The Dark Season Saga- the Final Harvest

by Yehya H Safwat

  There was only one thing that could penetrate my shroud of apathy: innocence.

  A feeling similar to that I felt when Taria smiled at me in Mergal one hundred years ago loomed on the horizon of the grey wastes inside me, threatening its ever dusky night. I should let her be, I thought, then I paid and left from the back door of the tavern.

  In stealth, I climbed the walls of the inn and eased my way back to the balcony. I looked inside and saw Maloch sitting in the dark as usual, drinking and gazing into nothingness. On the table beside him lay the bowl where he kept all the weird material he’d been collecting the past few days. Some leaves, few metallic beads, a shiny ring and a mixture of powder, all immersed in the grey water that was once the pure water of the Silver Marshes. My best guess was that they were exotic components of some spell. Not my area of expertise though.

  I was without the slightest clue as to my next move. I rested in my usual spot, the shady corner of the balcony, and gazed at the eerie night sky and the crazed clouds racing over the city. And then it started to rain. I tried as hard as I could to concentrate. I thought of phasing back to Veil, but I didn’t want to take the scroll there. It was enough that the Genn were after the Shards of Mergal; I didn’t want the Chain of Cas to hunt something I was hiding in Veil as well.

  I caressed the scroll in my backpack. This hit had taken things to a whole new level. No Genn had ever taken an item that was not forsaken, something in the possession of an owner who didn’t abandon it yet. That was stealing, plain and simple, a line of work different than that of the Order of Sever.

  As if I hadn’t enough surprises, Maloch spoke with no warning. “I know you are there.”

  I was petrified. I tried not to make a single sound, waiting to know for sure who he was talking to. His scarred eye stared at the floor in the dark.

  “She spoke of you… Sarin. She spoke of the shadow that followed me. Then I realized there is a dark shroud which visits me sometimes. Things change… the air darkens. I know. I have seen your kind before.” His voice was gloomy and distant.

  I didn’t respond.

  “You don’t have to answer, but I know you are there.”

  I was still staring at him, speechless. He didn’t move or look into my direction, but he resumed his drinking.

  He stood up and started putting on a uniform, setting his nearly-empty glass on the dresser just beside him. “I must admit, you made me feel that I was not the only outcast. I was glad to know that I was not the only one running out of time.”

  The uniform wasn’t the official uniform of the Tirra Mortus, but his old Sidnian uniform. The crazy fool, I thought. They would butcher him for his defiance. No one wore the Tirra Mortus’s uniform and then replaced it.

  “I made terrible mistakes, my veiled friend, in the name of those I served. I bartered with my own ideals. And my greed won. But I will not stand watching and let them do to Eredia and the Order of Eon what they did with my home, Sidnia.”

  He grabbed a simple brown cloak adorned with the emblem of the Tirra Mortus, the black lightning. Wearing it atop the Sidnian uniform, he went on. “Tomorrow, at the grand finale of the festival, the final blow will land… and I have done my share in delivering it. When I joined the Chain of Cas, following the Traitor King, I was young and acquisitive . I knew the price and overlooked its heftiness. I couldn’t resist the Itians’ invitation to lead the Tirra Mortus with them and dominate the world. Now, after seeing what is inside their heads and what payment becomes due, I regret everything and loathe the pains ahead. But I am awake now, and I am glad to have you as my witness.”

  When he finished dressing, he sat down again and refilled his glass of wine. He looked past me to the city outside the window. “Akavi, that dwarven hero, came out victorious after all. By my orders, he met his maker, but he managed to land the last blow. The dignity he died with shock my arrogance and opened my eyes. Then when I came here and saw her, Trador’s girl, it was vividly clear –the contrast between everything that she and the dwarf are, and everything I am. And it struck me, they might not be the only ones. Others like them might be still around. So what was I doing? I asked myself.

  “It is the legacy of your race to witness, observe and, collect. Somewhere in your hoard of memories and treasure lies our salvation. Today, you are either part of the wind or part of the wall it slams upon. You must decide whether to remain unnoted among the audience or step with us on the stage.”

  He stood erect, picking up the material he had gathered. “I failed Sarin many times. But if you see her, tell her that I tried to redeem myself. And if we meet again, you and I, then I will have succeeded and hope will shine from above. Perhaps we can have a game of Seven Diamonds under ‎(10) the shield of Eredia.”

  Then before he left the room, he turned back to the window. “Whatever your decision is, Shadow Pilgrim, be careful of Sarin… she has harvested the anger of this age and sown it back into her heart. And she has seen you. You cannot hide from her. You cannot hide from the choice.”

  My Gray Waste

  I let him go without uttering a single word. I wasn’t mistaken about him; he was different indeed. Failing to conclude what he was up to, I let that mystery be, for the time being, needing to delve back into my own colossal troubles.

  I had the scroll. What next? I pondered. Should I leave or search for the Wizard of Time to hand it to him?

  Sherako jumped on the ledge of the balcony and reticently gazed at Borg.

  “So ... I hope you are satisfied with this last loot. Shall we say our goodbyes now? Are you ready to fall back to Veil?” I asked my cat.

  Expecting no audible reply, as usual, I examined his gestures — same as ever. There was still something in Borg I was yet to find.

  ***

  As I watched Borg from above, I saw evidence that hidden things were in motion. Figures were moving in the dark, whispers were caressing my ears, and faces were in places where they shouldn’t be. I saw a Dargos, in crude disguise, casually stumbling across some peculiar narrow-eyed folk from the far west and having a quick chat –though it wasn’t casual to my eyes.

  I saw the snow-haired elderly lady, the one who addressed Robyn in the refugee camp, leaning on her walking stick and talking to Acar. Near the stage, they talked for few minutes. Then the woman left, apparently dissatisfied with the result of the conversation. The soldier remained in his spot for a brief moment, glowering at the ground. Finally, he turned and walked away, anger clouding his features.

  When I went to the docks, I saw Aeron Windburn standing at the far end of the shore next to a ship, his feet in the water. He was talking to an animated humanoid figure of semi-transparent water, so see-through that I nearly overlooked it entirely. The figure dropped back into the water the moment I laid my eyes upon it.

  Though such a thing would surely draw my attention in normal circumstances, I didn’t have any to spare for those happenings, so I tried to lose interest in them.

  I climbed a tall tree beside the city walls that overlooked the beach and gazed toward the Emerald Shore. I should leave, I kept repeating to myself, before that meeting, before everything explodes.

  I could simply abandon the quest of the O’Lenatum, yet deep inside I knew that it wasn’t the only thing binding me to the city, and it was puzzling me. It wasn’t the scroll either. I could leave a trail for Gazateer to find me, and I would hand it to him, if that was his plan.

  Occasionally, I saw thunder-less lightning and heard lightning-less thunder in Borg. I heard it in Veil too as I lingered on its borders. No one in Borg seemed to pay it much attention. Everyone was either enjoying the contest, busy with the slave auction or occupied with trading.

  Something was reaching for me in that city, but its voice was mute.

  What are those borders we are going to cross, Maloch? The question kept flickering in my mind.

  By the end of the day, I saw the side door of the governor’s hall open. With utter contempt, I watched as a group of slav
es was tossed in the street. A cry thundered announcing the start of a Shagwig –a live manhunt. Rich folk paid a lot to release their trained beasts in pursuit of the slaves, and the beast that maimed or ate alive the most slaves, won.

  Then came the answer.

  ***

  There she was again, her hands and ankles shackled together like the rest of the slaves while cleaning the streets of blood and torn up bodies resulting from the last Shagwig. Her hair was still radiating in the sun, her walk proud despite her bonds. I could see her lips moving and could make out prayers –I imagined they were prayers for mercy on the hapless.

  I will not jump into your web, Borg . I had enough of that scene, I reckoned, so I turned and walked away. I climbed the first tree I found in stealth then went all the way to the roof of the building next to it.

  I watched the girl from the roof. I was trying in vain to rationalize my interest in her when something beside her drew my attention. To my surprise, I saw Sherako in his normal cat form –not the shadowy one- rubbing against the girl’s feet. She turned to him, smiling, despite her ill condition, and started caressing his back with her chained hands.

  That is odd, I thought, I knew what it meant when Sherako gets that close to something... or someone. Before I could think it through any further, I noticed a beast with the size and shape of a giant boar standing a few steps behind her with hunched back. Its legs and the structure of its jaws resembled that of a hyena. It was an ogithon, a wild predator native to the Zenian hills, and it had its eyes locked on her back.

  Some of the audience noticed it too– a boy pointed excitedly, not taking his eyes off the girl, as he tapped his mother’s shoulders. Excitement filling their eyes, one by one, the crowd anticipated seeing the remorseless beast rip her apart.

  In the same street, I saw Ginto and an entourage of Neligans. I halted momentarily and watched them. They were like gods walking among insects, gliding in intolerable arrogance and looking down on everyone and everything around them.

  I heard Sherako hissing. No one could hear him of course, but when I glanced to where he stood beside the girl, I saw something that baffled me. He was hissing at the ogithon.

  As I moved my eyes between Ginto and Sherako, I realized that it was she — the most precious thing in Borg. That girl in front of me was what Sherako wanted me to find – she was the Final Word.

  Why not ? I asked myself. If Borg had gone crazy anyway, then the hell with it … the hell with everything.

  So I calculated the distance between me and the beast. My eyes scanned the area for structures useful in my descent upon the beast. I also scanned the audience to make sure no one was looking in my direction.

  What happened next was the performance of a lifetime.

  I let my body slowly lean forward, and I simply free-fell. Using the hazy vapor form I naturally assume in the first few minutes of my exit from the border of shadows to my advantage, I glided and landed right behind the Ogithon. To others, it should look like a blurry air draft that moved around the bloody street.

  I couldn’t fool a beast with such high senses and hunting prowess, as when it bit, it must bite true –not on an illusion or a shadowy form. I also had to fool the eyes of the crowd around me in order to kill the beast without alerting them to my presence.

  That was why I chose to use the technique of Garesta, or the False Body. The Garesta relied on speed and precision. The one who uses it simply moves invisibly in blurring speed after luring someone to stand in his spot. The spell tricks the eyes of his attacker into believing that he is damaging the user of the technique, not the unfortunate decoy.

  I saw that seven out of the eight Neligans accompanying Ginto moved on in the street leaving only one behind.

  “Hey,” I whispered to the Neligan standing several feet from me.

  He looked in my direction, squinting against the haze. He walked towards me as the beast closed in on the girl. Just when it was about to clamp its huge jaw on her shoulders it felt my presence behind it and turned around. I heard a few gasps in the crowd when the beast snapped its jaw at me. It was then that the unlucky Neligan received my gift.

  The beast lunged at what looked like my hand, ripping it clean from the body. Too shocked to scream with pain, the Neligan clutched at the stump where his hand had been. Then, the beast found my faithful dagger, Yoppa, in its neck, unleashing its weakening power. The beast howled and dropped the Neligan’s hand. It snapped back at me, biting my knee – which was the knee of the Neligan. Holding my position as the shadow of the Neligan, I shoved Yarpus into the beast’s head. The beast wailed faintly in pain, enduring that agonizing jolt that my dagger induced, but didn’t let go of the leg it held.

  The audience screamed as the leg came off in the beast’s mouth, although I couldn’t tell if it was fear or delight that kept them watching. It jumped a couple of feet back, hanging onto the leg and looking at me with bloodied eyes.

  “Pull him away,” shouted the leader of the Neligans.

  “Why the hell is the beast attacking us? Where is its master?” yelled one of the Neligans as they ran back to the horrific scene, lashes drawn.

  We exchanged stares for a second, me and the beast, and then it dropped the leg. Still staring me in the eye, it charged again. It managed to engulf the whole head of the Neligan inside its mouth. The other Neligans halted and watched in terror. As he pulled the head, my daggers met each other in its chest entering from both sides.

  They whispered their names: Yoppa … Yarpus. They were mates for life, my daggers, and their kiss was final.

  I pulled them down, gashing its chest wide open, dropping its contents on the ground behind the girl stooped on the ground. The sound of the beast dropping on the ground alerted her to the almost mute battle behind her. She turned to find it motionless, with the head of the Neligan in its mouth as his friends dragged away the body’s remains. She gasped and stood up in terror, looking around to see his hand and leg lying on the ground.

  Still covered by my quasi-transparent existence, I drew closer to her. Momentarily I stared at her and wondered. Those brown eyes… all the golden shores of the world … how small they were compared to her eyes .

  How can something so fragile be so overwhelming? I stretched my hands to her face, trying to contain her delicate, frightened features in my palms without actually touching her. I didn’t know why I did that, but I wanted her to see me –only me – if only she could. She started to relax, and I chose to believe that she sensed my presence.

  ***

  Years after that moment, the Fisherman told me that he heard a conversation in Veil, on the Border of Eternity, the same day I interfered to save that girl.

  “Who is there?” the female voice asked.

  “Me – a Watcher.” The male voice answered.

  “What are you watching?”

  “You.”

  “Why?”

  A long pause followed.

  “You are everything I didn’t have the courage to embrace ... everything my merciless world of shadows lacked.”

  Then the conversation halted, and the Vortex of Question violently swirled about her silence.

  “I must leave.” The male voice said.

  “Why?” She asked.

  “The edges of my existence feel sharper, crueler, compared to the velvet shores of yours.”

  She listened to his footsteps walking away. Before he left, he stopped to add, “My life touched that of a girl once, for a bit longer and deeper than I wished, and I am still paying a hefty price now, more than a century later.”

  ***

  With great effort, I pulled away from her. I retreated to a shadowy spot among the crowd, getting back into my human form. I changed complexion to match the humans of that region; a light tan tone.

  I turned to the scene and saw Ginto ordering the guards secure the spot where the beast and the Neligan were butchered. As fast as possible, they cleared the place so as not to ruin the mood of the audience and to
prevent any meddling in the matter. They waited for the owner of the slain beast to come and claim the corpse. Ginto motioned to an Untherax to get the girl. The dreadful monstrosity grabbed her by the hair and pulled her away from the crowd with a golem-like, emotionless pace.

  Anger smoldered in my chest, slowly quenched by the wind of reason and my shaky indifference. I to Ginto and found him searching the crowd for something. I was sure it was me. For it didn’t take them long before they discovered that something else killed the beast, not the poor Neligan. The double wound my daggers made in the beast’s neck couldn’t lie.

  Blended with the crowd, I watched the Untherax taking the girl back towards the beach, to the door leading to the Dungeon of Bore. She wasn’t crying, instead, her eyes scanned the crowd again and again.

  Nice to meet you, my lady, I sent her that thought with a bow.

  Just before I dissolved into the audience and headed out of the city, I noticed Ginto’s attention drawn to something. Now that the girl was gone, the dead beast was the center of the crowd’s attention. I watched as the Untherax returned with his slow gigantean pace. In a most intimidating manner, he moved toward the bloody scene and stopped by the corpse of the ogithon.

  The whole street and the balconies of the buildings lining it fell into silence as everyone gazed toward the walking abomination. My heartbeat quickened when he bent a knee, stretching his lightly-grayish arms to the ogithon’s torn carcass.

  I could detect under his massive hood a very faint movement as if he was whispering. Those around me watched the Untherax as he held the beast by the neck and drew it closer to his hooded face. The Untherax turned the head and examined the wounds my daggers had made.