4.1 - The River Runs From Yulfang
Darkness, splintered wood, the smell of warm honey beneath a heavy layer of cardamom. The three elements present in Elantha’s world. Her legs were pinned up against her chest by the veilmelons taking up two-thirds of the sealed crate. Yulfang’s finest delicacy is always portioned out judiciously with dessert due to the pungency of its flavors. After what must have been at least an hour confined in this space with them, she was nauseated from the smell and afraid her clothes would be permanently soaked through with it. She embraced that fear wholeheartedly. With all her strength she tried to focus on it. It was the only thing keeping her from the wave of fears that nipped at her heels. Worrying about the scent of her clothes meant she wasn’t thinking about Yulfang. About what might be pursuing her. About what she was leaving behind. About Kanta.
“Getting you aboard was the easy part,” a tri-horned san renomo said as she pried the lid off of the crate. “Yulfang has a strict border inspection about an hour downriver. That’s where things get thorny.” She reached a hand in and gently helped Elantha unfold from her position.
“For the time being, however, allow me to welcome you aboard Zotzotl’s Servitor!” She ushered Elantha towards the door out of the dark and cramped storage room. “The finest merchant vessel turned smuggling craft this side of Blosko’s Fleet.”
She swung the door open and proudly stepped out into the sunlight. Elantha tried to look around the vessel, but the morning sun was blinding. As a Carshgan, she was adapted to moonlight. The occasional dawnlight splashing through the window. Nothing like this. Everything around her glistened relentlessly. She felt dizzy and nauseous, and all she could hear was a harsh ringing. Closing her eyes as tight as possible was her only reprieve, and even then, the light pried its way in. Before she realized it, she was on her knees with her hands clamped over her eyes. Every muscle in her face was stricken with pain as she squeezed them tight. Her breathing was quick, stuttering, and thin in her tightening throat. The deck beneath her shifted uneasily in the water, bringing her nausea back to the forefront. Just as she felt her stomach would turn itself inside out, a hand rested on her shoulder. A rapid heat blossomed outward from it, running through her body. The churning in her stomach settled. The ringing in her ears gave way to the soft splash of the river as the boat cut through it. Her head, a swarming nest, quieted to restfulness. Finally, the heat made its way to her eyes. For a moment she feared that it would burn, but it gently cradled them and eased away the spots flickering against the dark of her eyelids like thousands of dying stars. The light trying to pry its way in was no longer piercing, but pleasant. Slowly, Elantha opened her eyes and was greeted by the smiling face of the san renomo. The sounds of the crew returned, but just as quickly vanished, along with the noise of the river and the birds until Elantha was surrounded by a silence more complete than she had ever experienced.
“The pain of this world waits in the hedges and hangs from the boughs and spins in bitter spirals beneath the surface of the water,” Elantha could hear the san renomo’s voice, but her tender smile remained unmoving. “We should always remember the feeling, lest we forget those who feel it still. The ones beneath the hatred of time. In the movement of a thousand years, the flinch of one moment seems lost before it can be born. But in the flinch of one moment, there you are. A thousand of you and more, as a constellation greater than the dead and dying beast of time. You will persist if we take the corners of the cloudless open sky and fold it around ourselves. Within is where we learn the meaninglessness of time when we have the other.”
Suddenly the sound of the world returned, and the san renomo took her hand off of Elantha’s shoulder. She spoke again, only this time her mouth moved.
“There we are, right as rain,” she said. “I should have expected the sunsickness to be particularly difficult for you, coming from a place like Yulfang. My apology.”
Elantha cautiously stood, but she felt none of the discomfort that had nearly overcome her.
“How...how did you…” she tried but everything she thought to say seemed too nonsensical for her to finish.
“An old san renomo trick,” the san renomo said and winked. “I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced myself! My name is Selouise. I suppose you could call me the captain of the ship, but truthfully we work as a unit. The title is purely for paperwork purposes, you know.”
Selouise was the first san renomo Elantha had ever seen. Three horns curled backward from her forehead along her wavy black hair, which stood in stark contrast to her bright golden eyes and shimmering silver skin. She stood with her hands on her waist. She wore a loose sleeveless shirt, and along the inside of each arm from pit to wrist, was a thin web of skin that folded and unfolded as she moved them.
The boat itself was much like a blade, long and thin, cutting a quick line downriver. Where it differed from vessels Elantha had seen in the past was its multilayered structure. Instead of a hold below deck, the Zotzotl’s Servitor had two decks stacked atop each other, each progressively smaller than the one below it. She turned her gaze to the small crew manning the boat, another san renomo, two humans, and a zeitlos.
“That dual-horned bruiser is my brother Sendo,” Selouise said, pointing at the other san renomo. “The two up on the second deck are Varit and Numair, Saorin refugees from Gliss. Last but not least, the zeitlos is Shore.”
Shore was laying belly down on the deck with a hatch open and his upper-half submerged in the water. He reached one arm out of the water and gave a thumbs up.
“A good sign!” Selouise said. “He’s performing one last check on how we’re going to sneak you through the inspection.”
“I...I don’t know how to thank all of you for this,” Elantha said.
Selouise waved a hand.
“This is what we do,” she said. “Zotzotl’s Chorus serves the people.”
She turned from Elantha towards the front of the boat and reached into her pocket, pulling out a bronze spyglass.
“We need to be particularly careful. Rasmosa is not only doubling his riverwatch, but our reports say he’s been employing the use of ikyrons as scouts. If we’re going to get you out of here, we need you to be ready to do exactly as we say.”
At the mention of Rasmosa, Elantha felt the last bit of warmth from Selouise’s trick fade from her body. Rasmosa was born into leadership. His family line is long and filled with murder, deception, and villainy. His first act as Saorin ruler of Yulfang was to have the Carshgan ruler assassinated and replaced with his own lackey, giving him complete control over the city. From then on, the Carshgans have lived beneath his unbending hatred. If a Carshgan wished to leave Yulfang, Rasmosa’s lottery was the only sanctioned way to leave. All other ways resulted in treason charges. Of course, Rasmosa’s lottery was not only unreliable, but plagued with rumors of what truly happened to someone who won. Two names were drawn every six months for what was called the “Explorer’s Privilege.” Elantha had friends of friends who were selected and never heard from again, but whether they went to their death or to a life in which they got as far from Yulfang as they could, she did not know. Those suspected of plotting against him, or caught attempting to flee without the Explorer's Privilege are suspended in what he calls retribution towers for days at a time. In the center of town are roofless cages, with iron frames in the middle. The suspect is drenched in saltwater and lashed to the frame, face-up, forced to endure the rising sun directly. Saorins make a game of climbing the cages and spitting on the Carshgans or tying objects to the top of the cage to tease them with a hint of shade. It is the mildest of Rasmosa’s games. Elantha watched entire families taken in the morning light, by packs of loyalists. Sometimes it’s as if they never existed in the first place, and other times they like to make a show of it. They drag the parents through the streets of the Carshgan neighborhoods in the middle of the day, barking off the unforgivable crimes they’ve committed, making sure to wake every single household before taking their victims to the gallows on the cliffside above Yulfang.
And then there were the ikyrons. Manlike creatures made of iron and wood, designed for catching Carshgans and exercising the wrath of their lord upon them. Elantha had never seen one perform its dark work, only heard the screams of their victims, and seen the aftermath. She worked long and hard to scrub those memories from her mind. No good came of those images. They are the creation of Rasmosa’s two most trusted advisors, Nail and Spring. No Carshgan knew their real names. In fact, very little was known of the two. They worship an old god from another time known as Bogdoroga. Some say they were originally from the city of Sumberus, on the other side of the Barge of Souls. Why or when they left, Elantha didn’t know. All she knew was that their gaze had turned to Yulfang, and Rasmosa had given them permission to do as they please.
“What can I do to help?” Elantha asked. “I need to make myself useful if I’m to show my gratitude, and clear my head of what is behind me. Consider me a crew member, captain.”
Selouise lowered her spyglass and smiled.
“As you wish. Check-in with Varit and Numair on the second deck. They’ll know what needs doing.”
Elantha nodded and spun on her heel towards the rear of the boat, and the tiered decks. There was a joy in her that she hadn’t felt in a long time, tangled with a violent feeling of loss. Like a bear stalking its prey, they danced around one another, the prey narrowly escaping at each turn. So fragile, Elantha felt as if her insides were made of glass, ready to crack at any moment. The loss was twofold, one of which she couldn’t quite understand. It was a sense of loneliness at the thought of leaving Yulfang forever. A horrible place, a place of great suffering, and yet, a place she had spent her entire life. There were moments, however fleeting they may have been, and however amplified by the years of pain around them, that she cherished. It was a difficult feeling to come to terms with. The other was much more straightforward. The loss of her son Kanta. She hadn’t planned on bringing a life into the world of Yulfang. It is no place to raise a Carshgan child. She was afraid to bring him with her, afraid to put him in danger, so she found another solution. There was a Saorin couple in Yulfang, desperate for children but incapable of having their own. A family in which Kanta would know comfort and could live without fear or judgment. They took the child in, vowing to never reveal his heritage, so long as Elantha never reached out to him. So on the eve before her escape, she carried Kanta across town, breathless, darting from alleyway to alleyway. She found the Saorin house, a mansion compared to her own upbringing, and gave her child away.
“Hey there!” The voice of one of the Saorin refugees called out to Elantha as she reached the second deck. “Welcome aboard!”
One corner of the deck was taken up by caged chickens and a few goats, while the rest of the space was occupied by a variety of plantlife. Some Elantha recognized from Yulfang, while others she assumed were from farther upriver. A woman with a wild mane of dark black curls sat against the mast packing a pipe with ground buds from a palm-sized wooden box, her legs like two long roots stretched out wide in front of her.
“I’m Varit,” she said, giving Elantha a smile and a nod.
Behind her was a man carefully tying down the last crate of plants. Elantha would have thought him a boy were it not for the tangled chestnut beard that hung down nearly to his waist. Otherwise he was thin, and short of stature, with bright youthful skin. Numair glanced at her and waved before continuing his work.
“Hello, I’m Elantha. Selouise told me to check with you two for work to be done.”
Varit gave two emphatic pats on the deck next to her.
“I’ve got your work right here,” she said, holding up her pipe. “Have a seat. We’ve got it all covered for now.”
Elantha felt her heart begin to race. For the first time on Zotzotl’s Servitor, she realized that she was more than likely the only Carshgan aboard. Selouise had referred to these two as Saorin refugees, but from where Elantha didn’t know. Knowing them to be Saorin was enough to set her on edge. What if this was all a ploy? All a grand trap set in place by Rasmosa? She had nowhere to run, to escape, she was at their mercy. Varit was still smiling and waiting patiently. Elantha stared intently at her, trying to spot a tell or a betrayal of the kindness she was proffering forward. Instead she saw sadness, and a weight of understanding in the woman’s dark brown eyes. It was a look as deep as a well, painstakingly built stone by stone with the same fear that Elantha felt herself. The fear of that which stalks in the footsteps behind you. Fingers clutching at the back of your neck, the breeze of their grasp fluttering by your ears. This woman was a Saorin, but she was no enemy of Elantha.
“Is it ayse?” Elantha asked as she gingerly sat down next to Varit, still feeling the strain of her muscles from her time in the veilmelon crate. Varit nodded and took out a small iron tube the size of her middle finger. One end was open and the other was crowned with a semicircle claw of silver wood. She raised the open side to her mouth and expelled a quick breath through it. As she did, a spark burst from the pipe onto the claw of wood and caught it alight. She then held the semicircle around the packed end of her pipe and inhaled until the buds began to smolder. She shook the iron lighter until the flame went out while leaning her head back against the mast, then slowly expelled a cloud of smoke from her nostrils. With her eyes closed and her head leaned back, she handed the pipe in Elantha’s direction. Elantha gladly accepted and breathed in deep herself. She was very familiar with ayse. A fairly mild psychoactive drug, it was one of the only substances Carshgans could reliably get their hands on in Yulfang other than Carshwine, the cheap and horribly debilitating alcohol that Rasmosa flooded the Carshgan economy with. The smoke filled her mouth and throat with a delicate warmth as she held it in, savoring the smooth flowery taste. It had been months since she last had any, and it showed as she suddenly began to cough, the smoke filtering out of her nose and mouth at the same time.
“She’s been a crewmember for all of ten minutes and you’re already getting her high?” Numair asked as he walked around in front of the two of them with his hands on his hips.
“Oh ease off it,” Varit said, taking the pipe back from Elantha. “You know taking the edge off is the only way I can get through these border inspections without lapsing back to our time in Gliss.”
Elantha knew of the midland city of Gliss, only because Yulfang was often called the Carshgan equivalent. So her assumptions were correct. These two were victims of the brutality of unchecked power just as she was. Numair raised an eyebrow at Varit who returned the look by sticking out her tongue and offering the pipe to him. He shrugged and took the pipe before slumping down against a crate next to them and taking a hit himself. He closed his eyes and let his head slump forward for a moment, then looked up at Elantha. His eyes were ice blue, with heavy bags beneath them, and the same sadness she had seen in Varit’s.
“Is there anything you’ll miss about Yulfang?” he said, almost too quiet to hear. “The fear is much easier to manage if you cushion it. As you can tell from the two of us, the panic won’t truly ever leave you. With it comes memory loss. The mind isn’t meant to sustain this kind of pressure. I won’t speak for Varit, but I have nothing left of Gliss except the fear and the panic. I can’t even remember what it looked like.”
He handed the pipe to Varit and took a moment. Elantha noticed the sliver of bare skin between his left eye and beard twitching.
“If there is something you will miss, tell us. Live in it now. Surround yourself with it. Do everything you can to paint the walls of your memory with it. Make that thing the one memory that persists.”
Elantha reached for the pipe from Varit and took another hit. Kanta flooded her mind, but she couldn’t speak of him. He was gone. Keeping him would only hurt. He would live, free of her, free of his birth. Free to do as he pleased. She was only a problem for him. He could never be the thing that persists or it would dismantle her beyond repair.
“There was a cathedral,” she said. “The Saorins allowed us to worship in one of the cathedrals. It was one of the only privileges allowed us. The only building in Yulfang used by both Saorins and Carshgans alike, never at once of course. It was made of white marble from top to bottom, massive blocks of it. I called it Snow Church when I was a child. Along the walls on either side were painted prayer windows, each dedicated to a different aspect of Ysopra. The sun had always set when we worshipped of course but the moonlight, when bright enough and clear enough, splashed through the windows like the breath of a god. My favorite window was the one dedicated to patience. It showed Ysopra in their fourth form, a being of flowers in bloom. Before them is a woman cloaked in flame. The flames are curled, angry, spitting, burning the grass beneath her. She stands inside of it, looking up, reaching a fiery arm out towards Ysopra while a crowd looks on in horror behind her. Ysopra's hand of flowers and leaves is stretched out to meet hers as if the flames wouldn’t burn. In the center of the painting, their hand is curled around hers, and the flames have receded down her arm, fleeing from their grasp. Some of the congregation read the flames as a representation of evil, but I never saw it that way. The designation of patience made me believe otherwise. I saw the flames, the cloak of her being, as a signature of the world upon her life. The density of experiences that only she will ever know. They built upon her until she was nothing but a horror to the other humans when all they needed was to reach through and touch her. Recognize the fire for what it was, and how it changed her. If there is anything from Yulfang I wish to keep, it’s that.”
“I could get rid of that fire easy!” an eager young voice said.
Elantha jumped, looking for the source of the voice. A boy peered through the railing on the port side of the Servitor, hands dripping with water and clutching the rails. His head was shaved bald and he was wearing a tunic made of dozens of leather straps, tangled around each other. His eyes, the most striking thing about him, were pupilless and singularly pale blue. He seemed to be looking at Elantha, but with no direction in his eyes, it was difficult to tell. As if to demonstrate how he could easily dispose of the fire, the boy opened his mouth wide, and much like his eyes, the inside of his mouth was pale blue and splashing like waves. Elantha had met zeitlos before, but at best, they had been a child of only one zeitlos, or perhaps a grandchild. Shore, as Selouise had called him, seemed to be a direct descendant of two zeitlos. The waterfolk.
“I’m Shore, nice to meetcha,” he said. “Selouise asked me to show you how we’re gonna get you through the checkpoint. You want any more of that or should we get to it?”
He nodded at the pipe in her hand, which she had entirely forgotten about.
“No, no, I’m ready.” she said. Numair reached out for the pipe.
“Remember Snow Church,” he said, as she placed the pipe in his palm. “Do not let it escape. Anchor it in your memory forever.”
Elantha nodded. She still felt the fear, the paranoia, but her memory seemed to be cushioning it as Numair had said.
“Thank you for the ayse,” Elantha said to Varit, who smiled and nodded back.
Shore swung up over the railing and excitedly motioned for Elantha to follow him down to the main deck. The hatch Shore had been halfway through earlier was left open on the deck and next to it was an odd leather robe and a pair of goggles. The bottom side of the hatch had two large handles with heavy ropes looped through them. The ropes were looped and tied at the other end fully around a glass ball that was resting on the deck. It was large enough for one, or perhaps two humans to fit inside.
“The goggles and the suit are just in case!” Shore said. “But I don’t think anything will go wrong.”
The boy was brimming with confidence, she’d give him that. Explaining things didn’t seem to be his strong suit, however.
“What exactly am I looking at?” Elantha asked.
“Oh! Haha, right. This is my creation!” He hopped over to the glass ball, popped a door on the side open, and climbed inside. “Undersea exploration for people like you! It’s not fair that only us zeitlos can survive down there. It just so happens to also help with, you know, hiding folks from certain other folks. You can ride in here under the ship when we cross the checkpoint.”
“You’re sure it’s safe?” Elantha asked. “It...well it looks questionable.”
“I’ve ridden in it plenty of times!” Shore said, still inside the ball. “I mean...I rode inside it once and it was fine! Besides, if there’s a leak, you’ll have your suit and goggles on. All you need to do is pull this lever. It’ll swing this mechanism down and crack the glass open, pop! Just like an egg. Then you can swim to safety.”
At least it had a failsafe. Anyway, Elantha would rather drown than face Rasmosa and his ikyrons. This seemed as good a plan as any. Shore climbed out of the ball and bowed before her.
“Want to see some of my other inventions? I’ve been working on an explosive bolt for our-” he was interrupted by a loud, harsh whistle from the second deck.
“Riverwatch spotted!” he said. “Quick, we need to get you below now. Sendo! Help!”
Elantha turned and saw Selouise’s brother, the dual-horned san renomo came bounding across the deck, his heavy footfalls pounding the wood like drums of war. He was easily six feet tall, and as thick as the main mast of the Servitor. Like his sister, he had webs of skin along the inside of his arms and shimmering silver skin, but where Selouise’s hair was black, his was a bright amber color.
“I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself milady,” he said, his voice vibrating in mountainous tones. “But the time will come after. Please, put on your equipment and get inside so I may deploy you beneath the ship.”
Elantha did as she was asked, pulling on the tight leather robe and goggles before clambering inside the glass ball. Shore deftly shut and latched closed the door, then smiled and gave a thumbs up to Elantha. Only now, from the inside did she see the weights secured to the rope at the bottom of the egg. Without them, surely the ball would bump and slam into the underside of the ship, fighting against the buoyancy of the air inside it. Before she could react, Sendo wrapped his arms around the ball and hefted it into the air in front of him. As gently as she had ever seen a being of his stature move, he rested the ball into the hatch, and she watched him and Shore slowly disappear as water crowded in overtop of the ball.
Then, silence. The hatch above closed, causing the ball to shift down slightly, and flow backward enough for Elantha to need to push her hands out against the walls to steady herself. The river was far deeper than Elantha would have expected it to be. Looking down through the glass at her feet, she saw only muddy water with the occasional shape moving through it. No bottom in sight. Most of the fish gave her a wide berth, but a few larger ones approached the glass and poked it before quickly swimming away. Tangles of vegetation like ethereal wisps of the earth reached towards the underside of the egg through the murk, softly flowing with the movement of the water. The ayse in Elantha’s body was just enough to shift her mind from a state of panic to one of amazement. Seeing the river like this, as the river creatures do every day was a true blessing. One she wouldn’t soon forget.
A large shadow approached the Servitor, cast from a ship nearly twice the size. It pulled up alongside the Servitor, and both vessels stopped, causing Elantha’s glass egg to settle forward and drop even lower into the river. The Yulfang border inspection. Helplessness was a nest in which every Carshgan from Yulfang was raised, and here it was again. A great power overhead, ready and willing to exert its will upon her. The only thing standing between them were a few well-meaning smugglers and fifteen feet of river water. Elantha did as she had done since she was a child in the face of such overwhelming helplessness. She clasped her hands together and began to pray. She didn’t pray with the hope of grand divine intervention on her behalf, no. Carshgans weren’t worthy of such things. She prayed for strength. The strength to carry on, even in the heat of great hatred. She prayed for structure beneath her hope, to hold and steady it. To keep it upright as everything but the sky came crashing down upon it. She prayed for forgiveness. Not for herself, she had done nothing wrong and she knew it. Not for her oppressors. She was no saint, and that kind of compassion was beyond her. She asked forgiveness for the idle. The ones who chose blindness. For truly, theirs was the grimmest fate. A world without conviction, or truth. A world where even the light is a gray melange, with no end in sight. An aimless, pointless world.
Suddenly a harsh light hit Elantha’s closed eyes. Her first assumption was that she had been discovered and the egg was being hauled aboard. She opened her eyes and saw the river, but no movement from above. She hadn’t been discovered. A bright light flashed again, deep in the water. Then a third time. It was centered in the same spot and seemed to be displacing things around it. Each flash of light was accompanied by a shockwave, chasing fish away from the source. A fourth flash, but this time it remained for a few moments. A large square of light, through the center of which Elantha could see land. A valley, flanked by rocky hills. In the valley, there was a semicircle of figures cloaked in green and some winged thing. The light disappeared. Elantha heard shouting above, clearly, that was bright enough for Rasmosa’s men to see. It would lead them right to her. A fifth flash of light, and the image of the valley once more. This time the image was stable, as clear as a painting. A towering mechanism of gears and spiraling pale red energy stood behind the cloaked figures, lashing out with vines of light. The winged thing suddenly rose up, spreading its indigo wings wide and crashing toward the light. Towards Elantha. It burst through the square, and just as quickly the light vanished, leaving the giant winged beast in the water beneath her.
Its body was long and slim, shimmering like the walls of a gem-encrusted cavern. Four limbs stuck out from its torso with talons of great severity, the likes of which Elantha had never seen. Its head was twofold, splitting at the neck. They shared similarities but moved independently of one another. Both were crowned with manes of white hair, flowing this way and that in the water around them. The features of their faces were more akin to an owl than anything else, eyes wide with black pupils surrounded by gold, and hooked brown beaks. The creature, despite clearly being uncomfortable beneath the water, showed no signs of panic. It wriggled forward, pinning its wings to its body and using its large limbs to pull it up toward the underside of the border inspection ship. Elantha heard shouts and loud rumblings above. The beast gained momentum, and suddenly all sound was drowned out by a voice coming from one of the heads.
“Come now, you loathsome few, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have fattened your hearts in a time of slaughter.”
In one swift movement, the winged creature jettisoned straight upwards like an arrow, splitting the inspection ship clean in half. Elantha watched as debris, ikyrons, and riverwatch alike fell into the muddy water. The beast, in four massive rotations, ate all of it until nothing remained. It flew upwards above the surface and out of Elantha’s view. In the silence that followed, she feared the crew of the Servitor hadn’t survived. She reached down to the escape lever, ready to break open the egg when she heard something. Another moment passed, her hand still on the lever. Then, the egg shifted upward slightly, and a bright light illuminated her. She looked up and saw the open hatch with Selouise, Varit, Numair, Sendo, and Shore peering down at her.