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 One

I am heartily sorry for the delay. It has been a busy weekend. I beg your patience and forgiveness.

Continued from Chapter Five: Part Four.

Jarvela Gunnar ruled gangs. He was born in Kunigsgrad, back when it was called Seafasten, in the later days of the war. The streets were most dangerous then, and he called the streets home. Jarvela lived by his wits, staying alive by keeping ahead of the other urchins. It always felt to him like he had more than the usual rationing of wit. People he knew back then all seemed slow and stupid. He made them into a gang, for their protection and his own. Then, in the shortest version of a long and painful story, though, the gang all died, killed by a larger and more powerful gang. Jarvela survived. After spending a week of night drinking he armed himself, making ready to storm the house of his enemies. He wanted to end his life. As a return, he wished only to take a few of them with him.


Any other option sickened him with grief. He would not go on. He would not go back. But over his last bottle of rum, taken in a tavern before making his attack, a person confronted Jarvela, suggesting a different option.

The man called himself Kyouki no Uma. He had sleek black hair grown long, thin eyes that slanted at the edges, and skin colored like unbleached silk. He smelled like mint, wore sleek clothing, and stood taller than Jarvela. He looked out of place in the dark wood of the tavern, stained with smoke and worn to sleekness by hundreds of years of people walking around the room. Jarvela stood at the bar, his third clay cup of rum in his hand, and he angled his head to the mint smelling man who looked out of place in the tavern—far too clean, far too distinguished. Castles and fine halls would be Kyouki no Uma’s natural environment. Kyouki looked sideways at Jarvela and smiled crookedly, twisting his trimmed goatee.

“You’re shitting me, little man,” Jarvela said, raising his rum to his lips. Kyouki had just offered Jarvela a job. He had not yet said what job. It didn’t matter. Jarvela didn’t want a job. It was common for refined men of money to hire men like Jarvela to do the violent things they lacked the spine to do themselves. Jarvela would have been interested any other day. He just wanted to be left alone today. “Find some other schill, little man,” he said.

“You haven’t heard the job yet,” Kyouki said, his voice low and perfectly pronounced.

“Step off,” Jarvela said. “You’ve picked a bad day.”

“I think it’s the perfect day,” Kyouki said. “As I understand it, your enemies have deprived you of your allies and you have nothing left to do for yourself.”

Kyouki said the words evenly, without spite, without a hint of bragging. Only Jarvela’s enemies would know what Kyouki said.

“Tread carefully,” Jarvela said, lowering his voice and his cup of rum. His axe hung at his waist. He readied himself to use it.

“I’m not one of your enemies,” Kyouki said.

“You’re sniveling enough to be one of them,” Jarvela said.

“Jarvela Gunnar,” Kyouki said, a name he should not have known. Jarvela never used his real name back then. Kyouki’s smile softened. “Do you remember your first cloak?”

That cloak had been the first Jarvela had met Kyouki no Uma. Kyouki had given Jarvela his first cloak—a wool cloak, grey, soon stolen. After several days of thought, Jarvela did take the job Kyouki offered. He found he preferred it to dying. At first, Jarvela had acted as Kyouki’s valet and bodyguard, traveling with Kyouki. Kyouki went everywhere inside of the first few months, getting in the worst kind of scrapes. Kyouki would start fights everywhere. They would enter bars, and Kyouki would empty bottles of wine himself. He’d raise a ruckus and he and Jarvela would be forced to fight their way back to the street. Jarvela wondered from the first days what Kyouki wanted with a bodyguard. He could take care of himself, and more. Kyouki started teaching Jarvela things, in fact. Not just fighting, though Jarvela and Kyouki saw most eye-to-eye about that. Kyouki had a broad understanding of history, philosophy, logic, geometry, and all the old stories. Education had never either appealed to or wholly revolted Jarvela once he had a chance to learn from Kyouki he found his curiosity grew daily. He plagued Kyouki with questions and Kyouki fielded them with the patience of one who felt they had all of eternity to answer. And, sometimes, Kyouki would volunteer a piece of information: “I rather like to collect ghost stories,” he said more than once, and, more than once, he asked for new ones from the people they met on the road.

Jarvela continued, nominally, to be Kyouki’s bodyguard, though the idea of “employment” faded. They traveled to all corners of the world. They traveled to the farthest south and raised hell with the pirate lords, which Jarvela thought was stupid. Not as stupid, however, as the next few months when they went to the eastern isles and wandered the Savage Lands, bothering werewolves and the primal natives. From there they spent almost a year zigzagging gradually westward across the great plains in the middle of Eardbána, sampling beers, women, and brawling through towns. Jarvela sometimes wondered what drove Kyouki. Most days, he allowed the journey to be its own adventure. Other days he inquired what they were doing. Kyouki always answered that particular question with some sociopolitical question--who is the king? What is justice? Does anyone speak for the voiceless? The question started some only slightly related discussion, and Jarvela let it go. He presumed that Kyouki meant to tell Jarvela abstractly what the point it by the discussion. Jarvela had not divined the answer yet. Perhaps there was no answer and Kyouki was merely mad; that made more sense most days.

The Gelodra Mountains in the west slowed their journey, as winter had fallen upon them by the time they reached the foothills. Instead of stopping, Kyouki stocked up on whiskey and forged ahead, keeping Jarvela slightly tipsy through the whole trek through the passes. Jarvela remembered very little of the Gelodra days. He remembered, in their drunkenness, singing loudly enough to cause a few avalanches, and he remembered fighting bears that sparked from the mouth and bears that seemed a little too smart, and he vaguely remembered fighting monsters. He mostly remembered bitching about the cold and drinking more whisky.

“It was not wise to go into the mountains in winter,” Jarvela grumbled during a blizzard. He couldn’t tell if it was day or night. The world had greyed out. The warmth of a half of bottle of whisky kept him riding.

“Wisdom is subjective,” Kyouki said. “A man’s intentions inform the wisdom of his actions.”

“You haven’t told me what your intentions are,” Jarvela said, frowning.

“You can only decide the wisdom of your own actions, then,” Kyouki said, nearly shouting to be heard over the wind.

The whisky lasted just long enough to get them through the mountains out into the lush jungle in the western shadows of the Gelodra Mountains. Jarvela had always feared Kyouki would take them this way. They hiked through the jungle, where it rained constantly. Kyouki said they were fortunate it rained. The barbarians living in the jungle stayed indoors when it rained. Jarvela had despised the rain.

Eventually they passed from the jungle. The trees thinned and eventually disappeared. Then, with a suddenness almost like ocean breaching shoreline, they reached hot desert.

“You miss the rain now, I think,” Kyouki said, surveying the seemingly infinite sands with an ironic smile.

“Lord of chaos, you’re a crazy bastard, Kyouki,” Jarvela said.

They rode south along the edge of the desert, keeping in the scrubby hills. The tufts of olive trees and bramble offered some shelter from the heat, and Kyouki explained they would be more able to find water. “We’ll head out into the dunes in perhaps a few days,” Kyouki said. “Maybe. I hope not, though.”

Continued on January 26...