Closed. Yes. He has walled himself off from the rest of us. Why? What is he afraid of? Or hiding? Or protecting us from?
‘Look there!’ Rutana called, pointing, her voice shrill.
Stone humps stood from the river ahead. As the
Serpent
drew
closer
they resolved into statues and architectural features – a bell-shaped stupa, a cyclopean lintel over a submerged entranceway. All were gripped in the fists of trees and hung with flowering lianas. All were eroded to shapeless forms. The statues might have once carried human, or even beast, characteristics. All elements of faces or forms had been scoured away. Time and the relentless probing tendrils and roots of the flowers had ground the rock away as if it were mere sand.
‘We are close,’ Rutana reaffirmed. ‘Very close now.’
Close to what?
Shimmer wondered.
All I see is a gulf of time. An immensity I cannot even begin to comprehend. Yet is it so? Perhaps it has been only a few brief centuries or decades and that is all that is required to wipe away all remnants and signs of human existence
.
Perhaps this is the true lesson Himatan presents here
.
* * *
The first hint Pon-lor had that something was going on was when the weasel-thin Thet-mun rushed to Jak’s side and whispered excitedly to him. The column had halted and Pon-lor stood breathing heavily, his legs leaden and aching – he wasn’t used to so much walking. His arms were tied tightly behind his back. His robes now hung from him sodden and torn, no better than rags. At night he was left lying in the rain. For food, scraps were thrown in the dirt before him; so far he’d refused them all.
It was, he decided, the harshest test yet of his Thaumaturg training in the denial and mastering of the demands of the flesh. Should he survive he might even suggest instituting it as a sort of final examination. Any normal man, he knew, would have succumbed long ago: to starvation, exposure, or any one of a number of sicknesses.
Jak snapped out a series of low orders then swaggered over to stand before him. As he always did, he reached up and made a show of running Pon-lor’s jade comb through his long hair. Finishing his ministrations, he knotted the hair through itself then looked him up and down and sniffed his disapproval. ‘You’re a mess, spoiled noble boy,’ he said. ‘Want a drink?’
Pon-lor knew a drink wouldn’t be forthcoming but his ferocious thirst demanded he nod the affirmative. Jak signed for a skin of water. He took a long drink then stoppered it and handed it off, all the while holding his laughing gaze on Pon-lor’s eyes. He edged a half-step closer.
‘I’m going to break you, noble brat,’ he purred, his voice silky with pleasure. ‘In a few days you’ll beg to drink my piss.’
‘I’ve had worse,’ Pon-lor managed to grate, barely.
The youth’s arrogant twist of the lips pulled back into rage and his right arm came up. His fist exploded against the side of Pon-lor’s head and sent him to the ground. Darkness and bursts of light warred in his vision. Myint’s hysterical hyena laugh sounded over him. Her knee pressed into his stomach, cutting off his breath. A gag was wrestled over his mouth. He was dragged through the mud and slammed against a tree. More ropes secured him to it.
When his vision cleared and he shook his loosened hair from before his face the troop had disappeared into the jungle. One guard remained. The least of them, a kid named Heng-lon whose appearance had so far evoked only sympathy from Pon-lor: beneath his bristling brush-cut hair the left side of his skull was flattened and pushed in, the eye on that side stared off permanently to the left, he breathed through his mouth, and he had the mental age of a five-year-old.
The youth clutched his spear in both hands, scanning the jungle, obviously terrified to be alone. Seeing Pon-lor awake he wet his lips and sidled over. Grinning, he set his spear against the tree then fumbled at the ties of his short trousers.
Pon-lor quickly lowered his head. A warm stream hissed against his crown then splashed over his shoulder and down into his lap. The kid giggled. ‘Always wanted to do that,’ he said. ‘No one c’n top this story!’
This is proving quite the test indeed
…
I could give you a story no one could top. ‘How my head got to be on this shelf’ perhaps. Or ‘How I lost all my limbs’. But that would be too easy
.
Pon-lor struggled instead with keeping his hands, tied behind him, in the meditative position of forefingers touching thumbs.
‘What’cha doin’?’ Heng-lon asked.
Pon-lor looked up, raising his chin and the gag tied there. The youth reached for the gag then stopped, thinking better of it. He took up his spear and backed away. While Pon-lor meditated, the youth set to starting a fire.
It took a great deal of effort to force himself to slow his breathing, but Pon-lor finally managed to isolate all the tension, locate the suppressed rage, and mentally uncoil it to ease his flesh into the requisite degree of relaxation. From this point he was able to
concentrate
upon separating his spirit – the Nak – from its fleshly housing.
What are they up to out there? Well, we shall soon see
.
But he’d forgotten the psychic storm that was Ardata’s aura. The punishing stream snatched him and cast him spinning. He knew he was an instant from wandering lost forever when he remembered his lessons and forced himself to re-imagine his presence not as a solid entity but as downy fluff, as dust, as a handful of drifting motes. Now the storm raged on but passed through him, like wind through a tree.
He searched for Jak and his band of pathetic cast-off bandits.
Before he could track down their auras a blazing presence in the psychic landscape screamed for his attention. For an instant he felt himself shrinking in fear: was this
her
? The Queen of Monsters herself?
But the essence was entirely different. In fact, it was so entirely different it appeared almost alien. What was this thing? Was it a denizen of this jungle? Yet such awesome power. If he were a candle flame of presence flickering in the half-spirit realm then this thing’s projection here towered as a coruscating sky-high pillar. He dared to drift closer to the presence and cast a greeting.
‘
Who are you?
’
‘
Who are you?
’ a voice answered in his consciousness – a child’s voice, unbelievably.
‘
What are you?
’
‘
I do not know. What are you?
’
‘
A mage. A traveller here
.’
‘
A mage? Ah – a manipulator of interdimensional leakage
.’
A what?
Pon-lor wondered.
‘
The flavour of your art is oddly familiar to me. Why should this be? I must examine you
.’
A bulge swelled the side of the towering white-argent pillar. A mountain of puissance descended towards him – enough to scatter his atoms.
Pon-lor snapped away. His chest swelled reflexively, drawing in a panicked breath. He opened his eyes expecting a firestorm about him, the trees drifting away in motes of soot. His palms tingled with sweat and his heart was pounding as if he’d just completed a full course of muscle isolation.
All was quiet. Heng-lon glanced back to him from where he sat poking at the fire, his spear across his lap. It was night. A light rain had begun. They were not alone; someone was approaching.
A
large party. He sensed them but the kid hadn’t yet. Presently, the lad sprang to his feet, spear levelled in both hands. He jerked the iron point left and right. It trembled in the firelight. The youth backed up until he stood level with Pon-lor. He drew a short-bladed knife from his sash.
Not so stupid after all, then, if his plan is to release me to help in any possible fight to come
.
But it was a grinning Thet-mun who emerged from the dark. The firelight glimmered from his teeth and eyes. He looked immensely pleased and went straight to their heaped gear. ‘Where’s the palm wine?’ he demanded. ‘Ha! Here’s my beauty.’ He lifted a skin and took a long pull, wiped his mouth.
‘We have them, turtle-boy! Got them both. You should’ve seen it. It was laughable. They walked right in. Ha!’ He raised the skin and poured another stream into his mouth.
Heng-lon – turtle-boy, apparently – laughed as well, though he obviously had no idea why.
The rest of the bandit crew now came tumbling in from the dark. All were grinning and snorting laughs. Two carried a roped body between them that they threw down next to Pon-lor. A girl, or rather a young woman. She was unconscious.
By the Founders! Was this the witch? Could they have really
…
Jak arrived to snatch the skin of palm wine from Thet-mun’s hand. He leaned over Pon-lor, took a sip, then stood staring down at him for some time. Finally, he pulled an exaggerated moue of disappointment. ‘You high and mighties. Look at you. Useless.’ He straightened to peer about, spread his arms wide. ‘I beat you! Me! A lowly cast-out nobody you
sneered
at! Well … look at you now!’
‘Coming!’ one of the bandits shouted from the jungle.
Coming? What could they
…
Heavy measured steps sounded over the pattering of raindrops. They came from beyond the cover of thick wide leaves. Pon-lor straightened where he sat.
They’ve done it! Brought it to me! Time to end this ridiculous charade
.
A heavy curved blade flashed before his vision to press against his neck. Myint’s head rested on his shoulder from behind. ‘Don’t try anything, sweetie.’ And she blew a kiss into his ear.
Pon-lor let his shoulders drop.
Why do I keep underestimating these wretches?
Jak snapped his fingers, gesturing. A spear was thrown to him and he spun it to rest its keen bright iron point against the unconscious woman’s side. The stand of tall ferns shook, tossing raindrops
everywhere
, then was thrust aside and an armoured giant strode through, a wide bright yataghan blade outstretched before it.
‘Hold!’ Jak called. ‘Or I thrust through your mistress.’
To Pon-lor’s utter astonishment the yakshaka froze.
‘Sheathe your weapon.’
The soldier complied.
Pon-lor stared, dumbfounded. How was this possible? How was its conditioning overcome? He had to discover how. This simply had to be reported to the ruling Circle of Masters.
Jak was nodding to himself and he shot Pon-lor a quick triumphant glance to make certain he was taking this in. ‘Your mistress will be under guard constantly. Someone will always be within sword’s reach. So behave.’ He pointed to a tree on the far side of the encampment. ‘Sit.’
The armoured giant’s helm turned aside as it regarded the tree. Then it lumbered heavily to the spot and put its back to the trunk to stand glittering in the shadows, arms crossed.
Jak shrugged. ‘Good enough.’ He looked to Pon-lor, jerked his head to the yakshaka. ‘I couldn’t believe it understood me.’ He frowned, lowered his voice. ‘Is there a man in there?’ Then, realizing, he waved the question aside.
‘What about you, sweetmeat?’ Myint breathed into his ear. ‘You gonna behave?’
Pon-lor gave a long slow nod. Yes, he would. At least until he had questioned this witch.
‘Aw.’ Myint pouted her disappointment. It was an awful twisting of her features, given her disfigured lip. She slit the gag, managing to slice his cheek and ear at the same time. ‘Sorry,’ she dropped, not sorry at all, as she walked away.
Pon-lor felt the warm blood drip down his neck while he sat cross-legged, staring straight ahead at the shadowed figure across the camp where the firelight winked and flashed from its mosaic inlay. Perhaps it was only his impression, but it seemed the creature dropped its helmed head as if unable to meet his gaze.
The next day Pon-lor was awake before everyone, as usual. He waited for the woman to rouse. Through the night the bandits had been trading off watches, keeping someone always close. Now it was Myint’s turn and she hauled the woman up and marched her off – perhaps to see to her morning toilet.
Pon-lor was disappointed by what he saw. She was just a local girl; a peasant from any one of their villages. For a time he’d played
with
the possibility that she was some sort of agent for Ardata and that by capturing her he could learn secrets of the Witch-Queen’s court in fabled Jakal Viharn. Now, however, he had to wrestle with the mystery of how this peasant could possibly have suborned a yakshaka soldier. The most likely answer was that she had not; that this soldier was flawed and had somehow fixated upon her. She probably had no idea why this thing was following her around, and had become terrified and run off.
Or had been run off by her terrified fellow villagers.
As the bandits broke camp Pon-lor sat, still tied up, and wondered why Jak had brought her back. If she really was an agent of Ardata then he ought to have killed her right away. That would have been the safest course. Like him, then, Jak must have realized that she was no servant of the Witch-Queen. She was merely his convenient guarantor of the yakshaka’s cooperation. Clearly, then, once Jak had delivered his prize, he would still have her for his revenge.
Very greedy is this Kenjak Ashevajak, the Bandit Lord
.