The Legend of El Shashi (54 page)

“You … should heal the Wurm. And we should return to Sanctuary. Will it chase us now?”

I shook my head. “It was Benethar, Amal–Janos. All these anna, Janos was chasing me.”

And with those words,
a trembling began in my feet and rapidly overwhelmed my being. I put my face in my hands, and wept for the man who had been a true father to me, who I betrayed all those anna ago.

*  *  *  *

Amal and Eliyan found me atop the battlement of Sanctuary, staring out over the blasted fields of Birial. It was day–a grey, twilight day, as only Birial Island could have it. There lay the Wurm, able to rest at last. Benethar, I should learn to call it. I wondered if there was a way to transfer what Janos bequeathed me, into that great creature, and make him anew. Such dreams belonged to Mata rather than mortal men, but it did not stop me dreaming them.

Feeling
my dear friends waiting for me, I said softly to the wind and the storm:

“
As El Shashi’s last stumble crosses the waters,

Royal voice of thunder, an
d lightning that rends the sea’s belly,

Yes, he will rise from the depths
,

And from amidst the dark creatures will he appear
.”

Eliyan
’s sigh was replete with frustration. “Tell me again how you thought destroying the Portal would eliminate the Banishment storm, Arlak
-torfea?
”

I dredged up Janos’ memories and recounted the constructs for him once more. “‘Destabilise’ was the word I used, Eliyan-
tor
.”

“Perhaps our Benethar’s memory was fallible after all,” he commented after a time. “But the spell was changed. Talan, son of Lucan made it so. We are rid of Jyla, rid of the Karak, too, and
are prisoners in a perfect prison of our own making. All that magic within the Wurm, and the storm just laps it up like some salcat with a bottomless stomach. Torbin’s Sorcerers are still working on a spell, they say, but I don’t hold out any great hope. That Banishment spell was utterly flawless, thanks to our dear brother Benethar. What think you, Amal-
nishka?
”

I gritted my teeth as they shared a fond glance. I had never missed P’dáronï of Armittal so greatly–but I should not begrudge them their happiness.

Amal’s eyes, the very mirror of mine, regarded me gently. She knew my thoughts. “I say Arlak is thinking upon the Transformed he has not yet healed.”

“Ay
, that I am.”

Eliyan growled, “We could not possibly feed them all.”

Torbin and Eliyan had entreated me to stop healing the Transformed–or we would all starve. Some of the Warlocks and scholars worked on ways to produce food from magic. Their ideas were not very advanced. Three days had passed since Jyla’s defeat, and we all felt defeated too. Even the prospect of being free from Jyla’s pursuit, after all the anna of my life, was unable to lift my mood. That burden had vanished only to be replaced with another. My quoph felt sore beset.

I sighed. “All those Eldrik–call them Eldrik, Eliyan-
tor
, for they are people clothed in the skins of beasts–hiding deep in their caves, far from any light … their caves … yes, caves!”

Amal and Eliyan gaped at me.

I stroked my chin, my thoughts racing.

“Too much jerlak in him by far,” said Amal.

“Three puffs of a dream-pipe,” added Eliyan, “and your dear brother hallucinates in broad daylight.”

“His head’s floating on clouds above the
Warlock’s Roost.”

I just grinned at my friends. “Truly told,
I’ve a little idea.” They nodded as one. “What say you we ride the Wurm to Eldoran?”

“
What?
”

“Don’t shout at me. Listen. The Wurm could ride us either through the ocean or beneath the ocean floor, all those leagues back to Eldoran. We stand either inside the Wurm itself, or we tie ourselves to its tail.”

“Tied to its tail?” Eliyan spluttered. “I wasn’t joking about the dream-pipe!”

Amal put her hand on his arm. “No, Eliyan, Arlak has a point. Let’s say he can control the Wurm
and bid it carve a tunnel all the way back to Eldoria–there are territories perhaps a hundred and seventy leagues from here … these people couldn’t walk that. So we tow them on a sled, like the northerners use during Alldark season.”

“This madness runs in the family, says I. How will you build a sled, pray ask, on an island where the biggest piece of wood is some
Mata-forsaken stubbly bush? Grow it for an anna?”

“Eliyan
-
nihka
, do not spurn what Mata put on your shoulders,” Amal said scathingly. “How much
lillia
do we have at our disposal? We could levitate the whole of Sanctuary and shield it across ten thousand leagues.”

First Councillor of the Eldrik Sorcerers or none, the surprise writ on his face was comical. And
somehow beautiful to behold. His shoulders straightened. His chest swelled. Eliyan gathered his dark, tattered robes about his lean frame with something of his former snap. A purposeful glint entered his dark gaze.

“If we cannot take all,
this time,” I added, taking great care to stress my words, “then I will return with the Wurm until all of the Transformed are healed and taken home. And in Eldoran, you will use the Wurm’s power to restore the city, tear down the Pentacle, destroy the work of the Interrogators, and make what was lost, new.”

Eliyan said, “You are not for nothing the man called El Shashi.”

“Ay,” I said. “A poetess I knew said it best:

Not to kill but to heal, not to break but to summon
,

No longer to plough the desert as before
,

Only
to await the master’s beck and call,

El Shashi’s duality, the reason that he be.
”

I
fixed my gaze on Eliyan. “The Wurm awaits our call.”

Birial Island, 1
st
to 4
th
days of Sowing, Anna Roak 1407

Eliyan the Sorcerer raised his hand. “Cast off.”

His voice was low, but
his command easily carried the few paces to where Amal and I stood in our stone barrel, hooked to the end of the Wurm’s tail. Above us and to our sides, two dozen massive metal hooks were implanted deep in the Wurm’s carapace. Huge plaited hawsers, forged by magic from the pitiful iron ores found on the island, were attached to the hooks and extended all the way around Sanctuary.

Torbin signalled his Sorcerers and Warlocks hid inside Sanctuary. “Cast off!”

The entire fortress rose a pace or so off the ground. The cannon stood still. The lights were off. All of the power was needed by the magicians, who numbered over two hundred. I could not see from my position, but I knew the entire courtyard of Sanctuary was packed shoulder to shoulder with humanity. We would leave thousands more of the Transformed behind. But I planned to return.

El Shashi’s work was not complete.

“Take the strain,” said Eliyan. “El Shashi?”

I placed my hands on the Wurm. “Easy, Benethar. Just as we discussed. Don’t you be rushing off to the horizon without us, alright?
This is your chance to achieve what you always dreamed of, old friend. Let’s do this together. You and me, and the Banished. Let’s take them home.”

“Stop gabbling, you incorrigible old fraud, and get us moving,” Amal whispered in my ear.

With my power, I teased the Wurm into motion.

The hawsers jerked at that first pull from the Wurm, but we had anticipated this. Behind me, an array of Sorcerers had already–as Eliyan put it–put the skids under
neath Sanctuary. The Warlocks threw up a huge shield over the entirety of the fortress, shaping it as Janos’ memories had taught them, making the air shimmer behind and around us.

The Wurm’s segments rippled as it went to ground, burrowing down at the shallowest angle we had calculated should take us beneath the ocean bed itself.
An entire stone fortress holding thousands of people bobbled along behind. Eliyan, standing in Sanctuary’s stone entryway, offered a hesitant smile as I glanced over my shoulder. Then Sanctuary tipped over the lip of the Wurm’s pit and accelerated down the slope.

Suddenly, thousands of tons of stone were overtaking us from behind.

“Beware!” shouted Amal.

She and Eliyan slammed up shields; I felt them in my mind. I desperately tried to spur the Wurm on. In slow motion, the fortress pressed up against the stone barrel and cracked it. I felt a gentle bump from behind, but the expected effect–of us being torflies smashed against a hard surface–did not materialise.

With one hand resting on the Wurm’s rear end, I turned to glare at Eliyan’s snicker. “Just wanted to hold your hand, Amal-
nishka,
” he quipped, feigning nonchalance.

She, rather more white-faced than he, matched my glare with one of her own. “What else have we not anticipated, Eliyan?”

The Sorcerer said, “You two are so alike it’s like speaking to a mirror.”

“Just don’t
start kissing me by mistake,” I teased him. I had to try to live, even though part of me had died the day P’dáronï died in the Banishment portal. But it hurt. Mata, how I mourned!

“
There wasn’t enough ore for the hawsers,” Eliyan said. “We knew they were too short. But we neglected to balance your shield with ours. And we don’t know how deep the ocean is. Torbin has men back there trying to take measurements as we speak. I’d hate to try our shield against the ocean’s might.”

Sanctuary’s lights flickered on as the Wurm burrowed into endless blackness. Down, down beneath the ocean, down beneath the ever-black
deeps that separated Birial from Eldoria, accelerating toward the point I had so carefully placed in its mind. The Wurm surged through the rock without care or pause, carving it out with its great magic, leaving a smoothly hollowed tunnel behind us that we hoped would eventually connect Birial to the Eldrik homeland. All that rock turned to magic. Somewhere, somehow, I knew, Mata had to keep the balance. What would be the ultimate effect of all the damage the Wurm had wreaked over its lifetime? We had not the first inkling.

I
remembered how it felt to hold P’dáronï of Armittal in my arms, and the beauty of her reconstructed eyes, and wept. I wondered then if she might even that moment be numbered amongst the Transformed. I racked Janos’ brain to learn what happened to Armittalese when they died, but learned nought that was new to me. They went to meet Mata, he believed.

And so we travelled, makh upon makh, for three days. Only
our mealtimes served to mark time beneath the ocean. I tried to preoccupy my mind with learning how the Wurm moved, and attempting to grasp how Janos had possibly moved part–or all–of his mind into mine. The Banished ran out of food and began to complain. Eliyan needled me that I should not have healed so many of the Transformed. They had not enough clothes.

But then they began to sing.

I had not realised we were free of Birial’s binding enchantment. I had locked myself away in my thoughts, and not felt the
gyael-irfa
coming to life around me. I had never heard the
hyngreal
of Mata-worship. But these Eldrik were returning home, and when they sensed the return of that which was familiar to them, they broke into a song so haunting and beautiful it fairly made my hair stand on end. Such I could have listened to for a thousand anna.

And then, without warning, we broke through into daylight.

The Wurm trumpeted its greeting to the suns, drowning out the Mata-worship for more than a span. But the moment the Wurm stopped roaring, I heard such a cheer rise behind me! The Sorcerers and Warlocks brought Sanctuary to a gentle landing as our transportation picked up speed across Eldoria, until we were fairly flying over the gently rolling hills. Caught up in the carnival spirit, I urged the Wurm to greater and greater speeds. We carved a new pass through the mountains ten leagues north of Eldoran, and three makh later, having covered an astounding thirty leagues before noon was raised, we sighted the hills of fair Eldoran.

After gantuls, the Banished were home.

Warlock’s Roost, 3
rd
Glimday of the Thawing, Anna Nox 1705

El Shashi. What a name!

Whisper it reverently, friend. Hurl it as a weapon. Let it fester between vindictive curses, or let it be your benison.

I was called Soulstealer, Kin-Reaper, the Burning One, the Whisperer, the Running Man, Stormtide over Gethamadi, Benok Holyhand, Scourge of the Westland, the Plague-Rider, and, worst of all, Bringer of the Wurm.

But they also call me
the Father of the Eldrik.

In the anna following the first return of the Banished, I was almighty busy. Four more trips did we make, Eliyan, Amal
, and I, to hunt down the Transformed of Birial Island and succour them. Many did not want to be succoured. But we scoured the hollows and caves until we became heartily sick of them.

We searched for sign of P’dáronï, but from the moment she entered the Portal, wrapped in a translation of her own making around the evil Sorceress Jyla, she was lost to the lands of the living. I bowed my head, steeled my quoph, and ran away for a gantul.

Well, I left Eldoran–a city lovingly restored to its former beauty by the Sorcerers Council, who for once managed to agree on an important matter. It helped that they had virtually unlimited power to accomplish the task. Truly told, I had little need to run, save from my own ghosts. So run I did, in a manner of speaking. I restarted the trade between Eldoran and Herliki Free Fiefdom. With the benefit of a trade monopoly, as I alone of all living men knew the secret of navigating the Straits of Nxthu, I became unspeakably rich.

But no ocean of terls, ukals, and Lortiti Reals could salve the
immedicable wound in my quoph.

Between journeys, I studied every scroll known to Eldrik or Umarite and assembled a library on magic that filled the caverns beneath the
Warlock’s Roost so completely, they begged me to have the Wurm carve out new space. This I did. But I found nought to bring P’dáronï back.

I returned to my family, became Benok Holyhand for a time, and presided over the expansion of my network of hospitals just in time for the anna they call the Red Burning, a plague of virulent, haemorrhagic pox that
even reached Eldoran. This consumed my energies for a gantul and more as the plague kept flaring up in different parts of the Fiefdoms. In later anna, the scholars would estimate from our hospital records that one in two people in the Fiefdoms, and one in five Eldrik, died during those anna. Without our efforts, the toll would have been far higher.

At some point in time, I know not when, I put P’dáronï away in the depths of my quoph and thought I should mourn her no more.

Ay, I have yet one more name.

I should be called Fool.

*  *  *  *

On the third Glimday of the Thawing, Anna Nox 1705, I observed a beneficent sunshine warming the gardens around the
Warlock’s Roost, and determined that my frail old bones should well enjoy such a day. Grasping my twin canes, I made the makh-long journey without the tower, for I could barely walk any more for the severe rheumatism that plagued me in the cold seasons.

A young Armittalese slave opened the thick wooden door for me. I could not have
shifted it myself.

Ay, I did think then of Janos, and P’dáronï, and the rash promise of my youth, that I should free all the slaves. Gantuls before, I had not wished to
flout the direct command of the Eldrik Sorcerers Council. They had a better life in Eldoran than in the mines of Ummandor, across the Ammilese March, I convinced myself. Truly told, and I owned the entirety of the slave trade. It had taken six gantuls, but now my agents alone bought each and every Armittalese slave that was offered to market.

I paused beside him. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Benethar,” he said.

“B-Benethar?” I spluttered.

He smiled and bowed in the flowing Armittalese way. “Of Armittal, great Father. How may I help you?”

I squinted at him, as my eyes were going bad. “I knew a Benethar once,” I said. “A great man, who I betrayed. Did you know, boy, it was he who designed the Banishment? A perfectly astounding construct of magic.”

“I’ve read your writings, Father-mine,” said Benethar, bowing again. “I found them most instructive. Would you tell me about this Benethar? You wrote that he was unique, a man of eidetic memory and a Synthesizer.”

“Do you fancy yourself such, boy?”

“No, Father-mine. But I would know, as I believe we might have been related.”

Silently, I held out my arm for him to take, so that I could lean on his youthful strength. A man in his
three hundred and seventy-seventh anna must make a few small concessions to age. This young man, so dark and serious, could almost have passed for Janos–of course, I did not remember so well any more. But as we took a slow, steady circuit around the gardens, I could not shake a most bizarre grephe that I spoke to Janos reborn. So I spoke to him earnestly, and with great candour, about the past.

As we passed close by the tower, I heard a loud cry
followed by a thud.

“What was that?”

“Quickly,” said Benethar. “Someone is hurt.”

Ay, I tottered along behind him as
best I could. I found another Armittalese slave lying half on the path, blood streaming from his head. Benethar knelt beside him, trying to stanch the wound, shaking his head in sorrow. I saw a tall ladder leaning against the tower. The man had a workman’s tools in his belt. I rushed up and touched him.

I stiffened. “
Larathi
, no–you can’t die now!”

Summoning my power, I hastened to bring him back from the brink.

The man gasped, twice, and his heart stopped beating. I had a sense his soul was beginning to drift from his body to the realms of Mata: I had seen death too many times not to recognise the moment.

“Quick,” said Benethar. “Try this. Use your power to

.”

I commanded. To my great shock, the man coughed and began to breathe at once. Soon, with my further healing help, he opened his eyes.

“What happened to me?”

“You fell,” Benethar explained. “Fortunately, El Shashi was right here and healed you before you died.”

“I am forever indebted to you,” said the man.

“You should go rest,” I said. “You’ve had a great shock.” Although, truly told, it was I who had the greater shock. My eyes followed the departing man. “He was dead, Benethar. Dead.”

“He was,” agreed Benethar. “I didn’t know if that would work.”

“How did you know what to do?”

Benethar’s eyes, as grey as flints, met mine frankly. “Because all Armittalese are controlled in the same way, El Shashi, controlled by the Nummandori Overlords. Did you never
learn that about the woman you once loved, P’dáronï of Armittal?”

“I … did. I’m sorry if I’m staring, but … do I know you?”

“I’ve held the door for a few seasons,” he chuckled. “But I never found the courage to speak to you, until you spoke to me today. As I said, I think your Benethar is my relative. Or perhaps I am he, reincarnate–I don’t know. Armittalese history seems strangely circular. I have been trying to make some kind of study among our people here without raising suspicions. You see, when Armittalese die, they are returned to the Overlords. You just stopped that now. As you saw.”

My head spun so
violently that I sat back on the path and could not rise.

“They return to the … great Mata! They return
where?
They don’t really die? What happens to them? How do you know this? Who are you?”

“I am Benethar,” he said, and bowed low once more in the Armittalese way. “
I’m the one who, I believe, is able to override what the Nummandori Overlords set inside of him. I am he who finds within himself memories not his own.”

“You can override … a magical command structure embedded in
the core of your very being? So if I asked you why Armittalese women return over the Ammilese March to have their babies, you’d say …?”

“
I’d tell you that babies need to be imprinted by the Overlords, Father-mine. All babies, no exceptions, from the time they lie within their mother’s womb.”

“Let me hold your hand and ask you again.”

I held the young man’s fingers and asked him the question. Similar commands appeared to those which had so memorably controlled P’dáronï, but he appeared able to ignore them or sideslip the commands somehow. I dropped his hand with a shudder.

“Help me rise.”

Dear sweet Mata, after all these anna, the possibility! I hardly dared voice my hope. I must question this boy at length. Did he truly mean P’dáronï would have returned somewhere to these Overlords, to be recycled in a new body? That a young P’dáronï could be growing up, or have grown up, somewhere in Armittal, and I did not even know it? That these Nummandori Overlords controlled all Armittalese by means of these strange commands–to what end? For good? That was difficult to believe.

Ay. I rubbed the lyomflesh on my arms.

My mind raced across the gantuls now. Things Janos had said: ‘…
for we Armittalese live long, Arlak, longer even than the Eldrik–and our spirits are not as strongly bound to flesh as the Umarite or Eldrik races.’
Things he had taught me; things I had discussed with P’dáronï, impressions and observations of these slaves in Eldoran. It made sense. They were a race of perfect slaves. Perfectly controlled by the Overlords. Perfectly positioned to spy out every secret the Eldrik ever had–even down to young Benethar, questioning me so innocently. Even he could be spying for these Overlords. P’dáronï, too. Even Janos, unless his essence was irretrievably bound up in the Wurm.

But I owed it to my father, who bequeathed me the ownership of slaves.

I owed it to the Armittalese.

I owed it to P’dáronï.

Benethar said softly, “I am he who asks you to set my people free.”

I wondered what Mata would say to one last act of selfishness. After all, it was She who made me so. Perhaps that should be my final name, for no man of
nigh four hundred anna, who could barely manage to walk around a garden without the help of two canes and a young arm, would be journeying across the Ammilese March to confront the Nummandori Overlords. Could any man be selfish enough, and vain enough, to aspire to be Father to not one but two races?

I reached out to the slumbering Wurm.
For this, I needed
lillia
. More
lillia
than I had required in gantuls.

“
P’dáronï! I come, P’dáronï!”

El Shashi would run again.