Farlander

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

A Storm in the Mountains Che awoke to a foul taste in his mouth and a pounding in his head as though he had been drinking hard liquor, though he knew he had not. It was the after-effects of the berry juice he had smeared on his forehead all those days before.

He heard a sharp crack in the distance, and then another. Rifle shots. He opened his eyes, saw it was evening. Early stars hung, brightening, overhead.

Che groaned and forced himself up. He swayed on his feet, stumbled, toppled on to his back. He groaned again and looked about him. He knew this place.

He was at the foot of a high valley. By his side a bush swayed in the breeze, heavy with plump berries. Che blinked his eyes clear. The daylight was fading fast, though he could just make out the course of the broad stream that twisted up the valley floor. His gaze followed it upwards, scenting the breeze as he did so: blackpowder and burning wood. He knew what he would see there.

The monastery, surrounded by its forest of jupe trees.

The building was aflame.

As Che looked on, flashes of fire sped towards the monastery from different directions: artillery shooting through the dusk to impact against the buildings in gouts of flame and debris; and snipers, armed with long-rifles, firing down from high bluffs over to the west.

The flames were catching hold fast. Silhouetted against their light, Commandos were moving by platoon into the forest of jupes. A bell was ringing.

Che's stomach growled in hunger. It was the memory of mealtimes spent here, the same bell calling out for supper.

*

Clouds scraped over the mountain peaks, blotting out the stars one by one.

Che paused at the edge of the jupe forest.

In the shadows beneath the trees men fought in grim struggle. He saw firelight flash against blades, and a black-robed figure cutting his way through a line of Commandos, as their lieutenant yelled for them to close in and take him down. To the left, towards where he judged the main gateway to be, he could hear a larger action taking place. Steel clashed above the uglier clatter of rifle shots. Men hollered.

He flinched as a great explosion tore half the evening gloom away, and looked up in time to see the upper portion of the tower – where he knew old Osh to live – disintegrating in a cloud of dust. Someone screamed in the distance; from pain or rage, he couldn't tell.

Che retreated from the treeline. His eyes refused to consider any more of the destruction. He stared fixedly at the ground before his feet, lit occasionally enough to show clumps of grass, stripes of shadow. He skirted the treeline, came to the stream again.

Che turned and followed it upwards, leaving the monastery behind him.

Soon he saw it: the little shack of the Seer.

'Hello, Che,' said the Seer, in Trade, squatting in front of the shack.

At least Che's name had been real, while he had lived here, even if he had not been.

He stopped. He looked for weapons on the ancient Seer, or any sign of Rshun lurking inside the hut.

'How are you?' asked the Seer, his tone gentle.

Another whumpf of artillery sounded from below. The ground trembled beneath Che's feet. It shook him to answer though his response was a mere shrug.

Che didn't really know how he was.

The ancient farlander nodded, and patted the grass by his side. Che hesitated, as though the grass itself might contain hidden dangers. Delicately, he sat down beside the old Seer.

Together, they faced the battle below.

'We wondered where you had vanished to,' said the Seer in his thin, weak voice. 'But now we know.'

A tightness in Che's chest. 'It was not of my own choosing,' he said.

'I don't expect that it was. I would have seen it in you, if you had been the type for easy betrayal.'

Che dropped his gaze.

'I do not judge you,' said the Seer, patting his hand. 'We do as we must do. But tell me, please – how have you been, since we last sat and talked like this?'

Che scratched at his neck. He considered what to say to this man he had known so well in another life. For a moment, Che wondered what he was doing here, talking with him like this so casually, like friends. But then he heard the crack of shots fired below, and he remembered why he was here, and not there.

'When I lived here,' he said, 'I would dream, every night, of being a different person. Now I am that person, and every night I dream of being who I once was before. I am split in two by my past. I cannot escape it, however much I might try to flee.'

'You have it wrong, Che,' said the Seer. 'You cannot run from your past.' And the ancient farlander leaned closer, so that Che caught the reek of his breath. 'You can only sit until you are still, and wait for it to leave you.'

'I try.' Che sighed. 'I meditate, as I was taught here, but still I am torn.'

'What of your Chan?' asked the old man, as though that was somehow relevant. 'Is it as strong as I remember it to be?'

'My Chan?' Che's voice was heavy with disgust. 'If I once possessed such a thing, it was long ago squandered by my own hand. I am not who you think I am, old man.'

'I know who you are,' asserted the farlander. He sounded so certain.

'Then tell me,' said Che.

'You are a laughter, from deep within you.'

'I haven't the patience for riddles tonight.'

The corners of the old man's lips twitched. He gazed down on the burning monastery, and his mouth stiffened.

'When you first came here, I did not notice you. I pay no mind to such things, for you young ones are like the butterflies of summer, always coming then going. But I noticed, on certain days, when the air was still or the wind was playing in the right direction, snatches of laughter coming from the grounds of the monastery. Most laughter that I hear from there, it is restrained, you see, or courting an audience. This, though, was not, and it would always catch my ear. It was – how do you say it – so natural, spontaneous. Like a child experiencing joy.' And the Seer nodded as if in agreement with himself.

'So I asked myself… I asked myself who is it that I can hear laughing so well? And I thought of all who were there as Rshun, all who I knew of, and I did not know.

'So I waited. The answer always comes if you wait long enough, have you noticed? And it did. One day, your master brought you to me, so that I would look into your heart and tell him what I saw. Straight away, I knew you for the creator of that laughter. You had a humour in you, Che, that made spite of your demons.'

Flames now sprouted from the roof of the north wing of the monastery. The dining hall was on fire, and Che thought of the thousands of mealtimes he had spent there, chatting or listening to his peers.

Softly, he asked: 'How is my old master?'

'Shebec? He is dead.'

Che stiffened. Felt a cold numbness wash through him.

The fire was spreading fast; sparks flew wild through the air. The stand of jupe trees in the centre of the courtyard caught alight. From here, two men could see their upper branches wreathed in smoke. The trees themselves swayed in the waves of heat.

'Will they win, your people? I cannot see clearly with these poor eyes of mine.'

'You are the one who is the Seer.'

A faint smile passed over the farlander's lips.

'The Rshun,' said Che, 'they are making a fight of it.'

'That is good.'

'Will you not join them?'

'Me? I am too old to fight.'

They fell to silence. With glazed eyes, Che watched the reflections of flames as they were cast against the underbelly of low clouds. He thought: This was home to me once. I think it was truly the only home I have ever known.

'They will kill you, if you stay here,' he warned.

'I know.'

Part of the roof collapsed. The flames leapt higher.

'And my people,' said the Seer. 'They will kill you, if they win through.'

'I would expect so,' replied the young man.

The old Seer chuckled drily to himself. He patted Che's hand once more. 'Then sit with me a while longer,' he said, 'and let us see what happens.'

*

He was too late, and he knew it.

Ash clambered higher, breaking away from the rearmost tier of crowded seats, the highest and furthest from the stadium floor. He climbed a rusty iron ladder bolted into the outer wall of the stadium, passing guano-stained gargoyles and statues of imperial celebrities. Soldiers had been stationed here only moments before, but now they had left to converge on the more troublesome elements of the crowd, as people began throwing missiles and demanding that their calls for mercy be recognized.

He was weak with sickness, and long past the last of his strength. Still he climbed, forced on by the dread of what needed to be done. There was only one thing he could do for the boy now, and the knowledge of it sat like a heavy certainty in his guts.

Nico had fought well, Ash having arrived just in time to witness his fight against the wolves. All the while, he had scanned the stadium for some inspiration to strike him, a way to save his young apprentice. Nothing had come to him.

Hope had flared when Nico, against every expectation, had somehow fought through to win the crowd's approval. But now all that had changed again, reverting to a nightmare once more. The Matriarch had heard of her son's death, that much was clear, and she wished to wreak her vengeance on this boy in front of all. Such was the way of grief, the spoils of violence. It was his own fault, Ash realized. He had brought this fate down upon the boy.

Below, on the stadium floor, they had erected a post atop the pyre, and Nico was being tied to it even now. He seemed oblivious to what they were doing to him, his face tilted to the sky. The ends of three long chains had been looped over the top of the post. Acolytes stood with their hands wrapped in rags, holding the other ends slack. Others doused the pile of wood with oil.

Ash knew how the Mannians did such things. Doused in oil like that, the pyre would catch fire fast, offering little chance for the victim to pass out from the fumes. They would scorch him alive, then drag him out just as he stopped screaming. If timed right – and they considered this a form of art in Q'os, such was the nature of the place – their victim would still be alive, his flesh livid and exposed. He would then be nailed up for public display and left to die pitifully, suffering in agony.

Ash could not allow that to happen.

As if on cue, more white-robes appeared around the pyre, holding unlit brands. They set about lighting them as the soldiers stationed along the walls fought to push back the surging crowds.

Ash finally reached the top of the wall, and for some moments lay on the hard parapet. His skull felt as though it was trapped in a vice, sending nausea cascading through his body.

The wound in his leg had reopened, and he could feel his strength trickling and pooling in his boot, squandered out through the leather. Ash rummaged in a pocket, moving his arm and nothing else. He pulled out his pouch, drew some of the dulce leaves from it. He stuffed them into his mouth, rested his head against the stone once more. Immobile, he waited for the sickness to subside.

For as far back as Ash could remember, people had always complained that life was too short. He had often wondered at that because to him, for many years now, it had seemed life much, much too long. Perhaps he had simply experienced more incarnations than most – as some Daoist monks would have people believe – and the sheen on this game of life had simply worn thin for him, so that he could see through it too easily. Perhaps it was time to transcend this wheel of life for good, as those monks would say.

In his own questioning way, Ash did not know whether to believe in any of that. How could one know?

But he did know, now more than ever, that long ago he should have retired from this business, and taken himself to some distant mountain and built himself a hut there, to live out the rest of his years in simplicity. It wouldn't have brought him happiness – happiness was still part of the game after all. But perhaps, by setting everything aside, it might have finally brought him peace.

Ash lay his cheek against the cool concrete and closed his eyes. He could let it all go now, and never face what he would need to face any moment from now.

The boy had fought well.

Ash used his sheathed sword to help him rise unsteadily to his feet. He swayed, blinking to clear his vision. He turned to face the arena floor, distant from here, almost unreal.

Smoke already spilled from the base of the pyre. Acolytes stood around it, prodding it with burning brands as they set it to further life. The tethered young man began to struggle.

Ash hauled out the crossbow he had taken from Aleas. Carefully, he slotted the two bolts he carried into its grooves. It was a short-range weapon, but the bolts were heavy. From this height that might suffice.

Ash took another sighting of Nico, then hoisted the crossbow and aimed it high. He inhaled deep into his belly, concentrating on the flow of air through his lungs. His body slowly relaxed.

A moment arrived, and it still seemed strange to him, even after all these years, that moment in which he no longer felt that he was breathing, but being breathed. Slowly he exhaled and he felt his finger tighten against the trigger.

The bolt shot out faster than sight could follow. Ash didn't move from his posture, but stayed fixed like that as his eyes picked out the dark bolt falling in an arc towards the sand of the arena.

It struck the post just above Nico's head. Ash blinked away sweat. It was gushing now from his scalp like blood from an open wound, carrying his tears away with it.

Flames licked around the boy's feet. Smoke billowed about him. Nico was choking, and fighting to free himself.

Ash inhaled again. He lowered the crossbow by a fraction of an inch. Exhaled.

Released.

*

The more Nico struggled to breathe the more his lungs burned. He coughed and fought to break the chains that held him to the post. The smoke was making him light-headed; his bare soles flinched against the touch of flames. For a moment, he was back in Al-Khos, on the hot tiles of that roof, with Lena cajoling him from behind. It seemed as though his whole life revolved around that single mistake.

Nico would have done it all so differently, had he the choice.

He was close to his own death now. Strange how life seemed so vividly real near its end. Colours bled in tones he had never before noticed; even the tan sand was an infinite variation of light and shade, captivating his eyes. He could taste smells that went far beyond pleasant or unpleasant. He could hear individual voices in the great wash of the crowd; words even, tones of meaning. Why could it not always have been this way, so rich and vibrant? He could have sat for days on end and simply rejoiced in it all. Perhaps, he thought, this is what it is like, too, when we are born.

What a shame, then, to lose this brilliance of life until the very moment of our death. This was what the Daoists talked so much about, he realized. His master had certainly talked of it: the way the world stilled when you yourself became still, so that at last you could see it, sense it, capture it as it truly was. Real and infinitely uncoiling.

He heard something strike the wood above his head. Nico paid it no mind. Instead he looked down at his feet, and saw the pit of flames gathering force beneath him. A surge of heat billowed around him like scalding water. He was going to burn to death. He was going to be eaten alive by those flames.

Nico had heard a story once of the time the Mannians invaded the country of Nathal. A monk in the city of Maroot had sat in the street in front of the High Priest's manor and doused himself in oil, and then set the oil alight, and burned himself alive without the merest flinch, in protest at the crimes the Mannians were still perpetrating against his people.

How had the man done that, Nico now wondered. How had he found such stillness?

The heat was engulfing him. He blinked, trying to see. It was too real, all of this. Part of him refused to believe it was happening. It was not the part of him that mattered, though – not the part that recoiled from the flames and choked on the smoke and the smell of cooking meat, and began to scream and struggle in animal panic.

Nico rolled his eyes, desperately seeking something to grip his mind upon. The Acolytes stood with their burning brands, their eyes behind their inhuman masks narrowing against the drifting smoke.

The pain rising from his feet was quickly edging towards agony, an agony that he knew he could not bear. The smoke obscured everything now.

Nico tilted his head back in an attempt to draw air. A blue sky, the clouds breaking to the east and etched by sunlight. Amongst them, between spaces in the smoke, a sudden dark motion. Something falling towards him.

He gazed at it, mesmerized by its spinning flight.

He was shocked by a sudden impact. Began to choke again on a sharp taste of blood. His vision faded into itself, fixed blurrily upon the sun or something else that burned just as brightly. Then, even that faded to nothing.