Chapter Six: Part Four

Continued from Chapter Six: Part Three

Younes chuckled. “Not so,” he said. “Not so. A monster he is, no failing that. Join with the tidy man? Mayhap he will—mayhap he will. And yet, something gives him pause,” Younes, sitting on the ground, no longer looked up, no longer seemed to talk to Kyouki or anyone else but himself. “Nay,” he went on, his voice getting steadily quieter so that it could hardly be heard over the wind outside the hollow. “Nay, for he has had a long hard time to think in the rushing sands—sands of time, yes. Iskander Younes is a hazard. No mistaking that, certain sure. That being so, why did they not kill him when a chance for it came to them? That’s a question that vexed him long, kept him quiet, left the canyon free of his wailing and cursing. That it did. His new mind never left it to rest, and Iskander Younes as he is to be seen now discovered a fair prize. He solved the riddle to his own liking, that and more. Yes, it’s so.” Younes rolled his eyes back to look at Kyouki. “You’ve an opinion that he should join your adventures, do you? But tell me, tidy man, what service can you to aid Iskander Younes in his vengeance? Can you answer me that?”

Kyouki paused before answering. Jarvela felt the sadness in him, seeping out like a mist. It was the kind of question he would not want to answer.

“I will not aid your vengeance, Younes,” Kyouki said.

Younes grinned. “Then Iskander Younes has no further use of you.”

The interview ended badly. Younes fled.

*

Thinking back on Younes, as they met in that canyon so many years earlier, Jarvela left Súthende in the company of his young friend, Tag Tegran. They rode due north through the hills to Kyouki no Uma’s house, a home to lost children like Jarvela till they could go into the world and stand vigil. The lost and the forgotten drew to Kyouki, learning of themselves, growing and training. They learned secrets of the world, locked in themselves. Over time, the urchins at Kyouki’s house blossomed and he sent them into the world to keep the peace—fighting monsters in shadow. The uneasy peace of the world would have long before been hotter had Kyouki’s Runagates not been prowling, though few knew it.

Jarvela had his message to carry to Kyouki: in the company of Digger, the Wiggend Lordling, Silk Golinvaux had gone into the hills near Súthende. Jarvela had been investigating Silk and his movements for months, using the networks of Runagates. Jarvela concluded that Silk had gone into the hills to meet with Iskander Younes, to join in their common purpose, though they had different reasons for meaning violence to the Warlord Engelkind. Younes had gone his farthest yet on his mission of revenge. He could be tracked through the movements of his less careful company.

“You’re awfully quiet, Jarvela,” Tag said in his deep voice, uncommonly thoughtful and even for a kid his age. He had dark hair straight as straw, and wise eyes with premature wrinkles around them. A hand rolled cigarette wobbled between his lips. Often his eyes stared into the distance even when he talked to someone three feet from him.

“I’d hope that Wexerly would join us on this road,” Jarvela said. “We’re riding to…” Jarvela groped for words.

“Death and ruin?” Tag suggested.

Jarvela shook his head, not to disagree but to say he didn’t know. “How do you feel about the future, Tag?”

Tag smiled around his cigarette. “It feels stormy, or nearly stormy. A pregnant frisson awaiting the first lightning strike.”

Jarvela frowned. He disagreed. He thought the first lightning had stricken somewhere, that they had missed it and awaited the thunder and the onslaught of a torrential rain.

He kicked his horse to a trot. Haste felt appropriate.

End of Chapter Six. Continued on February 7...

Chapter Six: Part Three

Continued from Chapter Six: Part Two

“Aside from my training,” Jarvela said. “I can only remember that you always asked for more ghost stories. I discount my training as important to you. So we must be ghost hunting.”

“Do not be so quick to dismiss yourself,” Kyouki said, looking sidelong at Jarvela. “You are right, though. We are ghost hunting. A specific ghost. We have almost found him.”

The next morning they started early. Unlike every other day since Jarvela had joined company with Kyouki, the Oswemend seemed to have a clear idea which way to go. They continued southward along the scrubby edge of the desert. Gradually, hills grew and slowed their horses. For a day no further adventure beset them.

The next dawn burned hotter than any Jarvela had ever felt. He shed many layers of clothing before they started and still dripped with sweat before an hour had passed. The hills grew hotter and drier as they went south. Large, sandy rocks began sticking up from the ground, becoming larger as they went. After not many hours there was more rock than hills. The wind formed rocks swept up taller and taller. Soon their rode wove around tall rock formations.

Wind grew through the rocks. The sparse sand whipped up. Jarvela wrapped a cloth around his mouth to protect his breath. The going got more difficult every mile—the wind threw around more grit and the ground was always stonier. Jarvela did not want to believe that some ill will set against them. He had trouble disbelieving it. A dry voice laughed or cursed in the wind, raising the hairs on his neck. The first few times he heard it he thought he imagined it, spiraling through the coarse dust into his face. It sounded so faintly and seldom that he thought it a brush of wind. The sound of the voice grew louder, clearer, frequenter, till Jarvela could only believe it. The laughter sounded scornful and ironic—the curses as bitter as the grit in the wind blowing in his face.

The sand blowing around had grown so thick Jarvela saw a few feet ahead of him and no further. He had no clear idea of the terrain anymore, except that the ground had become dry stone. Kyouki still seemed to know where he wanted to go. He rode a little ahead of Jarvela, his head bowed and wrapped in his black silk hood. The cruel voice in the wind drew him on through the sand. He had found his ghost, Jarvela supposed.

Though the wind developed no change, Jarvela became vaguely aware through the closening of the air and the tightening of the rushing sound that they had ridden into a canyon. Jarvela felt they had been riding in it for some time—perhaps two miles. The walls swooped closer around them so that what little sunlight strangled through the gritty wind turned dim and red. The horses didn’t like the wind and sand. They wanted to turn back. The voice in the wind scared them the more. It had become shouting with a renewed vigor.

The walls of the canyon narrowed to nearly a cave for a hundred feet. They whooshed out again suddenly and they rode into a wide place in the canyon. The sand had been thinning for a while. Through it Jarvela could see vague shapes in the distance. The walls of the sandstone canyon, windswept and winding, stood tall and a uniform yellow-red from the ground up shaped like a very slow creek bed eroded with very fast wind. The[1]  far wall was featureless except for a pale X shape chained to the wall thirty feet off the ground.

“A man,” Jarvela shouted, bending near Kyouki’s protected head.

“Very nearly,” Kyouki said. If Jarvela could have seen his face he would have guessed Kyouki smiled.

“Your ghost?”

“Yes—the wretched creature,” Kyouki said. The familiar, rasping laugh in the wind broke forth again, louder than ever.

Taking a pickaxe they had brought with them, Kyouki, using his own special nimbleness, climbed slowly up the cliff face to the X of a pale man hanging from the walls. Kyouki found a narrow ledge under the chains and just managed to keep his feet enough to strike the chains securing the man’s feet a few good blows. Jarvela watched, feeling loathe to release this person, so securely hanged from chains in such an unwholesome place. His voice made Jarvela nervous. And some other ill feeling hung about the place, though Jarvela could just be jumpy from riding in the hard wind in the canyon for so long. Besides, the pale man could not be trussed so roughly for being a safe person. A hazard and no mistake.

Kyouki managed to dislodge the chains securing the man from the cliff till only on chain kept the pale man’s left arm attached to the wall. Through an improbable feat of balance and strength Kyouki held the pale man by the one chain left, climbed to where it was attached to the wall, and dislodged it as well. He kept a hold of the chain and climbed down the cliff. On the ground Kyouki wrapped his own cloak around the man, who could almost not stand. They walked back to Jarvela and the horses, Kyouki supporting the other, who still dragged his chains.

“Let’s find someplace to get out of this wind,” Kyouki shouted at Jarvela. Jarvela tried and failed to get a good look at the newcomer. He kept the hood of Kyouki’s cloak over his face. Aside from being a man as large as Jarvela, broader than Kyouki, and pale, Jarvela could see very little of him.

A little further along the canyon they found a deep crevice which afforded protection from the wind. It was deep enough and wide enough to get the horses inside. Still they had enough space to sit on the canyon floor near the opening. Jarvela had a good look of the pale man, who sat against a wall in the alcove.

He smiled. It looked genuine enough. Anything cheerful in it had the taint of being formed by a purple and bruised mouth in a wax-white face, his skin chapped and cracked from maybe years hanging in the sand-swept canyon. The chains around his limbs had been welded together. Whoever put him up there wanted to keep him there.

“What crime deserves this punishment?” Jarvela asked.

“He is guilty of no crime,” Kyouki said. “Though the name may mean nothing to you, this is Iskander Younes. He was hidden here because some people are embarrassed by his existence. He reminds them of certain secrets they’d rather hide. I think he wants to tell you about it.” Kyouki fell silent while the quiet laugh of Younes mumbled from him.

“Aye, no crime but loyalty,” Younes said. “This was the body of Iskander Younes, a loyal soldier, who swore fealty to a lord and a lord bade him do, so Iskander Younes did as he was bidden. There died Iskander Younes, but not his end. Nay, for here is he still. And not the same. Nay, respawned, the first of an ill breed.” Younes giggled. “They hid him away—dangerous he is, certain. More dangerous still being present than being he. Iskander Younes is a secret clue of a bad decision. As the master yon suggests, Iskander Younes reminds them what they meant to hide. They don’t much like that.”

“Damn,” Kyouki muttered, standing just behind Jarvela’s shoulder. Jarvela glanced back. Kyouki’s eyebrows lowered, his eyes stern. “I’ve made a grave error. I hoped he’d be more stable than this.”

Younes looked past Jarvela at Kyouki. Laughing, Younes waved a chained hand to Kyouki. “Iskander Younes is free. The tidy man—oh ho, so prim and clean at every edge—has his price, no doubt. Perhaps Iskander Younes will see it in his power to repay this mild kindness extended to him. Name your warrant, tidy man.”

“Join with me, Younes,” Kyouki said, stepping around Jarvela. “Join with me and we will rebuild a place for our kind.”

The pale face of Younes looked suddenly tense. His eyes widened and his mouth fell agape. “You are not like Iskander Younes. Not by an ounce of flesh nor a turn of phrase. How could you even suppose?”

“I know better what you are than you know,” Kyouki said, lowering his voice. He sounded like he had recently become uncertain of it.

Continued on February 3...

Chapter Six: Part Two

Continued from Chapter Six: Part One

All the booze had run out. For the last couple of years, their travels had been accompanied with beer, or wine, or hard alcohol. The night at the edge of the desert were the first completely sober nights of their adventures in a long time. Jarvela found the experience thoughtful and calm. He didn’t miss the alcohol. Although he found that he wondered with a greater urgency than ever what Kyouki had in mind for the future.

“I think that your fiddle needs new strings,” Kyouki said to Jarvela on the second night, when they had camped in a gravely patch surrounded by rocks and thorny bushes. Kyouki lay on his blanket, the stars reflected in his eyes. Jarvela sat on a log across the campfire from him. At Kyouki’s suggestion, Jarvela fetched his fiddle from one of the packs. He had taken up fiddle at some point during their travels. Kyouki encouraged it, seeming to think it calmed Jarvela.

It did, Jarvela hesitated to admit. He had always thought music seemed a prissy pastime. Admitting he quite liked it came hard. But he did admit it.

Gently adjusting the delicate wood, Jarvela removed some of the old strings from his fiddle. He had new strings in his bag, but before he started putting them on he checked everything else about the fiddle to be certain it stayed in good shape. He worked quietly, keeping his main attention on his task while allowing his imagination to wander freely, thinking through old ponderings. He began wondering about Kyouki, his past and motivations. Jarvela knew very little about Kyouki, really. Kyouki had money and Kyouki had prestige, though why he did never seemed to come up in conversation. On their travels, Kyouki would often be treated with an almost religious respect by the few who recognized his name—usually historians or the very religious. They called him “consort”—Consort no Uma. Though consort to whom they never mentioned. Kyouki never brought it up. It seemed that Kyouki had no allegiance to any kingdom. He seemed neutral to both Engelkind’s new regime and to the old king exiled in the north. One thing he had told Jarvela was there were no lands that belonged to the name no Uma. Kyouki conducted himself like an errant knight, allied to no one.

The only distinct point of character that Jarvela had gleaned of Kyouki was a profound religious respect. Many people chose a god or two, sometimes, three, to hold in most reverence, directing the bulk of their prayers and sacrifices to that god. Jarvela himself had always held Ythig, the lord of chaos and first mover, in most reverence, though he had a strong respect for Ellen Róf, the shield maiden and courageous cousin to Ythig. People would remember and revere all the other gods. They were gods. They all deserved reverence. Each god had a different philosophy, though, and healthy folk would decide on the one that suited them best and live most by that philosophy. No one followed all the gods at once. That would imply far too much discipline.

Kyouki did, though. Kyouki would make daily references to all seven of the gods. He would talk in the morning of Ythig’s excitement of new movement, throughout the day Kyouki would talk of Gróesn and the value of being aware of the still things, and at dusk he would tell sometimes unsettling stories of Ferryman and his often peculiar place in history. Kyouki would talk of Gróesn’s wife, the lady Wendy, when they rode through leafy woods, and on the crossing of rivers and when they walked on the tops of cliffs overlooking the sea Kyouki would laugh and shout to Ellen Róf, Ythig’s wife. The other two, Uncle Spircan and Mama Boom-Boom, known sometimes as the grandparents of the gods, Kyouki would mention less often, but with as much respect. Uncle Spircan often came up when they lit campfires, and he would mention Mama Boom-Boom often when he would sing songs or tell old tales. Kyouki rarely spoke of Kunig, the new god, but when he did he was thoughtful, as if he had made no certain decision about him.

Dedicated allegiance to the entire pantheon was unheard of in Jarvela’s memory. Men who tried became confused and flighty, never sure what they believed. Jarvela knew a few historian monks who claimed to be non-denominational, following all gods the same. They mumbled rather than spoke and were perpetually lost in study, never aware of anything but their books.

Somehow, Kyouki seemed functioning enough. And when he told stories of the gods the stories sounded less like old legends, heard from childhood up, than like anecdotes. Some of Kyouki’s tales almost seemed to feature him. Jarvela had long suspected Kyouki was more than human, though not a god himself. Kyouki never confirmed it. It hardly mattered. Many strange things lived in the world. Jarvela knew Kyouki no Uma the person, and that contented him till Kyouki cared to explain himself.

Jarvela finished stringing his fiddle. He began tuning it. Probably Kyouki guessed Jarvela’s thoughts. Kyouki had an uncanny talent to do that. When he did he would address Jarvela’s concerns, but in a sideways way that made Jarvela think about what the problem had been at the first.

“Are you concerned that I have no idea what I’m doing, Jarvela?” Kyouki asked. The question surprised Jarvela. He shook his head and muttered, “Of course not,” before he really thought about it. Doubting Kyouki’s self-assurance had never occurred to Jarvela. Now that the question had been posed, though, Jarvela began to realize that Kyouki seemed completely confused. He got routinely drunk, started fights almost nightly, and wandered without clear purpose. It made sense to think of Kyouki as befuddled. He always seemed so wise and in control, never a hair on his head out of place, never a question set to him without an immediate answer on his lips. It inspired Jarvela to just go along with Kyouki’s idiosyncrasies. It suddenly seemed idiotic to Jarvela that he had failed to question Kyouki’s state of control sooner.

Kyouki smiled. “And his world comes crashing down around his ears,” he said. “You have the tools to doubt me. Rightly you should. My world has been devastated since the War. Since the exile of the gods I have been attempting to rebuild my world. I have not been making too fine a job of it either. There’s been progress, though.”

Jarvela thought of a question. He hesitated to ask it.

“Ask it, Jarvela,” Kyouki said.

“What was your place, master?” Jarvela asked.

“What do you think it was?”

Jarvela thought about it. Kyouki was more than a man, that much seemed clear. He told stories he could not know about things in the shadows of the past, and he seemed on first-name terms with all the gods at once. Some old stories featured strengthy beings, more than men and less than gods, who served the gods as their close consorts.

“I’d warrant you’re Oswemend,” Jarvela said. “A god herald.”

“And that does not frighten you?” Kyouki asked, smiling still. “Men are usually awed to know that.”

“They have not drunk with you, perhaps,” Jarvela said. He raised his now strung fiddle to his shoulder and drew a few notes from it. He continued pondering. Oswemend--god herald. A servant of the gods, made by the gods to work with them, and all the gods but one exiled to none knew where. The one left had been the power exiling the others. Here was Kyouki left behind.

“I have nothing left to do in this world,” Kyouki said. Jarvela could see that. “Or I had no possible mission. As I have said, I have been rebuilding.”

“There are other Oswemend, I presume,” Jarvela said.

“Yes. We are a closer-knit bunch for the fall of our lords,” Kyouki said. “Our world looks far different than any we had ever anticipated for ourselves. We have been forced to grow.”

“You are boozing rapscallions?”

“Come now, you know me better than that,” Kyouki said. Jarvela wanted to believe that he did. Keeping his mind on the sweeps of his bow across the fiddle strings Jarvela quieted his rising anger at Kyouki. Before his anger could quite take root, Jarvela thought over the past couple years, finding if there was anything aside from the boozing and the fighting that unified their travels.

Continued on January 31...