I introduced the two old men
to each other–truly told, one much older than the other–and then made my excuses to retreat to my old chamber. There I dyed my right hand with blue fabric dye as ever before, and after letting it dry, slipped through the secret tunnel into the Holyhand’s chamber. I tugged a sea-blue, hooded monk’s habit over my head. To my face I affixed a stagesmith’s mask. A bell chimed. Rising, I processed between two brothers to the outer court of the monastery, entering my screened booth from behind by a private entrance.
Engrossed
in my work, I whiled away four makh.
Not every ill may be healed at a touch. Maladies there are that require a great deal of careful thought and work, and planning too. Three of the penitents, I
examined, strengthened, and dismissed with instructions to return the next day. The rest I dealt with, and afterward, could barely raise the strength to walk back to my quarters.
The following day I roused myself before the makh of dawn and toured the hospital
and athocarial teaching chambers with five of the senior Solburn Brothers. Thereafter I consulted with them at length, learning much that pleased me and much that required my attention. I retrieved the two books P’dáronï had gifted me. The book of Eldrik medicine I would leave with Father Yatak to be copied, pored over, dissected, and treasured. P’dáronï’s book I would take with me. I had already copied onto scrolls those parts of her writings which dealt with subjects that would help the Solburn Brothers develop their craft and practice.
I returned to find Orik Sorlakson discussing business plans with the Father.
“A hospital in every Fiefdom!” breathed Father Yatak, his eyes shining with a peculiar light that set my spine a-quiver.
Orik
looked as smug as a salcat neck-deep in cream and lapping it up for all he was worth. “In every Fiefdom,” he agreed. “I could not think of a worthier cause–”
“Father! What are you talking about?”
“Putting the resources of the House Telmak to good use.”
I stared,
and then shook my head. “Father, you don’t run a palace, you run an
inn
. A very good inn, I’ll concede–”
“Jatha-droppings to that, son!” my father interrupted hotly. “You have no earthly
conception of Telmak House’s wealth, so I suggest you keep that flapping hole of yours shut lest your ignorance evermore be brayed to the world!”
Should I be shocked by his fury? Ay, but what shocked me most, was to see a mirror of my own behaviour and temperament in swingeing action.
“Ha!” he snorted, probably mistaking my silence for chagrin. “As I thought. Son, I was a rich man before I ever met your mother. I had the good fortune to be well advised in my investments, both in the Fiefdoms and abroad. Let me advise you that I can think of few better causes to spend my terls and ukals upon than this venture; for I mark, Arlak, that through this great work of teaching, you have done more good in our Fiefdoms in a handful of anna than you ever did during the gantuls your travels. Father Yatak has convinced me. You are saving lives every day. Through our good Solburn Brothers, you are changing the very fabric of Umarite society.”
I burshingled deeply to him, humbled. “Father, your vision is greater than mine.”
“And more steaming clods jatha-droppings heaped upon that!”
“You’re in a testy mood, Master Telmak,” said the Father. “More chai?”
My father unbent with a wry smile. “Ay, Father, and scrolls, ink, and many hands to carry forth my messages. I will pen the missives in my own hand. I have few days left in which to set much in motion. From you, I shall require a list of your Solburn and affiliated monasteries throughout the Fiefdoms. I will match these with my business contacts.”
I could see the thoughts buzzing around in his brain. After a long, thoughtful silence, I
commented, “You do me honour, father.”
In his grin I saw myself. “In all you told me
upon the road, son, you never hinted at this great work. Nay, truly told, the honour in this is mine. I’ve too long sat upon piles of terls and ukals with nought of worth to show for it. Now incline your ear to this. I’ve been thinking. When I mentioned investments abroad, I meant Eldoran. Son, I have prepared the sealed, witnessed papers to leave those interests to you.”
“I
… uh …”
“Don’t thank me until you learn what I bequeath you,” he said, raising a warning finger. He changed the gesture suddenly to the buskal of Mata’s mercy. “Early on,
following the advice of those I felt understood the Eldrik well, I invested very heavily in the Armittalese slave trade.”
My eyes popped like a land-snail’s eyes upon their waving stalks.
“Well may you gasp, son. According to the last message I had smuggled out of Eldoran–for you must know, there’s an illegal trade operating between Eldoran and the shores of the Fiefdoms to this very day–our family owns some seventy-three percent of the slave trade. There’s a very good chance, as the heir to this venture of the House Telmak, that you
own
the woman you told me about, this P’dáronï of Armittal.”
“But
… I’m illegitimate!”
He tapped his nose knowingly. “Not according to the papers I have prepared.”
“Father, the Sorcerers will kill me when they find out my mother was an Eldrik Warlock!”
“The papers note you are the son of the Master Telmak by his mistress Alannah. Not Alannah of Eldoran. There is no lie
cast in these runes.”
Now I knew what it was to be outmanoeuvred
and cornered, a rat beneath a salcat’s paw. Orik Sorlakson amazed me. However, I still had strength to grumble, “But I don’t want to own any slaves! My very quoph rebels at the thought!”
“What would you do?” my father challenged me.
“Free them all,” I snapped. “Every last one.”
“And thereby terminate the only route the Armittalese have to escape their Nummandori Overlords?”
“Oh, and life in Eldoran is so much better?”
He nodded quietly. “Well might you be bitter upon this score, Arlak. Several tales for the road, say I, to
share what few things I know of the lot of the Armittalese. And two words of advice. One, you already know. You would not win this woman’s heart by purchasing her freedom. But you could gift her that freedom and then see if she still chooses you. That is a risk you must take. Secondly, I charge you to find a better solution than the one you propose. It sounds like you already have an incentive.”
“
Who exactly are you calling an ‘incentive’, you pompous old–”
“Mata’s peace, both of you!” Father Yatak
moved between us with his hands raised. “I’m convinced. Truly and unreservedly … convinced.”
From either side of him, we growled
in tandem, “Of what?”
His
expression clearly said, ‘See?’
I gazed at my father. He gazed back at me. After a moment, we shared a chuckle.
“Father and son,” said Orik. “Truly told.”
“Father and son,” Father Yatak agreed.
“Convinced.”
Cracking open my eyes, I beheld before me nought but the white of death. Endless white fields of death.
Lorimi the Historian:
Nethe Unbound, The Essential El Shashi (113
th
Scrolleaf)
The time before the fires of Nethe descended upon my life was one of the happiest that I remember, magnified through the eyes of my father’s contentment.
Ordinarily, Alldark week is a time of fear and trembling and paying one
’s dues to ward off the ghouls of Ulim’s Hunt. For our family, Alldark was a time of laughter, rediscovery, and the telling of many stories upon the great-grandfather’s knee. Truly told, he could have done with ten knees for all of the demands his family made upon him–but Orik Sorlakson lapped it up as an old hound who at last has found his place beside a warm fireplace, and a family to cosset him, rub his ears, and never trouble his grey old muzzle with a cross word.
For this, I could
gladly cross the breadth of the Fiefdoms, a thousand times and more.
As I suspected, Sherik and Lailla appeared after Alldark Week, having rested west of the mountains in mild Hakooi and more lately, at the Solburn Monastery.
“I’m a monk no longer,” boomed Sherik, clasping me in his great arms. “And with your permission, I will have your daughter to the Matabond.”
“Lailla is a woman grown,” I protested, trying to peer around his
huge shoulder to see her response. “Knows she her own mind? And what of the children? Lyllia? Tyrak?”
“I will care for them. Think you not I–”
“Grandfather!” A dark pair of eyes peered up at me from the region of my knee, which had been claimed and kept by both her legs and arms. “You came back!”
“Did I not promise?”
She nodded solemnly. “Men don’t keep promises.”
Sherik saved me by kneeling swiftly and gathering the little mite in his arms. In a moment, a strangely deep pair of dark eyes
gazed over her thumb, inserted firmly into her mouth, at me–an examination searching enough to make me squirm. “Look at this man,” he said, gently. “He promised to come back, and he did. He promised to heal your mother, and he will.”
I started to say, “Healing what is no longer present is complex–”
“You can heal my mama,” said the child, around her thumb. “The power’s hidden in your quoph. All you need do is summon it, grandfather.”
Ulim’s howling hunt! I stared at the child as a deadly realisation
struck me dumb. I was part-Eldrik, descended from a line of powerful Sorcerers and Warlocks. Should I be surprised that magic should rear its head in my bloodline?
“I promised,” I agreed
, trying to iron the quiver out of my voice. A four anna-old could do this to me? “I will start work right away, Lyllia. After all, if your mother is to speak the vows of the Matabond, she’ll need a new tongue, won’t she?”
And how did one build a new tongue, exactly?
I licked my lips. Ready for this challenge, El Shashi? Could I grow her tongue anew?
But my slender daughter was dancing with the
hulking ex-wrestler and now ex-monk–and what did I know? I could not deny what Mata had made right and good and true, a flower of love blossoming from the Nethe-wrought pits of burning hell she had been forced to walk though. Now Lailla twirled out of Sherik’s arms and into mine. Her mouth was flung wide in soundless laughter. Perhaps, I reflected, this was Mata’s way of healing what I could not.
“Spin me!” Lyllia demanded.
Sherik threw her toward the rafters until she was breathless with giggling.
* * * *
“So you’re leaving this work to Jerom?”
My father inclined his head stiffly. “I believe all is ready, Arlak. He has an excellent grasp of business. And he
wants
to do this. He wants to do something worthwhile rather than sell pots and kitchenware the rest of his life.”
Alldark had long ago given way to Youngsun. The day outside was mild; Orik’s shutters
stood open to welcome the breezes. “Nought I taught him,” I muttered bitterly. “What kind of father was I?”
“And what kind of father was I?”
I sank into the chair opposite my father’s desk, which had sprouted over the last couple of seasons, as if by some miracle, piles of scrolls fit to sink any Eldrik
tollish
ship. For a man approaching his hundred and eleventh anna, Orik was amazingly productive and still as sharp as a Herliki scimitar. I sat up straighter.
“Father, are you feeling quite well?”
“The chill of Nethe rests upon my quoph this day, son,” he said. “I feel every one of my anna. I fear my time is soon.”
“Say it not–”
“I long ago resolved to speak nought but the truth. You should do the same.”
We both
glanced up at a sound without the room. The house was quiet, as Jerom and his family, together with Rubiny and Tarrak, had travelled north to the Solburn Monastery on what they were now beginning to term ‘family business’.
We had no time to move from our seats as first two, then a further five or six ruffians crowded into the room. I smelled salikweed u
pon the breath of their leader–a big, scarred brute clutching a cudgel which appeared to have seen much service. His fellows brandished a salcat’s basket of barbed weaponry at us.
“What can we
do for you, in Mata’s name?” my father asked mildly.
“You’ll come with us,” rasped one of the thugs.
“In whose name?”
“That’s no concern of yours!”
I pushed back my seat, leaping to my feet. What thought I–that my short time in military service would stand me in some kind of stead against these ruffians? The leader lashed out with his cudgel. I snapped up my right arm reflexively, and had my elbow smashed into pieces for my trouble. I stared at my arm in surprise and pain. Chuckling, the man flicked the club a second time. Blackness exploded across my vision.
When my eyes
cracked open, it was to ignite a headache. My head felt as though it had been battered by a dozen cudgels, rather than the single blow I remembered. I squeezed down on the pain emanating from a lyom’s-egg upon my left temple. Biting my lip, I directed my power into my elbow. What a mess!
Even as I
saw to my needs, my mind calmly evaluated my situation. I sensed I was in another place. My left arm was upraised as though it clutched a dagger ready for a downward blow, chained at the wrist to the wall against which my back rested. I tested the chain, finding it short and immovable.
“Well rested, El Shashi?”
I knew that voice! Mata, I had never wished to hear it again. The voice doused my quoph in the bitter acid of despair. And my eyes fixed at once on the person I knew owned that nasal whine.
Lenbis leaned forward in his comfortable couch. “El Shashi. How good to see you again. With your aged father. You at least are looking well.
I can’t say the same for the old fossil.”
“Release us, Lenbis!”
Lenbis threw back his head and laughed unpleasantly. “Release you? Not before I’ve had my fun, El Shashi. You stole my toys and ruined my business. The business I don’t mind, because I’ll get rich again. But I liked the girl. She had spirit.”
I found him as revolting as ever.
A chill slithered from my quoph into my body.
Looking about, I saw that I was chained in a room I did not recognise–a room with no windows, and but one door. It held the chair that Lenbis was sitting on, me, and a table upon which another person lay, chained
hand and foot. Although I could see nought but the person’s shoes, I knew this was my father. What was going on here? What was Lenbis planning?
I tried to stuff my hatred of Lenbis back down my throat. “I wronged you in Darbis,” I said. “Why don’t you let me heal you, and we can put this business behind us?”
“Don’t make me laugh!” he snarled. “Do you think I’m letting you near me, El Shashi?” Pulling a scrap of cloth from his pocket, Lenbis mopped his glistening forehead. “Let’s be clear. I intend to get rich. After you wrecked my warehouse and burned all my stores in Darbis, El Shashi, I wanted nothing more than to track you down and wring your scrawny lyom’s-neck. But then I discovered I was not the only one seeking a measure of your flesh. I fell in with agents of a certain Mistress Jyla.”
“Jyla has no
further interest in me,” I shot back, full of uncertain bravado.
“Agreed,” said Lenbis, with a cruel twist of his fleshy lips. “But she is interested in your power. Oceans of your power.”
My power? I ran my tongue over my dry lips. She still wanted my power? Whatever for? What could she use the Wurm’s power for which did not involve breaking the Banishment? She must have some new plan … and it was active. She and her ambitions were alive and well, and she had somehow recruited this worm of a man to carry out her desires.
“Let us go, boy, and the House Telmak
will make you rich beyond your dreams,” whispered my father.
“Riches I want,” Lenbis grinned, rising awkwardly to his feet so that he could overshadow my father and I. “But, unlike your fool of a son, I have the good sense not to cross a Sorceress. My colleagues in the criminal underworld agree on few things, but they are unanimous in their fear and loathing of the
Honoria Jyla. I’ve always harboured a weakness for a truly ruthless and diabolical woman. They whisper she is Matabound with Ulim Godslayer himself.”
No surprises there, truly told! Shuddering, I asked, “So what do you want, Lenbis? Name your price.”
“Look about you, El Shashi. Stand for me. See if you can reach out and touch your father.”
I did not understand. But I obeyed
him, rising to my feet, finding the limit of the chain, and reaching out to touch the fingertip of my father’s right hand.
“Perfect,” said Lenbis, looking so cheerful
that I yearned for nothing more than a length of rope in my hands to use for a garrotte. “Read the shalik runes upon this for me, El Shashi. Do I strike you as a man interested in terls and ukals? Why would I chain your aged father to this table if I was? What think you?”
“You want m
e to heal him,” I said, slowly. I hoped against hope that would be all.
“
But he has nought to heal, save old age,” Lenbis said. “And what pleasure would I derive from a simple healing?” He reached down toward his feet. When his hand reappeared, there dangled from it a heavy whip–the kind used by some cruel masters to drive their jatha in place of the master-prod, which is a kinder tool by leagues. As he continued to speak he moved backward to give himself space to wield the weapon. “I’ve a better idea. Why don’t you and I shoot not just two birds with one arrow, but three? I will have my revenge by seeing you and your father scream and weep and curse the day you were whelped. You will keep your father alive by healing him. And you will supply the Sorceress with the power she craves. There, shall we not all be satisfied?”
“Please,” my voice cracked. “Please, Lenbis, I beg you. Let me heal you.”
“I’ll not waste my breath further.”
Crack!
My father’s shirt leaped and settled again. He cried out. As if by magic, a red stain enlarged from the spot the whip had struck.
“Oh dear
, El Shashi,” said Lenbis, pretending horror. “An old man’s skin is so thin! It took at least two or three strokes in the same place to break your daughter’s skin–except where she was already scarred and scabbed.”
“Please! Have pity, Lenbis!”
Crack!
Spoke the whip. It first vented a horrible hiss as it curled through the air, and then an angry retort as the leather bit into the skin. I was reminded of the strike of a forest cobra; the warning hiss, and then the fatal strike.
“Come, El Shashi. Have mercy upon your
poor father. Will you not heal him?”
“
Mata’s name!” I shouted, stretching to the limit of my chain in order to reach my father’s uncurled fingers. “Stop this madness!”
My shouting, pleading
, and cursing only encouraged Lenbis. His fleshy, sweating jowls were formed into a half-smile as he plied the whip. His smile was a deviant caricature. I began to feel that my cries were stroking his pleasure, giving him what he could never again have by his own flesh, after the damage I had wrought in Darbis. I would have healed him at least to set my conscience aright, but Lenbis was having none of it. Perhaps he feared me. Perhaps rightly so. I had vowed never again to exact such a revenge, but now my anguish threatened at every stroke to rise up and strangle my resolve.
Lenbis could land the tip of his whip upon a brass terl. He must have had a great deal of practice. I could not imagine how my father
suffered, but after his first few groans, Orik appeared to bear the punishment with a grim surfeit of pride–in the face of which, I felt the lesser man.
We fell into a strange
rhythm. After each stroke of the whip I would strain forward, waiting for my father’s hand to uncurl, for his fingers to straighten so that I could make the healing touch. My world narrowed to the gap between us. Lenbis had cleverly positioned the table so that only at a stretch could I touch my father’s longest digit–the digit used by yammariks the Fiefdoms over to point to Mata. He must have measured while I was unconscious, I realised. Each period of time I spent waiting for Orik’s fingers to move inflicted upon my quoph a horror all of its own, quite apart from the physical, for that was the time given in which to appreciate the impact of each blow upon my father; to see pain’s stamp upon his body and to trace the course of it in the taut tendons of his neck and the unavoidable quivering of his muscles, and the whiteness of the muscles around his mouth pressing his lips together in an attempt to stifle his moans.