Olga McArrow - Cold obsidian

“I am an ordinary guy,” Kan told himself back in Vlada’s room again and gently touched the parchment of the wonderful map. Was it even parchment at all?

The heat became so fierce that it made even the loudest merchants hush up. They still kept advertising their wares but in much weaker voices. The river of their customers got reduced to a trickle anyway. Most people preferred to hide from the heat in their homes and have some iced tea instead of shopping. The young lady selling ice seemed the only person who was happy with the weather.

The merciless heat, unusual for that Region, reminded Kangassk of Kuldagan in an unexpectedly nostalgic way. His home town, the place he hated with passion, looked quite nice from afar. Well wasn’t it magic! Kan made a firm decision to let it stay this way. Somehow being an ordinary guy in a fairy-tale still seemed better than returning to that backwards sand hole and being treated as a freak again.

Speaking of freaks… Since no one here saw him as one, there was no need to hide himself in daylight, so Kan decided to try something he had always wanted to. He left his jacket and shirt at the inn and went for a walk topless just like half the citizens on that hot day. He totally mingled with the crowd of the tanned, half-naked locals. No one cared. It felt amazing!

As Kangassk kept wandering around the town, his feet seemed to follow his thoughts. How else could he find himself in the same alley where he met Zanna the night before?

The girl was still there, seated on the same chair, but she had put her sign away and changed her soothsayer outfit to patched boyish shorts, an oversized shirt with its sleeves cut off, and a pair of leather sandals too big for her little bare feet. She held a frosted glass bottle of icy water in her hands, just like most of the citizens that day.

Since Zanna had already seen Kangassk, running away was no longer an option. So he made his best smile, waved to the girl, and kept walking. He didn’t have to walk very far to see the full picture, though. Two steps were enough… Zanna was not the only one enjoying the shade of that house. Vlada was there too. The young Wanderer occupied a little folding chair similar to Zanna’s and sat there with her back to the cool stones of the wall. Kan remembered the question he asked the little soothsayer about Vlada and felt blood flushing to his face. What a fool he was! And now he was going to pay for this, he felt it in his gut.

Zanna sprang on her feet, put her skinny hands on her hips, and announced in the loudest voice she could, “That’s him!!!”

For a moment, Kan thought that running away as soon as he saw the girl hadn’t been a bad idea at all.

“I’m… well… just walking by,” he mumbled and lowered his eyes.

“He’s not a hero! Not a great warrior either!” Zanna kept going, her voice getting more and more miserable, her black eyes glistening with tears.

The girl turned her face to Vlada, looking for support. She was openly crying now, with real, bitter tears, not the plain salty water that spoiled kids produce on a whim to get treats.

“I don’t want it, Vlada! Do something! Please!” Zanna sobbed.

“Come here, my dear,” said Vlada in a soft, quiet voice and embraced the little soothsayer. “Everyone has a destiny: you, me, Grey Inquisitor from the Grey Tower, our friend Kangassk here, everyone. The world is a written book where past, present, and future exist all at once. It is true that we can not change the future. But it is also true that we can not completely foresee it, understand it from where we are. Many years will pass, Zanna, before what you saw, that glimpse of your destiny, comes true. A lot of things will change by then. You will change as well. When you’ll look at the situation in its real light, with your own eyes, it won’t be the same thing that upsets you now. Trust me.”

Zanna calmed down after a while. She returned to her squeaky little chair where she sat in silence, rocking back and forth, cradling the cold water bottle in her arms, thinking. After several minutes of being like this she stood up and approached Kangassk who was still standing there, afraid to move, holding his breath and feeling like a total idiot.

The child was so small that even Kangassk who was way shorter than an average man towered about her like a giant. Zanna came so close she had to crane her head to look him in the eye. Kan met her stern gaze steadily and didn’t flinch.

“Here, have some water,” said Zanna, frowning, and handed him her water bottle. “You’ll need this. It’s crazy hot today. And this is something to keep you safe in your journeys…”

She took off the little bauble she wore around her neck – a black, glassy pebble with a hole for the string in it – and offered it to Kangassk. He bowed his head to the child and received the simple gift with all possible seriousness as if it were a medal of honour.

The last half an hour had been so silly, weird, and bewildering at the same time that Kangassk had come to his senses only on his way back to the inn. Vladislava walked beside him, whistling a happy tune that seemed vaguely familiar to Kangassk.

“What were you and the girl talking about when I came?” asked Kan, trying to sound as casual as he could.

“Women’s stuff.” Vlada smiled and moved from whistling the tune to singing:

So don’t expect me on the beach

‘Cos I ain’t gonna stay.

I wish an angry shark would come

And bite your leg away!

So that’s why the tune sounded so familiar. It was one of the Mirumir teasing verses. Even Kangassk knew some despite being a desert dweller and living so far away from the sea. The traders brought them, the locals caught the exotic melodies up… It had always been nice to collect another one, especially if there was a shark in it. Too bad he was in no mood for silly songs. Kangassk sighed and touched the black pebble Zanna gave him. The pebble was warm.

They left Tammar the next morning, at dawn, true to the old wayfarer tradition.

Just a couple of days ago the city meant nothing to Kangassk. Now, he felt sad leaving Tammar behind. He kept looking back, waiting for something, feeling the unnamed lingering hope in his heart slowly die by the minute…

"Why was Zanna so mad at me?" he had asked Vlada yesterday.

"No soothsayer ever reads her own fortune. It's not the same as foretelling things for someone else. Another soothsayer would be gentle with her, softening the negatives, emphasizing the positives, offering advice. Reading your own fortune means facing the unfiltered truth, alone, without help. Your destiny was connected to Zanna's, so while reading your fortune, she had accidentally glimpsed her own. The vision wasn't pleasant."

Kangassk had barely managed to keep silent while listening to Vlada’s words back then. He was so angry with her! He had never thought he could feel about her this way. All those mysteries and puzzles of hers… her keeping him in the dark about the goal of their journey… her silly songs and tunes during the most serious moments… He felt his blood boil. The silent rage, coming from his chest upward, almost made him choke on his own words.

“Our destinies cross, you say?” he spat out. “How?”

Vlada didn’t answer. In a while, Kan’s anger burnt out in that silence like a fire deprived of oxygen. That was for the best. By the end of the day, he felt empty and tired, he lost all his interest in fortune-telling and adventures but at least he managed to stay on good terms with Vlada.

Kangassk decided to call it a win and get an extra dose of science to lull himself to sleep that night. Encyclopedia of No Man’s Land was helpful as always. The ability of dry scientific texts to drive anxiety away was undeniable. The bookish world without mysteries, magic, and wonders seemed so safe, so predictable, so quiet. The horrors were no longer scary when given names. The journey didn’t seem that dangerous with all the tips and directions. Page by page, sentence by sentence, the old textbook did its job: it quenched fears, silenced doubts, and made its reader sleepy along the way.

“White Region (W.R.) anomaly is a result of a failed magic stabilization experiment that used dozens of little stabilizing Horas placed close to Hora Tenebris. The first experimental stabilizer was placed in what is now the centre of the W.R. Its sudden explosion created the anomaly – “white gloom” – that exists in the W.R. to this day. Possible explanations for the experiment’s failure: insufficient size of the Hora, lack of the antipode, placement in close proximity to the magic source.

An hour after the catastrophe the W.R. had been covered by a substance of undefined nature that could be registered neither by magical nor by physical instruments. To human eye that substance looked like a dense fog covering the land. The explorers who entered the fog reported a peculiar vision disturbance: the gradual disappearance of colours and contours of objects. The disturbance intensified as they moved toward the centre of the Region. The effect of one colour – white – swallowing everything resembled a reverted darkness, hence the name of the phenomena. Upon leaving the white gloom area the explorers’ vision returned to normal.

“White gloom” effect makes the detailed exploration of the W.R.’s central area impossible. Only the periphery of the Region is mapped.

The only animal species living there is sylpha (Silphys vulgaris), the sole representative of the True elves (Elvenidae) family. Sylphas are small creatures about the size of a sparrow. They belong to the class of air spirits (Airae), feed on the fruit of southern juicer (Pirum mali) and the seeds of witch's pseudofruit (Pseudospermum veneficae), the northern relict. Sylphas are capable of stabilizing wild magic and using it for hunting and self-defence (see "Omnis Fauna", book 2 "Fauna of No Man's Land", page 334, published by North-South company)."

The last line of the resume did the trick. The heavy book fell out of Kan's hand as he went to sleep as fast and sweet as a baby.

…Kangassk looked at the sleeping city, golden in the morning sunlight. The unnamed hope faded under his heart and let the more mundane feelings take over. Whatever he had hoped for, it did not happen. Soon, Tammar disappeared from view as they entered the forest. The road, wide and well-trodden, snaked at the feet of the ancient pine trees.

"This town's name is Tammar. It's the biggest town in the Calid Region," Kan told himself, hammering the info into his memory. "I shall not miss it on my way back."

He didn't even wonder whether he would return. He knew he would.

They didn't have to enjoy the road for too long because no roads led to where Vlada wanted to go. Soon, they had to make a turn, leave the well-trodden path and enter the woods.

Separated from the pines with a bushy undergrowth, there lay an old oak forest as beautiful and spacious as a fairy-tale temple. The oaks grew freely, each a thick column with a gorgeous crown of boughs making sunlight fall down in slanted rays. The forest floor was soft with young grass and bright yellow flowers. Beyond doubt, chargas enjoyed their every step. The thick grassy carpet must have been a great change after all the dusty road littered with sharp little stones.

They didn’t hurry. Vlada had accounted for everything. They had to make their last camp by the very border of the White Region because camping beyond that point was not possible.

As the day drew on, Kangassk started to notice the first signs of the vision disturbance: a white leaf here, a white patch of grass there. The further Vlada and he went into the forest, the more uncanny white spots they saw and the bigger these spots became.