“
I yearn for your touch, Arlak-
nevsê
,” she interrupted, clutching my arm with both hands and pressing the slender length of her body suggestively against mine. “Shall we tarry here awhile?”
My sweetbread turned into a stone in my mouth. By sheer force of will, I moved my jaw up and down. Never mind that she almost undid my self-restraint at a stroke
–this was not P’dáronï! She was passionate, truly told, with frankness and abandon that sometimes startled me, but not in the manner of a cheap brothel wench.
“Tell me how
you Armittalese pair up, man and woman.”
“
Liaisons are formed between families of similar social standing, Arlak. The young men and women of each such pool of families–they are large; the word is
irahi
in Old Armittalese–choose from among their peers, most often for love. The vows are called
oe’e lorai yohii
and are made for life.”
“And would they have children immediately?”
“Most will wait a time, perhaps three or four anna–”
“Are any
… not useful … amongst Armittalese society?”
<
Command: seduction-female-redirect>
P’dáronï slipped her arm about my neck. “Have I tired you out, El Shashi?” And she
kissed me passionately. Almost, almost I threw her from me as I might a snake. “What’s the matter, Arlak
-nevsê?
”
‘You!’ I wanted to shout. ‘Who by Nethe’s
hottest hells are you?’ Instead, I kissed her ardently in return, and ran my hands up and down her back–which surely amounted to no hardship whatsoever–and meantime tried to think furiously through what I had perceived, which was by far the harder task given my body’s response to her flirtation. This was what Orik Sorlakson had bequeathed me. Seventy-odd percent ownership of a group of perfect slaves, who never ran away, always worked hard, were perfectly loyal and trustworthy and … were they Nummandori spies in Eldoran? No, surely not. But P’dáronï was certainly inhabited by something I did not understand. Something that issued mental commands. A demon? Mata forbid!
She was uncannily beautiful. One kiss from her could drive a man to distraction; her repeated kisses were tearing holes in any logical framework I attempted to form in my mind. Succubus kisses? Kisses controlled from elsewhere by another being or creature or
… or by P’dáronï herself?
Was this the signature work of the Nummandori Overlords? If so, then there were evidently more ways of controlling a populace than the
gyael-irfa
and Banishment!
And I had
allowed this woman into my mind?
“Dear sweet Mata!” I
muttered–minded of some demonic beast about to sink its fangs into my jugular, I rather wished she were not nibbling so sweetly at my neck.
Oddly, P’dáronï herself did not seem at all aware of those interruptions in her thoughts. Perhaps only I, as El Shashi, could have detected them. As we tumbled onto
a grassy spot beside the trail in a tangle of limbs, I muttered, “I shall withhold no longer, P’dáronï–I want to have a child with you.”
I shuddered at the tenor of that cold, unfeeling mental command. Had I not as much asked for an answer to the Armittalese methods of birth control? Focus, Arlak! I had to see through what I suspected, if I could … but P’dáronï, meantime, had contrived by some magical artifice to drop my trousers to my knees and was shucking her own clothing with wild abandon.
But I
shuddered within my quoph, saying, “You’re so gorgeous. Mmm … tell me, P’dáronï, how the–oh, that is heaven–how the Nummandori … oh … control you?”
<
!!OVERRIDE: emergency-shutdown-priority-highest!!>
P’dáronï slumped upon my chest.
“
Larathi!
What–P’dáronï! P’dáronï-
nevsêsh!
Oh Mata, what have I done?”
Thank Mata!
Slow and steady, I felt her pulse throb beneath my fumbling fingertip touch. My own was leaping about with frantic haste. Me and my idiotic, bloody-minded determination to prove my suspicions–at what cost?
So here was a turn for the most vulture-minded of men. Mentally, I threw up my hands and levelled a huge sigh at the heavens. Unbidden, Janos’ voice commented dryly in my head, ‘Learn to fight one battle at a time, Arlak!
’ This was in reference to my struggles to simultaneously train to the glove a falcon chick I had rescued, and protect my rimmerwort crop from the damage of an early frost.
That chill breeze swelling from the east was the harbinger of my first battle.
The Wurm. I rolled her off and winced as P’dáronï’s head struck a stone. I healed her with a brief touch, shuddered as I denied my healing power’s rising to quarry that thing out of her mind, and rescued my trousers absent-mindedly. My eyes skated over the sculpted planes of her cheekbones to her eyes, as unseeing now in repose as ever she were awake. What lay hid within? Was her blindness the lesser … problem? Handicap? I found myself flailing about for a good word like a madman threshing hewehat stalks with his hands.
Rising, I
scooped the unconscious form of P’dáronï of Armittal up into my arms and kissed her tenderly. “Sorry, my beloved. I am so sorry. Father Yatak says that to heal is to extend Mata’s grace, one precious person at a time. But how will you ever receive this grace, not only for your sight, but for what lurks within you?”
A secret as deep-hidden as my Wurm.
I squared my shoulders. Would I have committed my life into her hands had I known these things? I told myself I would still rather walk this road with her than without.
“Priority?
” I chuckled, harshly. “Priority one, don’t become a Wurm’s lunch; two, don’t get killed by the woman you love; three, ransack Janos’ memories for clues; four, find passage to Eldoran; five … deal with the Sorceress. Ay, Arlak? With the luck you’ve enjoyed all your life?”
What did luck have to do with anything?
I own one morn Gethamadi was a town. The ocean rose. And then it was gone. Such was the fate of Gethamadi.
Soihon al’Thab kin Tar’ka,
When Gods Walked: Untold Tales of El Shashi
I stood with my beloved upon the heights of a headland. Holding hands, we gazed out over the rippling turquoise waters of the Gulf of Erbon. A briny breeze ruffled our hair and plucked our clothes mischievously. The rugged peninsula dropped in monumental dark cliffs down to the sea, far below. A great bay curved around to our right hand, a sweep of dramatic splendour broken in places by tiny cream beaches upon which the shy seribik sea-serpents nested–I could see the dots of their sandy nests even from where we stood.
Truly told, a blind woman did look, and did follow what I pointed out to her–imperfectly, but effectively
, I believe.
This is the seventh sense. The secret seventh sense, which
, in order to forestall a lengthy philosophical aside, I shall reduce to calling ‘the sense of magic’. Some call it ‘second sight,’ although it should more accurately be called the third, as it follows the sight and insight of the grephe-sense. It underpins the
gyael-irfa
of the Eldrik. It allowed P’dáronï the power of magical sight. It sang together in our very souls, needing no physical joining of bodies as man and woman to bind us together irrevocably, to whisper along the pathways of our thoughts at all makh and even through the night. It is the sense that caused me to claim: ‘No other has ever loved as I.’ A delicious untruth, I own, but a nectar sweeter than the quoph can bear to refuse.
“Gethamadi
lies directly across the bay,” I said. “We must tarry there for food.”
“Our very bones groan a paean of pain,” agreed
P’dáronï. “Our daily orison to Ulim.”
“P’dáronï-
nevsêsh,
I don’t believe that,
”
I disagreed, but gently. Even exhausted as I was, I wished to be gentle with her. She marked it well and wondered at the change in me, I knew. “The Wurm is but an instrument.”
“Wielded by Jyla.”
“Ay.”
“She is down there.”
“
Mata’s breath!
”
P’dáronï tapped
my hand insistently. “Arlak, you’re stronger than you think. Please.”
“Sorry.” I shook my head. “Sorry, a hundred times over
… it’s Jyla? Are you certain?” I massaged her fingers and eased the bruised joints with an automatic touch of my mind.
“Is Doublesun hot,
Arlak-
nevsê?
Is the ocean wide? Is the beauty of Eldoran celebrated by the poets–”
“Fie, woman!
Be at peace,” I laughed. “A foolish question, truly told, of which I repent.”
“
You Umarites always question the obvious,” P’dáronï noted, but rose upon her toes to punctuate each word of her response with a kiss upon my stubbly cheek. “You’re scratchy.”
“Woman, I desire a moment’s coherent thought,” I growled, but without rancour.
“And I am half-Eldrik, may I remind you?”
“I didn’t know I was courting a timber wolf.”
I laughed, but recognised there was within both of us an instant, unspoken tension that we were trying to beat away with our frivolity. “We have to try to help Amal.”
The Wurm was still advancing. I
felt it in my marrow, although I had hoped this day would be the last of our run. I must have miscounted. I did not know how I had come from the foothills of the Lyrn Mountains to the Nugar river, truly told–if indeed we were carried by jerlak. Neither did P’dáronï have any recollection of that time. That was the problem. We did not know when exactly the twenty-eighth day would be run, and the Wurm would repair to its rest.
But we were ready to rest. Oh, Mata, were we ready!
“I wouldn’t have made this run without you, P’dáronï.”
“Me neither,” she retorted, and we laughed together.
Only with her power, I reflected, had I been able to find enough rest–barely enough rest–to stave off collapse. And only with my power could she have fled so far, so fast. We had both damaged our bodies; we both were skin on a rack of bones, and not a hairsbreadth of fat remained to cover our muscles or pad our bones. Mata grant us the strength …
“
We must,” said P’dáronï. “She’s somewhere down there amongst those ships in the harbour, I sense, although from this distance–”
“Closer, then. Will Jyla sense the use of your power if you jump us around the bay?”
“I don’t believe so, Arlak-
nih
. This teleportation is a modification of the environment immediately around us–almost like folding a message. Can you hear the Qur’lik message drum?”
“I can,” said I, repressing a shudder. I was growing more skilled at the onion of Dissembling than I would have wanted to, but it was the only way to manage my instinctive response to that cold, impersonal override command structure. “
Are you still able–?”
“I’m not
that
selfish!”
“Beloved, what you are
is tired. Shattered–we both are.”
<
Pulse: apologies-stupid-exhaustion>
“Now I’m the slavering wolf. Come. And keep your Dissembling as tight as a two-terl miser.”
My chuckle at her borrowing one of my expressions
hiccupped as we flickered and reappeared half a league around the corner of the bay. What a strange feeling, as though the sound had for a moment dropped off the edge of eternity. We shifted again. It took longer this time, and as we wavered our way toward solidity, P’dáronï stumbled against me.
I caught her in my arms. “P’dáronï–”
“One more.”
“I’ll need you
r strength now … against Jyla.” She turned to me, cupping my cheeks with her hands. “Arlak–”
“I will run. You try to pinpoint the Eldrik ship.”
“Arlak–”
“Ay, I have no plan, no strength, and no hope against that Sorceress.
But I will not stand by and see Amal destroyed! Worse, turned to their side. Larathi, woman, why will you not just do what I say?”
Mark my words, I could think of a dozen good reasons not to do as I had just proposed, but as I stood there shaking with
vehemence, P’dáronï put her fingertip to my lips. “You are a good man, Arlak-
nevsê
. I feel as you do. I think I could grow used to this Arlak; he of passion and command and the unshakable desire to see this fate to its conclusion. And that’s why I will refuse Eliyan’s order until all that remains is the white of death. Mata grant us wings to fly.”
I kissed her fiercely.
And then we ran. I ran. I took the slight weight of P’dáronï upon my back and bounded across those cliff tops with the speed of the great eagles of Mara-Kern, where I had once taken an impromptu flying lesson, and the surety of a wild mountain goat whose cloven hooves can find purchase upon the very roof of the world itself. I poured strength into my muscles, tearing from my own person the nutrients to force my body into a sprint once more, a two-league sprint faster than perhaps any man has run before. Wind whistled eerily past my ears. I leaped sulg bushes in great bounds a dozen paces long and more, for ever since I fled Sillbrook Town after my beating at the hands of the possessed man Sathak, who I failed to heal, I had enjoyed greater strength than any ordinary man. How else could I run from the Wurm like some frightened rabbit evading the hawk’s swoop?
“
Larathi!
” I screamed as we pitched over the edge of an unseen precipice.
But my scream was cut off as we shifted through space and dropped heavily upon the far side.
“Fine,” I panted, thrusting off my skinned knees. “Have I told you
… you’re amazing?”
<
Reflect: you-too-sweet-man>
I raced
up a slope, heading for the top of the last hill before Gethamadi. It was a sizeable community, perhaps several thousand strong, which I had visited many anna before following my sojourn amongst the Frenjj, the beautiful, dark-skinned people of the Hakooi lowlands. That thought reminded me of a dusky desert maiden …
“Arlak!” P’dáronï hissed in my ear. “Who is Shalima and why do you have a picture of some bare-breasted, dagger-waving little
harridan in your mind?”
So much for my onion not leaking! That honesty I had feared
had bitten me more sorely than a desert cobra! I groaned. “Tell you … later?”
COMMAND: treacherous-shadworm-oh-you-will!>
Her mental shout made me wince
. “Any sign of–”
“Jyla seems to be moving without walking
.”
I puzzled this over for perhaps a hundred strides before I realised what she
must mean. “There’s a ship raising sail right now, coming out of the harbour,” I said. “Look with me–would that be where she is? It doesn’t look like a
tollish
ship to me. My father would have known. He was a sea captain.”
“Amongst other details you have yet to tell me about your past, evidently,” sniffed P’dáronï
, clearly unwilling to let the matter of Shalima drop. “Shall I take us there?”
Again, the translation
felt strained. We dropped upon the deck of that ship and I sensed, through the connection of our fingers, a powerful headache attack P’dáronï. I damped it at once.
But barely had our feet touched wood, when the Sorceress
Jyla whirled upon her heel amidships and came stalking toward us. A smile touched her lips.
“Why, Arlak,
you’re more persistent than a crazed torfly. Welcome aboard my ship.”
“Let Amal go!” I demanded.
Jyla paused close enough that I could see the detail of her black-in-black eyes, the way they seemed inured even to the brightest sunshine, oozing evil from their ageless depths. “But the Wurm is coming, Arlak. I felt the beast long before you arrived. I knew you were following. And, you fool, do you know what you’ve done?” She paused to laugh unpleasantly. “Look to the horizon behind me, you stupid lump of rockwood, and consider this–what path do you think the Wurm will take to this position?”
I stared at her. What was this? Where was Amal? Why
did Jyla affect such gratification?
“Across the bay,” P’dáronï said.
The dread in her voice mirrored the chill that skewered my quoph upon a spear of cold, heavy iron. I knew she was right.
“
Once, when I lived upon the accursed Isle of Birial,” Jyla said, “there was a seaquake nearby. It resulted in a stormtide. Do you know what a stormtide would do to Gethamadi, Arlak Sorlakson? How big has the Wurm grown? How many people think you live beside the peaceful ocean, oblivious to their fate?”
Her eyes studied me closely. A smile of malicious pleasure curved her lips as she considered my reaction to her words; as she doubtless read the calculation taking place behind my eyes. I could only imagine what a stormtide would do to Gethamadi. The pretty whitewashed cottages nestled down at the water’s edge. The teeming marketplace was right beside the harbour, where the fishing vessels would unload their catch directly into the vendors’ stalls. We had little time to act. Not enough time both to save Amal, and to save the three or four thousands who lived in that town.
Out there I saw a thin blue line had formed beneath a frowning storm-sky. That line crossed the bay from shore to ocean. A line that was moving toward us in a way contrary to the flow of the swell and the action of the waves; a line fuelled by enormous, unnatural power. Seen across the leagues it looked trivial, but I knew it had to be a wave many men high.
“You’re a monster!”
“Have a pleasant swim, El Shashi!”
And the last I saw of Jyla was her smile shimmering into the mist as P’dáronï translated us off that vessel. She took us straight to the Qur’lik message drummer. Indeed, we fell upon the drummer and his assistant, who swore and flailed at us briefly before they realised we meant no harm.
“My name is El Shashi,” I said to the startled drummer. “Anna ago I healed your eldest daughter of a harelip, right here in this square. Now I need you to listen well, for every life in this town depends upon
what we do. I swear this upon the holiness of Mata’s name.”
* * * *
Praise Mata for P’dáronï’s quick thinking. For listening even to the unspoken thoughts of my quoph; for knowing what was needed even when I did not.
With the help of the Qur’lik drummer we mobilised the townspeople to rush to the hills which overlooked their town. Before
a quarter makh had passed there was a great exodus from the town–jatha lowing, children crying, carts piled high with panicked humanity. Thrice did P’dáronï remove the elderly and the infirm from the town square, and each time, I felt her fade further and expected her return the less. The toll was immense. I touched her to aid her as I could, but despaired. It was too little; P’dáronï was too weak