#68 - What a Story-Theory Song!

I am Evil incarnate. I’m bad, I’m wrong. I’m the cause of all the pain.  I’m the cause of my own pain. I belong to Father, he says I’m making him do these things to me. My fault. If I make someone else hurt then I’m safe.

The taste of blood, screaming hundreds, they’re hurting not me. I am a good warrior. I slaughter with the best. Blow holes in them with carbine, thrust holes in them with sword. Make the horse stamp someone to death. That is what I’m best at.

Flogging and beating makes people obey. They are safe. But Kinourae said he loved me still. He isn’t in this world, or he’s off doing some other job. He’s not my body servant. Even if I hurt him, he said he understood that it is by Father’s will.

The monster broke me and made me into another monster. Kill or maim all around you. Assault your younger brothers. Don’t touch the girls, they’re going to some other man, or Father will teach them properly.

Only Arnziel is left alive in my world, that world. He hates me. He blames me for what Father made me, made us do.

I hear the Rummummalos tongue rumbling through my body.  Didara is curious, always.  Fascinated that I knew her from another world. Appalled that she is dead, or so everyone suspects.  I didn’t tell anyone that she died.  Limyé thinks so and he’s right.  I can hear them talking.  Ologbon’s Innéan is improving as fast as it did in the real world. My world.

“Real world?”  The voice I know.  She is everywhere wound through my life.  I am terrified of her. I must be a witch and someone will throw test powder on me, douse me with a bucket of water and watch me go up in flames. Maybe I’m ready for that.

It will hurt once more and then never again.  I find that attractive.

“No, child.  You will be able to serve as a healer for two worlds yet.”

“Liryen.”

“Yes?”

“I heard what you said, oh Goddess, but it makes no sense.”

“Just as you are one of the only people on this continent, in fact on both continents who can hear and speak to the Rummummalos, you are the trigger for all of Inné in both worlds.  Heal yourself and then we will speak again.”

“Goddess!  I’m so crazy I can’t!” I float in a sea of my screaming and I am scooped up out of it, floating as though I am held cupped in two hands.

“To me, child, you are already a flickering cloud of thought held to a particular body that enables you to perceive me and that is all right.”  The hands shake and I, the cloud of mirror particles shuffle and float and then settle again, edges closer.  “See?  That is how you change.  Gather up the bits and put them back together for me.”

How do shattered bits of glass reflect anything but ruin? But I answer Her obediently. “Yes, oh Lady of the Depths and Snow.”

I can feel her smile.  The black-haired girl who changes before me, grows rosy cheeked and ruddy, glowing with… heat?  I don’t understand.  But I am finally warm, even the cold dead pieces of me that sat with my dead mother.  That part of me might live again if I let it.  I see a few green shoots growing out of the dead pieces.

How do green growing things and glass and volcanic heat have anything to do with one another?  I see all three in Her eyes. She looks at me and I am not judged and found wanting. “Your poor Monster could never hear me,” She says.  “And ultimately you burned him to ashes, though his spirit is now far away from you.”

“I hurt, Mama.”

“I know.  It will ease.  Heal yourself. I will help you.”

Ahrimaz could feel the stretch of his lungs in his body, became aware of his heartbeat, his clenched hands, the discomfort of his clothes knotted under his body.  He could feel the worn wooden floor with waves of knots rising out of the smooth-worn surface like a benign ocean under the sun.  The circle of heat around Jagunjagun was a blessing here at the empty end of the barn where the snow blasted through the walls when the wind howled.

Limyé’s hand was on one of his shoulders and Didara’s trunk fingers curled around his other shoulder as he lay, her bulk, in her mirrored wool coat was the other source of heat, shielding him from winter’s teeth.

“Jagunjagun will be all right, Ahrimaz.  You saved him, not by force of arms, or by slaughtering everyone who threatened them.  You saved your friend by bringing Etienne and I to him when he needed us.”

He could hear Jagunjagun snoring, comfortable enough to sleep, though not comfortable enough to sleep on his side.  He stood in the dim light surrounded by bales of hay to lean against should he wish.

“The ammunition the bandits used had been smeared with filth and Didara assured me that we caught the blood-sepsis in time.  Etienne is chagrined that he missed a ball the first time, but it’s all right now.”

Ahrimaz’s eyes opened and found himself staring into Teh’s eyes lying concerned just past his hands.  When he looked at her she wiggled forward on her belly and he found himself somehow clutching the big white dog.

He coughed and turned toward Didara, who hadn’t let go of him.  “Did they tell you I’m not from this world? That I knew you in another place, another time?”

The rumble she made he recognized as laughter. “Fascinating idea.  Such a story-Theory Song it will make!”

#67 - Crises

Ambassadors of Rummammalos: Mountains That Think

-- By Teel James, Raconteur for the Chronicles of Inné and Innéthel and their environs, Late Winter

The two Ambassadors, Didara, the Curious and Jagunjagun, the Fierce have been met by the joined forces of Cylak and Inné, with assistance from Riga.  On their journey to Innéthel the sister and brother were attacked by bandits and with their escort successfully fought off the miscreants.

First let me describe the ambassadors.  They stand on four limbs, like a dog or a horse, though their feet are round and thick enough that I cannot span their girth with my two hands.  Their skin is grey and they have ears the size of bed-sheets on either side of their heads.  In the centre of their faces is a limb that might be called a nose but it reaches to the ground and is prehensile with two fingers at the tip.  This is strong enough to pick a man off the ground and hurl him five hundred paces away.  I pause at this point to reassure my faithful reader that I, personally, witnessed this action, though the Horse Guard were more than a thousand paces away.  I swear on my liquid self to Liryan that this is true and factual to the absolute best of my powers of description.

To continue.  The ambassadors have a family member with them who is a human, though their relationship is difficult to describe.  The so-called ‘iti-igi’, which is also one of their names for their nose-tentacle, is raised with the young elephants and this gentleman, by the name of Ologbon, is if the height of a rather typical ten year old Innéan, only coming to my waist.  He speaks excellent Rigan and Cylak and passable Innéan which is improving rapidly.

To return to the ambassadors.  They both have two enormous tusks protruding from their mouths on either side of their noses, that have been elaborately decorated.  More so in the case of Didara than her little brother Jagunjagun.

We are currently taking refuge in the village of Champ de Navet, in their largest turnip barn, since that is the only enclosed space large enough to house the ambassadors out of the cold.  Jagunjagun is in his second surgery, with his sister the only one able to restrain him, since none of our healers know how to anaesthetize a creature so large and the Rummummalos themselves have never considered such an idea.

Jagunjagun was struck by several musketoon rounds during the battle and despite their robust skin and the boiled wool of their winter coats, was injured, with at least three balls penetrating his skin.  There is an Imaryan healer and the chirurgeon of the Horse Guard and the House of the Hand both working on the ambassador.  We shall be resting here until the younger ambassador is well enough to travel.

I am, Teel James, your most faithful raconteur of the latest news of Inné.

 

The Alien Emperor In Crisis

-- By Teel James, Raconteur for the Chronicles of Inné and Innéthel and their environs, Late Winter

Ahrimaz, who was given lead of this rescue operation of the Ambassadors of Rummammalos, on his most urgent request, most successfully guided the Horse Guard and His Belling Lordliness, Pelahir, Stag Lord, to Up Ford, on the edge of the Grim Mire, where the Rummammalos had just successfully fought off a bandit ambush with their escort. (see other story “Mountains that Think").

In the process of attempted assistance, Ahrimaz was minorly injured (merely a bloody nose) and in the course of the clearing up of the battle, ceased to speak.  At least he ceased to speak Innéan.

In the turnip barn where the ambassadors currently reside, he sits as close to one or the other elephant as he can, but when they move away, he does not follow, but sits, staring into the middle distance.  He does not resist if someone leads him to the necessary, or places a bowl of stew in his hands, though he must be urged to eat. He—

Teel dropped his pen and threw both of his hands over his ears in a futile attempt to block the sound as Jagunjagun moaned. It wasn’t as bad as him screaming but still shook everyone in the building. He was refusing to scream but had failed several times.  In the ring of heat the young priest was praying for, the elephant lay on his side, with both Etienne and Limyé at his elbow, though the young chirurgeon was wearily climbing to his feet as Limyé finished tying off the bandage.   

“He should be all right, Ahrimaz,” Etienne said, going over to where he sat, staring, Pel with bowl and spoon urging him to eat.

He put a hand on Ahrimaz’s shoulder and the man flung himself out from under it, Pel snatching the bowl out of the way, Ahrimaz laying prostrate on the ground arms wrapped around his head as Jagunjagun moaned once more, the broken form of the young man somehow echoing the broken form of the young elephant.

66 I Am Not Voice. Voice Is Sanity

It was a nightmare built of ice and silence, a peculiar ringing silence in his ears as he strained toward the ford.

The one bandit whose gun blew up instead of firing, leaving him writhing in scarlet splotch in the middle of the field of white, much darker than the wool fringes on the elephant’s jackets, squawling in the centre of the red mark.  The dark clot of bandits whose guns had fired or misfired, he couldn’t count them at this distance, setting plug bayonets even as the Cylak bore down on them, the deer only slipping a little on the ice at the ford.  It was frozen solid enough to carry them, perhaps all the way to the bottom.

Some bandits fleeing as their ambush failed and it turned into a stand-up fight.  Ahrimaz could see the tiny figure on Didara’s back apparently kneeling but he hurled his ammunition in a sling whipping around his head.  The iti-igi, always good at hurling rocks, ran through Ahrimaz’s head.  That had happened in the other world, according to both elephants, before Diadara had died.

Nightmare pounding, the Cylak he’d brought, Pel pulling his carbine in the brutal spray of ice shards his doe kicked up as they poured past him.  Yustiç -- the mare -- The horses could only go so fast on ice… no no no, Gods do you punish me to see Diadara take her fatal wound?  Instead of saving her? No, no no  It was a thunder of no and his blood pounding in his head and then, Ologbon… it must be him if it was Diadara… running out of rocks, dumping the basket next to him, full of glittering shards, making her even harder to see as she trumpeted and spun.

Bandit after bandit was hurled into the frozen ground as the elephants joined the fray.  Each step killed another man, their leggings soaked dark.

Yustiç stopped, plunging and rearing, refusing to go any further, Ahrimaz jammed his bootheels viciously into her sides and she went down and rolled.  He managed to fling himself clear and the other horses of the Guard all around, bucked and balked and some threw their riders and ran back down the road.  Elephants.  These horses had never seen elephants before.

His slick-soled boots skidded on the icy road and his greatcoat billowed around him and he saw… he saw in the middle of the battle… a bandit roll out from under an elephant foot about to smash him into slush, rose to one knee, jabbed up under Jagunjagun’s armpit with the broken bayonette.  “NO!”

Jagunjagun spun, the man flew against Didara and she snatched him up with her trunk and flung him into a boulder at the edge of the ford.

The hideous, glorious, longed-for sounds of fighting and men dying. Screams and gunshots and deer bellowing suddenly rushed into Ahrimaz’s head as he finally, finally got to the fight.  To find it over.  His head was full of the taste of blood and he grinned from ear to ear.

“welcome, rummmummmalos,” he could feel his words rumbling through his feet as the last of the Cylak escort came back from trying to chase stragglers, giving up as a deer went through the ice, and into mud below.  “You do your Queen proud.”

“thank you.  Who are you who know us?”  Diadara spoke, swaying and distressed.

“Ah-rummmm-aaaaz.” He gave his name the best roll he could.  All around he could hear the Captain, and Pel, cleaning up the blood and shit stinking mess.  “Are you injured? Do you need assistance?  We should get our injured back to shelter.  There is a village not far.”

“I…am Didara the curious and this is jagunjagun and our iti-igi ologbon. I am uninjured—“

“I am hurt, I think,” Jagunjagun said.  ‘that iti-igi hurt me.”

“Ahrimaz, we’ve mostly got thing together, we can take the injured back to Champ,” Pel stood next to Ahrimaz gazing up at the bloody, distressed, now quiet elephants above, like mountains rocking.  “We need to get out of this cold.”

Ahrimaz nodded.  “Pel, yes, I…” He reached out a hand, almost blindly to snatch at Etienne’s sleeve and drag him toward JagunJagun.  “Surgeon.  He is injured.  See to him first.”  Then all his words stopped.  He shuddered at the taste of blood in his mouth, frozen on the edges of his scarf where the mare, Yustiç, had slammed her head into his face.  His mind splintered into a thousand pieces, like the chips of glass and he watched through the thousand faceted eyes of a fly as he caught and calmed Yustiç, petted Heylia and Teh and Sure who all three helped round up the Horse Guard’s fleeing mounts.

I cannot speak. I must not speak. If I speak this shattering will carry through my whole body and I will fall apart like an ice statue. I hear them… Ologbon can speak our tongue. I am swimming in all the blood I ever spilled, rubbed my face into, bathed in, washing my pain away with other people’s screams. I am not whole and I was shattered by what the Monster my Father made me do, over and over and over again until I needed pain to function.  I am blood. I AM shit. I AM the battlefield. I am not Voice. Voice is sanity.

#65 - A Crackle Of Muskatoon Fire

The weather after the ice storm had cleared and the temperature had plummeted.  The sun shone in an icy blue sky hard as stone.  Every single horse soldier had tinted glass goggles to save their eyes and the riding animals had mesh over their faces it was so blinding. In the absolute stillness echoing cracks of trees exploding travelled for thousands of paces and often they groaned before they broke.

The war cats curled into their baskets, the dogs ran with their feet covered in boots, hoods tied over their heads and the short-haired breeds had coats even over their winter fur.  The light struck as though it were cold manifest, chewing on anything breathing, producing heat. Every crystal of snow, every fragment of crust reflected the light, breaking it into dozens of blinding glances.

The whole troop stood under one of the last stands of trees, the land falling away from them, down toward the Great Mire, a flat, ice covered expanse full of what looked like dead trees, all with no branches,  mounds of scrub weighted down by ice here and there. 

Ahrimaz tried to breathe slowly through his face covering, one hand on the mare.  All of the animals had to rest, especially in this tearing, biting cold.  He could feel the edges of everything he wore freezing as it got further away from the warmth of his body, and the warmth of his breath.  “Of course this had to be in the middle of winter,” he growled.  “It’s one reason no one was out, when the bandit—“ his complaint was cut off by a whistle, a shriek from one of the Cylak scouts, trotting back slowly with his falcon huddled on his saddleblock, tearing at a bit of jerky.

“’Efants,” he said slowly, as fast as he could without sucking icy air into his lungs.  “North of Down Ford, nearly to Up Ford.”Ahrimaz was about to cheer but he went on.  “Ambush.  UpFord, our side.  Fording l’slow ‘em down.”

“Mount ‘em!” the Captain’s voice was thin in the cold but everyone jumped.  “We’ll see ‘em safe!”

Ahrimaz had already swung up on the mare who had caught his urgency and threw her head up, stepping out as fast as she could in her best ground eating pace.  It was too cold to try and gallop so far and no matter how badly he wanted to he could not make her kill herself for no reason.

He was just behind the scouts as they burst out of the scrubby trees on the edge of the cliff, the road beginning the long sweeping switchbacks to take them safely down to the lower ground and the edge of the swamp.

He could see the moving dots of the elephants even without an eyeglass, but it would be insane to make the horse cut across country, even if they could trust the snow crust.  His head turned as they ran away, then back and away again, as the slowly, gently moving mountains, brightly coated and standing out as sharply in the white and grey and black landscape as the pain of a freshly smashed thumb.

Ahrimaz could see the blinding twinkle of hundreds of what looked like chips of light on the coat and head covering of one.  “Didara,” he said, and his hands tightened again and the mare shook her head in protest.

“Someone get me a drum!” Ahrimaz bellowed as his friends paced gently on toward the ambush, unknowing, even though there were surely Cylak scouting for them.  Surely.  He had to warn them, somehow.

It was a nightmare of plowing along over too slick footing, shards of broken ice that slashed through boots and wrappings, back and forth down the cliff face never seeming to get any closer.

Something was happening.  JagunJagun stopped and tapped Didara on her shoulder as she stepped around him.  She stopped too.

They were too far away to hear anything.  Even the deep rumbles they spoke with would carry differently through different ground, but someone thrust a drum into his hand and he didn’t take it out of its case, afraid the hide would just freeze.  He pounded on it as he rode,  eyes locked on the elephants, reins loose over his arm, the muffled thump seeming futile as their plunge down the cliff.

Danger danger ambush ambush danger ambush.  Over and over again with the tiny drum in the hope that they would hear, or feel it through their feet.

Even as Jagunjagun’s head swung up, muffled ears spread wide, just on the edge of the ford, a rank of men stood up and there was a tiny, fading crackle of muskatoon fire and a billow of black powder smoke.  “NOOOOOO!” Ahrimaz dropped the drum and they cleared the last switchback, a clear run toward the ford.  He lashed the mare trying to make her run and she bashed his face with her poll as she flung her head up, still moving quickly but refusing to run with ice under her feet.