In the final part of Tooth and Claw, Raz makes a world-shaking discovery about the blight, old friends, and the true power in Verenesh …
Broken Vows
Note: The pronouns di (s/he/they), dira (him/her/their/them), diras (his/her/hers/theirs), diraself (him/herself/themself) are used throughout.
An abundant cloak concealed Raz’s hessian attire beneath. Once beyond the Central Confluence, the masquerade would work. The boater, shrewd Har, had perceived the disguise yet made no mention. Instead, Har’s aimable chatter saw dira peaceably along. According to Har, citizens were on edge. Onrake were being refused goods and services and, on occasion, attacked. So Raz followed Har’s example and kept diras hood up.
Har recounted two instances where customers, a lairgvrn and an ignion, had leapt off diras boat paying not frills but insults. Could the Dark Sun be stoking embers and awakening sleeping flames? Mayhaps. So numerous now were dira murals, none could remove dira quickly enough. Har’s gentle observation broke Raz’s thoughts. ‘You seem perplexed.’
‘Before leaving Azrith, I visited Hev Nar Jar’s most frequented place.’
‘Gambling den?’ Was Har’s unsolicited supposition. ‘Only so many braziers and sconces you can attend ‘spose.’
‘Indeed.’ Raz snorted. ‘However, our sagarm had not developed such practices. In fact, di had been exceptionally virtuous. Frequent visits. The canopic repositories …’
Har threw a puzzled look.
Raz ensured there was no superiority in the way di asked the question. ‘Know much of ancient diraghoni history?’
‘I am not read,’ Har confessed, without sign of remorse. ‘The history of these waterways, the canal, bridges and buildings, the paths, the boats … I know it. Ancient history is for sagarm.’
‘The Great Diraghoni Wars? Of Zek Tuh Mil?’
‘Oh, that history,’ Har huffed and took up a rigid stance as di punted dira along in the dwindling day.
If anyone comprehended the reality of such prejudice, it was an onrake. Since the wars, onrake teeth had been ‘managed’ by the sagarm and the growth and education of toothlings monitored stringently. Raz pondered what could have been if corrupt Zek Tuh had not seized power. Would onrake be equals? Would dira office be raised? Would the order of Balarish have banned transmogrification?
‘The canopic repositories, you were saying …’
Raz emerged from diras musings. ‘Ah, yes. The repositories … one in particular. Hev was quite the patron of Saint Sik Rad Mil.’
A glacial silence took the boat. No doubt Har knew what that meant. It was Sik Rad who had poisoned Zek Tuh and vowed to return should any tooth descendent of Zek come forth.
‘Just here will be fine,’ Raz said.
Raz climbed out onto the towpath and instructed Har not to linger. Har gestured to the violet shards of ragged teeth peering over the dusk-painted wall of Verenesh, vivid in the reddening day. ‘Careful in the heights. It blows chill.’
Broken Tooth mountain glared right back at Raz like the eyes of a solemn portrait. Hev had been brave, for sure. Raz noticed di had paused and was gawping. Di shook the mountain from diras mind. ‘I shall bask plenty. Your concern is kind. May you live to brush another day.’
Di exchanged bows and Raz left Har canal side. Slipping into an alley to join the few out in the early evening markets, Raz glanced over diras shoulder now and then alert for trailing shadows.
‘… but two days ago.’
The lairgvrn Raz was quizzing brought meat cleaver to block decapitating a bark crawler.
‘Regular di was. Partial to smoked meats as yourself. Sagarm too, s’pose?’
Raz nodded and thanked the butcher for diras time, paid frills for the preserved meats and left. Di trod the towpath interrupting diras brisk pace with inquiries until making the Southeast Gate. The sun had all but melted away now, moulding great shadows over the narrow-stacked houses.
‘… two or three days?’ asked Raz of an ignion guard di had managed to catch ending diras shift at the gate.
‘Give or take. Returned a few days ago.’
‘Anything on diras person?’
The guard shook diras head and made some comment about keeping snouts down and flickers out of tongues and strode off. Giving interrogations up for a hopeless errand, Raz struck beyond the city wall. Here cottages and improvised dwellings seemed to storm the red wall like ocean breakers. Yet, the wall remained stalwart and impervious to such poverty.
Doors slammed in Raz’s snout. From some dark crevice, a slur against onrake. It was after the coincidental blessing of a shooting star upon the opening of a door that Raz was finally permitted into a modest farmhouse by its superstitious owner. Nav, an onrake who neglected to give diras three respects, was shrunken with years and bow-backed from hard toil. Acute eyes spoke of a keenness for life and immaculate teeth confirmed it.
Nav: ‘Always a pleasure.’ (portioning a bowl of stew and offering with two hands) ‘Don’t see many sagarm this way …’
Raz: ‘You rarely see sagarm,’ (tongue-testing the air about the bowl) ‘at all?’
Nav: ‘Apart from this Hev Nar Jar? No.’
Raz: ‘Any idea where di would go and why?’
Nav: (stooping to return the pot to the fire and sit with diras own) ‘Your guess would be better. What with being a sagarm. Nope, not reason … just route.’
Slurping.
Nav: ‘A common path. Near the village. The wilds are, well, wild.’
Raz: ‘This is good soup … May I ask a bold favour?’
Nav: ‘You wish for a guide, yes? A welcome break to tedium. Not much but burning to be done … damned blight.’ (pause) ‘Early morning then? A touch before dawn. It’s a muddle through the village, unless you’re familiar. Plain straightforward mountain slog after. Sure you’ll be up to it?’
Raz: ‘Another matter.’ (patting diras legs) ‘Accustomed to kneeling and the slow pace of Azrith. Though, the climb up the temple is quite demanding.’
Nav: (eye crest raised) ‘There are no steps hewn up Broken Tooth.’
A thoughtful silence followed and after an insisted second portion, conversation turned to trails. ‘… Needle Falls. Climb Dah Mok Crag. A ragged path. Follow the stream to its source …’
… something about scree and Raz caught diraself dozing. Making apologies, Raz took to the mound of dried reeds which Nav had laid by way of a bed and settled for the night.
Wind swept up the valley in warm cuffing flares that had Raz seeking rooted rock and even spiky gorse for anchor. Sigik hung above in radiant intensity, so each time di was forced to pause, Raz could at least bask. Now, with diras pack of provisions wedged between two lichen freckled rocks, Raz’s gaze traced diras route back to the snaking maze of alleys and throughfares old Nav had directed dira along earlier that day.
A farmer’s rise had been prudent. The summit of Broken Tooth appeared closer. Not that the fanged peak was Raz’s goal. Rather, the scree slope shored up by a thick tangled patch of sacred herb. Once sighted, it appeared to slink away as if it knew, somehow, Raz desired it. Finally caught, Raz rested solidly against the wind, appreciating Verenesh glowing in warm redness. A patchy ring of blight encircled the farmsteads outside the city walls. Raz turned back to investigate the scrubby slope.
It wasn’t long before di discovered where Hev had taken herb cuttings. The precise snips would promote growth rather than damage; sagarm knowledge. Magia sent lancing pins of energy through Raz’s fingers and the scent of it invigorated the senses, soothing diras aches and pains.
How are you impervious to blight?
Raz stood to scrutinise Verenesh once again with the city at diras feet. Di mused the scorch marks encircling the city like a black rope girdled about a raw neck. Sickly grey-green spread in psoriatic patches; blight awaiting the burn. Yet beyond Verenesh the land spread a healthy patchwork of yellow-green intersected violet where sangroth tongue bloomed as if it were trying to lick the sky. Strange. In Azrith, one had been led to believe the blight to be more extensive and far reaching. Yet in Aktos di grew fruit …
To divert diras mind from the discrepancy, Raz scoured the scrub with the profound sense something was to be revealed. The hole di eventually came upon, concealed beneath a brain-shaped shrub, was a few weeks old. It told of fleeting mountain showers and belting wind, yet still was a near perfect circle.
Raz plunged a hand in and came back with a fist of fine sand and something else. Di allowed the silver grains to drain like so many threads of time between diras fingers. When Raz opened diras fist, what di saw confirmed suspicions. The sand in shale ground had been transported here. The hole dug to precise depth … signs of sagarm expertise.
Then there were the teeth.
‘Pleurodontan fangs,’ Raz told the wind. Well-rounded tooth tips indicating robust memory heritage. The roundedness demonstrated the originator had been extremely old. Whose teeth had they been? The ones in Raz’s palm were rotten, yet at least one had formed into an egg.
Hev, must have trekked here bearing sand and teeth. Di buried them, hoping they would hatch. Hev used sand, so di knew, like Raz now knew, an ignion would seed. Onrake seeded in soil and lairgvrn in shale. Perhaps—
A tinkle of shale.
It was almost imperceptible against the raspy chatter of the wind-flustered scrub. Raz became a rock, unmoving and unblinking.
Another movement. Too erratic and endemic to be wind.
‘I taste you,’ Raz hissed. ‘Do not fear.’
The shrub ceased its shivering—reply enough. A skittering of stones. A rustle. Raz scented the air. The unmistakable tang of diraghoni. Di flushed diras snout gold. A toothling would understand the smile it implied. From diras provisions, Raz selected a few strips of cured meat and hung it like drying rags in the twisted fingers of a shrub.
Battalions of clouds charged across the sky and the sun sank pink and fat before sniffing and snuffling started up. A hand, whipping like a toad’s tongue, snatched a morsel.
‘Must be hungry. Come. I shall not harm you,’ Raz hissed amiably. A time passed where Raz thought di may have been hallucinating. A bleary, mountain-tired dream that—
An ignion toothling darted up, orb-like eyes blinking enquiry. It was all Raz could do to stay calm. One twitch would spook the child. The toothling sprang and pinched another strip, regarding Raz as di swallowed the prize whole.
‘A tiny one. Up here, alone? Come.’ Raz’s palms were up as if to say, empty.
‘Hev?’ the toothling hissed.
‘Well, isn’t that a thing? You know this?’ Raz patted diras hessian and pointed to the city. ‘Azrith, in Verenesh? You know?’
‘Hev?’
Just when Raz thought di would be there all night, the ignion was eating from diras hand. Scales gleamed polished youth, a snubby snout still bore diras birth tooth and a bottomless gaze could beg fondness and protection even from the most indifferent heart.
‘Hev?’ the toothling insisted.
‘Not Hev Nar Jar. Your friend is gone, I am sad to say.’
‘Hev!’
‘No. Raz-Dev-Mil.’
‘Raz?’
‘Yes!’
The child startled at Raz’s enthusiasm. It took a few anxious moments to win trust back. ‘A fast learner I see. But what is your—who are you?’ Raz turned to Verenesh preparing to sleep beneath the encroaching starlight.
And more importantly; from whose jaw did you sprout?
With the alignment almost upon dira, Verenesh was plunged into a charged metallic twilight. The place seemed deserted as an unknown onrake boater ferried Raz to the Central Confluence. Shuttered up and bolted. Save the odd ones caught scurrying to dira homes, no one was out expunging the Dark Sun’s scrawlings which now dressed walls with prophetic glyphs. Raz and a boater had suffered a pelting of rotten vegetables and mortar picked from walls. Hidden assailants, courageous on dira balconies, hurled insults and defamation. Nooks and alleys ran with liquid shadows. The boater, less loquacious than Har, watched corners in twitching suspicion.
If the Holy City felt deserted, then the Monastery of Balarish and Azrith Temple were long forgotten tombs. The relentless flicker of braziers lining Azrith’s steps and the unnerving fire glow at the pyramid’s zenith painted a false life into the scene where nothing moved except shadows and the flames animating dira.
Azrith’s steps were a trifle now compared to the previous mountain ascent. It was the afternoon of the third day after Raz’s expedition beyond the wall and already it grew dark with the ominous weight of the creeping eclipse. Ceremonious hissing lured Raz towards the pyramid’s crown. Before the cypher of windswept words came clear, a shrouded figure blossomed from an archway like ink florets in water.
‘My sagarm! Where have you been so long?’
Raz relaxed clenched fingers. ‘Bur Lap! Thank Sik Rad. We must find Jar Kor Mil directly … the High Sagarm too.’ So lost in relief to hear a familiar voice, Raz only mentally questioned Bur’s manner of dress when di was on the step above.
Raz reclaimed the step below.
‘On the mountain,’ Raz filled silence to ease the sudden return of tension. Di told of the herb patch; of the singular ring of blight; of unpolluted lands beyond.
‘We should be grateful for the limit of its spread,’ said Bur dismissively. Di glanced over diras shoulder and up the steps. And as if Bur had willed it, what little light was left cut as though the world had closed its eyes.
‘I believe not. Youngling, I fear this,’—Raz pointed skyward. Stars intruded when they should not—‘is graver than any of us had believed. Ash Kar Mil and the Dark Sun …’
… connected, all of it. The journey from the mountains and through Verenesh had allowed time to thread it all together. The toothling had proved to be the central pearl. Bur snapped diras hood back and flickered diras tongue. Di came down a step filling the air between dira. Raz made more space in response.
‘Dangerous talk,’ hissed Bur. ‘As you once advised me; you should be cautious how flickers your tongue. Come, we are required in the Clerical Quarters.’ Bur pivoted on diras heels, tail slicing the air at Raz’s snout.
A portion of Raz pleaded not to follow, yet with each step di asked diraself why di had. Bur seemed taller, bolder … Di walks these passages as though di built them. Passages that would not lead to the Clerical Quarter. Enough. Raz paused.
‘Bur Lap Mil, where are you taking me?’
‘The Cleri—’
‘No!’ Raz roared; the violence in diras throat a stranger. ‘Bur Lap? You … you know.’
‘I have. Always. It seems you have much to learn, dear sagarm.’ Bur seemed to fill the passage. ‘You are an onrake—a flame breather no less—yet you kowtow to ‘nions and ‘gvrns.’
Raz was backing away, glancing over diras shoulder to ensure an unobstructed escape. Already there was some semblance of a plan forming. ‘Ash Kar, the Dark Sun,’ Raz began, hoping to distract, ‘di poisoned Hev Nar and Loz Bak. Didn’t di? Didn’t di?’
Bur: (snarling) ‘Di stood in our way.’
Raz: ‘This is not a path one should venture down, Bur Lap.’
Bur: ‘Why not? To stand tall again,’ (pausing to raise diras arms as if preaching) ‘with a descendent of the mighty Zek Tuh Mil! We can govern Verenesh. Raz, Ash is fond of you. You are teeth kin.’
Raz: ‘Not of the same jaw.’
Bur: ‘No more! Ash Kar Mil is at the pinnacle. The teeth of Zek Tuh Mil are found!’
Raz: ‘Di is no Mil! Ash is insane! That jawline cannot be tamed.’
A rasping breath and talons on stone behind Raz
Raz: ‘A new Zek would become a monster. Bur Lap, I implore you, Ash Kar cannot possibly control the likes of a Zek. The dark magia infused within such a diraghoni—’
Bur: ‘A Zek would be an onrake. We don’t betray kin.’
Raz: ‘Do we not?’
Raz spun, belched fire, the two would-be assassins set aflame, curved blades clattered to the stone floor and screeching took up. Raz leapt as though di were a youngling, di cleared the writhing bodies, landed in a run. Instinct took diras feet and dread took diras breath. Raz thought of the mountain. Thought of the toothling and the supplies di had left there. Di bounded down the temple steps.
A tolling bell.
Di ran.
A column of searing light speared Azrith’s zenith.
A dark deed is done.
Behind dira, down the mountain, Verenesh choked on flame and smoke. Ahead of dira, the toothling stood inert like a curious rock formation as a more natural, timely darkness took a fractured day into night. For once, mouth agape, Har had nothing to say. Raz soothed the child with placating hisses until trust was earnt again. In the same way, the toothling gradually became familiar with Har.
‘Di is young. From what jawline?’ said the boater.
‘This is—’
The toothling bristled and hissed. Snout flushing aggressive crimson, di leapt back. From behind Har, craggy shadows peeled into three cloaked figures. The leader was a few steps ahead of the others, face shrouded. Behind, scimitars winked in the moonlight.
‘Give me child. Do this and your toothling progenies shall be seeded after you. Your lives cannot be spared. If you do not hand over the child, your teeth will be ground to meal after your death.’
Raz’s heart would have broken had di not already suspected who had trailed dira. ‘Bur. Do you know who this is?’
Bur shed diras hood. ‘Cleric Ish Lor was a fool. A fool to believe and a fool to entrust Hev Nar to seed the child. Ash Kar Mil discovered teeth missing at the shrine. Di ground what remained to dust and cast it into flames.’
Raz: (devastated) ‘Then there is no turning back. Di has committed the sin of sins.’
Bur: ‘What are a handful of teeth in our long history?’
Raz: (flushing crimson) ‘Di annihilated a jawline!’
Bur: ‘Not quite.’ (looking to the toothling) ‘Sik Rad’s line ends this day.’
Bur pounced into the air. Cloak and robe scattered. Muscle twisted and distended. Spines erupted and fanned out. Claws unfurled and gleamed slick and sharp. Four-legged and snarling, Bur’s transmogrified feral form raked the shale. Di roared and lashed a spined tail.
It began.
Har jumped to defend, deflected scimitars and teeth with quant pole, Bur’s assassins screamed in pain, transforming, teeth and claws and tails struck in relentless barrage. The boater cast down the whittled pole and bellowed in the agony of transformation as tail, teeth and bones stretched and groaned. Now one feral onrake stood against three.
Feral Har tussled in the scree, tore a throat, opened another from ilium to scapula. Raz—diras cloak now damp and tacky with blood—shielded the child against Bur’s lunging talons. Bur swiped for an opening. Har was suddenly between dira. Di should not have been there. The boater slipped to the ground in jagged stages, the lower portions of diras abdomen flooding the thirsty shale. Bur swept the boater aside as though di were an inconvenient sapling.
Raz grimaced and placed the youngling behind dira.
Protect the child.
Di had long forgotten the inherited memory of feral pain. The torsion of muscle. The scraping and stretching of bone. The dull tugging and popping of joints. Nausea twisted Raz’s insides …
Must
… the turmoil of a shifting mind. The world now strident bursts of scents and sounds. Body like a coiled falryx …
protect
… energy stirred Raz’s tail to a predatory sway. Instinct molten and volcanic …
Must-protect-the
Broken vows.
The day had always been coming. All reason dissolved. Flames in the wind. Feral mind consuming the sagarm within. One instinct. Enduring. Raz wrestled the fierce beast di had become. Tempered by decades … the cleric that had once been.
Raz leapt at Bur on the wings of the only remaining civilised thought di had left:
Must protect the child.
THE END
M F ALFREY 