The War of the Realms

by C Steven Meldrum

  Dust flew and my mount continued to climb, legs pumping and hooves digging into the steep and rocky ground looking for any purchase. I continued to cling on and looked behind me in time to see Pemba and the other rider unhorsed by three pursuers that had chased us out of the valley.

  They gained fast. I drew my cudgel even though it only allowed me to grasp the reins with one hand. I knew nothing about fighting while mounted and could do nothing but sweep at them as they got close enough.

  There was no other noise. I had left my party well behind to whatever fate but it struck me that the two black robes would make little work of whomever they came across and if I could work my way round to the top of the valley, they might at least be able to provide some aid.

  I had no time though. My mount leaped high to clear a deep but narrow defile in the hill and as it landed I was thrown. My legs came out of the stirrups and I let go of the reins lest I be caught up in them and dragged along underneath. I landed hard on my side and my breath exploded out of me, leaving me winded and in agonising pain. I looked up to see my pursuers trotting slowly up to where I had landed. I leaped up with as much aggression as I could muster given the fact I could hardly breathe and a thin line of blood trickled from a cut above my left eye making me blink.

  They were all masked and wore clothing unlike anything I had ever seen: two were dressed similarly in grey but the third was in a black robe that by some unknown art seemed to shift and flicker. It was attired in some sort of armour that looked blacker than the night. He hung further back than the other two. These did not seem common raiders to me.

  “What do you want!” I yelled, brandishing my cudgel. They were silent although one of the two closest to me aimed a strange looking firearm at me and the other was casually climbing out of his saddle. He dropped to the ground and came to stand within a few strides from me. He was tall, as tall as Dorje and carried an air of confidence, no, arrogance.

  I swung my cudgel in slow spirals showing them I knew how to use it and breathed as deeply as I could. Master Panuaru had always impressed upon us that the worst thing you could do was spend the first few moments in handto-hand combat goading your opponent with insults and profanity.

  You must spend those first critical moments observing your opponent. Is he armed, does he favour a stance, does he display a characteristic that you can use to your advantage such as over-extending his attacks or perhaps covering an injury? I moved slowly to get the one in front of me between me and the mounted fellow holding the firearm. I thought that since they hadn’t all rushed me they might be sporting and give me the opportunity to fight them one-at-a-time. My main aim was focussed on taking out the one that stood before me before while somehow disarming the second. With no weapons visible I would leave the third as long as I could.

  The one in front of me stood flat-footed and impassive. He showed no aggression, was completely silent and seemed to have all the patience in the world. The robes and face wrapping totally hid his features making him seem somehow alien. I did not know whether he hesitated or merely waited for me to attack first.

  I risked a backward glance to see how far my mount was away from me if the slim hope presented itself for me to flee. It cost me dearly. In those few seconds he was upon me, trying to wrest my cudgel from my hands. Now that he was so close I could see he was a full head taller than me and incredibly strong. The vice-like grip that grasped my arm made me howl with pain, but I took the opportunity to strike at his neck on that unprotected side using a pressure punch that should have had him reeling backward, coughing and struggling to breathe. Instead my outstretched fingers met some close-fitting armour that obviously protected his throat and I screamed again, feeling like I had broken my fingers.

  His reaction was to throw me. Not throw me down as I might have done with a younger apprentice who was giving me trouble but really throw me. I must have flown at least twenty feet before crashing down and reeling in more pain. What human could do that and still stand there as impassively as he did? Grimacing in pain I saw that I was still clutching my cudgel.

  I stood, very slowly, and since my mount was now further from where he had been, I knew flight was impossible at that moment and thus I must focus everything on bringing this bandit down. I marched slowly back to them, hoping a look of bravura would bring some respect. I might have had the same effect upon a desert bramble.

  This time however, the creature did don a fighting stance and as he came at me I twisted and leaped and struck true, my cudgel tip feinting towards his cowled face which brought a blocking arm up to protect it while my true manoeuvre succeeded in bringing the other end down upon his thigh to damage the leg and also wrong-foot him so he landed off-balance. Those few moments passed much more quickly than I can possibly set it down but without turning I heard the crash of heavy armour hitting the earth at the same time my own roll brought me within striking distance of the mounted attacker.

  With all my strength I threw my cudgel like a spear at his face and as he was encumbered with the weapon he could not guard himself. The cudgel tip struck in the middle of the cowled face and with a grunt he toppled off the back of the horse. I leaped up on his mount in the same moment he fell from it and grasped for the reins.

  Suddenly, hands were clutching for me and I saw the first attacker at my left, grappling for a firm hold. I kicked him in the face as hard as I could but did not hear the sickening breaking of bone I expected. Instead he fell back a step which was all the space I needed to dig my heels into the mount, lashing it with the reins and yelling for it to move.

  I screamed for anyone who could hear me to come to my aid. My mount had suddenly lurched forward with such power I hadn’t known a simulgen could possess and I breathed deeply the cool afternoon air. I thought I heard a low growl some way from where I was but gave no attention to it.

  I aimed for my own mount but within half a dozen strides the beast that I rode was no longer beneath me and I flew through the air to land haplessly in the dirt again. I wheeled about to see what had happened and was suddenly tackled to the ground from behind. In pain and disbelief, I spun onto my back and was suddenly pinned by something black and featureless.

  I looked up into the cowled void where the face should have been and a feeling of gelid death overwhelmed me, as if I looked into the very face of Yama. An unintelligible and aethereal scream emanated from it and it pulled down its mask to reveal what I can only describe as the very avatar of death, a black and firey void rimmed with black armour. Its touch was as bitter as the Drzakar on that night I will never forget. Such fear and abject despair as I have never known gripped me so that I flailed helplessly as a man who falls from a cliff grapples at thin air and denies in his heart what his head it telling him– you are going to die and there is nothing you can do to stop it.

  Yet though it was clearly not of this world, it seemed to me in the terrifying last moments of life that this was not just alien but something worse, as though its very existence was a violation of nature, that it destroyed part of creation by being here. Mother Irth fought it also. I could feel it. Its periphery, like a huge cloak, flickered in and out of existence: a ragged seeming of black death. But at its core, which looked like a window upon a starless and frozen void, it did not waiver. I knew I was dead then. How can a single man preserve his frail life against death itself?

  As I succumbed to my despair and my strength waned, I wondered that the other two creatures were not tearing at me also. My life was been drained away and a feeling of deepest apathy and woe robbed me of all strength and will. The cowled void lunged closer and my face froze and burned simultaneously. But instead of feeling my head torn away from my body, out of the corner of my eye I saw another large shape suddenly crash into the creature from the side. I was no longer pinned and immediately rolled in the other direction. Without looking to see where it was, or what had aided me, I gathered my wits, released from its spell for a moment, and ran.

  The question of the other two f
oes was answered immediately. A massive amur, which must have weighed at least six hundred pounds, resplendent with a magnificent long-haired coat of orange, white and black, wrestled with one of the creatures, its teeth as long as my hand and paws the size of my head tearing and goring.

  The other creature lay not far from me. It had been torn to bits. There was no blood however. A metallic chromium arm lay several feet from the robed body that bled that vile liquid the colour of white gold: pallasieum. Damned Sidus! What were they doing with a band of common raiders? It twitched still. My head a little clearer and survival suddenly foremost in my mind again, I ran past it to where one of their mounts waited patiently further down the slope. The others, including my own, had wandered away. I grabbed the bridle of the creature and leaped onto its back. I had no weapon and once I had the reins and a measure of control over it, galloped to where the armed rider had been dismounted. His weapon still lay upon the ragged hillside, next to my cudgel which still had a large hole in one end where Puk had retrieved the wolf tooth I even now wore about my neck. I jumped down and retrieved both, and in that instant saw the head of the creature the amur wrestled casually rolling down the hill past me. I ignored the tiger for a moment. It was busy goring the creature and rending its limbs in all directions. If the beast decided to charge me I at least had some weapons now.

  I jumped back in the saddle and studied the strange energy weapon. It had various dials and coloured crystals along it. One appeared to be set on a minimum setting which I turned to the other extreme and then holding it so that the part the charge appeared to come out of was pointed to the front I urged the mequus forward to where the high-pitched and deathly screeches of the creature in black told me it was still alive. Both my saviour and the creature had fallen into a shallow wadi and continued to fight.

  I looked over the edge of the wadi to behold the most amazing sight I was to see in a day of extraordinary events. A strangely attired female stood with a long spear in one hand and some kind of sword that emitted a preternatural blackness akin to what I had seen in the face of the creature, as though it were a rip in the natural fabric of the world that would draw all the light and life of the universe into it. I could see she was injured however and had many deep cuts along her body, her dark blood soaking the ground beneath her. The black horror appeared uninjured and slowly circled her. I saw what had injured her: long curved fingers the colour of night, like five blades upon each hand about a cubit each in length: icy sickles of death. The creature crouched and seemed on the verge of leaping at her when I yelled from my mount.

  “Don’t !” I yelled. “I don’t know what you are but you do not belong in this world. Go back to your Demon Lord, spawn of darkness! Horror of the netherworld! I will shoot you before you can strike again!”

  It seemed to waiver for only a moment but then most unexpected thing happened. In my folly I thought that sat upon the simulgen and looking down into the wadi I was high enough above and away from the melee but the creature that seemed intent on the female instead leaped at me! Without even thinking I squeezed the trigger and in a phosphorous blaze I was thrown backward by an almighty shockwave, blinded by the light of a thousand suns. I didn’t know then whether it was the sound of the weapon or the creature as the beam hit it but it was the most terrifying screech I have ever heard, like the universe being torn in two and every star and world within it stamped out of existence in a second. I tumbled backward off the mount and hardly remember hitting the ground.

  When I came to, I still had spots buzzing before my eyes, my ears were ringing slightly and my face and hands were covered with my congealed blood. I moved slowly onto my side and coughed dust and blood from my mouth. I felt weak and had trouble in even standing. My robe was slightly burnt as if I had lain too close to a fire. Patting dust from my blackened and torn robe I looked around me. Before me lay the mequus, unmoving. There was no sight of the black creature. Thinking it might still be down in the wadi I looked for the energy weapon and saw it laying on the ground where I had dropped it. No wonder they had it dialled down if it could do that, I thought. I picked it up but the light was gone from it and playing with the dials did nothing so I dropped it.

  I hobbled to the edge of the wadi, which seemed deathly quiet. I looked down, expecting to see the corpse of the black-robed creature. It was nowhere to be seen. The woman who had saved my life was, however, still at the bottom.

  Chapter 9: Budhi Pallien “Ladies and gentlemen, a proud day for all of humankind, I’m sure you’ll agree– the true advent of independent thought. Morgan Reed and Reed Industries has succeeded where others have produced nothing more than

  glorified chessplaying robots. This is the real deal.”

  Excerpt from ancient text “Cogitavi ut fiat” on the advent of the ‘machina intelligentia’ Recovered from the north eastern provinces of the Empire of Greater Usa. I had not been able to rouse the woman, and even though her blood had stained her clothes and the ground around her, in amazement I could not see any visual cuts to bandage or broken limbs to splint – not that I had any medical supplies with me but it saved having to tear a portion of my tunic. She was at least breathing; a slow and measured breathing which I found reassuring. I climbed back out of the wadi thinking she would be safer there than on the open ground of the hillside if the giant amur returned, and went for help. I had not gone more than a few hundred paces when I spied my mount and the others corralled in a natural cul-de-sac formed by a depression in the hillside. I was amazed they hadn’t run off until I saw the reason.

  The massive amur had corralled them in a natural cul de sac. I clasped my hands in prayer and said over and over in my mind Banka-Mundi, BankaMundi, BankaMundi … after the Hunting Goddess of the Khoud as uttering Her name makes one fearless against jungle beasts. I prayed aloud to Durga also; the Queen Mother and patron Warrior Goddess of the Sera Ngari who rode tigers into battle defending Her children, the gods.

  “My Queen. Please help me toaid the one who saved my life.” Before I could utter anything more, I beheld a beautiful woman. She was dressed in flowing and almost transparent wisps of colour; yellows and greens and whites and golds. She held a stringed musical instrument in one hand that looked like a tamyen. Bathed in an aethereal light it was if I had stepped into a portrait and had come to stand before her.

  I looked around and suddenly beheld a dense forest of tall trees with dark green leaves and a fierce heat in the air that had me sweating and wiping my brow. I was breathless and felt faint after the fresh highland winds of the hillside I had stood upon a moment ago. I felt as though a swoon would overcome me and grasped the trunk of a thin tree that only moments ago had not been there.

  “Greetings, young one”, she said smoothly as she came to stand only a cubit before me. Although beautiful, she was fearsome to look upon and her eyes, although human, held the colour, strength and fearsomeness of the amur that had vanquished the raiders. Yet as terrible and formidable as she looked, a fragrant air of white lotus enveloped me and I immediately loved her.

  “You prayed to Durga a moment ago. For protection? Did you think I would eat you? Rend your carcassand sate myself on your flesh?” I could not answer. I was overwhelmed by the power and beauty that flowed from her and with the heat of the jungle sapping my strength I fell to my knees, knowing her to be a goddess.

  “She is Uma, the Golden Goddess, who is also Bhairavi, Kali, Ambika, Gauri, Mahadevi, Jagadmatai, Syama, Kanyakumari, Annapurna, Candi, Kumari, Parvati and Durga.” She asked if I remembered her words to me as I drifted under the ice, moments away from death.

  “She said … she said she would send the Budhi Pallien to be my guide. Forgive me.” I prostrated myself before her on the leafy jungle floor. “Let us visit her temple at Koh Ker and you may give her thanks for my

  aid.”

  I thanked her for saving me from the bandits and said I would certainly

  do as she bade me as we were headed for the Holy Mountain. She laughed a
<
br />   clear and trilling laugh.

  “Let me tell you a story, so that you may know our patroness”, she said.

  By now I was coming to terms with the heat but was very thirsty. As if

  knowing my thoughts, she handed me a skin of water from which I drank,

  deeply. I suddenly felt completely rejuvenated and my pains and bruises were

  gone although the marks remained upon my face. I thanked her thrice over and handed the skin back to her. She suggested we walk as there was a very good

  temple that overlooked the land from high above that she wanted to show me. “Once a rishi – do you know what a rishi is?” I nodded and told her a

  rishi is a holy teacher. “As you are yourself, being the Rinpoche, the Panchen

  Lama reborn for your people.” I made no comment as I still had not come to

  terms with anything yet.

  “Once a rishi sat atop a mountain before the stupa for that mountain’s

  god and spoke to his students about the gods and the way of the universe.

  When the lesson was over, a student asked: ‘Holiness, who makes the mind to

  want? Who makes the eyes to see, the ears to hear and the tongue to speak?’ “The rishi asked each student to look into his heart and replied that it is

  the One Great God that causes all these things. He is everywhere. He is

  everything. He is the sky, and the earth and wind in the trees and seas that rise

  and crash upon the shore. He is the stars in the sky and the petals of the lotus.

  He is all seeing, all knowing. He is the source of all things. The teacher begged