Fantasy Tales of Kijat

[Obsidianserpent]

​

Moonbeams cascaded across miles of sand and stone, illuminating the cliffside. In the wagon at the rear of the caravan, brooding beneath long, crimson robes, the skinwalker Nadir sipped at a small of cup of needle grass tea and cringed. This tastes like horse piss, Nadir thought to himself, but forced it down all the same. It had been nearly two days since he'd slept, and in that moment he longed for nothing more than his fur cot, a bath, and a hearty bowl of pheasant stew. He was well aware of the risks he was taking by traveling through the night. He could sense the blood lust of the wolves that stalked the caravan as if it were his own. Occasionally, he'd slip into the mind of the alpha, a majestic, full bodied, black furred beast with beady red eyes, and snap at the other wolves of the pack, sending them scurrying into the cliffs. But hunger always compelled them to return and stalk their prey the moment Nadir returned to his mortal skin. If he intended on protecting the caravan he'd need to stay alert. Piss flavored as it may have been, the acrid tea would help him do so.

The Devil’s Crown harbored other dangers as well. Ghouls, bandits, disciples of the Pale Mother: the desert was rife with nocturnal foes. Nadir would have preferred to set up camp and set out the following dawn, but time was a luxury they couldn't afford. The Amyr Garnet was growing dangerously unstable. Two nights prior, the massive stone had driven the sellsword, Rafiq, completely mad. The once witty if sharp tongued mercenary had been suddenly reduced to little more than a rabid animal: frothing at the mouth and speaking of violent commands apparently given to him by the stone. His comrades had proven incapable of restraining him when he lunged at the young orphan, Oma, feeding upon her flesh like a ravenous beast: his gorging interrupted only by intermittent, unintelligible chanting in some unknown tongue. Haqan, leader of the Timurid Arms, had been forced to drive his shamshir through the madman that same night. Oma, the blonde, jovial girl of only thirteen they'd found stranded along the road, did nothing to deserve such a horrific end. It was a gruesome and disturbing episode unlike anything Nadir had ever witnessed.

He’d studied the stone for nearly a month: a complicated venture that took him from his secluded, desert abode to the distant libraries of Herat and beyond. Having poured hours over cryptic texts, and sifting through the stone’s memories through tedious scrying rituals, Nadir believed he had discovered a way to rid the mortal world of the garnet’s insidious presence. The stone would need to be escorted south-east, past the endless wastes to the altar of the dead goddess, Nemes. There he would perform an ancient ritual, harnessing the power of the sun and moon, and banishing the Amyr to the distant void which spawned it. After what seemed like an eternity of preparation, the caravan was now less than five miles from its destination, and Nadir would not abide the stone's murderous appetite for a moment longer than necessary. They would press on through the night, no matter the cost.

A warm breeze blew through the air, carrying with it the smell of hot iron and burnt human flesh. Nadir grew dismayed. He could hear the panicked bellowing of the oxen up ahead, and the shouting of the sell swords who strove in vain to pacify them. The oxen, too, could sense something sinister in the air. Nadir reached for his dagger and a small wicker basket which buzzed at his approach. As he kicked open the door to his carriage, Ehsan, the stout and balding ox driver from Sabina, gazed up at him with troubled eyes.

"The oxen...I know not what plagues them!" Ehsan said.

"Can you not smell that, Ehsan?"

Ehsan appeared bewildered. He searched through an old rucksack for a handful of oats or figs to subdue the crazed animals. Nadir paced toward the front of the caravan, leaving a trail of moonlit dust in his wake. As he caressed the neck of the rearmost stead, an arrow sped past him, carving a thin cut into his left shoulder and burying itself deep in the ox’s flesh. The beast wailed in agony. Blood spewed from its wound like a cracked wine barrel. Nadir's attention was drawn south by screams from the rear of the caravan. Beside the empty wagon, Ehsan gripped his hemorrhaging neck, his screams fading to jumbled gurgles as he bled out and collapsed into the sand. Standing overhead Ehsan's corpse, a woman, clad in black, hooded garments and an ornate mask twisted a bloodied stiletto between her fingers. From the shadows of the cliff two figures, similarly clad, emerged with swords and spears in hand. There could be no mistaking that infamous garb; these rogues were none other than the Hashashins of Mubarak. Nadir had heard more than one tavern's tale of these warriors: of their ability to conjure illusions out of thin air and wield blades with unparalleled finesse; such opponents were not to be underestimated.

Adrenaline raced through Nadir's veins, propelling him forward toward the now abandoned supply wagon. Sliding beneath the turned over pile of wood and iron would afford him some meager cover for the time being. The pack of wolves that had been stalking them for days still lurked nearby. For the first time since they'd departed from Samarkand, Nadir was grateful to the creatures for their perseverance. He pulled himself from his mortal vessel, his eyes turning white as the moon which beamed overhead. Synesthesia enveloped him as he once more possessed the leader of the pack, donning his skin like a cloak. The sounds, sights, and above all scents of the forest began to solidify and take form. He could now feel the wolf's hunger directly: a pit in the creature's belly that radiated throughout his entire body. You shall feed soon enough, beast, Nadir whispered silently to the creature.

Nadir prowled closer to the commotion, the pack not far behind him. The masked woman bolted for his entranced, mortal body, her blade outstretched. Rage ignited in Nadir's veins. He lunged toward the woman's neck, his fanged maw wide open, and tore at her jugular. The sound which followed was enough to turn the stomach of the most seasoned warrior: a twisting, snapping, blood-curdling crunch which left his snout covered in human entrails. The pack soon followed, ravaging the woman’s flesh from head to toe. With the taste of fresh blood on his palette, he searched feverishly for the remaining assailants.

​

 

[Qazi]

The desert winds have flown through the spires of Samarkand and into the people, sailing through the streets, arcing past their river-runover lives that were often the first witness to the vicious cycles of hierarchy, scattering finally against the bulwarks of Nibelung's fortresses and the golden tombs overseeing the thresholds of the lands and its limits as far as the horizon laying road to the barrens and the others winding to the trade routes beyond the pale and the satellite cities of the khan himself and his court of crimson beguiling—fractals followed through the gates of the city, where the merchants came flayed and molested of their prizes and treasures, before being greased to death by the guards as to revive their senses and then sent off to the debt institutions interspersed across the lost steps, from where they were forcibly excommunicated and at cutthroat rates subjugated and forced to serve at the salt mines, their death becoming an original sight to the public visitors and audiences as if they were inversely separate to the deaths of the cities—, and the dithering trail of pilgrims, some dead men walking beside others alive, and the houses nestled in a row fronting their cramped road to this unknown theological privilege, the mercenaries appointed—Ada, who last had been seen succumbing to some quicksand where the dehydration and the infernal heat baked him in his plate suit, and Kadi, heard inside the spiralling-downs of a dungeon wailing by some evil mages on the run, and Shah Saadi, some of the only company men alive and not in the despondency as even he himself had fallen to—watching over them, sullen, fondling the handles of their swords, perhaps in consideration that abandoning the holy words of the mnemon wasn't as bad as it sounded against the idea of the possible monies to be gained at the expense of the pilgrims swirling in dim awareness of their own statuses, the farce that was their whole being: what benefit was there to cast absolution and redemption on men in abandonment of their existence? These were people who served only to worship their slum landlords, the fake gods, the royal regalia and court, and death was perhaps a blessing in disguise for their kind; these people populated the city of Samarkand, next to the red countries and Baru's Point, the eroded valleys on the hinds, laid low and since capitalized and sent to ruination by immortal Nibelung: it starred the great expanses as one of the few prime cities as to seek refuge—built on top of Haurniri, one of the most largest water wells in the whole mainland—, from the cannibals and ghouls, whatever they were made of, and the black sorcerers and the djinn-blooded demons of the out-lands, and of rumors spread around the opium dens of some others from the faraway frosted scapes seeking fortune and the liberty to indulge in further deprecation and evil. Even deeper in the streets, eyes set upon it from the roadside weeds and morning-glories and shattered pewter mugs and maps of shit and blood, from bird's eyeing the fawns of the broodmothers and cities venturing despairing eyes towards this possible ideal: laid on streets on scarred wood pedestals and sawed tables, beneath cloth emporiums and hemp atriums, side by side the crowding flesh, smelling strongly of sweat, rotten fruit and spices from the hordes of unlidded pots, bearing peeled foodstuff braised in whatever concoction each had seen fit to devise and send as a flying din to the people, anticipating goodly rooming in this golden city and surviving, perhaps, another night to repeat thereafter again and again; some on mahogany, in crystal-alit stalls of fuchsia canopies, trading on the doubts of the people and their dread with the cards and books conjured by old wanderlust and the fraudulently illustrious knowledge of the hereafter and the energies individual to the common understanding, others on the factual end commemorating the fiftieth year of the once and forever emperor—as it was, could've explained the people, the undying congestion clogging the city—, saying, ‘of the near withered lands last the first decades, veritable, and made doubly better, saved from, from dismal airs and. . .’ and onwards until further dictations were reached within the owner's amateur knowledge of history and the conflict of the Kaidanar dune, beside it a few like to say, which ensured the ascension of Nibelung and the defeat of the Ur-Trittabh. Of a time beyond better days, of the lost and whited cities entombed in the sepulchre of time: Samarkand, land of demons, land of a great and certain demise to its denizens, invariably.

Beside the well of fortunes: old, withering dogs barking, splashing into the tinier sub-wells of sewage and gunk, lobbing serious attempts at bites which did nothing save annoy the sticks. The children were sleeping, some of them not, instead throwing bottles and clay pottery at those dogs. Amongst the commotion, he picked out the squealing bottles and the shattering, fired clay, spreading everywhere like the desert winds. The lands nearly parted to the air sometimes, this Samarkand, as if to show that they were special but not blessed. Samarkand, Timur'd world, his world now but for how much longer? Absently, he watched the commotion which died in a span of minutes, and absently he touched the desert dirt his boots stood upon, as if it would prove to be a revelation of some sorts. It was a lie, a lie he told himself, that perhaps his desires were, if shot, to be true someday. If there was anything he wanted now, except revelation, it was to go away and live amongst the trees of the distant lands, just for a second, abandon his cut throat and slit back. He'd never learned where the lock was, much less the key, though he knew it was rusted and it might break away soon. A man of cynicism such as him hardly ever touched on ideals and goals, but this was an exception and this mattered because there were certain things at stake he simply could not forsake—first and foremost out of them being his life. The city was its own grave, immortal like the other ruinations he'd seen in his many travels into the outskirts back when the dangers were less; the shadow of people lay like a sheet of ice on this corpse, yet to decompose in this prolonged winter, lying placidly, unwanted but still there. Like many other elements of life, of course.

But what use was it to preach? Futile efforts.


“This is the fifth day, though I'm not sure. The fifth day since that day, that day that wasn't supposed to be, but is. It's that day, it's the fifth day, and there's two days more to go. The rest, all of them save the white man are dead, by means I cannot recognize. Or at least grasp. The clocks are dying, the sun is rising, the moon has fled. I see a world that has turned strange, warped into this creature, and perhaps it is this transmogrified world that has claimed my kind. Humans, not humans, killers, murderers, but never thieves—thieves thrive, we don't. I met Shah Saadi on the first day, a few hours before the world was lost. He was happy that I had come to see him. I was not happy that I had come to see him, but I was forced to nonetheless. He took me in, perhaps he saw me in a state of distress and which was why he remained reticent, or perhaps it was something else—everybody knows my violence. Everybody. It makes me feel like a whore at times, an old whore. Saadi isn't old. He isn't violent either but he's a whore. Make no mistake: he's still a friend. No, not a friend, a colleague, acquaintance, a fool. Moral fibre? You'll find that nowhere in him. So, right then: Saadi had caught a snake the other day, caught it while it was jumping from a dune, straight out of the air with two fingers, his thumb and his index. He slit it into two through its head and cast it into brine, whereupon he had it cooked and served to me by his many slaves. We ate it together and I told him the issue: somebody was killing us off, the old troopers, one by one. Old whore, new whore. I don't know why I told him. Saadi? That smug snake, son of a bastard. He gave me a look, the kind you give when you're trying to be polite but also want to make that fact known. I could've killed him right there but I didn't. It's a truth. We were being killed off. I think I know who it is, but Saadi. . . come, look at the city, look at us now. We are the snake, we are in the brine now, waiting to be strangled of our miserable dignity, whatever we have left so far. Whatever dignity, I don't care, but we old troopers have the number and the boon of the dirt. The black sands. We're still alive, some of us at least, Saadi for one.”

It was his time, standing before nowhere, not an iota of an ennobling thought running through his head, and he didn't think he was lying but he wasn't telling the truth either. He was Haqan, as lost as the people with no indication of respite, in the centre of of this heart of darkness where the city smelled foulest—of congealed blood and dead pigs, emanating from the slaughterhouse and from bodies stashed behind the nooks and slits of the alleyways, and ink from a shattered case of the scribe's apprentice's, of wild lavender catered to by the flowerist whose son had died at the hands of the Berber, of the cruel eyes of the hooded men seeking peace in violence, of the dancing swordsmen and the temple-men's religious fervor and the manifestos stapled to their stances—, and he was speaking with Abdullah, the Shinabek murderer, a former hunter of the Thuggee clan. They were standing in plain sight for the urban gentry of the Castila Hills to goggle and stare at, and they were sights indeed, even recognizable as soldiers of the old world: in plated armour, carrying the feathers of the obloquy and the unflattering cut of their faces, roguish and ugly, portraits of endless conflict, chaos and war, of defeat and loss, despair. The Castila Hills were composed of a line of once-hills converted into palisades a step above the downtown of the slums and the dregs, constructed first by the new emperor himself, Nibelung, as par his reconstruction efforts for Samarkand, though he was never able to get rid of the beggars and the city curs as he'd aimed to. The two rogues were loitering near the central avenue, next to the fountain and the goldsmith Rudh's house, which was also the meeting place of the Society Of Saka-ol-Molk. At this time of the day, being the early morn as stated by the sundial close to the entrance to Kamal Taimul's estate—who prided himself in being husband to one of Nibelung's more distant cousins—, the avenue was bereft of people, at least compared to the evening rush, save for the early workers and a group of cavalier troopers who stopped their patrol for a cup of tea from Sabir's stall. When he had to talk about exceptional details, Haqan preferred taking his conversations to places distinct from their usual locations, sparse on casual eavesdroppers too, but today was different—there wasn't much people anyway, save perhaps for the secretive temple-men, accounting for the time and the day, of celebrations taking place in the downtown regions.

Abdullah had a hard time reconciling the rumors he had heard (‘uncompromising,’ ‘cruel,’ ‘maniacal’) with the actual man himself, though he had known Haqan since before he had joined the Thuggee clan—for all the prowess the mercenary commander had, if overly flamboyant in style and lacking the structural integrity of the kadashi forms, he was a weak man. From his first days in the city, to his last as he claimed now, he had been a fragile trooper closer to the edge than what one might have assumed. Abdullah didn't care much for it but he could see cracks in the surface, the contents inside, grime and dirt and blackened ichor, spilling out by the gallons. The cracks were becoming wider, he supposed, not to the greatest extent as to spur the man to insanity, but instead, it would as well spur the man to violence; running men, like those routiers, fallen companies resorting to banditry, none so vile.

Hearing the princely warmonger's monologue, Abdullah said: “That's a long stretch, this accusation, this conspiracy you insist is occurring right now behind our backs. While it is entirely probable that someone of influence perhaps considers us a burden, or a hidden threat, and seeks to remove us, there in turn comes another question: why now? Of all the possible moments, in the earlier days of chaos, the leniency and doldrums afterwards, why now in this—” he shifted his hands around, circling around an invisible nothingness—“sandstorm. You know what I speak of. The ghouls are becoming more daring, the sorcerers more avaricious and those routiers are seeking vengeance on the new king; the hashashin are branching into newer territories, attacking the encampments and frontier villages and lands; and the troopers are far too young, the war culling the veterans and leaving behind the inexperienced and the cowardly, leaving behind a rabble for an imperial army. If anything, the empire needs us even more now!”

Haqan gave him a look. “I won't deny your reasoning but the facts are still present: people are dying, here, there, everywhere.” He pointed at himself. “It has something to do with me, has to, and I'm not going to die so pathetically. It's rightly enough that I have to suffer and settle with the ministering of Nibelung—”

Abdullah interjected with a hiss. “That's almost treasonous!”

“So sayeth this patriot.” Haqan smirked. “You've never even been that loyal to the empire, much less to anyone save yourself.”

“And that is precisely why I cannot tolerate your flytrap blathering. I'm not going to risk my life chatting emptily about this despot—”

Haqan was relishing the spite, glancing at Abdullah, not paying much heed greater than that of a simple exchange of barbs. “Yet you're doing that yourself.”

Abdullah sighed. “What are you going to do now?”

“I'm going to leave, simple as that. I'm going to leave this city for good before this tide of events catch up with me.”

“What will it take to make you leave?”

Haqan smiled. “I need someone who's seeking to venture outside the region boundaries, the barrens perhaps. My destination is the northern lands.”

“What do you aim to accomplish exactly?” He folded his arms. “You can flee by yourself, quite, not that you need a patron to guide you through.”

“But I need money—my company needs money—and I need guise. Your friend, whoever he is, will serve on both accounts.”

Abdullah grunted. “If that is so, then. . .”

“I'm telling you. Something is going on. I don't know for sure what it is, but it is there, waiting for me. . . perhaps, for you too.”

The ritual murderer—one can assume a personage used to the idea of death—shrugged. “I could care more about it, Haqan, but I'm not going to.”


The seventh mosiac panel in the temple of the Shinabek Thuggee displayed a landscape of a primitive elysium, rustic and free of the corruption of human touch, of an age long past when the barrens were not barrens but lush lands like those of the Iberians or even the farther Teutons—and this frame of that world was filled to the brim, or at least the fullest he'd ever seen in a work of art, not that he was any accomplished curator of the creative processes, with life and the consequences of life. The latter interested him the most. Haqan had seen the seventh during his time spent with Abdullah back when the Shinabek were still around and alive. It was his first and last time and he was awestruck by the whole of the complex, a complex that didn't allow for outsiders often to see: gold embossed on silver columns, in the templates of the olden architects, and wired down the floors and crimson curtains, some of them tarnished by age or cut by thieves; depictions of the kadashi symbols on the walls, intricately placed letter forms alien to his uneducated mind but curious nonetheless; and the first mosaic, which was made of Kali, their goddess, or at least the goddess of this particular incarnation of the whole Thug movement; and when they went down the long concord, straddling the toothed ground like two limping veterans of war—though that may as well have been a truth—, the wandering eyes following them, mostly him, those dagger'd eyes. Yet, he was not as staggered by the embellishments and grandiosity imposed by the clan as he was by that seventh mural, the tiger, the lamb, the deathly shepherd, but that emotion could've been the product of historical context too—considering the fact that he did feel like the shepherd and the lambs, somewhat beyond the tiger's grasp yet not safe either.


It had been rough the previous few days, the storms clearing only recently as they ventured deeper into the barrens, revealing a dazzling sun when it rose and a mesmerizing moon when it did not—neither provided the illumination he needed to see through the navigational horror, the confusion, the hysteria and what he decided was his fate and the fate of his people, because the dunes kept shifting, like a labyrinth defying a map, and the winds were relentlessly chipping away at their constitution. The men were tired. He was tired. But today was sanctuary, of sorts, with the night mild with its cold and the winds not so furious as they were wont to be. The dunes formed rapidly, multiplying like weeds. He gazed at the men behind him, his men. How would he convince them of the rather suspiciously hidden location that was their destination? Even the winds were reticent when it came to that valley of rocks, instead going over them, eroding the rocks on the peak to dust and beyond. His eyes passed over to his employer: just as mysterious, if not even more, though he did not care for transparency as he cared for the money. And there was a lot of money in for them. At what cost? It seemed often, in the dark, amongst the whispers of his men and this world, that he had perhaps made a deal with the devil.

Devil: what a word, a near traitorous word. Who better to describe as the devil than yourself? Their company, the Timur'd Arms so widely famed—and who'd shed a tear if they fell to their darkness. Just like all the other companies before him, all of them, killed by their own madness. The deceiving air, pumice, and the long hand of the empyrean god to guide his illusions. And of such ominous words, incidents had occurred too. The youth they had picked up on their way, optimistic as they were in their travels and confident enough to think of themselves as quite the protectors, of their moral fibre than any other being he deduced, had succumbed to the unknown sickness of Rafiq who began to exhibit, and subsequently indulge, cannibalistic tendencies; insanity, delusions and madness followed and killed as they would, bowing only to the curve of his sword. The sword had taught him one thing in his entire life, one particular thing of particular use: there was no reprieve, thus, there was no use in hoping, but the despondency was deafening and so basic in this instance, to the extent that he was forced to think of survival, life or death. They were dying back in the city, they were dying now. The thought made him despair, never mind that, the thought made him furious—was this another one of those spiraling evils, such as what happened upon Ada, or was it the folly of his own to accept the guise of their employer, whoever he was? In the retrospective of this certain phase of events, he was inclined to blame himself, for not choosing his path with more caution; or perhaps it was his delusions in the first place that ensured their desolation and the desolation of their fate. Abdullah could've been right—but it was madness either way, everyway.


The travellers stopped at the Faegan Fen where they met the assassins of the night—silver knives gripped, black tassels, damask robes and other clothing articles of shoddy integrity—, attracted to them perhaps by their unnatural commotion, at least considering that they'd done operations such as this with far more silence minded. The nocturnal cures of the assassins gave them an uncannily pale skin, an appearance far below their actual number, and eyes almost engulfed by a complete black. Those very eyes were alarmed as their lack of armour and quick feet met the swords of Timur, cutting and stabbing with ease, alongside the savagery of their employer. Accordingly:

“The air is not in. . .”

Haqan raised an eyebrow. “Fancy yourself a diviner?”

Caliban flinched at the interruption. “At the very least a poet,” he said.

“What exactly do you see?” Haqan asked. “Out there in the wilds?”

“Nothing of note.”

He nodded. He raised an arm and waved at the sullen dark. “I cannot see anything either. I'm blind. Then, Caliban, what can you hear? I've heard talk of your keen pair of ears.”

Without missing a moment, without the histrionics that would usually accompany such statements, “Footsteps in the sands.”

Haqan's eyes narrowed. He tried looking around but there was nothing. “Where are we, Caliban?” he said.

“The fen.”

“Prepare—”

They jumped right then with the same viciousness he remembered seeing during his early travels, back when the Hashashins were figures of doom and omen, back when the ghouls and the ifrits and the sorcerers were not frequent in their clashes and when harmonious magicks mediated the world. A duo headed their way: one of the jumped chest first into the length of Caliban's blade, impaling themselves. Haqan met the other's daggers with the cross guard of his saber, smashing the pommel into their chin, then a motion across their neck; the results were unanimously towards his own favour.

Another three came from the left: two swords cleaving through the sides of their torso from the folds of their arm and downwards; a sword, Haqan's, clashing against a knife, weight winning over dexterity, in through the crest of the head; Caliban, tackled to the bed of sands and nearly stabbed in the shoulder, and his elbow to the face of another.

Four men buried.


“Wolves,” Haqan said. They'd went to investigate the growls, now that the rogues were dealt with, but were met with some odd a sight: no employer, perhaps hiding, and only a pack of beasts going away at one of the assassins. It wasn't a pretty sight, gore, entrails, flesh strewn about the ground.

“The same that's been following us for a couple days,” Caliban added.

Trauk, voiceless, raised his mace.

“Trauk,” Haqan said, “check on the rest of our company and our employer.”

Trauk grunted and followed his command.

Caliban grimaced. “What do we do about the wolves? They seem busy. . . with their prize, I reckon. . . and probably won't bother us.”

“And you think I'm a beast master? They might, the might not. We're dangling on probability. You want to tussle with wolves?”

“Hell no.”

Haqan sneered. “Beasts.”

“We can scare them with fire,” suggested Caliban.

“That we can do. Let's regroup with Trauk and our employer, see if they're all okay.”

“That seems alright to me.”