by Ben Galley
Farden didn’t reply, and it continued, wagging a hairy finger as it lectured. Its fingernail was long, cracked, and yellow. ‘The Paraians have a saying, that the man who digs in the sand for the sun after it has set is a fool.’ And with that, the goat-man stood and Farden followed suit. ‘Some things don’t want to be found, boy,’ it added.
‘How encouraging. I will bear that in mind,’ replied the mage, nettled at being called boy. His new friend held out a hand and Farden shook it without breaking his gaze. The goat-man smiled and flashed needle-like teeth.
‘A desert for a deserter,’ it said, chuckling at its joke. ‘Why don’t you go back home, Arka, and stop wasting your time, eh?’ Farden didn’t reply. He merely continued to stare. The creature shrugged, turned its back to the mage, and then wandered off into the moonlight. As it walked away, Farden noticed that its legs were bent like a goat’s, and hoofed. Farden kept his eyes on it until it had disappeared into the darkness. He waited until the fire finally died out, and then, wary as ever, he crept into his glass hut and made a hollow in the sand for a bed. Farden fell asleep in seconds, dreaming of goat-creatures and waterfalls and balconies. Go home, they whispered to him. Go home.
Morning came, and with it the sun, and it painted the eastern sky with a swirling mishmash of reds and oranges. The rushing waterfalls were tinged with pink in the early light. Gordheim was waking up, and in the palace, in the highest part of the highest tower, a door slammed, nearly breaking it from its hinges. Bare feet stamped loudly on the spiral steps and the furious footsteps echoed against the stone walls. Nearby guards clicked their metal heels together and stood a little straighter as the woman marched past, a flurry of blonde hair. Cheska was livid. She stormed down the corridor and almost tearing the handles from the wood, she yanked open a set of large double doors. Two men, one tall yet muscular with dirty blonde hair and a calculating hazel gaze, one huge and hulking, swathed in bear fur and adorned with jewellery and scars, sat at a table breaking their fast.
‘He was in my room!’ yelled Cheska, ear-piercingly shrill. The two men watched her approach their table, eyeing the furious woman calmly. King Bane ripped a loaf in two as if it were a strip of paper and stuffed a portion in his mouth. Vice put down his fork and crossed his arms. ‘Who?’ he asked.
Cheska’s blue eyes were wide with anger. ‘Who do you think?’ she spat. With a thud she slammed her hand down on the table and then pointed at the small circlet of red metal. ‘See? He left it on my pillow!’
The two men peered at the fjortla, the red metal bracelet that marked a prospective Written for their Ritual, and then swapped a glance. Vice clenched his fist and then rose from his chair without a word. Bane chuckled through a mouthful of bread. ‘I knew we should have killed him when we had the chance.’
Vice narrowed his eyes at the king. ‘How helpful, Bane, thank you,’ he said, and the king scowled, stabbing a scrap of boiled meat with an oversized knife. Vice rubbed his angular chin and thought for a moment, absently patting his breast pocket, before turning to Cheska. ‘Have your servants pack your things.’
She moved her hair out of her face with an impatient hand and snorted. ‘Why?’
‘Because we’re going to Krauslung,’ replied Vice, and Bane rolled his eyes at the mention of the city. ‘Now stop asking questions and get to it.’ The Arkmage waved a hand towards the open door behind her, where the guards were trying their best not to eavesdrop. Cheska hesitated, eying him with a feisty look. She jabbed the air between them with a finger. ‘If I was in charge, Farden would be dead already, and hanging from the city walls by his neck,’ she said. An awkward silence fell in the room, broken only by the squeaking of Bane’s chair as he stood up.
The king walked forward, fur boots thudding on the stone, and came to a halt a few inches from his daughter’s flushed face. With a monstrous hand he grabbed her chin and slowly lifted her face to meet his. Cheska tried to match his dark emerald stare but found herself wilting. A scar carved its way down one side of his jaw. His mouth curled into a sneer. ‘But you’re not in charge, so you’d better watch your tongue, girl,’ Bane growled in a low voice. With a flick of his hand he tossed her aside and walked out of the room. Cheska gasped and almost fell, but Vice grabbed her wrist and hauled her upright. Furious and a little shaken, she tried to shake off Vice’s grip but he held fast and hissed in her ear like a snake.
‘You better listen to you father if you know what’s good for you, and concentrate on one thing,’ he whispered. His eyes flicked to the visible bulge beneath her nightgown. ‘You’re too important to me,’ he added, and with that he let her go, leaving her to rub her wrist and her chin. Vice turned and made to leave, but just before he closed the door he turned back to face her. ‘And leave Farden to me,’ he said. The doors slammed behind him, leaving Cheska alone in the room, one hand on her stomach.
Outside in the corridor, Vice quickly caught up with Bane. The sounds of their hurried strides echoed around them. ‘What is wrong with you lately?’ demanded Vice, watching his brother from the corner of his eye.
‘I’m tired of waiting,’ replied the king.
‘It’s necessary.’
Bane glowered. ‘She reminds me more of her mother every day.’
‘Ah yes, the woman you literally loved to death,’ said Vice, in an oily voice.
‘She was a means to an end.’
‘And is that how you see your daughter?’
Bane stopped outside his door and squared up to Vice. ‘Don't you?’ he challenged.
The Arkmage took a step forward. ‘Mark my words, brother, Cheska is vital to our plans, as is our move to Krauslung. You need to control yourself. Damage her, and I will have your head.’
Bane wrinkled his nose in distaste and walked into his rooms, knocking Vice with his shoulder as he passed. Vice hardly moved. ‘Threaten me again, brother, and you'll regret it,’ said Bane, and then he slammed his door, producing a shower of dust. Vice cracked his knuckles.
When Farden awoke, the sun was already above the horizon and starting to burn its path through the pure cerulean sky. Farden, already sweating inside his glass shelter, crawled out into the sunlight and stood grimacing at the shivering sands. Goat-creatures be damned, he thought, his sleepy mind fuzzy and muffled. He was wasting his time wandering aimlessly through the deserts. He needed cold, hard, definitive answers, and he suspected that creature had them. But first, he decided, he would pay a visit to Lafik. After a wide yawn, Farden packed his things, and headed back the way he had come, leaving his hut for the next hopeless wanderer.
After almost a whole day’s walk, the flat horizon was interrupted by tall mountains looming in the distance, dark, sullen, and topped with streaky clouds. In the heat waves they were nothing but blotches and smudges, but as Farden trudged stalwartly over dune and along dry river bed, they slowly began to take shape and rear their heads like craggy beasts. After a few more hours, foothills began to rise up around him, servants of the mountains, and like pilgrims they knelt and bowed to their taller masters in the distance. A lonely road meandered between the hills, and Farden joined it, watching the landscape change. The dunes faded. Sand gave way to dirt and pebble. In the distance a farmhouse sat surrounded by empty fields. Stunted trees punctuated the emptiness, growing greener and taller with each league that passed. Mountain streams weaved their way through the open plains, feeding the dry earth. They glimmered like snakes of molten silver in the hot sun. Within a day’s travel, the desert had become an open scrubland, a completely different Paraia altogether.
But no matter where Farden went, he could not shake off the feeling of perpetual déjà vu that plagued him. Maybe it was the sky, that empty blueness that he felt like melting into every time he looked at it, the sky in his dreams. Maybe it was the perpetual heat. Maybe it was the fact that for the most part, every mile looked identical.
During his early years at the School, he had come to Paraia with a group of mages to see the sands and the creatures,
the odd tribes and the bastions. But that had been a short trip, and they had kept to the mountains in the distance, but still Farden felt as if he had seen every rock, tree, and dune before. He stared at the wilderness with glazed, ponderous eyes.
Slowly, people began to populate the lonely road. Towards the evening a bull wandered past him, leading a train of young boys in shackles. Long-legged men, beady-eyed and wearing flat caps and buttoned jackets, walked alongside the boys and waggled switches of wood in their faces, mumbling to each other in an eastern tongue. The bell on the bull’s collar and the jangling of their manacles awoke Farden from his reverie, and he watched the slave train pass in silence. The men ignored him, while the boys stared back with wide and hollow eyes, shuffling and clinking in their irons. Some of them had the beginnings of pox, others had the purple welts of the switches on their arms. They were probably on their way to the slave and magick markets in Halios, a good week’s march from Belephon, and there would be many more whip-marks before their journey was over. The mage pitied them. Slavery had yet to mar the north, and it was an ugly practice in his eyes.
Following a short distance behind the slave boys was a man. He was short, unremarkable, from the Shattered Isles by the look of his hat and gloves, and minding his own business, but it was what he held in his hand that caught Farden’s attention. The smell hit him the hardest: that bittersweet smouldering smell, unmistakable. As the man passed, a cloud of smoke wafted over Farden and filled his nostrils with the smell of old habits. Old habits that had never completely died away. Stoppered and forgotten, yes, but not dead.
Farden stopped and took a deep breath through his nose, savouring the smell of the nevermar. He watched the man flick the ash from his pipe with a long finger. Sensing someone was looking at him, the man turned, made a face, and walked on, a little brisker than before. Farden sighed and shook his head, mentally chastising himself. He had other things to worry about.
The market town of Belephon was a mere tabletop of sandstone that lurked a few hours’ walk away, squatting in the distance between Farden’s road and the dry mountain slopes. He could already make out its pale yellow and orange buildings with their coloured domes and little blue ribbons. Every now and again, when the wind blew in the right direction, he could hear the tinkling of the bells and the thuds of market magick on the wind.
When the road split in half, he took the left fork and continued up the winding path towards the little sandstone outcrop. A dirty little stream trickled through the ditch to his side. It reminded Farden how parched he really was. Another man wandered past with a coelo laden with heavy goods and pots full of perfumed oils. It sloshed around noisily with every tired step the huge wooly animal took. Farden was now very thirsty indeed.
The sounds of the town grew louder and louder the closer he got to the walls. It was yet another market day, and people for miles around had brought their wares to sell. Farden followed the road to the gap in the town walls and the guards waved him through. After several months, he was now somewhat of a familiar face.
Farden moved through the thick throngs of brightly-coloured people and past the meat market stalls, packed with strange concoctions and assorted bits of even stranger animals: haunches of desert deer almost twelve foot tall, coelo and cow steaks, giant bastion fillets, goat stews, grimling and scorpion tails, lamb, quillhog, and dillo ribs, and even some cuts that looked decidedly, well, human.
Farden stopped at a little fountain where spring water had been gathered in urns and pots. For a small bit of coin he was given a clay bowl full of fresh, cold water. He could almost imagine the steam coming from his dry tongue as he gulped it down. He leant against an adobe pillar and took a moment to look around.
The deserts and plains of Paraia were incredibly different compared to Emaneska, but it was the contrast in its peoples that Farden found to be the strangest aspect. Every one of them was different from the next, and not just in their clothing and their customs but in their faces and their traits as well. Many seemed to be hybrids with hints of animalistic features, like his goat-legged visitor from the night before. Some had scales or teeth like that of lizards, similar to the Sirens, while others of the innumerable nomad tribes had legs and feet like antelopes, hoofed and gnarled. Some even had horns like deer or gazelles. For many the difference was simply in the eyes. As he walked around the market people gazed at him with irises of purple, bright yellow, red, or white. Farden kept walking and tried not to stare, but as always there was something new to look at, and he couldn’t help himself. It was only natural.
The people of Paraia were a wilder people, and, like the witches of the Nelska mountains, their magick came from the sand and the soil and the shrubs, rather than from spell books or tattoos. And yet, unlike the witches, their magick wasn’t limited to potions. In fact, it didn’t seem to be limited at all. Spells seemed to be everywhere. The magick market was booming in Paraia. Every now and again there was a bang and a cloud of colourful sparks would burst above a stall. Charmed trinkets occasionally cried out and yelled at passers-by, literally begging to be bought. Painted skulls nattered to each other. Nearby a man was selling bottles of different coloured sands, and when a customer pointed at one, he tipped a little into his hand and flung it into the air. The sand glittered in the air, quickly turning into a miniature storm cloud, and pelting the customer with rain for a moment. Farden smiled and shook his head. It was sad that these traders never made it to the Emaneska markets. Maybe one day, he thought.
Whereas the magick of Emaneska came from the magick hidden in spells and words, written down and passed along from scholar to mage, Paraian magick seemed to come directly from nature, and apparently relied on almost no spells at all. They had no official mages, no wizards, and no sorcerers, and yet magick in the deserts was surprisingly prevalent. The mage couldn’t help but be fascinated by it. Maybe it was something in the water here, or simply just memorised.
Even stranger, the Paraians also seemed to be obsessed with death. One out of every three stalls he could see sold some sort of funeral paraphernalia: rolls of paper cloth, dark, heavily-scented oils, strange silver implements, tall jars shaped like animals, and staves of wood with runes carved into them. Like Emaneska traditions, the Paraian dead were cremated, but it seemed that death in the desert towns was steeped in heavy ritual and ancient ceremony. There also appeared to be a plethora of death-related gods. They were clustered in gangs around the legs of the tables, grinning and winking at their soon-to-be customers. Farden glared at them.
At the request of his complaining stomach, the mage decided to wander on to find some food. He cast a quick look over the meat stalls, but as usual the pungent smells and buzzing clouds of flies put him off. Farden wrinkled his nose and moved on. Further down the street and away from the initial bustle, he came across a clump of food stalls. First, he approached a tiny birdlike woman, who sat on a stool behind her table, blinking independently. Her wares were laid out on a dirty cloth: brown lizards roasted on sticks and bags of something that looked like little worms or other such straggly insects. The mage prodded and poked as the woman nodded and grinned at him encouragingly, smacking her lips and rubbing her teeth every now and again. Farden’s stomach wisely disagreed with what he saw on the bench and he left, much to the woman’s annoyance.
A couple of merchants down the line, the mage spotted a stall displaying a garish assortment of nuts and berries. He decided to see if they were any more appetising than the insects. A man wearing a long white robe with pointy, and slightly furry, ears stood behind the stall. ‘How may I be of service, good sir?’ he asked politely, in a familiar tongue. It had taken Farden a long time to understand the strange accents of Paraia, and he still wasn’t sure if he had heard them all. It was nice to hear a trader speaking so clearly for a change.
‘What are these? Are they for eating?’ Farden asked, pointing at the bowls. The man waved his furry hand in a long, sweeping gesture.
‘There are many different items
for many different purposes good sir. Some are for eating, others are for not. Perhaps sir has a lady he would like to seduce? Or an animal he wishes to tame? An enemy he would prefer to be taken ill?’ The man winked a bright yellow eye.
‘Not really,’ Farden shook his head, confused as to how these nuts and berries became so special. ‘I’m looking for something to eat.’
The man nodded knowingly, obviously not understanding. ‘Ah. A man who wishes for better dreams. This one for the good sir!’ The man wagged a finger and quickly picked a nut from one of the bowls. It looked like a small acorn, but it was a disturbingly bright green. ‘Once eaten, this nut produces the most astounding and dazzling array of colours behind the eyes.’
Farden shook his head again, pointing to his open mouth. ‘No. To eat?’
The man squinted, tapping his nose. ‘I know. You are looking for something.’
Farden rolled his eyes. ‘Well, yes, I suppose. I am trying to find someone, but I’m also trying to find something to ear?’ he tried again, but before he could get any further the man clapped his hands. He leant forward.
‘Boy or girl for you sir?’ he said with a glint in his eye.
The mage suppressed a laugh. ‘No no, it’s not that kind of thing. It’s a long lost family member.’
‘Ah, sir should have said.’ The cat-eared man hovered over his bowls and his nimble fingers plucked out two different nuts. One was almost black, the other an ash white. ‘One brings them to you, the other takes you to them.’
It sounded like an easy decision, but Farden couldn’t decide whatsoever. ‘Erm, what do you think?’
‘With estranged family members sir, it is always best to make the first move,’ said the man, a hint of pity in his voice. Farden couldn’t deny the man’s logic, and he shrugged. ‘I’ll go to him,’ he decided.