I'd like to see you try and stop me

40th  White Day – the Bitterchill– YK 2047 Transcripts of a Conversation between Irrinzil the Xethan and Olmstead Goldendream agent of the Golden Tower[1].

Irrinzil -               I wustz callt to dse Courdt of mine fryndt dse Gannyl (Transcriber's Note – "I was called to the court of my friend the Kannyl", I introduce the passage with my best depiction of the Instructor's patois' but only for the sake of verisimilitude, I will translate what follows into more legible Kliali.)    But I did not go to see him. They said that I must go to be interviewed by an agent of the Gold Tower.  I was excited by this because I had wondered at the purpose of the Gold Tower for many years after my long search to see it.  I went to one of the little chapel rooms of the Kannyl's house, which house it seems has an endless number of rooms that I have not yet seen.  This room was small and had a strong fire in the grate and only two big chairs set so two would face each other.  When I came in I was surprised, I found a man sitting with his back to the door.  The Man stood, he was a Kliali through and through, his hair was short and trimmed close and his little beard was also carefully trimmed and his eyes were gold and green and darting and clever.  He smiled and saluted in a strange way – it was very effete and casual, it made me feel familiar with him, we were at rest right away.  He said I should sit and his voice was warm and deep and calm.  I sat and he began speaking. 

Olmsted -           I have read your books.

Irr. -       But have no books szir, I cannot wirite nor read eizther.

Olms. - Nevertheless master Irrinzil, there are books of your stories and I have read them.  I know from them that you are confused about many aspects of the Empire, but that you bear it and its head no malice.

Irr. -       Indteed I loave thze Empire.  I didt not know itd hazd a headt or else I would have trietd to visitd itd.

Olms. -  The Head of the state is the Kannyltine, there would be a state without him, but it would be a corpse.

Irr. -       Aha!  Whatd is a headt thzen withzout a bpody?

Olms. -  The head's purpose is to direct the body, without a body there is no need for a head.  It amuses me to play this game with you but I think that you are attempting to divert me.  You have no need to divert me, as I have said I have read your books – your stories and I judge no malice for the Kannyltine within them.  Indeed if I did detect any hostility for the Kannyltine within your works or your behavior today it would matter to me not at all because you are not a greatblood, not even Klliali.  My concern and the purpose of the Tower of Gold is to inspect the cousins of the Kannyltine – the other Greatblood Lords for signs of sedition.  You understand - rebellion.  You and I are not Greatbloods and are therefore of no concern to the Tower.

Irr.-       I hafve no ill intentzionsz!

Olms. -  Everyone has ill intentions, sometimes those intentions are turned toward the greatest authority.  Again, I do not care and do not judge you condemn you or suspect you.  I have requested this audience because I am curious about your patron's ambitions.  Saris is a powerful lord. They say he’s the richest of all the Greatbloods.  That may be so.  I’m very curious - what does he say about the Kannyltine?

Irr. -       Nothzing to me I'm szure.  I occupy a narrow placze in hisz life.

Olms. -  I think you may have more information than you realize.  They say that the Storytellers of the Xeth remember everything that they see.

Irr. -       And everythzing we are toldt.

Olms. -  So what have you been told?  What are Kannyl Saris’ ambitions? 

Irr. -       Akgain I muszt insziszt I know none of thzem. 

Olms. -  You are concealing something or else you would be asking questions rather than making statements.  I have read your stories I know how you operate.

Irr. -       Well!  I ahm shzocked by whatd is happeningk.  I dton'td know to szpeak againszt Lord Sarisz andt I dton'td know thzat I wouldt say if I knew anythzing.

Olms. -  I see, you aren't used to being  questioned. You ask questions. 

Irr. -       Yesz.

Olms. -  Ask me a question.

Irr. -       Whatd isz thze Tdower of Goldt?  Whatd dtoes itd mean?

Olms. -   The man coughs as if to hid laughter.  A fair question, I know you sought us out in the past.  It is of no consequence if you learn our history we are not secretive though we seek no notoriety.  Some centuries past the Kannyls of Copperring took recourse to their house sages, the coven of the Url King.  This they did in defiance of the Kannyltine it was their wish to overthrow him and replace the office with one of their own.  This was learned and in retribution the Kannyltine took all the gold of the Lords of Copperring and built a tower in which he entombed them all.  He replaced the seditious lords with his own loyalists and let the tower stand forever after.  Some time later an agency was commissioned to seek out and suppress any such sedition.  It was named for the tower of gold and the Golden Tower serves as a tomb for overly ambitious lords.  Are you satisfied now?

Irr. -       I musdt be I thzink; dto you have more tdo szay?

Olms. -  I am not here to entomb Saris, I am not here to ask you to do so.  I am here because Saris is very rich, his power could come to exceed his grasp.  Times are dangerous.  You know the Kannyltine has no heir?

Irr. -       Dto you wish an answer? Itd isz well known bpy everyone. 

Olms. -  Known y everyone.  What it means is the matter of speculation.  Whatever you say, to officials such as myself – this is transcribed and given to your keepers.  Kannyl Windheart will learn of this conversation correct? 

Irr. -       Nods assent

Olms. -  What will happen is still in the hands of the Kannyltine, he will name an heir and it will not be Saris Windheart.  Will your Kannyl accept this?  Will Saris wish to grasp more than his power can contain?  I am not here to ask you anything, I am here to put questions in your mind and to pass a message to your Patron.  Do you understand?

Irr. -       I thzink thzatd I dto.

Olms. -  Don't worry, we won't speak again.  If you wish, I’ll arrange a visit for you, to the Tower of Gold.  Perhaps you’d like to see it.

Irr. -       I amm nodt szo szure.

Kaffiyon’s Reports – Grey Season YK 2037 – Raindrinker – Court of Burkannyl Tabatta[1]

The Trulk           

Trulking, trulkish – there’s names for these things but when they speak their language it’s like the croak of a frog – “trulk”.  That’s their noise so I’ll call them all that.  Red fanged beasts, every one.  Tabatta is nothing like any greatblood, different in demeanor, in her court in her presence, all of it – she’s something new in the garden and not something good.  She’s supposedly only a few years old, she showed us her natal charts, provenances and good titles – none of them look like forgeries but none of them look like proper documents either.  If she is who she says she’s some kind of nightmare.  Supposedly she’s Arno’s daughter who he had on the way to the antipodal dark.  A fling with one of these red-fanged people.   We’ve not seen any among them that present as women, mothers daughters any of that.  Tabatta’s the only one so far.  She’s grown, fully grown and not a decade gone – if you believe what these things in the dark say, how can they even count years without seeing the sun.  She’s a grown adult & dresses like the others.  Lives with the others-  it’s a collapse of any protocol we’ve ever been commanded to uphold. 

The whole meeting is worth commenting upon.  We’d been caged in one of Tabatta’s men’s houses.  At first it seemed just a place to be stored for later need but it was a jail of a sort we soon deduced.  It was, I think Margus who tried to get out – he wanted to tend to his samples and made to leave but was kept from doing so.  There’s no door on their house – dirt holes that they are – but they laid a plank over the entry and had enough men or stones or something stacked upon it that even I couldn’t lift it, not with the help of all the rest of the iron tree’s men.  We realized then, far too late, that our bearers- the Euye woodmen weren’t among us.  We had thought they might be housed elsewhere in observance of some local taboo.  Reasoning that we’d be poor explorers indeed if we were trapped by a dirt hole – we began digging at the walls and were making our way out of the cage of stone roots that piered the dirt.  This was in opposition to a taboo as the trulkish of the village reacted with angry croaks, lashing at our hands with switches.  We retreated from the attack but could see – were able to peer out of the dark hole into the village to see what transpired.  Our bearers – the Euye we’d gone with down here to the Duskmarch – they were spread upon the ground – tied to stakes & each other ankles & wrists in a circle upon the open ground under the coalchain laurels.  The host of our house the one with the fleshy rose blooming in his chest then grunted at the rest and they passed among them a wooden bowl grown with moss.  “Drink the rain ulthansons!  Drink the rain like the horsetamer! the stormcaller!”  This they said in the Euye tongue but I’d learned enough by then to understand.  They drank filthy water, pouring it over themselves – then the one with the flower-of-flesh upon his breast leaned low over each of the splayed men on the clay – crawled over them, growling & spitting.  I felt the stone root of the tree crack under my hands but I could not break them or get free though I pulled at them with a will.  The rite we witnessed-  it was a horrid thing – the crawling man – from his flower of flesh a stream of blood, flowing like water, flowing with ease, poured over each of the captives who in turn screamed in terror and writhed in hideous pain.  Under the coal light the red of the blood and the trulkings’ teeth and the foam at the mouths of the captives – all of it, red and soaking.  The flower gouted blood and the man, our host, collapsed in the midst of the captives.  The ground quickly soaked in his gore bubbled blood and that flowed over the ground toward the hole we were kept in.  We struggled to shore up a barrier against it, replacing where we’d dug with mound of clay, desperate to keep the blood at bay.  The unnatural flow of so much blood.  So much, and I could see, through the stone bars of roots, through the handfuls of clay I mashed into the gaps, the man with the flower, the host, gasping at air, the flower pumping feeble jets in time with his breaths. 

Tabatta’s Garden Again

They drug the plank from the entry and waited for us to climb out of our own accord.  They didn’t pull or command or cajole at all.  Senjamis the foolish old man made to leave first with a noise about his knees doing poorly in the damp.  I had to hold him back.  “Get your iron branch old man.”  I realized without them we’d be in danger for our lives.  Without the iron branch to prove our status we could be killed – probably would be killed without a thought.  No one lightly slights the iron tree, to harm a member is unthinkable.  They say even the specter of death itself is frightened when it comes to the iron tree and that disease and hunger in personified form are hesitant themselves to harm one of the Irontree so that’s why they rarely go hungry or die of sickness.  So they say.  “Get your iron branch old man!”  He’d left it in the mud, which fact amazed me – but in the coalchain’s light I could barely see the old man’s face, the others in the troupe – they’d been frightened.  Obviously they’d been frightened, we’d spent a month clawing through the dark forest fearful of what was hiding at the fire’s edge and now confronted by it, it was altogether more terrible than we’d ever guessed, than we could imagine.  So it fell to me to act, as I could see the despair on them, by that bare red light, these men, industrious, decent – they’d never be ready for what we’d witnessed, they’d likely never recover.  But I’d been trained for it, to abandon fear or sense – to withstand a greatblood’s wrath or a talan’s challenge.  And now I was betraying myself to our captors – revealing too much by controlling myself.  “Get your stick, they won’t hurt us if you carry your badges.  They can’t.”  Which these eight men believed.  They trusted their badges because they’d been trained to, raised to and had through their experience been made assured of their inviolability.  So they took direction. 

I left the hole first – no reason not to pretend at least that I was bravest of the troupe – no reason not to upset the impression, change a watcher’s perception.  I held my branch of iron before me saying – “You know what this means – you don’t dare break the Kannyltine’s law do you?  Do you think you’ll break the greatbloods’ laws?”  I needn’t have been so forceful, I think – they looked at me and the others, scoffing, not laughing, they do not laugh – these men of the duskmark, these trulks – they do not laugh but sneer and hiss and bare their rust fangs and their crimson nails.  They sneered at our discomfort and sneered at our iron branches.  When Amiss went to examine our bearers – Amiss, a physician – he’d treated them their hurts on the trail, developed a sense of propriety, control – the physician’s way, I’d seen it elsewhere and wasn’t surprised by it now.  He’d been noisily opposed to their wrapping themselves in the coalchain – he’d pleaded with them to be treated.  They’d refused him, the mad Euyemen and now they’d surprised him.  Amiss shouted at the bound men and the trulkish only sneered again.  “They’re alive, they’re changing – look, their wounds!  Look!”  He cried, not just cried out but wept – in fear, you’ll see that sometimes, amongst the broken-willed, weeping terror.  We’d all been made to feel it, when we’d been brought to the Tower of Gold – once and for the last time when they purged fear from us.  Poor Amiss hadn’t the benefit of such discipline and fell upon the supine bodies and wept in terror.  Their wounds-  the welts they’d raised with the coalchain wrappings now boiled, bled a black seeping puss where the blood of the flower-of-flesh had poured into them.  And the man – the flower man – he’d withered to nothing by then, he’d wrinkled into desiccated mummy – just flesh wrinkled tight over displaced bones and topped, horribly, by the blooming flower, flesh, meat, dripping blood and blooming.  The captives, the tied men bleeding slime into the blood drenched clay  they each -all of them the twelve of them, they began t howl, to sing to shriek harmoniously together, joined by the other trulkish, our captors.  When they bared their teeth in their awful shrieks we could see they were stained red, their white eyes rolling as they twisted their limbs snapping them, breaking them stretching as they boke their bindings with popping noises, crackling like fat on a skillet.  They broke themselves and writhed free to stand, broken, draped in their bindings to join with the others – newly born, newly made trulkish.  They must have known – since Aismoth Falls, since we’d gone with them on the trail that this was their destination, this transformation, mutilation.  Such thought was not my own alone – the others of the iron tree, captives – we held each other close, gripped wrists and shoulders-  shock, terror.  I grabbed at Amiss, pulled him up from where he knelt, weeping amidst the ritual transfiguring.  “Keep hold of your stick physician.  They’ll not dare harm you.”  I told him, loud enough so the others would hear, loud enough that the trulkish would hear but I knew, then, that they would not care.  They would harm us or not only at their whim.  We would live or we would die here but nothing in us would make that determination for we’d fallen into an enemy’s power.

Without force our captors guided us where they wanted us to go.  They simply lined up, created a path and we followed it as they braced us on either side, their long limbs entwined their redfanged sneers shining in the coallight.  The path was a sinuous journey into the deeper part of the hidden valley.  Under a particularly large stone tree the roots of which rose out of the ground creating a cage of stone roots under a mass of stone – trunk and branches looming overhead and never not seeming precarious.  We were led to this realm where the coalchains were fewer the lights unkindly dim, we struggled on the red clay, slipping in it and clutching at one another.  We were drawn into the court of Burkannyl Tabatta then.  This court is unalike to any other of the greatblood courts.  She reclines upon the bodies of her trulkish men, who weave themselves together into a mat of limbs and bodies that undulate with breath.  Surrounding the supine Burkannyl were stands of the fleshy flowers – these massive, larger across than the spread of my arms and at their base are many dozens of the withered bodies from whence they must have sprouted.  Each flower stinking of cloves and rancid oil, each dribbling from their petalled lips streams of oily nectar that drowned the crawling bugs around their base in pools of stinking perfume.  She writhes with her men, breathes as they breathe and as the blooms of flesh gasp and breathe – there is heat in all this breathing that steams and rises like a dense cloud within the court, there is a hot wetness upon one’s face as they enter here, and which leaves oily sweating drips down their necks and arms.  I bow without hesitation to guide the others, I pull down Amiss who’s not out of his shock.  “Majesty. We are servants of he Iron Tree sent by the Golden Dreamer the Kannyltine to survey your territory.”  Gregor says it, breathes it out and we all mutter our assent.  We’re here to do a job, a cursed job but quite within what anyone could expect, certainly in the course of mortal affairs our task here is well within the bounds of the expected.   We steam ourselves, breathing hard as we hold our palms against the clammy clay soil.  It flows over my knuckles as if the earth itself would seek to hold my hands, to pull me close.  “You are the newest of the Kannyltine’s cousins, he wishes to offer greetings to you, to offer as gift our services.”  Still Gregor speaks – following a protocol, I’m certain, but one I know not.  No Kannylte has been created in a score of a dozen years.  No Kannylte has been made in all the generations of my family.  But these are the words said when a fresh territory is carved from the terminal edge of the empire.  We bow, offering service and giving up our works as an offering. 

She responds – every bit a greatblood her voice leaves an echo within our heads, an unheard echo that vibrates the jaw, raises the hairs upon one’s neck and arms.  My eyes seem to swim in my head and I feel borne forward carried along a golden path of wisdom and light.  The gnosis one feels when addressed by the greatbloods directly puts me at ease.  “Men of the Iron Tree, only men.  If you’ve come to serve you are welcome here.  Tell us about our kannylte given by our father the Kannyl Arno, ruler of the utter dark.”

To disagree with the greatblood voice, to hear these words and to say, “no” – such a thing is not attempted by the untrained.  I think to myself the words I must say – “nothing is given but by the Kannyltine, the world is his and he grants you its use, shares with us all what is his.”  This is what I ought to say and it would be right, we all should say it at once- each man of the irontree should know this and repeat it.  Only Gregor is able though – he says the words while I try to whisper them. 

“My cousin is generous with his lands and with his sages.  Thank you, men of the Tree of Iron.  I thank you for my father for your allegiance to our master.  I am only newly seated and not yet so gifted in courtly manners as many among you.  I thank you for educating me.”  She is not thankful, she is menacing, she is furious to be contradicted.  A glance at her terrible court tells anyone she has never faced contention, never been held in check.  The fury in her voice rakes over nerves, the Greatblood skill not trained but bred, she is a lash of scorn that stings the mind.  “You say that you’ve been given to me.  What is it to have a person?  I have my cousins, my kinsmen here but you’re outside the song from the dark, the dusk music like me.  I have you?  Gifts?  What will I do with you?”  This, what she said-  it meant little then, but the tone of it – she rose & approached me – long & with the extra joints like the others of the court – she approached and I knew she would come for me.  “What about you, a giant, a mountain.  I have heard of the mountains.  There are some in the darkness below – my father tells me about them when he sings to me in my sleep, when I sing to him I’ll tell him I have seen a mountain too, a man.  What’s this?  You’ve horns!  Horned giant!  My cousin the ruler of all men is kind to give me such.”  Always it is thus for the hlorii out in the world and whether I’d hoped for less predictable treatment from her or not, I still was disappointed.  She, more exotic than I by far, a unique specimen, and yet she feels confident to comment, well of course, it’s her court.  I’m her subject.  “I am an hlorii of the southern coast of the Empire my Burkannyl.  My people do not commonly wander far from the sea but I felt obliged to do the work of the iron tree and its master the Kannyltine.” 

“My father told me about your kind.  He has friends from across the sea.  Men who walked the ice with him. He says they walked the ice.  Do you know what that means?  I have not seen ice, only felt it.  In the dark there’s only ice.  But it can’t be seen.  Do you know that?  That in the utter dark there is not light at all?  Only ice and cold.  My father is there subduing the mothers of the trulk.  He’ll do it and the world will be saved.  That is his work.  He tells me you don’t believe him.” 

Marcus saved me her attentions – drew some his own way.  “We had not known that these creatures were a danger to the country.  They only drive from the utter dark every seventeenth year.  That is what we know of them.  And never in numbers They cannot overtake a wall or defeat armed soldiers.  That is what we have recorded for the Iron Tree.  Will you share with us, your experiences?”  I do not believe that she’d ever been asked a question. 

“My experience is that the singers in the ice and dark sing and when the song reaches our ears we must dance.  But I have learned to sing better than them, I’m cousins with your Kannyltine, is why.  I sing.  So my other cousins dance for me.  Live for me.  Die for me if I want it.”   She glared at us all.  This is her look – she is too tall because her joints are twisted and too long.  She has red fangs for teeth and red needles for claws.  She has a beautiful commanding face and a voice that melts the will.  She is draped in red hair that hangs like muddy ropes over her bare shoulders.  Upon her arms are the impressions of flesh-roses, skin flowers but retracted somehow, so they are nearly smooth upon her bare gray skin – like a pattern of flowers carved into her over and over, covering her.  She glares with pale eyes, gold eyes, she glares and locks her gaze with us each when she says it.  She looks hard at me and says “Kill for me if I want it.”

The others, I can hear their teeth chatter – they’re truly afraid, the chill of her words eats through them.  You see this sometimes, the real fear – that overwhelms nerve.  They quiver when she speaks – their knees knocking.  When the fear is real, not performative, but real – intense, true – physical – then your teeth might chatter and your knees might knock.  She makes them shake, the Irontree surveyors.  I am trained and do not betray fear.  I am trained and do not meet her gaze, she is superior.  I am servile.  She is greatblood.  I bow and don’t meet her gaze but I don’t shiver with fear.  This is apparently defiance enough for her.  “You are mine, my cousin, your Kannyltine gave you to me.”  She pretends it is a question.  I know what is coming.  “I want you to prove yourself for me.  I want you to fight for your life.  You, big one.”  The trulkish in the court murmur as one, like an undulating gasp that you’d imagine as the laughter of an ocean.  My fellow surveyors let loose gasps, tearful sobs.  It’s asking much from them, to bear up under a greatblood’s command in such a condition.  They weep and I rise, not meeting her gaze. 

“My Iron Branch makes me inviolate.  I and my troupe are not to be harmed.” 

She’s never faced defiance but she knows not to accept anything but assent.  “If your Kannytline protects you, what harm could come to you?  Do this for me, for my court.”

So I did.

The Trulkish

She picked out one of her men and sent him to meet me in the middle of her room.  They’d gathered boughs of coalchain & hung them on stone branches, this is what they have in place of candles down there.  Then they’d set fire to mounds of the mushroom buttons they had gathered apparently for this purpose specifically because they smoked and guttered for a few long moments before lighting and then burning steadily emanating a stinking ochre smoke.  The smoke is the main thing of their fight I think, not the light because I think they can see by the darkness in the dim of the duskmarch they could see like you or I can see by day.  That’s what I’m told by my reliable source.  It’s not for light but the smoke that they burn the mushrooms because the smoke is stinking but it fills the lungs and drives out good air and good sense along with it.  A potent effect, the noxious things have- they killed one among us with a touch but their burning smoke was sufficient to kill our reason and render my weak-kneed, cowering cohort a mess of sobbing laughter, hysterical – like Ambrose’d been when he died.  I laughed along with them but held together, since I was about to be in a fight for my life.  I kept my head up and didn’t fall to my knees but I couldn’t help but hold my head back and let free some bellows.  I yelled rather than laugh, shouted at the sky and sang, not as well as any hlorii but better than any woods-born Euye or trulk could sing.  I bellowed and waved my iron branch instead of laughing but the same convulsions that lead to Ambrose’s death were gripping my heart like an icy claw and I could see it hurting the others just as badly, driving them to the red-clay mud in desperate hysterics. 

The trulkish don’t laugh, they don’t laugh and when they smile it’s a menacing mask, nothing like friendship can possibly exist among them, nothing like a colleague – one’s either of their kind or meat to be eaten.  I found that out when they sent one of them after me.  He rushed in through the smoke, coughing as he came, drooling yellow gore it poured down his chest – the smoke turned to spittle, as he drank it out of the heavy air.  He came at me and accepted my iron branch which I held out like a shield, he accepted it as it crashed into his shoulder and came at me, twisting as he did, a frantic fall and a flailing as he saved himself a spill by clawing at my leg and middle.  He caught himself and dangling by his claws hung up in my flesh he drove his face into me and bit for all he could at my thigh.  I gave him the flat part of my stick with as much force as I could manage and I felt it break his skull but he didn’t let go – not one bit.  I let it fall on him twice more & felt his brains pour down my leg, felt his blood burning on me and still the awful claws the awful bite wouldn’t relent.  I had to pry his face off of me with the pointed end of my branch, pull his dead hands apart, breaking the fingers to get its paws to loose me.  Not a brief enough fight and not a long fight by any means but a terrible one and bloody.  I was angry and roared in the smoke – still not laughing though the other klialis did, I bellowed and stamped the dead trulkish’ body into the mud and I might have gone at Tabatta – my stick in hand – I might have but the meditation that drives out the greatblood induced fear it also reasserts one’s wits.  I’d like to have stove her head in as well as I’d done her servant but I held back and then the calm wash of clarity came over me, the wise voice of the Kannytline in my mind.  I let my limbs rest, almost dragging my iron branch in the mud. 

“You’ve seen it for yourself.”  Was all I could think to say.  And “Let us go.  Let them go, we’re here as a favor.  To you.”

Gregor

I keep referring to him as Gregor here, for the sake of secrecy but you, if you’re reading this must know who I mean, you sent him as you sent me.  He came to me in our cage – which after all is where we were returned.  He came to me and said what I was thinking to myself, what I knew well enough.  “She doesn’t dare let us go.”  I nodded.  Saying nothing.  Amiss was upon me, pulling his threads, sewing up my wounds and saying “The trulk, it tore at one of your canals, without attention you’d bleed, be still, let the threads work.”  He sewed me up with his chemist threads, kept me alive while Gregor came to talk to me.  “If we are able to get word of anything we’ve seen – it means she’ll be the target of every lance and sword and arrow in the empire.  An outlaw Kannylte?  Has there ever been such a thing?”

“Two hundred years back,” says Kirll, who’d know.  “There was, out upon Bronzecap, a pirate of the coast claimed himself Vorkannyl, he said he was a greatblood bastard.” 

“And what happened to him?” 

“I think the Kannyl of Silverheaven was created as a reward for the talans that hanged him.” 

“She doesn’t dare let us go.”  Gregor speaks, low and fast – he’s got a kind of hurried precision in his voice, he seems frantic when he’s calm, and always serious.  I turn and glare at him, as one does when their near-mortal bite wounds are being treated while you’re being told bad news.  I think it displeased him because beneath his styled beard he smiled a quick, sincere grin.  “You know she won’t.  But we must tell someone.”

“Must we?”  Amiss is worried, not for himself – I think he considered himself dead when the smoke rose up in his lungs.  I think he’s still affected by it, still near hysteria, he hasn’t stopped grinning.  “We’re servants at court, like we always have been, it’s just a different sort of court.  We’re supposed to survey – I don’t see why we oughtn’t carry out the survey.  Stay on task, that’s our duty no?”

“You think we can offer ourselves up to her and she’ll fall into line?  Act the part?”  Senjamis, the old man circumspect.  “It wouldn’t be the first time I’d seen a new-made lord behave so badly.  Only then there’s a Kannyl on hand to knock sense into them.  Where’s her Kannyl?  Where’s Arno?  That’s the question – Raindrinker’s got no masters at hand.  I think we’s aught to get at her on this account – get her to take up her papa’s duty.” 

“What about the others?  His other subordinates? “The Irontree servants fell into a long digression about what the proper order of succession must be amongst the lesser lords of Raindrinker.  But Gregor stayed by me, even helping Amiss tie off his threads. 

“What about Arno.  He’s got no dispensation to invade the Antipodes.  Who even knows where he’s gone?”  And I took his meaning, Gregor. 

And I answered him in Hlorin, the language I write here, obscure anywhere but particularly unknown in the East:  “The Moon is charming.”

And he answered, likewise in the language of my kin “It is as Golden as the Kannyltine's Vault."  Consummating the rite, his Hlorin better than adequate.  "I should have supposed that I would not be sent alone.  I confess it is a relief to find another among our party."  Quickly he revealed that he was suffering as I was – "Have you seen the Tower since we've achieved the Duskmarch?  When last did you see it?" 

Too long ago, before the Duskmarch and before it, at Aismoth Falls I saw a bloody mouth when I looked into the place in my mind where I would look to find the tower.  No tower but the bloody mouth, and further up the Euyhmer, when we’d gone under the fortress at Draylbuhn – there:  “I saw fire, a burning hearth,” he says. 

"It is obvious isn't it.  This adventure in the south the aggrandizement, the inauspicious nativity.  I think that the Burkannyl certainly understands her role as her father’s agent but do you think she has any orders?  She’s no conspirator, she’s a pawn – too new, too unready for whatever Arno’s plan is – she’s here to guard his back.”  Gregor sighs.  “It’s this I was sent to discover.  “For the Tower of Gold – discern the purpose of this Dusk Mark.  A modest task, and now – accomplished.   I take it, sir, that your work is yet incomplete.” 

I watch the little man pull at his moustaches, he’s truthfully nervous now, not playing a part – not pretending his Irontree duty.  He’s anxious and fearful – having broken the masquerade.  I realize as well that I’m more stirred by this than I was by the charging beast man I’d only on the hour killed.  No, revealing this secret was more terrible, by far than fighting any trulkish.  Even to another keeping the same secret.  “It's the father's will I was sent to learn, his ambition in the utterdark – whether he’s discover anything.  What she does here is curious, maybe terrible, but it is not my duty to discover." 

His duty is done.  We consider this place, this village, as they’ve called it.  Not one begging child, no men drinking on their doorsteps.  The only woman recognizable as such here is Tabatta.  It’s no village, it’s a camp, a war base.  Gregor’s seen it and knows that Tabatta calls herself a peer of the greatblood.  His duty is done – this is what is being done – a hidden army is being made – a monstrous one at that.  He’ll need to get out of here, he’ll need to contact the tower.  “They need to know what’s happening here.”  We agree on this.  I finish my own report, this report & put it in his hands.  He’ll get out of here, I’ll see to it.  He wishes me luck, in the dark, as I finish this report. 

Kaffiyon’s Reports, Grey Season – YK 2037, Raindrinker the Garden of Burkannyl Tabatha[1]

The Forest

Seasons in the Duskmarch are indistinct.  Though we are, by the reckoning of my cohort well within the Grey the seasonal variety that we expect in the more benign latitudes is not to be found.  The march through the woods, which is what we’ve called our last four weeks of travel, have been at the very least difficult.  The Aismoth Falls, of which had very little to recommend it is a paradise in comparison to the privation we’ve endured.  Our company.  The company that I’ve infiltrated in service to the Empire has suffered rather badly at the indifferent whims of the capricious wood.  Though we are at all times in the midst of howling creatures – the ravening, gnashing sound of which I hear even now – pacing the edge of the firelight.  The darkness here is incredible.  The fires we’ve built each night have been larger & larger.  We’ve taken to snatching every scrap of combustible wood we find in our path each day to build yet bigger campfires & for all their mass, each larger than the previous night’s, they are each like a sputtering candle flame at the bottom of a well.  We are stalked by indistinct creatures always at the edge of perception.  The days are brief, startlingly so in fact.  When sometimes we have found a clearing in the dense forest it has been possible to see the speedy progress of the sun through the northern sky.  It is an intensely dispiriting thing to observe – so much so that we, to a one, commented that we preferred the gloom of the overarching canopy to seeing the brief sun sliding upon the firmament 

But we have had casualties.  I considered not naming them for the sake of their anonymity – to protect their people from investigation or surprise – but the circumstances of their deaths have been so tragically ignominious that I feel I must comment upon them.  So I have designed to call them by pseudonyms.  Pertinash from the Tree of Iron, a surveyor drowned in mud after an embankment was undercut by a sudden flow of water, as if a dam had burst.  The hillside washed away beneath him & he as well as two of his local guides, both Euyemen foresters tumbled into the torrent & were subsequently buried under the flow of mud that followed their own fall.  I heard him scream & could not reach him – I had to leap to safety & was able to rescue two other of the bearers.  I know not the names of any of the Euye foresters.  I do not trust their silvery eyes or their wolfish muzzles.  I & the others, rely on Gregor to interpret their speech, which they use quite sparingly, and to manage their contributions to the trek.  Gregor indicates that these porters, guides & camp aides, who number at nineteen now, have greater fear of the Utterdark & the Duskmarch than we, which thought gives me the greatest trepidation.  That those who are closest to the threat understand it & fear it far more greatly than do our own official company of now nine brave men. 

We lost Ambrose as well – but to sickness possibly to poisoning.  The old man was fearless in his exploration came upon a species of toadstool heretofore unknown to the Iron Tree & in his analysis of the mushrooms, which he indicated grew in bulbous buttons like a rash upon the roots of the aigathos trees, he became somehow compromised, maddened at first & then hysterical.  After an interminable night of the old man’s mad peals of hilarity we watched all the color fall from his face, even his eyes were bleached and I saw for myself the color drain from his hair – from silver to white like watching wine drain from a glass.  His force was spent & when we buried him we noted that he weighed nearly nothing and that carrying him was like carrying a dried & hollow log.  We never knew if had eaten the mushrooms or had merely touched them.  His notes on the matter are coded in Irontree shorthand cypher but the texts are retained with the increasingly vain-seeming idea that we will encounter someone capable of transmitting these messages back to the capitol. 

We have been treading down a circuitous track that barely suffices as a game trail but which accounts as the main street of Duskmarch.  Somewhere within this trackless forest the Kannyl of Raindrinker has made his headquarters.  That such a thing has come to pass is beyond confounding.  I am sent by the secret chiefs of Gold Tower to find answers.  I travel in the company of an enclave of Irontree surveyors as my cover.  At present I suspect that I am not the only agent of the Tower in the company.  I believe that Gregor, who’s name I have altered here, is a fellow of the conspiring service. 

I had considered to make records of the sights & personalities of Duskmarch but I have observed the rigor of the, true, Irontree surveyors & am made to feel some shame regarding my lack of acuity of eye or cleverness with words.  They have compiled a great quantity of text already – using the immense fires & the long nights to write, and often enough with a fury which, I have no doubt, is sustained as a means of avoiding consideration of the beasts just at the edge of perception.  Just now, my concentration has been shaken by the cackling roar of some creature at the edge of the fire, a monkey or a cat – I think, based upon the scattered words of Euye I’ve absorbed.  The guides are not frantic, as I’ve seen them become occasionally, instead they’re scanning the perimeter. 

It seems that the piercing shriek was the cry of some monkeys attacked by a lion of some description, the cry of which is too similar to the wailing of an infant to be borne.  Evidently the cry precedes its strike & the Euye woodmen are unconcerned because local legend claims that you cannot hear the cry of the lion that comes for you.  So we experience sudden death as spectators rather than victims. 

Thus far I’ve passed off my writing, and there’s little to do by the firelight in this company besides write, as a record of the winds.  Such study being esoteric enough to be deemed impenetrable to outside curiosity while related in some way to my being an Hlorii, and as well my use of the hlorin script is both useful for secrecy and outside of question.  It is not the first time that I’ve used this cover but I’ve not attempted this identity or any other save my original for so long.  I ought, I think, have studied more about the winds though there are too few in the wood to comment upon, I have held that the lack of a wind is equivalent to an abundance of winds to the initiated.  I think Gregor saw through this deception & this is why I think that he is, if not an agent of the Tower then an agent of some opposite force – which, until this moment I had not considered a possibility.  The Empire rules the world entire – all civilizations are within its bounds and all that lies outside the bounds is ungoverned wilderness, so I had always assumed. 

So I still believe, I suppose it’s meet to say.  The bounds of the world are known.  The edge of the empire, where I find myself now, the border between the inhabited forest and the utter dark, where the sun is unknown.  Why would Arno make his camp here, why would he claim the woods, why would he refuse his recall to court.  The Tower has more questions than these & Arno has offered the same answer to each – silence.  So I am dispatched to see for myself and make an answer to the Tower of Gold.  Could Arno have agents of his own?  Opposed to the tower?  I have seen the Tower, just as I have seen the tower – I know the vastness of the resources committed to the clandestine service & cannot imagine a way in which the poorest Kannyl in the remotest Kannylte in the empire could mount anything approximating that power, let alone capable of challenging it.  Nevertheless, I see Gregor at another edge of the fire, writing in his own codex & cannot help but think he is making note of me as I have made note of him.  Perhaps he is who he claims, a student of the divisions between human appearance, an Anthropiphist of the Iron Tree, studying the greyhided Euye but also the big Hlorii beside them, perhaps he’s never seen my like, though I imagine that unlikely, or perhaps he merely hopes for a view of my horns, though they are barely there. 

A monkey has been driven to the camp, probably by the death of its fellow & the guides are busy trying to corner it – and now they’ve driven it into the fire.  There’s aught to do besides write about what’s happening around us or to drive a monkey into a fire for the scant & grim amusement such cruelty gives.   

The Trail, another night.  The trail is arduous.  The world is endless, the forest.  We’re on the twenty fourth night.  The nights are so long and the days so brief that I’m certain we’ve made truly terrible time on this journey, we’re probably only a few hundred leagues out of Aismoth Falls.  Though the wood lacks mountains or hills of any description it’s not a flatland either.  There are innumerable deep gullies that embank trickling streams through the wood.  The whole forest drains in tiny rivulets north to the River Euyhmer.  Not one cold be navigated by anything but a minnow. 

Senjamis says that the forest to the south & the east of the Euyhmer is the borderland of the empire & ever will be.  To the south is the Utter Dark where no sunlight is ever seen and to the east & north is the interminable plain – which none have crossed & which is thought to continue into the theorized Ever Day.  Senjamis is a surveyor, not merely in title, like the rest of the survey – he marks the road with the chains & for every gully we’ve had to cross, first by uncertain descent down a steep muddy bank & then by a hazardous ascent up a steep muddy bank he has sketched a plan of a bridge of rope & planks accompanied by a coordinate, a measurement & a calculation.  Each of the crossings -and he says there have been eight so far, have occupied the whole of one of the Duskmarch’s brief days.  I’ve learned this because Senjamis is talkative but not a friendly sort, a pedagogical sort, a lecturer.  He’d previously been joined to Pertinash by the chain & stave, for these surveyors work in a team.  When they worked together they were efficient & capable, our troupe didn’t need to pause for their work as they kept our pace & sometimes set it.  Now we’re hindered because I have been made Senjamis partner.  Pressed into that service by him as he observed to me – “Map the winds like it was a sea?  No, you’re not fooling me big son, you’re an idler but no more, I’ve need of a partner in the staving & chainging.  We’ll mark the measure of the road me, and you, idle windmapper.  You’ll see, the path is easier to mark than the flow of the breeze through these trees.”  This he said amidst gulps of air as he carried the gear that a pair would carry by himself.  Even in the cold he sweated & I felt at the least of the human urge to aid one on the same path.  I took his staves and helped him with the chains.  I’m told our efforts from now will be a poor first draft of the route but will still serve when the road builders come.  He is certain that they must. 

“No Kannyl ever was that didn’t have the one road from Klial to his door and no Kannyl ever will be that doesn’t have the Kannyltine’s highway rolled out to meet him, like a carpet at a fete.”   Senjamis iterates some variant of this exposition over and over.  Sometimes one chants or sings on the trail – as a meditation.  One foot falls then the other, a determined steady pace – forward, forward, forward.  The trail is meditative, when you let it be but sometimes the chant is what’s needed to let it be.  This is Senjamis’ chant.  “No Kannyl ever was that didn’t have the one road.”  “From Klial to his door.”  “No Kannyl ever’ll be that doesn’t have the Kannytline’s highway rolled out.”  “Like a carpet at a fete.”  “No Kannyl ever was.”

I think that perhaps this is why Arno has taken to Duskmarch.  Or has gone to the Utterdark.  It’s muttered here and there in our troupe that this is where we’ll go.  That we’re following him into the dark.

And it is darker, growing darker every day as every day’s bounds are truncated further.  The nights have grown longer when already we were persuaded that they could not be longer.  Soon we’ll be in the umbral realm of the world, near the Utterdark & though we’ve all along known that this would be our destination the reality of it, the truth of the experience of interminable night can be anticipated but only as one regards a poorly remembered dream – there is something that you know -but you cannot bring to mind what the experience will be.  Today we camp near a treefall, one of the titanic aigathos, dragged down by the vines that drape upon their limbs, pulled to earth by the weight of all the life it supported, through the gap in the canopy that such a fall allows we were able to see the sun swim through the sky & its disk never broke from the horizon, it skimmed along the northern edge of view & never broke contact with the edge of the world  We watched it set with terrific speed, much more than we’d previously believed possible.  The sight of it, barely hung in the sky, barely visible under the canopy, barely with us – the sense of being forsaken penetrates to the bones, it hollows our eyes makes us feel as though we’re stranded upon an island in a rushing stream. 

The dark of the wood is counteracted now by the presence of hanging chains of burning coal.  The heat of them is insufficient to light the wood but they are there-  vines of coal, burning black, a red flame dancing furled upon the branches of the wood like bunting.  The little chasing flames flow in waves & I’m reminded that I should at least pretend an interest in the wind.  Fire doesn’t blow with the wind but reacts, dances against the breeze.  I’m sure a physician from the old school would know something about this, wind and fire – opposites?  It’s my past self that knew these things, not well I suppose, since I can’t recollect a fact beyond the existence of a flame and wind without a concept of their relation.  But I’ve seen the fire in the night, snapping in the wind, hissing its little sound like a sheet flapping on a mast but so faint.  Each flame is like a woven strand, like a braid of charcoal that burns but so cold that even the dry needles won’t ignite.  A fire of light alone.  Ambrose, who’s dead, had talked about wanting to see the coalchain so all of us feel we must give it our attention so as to honor him or his wish, though I recollect how he wailed hysterically for a night before dying and find I can’t muster any feeling more than relief.  The others are content to just look at the chains and to glumly nod at the wonder of them.  The old man’s cackle was too horrible and being forced to remember it as a surprise has taken the pleasure from the discovery.  The Euye woodsmen are indifferent to the coalchain, it goes unremarked upon by them but now I see them gathering some, out beyond the campfire’s glow.  Yes, you can see them pulling down the vines, the deformation of the liquid flame in the dark, the shadows of men, yelping from the pain.

They returned, the Euyemen I’ve not named here, they came back with laurels of the coalchain dragged behind them leaving motes of ember in the dirt.  They made a show of removing their shirts & exposing their grey skins to the camp.  Then one among them draped the burning coalchain upon the shoulders of each of them one after the other until each had a length wrapping about a quarter of their upper body.  By the time the final one among them was being wrapped the first to be so decorated could contain himself no longer and began to scream after his stoic tooth gnashing & foot stamping availed him not.  He howled into the night, eyes rolling in panic, he howled, spoke no word in the cries  but screamed all the same.  He peeled the braided cords of the burning plant from himself and upon his body were left scars, welts, blisters and blood.  Then the others peeled their own coalchains off as they, out of turn, chaotically, succumbed to the anguish and were forced to relent.  In an hour they each had been draped and then cast their chains into the fire, which once stoked gave an ugly smoke and spit furiously, it still sputters and pops though this was an hour past at least.  I can see the chains in the fire not consumed but burning like charcoal.  The foresters, the Euyemen are more grim now, more than even their customary dull-witted, casual cruelty can bear.  They take turns inspecting their welts, the patterns of the burns around their necks & shoulders, the one who’d laid the laurels upon them he holds forth his hands, blackened and bloody for them each to see and smears one finger’s gore on each of their faces.  I know nothing of this act they’ve performed but I imagine that they will regret it sooner than later as there’s little water left just now and we’ve seen no sign of a stream for a day at least. 

Tabatta’s Garden

They must have known we were about to approach this place – the Euyemen.  I think of their conduct elsewhere upon the trail, consider each action of each of the men, think of the surreptitious glances, the trips into the bush to gather game, the silent brooding at the fire.  They knew and led us here without a thought of telling us.  I’m not yet sure if it’s a betrayal by intention or omission.  They do seem too dull-witted to betray us in accordance with some interior drive, some machination – but they are servile enough that they may have betrayed us out of a competing loyalty.  Tabatta is the newest of the greatblood aristocrats of Klial, it seems.  There’s been no annunciation, no adding her name to the genealogies, no word at all from the Duskmarch which is the inciting cause of my journey here but is, in its effect quite like the minimal daylight here, much worse than you’ve expected though you expected what you had considered to be the worst already.  A new floor lies beneath what I’ve taken to be the trouble here.  It’s not disobedience to the order of recall it’s outright sedition such as the Empire’s not seen in generations. 

Quickly, Arno has left even the gloomy duskmark behind and advanced into the Utterdark of his own accord, plainly in defiance of the several refusals that have been issued from the throne.  He is meant to hold the borders and to make no war on the extreme south and the Trulkings there.  That was the word from the Kannyltine’s chair and was issued in proclamation at least four times.  I’ve seen the proclamation, I have a sealed copy upon my person even now, meant to be clandestinely snuck into Kannyl Arno’s possession at such time as I am able to enter his chambers in secret.  A typical threat offered by the Tower, a message of warning.  There’s no chance of any such maneuver now though, the Kannyl has slipped the bounds of the Empire to, one presumes, carve his own sovereignty from the southern wilds. 

I should collect myself, record my impressions as I experienced them, as I got wound into this tale.

First the trail wound through a dense stand of trees and switched back, descending  one of those hidden slopes, a gully, like where we lost Pertinash – but here & note this, when you come for you must come here, send others, more.  There’s a need of the Tower’s intervention, at the very least.  You must come to this valley – which is broad & deep & spreads out under the glimmering edge of night where the duskmarch descends into the endless night of the antipode.  There’s a line in the sky, a line of light that writhes like a serpent, edges across the firmament inching – not a serpent, but a worm.  It edges across the sky, a rigid, clear line in the sky marking the utterdark & the lands where the sun sometimes still shines – for an hour or two in a day.  This line is a light like starlight, it cascades down in a ribbon of every color,  a rainbow that arcs over the whole world.  When you’ve walked the trails and found the edge of the deep valley covered over by the trees that fan out over the earth, concealing everything – when you’ve found this deep valley where you cannot see the floor beneath and you see overhead this rainbow that marks night & day in permanent dull hues, sometimes colors and sometimes grey bands of differentiated streaks – hen you’ve come to there make your way, carefully now, into the valley.  Here is what you will find there.

Tabatta’s garden is at the center of the valley which bounds are marked by falling streams of water, bare stone seeping as if from walls bleeding rain in a flood, the walls of the valley are steep stone bluffs that seep ceaselessly, slow torrents of water that pool at the base of the high walls.  For a roof this house has the great tall pines but these are – they are unlike any other trees -  they are like the bones of trees – as if a cavern were excavated out of bare rock & the supports were columns left intact within all of the subtracted stone but carved as well, decoratively to resemble trees, to look for all the world like any tree at all but made of brittle stone, not wood  These trees stand under the grey rainbow, their branches spread out over the valley but these are not clothed in the leaves or needles of any other trees, no. 

No, I reached the lower branches, for I am hlorii, taller than THEM, and feeling upon the branches I could see, by the light.  The light!  I must mention that as well,  I mut tell you.  But first, in place of leaves, in place of cones or seeds this tree, all the others here, they have a mass of buttons, fleshy toadstools, mushrooms – those same that killed Ambrose, that drove him mad.  I am smiling, hard right now, my jaw is gripped by it, tension that spreads my smile wide.  It can’t be that I’ll die howling laughter, like Ambrose did.  I. 

I think it’s fading, from me.  I am young & great, broad of shoulder, firm of heart, not an old withered man, and I have felt some of what it was that killed the old man, but I endure it.  Now, after lying for a time under these skeletal trees in this garden of burning coals.

A Creature’s House

The coals.  Here the people have wrapped the coalchain so it grows in abundance upon the stone trees, and on the rocks strewn by old falls.  The wrappers of glowing, cold flames cast light over the secret valley & by this light their lives are lived, their staples are grown, their days are measured.  There is just one day, the long dim day in Tabatta’s garden.  This place is wonders and terrors meshed and compounded.  We are in the house of one of the leading people of the village.  They say they are a man & we’ve all grace to take it at that, to say, “sir, yes.” When we go into their home it is only a pit in the earth under the stony arch of the roots of the unbending trees & descending the bare earthen ramp into the place, a single room, entering it we are warmed and realize that we’ve been freezing.  The house is a room, only a room.  Mud for walls, for floors, bare excavated earth and by the light of the coalchain draped from the ceiling we can see.  I must duck, crawl, to enter and then stumble, scuffing my palms, there are living worms & beetles crawling upon the floor.  The earth is clay and slippery loam, my knees plunge into the surface, inches into the cold wet of the home.  The host, our host is Trulkish, a hybrid of the Euye and the Trulkings of the utterdark.  Trulkings, I do not know – though we’ve heard from Gregor a warning, saying that not one Trulking has survived in the sunlight, that they’ve gone mad & eaten off their own limbs rather than bear the sunlight and that they’re well suited to this autocannibalism given their reddish teeth, infused with iron, their rubbery necks, their flexible limbs.  That’s what the texts describe.  We’re hosted not by any Trulking but our host is what’s called trulk-ish.  He’s long like me but not quite so, long and narrower than an Euyeman.  Thinner than a Zunman but not altogether.  His limbs are too long, they hang & collapse over themselves, as if with extra joints. His fingers are long & the nails shimmer a dull red, his teeth as well, which he flashes with a will, not a smile but a snarl.  Not one of these Trulkish have smiled, they’re more dour still than the humorless Euye.  They’re a terror.  His teeth are too long, his hands, his arms.  From his bare chest there sags a single fleshy rose, a bloom of plump petals that hnags like a solitary bosom.  It slaps upon his chest & though we’ve seen much of these trulkish – only he has this tumorous flower.  We suppose it is a mark of rank idly, when we gather in his pit-house me and the other Irontree guests are finished with our own congress.  I’m writing now because the others have collapsed from exhaustion mingled with anxiety while I, the biggest, strongest and most capable among us have been pressed into service as a guard.  So I sit guard in this pit and keep my eyes on the entry, lest our host return without warning.  We’ve seen them move, these folk of Duskmarch, these wrigglers these tree-climbers, these serpents – they’re, if human, abominable, if not – then a horror.  Creatures.  Just creatures. 

We’d been resting in the garden though we didn’t know it as the garden then, just the bony trees & their fungal coverings overarching the coalchained arbors beneath.  We laid & rested – no need for a camp, at last, no need for a fire in the darkness – the light under the trees is plenty, it’s dull and burnished light, a ruddy shadowy light but greater light than we’d seen in this latitude.  We lay to rest, I laid to rest, the others paced but I was drugged, the button rash of mushrooms I’d touched affected me, enough, not enough to kill like they’d killed Ambrose, but badly enough that I had to lay, to feel my body spin sickeningly, to feel myself flipping over and over until I was sick in the bare chalky earth twice.  It was better after that, I felt the earth solid as ever at my back but wriggling, living – the worms here are immense, finger-wide, as wide as my own thumb that’s like a wrist of these others.  These senseless worms writhe up to nestle at your back to gather the warmth from your body, to drink it from you.  It was enough to startle me up, to launch me halfway to standing to feel the cold ribbon on my flesh, of the heat-thirsty worm.  And rising up, sudden as a whipcrack, I startled these creatures that came upon us, sneaking.  Said they to me, sneering, “Big big giant man.  Man, man of the city.  Man of the empire.”  This last, he meant himself.  He gestured to me – “Man of the city” then to himself “Man of the empire.”  I didn’t believe it, not a man.  A horror, the extra joint in their knees, the extra join in their wrists – I saw their limbs furling & unfurling as they came.  “Back, away from us.”  Said I at them.  They kept away and I said “What is this place? Who are you men? And Where is Kannyl Arno?” 

“We are empire’s men, we are Klia-lee.  Our mistress is Tabatta, she is Burka-nill”  One said, one spoke up, and the others followed.  “We” said one and seven finished together “Burka-nill”, Burkannyl, bow-muster lord. 

This was enough to rouse the others, my troupe.  They sprang up and engaged these men, these new sorts of people.  Trulkish.  They led us under the trees, through their gardens – whorls of plants grown in spirals around each stony tree’s trunk.  A wave of millet, of maize, of beans, of tubers – spiral arms all lit by hanging boughs of coruscating coalchain for want of the sun’s light.  A plot like the petals of a flower spread from each trunk of the stone trees, and under each tree was a house like this one, a hole.  We watched the ugly withered folk rise up from their houses, small & sickly – the children?  Bent with red nails, red teeth and the pale whit eyes.  These, the smallest of them, they had, I could see the pale eyes of the Euye, and the muzzles – the long mouths, but bursting from them were their red teeth.  I’m formulating, now, an idea about these folk.  I wonder if they’re born or made – I think they’re made, forged somehow out of the Euye greyhides.  Or mingled – cross-bred?  They’re each fantastic, bizarre.  They drew us into their village, hissing, spitting flaring like fires they screech anger.  The others with me hold out their iron branches. I follow suit, remembering my cover.  The iron branch, inviolability goes with it.  No one dares to harm the Kannytline’s servants.  I hold my branch & the others do.  I think, I’m thinking now of the stone trees here, how like the iron tree they must be  What must these trulkish make of them.  Have they ever seen a branch of the iron tree?  Did they take it as a cousin to their own stone trees?  They understood our brandishing as if we’d held up weapons.  They withdrew, covered themselves, hissed, spit again.  One among them – a Talan?  A leader of some kind, they said they knew what the branches meant & who we were.  He said, come to my house, wait at my house for the Burkannyl Tabatta, she’ll sort you out.  “We are here to present ourselves to the Kannyl Arno.”  Gregor spoke up for the mission, the rest of us were stunned or dismayed enough to forget ourselves.  “Come to my house.”  The Talan-thing said.  The flower-of-flesh bursting from his chest, dangling flesh in perfect petals – just like a rose, it breathes with the rise of his chest, it breathes as he breathes.  Come to my house, when the Burkannyl comes she will tell you, all about her father.  “Who is her father?”  “Her father is the Kannyl Arno, ruler of the forest of the world itself.”  And I am here to warn this man that he is under suspicion of sedition to his ruler, I wonder what he’ll make of a warning.  Of what he might expect.