The Legend of El Shashi (51 page)

“How do you defend yourselves?” puffed Eliyan. The oldest of our number, he was not enjoying having to run.

I saw Eliyan levitating slightly over the rougher parts of our trail. We had now crested the hill, which had only hid a taller hill behind it. There, upon the brow of the hill, blazed a fortress that had to be our goal. It was tall and devoid of ornament, a forbidding massif clearly constructed for nought but stolid defence. I could not tell the source of its light, but it glowed with commendable and welcoming urgency upon that hillside; my quoph leaped at the sight.

“Conserve your energies, Sorcerer Eliyan. The more you employ your magic, the faster Birial will corrupt your flesh.”

“So the castle … has self-sustaining Webs?”

“Indeed,” said Torbin, who on the downhill was now stretching his long legs, easily matching the best efforts of my companions. “As is the Banishment–self-regenerating, and self-sustaining, even though so many creatures feed upon it.”

“These … Transformed … are the feeders?”

“Ay, and the Karak.”

At this dour assessment, Eliyan uttered a low curse. His words were well-chosen. All around us now, as the darkness deepened, we heard strange cries tracking our progress. Skin like leather rustled over stone. Wings flapped ominously. A wild chattering swelled, as though the wild and fey things of Birial were discussing what kind of a meal they were about to enjoy. I found myself pressing closer to my sister as her hands lit up, suddenly encased in globes of icy blue light. The darkness backed up. But only a little.

Claws skittered
upon rocky surfaces. I saw a low, hunch-backed beast rise from the boulders nearby, shielding its eyes from our light with a gnarled arm. It bayed as a hound upon the scent. As if this were a signal, a sudden rushing in the air and a thudding and scratching upon the ground heralded a rush of creatures such as I had never imagined in the darkest of my Ulim-spawned nightmares. Truly told, they were nought but a wall of fangs and claws and wild, hairy faces illuminated in the piercing glow of my companions’ lights. Where the light touched their flesh it blistered and sizzled with apparently excruciating pain.

“Keep close!” cried Torbin.

Ay, I had no need to be told. The creatures bellowed as they made small darts at the ambit of our light. They twisted and leaped in a demented rage. We were surrounded by a cacophony of shrieks and roars and whistles, as though we led in our train Ulim’s Hunt, and commanded his demons onward to the destruction of all humankind.

A shout from Amal warned me as a burning mass of limbs and wings plummeted from above right into my path. I hurdled
the mess without breaking step. I saw Eliyan loose a bubble of light. It swirled away from us, illuminating a sky thick with creatures shaped in the form bats, but many times larger, and other gliding and muscular bounding things with half-formed wings that never allowed them full flight. A dozen creatures flung themselves at that point of light with howls of hatred, and smothered it utterly. I smelled burning hair and flesh on the breeze.

These were the Transformed. And these ghastly, twisted, no-longer-human things had once been beautiful Eldrik?
My gorge rose in my throat.

We fled. We raced down a long, scrubby slope in our bubble of safety, beset on all sides by these creatures.
Only the circle of light kept them at bay–and that, barely. Why had Torbin waited so long to invite us to Sanctuary, I wondered? Was this some kind of test? A rite of passage?

Suddenly Amal swerved. “Watch out!”

A wall of hairy backs loomed before me. I was so intent on running that I smacked straight into them and bounced off. A pang of fear and betrayal burst upon my senses. Amal had my hand. She led me to my right, around the blockade. My boots splashed through a stream. Eliyan fired off dozens of tiny darts of light. Wherever they touched flesh they spurted into flame, and would not be put out. Screeches of pain erupted from our pursuers. I glimpsed them writhing and contorting upon the ground. The stricken were attacked by their fellows and torn apart before my eyes.

“What was that?” Eliyan snarled at Torbin.

“They sense your power.”

My
scathing reply transformed into a wolf-like howl as I felt something snag my ankle. The ground punched the air out of my lungs. I saw an arm cunningly outthrust from beneath a boulder. The owner of that arm gripped my ankle as though I were shackled with cold iron.

My companions skidded to a halt
ahead, leaving me at the very periphery of our circle of light. What I had taken for a boulder roared to life. It reared above me. Half-seen in the dimness, the creature resembled an alligator with arms. The body was tall and massive, the stubby legs supported by a long ridged tail. Huge jaws snapped at my neck. I jerked backward. My bones ground together as the creature firmed its grip and dragged me toward the darkness. Its arm smoked. The scaly armoured flesh hissed and bubbled as the light intensified, but the creature did not let go. Instead, it took a great leap for the blackness.

I
liberated my own power. I knew I could have stopped his heart. Instead, I tried a healing. Power, huge power, pulsed across the great distance to the Wurm.

He
heaved a great sigh, as a sudden breeze soughing in a tree, and slumped on top of me. For a breath, I looked into the eyes of humanity.

Then the creatures of
Birial fell upon him and tore him limb from limb. Dark claws scooped out a mass of intestines and stuffed them into a yawning maw. Blood slopped warm across my chest and face. Scaly hard feet scrabbled all around me. I smelled rank animal bodies squabbling for any piece of meat. But then Amal burst into the midst of the creatures like a blade of brilliant starlight, blazing her fury. As the yammariks own, she resembled Mata in Her Doublesun glory. The creatures recoiled from her presence with guttural cries of dismay. In a blink the circle was clear of all but scraps of that Transformed man, and Arlak Sorlakson–sore shaken, mostly unharmed.

“Quickly!” called Torbin.

I surged to my feet with a cry of horror. That man! The corruption, the bestial hungers within! He was nought but a rack upon which human flesh once hung. This was the fate of the Banished? This was Lucan’s great work? A holy cleansing of the
gyael-irfa?

Amal took my hand. We ran together.

Quietly, in my quoph, I vowed before Mata and before man: I would rid the world of Birial’s prison, or perish in the trying. This outpost of Nethe had no place among the mortal lands.

Nought but Mata shall ever be,

My Sanctuary.

Inscription above the main door of Birial’s Sanctuary

As we pelted full-tilt up the gentle slope, the fortress above us loomed with all the beauty of a Mataflower of great price–at least to my fevered mind. A square, unadorned granite monolith, it seemed fused into the bedrock of Birial itself. The walls had to be twenty men tall. Pits on the walls cast a suns-bright light over the land about the castle, a light which reflected from the clouds roiling above. A massive tower at each corner sprouted conical protuberances that oriented ominously upon us as we approached.

Unassailable
, I thought. Immutable. And not a little scary. I could not wait to be behind those walls.

Torbin raised his hands and uttered a
terse word of command.

Without delay, a voice intoned, “Identify
yourselves to Sanctuary!”

I frowned. Had the fortress itself spoken?

Torbin, however, introduced himself and claimed safe passage. The expressionless voice said, “Enter Sanctuary.”

As we moved forward a brilliant beam seared the night. It left a glowing streak across my retinae. Several flying Transformed thudded to the ground around us. Eliyan’s head jerked.
I heard him mutter, “What is this?”

The light robed us. As we drew close beneath the mighty walls, a huge stone gateway rose silently upward. We entered a passage that
would have accommodated fifty times our number. It was so dazzlingly illuminated that we had to squint to see anything at all.

“They have power,” Amal said aside to Eliyan.

“Drawn from the Banishment,” he said. “How is your mother, Amal-
nish?
”

“Gravely ill, Eliyan-
tor
.”

I glanced between the two of them. Was this a secret signal? An alert?

We padded soft-footed along that passage. Suddenly, an enormous force smote me to the ground. Beside me, I saw Eliyan and Amal fall too–but Amal’s image faded before my eyes, and swam away like a translucent silverfish. She disappeared into the fortress. I blinked.

“Catch
that Sorceress!” shouted Torbin.

Eliyan, truly told,
smiled. He cleared his throat to gain Torbin’s attention, and then said, “A strange way to greet guests, old friend.”

Somewhere beyond the light Amal was creating quite a ruckus.

“By Ulim’s hairy backside, can a hundred Sorcerers not catch one woman?” Torbin cried irritably.

“Oh, you’ll find her
rather hard to catch,” Eliyan noted. He faded too, and then rose to his feet as though the force which held me prisoner were a scrap of the finest Sulmian silk. “It’s an Armittalese trick. Takes a fair amount of practise to master, Torbin. Practise you were ever too impatient to apply yourself to.”

“I’ll turn the light cannon on her!” snarled Torbin.

“I’ll turn your walls to dust.”

“I’ll
kill you with a snap of my fingers!”

“And his Wurm will level your entire island.”
After waving noncommittally at me, Eliyan examined his fingernails. “Now, do dispense of this silliness, Torbin, and let us talk together. Jyla has returned–”

“A fact that does not escape me
, thanks to you!”

“–and El Shashi’s Wurm is on its way to smash into
this island. How long do you think it will take to cross the two hundred leagues from Eldoran, El Shashi?”

“A couple of days at most, Eliyan.
It is very quick across the ocean.”

“El Shashi?” Torbin’s
dark eyes glittered. “Jyla Banished
him?
”

Eliyan was playing his game as cool as an Alldark ice-storm, I thought. Should I be impressed? Or annoyed? Either way, he had enough of Torbin’s ear that the force which trapped me
, abated.

The leader of the Banished
snapped his fingers at me as though I were a hound. “Come. I will summon the Council.”

We crossed the wide central square of Sanctuary, which was filled with black-bearded ibex the islanders raised for meat, milk
, and clothing. A thousand curious eyes tracked us. I especially disliked the way they stared at Amal–as though she were a tasty dish brought to table for evensup. Mata forbid one of them should lay a hand upon her! But Amal needed nought of my protection. And she felt their regard too. She drew herself upright, and her gaze flashed about her.

“What are these light cannon?” asked Eliyan.

“Protection,” said Torbin. “These you see in Sanctuary are the last of the Banished. All the rest have turned into the Transformed, or been killed by the Transformed or the Karak. These last anna have gone ill with us. The increase in numbers of the Banished was insupportable. We tried to raise a second Sanctuary on the far side of Birial, but failed.”

“Jyla purged Eldoran. The Third Purge.”

“Well we know it,” Torbin said bitterly. Without any apparent command on his part, a door slid open in the fortress wall ahead of us and we found ourselves in a great hall. The walls were sombre slabs of grey Birial stone, apparently seamlessly fitted together from the smooth granite floor to a plain ceiling arched high overhead. “I will summon the others.”

After bidding us be seated at a round granite table which dominated the near end of the
hall, he added, “You asked about the cannon. Truly told, they are based on work done by Jyla when she was still called Aulynni. Before she Transformed, she was one of us. And before that, she was an Inquisitor in Eldoran. One of the best; certainly one of the most powerful, and undeniably brilliant. She herself sent many souls here. Within each of the corner towers is a tall room. A Web of Sulangi collects
lillia
. Jyla herself designed the mechanism by which those Webs sustain and charge themselves with huge reserves of power. And she laid the groundwork at least for the workings of the cannon. Each addresses an overlapping portion of land or sky, which is divided by the dyndigit into millions of units. When a hostile creature is detected their movement through those units is tracked by magic. Should they approach beyond a certain threshold, a beam of pure light, concentrated by special dynilenses and fuelled by
lillia,
burns them to cinders. And this is how we protect ourselves without expending our own precious magic.”

I soberly considered how the Lymarian war
of my youth might have fared with weapons such as these. So this was what preoccupied the Birial islanders in their isolation? But–I shuddered–they had good reason. Even inside the fortress I could hear muffled cries and shrieks splitting the night. And always, the subsonic vibration of the storm.

I clamped down on these thoughts to
run my eyes over Torbin’s colleagues as they entered the hall and arranged themselves around the table. Not a word was spoken. Despite the room’s ample magical illumination their faces were as shuttered as Yarabi Vale houses on an Alldark evening. As a group they reminded me of a cabal of diseased thieves I had once been ‘encouraged’ to treat–at knifepoint–in Lorimere. Strange how I no longer feared the white of death. Death was my dear friend. Truly told, a friend I would have welcomed in place of the abyss of my loss.

They all had skin maladies akin to Torbin’s–some better, some cracked and bleeding from
open sores. How did they know when a person would Transform, I wondered? What happened then?

Eliyan told his tale with typical economy. Most of these men and women were once ranking Sorcerers and Warlocks in Eldoran. They did not need to know much of Jyla. They asked few questions. But when my time came, their dark eyes fixated upon me as I related how P’dáronï had thrust Jyla through the Portal.
Only one face registered mild sympathy at the note of distress in my voice. I wondered who would be first to ask for healing.

Then we spoke of the Wurm. I told them what I
understood of the beast, the nature of the curse, and how it had been my very shadow for gantuls. When I spoke of how I believed Jyla had once tried to break the Banishment using the Wurm’s power, loaded glances flashed around the table that assured me these Banished were aware of this event, too.

“So when the Wurm arrives at Birial with the Portal in its belly,” Eliyan said, gazing about that cold table, “what, think you, will happen?”

His question rose unchallenged to the rafters.

Torbin said, “It will first strike the storm. No mere animal would withstand the storm–being both physical and magical.”

“How big is the Wurm, El Shashi?”

I replayed the stormtide in my mind. I hadn’t seen the Wurm
… but I had, previously, though P’dáronï’s eyes. “A hundred and twenty paces, Eliyan–”

“Huh, a trifling Wurm!” interrupted one of the Sorcerers.

“Wide,” I said. “That’s the width of its mouth.” An audible gasp rippled around the table. I had their attention now, I thought grimly. Serve these dour-faced unbelievers right!

“Impossible,” they muttered. “What force could sustain such a conjuration?”

“And that was last time, when it wiped Gethamadi off the map,” I put in, as dourly as I could manage. “The Wurm doubles in size–approximately–with each summoning. And it doubles in power.”

When the Sorcerers had no reply to this, Amal added, “As a prophetess said:
‘Name him God-mountain, sleeping at the root of the world, exalted and cunning in ancient ways, the Great Wurm’.
”

The Great Wurm! P’dáronï’s poem. I stared at my half-sister with dawning understanding. Mata meant this to be.
This was the rising of the Great Wurm–the last rising of the creature. Perhaps. If it did not destroy us all. If I could find a way not to let it … to halt it … or should I? Perhaps the key was my death? Perhaps this was why my grephe tingled so?

As El Shashi’s last stumble crosses the waters
… was I meant to be here? How had P’dáronï foreseen this?

The doors of the hall banged open. We startled.
“Torbin! You must look at this!” There was a note in the servant’s voice that had half the room already upon its feet. “Up on the battlements …”

I followed the thudding feet.
The leaders of Birial did not stand upon dignity. They ran. There were stairs up to the great walls of Sanctuary, but they did not bother with those. Standing in demarcated zones, we were whisked to the top on magical lifts triggered by a lever–again, supplied by the magic of Birial. I was beginning to wonder how much all of this sucking upon the teat of the Banishment contributed to the gruesome corrupting quality of the magic. Was
lillia
different here? Was there a corrupting factor in the air or the environment? But I was the man bringing the Wurm to their shores. I was surprised they had not thought to end my existence forthwith.

I laughed cheerlessly at myself.
Truly told, and here was El Shashi already making plans to heal these people. First I might ask, how would the Banishment affect my own magic?

But as I
rested my hands between the teeth of the battlements and leaned outward, these thoughts were dashed from my mind.

Out t
here on the horizon, all around us, I saw Banishment storm howling its circular path around the Dark Isle. Above, hugely swollen clouds hung above the fortress, great wet sacks bulging with their loads of water. Monstrous, deformed bats flitted beneath them. Away from the walls, down near the beach, I could make out what I mistook at first for a forest. Mata’s breath! The Transformed! Thousands of the creatures were gathered in their dumb masses to gape at what transfixed me. The storm was turning blue. A lustrous band of turquoise began as an intense blot directly opposite Sanctuary and quickly smeared away to my right hand at the wind-storm’s force. By now there was enough
lillia
present in that moving wall to light the whole scene in unnatural, moon-like effulgence. This light did not bother the Banished. They seemed mesmerised.

“The Wurm must be feeding the Portal,” I heard Eliyan note behind me. “All that stored
lillia
is being poured through the Portal into the storm.”

All along the battlements, hundreds of Banished Eldrik joined us to gawp slack-jawed at this spectacle.

“Wind-speed has nearly doubled to thirty leagues per makh,” another voice put in. I glanced at the man. He held a strange instrument, shaped like a Frenjj horn, to his left eye, while twiddling several knobs with his hand.

“What will happen to the Banishment spell when that
torrent of power is added?” Eliyan wondered aloud, stroking his beard as he always did when he was thinking hard. “Is there an upper limitation? There is certainly a Web of Sulangi which aims to sustain it … but an overload? Mata’s truth, I don’t know what this means.”

I summoned Janos’ memories. “Eliyan-
tor
. The pyramid of the seventh construct of the sustaining Web has no upper limitation. There’s no forced bleed of power, save the natural friction and attrition attributed to the storm’s power and the double shield it contains.”