by Russ Linton
Their new passenger sat on the driver's bench next to Sidge. This had crowded out his original bench mate, who now rode above, her feet dangling from the roof.
Sidge twitched his head to angle more of his lenses in her direction, and she acknowledged him from her perch with a tilt of her chin. He waved his antennae in response, glad to see she was in good spirits despite the new seating arrangements.
As they traveled throughout the day, many small villages appeared along the route. Eyes narrowed as they jostled down the lanes, and the typical excitement at seeing the first of the pilgrimage's wagons again melted into horror and confusion when they saw the driver. Forget the giant beast of a man next to him or the cantankerous horse. Never mind the stunningly beautiful woman sitting with courtly grace atop the wagon like a goddess descended from the heavens on her chariot to greet her subjects.
He hadn't realized how much having Kaaliya at his side had shielded him from these awkward reactions. Or maybe distracted him, he wasn't sure which. His new bench mate never asked about the Temple. Never placed a hand on Sidge's knee. Never shouted at the gawkers to breed with themselves, an image he found quite amusing.
Up until now, Kaaliya had made his first trip outside the Temple walls bearable. The commoners were unlearned, uncouth, he told himself. She was an exception. A most amazing exception.
She deserved the bench seat, but the once naked man, now called Chuman for Kaaliya had named him, had only stared as Sidge pantomimed a climb to the roof from the bench. Anxious and irritable, Izhar had taken to shouting for them to depart through the gaps in the cabin wall. As the noise increased and Sidge's wings beat more furiously, the horses grew restless, with the Nag making repeated attempts to lie in the grass while harnessed—a motion that caused the top-heavy vardo to strain dangerously against the hitching shaft. In the end, Kaaliya had hauled herself to the roof. Apologizing profusely, Sidge had flown her a saddle blanket on which to sit.
And that was why he rode with the strange man beside him. Mostly mute and largely motionless, Chuman could've been forgotten in the grinding miles. A piece of luggage, or an oddity among Izhar's possessions. Yet even the man's stillness was unnerving to Sidge.
Sidge reined in the horses aggressively. He was sure they'd been traveling so slowly a stray stone under the vardo's wheel might've threatened their progress. The beasts plodded to a stop, and the Paint swung its shaggy head, watching Sidge through one white-rimmed eye.
They rested several spans away from the crest of a steep embankment. The road ribboned down the side in a series of hairpin turns descending sharply into the valley. Inside the vardo's cabin, Izhar's meditations sounded in unbroken tones.
Sidge clambered from the bench and set his mind to the task of unpacking the wheel chains and locking the rear wheels. Work, not meditation, would relax him, but he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to focus on the particular task ahead.
Kaaliya stretched out across the roof and watched him from above. "Everything all right?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Your wings. They buzz like a nest full of hornets when you're upset."
He consciously slowed their cadence. "Nobody has ever told me this before."
Kaaliya shrugged. "Most of the time, people look at someone's face for a cue. You speak with your wings, your antennae."
With those limbs only recently freed from his robes, it was no wonder nobody else had ever noticed. Sidge returned to fitting the chains to the wagon and grumbled, "Rigors of the journey."
"Stop a minute and take a look." Kaaliya climbed down from the roof with ease and walked up the road where it disappeared into the bowl-shaped valley.
Sidge set down the chains and joined her. Below stretched a flat plain, surrounded by undulating hills which brought to Sidge's mind the serpentine spine of the Great Dragon, Vasheru. Only here, the backbone doubled and tripled and piled upon itself as more and more hills snaked out to the horizon, where they met a restless sea.
Between the sea and the plain stood the walls of Stronghold. The rough wooden trunks of the wall, each larger around than the horses and wagon combined, shot high into the sky. A silvery moat surrounded the city wall and in the reflection, the gigantic timbers drew outward so they became stilts buried in a cloud-laden sky.
Beating his wings at a calm pace as he took in the valley, his antennae tickled with a distant hum. A uniform droning in which he began to feel he could lose himself. Shut out his current world of impending descent, judgmental glares, disobedient beasts, and unwanted passengers.
Air shifted, and he thought he'd been drawn closer to the sound. Instead, the sound had come to them. He wondered if it was Izhar's chanting, but noticed Chuman had begun to hum. Kaaliya scrunched her nose and gave Sidge a bewildered look. She returned to the vardo to stare as Chuman matched the sound on the wind.
When she climbed on to the driver's bench, Sidge flew to her side.
Chuman continued humming, oblivious to Kaaliya's presence. Sidge hovered above the team, earning a swat from a horse's tail which he ignored.
"What's he doing?" Sidge asked.
"I don't know. His pitch is true," Kaaliya said. "Did he say anything to you along the way?"
"Not so much as a cough, or a whimper. He sat right there as though carved from stone. I'd venture to guess the villagers were more unnerved by him than myself." That last part didn't sound too convincing.
Kaaliya flashed a sympathetic expression before tapping Chuman on the arm. His humming continued. She shrugged and began to hum, matching the pitch effortlessly.
Sidge wished more than ever that he was capable of rolling his eyes. "Don't encourage him."
Responding with a playful wave, Kaaliya's hand froze mid-way as Chuman's humming ceased. She continued to hum, and the silenced man pivoted his head with a slow, cumbersome motion which reminded Sidge of the labored turn of a millstone. Slowly, Chuman brought his hand up toward Kaaliya. Her frozen, playful swipe became an open palm in Sidge's face, warding him away.
Sidge had been unaware he'd closed in, his wings buzzing furiously. He had an urge to grapple with the giant of a man. Then Chuman's fingers touched Kaaliya's lips, and more than grappling, he wished to sever the hand at the wrist with his mandibles, but a steady palm kept him at bay.
"What is this sound?" Chuman spoke with a sleepy, dreamlike quality to his dull voice.
"The city," said Kaaliya. "Wards placed by the Urujaav when the humans fled the slavery of Kurath's Children. So long as the call is heard, the city will not rot or burn, and the water will rise up against invaders like a many-taloned beast." She guided Chuman's hand to the bench between them.
"As the commoners say," interrupted Sidge. The closeness of Chuman to Kaaliya continued to agitate him. "The more educated know it was the Attarah … and perhaps," Sidge added with a sigh, "the powerful sorcerers of the Jadugar who did this."
Kaaliya, who could effortlessly roll her eyes, did so. "And neither are here to lay claim to their work, so one explanation is as good as the other."
Sidge wanted to reply but was cut off by more rumbling from Chuman. "I feel this sound."
He didn't want to admit it, but Chuman's simple statement made sense. The feeling was inexplicable, an inner calling or pull which radiated down his antennae like a properly intoned mantra.
"What of you, Kaaliya?" Sidge asked. "Do you feel the sound?"
Kaaliya closed her eyes as if searching for an answer. "No. I hear it. I can't say I feel it. But every place, like a person, has its own voice. They speak to us in different ways. Sadness. Regret." She opened her eyes and a crooked grin replaced the tense lines which had formed along her jaw. "Like some speak with their wings and antennae, hmm?"
He had an urge to move closer to her and he did. Chuman was again an insignificant piece of the scenery. A gray, motionless rock. The blue, open sky no longer a distraction. The sun a feeble light compared to her.
Kaaliya's brow furrowed and her mouth quirked as Sidge moved
closer. Words were on her lips, but she was forced to steady herself on the bench as the whole vardo jumped. An odd gurgle from the cabin broke the melody like a rock thrown into the placid moat around the city.
"Master?" Sidge tore away from Kaaliya and flew to the rear of the wagon.
Another sound came, this time a wet retching, and he felt the air charge. Trails of lightning arced from the roof and leapt toward the ground along the cargo netting. Sidge heard a popping noise and smelled all at once the rancid odor of vomit and the similar, vinegary tang of his personal food supplies.
Had his master actually tapped into the Wisdom? Was he controlling this?
He tossed the curtain aside.
Izhar knelt in the center of the cabin, his robes and a collection of undyed pillows crumpled beneath him on the travel chest. Contents of the shelves scattered, a cacophony of odds and ends fought for Sidge's attention. An earthen pot tumbled and rich soil fanned across the floorboards.
And leave everything where it is.
His master's eyes were white points and his shaggy belly was speckled with vomit as he continued the mantra. Empty shells of puffcap littered a sticky pool in Izhar's lap. The chain of the corestone pendant formed a taut "V" below his neck, with the stone itself disappearing into his meaty fist. Sparks of energy wove between the links of the chain and ricocheted off the walls and shelves.
Sidge knew the mantra well, and he'd been hearing the call for Wisdom intoned inside the cabin for weeks. This time something was horribly wrong.
"What's going on?" Kaaliya was at Sidge's side. She leaned toward the opening and he blocked her view.
"I'll handle this." He slipped into the cabin and pulled the curtain behind him.
Sidge examined Izhar's face, a stark contradiction to his meditative pose. Jaw steeled, the Words of storm and power trickled from his lips. A thin finger of lightning shot from Izhar, and an ivory handled bell tumbled from a shelf to join the chaos.
The curtain rustled again.
"Kaaliya." Sidge didn't bother turning his head as she peeked inside. He tried his best to sound brave. "Take Chuman. Move away from here." The small gap framing her eyes snapped shut. Soon, he heard her voice at the front of the vardo, urging Chuman down.
Izhar's mantra rose, the whispered words now a deadly conversation. Sidge could no longer decipher what was being said. These were not the teachings of the Temple. Stray bolts began to knit together into a single vein, feeding into the roof.
"Master?" Sidge swallowed his fear and moved to Izhar's side. His acolyte robes pressed tight against his shell as Vasheru's Kiss engulfed him. The cramped air of the vardo writhed with familiar power. At the Temple, in the courtyard, the feeling had been a herald of enlightenment. Here it was a terrible warning.
Sidge folded his legs carefully beneath him, ignoring the scattered trinkets pressed under his robes and shell. The vardo quaked and the incongruent assortment of odds and ends skittered across the floor. Soil sifted through the crevices between the boards, the clean odor of home disappearing with it. Wrestling with his hood, he placed both pairs of arms on his knees and turned palms to the heavens. He grasped his upper hands to stop them from shaking.
He couldn't even channel the Fire, let alone the Wisdom. Nothing would stop Vasheru's mighty power from consuming them both. He had no idea what to do.
Izhar sat unmoving, while the shelves continued emptying. With a hollow thump, the shaking paused and the vardo leaned. He heard a deep grunt outside and then Kaaliya, calling desperately for Chuman.
"Master, we will recite the sheathing now. Are you ready?" Sidge spoke the words patiently as he'd often heard Izhar say them, and fought to keep his voice steady. His master's eyes remained distant as he began. "Bloodied the blade. Rent the earth."
With those words, the Cloud Born's lashes fluttered. Knuckles white around the corestone, the call of the storm rose louder. Sidge swallowed. The vein of light feeding into the roof became a towering arc and Sidge's hood slithered from his head, borne away by an unseen current. White-hot energy swarmed across the littered cabin.
He felt the searching tendrils of energy, licking the walls of the wagon, stealing color from the air. He heard Kaaliya shout again outside, unintelligible. She didn't sound far enough away. He focused harder on the sheathing.
"My enemies fall to ash. My enemies fall to dust …" Sidge stuttered.
Izhar twitched and his countenance shifted. Sounds of the sheathing or any of the known mantras were not what escape his lips. Deep and primal utterances slurred thick on his tongue, mystery from beyond the Trials. Pure light leaked between his fingers.
There was no controlling this.
Sidge reached out, the light a solitary focus for the flickering prisms of his eyes. It burned away the chaos in the cabin. Control? Kindle? Fan the flame? He didn't care. If Izhar were to die here, he would die too. And in their deaths, perhaps he would finally know the radiance of Vasheru's Wisdom.
"He is close," spoke Izhar, pure energy dripping from his mouth.
Sidge closed his hand around his master's. Darkness replaced the light.
CHAPTER XI
Sidge was home.
The sharp odor of burning metal in the air told him as much. It was a clean smell. Nothing ever lingered with it. The pristine smell of a universe before being befouled by creation.
A wall of cloud stretched from horizon to horizon. Lightning fractured the monotone landscape, and Vasheru's Kiss rippled across an unseen ocean of pressure, pulsing with each strike. There was no sign of the vardo. He was alone.
He crouched low, as he'd been taught. The barren wastes of the Stormblade Sheath were not a place to stand exposed. Too tall and you became a focal point for Vasheru's Fire. Without the proper knowledge of channeling, you would be reduced to ash.
Sidge recalled the lone figure he'd seen from the ramparts, right before the chaining ceremony, and wondered if they'd survived. Acolytes would come here alone, to claim their corestone—but only an acolyte who had mastered channeling. Sidge never had. He would most likely die like the lone man.
But wasn't he already dead? How had he been taken from the vardo? How could he possibly have survived the wild energies unleashed in there? Was this more troll magic?
Sidge heard the thunder fade into another, deeper, richer song: Izhar's chanting. Creeping on his feet and middle palms, beaded sand crunching under his weight, he followed the sound.
A blinding bolt of lightning exploded nearby, and the concussive force tossed Sidge across the soil like a rock skipping on a pond. When he stopped, he stayed there, quivering in fear, waiting for the next assault. When it did not come, he shook his head free of the dirt and saw, not his master, but someone else.
Chuman sat naked at the edge of a crater, a clay cup in his hands. Tears streamed down his cheeks and shook free into the cup as he intoned the same deep, mysterious mantra Izhar had last spoken in the vardo.
The sky churned, and Sidge realized it hadn't been spiraling before like it should, like it was now, the clouds twisting around their invisible axle. Above the crater, clouds flexed like a pupil and Sidge became aware of being at the center of the great Storm. In the incredible brilliance, a face formed.
Vasheru.
A layered frill wreathed the Dragon's head and stretched outward like rays of the sun escaping the parting clouds. Gleaming and resplendent, His face was polished to a mirrored sheen. His broad, almost-human nose, flared in feral rage and below this His mouth hinged open in a mighty roar exposing fangs so immense Sidge could only imagine they were designed to devour worlds. But it was the Dragon's sunken eyes shrouded by a brow of sculpted flame that drew Sidge past the overwhelming majesty and into their fathomless pits.
Sidge's heart hammered. He kept trying to command his limbs to bend and kneel, bury his face before the Dragon, but they stayed rigid and frozen. All he could do was stare upward in awe. The sky shattered, and all hope of pulling his eyes downward was lost.
Lightning flashed, and the afterimage showed an arc streaming toward Chuman, then pulled into the crater. The naked man rose, but as he walked away, his seated body remained. The second Chuman paced the lip of the crater. A third emerged and a fourth, moving to opposing sides. The man's chanting layered with each new form, and bolts of lightning swarmed, funneling into a single, brilliant vein.
Inside the depression, the earth shifted and began to spin, counter to the clouds above. A pillar of light cascaded from the heavens, taking all sight with it. Only the chanting and Sidge's pulse broke the silence.
Another roar erupted, and Sidge's insides sloshed against his chitin as the force of it rolled through him. The chanting multiplied into a throng of syllables, more than four throats could voice.
When Sidge could see again, a legion of the naked men ringed the entire pit, each one emptying his clay cup into the crater. One by one, they dove into the searing light.
Fear replaced awe. Sidge could no longer see Vasheru, yet his terrible roar shook the earth. The sands of the crater glowed in an unbroken sheet then splintered.
Flight. Fast and as far away as he could go. That was the only thing to do.
No, he couldn't flee, if the world were to be torn asunder, he deserved to go with it. He'd failed his master in the vardo. And only moments ago, he'd remained upright in the face of Vasheru. Not knelt or even bowed.
Sidge launched himself into the crater.
Cold light filled the crater, freezing beyond the point where ice should form. He didn't care. He was dead or needed to be, this was the only way he could atone. He'd probably been consumed in the vardo, this visit to his home a final test of his spirit. A test he'd failed.
But drifting in the current, Sidge wondered if he'd ever even lived. He felt as if he'd become the song, the mantra, and as long as a voice called, he would be content. He would drift here, outside of everything for the rest of time, and be at peace.
Nothing to mend. Nothing to clean. No festivals to attend or patrons to impress. No gawking commoners. No more combing silken hair, soft as the light under a waning moon.