by Marc Secchia
In whose ever-humble opinion?
As if on cue, the chill breeze began to freshen, making the treetops whisper leafy portents. Dead leaves rustled from the trees, adding to what was already a squelchy, beetle-ridden carpet on the forest floor. I glanced down at the jerlak. It, too, was testing the air with nostrils moistly, delicately a-flare. Suddenly, two more jerlak appeared, and after a short nose-touching conference the animals as one turned and darted away.
I had to wait a good makh before my hands would suffer themselves to be uncurled from the branches and lower me to the soft sod.
By this time, the breeze was biting like a rabid salcat. The dark battalions marched inexorably closer; the day, grown dark long before eventide. I knew that without shelter I would freeze, but Sillbrook Town was still a day’s walk distant, so instead I jog-trotted down the trail as fast as I dared, scanning the terrain left and right. Lower meant better shelter. I hoped for a cave or a fallen tree. And no more jerlak!
Several makh later I finally stumbled across shelter in the rot-hollowed core of an ancient lyrithbark. Clouds already raced overhead and freezing raindrops had begun to pelt my head and shoulders with a stinging force that made me fancy Ulim was up there, vindictively flinging his arsenal down upon the unfortunate traveller. I folded my limbs into the hollow, thanking Mata for Her saving grace with more than my usual fervour, and hauled my backpack with its precious books and pitiful supply of athocarial instruments and supplies, in after me. I propped it against the opening. Any additional protection from the cold was welcome.
Krrrr … sss!
A warning rattle. Pain! Instinctively I beat my left hand against the inside of the trunk, crushing the snake’s skull more by luck than design. I clutched my wrist, sobbing, “No, no! Oh … larathi!”
But after a further moment, my power surged up and I realised how irrational was my reaction. I glared at the twin, oozing puncture-marks; traced the poison within my bloodstream, and held it at abeyance by the force of my will. Toxin … almost beautiful in its complexity, and as deadly as it was intriguing. I watched the venom leaping to its evil work, spreading, contaminating, injuring the flesh, but still I held back, aspiring out of sheer perversity to appreciate more about the way it worked. A russet adder, native to these parts. Not a big one–but their bite was often fatal, for without proper treatment the flesh died, became gangrenous, and soon infected the entire body. I catalogued the poison mentally. If only an ordinary person could treat themselves as did I!
I could have done with that dynilens P’dáronï’s friend was developing. But even that would have been insufficient to detect the poisonous irruption at the dyndyndigit level, or ten thousandth of an Umarik digit, in my flesh. I clucked my tongue in frustration. Even my Web-augmented powers were unable to peer that deep. Focus within focus within … perhaps if one combined a Web of Sulangi with the dynilens? I must write that down. Combine a Sorcerer’s skill with an engineer’s? I needed more tutoring in the magical disciplines … with a shudder, I forced the venom out and sealed the twin puncture wounds. Enough experimenting on my own flesh.
With the weather closing in and the wind yet rising, my gaze turned inward.
How could I be the Wurm? Was it not the essence of Janos murdered? Jyla said as much. Did Janos by some miracle beyond my compass live on in me … or in the Wurm? I was struck with this thought. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but what if Janos had not died that day? Sorcerers may augment creatures, truly told, but to imbue them or indeed another living being with the quoph of a person …? Truly this must be beyond the ambit of a master Sorceress, even one as powerful as Jyla. Divine labour alone could produce such a result.
More and more, my thoughts turned to the ways of Mata. Were these not the concerns of the yammariks, concerns of the ways a man might live or die? Or, as P’dáronï had intimated, was it a limitation of my power to be unable to heal the inborn defect? ‘Congenital,’ I mouthed the Eldrik word. Many athocaries, for religious reasons, refuse to treat congenital conditions–but if, as the yammariks assert, the true path of Mata leads to the restoration of all humankind, then how could this fit Mata’s will?
“Come, Arlak!” I muttered between cold-chapped lips. “Have you not many times healed the inborn defect? Think upon K’huylia’s condition. And what of Soluk Village’s luckless denizens?” But did that mean I could create sight anew? Reinvent what had never been?
Could I heal myself of my connection to the Wurm?
Eventide yielded to darkness. My body heat had begun to warm the hole, but the air was still frigid. Within a span, the song of my snores filled the woody hollow.
I woke many times during the night, shivering. Truly told, Hakooi does not ordinarily demand a thick burnoose for the colder seasons, and mine was worn through in more places than not. No amount of huddling would ward against this cold, and with but a crust of bread in my pack, I was short on food too. Pickings had been lean of late. So come the dawn chorus, such as might arise in this foul weather, I determined to put my boots to the trail.
But I emerged to a different world.
Every surface around me was covered in a thick layer of ice. My eyes roamed the trees, the bushes, the many branches of the forest torn down by the sheer weight of accumulated ice, the tree-trunks and roots in their glistening casements, icicles hanging like daggers waiting to spear the unwary, even a large locust standing in frozen perpetuity, its beady eyes stuck in an expression of loathsome surprise–and I felt a chill stronger even than the weather. Dear Mata, what was this? An ice-storm?
I slipped and slithered downhill through the ice-shards, trying to pick the path least likely to break my neck. I could not understand it. The rain must have fallen before freezing solid on every leaf, branch, and twig. As I pressed out into an open meadow, I saw that even the individual grass blades had been picked out in crystalline splendour. The result was curiously beautiful, but if it did not melt soon, probably deadly for the smaller creatures. I craned my neck upward suspiciously. Not much of a morn, nought but heavy clouds. More of this to come, or I was no judge.
Angrily, I lengthened my stride across the open field.
I promptly slipped on a patch of ice and bruised my tailbone.
“Come not near!” repeated the woman. “Come not near.”
I gaped at her. Three days and three nights had I struggled toward Sillbrook, losing the trail on the way, hollow-eyed and hollow-stomached, no longer able to feel any sensation from mid-calf down–only to be refused upon the doorstep of my salvation. I could not contemplate another step.
The woman stared back, probably trying to decide if I was a madman or a fool. “We’ve the plague,” she said finally, settling her cloth-swaddled infant with a practised patting of her hand. “I’m sorry, but in Mata’s name, we can offer you nought but death.”
“Death?” My chuckle turned into a hacking cough. “Were it only that easy, good woman, I would embrace death directly.”
She smoothed back her hair, which was brown and lank–once pretty, I imagined, but now it looked unwashed and work-worn. There was a haggard hopelessness about her that moved my quoph. “Be you off, stranger. This plague is no respecter of persons.”
“How many children have you, good woman?”
“Five,” she said. “Three lie abed. One is beyond succour. This little one will not last the day. I found my own spots last eventide.” She made the full buskal of Mata’s mercy. “It will not be long now.”
“And your neighbours, are–”
“Ill or dead. What is it to you?”
I squared my shoulders, wishing I looked and felt less of a homeless outcast. “I am El Shashi.” The woman began to laugh shrilly. The more she laughed, the more discomfited I became. “Truly told–I swear it by Mata’s name!”
This village was but a scattering of croftholds, perhaps ten at most, too poor even to include the typical Hakooi music room. A whole family would sleep together. Rush roofing over a wood-and-mud plastered frame
, with a stone fireplace at one end of the building. Their homes had been blasted by the weather, their fields ruined, any animals left outside, frozen to death. Add the plague to this? Too cruel by far. Ulim’s signature work, mark my words!
I should not have given away my name, I thought. Eliyan would disapprove. But what choice did I have? Leave these poor people to die? Add them to the tally of countless others I had killed?
“Good woman,” I said softly, “let me touch the hand of your babe. I ask nought more. And you will see I am who I say I am. If I catch this plague and die, let it be Mata’s judgement.”
This time I did not cast my eyes down, as was customary, but met her gaze with all the honesty I could muster. I was not sure what she saw in me, but it was after a good half-span the woman suddenly jerked away the cloth covering her infant’s face and upper body and gave me the first sight of her affliction.
I caught my breath in shock. I have treated mild cases of the pox. But this poor babe! Every last dyndigit of this child’s skin was covered in a layer of raised, straw-coloured blisters that had a slight indent in their centre, as though a sadistic athocary had stuffed raisins beneath her skin. They were thickest on her torso and face, and more spaced out on her limbs. Many of the sores had broken open or scabbed over to create lumpy, rust-coloured masses, particularly on her face where the affliction was densest.
The infant mewled weakly. She looked scarcely human.
“Oh … Mata,” I bleated.
The woman smiled grimly. “Still have the stomach to do your word, stranger?”
“They are all like this?”
“Some bleed from the skin, too,” she nodded. “We’re all but a step from the afterlife.”
I let my pack slip to the ground and stepped closer, reaching out for the babe. “Let’s see to the truth of that, shall we?”
“There are six more, El Shashi,” said the woman. “Wake up. Please.”
Groaning, I opened my eyes. Rush roof. Warm fireplace. She must have dragged me here and covered me with a blanket after I collapsed from exhaustion.
“My sister, from the next village.”
“Bring them,” I ordered, “and do not delay.”
The faces the desperate always haunt me, much more so than the faces of hope and joy. This family was no different, only, I knew more now of this terrible pox than before, so it consumed less of my strength to turn these people back from Ulim’s doorpost. Ay, their youngest was but three weeks of age. When I held him in my arms I wept.
“I am sorry,” said the man, Serdan by name, handing me a rag to dab my eyes. “We would have been lost, had Ciliz not sent word.”
I wiped my eyes. “Peace to you. I once had children of my own to hold, but they are lost to me forever. That is why I weep.”
Serdan held my shoulder gently. “Mata turn Her face to you and light your ways, friend.” And he pressed his forefinger to my forehead in the brother-blessing. “Half our village has already crossed over. Will you come succour the rest?”
In the days that followed, I would remember that gesture of Serdan’s most especially, for in the face of torrents of death, it is the small acts of love one clings to as a drowning man clings to a branch. The pox was devastating. It struck down eight in ten persons, most often the elderly and the children. In many places it swept away entire families and communities. I could not attend all of the sick. Over and over again, as I rushed from place to place, I caught myself wishing that Mata could somehow have multiplied my gifts into another thousand people, rather than overfilling one weak, failing vessel. The only thankfulness I had was for the terrible ice-storm, for it had stopped the movement of people and thus stopped the pox in its tracks, too.
And so, after nigh upon a season of gruelling labour, I came full circle back to the same village–through no plan of my own, Mata’s truth. When I recognised the place I smiled for the first time in more days than I could remember.
“You will pass Alldark with us, won’t you, El Shashi?” asked Surina, Chiliz’s oldest daughter. At thirteen, she was approaching that age when childhood innocence gives way to teenage skittishness.
“That depends on your mother,” said I.
“What gift will you bring?” she asked formally, cleaning her hands on her apron. This was customary, the gift of a stranger to the Alldark host. Then, perhaps thinking upon the life I had already redeemed to her family, she blushed rosily to the roots of her hair.
“I’ve nought but the skills of my hands,” I replied, smiling, “but I see that your roof is in sore need of repair. May this be my gift to you?”
The children cheered so loudly that the babe in its sling let out a healthy wail. We all laughed. And so I entered into the Alldark Week that anna, which was one of the strangest I recall.
Chiliz prepared for us Darkenseason pies, made from lyom meat swimming in a delicious gravy. “The last storm froze three of our lyoms,” she explained. Clearly, this was to save me the guilt of thinking I was eating the family’s livelihood. I helped the children set Alldark candles in the four corners of the croft. “My husband was killed by a tygar just around Youngsun–well, the hunters think so. They followed the tracks to where he had been dragged off, but did not find any remains. He never came back.”
So he must be dead, I thought, hearing her unspoken words. Why else might a good husband not return? “Mata’s good hand upon you,” said I, feelingly, signing the full buskal of mercy at the time of grieving.
Later, after a delicious meal, we sat cross-legged on the furs next to the cheerful fire, and sang Mata’s Canticle, which tells of Ulim’s Hunt and how Mata’s Light always followed Darkenseason in the eternal Balance.
“What kind of scrolleaf do you have in your pack?” inquired Tanisha, the inquisitive six anna-old. Surina immediately set about chastising her sibling. In a moment a play-fight developed in the middle of the floor, with Tage, the three anna-old boy, right in there wrestling with his sisters.
“Hold, you rascals,” I laughed. But there was a secret part of my quoph in which the Hassutl of Sorrows held court. Truly told, I feared to present the book to them. “I will show you. This is called a book. It works much like a scrolleaf, only you page through it rather than furling and unfurling … like so … and it was written by the scribe to P’dáronï of Armittal. She is a poetess and an athocary, like me. Let me read you a–”
“Is she beautiful? Do you love her?”
“Surina!” cried her mother.
I rubbed my chin, freshly shaven and twice nicked that afternoon with Chiliz’s late husband’s blade. “Mahira Surina, P’dáronï is cleverer than an ulule, more beautiful than a Hassutla, gentle and true of heart, and a slave in a faraway country. Ay, she is the very breath of my quoph.”
Surina clasped her hands and sighed, “Oh!”
Exactly the effect I had aimed for, with my words borrowed from a ulule’s repertoire.
Her mother rolled her eyes. “Take no notice of her dreaming, El Shashi.”
I leafed towards the back of the book, and read:
Dreaming I slumber, dreaming I wake,
Dreaming of worlds I never forsake,
Dreaming of newness, redemption and home,
Dreaming of love sweet and true,
For dreaming is my life.
Dreaming is ecstasy, dreaming is pain,
Dreaming is nought but tears in the rain.
Dreaming is heart, sprung into motion,
Dreaming is heart-pictures of rue,
For dreaming is my life.
“What has this Poetess to rue,” asked Surina, “if she has love true?”
Right on the mark, I thought. I answered slowly, “P’dáronï is blind, child. I suppose if I were blind, dreaming of the real world I touch, hear, and sense, would figure greatly in my thoughts.” Janos had always been much enamoured of dreams. And portents. A surprisingly mystical fellow, for a blacksmith.
“But you are all-powerful, El Shashi! Why could you not hea
l her?”
I forced a short laugh. “Because she bade me not to. She said that such healing is Mata’s place only …” Ah, P’dáronï! Bewitcher of my heart! I yearn … “And she was afraid. I myself don’t understand what is Mata’s province and what is mine, any more–I don’t understand why I was granted this great power, nor how best to use it.”
Chiliz put in, “But you used it well here.”
“In the Umarite demesnes, good woman, there may be a dozen such plagues raging right this makh. Could I heal them all? I’m not Mata. I have but two hands and two feet. I can be in but one place at a time. I grow weary. You have seen me heal with a touch, but not all ills can I heal.”
My voice must have revealed more disappointment and bitterness than I had intended, for Chiliz took my hand and said, “Have you considered becoming a yammarik, El Shashi? You have the mien of a man much afflicted by your elevated position in this life. Who has not heard of your great deeds? Who envies not your power? And yet, such a mantle must bear a most weary weight. You are much wearied, are you not? And yoked to your power more surely than any team of jatha?”
“By my quoph, that is a true word.”
I sighed deeply, gazing into the leaping flames as if wishing an answer would spark into my consciousness. What should I do with my life now? Forget P’dáronï? Bury the gift as Eliyan had commanded me, disappear into the Fiefdoms, and become just an ordinary man? Tried it before. Ended in tragedy. Where was Rubiny this Alldark? What if this plague struck down my children and I was …
I could not complete the thought.
“Surina, please take Tage to the privy before he bursts.”
Surina took her little brother by the hand. “Here, wrap this burnoose around you.”
I watched them absently. Surina was superb with her younger siblings–uncomplaining, helpful–perhaps the more so, because she had no father now. This must have been Rubiny’s lot, to bring up our children, alone. Fatherless. Though it pained me deeply, I did hope she was Matabound once more. My half-sister! She deserved better than a life of loneliness, even if she left me because of Jyla. That evil, life-stealing, narkik!
