The Legend of El Shashi (22 page)

Arlak-nih!
The first time P’dáronï had ever addressed me in the familiar-intimate form! Trying to keep my voice somewhat even despite that jolt to my equanimity, I said, “Congratulations, o Master Physician. I shall henceforth treat you with the deference due your station. Now, I’ve a confession to make.”

“A confession?”

“Truly told, it is but a trivial thing,” I chuckled. “What does it tell you that beforehand, I bought you a little present with every intent of rejoicing at your success?”

Covering her mouth with her hand, P’dáronï began to cry.
“I’m just so happy, Arlak,” she sobbed. “Throughout this eventide you’ve proved a bad actor and a worse liar. Thank you!”

*  *  *  *

It was Doublesun and I had walked to P’dáronï’s
holia
, on the pretext of discussing a scrolleaf on dementia, to share evensup with her. She lived half a league from Eliyan’s estate. The day’s sultry heat was just beginning to abate. I had not expected anyone else to attend, but found several other friends already lounging upon her cushions, nibbling on toasted lahi-bread dipped in small bowls of P’dáronï’s spicy gorda fish
illiathi
, an Eldrik favourite that I had learned varied from very piquant to set-your-tongue-aflame peppery. One of P’dáronï’s female friends had brought her companion, a scholar named Pedyk, who had been one of my first tutors in Eldoran. I remembered Pedyk with particular dislike due to his scathing tongue and ill-disguised hatred of foreigners.

So the scene was not best set when Pedyk set about needling me about my ‘quaint’ Umarik accent. This much I handled graciously, but as the
eventide wore on his barbs grew more personal and galling–fuelled by a bottle of illegal liqueur which he had bought along to lubricate himself. No-one else partook.

Later, he cut across my conversation with a sneer: “You couldn’t cure blindness.”

“I have healed many blind people,” I said. “Often cataracts or–”

“But not someone blind from birth.”

“Aye, that too–”

“You shouldn’t lie in front of all these people,” Pedyk said, mock-pleasantly. “Or is that another of your Umarite skills? No one can heal a person blind from birth.”

“I surely can!”

“You sound so arrogant when you say it like that.”

“More
illiathi
, Pedyk?”

He waved the peace offering aside, intent on my reddening face. “Come on, admit the lie
. We’re all friends here.”

I growled, “I’
m no liar! When I say I can, I can!”

“So, why don’t you prove it on your Armittalese
whore here?” His tone was so matter-of-fact that at first I was not sure I had heard the insult aright. “Or is it one of those outlandish things you Umarite barbarians enjoy, sleeping with a slave who can’t see you for who you truly are?”

Even the silence was mortified.

I was stranded somewhere between distress for P’dáronï’s humiliation, and the need to defending my powers and capabilities–so much so, that I could think of not a single coherent word.

P’dáronï said tightly, “I would not have you do it, Arlak.”

I knew she was upset, mark my words, but an accusation simply exploded out of my own hurt, “
What?
Don’t you trust me either?”

“No, wait
–”

“You know I can, P’dáronï! Why not do it now?”

“Allow me to explain!”

“No, there is nothing to explain!”

Pedyk slapped his knees in drunken glee. “Oh, this is too
precious
for words!”

P’dáronï raised her hands as if imploring Mata to intervene. “Everyone
–out!” she commanded. “Dinner is ended.”

And
, with a tiny genuflection, she vanished from our sight.

*  *  *  *

Twice, running through the streets of Eldoran during my early-morn exercise, I had been turned back by my shadows. ‘Not permitted,’ they insisted, politely but firmly. There was an area of the city, near the central gardens, that I was not allowed to see. Even Eliyan, when first showing me the sights of Eldoran, had politely deflected my questions about it. It struck me, even though the city was built in the bowl created by the confluence of three hills, that the area had been purposely constructed to prevent viewing from afar.

It was
there I ran.

Four days after the disastrous meal at P’dáronï’s
holia
, just before the makh of dioni orison, I set out for my usual run. My quoph pulsed with feelings long-suppressed. The world appeared bathed in colours and beauty I had never appreciated in quite the same way before. It was the last morn of Doublesun. Already the temperature was rising as the suns would soon make their double-act sunrise, within a span of each other, and the white heat of Belion would blister the lands. As I stretched my legs, taking the road from Eliyan’s estate to the nearby outskirts of Eldoran, I saw the usual shadows in my wake. No mind. Mark my words, I know how to run!

And I knew, this morning of all mornings, that I should hurry. A strange compulsion drove me. My thoughts and deeds were not my own. The air
felt pregnant with promise. Whatever my fate, I wished to meet it head-on.

For two makh I led the guards a merry chase through the Mylldell Woods, for I was familiar with the area after anna of regular runs a
round the city. My quoph drank of the sylvan peace around me; the meandering brooks and warbling birds, and the fresh scents of Eldoran’s pretty morn-flowers. My mind ranged near and far–to the curse upon my life, to the regrets of an unthinking youth who had once sold his services to a brothel, to a forbidden Matabond with my half-sister … ay, and now my heart would entwine another’s fate with mine?

No! A
visceral groan shook my body. But my feet would dance rather than run. My quoph soared. I knew, but refused to accept, that it was hopeless. What man or woman in all of Mata’s creation ever mastered the secrets of the heart?

My guards
began to struggle as tiredness crept into their limbs. Choosing my moment as I rounded a tall rock standing next to the trail, I stopped abruptly and took off at right-angles to my previous course. The faint trail led on several hundred paces, before joining another road back to the northern quarter of the city. I trod softly, not wishing to disturb a leaf or blade of grass, counting in my head up to the moment the guards would approach the rock. I crashed to my belly and peered back the way I had come.

Puffing and wheezing like a brace of elderly jatha, the guards charged along the trail they thought I must have taken. In short order the woods were silent again. I picked myself up and trotted back towards Eldoran.

Free–for once, free of their infernal vigilance. Eyes, always eyes watching me! It was enough to drive a man to extremity.

I stripped off my shirt. Beneath it I had secreted the hooded hassock of a manservant. I drew it over my head and arranged the large, drooping hood as best I was able, cheering my forethought at practising with the garment beforehand. When I entered the city I blended right in. Mingling with the morning crowds, I worked my way south, towards my goal. There could be only o
ne reason for a forbidden place, I had decided.

Banishment.

Truly told, I was frustrated with life amongst the Eldrik. Everlasting perfection … give me the chaos of the marketplace any day. A society under impeccable control, yet there were dark undercurrents which defied my understanding. Endless smiles and pleasantries, but hardly a hint of knowing the person beneath.

Save
for P’dáronï of Armittal.

So, Arlak
had finally come to admit it! Indeed I did, and more. Our enforced separation forced me at last to confess the true depth of my affection for her. The ‘Armittalese whore’, I mouthed to myself, trying and failing to restrain my hatred of Pedyk. Trust him to play the spoiler.

But he had made a fool own up to love.

Which was greater, my fears, or this extraordinary hope that consumed my every waking makh, indeed, my very quoph? P’dáronï … my whole world breathed nought but her name! When had she come to mean so much to me?

Oh Mata, I am not ready for this!

Rubiny loomed too large in my heart to allow another woman purchase, even one of P’dáronï’s charm and intelligence. Despite that Rubiny was my half-sister. And her beauty! I should not forget where I had started–shallow cad. P’dáronï deserved better than to become another notch amongst my dalliances.

Besides, I h
ad lied to her from the outset. I had lied to everyone in Eldoran, but P’dáronï more than most. As I remembered Janos opining, ‘Truth is the best foundation for any relationship, Arlak. Beware the power of lies. Do not be seduced by the ease of a lying tongue, for one lie leads to another greater than the first.’

When last did Janos’ voice echo in
my mind?

Sidling around the corner of a building, I found myself in a clear, circular space, some one hundred
and fifty paces across by my estimate. Directly before me stood a large, plain pergola, set on a raised platform girt in pristine white cloth. Upon it, clad in robes the colour of a splash of blood, stood a man I took for a yammarik, and at intervals around the edge of the platform some fifteen or more black sherimol robes of the Sorcerers Guild–Eliyan’s colleagues. Beyond them I noticed a coterie of samite-robed men, resplendent in robes of such perfect white I knew only magic could keep them so. Only once had I seen a white robe on the streets of Eldoran. Never a whole group together. Interrogators. Ulim’s ghouls! Ironically, they wore a colour that to the Umarite in me symbolised death.

My gaze flickered over the
pergola. There was something in there, suspended in the air between the white arches, something formless and oily-black, exactly as I remembered the smoke Jyla had once conjured from her brazier. The sight of it gave me lyomflesh.

A sparse crowd
stood in that space, looking on with expressions that even for the ever-watchful Eldrik, struck me as oddly vacuous. Were the proceedings enough to transfix them so? Or was it the
gyael-irfa
, that shared experience from which I was barred? As I watched, a troop of guards marched up to the pergola. In their midst they held a man who could only be a prisoner.

So much for the perfection of Eldoran
, I sneered inwardly. Look, a common criminal …
Pedyk!
My eyes nearly leaped from their sockets. Dear Mata!

Ducking my head
, I struggled to school my features into the impassivity of the other watchers. The crimson robe on the platform intoned, “Judged and found wanting. Pedyk of Eldoran. Guilty of the abuse of banned substances. Guilty of neglecting his scholarly duties. Guilty of addiction. Guilty of grieving the
gyael-irfa!
”

“
Ahammae mor morbinduu
,” hissed the crowd. Separation is the penalty.

“The decree of the Council must stand. The guilty must be punished, lest the justice of the people be found wanting.”

“
Ahu, ahammae mor morbinduu.
”

“The
gyael-irfa
must be cleansed, lest all fail together.”

“
AHU, AHAMMAE MOR MORBINDUU!
”

A deep, mournful horn sounded a single note, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Now another joined it, sounding a terrible discord that set my teeth on edge. Truly
told I am no musician, but this was an offence upon the ear, as if two salcats were mewling in a mating fight.

I dared
to look again. The black robes turned inward. Chanting together, each raised his or her staff to the skies. There came a roaring of wind. The blackness was changing, clarifying, taking shape. I realised that the roaring issued from within the portal. Sparks exploded from its mouth and blew over the crowd, in all directions, but the people did not flinch. I thought I saw tentacles rising from the darkness beyond, and a grey, blasted isle reeling at the blows of mountainous seas. An icy wind whipped around the circle, moaning wickedly as it fled between the buildings.

Over the noise, I
heard a voice whimpering, protesting, pleading, as the impassive guards dragged Pedyk forward. I have seldom seen a man experience mortal fear. Pedyk, in utter despair, stared into Ulim’s very pit. His lank, greasy hair was plastered to his sallow jowls like old seaweed to a rock.

Still, the crimson robe’s booming monotone could be heard plainly over the din. “Pedyk of Eldoran, you have been judged and found wanting. Do you accept this punishment?”

They dumped Pedyk on the platform as if he were a sack of rimmerwort root. The guards took a good grip of his arms. He thrashed in his captors’ grip and shrieked: “Death to the Banishment! You will pay for this, I swear! You will–”

As the guards pitched him head-first into the maelstrom, his cries were cut off. I lowered my head. The
Sorcerers chanted, “Consecrate us, dear Mata, with the spirit of wisdom and unity, that we may better serve you …”