And no doubt she did the same on the battlefield. Jallarzi wasn’t just a wizard of the Circle; she was a warrior, a thinker. I wonder if her opinion of me would change if she knew of my affiliation to the illuminati? She knew her own strengths and weaknesses as well as any, but measured her opponent’s better than most. I had no doubt that the woman often used her feminine charms on unwitting opponents, throwing them off guard before crushing them with one of Bigby’s hands.
I respected that; the image brought a smile to my often-serious and weathered face.
It was a short-lived grin, though, as I considered my own situation. On a peg near the clothes rack where Jallarzi dressed hung my small-brimmed black hat, the one Thrommel had given me. I had found that the cap, like my paladin companions, was much more than it seemed. It held many beneficial properties, magical and mechanical. It looked mostly ridicouls, as I’m sure was the point when Thrommel gave to me as a gift. What gave away the intent was the ever youthful, ever so cunning grin of the young prince. How I miss him.
I had slept soundly after my encounter with Jallarzi the previous night. Too soundly? Jallarzi could have killed me, I realized, and the thought flickered through my mind that perhaps the woman was using her charms on me. She had put me into more vulnerable a position than I had ever known. The succubi had never gotten so close.
No, I assured myself. Her feelings for me are genuine. This is no game.
Except, he noted, wouldn’t that have been Jallarzi’s strategy, to put me so completely off my guard that she could risk an attack upon me? I would expect such from a succubi.
I dropped my head into my hands and rubbed my bleary eyes. I shook my head as I did, and was glad that my hands covered my helpless chuckle. I would drive myself mad with such thoughts.
“Are you coming with me, then?” Jallarzi asked, drawing me from my introspection.
I lifted my head and looked at her again as she stood by the rack. She was still nude, though my eyes did not roam her body, but rather settled upon her face. By all measures, Jallarzi had once been a strikingly beautiful woman, with startling eyes that sometimes showed reflections of gray amidst their blue. At other times, depending on the background—the lighting, her lothing—those eyes glowed an exquisite shade of medium blue, and either way they always seemed striking because of their contrast with her raven-dark hair. Her face was symmetrical, her bone structure impeccable.
But that scar. It ran across her right cheek to her nose, then down through her lips to the middle of her chin. It was an angry scar, often inflamed and red. Jallarzi hid behind it, I knew, as if in denial of her feminine beauty. We all hide behind our scars. Maybe it was her strength as well, for my scars fueled my focus.
When she flashed her smile, though, so mischievous and dangerous, I hardly noticed the tear in her lips. To me, she remained beautiful, and other than to consider her motivations for keeping the scar and the deeper meaning it seemed to hold to her, I hardly noticed it. It was a reminder of her time in captivity. It did not detract in the least for me, so lost was I in the mysteries that simmered in her eyes. She shook her head and her thick hair rolled over her shoulders, and I wanted to leap over and bury my face in that warm, soft mane.
“We agreed to eat,” Jallarzi reminded me. She gave a sigh and began pulling on her shirt. “I would have thought you’d worked up a great and growling hunger.”
As her head came up through her coller her eyes set on me, her lover, and Jallarzi’s smile disappeared.
That flash of a frown clued me in to my own expression. I was scowling. I didn’t know why. There wasn’t a singular thought in my mind that might bring a scowl to my face just then. Jallarzi wouldn’t elicit such a thought from me, after all, for I considered her a bright spot in my colorless life. But I was indeed scowling, as her reflective frown revealed.
I wore that dour expression often of late—or had it been forever?—and usually for no apparent reason at all. Except, of course, that I was often angry—at everything and nothing all at once.
“We do not have to eat,” the woman said.
“No, no, of course we should go and get some food. The morning is late already.”
“What troubles you?”
“Nothing.”
“Did I not please you last night?”
I nearly snorted aloud at that absurdity, and I couldn’t suppress a smile as I considered Jallarzi and recognized that she was simply goading me for a compliment.
“You have pleased me many nights. Greatly. And last night was among those,” I offered to her, and I was glad to see her apparent relief.
“Then what troubles you?”
“I told you that I am not troubled.” I reached down and gathered up my pants and began pulling them over my feet. I stopped when I felt Jallarzi’s hand on my shoulder. I looked up at her, staring down at me, a look of concern on her face.
“Your words do not match your expression,” she said. “Tell me. Can you not trust me? What is it that so upsets the humors of the great Market? What is it about you? What happened to you, to ignite this inner fire?”
“You speak in foolish riddles of your own imagination.” I bent down again to pull my pants on, but Jallarzi gripped me more tightly, forcing me to look back at her.
“What is it?” she pressed. “How is a warrior of such perfection as Market Fangorn, the “Ma’Hael” created? What history did this to you?”
----
I looked away from her, looked down at my own feet. But I didn’t really see them. In my mind’s eye, I was a boy again, barely more than a child, in the dusty streets of a semi desert city that was full of the smell of brine or filled with stinging sand, depending upon which way the wind was blowing.
The wagons creaked even though they were not moving, as the sandy breeze sizzled against their wooden sides. A couple of the horses nickered uncomfortably and one even reared up as far as its heavy, tight harness would allow. The driver, a thin and sinewy man of harsh, angular features who reminded the boy of my father, wasted no time in putting the whip savagely to the frightened creature.
Yes, just like my father.
The fat spice dealer seated on one wagon stared at me for a long time. Those heavy-lidded eyes seemed to invite me to slumber, as mesmerizing as a swaying serpent. There was something there, I knew, some magic behind that gaze, some method of control that had allowed the pathetic, slovenly beast to rise to prominence among the troupe gathered for their seasonal caravan out of Lopolla in Ket. The others all deferred to that one, he could see, though was just a boy and knew little about the world or about the hierarchy of the merchant class.
But that one was the boss, to be sure, and I flushed, flattered that the leader of so many would spend time with me and my mother. That prideful flush became an open-jawed, wide-eyed stare of disbelief as the fat man handed over coins—gold coins! Gold coins! I had heard of them, had heard of golden coins, but had never seen any. I had seen silver once, handed by some stranger to my father, Belrigger, before the stranger went behind the curtain with my mother.
But never gold. My mother was holding gold!
How thrilling it had been, but briefly. Then Shanali, my mother, grabbed me roughly by the shoulder and pushed me to the fat man’s waiting grasp. I wriggled and fought the hold. I tried to tug away from the sweaty arms, at least so that I could get some answers from my mother.
But when I finally managed to face her, she had already turned and started away.
I called out to her. I pleaded with her. I asked her what it all meant.
“Where are you going?”
“Why am I still here?”
“Why is he holding me?”
“Mama-hal!”
And she did glance back, only once and only for a moment. Just long enough for me to see her sunken, sad eyes one last time.
-------
“Market?”
I shook my memories away and looked at Jallarzi. She seemed amused and concerned all at once. Strangely so. “Are you to sit there with a flute in your hands and your breeches about your ankles all morning?”
The question shook me, and only then did I realize that I was indeed holding Enye’s flute, the magical instrument the dragon had given to me. And yes, as Jallarzi had noted, my breeches were still rumpled around my ankles. I placed the flute down beside me on my bed—or started to, but found I couldn’t quite let it go just then. With that realization came a sudden strength, and I dropped the flute, quickly stood, and pulled up my pants.
“So what is it?” Jallarzi asked me, and he looked at her with curiosity. “What is it that creates a perfect warrior such as Market, A Choden Khal?” she clarified.
My mind flashed back again to Memnoc. An image of Belrigger flashed before me and I felt meself jerk.
I realized that I was holding the flute again.
Tosso-pash’s one-toothed leer flickered before me, and I threw the flute down on the bed as if I were holding a live viper.
“Training? Discipline?” Jallarzi asked.
I snatched my shirt up from the chair and moved past her.
“Anger,” I said, and in such a tone that no further questioning would likely be forthcoming.
---
It stood as just another clay-stone rectangle in a sea of similar houses, an unremarkable structure a dozen feet across and half a dozen front-to-back. It had an awning, like all of its neighbors, facing the sea breeze that usually offered the only relief from Memnoc’s unrelenting heat. There were no walls partitioning the house. A single threadbare curtain sectioned off a sleeping area, where my mother and father, Shanali and Belrigger—or Shanali and someone who had aid Belrigger—slept. For the boy there was just the floor of the common room. Once, when too many bugs had crawled around me, I had climbed on the table to sleep, but Belrigger had found me there and had beaten me severely for the infraction.
Most of the beatings had blended together in the haze of passing time, but that particular one, I remembered clearly. Drunker than usual, Belrigger had taken to my back and rump with a rotted old board, and the battering had left several splinters in my backside that had become infected and oozed white and greenish pus for days.
Shanali had come to me with a wet cloth to wipe those wounds. I remembered that. She had rubbed my backside gently, with motherly love, and though she had uttered a few scolding words, calling me foolish for not remembering Belrigger’s rules, even those had come tinged with sympathy.
Was that the last time Shanali had treated me kindly? Was that the last gentle memory I had of my mother?
The woman who had handed me over to the merchant caravan a few months later hardly seemed like the same creature. She had even physically changed by that fateful day at the merchant’s, had grown pale and sunken, and she couldn’t speak a full sentence without pausing to catch her breath.
My mind recoiled from the image of that day, rushing back to Belrigger and Tosso-pash, the toothless and bristle-faced idiot who spent more time under Belrigger’s awning than did Belrigger meself.
Tosso-pash came to me in flashing images—leering, always leering, and always leaning over me, always reaching for me. Even the man’s words flashed in phrases I had heard far too many times.
“I’m yer Papa-hal’s brother.”
“Ye call me Uncle Tosso.”
“I can make ye feel good, boy.”
My mind recoiled from those images, from those words, even more so than from the last image of my mother.
Belrigger had never done that, at least, had never chased me around the alleyways until my legs ached from the exertion, had never lain down beside me when he was trying to sleep, had never tried to kiss me or touch me. Belrigger hardly ever even acknowledged my existence, unless it was to administer another beating, or to lash out at me with a string of insults and curses.
I could only imagine that I had been a great disappointment to my father. What else could bring the man to such anger against me? Belrigger was embarrassed by the frail Market—ashamed and angry that he had to feed me, even if all he ever gave to me was the stale crust of his bread or other morsels left over after he was done with his meal.
And even my mother had turned away from me, had taken the gold . . .
The fat merchant’s flabby arms provided no warmth and no comfort.
I woke in darkness. I felt the cold sweat all over my naked form; the blankets clung wetly to me.
Are these the remnants of the memories that had been so suppressed all these years. Looking back, all I recall is my time at the temple. Is this the life that I led before my coming to the temple?
The moment of panic subsided somewhat when he heard Jallarzi’s steady breathing beside me. I moved to sit up, and was surprised to find that magical flute of Enya lying across my waist.
I picked it up and brought it before my eyes, though I could barely see it in the dim starlight slipping in through the room’s single window. From its feel, both physically in my hands and in the emotional connection I had attained with it in my mind, I was certain that it was the same magical flute, alas I remember leaving it behind…or did I?
I paused for a moment to consider where I had placed the flute when I had gone to bed—on the lip of the wooden bed frame beside me, I recalled, and within easy reach.
So I had apparently scooped it up during my sleep, and it had brought me to those memories again.
Or were they even memories? I had to wonder. Were the images flashing so clearly through my mind an accurate recounting of my childhood days in Memnoc? Or were they some devilish manipulation by the always-surprising flute, somehow meant to unbalance me?
I remembered clearly that day with the caravan, though, and knew my flute-enhanced images of it were indeed correct. That memory of Memnoc, the final and absolute betrayal by my mother, had followed me for fourty plus years.
“Are you all right?” Jallarzi asked softly as he sat on the edge of the bed. He heard her shift behind me, then felt her against my back, leaning on me, her arm coming around to rub my chest and hold me close.
“Are you all right?” she asked again.
My fingers moving along the smooth curves of Enye’s flute, I wasn’t sure.
“You are tense,” Jallarzi noted, and she kissed me on the side of the neck.
My reflexive movement showed her that I wasn’t in the mood for any of that, though.
“Is it your anger?” the woman prodded. “Are you still thinking of that? The anger that created Market?”
“You know nothing,” I assured her, and shot her a look that even in the darkness she could sense warned her that she was walking on ground uninvited.
“Anger at who?” she asked anyway. “At what?”
“No, not anger,” I corrected, and I was talking to myself more than to her. “Disgust.”
“At?”
“Yes,” I answered, and pulled away and stood up.
I turned to Jallarzi. She shook her head and slowly slid off the bed to move to stand at my side. She gently draped her arm behind my neck and leaned in close. The dream of the fields of Fangorn, she and I together, came to mind and along came the image of the worm child.
“Do I disgust you?” she whispered in my ear.
No, I thought, keeping to my self, I worry for your safety.
Always thinking of the Succubi and wondering if I will ever have to plunge Callendor through your heart.
I forced that notion from my thoughts and put my hand over Jallarzi’s, then glanced sidelong at her and offered a comforting smile.
I forced that notion from my thoughts and put my hand over Jallarzi’s, then glanced sidelong at her and offered a comforting smile.
