The Island (part 1)
The Island - what we know
The landscape of the Island is a series of contrasts.
The interior spans many millions of hectares of parched scrubland, reminiscent of sub-equatorial Africa in the driest of dry seasons. To the north, the veldt blends into a high mountain range, known locally as the S'erras or "the saw's teeth". This vast mass of land rears up vertiginously from the scrubby foothills, culminating in the twin, snow-capped peaks called the "Horns of the Dark One" (Ø!locti Bast d'Rinth). The western Horn is marginally higher, and ends in a wide, overhanging, cloud-shrouded plateau. This peak has never been scaled. Legend tells of a population of hardy aboriginals who make their home on this high shelf.
The eastern Horn has an easier traverse, and it has long been part of an initiation rite for the young inhabitants of the tribes who live at the base of the S'erras. Those few who return from scaling the eastern Horn form the warrior elite of these permanently squabbling tribes; their remit to maintain an uneasy rule of law that keeps the confederation from bubbling over into full-blown war.
Further north, and the S'erras end abruptly at a mile-high cliff, I! Tem I'X!lac!tlo, which translates roughly to "The End of Everything". Beyond lies only the frozen northern Ocean. Our knowledge of the geography of the World also ends here.
The Island is the only major landmass on the predominantly aquatic planet, and occupies approximately one eighth of its total surface area. The Ocean is mainly uncharted save the shallow reefs to the south of the almost circular Island, which are fished by the dwellers of the remote beach communities that fringe its Southern and Eastern borders. The inhabitants of the Island (known as "The Folk" or "The People") are not seafaring folk; they look upon the mysterious ocean with suspicion and fear.
The biology of The Folk is interesting. Babies are born female, by parthenogenetic fission. Girls grow to a pubertal age, and then a period of selection splits the community at the "Age of Coming". One third of the girls of this age are selected to become part of the X!lombi caste. Fed the extract of a bitter herb found in the foothills of the S'erras, their bodies undergo a painful change over six months. Limbs elongate, become more muscular. Breast development is retarded and reversed, and a male pattern of body hair takes over. The X!lombi, or "The He" perform the male role in the People's society. It seems that, biologically deprived of the binary male-female relationship, the People have evolved a way to bring it about anyway, perhaps to fulfil some sort of cultural need.
The South and West of the Island comprise an extensive area known in the local tribal tongue as Dev!I Nox!chat (Dev!I being a deity who cooks soup from the bones of his enemies and a Nox!chat a form of local fired cookware similar to a stew-pot, or tureen).
This land is treacherous. A uniform expanse of flat marshland pocked with thick swathes of head-high razor grass; experienced trackers know their way through these marshes, but for the unwary, a watery death lies concealed at every next step.
Through the marshes of Dev!I Nox!chat a man is running.
The hunter / hunted
He is running with a ragged desperation that indicates perhaps that he had been on the move for some time; that whomever or whatever he flees is close to chasing him down. The rough woven tunic and jerkin he wears is sodden and streaked with swamp slime and marsh muck; his hair and long beard wet with sweat; his breath escaping in huge desperate gouging gasps from his gap toothed mouth; his eyes wild.
The man is running on instinct alone. The marshland he has known and travelled since his Age of Coming is his only possible rescue from his pursuer. The man doesn't need even to see where he's going. He knows where the dangerous deeps are, and the traversable fords and shallows. He skirts the sucking mud traps without need for thought or care. That tree, there, indicates the source of a major current that can sweep away the unwary. A trapper and tracker for twenty-eight local years now, the man is one of the most highly regarded inhabitants of the marshlands to friends, colleagues, even his enemies.
His pursuer doesn't hold him in similar regard. Nor does the creature seem to care much about the hidden perils of Dev!I Nox!chat. If the running man is the elaborate and twisting story of a ball of twine, the creature that hunts him is a straight line, cutting through the treacherous lands with not a pause for its advertised hazards. The man can hear it crashing and splashing in its pursuit, trees splintering in its wake, the bellows of its heavy breath keeping time with the piston-like regularity of its stride.
The man looks up as he passes a familiar pile of scree at the foot of a jagged rock on the rough path. He knows that the potential shelter of a trapper's hut is nearby, but to reach it, he must break out of the undergrowth that he hopes has been slowing the pursuing creature and cross a narrow strip of exposed land through which a small brook runs, weaving through grey boulders. The shelter of more and thicker scrub awaits on the other side, and the hut lies in a hard to find clearing shortly beyond. The hut is designed to withstand the floods that pour through Dev!I Nox!chat in the cold months. It is sturdy and hard to breach. It may offer him some respite, in the shelter of its heavy, foot-thick dry stone walls. He redoubles his desperate pace, hoping to put enough distance between him and his pursuer to facilitate his final gambit.
As he breaks cover and pell-mells across the suddenly wider-seeming space, arms milling wildly, he is reassured to hear his pursuer still crashing through the trees behind. Scrambling over the rocks, jumping the narrow ribbon of flowing water, he hears the thing break out of the thicket behind him. He daren't turn his head. With a yell, he hurls himself into the brambles of the further marsh. They tear his face and hands but he doesn't even notice. He weaves through the maze of rotted, bramble-choked trunks, and with dread, hears the thudding tread of his hunter, closer than ever before.
The hut looms before him. With another ragged yell, he closes the last few feet to its heavy wooden door and wrenches it open with his last remaining breath. Skittering across the dropped stone floor of the hut in his own boot slime, he hurls his weight against the door and heaves it shut, fumbling with the forearm-thick iron bolts. They fall into place. One top. Two across, and two bottom. He drops, his broad back to the door.
Leaning his head back against the thick knotted wood, he draws a deep breath.
Without warning, there is a tremendous impact against the door that shakes the deep foundations of the shelter. He is almost thrown bodily forward by the brunt. The bolts wobble and hold.
The man moves from the door towards the back of the hut, where he knows a hoard of tools for those forced to overwinter in the hut is squirreled, behind the rough curtain. An axe, an awl, anything to defend himself; the man moves from the door. But he finds he is held immobile against it. He looks down and is surprised to find that the creature's left arm, which ends in a two foot bone spike, six inches in diameter at the base, has penetrated the 10-inch timber of the door, the back of his heavy leather jerkin, and broken the rough skin of his upper back, once the smooth, pale skin of a young girl who liked to press autumn blooms in the leaves of her mother's daybook; skin now covered in a coarse mat of auburn hair. The spike entered his body there, and pierced his ribcage, his right lung and heart, and now protrudes about half a foot from the front of his chest, glistening in the half gloom of the hut's interior.
With a sigh almost of respite, the man closes his clouding eyes. Pulls tenderly away from the weapon impaling him. He lowers himself to the floor, resting his grizzled face on his hands.
In the time measured by three slow breaths, the X!lombi trapper is dead.
In the town
"...and that was how it began," concluded the fat man, as he continued to wipe the tankards lining the edge of the stone sink with a filthy rag.
Outside the inn, there appeared to be no chance of the vile weather relenting. I sipped my mead and nodded, looking up at his scarred, hairy and sweating face.
He shrugged, tossing the ale sodden rag into the sink. "Twelve more, since then," he continued, "a full hunting boat of men." He shrugged again.
"And you've never seen this... creature?" I asked again.
"Woman up in T'labor village claims to have seen it. Making it up though, she is. This creature's too clever to let himself be seen. Unless he wants to. Then you're dead already. Excuse me." The fat landlord nodded and went to serve a customer along the bar from where I perched. I took another sip of the sweet, fiery mead, and looked up to where my friend was talking quietly to a small group of men by the embers of the fire. He glanced sideways over at me and nodded, imperceptibly.
I left the rest of my drink and rose, making my way to the alcove behind the stone clad fireplace. The heavy peat fire gave hardly any heat now, but the smell was not unpleasant. The packed inn was generating plenty of heat from the steaming bodies of the villagefolk drawn into a night of huddled drink by the prospect of seeing two strangers from the other lands in their midst. Dev!I Nox!chat was not a great draw for visitors from the rest of the Island and our sudden appearance earlier today had seemingly raised something of a commotion. They had never seen the likes of my friend and I; his fine, tailored clothes, his cultured and quiet voice, the neatly shaved crop of thinning hair and round eyeglasses, boots that were black and polished rather than shabby, tan and bursting at the stitches. And I could see eyes following me curiously and pruriently as I made my way into the alcove and drew open the connecting door to the stairs leading up to our guest rooms.
I glanced back as I lit one of the tallow lamps that were left at the doorway. As usual, my friend seemed easily to have won the confidence of those round him. I watched as he said something in that quiet way of his, and the group of rough men that surrounded him dissolved into guffaws of laughter, slapping each other on the back and knocking back yet more of the black ale that smelled, to my nose, a little like sulphurous eggs. My friend looked up at me again with a smile on his broad face and tilted his head again.
I nodded back at him and turned to go upstairs to my room. By now, he was the centre of the inn's attention, and no one noticed as I made my quiet way upstairs, the guttering flame of the tallow lamp casting moving shadows on the cold, stone walls that surrounded me.
I waited five minutes in my small room, listening at the door to make sure I was not followed. I'd extinguished the lamp and placed it by my bedside. I needed the time to allow my eyes to adjust to the darkness.
The sound of voices drifted up from below, interspersed now and again by gales of laughter. I smiled, thinking of my friend's impish sense of humour and his talent for telling stories. He would entertain me for hours during our long travels with tales of his past misadventures. I sometimes wondered how someone who looked quite young - perhaps only ten years along life's line from his Age of Coming - could have done so much. But then othertimes, I sensed a darkness in his eyes that told me that he was perhaps more experienced than he looked. Sometimes, age is not counted in mere years, but also in the things one has done and witnessed, the paths chosen for you rather than the road you might choose to walk. I was all too aware of that.
By now he would be surrounded by the occupants of the tavern. The landlord would probably have come out from behind his bar and be goodnaturedly eavesdropping, perhaps interjecting roughly into the conversation, wiping down the marshwood tables with his dirty cloth. I would almost certainly remain undisturbed.
I opened my door and stepped out onto the landing. I'd removed my boots so I would make less noise on the worn floorboards. Earlier I'd made two trips to the bathroom so I'd know exactly which noisy boards to avoid during my current mission. Quickly, I slipped down the corridor in the darkness, like a stream of silent water joining a bigger flow of shadow.
At the end of the passage, past the bathroom and the door leading to my friend's rather grander accommodation, was a window opening onto a low, flat roof that overhung the inn's makeshift stables.
I struggled momentarily with the latch, then swung the dirty glass open wide enough to accommodate me, taking care to not let the frame flap in the wind that suddenly burst in. I swung my legs over the sill and quickly crouched down below the lower lip of the frame on the sodden thatch of the flat roof.
Momentarily, I peered back into the corridor. The space was still deserted. I pulled a small rectangle of folded parchment from my britches and used it to wedge the window shut. No one passing would notice that the window was unbolted to allow my passage back into the inn unless they were looking for it directly. I tugged at the frame with my nails to ensure it was secure. Were the window to blow open, someone below would surely hear and come to investigate. They would bolt it to again, making my ingress that much more hard. Such a result would also be sure to rouse suspicion.
Satisfied, I turned, and without worrying to look around, quickly walked in a low crouch to the opposite corner of the flat roof. Only a foolish thief worries about being seen. You'll be seen or you won't. Cautiousness only increases the delay in which a pair of eyes might spy you.
The tavern's stables adjoined the rather grander stable block of the speech house, the local governing seat and my immediate objective. My friend and I had seen upon our arrival that there was only a narrow space between the inn's flat thatched roof and the slightly canted tiles of the speech house's equivalent. In theory a simple jump, though more of a test in this torrential rain. But I hopped across without hesitation, my bare feet finding a solid enough purchase on the blueshale tiles, slick though they were.
My friend had acquired the floor plans of the imposing building some time before. I'd spent time committing them to memory so I knew that there was a window close to my target around the opposite side of the structure from the potential prying eyes within the inn. I quickly traversed the slippery roof and took shelter around the other side, close by the window in question.
I examined the catch and smiled. It was a simple hooked latch that matched a loop of brass bolted on the opposite frame, much like the one that I'd opened across the other side of the stable yard minutes ago. What was more, the wood of the frame was warped, leaving quite a sizeable gap. I reached into my jerkin and pulled out a small, flat blade, about as wide as my thumb and forefinger together but much thinner. It was a simple matter to slide the blade through the gap and unhook the latch. The window creaked ajar. I reached up to pull it open.
Right at that moment I fancied I saw something move out of the corner of my eye and crouched down, pressing myself into the shadow of the wall. A faint light was approaching across the flat expanse of marshland that bordered the south side of the township. It was a coach, approaching along the scrubby sort of path that passes for a road in Dev!I Nox!chat. It was travelling at a fair clip, the faint glow of its lamps bouncing in the rain scattered gloom. Soon, it was through the south gate of the town and mazing its way through the narrow streets towards the square upon which the speech house and inn were nestled together.
I was safely obscured by the dark and the wall against which I was crouched, so I was able to get a good view of the coach as it approached, confident that I would be unobserved. It was clearly not of local origin. Impressive, it was, all gleaming black coachwork and brass trim, two oil lamps guttering at its front in their blown glass cases. The coachman was huddled within a huge coat, whipping the beasts that drew it with a frenzied urgency. Inside I fancied I could make out one or two figures, though it was so dark that the conveyance could have quite easily been empty for all I knew.
Along the lower half of the door on my side, illuminated suddenly by a sheet of lightning that chose the moment of the coach's passage to rip the sky above us, was painted a crest or coat of arms that I did not recognise.
A peculiar beast, rampant, that looked like a two headed bird of prey rising from flame, but with the body of a marsh wolf or some other carnivorous land animal. Arched around the twined heads of the beast were the depictions of spindly, wintry trees, also emerging from the flames and wrapping into a mass of branches above. I was fascinated by the design and made sure I retained a clear impression in my mind's eye so I could ask my friend about it the next day. I'd never seen the like.
I expected the coach to pull into the inn's stables but to my surprise, it continued past on its hurried way towards the north end of town. I lost it from view amongst the crammed buildings that muddled drunkenly up the hill that formed the northern border of the settlement. Clearly some of those inside the inn had also remarked its approach. I heard an excited hubbub and the door to the bar opening as some of the townsfolk came out to ogle the coach's rapid transit through the centre. Soon, though, whoever had emerged had gone back inside out of the pelting rain.
Indoor lightning
As soon as I heard the door close again, I reached up and swung the window open, hopping lightly into the speech house's upstairs washrooms, closing and latching the window behind me.
I was dripping wet and freezing. The latter would have to wait, but I would have to do something about my sopping clothes or else leave incriminating drips and pools throughout the building (not to metion muddy footprints!). The tiled floor of the washroom would probably dry, but this was less likely of the polished wood inside the building proper. I unshouldered the small, waterproof bag made of tanned hogskin that I was carrying, and emptied it of the jerkin and leggings, identical to those I already wore, that were cached inside. There was also a large, rough cloth within that I used first to dry myself and then to wipe my feet and the patch of floor upon which I stood, after stripping off my wet costume and stuffing it in the bag. I then quickly dressed myself in the dry clothing, shivering, and checked the floor again for drips and marks, where I stood, and all the way back to the window.
Satisfied, I stuffed the cloth back into the bag, shouldered it again, and padded silently on my bare feet to the door of the washroom. The door creaked as I pulled it open but I was confident that there was no one in the building this late at night. I stepped into the corridor beyond.
The washroom had been illuminated by the light from the window, but the first floor landing I stepped onto was pitch black. I left the washroom door open so I could at least take advantage of what meagre light spilled through but that was of scant help. The building smelled almost overwhelmingly of wax polish and old wood. I turned right and began to feel my way along the wall. Soon, I was in utter darkness. It was forbiddingly quiet, in contrast to the maelstrom outside, or indeed the cosy hubbub of the inn. Somewhere in the middle distance, echoed the ponderous tick-tock of some large clock. Aside from that, the only noise was my footfall in the darkness and the breath in my chest that I tried to keep shallow and calm.
Presently the wall along which I was inching started to curve away from me as my mind-picture of the floor plans had led me to anticipate. So, very soon, I came upon the frame of the door of the office of the Procurator of Dev!I Nox!chat. My destination. I felt for the door handle and turned it. It was locked, of course. I reached inside my jerkin and pulled out a picklock from the toolbelt tied around my body. Finding the lock under the handle, I inserted the pick and tried to engage the mechanism. Here was a point in my night's work where the fact that it was so dark I was unable to see made no difference whatsoever. With a heavy click, I caught the tumbler and the door unlocked. I smiled in the darkness. I slipped inside, closing the door behind me.
Inside, I could make out the basic shape of the room from the light that the small window to my right afforded. Opposite me was the Procurator's desk. On the wall behind that was mounted my objective.
I walked towards the desk, reaching inside my jerkin again and apprehensively retrieving the small magical instrument that my friend had given me to aid my mission. As my friend had instructed, I pressed the small metal stud on the side of the unfamiliar silver oblong box - about the size of a snuff box but heavier. I still flinched at what happened next. The box emitted a short sound like a bird singing a single note. Immediately a single, uncanny light about the size of a pinhead began burning redly next to the stud I'd pressed, and a cylindrical protrusion emerged by magic from one of the larger, flat faces of the box, through an indented circular "door", which opened with a quiet whine. The protrusion was made of three concentric pieces of cylindrical metal, progressively narrower the furher from the body of the box they were. On the end of the furthermost cylinder was a circular glass "eye" which was the focus of the silver box's magic.
I raised the instrument, with its glass eye pointing directly towards the object hanging behind the Procurator's desk. Next to the one I'd pressed earlier to cause the "eye" to emerge, was a similar, if slightly larger stud.
Depressing this caused an unearthly orange glow to emerge momentarily from the surface of the device. I knew by now that the device was (to my knowledge) benign, but this part still terrified me. I tried to hold it steady as I knew from experience that movement affected its function adversely. As if in response to the orange light, the three cylinders bearing the eye twitched and shrank, and the box again made the short birdcall noise, before it erupted with a momentary and terrifyingly silent explosion of cold, white lightning. I almost dropped the box, as I had done before, to my friend's chagrin, but managed to keep my nerveless fingers on it this time. The flash of lightning was followed by a sound like a piece of iron being dragged along the rough edge on an anvil (but quieter and faster).
I opened my eyes, which I'd screwed shut in anticipation of the lightning. A small window had now become illuminated on the reverse face of the box from the eye. Captured within this window was a miniature rendition, perfect in every detail, of the map that hung behind the desk. Back in our conveyance, my friend would be able to pull this depiction from the box, using a short piece of shiny black magic rope, and subsequently (through a method I could not fathom) transfer the map to parchment for our subsequent use. In this way he had also created numerous renditions of me inside this magic silver box. A miracle.
I depressed the original stud again. With the same whine as before, the eye shrank back inside the instrument and the light within the picture window died. Now the box was, once again, simply a dead piece of metal. I waited a moment to ensure it would not come alive again then replaced it within my jerkin. I looked up at the window. Facing away from the inn as it was, it was highly unlikely that the lightning from the box would have been spied. Had it been, well, there was plenty of lightning of the real, unmagical kind to confuse it with, on a night like this.
Soon, I was climbing back out with my treasure into the rainswept night, holding the latch with the same knife I'd used to open it before letting it fall closed and sliding the blade out.
I hopped nimbly across to the opposite roof, opened the parchment-wedged window and was very soon back within the safetly of my room.
The inn was quieter now but I could still hear voices from below. I dried my short hair and removed my damp jerkin and leggings, letting out a wide mouthed yawn.
I wanted to wash, but at the same time, I just wanted to stay in my warm room and sleep rather than go out in the draughty corridor to reach the bathroom.
I sat on the edge of my bed, unbuttoning my rough undershirt made from sedge hemp. My chest was sore from the bandage I wound every morning to hide my breasts. I yawned again as I unpinned the edge of the stiff material and gratefully unwound it.
With the bandage finally off, I stretched properly.
I felt more tired than I had done for weeks. I closed my eyes, sinking down onto the bed.
Within minutes I was asleep.
to be continued
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