For some reason this irritated the very Hounds of Nethe
out of me.
But I did have a new covering upon my stomach.
“You’ll have to regrow everything beneath,” said P’dáronï.
“R
ushed for time?”
“
Would you prefer to be dragging spans of intestines around the Lyrn Mountains?”
“P’dáronï-
nishka
…”
“We crossed a
continent for you, Arlak, and your ingratitude shines forth? Amal surrendered herself into Jyla’s power to aid
your
escape. Do you remember your interrogation in Eldoran? Jyla will make that seem as a fresh breeze off the ocean!”
“P–” My words wavered and we moved again.
I swallowed, reminded that the last time I had seen P’dáronï angry, a man had ended up being Banished. Was this the same woman I had loved? Did I love her still?
“Well may you ask why we came for you!”
“Ulim’s breath upon it, I just saw my father killed!” I blazed back. “Do you have any idea how that felt?”
Her face crumpled like a wet scrolleaf. A quiver passed through her body and into mine.
“Oh,
larathi!
” The swear word exploded out of me. “P’dáronï … truly told, you must think you’re talking to the biggest fool in the Fiefdoms. And Eldoria. And anywhere else you care to mention.” I wished I could have read her eyes. I felt cast adrift when speaking to her. Another woman could have read what I meant in my gaze, but I needed to pour it all into my voice. “I’m sorry,” I added simply. “I know nothing about where you come from. I’m worse than a dumb jatha at the yoke. Truly told, did you even know your father? Did he sell you into slavery?”
“I knew him,” P’dáronï said in a murmur barely audible above the
storming approach of the Wurm. I imagined the creature was becoming irritated with P’dáronï’s ability to teleport us overland. The skies darkened unnaturally overhead, and I saw lightning strike upward into the clouds. “He sold me in my ninth anna. He said it was my duty to keep my family alive.”
The
gathering storm formed a perfect backdrop to her hurt.
“
Have you see him since?”
“Never again.”
I had no words. Numbly, I wondered if I owned P’dáronï, as my father had intimated. If she doubted me already, what ruin might this secret wreak upon our fragile relationship? Any why was this thought anathema to my quoph? Though the Umarite Fiefdoms lacked the formal slavery system of the Eldrik, many families were kept indebted to their Hassutla or Hassutl over the gantuls–a system in most respects similar to slavery, although there was always the option of buying out a contract. For a poor family this was akin to envisioning a voyage around Belion. Janos had always grown animated when teaching me about injustice. Now I understood what had confused me in my youth. Ay, truly told, I understood with a sense of trembling outrage at the unfairness of the world, or perhaps what we humans had made of Mata’s world.
The world leaped again; twice, in rapid succession.
From my new vantage point I could gaze the height and breadth of a solid bank of clouds gathering over to the east, as though Ulim’s army of doom marched across the lands at the world’s final death-knell.
“I see the Wurm
shouldering aside the mountains,” said P’dáronï. “The world is ablaze in
lillia.
So much so, I can see shapes–I believe they must be hills and forests, and above them, more mountains.”
“Clouds,”
I corrected her, shivering with wonder. “A storm front.”
“
I’ve never seen the world like this before.”
“In energies?”
Her smile was a study in childlike delight; an abruption of her preceding distress. “By the essence of magic. The Wurm’s magic. I’ve always had interaction with close things; mostly with what I could touch. But this is …
amazing
. Truly told, I never knew!”
“I’m sorry you must flee the Wurm with me.”
P’dáronï tilted her face again to the horizon. “I committed myself to this, Arlak-
nih
.”
“
This … P’dáronï-
nish
,” I stressed the endearment slightly, “you think this is a mistake, don’t you?”
I could not read the miniscule tightening of the muscles around her mouth.
“Can you heal yourself?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then we must find space that you may rest. I will carry you as far as I am able. And I will Dissemble for us both until you have the strength to learn the skill.”
And so we travelled
: the man of power, as helpless as any babe, and the blind slave, who held me as much captive as friend. When I began to ask questions she bade me, with ire, to rest and gather my strength. But I could try to draw my own conclusions. Why should Jyla seek me out after all these anna? Why should she abscond only with Amal? What had changed meantime in Eldoran? Did she seek to draw me back to the Eldrik?
I needed answers from P’dáronï. But she seemed disinclined–unless, by opening my mind to her, I could lay my quoph’s secrets bare. Ay, and
how many of those secrets would I want another to know? Especially one so dear? Total, naked honesty … how could I ever consent?
I wanted to ruminate more upon these things, but my body
would not tolerate any further abuse. Shortly, I slept, insensible to the world and its dangers.
* * * *
El Shashi had never been in such a state.
Never had I lacked the power to heal myself. But with the poison of the redbane berry spreading though my system, whatever tiny amount of
lillia
I managed to gather, was turned immediately to keeping the toxins at bay. Besides the poison there was massive damage to my stomach. An infection took root there. I was more than sickly. I was dying.
I confess I knew little of this. It was P’dáronï who bore me without complaint, dazed and delirious, across the Lyrn Mountains and down into
the foothills of eastern Hakooi.
“You have to open yourself,” she kept saying. “Show me how to heal you, Arlak.”
I tried! Ay, Mata, I tried. I fought and cursed my inability to comply; I wept and gnashed my teeth and moaned my love for her through cracked and bleeding lips. But my traitorous mind would not relent. Locked for gantuls in the guardtower will of Janos’ manufacture, which had been imbedded in the very foundations of my being under the full force of his supreme hypnosis, my mental bastion no longer knew how to let itself be breached. Not only was the key missing, but the door itself was long forgotten. In attempting to help me, P’dáronï hurt and drove herself to collapse.
I dreamed of Ulim’s Hunt. I dreamed of lying beneath the Pentacle in Eldoran
beneath the Inquisitors terrible assault, as they threw the amplified power of a hundred minds at me, yet something within would not yield. I dreamed of drawing P’dáronï of Armittal tenderly into in my arms, only to realise her blind eyes hid a contagion spreading from her body into mine. She clasped her arms around my neck and smiled a ghastly, succubus smile filled with fangs that mirrored the rocky spires of Birial. ‘Die with me, Arlak.’ I shrieked and flailed at her … and dreamed again … of being carried upon the back of Thurbarak, the albino king of the jerlak, at the head of a jerlak tide. And always behind, stalking me with bestial purpose to the very ends of the world, was the invisible but clearly felt presence of the Wurm.
I sprang awake as the ground trembled.
I found myself lying prone upon a sandbank beside the young and narrow reach of the Nugar River, easily recognisable to me, in the shadow of a small sailboat. P’dáronï was nestled against my left shoulder, her body pliant against mine, the brush of her breath upon my cheek a faint and uncertain perfume. Hearth and hand, how I craved … a tendril of danger tickled my senses. My regard leaped to alarm.
“P’dáronï
-
nish!
Wake up!”
The Wurm was close.
Dozens of river pike leaped agitatedly from the brown waters, racing downstream from a doom slithering down the river channel toward us.
I leaped to my feet. How this was possible, I knew not–had I healed myself whil
st asleep? Bending, I slapped P’dáronï’s cheek harder than I had intended. “Wake up!”
Jerlak
hoof prints? All around where we had lain … prints twice the size of my palm. My quoph lurched. My dream! But I was acting on instinct now. Before I knew what I was doing, I scooped the surprisingly slight form of P’dáronï into my arms. Water surged around my knees. As the boat shifted towards me, I dumped us together over the gunwale and into the belly of the vessel. Ungainly, but effective, I congratulated myself, as the floodwaters swept us away.
That was when we ran into a tree.
And I ran my head into a wooden box tucked into the bow.
“
Larathi!
”
The boat
rotated slowly, snagged upon a branch. I staggered upright, finding a curl of power within to dull the pain. But even that action froze mid-thought; because well above the treeline I saw the roof of the Wurm’s mouth, a vast, gaping cavern smoking at its edges with violet
lillia
, shovelling a brown tide of sludge and water before it as the creature sailed majestically down the Nugar’s riverbed. Trees and bushes either side on the river banks were inundated by the rising swell.
I still did not understand why, but the terror that quivered my quoph was more than fear of dying; more than
a furious conviction that P’dáronï and I deserved a chance after so many anna; greater even than what the name El Shashi had come to represent. I could not have described this knowledge given the tongue of ulule crossed with mystical insight of a Hakooi poetess.
What I knew was that I had an oar in my hands. I plied it like a madman stabbing soft turf with murderous glee, for we had risen now upon that pile of mud and were being inexorably
drawn into the Wurm’s mouth. It was more akin to poling through a Frenjj swamp than paddling. My frantic backward glances assured me that the Wurm ate water and mud with ease, and whole trees tipped into its gargantuan mouth in a steady stream. The mandibles, as thick as houses, waved back in forth with a steady sweeping motion, shovelling all before it into the Wurm’s insatiable maw. I could not estimate how large it had grown. Comparisons faded into insignificance. As the river bent I thought the creature must be a goodly part of a league in length. Its tail was lost in the distance. The mouth had to be a trin wide, over a hundred paces. It carved out the Nugar anew.
For a span, t
he beast’s roaring shook us and that slipping pile of mud as though we rowed across a bowl of gelatine. Mud splattered over us until I came to resemble a shadworm slithering about in a pit of clay.
Suddenly,
the boat lurched and we tipped forward. As the muck thinned, so we accelerated, until we rode the Wurm’s bow-wave along with a snarl of branches and bushes and several dead jatha. Taking up the second oar, I set them to the oarlocks and began to bend my back in earnest–at which my innards agonisingly announced they were not yet whole. I distinctly felt the contents of my intestines squeezing into places they had no right to be. Each stroke brought fresh tears to my eyes.
And then my gaze dropped from the Wurm to P’dáronï.
I shipped the oars with a curse and dragged her face free of the mud pooled in the bottom of the boat. Her body hung limp in my arms. “Jyla, how could you do this to me?” I shouted. I jammed my fingers into her mouth and scooped out half a handful of mud and filth. “Breathe! Sink you to Nethe’s hells, you stupid, stupid Wurm!”
Abandoning my own pain, I dove into P’dáronï and found myself in an unfamiliar place–in a body whose
elemental composition was as alien to my experience as though the world were built upon different foundations–she was human in all parts but somehow, in her tiniest components, formed in a different way. I grappled momentarily with my shock. Ay, she had limbs and organs, blood and heart and brain, so why …? I was a sculptor who, having expected fromite, finds himself working instead with the finest crystal. Here I found an elegant, enigmatic magic woven into the warp and weft of her being, magic intrinsic and not learned, magic of untold potency–here was design and artistry, complexity and balance and beauty, I had never before encountered but knew I was uniquely positioned to appreciate.
And I had imagined healing this woman’s vision?
The odious arrogance of El Shashi!
But time was short.
I reached for her reserves. There are hidden depths every person has, hid away by Mata against an evil day. These I stoked to wakefulness. I husbanded and focussed her strength. I attempted to rouse her magic. She coughed and retched, and then fell into a more normal sleep. A pleasing hint of colour stole into her cheeks.
Now I must row, though it burned me as the fires of Nethe itself.
Three makh later, having kept ahead of the Wurm all the while, it came to my mind that I might raise the sail and save myself the labour.