Samakarantha walked to the windows of the room and stood in the streaming sunlight. The glass panes stretched all the way from floor to ceiling, and although the expanse was comprised of hundreds of smallish squares of glass, each enclosed in a leadlight lattice, the whole surface still presented a remarkable flood of daylight in an otherwise dreary house.
He watched in silence as the moments slipped past on spidery feet, turning incrementally to minutes. At last, he saw a team of men appear at the westernmost entryway to the square. They were dark of skin, as he was himself, not like these pallid north-people who lived so close to the shadow of the nightlands. Six sturdy sailors carried a massive sea-chest, whilst four sash-bedecked and jaunty gallants walked guard. Each of the guards had oiled, ringleted hair, gold jewellery in abundance, and wore a coat of brigandine. They each carried a longsword gently over the shoulder, and the blades glittered black-and-white in eddying patterns. That was a metal of a rare prized making from Atroponea. Many sailors of wealthier crews carried such blades–the ‘magpie steel’, as it was called, which did not rust. Though, truth be told, longswords were unusual, and mostly for use in ports. A cutlass or shortsword was better for work aboard-ship were agility and deftness were more important than reach.
Samakrantha was preparing in his mind what charms and spell-raising he might attempt, when something like a cold set of fingers tugged at his sleeve.
He turned, but no one was there
A watchful moment passed. Some dust curled and billowed in the carpeted hall. Samakarantha walked to the doorway. He paused long enough to call out, “Have the chest brought to this room.”
A faint, “Very good, sir,” answered, letting him know that he had been heard.
Then he walked a little way down the hall. There was a definite chill on the air, and it did not have a wholly natural feel to it. He was about to go farther when he heard footsteps on the stairs. The men hauling the sea-trunk came into view. Whatever else was perhaps restless in the house would have to wait.
“In here, if it may please you,” said the magician, directing the sailors where to leave the trunk. Once the chest had been eased onto the dusty floorboards, he handed them all–sailors and guards alike–a glinting coin, then sent them back to the ship. “Bring my other things as time permits and at the discretion and commandments of your captain. This here, this is what is most valuable and most immediate in my estimations. I thank you, and I am grateful.”
The sailors all bowed and murmured their replies, mostly in the language of Emeraltus, though a couple spoke in the common Altongue of these northern lands. “As pleases you, as pleases us, magus,” and “Welutu atu, welù-matu aturra.” The words mingled together softly, like a flock of blackbirds and white starlings, winging among one-another and never quite touching.
He waited for them to depart, and even went back to the windows, and watched as they moved together across the city square, then to vanish into the gloom of the narrow laneway they had emerged from just minutes ago. He felt strange inside. Samakarantha was not used to feeling uncertain, but watching the familiar sailors depart left him feeling just that.
What would the days ahead bring? Good or ill. War or peace. Destruction or life ongoing. Which way would the coin of fate fall?
His reflection had stared back at him from the window panes for a good many minutes before he collected himself and went to the sea-chest. “Now, let us get about the first of our tasks this day.”
He opened the chest and took out a large silver platter. This he laid in the middle of the room. Into the platter, he emptied a leather sack of sand. The sand was white and sparkling and as fine as powder snow. It was sand taken from the banks of a stream that wound through the cloud-forests that stood east of his homeland. Those were haunted jungles: full of weird spirits, and monstrous snake-creatures, and demons with grass for hair and wood for faces. Once the sand was in place, and smoothed flat, Samakarantha removed three silk-wrapped wooden masks. Each of these he nestled down into the sand. The visages were weird and vaguely demonic in their appearance: heavy browed, tusked with wild pig teeth, thickly lined with wrinkles, and with a thatch of old dry grass for hair. Once all this was in place, he uncorked a bottle that held water taken from that same river and splashed it onto the three faces. Finally, at last, he removed the gong that he had made from three melted bronze bells. This, he set on its poles and stands, and once it was ready, he struck it three times. The noise echoed and flung itself into the corners of the room. The windows seemed to shiver. The air grew momentarily hot and humid. A buzz of giant dragonflies arose. He spoke.
“There was once a magician who thought himself more clever than all the other magicians. He went into the wild and cloud-choked jungles and there he dwelled for a hundred days. In that time, he lured and caught three spirits of the forest. He made bargains with them… and he did other things too, that might ensure their loyalty. He was a fool then. And a fool now. But he is the fool who is a master of three Biloko. Emthesti ifi ifi ishii. Emthesti ifi ifo ishiia lomokulu.”
The masks stirred. Mists and vapours gathered about them. Each began to rise up from the sand, gathering behind itself a form, heavy and hunched, strong-armed, long-fingered, brindled in red and grey, and with a face that was hard and wrinkled like old polished wood cut into a shape half-way between a human and a forest pig.
One of them spoke. Its voice was surprisingly soft, like rain falling through a canopy, like mist in a cloud-forest: “Ekulu ti fo olarumila?
Samakarantha waved his hand outwards expressively, “Imtafa! Tasuh ti umturaja. Mkalu ti ifi ifo ja-umturajam. Atha! Atha!”
“Iyshee,” they all said in reply. Then they bowed stiffly and shuffled out of the room, their lop-sided gait making them weave side-to-side. As soon as they were gone from sight a change came over the air. A sense of humidity entered and erased the chill. The sunlight streaming through the windowpanes seemed brighter somehow. Faint noises of animals and birds that lived many, many leagues away became audible: but only if one knew what to listen for and strained to hear them. The laughter of the hyaena was barely louder than Samakarantha’s heartbeat. The noise of a raucous grey parrot was no louder than his breath. The roar of a tawny gryphon was no more loud than the noise of his own blood in his ears.
Slowly, a change came over the room. It spread like linseed oil spilled across a thirsty and rough-sanded wood grain, seeping outwards in a glistening richness, adding colour and hue as it crept.