Periphery

By Gary Magallon

Periphery has a virtual reality theme park decades in the future. The themes of this park are different, they bleed into each other, resulting in situations that make Alices Wonderland a model of society. The hero, Tairin, lives in Itanniland and belongs to the dienship of Lord Fil, who on his deathbed sends Tairin on an errand to find Periphery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 7, 2005
• ISBN: 9781462820061

Book preview

Contents

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

XXV

I

The fool says death is a passage

The greater fool a closed gate.

—Lanni the Troubadour

Trials of Mani Calep

An icy wind came slapping across the narrow mountain path, bringing tears to Tairin’s eyes which solidified almost instantly into beads of frost clinging tenaciously to his cheeks. With a venerable curse the green armored anayi hammered his fist against the spongy base of the dolsi’s heart-shaped head. The great insect stopped in its tracks, motor nerves paralyzed by the blow, its bone-plated body as rigid as a fossil on display. Only the long, slender antennae remained in motion, slowly, sinuously swaying from side to side. Tairin extracted a leather hood from his satchel, removed his helmet and with fingers growing numb despite the fur-lined gloves encasing them, set the protective garment over his head. He put the helmet back on, grabbed hold of the dolsi’s antennae and yanked. The insect came alive with a short vivid leap, landing with reliable steadiness on all eight legs before settling into an unwavering sure-footed trot so unlike the jerky, wait and feel movements of its diminutive cousins but steady or not, Tairin kept a tight grip on the antennae, for his field of vision was now reduced to what could be seen from behind a narrow slit running across the leather hood from temple to temple and which he knew would soon be even further diminished as frost gathered on his eyelashes like a curtain of crystal. After all, this was not his first sojourn into the Bultrans.

But this time there was a difference. He was alone. Earlier that morning Lord Fil and the bulk of his anayi had forged ahead in search of the elusive Yeni-Cheri, posting Tairin and eleven other anayi at the Sevati Flats where they could keep an eye on the junction of lower trails crossing the grassy meadow. As of yet they had not seen a sign of Yeni-Cheri activity in the foothills, not even the bones and disregarded viscera of a horned carat, indicating that at the very least hunters had recently been in the area. The Yeni-Cheri seemed to have completely withdrawn from the lower elevations, which was odd considering the rash of attacks that had taken place there recently.

At mid-morning a tal bird had swooped down from charcoal skies, landing on the naked branch of a dormant banban tree, near where the anayi were secluded behind stalks of grass as high as a man by twice. Lord Fil is dying beyond the Moravi Gorge. He calls for Tairin. Indicating the message had been reported in full, the tal bird wrapped its feathery wings, as black as coal, demurely about its bare, coral colored chest, waxy human baby-like face as expressionless as stone. Nevertheless, Tairin continued to stare at the courier as though by force of will he could wrench more information out of it. Of course, nothing of the kind would occur. Tal birds can only repeat messages, not elaborate upon them. Lord Fil dying! And calling for Tairin, who he had never patently singled out before. It was a dispatch as strange as it was grievous. But then this entire campaign, especially the reason behind its initiation, was seeped with strangeness. From castle to castle, tavern to tavern, word had spread across Itanniland that mysterious triangular shaped flying creatures had been seen soaring through the skies at speeds no tal bird could match and that they could breathe fire and that one had burst into a ball of flames over the Bultrans and it was this that had so agitated the Yeni-Cheri, that was causing their unseasonable blood-lust for Itanni flesh. Tairin did not know what to make of such talk. All he knew was that the Yeni-Cheri deserved punishment. They were, and always would be, the ENEMY. Anyway, it was not his business to question the peculiarities of the situation. His being was defined by obedience and loyalty to his dien lord. Which was why when he saw some of his fellow anayi beginning to mount their dolsi, he barked: He calls for me and me alone. He said nothing about abandoning the Sevati Flats. Although they too were taken aback by the tal bird’s dire message, there was no disputing Tairin’s words. Without protest they dismounted their dolsi, the insects again settling to the ground, spindly legs virtually folded in half, nodular knee-joints rising above amber, bone-shielded torsos.

So alone, with only a tal bird in assistance, Tairin made his way up an almost imperceptible snake of a path, a mere hand-cut terrace etched into gigantic slabs of blackened granite rising into and through a perpetual blanket of gray clouds. He was above the frost line where no tree, bush or blade of grass could grow. To the right, across a deep v-shaped ravine, glaciers cut into the mountain side like monstrous white tongues. Overhead, icicles hung from rocky ledges like translucent spears. The hard, flinty ground was spotted with dirty snow patches that before long would coagulate into a single white sheet through which black, wrinkled rocks would protrude like a display of shrunken heads. He was entering the true homeland of the Yeni-Chari.

Frustrated by the dolsi’s plodding, if steady pace, he gave the antennae a violent tug. On reflex, the insect leaped ahead, its eight legs kicking up clumps of snow. But almost immediately it settled back into a slow, self-preserving gait—it would only go so fast on an icy, death-hugging trail. Like himself, it was forest-bred, a lover of shady groves and firm, level ground. Perhaps it was just as well, Tairin reminded himself. A single slip would plunge them into the unfathomable depths of the adjoining ravine where the echo of his screams would resound off the canyon walls long after they had struck bottom. And yet… the slowness of the ascent was maddening. At this rate it would be well past noon before he reached the Moravi Gorge, beyond which the tal bird had said Lord Fil lay dying.

It was beginning to snow; not hard, but like a white mist dreamily suspended in the air. He could no longer make out the path and would have to rely on the tal bird hovering in the sky up ahead. The creature seemed as impatient as he to reach Lord Fil, its wings fluttering like leaves in the wind as it waited for the lumbering insect and its armored rider to catch up to where it was circling just under the clouds.

Finally, he caught sight of the great parallel cliffs of the Moravi Gorge, towering, tar-black walls through which the path opened into an expanse wide enough for ten dolsi to run abreast; where thirty cycles before a savage, legendary battle had destroyed the Yeni-Cheri dreams of conquest but had decimated also, in bloody victory, a whole generation of anayi.

Tairin hesitated as he drew close to the majestic gates. In the wailing winds sweeping through the Gorge he heard the ferocious ghost clamor of the great battle; rabid Yeni-Cheri squeals, gruff anayi war cries, the clang of weapons, the agonizing shrieks of both species rebounding off sheer, ebony walls. For whatever good it might do, he drew his sword from its scabbard and loosened the loops binding the spike net to the saddle. The dolsi lurched ahead, struggling against the snow banks with frantic, heaving movements; Tairin pushing the straining insect to its limits, keeping it to the center of the Gorge, away from the vertical walls as smooth as obsidian, their time-ravished summits hidden, as always, in a mush of gray clouds. Relentless, snow heavy winds forced him to bend forward until he was almost flattened against the dolsi’s backside. Through the narrow eyelet of his hood he saw shadowy, skeletal figures of long-dead warriors flitting through the snow flurry like incorporeal dancers pantomiming the great battle—he spied something of this world and time—brown, furry bodies half buried in the snow! He fisted the dolsi to a stop. Draping the spike net across his lap, he eased the insect forward. The figures in the snow remained motionless. As he drew closer it became obvious that they were dead. Their fur was matted with clear, foul-smelling blood and their round bronze-colored eyes were fixed wide open—Yeni-Cheri always died with their eyes open. He counted six bodies. It had been a tight, fast battle judging by the proximity of the Yeni-Cheri corpses. He looked around, scanning the Gorge as best he could through the snowfall, afraid of what else he might see. Up ahead, at the end of the Gorge, he spotted the tal bird, a black dot that seemed to blink on and off as it sailed through churning skies.

He caught sight of Gorlon, his signifying blue-black armor materializing out of a pervasive whiteness. The spitting serpent master was on a dolsi just beyond where the Gorge emptied into a smallish plateau encircled by glacier coated peaks, his solitary figure poised in repudiation of the freezing winds, the Bultrans, the hairline distance from death. Behind him, at an indeterminate reach, a colorful mosaic of mounted anayi was beginning to show through a mesh of swirling snow.

Gorlon saluted him with a raised fist. You cheat the long sleep, Tairin. His voice, already muffled by a full-faced hood, was barely audible in the wind.

And Lord Fil?

Not so fortunate.

Tairin glanced over Gorlon’s shoulder to where the other anayi had arranged themselves in a defensive circle. What happened?

Gorlon lifted his chin furiously toward the Gorge. They were under the snow breathing through small white tubes. We didn’t see them. They jumped up and pulled Lord Fil to the ground… by the time we got to him… The wind carried Gorlon’s last words into oblivion. It hardly mattered.

Tairin dismounted and made his way on foot through the snow toward the ring of mounted warriors. Centered in the flesh and iron barricade was a blanket tied to the hilts of four swords stuck tip first into the ground. A bundled figure was lying under the makeshift shelter. As Tairin passed through the anayi line he looked up at a thorn thrower, his canary yellow helmet bristling with evil-looking saw-tooth spikes. The eyes behind the hood were curious, suspicious, jealous, for like the others he could not understand why Fil, at life’s end, had called for Tairin. But neither did Tairin, and at the moment he wished very much that it was not true. He did not relish being a disrupting force amongst his proud and exclusive warrior caste.

When he reached the meager, snow covered canopy he fell to his knees alongside the bundled figure of his lord. The blanket swathing Fil up to the neck was wet with blood.

Behind the narrow cut in his hood the dying man’s opened eyes reflecting not only pain but something like frantic urgency. Good… in time. The voice was dreadfully weak, almost unrecognizable.

You called for me? Tairin did not know what else to say but the obvious.

As Fil began to respond, he was gripped by a violent convulsion. He clenched his eyes tight, groaning in agony as the terrible spasm ran its course.

Lord Fil! Tairin cried helplessly.

This time when Fil opened his eyes they were as glazed as polished marble, and not all together focused. Sit me up, he said breathlessly, each word a universe in itself.

But the movement— Tairin protested.

Do it! Fil commanded with the limitation of a strangled whisper.

The dien lord muzzled a cry of pain as Tairin obediently raised him into a seated position. In so doing, the blanket slipped to the dying man’s lap revealing blood soaked armpits, three deep, parallel gashes on the side of the neck and another three in the unprotected area of the groin. The Yeni-Cheri knew exactly where to strike with their forked blades. Tairin carefully replaced the blanket around Lord Fil’s shoulders.

See, Fil whispered throatily, his glassy gaze loosely aimed upon the snow-whipped distance. Up… up and over.

Accommodatingly, Tairin glanced up at a sunless sky as opaque as a dome of dank clay.

Lord Fil set his hand on Tairin’s armored forearm. Periphery. His voice trailed off into a series of short, laboring gasps.

What did you say, my lord? Tairin set his ear almost flush against Fil’s leather hood.

It seemed as if he would never go on, as if talking was too far on this side of life. Finally, like water trickling through a crack in a wall, words came… Commander Corey… Jill Harper… Captain Bob… now you… see Jain… Jain knows… He… Lord Fil was drifting into some dark, inner spiral.

Tairin moved his head back, wincing with perplexion under his hood.

With eyes showing a last weak ember of burning within, Fil managed to add, Find it… Periphery… your pledge.

I pledge, Tairin said after a moment’s hesitation, but with the same reverent solemnity, the same sacred touch of the fist to the forehead which occasioned all anayi oaths, even though in this case it was done in utter bewilderment and only in salutation to the dien lord he had been bonded to all his adult life, whose very existence was part of his own self-identity.

Tairin thought he heard Fil trying to speak, hopefully to clarify the pledge he had just elicited. But the only sound that clearly escaped his lips was a ghastly, wheezing exhalation, after which his eyes closed and his chin dropped lifelessly to his chest.

So gently did Tairin lay his fallen lord back on the snow, one would think the dead man was still riveted with pain. May you feast at the table of Mani Calep this night! he said with a sincerity tempered by unaccustomed misgivings. He had just made an oath incomprehensible to himself!

There was no need to announce the passing of their lord to his comrades-in-arms; they all, to a man, had their hood-covered faces turned toward the blood soaked body lying at his feet. No amount of armor or leather could conceal the drama of the moment: the dien lord was dead! The bond severed! For most of these ascetic, uncompromising warriors it was the first time in their lives they had experienced the empty, somewhat disoriented feeling of being unbound, a feeling quite apart from whatever degree of personal grief they may or may not have felt for the man who for 27 cycles had reigned over arguably the most powerful dien in Itanniland.

No one, including Tairin, seemed to know what to do next, although it was obvious enough what had to be done—bring the body of Lord Fil home for burial. Still, it wasn’t until Gorlon shouted out those very words—Let us bring him home!—words all but lost in the howling wind, but nevertheless comprehended with absolute clarity, that any of the anayi appeared even capable of movement.

A green and scarlet armored warrior, his helmet crowned with a comb of black fins, broke from the ranks and rode over to where a pack of surplus dolsi were huddled together, their antennae, despite the fierce wind, wriggling like blades of grass in an afternoon breeze. He drew a mount from the pack, but as he guided it over to where Fil’s body was lying, he stopped in his tracks. Out of the white, snow-veiled distance came the sound of drums; the deep toned one-two, one-two-three beat of marching Yeni-Cheri!

A long, brown arc was moving across a glacier like a giant scythe cutting through the ice, an arc as wide as the glacier itself; marching to the beat of kettle drums whose skins had been flayed from the bodies of captured Itanni.

Automatically, the anayi arranged themselves into two parallel lines facing the oncoming enemy; the front column bearing slicers, iron thorns, blinders; the rear, swords, spike nets, spitting serpents. The tal bird took to the sky, gliding back and forth over the lines, alert for orders.

The drums grew louder, competing with the wail of the wind.

Too many, Tairin snarled as Gorlon passed by, a saucer headed spitting serpent cradled in his lap, his finger set on the trigger that when pressed could send a stream of flesh-singeing venom a good ten paces against the wind, thirty with it.

It is of no consequence, Tairin. The day is a draw. Leaving Tairin looking at him quizzically, the black armored anayi steered his dolsi toward the right arm of the rear line where, as tactics demanded, the spitting serpent masters were positioned so that during the battle they could make a wide sweep to the rear of the enemy.

The drums abruptly fell silent. The Yeni-Cheri host had come to a uniformed halt some three-quarters of the way down the glacier. The only sound that could be heard on the small plateau was the incessant roar of the wind; the only movement, that of the tal bird flitting to and fro above the anayi lines.

Separated by a gulf far wider than anything measured by distance the two species faced each other as if frozen in hatred, their mutual loathing as intractable as the glaciers rimming the high plateau. The unnatural quiescence was suddenly broken as a single white figure emerged from the center of the long brown arc, walking with the customary bow legged, stoop-shouldered Yeni-Cheri stride directly toward the anayi. His slender, talon shaped fingers encircled a red and white striped staff.

A murmur swept across the anayi ranks. Lord Dallon! Who else could this white-furred one be but Dallon, Padimar of the Western Yeni-Cheri, whom no Itanni had ever laid eyes on before—and returned to tell about it.

The Yeni-Cheri priest-ruler came to a stop at a distance from the anayi columns where it might have been just possible for a rider on a charging dolsi to cut him down before any of his subjects could save him. It was a calculated move on Dallon’s part enacted for the benefit of his warriors, a reaffirmation that he, and by implication they too, despite all that had occurred of late, were under the privileged protection of the often capricious 20,000 gods. He stood on long bow legs, leaning on the staff, bell shaped head thrust beyond stooped shoulders, round pink eyes fixed on the bundled figure lying peacefully in the snow. A voluptuous grin showing sharp yellowish fangs crossed his flat, lipless face. He raised the staff high over his head. A weaponless Yeni-Cheri broke from the row of trident armed warriors, running past Dallon, quick and sure footed across the glacier. He stopped at a stone-throw’s distance from the anayi’s front line and lifted a bored out carat horn to his mouth. The Gorge is blocked!—his strident, squealing Yeni-Cheri voice magnified by the horn. He let the words sink in before continuing: However, the Padimar Dallon is as merciful as he is powerful. Give us the body of Lord Fil and all you Itanni filth can return to your fungus encrusted land!

No sooner had the Yeni-Cheri completed the odious message than Gorlon shoved his dolsi to the forefront. So be it!

Outcries of disbelief and anger could be heard coming from the anayi ranks. Tairin bolted from his position in the rear, pulling up forcefully alongside Gorlon. What are you saying! You know what they will do with him!

It was Fil’s wish, if it came to this. Through the opening in his hood Gorlon’s eyes were as hard as flint. Do you stand between me and Lord Fil’s command?

For an anxious moment the two anayi set their gaze on each other, Tairin knowing full well that he would never see Gorlon flinch. All right. But it is you who will answer to Lady Maina, Tairin said. Turning, he shouted to the rest, I am with Gorlon!

There was some further rumblings, but in effect all serious protest had been silenced by Tairin’s words. If the very anayi Lord Fil had called for on his ‘deathbed’ was willing to offer Lady Maina and Bel a ghastly piece of news instead of a ceremoniously draped corpse, then who were they to say otherwise? Especially, if it meant saving their own skins from being stretched across the top of a kettle drum.

Gorlon pointed his spitting serpent at the Yeni-Cheri messenger. So be it! he repeated, savagely.

The messenger pivoted on his furry, bandy legs and scampered back to where Dallon was waiting, spoke to him briefly, then raced back to the Yeni-Cheri line, merging inconspicuously into the brown arc extending ominously across the glacier.

Gorlon dismounted and walked over to where Lord Fil’s body was lying. With Dallon watching curiously from the distance, he dropped to his knees and kissed his fallen lord on the forehead. At the same time, his right hand, hidden from view, plunged a black fang into one of the deep wounds in Fil’s groin. He stood up and walked back to his dolsi.

I put a fang in his body, he told Tairin with characteristic matter-of-factness.

Tairin glanced down at Gorlon’s wrist. There was an empty loop on the leather wrist strap where he kept his black fangs—tiny, cone shaped weapons whose sharp, pin-pointed tips were coated with a lethal poison.

In death he will win his greatest victory, said Gorlon.

Tairin responded with a half-hearted nod of the head. He was not at all sure that anything triumphant could come of a scheme as repugnant as this.

Gorlon lifted his arm into the air and vigorously waved his hand. The tal bird swooped down from the sky, holding itself directly above the spitting serpent master, wings flapping rapidly. Let us go! he shouted at the feathery carrier who immediately took off, flying up and back over the anayi lines crying Let us go! Let us go! in the crisp, soulless voice common to its kind.

In mass, the anayi broke for the Moravi Gorge, leaving the body of their lord resting between four implanted swords and beneath an old blanket buckling under the weight of falling snow, as if it were a sack of grain set for temporary storage. As they entered the Gorge they spread out four abreast, lurching frantically through waist-high snow, their only thought being to get through the great fissure and away from the restless ghosts of its bloody past as swiftly as possible. Overhead, the tal bird circled gracefully through a convulsive sky.

After a time lost in a fury of purpose, and through clouds of snow lifted by the struggling legs of more than a hundred dolsi, the anayi spewed through the massive gates, one after another, as if the Gorge were spitting them out with distaste, and in single file made their way down the narrow mountain ledge, from afar looking like a multi-colored ribbon loosely strung along white capped rocks. Huge weathered slabs of blackened granite bordered them to one side; a wide, terrifyingly deep ravine hemmed them in on the other. Above, icicles hung from granite shelves like shards of glass. But no matter how treacherous the descent, with death measured in the handspan between a dolsi’s surefootedness and the edge of a precipice, there wasn’t an anayi who didn’t feel the urge to distance himself as quickly as possible from this stark and hostile world, this ultimately impenetrable barrier of granite and ice which pinched the six diens of Itanniland on all sides, this nightmarish world of bloody, ferocious memories to which the death of Lord Fil and the abandonment of his corpse had just been intractably added.

It had stopped snowing and a number of blue and yellow shrubs could be seen scattered amongst the dirty snow patches. This first sighting of vegetation was to the anayi what distant mist is to a sailor lost at sea, and almost as one they removed their leather hoods, delighting in the cool, fragrant breeze brushing against their grimy faces. They were entering their own element—temperate, aromatic, vibrant with life and color. Even the thick gray clouds overhead were breaking apart, showing patches of deep blue. Soon they would come upon the first of the dwarfish, purple flowered anna trees, so abundant in the lower elevations, their delicate branches curving upward like a wooden candelabrum, also the double-trunked geti trees, their bark covered with red moss that would grow fuller and redder the nearer they got to the Sevati Flats, that spacious spread of grass cupped like the palm of a hand in the deceptively enchanting foothills, which in actuality formed a fierce, flexible boundary between Yeni-Cheri and Itanni.

As the path began to widen and then virtually disappear under a canopy of ankle high shrubbery alive with the colors of the rainbow, Gorlon pulled up next to Tairin. You will bond yourself to Bel, will you not? Whatever else he may be, he is a Calep.

Tairin shrugged his shoulders non-committally. More likely than not, I suppose. In fact, the enigmatic oath he had given Lord Fil had put everything, including the question of his bonding, in abeyance. His expression became dead serious. Gorlon, have you heard of Periphery?

The spitting serpent master shook his head. No. What is it? A citadel?

I do not know. Before he died, Lord Fil commanded me to find it.

Gorlon’s chiseled features grimaced with astonishment. He let out a short, sneering laugh. Death rattle! That’s all that was. Whatever reason he called for you, it was forgotten by the time you arrived. He had lost a great deal of blood, too much for his mind to function rationally. I have seen it happen before to dying men, many times… Now, about what we were talking about. Just remember, politics will temper Bel’s eccentricities. With that Gorlon sped ahead toward a nearby grove of trees between whose delicate, upturned branches the high, tawny grasses of the Sevati Flats could be seen fluttering in the breeze.

* * *

Far above the frost line where the time-eroded peaks of the Western Bultrans touched gray skies, the hallowed ice-walled valley of Nilm resonated with the sounds of drums, the sacred rhythms being sent across the icy floor and up tall, red and white striped poles planted upright in mystical geometrical patterns from one end of the valley to the other; the rhythms then channeled by the poles to the rarely seen stars where the 20,000 gods dwelled in lavish, hot-blooded luxury.

The drums fell silent. In the center of the valley the Yeni-Cheri masses watched in awe as the Padimar Dallon squatted on his haunches next to the corpse of Lord Fil, disrobed and lying face up on a bed of smoldering rocks warmed by jets of steam rising from the core of the Bultrans. As the rhythm of the drums intensified to a point of near frenzy Dallon plunged his