A Solitary Journey

by Tony Shillitoe

  Sitting on the bare earth at the rear of the rented two-roomed wood-and-thatch cottage on the edge of the town, she watched Emma playing with Whisper under an ash-oak, wishing she was under a gum tree back in Summerbrook. Andrak was a foreign world in every way—from the inventions to the people to the animals and plants. A flock of multicoloured birds chattering in the boughs of the dark-leaved ash-oak reminded her of the rosellas that often fed on the blossoms outside of her mother’s house in the mornings and evenings during the cycle of Varsoo and she realised that she was homesick for the first time since embarking on the adventure to find her children.

  ‘How long do rats live?’ Emma asked in her native Shessian language as she sat beside her mother, the black bush rat sitting up in expectation of being picked up.

  Meg embraced her daughter’s shoulders with her left arm. ‘We don’t speak Shessian any more,’ Meg reminded her, using the Andrak tongue.

  ‘Sorry. I forget when it’s just us,’ Emma said. She concentrated on the words and asked, in Andrak, ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Whisper isn’t like an ordinary animal. She lives a lot longer.’

  ‘But how old is she?’ Emma insisted. ‘I’m nearly nine years old and she was a grown rat when I was little.’

  ‘She’s very old,’ Meg replied. How old is she really? she wondered, remembering that Whisper had been old Samuel’s pet and came to Meg when Meg was almost sixteen. That was fourteen years ago.

  ‘Will she die soon?’

  ‘What sort of question is that?’ Meg asked indignantly. ‘Of course she won’t. She’s healthy. You can see that.’

  ‘Then how long will she live?’ Emma persisted.

  Meg reached down and scooped up Whisper so that the rat could nestle in her lap. ‘She’ll live as long as she needs to,’ she said, smiling at her daughter.

  ‘What sort of answer is that?’ Emma asked, mocking her mother’s indignation, and the pair broke into laughter as Whisper curled up to snooze in the warm comfort of Meg’s lap and the afternoon sunshine.

  She dreamed of him most nights, sometimes waking with the sensation on her lips that he had left when they last parted, and she wondered if he had found what he searched for and what he was doing.

  In Marella, over the months after Luca’s departure, she engineered the life for which she’d been craving—a life of anonymity and peace for her daughter and herself. The story of the red-haired sorceress and murderess who vanished in Central Andrak to the puzzled consternation of the Peacekeepers briefly passed through town and was quickly forgotten, and no one associated her with it except in jest as a newcomer to Marella. She worked in Tunbridge’s shirt factory to earn a living during the weekdays and in the evenings she taught Emma the Andrak language and how to read in preparation for going to the town school when the next season came. Letta and Dyan insisted daily that Emma should already be in the school, but Meg didn’t want her daughter to start until she was certain there would be no curious questions inspired by a slip of Emma’s tongue into the Shessian language.

  With Emma’s help while she was at work, she transformed the dilapidated and abandoned cottage into a tidy, if tiny, home and within months she had a healthy garden of vegetables and flowers and she was content. Some day she would have to face the task of searching for her son, Treasure, but for the moment she had Emma and she had peace, and both sustained her.

  But her nights were restless with dreams of A Ahmud Ki. She saw him always standing before her as he had on their last morning together and they kissed and she would wake. The dreams were not like the first ones she had when she was younger, when he spoke to her and urged her to free him from his entrapment in Se’Treya. These were dreams of longing and regret—the dreams of a forsaken lover—and the dreams filled her with longing and sadness.

  One night after three months, the world awash with moonlight, she checked that Emma was safe and asleep under Whisper’s watchful guard before she crept from her cottage across an open paddock to a stand of trees nestled between two hillocks. There, when she was certain no one else was stirring in the vicinity, she conjured a portal and stepped through the blue haze.

  The brilliantly bright, endless blue sky reminded her of her old home in Western Shess because it was so different to the dull grey sky of her new homeland from which rain fell with annoying regularity. She missed the long, lazy days of sunshine and heat in Western Shess when the sweetest moment was sitting beneath a shady gum tree to drink cool water from a water bottle. The endless grey dust plain stretched in every direction, studded with the white skeletons of dead trees—a place devoid of life.

  Forsaking the forbidding vista, she ploughed through the dust that felt as if it wanted to resist her for intruding, until she reached the familiar rectangular opening that led into the underground chamber where she’d first discovered A Ahmud Ki. She listened at the head of the stairway and checked the stone steps for footprints, but the chamber was silent as if no one had come or gone for a long time. She instinctively surveyed the landscape again, but the grey plain and blue skies were empty.

  She summoned her courage and descended the grey stone steps, prepared to run as darkness enveloped her, remembering her last encounter with the Demon Horsemen. At the base of the stairs she listened again for telltale warnings, her heart racing, before she crept along the stone corridor to the central chamber which was dark, empty and silent. She knew corridors led to the four compass points, but they were also dark and silent. When she felt certain that it was safe, she conjured a light sphere to illuminate the circular chamber in soft white light, and she listened and watched again for the chamber’s custodians.

  Her eyes finally rested on the ebony sleeping dragon statue. A Ahmud Ki was pinned to it by his shoulders with a pair of axes when she first found him, enveloped in a green magical shaft of light called a glyph designed to lock him in his suffering for eternity. The concept of magic so powerful and enduring had astonished and daunted her, but she had dismantled the magic to release him and he had become her companion on her search for her children. He had become someone very special to her, someone who haunted her dreams. Only the clefts in the statue where the axes had been embedded confirmed that what happened was not one of her prophetic and confusing dreams that still plagued her nights. The axes were gone. The chamber was cold and dead, as if no one had ever been in it.

  Meg stared at the empty corridors. ‘Where are you?’ she whispered. ‘I need you.’ She waited, expecting an answer but the chamber stayed silent. A Ahmud Ki? she projected. Where are you? She sighed and headed for the left-hand corridor. It was risky, but she was curious and determined to know if anything still existed in this ancient place of the long-dead Dragonlords.

  She walked warily, shrouded by her ball of light and ready to sprint for safety in case a Demon Horseman appeared, ready to create an escape portal in the frame of the corridor, but the corridor was empty and eventually came to a dead end. The grey stone wall she faced was solid, but her spine tingled in its presence and she knew she was facing more than ordinary stone, and when she pressed her hand against it energy surged through her and made her step back. ‘What is this?’ she whispered. Suddenly afraid, she glanced over her shoulder to check the corridor behind her, and even when she confirmed that she was alone her uneasiness did not subside. She retreated into the dragon chamber, her heart racing, and caught her breath. ‘A Ahmud Ki?’ she asked the empty room, but there was no answer. She conjured a portal in the chamber doorway. A solitary tear in her right eye, she stepped into the soft blue haze.

  Emma was in school as Meg stood with her co-workers outside the shirt factory to watch the line of young men march past in their dark green uniforms, peacemakers slung over their shoulders, some smiling at the audience, others with their faces set in grim resignation. The endless Ranu-Andrak war was reaching yet another crucial phase so the Andrak war machine was committing troops and equipment with greater fervour to the front lines. Behind the soldiers came cavalry f
ollowed by wagons loaded with the big grey peacemakers that fired massive explosives.

  When the procession ended the foreman told everyone that Missus Tunbridge said they could go home for the afternoon. Despite Dyan and Letta’s insistent invitations to join them for lunch, Meg headed for her cottage alone, troubled by memories and driven by a desire that had nagged her for several months since her three fruitless visits to Se’Treya.

  Inside her cottage, she shifted Whisper who was sleeping on the emerald bedspread onto a chair in the main room before she retreated to the bedroom and shut the door. There she stripped off her vest and shirt and stood before a long mirror, studying the faint thin discolouration between her breasts where the sliver of amber was embedded. Her latest dreams had her standing among Andrak soldiers, wielding her magic to slay an endless number of enemies who streamed towards her until she stood in a macabre sea of bodies and blood. Her once-lost memories of the killings she’d committed in Queen Sunset’s name haunted her every morning she woke from the war dream and so she had come to her decision.

  A long time ago, marooned on an island, she believed the safest way to stop the Seers from acquiring the amber Conduit was to embed it in herself, never guessing at the consequences until she became the Conduit incarnate. Then the magic changed her life irrevocably. After the release of the Demon Horsemen and the death of Light she sought anonymity and safety in Summerbrook. The arrival of the Kerwyn changed all that and before she had fully recovered her memories she had become a killing machine with her magic. Wherever she went inevitably she was hunted and she ended up killing someone with her powers, even in Andrak. Now the latest dreams foretold her using the Conduit’s power to kill yet again. In Marella she had found peace and anonymity for herself and for her daughter. Perhaps, if they ever found Treasure, all three of them could live quietly and peacefully like everyone else. But as long as she was the Conduit that hope was under threat.

  Before the Kerwyn, during her years of peace in Summerbrook, she’d contemplated extracting the amber from her chest. Fear kept her from acting—fear that the Seers might one day find that she was still alive—fear that without the magic she couldn’t protect her children or her husband. All of that proved pointless. When the Kerwyn came she hadn’t saved anyone with her magic. And now, as Rees Feond of Marella in Western Andrak, she was as far from the Seers as she could ever hope to be. There was no threat to the Conduit and no need for the magic. All it had ever really brought to her, when all that happened was measured, was misery.

  She gazed at her eyes in the mirror. The face there, framed by the short black hair that she had to dye every week, was tired. So many nights had been wasted, lying awake, weighing the consequences of her decision. Taking out the amber closed the door to Se’Treya and A Ahmud Ki. But he wasn’t there anyway. Each of her four visits revealed a dead and empty place. Only the strangely energised walls at the end of the corridors puzzled her. Doorways for the Demon Horsemen, she surmised and resolved not to return. She missed him. He even told her that he loved her as he left, but she realised that his lust for power was stronger and that he wouldn’t return.

  The ghosts of the brutal past, the glimpses of future killing fields, her lost love and a desperate desire for peace and safety drove her to the only decision that made sense. She sank to the floor beside her bed, onto her back, and pressed her hands across her chest, covering the amber stain. On the island, so many years ago, she relied on instructions for a spell she barely believed would work to embed the amber sliver. Now she relied on her strength of will to rid herself of the demon in her being. She closed her eyes, braced her body for the shock that she expected, and imagined the amber easing from her chest.

  Emma opened her school exercise book and picked up the autoscribe. ‘Watch this, Mum,’ she said proudly, and she wrote boldly in Andrak, ‘My name is Emma Feond. I am ten years old.’ She shifted the book on the table so that Meg could see the result.

  ‘I’m very impressed,’ said Meg, and she kissed her daughter’s forehead, brushing aside the red locks that dangled across her temple. ‘I take it you like being here.’

  Emma nodded and closed the book. ‘Where’s Whisper?’

  ‘I suspect she’s out in the back garden,’ Meg replied, shifting a cooking pot on the hearth fire. Emma slid from her wooden chair and headed for the rear door. ‘Tea will be ready shortly,’ Meg called after her daughter as the door closed, and she smiled, pleased to see Emma happy. She reached above the cooking hearth to a shelf of metal containers, pulled down one labelled ‘Salt’, dropped a quick peck into the steaming stew pot and returned the seasoning container to its position. Her fingers brushed the tiny green ceramic jar beside it, sending a tingling thrill through her arm. She lowered her hand, but her eyes rested on the ceramic jar, checking that the lid was securely sealed with melted blue wax, before she returned to her cooking. It held her past, a sliver of amber. The world had changed entirely since the beginning of her journey from Summerbrook, but then so had she. Meg Farmer, Meg Tailor, Meg Kushel, Lady Amber—all those people no longer existed. She was Rees Feond, she lived in Marella and worked for Missus Tunbridge, her daughter was safe and happy, and she was at peace in a new place and a new life.

  APPENDIX

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF WESTERN SHESS

  The title of Shess for the vast western regions first appeared on cartographers’ documents during the seven-century reign of the Ashuak Empire, when Emperor Haarva began his expansionist crusade, and the Ashuak word ‘Shess’, meaning ‘foreign ones’, referred to a conglomerate of tribal factions with diverse cultures and languages. Despite disharmony and constant factional fighting between the many tribes, the great Ashuak armies failed to control the land they invaded. Instead, they learned that a disunited enemy was more troublesome than a united one because they were constantly harassed and confronted by new tribal groups who did not accept that the defeat of their neighbours also signified Ashuak rule over them. During the period of the Ashuak Empire, individuals sometimes tried to unite tribal groups against the common enemy. The concept of nationalism never superseded parochial tribalism, but the Ashuak principles of expansion and imperial rule took root, and after the Empire collapsed the strongest tribes in the north and west gradually dominated their neighbours to establish fledgling kingdoms.

  Western Shess first took shape under the warrior chieftain Bigaxe Royal, a veteran of several battles with the Ashuak invaders. Bigaxe declared himself king of his region, demanding that his neighbouring tribal leaders recognise his sovereignty, and ruthlessly enforced his leadership over the many dissenters. Curiously, Bigaxe retained the Ashuak name for the region, probably because the only existent maps of the land were Ashuak in origin.

  Royal successors settled their capital at Port of Joy and extended dominion further north and east during three centuries of Royal control, but rival kingdoms in the north in mountainous countryside eventually halted expansion. To the south, fierce tribal resistance, reminiscent of the war against the Ashuak invaders, stopped the kingdom from growing larger.

  Although a patriarchal lineage, the death of King Godson Royal from illness shortly after the death of both his sons in battle left his only remaining child, his daughter Sunset, to succeed to the throne. Queen Sunset Royal defied numerous political manoeuvres to prevent her succession and assassination attempts once in power to successfully rule for twenty-seven years, before her son, Future Royal, began to fight for the throne, backed by religious rebels.

  RELIGION

  Religion is split between the ancient shamanistic forms with a multiplicity of spirits informing their followers, and the spreading monotheistic Jarudhaism imported from the eastern lands.

  Jarudhaism is a corruption of the faiths originally started in the old eastern empires and kingdoms, a blend of Hohdaism and Jaru, along with some of the teachings of the philosopher Alwyn, called Alun in the Shessian sect, as well as aspects of the shamanistic beliefs of the earlier Shess tribes. In its simplis
tic form, Jarudha is the one god who created the world and all of the people, and who has set down his laws for life through a series of great books collectively called The Word. The Word’s origins can be traced back to the Hohdan priests of the Ashuak Empire and a text called Jaru’s Gift that arose from earlier works written by Jaru philosophers, but subsequently The Word has been expanded to encompass at least fifteen known philosophical and religious works. Followers of Jarudha believe that Jarudha’s hand guides the affairs of the world, and that Jarudhan disciples only act according to His Will. They also believe that the world is corrupt and sinful, and that the time is approaching when Jarudha’s disciples will rise and assert dominion over the unfaithful who will be converted or destroyed.

  In Western Shess, Jarudha’s disciples are synonymous with magical ability that is called the Blessing. Acolytes who demonstrate genuine magical skill are elevated to the rank of Seer, and the Seers believe that they are the vehicles for moral and spiritual consistency and reform. Jarudhaism is confined to the capital city, Port of Joy, and nearby towns. Outlying villages do not have Jarudhan representatives living in them.

  WESTERN SHESS POLITICAL STRUCTURES

  The political structures are quite simplistic because of the tribal roots and brutal determination of Bigaxe Royal and his successors to keep control. Essentially the regent is the supreme authority and law, and the leadership beneath is militaristic. The religious leadership is the only exception, and tensions between the Royals and the Jarudhan disciples have been taut throughout the kingdom’s history.