Jirundil

By elveloy

Grey dust stretched to the horizon, as far as the eye could see. There were no villages, no roads. Nothing moved. There was absolutely no sign of life, not a single creature or tree, not even a patch of lichen as far as he could tell. Barren.

Ash swallowed. There was nowhere to go, even if he escaped.

He pressed closer to the viewport, peering upward to catch a glimpse of the sky. He cupped his eyes, trying to close out the bright light from the room he was standing in. The sky seemed black and empty, nothing to see except stars.

Where were the moons? The glorious thirteen moons of Jirundil, one of the wonders of the universe? At least some of them should have been visible tonight. But they weren't.

Where the fuck was he?

His brain scrambled to make sense of what his eyes were telling him. It was painfully evident that this was not Jirundil. Though he couldn't remember the actual kidnapping, he must have been captured and carried away by ship, to be held captive on this desolate world. He struggled to remember what had happened but everything was foggy.

It was obvious he had been drugged. He couldn't even remember how he had got here, to this viewport... How had he got to the viewport? Had someone brought him? He swung around, crouching defensively, but the room was empty. He stood, and examined the space. There were two closed doors, each set in an opposite wall, but oddly enough, the bottoms were almost a foot above floor level. Weird.

He strode across to the nearest and grasped the handle. After a bit of trial and error, he managed to pull the door open and found himself staring down a long white corridor, lined with what looked like more closed doors. Heart beating fast, he stepped over the sill and began to explore.

The first room was empty, but the second held a bed, complete with white quilt and a pillow. A small night stand stood next to the bed and a toilet and shower were tucked away to one side behind a partition. Was this his room, where he had been kept? Nothing seemed familiar and he continued down the corridor, looking into each room. All of them were empty.

Braced to defend himself from his captors, the last thing Ash had expected was to find himself alone. Who in Yurov's name had done this? What did they want?

He went back and checked every room again, just in case they were hiding from him, playing some sort of bizarre game, but he found no-one. Anxiety rising, Ash felt on the verge of a panic attack before he realised the truth. There must be a hidden door, leading to the rest of the compound; perhaps even a trapdoor to underground facilities or a hatch up to the floor above.

He searched again but had no luck in finding it. Eventually, worn out, he returned to the room with the bed and collapsed on top of it.

On the verge of sleep, his mind drifted back to his life on Jirundil, to the story he had been brought up with. His parent's story.

All thirteen moons of Jirundil were in the sky for the last hours of the night. They shone down on a thousand fires, a thousand empty pavilions, on the last rites of the Gathering.

The priests, the magic-people, the witches from a thousand planets were taking formal leave of the Gathering, for which many had travelled hundreds of light years. For a hundred days they had initiated the young, held council, swapped goods and used Power together. They would not meet again for another century and only a few would survive to do that.

Many miles away in a cavern, Euthe the Most Imperial Princess of the Shama and Ilvorri, Son of the Tor, used Power together and created a child. They knew what they did was forbidden, but that night, youth and love were stronger than law. As they created they crooned aloud, and when their son was born, they called him Ashandral...

All well and good, thought Ash, but what the story didn't say, was how the Shama and the Tor had vengefully pursued his parents, forcing them to flee for their lives. For two years they had lived underground, with different names and taking whatever menial work they could find, until one day, his father's people, the Tor, had caught up with them.

His mother told him Ilvorri had died, acting as a decoy to allow them to escape. Euthe had fled to the desert where she took shelter with one of the tribes. They'd had a good life, Ash remembered, until the day his mother succumbed to the plague which had swept over Jirundil like a storm. Ash had been twelve years old. Fortunately, the tribe's matriarch had taken him under her wing, teaching him the lore of the tribe, so that he'd be ready when he eventually came into his powers as an adult.

He was nearing his twenty-first birthday... and then, the people who had kidnapped him would discover they'd made a huge mistake.

~~~~

Two men walked down the corridor, the younger one pushing a small trolley before him, covered with a white cloth. The older man unlocked the door and let the other precede him into the room.

Both looked down at the man in the bed. One arm was fastened to the railing by the wrist. He slept, his eyes twitching, as if he dreamed.

"Has there been any improvement? Anything at all?"

The younger man sighed and shook his head. "Nothing I'm afraid, he needs specialist care. I've arranged for him to return to Earth with the next shuttle. I'm sorry."

The older man shrugged, a wry expression on his face. "Don't be. I think that's for the best. He might be my son, but he's using valuable resources we can't really spare."

"It's ironic, isn't it? Call it delusions or madness... The very word 'lunacy' was given to mental illnesses in the middle-ages, people thought they were caused by the moon. But who knew it would become a real risk once we were here?"