Encounter at the Senti Massif
I began that day expecting a feigned retreat and an ambush, the favored tactic of all the desert tribes. But the danger we encountered was far worse, and it was not a thing I could have anticipated.
My name is Rosteval, son of Bosvadal, and on that day my men and I were perhaps eight days’ ride into the desert, chasing a war-band of raiders—and a rumor that had grown too pernicious to be ignored.
“There we are, men,” I said, gesturing toward the mountain range that broke the sands of the great Sebaiya Desert like a rocky, worn-down wall. “The Senti Massif.” The way ahead was clear, a trail marked by dozens, scores of horses, camels, and captives, a trail that led toward the Senti Massif.
We were on the warpath, and so I carried my bow in its case over my back. My quiver of arrows hung at my side, and I had a single-edged iron blade sheathed at my belt.
Despite the heat, I wore a pointed iron helmet and lamellar cuirass of iron scales over my cotton tunic with wide sleeves that covered my upper arms, along with cotton trousers and leather boots.
My forearms were clad with leather gauntlets, and like all the men, I wore bronze bracelets at my wrists. Each of the bracelets held a glass disc about an inch in diameter: the one on my left wrist glowed silver, and the one on my right wrist glowed blue.
The man at my left-hand side laughed. “A great pile of rocks in the desert, fit only for snakes, jackals, and small-hyenas. No wonder the Sen-Batalra live there.” He spoke Tamnool, his own first language and one I had come to master a little while back.
“I can’t argue with you, Kurjayak,” I said in the same language, turning toward him even as I gave the signal to rein in. “This country is a wasteland.” We had a war party of two thousand horsemen, not to mention spare mounts and camp followers. It would have been far too many people and animals to travel together in the desert… but we had allies who kept us supplied by air.
Kurjayak’s golden-brown eyes took on their wolfish look as he surveyed the mountain and licked his lips. “Lots of plunder they’ve made off with. Too bad it was ours to begin with.”
Kurjayak’s deep bronze-hued face was damp with sweat, and the dust of travel coated his dark beard, part of which he had dyed with a blood-red pigment. He wore a lamellar cuirass of iron scales over a green, sleeveless serape, now stained with the sweat and dust of travel, and a green tunic and trousers. On his head he wore a pointed iron helmet in lieu of the brimless cap favored by his people, the Isarpaday Tamnoolra.
On my right-hand side, my cousin Daryubal spoke: “Bit inconsiderate of them, though, dragging us all the way out here for a fight.”
Daryubal shared my yellow-gold eyes, common enough among our people, the Barduvatra. He was broad-shouldered and strong-jawed, and dependable in combat. Some years back, he had won a beautiful slave-girl, Shayasda, in a duel of honor, killing her former master. He still regaled us with that story, including the part where he had used a wishbone transport charm, tied to an arrow, to appear next to the man, topple him from his horse, and kill him.
I smirked. “Come now, the sooner we handle this, the sooner we can return to our encampment. I’m sure Shayasda will be delighted with what you bring back for her.” I made a ring with my left thumb and middle finger, and stuck my first two right-hand fingers in and out while I leered at him.
“That’s if she’s fond of small packages!” said another familiar voice, a rider behind Daryubal.
Daryubal whirled about on his horse and slugged the young man in the shoulder. “You’re one to talk, Little Bardamal!”
“Not so little anymore, am I?” Little Bardamal said, fending off another blow and hitting Daryubal back. Little Bardamal had been short, once, but now he was a tall and rather gawky nineteen.
“You’ll always be our Little Barda-boy!” Daryubal said, growling with mock-ferocity as he tried to pull off Little Bardamal’s helmet. I knew them well enough to know that Daryubal was trying to tousle Little Bardamal’s hair.
The sands of the great Sebaiya Desert were all around us and behind us, broken only by the occasional gnarled juniper or patchy outcrop of thorns. Still, the way ahead was clear, a trail marked by dozens, scores of horses, camels, and captives, a trail that led toward the Senti Massif.
A faint humming sound drew my attention upward, toward the living god who was descending toward us.
“Hail and well met, Bright Apshendarin,” I said, not in Tamnool but Shaper-tongue, the language of the Lashvanti, the long-vanished Shaper race.
Apshendarin was a Bright Zayastu, a living god, and as such he glowed with a soft golden light that emanated from his skin and hair. His eyes glowed silver. His face was strong, nose well-formed, and his beard and hair were trimmed and oiled to uncanny neatness.
Still, he was girded for war: he wore a splendid lamellar cuirass with gilt-edged iron scales, and a bronze helmet over his coiffure. He had a sword sheathed at his belt, but I was not fooled: I knew his most important weapon was the pair of blades affixed to the bottoms of his sandals.
“Hail, Rosteval… Kastorak of the Western Lohiman Kingdom,” he said, his voice a low rumbling that always put me in mind of boulders shifting. “The war-band… they are not far ahead… the captives, too… camped in a valley of the Massif.” His face was impassive, betraying no hint of anything he might have been feeling.
“The war-band, are they all Sen-Batalra?” I asked. “Or are there Ketaryatra among them?”
My tribe, the Barduvatra, counted among the Ketaryat tribes. But I had led a war-band south, across the great Sebaiya, to escape the rule of my grandfather Hamarvan, king of all the Ketaryat tribes. We had defeated the army he had sent against us, but some of them had escaped.
“Ketaryatra, yes…” Apshendarin said. His brow furrowed. “There is… something unusual among them… a perturbation of power.”
Well, that confirmed the rumors: instead of going back across the Sebaiya, the survivors of the Ketaryat army had found common cause with the Sen-Batalra. That still left the question of how they had found common cause: the Sen-Batalra were known to be fiercely intolerant of outsiders.
I frowned. “The white Rishva-shade?”
“No… this is something different. I sense… a great tremor… in the Rishva.”
My frown deepened. “How can there be a tremor in the Rishva?” I didn’t think of the Rishva, the immense spiral that flowed between worlds, as the sort of thing that could get tremors.
His eyes, usually so impassive, flickered with displeasure. “I can only assume… Rishvant meddling.”
I gave a wry laugh. “Haldua is bound. Some other Rishvant, perhaps?”
“Hey, Rosteval, are we going to fight at some point today?” Daryubal said.
“You’re right, Daryubal, we shouldn’t delay your package,” I said, giving him another wicked look.
We formed up and rode toward the Massif. Our horses’ hooves made a dull, rhythmic thumping as they moved across the sand.
Apshendarin and the other Bright Zayastura with him stayed high overhead, flying high enough to be visible only as small, moving spots of light. From practice, I knew that they were flying too high for me to be able to eavesdrop on their thoughts, a strange ability I had discovered I possessed.
That’s probably why they’re flying so high, I thought, with a rueful mental laugh. In truth, I still knew very little about the Bright Zayastura: they conducted themselves in such a remote and aloof fashion, and they lived apart from humans.
There I go again, I thought, thinking of the Bright Zayastura as not-humans.
“Tell me, friend Kurjayak,” I said, “do you still believe the Bright Zayastura are less human than ogres?”
His laugh was a cackle. “Your memory is remarkable, Rosteval. I suppose I did say that, once—and it is still true. Even the lowliest slave, even a Yulha-man, has human needs, human yearnings, human responsibilities. And I have hunted ogres: they flee, and when they cannot flee they fight with a ferocity that is a marvel to behold.”
Daryubal snorted. “Man is more than what he needs and what he’s responsible for. Spirit, that’s what a man is, and a man’s spirit is measured by his deeds.”
Kurjayak quirked an eyebrow, and his wolfish eyes glinted. “A man performs great deeds so that he may profit by them. Thus he satisfies his needs and fulfills his responsibilities. An ogre has simpler needs, and I have never met one who was responsible.”
My mind grasped his words like cord, and wove them together to make a rope. “What do the Bright Zayastura need? For what are they responsible?”
Kurjayak gave me an approving nod. “Questions I have never found any satisfactory answer to.”
Daryubal made a sour face. “Bah. I still say it’s the deeds and the spirit of a man you should look to. A man’s deeds are the track-way of his spirit.”
Kurjayak shrugged. “The spirit of a man is like the spirit of a horse or camel: it is conditioned by what he does, by what he is made to do.”
We continued in this vein for a time as we rode toward the Massif, following the trail of the war-band with their stolen captives and livestock. I was glad for our men to have the chance to engage in this kind of banter: it was a good distraction from the rigors of the campaign and the uncertainty of the battle ahead.
Everyone I had spoken to about the Sen-Batalra had told me the same thing: they were a fractious, quarrelsome race who obeyed no chieftains. They made war on each other as much as they did against their neighbors, and frequently regarded each other with much the same fear that they inspired in others.
Apshendarin had mentioned a perturbation in the power. What could that mean?
I turned these thoughts over in my mind before setting them aside. We were carrying the battle to the Sen-Batalra. With luck, we would prevail.
As we neared the Senti Massif, the low, rocky wall became large and imposing, a great dust-colored wall of desolate desert stone. It was not so tall as the mighty peaks of the Paradtha, or even the weathered slopes of the Masvalpa, but it was far more austere and stark than either of these. The craggy rock was dun-colored, perhaps a half-shade or shade darker than the desert, and the sky was a clear, light blue, a striking contrast with the monotony of the land.
Drawing closer, I could see that there were a number of rocky outcroppings and low hills. A handful of shrubby junipers, scraggly acacias, and thorny weeds grew here and there.
Looking up, my eye was drawn to a soaring vulture. What did it think it would scavenge, in this desolate land?
My Rishva-sense alerted me to Apshendarin’s presence, and I looked up as he descended.
He pointed ahead, toward a rocky hill. “There… behind that hill… they are behind it… in a narrow valley.”
I thanked him and motioned to my men. This was it.
Ordinarily I would have winded the horn, but we had opted to try for the element of surprise. I raised my left wrist, and made a resonant, droning aural hum, an emanation resonance. A silver Rishva-form about three feet in height sprang into being, surmounted by a silver spirit-figure about two feet in height. Even as the silver light washed over me and my mount, bringing with it a warm, exhilarating sense of power and speed, I willed it to hover overhead.
All around me, the others began doing the same.
I kicked my horse forward, angling toward the rocky hill, and the men followed. Now we were a great stampeding river of men and horses, our mounts galloping with Rishva-enhanced speed around the rocky hill and into the narrow defile behind it.
We came upon a great milling congregation of men and animals, and I quickly saw that the vast majority of the people seemed to be the captives.
With practiced ease, I drew three arrows from my quiver with my right hand and nocked one to my bow. Sighting on the nearest enemy warrior, a wiry, rangy-looking fellow with shifty-looking eyes, and loosed.
He wore no armor, only a cloth headdress and a tunic, and my arrow took him in the chest. As he toppled from his horse, someone within the Sen-Batal ranks winded a horn. The hostages began to cry out, some in panic but others, I thought, begging for deliverance, even as the Sen-Batal warriors shouted in alarm and drone-hummed their own Rishva-spirits into being. Rishva-pairs burst into being over the warriors, a few silver but most of them blue, the fastest.
As the warriors scattered and fled, I saw that some of them wore the iron helmets, lamellar cuirasses, tunics and trousers of Ketaryatra. They looked Ketaryat as well: tawny faces, strong noses, and many of them with the same yellow-gold eyes that I and others of my tribe had.
All the same, they scattered, Sen-Batalra and Ketaryatra, loosing no more than a handful of shafts at us as they fled. We rode after them, killing a few more as they fled, but they led us into a maze of hills and rocky outcroppings. Rather than asking my men to exhaust themselves and their mounts in a futile chase, I opted to turn back.
We returned to the valley, and I saw that the captives and the livestock were gathered around a pool ringed by acacias. They shied away from us as we approached.
“Do not fear,” I said in the Tamnool language, raising a hand to hail them. “I am Lord Rosteval, Kastorak of the Western Lohiman Kingdom.”
My words elicited no sign of recognition, so I repeated myself in Old Hurranian.
“Doubt this lot have any Old Hurranian among them,” Kurjayak said. “Peasants and Yulha-folk, lot of ‘em. Shaper-tongue, maybe.”
I tried the Shaper-tongue, and this time a Yulha-man came forward. He had the characteristic wide eyes and flat face of the race, and his chin had no more than a light fuzz, the merest whisper of a beard. He wore a saffron robe, patterned with cross-hatched blue stripes, and a matching brimless cap.
“Kastorak Rosteval, this Yulha begs leave to speak.”
After several months in the Western Lohiman Kingdom, I had learned enough to recognize the Yulha-man’s distinctive pattern of dress: he was an official for an administrative unit of Yulha-folk, responsible for overseeing taxation and representing them before their provincial governor.
“Granted,” I said. “Tell me your name, baiyul.”
He bobbed his head. “Yensapor, baiyul of the South District of Ammartja Province. Your fame much precedes you, Kastorak.”
“I would be surprised if it had not,” I said. “Yensapor, I want you to tell these people we are here to return them to their homes. The Bright Zayastura will bring food and water for the return journey.”
He clasped his hands before him and bobbed his head once more. “Gratitude, Kastorak Rosteval.” He turned and spoke to the crowd in a language I did not know—probably Dujanese, by the sound of it. People shouted questions at him, and he responded in a calm, smooth manner.
This, I realized, was a man who was very good at his job.
He turned back to me and bobbed his head again. “This one has done as you request, Kastorak Rosteval. The people are grateful, but they wonder if you can help with those who have…” he paused, and seemed to be struggling to find the right words. “Taken mad might be the best way to say it.”
I dismounted, and gestured to my men to follow my lead. “Show me.”
He led me in among their midst, the true-folk and the Yulha-folk all thronged together, though they parted as we advanced. I saw haggard, desperate faces of men, women, and children, most clad in simple peasant garb: kilts or trousers for the men, skirts or simple mantles that wrapped around the waist and ran over one shoulder for the women. I had noticed that very few of the non-noble women in these hot, sun-touched southern lands bothered to cover their breasts.
I knew, too, that the great blood-law held sway here, as strongly as it did north of the Sebaiya where it was called the Hurranian blood-law: a man could lay a Yulha-maid, even keep a Yulha slave-girl, but to mix the bloodlines was an abomination that would attaint them both. Still, the true-folk and the Yulha-folk thronged together, no doubt bonded in their adversity and the experience of their captivity.
They made way for us, and several of them pointed as the crowd drew back to reveal perhaps a score of people, most of them laid out on blankets. Looking them over, I saw that they all had their eyes closed, but I could see chests rising and falling: they were unconscious, not dead.
“Have you administered amber Rishva-pairs?” I asked.
Yensapor shook his head. “Ah, Kastorak Rosteval, amber Rishva-pairs were not among the articles the Sen-Batalra and the strange ones with them allowed us.”
I drew out a glowing amber disc from my belt and knelt by the closest sleeper, a youth. A quick drone-hum drew out the amber Rishva-pair, the shade surmounted on its whirling spiral, and I brought it down to touch the youth.
The youth sat up, rising so quickly he seemed to have been pulled up as if by a string.
His eyes opened, but they were wide and staring.
“The Rishva-lord, the Master of the World!”
The voice was in the Shaper-tongue, and it was like the rushing of great waters, or the coming of a great storm: a voice too great to belong to any mortal man.
A cold chill went down my spine. I had heard this voice before.
“The Rishva-lord, the Master of the World!”
His eyes were twin pools reflecting the sky. No spark of awareness gleamed within them.
“Possession,” I said, reflexively reaching for the sword at my side before I stopped myself. I suppressed a curse. It would not do to anger a god.
The people around me were beginning to gasp and cry out in astonishment.
“Kastorak Rosteval, what does one do if a person is possessed?” Yensapor asked.
“Wait it out,” I said. I glanced behind me and saw Kurjayak, Daryubal, and a few others approaching.
A Yulha-maid sat up, eyes opening wide. They were just as blank as the man’s.
“The Rishva-lord, Master of the World!”
It was the same voice.
And now a true-woman sat up, and then another true-man, and a Yulha-man, and so on until they were all sitting up, eyes wide and staring.
The voice echoed in a chorus from their throats: “The Rishva-lord, Master of the World!”
Perhaps I should have waited, but I hate waiting when there might be another option. “Who is this Rishva-lord, Master of the World?” I said.
They all turned to me and smiled, their blank, empty eyes staring but still betraying no spark of recognition.
“He comes, Kastorak Rosteval, for the fulfillment of all men! He comes, and he will overcome all opposition! Do not fear, for you will see him soon! He comes, he comes, he comes!”
As one, they closed their eyes and then, very carefully and deliberately, lay back down and appeared to go to sleep.
Everyone was silent for a long moment, save for a handful of muffled sobs and gasps of shock.
“Tell me, Rosteval,” Kurjayak said. “Did that Haldua ever fancy himself a Rishva-lord, Master of the World?”
My mind was still groping for flint and iron to make a spark. “I can’t say that he did. Then again, who knows? He may have gone mad in the months since Ghaitta and I confined him.”
“Guess we won’t have long to wait to find out,” Daryubal said. He made a face. “After all, didn’t you hear? He comes.”
