Of Ashes Born: The Burning Janzacs
Being the fourth instalment of a serialised fantasy novella.
This is the fourth of five instalments. Here are the other instalments, in case you are up to a different one:
Part One: The Janzacs of Hazathsad
Part Three: The Golden Janzacs
(You are here.)
Part Five: The Birth of the Taranor
And here is an audio clip for those who’d prefer to listen to a reading by yours truly:
PART FOUR: THE BURNING JANZACS
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE GIFT OF GEVALA
In the very south-western corner of Iantal Province, in the morning shadow of a peninsula with a fantastic headland, there were some few last remnants of a forest that had once been immense. It had been known as the Restless Westwood. The pines and ironbarks that filled that coastal wilderness had, long ago, stretched in a great horde all the way north to the Risewood of Felon Valley.
Nearly three hundred years ago, however, a strange new kind of tree had devoured the vast majority of it, spreading forth from the volcanic mountains in its centre like sluggish ripples of living lava. It left only the Risewood at its northern end and the Fallwood at its southern, and people called it the Bluewood because the merin trees that grew there—as well as the ferns beneath them—were infused with indigo.
The coastal strip of the Fallwood was the perfect land for the praetor to give the Golden Janzacs. It was a secluded place, as very few Iantalians trekked all the way through to the ocean, hunting and trapping mostly further inland. People often went missing in the Bluewood. Few know why but fortunately, I am one of the few. People went missing because they were slain by the Eramon Tribe that yet dwelled there.
When Toran arrived there, he dragged a word up from a Tuthervarr tale he had read many times on the rock in his youth. The word was Gevala, which means ‘hope’ in Dwoemic. So Gevala he dubbed the natural harbour that they began their work in.
Rador and Toran had used the weeks travelling there to design a ship suitable for their return to Hazathsad. It was barely more than a sailing boat, as they only had the four of them to man it. Gallamis did much of the milling of the timber, and Coran crafted many of the finer joints. Rador had adopted a walking cane a few weeks previously and spent most of his time leaning on it while he shouted orders at the others. The great bulk of the craftsmanship rested on Toran’s shoulders, and the man bore it well.
One evening, a few weeks after they began construction, a stranger came wandering over the headland to find their little settlement. The man, a tall specimen with wide shoulders, a copper beard and mischievous green eyes, stopped high on the headland and watched the shipwrights work for a few minutes. As they began to pack up and gather their tools—stowing them under animal hides or canvas in preparation for the rain on the horizon—Toran happened to glance eastwards and spotted the figure silhouetted against the darkling sky.
The stranger raised a hand in greeting, beginning to descend towards the Janzacs. Toran nudged Rador and nodded towards the newcomer. Rador squinted and grunted, and the two of them set off to meet him—climbing down from the scaffolding that surrounded the beginnings of their ship. They met the stranger at the foot of the headland.
‘Good evening, friends,’ the man said, offering his left hand for Rador and Toran to shake.
‘Evening, sir,’ replied Toran, taking in the broad falchion at the man’s hip and the spark in his eyes. He would have found it difficult not to like the man almost instantly if he had not faced so much distrust himself over the last few years. ‘Why the left hand?’ Toran asked.
‘A custom of the guild I was raised in,’ answered the man, chuckling. ‘A code of sorts, and a way of keeping our right hands free for stabbing.’
Toran smiled briefly to acknowledge the joke. ‘What guild is this?’ he asked.
The man raised his hands, undoing a bracelet from his right wrist. It was set with small black beads interspersed with other stones or fragments of bone of differing colours—a prayer bracelet, Toran recognised. The stranger held up one of the fragments of bone that had been whittled into two interlocking Ms.
‘Monster Missionary Guild, friend,’ the man said, putting the bracelet back on.
Rador raised his eyebrows. ‘And what’re you doing here?’ he asked. ‘There a monster around?’
The man shrugged. ‘The dryads of the Bluewood are rather monstrous … but that is not why I have come.’ He reached into a pocket and withdrew a weathered piece of paper—one of Toran’s pamphlets. ‘I came to join you—to overthrow the Janzacs … I guess I came monster-hunting, in a way.’
Toran laughed, somewhat in disbelief that his pamphlet had actually persuaded someone. ‘I guess you did, friend,’ he said. ‘Where have you come from? What is your name?’
The man smiled. ‘My name is Burn, and I was in Turling when I came across your pamphlet. The Geremorian who had the pamphlet pointed me in this direction. Rumours of Golden Janzacs brought me here from Chestron.’
‘Hell of a way to come,’ Rador commented.
Again, Burn shrugged. ‘The missionaries have means of travelling quickly at times … Tell me, how can I help you?’
Toran and Rador shared a look that seemed to say I guess the four of us can handle him if he turns out rotten, and the look was not lost on the mischievous Burn, who had expected nothing less. Toran went through their current plans of building a ship and returning to Hazathsad to meet up with their fellows there.
‘I have no experience ship-building,’ said Burn, ‘but I will contribute whatever labour I can—and I can hunt and cook well enough …’
They returned to their campsite and introduced Burn to Coran and Gallamis. They peppered Burn with questions about his motives and history all through dinner, uncovering just a little of the man’s long, strange tale. By the time they all turned in for the night, they seemed glad enough of his company.
It took them two months to build the ship, allowing time for the seasoning of the wood. By this time, summer was fading to autumn, and far across the Steel Waters and the Hellspring beyond, Hazathsad was in turmoil.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: RECONNAISSANCE
On the day—or perhaps it was night—that the Golden Janzacs returned to Hazathsad, the sons of Rachrinor made their way into the city to fuel their rumours.
It was strange that when Toran sailed into the storm of Whiterock Sea, he felt the nostalgia of homecoming, for he had never thought the place was home. Passing beneath the hells and into the rock’s main harbour, the unearthly cobalt flickering of the domed lighthouse sent an odd calmness of familiarity through the returning Janzacs. After sailing through a storm for an unknown number of days, arriving at this island of eternal half-light always created the impression of time coming to a halt. It was raining heavily when they disembarked, and echoes of thunder from the distant mountains rolled through the city nearly rhythmically.
Toran wiped his drenched face with a soaked sleeve, squinting through the downpour at the low stone houses bathed in misty, deep cerulean. In their usual spite of the atrocious weather, there were many Janzac craftsmen at work about the harbour. Coran, just ahead, was weaving through the throng towards the city, the cowl of his travel cloak drawn.
Feeling a hand on his shoulder, Toran turned. Gallamis had stopped him and was pointing towards a group of armoured men a few yards away from them. They had stopped a pair of deckhands helping load a ship, and there was another patrol further off. Outgoing voyages were being monitored, it seemed. Toran nodded to Gallamis, and the two of them moved on, Rador and Burn close behind.
Coran led them out of the bustling harbour and into the streets, where there were yet more patrols knocking on doors and stopping laden carts. The recalcitrant Janzacs made it to Ravunbror’s house unobstructed but found the windows dark and the door broken. Someone had split it with an axe, warping the hinges in the process.
The five of them exchanged quick glances—all guessing at the fate of their compatriots—before creeping inside. The stone hovel was a wreck. The frequent storms of Hazathsad had swept through the broken door, making a mess of everything within.
‘Should we try Galorian’s house?’ Coran said, only just audible under the rain drumming on the roof.
‘No,’ said a voice from the door, ‘I don’t think you’ll be going any further just now.’
They turned. A patrol had stopped at the door, and their captain was stepping inside, an axe in drawn. Toran’s right hand disappeared inside his cloak, reaching for his own axe. The captain stopped just inside, his blue, orange-ringed eyes taking in the four dripping companions.
‘Now,’ he continued, his eyes settling on Toran’s concealed hand, ‘what would four lost-looking Janzacs be doing in the house of a wanted man?’ When none of them answered, he inclined his head and pressed on. ‘Would they not know that the sons of Rachrinor are outlaws hiding in the woods? Have they been away for so long? Two-and-a-half years? Crafting their own cloaks … their golden reputation …’ The captain smiled, beckoning to his soldiers with his free hand as he stepped closer. ‘Boys,’ he said to them, ‘there be a golden price on these here treacherous heads.’
Neither Toran nor any of his friends could think of a way out with only their words. The captain sensed the tension and defiance in Toran, though, and his smile broadened.
‘I don’t particularly care if’n you fight or not,’ he said. ‘The price is on your head, see, and it don’t much matter if we leave your other … left-over parts lying around.’
At this point, Toran’s imagination had taken his plans well past the imminent fight, and he was thinking up the fastest route to the woods to join Ravunbror and Rebror. Rador, however, had locked eyes with one of the soldiers who had entered behind the captain.
‘Dallon,’ the old man said, taking a step forward, his cane striking sharply on the stone floor. ‘Dallon, do you really wish to throw your lot in with Hamborty?’
Dallon, a soldier with a blacksmith’s physic, smoothed his blood-red hair back with his left hand, drawing his axe with his right. He declined to even answer Rador, checking his axe’s edge instead. Toran, though, imagined he saw a flicker of doubt in the soldier’s eyes.
‘Soon,’ the captain said, ‘the whole of Durnam will be under the dominion of King Hamborty—’
‘Dallon?’ Rador said again, stepping past Toran and interrupting the captain. The tension in the room thickened by double in the moment that Rador stepped within striking range of Dallon’s axe.
‘What, old man?’ Dallon said, glaring as he met the shipwright’s gaze.
The captain, niggled at being interrupted, growled, ‘Put an axe in him, boy. He’s only trying to get close enough to strike.’
Dallon raised his axe a fraction but stilled as Rador came yet closer. ‘Remember your father, Dallon,’ he said.
The rest of the words he had planned would never be heard. Toran saw the murder in the captain’s gaze only a moment before the man lunged for the shipwright. Toran’s sudden movement to block the man startled the nervous Dallon, and in his battle jitters, the red-haired man split Rador’s skull.
The shipwright fell, his cane clattering on the stone.
Toran, his left hand clamped around the captain’s wrist—halting his axe—bellowed in rage. His right hand swept forward from the folds of his cloak, an axe appearing in its grip, and he cut the captain down with that single strike.
The dozen or so that made up the guard shouted and surged forward instantly—except Dallon, who seemed transfixed by the lifeless gaze of the man he had just killed, lying on the floor before him. In the next few moments, when the struggle began in earnest, he slipped back out of the stone hovel and made his way home, his weeping disguised by the roaring rain.
Gallamis and Burn, better fighters by far than Toran and Coran, took the lead in backing against a wall to avoid being surrounded. One of the soldiers sounded a horn.
The three renegades and Burn, defending themselves desperately, might never have made it out of that hovel if the sons of Rachrinor had not chosen that exact day to come down into the city.
Hearing the horn from a few streets off, the brothers made at once for the sound, knowing that almost all inner-city conflicts were, these days, between Hamborty’s Watch and those who sympathised with the rumours of Toran’s revolution. Coming to his own hovel and wondering who would be stupid enough to investigate the abandoned place, Ravunbror suddenly realised just who must be inside.
Now, as I have told you, the sons of Rachrinor were the most renowned duellists among the Janzacs. For this very fact, many of the soldiers who went searching for them secretly hoped they would not be the ones who found them. So, when the guards nearest the door turned and saw the brothers approaching, they panicked—and as most panic is more infectious than confidence, it overtook the whole patrol and ended them well before the axes of the recalcitrant Janzacs broke their bodies.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE EXODUS
In the woods of Hazathsad, some hours later, the rain was easing off a little. The sons of Rachrinor had brought their three remaining compatriots to their hideout, where a few other sympathisers of their cause were also hidden—Ravunbror’s family among them. The hideout was in a dense part of the woods, some way northwest of the mills, in the foothills of the rock’s sharp mountains.
Here, Toran, Coran and Gallamis were informed as to the current state of the city. They spent a long few hours there planning their next steps and grieving the loss of their friend. Afterwards, they slept. When they woke to the new day—or the new night—they went down into the eerie blue city again.
In the days that followed, they sought out all those whom the sons of Rachrinor knew to be sympathetic to their cause. It was arranged that their families—along with all who did not wish to fight—would sail back to Gevala, leaving the final stage of Toran’s plan to those warriors who were brave enough to remain on the god-forsaken rock.
Slowly the city’s populace was thinned as Janzacs—of conscience compelled—found a suitable exodus for themselves and their families.
During those days, Burn made time to explore further into the woods and mountains of Hazathsad, intrigued by the wild beauty of the island. Returning from one such pre-dawn wandering, he found the clearing where the twins—Toran and Coran—were breaking their fast with porridge warmed by their campfire. The missionary removed his overcoat, folded it and set it on the soaked surface of a felled cedar. Sitting, and accepting the wooden bowl of porridge that Toran offered, he cleared his throat.
‘If one of you met the king, Hamborty, in the city today,’ he said, ‘would you kill him?’
Naturally, this question caught the pair of them off-guard.
‘I think I might—a little more uncertainty in the citadel can only help our cause at this point.’ Toran answered at length. ‘Why? Did you see him in the city yesterday?’
‘No,’ Burn said. ‘I am only imagining.’
Toran flashed a smile. He thought it uncanny how perceptive Burn was—how adept at picking up on the little phrases and sentiments that enchanted the folk he spoke with.
‘Would you kill him, given the chance?’ Coran asked, watching the missionary with some curiosity.
‘That is indeed the question I have been contemplating this morning,’ Burn answered. ‘I am wondering now if it is not the same question as “What is our cause?”’
‘I suppose in some way they are the same question,’ Toran said. ‘Do you think it might damage our cause in some way to kill Hamborty?’
Burn took a long, slow breath, staring at the fire as the grey of dawn grew about them. ‘If our cause is not to kill but somehow redeem the Janzac culture, what does it mean to remove the figure that unifies and leads the culture?’
‘They will need to unify under a different leader, of course,’ Toran said, believing he now understood the missionary’s concern. He sighed, a bitter sorrow filling him suddenly. ‘I had Rador in mind for that.’
Burn nodded earnestly, allowing a moment of grief for the boys who had so recently lost their mentor. Then he said, ‘And Rador would have made a good ruler. But the role of “Janzac leader” would have been so tarnished by regicide … How could any new leader hope to unify again a culture so violently sundered?’
Coran frowned, not fully understanding. Toran, though, sighed and nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Revolution, civil war, regicide … These things will damage our people greatly, but I see no alternative. Our war-mongering must be ended—for the good of all the islands of Durnam.’
Burn nodded, sadness in his eyes. ‘Tis a fearful business—and regicide, I fear, is the worst part of it …’ He took a deep breath before continuing. ‘I have an intuition, only supported by vague reasoning, that if we could somehow exile the king—stop the war-mongering without killing him or permanently removing him from the throne—we might be able to avoid the worst of the damage this revolution will cause.’
‘Would exiling him not remove him from the throne?’ Coran asked.
Burn shook his head. ‘An exiled king always has the option of contrite return—repentance. The respect for the throne remains intact.’ The missionary sighed. ‘My words may not make much sense in the abstract way I am saying them … I only fear that their truth is revealed in experience more than reason.’
Indeed. Having lived through the thirty-three years following Toran’s revolution, I have experienced just how true Burn’s words were. Perhaps they were more like prophecy than imaginings.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: FINAL FLICKER
It so happened that when the final ship of exiles was set to depart, Rachrinor finally caught them. He had been listening to the rumours and watching the city thin, though his sons had been too secretive for even he to catch them. This last vessel, though, Rachrinor had been watching, for it had appeared out of nowhere, unsanctioned and nameless.
It was the small ship they had built in Gevala, and Coran was aiding the departure—unmooring the boat, in fact—when a hot pain suddenly flared through his shoulder.
In the fierce storm that was crashing over the city, he had not heard the clack of the crossbow’s release or the footfalls of the soldiers approaching. Announcing their presence with the bolt now embedded in Coran’s shoulder, they advanced with weapons drawn.
Stumbling and slipping in the rain, his shoulder screaming, Coran groaned as he searched for a way out. He had almost tossed the final mooring line after the boat that was moving off the wharf when he realised that it was his only chance of escaping the guards.
Shouting defiance at his protesting shoulder, he gripped the line and launched himself off the wharf. Those on the boat, realising what had occurred, pulled hard on the line, drawing Coran up into the boat.
The blurry hours that followed were filled with Coran’s whimpering as they made a bandage for his shoulder. A caravel had set after them from the azure mists of the harbour, meaning to ram them, break their hull, and send them to the very source of the Hellspring. Luckily, in the storm of Whiterock—gargantuan compared to the ruckus in the harbour—the small boat of exiles managed to lose them.
(END OF THE FOURTH INSTALMENT. CLICK HERE FOR THE FINALE.)