Free The Legend of El Shashi by Marc Secchia Page B

past at great length. The realisation that a considerable portion of my life had been wasted–or stolen from me–was painful and disorienting. The anna! Where had they flown? A great gap, then Jyla. The tower. Janos. The storm … her grand design apparently ruined by Mata’s envoy.
    What did it mean?
    What had Jyla done to me?
    The memory of Jyla’s sorcery seemed a nightmare wreaked upon some stranger’s person. Not I, not this withered husk of a man. But my wrists bore scars from the manacles. When had I lost those? Even as a quim to the scrolleaf, so had Tortha’s rod and whip scored its tale upon my flesh. As the days rolled into seasons, I found I could recall the past in ever-greater detail. I knew too much. I dreamed repeatedly of Jyla, tasting again the smoke of her sacrifice, walking panting and choking upon my own vomitus.
    I found it in my eyes. The day I borrowed Telia’s glass, the better to extract a thorn from my cheek, I saw it lurking there. The accursed Wurm. Or did I imagine it?
    The glass slipped from my nerveless grasp. Shards burst star -like from the point of impact. Shattered, silvery slivers winking back my fractured life.
    It is commonly held that a man’s eyes mirror his quoph. Zealots of the highly religious and influential Grathayn sect, which is strongest in the southern Fiefdoms, practise matali-ur-uli or ‘light overcomes darkness’ to exorcise the evil they believe is rooted in the quath and corrupts the quatl and quoph if left unattended. Matali-ur-uli involves using mirrors to direct sunlight into the bound subject’s eyes. I hear it can make one go blind–may I never suffer such ignorance! Even before Doublesun matali-ur-uli will blind the subject, but Belion’s brilliance makes a smoking ruin of the flesh. This to save the quoph? Idiocy!
    Thus, the broken looking-glass became a portent to my febrile mind. A curiously beautiful, enigmatic motif. To know this madness was to behold the visage of my inmost terrors. My sanity resembled aged scrolleaf–thin, brittle, and curled at the edges. Truly told, when the terrors descended upon me I thought I should stop breathing, and shadows would stalk the edges of my vision, and I cowered in a corner for makh barking at all comers.
    White was the colour of my mourning. Sunk in a bottomless well of depression, I made myself a terrible burden to Telia and Agria. I treated them harshly, but never a harsh word did they return. Their kindness restored my life. Slowly, nourished at their hearth, I gathered strength. The fears abated. I grieved for my friend Janos, who I had betrayed.
    My soles itched to tread new roads.
    And so, as Glooming season turned to the Rains and the harvest was safely stored in granaries the Fiefdoms over, Agria shared with me her deepest longing and the best way I could express my appreciation to her daughter.
    That selfsame night, I fled with nary a backward glance.
    Ay, the Arlak of old might have obliged with scarce a second thought, but I was far from that man now. Grant her a child? A kindly thought, except that my terrors far overshadowed any sense of obligation. Perhaps the ulules had invented one too many tales birthed in the contaminated seed of demon-possessed men. To what Nethespawn monster might Jyla’s foul labours give rise, lay there but a grain of truth therein?

Chapter 6 : Magic
     
    Warlock’s Roost, 3 rd Joinday of Highsun, Anna Nol 1603
     
    I dipped my quim in the lithpot, trapped the excess ink against its rim, and said, “You will understand, Benethar, that two hundred and fifty anna ago I knew as little of the ways of magic as I knew of the world beyond Roymere.” I scratched a careful note on the scrolleaf. “I was ignorant and cocksure. The more I have learned, the more I realise there is to know. There can be no end to the accumulation of knowledge in one man’s lifetime. There are mysteries that can never be fathomed, just as my own life is a mystery. I enjoy mysteries. They humble