The Legend of El Shashi

by Marc Secchia

  Besides, I had lied to her from the outset. I had lied to everyone in Eldoran, but P’dáronï more than most. As I remembered Janos opining, ‘Truth is the best foundation for any relationship, Arlak. Beware the power of lies. Do not be seduced by the ease of a lying tongue, for one lie leads to another greater than the first.’

  When last did Janos’ voice echo in my mind?

  Sidling around the corner of a building, I found myself in a clear, circular space, some one hundred and fifty paces across by my estimate. Directly before me stood a large, plain pergola, set on a raised platform girt in pristine white cloth. Upon it, clad in robes the colour of a splash of blood, stood a man I took for a yammarik, and at intervals around the edge of the platform some fifteen or more black sherimol robes of the Sorcerers Guild–Eliyan’s colleagues. Beyond them I noticed a coterie of samite-robed men, resplendent in robes of such perfect white I knew only magic could keep them so. Only once had I seen a white robe on the streets of Eldoran. Never a whole group together. Interrogators. Ulim’s ghouls! Ironically, they wore a colour that to the Umarite in me symbolised death.

  My gaze flickered over the pergola. There was something in there, suspended in the air between the white arches, something formless and oily-black, exactly as I remembered the smoke Jyla had once conjured from her brazier. The sight of it gave me lyomflesh.

  A sparse crowd stood in that space, looking on with expressions that even for the ever-watchful Eldrik, struck me as oddly vacuous. Were the proceedings enough to transfix them so? Or was it the gyael-irfa, that shared experience from which I was barred? As I watched, a troop of guards marched up to the pergola. In their midst they held a man who could only be a prisoner.

  So much for the perfection of Eldoran, I sneered inwardly. Look, a common criminal … Pedyk! My eyes nearly leaped from their sockets. Dear Mata!

  Ducking my head, I struggled to school my features into the impassivity of the other watchers. The crimson robe on the platform intoned, “Judged and found wanting. Pedyk of Eldoran. Guilty of the abuse of banned substances. Guilty of neglecting his scholarly duties. Guilty of addiction. Guilty of grieving the gyael-irfa!”

  “Ahammae mor morbinduu,” hissed the crowd. Separation is the penalty.

  “The decree of the Council must stand. The guilty must be punished, lest the justice of the people be found wanting.”

  “Ahu, ahammae mor morbinduu.”

  “The gyael-irfa must be cleansed, lest all fail together.”

  “AHU, AHAMMAE MOR MORBINDUU!”

  A deep, mournful horn sounded a single note, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Now another joined it, sounding a terrible discord that set my teeth on edge. Truly told I am no musician, but this was an offence upon the ear, as if two salcats were mewling in a mating fight.

  I dared to look again. The black robes turned inward. Chanting together, each raised his or her staff to the skies. There came a roaring of wind. The blackness was changing, clarifying, taking shape. I realised that the roaring issued from within the portal. Sparks exploded from its mouth and blew over the crowd, in all directions, but the people did not flinch. I thought I saw tentacles rising from the darkness beyond, and a grey, blasted isle reeling at the blows of mountainous seas. An icy wind whipped around the circle, moaning wickedly as it fled between the buildings.

  Over the noise, I heard a voice whimpering, protesting, pleading, as the impassive guards dragged Pedyk forward. I have seldom seen a man experience mortal fear. Pedyk, in utter despair, stared into Ulim’s very pit. His lank, greasy hair was plastered to his sallow jowls like old seaweed to a rock.

  Still, the crimson robe’s booming monotone could be heard plainly over the din. “Pedyk of Eldoran, you have been judged and found wanting. Do you accept this punishment?”

  They dumped Pedyk on the platform as if he were a sack of rimmerwort root. The guards took a good grip of his arms. He thrashed in his captors’ grip and shrieked: “Death to the Banishment! You will pay for this, I swear! You will–”

  As the guards pitched him head-first into the maelstrom, his cries were cut off. I lowered my head. The Sorcerers chanted, “Consecrate us, dear Mata, with the spirit of wisdom and unity, that we may better serve you …”

  I clutched my stomach. I tried to duck behind a building. I stumbled back the way I had come, unseeing.

  A slim, familiar arm arrested my halting progress. Reached around me.

  “Arlak-nih,” said P’dáronï, tugging the hood over my face. “You should not have come.”

  Grinding my fist against my mouth, I tried to stifle my furious sobs as P’dáronï led me away.

  Chapter 21: Myki Mahdros

  Truth? Speak not of truth to me,

  You two-hearted changeling of yesteranna!

  Night and day lurk equally within you,

  Who may say which will win out?

  Faliyan of Eldoran: Legends, 11th Tale: Myki Mahdros

  “How can you sit there with the calm of a statue?”

  “How come you are pacing like a caged tygar? Calm yourself.”

  “P’dáronï, we could be in grave danger!”

  “We are in grave danger, Arlak, and no amount of polishing the floor with your boots will summon Amal with greater haste,” P’dáronï retorted. “Now, calm yourself. You’ll like Amal–she has a calm head, great wisdom, and she knows much about you already.”

  “How come I’ve never met this Sorceress–this Amal? And what exactly have you been telling her about me?”

  P’dáronï cocked her head to one side, as she always did when amused. “Come now, Arlak-nih, you should know better than to inquire what secrets women share with their friends. Fear not, I haven’t laid bare the bones of your life.”

  “About not telling secrets–”

  “She is the one,” P’dáronï continued, interrupting my intended confession, “who has been swapping tutoring duties with me these many seasons, that I might meet with you the more often.”

  I am afraid my jaw sagged. For the inflection of her voice was clear, truly told, as clear as a searing lightning bolt. She cared! She cared for me! If I could have harboured any doubt, the sudden flush of colour entering her cheeks as she spoke proclaimed the same.

  But before I could order my reeling thoughts further, there came the sound of a quick footstep on the pathway outside and P’dáronï leaped to her feet. “There’s Amal now. Do shut your mouth before the flies enter.”

  For a blind woman, I thought with grudging respect, she could read a man better than I, with my eyes, could read a book. An uncanny skill, and at times, deeply disquieting. Mark my words, she had hidden her true powers from me. How had she vanished from her holia after Pedyk baited us? How had she tracked me to the Banishment? Did the Armittalese boast Warlocks, like the Eldrik? Was it this power which had lifted her out of enslavement? But she had cut short my reckless confession; my courage sought to retreat into its burrow once more.

  I looked up as the Sorceress Amal billowed into the room on the wings of her black sherimol cloak, with the superior self-assurance of her kind–and, casting back her hood, regarded me across the small chamber.

  We gasped in unison.

  Grephe blasted through my limbs and mind, reducing me to lump of quivering disbelief.

  The woman yanks the child back to her skirts. As she whirls, the child’s countenance turns from a profile hidden by her long, dark hair, to face us briefly. I am staring into a mirror. She is the very image of me!

  P’dáronï announced, “Ah! I knew it.”

  Amal stared at me as one might regard a poisonous serpent; her face, devoid of colour; her breath, forgotten in her lungs. “What is it, P’dáronï-nish?”

  “It is he who carries a Web of Sulangi about Eldoran.”

  “Hold on, friend,” Amal grated. “Who in Mata’s name is this?”

  “Arlak, oh … no!” P’dáronï replied, in rising tones, swivelling her head frantically as she tried to pinpoint th
e source of our disquiet. “Why are you panting–both of you? What is going on, Amal-nish? What can I not see?”

  “Be not distressed, P’dáronï-nishka,” said I, gritting my teeth as the most intimate form of address slipped free of my chaotic thoughts, inappropriately. I took her hand in mine, patting it inanely as I drew her forward. The second girl in my vision … Mata had drawn me full circle. Now I was duty-bound to set the truth free, as it must have groaned for release these many long anna. “Here. Come, tell us what you feel.”

  Amal looked as though she was priming herself to bolt out of the door. I was considering such a course myself. Dear Mata! In the midst of idyllic Eldoran … clearly, here stood my blood relative. Our likeness was as plain as the makh of High Doublesun; Mata had moulded my own flesh upon a woman’s form, and it both fascinated and disturbed me. I had never imagined myself clothed in the feminine. She was tall, as I. Dark of hair and lithe of frame, as I. The line of her jaw, the set of her eyes, her physical beauty–truly told, even her response mirrored mine. Amal was my very twin!

  P’dáronï touched my face lightly–for the first time, Mata’s truth. Before, she would have known me by the timbre of my voice, or my guiding hand upon her arm, and aspects of my presence that as a sighted person I could only guess at. But not the face. Touching the face is taboo amongst the Eldrik, save between a woman and her husband, and that in the privacy of the bedchamber. Indeed, the Umarite peoples have two main greetings, the common handshake for informal greetings, and burshingling to signify formality and respect. The precise forms vary by region. The Eldrik greet in the main by touching the chin with the forefinger of each hand, making a V-shape of the hands. But there is a great variety of more nuanced formal greetings, which depend on rank, relationship, age, and time of day. Only the intimate forms include touch.

  Now, her fingertips traced Amal’s features. Then mine again, trembling at the certainty of what she discerned. She whispered, “No, this cannot be. No.”

  I drew breath and quoted from my vision: “I have read the scrolls. Surely, you are the foremost of the Sorcerers, you of all people have the power to deny this vile … this thing … this abomination! How will these new exiles be chosen? Who writes the cursed lists? Who will decree their fate? Is all life not equally sacred? Have you not taught me this?”

  “Mata preserve us!” breathed Amal, turning the grey hue of a storm cloud. “You were there?”

  The Sorceress was shaking. So were we all.

  “What shall we do?” asked P’dáronï.

  I croaked, “We shall have to summon Eliyan. Only he can help us now.”

  Fate devoured us. The winds of Mata’s destiny, even like Her wind which once toppled Jyla’s tower, could neither be resisted nor denied. Finally, I had the first inkling of understanding why Mata had brought me to Eldoran and allowed me to be tortured; what these strange anna of virtual captivity meant, and why the thread of P’dáronï’s life did weave with mine. Now, should I dare to act on my feelings at this most perilous of times?

  We summoned the First Councillor and arranged to meet in Eldoran’s stupendously perfect Gardens of Serendipity. There, no finger of suspicion could be pointed at us.

  And so, when I saw the small dark man walking purposefully up the path, his sherimol cloak billowing about him and an inscrutable expression making his inner life, I sauntered down to meet him. I bowed. In silence, we turned as one and began to walk together, exchanging pleasantries and greetings after the interminable Eldrik fashion.

  I said at length, “I wish to thank you for your hospitality.”

  “It is nothing,” said Eliyan, descending from the mysterious hinterland of his thoughts. “Is the holia to your satisfaction? The servants? The tutors?”

  For the first time in a makh spent strolling along the shaded pathways, I met his gaze.

  “Doubtless the servants tell you all you need to know of my welfare.”

  “Ay!” he chortled, then sobered when I did not return his grin. “But you seem … troubled, Arlak. Much troubled.”

  I pretended to admire a wondrous flower called a louanfire, a rare and delicate beauty much praised in Eldrik verse and song.

  Eliyan mopped his brow. “This weather! You must try wearing black during Doublesun, friend. Every anna I swear I will table a motion in Council to have our Sorcerer colours changed.”

  Banalities, when I bore the world upon my shoulders! I had to resist the urge to shake him ungently. Fearfully, like a Herliki fisherman fearing a marauding shark, I cast my line. “First Councillor, I’ve decided I need to trust you with a troubling secret.”

  He inclined his head, mocking, but gently. “Eliyan-tor, please.”

  Janos’ voice echoed in my mind, ‘Tor, Arlak. Respect. A weighty word. A father or trusted mentor will use this suffix. To him you will be torfea, a son. I would like it very much if you would address me in this way, if you feel it appropriate.’ I had nodded at once. ‘I would like that too.’

  Yet, was that how I felt about Eliyan? Similarly, indeed! “Have you ever wondered, Eliyan-tor, how it is that I speak High Eldrik so fluently?”

  “I assumed you were tutored in languages while growing up in Roymere. Isn’t that so?”

  “That I am capable of magic?”

  He nodded. “You have spoken many times of the woman called Jyla. Indeed, you have been very open about your past.”

  I winced at his choice of words. “How I wish that were true.”

  There, the plunge. I felt an enormous weight lift off my back and shoulders. Now the Eliyan I knew would pursue the matter until he was satisfied he had squeezed out every ounce of juice and sucked the pith dry too.

  “So, tell me, is it possible to remove oneself from the gyael-irfa–temporarily, even? Or to filter what is passed in and through the gyael-irfa?”

  The Sorcerer stared at me for so long I guessed I had offered some gross insult. Then he said, “The correct answer is ‘no’.”

  His reply ignited a bonfire of thoughts. Eliyan had a talent for making even a pithy statement eloquent–warning, admonition, and a hint of possibility were all bound up in one simple phrase. People often described him as a consummate politician.

  This Sorcerer had tried very hard to become my friend. He had been trying since I had woken in a soft hammock in his house, and I had been stringing him along ever since in a nuanced dance that had at times stretched my mental resources and creativity to the limits. He could not know that I felt the gyael-irfa. He also could not know, for I had not told him, of the Eldrik part of my heritage. Perhaps he was trying to make up for kidnapping me from the Mystic Library, giving me over to the Interrogators, and then having to care for me afterward after they had done trying to break me?

  A rocky start to any friendship.

  “I suggest that the wondrous poetry of flowers should command your fullest attention, First, er, Eliyan-tor, while we converse further.”

  I trembled in anticipation of what I was about to do to him.

  “Indeed,” he said, drawing close to gaze at the louanfire too. “There, it is done. Now what is this deep, dark, and dreadful secret you wish to reveal, Arlak-torfea?”

  I bowed in the Eldrik way, student to mentor. “First, I wish you to meet two of the fairest flowers in Eldoran. This way, please.”

  “If you’re trying to tell me in some roundabout Umarite way about your blossoming romance with P’dáronï of Armittal,” said he, placing an avuncular hand upon my arm, “then rest assured, the servants have tattled about that at considerable length. A liaison with a slave is a minor issue. I have concerns, yes. And reservations–but I would never act to prevent it.”

  He truly had no inkling of the avalanche that was about to overtake his life. I was too amazed to be angry at his off-hand response. Ordinarily nothing would surprise Eliyan, for he had thought upon all the possibilities beforehand–like a good stones player, a strategy game popular in Hakooi and Roymere. P’dáronï had attempted to caution me abo
ut my approach to the Sorcerer. But I was sore weary of dissembling. So I said bluntly:

  “I saw Pedyk pass through the portal this morning.”

  Eliyan’s brows furrowed as though I had sparked a particularly painful headache behind his temples. “That is an altogether more serious matter.”

  “Yes, the system of Banishment is an extremely serious matter.”

  The Sorcerer compressed his lips into a thin line. “Who have you been talking to?”

  “My father. And before you ask, my mother was an Eldrik Warlock named Alannah. She was killed by those assigned to track down any Eldrik who had fled Lucan’s enlightened reign–so I never knew her.”

  This was cause for several moments’ inscrutable digestion on Eliyan’s part. He always put on his mask when he was thinking very quickly. But his grip was stopping the blood in my arm, and I sensed magic building in the air between us. “I find I do not know you, Arlak Sorlakson. If I discover that P’dáronï has been teaching you the secret paths, it shall go ill–”

  “First Councillor.” I whirled to confront him. Guessing how he might react, I had prepared myself accordingly. “Your threats are both unnecessary and unbecoming. Put aside your Councillor’s robes for a moment and listen. P’dáronï has nought to do with my past, nor my knowledge of the Banishment. I will speak the truth. Willingly. But I need you to help me. I need the whole truth from you, Eliyan-tor. No more half-truths and evasions.”

  The Sorcerer had the look of a man who desperately wanted to tear my head off with his bare hands. Before he could explode, I rushed on:

  “I’ve told you about the Sorceress Jyla and her Wurm. What I want to know is, what is she planning? Will she seek to break the Banishment–for good, or ill? For the Eldrik peoples, or Umarik, or both? Why did the blue condor intervene on that fateful day, and Mata touch my life? Why must I, all alone, struggle to save the few, when thousands perish every day in lands beyond my reach, and what by the sulphurous fires of Nethe is the point of my work if men and women will one day pass beyond anyway? Eliyan, this is beyond the politics of the Eldrik Council. Who knows what destruction Jyla might wreak upon our societies–”