Shree Sevlanti
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Table of Contents Part I, installment 1 appears in this issue. |
| part I, installment 2 |
Sevlanti grunted what was almost words, “Thanky Ouuu.” and pulled up his robe.
Jonlok: “He says they put him on the stake, and whipped him, he says for no other reason than sadism; they believe cruelty to a Created One will bring them good luck as well as praise in the afterlife.”
Kladius nodded, he knew the ways of the Saddle Witches.
Jonlok: “He says, the Saddle Witches feasted and drank wine with their beasts of burden until late into the night. The dawn was near. As they slept, he untied his bonds with his trunk, he was in great pain but sought his revenge and knew they would overtake him if he fled.
He sneaked like thief and crushed the heads of three Witches before the rest woke. A Witch fled on the back of a centaur, leaving two more witches and one centaur. He battled the centaur, he gored him and broke his tooth in the beast’s chest, the beast bled to death quickly.
The two witches almost got the better of him, but finally he was the victor, running his good tusk into one witch’s skull, the other pulled close with his trunk, and forced his finger into her throat, and she suffocated,” Sevlanti held his finger up, a faint ring of teeth marks could be seen.
Kladius: “Aye, we are six brothers tonight, I will sing the name of Sevlanti the Saddle Witch Slayer in the heavens,” he bowed deeply. The Elephantine managed to make a face that nearly looked like a smile.
Thadius walked to the edge of the lake and plunged in the white-hot metal. The cone was transformed into a thing of beauty when it returned to the air. The metal cooled to a rich coppery gold. He tested the temperature with his fingers. Satisfied with his creation, he slipped it over the damaged tusk: a perfect fit. He screwed finely threaded hooks to mount it to the tusk.
Sevlanti stroked it with his trunk, feeling the raised metal, and trumpeted with approval, and Thadius nodded his head accepting the praise.
“Now for your back, I have an ointment that will keep the flesh supple until it heals.” He began healing the Elephantine. Samuel, his belly now full of soup, indulged in a peculiar habit and scrapped at the back of his arm with his penny-knife, smoothing the day’s stubble.
Samuel: “With all due respect to our guest, we are not here to boast of how many Saddle Witches we have stomped on. I want the Wheel, and I want it before dawn.”
Kladius: “Brother, you forget your teachers. Only civility keeps us from the horrors of savagery and barbarism.”
Samuel: “Kurkak to civility, what will we do? We all agree there is something in the bottom of this lake, I say Kalinon uses his sorcery to raise this servant instead of getting permission from our whorish mother. Perhaps we can return home instead of drinking soup from clay cups in the middle of nowhere.”
Somewhere in the heavens a thunder storm rolled against the clouds.
Kladius: “Don’t worry, brother, we will call it out tonight.”
Sevlanti, with his ears raised to the sky, his trunk probing the air, signed to Jonlok.
Jonlok: “He tells me that his tribe is coming, that they will be at the edge of this valley by morning. He can smell them on the wind and that the sky itself echoes their march. He asks if he may camp with us tonight, he says he will gladly face whatever is in the lake with us.”
Kladius: “Your trek west begins, so soon? It seems earlier every year.”
Sevlanti blinked his tiny eyes, and motioned to Jonlok.
Jonlok: “He says indeed, so soon. He has a gift for us, that there is magic in it, but our meal and Thadius’ healing are a worthy trade.”
Sevlanti reached into his robes and pulled out a small woven bag, and with his trunk delicately undid the complex knot, from the bag, he pulled a piece of tanned leather, he laid it on his lap, and unrolled it. The brothers watched as the container was opened. Something lay in the dark folds. It was pure white, almost glowing under the moonlight.
Kladius: “By all that was Begotten and Created...”
Thadius: “Aye.”
Samuel: “It can’t be.”
Kalinon: “But it is...”
Jonlok: “Feathers from the Begotten Seraph.” Sevlanti began motioning, sharing the final bits of the Saddle Witch massacre.
Jonlok: “The witch that escaped returned as he nursed his wounds. She came swiftly, her centaur chanting an unholy verse, but she wasn’t after his blood; she passed him by and stopped a few feet away, dismounted and ransacked the belongings of another witch.
Our friend says he found a lost whip, picked it up in his trunk (he could smell his own blood on it), lashed out at the centaur, striking him in the neck and chest as he was startled by the attack, caught off guard, he accidentally ran his foot through the final Saddle Witch’s chest. He was horrified and fled to the east.”
Kladius: “What then? Where did he get those?” the feathers brought a strange feeling in his belly, as if something dark but beautiful had nested in it.
Jonlok: “Curious at what she had returned for, he looked closer. Her corpse still had life in it; she cursed him, he let her die slowly choking on her own blood and bile. He found in her hand this skin with the feathers, as they are now.”
Sevlanti, “Gifft to ouuu,” he said, and with his trunk, passed the feathers to each brother. Kladius nervously watched his brothers as they got theirs first, hoping for a kinsmen in a fever of emotions that swept him. But it seemed he was alone; he took his feather, and his heart thumped with a dark loving sadness, a feeling he had only known in dreams. Dreams so vivid, and deep he had never shared them with anyone, True Man or Created.
He’d trained for decades in hope of fulfilling his mission to rescue the Begotten Seraph, and now the feathers had soothed his doubt: the Seraph was real, and his quest would come to its glorious end.
Finally, Sevlanti produced the last feather, a full inch shorter than rest, which he presented to Kalinon. Desperate for a companion in this emotion, he looked to Kalinon... And yes it was there, carefully guarded, as he hoped he had guarded his heart. The sky rumbled again, and his mind echoed the prophesy of Helen: “One of you will die tonight.”
Kladius: “Created One, we are not worthy of these gifts, these are the rarest of treasures, our humble soup and our healer who has vowed to heal all, do not justify such gifts.”
Jonlok: “He says for a Created One these feathers are a beautiful decoration, perhaps a bit of magic in them. But the kindness of the True Men is much more magical to him. He says he will sing our names as brothers to his herd, and eternally we will be kinsmen.”
The brothers five bowed deeply to the Created One, who returned the bow, his massive head nearly touching the earth. As if cued by some pouting god, the sky crashed, and soft warm rain began falling. Before Sevlanti could raise his head, the lake became alive with the droplets.
Kalinon pointed out a blur of cloudy red light forming near the center of the lake.
Samuel: “Whatever it is in the bottom of this lake, like me, can’t stand another minute of this asinine talking.” He raised his voice, bellowing from deep with in himself, “Rise beast, and face the Last Warriors!”
Kladius turned to Samuel, and scowled. Samuel shrugged and slid his penny-knife back into its sheath, “That soup did not fill my belly; they say a Warrior may eat only the flesh of an enemy he has killed in fair battle.” He handed his feather to Kladius, and began stripping his clothes.
Kalinon: “Fool. Kladius? Stop him.”
Knowing it was not within his power to stop Samuel, Kladius breathed deeply and spoke, “By sorcery or strength, we must face this creature on its own terms, it is the way of the Last Warriors, by hook or by crook, I say.”
Thadius: “Samuel, you don’t think. You don’t consider the consequences.”
Samuel: “Kurak to to the consequences, my brother, that is why I succeed. “
Now naked, Samuel picked up his penny-knife from his discarded clothes.
In his mind Kladius heard it again: “One of you will die tonight!”
Samuel put his penny-knife in between his teeth, and took a running start into the shallow water, and finally dove into the lake. The others watched him swim arm over arm in the hazy blur of moon light and rain.
Thadius shook his head in distaste at the recklessness, “What is it that they say?”
Kalinon: “Fools often lead where a Seraph would fear to follow?”
Thadius: “Aye, I love him, but I wonder about his mind, he fears nothing, and nothing fears him.”
Samuel, Slayer of the Sly-One, third to fall from Helen’s womb, filled his lungs with air, and made his way to the bottom of the lake.
Four brothers and one Elephantine held their breaths with him, they in the last warm summer rain, and he in the coolness of the lake driven by the fire in his heart. The sky spoke once again. Sevlanti tapped away the seconds in the air with his trunk, every so often shaking his huge ears to dump the water collected in them.
The lake water sprayed upward. It was a dark beast, hard to see by the moonlight, its throat glowed red as if it had swallowed a great ember. It rose impossibly high, like a serpent standing on its tail. The Warriors strained to catch a glimpse of Samuel, but his presence was not evident. Kladius quickly hid the two feathers deep in his traveling bag.
Kladius spoke, his voice strangely calm, “Aye, I’ve never seen such a beast, or heard stories.”
The brothers stood waiting for the creature to finish unspooling itself from the lake. It growled with the hollow wetness of a frog calling its mate. The lake creature turned to the Warriors, the moon lighting its face; it did not look as fearsome as they had expected; the rounded face, a rubbery mess of skin and flaps, gills and vents. Its throat swollen with a glow so bright it penetrated the black rubbery skin of the beast. It struck at the brothers maniacally.
They dodged the strike. As the creature stopped inches from the earth, it offered an opportunity for Kladius. He jumped, his hands barely able to hold on the slippery mess. He plunged his arms deep into the holes on either side of the thing’s head. It screeched with anger and fear, desperate to shake off this hellish foe. Kladius dug deeply, tearing at the flesh inside, he knew not whether it was gills or ears, or if he clawed the creature’s brain itself. As he rode the creature into the sky, his eye caught something: another creature, the same as the one he rode, at the far side of the lake. He whistled, and yelled —
“One of you shall die tonight,” he heard Helen’s ghost taunting him.
Kalinon looked up, and caught Kladius’ eye; the message came without words.
“Jonlok, follow me,” Kalinon said. He took off running into the night. Jonlok, without questioning, followed. The second creature had been sneaking, now that it knew it had been found out, It flung itself from the lake into the tree tops, and slithered across as the two warriors followed it into the night. Thadius and Sevlanti stood by, helpless, while Kladius rode the thing like a demon bull.
But what was this? Thadius saw the creature’s middle split open, and like the fruit of some perverted womb, Samuel’s head crowned the now bleeding hole. Once his lungs were full of air, he yelled, but none on the ground understood. Sevlanti trumpeted a frustrated reply.
Kladius dug deep into the creature’s skull, gouging, tearing, burrowing his thick arms into its flesh. It slapped its head against the water, submerging Samuel again. When it dipped out of the water, Samuel had widened the hole.
As suddenly as it had attacked, the creature fell dead, the bulk of its body landing on the shore. Kladius was pinned underneath, but its strength lay in its muscle, not its weight. He pulled himself out easily. He held some foul chunk of flesh in his hand, which he pitched into the lake.
Samuel, with grim satisfaction, managed to cut himself from the beast’s belly. Thadius rushed to him, and pulled him out. A gush of dark brackish liquid followed like a sickly afterbirth. They found his left leg horribly twisted, his shin bone jutting from the flesh just below the knee, his body shivering, despite the warm night.
Thadius: “It looks like this beast wanted some meat in its belly as well.”
Samuel: “It seems so. It may have eaten me, but it was slow on the digestion, and that was its first mistake.”
The rain stopped as quickly as it had come.
Kladius: “Get him back to the camp.”
Kladius drew his penny-knife and raised it to silt the creature’s throat where it still glowed in ruddy mystery. The Elephantine and Thadius picked up Samuel as carefully as possible, while his square jaw clenched in a grin meant to hide the pain.
Before Kladius could free whatever treasure was embedded in the beast’s throat, the beast began a metamorphosis. Its skin became liquid and soon began melting like a candle’s wax, and then it collapsed into a pile of what looked to be silt.
Simultaneously, Kladius saw whatever magic animated the creature take form in a whitish cloud. It went east after the two brothers.
“One of you will die tonight!”
If not Samuel, by his own recklessness, then who? Kladius thought.
He took another look at the corpse of the lake creature, a myriad of human skeletons in various stages of destruction lay in the muck. The skin stripped, the bones shining blue in the moonlight. Even in the aftermath of the lake creature’s collapse, the treasure was evident. It might have been a box at some point, two handles still jutted from its sides; it was coated with thousand years of built-up slag, sealed by nature or magic, Kladius could not know. He dragged it to the camp area.
Thadius was trying to heal Samuel’s leg, but it seemed hopeless. Kladius approached, dragging the treasure. Samuel lay, the handle of the penny-knife between his teeth, biting down in agony as Thadius attempted to set the bone back in place. Sevlanti held Samuel’s thigh his great hands.
Kladius: “A Warrior has three things, his sense, his legs, and his penny-knife. I’m glad to see your knife is still of use to you.”
Samuel pulled the penny-knife from his teeth and managed a profanity.
Kladius: “I’m going after the second beast.”
He turned, tucked the treasure close to the fire, and ran off into the night.
To be continued...
Copyright © 2006 by Bosley Gravel
