Escana

by J. R. Karlsson

  El-Vador's eyes had widened with each word, clearly it had not been expecting such a response and it remained silent for some time after.

  'Where did you learn such an elongated form of expression?' it finally asked her, eyes filled with curiosity and a hint of longing that made her ill at ease. Apparently the topic of Jimmy had been cast aside in light of her response to him.

  'When I was very young my father sent me a teacher to learn my letters from. He told me that he wanted to afford me a gift he never had and bought me a book. It was a large leather-bound tome describing the trials and tribulations of an orphan child. It was written in a very exhaustive fashion and most of my time was spent trying to decipher what the various words meant using what little I had been taught.'

  She looked up at him, it was staring at her with rapt attention and had noticed her lapsing into silence.

  'Please, do continue. What happened to the orphan child?'

  She tried to hide the confusion from her face. It seemed that it now wanted to know more about the story than why she had talked in a mimicry of his own speech. Not a moment ago it seemed completely engrossed in that, had such a simple explanation sufficed?

  'The orphan child's village was destroyed by invaders. He fled as the sole survivor and lived in the wild forests, there he befriended pixies and fought an evil necromancer.'

  El-Vador nodded. 'Pixies with gossamer wings and tinkling high voices as they danced upon the lakes in the twilight hours.'

  The words it spoke were a direct quote from the book, was it reading her mind? She sensed he wanted to hear more and ploughed on, hoping that the tale would satisfy his unsettling curiosity.

  'The orphan grew from boy into man, adored by his surrogate people and content for the longest of time.'

  It sighed at her then, cutting her off. 'Then came the darker times, with their brethren defeated the others overstepped their boundaries. The orphan was now a man and with the aid of the landspeople he fought off the incursion. Then came the reincarnated cloaked figures, emissaries from the cliffs of afar and ultimately even darker times than before.'

  She nodded, it was a perfect synopsis of the events of her book. It also seemed subdued and regretful in the telling.

  'You have read the book then?' she asked it, chancing a question of her own.

  It didn't say anything to that, it simply beckoned her to come closer with tentative arms. She found herself acquiescing without any given reason but not involuntarily as she had before. She didn't feel drawn against her will in doing so. Prior to this her every action had been necessitated by the complete control the creature seemed to exude. Here it seemed a very different domain, it looked strangely vulnerable in offering her the chance to reject it.

  She stepped toward it and the creature encircled her in its arms. A flash of colour exploded in her head and the mountains were forgotten. She felt weightless and her head span, the only other sensation was the light brush of thin arms on her back. El-Vador's voice spoke as if directly into her mind.

  'You know of me better than my instincts had suggested. I have not read this book you speak of, I am the very orphan that lived through its pages.'

  66

  Garth

  The carriage came to a stop, the door swung open and mercifully Mayer found someone else to talk at.

  It had been an unspeakably long journey, Mayer's tongue surpassed that of the local traders in its ability to wag endlessly about any number of dull subjects. For the eternity it felt, Garth knew that the few day's ride had barely taken them beyond Urial.

  He spent a brief moment wondering what had happened to Thom, whether he had caught up with Solomon's murderer and if the villain treated young Ella with any sort of dignity whatsoever. He doubted it. If there was one man capable of exacting vengeance for such debauchery it was Thom. That it had been days since he had last seen him meant nothing, he worried about him plenty but deep down he knew Thom could handle himself. His friend wasn't going to be happy when he arrived back with the murderer's head only to find him absent. He'd probably have to recount the tale to Gooseman, who was never one for violence and wouldn't appreciate the comeuppance.

  The rain tore through the sky as if each droplet was racing the other to the muddy earth below. They had stopped at a roadside inn that seemed surprisingly populated given the foul weather. Garth was beginning to hope that they'd have beds to spare and then caught himself. Mayer would undoubtedly pull the privilege of rank and flash it around for all to see. Military men always got first choice of rooms in local establishments wanting to seem loyal to the Empire. That these rooms were occupied was of little consequence and quite often those inside happily gave way. He doubted this was out of either fear or generosity. The inflated prices Mayer and his men would have to pay for bed and board would be split between the owner and former occupants.

  Their chauffeur and the other guard marched their way forward with much pomp and ceremony, Mayer in close attendance trying to look as important as possible even though nobody would be watching them yet.

  This was one of the few perks of rank that Garth actually enjoyed. While others in the military had to exude that sense of order and discipline, the General's outfit they had supplied him allowed for a more relaxed disposition, the patches on his chest spoke for themselves.

  He had surveyed them briefly, someone had been keeping tabs on his history and even the honours he was loathed to parade about in public were stitched into the uniform. They brightly depicted glorious victories and conflicts hard fought. That a number of them had been hopeless massacres under his command seemed to have been consigned to the basement of the past where only the prying eyes of historians could steal over their true depiction.

  The inn was small and crowded. Mayer had already marched forward and demanded to speak to the innkeeper in a loud voice. The coach driver found a seat and the other guard ordered a round of drinks, it would appear that they weren't going straight to their beds after a long journey.

  A number of glances were being cast at their uniforms now, Garth was expecting hostility given how terribly the war had been going but all he saw were nods and smiles.

  It became the same routine each time. A member of the crowd would gaze at his uniform, stare briefly at his chest and then avert his eyes as if he had seen something shameful. Garth said as much to the coach driver sat next to him.

  'They look at you funny cos your uniform is different from ours sir. Then they see your patches and they avert their eyes out of fear. Aint none of them seen a General in their lifetimes but they heard enough about them to be feared.'

  He nodded. To the folk out on the fringes of the world a General of an army was as much a mythical creature as a cockatrice. They may have heard about them in stories and such but they'd never seen the likes of one in the flesh. It was as if he had wandered in out of a storybook to grace their small inn. He imagined the reaction would probably be the same in Escana had anyone known who he used to be.

  Mayer and the other guard finally came back with drinks, big grins on both their faces and neither of them seemingly wearied in the slightest.

  'The innkeeper says he keeps a number of private rooms free should customers of our calibre come calling. I haggled the price down and we'll be sleeping soundly tonight after a few rounds.'

  Garth may not have a choice as to who he was travelling with, he certainly had a choice as to who he drank with. 'Would you care to show me to my room, Colonel?'

  Mayer's grin died on his face, his voice was tinged with just the right amount of uncertainty as to pull at his heartstrings. 'Are you sure you don't want to share a drink with us sir? Your company would be most valued by us officers.'

  A blithering idiot this man might sound but he also seemed to have a slippery way with words, appealing to a sense of comradeship that Garth didn't feel. He noted this for further study, slippery could easily turn into dangerous given the wrong motivations.

  'I'm afraid I must insist Mayer, it's b
een some time since I travelled such a great distance and I need my bed.'

  Mayer got up and Garth cautiously followed him, the refusal had rendered the boisterous man silent and that made him nervous.

  They were about to ascend the stairs towards the room when Mayer finally spoke.

  'Sir, I must respectfully request that you join us for a round in your official capacity as General.'

  Garth blinked. The audacity of this little man to try and order him around.

  Noticing the anger starting to mount, Mayer quickly added more words. 'I am not trying to order you into drinking with us sir, our duties include a recruitment drive for our forces and the regulations state that the commanding officer must be present at all times.'

  Garth snorted. 'Do they really now? Would you care to show me these regulations?'

  Mayer paused, briefly patting his uniform as if he were going to pull out the regulation and cite it on the spot. 'I appear to have left the order in the carriage, General.'

  Garth turned and started ascending the stairs, the petulant tone in Mayer's address was unbecoming. 'I'm sure you did, Colonel. Enjoy your drinks, I'll find my own bed.'

  He left on that.

  Later that night all he heard were haunted smatterings of screaming and pain. A film of dust or sand seemed to reduce his eyesight to a blunted haze that rendered everything indistinct until much too close.

  Someone appeared to be calling for his attention, yet they couldn't be heard over the noise of the horrors unfolding nearby.

  He felt an almost overwhelming urge to run, to leave these cursed lands far behind and settle for living with the guilt the rest of his life. It may be an existence he looked at with utter disgust before but he was beginning to see the appeal of spending his days as a deserter in some far-flung corner of the land than ending his life in an equally remote and far more inhospitable place.

  The voice called to him once again, couldn't he see it was futile? He didn't have any answers and was in no fit state to give orders, even if the situation hadn't been so hopeless.

  A strange chill took him then, there was no reason for his feeling so cold in this scorching tomb, the voice was growing louder now. A strange knocking sound emanated from outside the flaps of his command tent. That made even less sense than the sounds of the battle receding, perhaps the heat had finally got to him and he was passing out.

  The knocking came again, that same repetitive noise as if on wood. The tents couldn't make that sound, where was it coming from?

  Garth woke to the sound of knocking on his door, he can't have slept for more than a clutch of hours. There was nothing unaccustomed about that, he was a light sleeper at the best of times after all he'd endured over the years.

  He slumped forward to the side of the bed and pulled on his slacks, muttering whoever it was at the door to wait while he got his bearings.

  'General Garth,' the pompous voice of Mayer sounded through the wood. 'The new recruits are lined up outside awaiting your inspection.'

  New recruits? What was the man talking about? Were they planning to build some sort of convoy of soldiers to traffic toward the war zone?

  Shrugging on his clothes he straightened up and opened the door just as Mayer was poised to knock again. If the Colonel lost his balance he did well to mask the fact, behind him stood the other soldier with a handful of young men. There was no sign of their driver, apparently he had the good sense to get to bed early.

  'Recruits, you say?' Garth said, putting on his best authoritarian voice in the hopes of getting to the bottom of this.

  Mayer snapped a salute. 'Yes sir, the new recruits that have volunteered to fight for the good of the Empire to win the war.'

  Now he saw it. Mayer was just as he had suspected, a recruiter. Touring up and down the various villages and hamlets and towns, acting the part and glorifying the conflict and speaking of duty and honour and courage, virtues he had probably never seen in his lifetime given that he'd never been in a fight beyond basic training or a conflict beyond peering at military maps.

  Garth didn't deny that the army needed men behind the scenes. He remembered being told that for every single soldier in an army there were seven hard working individuals that enabled him to battle. The camps he had seen in his time attested to this as the majority involved were non-combatants.

  Mayer though, this was a different side to the army that he didn't like to see. If a man was going to risk his life and limb for an ideal then he should do so well-informed, lest he die for something that never existed.

  Garth walked up and down the line of men silently, meeting each of them in the eye. They were the absolute dregs of humanity, many of them even gave him an insolent look back. They simply didn't care for rank. Others were far too young to be involved in war, their bright eyes filled with nonsense and hope and glory.

  'How many of you men have been involved in combat of any sorts before?'

  A tough looking thug on the end spoke up. 'Been in a fair few fights in my time.' Garth didn't fail to catch the frantic gesture Mayer made with his wrist. '...sir,' the thug added, as if it were an afterthought that left a bad taste in his mouth.

  'So you've fought a few times, have any of the rest of you fought a single day in your lives?'

  No response.

  'Well? None of you?'

  The silence was exactly what he had suspected, Garth turned his attention back to the thug at the end.

  'I didn't ask you if you'd had any experience fighting, I asked you if you had any experience in combat.'

  The thug shrugged insolently. 'Same thing, innit?'

  Garth's arm shot forward and he pinned the man by the throat to the wall behind him.

  'It is not he same thing!' he bellowed, tightening his grip measurably.

  He let go as the thug started clawing for air, letting him gasp to the floor and turned as if nothing had happened. His gaze terrified them, he didn't want to do this but it was the only way they'd learn.

  'Combat is nothing like a fight. A fight is a few foul creatures clawing and spitting at each other. Combat is an art, a living and a death sentence. Combat is the heart of a long and complex strategy beyond any of you. The battle you are so eager to sign up for is a massacre.' He eyed Mayer unfavourably. 'Though I am sure you have been told otherwise by less reliable sources.'

  The Colonel had the good grace not to look affronted when his General was in such a foul mood, he was used to this game even if the outburst had surprised him.

  'None of you are fit to lick the boots of the men and women I have seen give their lives freely for the cause, get out of my sight before I start to get angry.'

  The line of men excused themselves quickly, not willing to tempt Garth's wrath any further.

  Mayer didn't say a word, he was waiting for the same treatment no doubt. Garth would deal with him another time.

  He slammed the door behind him and settled into his bed once more, slowing his breathing and trying not to think of what sort of fate he had set in store for him by powers unseen.

  67

  Ella

  The whiteness subsided from her vision and she found herself draped over a luxurious double bed. She sat up and immediately regretted her decision, her head spinning as if it had been turned inside out.

  'Welcome to Levanin,' the increasingly familiar voice of El-Vador said. 'This is the largest known inhabited capital in the Empire.'

  She blinked twice as her sight came back to her, apparently the whiteness she had been blinded with was compounded by the colour of the room itself.

  It was utterly minimalist in nature, the tiled floor was made of white, smooth stone and the unadorned walls appeared to be the same. A round archway led out onto a balcony from which a bright mid-day sky greeted them. That it was light here further disorientated her, had she fallen asleep in this bed upon their arrival? How far had they travelled?

  'You have many questions, I can see them playing upon your face. Today we need not concern o
urselves with the daily grind of those beneath us, today you recover from our journey and learn what it is you need to know.'

  She made another attempt at propping herself up, this time with a degree of success. She eyed him suspiciously but...

  She stopped herself mid-thought. Had she just referred to this creature as 'him'? A warning voice inside her head suggested that she not get too complacent with its congenial attitude toward her words.

  It was with more than a touch of guilt that she found she had forgotten entirely about Jimmy and Jakob in her initial thoughts. She had no idea what had befallen them in their departure from Urial, her previous attempt at finding out had been met with an abrupt change of topic.

  'What has happened to my friends?'

  He came a little closer to the bed before responding and she saw his face properly for the first time.

  His features were gaunt and pallid, his brows strangely elongated in a way she had never seen before. He sported no scarring or evidence of hard living and his form was slight but lithe in movement. His hazel hair was cropped around shoulder-length and shimmered as if newly-washed. For all his distinctiveness, it was his eyes that drew her in.

  In them she saw something entirely alien to her, an endless well that she perched on the lip of as it beckoned to send her tumbling for eternity.

  She had been told as a young girl that you could know the nature of someone by staring into their eyes long enough. What looked back at her was incalculably old but not blunted by the passage of time. Words seemed ineffective at describing the strange and immediate keenness of thought she saw and had to reconcile with the feeling of great age.

  'So you finally see me, the first to do so in a very long time indeed. To you my walls are down, my conceit is disarmed and my semblance of self is as clear as it was in the world's prime.'

  He, and of this Ella was in no doubt about, he was standing there and allowing her to drink in this sight, cautiously edging a little bit closer to the bed. She made no move to stop him, not wishing to test the idea that if she did he would accept the rejection.