Once Were Men

by Marin Landis

  “We cannot take them back and we cannot take them forward,” he mused.

  “You do not have to take us anywhere, we are quite capable of reaching Maresh City and then to Magnar.” Rejana set her jaw and folded her arms.

  “I will not put you in that potential danger, but ahead is certain danger. And something else.” She thought of the Guardian. These girls didn’t seem strong of spirit and they were probably in shock still. “Let us sleep on it and come to a conclusion with the dawn’s arrival. All seems worse in night’s embrace.”

  “Aye, we are weary though we have done little but lay upon the ground. Being warm is enough to make me feel safe at this moment, so sleep will be welcome.” Kitze nodded her appreciation of Rejana’s agreement.

  “No sneaking off, we shall know. Sjarcu’s senses are heightened beyond the ken of a mere mortal. Just look at his eyes.”

  Sjarcu almost objected until he realized what Runild did. He was pleased with himself for picking up on her ploy. His knowledge of inter-personal relationships between humans was increasing and all knowledge to him was welcome.

  He built the fire as large as he dared, that it might last until morning light and lay down, secretly setting an alarum at the only path from the small clearing in which their camp lay. He would know if they tried to make off. He waited until all three slept and drifted away to sleep himself, his last thought satisfaction in having done a good deed.

  Sjarcu would certainly have known if the two rescued women had tried to escape. What he had set no ward against was treachery. Up they rose, the two Shadow Assassins, their taut forms glistening in the fire light. No sound issued from their rising both at once, nor from their shucking of the second hand garb from their saviors. There was no hesitation in their actions and in unison, as though some well-rehearsed dance, they carried out their awful deed. From some hidden place they each produced a handful of a mossy substance and placed it beneath the nostrils of their intended victim. The desired reaction took longer to elicit from Sjarcu than from Runild, but the end result was the same; a sharp breath followed by a stiffening of the torso and the limbs and then utter inanimation.

  Both women then squatted before the fire. Rejana drew in the air a sigil, a faint trace of black in the air following her fingers and to a bystander it would appear that the fire was sucked into the center of the crazily shaped figure that hung hazily before the assassin’s eyes. Then their chant began.

  “Tumar ehyoua, tumar ehyoua.” Slowly at first and then louder and faster, with each repetition the sigil grew in size until it was the height of a tall man wide. The lines still as hazy and now possessed of a sickly glow that originated from no light, a ghastly fluorescence that would have smitten anyone not attuned to its nature with an excruciating headache. Such was its unnatural power that even these two, its creators, were eager to be away from it. Like it was nothing more than a doorway into some hidden room, Rejana stepped through with one leg, dragging Sjarcu by both arms, taking him along with her. Kitze did the same with the heavier Runild, silently cursing that she had chosen the woman expecting her to be less heavy.

  Once all four were through the sigil gate ceased to be, as though it had not ever been there. Thin wispy tendrils of dark lasted mere seconds before giving way before the shards of moonlight that pierced the tree cover.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Pupils and Master

  “You see them sometimes, the Elves. They look at you like a hawk looks at a rabbit. You can’t look back, so you just leave.” - Haelfrin

  Sjarcu was having a dream. He had admitted it to nobody, but this was a dream that had interrupted his sleep dozens, maybe hundreds of times since childhood. He would awaken in a strange dark room, his parents were dead and he had no food. His only companion was a snake that would eventually bite him. No matter how hard he tried to make friends with the snake, it would bite him. Eventually he would get tired of the snake’s ungrateful attitude and he would bite its head off with an uncharacteristically savage snap of his jaws. This is where he would wake, sometimes with the taste of blood in his mouth. His own blood, from his tongue or cheek. The dream served well to remind him of who he was. An orphan, though his parents still lived, who had no direction but that of the Shrike. That being his first thought when he awoke, his second was along the lines of:

  Who will lead the Shrike once Surakoita is gone? Where is Sjahothe and why would he let Surakoita do this?

  Sitting up rapidly, he was on the bed from his dream. How could he still dream? He had awoken.

  Thoughts flowed and one surprising one was, “Why is Runild in my dream?”

  She lay on the floor, looking for all the world to be having a delightful nap. Were the floor anything but cold, hard wood, he might have believed it.

  It is a dream though, so anything is possible.

  He tried to stand but his head swam and he was forced to sit once again. That settled it. This is no dream. This is Surakoita’s testing room. How…

  He remembered. Those women. It was a trap.

  Surakoita had not killed them so there must be a point to his incarceration. The poison was still in his bloodstream. Fewmoss. A most powerful soporific. He recognized the feeling. Long he had studied poisons and taken many of the non-fatal ones to test their effects and gain whatever levels of immunity one could reach.

  He leaned over the edge of the bed. Runild’s breathing was as one might expect from someone in a deep sleep. No concerns there. Better to sleep off the impact of Fewmoss. He lay back on the bed and shut his eyes. Within seconds he slept, any worries parked until it would make sense to feel them.

  “Sjarcu, Sjarcu!” his shoulder was being shaken. He came awake slowly, knowing there would be no danger, just the panic of a waking Runild.

  “I am awake, as I was before.” He sat up slowly, the aftereffects of the poison gone as much as to be no hindrance.

  “Why didn’t you wake me? Where are we? Those bitches! I will gut them like the treacherous snakes they are!” She was angry but also concerned. He almost worried that she might start panicking, but remembered that she had been trained similarly to him, so panic was out of the question.

  “We are guests of The Faceless One.” He didn’t mention his time here. It seemed shameful somehow, which was an odd sensation. He hadn’t felt anything like that since he was last in this room, or so his memory told him. It was an illogical feeling. Alongside fear and anxiety it was something to own and understand and then move through. Like feelings of guilt, shame was self-destructive and for more purposeless beings.

  “Fuck it! We’re dead then. She has no mercy, as well you know.” She started pacing around the room. “It only remains to be seen what method of torture she will expose us to first.” She stopped at the door, running her hands over it. She felt the edges, looked through the crack at the bottom, shook the handle and pressed her ear to it. “We can escape surely. Hold on, how do you know that it is she who holds us?” She turned to look at him.

  “I have been in this very room. Not for years, but the door leads to her quarters. We are not far from Hook Arbor, my home, where I was born. Where Surakoita takes away the dead and punishes transgressions.”

  “So can we escape? This door will not open and I see no lock. Were you locked in here? How did you escape?” She went back to examining the door.

  “There was a series of tests and traps which I passed and then she released me. She trained me and raised me. I…”

  The door opened. She stood there, outlined with light. Nothing as grand as the beings he had seen in Maresh Palace, but illuminated by lamps within her chambers.

  “Come, you both.” She stalked off.

  They followed.

  Twenty minutes later, after a chance to wash and some food, they sat in the parlor of the Faceless One. Though now, she had a face and Runild wasn’t disappointed. Sjarcu thought that she might attack their former benefactor on sight, but no matter her temper and desire for revenge, it would be utter fo
lly to attack Surakoita on her terms, in her rooms.

  Another doorway from the luxurious sitting room with the open fire and comfortable chair led to a room in which there were two tubs of hot water and soap and scented candles. He washed and dressed in clean clothes within a few minutes, she took a little longer and ushered him out of the room. He sat, therefore, on one of the soft leather chairs, Sura off somewhere, and waited.

  Probably not coincidentally, the moment Runild came through, clean and smelling delightful, the head of Ain-Ordra’s Shadow Assassins made herself present again, slipping from one of the seemingly endless secret doors from this room.

  “What…” started Runild, but she was interrupted by an upheld hand. It was a thin hand, with the contours and shade of a prune. The nails were long and looked sharp and doubtless were tipped with some sort of toxin, set to release on a combination of mental command and impact.

  “I will explain, for I know why you come here, and then you may make an informed decision about your next steps.” She poured herself some dark sweet wine and sat. She indicated that they should do the same, but neither partook, though Runild joined the Talvar in sitting. “Often, when one rails against something for so long, making little progress and finding oneself beset with challenges at every turn, one gets turned around. I don’t recall exactly when I realized that my people were living a folly, but when I did I knew that to change would destroy them. They are a doomed people, bereft of purpose and on their way to extinction. Birth rates are low and there is little incentive to procreate, save for minor and disingenuous praise and the hope of a prodigy to discover more pointless secrets.” She took a drink and a deep breath. “What I say next will surprise you, but it’s for your own good and will allow you to make any further decisions based on all the information. I expect that Ain-Ordra and her highest ranking followers will soon start to hear about what has happened and will be aware of my plans. I know that Mithras has revealed his plans for me, in which I am a willing participant and my apostasy cannot be hidden long. The minions of Kvalishskaiinetta will soon descend upon me and I will have little hope of survival. Should I face them. Which I won’t. Nor will I ask you to put aside your struggle with Him, for His plans do, after all, include your death, and the death of all life on this world. What I will tell you is that the Talvar as a race will die out within three generations. For that reason, amongst others, I am using them for my ascendance.”

  “What does that signify?” asked Sjarcu, a sense of dread filling his belly.

  “It means the end of our people, Sjarcu. It means I will hasten their demise. I will euthanize the Talvar.” He could see her tense and could feel Runild shy away and for the merest instant couldn’t figure out why either would react in that fashion. Then he understood. He was on his feet, his fists clenched. He had no weapon, but he was nevertheless dangerous. He calmed himself, driving himself down into Kehan. Emotional responses were foolish and unnecessary and not helpful.

  “I won’t let you, Sura. I will stop you and I will stop Mithras and I will carry on my original mission until all that threaten our way of life are destroyed.” His breathing was heavy despite his inner calmness and he felt something rising in him. Something unexpected.

  “You cannot. I offer you both a chance. This world will be destroyed save for a select few and you are my proteges, my prodigies, my children and I love you both, though it seems otherwise to you. The fact that you confront me like this redeems my faith in you and concretes my belief that everything I do now is right and proper.”

  “I offer you a chance in return. Stop this madness and take yourself far away from my people and from this place. For the love I once felt for you, I will cover your escape, before She sends her minions against you.”

  Surakoita laughed with actual mirth, unlike any sound he had heard from her at any time. He looked quickly to Runild who was silent and still.

  “She will be no threat to me, and will even be glad of my actions once she feels the power from a million souls. I will be long gone by the time the hounds reach here. Nor will the Dead find me. What they might find though are your corpses.” Her voice turned cold. “Make up your minds quickly now.”

  He wasted no time on words. She could not be intimidated by his and he would not be emboldened by them either. In a single movement he unsheathed the two long knives at his belt and forced down the slight anger at the unspoken dismissal in the act of not disarming him. He moved forward as he spun, blades flashing as he scribed a full circle at neck height, his body twirling like a Rhythienne ribbon dancer.

  He missed decapitating Runild by a hair's breadth but Surakoita was not so lucky. He sliced a long gash across her cheek and she fell back with a cry.

  "You dare!" she screeched, leaping backwards over the couch. In a flash, blades appeared in her hands and she crouched down, partially obscured by the leather settee.

  Sjarcu noticed Runild wielded her chosen weapons as well. Thin blades, six inches of hardened steel, attached to a tubular piece of wood designed to fit in the palm. Were one not observant it might be thought she fought with bare fists.

  He and Runild moved further apart, hoping, instinctively, to flank, and rapidly defeat, Surakoita. He knew though that she would be no easy target, even for two of them.

  She leapt up, which was not unexpected, and perch bird-like on the back of the chair, her balance perfect. It would have been his move. As would have been to throw his two daggers. Against two less skillful opponents the fight would have been over, but it appeared that Runild had also anticipated the move. He saw her twist out of the way of the deadly missile at the same time that he spun and ducked. His evasion was less ‘dodge’ and more ‘gain momentum’ as he pushed himself on the ball of his left foot, aloft and powerfully towards the chair on the back of which his foe alit on one leg. The padded leather seat, expensive it probably was, flew back, Surakoita with it. In the same movement he flung out his arm, seemingly beyond the range it should have had, to strike at her leg as she flailed wildly, trying to regain equilibrium.

  The Mistress of the Shadow Assassins let out a squawk of dismay and pain as Sjarcu’s long knife tore in the flesh of her calf. Shortly thereafter, a flung kester, Runild’s punching spine-dagger, thumped into her cheek. Luckily for the Talvar it was merely the handle and not the business end that cracked into her face, but the impact was enough to distract her further from keeping upright and she fell to the ground. No longer a target for any thrown weapons she, as Sjarcu was on her immediately, imagining that his greater weight, strength and momentum would carry his planned attack home.

  Sjarcu, in the moment that his mentor fell to the ground thought of mercy. The moment he carried out his non-lethal plan he knew it was a mistake. Instead of stabbing his knives into her chest in the gap between breast and shoulder, he went for a nerve strike to a similar area, potentially disabling her arms instead of irreparably maiming her. He landed on her from his scrambled half-leap and drove his knuckles into her firm flesh, winding her at the same time. She let out a great breath and then winced as his painful strike removed from her, temporarily, the use of her upper limbs. His blades discarded during his frantic movement, he brought both of the heels of his hands down on her eye-sockets, seeking to break at least one bone in her face. Such a move would often end a conflict. He did not mitigate his blow.

  A piercing pain drove itself into both palms. It was his turn to shriek involuntarily. He also heard a strange noise from his victim though he did not visually register that she made a noise. Runild too ejaculated a strangled gasp.

  He felt his body flung into the air backwards. Retaining enough self-awareness despite the pain and shock of his situation he flung his body with the force expelled upon it and managed to land on his feet some feet away after somersaulting through the air propelled by he knew not what. Shaking the concussive force from his consciousness he saw with horror a creature that stood where Surakoita once did, inhabiting her space, owning her body. It was her, that
he assumed correctly, but not her at the same time. Of roughly her shape and height, the remains of her leather clothing hanging in strips from her now spiny, thorned and blackened body. Dark was her complexion before but now like charcoal it was. Wrinkled was her skin, but now covered with pointy protuberances as long as a man’s thumb. Even her face was not clear of the spurs, Sjarcu’s bleeding and pained hands testament to that.

  If one looked closely, which Sjarcu did by default, the woman that she once was could be recognized, but only barely.

  “Ascension!” she screeched in a high pitched yet rough squall.

  Faster than he would have deemed possible she dashed across the room, knocking Runild from her feet and, to his horror, spat a globule of gray matter into the downed woman’s face. Leaping over fallen furniture, weaponless, ignoring the pain from her thorny skin, Sjarcu grabbed ahold of Surakoita’s shoulders and attempted to pull her from the prone Runild who had started to scream and gibber as though the sputum was liquid fire. With one arm, as if swatting an errant wasp she again knocked him from his feet. This time his coordination was reduced by growing panic and he landed hard, hitting his head against the upturned table. He felt a sharp pain in his arm. Heedless, he tried to rise and then she was on him, his arms held fast, his legs thrashing but feeling no purchase.

  “You…had…a…chance!” She breathed heavily and the reek of it was sulferous, like a deep cave. She struck him. Harder than he had ever been struck before. Her thorns pierced the flesh of his cheek and jaw, ripping skin and pulling on his face. The force of the blow rocked him and brought tears to his eyes. Motes of light floated through his vision and his urge to fight, to kill, faded in that instant.

  "You are too late anyway," she sat on her haunches, on him, her breath coming heavily still. "All three communes will die out. Ironically, you will be the last of your kind. The last born and the last to die. I will of course, outlive you, though your treachery has earned you a spot in the audience." She snorted, showing more emotion in that one exhalation than she had in all the time he had known her. She wiped the spittle from her chin with the back of her hand, managing not to impale herself on the spines that now jutted from her limbs.