Merchant of Alyss

by Thomas Locke

  “The golems,” Hyam said.

  “They have an appetite unlike anything you can imagine,” Selim said. “They eat and they mine. They carve the tunnels, so long as they are fed. And thus has it been for a thousand years.”

  Meda recalled, “Lorekeepers of the badlands speak of how the crimson horde attacked with these monsters at their fore.”

  “All that is confirmed by our earliest tales,” Selim agreed. “When the Milantians were defeated, desert traders found these golems wandering in the desert. They ate whatever was in reach. They swallowed whole camels, along with all the wares piled upon their backs. Spears and arrows did not dent their hide. But once they had eaten their fill, the golems became docile as sheep. There are arguments over who thought to set them to mining. But for ten centuries that is what they have done. They do not mate, they do not sire, and they do not die. They mine and they eat.”

  “One died,” Meda corrected. “And turned instantly to dust.”

  “Which confirms our suspicions that they never truly have lived at all, but rather are magical constructs.”

  “Milantian magic,” Meda added.

  Selim shrugged. “I have long suspected you are right. But until recently, there has been no reason to worry over their origins. For it is upon them that Olom has grown rich.”

  As the sky overhead turned a sunset gold, servants walked through the empty courtyard, lighting metal bowls holding scented wood. The oily kindling drove away the night insects and perfumed the air.

  Hyam asked, “And now?”

  “They are vanishing,” Selim said. “A year ago, there were almost two hundred golems. They were known by the name of the clan whose sector they mined. Now there are just forty-seven. The others have simply wandered off. Nothing can hold nor stop them.”

  “Where do . . .” Meda’s eyes opened wide. “Alyss.”

  Selim nodded. “Naturally the beasts have been tracked. The clans who lose their golems face ruin. The entire society of Olom is being demolished. Of course we have followed them.”

  “And none of those who take the Alyss road have returned,” Hyam said. “Which was why you told the dragon that the road was perilous. This was not some missing caravan from sometime in the distant past. This is now.”

  “Many of Olom’s warriors went in search of the beasts,” Selim confirmed. “Those who tracked the golems vanished. And still the golems depart.”

  Fareed said, “And yet you will travel with us to Alyss?”

  “I gave my word to a beast who only exists in fable.” Selim rose to his feet. “I am a man of my word.”

  Meda asked a final question. “Who is Jaffar?”

  “My grandfather. He led this caravan for sixty-two years. And raised me in the process, for my father died from a fever that swept through Olom when I was nine.” Selim offered a salaam of farewell. “He leads me still and speaks to me of danger and dry wells. And right now he is saying that dawn will come too soon, and we must all sleep.”

  Hyam climbed the stairs and walked the torch-lit corridor. Behind him the company murmured their weary good nights, but he heard nothing.

  That afternoon, alone in the men’s bath, Hyam had dozed off. And dreamed of Joelle.

  She had reached across the impossible distance and reopened the crippling wound. If she had screamed or begged or called frantically, he could have remained strong. But she had come to him as only Joelle knew how, in loving anticipation of love.

  Now as he walked the empty corridor, Hyam sensed the eye drawing him forward. What he felt was no mere invitation. The eye summoned him.

  It whispered a dread command to look. And drown in memories of that which was no more.

  He stopped in the hall and listened. When he was certain the others were still downstairs, Hyam slipped into Meda’s room. He rummaged through her pack and took the box holding the eye.

  As soon as Hyam entered his bedchamber, the eye captured every iota of his being. He crossed the room as unsteady as a sleepwalker. His last chance to know the joy of Joelle’s unique treasures was hidden inside. And just then, he could not recall the reason why he had forbidden himself from ever looking at the eye again.

  He opened the box and peered inside.

  31

  Shona stood in the center of her room, staring into a mirror larger than the veranda’s double doors. Behind her, the bed was illuminated by tall candles in bronze stands. Shona inspected herself with a distant passion. She had known of her beauty since childhood. She realized for most men it served as a powerful lure.

  Shona slowly undressed, inspecting herself through the process. She had so much to offer a man. Even enough, she hoped, to draw Hyam back from the ashes of loss.

  While she had been in the baths, maids had washed her road-weary garments. Now they lay upon her bed, and alongside them was a silken nightgown. Shona slipped the garment over her head. It drifted down, slow as hands, soft as clouds. She blushed at her audacity, for the gown was almost transparent.

  She turned from the mirror, determined now. She was so intent upon the prize she could almost ignore Meda’s warnings.

  She crossed the room, opened her door, and stopped to listen. Hyam’s door was directly opposite hers. From where she stood, it appeared that it had been left open a crack. Her heart leapt at the thought that he too anticipated her arrival. A few steps, a soft knock, and bliss.

  Then she heard it. The softest hint drifted down the empty corridor. A tinkle of women’s laughter. She tried to tell herself it had come from some distant chamber, where the inn’s few guests lingered. But Shona knew better.

  The witches called to her. They welcomed her as one of their own. Using her lures to draw in the unsuspecting, the defenseless.

  She fought the realization with a furious vigor. She had never wanted anything so much as this.

  But the reality was too strong. Meda’s cautions and the witches’ laughter worked at her like a vise.

  Shona closed her door and sank to the hard tiled floor. She wept, defeated by all the reasons not to cross the hall.

  Then she heard Hyam call out in an anguish worse than her own.

  32

  The eye was just a ceramic bauble, almost crudely formed. But this night it drew in the candle’s light and gleamed. Inviting. Greedy.

  Hyam leaned in closer. And sank into memories. He managed one fractured thought, that none of these memories were entirely real. But just then the truth did not matter. All he wanted was the chance to be with his beloved again. Even if the act was fashioned from a lie.

  Once again Hyam rode the cliffs with Joelle. He did not recall the experience. He lived it. Only this time the event was better, refined, perfect.

  They stopped and watched the sea surge and crash. They shared cold tea from a leather skin, the honeyed draught sweet as nectar. Joelle smiled at him in that special way. They fashioned a bed from the wiry grass lining the cliff top. They added their music to that of the sea and the wind.

  Then he felt it, a faintly surging cry from deeper within the eye.

  Hyam realized that he was not alone.

  Farther down inside the cavernous depths, someone else was there. Caught by the same ruse that now ensnared Hyam.

  The shock caused him to draw back. Or at least try to. But he was held in place by hands that before had pretended to belong to Joelle.

  Then he felt the teeth. Sharp as tiny razors, gnawing at the edge of his soul. Eating away. Drawing a delighted pleasure from his helpless state. There was no rush to the meal. He was trapped. Lost. The flavor of his life was too sublime to hurry through. The teeth would gnaw at him for centuries before he was fully consumed.

  From deep below, the lost soul resigned to the dark cage cried a second warning. This time Hyam cried out in agreement.

  Too late. Too late.

  33

  Shona jerked the silk over her head and flung on her trousers and blouse. Her fingers made a mess of the buttons. She cried in her frustration and flung
open her door. Meda raced down the corridor, looking even more disheveled. Shona reached Hyam’s door first. She entered and cried a second time at the sight of him sprawled across the floor, one fist clenching an oddly painted ceramic bauble.

  She knelt and cradled his head and called his name. “Hyam!”

  He moaned.

  There was a bitter paradox to her position. Holding his head, stroking his face, while alarm grew all about them. She called his name again, wishing with all her heart they knew a private intimacy instead of fear and woe.

  But the bond was strong just the same. Shona knew this because the next step came to her in a whispered flash. She said to Meda, “The eye!”

  “What?”

  “The bauble he holds! It consumes him!”

  Meda used all her strength to pry back his fingers. She stood and demanded, “What now?”

  “Destroy it!” Shona had no idea why she was so certain. Only that she was. She wrapped her arms around Hyam’s head and called, “Stay with us!”

  Meda searched frantically, but the room’s only fire was a bedside candle. She held the eye over the tiny flame.

  Hyam shrieked in agony.

  Meda yelled, “Fareed!”

  The young mage rushed in, gripped the eye with both hands, clenched his eyes shut, and spoke.

  The eye burst into flames and exploded.

  Hyam yelped, gasped, choked, and cried again, more softly this time.

  But their attention was no longer solely upon Hyam. For there beside Fareed, another being appeared.

  The figure revealed an Elven king, or so it seemed to Shona. A man with a diadem upon his forehead, similar to the one Darwain had given Hyam. He was rimmed by fires that did not burn. The flames held a greenish tint, as though bound to forest shades. The ruler’s eyes were brilliant and alight as they studied the room. He gazed upon them with the satisfaction of centuries, smiling with sorrow and joy both. He raised a hand, a silent benediction. Then he lifted both his arms above his head. The ceiling opened, a swirling vortex of light and welcome. The flames encasing the king grew brighter still, consuming him and drawing him up.

  The room grew dim, the image gone, and all that was left were tiny ceramic shards covering the floor.

  Hyam opened his eyes, looked up at Shona, and whispered, “You were strong for me.”

  34

  Hyam felt roundly abused when they set off from Olom the hour before dawn. After the crisis, he had managed a few hours’ troubled rest. Meda and Fareed had both slept on the floor at the foot of his bed. Shona had stayed there beside him, cradling his head in her arms. Now she rode slightly slumped, her shoulders bowed, her young face creased with exhaustion.

  They rode a motley assortment of desert ponies. Hyam’s head pounded such that each clop of a hoof was matched by another pulse of pain. His sense of guilt fashioned a pain worse than his head. His weakness had wreaked havoc on his closest remaining friends.

  He listened as Meda related the night’s experience to Selim. Meda made it sound as though the entire experience centered upon the release of the eye’s other prisoner. Twice Hyam started to correct her. Confess the temptation that had snared him. Apologize again.

  But his admission would only focus their attention on a threat that had passed. Hyam lifted his gaze to the unseen road beyond the reach of their mage-lights. Out where the shadows waited and new dangers lurked. He remained silent.

  When Meda finished her telling, Selim said, “I wonder who the prisoner might have been.”

  This much Hyam retained from his ordeal. “His name was Dyamid. More I cannot say. But the name was the last clear thought I had.”

  “The name is enough,” Selim declared. “I will explain when we have left the city well behind.”

  Olom still slept, yet they could see testimony of the recent crisis all about them. From the road, the dwellings revealed long, dusty brick walls with guard parapets anchoring each corner. But the doors to many hung like wooden flags of defeat, revealing interiors void of life.

  As they arrived at the city’s eastern gates, the rising sun offered a rose-tinted glow to their departure. The road passed between two springs feeding streams that ran like sparkling veins through vast fields of green. The cultivated valley was rich and verdant and lined by blooming fruit trees. The pastures held thousands of bleating sheep.

  Meda asked, “How many animals can one city need?”

  “Not us, but the golems,” Selim replied. “They eat more than a dozen each day. Rather, they did. Now it is as you see. The shepherds keep raising flocks in hopes that the golems will return, and for the few who still remain. When our last golems depart, the city perishes.”

  The green farmlands and bleating sheep stayed with them for several more miles. Eventually they gave way to empty meadows starved of moisture. The buildings became little more than hovels. Most revealed gaping doors and empty corrals.

  Hyam waited until they passed the last gnarled olive grove. Ahead of them now was only the empty yellow desert. Then he asked, “Who was Dyamid?”

  “Elven rulers take names that are permitted to no other,” Selim replied. “The name is used once and buried with their king or queen.”

  The sun was climbing overhead, the heat swiftly building. Hyam found the intensity helped clear his head. “I did not know that.”

  “Nor is there any reason that you should. Dyamid was Ethrin’s last ruler. The tales of my clan’s early days include stories about him. The year before Ethrin fell to the Milantian hordes, Dyamid’s wife and only child perished. Some say it was due to a sudden fever, others to poison. Then two months before the hordes invaded, a wandering mage offered Dyamid an amulet or mirror or some such thing that granted him access to the other world.”

  The gorge rose in Hyam’s throat as he recalled the needle-sharp teeth gnawing at his life. From his other side, Meda said, “He was given the eye.”

  “No,” Shona said, her voice a full octave lower than normal. “The eye was made for him.”

  “That is my thinking as well,” Selim agreed. “For the legend states that Dyamid perished while his body still lived. He became a puppet that breathed. And the last command Dyamid gave was for his warriors to open the hidden portal and allow the Milantian horde to invade the Elven kingdom.”

  Hyam heard the rush of voices surround him. But the words no longer mattered. He rode convicted by Selim’s tale. It was not the loss of his own life that assaulted him. Rather, how he had almost shared Dyamid’s fate. Failing in his responsibilities to all those who had placed their trust in him.

  Hyam found it helpful to focus upon the empty realm. Gradually the road became erased by the sweep of yellow dust. Up ahead there was no trail, no hint of what awaited them beyond the veil of shimmering heat. He swallowed the guilt with a determined strength. He would not fail his company or his lover again.

  They needed him to be strong. They needed him to live.

  35

  Midafternoon they crested the tall ridgeline marking the end of Olom’s reach. Selim said, “From here to Alyss we eat and drink only what we carry.”

  They journeyed through the remainder of the day and into the sunset and nothing changed. Their horses were sturdy beasts with a light step and delicate hooves. Selim claimed there was nothing on two legs or four able to match them for speed, even when scaling a desert ridge. And whatever else one might say about camels, they were not climbers. Tethered to each mount were two donkeys, four of which carried only water. The sloshing liquid formed a constant backdrop to their otherwise silent passage.

  They halted as the light failed, and Hyam drew an encircling shield as others prepared camp and hobbled the horses. He was so fatigued he stumbled over the spell and twice had to restart. But no one seemed to notice, for they all remained stained by the previous night. They ate a cold meal and drank their fill of tea in silence. The stars formed a silver sea overhead. Nothing moved. Of the bird there was no sign.

  That night Hyam sle
pt deeply and did not dream until near sunrise. He knew the time because he was drawn from his body. He hovered there above the camp in the clear pale wash of a new day. Then turned to face a king rimmed by green fire. A silver diadem encircled Dyamid’s head, one holding a small gleaming orb.

  Hyam spoke the first words that came to mind. “Should I kneel?”

  “You are the one who saved me,” the king replied.

  “I saved no one. I almost joined you.”

  “I am well aware of the debt I owe your entire group.” Dyamid looked down to where Shona still slept. “You will thank them for me?”

  “I will.” Hyam asked because he had to. “Do you have news of Joelle?”

  “Your wife is still among the living. Barely.” Dyamid did not actually speak. Rather, his words were planted in Hyam’s mind. But they still carried a ruler’s dread authority. “The Elven healers are doing all they can to keep her there. Now your attention must turn away from her. You understand?”

  “I need to focus upon what lies ahead.”

  “Correct. Far more than your wife’s fate hangs in the balance. Use my own tragic tale as your last warning.”

  “What awaits us?”

  Dyamid nodded approval to the question. “This was why I was permitted to return, that I might serve as messenger. Heed my words, Emissary. Your only hope of survival lies in accepting what you have spent your entire life fleeing.”

  The Elven king’s warning carried Hyam through much of the next day. He did not share the dream with anyone, not yet. He knew exactly what Dyamid had meant by the words. As Hyam rode through the arid plains east of Olom, he felt as though everything about this journey, the mysteries and the threats and the losses, all had combined to draw him here. To the moment he faced the challenge of his own past.