Abengoni

by Charles R. Saunders

  Then Kyroun showed them his life ....

  Gebrem and Tiyana saw him as a slim, dark-haired boy, a youngest child pampered by a family that had accumulated wealth for generations as artists and artisans. Young Kyroun’s brothers and sisters inherited their share of the talent that ran in their family, the legacy of Yekunu. But nothing of that wellspring of creativity had ever touched young Kyroun.

  His hands could not create anything of beauty. The floor of the family’s studios became littered with the debris of statuettes he had broken in disappointment over his lack of ability. He could sense the pity in the eyes of his family when they looked at the pieces he had not destroyed, and that pity gave him greater hurt than any harsh words or blows could have inflicted.

  As he grew into lonely adolescence, Kyroun discovered an outlet for his frustration and disappointment – fighting.

  Balled into fists or clenched around the hilt of a sword or the narrow end of a cudgel, Kyroun’s hands discovered the aptitude that had eluded them in the studio. He soon became the terror of Lumaron’s streets, bursting into a berserker’s fury at the slightest provocation. Only the high standing of his family kept the brooding, belligerent youth away from prison or the gallows as he wreaked havoc throughout the city during the course of his growth into manhood. More than one Lumaronian believed that Kyroun’s life was headed inexorably toward a quick and violent end.

  Then Kyroun’s father, Channar ni Abdu, died suddenly, leaving the family’s studios to the older children. To the surprise and chagrin of his brothers and sisters, however, it was the rebellious Kyroun who received the most precious heirloom of all – the Ishimbi statuette that was the legacy of their long-dead ancestor from a faraway, half-forgotten land. Kyroun himself had been shocked by the gesture; his relations with his father had grown distant as the years passed.

  Still, he kept the statuette, and earned the enmity of his eldest brother, a renowned sculptor who believed the Ishimbi rightfully belonged to him.

  Realizing he no longer had any place in the life of his family, Kyroun departed Lumaron, joining a company of sellswords headed for the fractious lands of the east. Ten years passed before he returned.

  Kyroun was just past the end of his adolescence when he left Lumaron; he came back a hard-eyed, battle-scarred man of the sword. Of his time among the warring nations of the east he said nothing, not even to his family. Some whispered that he had been an assassin; other rumors spoke of terrible deeds that caused even the bloodthirsty Easterners to drive him from their midst.

  If he had accumulated any wealth in his years of warfare, he kept it well-hidden. His horse – which to Gebrem and Tiyana looked like some strange, stripe-less breed of quagga – and weapons were all he possessed when he rode again through Lumaron’s gates.

  Kyroun’s reckless youth had long since passed. No longer was he inclined to lash out at anyone he believed affronted him. Still, he could not find a niche in Lumaron, a city that preferred to create wealth rather than wage warfare. Soon he departed again. This time, he headed west, his sword hired to help protect a trade caravan headed across the Bashoob to the oasis kingdom of Pashtar.

  There, he nearly met his end.

  A rival merchant had betrayed route of the caravan to a bandit chieftain who awaited their coming like a desert lion crouching patiently amidst the dunes. The ambush was swift and merciless. Kyroun and his fellow sell-swords fought valiantly, but the bandits’ numbers were overwhelming, and he went down, bleeding from a dozen wounds.

  After gathering the caravan’s goods and camels – beasts totally alien to the eyes of Tiyana and Gebrem – the bandits departed, leaving the merchants and sellswords for dead. And dead they were – all except Kyroun.

  Vision blurred, blood soaking his garments, Kyroun staggered to his feet. Around him, corpses lay strewn like chaff in the sand. He swayed, about to fall, about to join his comrades in death ....

  Then a light blazed in front of him, nearly blinding him. Kyroun blinked and rubbed a bloody hand across his eyes. And then he saw the light coalesce into a human-like form that towered high above him, tall though he was.

  At first he thought it was a djinn, a desert devil, come to collect his soul in recompense for his many sins. Then the glowing apparition spoke to Kyroun in his mind in a tone that tolled like a great bell.

  I am Almovaar, the apparition announced.

  Kyroun shook his head in disbelief. Almovaar was a god worshipped above all others in ancient days when Lumaron was only a small trading town. Then, as the town grew into a thriving city, foreign deities gained ascendance and eventually Almovaar was relegated to the background, then nearly forgotten and, by some, shunned. Yet Kyroun, having studied history as a youth, knew who this old god was.

  “What does a dead god want with a dying man?” Kyroun demanded. He was beyond any fear of affronting a deity.

  I offer you life – for a price, Almovaar said to Kyroun.

  Kyroun remained silent. For all he knew, this vision was nothing more than an illusion, a hallucination that preceded death. Still, he did not want to die.

  “What is the price?”

  Be my Seer, Kyroun ni Channar. Bring me worshippers. Rebuild my temple. Restore my name among the people.

  Kyroun’s reaction surprised him. Purpose suddenly kindled in his benighted soul. The emptiness he had known since the day he became bitterly aware that he could not create art like the rest of his family was suddenly filled. He realized he could, indeed, do what the god asked of him.

  “I am yours,” he told the deity.

  As I have always known, said Almovaar.

  Then the god reached out a lambent hand and touched Kyroun. And Kyroun’s mortal wounds healed instantly, and his near-death weariness vanished, to be replaced by preternatural vigor.

  As the revived Kyroun stretched his arms in wonder, the apparition of Almovaar began to fade. Before he disappeared completely, Almovaar whispered three names in his mind. And when he heard them, Kyroun knew he had received yet another gift from his new god.

  Kyroun knew he would have to leave Lumaron again. But before he departed from his homeland for the second time, two men died horrible, inexplicable deaths. One was the leader of the bandits who had ambushed the caravan. The other was the merchant in Lumaron who had arranged the betrayal. Theirs were the first two names Almovaar had spoken to Kyroun.

  Now Kyroun’s path led northward, across the vast steppes that abutted the Bashoob, toward the towering Rafja Mountains, where the legendary sorcerers of Yaghan made their home.

  Yaghan was the third name Almovaar had spoken. Kyroun realized he would need to learn the wisdom the Yaghans offered in order to make best use of the power necessary to restore Almovaar’s status in Lumaron. He knew Almovaar could give him the magic. But he also knew he needed to earn the right to use it.

  Many had made the arduous pilgrimage to the Yaghan’s stronghold, a paradise in the midst of harsh mountain peaks. But only a few survived, for the Yaghans had laid many traps and obstacles along the way to weed out the unworthy.

  Kyroun survived all the Yaghan’s lethal tests. When he finally arrived at the warm land their magic had created from rocks, ice and snow, the Yaghans welcomed him as a pupil. For the next twenty years, he delved into arcane mysteries and learned how to handle sources of power only the most elite among sorcerers dared to tap – and his mastery eventually exceeded their own.

  Finally, the Yaghans told Kyroun he had learned all they could teach him. And he finally understood that it was in sorcery, rather than art or arms, that his true talent lay. When he made his way back down the Rafjas, none of the perils that had confronted him during his ascent appeared. There was no need for them.

  Once again, Kyroun returned to the city of his birth – this time as a seer rather than a man of war. Many of his old acquaintances failed to recognize him. And to his family, which had continued to prosper, he was a stranger in more ways than he had been before.

  Soon after h
is arrival, Kyroun rebuilt the long-abandoned Temple of Almovaar and gathered the few in Lumaron who remembered the city’s first god. Then he began to preach in the streets and the market squares, seeking new worshippers as he had promised Almovaar in the desert.

  At first, he made scant headway, for the veneration of the newer deities had become firmly ensconced. And none of Kyroun’s family ever set foot in the new Temple of Almovaar.

  Then Kyroun began to perform miracles. Utilizing the knowledge he had acquired from the Yaghans, he healed the sick and made the maimed whole. He turned desiccated land into lush fields. He made barren women fecund. He destroyed an army sent by a steppe-lord to pillage a border city that was loyal to Lumaron.

  New worshippers soon filled the Temple of Almovaar. Those who felt forsaken by Lumaron’s other gods returned to the older deity. People of the Shadim, a mysterious race of wanderers from the east who were looked upon with suspicion by westerners, also responded to Kyroun’s preachings. Even a group of Dwarvenkind, who normally were disdained by much of humankind, listened to Kyroun’s sermons and became Almovaads – Believers – because their own gods had not saved them from the cave-in that had destroyed their underground home, and Kyroun offered them protection from those who felt threatened by the Dwarvenkind’s very existence as they wandered through lands alien to them.

  He even counted among his followers a lone Elven woman, an exile from her people who refused to disclose her reasons for joining the Almovaads. It was enough for Kyroun that someone from the most elusive of all the races of Cym Dinath would choose to join his cause. He suspected that the woman possessed qualities she kept hidden from him. In due time, he would learn what they were.

  As the ascendance of the Almovaads increased, so did the jealousies of the other gods’ priests. They could not oppose Kyroun openly, for he had gained the favor of Lumaron’s rulers. Instead, they plotted in secret, pooling their resentment and their resources for a swift, sudden strike.

  But Almovaar warned Kyroun of what was to come. The deity spoke to him through the medium of Ishimbi statuette the Seer kept with him at all times.

  These people are unworthy of you or me, Kyroun, Almovaar said. I see now that our destiny lies in a place far from here.

  “What is this place?” Kyroun asked.

  Your true homeland.

  “But this is my homeland,” Kyroun protested.

  No. Your family forsakes you. And even now, those who serve other gods are coming to slay you. You and I are not wanted or needed here. You and I are needed in the home of the one who made this object.

  Kyroun shook his head in disbelief. Family history had told him Yekunu had been forever separated from his faraway homeland by storms that never ceased. Yet now his god was telling him that was where he needed to go.

  The Seer’s hesitation lasted less than a moment. Almovaar had not yet failed him yet. And he would not fail Almovaar.

  “We will go,” he said to the sculpture in his hands, even as Almovaar’s presence faded yet again.

  When the mob the rival priests had incited arrived, bent on destroying the Temple of Almovaar, it stopped short in fear and astonishment.

  What stood before them was not the restored, resplendent house of the elder god. Instead, they saw the temple as it had been before the Seer Kyroun had returned from his time among the Yaghans – crumbling, deserted, spider-haunted.

  Of Kyroun and the Almovaad congregation, there was not even the slightest of signs ...

  Kyroun had gathered his remaining followers at the edge of the Bashoob. There, he told them of the new mission Almovaar had revealed: a journey to a place that no longer existed on maps of the known world.

  He offered them a choice. They could join him in his quest for the lost homeland of his ancestor. Or they could go elsewhere – anywhere other than Lumaron, where the Almovaads were clearly no longer welcome. For himself, the choice was inevitable and irrevocable.

  “I will go to Matile, as Almovaar commands,” Kyroun told them. “Almovaar will protect us from the storms. If necessary, I will go to Matile alone.”

  Only a small fraction of the Believers refused to follow their Seer when he began to walk westward across the Bashoob. The rest – a congregation numbering nearly a thousand – joined him on the long journey to Fiadol, greatest of the seafaring kingdoms in Cym Dinath.

  Along the way, additional Believers had deserted, frightened by the prospect of sailing into the teeth of an endless storm. But others – outsiders who listened to the sermons Kyroun preached whenever the Almovaads stopped to rest – became Believers and took the places of those who had fallen away, so that in the end their numbers became larger than ever.

  Finally they reached Fiadol, a swaggering coastal city laden with the wealth of the world gained through trade. There, Kyroun searched for a ship-captain willing to undertake a seemingly suicidal voyage into the Sea of Storms, an area even the most foolhardy seamen shunned.

  With the treasure his sect had accumulated and taken from Lumaron, Kyroun could have purchased an entire fleet. But none of Fiadol’s captains was willing to sail into a maelstrom of wind and rain that had no known end, regardless of the Seer’s repeated assurances of protection from his obscure god.

  “For all you know, this Ma-teel place of yours could be nothing more than a bunch of washed-out ruins,” one grizzled sea-dog told him. “It might even be under water by now.”

  Kyroun knew that was not true. He also knew Matile was better-remembered in Fiadol than the skeptical captain had indicated. But all he could offer for veracity was the Ishimbi statuette and the word of Almovaar, neither of which meant much to a non-Believer. Even demonstrations of his hard-won skills at weather-control magic failed to impress the seafarers. But they did bring down the disapproval of Fiadol’s established priesthood, whose members warned him to cease his encroachments on their sphere of influence.

  It seemed Kyroun’s voyage had ended before it could ever begin. Some of his followers even began to question the wisdom of his determination to find the lost land of his distant ancestor.

  Then one of the Believers found Pel Muldure, a captain who was down on his luck and landbound. Lured by a promise of wealth, Muldure had undertaken a privateering venture that had gone awry. Disavowed by the Fiadolian noble who had hired him, Muldure had been judged harshly by the seamen’s tribunal, losing both his ship and captaincy credentials for his troubles.

  The latter he had regained after a period of penance, and the payment of a large fine. But no one was willing to hire his services, and he became a fixture at the drinking dives that dotted Fiadol’s wharf district, much to the despair of the few friends he had left.

  “I will buy the ships we need,” Kyroun told Muldure when they met at the encampment the Seer had established for his followers. “Almovaar will protect us on our voyage. And when word of your feat of seamanship spreads across the world, those who now disdain you will speak your name in tones of wonder.”

  “You say your god can get a ship to this lost land,” Muldure said. “Can he bring us back here?”

  “Do you really want to come back here?” Kyroun countered.

  Muldure considered. He believed Kyroun was a madman and his proposed voyage an invitation to suicide. Yet without a deck under his feet and a tiller in his hands, he might as well be dead anyway.

  Pel Muldure accepted Kyroun’s offer. He had nothing to lose. Neither did the crews he assembled for the two ships Kyroun’s gold bought. Some of them were old friends, such as Lyann, who had suffered for their loyalty to him; others were dockside drifters and miscreants who, like him, were unable to find other employment.

  When the ships, the White Gull and the Swordfish, set sail from Fiadol’s crowded harbor, the other captains provided a derisive sendoff. “Voyage of fools,” they called the venture. They did not expect to see either Muldure or the Almovaads again.

  Months passed before the White Gull and Swordfish came within sight of the Sea of Storms. A
t first, it appeared as a faint gray smudge stretching from one end of the horizon to the other. Day by day it grew, consuming the sky as the Almovaads drew closer, the Seer sailing in the White Gull, the Swordfish trailing in its wake. Then the storm engulfed them, and the thaumaturgy Kyroun had learned from the Yaghans was put to its ultimate test.

  He constructed a protective barrier around both ships, an unseen shield strong enough to prevent the warring elements of wind and water from wreaking their havoc. At the same time, he conjured a ghost-wind that propelled the White Gull and Swordfish forward, ever forward, in the direction in which old maps indicated Matile lay.

  To perform either task would have been a remarkable feat of sorcery. To do both simultaneously, unceasingly – the Almovaads’ awe of their Seer increased ten-fold. Even the ship’s crew – of whom only a few had become Believers – began to respect him as the days in the storm passed.

  More than that, they began to fear him ....

  Still, Kyroun was only mortal, a flesh-and blood conduit through which the power of Almovaar flowed. Soon enough, the conduit corroded. Kyroun’s weakening was imperceptible at first. However, as the days in the storm dragged into weeks, the strain on the Seer became more noticeable. And the disquiet among Believers and non-Believers alike grew with each buffet of wind and wave against the ship’s hulls.

  When the last of Kyroun’s strength ebbed away, the thwarted elementals lashed at the White Gull and Swordfish with a vengeful fury, nearly tearing both ships apart. But Kyroun managed to summon a final gust of ghost-wind that pushed the White Gull out of the storm, even as he and the others who remained alive lost consciousness. But he did not have enough strength left to save the Swordfish. The Elven woman had been on that ship. Kyroun had preferred that she sail with him, but she had insisted on a different arrangement, and he had not argued with her. Now, she was lost, as were all the others on the doomed ship.