The Legend of El Shashi Read online

  Words of grephe are neither lightly spoken, nor lightly received.

  So I chewed and stewed upon his grephe all that afternoon, tromping my way from a cheerful mood into the slough-pit of despair. Would that I could have dismissed it out of hand! “Surly brat,” I berated myself. “You wronged a man an honest grephe-offering.” I tossed the jatha their head and thundered down to the plain, wrapped in a storm-cloud of my own making, embittered and consumed by thoughts of my empty present and misfortunate past.

  But once down into the foothills that would lead me shortly into Hadla’s Skirts, my mind drifted on to other matters.

  Janos had given me a new jerkin that very morn. I fingered the supple leather, worked with subtle patterns of swords crossed in battle, eagles soaring, a charging tygar, and other symbols of power, and owned it an excellent gift. Far too fine for a farmer’s son. It put me in mind of Rubiny o’Telmak. Ah, Rubiny! A maiden as beauteous as she was heartless, as coveted as she was aloof, as sweet of body as she was cruel of disposition! Janos had vowed she would look kindly upon me should I wear the garment. My loud chuckle startled the jatha. I stilled them with a firm slap of the traces. Truly told, it is customary for young men of my age and station to invite a girl to the harvest dances on the Doublesun cahooday, a regional festival of considerable note, when the twin suns bear down with their utmost brilliance and the stifling makh of darkness is mercilessly brief. Rubiny had turned me down flat four anna running. She did not sashay out with another, though there were suitors aplenty. She simply did not want me. So she claimed–why else spurn my invitations? And a man has his pride!

  Let me be swift to advise: Rubiny was the very incarnation of quathly desire. Lissom of leg, full of bosom, bright of eye, flame-red of hair, she was nought but a deer gliding amidst common hogs. She had owned me heart, hand, and hearth, since I first beheld her one Youngsun morn bearing a basket of brown-speckled eggs fresh from the lyomhouse at Telmak Lodge.

  But where before I might have mooned over her beauty for a makh or more, this day my heart was consumed with a helpless, blind fury that knew no stanching, a bleeding anger as raw as fresh-crushed bitterwort. I could not avoid meeting Rubiny at the inn. Her lip would curl. She would revel in my stuttering importunities, my brash and graceless tongue, my country drawl, and my dusty half-boots. She would ready whip-words of rejection to lash from her lips. With her smile, she would flay me bone-deep.

  My doubled-up fists struck puffs of dust from my thighs. I should rather die. Better still, I should shun her company, drink myself into oblivion, and then … enough!

  Half a makh before sunset, right on schedule, I heaved the cart to a standstill in the forecourt of Telmak Lodge and alighted cockerel-stiff to the dark, freshly-swept flagstones. My lead jatha lowed like a lovesick Hakooi minstrel sawing at a five-stringed lummericoot, hoof-weary and hungry besides. A drudge regarded me toothlessly from his indolent throne upon a bale of thorrick beside the wide-flung stable doors–soaking up the day’s last warmth, I suspected, until his master returned with kicks and curses to chivvy him along.

  I inhaled deeply, feeling my stomach stir. Sweetbread a-bake in the kitchen, or I was a greater idiot than that drudge. Delicious! And–Mata be praised–did I smell beef stew with rich gravy? The house special! Toris, the head cook, was an absolute marvel. Her fare fed local legend, making Telmak Lodge the envy of every inn south of Elaki Fountain.

  Ay. I had before me four days further travel through Hadla’s Skirts, keeping a sleepless watch for lean, hungry timber wolves and the even more dangerous jerlak, before partaking of Sherm Inn’s dubious charms on the northern fringe. Bedbugs and fleas–but better than an icy night beneath the cart! Then, several makh of the fifth morrow should bring me to the Ry-Breen Crossing, and with favourable progress over the twin massifs of Shaly Ridge to the north and a shade east, I would reach Elaki Fountain by midday the day after that. A route I knew as well as the lines upon my own palm.

  But first, I must gird myself with the courage needed to brave Telmak Lodge.

  I saw to my animals before my own comforts. My father had drummed into me by word, and by leather strap when words failed to impress, ‘A man who cares not for his animals cares not for life itself.’ Then I saw my chattels locked in the safehouse and the guard paid his due.

  These tasks struck off, I ducked into the pumphouse. Truly told, I smelled skunksome even to my own nostrils. Laziness born of lack of company in the mountains, Arlak! Another day I might have oiled my hair, or paid five brass terls for a hot shave and a trim of my unruly curls, but not this day. Though my personal grooming had latterly been the chief object of Rubiny’s scorn, mirrors tell no lies. Roymerian maidens are bold creatures withal, and audacious in pursuit of a man. Many a compliment–ribald or courteous–have I savoured for my mother’s jet-black hair, striking dark eyes, and tan complexion. A rangy frame square in the shoulder and lithe in the hips and waist comprised my father’s bequest. Combined with my demanding work and outdoors lifestyle, it needed little by way of maintenance. Thus, from my early manhood, I had been left in no doubt as to what maidens should wish to do with a man of my ilk. In turn I exercised scant restraint. Why, in Mata’s name, spurn one’s natural gifts?

  In the mirror my grin failed to cheer.

  Janos did not believe in such liberties. His austerity was oft apparent, from the simplicity of his single-roomed log cabin, to the way he took meals, to his outlook on life. After my parents’ death, he took me in until I could face living again. Unbidden, his dry scorn echoed in my memory: “So help me Mata, we might be trapped in a blissfully rustic village a hundred leagues from civilisation, Arlak, but the depths of your ignorance astound me!”

  “I know lots of things, Janos.”

  “You couldn’t find darkness in a mineshaft, boy! Wake up!”

  I scowled fiercely at the wall.

  “Fine. What’s the capital city of Yumark?”

  “I … I don’t know. Do I care? No. Where’s this leading, anyway?”

  “Yumark is a city, you overweening ignoramus!” His forefinger danced beneath my nose. “Right, my mind is fixed. Your education starts today–like it or not. You’ll dig vegetables by day, and study the scrolleaf by night.”

  And so I learned from Janos the lay of the lands, numerology, the ways of the senses, and how to read and write in both the Umarik and Eldrik scripts. I learned to speak the liquid Eldrik tongue. Janos instructed me in the nuances of shalik rune interpretation, in the histories, politics, and many subjects besides. Some of his methods were inexplicable, such as the practise of hypnosis, but the breadth of his knowledge was uncommon and his ability to instruct, dazzling. Religion played no great part in the breadth of his teaching, but it did figure in subtle ways. Before I knew it, Janos became the voice of my conscience. We clashed in various ways at various times, and none more so than over my conduct with the daughters of Yuthe.

  My brace of terls clinked into the housekeeper’s box as I welcomed the genial sunlight on my shoulders. A fresh linen shirt chafed my skin agreeably, starched and hot-pressed by a servant, and I found myself strutting a little as I entered the courtyard. Janos would have snickered at such preening.

  Janos. Ever my keeper. He held that the quoph, the third soul, was immortal, and that it required proper discipline to elevate the quoph to the divine plane of Mata, the creator God.

  We Umarites hold that persons have three souls. The lowest of these is the quath, sometimes called the animal soul, which is the seat of emotions, desires, and one’s fundamental needs. What the Eldrik call the personality, we call the quatl–one’s character, background, and upbringing, beliefs, and so forth. And lastly there is the quoph, which lives on after death. This is the highest, deepest, and most mysterious of the three souls. Some believe in an afterlife, some pray to gods or yammariks, some believe in reincarnation–and then there are men like me, men who have little time for religion, who believe that there is nothing after death. A void. Nothing fo
rever.

  His religion was not for me. I should step out of the shadows and make my own mark upon my own life. Refuse to be his lackey forever!

  So thinking, I combed my fingers through my hair and regarded Telmak Lodge’s wood-frame solidity. My gaze stepped warily across its heavy dark beams and white-limed walls, its deep casement windows and protruding double-gabled façade, as though I had never seen it before. The forecourt was busy this makh. A man’s entrance might go unnoticed. He might steal into a dark corner and there, unremarked, drain his cups.

  As I sidled forth, I had no greater wish.

  Several makh later, as I quaffed my fourth draught of a potent, bitter Imurian root beer to an inward sigh of pleasure, I became aware I had company. Peering blearily over the rim of my silver-lipped goblet, I discerned the flawless features of Rubiny o’Telmak and coughed involuntarily, spluttering beer upon the table.

  I wiped my mouth upon my sleeve.

  “Learned our manners from a swineherd?” she greeted me. I was trying to decide if the table was moving, or if it was my head imitating a rowboat upon my shoulders. “How is farm life? Still growing your scrawny vegetables in the mountains?”

  I swallowed, and tried to hide my soil-blackened fingernails beneath the tabletop. “Goosh, er, hello Rub–”

  “’Goosh’? Had a drop too much, Arlak Sorlakson?”

  People were turning on their benches, sensing entertainment at hand.

  “Prob’ly.”

  “Hopeless, that’s what you are! And you know what they say. He who can’t hold his beer, can’t hold a woman.”

  Shame I could not punch a certain woman! Who had warned her of my arrival had done me an ill service. While it was beneath the daughter Telmak’s station to wait upon customers, baiting customers was clearly a coin of another stamp. Her long Roymerian skirts, gathered close to her trim waist and embroidered in painstaking detail by the labour of her own fingers with scenes of traditional country life such as beekeeping, beer-brewing, keg-wrestling at the Doublesun Cahooday festival, and hawking, swished as she moved closer to my bench–the better to inspect my inebriated state, I imagined.

  At least I had seen the pumphouse! I no longer stank of three days of eating the dust of my jatha team. Proudly, I wore my new jerkin over a clean rumik, belted neatly at the waist, and a travel-worn but acceptable pair of thexik trousers that formed the basic wardrobe of nigh every man in the room.

  I grunted like an articulate hog at my goblet, “I haven’t any problem–”

  “But I hear you do have a particular problem,” Rubiny cooed, arched of eyebrow as she played to her audience. “A rather … small … problem. Haven’t you, peasant boy?”

  People sniggered loudly. The room suddenly felt hot. The clever tongue of a trader served me well in the marketplace, but in her presence it became nought but a stout plank. I blurted out, “Wait just a stinking span!”

  “Now, now, watch your tone,” she warned. “I’m the daughter Telmak and you would do well to remember your station. It’s you who’re doing the stinking around here, you dung-shovelling simpleton!”

  Laughter beat against my ears. A dim recollection of my earlier resolve percolated through my addled wits and assumed a deadly new form. I stumbled to my feet, slurring, “To Hajik with you, wench!”

  She gasped.

  “Leave me, I–”

  “What?”

  My eyes were pinned to her torso. I had forgotten how attractively her dress moulded itself to her fine figure. “Leash … me …”

  Rubiny drew back a step, drawing ragged breath, and crossed her arms across her chest as if to ward off my lascivious gaze. Then her brow drew down and she snapped, “What? No invitations this season? Highsun approaches!”

  I blinked several times. Processing a simple thought took forever. “What for?”

  “What do you mean, what for?”

  “Waste my breath, Shrubbiny, I would.”

  Her voice rose as the breath of a storm wind snapping at one’s cloak. “How dare you mangle my name like that, you worthless, striploose male! You’re sloshing with beer!”

  “Quite.” Care had fled hand in hand with common sense. Had I not started this fight? Four large goblets of strong beer spoke up for me: “You’ve something to say, shrub–Rubinshee?”

  “Say? To you?” Rubiny drew herself up. Her response achieved a shrilling pitch that pained my ears. “Will you not declare your undying love and devotion, as before? Have you tossed a copper for a few shop-worn lines from some halfwit ulule? Or composed an ode to the beauties of your own nose? Don’t embarrass me again! Last time you slobbered over my hand like some hog at the trough–disgusting!”

  Our audience roared and hooted. Shame made me angry enough to momentarily burn through the fug in my head. Leaning across the table, I shot back, “Have you something intelligent to say, Rubiny? That’s what I meant. Because way I see it, this beer makes for the better company!”

  Some distant part of me could not believe what had just spilled from my lips. It cried that the goose was loose, that the Alldark Hounds had been unleashed and the recall whistle tossed into the ocean’s blackest depths. Another part of my quatl cheered lustily. This makh, for the first time, Arlak was man enough to speak his mind plain and clear.

  I felt sick.

  I may as well have driven my hunting knife between her ribs. Rubiny’s features blanched to a dreadful pallor and she sagged like a half-drained wineskin, clutching the nearest chair back for support. Tears started in her eyes, a sight I had never seen before–but, rather than summoning the herald for a victory chant, I pictured myself slinking away beneath the tables as a cur flees the beating of a master’s stick.

  Thick silence enfolded us.

  An apology should have been in order. Instead, all I could grit between my teeth was, “I care for nought but a quiet drink, Rubiny o’Telmak. Now leave a man be.”

  I saw her spin, but I never saw what she held. Pain exploded in my jaw. I dropped as though I had been kicked by an angry jatha.

  Next, I remember being sprawled beneath the wooden bench I had been sitting on, watching an ulinbarb-twig broom sweeping toward my tender skull.

  The morn was upon me.

  Chapter 2: Elaki Fountain

  Riddle me rhyme, riddle me ree,

  What silk ties tighter,

  Than Gethamadi?

  Traditional Hakooi handfasting ceremony: Love Knot

  There was no athocary at Telmak Lodge, so I had to make do with pinching shut the gash on my chin and continuing my journey. I fingered the bruised skin with grudging admiration. It would scar later.

  Rubiny must have struck me with a goblet. Roymere goblets are hardwood on a cast ormetal base, with a moulded ormetal rim, often carved with pithy sayings or charred with the heated tip of knife in a process called umanthi. Evidently they made for serviceable clubs as well as drinking vessels. Surely no woman alive could otherwise possess such strength of arm?

  For once, I had stood up to her and not just meekly bowed my head. Good. Served her right, the number of times she had humiliated me!

  Anyways, best I forget my adder-tongued nemesis. I should find a sweet girl to grace my home–a Janos phrase shop-worn by recent overuse. A vein throbbed at my temple. Gods, I had anna ahead to sample life’s richness. Staid and settled at my age? I should think not!

  Why did thinking about her always make me fume? Rubiny o-blasted Telmak! So much for Janos’ jerkin improving her favour. Rubiny had proved her favour upon my jaw instead.

  The day’s travel was thirsty work, made thirstier by the lingering queasiness of my abused innards. My hangover pounded like Janos’ forge at full blast. A sultry humidity rose in waves from the tilled fields and the cloying burnt-umber scent of bragazzar woods alongside the track tickled my nostrils with gritty pollens. I removed my undershirt and let the sweat run freely down my neck and chest. At a small river crossing I paused to refresh myself, but after a makh or two in the muggy dep
ths of Hadla’s Skirts, the cool waters seemed but a fever-dream. I tossed the jatha their head, and slumped into a lolling doze upon the sun-drenched bench of my cart.

  In the late afternoon, the weather broke in a thunderstorm that grumbled and snarled overhead like an elderly dog which has lost his former menace. I ducked beneath the cart to shelter from the short but heavy shower that followed. Come nightfall, I carefully set about my camp the tripwires and bell-snares that would warn of a wolf’s approach–knowing I had to sleep or I would be less than useless come the morn. I dreamed of last anna’s disastrous proposition to Rubiny and how she had tongue-thrashed me until I fled from her presence, and later of the carter and his dire prediction for my journey. My sleep was ill, my dreams Ulim-haunted.

  The first word to pass my lips when dawn broke was a curse.

  Beyond the low hills of Shaly Ridge, five days beyond Telmak Lodge, the route changed from a deep-rutted cart track into a proper road paved in burgundy-coloured wishbone bricks. Sowing season had at last yielded to Springtide. This region was well named the breadbasket of Umarik, for here the fruit plantations of the ridge’s northern face turned to ripening fields of grain: moxi and lymat in the higher regions, and verdant hewehat where the road abutted the stream locally called the Silcan, which meandered sleepily from the Urm Hills to the walled town of Elaki Fountain, whence I was bound.

  Thus my mind turned to my vegetables, the kale, lohki, renj, and limmerwort, and the herbs which would only grow in the mountains, and I began to calculate the profit I might turn this week. As the piles of terls and ukals mounted in my head, I began to smile. When I saw the bustling crowd at the towering town gates, I whistled a merry tune.

  I banished the trader’s grephe, and Rubiny, from my thoughts.