Abengoni

by Charles R. Saunders

  “About time you made it back the land of the living, Captain,” Lyann said. Her bantering tone couldn’t quite mask an underlying sense of relief.

  Muldure could only nod; his throat felt as though he had swallowed sandpaper, and it seemed that every muscle in his body was being hit with hammers.

  Hands on breeches-clad hips, Lyann looked down at him. Above-average in height, her lean body had been hardened by nearly a decade of life at sea. Her tanned skin had not yet acquired the leathery look of a longtime seafarer. The time when it would, however, would not be much longer in arriving.

  The wooden buttons of her white linen shirt were undone and its tails were knotted over her flat, smooth-muscled stomach. The scabbard belted at her side was, like his, empty. But Muldure was still too disoriented to worry much about being weaponless in a strange land.

  Still grinning, Lyann made a drinking motion with one hand. For a moment, Muldure was puzzled. Then he realized her gesture had not been directed toward him.

  In response to Lyann’s signal, the dark woman at Muldure’s side, having recovered her composure, offered him water in a black earthenware cup. He took the cup in his hands, raised it to his lips, and drank. The water was cool and sweet, as though flavored with fruit. It soon smoothed the roughness in his throat.

  He smiled his thanks to the woman. She spoke to him in a torrent of syllables that meant nothing to him. Even though he couldn’t understand her, though, the reaction she showed when he spoke the word “Ma-teel” told him all he needed to know.

  Against overwhelming odds, the White Gull had arrived at its improbable destination ... Ma-teel, the almost-mythical Land Beyond the Sun, a place that over the centuries had become more legendary than real after all contact with it had been mysteriously lost.

  “You plan on getting up anytime soon, or do you intend to spend the rest of your life sitting on your arse?” Lyann demanded, breaking into his thoughts.

  “I’ll get up,” Muldure said. “No telling what might happen to this ship with you in charge.”

  Lyann laughed. Then she extended her hand. Muldure took it, and with her help he made it to his feet. As he stood, dizziness assailed him, and every bruise on his body throbbed in painful protest. He willed some stiffness into his legs and managed to remain upright.

  He was only a few inches taller than Lyann, with a frame spare and sinewy as whipcord. Endurance, not size, was his strong suit. He could outwork and outfight sea-dogs twice his size and half his age, and outsmart the rest. A thick, drooping black mustache framed his mouth. Only the thinning black hair pulled back from his forehead and his rough, permanently-browned skin betrayed the many years he had spent on ships that sailed from the Ice Isles to the Moondragon Sea, working his way up from cabin-boy to captain at an age younger than most.

  And then he had worked his way back down again ... and back up ... and back down, a cycle he seemed doomed to repeat itself until he died.

  Muldure’s heart sank as he surveyed the deck and realized the extent of the damage the White Gull had sustained. Broken planking; holes in the hull; stone dockwork piercing the bow; a web of ropes securing the ship to the wharf – at first, and second, and even third glance, the ship appeared to be beyond any hope of salvaging.

  And the condition of its passengers and crew was only slightly more heartening. Some were on their feet and moving about, and when they saw him they waved and called out greetings, which he returned. Others lay injured, tended and fed by dark-skinned men and women – Ma-teel – like the one who had given him water. Still others – far too many others – were simply ... gone. He did not have to speculate on the significance of their absence.

  Muldure also noticed that, as always, the Almovaads – the Believers – had separated themselves from the ship’s crew. He scowled for a moment. He had never thought the Believers were his betters, although he was certain many of them were convinced otherwise. Now, after nearly going to the bottom of the sea, where differences in belief and station meant nothing, here they were, keeping themselves apart again.

  He also noticed that no one – passenger and crew alike – retained their weapons. That observation was now beginning to increase his sense of unease. Had they come all this way only to fall into captivity?

  He turned to Lyann.

  “Are we under guard?” he asked.

  “Yes, but in a very polite way,” she replied. “There’s soldiers all over the docks. These people have given us everything we need. But they won’t let anybody off the ship.”

  “What about the ones who didn’t survive?” Muldure asked.

  Lyann shook her head. A sad expression crossed her face.

  “They took the dead off the ship,” she said.

  “And what about ... him?”

  “He’s in your cabin, as always,” Lyann replied. The grin was gone from her face.

  “He’s alive,” she added.

  Muldure said nothing more, but he was certain Lyann knew what he was thinking as he glanced in the direction of his cabin, which he had sometimes shared with her before it was taken from him.

  He brought us through the storms, just as he said he would, Muldure thought. But the cost ... gods above and below, the cost ....

  “He’s not alone in there,” Lyann said. “He’s getting special help from what looks to be important people.”

  “What else would you expect?” Muldure said.

  They exchanged a long look that combined apprehension and distaste. Then Lyann took Muldure by the arm and led him toward the other survivors, who raised cups of water and other drinks to celebrate their captain’s recovery. He gave the cabin a final glance before he joined the others.

  3

  It took a moment for Gebrem and Tiyana to digest what Kyroun had told them. The Fidi remained silent, waiting for the others to speak first.

  “Home?” Gebrem finally repeated incredulously. “Here? How can that be? I do not understand.”

  In response, Kyroun reached over to his side and pushed the Ishimbi statue closer to Gebrem.

  “This item has been in my family for many generations,” he said.

  Gebrem reached out to touch it, then hesitated, and looked at the Fidi.

  “May I?” he asked.

  Kyroun nodded.

  Gebrem ran a finger across the smooth, basalt surface of the carving. It was as though he were touching a piece of his country’s history, a history that he had only recently relearned.

  “Only one set of these was ever made,” the Leba mused. “Yekunu, greatest of all Matile sculptors, carved five Ishimbi replicas for a Fidi merchant lord named Hulett Jull, and he accepted Hulett Jull’s invitation to accompany him – and them – to the Fidi Lands.

  “That was more than 500 years ago.”

  Gebrem had uncovered that piece of information in one of the many tomes on the Fidi he had studied long into the night after the Emperor had made the strangers his responsibility. He was certain he now knew more about the newcomers than anyone else in Khambawe – especially the Emperor.

  “You are right,” Kyroun said. “And this is the last of them.”

  He paused before continuing.

  “The forebear who passed it down to me was Yekunu,” he said.

  Gebrem and Tiyana looked at him, trying to find a sign of Matile ancestry in his appearance – a hint of wideness at his nose or lips, a dark undercast to his skin. There was no such sign. But then, the passage of time had also erased most of the few strains of Fidi blood among the Matile who had such ancestry.

  Kyroun was aware of their scrutiny, but he continued to talk. The dissonant effect of the sound of his speech and the meaning of his words was beginning to ease. It was beginning to seem as though he were actually speaking Matile, rather than his own language.

  “After the Storm Wars left him stranded, Yekunu stayed for a time with Hulett, and he was honored in the kingdom of Fiadol,” Kyroun recounted. “But he became restless, and eventually he departed from Fiadol. H
ulett Jull gave him one of the Ishimbi statuettes as a parting gift, to remind him of his lost homeland.

  “For many years, Yekunu travelled across Cym Dinath, our continent, which is large enough to hold more than two of yours. His sculptures earned him both a living and a reputation that has lasted to this day. In time, though, he grew weary of wandering.

  “He finally settled in Lumaron, a kingdom far to the east of Fiadol, on the edge of the Geron Shi Desert. There, he married into a clan of artisans and began a family of his own. And the Ishimbi statuette was passed from descendant to descendant to keep the memory of Yekunu’s long-lost homeland alive. My father bequeathed it to me on his deathbed.”

  Gebrem and Tiyana remained silent for a moment, reflecting on what Kyroun had said thus far. They were intrigued by the saga of Yekunu, and the survival of the memory of the Matile in Kyroun’s faraway land. But there were further questions that needed to be answered.

  Tiyana spoke first. Her words betrayed the lingering suspicions the stranger’s warmth toward her had only partially allayed.

  “That explains why you have the Ishimbi statuette. But it does not explain why you are here.”

  “Tiyana ....” Gebrem began, a tone of warning in his voice.

  “She has a right to remain suspicious, Jass Gebrem,” Kyroun interjected. “So do you.”

  “I am not necessarily suspicious,” Gebrem said diplomatically. “Merely ... curious.”

  “Just so,” Kyroun said with a smile and a nod.

  “I could spend hours – days – answering the questions both of you have,” the Fidi continued. “And, of course, I have questions of my own. But there is a better way for us to learn the answers we each seek. It is called In-Seeing. Through In-Seeing, I can show you how and why my people and I have come here. And I, in turn, can learn what has become of my distant ancestor’s homeland in the many years that have passed since he left it.”

  “How do we accomplish this ‘In-Seeing’?” Gebrem asked.

  “It is simple. Just hold my hands, and I will do the rest.”

  Kyroun extended his hands. Gebrem took one of them without hesitation. But Tiyana held back for a moment.

  She looked at Kyroun’s outstretched hand. Never before had she seen such skin. She could discern a tracery of blue veins on the top of his hand. Among the Matile, only the faintest hint of blue could be seen under the lightest-brown skins of the few whose distant Fidi ancestry still showed. Tiyana had no idea what color her veins were, and she hadn’t even thought about it until now.

  Kyroun’s hand also featured a number of tiny brown flecks, like spatters from an artist’s paintbrush. Perhaps they are his legacy from Yekunu, Tiyana thought.

  Then she took his hand. And the In-Seeing began.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  What Kyroun Saw

  Behind his closed eyes, Kyroun beheld the past in which Jass Gebrem, Tiyana and most other Matile believed, and the present they now endured. It was a weave of images gleaned from dusty tomes and ancient legends; stories carved in sculptures, woven in tapestries, sung in songs – all of it filtered through a mental prism that rendered the Matiles’ history as half-truth, half-dream, beginning with the legend of Etiya ...

  Long ago, in the Beforetime, the land called Abengoni was encircled by the coils of an enormous serpent called Adwe. The people of Abengoni could not live on the land; Adwe enveloped all, and even the sun could not penetrate the darkness cast by the serpent’s vast bulk. Not only did Adwe refuse to allow people to dwell on the surface of Abengoni; the serpent demanded tribute from them as well. So impoverished were the people of Abengoni that all they could offer Adwe in return for their miserable existence was the lives of their first-born children when they reached adult age.

  The people lived in darkness and despair, even as they longed for the time before Adwe had tightened his coils around their world. They remembered the sky and the sun, the grass and the trees, the sea and the rivers, the abundance of animals. Yet even as Adwe blotted out those memories, the yearning for what they once had did not die among the people; and as time passed, they planned ways to get it back.

  Singly, or in small, determined groups, the people sought ways to slay Adwe, or, at least, to escape the oppressive presence of the serpent’s bulk. All their schemes ended in their deaths. They would not be the only ones who died. When Adwe became angry, he would twist his coils, and that twisting would mercilessly shake Abengoni, and the guilty and innocent alike would die.

  Whether he twisted or remained quiescent, Adwe continued to demand sacrifices, and the people descended further into hopelessness.

  One day, a young woman named Etiya was chosen to be the sacrifice. And this time, the sorrow was even deeper than usual when the sacrifices were made, for Etiya was a singer, and the strains of her sweet voice provided the only hint of brightness in the gloomy netherworld to which Adwe had relegated them.

  When the time came for her to be sacrificed, Etiya went willingly to the place from which Adwe would claim her, as he had countless of others before her. Resistance had by then become unthinkable. Yet Etiya was determined not to die meekly and quietly. She would sing one last song before the serpent took her.

  And when Adwe came, his unimaginable bulk filling the horizon, Etiya sang. The words of her song bespoke hope and defiance, and the melody reached down to where her people huddled in their endless darkness and misery. If for only a moment, Etiya’s song lifted them from the bleak depths into which their spirits had fallen.

  Adwe paid no attention to the song. The serpent cared nothing for either bravery or beauty, both of which were abundant in Etiya. But her song extended far beyond Adwe, and even beyond Abengoni itself. Etiya’s song travelled to the Realms of a pantheon of deities called the Jagasti. Although the Jagasti knew nothing of Abengoni, they hearkened well to the words of the song. And as the deities listened, they took pity on the singer of the song and her beleaguered people, and they decided to come to their aid.

  The moment before Adwe was about to devour Etiya and silence her song, the Jagasti came down from their Realms and fell upon the gigantic serpent. Wielding weapons of sunfire and lightning, sky-iron and storm wind, they slew Adwe and cut his body into a myriad of pieces. Then they took those pieces and flung them high above Abengoni, where they became the Moon Stars, luminous clusters of light that would shine far brighter than any other star in the night sky.

  When they were done with Adwe, the Jagasti released Etiya and her people from their imprisonment, and showed them how they could best reclaim the world the serpent had stolen from them. The Jagasti remained among the people for a time, until they longed for their own Realms and returned there.

  Etiya continued to sing for the rest of her life. Her people took the name “Matile” – the “restored ones.” And the Matile made the Jagasti their gods and goddesses, and continued to sing to them long after Etiya’s life ended.

  Kyroun then saw the time after the demise of Adwe, when the Matile were simple farmers and herders who had only recently ended ages of wandering, hunting teeming hordes of wildlife and gathering abundant fruits across the northern rim of Abengoni.

  During that ancient time, the Matile’s claim to the land had been fiercely disputed by beings of human shape but inhuman nature – brutal, man-eating ogres called Zimwe and the enigmatic Tokoloshe, who were not then allied with humankind.

  The fierce battles among the foes soaked the land with blood. No race could hold sway for long; their advantages – the size and ferocity of the Zimwe, the sorcerous talents of the Tokoloshe, the sheer numbers and dogged determination of the Matile – always offset each other and led to more conflict and bloodshed.

  It was the discovery of a different kind of magic that eventually allowed the Matile to prevail over their foes: ashuma, a direct link to the power of the Jagasti, who had remained apart in their Realms beyond the boundaries of the mortals’ world since they had rescued the people of Abengoni from Adwe.

 
Kyroun saw the face of the first Matile to wield ashuma, and heard his name: Jaussa, an ocher-daubed, befeathered shaman who stared in fear and wonder at the eldritch energy that glowed brightly in his outstretched hands, consuming them even as he watched.

  When later Matile shamans learned to harness that awesome power, they used it to drive the Zimwe into a wasteland far to the east. The Tokoloshe, realizing that their own sorcery was no match for ashuma, wisely made an alliance with the Matile and retreated to their underground domains. The great animal herds grudgingly retreated from plains that became farmland, and orchards replaced vast forests.

  Freed from the constant struggle to survive, the Matile learned to build in stone rather than straw; to record their thoughts in written symbols; to fully explore the power of the gift for which Jaussa had paid with his hands; to walk with the Jagasti, who had decided that the Matile were once again worthy of their company, long after they had first heard Etiya’s song ... Akpema of the sun, Nama-kwah of the sea, Alamak of the stars, Ufashwe of the wind, Halasha of iron, and many others ....

  Kyroun saw magnificent cities begin to rise throughout the north of Abengoni, glittering like stars in a midnight sky. Their names whispered in his mind: Khambawe, Tesseni, Aglada, Jimmar, Ibela and dozens more. Each of those cities was the capital of its own kingdom. With the menace of the Zimwe and competition from the Tokoloshe gone, the Matile kingdoms ultimately became bitter rivals, incessantly warring against each other, conquering, overthrowing, re-conquering and overthrowing again.

  First Khambawe would hold sway over the others, then Tesseni, then Aglada, then Jimmar, then Khambawe again in a never-ending cycle of battle and bloodshed. Finally Dardar Issuri, warrior-king of Khambawe, was able to conquer the other city-states one by one, finally melding the whole of the north into a vast empire and siring the dynasty that continued to rule until this day.