Houses were abandoned and lives swept aside for a purpose greater than the mere necessity of human survival.
The two Intoli guards exchanged a few words in their own language, and then more Intoli appeared, attired in similar white and blue garb. The two newcomers took charge, allowing the two guards to depart. Aviti and Dregan were pushed toward one of the smallest dwellings, one of the few original buildings to survive the occupation. As they approached it, one of the Intoli removed a leather pouch from under his robe. He gave it to Dregan and made a movement indicating that the Mage should drink from it. Dregan did so without question and then passed it to Aviti.
Aviti looked at the Intoli as she accepted the pouch. 'What is it?' she asked the Mage without removing her eyes from the Intoli. Behind the sentries a few people shuffled past, but made no effort to raise their heads.
One of the Intoli signed for her to drink, pointing the brass bar in his hands at Aviti as if it were a threat.
'Do as they want Aviti. We are not in a position to bargain,' Dregan said, as he looked around.
So, she placed the bottle under her nose and sniffed at it. It was the same liquid that she had consumed earlier. It carried the same sweet musty odour. Earlier it had helped ease the pain from the cut in her head. So, seeing no other choice, she drank a swallow. That appeared to satisfy the Intoli. One of them motioned towards the abandoned wooden house, so Aviti and Dregan climbed the few steps.
Weariness overcame Aviti and she succumbed to sleep as soon as she had found a place to lie down.
-*-
She awoke from her restless slumber unable to recall her dreams. Only an impression of their importance remained. She tried to stand up and go to the window to peer through the gaps in the boards that secured the room. As she stood, the room swam around her and her vision blurred. But what she felt was more than dizziness. A pleasant stupor gripped her now.
So, she stayed on the floor, trying to stop the room from rotating. She thought of calling for Dregan, but that would require effort. Aviti heard footsteps behind her. Then hands were thrust under her and she was forced to rise.
'Please do not,' said a voice elsewhere in the room. Dregan's voice, she thought. This should have concerned her, but her mind buzzed with dislocation.
Drugged, she thought as she was shoved through the house. Even this did not bother her. She felt as if she floated through the house, as immaterial as an apparition.
In the distance, a voice begged for something. Whatever it was, whatever they needed, she did not care. This was not the high ecstasy of the Magic, but it was as blissful as ignorance and as peaceful as oblivion.
Aviti felt her feet dragged down the steps that lead out of the house that had been their gaol. Sunset approached them. She had always loved sunset. There were so many stars in Mashesh. She wondered how many stars she would see here. Would they be the same ones?
She felt herself dropped to the ground. It was so hot here. It felt like she sat before a funeral pyre. Sweat beaded all over her body, making her tattered clothes stick to her. She heard the clank of iron and smelled the stifling fumes of a furnace.
Her eyes came into focus long enough to see a small forge. This must be a blacksmith's house, she thought. Behind the forge stood a man, not an Intoli, a distant part of her mind said to her. He watched over something in a glowing pit of coals. Her attention wavered from him for an instant, her eyes drifting across the shelter that housed the forge. The two Intoli that had taken them to this house were there, as were the two that had guarded them. Somewhere inside herself, Aviti was surprised that she recognised them.
Between these two pairs stood a smaller Intoli. He had scars covering his face. White venous lines decorated his mien and bitter blue eyes stared at her. This should have filled her with dread, but her detachment remained. What could he do to her? All she had to do was to open that door within herself and seize the Magic and it would all be over. She should have thought of it before. Yes, that is what she would do.
The scarred Intoli looked over to the man at the forge. The man nodded and then lifted an iron tray from the coals. Then he walked over to the Intoli. Aviti noticed that there were other humans here, and other Intoli; come as if to witness something.
When the tray was presented to the scarred Intoli he lifted a brass bar out of his pocket and held it in his fist. Then he stuck his hand out to hover over the glowing tray. He muttered an invocation or a spell or a prayer to a god.
Now, now, she thought
When she reached for it, when she tried to find the doorway that lay within her, she could not grasp it. It slid through her fingers, like the sand of her past.
Now she realised the purpose of the liquid and panic tried to well in her, but her mind slipped.
Then the sun vanished. She would have liked to have watched it set, but thousands of trees obscured the western horizon.
She was forced down onto a stone block and her face was held flat against it, allowing her to see her fate. The scarred Intoli continued to chant as a new figure approached him. In one hand, he carried tongs. In the other...in the other he carried a hammer.
Somewhere there were shouts. Unintelligible cries in an alien language. Even in her dissociative state she could hear panic, urgency and fear in them. But the cries were not for her.
Uncertainty rippled through the assembled crowd, but the scarred Intoli was unmoved. His chanting grew in volume and ferocity as if he sought to combat the doubts of his congregation. Girded by this, the figure beside him reached into the iron tray with his tongs and removed a glowing bar. It looked similar to the one in the Intoli's hands, but it was longer and thicker, as if one were a childish replica of the other.
The figure with the glowing bar started towards Aviti, the hammer swinging in time with his strides.
Maybe I am to be sacrificed, Aviti thought. What a strange way to execute me.
But even this did not rouse her passion. The man stood over her, poised. Then the chanting stopped and the burning rod was placed against her right shoulder. She screamed as the pain penetrated her drugged mind.
Then the hammer fell and the bar was driven through her flesh.
In the instant before pain overcame her, she reached out. She reached out for her mother. Her soul screamed for her father, but he had departed this world long ago.
As her mind shut itself down to survive the cataclysmic pain, she caught a glimpse of a tiny strand. It was so faint it might have been a sliver of moonlight. But she grasped at it and tied her soul to it. Then she fell.
3 - If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day
Tyla stared eastwards, but not into the sky like the rest of his companions. Wist's enquiries had drawn no response from him and even Nikka gave up trying to speak to the Lyrat. Even the Cerni had sensed the Lyrats need for solitude. He had resumed his discussion with Haumea, and together they tried to decipher the dark circle in the sky. Wist stayed beside the desert man, holding his own vigil for him.
When the black disc was above the little company, the Lyrat stood up, walked back to his bedroll and lay down. With nothing left to stay for, Wist followed suit. He lay apart from the rest of his friends, as he had so many times before. Then he looked straight up at the festering hole. It writhed and moiled, reminding Wist of a drop of oil in a rain-soaked ditch.
In its own terrible way, it was beautiful. When the moon rose to join it, sometime later, it quashed one of his fears.
The moon's presence calmed him enough to shut eyes, if not enough to sleep. He rubbed at the rag on his wrist as he turned over what had happened in his mind. The rag was still there. It covered the gash that he sustained whilst fleeing Mashesh and the wound still bled. Even now, weeks later, his pulse remained, beating, mocking him for his failure; his failure in another world; his failure in another life.
He accepted the truth of it now. God knows how he had done it, but Eliscius had witnessed his suicide. How it burned inside him that his friend and mentor, his g
uide and guardian, had seen his ultimate failure. And that bastard Tilden executed Eliscius to goad him. His brother would pay.
Small fragments of his memory, of his other life – his 'real' life - were still absent, but he had abandoned his attempts to recall more. They only brought more failures, and fresh pain to wash them down with. Like his father's murder.
Wist rolled back over and scowled at the moon again. It was distant now, as if it ran from him. The ground contained less heat than in Mashesh. This felt like when he had laid … laid somewhere he couldn't recall, somewhere in that hidden past he used to fear. But this memory promised warmth and kindness, and perhaps a hint of something more. He had fallen into this trap before, allowing himself to open that door. The things that crawled out of it were dark and malignant, and they festered in his mind like infections.
But the touch of the grass was seductive. It whispered promises of deep, dreamless sleep. He closed his eyes whilst he continued to caress the lush blades with his fingertips. As he drifted towards sleep, a shape started to coalesce from the fragments of night and memories. It was a face, a soft face. It drifted in and out of existence and he knew that should he try to focus on it, the apparition would flee, chased back by his demons to hide in the darkness. Who was she? He felt sure the face belonged to a woman. It wasn't Aviti, but this wasn't her. The only other woman he could think of was his mother, but as he thought of her, he remembered the cruel spectre in the dead village.
'Useless,'
'Worthless'
'Hopeless'
And he had stood and listened to the monster in his mother's guise speak her words from his memories. But he wasn't that wretch now. He should have ripped the Lytch to pieces. He should have brought that hovel down upon its head - rended it and the apparition to nothing.
Wist awoke as the ground beneath him shook. It had woken his companions too. They jumped up as if they could find a cause for the tremor.
'An earthquake,' Wist said. 'We used to have small ones like that all the time.' Back in his old life, his other world. He cursed himself for his slip.
'This is not a common occurrence here,' said Haumea. 'In all my life I have never felt its like. I am too young to remember the Great Division though. It is said-'
'Well, that was an earthquake,' repeated Wist, not wanting to hear details of how his first failure in Mashesh three centuries ago had affected this land. He was done with remorse.
'So,' said Haumea, 'the Sun is nearly up and we should make ready. I would like to leave at sunrise. I shall prepare some food. There is a stream nearby for your ablutions.' The eastern horizon glowed with the Sun's approach. To the west, the dark moon must have passed behind the mountains.
Tyla was the first of the companions to go to the water. He left in silence as if the appearance of a dark moon and his sudden passion-filled scream were not worthy of note. Wist shook his head.
'What do you think happened to him?' asked Nikka to Wist, whilst Haumea busied herself.
'How should I know?' replied Wist. 'Maybe that thing up there shook him up more than we realised. He is a Lyrat. Maybe they've some tale about it or something.'
Nikka grinned in reply. 'That's the worst lie I have heard in an age. But let it pass. You know as well as I do that when he cried out he did not look upon the object of our terror. He gazed into the east, aye, but at a different target. What lies in the other side of this land terrible enough to evoke the cry of a Lyrat?'
'He is changed,' said Wist. 'After he and Faric … after their bond was severed. He was never the same. And after Faric's death…' He was another victim of Tilden; another reason for his revenge.
'Aye, that is true.' said Nikka. 'But no matter the alteration in him, he was forged in the heat of Tapasya; tempered by its Great Desert. What he fears must make us all tremble.' Wist nodded. Perhaps Tyla had a vision, some hint of his enemy.
Haumea moved beside Nikka and her face lit up at the mention of Tapasya. ‘Is the desert in Tapasya, is it as vast as it is said to be?’ Wist ignored the question, but Nikka said, ‘Dear Giantess, I am little travelled. I lived upon, and under a mountain, when I was not waging war. But recently I have crossed the Great Desert, on the back of Sand-whale.’ When this grandiose statement garnered no response from Haumea, Nikka continued. ‘It ran from horizon to horizon and without the aid of the great beast, I can only guess at how many weeks it would have taken even a Giant to cross.’
Haumea’s face wrinkled and Nikka laughed. ‘I do not jest Haumea. But it was not its size that I found inspiring, but its magnificent array of colours in the setting sun. I only saw a fraction of Tapasya’s bounty, but its gold was a perilous thing indeed.’ Nikka chuckled again at his own cleverness, earning a grunt from Wist.
‘I hope to see more of your land,’ Nikka said. ‘What lies beyond these hills?’
Haumea turned her back on the Cerni at first whilst she retrieved food for them. With her head lowered, she turned said. ‘I know little of Pyrite as a whole. You have come from the south, so you have seen the sea and the lands around us. To the north and west, the land of my kin, the land grows difficult to travel, even from us…larger people. Rivers and mountains are scattered to the north, so my father said
‘What of the land to the east?’ interrupted Wist, growing tired of her prattle.
'It is forest to the east,’ replied Haumea, suddenly reticent.
Wist sighed. ‘Who lives there?’
‘The humans live there,’ said Haumea as she turned away once more. ‘Or they used to.’ She brushed away Wist’s further enquires and sat down to her own food
-*-
Once their meal was done, Haumea took the lead as the company set off across a series of hills. The Giantess had informed them that she needed to report to 'Glaine'. Wist guessed that this was some sort of commander, a leader of the Giant's army.
Tyla remained silent and now he walked behind them all. Although he looked altered, the Lyrat remained comfortable in his solitude. Nikka joined Haumea at the front, and they chatted like old companions. The difference in height gave them a comical air. The female Giant towered over the Cerni.
'So, does this place have a name,' Nikka asked Haumea.
'Ah, we walk through the Plains of Uram, but this place as you so indelicately put it... Ah this is a special place; at least it is in my heart. I was born a mere score of miles from here. Eu-Dochas this place is called in the old tongue. My Father told me it means The Hope. And is it not a treasure for the eye. But treasure is such a poor word. Ah, I am no poet. A treasure is something to be guarded most jealously. Eu-Dochas is a benison for the soul.'
Nikka nodded and a smile touched his lips. 'I would tell you tales of my home on the Rathou, but I fear it would blacken your heart.'
The Giantess returned his smile. 'One day I shall have that story'
'And this place that we go to, does it have a name?' Wist asked.
Haumea's shoulders slumped. 'It is Creidas we are headed to, although it shames me to name it so.' Haumea fell silent and Nikka left the Giantess to collect her thoughts.
Wist wondered about Creidas, but his interest waned as he looked at the rolling hills. The sun rose above them, bathing them in a gentle heat. It was so different to the blast furnace of Tapasya. Where the desert sun had flayed his body, the seductive touch of this sun soothed his mind. Looking back over his shoulder, Wist saw Tyla. For a second, he thought he saw the Lyrat grimace, but Wist stumbled over the uneven ground, and when he looked back, Tyla was as blank as a pristine tombstone.
All Wist could see was rolling hills and no sign of where they were going. This was taking too long. He needed answers. ‘When you saw the… black disc in the sky, you mentioned a name, Intoli I think you said,’ said Wist. He stared at Haumea until she inclined her head. ‘Who are these Intoli?’
Haumea shuffled as if the ground beneath her had come alive. ‘They are a curse.’
‘So, they are a race? A people, like the Giants?’
> ‘No,’ she snapped. ‘They are not like the Giants. They are avarice and greed. They have emerged out of the frozen north to torment us, and the poor humans.’
Frozen north?
But before Wist could ask anything more, she moved away from him, leading them along a barren riverbed at the base of the glen.
-*-
They stopped at the side of a small stream around midday. Tyla wanted to scout the area, but Haumea warned him off the idea, telling him that she would know of any enemies in the area, and that should he be found roaming alone, he would be thought a spy. Tyla gave no argument. Instead, he went to the stream and filled his skins as any member of his tribe would have done when presented with such an abundance of water.
'Haumea,' said Wist, 'this war that you fight, against the Intoli... How did it start?' Nikka looked at Wist as if he had committed a faux-pas. As if intruding on another's war was the worst sort of bad manners.
'Ah, but you must forgive me,' said Haumea, her blue eyes lowering to gaze upon the muddy riverbank. 'I am no leader of people. I am told what I must do and I obey. And I am honoured to give what little service I can.'
'But you must know why you fight? Surely nobody fights in a war for nothing?'
'Do they not?' chuckled Nikka. 'Did you not listen to a word I said? I have fought in wars uncounted without knowledge of cause. The simple, solid fact of payment was enough for me. That and the taste of blood.' The humour evaporated from his voice as he finished speaking, as if an old spectre threatened to rear its head. Haumea looked appalled.
'What do you do for your people?' asked Wist, struggling with his temper. He must learn something if he stood any chance of getting to Medicaut and killing Tilden.
Haumea brightened. 'I patrol this land, this beautiful land of mine. I look for signs of incursions; for the unusual; for the extraordinary. And what could be less ordinary than a man, a dark dwarf from the mountains over the sea and a fearsome desert tribesman.'
The Redemption of Wist Boxed Set: Books 1 - 3: The complete collection Page 33
