The Legend of El Shashi by Marc Secchia Read Free Book Online

you?”
    “Ah …” she hissed, and the syllable stuck a hot poker into my gullet. “The trader from the marketplace!”
    Her! Jyla! A thousand thoughts, every last one of them ill, jammed into my head at once. I tried to push myself onward, to square my shoulders, but my boots seemed nailed to the top step. I rasped, “What are you doing here? Where’s Janos?”
    “I might ask you the same question, boy,” she smiled coolly, “but I would rather thank you first.” Jyla made a half-buskal, a mocking perversion of the common gesture of appreciation. “For leading us hence –thank you.”
    My hands knotted into fists.
    “After all, our Janos has proved most elusive over the anna. And resourceful.” Her laughter tinkled as if tiny icicles were dropping to the ground. “That is, until you betrayed him. You have my … heartfelt gratitude.”
    “Where is Janos?” My voice belonged to a stranger. “Where is he?”
    “Such touching concern,” Jyla tittered. Her black-in-black eyes glitter ed like hideous diamonds, and her voice flicked in an instant from honey to iron. “Would you see your precious Janos? Tortha! Stop fooling about. Bring him out.”
    There was a low moan that I mistook at first for the cry of poorly oiled hinges. But when Tortha banged the forge door open, the moaning soared into a raw, lingering scream. I have never since heard a living creature utter such a sound. I wish I never had. It tore an unspeakable wound in my innermost quoph.
    I squinted against the forge’s brutal , shimmering heat. There was a figure nailed to the door. Great, thick iron nails at shoulder, hip, lower thigh, and left ankle, pinned a man cruelly to the heat-scarred wood. Blood crusted his torso. Where his nose had been lay a smoking ruin, a gaping sore in the flesh. His left ear hung by a thread. He had bitten through his lower lip. Only his eyes were familiar, grey as flint, and thus I knew him for Janos.
    Tortha kicked the door. He sho ok it violently with both hands. Janos shrieked again and again as his body flopped about upon its pinions; Tortha’s perverse mirth spilled forth into the night.
    The man roared, “Give greeting, Janos! Your apprentice is come.”
    Despair creased Janos’ expression before he forced a smile–more a grimace–to his lips and sighed, “Arlak.” He mouthed, solûm tï mik , which means ‘son of my hearth’ in Dusky Fahric. An endearment, and a secret signal between us.
    But before I could think upon it, Jyla said sharply, “Boy! Have you used nails before?”
    “Nails?”
    “Like this.” Suddenly, one of the thick iron nails floated in the air between us. “A simple tool,” she noted, studying my reaction, “and singularly effective, would n’t you agree? Once driven home, they are nigh impossible to extract.”
    I had the impression this statement was meant for a test. I glanced at Janos for guidance, but he watched Jyla with neither malice nor anger, but with a quietude of spirit that given the situation, seemed utterly misplaced.
    “Iron nails. Sharp enough to pierce flesh. Blunt enough to make it interesting.” Jyla raised her hand and the nail drifted through the air toward Janos. “Where shall I place this one? Your choice. Neck?”
    The leaping forge flames made a brazen s tatue of her flawless features, as if she were chiselled of cold, unfeeling marble. “What about an eye? Left or right?” How could this be, I thought dully. A vine of such beauty; its fruit nought but evil? “Maybe his arm will suffice.”
    Jyla flicked her fingers. The nail shot forward to impale Janos’ left wrist , and pinned it upright as if she had calculated to trap him in the act of asking a question.
    Janos cried out, a thin and distant sound swallowed in the hot vomit spewing from my mouth; in my retching, gagging, and coughing; kneeling helplessly in the dirt, still heaving long after my stomach had nought left to expel. Then, by force of will, I staggered upright, shouting in