CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX—BACK TO THE EIPHR
Debaku howled a battle cry as she swung his scimitar in a wide arc, his blade visibly cutting the air as some kind of magic was present.
His blade passed through the final swath of undead warriors, their bodies separating and turning into dust, but leaving his sword untouched.
Breathing heavily, they all looked at one another, Shiro slightly distracted as he had sensed something through his bond with Jessamine. I feel her satisfaction? Disgust? He wasn’t entirely certain.
Men shouted from within the second courtyard and then burst out of the colonnade as Shiro and the others turned around.
“Master Shiro!” Ushtan cried in tears, though his face was triumphant and determined and full of relieve. “Thank the gods—we’re saved!”
The samurai blinked in surprise. “You are alive! What happened?”
“It was your most venerable compaction,” he said as the other men cried out happily as they met the gazes of their bloodied but triumphant commanders. Some of them looked up into the sky and thanked the gods.
“Jessamine,” Ushtan continued. “She saved us! We were captured at the river.” Ushtan gestured for added emphasis. “They brought us here and… and they—“
“They sacrificed some of the men,” Mahsa, the cook cried. “It was horrible, Master Shiro! But you came back for us.” He grabbed Shiro’s hand and kissed it multiple times.
He almost pulled back, but to the man’s credit, he did not linger overly long in his exultation of the isekai.
Ushtan nodded somberly as Shiro looked them all over. “We lost four?”
“Yes,” Ushtan said. The men glanced about quietly in remembrance of the dead, but also the horrors they had all witnessed. Then Ushtan brightened. “It was your jinni who saved us, Master Shiro.”
“Yes,” drawled Raz, “you said that already.”
Shiro put his hand on the captain’s shoulder. Then with a nod, he said, “Pick up these weapons. The fighting is not done yet.”
“I am starving,” Raz complained as he glanced about. “I wonder if we can find some food around here?”
Debaku looked at him with incredulity. “How can you be hungry after this?” He gestured to the bodies.
With a shrug, Razul said, “What?”
“Come!” Shiro said. “We should not waste time.”
Nodding, Ushtan, one of the captains Shiro had chosen personally to accompany them on the scouting expedition, took the lead, his men following.
Shiro glanced back at the carnage, then up at the colonnade and saw Jessamine standing high above him, her skirt blowing in the wind.
She whirled, disappearing into a plume of blue mist, which reappeared near him in the courtyard. “I am well ready to be rid of this retched place, Shiro.”
“Hai,” he said with a nod. “I am too.”
“Venerable jinni,” Debaku said with a small bow. “Was it you that stopped the shaman from using his dark magic? Was that you who saved us?”
“I killed his counterpart,” she said simply. He was sacrificing slaves—as well as some of our men in a dark pit not far from here.”
Raz made a sound evincing his distaste, which was rare for him. “Go on ahead. I will catch up with you.” He stepped to the wall and pulled a torch out of the sconce.
“What are you going to do?” Shiro asked.
With a smile, Raz pushed back his magnificent hair using the hand he held his large sword with. “I am going to set this place ablaze.”
“We do not have time—“ Shiro began, but he was interrupted by Jessamine.
“Yes!” she said, a maligned smile on her face. “I will help you. Shiro, take me to the top of that structure.” She pointed to the clay and wood structure with the straw roofing that abutted the massive Yamu-featured obelisk.
With a nod, he said, “Very well.”
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As Razul sprinted about the emptying city in the distance, setting fire to everything he could, Shiro watched Jessamine regard the structures. The Yamu—with their slaves and their servants, had fled ever since the battle had started, but when their shaman had been cut down, they truly did take to the hills in fear.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She looked at him. “I am fine now, Shiro, but…”
He said nothing, but waited for her to continue.
“I felt… something.”
“You hate this place.”
“Yes,” she said. “I hate this place.” She looked thoughtful. “But there was something else interfering with me, Shiro. Some form of dark magic—but it’s gone now.”
“You do not know what it was?”
She shook her head, the wind making her dark hair flutter as the horizon brightened with yellow light. The sun was not yet up and had it been, the thick jungle forests would have obscured it from their view.
Flames licked several structures in the distance as the small and darkened figure of Raz continued running about, setting everything he could ablaze. He was not fast enough. He would never be able to burn it all, much less the pyramid in the distance.
“I fear whatever dark magic festers in this place,” Jessamine said, “more of it is in there.” She gestured to the massive pyramid that dwarfed the forest beneath it.
Shiro nodded.
“If we could, I would suggest we stay—to destroy that structure, and all who dwell within. This place…” She said the words with a kind of shutter in her voice, one of foreboding that filled Shiro with a sense of awe and mystery. And fear. “This place is evil.”
Then her hands opened and fireballs appeared within. She whirled her arms in a dancer’s graceful rhythm and hurled them out. Then she lurched and hurled two more as the first two struck their targets.
They exploded violently when they hit, spreading a clinging flame about that burned rapidly.
They watched as the flames licked and spread across the structures and roofs. Then Jessamine looked into Shiro’s eyes. In a swirl of luminescent mist, she disappeared and then reappeared nearby atop the obelisks head. Twirling and pirouetting, she sent out fireballs in a staccato rhythm that set the entire city ablaze in moments.
Shiro’s mouth hung open.
The sheer destructive power she held… It was awe inspiring, and turning to Debaku, Shiro could see that he too was surprised.
Raz ran to the center and glanced about, then lifted his arms in what Shiro thought to be an incredulousl gesture. Then he turned and ran back toward their position.
“We need to leave,” Debaku said. “They may have reinforcements on the way.”
Shiro nodded.
As they left the thick confines of the howling jungle and came out onto the Eiphr shore, Shiro glanced up the river and was not surprised when he saw the lead ship.
He pointed, saying nothing.
Ushtan called out and the men cried in triumph and excitement as they raised their fists and machetes into the air.
Jessamine had retreated completely, her silence worrying Shiro slightly, but this place had brought back terrible memories for her, memories Shiro was uncertain he should ask about. If she wants to speak of these things, she will tell me.
“Are you all right, my friend?” Debaku asked.
Shiro looked at the Mar’a Thulian in the golden light of the mid-morning and nodded. “I am. But we have had a long few days, and we have barely just begun this expedition.”
Debaku nodded. “We will prevail, Shiro. This I know.”
“How?”
“Because,” he said with a smile. “We are unstoppable, Shiro.”
“Well,” Raz said, calling up from the water as he swam on his back, his arms crossed underneath his head and swimming as easily as a dolphin. “I am! I do not know about you two.”
Rolling his eyes, Shiro smiled anyway at Raz’s inane and self-gratifying comment. “Tell Ali we have arrived,” he called.
“Of course I will,” Raz called back as he gestured with his hands impatiently as if he were a child being told what to do, despite being a fully grown man and a highly successful adventurer. Sometimes Shiro was not certain the ladder was true.
They stepped onto the ship and Ali laughed. “Shiro, my friend!” He opened his arms and they embraced. “I am glad to see you alive.” Then his eyes flicked to Debaku, Ushtan and Mahsa. “All of you!”
“Some of us were killed.”
“Indeed,” Ali said. “A sad thing to be sure, but a normalcy of war, yes?”
Shiro nodded.
“Come,” Ali said happily. “Let us continue our expedition down the Eiphr so that we may go forth upon quest. We have an empire to save, you know, and there are ten thousand Scorpions who are itching to get out of this sticky hell and into South Kalush!”
Shiro grinned at his friend. “Hai!”
The men on the ship cried as wind filled the sales and the oarsmen sang their songs as the train of more than one-hundred ships moved ever closer to their final destination.
Ali laughed and put an arm around Debaku’s shoulders, telling him some form of a joke Shiro never understood the meaning of.
“What is funny?” Raz asked.
“You would never understand, brother.”
“Try me.”
“I will leave it up to our Mar’a Thulian to divine the comedy from it.”
“Come on!”
“Worry not, Raz,” Debaku said. “I see none either.”
Ali ignored the comment and laughed. The ship was alive with activity, sailors and commanders going about their duties while the elite Scorpions patrolled the decks, both for recreation, but also for protection.
Ali and the others were exuberant.
Normally Shiro would join in their levity, but something stuck in Shiro’s mind that made him feel uncomfortable. One shaman in an outer temple had given them so much trouble—and that was nothing to say of what lies in wait for anyone brave—or perhaps foolish enough—to venture into the pyramids within these lands.
And that was to say nothing of the other threat against the Abassir Empire. The Florencian army pushing north had—up to this point—been implacable and inexorable. Something inside Shiro told him that his encounter with Hulio Barraci had been nothing more than a simple testing of foils.
Their fight would continue.
And Shiro wasn’t certain he could win. Something about that man had inferred a great strength that had been held back.
He sighed heavily.
Then a voice called down to him.
“What are you looking so dour about, isekai?”
Shiro glanced up and saw Jessamine sitting atop a crossbeam. The wind from the elevated height blew her hair and pale-green skirts about. She smiled down at him as she kicked her bare feet through the cool morning air.
Shiro could not help by smile back, his heart beating a little faster as her smile deepened into a knowing little smirk.