Toward
Tasen
Marik, the slave
trader, took a fancy to Shaneal. The captured villagers of Delgdreth thirsted
in the heat of the desert, as the fertile lands of The Meringal diminished;
they wearied, scourged by whips.
Shaneal enjoyed the luxuries of the slave trader’s opulent
carriage. He lavished her with sweet
meats and the brains of goats while Misha and Jon Esierk starved but for some
old bread and the occasional trickle of water.
When Misha finally succumbed to the heat and lack of food, the slave
minders unchained him and left him to die in the desert. Shaneal looked at his body from the back of
the wagon, a slight tear in her eyes, then returned to her master’s bed and
drank herself into a sex filled orgasmic oblivion.
She dreamt that night
of her father; the image of the murdered burnt offering to dark gods on the bar
of the Inn was eviscerated from her mind.
She was six or seven and the whole family were arriving at Ket on
holiday. Dalrosse, tiny in her arms,
like a doll, she would never discard.
Their mother, in the back was scolding Aflarien. Daddy stroked the horses as they waited at the
line before the gates of Ket. The line
was long but diminished rapidly and he led the horses at last beneath the
carved gates on the sunset lit city. He
gave her a silver coin and took them both down from the carriage and with
Dalrosse in her arms she went wandering.
In her dream she knew that Erafien Omelyn watched as she wandered amazed
and bemused by the circus of the market, the smells and laughter, the hubbub of
no silence as breathtaking as the silence of Delgdreth by the Lake. He heard her as she laughed aloud at the
jugglers and the poets, dancers and dream tellers, as she told the child of each
new thing and described to Dalrosse the colours and told him the names of the
spices he could smell.
The dream faded as
she felt Marik penetrating her once more like she was pierced by scalding
needle sewing through every inch of her being.
She woke as he began to slash her face with dirty fingernails and felt
as if she was half dead in the sea swell of the falling and rising of the
carriage. Plaintive, yet like an awful
scream, she called out Misha’s name.
Marik’s hand was at her throat.
“Who the nak is
Misha?” Her eyes bleached upon her skull
fell, pulled down from the awful sickness but it was only the slave owner
grabbing her hair tight in his fist and forcing her to meet his gaze.
She sighed.
“I was dreaming
Marik of a song I used to sing.” She
remembered one of the stories told to her when she was young.
“Not a just song
but the story of Misha and Elan.”
Starting with a whisper she sang the story into his ear as the song
unfolded she wove together the melody, a harmony to still his wants he slowly
loosened his grip on her hair and the wind of her words and the songs delicate fingertips stroked his
face. Before she had come to the end of
the song the wrinkled, sun blackened man had fallen asleep.
Misha was not quite
dead. The theem Jon had given him
before they rode into Delgdreth, spaced out the beating of his blood starved
heart and the pounding in his head.
Still into an electric piercing, like the cries of the corpse-ids, but
constant, he was wrenched back into a semblance of life. He rose like a ghost and walked towards the
moon on the rise above a parched plateau that began at the edge of the sand
dunes. In the labouring of his
breathless body, as in a moment, heartbeat, lungs stopped by the sudden
shock. An orange star like the Two
Wheels of Astor’s Eyes peering into the moon eclipsed night. Then the light
burnt the sky and tarnished the land cold green. The moon returned and there was nothing. He
breathed. His senses alive again after
being so long immersed in the shackles of pain, the pain was lost and then came
a deafening roar, a thrice booming then the sound of a falling of a mighty
stone, once more he seized in shock.
Then Misha ran swiftly to the new fires that seemed to melt the sand
into a sea of molten glass.
Later near to midnight Jon Esierk and the other
slaves from Delgdreth were at last given a break from the long march of the
day, after the bread and water, as usual, Jon told them a story before they
fell into a heavy dreamless sleep.
“Shush everyone, I
have a story. This is the tale of Misha
and Elan as it was told to me by the young chelah on our way to Delgdreth.
There is another place, beyond the eyes of Astor, only known to a few,
and from the world came a stranger to the lands of Menerth. He was a singer. For a while he sang of the place he had
lost, but, as he wandered the length and breadth of the world he half forgot
where he had come from. He entertained
the villagers with his songs in the markets, in Ket and other big cities and
one day he came to the sea and the towers of Tasen. Misha was singing in one of the many markets
when a princess, Elan, walked by,
looking for a particular gold threaded black silk to make a gown for her
mother, the Queen of Menerth. Then she
heard a song like the canticle of a lark and all earthly things seemed to be
washed away from her as she rushed to the group he was singing to. His song seemed as endless as the spray of
the ocean and it seemed as if the moon and the stars and the sun and moon again
wheeled above her as she stood listening and unfelt tears rushed down her
face. There was exquisite warmth in her
heart, a whirling dance in her mind, slowing time as he sang into a crescendo
of silence. Elan remained statue like
as the group of listeners about her dispersed when she felt Misha’s cold hand on
her shoulder.
She returned, at once, a Princess, to the authority of her everyday
poise of responsibilities for the nation.
What a time she’d wasted. Elan
ran from the singer and went to the Palace before the gates closed. She dreamt of the singer and his songs night
after night. So one morning she spoke
to her mother of the minstrel and the kindly Queen, flowing in a silk design of
the five roses said:
“Bring him to entertain us. If
he’s as good as you say perhaps he will bring the King from his worries and
fears.”
That afternoon Elan went back to the market place and a new sweet song
rose above an immense crowd. The mass
of silent people parted before Princess Elan once they realised who she
was. She took Misha by the hand and led
him through the corridor of the enraptured people back to the Palace and here
she told him to kneel before the King.
Unbidden, Misha began to sing.
He set a slow melody, paced it seemed by the throb of the multitude of
expectant heartbeats within the Palace, then his voice rose and quickened, the
words of his world an orchestra of untold instruments. He sang of the beauty and simplicity of that
world, where once so long ago he had lived, of the half-forgetful people dwarfed
by the powers and leader. They however,
seemed unconcerned with the day or the morrow, but the multiplicity of the
moment and Misha threaded into this music the spider webs of the people who
shone bright as the dew in the morning sun.
“Who are they of whom you speak?” the King demanded And Misha confessed.
“There was a land once of
richness and fertility. It held a
fecundity of love but they were betrayed and an end came to them. A great war came and few survived. The laughter of the minions of deceit echoed
about the world but it was silenced as the Rex Mundi of that world died in its’
destruction and those few that remained cherished the world. Alone I was sent
forth as a beacon into the nightmare sky to tell of the sorrows that had
befallen our world, so that it would not happen again. I remained alone for
aeons of lightless dark and soared into a deeper sunless dark until I came to
the new land of Menerth, before the Roses were born. I roamed alone until I basked in the eyes of
Astor, the gardener and the new whole was re-made. I came before your castles and your
kingships, before your lordlands and your peacekeepers and I sang the only song
that kept you whole but you were deceived by the darkness of the past, an urge
of me. The loss and sadness in the thread of my song that ever urged me to
return to the loves I knew. Even now I can’t forget them or give them up for
they hold me to the world I am from. I
sing my song in remembrance of them, for myself alone, but as time unfolded I
found new glory in your world before war returned and the Roses withered. My
songs brought joy and hope to the people and the offspring of the people and to
their kin, in Menerth so unlike the World where I was born. Yet with my song I
brought here memory of Rex Mundi alive.
I deceived the world of Menerth thinking that it had rediscovered purity
anew but no I was I mistaken. You are of
my kind and I am of you. Before the
death of my world and my sending here I was corrupted by grief and my song
infected this world with memories of those old times. Now it cannot change
except in my death and the silencing of my song which you will forbid and keep
me enthralled in the Song of the Old before Rex Mundi died and give him a new
hold upon your hearts and spirits.”
And Elan wept for him. His songs
in the marketplace Misha had given her hope.
But as the singer had predicted, the King kept him as a puppet for the
amusement of courtiers and the minor kings of Menerth, to sing of lesser
things. Of butterflies songs and the
trampling of the deer in the forests that entrenched the King’s memories and he
would not hear the truth of Misha’s plight and past and only Elan sang together
with Misha of that world gone array.
“Take me back,” she cried one night.
“So I can understand why this world was forgiven.”
“I am the corrupt’” Misha exclaimed.
“And I am the corrupted” she wept. “Perhaps if we can return a joy will
return to this Menerth, not the endless fear of our people.”
“It will be the death of us both if we return. I have lived a thousand
of your years, and you, my love so few. I have no words for your mourning dirge
except tears.”
“Take me back with you Misha.” She demanded is if they had no choice. So
Elan and Misha escaped from the Palace and searched for many days as for as the
parched plains on the edge of the desert until he found the craft that had
taken him away from the home he loved. Together they rose into the palaces of
star, together they died upon the lands of the old planet lost on the edge of
time in one of the piles of corpses of Rex Mundi’s wrath”. No-one upon Menerth ever
knew of Elan and Misha or felt their heart slowly break when Jon’s chelah sang
of Misha’s lost home.
This is the story my young chelah told me, he said that a wind from
between the two setting stars had a memory of the song and had whispered it to
him when he was young.
Jon was silent then and the slaves seemed freed for a while by his
words, until the whips once more lashed out at them from the song of love that
branched throughout the stars, and on bleeding feet they continued on through
the burning desert towards Tasen.
Chapter
6
Dalrosse
Goes North
Dalrosse washed himself in The Falls of Armoreth at the northern edge of
Lake Leme, but still felt grubby as if he would never be clean. Yet he bathed
in gahrthine reeds until he was rubbed raw by their hairy stems and floated
like flotsam or a log with nowhere special to go.
By Bayle’s Reach the Shouel was purified by the sound of birdsong and in
the pools of the waterfalls he consumed enough thelin to keep awake for a
thousand days. Finally he dried himself on another sandy cove, lifted his pack
and went in the direction of the town of Eaun. Dalrosse knew there he would
find the nearest Peacekeeper.
The first long night of winter had begun to fall and with it a
torrential rain. The small figure
struggled through the muddy road to where the Peacekeeper’s office was
signposted. It was closed. It seemed
apart from a bar where drunken yells broke into the night and a half-light
splattered the mud; the whole of Eaun was closed. Purposefully he walked into the bar.
‘It’s a nakkin’ Shouel, oi bunnyhumper come here,’ a fat drunk tried to grab
him, but with the unfamiliar sword he’d found in one of the bodies he warded
the human away from him. Dalrosse called out to the other people in the bar.
‘There’s been a massacre in Delgdreth. I need to speak to the Peacekeeper.’
With his words the drunk who had tried to grab him, seemed to grow two or three
feet taller, knocked the sword from his hand and with a glass of grogg hit him
in the face.
‘You just found me bunnyhumper. Now before we kill you, Merve here will
take you to my office, and you can tell me why a Shouel is telling tales on his
own murdering kind. I’m sure Merve will hurt you quite a lot while I have my
last drink of the evening. The nakker broke my favourite glass.’ A sneer of
laughter spread across the bar room.
An older, more timorous human lifted Dalrosse up from the floor and
struggled with him through the mud to the Peacekeeper’s office. Merve hit him a few times, almost
half-heartedly, then without a word threw him into a small cell. From the cell, before the Peacekeeper
appeared, Dalrosse tried to explain to Merve what seemed to have happened in
Delgdreth, of his stepfather’s death and his quest to find Shaneal and
Aflarien. Yet the words unhurried and concise seemed to fall on deaf ears. Hours seemed to pass in the company of the
guard who remained consistently silent as he whittled away at a piece of wood,
as Dalrosse paced impotently, also falling into silence, but screaming angrily
inside his head. Then the heavy boots of
the Peacekeeper kicked open the door of his office.
‘I thought you would’ve killed the bunnyhumper by now.’
Two other heavyset men came in behind him. Merve glanced at them with a
half smile creasing his face and showed the object he had carved in the time he
had spent alone with Dalrosse. He had made a rose. ‘Now ain’t that pretty. Best
one you’ve done yet,’ one of the men said and grabbed it from his yielding
fist. ‘My wife’ll love it,’ then he smacked the older man about the face. ‘Get
out of here muteman and watch the road case anymore Shouels turn up.’
‘Yeah scoot Merve.’ The peacekeeper said. Merve humbled away out into the rain. One of the men unlocked the cell door and all
three went in, towering over the Shouel. Dalrosse brimmed full with the power
of the thelin stood to face them.
They questioned him for hours.
The Peacekeeper toying with the sword that Dalrosse had brought from
Delgdreth. ‘He’s right about one thing, this isn’t a Shouels weapon, the
nakkers only use bows and adren tipped arrows.
My brother got one in the throat and he was dead before he hit the mud.’
As they talked among themselves a vague remembrance of the dream of the
Crow flew into Dalrosse’s head that whispered of a way to escape.
‘Mindcall your brethren, my king, they are not far and if you urge them
they will come.’
*****************
In the dark forest about Eaun a small band of Shouels led by Mithrish
were on to their home in the foothills of Lower Soen. Suddenly they were
stopped in their tracks as a bright light in the gloom of the rain soaked trees
that illuminated their dirty, bearded faces and they looked ahead in
wonderment.
Before them was a dream of butterflies, a conglomeration of a million
colours that was formed by a corolis swirl of wings that crafted a beautiful
woman, tall, slender. A flowing hair of
silvery wings cascaded down her naked body. Her eyes the cornflower blue of the
grass of Upper Soen. Her slight nose,
her entire face aglow with an ethereal radiance as she smiled as if the band of
Shouels had been ushered into a new world.
She only spoke four words before the butterflies flew apart and
disappeared in the rain.
‘Go quickly to Eaun.’ In silence the Shouels began to run between the
raindrops, as swift as the wind. Half an
hour later the stoic form of Merve stood before them.
Merve had never spoke since he had been seven years old when his mother,
father and small sister had been murdered by Shouels such as these. Sodden with
the rain he realized there were too many to hold back and he could not call for
help. Over the years Merve had learnt that all of the cognitive races where in
part cruel. The baptism of the winter rain seemed to clear a mighty boulder
from the cave of his mouth. As if in an occasional dream when he could speak
Merve turned in the rain and pointed to the Peacekeeper’s office and meekly
said:
‘Dalrosse is in the cell, he will be dead soon if he is not already. There is nothing but anger and hate in the
village for your sort. Yet I remember that it was not always the same.’
Marrana, his nurse before the death of his family, had loved him deeply and
despite all that had happened since, hers, the old Shouel’s, was the only love
he could remember. He guided the Shouels
to the office where Dalrosse paced in his cell, the men gone. Merve released him. Mithrish and the others went back with
Dalrosse Omelyn to the boundaries of Eaun.
He watched them vanish into the dense dark of the forest and for the first
time in his thirty-five years Merve laughed until tears of ecstasy ran down his
face. He too walked away from Eaun,
opening his dry mouth to the cold rain and drinking deep. From those parts of
the world no-one but Dalrosse ever saw him again.
******************************
Dalrosse started to tell his story of the massacre to Mithrish, but the
older Shouel told him shh and slow down, that he could tell all when he got to
the cavern city of Thet.
So in silence they walked drenched through for miles until the forest
receded and they finally reached their caverns.
Thet was a wonder to Dalrosse. He
had never seen s single Shouel before, now they were all around, lithe females
cooking on stone fires and little ones playing. Here at last was a multitude of
his people.
Mithrish told the others to go to their rest while he led Dalrosse to
the counsel room where the elders sat in a pungent smoke filled cave. Some of the Shouels stood and greeted Mithrish
with long hugs. Dalrosse lingered at the entrance as if a step forward would
seal a future he was not willing to take upon himself.
Nearest the fire, unmoving, sat an ancient Shouel. He seemed made of the rock about him and his
voice was imbued with wisdom from beyond the strictures of time.
‘Who is the boy?’ The wizened Shouel squinted and an ecstatic look of
recognition filled his eyes. ‘The lost one, Esierk’s son.’ Dalrosse wandered
through the flickering light of the fire and sat as if bidden beside the
Shouel.
‘My father’s that old storyteller?’
‘Yes child. We lost you from our world and sent you to the human’s. If
you are interested your mother is Marriamme, Princess of Thet,’ he looked at
Dalrosse sadly. ‘But she has gone to Tasen as an ambassador. A new war is
coming to the Menerth because Tasen and the king there have become corrupted by
the solitariness from the rest of the Menerth.’ He spat a glob of phlegm into
the fire. ‘Yes, child, you are the lost one and though you have found us you
must remain lost for a year or two more. You must go northwards instead of to
Ket where the war will start. At the base of the Mull Mountain your destiny and
a new strength will find you.’
He continued as if he were in a need to rush, to be rid of Dalrosse. ‘I
will send a few arrowmen to guide you to the cliffs of Mull Mountain, but they
will leave you then. Know that your journey will take you across the broad
river at the base of the cliffs. Child, remain lost, until we and the whole of
the Menerth is in the direst need, for only then will you be strong enough
defeat the sickness of the world.’ The Shouel then lowered his head as if he
had fallen into sleep.
Dalrosse was escorted out of the fire chamber by Mithrish. He and some
of his arrowmen led him through caves to the hidden entrance of Thet. Dawn
light had broken over the forest as they emerged. Dalrosse scrambled down the rubble of rocks
at the edge of the city, then ahead of him Mithrish entered the light rippled
sea of green and soon they were lost in the confines of the woods.
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