The Legend of El Shashi

by Marc Secchia

  ‘Have a focus against your fear, Arlak,’ he urged. ‘Listen to your heartbeat, or the rush of wind in your lungs, or picture something dear in your mind and focus on that to the exclusion of all else.’

  Even the memory was enough to ease my alarm. I felt the rise and fall of my breathing. Easy. Truly told, I had lost the art of meditation that Janos had taught me–I was out of practice.

  “Touch my face,” Torri whispered.

  Do it again? By my grephe, why not? I willed the power forth.

  Crimson pain!

  “Arise, you dumb nadal!” cried Torri. “It’s Joinday and there’s a queue at the door.”

  I groaned into my blanket, “I’m weary unto death.”

  “Up! Off your pallet!”

  She prodded my neck with her foot. Torri had recently taken to wearing Suliki half-boots, currently high fashion in Gramyre Town, complete with the risible affectation of a long, sharply pointed toe that made the wearer resemble a strutting sparrow. She might as well have jabbed me with a dagger.

  “One last word, Arlak. It’s nigh the makh of dawn and–”

  “There’s coin to be earned.”

  “Indeed. A servant should earn his keep.”

  Servant indeed! Bitterly, I sighed, opened my eyes, and scanned her scowling visage. I inquired, “What is my keep, mistress? Tell me–how much of the bond-contract do I still owe after these four anna? Our house prospers … exceedingly.”

  “Oh. So that’s your grievance, Arlak?” she said, coldly. “I’ve no obligation to you. That shadworm housemaster of yours must have smelled the terls and ukals. To Hajik with his greedy quoph! Get up. If you have not seen five customers within the makh, I’ll have you displayed. Publicly.”

  Poor wretches chained to market pillories, splattered with rotting kale and excrement and every manner of filth known in the Fiefdoms … ay, a common fate I had no desire to suffer. Lately my sullenness–born of frustration, and the grit of tiredness lodged in every joint of my limbs–had boiled over once too often. Torri would carry out her threat. I read that clearly in the set of her shoulders, and in her thin-lipped responses. Had I not been pulling in money hand over fist, running our healing business … truly told, there lay the nub.

  Were all women set upon simply using a man? Driving the beast of burden until he dropped? Cheating him of his dues; sucking the very husk of him out like the fabled Nethespawned night-eaters, summoned by Eldrik Warlocks, were said to?

  I dragged myself up to my elbow, fuming:

  Four anna had I slaved for Torri and her mother. The prospect of freedom, of a relationship with Torri, had faded before the first season ended. After purchasing my contract from the housemaster she toyed with me for a space, but now I slept behind the scullery with the drudges and house servants. Torri set up an athocarium for me. I worked there from dawn to dusk as the customers streamed in. Endless streams of sick humanity, desperate for a cure. Many had seen false athocaries, who had stolen their money with nought to show for a cure.

  It used to be I could rest. Business started slowly. But alas, word spread faster than wildfire. What I offered was no shim-sham fakery. My healings were permanent; my unguents, potent. With success and fame came better lodgings and clothing for Torri, her liaison with a man of real substance, more and more customers, and the fierce enmity of the other local healers.

  Ay, I counted many failures too. There was the man with tapeworm. After it obstructed his bowel, his stomach swelled to the size and shape of a Gurbian wineskin. In my anxiety to rid him of the worm I forced it through the skin of his stomach, and as it burst out, there followed such an explosion of pus and rotting food and flesh that it splattered all over the walls, floor and ceiling of my athocarium. The poor man screamed the house down for a makh while I fished about inside his torn abdomen for the remnants. We had to close for cleaning–but no need to send the other customers home. They had long since fled.

  I popped a man’s eyeball out of its socket by accident. I sent a woman away after treating her for a canker, only to have her distraught husband turn up the following morn with the news she had died during the night. His grieving, accusing face haunts me still. I remember twin girls born to a woman who were strangely conjoined at the navel. From what I could tell they shared a heart and lungs. They died in my care. And then, there were many I had to send away with nought but a palliative for their pain. The disease, incurable.

  I knew, deep in my marrow, I was a blunt instrument. ‘O Mata,’ I would pray, ‘please assuage the victims of my ignorance, ineptitude, and impatience. Mata, forgive me!’ Then I would rage: ‘I asked nought of You. Take this curse away! I hate You …’

  What I had once seen as a bottomless well of power, proved all too soon a tygar of no mean stripe. By this I mark, I needed time to replenish my resources–but Torri allowed none save a half-day rest on Sayth, the second day of the week–or I became incapable of healing so much as a planter’s wart. I had to learn to husband my strength. Therefore I undertook a hurried education in the many athocarial arts which needed no miraculous improvement. In this, Janos’ intense tutelage served me well. Skilled tutors were in short supply and expensive, but I expedited instant funding by the simple argument that thus I could see and deal with many more customers.

  Telling. Indeed, and how!

  For a time Torri, overjoyed by her healing and consequent reintroduction to society, had been a different woman. I remembered her laughing every morning as she beheld her restoration in our bedroom mirror, how she rubbed her arms and pinched her cheeks in delight. Had she forgotten? When had she become so bitter and resentful? Why such a disparity between physical healing, and the healing of the heart?

  Or had my actions only served to strip away the layer to concealing the true rottenness beneath?

  My cynical preoccupation whiled away the makh until dusk, when Torri and her mother departed for the daimi orison. They were religious when it suited. I perched upon my four-legged stool, trying to decide how to fob off my last customer until the morrow.

  He was a weathered husk of a man. A lifetime’s experience was etched upon on every digit of his face, and a mass of wrinkles framed rheumy eyes misted over with cataracts. My customer could barely see, but he saw more clearly than I.

  “Fie!” he spat. “Lost our power, have we?”

  I clucked my tongue. “Nay, I–”

  “Lost your nerve?”

  “No!”

  He peered across the desk, perhaps trying to make out my form in the gloaming. I reached for my sparkstone, set the lamp ablaze, and trimmed the wick deftly. Janos would have approved.

  “Then tell me–what do you want, young man? What will move you to act as only you seem able?”

  His question, his whole mien, pinned my limbs in place as my thoughts exploded into life like dry tinder inhaling a flame.

  “Must I plead my age? My frailty?” he said. “Must I tell my story, how I have suffered at the hands of all manner of charlatans, swindlers, and fools?”

  “Nay, not that.”

  “What then? Dance you a merry jig upon the table?” My laughter rang too loud in the close space. “What about money? I am not come for tawdry pigswill. I want your best. What does that cost?”

  I sucked in my cheeks.

  “Ah … I see how it is.” He leaned forward, resting his hands atop his embossed ulinbarb cane, and said, “Well, my young buck, I’ve a great fat purse bulging with ukals and nothing better to spend them on in my last days. Do you know what it is to live in darkness? To be unable to see the faces of loved ones? That is my daily pain.”

  If his words had struck me before, now they became hammer-blows pounding the message-drum of my heart.

  “Mayhap you are a bondservant. Tell me–what is the price of your contract? Does your mistress lie to keep you bound? How much coin would buy your freedom?”

  Freedom? Ah! Taste it, Arlak! I had hardly dared imagine … the silence between us thrummed, as if the whole wor
ld held its breath.

  I wet my lips and croaked, “Name your price.”

  His crook-toothed grin flashed at me.

  I had a dilemma. Staring at the small tower of sliver ukals winking upon my palm–twenty-one in all, or three days’ takings–I could not decide. I felt as a man being unfaithful to his wife. My dealings with Torri, though overwhelmingly one-sided, had at least been honest to this point.

  The old man left my chambers with a skip of sprightly delight and eyes that beheld the world as though all were new. I had a searing migraine and wished nothing more than to slump down on my pallet and shut my eyes to the world.

  My toe prodded the door shut. My fingers curled protectively around the coins. I should not be caught holding such a sum. I should hide it. Twisting on my heel, I wandered back across the room. I stroked the coins. Rolled them this way and that. Reformed the little tower upon my palm. Placed it on my writing-desk so that I could regard the fruit of my greed and desperation from a safe distance.

  Suddenly, an earth-tremor made the tower of coins collapse. I dashed across the room and pocketed them in an instant. Keep the ukals, of course. Decisions could wait on the morrow.

  Tremors–Roymere used to have several each week. One grew accustomed. But I could not remember any since my arrival in Gramyre Town. Would I not have noticed? The room shook again. One of my pots crashed to the floor. I had shelves stacked to the rafters with expensive supplies in the back … I took two or three steps across the room, thinking to see to my stores, when something struck the building a staggering blow from beneath. The structure groaned. Bottles leaped about and shattered on the floor. I heard a noise akin to rats’ claws scrabbling across a slate-tiled rooftop, only much louder.

  Something was down there … “Oh hush!” I said aloud. “It’s noth-”

  CRASH! The floorboards between my boots buckled and splintered upwards. Nails shrieked and ripped loose. Dust exploded into my face.

  Forget the supplies! I sprang for the doorway. Two great bounds across the reception, fingers fumbling with the door key–be cursed to Hajik I’d been meaning to oil the lock all season–as my ears conveyed the sounds of some unknown monster thrashing about back there, smashing against the walls with such great force that bits of plaster and wood rained down from the ceiling and the wood-lattice walls splintered. The sound tore into my gut and lent my fear wings.

  I burst out onto the street, all bellowing and enraged-jerlak snorting as I bulled over a woman carrying a basket of produce. I glanced off the side of a cart, feet pounding the cobblestones, before finding my escape stymied by a milling herd of goats. Larathi! I doubled back, too fast, and ducked as the carter slashed his prod at my face. A blow to my shoulder sent me reeling into the path of a merchant’s takibuge. It slewed, to a chorus of alarmed shouts from the servants aboard.

  Their cries were suddenly drowned in a rumbling crash as the entire side of the building housing my chambers slumped to the ground. Into the ground.

  People froze in disbelieving tableaux.

  The earth might as well have grown the maw of the mythical sea-serpent, and bitten a chunk off the building. There came a prolonged groan of tortured beams as the roof, bereft of its underpinnings, developed a wide crack up to the eaves and sagged down atop the mound of rubble. What had been the wall of my athocarium developed an unseemly outward bulge before collapsing in a spurt of lime powder and a clatter of bricks. Red roof tiles avalanched briefly into the pit with a tinkling of shattered shards, like notes plinked upon the seven-stringed lummericoot.

  Curses and wondering comments assaulted my petrified form. The brave advanced toward the scene of destruction, stepping gingerly lest the ground show further signs of caving in. Someone shouted for the watch. The clamour was indistinct, an insignificant counterpoint to the impressions cascading through my mind.

  What had I seen before I fled? Spines? Scales? An animalistic, heaving bulk half-seen, half-felt down there … my knuckles burned. I knelt in the road and rubbed my skinned digits aimlessly. I could not rightly remember, and it was important that I did, I knew, because …

  The insight I had been seeking crystallised in my mind as a flash of deathly-white terror. My face flushed cold, then hotter and hotter until I thought my veins would surely burst from my forehead. My sweat ran in thick, heavy droplets down my neck.

  The Wurm! Oh, what had I done?

  How many times had I not pondered those fateful words? How many times had I heard them play through my mind, prey on my dreams, disturb my waking makh? ‘Mark you how the Wurm rises!’ she had shrieked. Ay, I had the promised power, but not the belief. I had never truly believed, until this wave broke upon me, and broke my existence too.

  Mata sustain me! I regained my feet, wringing my hands.

  “You were selfish, Arlak,” I berated myself. “You took his money and summoned the Wurm. You fool! Jyla’s Wurm!”

  Curious stares, a turning of hard faces toward me, brought pause to my tirade. I realised I had spoken aloud, much more loudly than I had intended. I had to leave.

  I put my feet to the road, and ran.

  I cared not where.

  Scrolleaf the Second

  Recounting a tale in which horrors and happiness are juxtaposed.

  Herein a youth is catapulted into his manhood,

  Refined as through the fires of battle.

  Of love we shall speak, and his beloved, and chronicle the tragic consequences of a ruinous rage.

  Chapter 9: The Appearing

  Lymar Battlefield, last Xarday of the Richness, Anna Nox 1361

  That day, I truly beheld the Wurm for the first time.

  It seemed at its outset a day identical to many before–as ordinary a day as is served by war, which is itself an extraordinary affair. A brisk breeze had whisked the previous night’s rain clouds yonder to the northern horizon, where they floated in sullen grey puffs, as if contemplating a return after being scolded hence. Sodden turf squelched underfoot. Bald vultures made grim sentinels atop the gaunt loiol trees lining the gully between the opposed encampments. Fifty paces tall, lean and straight, loiols rise to a single, risible tuft of lavender leaves at the very tip–exactly where a vulture might choose his roost. Here, where Ulim stalked the still-living, the bald vultures congregated in their stupendously ugly, scabby-headed thousands to appraise the impending feast. Perhaps they laughed at us men. To them, we represented ready meals on the hoof.

  Beneath the loiols, soldiers cursed as soldiers will. They grumbled through a breakfast of roundel sweetbreads and goat-cheese, griped as they strapped on their armour, checked and rechecked their weapons, and swapped boastful stories and rough jests to raise spirits. Men whinged continuously as we drew up in our ranks, and my voice joined the chorus too.

  For I was afraid.

  Fear was my invisible brother-in-arms. It woke me at dawn, marched with me to the battle-line, and seeped beneath my enveloping cloak during the darkest makh. Did one ever become accustomed?

  Becoming a soldier was easy. Too easy. Having turned up with the right equipment–a sword, leather cuirass, and roundshield–the coin of hire was mine for the asking. How I rejoiced that day! I roughed my tongue across cracked, chapped lips. All of my romantic ideals had been dashed in the first makh of battle. Prove my manhood? Mark my name? Naïve, boyish fancies. Pipe-dreams of yesteranna.

  I had last seen Torri an anna before. A part of me longed to return to that simple life; a life without killing.

  For the hundredth time that grim morn, I checked my short-sword. Janos’ training had kept me alive so far. But no amount of groundwork could have prepared me for the sensation of feeling skin and cartilage part wetly as I drove my blade into a living body, followed by the grating of metal upon bone and the struggle to quickly withdraw before another enemy fell upon me; for the sight of gore dripping off the sword, running freely down the grooved channel and up my sword-arm to the elbow; for the stench of excrement as men’s bowels voided themselv
es in death or mortal terror; for a clamour so deafening that I could not hear myself shout; and for slipping upon coils of intestines spilled and trampled into the bloody carcass of the field.

  I felt grateful to Janos. Angry, too–why had he not warned me? Why had he not beaten the notion out of my dense skull? Stupid, callow youth I had been–Arlak would never have listened. Ay, that were truth indeed.

  Now, the battle lines were drawn up once more on opposing hillsides.

  To the south stood the Roymerians–a motley assemblage of some two hundred professional cavalry, and foot-militias bought to service with the coin of a dozen local Hassutls numbering some two thousands, who were armed with basic Lykki short swords, roundshields, and jatha-leather armour. My place was amongst the militias. Behind us stood a mass of civilians who hardly knew which end of a blade to grasp and who yesterday had to be brutally whipped before they would advance to the battle-line.

  Luckless swine.

  To the north the Lymarian horde milled restlessly, like ants stirred from their nest. The reason for their agitation soon became clear.

  “Told you,” spat the fellow to my right, Garrak by name. “Reinforcements.”

  “There’s already three of them for every one of us!”

  Left and right, my comrades spat in unison. “Tell it to the yammariks, pretty boy.”

  I felt myself redden. “In Mata’s name …”

  “In Mata’s name?” Garrak mocked. “Learn to curse like a man, to Hajik sink your quoph! What say you, Salk?”

  “Truly told,” grunted the other, and cursed at length in Tulkish, his native tongue. I thought him a surly brute, Salk, but a good man in a pinch. Truly told, while they might mock my proper speech, they trusted my blade. As dear as brothers we were, a brotherhood forged of death’s imminence. Had I not this Joinday past cleaned Salk’s back of a clinging Lymarian who was about to slash his throat with one of their ugly, serrated daggers?