Comments (whether positive or negative) are gratefully appreciated. I'm far more likely to keep adding to the story if I know people are actually still reading!
The templar-wife's name is Ysuun, BTW. It will be quite a while before anyone in-story addresses her by name, and I know some people like to know these sorts of things.
***
Pain. Pain the like of which I had never imagined. Like spears of sun-scorched obsidian sliding through my limbs where my bones should have been, the claws of some ravening beast tearing through my bowels, razors across my sweat-slick skin. And, through it all, he was there, inside my mind, pouring fear and anguish into my soul.
My body hung spread-eagled within an arch carved by the desert winds from solid rock, my wrists and ankles secured with ropes I had long since given up on breaking or loosening. They were of giant’s hair, and so tight that my hands and feet, even dripping with sweat and blood as they were, could never slip through.
He had plied me with his little knives for most of the night. They were ancient, these tools of torture, and he treated them almost as holy relics, unwrapping them from their envelope of tembo skin with obvious reverence, whispering prayers over them in a tongue I did not recognise. The blades were steel – not the crude iron from which the sand devils forge their curved swords. Not for the first time, I wondered where these savages found so much iron ore. I had never in my life seen so much metal as these fiends bore, not even within the Naggaramakam.
In truth, his blades alone did little. Though I will bear the scars upon my body until the end of my days, he seemed almost casual with his incisions, as though the mere physical agonies he inflicted were incidental. The true torment he inflicted mind to mind.
I had always prided myself on my strength of will. I am not the most beautiful of my husband’s templar-wives. My father’s taint left me with the pointed ears and slanted eyes of his uncivilized race, while my mother bestowed upon me her diminutive stature – this awkward combination of features had always seemed a cruel joke. So, had it not been for my intellect and my will, I would never have come to the Shadow King’s attention, and certainly never risen so high within the Temple of Thought.
Yet, this uncultured savage, this sand devil, tore through all my defences like a whirlwind through a nomad camp. He was everywhere, stalking me through the dark, desolate labyrinth of my mind, hurling my every fear and doubt against me as a weapon, his lash of terror and despair cutting more deeply by far than his little steel knives.
He hunted me wearing the faces of my mother, livid with the marks of the fever that had taken her from me before my thirteenth High Sun, and my father, whom I have never seen in truth, for he abandoned my mother as soon as her belly grew bloated with the fruit of his seed. He wore the face of Consort Boukta, who had taken pleasure in tormenting and terrifying me throughout the first three years after I became one of the Shadow King’s brides, and of the monstrous Prince Dhojakt, whose hideous form can still even the bravest heart. He even stole the likeness of my lord and husband – not the illusion he wears when he walks among his people, but his true face, in all its noble, draconic majesty. To hear the twisted sand devil’s cruel taunts and obscene promises spill from the mouth of my beloved was more than I could bear.
I had thought Boukta’s pitiless beatings had robbed me of my capacity for tears. Certainly, I had not shed a single tear in the five years since leaving the barracks over which she exercised her petty and brutal tyranny to take my place in the Temple of Thought. But now I cried as I had not since my mother’s death: the wracking, uncontrollable, shameful sobbing of a child.
The pain was nothing. I could have borne the skin being peeled from my flesh, the flesh from my bones. I would still have screamed, but I would not have wept. But the breaking open of my mind and memories, the cruel violation of my soul, those I could not endure. And I knew that there was no hope. No hope at all. This torment would last for days – so the sand devil had promised – and would end only with my death. And, even then, my soul would be plundered, used to unleash… what? He had babbled some nonsense about a being who had been the lord and master of my husband, long ago. It could not be true. Any of it. Yet, somehow, the dread was still real. I saw myself fall shrieking into darkness, into a place outside the world, outside of time and space. A prison within which was locked a being of such monstrous, calculating evil that even the legendary Dragon seemed like a mere kirre when compared to its ageless malevolence.
Through the dark haze of suffering, I felt the first rays of dawn upon my forehead. My tormentor snarled with displeasure as crimson light glinted upon the tips of his twisted horns. Then he sighed, an artist forced by circumstance to postpone the creation of his masterpiece, and smiled crookedly at me. His talons brushed my cheek, then cupped my chin almost tenderly, lifting my eyes to his.
“We shall continue tonight, child. My people do not enjoy the touch of the crimson sun. It reminds us too sharply that this world is not as it should be.” He turned away, his shoulders seeming to slump beneath his heavy black robes as he shuffled away into the darkness of the cave mouth. His next words seemed not to be directed at me, for he barely whispered them, but with my senses still agonisingly sensitive after his psychic assault, I heard them regardless: “It reminds us there is still so much work to do.”
Soon, another of the sand devils came: a woman wrapped in ragged desert robes to shield her crimson skin from the sun’s touch. She put a clay bowl to my lips. I had resolved to take no water, knowing that, even with the partial shelter provided by the cliff face, the sun would likely put an end to my suffering before dusk. But now I found I feared death more than the promise of further torture. I drank greedily, savouring the icy cold of the water. Doubtless it came from some hidden spring within the sand devils’ cave lair.
The woman smiled mockingly at me as I drank, her yellow eyes blazing with contempt and what might almost have been lust. It was clear she took pleasure from observing my wretched state. Her tongue, dark purple and pointed like that of an inix, darted out to moisten her thin lips. “You still strive for life, then,” she crooned. “I wonder how many nights you will last before we have to force the water down your throat.”
She carried the bowl back into the cave, then returned, tossing a jagged-bladed iron dagger casually from one hand to the other. “I wagered this that it will take only another night before you break. I see the weakness in you, you see. Another night, then you will beg us to cut your throat.” She sighed and rested the tip of her dagger in the hollow between my collarbones. Her nose wrinkled in distaste. “My brother disagrees, of course. He thinks it will take at least three nights.” A pause. The sand devil woman put her head on one side, as if in thought.
“I like this knife,” she said after a moment. “I am to guard you and keep you alive until dusk. But there is no reason why I should be bored. I have not the master’s skill, but I can still make you scream. And perhaps stack the odds of the wager a little more in my favour.”
I felt the tip of the knife slide down the line of my sternum. It paused at the point where bone ended and the flesh of my belly began. She pushed, just enough to pucker the skin, though not yet enough to draw blood. Then she paused.
I glanced up, saw a frown crease her horned brow. Then she winced as a flash of light cut across her eyes. She stepped back, blinking, frowning again in puzzlement and annoyance. “What is that?” she muttered. Sheathing the knife, she stepped around me.
There was a muffled sound, an intaking of breath swiftly cut off. Then a frantic, liquid gurgling that seemed to go on for a very long time, punctuated occasionally by faint scraping sounds. Then silence.
A shadow loomed over me, much too large to be cast by any of the sand devils, even with the sun still low in the sky. So this was to be how it ended. Some wild beast had come hunting for a meal. I did not relish the idea of being torn limb from limb and devoured, but at least it would be a quicker death than the one the sand devils had promised.
Then the shadow spoke, its harsh bass rumble one I recognised, and my heart leaped with the return of hope.
“Arrogant, these sand devils. Only one guard. No-one on watch. And they never bothered to check I was dead last night. Don’t know why everyone is so damn scared of them.”
Big hands pulled at my ropes, testing their strength. Then, with the sand devil’s iron dagger, Bayl began quickly cutting through the giant’s hair ropes that held me aloft. Hours of strain had stolen the strength from my limbs, and I fell limp into his powerful arms as he severed the last rope.
He wasted no time on checking my injuries. Loyal he might be, but tenderness has always been a foreign concept to Bayl, as it is to most of his race. Slinging my naked, bleeding body over his shoulder, he picked his way nimbly through the maze of shattered red stone within which the sand devils’ cave squatted like a spider at the heart of its web. I have never understood how such a big man can move so silently or with such grace and speed.
We passed the sprawled body of the sand devil woman, her limbs and face twisted in agony, purple tongue lolling from her mouth grotesquely. The cord of Bayl’s alhulak, a half-inch-thick braid of leather strips, had left its livid mark around her neck. I shuddered as I recalled the sounds I had heard just before Bayl appeared – the gurgling and thrashing that had seemed to go on for far longer than should have been necessary.
Bayl, obviously sensing my unease, shrugged. “Was angry,” he grunted, almost defensively. “You woke me,” he continued after a moment, and I realised he meant that my screams had woken him from the effects of the sand devils’ venom.
“Remind me never to make you angry, Bayl,” I said, trying to sound more cheerful than I felt.
“Never hurt you, lady,” he growled fiercely. “Never.”
I felt tears on my cheeks again. What had I ever done to earn such loyalty, I wondered? But I crushed that errant thought swiftly. Such weakness of emotion was surely just an after-effect of my torture. Bayl was a servant rather than a slave, for his skill and courage in the arena had earned him his freedom years ago, but I was a templar-wife of the Shadow King himself. As a citizen of Nibenay, even a free one, he owed me his very life. His rage at what the sand devils had done to me was only right and proper, and probably more a result of his simple mul mind than of any deeper loyalty.
I must have passed out then, for I remember no more until that evening, when we were far away. I think Bayl must have carried me, running non-stop almost from dawn to dusk. Such feats are nothing to a mul, of course, though such inhuman hardiness never ceases to amaze me. I can understand how the sand devils too must have underestimated him, leaving him for dead after their attack upon our party.
The sky blazed a deep crimson, the sun gaping like a bloody wound as it sank toward the horizon. Above, the sky had already deepened to the livid blue-black of bruised flesh. The rocks still shimmered as they radiated back the day’s scorching heat. It would be hours before the chill of the night reached this place.
Bayl had wrapped me in a pale desert robe, clean but somewhat threadbare. My own clothes, as well as the horned diadem and dragon’s-eye brooch that marked me as a wife of the Shadow King, were presumably still back at the sand devils’ lair. As I hauled myself into a sitting position against the rocks – my limbs still felt weak, my muscles and tendons torn – my hand brushed against a familiar shaft of rune-etched wood.
Smiling, I lifted the weapon, watching the last rays of the sun glinting upon the smooth crescents of sharpened bone affixed to each end. With a murmured word, I drew a little magic from the earth and air around me, focusing it upon the runes that spiralled along the weapon’s four-foot wooden haft. Tightening my grip and shifting my posture to give my arm more room, I swung the weapon hard against a boulder the size of a man’s head. There was a flash of blue light and a sharp crack, then the boulder fell into two cleanly-shorn halves. The lotulis’ crescent blade was untouched. Satisfied, I laid the weapon back down beside me. Whatever the sand devil had done to me, my magic seemed unaffected. I would not have to rely on Bayl as my only protection on the journey back to Nibenay.
As if conjured by my thoughts, the mul loomed over me. “Fire?” he grunted.
I shook my head. I had no idea how far he’d brought me from the sand devils’ lair but, even if they were not still hunting us, a fire could attract other scavengers, humanoid or otherwise. The rocks would keep us warm enough until near dawn, I reckoned, and I at least could see well enough to spot any approaching danger. Ral was only two nights past full, and its sickly greenish light, when it rose in an hour or so, would be enough for my half-elven eyes. These eyes were probably the only things of any use my worthless father had given me, after all.
Suddenly irritated, I said sharply, “You don’t need to talk like that here. There’s only the two of us.”
Bayl looked at his sandaled feet. “Sorry.” Then, after a few awkward moments, “It’s force of habit. I’d not have survived the arena if not for how easy it is to underestimate a big, dumb brute of a mul.” He pronounced the word the way even I would never dare to do in his hearing. The old insult recalled the foolish myth, either that all his race were sterile, or that childbearing invariably killed the mother. Yet his voice was wry rather than bitter. One might almost have forgotten what he’d done to the last person brave or stupid enough to insult him in that way.
Regretting my sharpness, I glanced around. We were in a sort of shallow crater, some twenty yards across, its floor scattered with broken chunks of reddish stone. We would be sheltered enough from the chill night air, or even from a sandstorm should one come upon us. Pulling the robe around my shoulders and leaning on my lotulis, I hauled myself to my feet, wincing as my torn muscles and wracked joints rebelled. Bayl reached forward, obviously meaning to help, but I glared at him and he thought better of it. I would be mistress of my own body again. I needed, and wanted, no tenderness. Perhaps, I hoped, the purely physical pain and rage would dull the echoes of the awful violation done to my mind and soul.
I picked my way through the jumble of rocks, clambering up to the lip of the crater. Every movement sent daggers of pain through my limbs. My head ached too, as though I’d drunk a whole cask of broy.
“We will reach the road tomorrow morning. We should be at Bremil Pass in three days at the most. Sooner if I don’t need to carry you.”
“I can walk,” I said, not at all surprised that he had once again managed to come up behind me without making a sound. “Do you think they followed us?” I asked, hearing the tremor of fear in my own voice and biting my lip in fury at my weakness.
Bayl shrugged. “There wasn’t much I could do to hide our trail. A lot depends on how long it took them to realise you’d gone. If they’re close, then they’ll probably attack tonight.” He paused. “You might be able to get away if I…”
“No,” I cut him off. “I can walk, but running is out of the question. If they attack, then we both fight. Either we kill them or they kill us. But I won’t risk being taken alive again.”
The night grew lighter as Ral’s pale, mottled face crawled slowly above the eastern edge of the crater. I have never liked the green moon. It reminds me too much of my mother’s sunken and sickly features in the last days before the fever took her from me.
I shivered, despite the heat radiating from the rocks around us, turning back to Bayl. “I don’t suppose anyone else survived?” I asked.
Bayl shook his head. “Morg and Brithis went down trying to keep those fiends away from you,” he said. “I think Gorrem tried to run away, but he got a scimitar in the back for his trouble. The others must have died after I took that poisoned dart in the leg. It all got blurry after that. But I counted the bodies before I went to find you. They might just have been mercenaries, but they fought bravely. Well, except for Gorrem, but screw that desert rat anyway.”
I was glad that the darkness hid my smile. Bayl had never liked or trusted Gorrem, perhaps for the same reason I’d never trust one of my father’s people. In truth, I wasn’t particularly surprised to hear the dwarf had tried to run away. The only thing that had ever struck me as reliable about him was his greed, and I suppose he saw little chance of being paid once I was out of the fight. Still, I supposed I ought to be grateful to the others. Of course, with the reputation of the sand devils being what it was, it was entirely possible the mercenaries fought so well simply out of desperation to avoid being taken captive. But I have always been cynical about the motives of others.
“Is there food and water?” I did not feel particularly hungry, for my stomach was still knotted with the after-effects of terror, but I knew I needed to restore my strength.
Bayl nodded. “The sand devils didn’t seem too interested in looting our baggage,” he said. “They killed the kanks, though. I carried as much water as I could, and I managed to catch a couple of jerboa just before you woke up. That’s why I suggested lighting a fire. I’ve eaten jerboa raw before, but it’s not exactly appetising.”
“Fine. A small fire only. With Ral near full, the light shouldn’t be too obvious down here, so long as you keep it in the shelter of the rocks.”
He nodded and moved away silently. I remained, gazing out across the rocky barrens toward the distant mountains that ringed the Dragon’s Bowl, standing there, gritting my teeth against the pain in my thighs and calves until I felt my strength beginning to return. My arms were still as weak as a kirre cub’s paws and I was not at all certain Bayl wouldn’t end up having to carry me after all on the morrow, but any sign of recovery was welcome. I had known slaves, punished by being hung from their arms like I was, who were crippled for the rest of their life by the experience.
At last, Bayl called softly to me, and I hobbled over to share in his meagre, greasy feast.
I've not had much time to write the last couple of days, but I'll hopefully be ready to put the next bit up tomorrow.
“I was wrong,” Bayl said, chewing thoughtfully. “Cooking hasn’t improved them at all.” He pulled the little rodent’s tail from between his teeth and grimaced at it in distaste, then flung it into the fire.
I had already finished mine. There had only been a few mouthfuls of greasy, slightly bitter meat on it. The smell of the jerboa cooking had almost made me retch at first, but I’d found I was ravenously hungry once I started on it. I hadn’t been quite hungry enough to crunch up the little rodent’s bones as Bayl did, however.
“Aren’t you going to eat that?” he asked, pointing to the rodent’s head I’d discarded.
I shook my head and handed the tiny morsel over, then tried to ignore the crunching sounds as Bayl munched on it. I knew it was foolish to waste food out here, where we might not find any more until we reached Bremil Pass and the fertile lands beyond, but I was not used to such unappetising fare. We templar-wives are not so weak and decadent as the generally worthless nobles of our city, but life in the Naggaramakam leaves us softer in some ways than the slaves and gladiators who serve us, or the nomads and raiders of the wilderness. I remembered the first thing I had been taught in the Temple of Thought: that arrogance is a weakness, and can easily be a fatal one. But only now did I begin to understand what that meant.
“You should get some sleep,” Bayl said, rising to his feet. “I’ll keep watch.”
“Can you see well enough?” I asked.
“Probably not. But…” he shrugged, then sighed and looked down at me pityingly, his yellow eyes shining in the light of the campfire. “If they catch up to us, we’re done for anyway. You know that.” He must have seen the spasm of terror that gripped me then, for his voice softened. “They won’t take you again, lady. Whatever happens. I promise.”
Shaken, and ashamed at my cowardice, I nodded curtly and shuffled back into the shelter of the still-warm rocks, wrapping myself in my borrowed robe and trying to curl myself into a position that was somewhere near comfortable.
A desert kirre roared somewhere in the distance, and was soon answered by its mate or rival. Other beasts I did not recognise filled the night air with their calls. This was far from my first night in the wilderness, but it was the first time I’d spent such a night without the wood and leather walls of a silt skimmer or argosy between me and the outside world. Every shriek and bellow sounded far too close, even though I knew most must be leagues away.
I lay shivering despite the heat radiating from the rocks around me. Unable to settle, I shifted and squirmed, turning over and over until my robe was twisted around my limbs so tightly that I felt almost as though I were trussed up like a captive again. The memories of the previous night swept through me. Sobbing with rage and shame, I fought free of the robe and hurled it away from me, then curled back up in my stone-walled burrow and wept until it seemed there could not be any more water left in my body.
Eventually, I must have slept.
The crimson glare of the midmorning sun through my eyelids woke me. I sat up quickly, blinking, my heart racing in sudden panic. Where was Bayl? Why hadn’t he woken me at dawn to resume our journey? We needed to reach Bremil Pass before the sand devils caught us!
“What do you think that is?” Bayl’s voice sounded unreasonably calm, in the circumstances.
I looked up, to see him crouched on the huge boulder in whose shadow I had slept. His gaze was fixed intently on the northern skyline, one huge hand shielding his eyes as he peered into the shimmering heat haze.
I realised he had covered me with a green-striped kirre skin I recognised had been used as a saddlecloth on one of the kanks, before the sand devils had attacked our caravan. He had spread my discarded robe out on one of the smaller boulders, and I pulled it around me, belting it at the waist with a short length of giant’s hair rope he had left beside it. I wondered if it had been part of the ropes the sand devils had bound me with.
I clambered up beside Bayl and peered into the distance. At first, all I could see was a cloud of dust. No, not dust: silt. A long, narrow arm of the Bay of Maray swept inland almost to the edge of the Dragon’s Bowl. I could see the rocky shore some distance away across the barren badlands. And, just reaching the shore as we watched, a triangular sail – shimmering white silk with an azure sign upon it – emerged from the billowing cloud.
“A silt skimmer,” I said. “From Nibenay. I recognise the device. A blue silk wyrm on white: House Mentsu.”
“Must be heading back from Raam,” Bayl mused. “Taking a shortcut to avoid the bastards we’re running from, I suppose. Going to be rough going crossing this to get to the road, though.”
My joy at the sight of the silt skimmer was short-lived. “I have no proof of my office,” I pointed out. “And we’ve nothing to offer them in return for passage. They’re hardly likely to offer assistance to two destitute travellers in the middle of nowhere just out of the goodness of their hearts.”
He grinned. “Nothing to offer? A gladiator always has something to offer. Any skimmer captain would be glad to have another strong sword arm on his deck. And you, lady…”
I interrupted. “Outside the walls of Nibenay, I’m just a defiler, Bayl. And no skimmer captain wants a defiler on his deck.” My bitter words sounded petulant, even to me, but I was growing angry now. I was glad that Bayl had been able to get us this far, but now he was taking too much upon himself. I might have lost my symbols of office, but he still had no excuse for forgetting our respective stations. It was not up to him to suggest a plan of action, still less to decide upon the details of one.
“I was going to say, you have some knowledge of healing, my lady,” he continued, unabashed. “And a good healer is more valuable even than a trained warrior out here. They’ll take us.”
Realising that he was probably right, and that it would be beneath my dignity to argue with my own servant, I simply nodded. Then waited with Bayl as the silt skimmer crawled ever closer, adjusting course every few minutes to avoid the worst areas of broken ground.
We heard the cry of the lookout, perched upon his small platform near the top of the skimmer’s mainmast, and saw the vessel alter course towards us.
We must have seemed a very strange pair, standing there upon our boulder at the edge of the crater. Bayl was large, even for one of his race, and more heavily muscled than anyone else I have ever seen. His skin was a burnished copper colour, crisscrossed by a spider’s web of pale scars, and entirely hairless. He still wore the armoured harness that had preserved his life for years in Nibenay’s arena. Heavy plates of kank chitin protected his wide shoulders, while multiple layers of cured hides covered his abdomen, with a knee-length kilt of leather and kirre skin hanging to his knees. Greaves made up of the thighbones of those he had slain in the arena, lashed together with rawhide strips, covered his lower legs. He wore his alhulak tied about his waist like a belt, its stone and head hanging at his side, wrapped in a piece of tembo hide to prevent the sharp kirre horns lashed to the stone weight from lacerating his thigh.
I have already mentioned my short stature. Standing beside Bayl, my head barely reached his chest. And, while I might be leaner, fitter, and certainly tougher than the simpering, self-indulgent daughters of my city’s decadent nobility, I have never had any claim to real physical strength. I have my mother’s olive skin and straight, raven-black hair, and my father’s slanted, almond shaped eyes, the brilliant blue colour of lapis. As a templar-wife, I should radiate majestic authority at all times. Barefoot and dressed only in a ragged, sweat-stained desert robe, belted with rope, and with the kirre skin draped over my shoulders, I did not feel particularly majestic. I suppose I must have looked like some mad desert wise-woman, one of those superstitious primitives who worship the spirits of Athas. At least my still-healing scars were mostly hidden beneath the robe.
The skimmer was not a large one, barely forty feet from the ivory carving at its prow to the raised quarterdeck at the stern. The azure wyrm of House Mentsu seemed to crawl across the shimmering white silk of the lateen-rigged mainsail as the wind billowed it out from its yard. Upon the smaller mizzen-sail was the same device as the skimmer’s figurehead: a bare-breasted woman with coiling hair and the lower body and tail of a snake, holding a widow’s knife in one hand and a pomegranate in the other. Weathered and wary faces stared down at us.
After several tense moments, a tall, thin, rather gangling young man clad in a loose grey jubba appeared at the gunwale and peered down at us, shielding his eyes from the sun with a pale hand. “Hello?” he called. “Are you lost?”
I had expected his voice to be as thin and reedy as his body, but it was surprisingly deep and melodious. Even with the uncertainty his questioning tone implied, he sounded like someone used to being obeyed without hesitation. Even without knowing his name, I knew he must be the noble whose skimmer this was.
“We…” I hesitated, wondering if perhaps it would be best to simply announce my name and status and hope that the young noble believed me even without my brooch and diadem, or at least that he would be uncertain enough not to risk the Shadow King’s wrath by denying us his aid. But some unconscious impulse stopped me. There was something about House Mentsu, or one of its scions; something I could not quite remember. Perhaps I had read of some suspicions in a report by one of the Temple’s agents. I wasn’t sure.
“We are simple travellers, but our party was attacked by bandits in the mountains yonder. We have skills to trade in return for passage to Nibenay.” That was close enough to the truth.
The young noble nodded. “Yes, we have heard the road near the rim of the Dragon’s Bowl has grown dangerous.” He gazed down at us, frowning slightly as if deciding what to do about us. It was difficult to read his expression, but the fact that he had not simply dismissed us as beneath him was probably a good sign.
A massive form loomed over his right shoulder suddenly: a half-giant woman clad in armour stitched from a patchwork of vividly-coloured animal hides. She looked much less friendly than her noble-born companion. The two conferred in urgent whispers for a few moments, the half-giant with her hands on her hips in an attitude of exasperated impatience, the noble seemingly trying to calm or reassure her.
“King’s Beard, what a beauty,” Bayl breathed, his eyes fixed on the half-giant, his expression a mixture of awe and honest lust.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Bayl,” I whispered. “I don’t think she likes us.” Despite the precariousness of our situation, I felt myself cheered by the big mul’s openness. Bayl was not stupid by any means, but his honest simplicity was one of the reasons I had chosen him as my servant. His presence was always a refreshing respite from the twisted intrigues of the Shadow King’s court.
At last, the half-giant threw up her hands in frustration and stormed off. The young noble shrugged, then turned back to us. He looked slightly startled for a moment, almost as if he had forgotten we were still here, or perhaps just surprised that we had not gotten tired of waiting and wandered off.
“Lower the boarding steps!” he called. With the creaking of giant’s-hair ropes, a tall, narrow section of the skimmer’s hull opened up and dropped jerkily to the ground.
Bayl and I scrambled down from our boulder and made our way up the steps. The young noble waited at the top, smiling a little uncertainly. The half-giant woman had reappeared behind him, scowling down at us. I had to admit that Bayl had a point. She was a magnificent specimen: tall and muscular as you would expect for one of her race, though she seemed more tough and athletic than brawny. To my eyes at least, many half-giant women appear rather coarse-featured, even mannish, but her obvious physical power only enhanced her beauty. The markings adorning her granite-grey skin were so dark as to be almost black, their pattern somewhat resembling the hide of a tembo. Eyes the colour of malachite glared out at us from within a wide dark band that ran across her face beneath her heavy brows.
The noble’s smile was warm and eager, and seemed genuine enough even to my cynical gaze. Seeing him close up, I realised he was even younger than I had thought, his short reddish beard almost comically sparse. His eyes too were green, though of a much less vivid shade than his companion’s.
“Welcome aboard! I am Neren. Neren of Mentsu,” He inclined his head slightly to Bayl and I in turn, the proper attitude of a Nibenayan nobleman towards someone whose station he does not know. “And this is Enamdis, my… uh… I suppose ‘bodyguard’?” He laid a slender white hand on the half-giant woman’s folded arms, glancing up at her with obvious fondness.
She favoured us with a wide grin, though there was no friendliness in it. “Anyone tries to hurt His Lordship, I get to snap them in half.”
Now, I have heard plenty of threats in my time. Generally, I find them tiresome, pathetic, sometimes even comical. I have never had much time for braggarts and blusterers. But this didn’t sound like a threat at all, but rather a simple statement of fact.
In most circumstances, anyone who even hinted at presenting some threat to my person would find Bayl’s alhulak tied round their neck before they could even finish a sentence. But these were hardly normal circumstances. I knew without even turning around that Bayl was now staring at the half-giant woman in reverent wonder. This was a complication I could have done without.
“I am Ysuun,” I said, hoping my voice sounded more amused than annoyed. “I have some skill with healing, though I am afraid my cures and potions are probably being misused by the scum who robbed us even as we speak. This large slab of muscle is Bayl. He…”
“Ex-gladiator,” Enamdis interrupted. “I know the look.” She was obviously still suspicious of us. Not even the suggestion of a smile touched her lips, but something in her startlingly green eyes told me she was aware of Bayl’s admiration for her and was not at all displeased. “Nice scars,” she said, a trace of irony in her voice. “You’re tough, but you don’t protect your right side well enough. We should spar sometime. Maybe you’ll learn enough to avoid walking into any more spears.” She nodded to a particularly nasty scar that puckered the flesh just to the right of his heart.
Neren glanced from mul to half-giant and back again, then shrugged and smiled at me. Awkward and gangling he might have been, but his smile made him seem almost handsome. “We should get underway. I would like to be well away from the Dragon’s Bowl by sunset. Come, you two look half-starved. We’ll get you fed and watered, then we can discuss how exactly you’re going to pay for your passage.”
While I haven't read a page of fantasy in 10 years or so, I have consumed a great deal of literature and I think this is quite good. The character development is good, not forced, and fits into the narrative. One thing that is often missing from fantasy (and I have read a bunch even if it's been a while) is that authors tend to lack patience in how the construct a story and I don't think you've got that problem, indeed I think your writing style comes across, after a few posts, as quite a generous way of giving the story and characters to the reader.
As someone who thinks about narrative alot, I have to ask, how long do you see this being? 10,000 words? Longer? It definitely seems like it could make for a novella or full length novel.
I'd seriously suggest sending what you've got to wizards at some point.
Anyways, can't wait for the next post
Hey, I just wanted to say I've enjoyed reading this every step of the way.
Good!
I was beginning to wonder if anybody was still reading. ;)While I haven't read a page of fantasy in 10 years or so, I have consumed a great deal of literature and I think this is quite good. The character development is good, not forced, and fits into the narrative.
I've always believed that character development should never be seen as separate from the rest of the narrative. A story shouldn't just be a series of things happening to a set of characters, with the two elements (plot and characters) considered as two discrete entities. Events shape characters, and characters also shape events. There should always be the feeling that the plot would have turned out entirely differently with a different set of characters, and also that the characters would have been quite different (or at least that their development would have been different) had they been shaped by a different set of events.
So, I have an idea in my head of what each of my characters is 'like', but how they appear on the page will be as much a consequence of what happens to them as it is the product of my ideas about their 'true inner nature'.
Likewise, the plot is not set in stone. At this point, most of it isn't even set in plasticine. The characters will react to events (and those reactions will spawn future events) in a way that feels natural to me at the time. At one point, I'd planned to have the sand devils attack Bayl and Ysuun that first night, before they encountered the silt skimmer, but that didn't really fit with how I imagine the sand devils' leader operating. He'd be much more likely to let them think they'd gotten away safely, and give them time to let their guard down, before striking. He had no way of knowing about the silt skimmer, of course, since it took its current route precisely to avoid going anywhere near the sand devils' lair.
One thing that is often missing from fantasy (and I have read a bunch even if it's been a while) is that authors tend to lack patience in how the construct a story and I don't think you've got that problem, indeed I think your writing style comes across, after a few posts, as quite a generous way of giving the story and characters to the reader.
This might be (at least partly) because I'm writing this as recreation/relaxation rather than to meet some arbitrary deadline or to make money. I've read a lot of novels that should have been really good, and in fact were really good for the first 80-90%, but then rushed to a conclusion far too quickly, as if the author suddenly realised they needed to get the thing finished before their agent or publisher started getting too antsy about deadlines or page-count.
As someone who thinks about narrative alot, I have to ask, how long do you see this being? 10,000 words? Longer? It definitely seems like it could make for a novella or full length novel.
I haven't really planned a final length. Almost certainly longer than 10,000 words, though. It's up to 6,000 or so words right now, and we're only halfway to Nibenay!
If I had to state an 'estimated final wordcount', I guess I'd go for around 30,000. That's basically a wild guess, though.
I'd seriously suggest sending what you've got to wizards at some point.
I'm pretty sure they'd never publish something that's already in the public domain, as this is. If they want to commission me to write something new for them, though, that'd be cool. I'm probably not going to have the free time to actually write anything to a real deadline until next spring, though.
Anyways, can't wait for the next post
Expect it either tomorrow or the day after. I won't have time to do any writing today, but I'm free tomorrow morning (AFAIK).
Your average collection of short stories, by the time it's been published in book format, has stories scattered all over the place, in journals, e-zines, maybe blogs, etc.
Still, here's the next bit. Sorry it's so short.***
The silt skimmer juddered as the crew pulled the locking bars from its huge wheels and the vessel began to move again, quickly picking up speed as the sails turned to catch the wind. I stumbled and had to steady myself against the gunwale; my legs were still unsteady and a lotulis makes a poor walking staff.
Neren looked awkward for a moment, as if unsure whether he should lend me his hand or not. “I do apologise. I tend to forget that not everyone is accustomed to travelling by skimmer. It will be smoother going once we get out of this Dragon-blasted boulder field.”
“Slower, though,” growled Enamdis from behind us. She was making a very poor job of pretending to ignore Bayl and his moon-eyed gaze. “There’ll be sand drifts all across the road this time of year. No doubt we’ll get bogged down and have to get out and push.” She was joking of course, but I could almost imagine she might be strong enough to move the silt skimmer by hand, grunting and half-panting, her well-muscled limbs streaming with sweat, glistening in the light of the crimson sun…
I shot Bayl a furious glare, then realised that Enamdis and Neren, as well as several of the skimmer’s crew, were staring at him too. He looked around, bewildered as though just woken from a pleasant dream, which I suppose was more or less the case. “What?” he demanded.
Neren chuckled. “It would appear your large friend has some talents besides fighting, Ysuun. That was a rather… detailed image.”
I shrugged with feigned nonchalance, relieved at least that Bayl’s lack of control would make us seem more like the ordinary travellers we pretended to be. Wild talents such as his were not uncommon, but Bayl’s abilies had been refined and strengthened through months of training in the Temple. If Neren was an adept of the Way, as could be safely assumed of any Nibenese noble as intelligent as he obviously was, there was a chance he could recognise such training. Luckily, Bayl’s lust-fuelled projection had been brief enough to pass as the product of an untrained mind.
Neren led us to the narrow wooden door beneath the quarterdeck. “I am afraid my cabin is rather cramped,” he said. “But there is at least a table so we can sit and eat like civilized folk.”
He was right. Enamdis and Bayl had to stoop just to get through the doorway. Neren’s cabin was surprisingly Spartan, too. A hammock woven from sack-cloth hung from a hook on one wall. Below it was a stack of books, obviously ancient, their leather bindings cracked and flaking, many of the pages loose. The rest of the room was taken up by a wooden table, strewn with charts and navigational instruments. Neren drew four small, three-legged stools out from under the table and motioned for us to sit.
The four of us squeezed in around the table, Enamdis taking the stool nearest the door. After a moment, one of the crew entered, a weathered veteran with skin like leather and a beard that made him look as though he were trying to eat a hejkin. He deposited a bowl of dried fruits and four cups of water from his tray, then left as silently as he had arrived.
Bayl tucked in with his customary lack of restraint. I took only a handful of dates, still unsure how much my ravaged guts could withstand.
“We heard rumours in Raam that there were raiders on the road near the Dragon’s Bowl,” Neren said, chewing thoughtfully on a dried fig. “The consensus, at least so far as there can ever be a consensus when it comes to rumours among merchants, was that the Black Sands Raiders have spread their territory to the north.”
Enamdis snorted. “A hundred miles to the north? I don’t think so.”
“Still,” said Neren mildly, “you must admit the stories sound like their work.”
“Oh, because no mere bandits could be as cruel and savage as Zeburon and his kank-humping scum, you mean?”
I wondered for a moment whether Bayl was out of luck here. Surely, no Nibenese noble would allow a mere bodyguard or other servant to talk to him in such a manner in front of guests? Yet the thought of this massive half-giant and this skinny young man as lovers was so ludicrous that I had to feign a yawn to hide my sudden mirth.
Neren smiled indulgently. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Enamdis send anyone to sleep before,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “Though, on second thoughts, arguing with her does sometimes make me want to give up on the day as a sunk cost and crawl back into my hammock.”
The half-giant glared at me, and for a moment I wondered if they’d both read my thoughts as clearly as we’d all seen Bayl’s. “So, who attacked you two, anyway,” she demanded. “Maybe we can settle this right now.”
I was going to lie and tell them it had been merely human bandits who attacked us. After all, my mission was supposed to be a secret. The Shadow King wanted confirmation that the raiders who had virtually cut off trade and travel along the northern part of the Nibenese Road were sand devils as he suspected. But I knew that he did not want such news made public. It was a tragedy that so many merchants and other travellers were lost, but the cost to Nibenay’s trade from the panic that might ensue would be far worse. Greedy merchants would gladly risk a road where there was merely a vague rumour of bandit raiders, but no sane person would travel where sand devils were known to hunt.
But the sand devils might still be following us. They might attack the silt skimmer, and we would have a much better chance of survival if our benefactors knew what we might be facing when dusk fell. Besides, once we reached Nibenay, Neren, Enamdis and their crew could be silenced easily enough if the Shadow King commanded it. I would have to be careful not to let Bayl know, though.
I took a sip of water to moisten my suddenly parched lips. “It wasn’t the Black Sands Raiders,” I began. Neren looked relived, but that quickly passed as I continued. “It was sand devils.”
Enamdis shot to her feet, spitting a string of expletives, some of which even Bayl had probably never heard before. “Sand devils don’t let anyone escape. Ever. That means they’re following you. Neren, I said we should have left them behind!”
The young noble had gone deathly pale, but he still managed a wan smile. “You always did say my kind heart would be the death of me. Still, they’d surely only send a small hunting party to chase down two escaped captives. There are a dozen of us, and we have stout wooden walls between us and the desert. The sand devils might not be willing to risk an attack.”
“Oh, they’ll attack. I’ve seen a sand devil dragging himself up the spear that skewered him to gouge the eyes from his own killer. They don’t fear death or pain.”
“Then we’ll kill them,” Bayl snarled. “They might not fear death, but they die just as easily as anyone else.” He glared fiercely at Enamdis, as if challenging her to dispute his claim.
The half-giant woman’s lips twitched as she met his insolent gaze, then she roared with sudden, hearty laughter. “It looks like we might have something in common after all, little man!”
The skimmer’s crew took the news surprisingly well. Neren and Enamdis called a brief halt and gathered them together below the quarterdeck to explain what was likely chasing us and to make preparations for a possible night attack. The faces of the eight men and women paled with fear, and several cast angry glances at Bayl and I, quite reasonably holding us responsible for what was soon to descend upon them. But none of them voiced any word of complaint or showed any open hostility towards us. The youngest of the crew, a blonde girl of perhaps sixteen years, even glanced at me with what looked to be pity, as though she somehow realised what I must have suffered before my escape from the sand devils. I found I could not meet her gaze.
As soon as Neren had finished speaking, Enamdis put the crew back to work with astonishing efficiency. The two strongest men, one of whom I was sure must have some mul blood in him, for he was almost as heavily muscled as Bayl, bent their backs to the skimmer’s capstan, adding their strength to that of the wind filling the sails. The blonde girl went below-decks and re-emerged carrying a double-armful of weapons and armour. Enamdis snatched a massive, obsidian-headed gouge from her and swung the strap over her shoulder, before taking her place at the ship’s helm. The rest of the crew set to trimming the skimmer’s two sails, letting each one fill out until it started to flap, then pulling the sheet tight to capture as much of the wind’s power as possible. Unless the wind picked up substantially, it was unlikely we could actually outrun our pursuers, but the faster we travelled, the more tired the sand devils would be if and when they attacked.
Wordlessly, the blonde girl handed me a leather breastplate, shaped to fit a woman’s torso and at least somewhere near my size, and a set of leather greaves. I thanked her and began to strap the breastplate on over my robe.
“They have a good crew,” Bayl remarked as he sauntered over to join me at the rail, out of the way of the crew. Enamdis had made it very clear she wanted no distractions at the helm. Controlling the silt skimmer’s course at this speed over the uneven, boulder-strewn terrain was a difficult enough job without having a lovesick mul mooning over her. So I was stuck with him.
“The half-giant picked them well, I suppose,” I shrugged, buckling the last strap under my left arm.
Bayl shook his head. “No, she told me Neren picked them.” He grinned at my sceptical expression. “He’s not as naïve as he seems, you know. Enamdis knows fighting, almost as well as me, maybe, but Neren knows people.”
“That’s what she said?”
“Actually, she said she knows more about fighting than any thick-skulled gladiator could ever pick up scrapping in a filthy arena. But, yeah, the rest of it’s exactly as she said.”
I finished strapping the greaves in place and checked they wouldn’t rub against the tops of my bare feet. Wearing borrowed armour is always uncomfortable, but at least this set was not so ill-fitted that it would hinder me in combat more than it would protect me.
“So, this Neren isn’t some silly child playing at being a hero, then? But, since he didn’t immediately dump us overboard the moment he learned we had likely brought the sand devils down on him, that means he’s something even more dangerous: a true idealist.” I swore under my breath. “An idealist trained in the Way who can read people like a book. Why do I suddenly feel like we’d have been better off with the sand devils?”
Bayl shrugged. “I don’t see the problem. He’s on our side.”
I stared at him incredulously. Had Enamdis really rendered him this stupid? “That might not last forever, Bayl,” I said, keeping my voice low enough that none of the crew could possibly overhear. “Every malcontent and rebel the Temple of the King’s Law has ever hung from the city walls started as a mere ‘idealist’, questioning things no subject of the Shadow King has any right to question. If they were not so mercifully rare, idealists would tear down civilization itself with their endless questioning. Our city would end up like Raam: a wretched hive of lawlessness, ruled by murderers and thieves.”
Bayl didn’t reply. I’m not sure he was even listening, for his attention was once again fixed upon the statuesque form of Enamdis where she stood upon the quarterdeck, both hands gripping the skimmer’s great mekillot-bone wheel. I sighed and checked the straps of my armour again.
We made good time at first, reaching the Nibenese Road by midmorning. As Enamdis had predicted, the ancient stone causeway was half-buried in great drifts of yellow sand, carried from the surrounding desert by the gusting winds that gave this month its name. It was a cruel irony that the same wind that had filled our sails so readily would now be responsible for delaying us, for the deepest drifts bogged down the silt skimmer’s huge wheels and dragged on the bottom of its sturdy hull. Two more crewmembers – a wiry, ebony-skinned man of middle years and a scar-faced woman whose cropped hair was almost the colour of the sun – had joined the pair at the capstan.
Three of the crew had erected a shelter of blue wyrm-silk below the quarterdeck once the sun had climbed high enough to make it necessary, and Bayl, Neren and I sat beneath it. Enamdis remained at the helm. Like the rest of the crew, she had wrapped a krama about her head, but she seemed otherwise unconcerned about the day’s steadily growing heat.
“We should reach Bremil Pass by tomorrow evening,” Neren said, sipping water from his cup. “If we are lucky enough not to be attacked tonight, the sand devils will have lost their chance. Nibenay maintains a fort in the pass and the lands roundabout are regularly patrolled.”
Bayl and I knew this already, of course, but we were supposed to be simple travellers, so we both made a great show of looking relieved at the revelation.
“You said you were a healer,” Neren continued. “That will no doubt prove useful in the aftermath of any attack. We have bandages, needle and fine silk thread for stitching wounds, spirits for cleansing and for dulling pain, even a crate of potion fruit. I have asked Mei to stay in your shadow. She knows where everything is stored on this vessel. Just ask her for anything you need.”
“Mei? That’s the blonde girl?” I asked.
Neren nodded. “She’s the finest archer aboard. Eyes like a hawk, except she can see well in the dark, too.” He shrugged. “Maybe she has some elven blood, like you?”
I tried not to take offence at that. I could hardly deny the evidence my vile father had left imprinted in my eyes and ears. It did not seem to me that Neren had meant his words as an insult, however. His smile was warm and genuine, with not a trace of the mocking irony I was used to whenever people spoke of half-bloods like myself.
“In any case, any sand devil who tries to get at you is likely to end up looking like a cactus,” Neren grinned.
“If her eyes are so good,” asked Bayl, voicing what I myself had been wondering, “how come she’s not your lookout?”
Neren sobered abruptly, and for a moment his eyes lit with fury. “It is difficult to serve as a lookout when one cannot call out what one sees,” he grated. With an obvious effort of will, he softened his angry tones. “I am sorry, my friends. You could not have known. When she was but a child, Mei somehow angered one of the Shadow King’s wives.” He shook his head. “I don’t know the details. Shadow-brides are notoriously petty and spiteful. Perhaps she was simply jealous of the girl’s beauty. Whatever the reason, she had Mei’s tongue cut out.”
I almost bit my tongue to stop myself from replying to this. Of course, his complaint was not entirely without merit. There have always been a few templar-wives who abuse their power and authority, and some are indeed vicious sadists and petty tyrants. I suffered enough indignities myself in my first few months in the Naggaramakam to know that. I could well believe Mei might have fallen foul of one of the worst of our number through no real fault of her own, especially if she had been merely a silly child, still ignorant of how the world truly works. But this callow youth, Neren, whether noble-born or not, had no right to criticise the actions of a templar-wife. Only senior wives and the Shadow King himself may chastise us.
Perhaps realising he had spoken unwisely, Neren changed the subject. “Ah, the mountains! We are almost at Nibenay’s doorstep.”
Indeed, the jagged, broken peaks of the Stormclaw and Black Spine ranges were just visible upon the southern horizon, their dark shapes dancing in the heat. A wide gap separated the two ranges: this was Bremil Pass, the gateway to the fertile lands beyond. I wondered whether I, or any of us, would live to reach it.
Enjoy!
***
The mountains had grown from a blurred, uneven line on the horizon to a recognisable part of the landscape by the time the sun sank beneath the western horizon. As the sky darkened from the yellow-tinged blue of late afternoon to the deep crimson of evening, the skimmer’s crew part-furled the sails and unlinked the capstan. We would keep moving until full dark, but it was too hazardous to maintain full speed in the gathering gloom.
Tamar, the scarred, red-haired woman who had spent most of the day at the capstan, lit rushlights and passed them to Mei to place in sconces around the gunwales. The lookout, Gerreth, a lad perhaps a couple of years older than Mei, with the coppery skin and jet-black hair of a Draji, called out how far he could still see every few minutes. At last, he announced that he could no longer see more than a few yards beyond the skimmer’s prow, and Enamdis ordered the sails fully furled and the locking bars inserted through the hull and into the wheels to prevent the vessel from shifting during the night.
Anyone who had not already armed themselves took weapons from the pile Mei had left nestled between the door to Neren’s cabin and the stairs up to the quarterdeck. We had all eaten and drunk our water rations while the skimmer was still moving, so we could now give our full attention to keeping watch for the attack we all hoped desperately would not come.
Neren approached, his face grim. “I want you up on the quarterdeck, you and Bayl and Mei and Tamar. It’s more easily defensible than the main deck.”
I opened my mouth to protest. Though I had no intention of telling him who – and what – I really was, I did not want to be treated as some fragile, helpless waif. Even without using so much magic that it marked me as a defiler, I could still fight. Deep in my soul, I knew I needed to prove to myself that I could kill the vile filth that had so horribly violated me less than two days before.
But he didn’t even give me the chance to speak. “Ysuun,” he said, his voice low and patient, “you are our healer. Once the fight is over, how many of my crew survive their wounds may depend upon your skills. I do not seek to spare you danger for your own sake, but for the sake of us all.”
I saw the sense in that. Had I been thinking rationally, I would have come to the same conclusion. Still, I hoped I would at least have the chance to bathe the blades of my lotulis in sand devil blood. Oh, how I wanted to see them suffer even a fraction of the pain they had inflicted on me!
The quarterdeck was almost square, but it narrowed slightly with the curve of the skimmer’s hull, from almost 15 feet abeam at its forward extent, where two sets of narrow steps led up from the main deck with the skimmer’s wheel between them, to a little over 10 feet abaft. The mizzenmast stood at the dead centre of the quarterdeck, and it was at its base that Mei had piled half a dozen quivers of arrows and two crates filled with bandages, dried herbs, potion fruit, suturing kits, splints and other tools of the healer’s trade.
The girl herself was stringing a small but powerful-looking recurved bow constructed from layers of horn and wood. Tamar sat beside her, leaning against one of the medical crates with her long, bare legs stretched out before her, adjusting the straps of her leather and chitin breastplate. A pair of matching carrikals lay beside her, their bone blades razor-sharp. The red-haired woman looked up as Bayl and I approached, and her scarred face creased into a scowl.
“I hope you know how to fight,” she said, her voice harsh. “My sister, Dragon take her, pops out squalling brats faster than the Queen of Raam. I joined this crew to get away from having to look after useless children, so you’d better not turn out to be one.”
“You talking to me or her?” Bayl drawled.
Tamar let out a bark of laughter. “Just don’t get in my way, gladiator! I’ll take the port stairs. You can have the starboard.”
Bayl shrugged, then nodded toward the woman’s axes. “Never much liked carrikals. Too slow for my way of fighting. But those two are fine workmanship.”
Tamar grinned happily, and for a moment I realised she must have been quite beautiful before someone or something tore her face to shreds. “These are my babies,” she chuckled. “Well, they’re the closest I ever want to having kids, anyway.” She plucked one from the deck and tossed it to Bayl.
He caught it deftly and whirled it through several practice swings. “Well-balanced. Yeah, I could see this doing some damage.” He handed it back to her. “I’ll stick with this, though,” he said, patting the alhulak tied around his waist.
“Does your kilt fall down when you untie that?” Tamar asked, a mischievous glint in her eyes.
Bayl harrumphed in mock umbrage and stumped across to take his place at the head of the starboard steps. Mei stifled a giggle, then made a rapid series of hand gestures, her slender fingers moving faster than my eyes could follow. Tamar guffawed.
I just wished the sand devils would show up, if they were ever going to. The tension of waiting was starting to bring back memories from two nights ago. Despite the growing shill of the desert night, I felt rivulets of sweat sliding icily across my skin.
Below us on the main deck, the rest of the crew stood evenly spaced around the rail. Most of the rushlights had been extinguished, and the rest would be put out as soon as the moons were in the sky. The crew would sleep two at a time, for an hour each, while the rest stayed on watch. They’d doubtless be weary the next day, but better weary than dead or captured by sand devils.
Enamdis and Neren stood beneath the mainmast, Enamdis with her gouge in her hands and Neren leaning on a plain wooden staff. He had given no clue as to his talents. He was obviously no warrior, but it is never wise to underestimate a practitioner of the Way. Alone among us all, he had donned no armour; he still wore only his pale grey jubba.
The hours crawled by like years as we waited. Tamar managed to get an hour’s rest somewhere near midnight, but Mei shook her head when the red-haired woman suggested she do the same. Bayl did not need to sleep, of course, and I knew I could not. Enamdis – and, to my surprise, Neren too – also remained awake.
The night was far from silent. Though there were fewer beasts living here in the sandy wastes than there had been last night in the badlands, and fewer still that would venture abroad by night, even the faintest sound could echo for miles across the dunes. I found I was grinding my teeth to stop myself from crying out at every hiss and roar. Mei nuzzled closer to me where we sat at the foot of the mizzenmast, half-covered by a woollen blanket. I smiled at the girl, grateful for her silent understanding. Somehow, I knew she had suffered more than the loss of her tongue. I did not want to think that any of my sister templars could have subjected a mere child to anything resembling what the sand devils had done to me, but I felt a strange kinship with Mei nonetheless.
Suddenly, there came a gasping cry from the maindeck. Mei and I shot to our feet, I grasping the haft of my lotulis, Mei snatching up her bow and nocking a flint-headed arrow to the string.
One of the crew was down, clutching at the hilt of a throwing knife jutting from his chest, a dark pool quickly growing on the deck beneath him. It was Gerreth. I was about to rush down from the quarterdeck, though I knew he was already beyond my abilities as a healer. But Bayl cried out a warning and I saw a kirre-horn grapnel sail over the rail and catch tight against the gunwale. Then another, and another. Within moments, a dozen or more black-clad figures swarmed onto the main deck, slashing at the crew with scimitars that gleamed in the moonlight. Not for the first time, I wondered how the sand devils could amass enough iron to make so many weapons. Surely it could not all have come from raiding trade caravans?
But Neren’s crew were skilled fighters. The first half-dozen sand devils to set foot upon the main deck died within moments, their skulls or ribcages smashed with stone-headed maces, run through the throat or belly with spears, or hacked down with axes and flaked-obsidian swords. Mei’s first arrow took a sand devil through the neck as he advanced upon Neren and Enamdis. The half-giant glanced in our direction and grinned.
But three of the crew were down too. Gerreth was dead. Larech, the big man who I thought must be half-mul, had taken a deep gash to the leg and had staggered back to where Neren and Enamdis stood. The Gulgan woman, Chanya, lay face-down, dark limbs sprawled like a ragdoll, still clutching her spear in one hand. I could see no wound on her and hoped she had merely been knocked senseless by a glancing blow.
With a snarl, Enamdis rushed forward into the gap left by Gerreth and Larech, swinging her gouge like an axe. Her first swing lopped the goat-horned head from one sand devil woman in a shower of blood. Her second ripped the guts from a male, leaving him writhing in agony on the blood-soaked deck. The half-giant woman slammed her foot into the next face to appear over the rail, breaking the attacker’s nose and hurling him shrieking from his rope, then thrust her weapon’s wicked spike into the throat of the next, sending that one too plummeting to her death on the hard stone roadway twenty-five feet below. Enamdis howled and laughed with sheer joy as she killed. I wasn’t sure whether to be heartened or revolted, but I could see Bayl was even more in love with her than ever.
Mei sent another shaft into the fray, felling the well-muscled sand devil who had dragged Chanya’s unconscious body to the rail, obviously intending to hand her down to his companions so that she could be carried off to a hideous fate.
Then a trio of sand devils, larger than their kin and clad in armour formed from pieces of barbed cilops carapace rather than the form-fitting black leather worn by the rest, leaped over the rail together and barrelled towards Neren.
Bayl called out a warning, but Enamdis was still at the rail at the other side of the skimmer, hewing through the ropes up which the sand devils still swarmed, and everyone else on the main deck had their hands full just staying alive. Neren was on his own.
The young noble seemed unconcerned, though. He had not even switched his staff to both hands to wield it defensively, but continued to lean upon it as if it were a walking stick. The three sand devils were almost upon him.
Unaccountably, they stopped dead and staggered back, as though they had run into an invisible wall. Only then did Neren even deign to look at them. There seemed to be a faint nimbus of silver light about his head. The young noble moved his staff, almost imperceptibly, and one of the sand devils jerked upright and seemed to jump three feet or so into the air. He hung there for a moment, struggling feebly against unseen bonds, then, with bone-shattering force, smashed sideways into his fellows, sending all three sprawling to the deck.
One of the three surged to her feet and leaped at Neren with an almost animal growl. But she ran straight past him, as though he had vanished from her sight. The look of surprise on her brutish face was almost comical, but it quickly twisted into agony as Larech ran her through from behind. Even wounded, his great strength easily drove the obsidian head of his spear through chitin, leather and flesh alike. He finished her off with a second thrust through her heart as she lay writhing and gasping on the deck.
The other two lived only a moment longer. Neren picked them up with his mind and, with a flick of his staff, sent them hurtling through the air to vanish over the skimmer’s rail, their screams cut off abruptly as their bodies smashed against the stone roadway.
But I had allowed myself to be distracted. Several sand devils had fought their way through to the foot of the stairs leading up to the quarterdeck. Bayl and Tamar flexed their muscles and settled into fighting stances as the horned figures surged up the steps, howling like wild beasts.
Mei’s arrows whistled past me and sank hungrily into the sand devils’ unarmoured throats. But then I saw one of the rearmost attackers throw something that flashed as it streaked toward me, past me... I heard a wet thud and a wordless cry, and turned to see Mei falling to her knees, the bow tumbling from her hand. The throwing knife had embedded itself in the upper part of her left thigh, and blood poured from the wound, glistening black against her pale flesh. She stared past me, her grey eyes wide and unfocussed in shock.
Ignoring the sounds of battle, which seemed entirely too close for comfort, I dashed to the girl’s side, supporting her with one arm as she sank to the deck. I studied her wound in dismay. The blade had severed the artery feeding her leg. Her life was spilling out, far too quickly for any mere surgeon to save her life.
I glanced behind me. Bayl and Tamar were fighting desperately, but they were being driven back towards me one step at a time. Bayl’s alhulak was everywhere at once, its kirre-horn tines ripping open throats and bellies without mercy. I saw him grab one sand devil who had almost slipped past him, hurling the fiend back down the stairs. Tamar seemed almost to be dancing rather than fighting, but there was no doubting the brutal efficiency of her fighting style. Her bare legs flashed in the moonlight as she span and leaped, her twin carrikals carving crimson arcs through the air.
Had I had the time to think rationally, I would have let Mei die. I owed her nothing. But my mind was not functioning on any rational basis. Sending my senses outward, beyond my mortal flesh, I felt the girl’s desperately flickering life-force, the stronger, steadier flame of Bayl’s, the flashing, fiery fury of Tamar, and the roiling, black, hate-fuelled souls of the sand devils. Then, below me, I felt something else: the passive green glow of plant life. Without hesitation, I tore the life away from whatever it was below me, shaped it, forced it to submit to my will. I placed my hand on Mei’s bloody thigh. She whimpered in pain, but she was too weak by now to struggle. With my other hand, I pulled the dagger free, its barbed edge tearing the girl’s tender flesh. As her blood spurted thickly from the awful wound, I poured every last shred of the life I had stolen into her trembling body.
There was a blinding flash of green-white light and I found myself flat on my back, my hand throbbing as if scalded. Mei lay very still. Her blood covered the deck; we were both soaked in it, and, for one terrible moment, I thought I had failed. But her wound was gone, with not even a scar to mark her smooth, pale skin. She was unconscious, but her chest moved with the breath of life.
But the night was far from over. How had so many sand devils tracked us, over miles of rock and sand, without us seeing any sign of them? I knew now that, had we not encountered Neren and his silt skimmer, Bayl and I would have stood no chance. There were enough of these fiends that we could not even have fought well enough that they were forced to slay us. They would have taken us alive to face night after night of hellish torture.
And that might still have been our fate. Bayl was bleeding from dozens of cuts to his chest and arms. Tamar was wounded too, and I could see she was exhausted. Each step of her bloody dance was just a little slower than the last.
Still shaking from the after-effects of my defiling, I hefted my lotulis and began drawing more magic from whatever lived in the cargo hold below. I had already revealed myself as a sorceress in healing Mei. There was no longer much point in trying to avoid using my magic. If Neren and his crew objected to having a defiler aboard, I hoped that at least an obvious display of destructive power would render them too intimidated to express their disapproval.
Perhaps Fate requires one life to pay for another. Or perhaps it was my fault, in that I spent too long checking that Mei was indeed still among the living. Perhaps, if Tamar had not worked the skimmer’s capstan for so long, she would not have started the battle already tired. Such grasping for meaning is pointless, yet the fact that I cannot stop myself from wondering reminds me that, no matter what I have done in the name of necessity, I am still human.
Tamar pulled her remaining carrikal from a sand devil’s chest. The other lay between her bare feet, clotted with blood and hair, the jawbone that formed its blades shattered. The red-haired woman spun to avoid a scimitar slash that would have opened her throat. She seemed to be moving in slow motion. She saw the fiend grinning at her, his fangs gleaming in Ral’s sickly light, but she was already off-balance. The scimitar plunged savagely through her belly, doubling her over, forcing a gasp of agony from her lungs. Blood sprayed as the blade burst through her leather-clad back. With a surge of sorrow, I saw that it had severed the woman’s spine.
Her graceful dancer’s legs folded under her as the sand devil wrenched his bloody blade free. Tamar sprawled on the deck, her carrikal falling from her hand. I thought the sand devils would merely surge over her to attack me, but the red-haired woman’s defiance had driven them into a bestial rage. Dark shapes swarmed around her body, scimitars rising and falling again and again, sending showers of crimson droplets into the air amidst the hideous sounds of a butcher’s shop. The fiends howled in ecstasy as they brandished pieces of Tamar’s dismembered body.
But my rage at the gruesome spectacle eclipsed their savage bloodlust just as it overwhelmed my own terror. I was filled with power, with life stolen from the green things below me in the hold. My lotulis spun in the air before me, the runes carved into its haft coruscating with livid crimson energy. With a Word, I crushed the will of the foremost sand devil, destroying the fiend’s mind and sending him reeling to hurl himself over the rail to his death. With a second Word, I drove two more to their knees, blood spilling from their eyes, ears, mouths and nostrils. My third Word slew the sand devil who held Tamar’s dripping, severed head, splitting his crimson skin open so that his lifeblood gushed forth in a torrent, mixing with Tamar’s as it soaked the deck.
Bayl had finished off his last foe, snapping her neck almost casually before hurling her spasming body over the rail. Now, he threw himself across the quarterdeck, hammering his fist into one sand devil’s stomach and wrapping his alhulak around the neck of another.
My lotulis scythed the head from one foe, before sinking its razor-sharp tines deep into the chest of his neighbour. But my rage was undimmed. They had died too quickly, almost without pain, and they deserved so much worse for what they had done – to me, and to Gerreth and Tamar, and almost to Mei. The next sand devil to draw my wrath died much more fittingly, as my spinning lotulis took off both her arms at the shoulders before slicing her open from crotch to sternum. She died writhing in her own blood and entrails. I do not clearly remember what I did to the rest – Bayl grew very pale and silent the one time I asked him about it – but I still feel no pity for them. If I could have made them suffer even more terribly, I would have done so joyously.
I was only dimly aware that the fighting had already ceased below us on the main deck. Only when Neren appeared, Enamdis looming over his shoulder, did I realise that it was all over and that we had survived. The last of my magic spent, my lotulis hung in the air for a moment, unmoving, then clattered to the deck. Exhausted, I sank into Bayl’s arms.
As I tended to the wounded, nobody seemed inclined to question what had occurred on the quarterdeck. I was too weary at the time to wonder why they seemed so accepting of my use of magic.
We had lost four of the crew. Young Gerreth had never stood a chance. He had bled to death almost before the battle had even begun. And there was nothing anyone could do for Tamar other than to gather up the sad, bloody pieces of her and tie them up in a linen sheet to give her burial some semblance of dignity. Thankfully, Enamdis set herself to that grim task, for I did not wish to set foot on that bloody quarterdeck ever again. Dornal, the bearded veteran who had brought us food and drink when Bayl and I first came aboard, had taken a knife in the stomach and another across the throat, and had died almost as quickly as Gerreth, whom I later learned had been his nephew. The last to die had been Korla, a middle-aged woman from Tyr whom I’d never even exchanged a word with but who had seemed as hard and tough as the dried meat she habitually chewed. A sand devil had hamstrung her from behind, then knifed her repeatedly in the chest and throat as she lay helpless.
Larech’s leg would heal well enough without magic. The wound was deep, but clean. I stitched it closed and someone found him a crutch to get around on until he could walk on his own. Chanya’s scalp needed stitching too, but the deeper wound was to her pride. She had belonged to a warrior dagada back in Gulg, and spending most of a battle unconscious due to one unlucky blow, while her comrades fought and died around her, was almost more than she could bear.
Jak, her fellow Gulgan, would never wield his trikal again. A sand devil’s scimitar had taken off his left hand at the wrist and removed three fingers from his right. The fiend had been about to slice off Jak’s manhood, too, but had been interrupted by a gouge spike through the guts, courtesy of Enamdis. Neren reassured the crippled Gulgan that House Mentsu would look after him and his two young sons even though he could no longer crew a silt skimmer. The black-skinned man wept with gratitude as the young noble embraced him.
Enamdis and Bayl had both taken only superficial cuts and bruises, and I left them to bind each other’s wounds, ribbing each other good-naturedly over their respective kill tallies. It seemed Enamdis had slain exactly one more sand devil than Bayl, though he was inclined to dispute her number over some technicality. I was not surprised, when I turned back from stitching Chanya’s head wound, to see them locked in a passionate embrace. Surviving a battle by the skin of his teeth had always left Bayl rather amorous, and it seemed Enamdis shared this trait. I hoped they could find some comfort in each other.
“You should get some rest,” came Neren’s voice from behind me. He sounded even wearier than I felt, though he was the only person on the skimmer who seemed not to have taken even a scratch. “I think that was all of them.”
I shrugged. “If more come, we’re dead anyway. Only those two seem to have any energy left at all.” I nodded toward Enamdis and Bayl.
Neren hesitated, frowning thoughtfully. “It is none of my business, I know…”
I was too tired even to laugh. “You want to know if you should order the crew to start gathering stones now, or wait until morning?” I asked, bitterly.
He smiled. “I was merely going to inquire as to why several of the crates in my hold seem now to be filled with black ash rather than with the pomegranates we are supposed to be transporting to Nibenay. But, of course, we both know the answer to that. No, do not concern yourself. You saved Mei’s life. She, and I, are both grateful.”
“Gratitude is not usually enough to keep a defiler alive,” I said, wondering where this was leading.
“Not everyone has the same view of magic, Ysuun. I do not condone defiling, but I know that magic itself is not evil, even though it is supposedly forbidden for all save the sorcerer-kings and their templars. There are other ways of using magic, besides tearing it from the life around us…”
“But, are you not a master of the Way, Lord Neren? You are no sorcerer, surely?”
Once again, he hesitated. “There are… groups of enlightened men and women. Organisations that can train those with the gift of magic to use that gift… responsibly. And to hide it from those who would not understand.”
My spine turned to ice. “You risk much, telling me this,” I said, hoping my face and tongue did not betray the creeping horror I felt. For now I remembered what I had seen in that Temple report on House Mentsu.
He gazed into my eyes for a long moment. “Perhaps,” he said after a time. “There is much darkness in you. Even had I not witnessed what you did to those sand devils, I would have known that. Yet, still, you risked your own life to save a young girl you owed nothing to. And seeing poor Tamar give her life to protect you roused you to fury. No, I do not think you will betray me, Ysuun.” Then, without another word, he turned and walked away.
***
As dawn broke over the distant Black Spine Mountains, we stripped the dead sand devils of their weapons and armour – their iron blades alone would more than pay for the cargo I had defiled – and dragged their corpses out into the desert a couple of hundred yards from the road. Kestrekels already circled overhead, eyeing the gory heap of tangled limbs and spilled guts with their customary hunger. By midmorning, there would be nothing left but a scattering of bones.
We buried Gerreth, Dornal, Korla and Tamar by the side of the road, marking each grave with a piece of wood cut from a broken spar. I knew the next windstorm would scatter the markers and bury the graves in mounds of sand, but understood the need for such symbols.
Mei clung to Enamdis, sobbing uncontrollably into the half-giant woman’s brawny shoulder. The rest of the crew seemed still to be too shocked and weary to weep. Or perhaps they had simply spent long enough in the desert to know better than to waste precious water on tears for those who were now beyond all suffering. We stood, shivering, our breaths turning into little silver spirals in the chill dawn air, as if Athas itself sought to prove we still lived.
“The Fates are strange,” Bayl rumbled softly behind my left shoulder. “There must have been twice as many of the bastards coming up the port stairs as the starboard. If she’d chosen differently, it’d probably be me you’d be burying now.” He shook his head as if to clear it of unwelcome thoughts. I noticed he had tucked one of Tamar’s carrikals – the broken one – into his belt alongside a pair of sand devil horns.
“She fought well,” I said, not sure what else to say. I still felt sick and half-dazed, from the battle, and from Neren’s revelation.
Bayl shrugged. “Not for you, though, lady.”
I didn’t understand what he meant, until he nodded, sadly, towards Mei. I remembered then the way the blonde girl and the red-haired warrior-woman had laughed together at Bayl’s pretended discomfiture only a few hours before, and the countless glances exchanged between them before that, the significance of which I had entirely missed at the time. Was I growing old and stupid, I wondered?
Neren spoke a few words, a eulogy for the dead, but I wasn’t listening. What was I going to do once we reached Nibenay? The Temple – no the Shadow King himself – had to be told. Neren and his crew, and perhaps the whole of House Mentsu, were aligned with, if not the Veiled Alliance itself, some group that shared its nature. There was no room for doubt concerning what Neren had said, no other way of interpreting his words. And there was no doubt about what would happen to these people if that news reached the ears of the Shadow King, for he could not allow the Veiled Alliance to operate freely in his city.
It was likely I would be required to organise the arrests of Neren, Enamdis, Mei and the rest, for I knew them by sight, then their interrogation under whatever torture was required, for we would have to determine how far their treason had spread. The Temple of the King’s Law would take care of the executions, but I would still be expected to witness their deaths.
I recognised the necessity – the moral imperative – for all this. Yet the thought sickened me. These people, despite their misguided allegiances, had fought alongside Bayl and I. They had risked their lives, and their friends had given theirs, to save us from the sand devils. Had they been inclined instead to leave us in the desert to face our fate alone, we could have invoked no obligation, moral or otherwise, to compel them to aid us. We were free of the sand devils solely because Neren had decided that rescuing two ragged vagrants he had never met before was simply the right thing to do.
My loyalty to my lord and husband still remained. Harsh though his law was, I knew my city could never survive without it. But now I felt an obligation too to this crew of traitors. Had the same idealism that had compelled Neren to save us also been what had led him into treason?
I felt paralysed, my mind caught upon an endless, spinning wheel of doubt.
Entirely unknowing, Bayl offered me some respite. “Ah, I thought I recognised it,” he muttered suddenly.
Glancing up, I realised he was watching Mei and Enamdis. He had barely taken his eyes from the half-giant woman since the battle, but it was the rapidly flickering fingers of the human girl that had provoked his comment now. After a moment, Enamdis answered Mei in the same manner, though I realised she was much slower and less practised at it than Mei, or than Tamar had been.
“The Silent Speech,” Bayl said by way of explanation. “A lot of the nomad tribes up in the Tablelands use it. I picked it up from one of my partners, back when old Boran was still putting me in for matched pairs. He said the elves had come up with it, so they could coordinate hunts and raids without making noise.” He blushed suddenly and looked at his feet. “They’re… uh… talking about Tamar, I think. Private stuff. I probably shouldn’t be listening in.”
I pounced on the opportunity almost desperately, hoping it would give me something to distract my mind from the awful decision I would have to make once we reached Nibenay. “Could you teach me?” I asked Bayl. “This so-called ‘Silent Speech’. It could prove useful.”
I felt a little embarrassed, for I could hear the desperate eagerness in my own voice, but Bayl just shrugged.
“I suppose so,” he said. “The basics are pretty simple, then it’s just a matter of getting faster at it.” He grinned suddenly. “You want to be able to talk to Mei, then? Thinking of replacing Tamar, are you?”
I shot him a glare so venomous that he actually backed away, putting his hands up placatingly. “Sorry, lady,” he said. “That was a stupid thing to say.”
I shook my head, too tired to even be truly angry with him. I do not think Bayl has ever known despair, or even real sorrow. He recognises these emotions in others, and in his own bluff, cheerful, clumsy way, seeks to dispel them. Often, his irrepressible optimism alone is enough to restore my spirits. But, this time, he had touched a nerve. Oh, how I wanted to be able to offer some comfort to Mei for her loss! Not of the sort Tamar herself would have given – despite what the lurid stories circulating in the dung-hole taverns of the Western District would have you believe, we templar-wives are mostly not inclined to jump lustfully upon one another every time our husband’s back is turned – but at least some show of human sympathy. But I could not even bear to go near her. If Neren could be believed, the girl had already suffered cruel injustice at the hands of one of my sister-wives, and now I, whom she trusted, whom she had fought to protect, would deliver her to far worse in the interrogation cells beneath the Temple.
“Yes, Bayl. Teach me this ‘Silent Speech’. I will ask Neren to find us a quiet place in the hold, out of the way of the crew.”
I hoped only that I could avoid Mei’s beautiful, accusing eyes until we reached Nibenay.
Keep going !
Plague
***
The gap between the Stormclaw and Black Spine Mountains is some fifteen miles wide, and those who have never been there must wonder why the route through is termed a ‘pass’, or why Nibenay bothers to maintain a fort to guard the road. But the land between the mountains is scattered with huge boulders carved from the peaks by ancient war-magic and by millennia of fierce winds and infrequent but heavy rains, and riven with deep chasms that make travel all but impossible except upon the raised causeway that carries the road from Nibenay to the cities of the north.
As it enters the pass, the causeway rises up on massive stone pylons, once carved into the forms of robed men and women, but now so worn that they might have been carved from native rock by the wind. In my first year as a bride of the Shadow King, an older templar-wife told me, with great pride, that our lord and husband was one of the figures depicted there in his original human form. I do not know whether this is true, or merely one of the many rumours that circulate among the lower ranks of the templarate, occasionally evolving over decades or centuries into something like religious mythology. Our husband does not demand, nor even encourage, such spiritual devotion, only worldly loyalty and the competent execution of our duties. But many of my fellow templar-wives, especially the younger ones, seem to need an object for such devotion. Surely it is better to worship the Shadow King as a god than to fall into the veneration of false deities, as has happened in Raam, where even the Sorceress-Queen styles herself a mere priestess!
Squatting above the causeway like a bloated stone spider, about a third of the way from the northern end of the pass, is the fort that marks the most northerly extent of the Shadow King’s domain. Built from cyclopean blocks of red and black granite, it has guarded Bremil Pass for longer than anyone – save perhaps the Shadow King himself – can say. I have seen temple records from two millennia ago, upon parchment so fragile that it must be kept preserved within ensorcelled crystal slabs, that speak of Bremil Fort as though it were already ancient. There is a tradition within the Temple of War that Bremil was the name of the first high consort of that temple, though I have no idea whether it is based upon truth. Certainly, it is not a Nibenese name (nor even, to my ears, a woman’s name).
But, then, neither does the fort resemble anything of Nibenay in its architecture. It is in the form of a massive gateway, with two square towers flanking the narrow portal. The walls are utterly plain and glassy-smooth, their granite blocks fitted together so closely that, even after uncounted centuries of sand-scouring winds, the joints are invisible from more than a few feet away. The elaborate carvings that would adorn every surface of a Nibenese building – even a military one – are entirely absent. Attempts were made, some four centuries ago, to adorn at least the lower sections of the towers with celebratory carvings of the Shadow King and his high consorts, but they came to naught. No chisel, not even an iron one, could so much as scratch the stone’s surface. Sunara, the high consort whose scheme it had been, fell from her lord and husband’s favour soon after and died a traitor’s death within the year. No more such attempts have been made.
The crimson sun was just brushing the peaks of the Stormclaw Mountains as the silt skimmer rumbled to a halt before the gates of the fort. The sky was deepening to violet above us, the tops of the fort’s twin towers outlined in faint auras of jade-green to my elf-tainted eyes. To the east, the first stars were just becoming visible. After the blood and horror of the previous night, they seemed to me like the hungry eyes of night-predators, hunting us. I shivered despite the day’s lingering heat.
Figures approached us in the gathering darkness. Half a dozen guards in armour made from inix scales – two of them half-giants, the rest humans – escorted two women clad in the distinctive dress of templar-wives.
It has long been a matter of (often heated) debate in the halls of the Naggaramakam, what the most appropriate and seemly style of dress should be for a loyal templar-wife. In Nibenay, it has always been the tradition for nobles and others of great wealth or status to wear very little clothing. The patriarch or matriarch of a noble house usually goes naked save for a simple breechcloth (and often a great deal of expensive jewellery), while slaves are expected to cover their bodies (which are, after all, the possessions of another) from head to foot. But a templar is not merely a woman of high status; she is also a servant (we would never, of course, use the term ‘slave’ ) of the Shadow King. More to the point, having the Shadow King’s wives’ and daughters’ bodies on open display to the masses always struck many within the Templarate as unseemly. We stand outside the normal social hierarchy of Nibenay, so we can afford to dress more modestly. Of course, there are always some among our number (often the scions of noble houses) who take more of a pride in their physical beauty than in their duties as templar-wives, and who bridle at the idea of hiding their bodies away like slaves.
Thus, without anyone ever establishing any official rules, a sort of ‘uniform’ has evolved over the centuries. Most templar-wives who wish to make their status obvious wear a sampot of wyrm-silk that hangs to the ankles and is usually coloured a dark blue or purple, an ornate horned and spired crown of ivory and painted or gilded wood, and a beaded collar that hangs down over the chest to hide as much or as little of the breasts as the individual templar desires.
Within the forbidden halls of the Naggaramakam, of course, we do go entirely naked. That is probably the only thing the scurrilous and filthy-minded tale-spinners of the Western District taverns do have right. I suspect the primary reason is simply to make it more difficult to hide a knife or a vial of poison when one is visiting the quarters of a rival.
With a strange mingling of relief and awkwardness, I realised that I recognised the elder of the two templar-wives. Abhivada had always been, if never exactly kind, then at least always approachable, in her calm and dutiful way. Like many other young shadow-brides, I had had my spirit steadied, if not quite restored, by her words of cool and pragmatic comfort after encounters with my more vicious sister-wives. Looking back with the clear sight of an adult, I think the closest Abhivada ever came to actually consoling any of us was a gentle admonition to “stop being such a silly girl, wasting all that precious water”, but compared to some of the treatment we youngsters were used to, that seemed like a mother’s love to us at the time.
She was silver-haired now, though still handsome, her face lined only around the eyes and at the corners of her thin lips. As she had always done, she wore her beads long and her sampot discreetly fastened. Her hands were empty at her sides: as I knew very well, she needed no weapon to enforce her will.
Her companion looked to be in her late teens, and perhaps her youth was sufficient excuse for the shamelessness of her dress. She had tied her sampot so that it fell open at the left side, displaying one shapely leg from painted toes all the way to softly-rounded hip. Her collar of amethysts and carnelians only emphasised her jutting breasts. But much worse was the young woman’s attitude of obvious contempt for everyone around her, even for Abhivada, who as a senior templar-wife deserved her unconditional respect.
Even from the deck of the silt skimmer, I could feel Abhivada’s disapproval for this young harlot like a wall of ice between them.
Then the old woman’s sharp eyes caught mine in the fading light and, for a moment, the rest of the world seemed to slide away into the darkness. She did not speak to me, neither in words nor mind to mind, for she recognised immediately that I was not travelling openly, and knew as well as I did that a master of the Way was aboard and might easily intercept any telepathic message. I received only the impression of mild curiosity as she brushed against my mind.
Neren and Enamdis clambered down to speak to Abhivada, ignoring the younger templar-wife. The girl’s eyes glittered with impotent fury and, despite myself, I felt almost sorry for her then. No doubt she had come to the Templarate from some noble house, fondly imagining that her new status would be immeasurably loftier than that she left behind as an unwanted and unregarded younger daughter. The first few years as a templar-wife were never kind to such creatures: she would quickly have learned that a new templar-wife has little real power, and even less comfort. Seeing that she was superfluous, she stalked away back towards the fort, radiating all the burning frustration of a caged kirre.
I read your Sand Devil short-story last year, but hadn't seen this until today. You're very talented. I look forward to reading more.
This is excellent, Duskweaver.
Thanks! :D
I set aside the Pentad itself to read this thread in its entirety. (I've never read the Pentad, either, so that's saying something;
I've never read it either. I keep thinking I probably ought to. To be honest, though, so much has changed between the Pentad and 4th edition Dark Sun that I suspect it might actually hinder my writing more than helping it. I like to throw in odd bits and pieces from older DS lore, but my 'vision' of Athas owes a lot more to the 4e books than to older material. With some additions of my own, of course, such as making the tieflings into descendants of Rajaat's devil-bred defiler super-soldiers. And putting a new spin on the 'Dragon's Levy' (and the Warlock's Curse mechanic), of course.
as does the fact that I've read all of this on my tiny iPhone screen!)
That sounds actively painful! I hope it's been worth it. ;)
I read your Sand Devil short-story last year, but hadn't seen this until today. You're very talented. I look forward to reading more.
Again, thanks for the praise! The next part follows...
***
After a few terse questions to Neren concerning his cargo and passengers, Abhivada glanced up towards the walls of the fort and I felt a brief psionic pulse as she signalled for the gates to be opened to us. Neren and Enamdis climbed aboard, and the silt skimmer juddered back into motion as Bayl and Chanya bent their backs to the capstan.
We passed under the outer gateway, seeing wary eyes peering down at us through the murder holes. There were massive, glass-walled tanks of braxat bile up there, I knew, each fitted with a spigot that could quickly be used to douse anyone passing through the gateway with viscous, green-yellow fluid that would melt flesh from bone in seconds. I knew this because I had designed the tanks myself three years before, after seeing the appalling effects of undiluted braxat bile upon an unfortunate (and terminally clumsy) slave. At the time, it seemed to me that such an agonising demise was a fitting end for enemies of my lord and husband.
The gateway led us into a gloomy courtyard, over which the fort’s twin towers seemed to loom like guards escorting a condemned prisoner. It was much cooler here than outside the fort, for the walls surrounding us were so high that the sun’s burning rays could reach the stone-flagged ground for only a couple of hours around midday.
Neren approached, his staff thumping against the wooden deck. “We will spend the night here,” he said, smiling. “The fort’s senior templar has invited us to share the evening meal with her and her sister templars.”
“Truly?” I asked, surprised. Such generosity was uncharacteristic of Abhivada.
Neren’s smile broadened. “She actually only invited me. But where I go, my crew goes. I’m not going to feast on delicacies while Enamdis and the rest sit and shiver out here, nibbling on ship’s biscuit and dried inix.”
He lowered his voice then, and his smile was replaced by a look of concern. “I won’t deny this could be dangerous for you, Ysuun. It’s best you say as little as possible. I’ve mentioned we were attacked by sand devils, but I’ve said nothing of your earlier encounter with them. All she knows is that you are an itinerant healer we picked up in the wastes.” He hesitated and looked away. “I am afraid the younger templar might have gotten the impression I picked you up for… umm… less than noble reasons.”
I probably ought to have been outraged at the suggestion that a mere girl, who had probably only been a templar for a year at most, might believe me to be some noble rake’s casually-acquired (and doubtless soon-to-be-discarded) plaything, but the irony was too rich for me to feel much other than slightly chastened amusement. It seemed that the foolish girl had approximately the same opinion of me that I had of her. Neren’s very obvious discomfiture only made it funnier.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone turn quite that shade of crimson before,” I said.
He looked like he didn’t know whether to grin or scowl, but his face soon returned to an expression of almost parental concern. “I doubt any of the templars would be able to identify you as a magic-user,” he said softly, “but don’t feel tempted to use any while we’re here.”
“She’s not a fool,” Bayl rumbled from just behind us.
Neren looked startled, though only for a moment. “I still haven’t gotten used to how quietly you can move, master mul,” he said, his smile returning.
“Bayl sniffed. “Most people don’t. Course, that’s sometimes ‘cos they don’t live long enough.”
Neren raised an eyebrow. “Now, master mul, I know that’s not a threat. I know that because Enamdis is standing right behind you, and if it had been a threat, your voice would have gone up an octave right at the end there.”
“What?” Bayl sounded genuinely puzzled. He can – very occasionally – be adorably slow on the uptake.
Enamdis clouted him over the head playfully. “Because by that point, I’d have been twisting your balls off, little man!”
“Returning to the subject at hand,” Neren interjected smoothly, “I know Ysuun is no fool. But I also know how hard some untrained magic-users can find it to control their powers, especially when in a stressful situation.”
I had a hard job keeping my face straight at that. Of all of us, I was the one least in danger here. I was coming home, after all. The only difficulty would be finding the opportunity to speak to Abhivada without Neren, Enamdis or any of their crew present. Oh, and resisting the urge to pick her subordinate up by her prettily-painted toes and toss her out of a high window.
“Not a single forbidden Word will cross my lips,” I said mildly.
Neren, Enamdis, Bayl, myself and the silt-skimmer’s surviving crew sat around a large, circular table in a lavishly-appointed receiving chamber attached to Abhivada’s quarters near the top of the eastern tower. The table was old and crudely made, obviously out of place among the silken drapes and velvet cushions. It was probably the only table in the fort large enough to accommodate us all. Abhivada joined us, along with her impatient and ill-dressed underling, whom she introduced as Jorani, and a pretty but rather plump girl of about the same age, named Kalliyan, who blinked sleepily at us as she entered. There are always three templars stationed at Bremil Fort at any one time, and they sleep in shifts to ensure there are always two on duty at any time, day or night. Kalliyan had clearly just awoken, meaning that either Abhivada or Jorani would probably retire early from the meal.
A pair of shaven-headed slaves brought trays piled high with ceramic bowls filled with spiced beans, dates, cubes of fried snake, inix and erdlu meat on skewers, and even a plate of alrasb, an elven delicacy of silt serpent cooked in faro leaves. The dates were so old that sugar had crystallised on their wrinked black skins, and the alrasb was second rate at best, with too much spice to hide the taste of the slightly over-ripe silt serpent flesh, but it was the best meal any of us had enjoyed for quite some time.
Abhivada was cordial enough, choosing to take no visible offence that Neren had brought seven uninvited guests with him to share her hospitality. I knew her well enough to realise that this had come as no surprise, and had in fact been her intention, for of course the whole purpose of this meal was to give me an excuse to enter the fort so that she could hear what I had to tell.
As the slaves entered with a second amphora of wine and began to refill everyone’s cups, I quietly excused myself, ostensibly to visit the water closet a short distance down the corridor.
Once in the corridor, I waited. My heart sank when Jorani appeared. But her former air of arrogant contempt was gone. Indeed, she looked rather self-conscious. It seemed to take an effort for her to meet my eyes.
“El… elder sister,” she stammered. “Sister Abhivada apologises that she cannot speak to you in person. Of… of course you will understand the circumstances…”
“Yes, yes,” I replied, actually more annoyed at myself for not having realised already that, as hostess, Abhivada could hardly have abandoned the meal herself to come and speak to me.
Jorani’s mouth opened and closed several times, but no words came out. I realised that she was terrified of me. It occurred to me then that I was probably the highest-ranking templar the poor girl had ever had reason to speak to. In truth, I do not often consider my own position within the hierarchy of the Templarate. As one of the Temple of Thought’s magical researchers, in practise I only really answer to High Consort Siemhouk and to the Shadow King himself. I had been thinking of Abhivada as senior to me, as she had been when last I had any real interaction with her, but she had always been one of those rare few templars who seemed to have no real personal ambition. She would have risen several ranks simply through length of service, but it was certain that I was now far above her in seniority. I found this strangely unsettling.
“I am, as Sister Abhivada has doubtless guessed, returning from a mission,” I said, keeping my voice low as much to calm Jorani as to avoid being over-heard. “You may tell her that I was sent to confirm rumours of sand devils near the Dragon’s Bowl.”
Jorani’s eyes widened. But there was excitement now mingled with her fear. “And are they true, then? That’s what’s been attacking the merchant caravans up there? I’ve seen a sand devil before. My father bought one once as a gift for my mother, but it kept attacking the other slaves and he had to have it put down. Nasty, vicious thing it was. I wonder if all the stories were true? I mean, why skin all the merchants but leave all those valuable trade goods behind? Oh…” Abruptly realising she’d been babbling, and whom she’d been babbling to, Jorani snapped her mouth shut.
Throwing her out of a window was looking even more appealing by the moment. But I restrained myself. “How old are you, sister?” I asked coldly.
“Nearly nineteen. Old enough to know better. That’s what Sister Abhivada says all the time.” A hint of her former bitter surliness was creeping back into her tone. I didn’t like it.
“Sister Abhivada is wise. You should listen to her.”
“But she’s an old woman and still so low in rank!” Jorani wailed. “I aim to be a high consort by the time I’m as old as her. What wisdom can she have for me? I don’t want to take her path. I don’t want to waste my life here!”
“Sister Abhivada is old, yes. She has outlived many templars with your… more ambitious approach to life. And no life lived in service to the Shadow King is wasted, sister. To say your life may be wasted borders on disloyalty.”
Jorani blanched at that, but her desperate frustration outweighed her fear still. “But you have reached high rank, elder sister, and you are much younger than Sister Abhivada! What did you do to attract the attention of the Shadow King?”
It was an honest enough question, for all that it was impertinent. “Our lord and husband chose me for my skill with magic. I learned to use it to heal, rather than merely to destroy, and to infuse it into physical objects. It is a rare gift. But, perhaps more importantly, I can see how things fit together, how they work, and how they can be improved. Machines or spells. Potions or people. In some ways they are the same. The Shadow King has a great interest in such things.” I glared disdainfully at Jorani’s half-naked body. “He sets much greater store on such skills than he does upon physical beauty, no matter how brazenly it is displayed.”
“That is easy for you to say,” Jorani muttered. “You are both beautiful and skilled.” Then she blushed, as though only then realising she had spoken aloud.
I was taken aback. But I suppose someone as young and sheltered as Jorani had seen very few half-elves in her short life. The exotic strangeness of my eyes and ears must have seemed like beauty to her naïve eyes. There was, of course, the possibility that this innocence was all a sham, and that her words had been a deliberate attempt at flattery. But, somehow, for all her faults, Jorani seemed too honest for such artifice. Dressed as she was, the thought of her being capable of any form of subtlety was, frankly, laughable.
“We stray from the point of our conversation, sister,” I said, rather more severely than I had intended. “You may further inform Sister Abhivada that I have confirmed the rumours and will be reporting directly to the Shadow King tomorrow when we arrive in Nibenay. I recommend that she communicate with the Temple telepathically and tell them of our imminent arrival.”
Abhivada’s most significant talent – and presumably the reason she had been stationed here at Bremil Fort – was her unusually long-range telepathy. We had joked, we young shadow-brides, that she could sense, and punish, any mischief from the other side of the Naggaramakam, and probably from the other side of the Ringing Mountains too if necessary. My friend, Chanthou, had even asserted that Abhivada would still know what we were up to even when she was dead and her spirit fading into the Grey. But Chanthou had always had a rather morbid sense of humour.
Jorani was nodding. “She is already going to talk to them tonight. We have finally captured the Kirre, but we can’t spare the guards to escort her back to the city for her execution.”
“Who?” I asked, bewildered. Why would a kirre warrant execution? Surely such a beast would be sent to the arena? And who uses the word ‘execution’ to refer to the killing of a wild animal, anyway?
“Apologies, elder sister.” Jorani’s dark eyes lit up at the realisation that she knew something I didn’t know. “The sand devils haven’t been the only ones attacking travellers in these parts. A band of feral elves, led by a sadistic hellion who calls herself ‘the Kirre’, have been murdering and robbing people on the road to Cromlin for nearly a year. But we finally caught up to them. It was a complete slaughter: we butchered every last stinking one of them except their leader. Such a quick death would have been too good for her. No, she’s to be sent back to Nibenay so they can stick her on a spike over the Mekillot Gate.” She grinned. A forthright young woman, yes, and rather a bloodthirsty one too, it seemed. She might do well in the Temple of War.
But her news wasn’t really of any great interest to me, beyond my quiet satisfaction that there were now fewer elves in the world than there had been a few days before. The public impalement of an infamous bandit leader would doubtless cheer the citizenry of Nibenay, reminding them that the Shadow King’s Law, for all its rigid severity, was there for their own good, to keep them and their city safe and secure. As my lord and husband would say, “Even the most worthless miscreant can improve the world, if only by being forcibly removed from it.”
“I had best return to the meal,” I said, “before my travelling companions start to think I have a bladder the size of the city reservoir.”
Jorani giggled, then hurriedly stifled it as she remembered who I was. I swept past her as she bowed her head in respectful submission – an effect that was rather spoiled by the half-snort of stifled laughter that burst from her as nervousness and delight warred within her.
Much to my surprise, I found I didn’t much want to toss her out of a window anymore. Not a high window anyway.
As I re-entered the receiving chamber, I glanced across the table to where Abhivada sat, talking quietly with Neren. She gave no sign that she was even aware of me. Neren too pretended not to have seen me enter, though he was a far less accomplished actor. I tried not to smile at his well-intentioned but totally unnecessary attempts to avoid drawing Abhivada’s attention to me.
I settled myself comfortably amongst the crimson velvet cushions next to Bayl. He didn’t seem to have noticed me, either. He and Enamdis, looming at his other side, burst into raucous laughter at some private joke. I saw Mei lean over from Enamdis’ other side and sign something to the two of them with her fingers.
Bayl is a good teacher, and I had by now picked up the rudiments of the Silent Speech, but Mei’s fingers still moved more quickly than I could follow. Whatever she had said, Enamdis and Bayl collapsed into another bout of uncontrolled laughter.
Mei laughed too, but silently, looking more like someone gasping for air. Perhaps it was the wine, but the sight made me want to weep. The girl seemed to have accepted the loss of her friend and lover, Tamar. It was good that the tragedy of that loss had not destroyed her lively and rather impish sense of humour. But her earlier loss – of her tongue and, I suspected, her innocence – could never be made right. I still wanted to deny that one of my sister-wives could have done such a thing, but I knew deep in my soul that what Neren had told me was true.
And none of that could sweep aside my duty to hand Mei, Neren and all the rest over to the Temple when we reached Nibenay. That duty hung over me like an executioner’s axe.
I could stomach no more of the over-rich food. Instead, I drank until sleep overtook me and comforting darkness smothered my anguish.
In my dreams, a red-haired warrior-woman stood over Mei’s sprawled and helpless form, fending off nightmarish shapes with her twin carrikals. She paused in her desperate fight to stare at me. Her lips moved. She seemed to be asking me a question, but I could not hear the words. She asked again, more urgently, pleading with me for… something.
Her large, dark eyes filled with whirling stars, and I felt myself spiralling back down into ordinary sleep.
The sun’s rays seemed to be trying to bore through my eyes and into my brain, and I was pretty sure the silt serpent I’d eaten was trying to climb back up out of my stomach. But I have always had a good head for wine. Aside from the nausea and the dull ache behind my eyes, I felt well enough.
Not so Bayl. As I sat up, blinking and cursing the sun’s obnoxious presence in the dusty olive-hued sky, he groaned loudly from where he lay, swaddled in blankets, just to my right. We had both been installed under the blue wyrm-silk canopy immediately forward of the quarterdeck.
The silt skimmer was already outside the walls of Bremil Fort. Indeed, it had been its rumbling motion that had awoken me as much as the sunlight. It was still early – only a couple of hours past dawn at the most – but already oppressively hot. I could see Chanya and Larech heaving at the vessel’s capstan, and now understood why the two of them had drunk only a single cup of wine apiece the night before. The great sail was unfurled upon the mainmast, but it hung limp and useless. The surrounding mountains usually channel the wind into Bremil Pass, but this morning was quite still.
Bayl tried to sit up, but immediately regretted the effort. He sank back into his blankets with a muffled curse. “Some bastard’s set up some sort of large-scale mining operation inside my skull,” he said after a few moments. “Did I lose a bet again?”
“I think you might have been trying to impress Enamdis,” I ventured. My own memories of the previous night were rather foggy, but I wasn’t going to let Bayl know that. I winced, wondering if I too had embarrassed myself. I could only hope that Abhivada had assumed my appearing to drink myself into unconsciousness was just part of my ‘cover’. Certainly, nobody at the meal could have imagined me to be a bride of the Shadow King.
Bayl grunted. “I thought I saw a funny thing, last night.”
“Oh?” I replied, rather absently, as I pulled my robe around me and fumbled among the blankets for my makeshift belt.
“I went out for a piss. Must have been after midnight. I wasn’t really drunk yet.” His heavy brows furrowed. “I needed a bit of fresh air too, so I went outside into the yard. Told the guards Neren had sent me to check the skimmer’s wheels had been properly braked.”
I finished belting my robe and glanced back at Bayl. “Well, go on. What did you see?”
He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Well, Mei must have slipped out too. I hadn’t seen her leave the meal, but you know how quiet she can be. As I came round the bow of the skimmer, I saw her sitting on the ground. I could have sworn she was talking to someone.”
“Who?”
“That’s just it. There was no-one there but her and me, and she didn’t seem to know I was there. And she wasn’t talking with her hands. Her mouth was moving, but of course nothing was coming out.”
“Maybe she was just eating?” I ventured.
Bayl grunted. “Maybe. I was behind her, pretty much, so it’s possible.” He shook his head. “Anyway, I went back up to the meal. After a minute or two, she slipped back in too. Nobody seemed to have noticed she’d even been gone. It’s probably nothing.”
“Probably,” I agreed. “But it’s nice to know your watchfulness did not entirely desert you last night.”
He had the sense to look chastened at the implied rebuke. “Sorry, lady. I don’t know what possessed me to drink so much.”
I sighed. “Never mind, Bayl. No harm came of it. In fact, it probably made us both seem no more than ordinary travellers, which is all to the good. Now, let’s see if Neren has anything aboard I can use to cure that hangover of yours.”
I've always believed that character development should never be seen as separate from the rest of the narrative. A story shouldn't just be a series of things happening to a set of characters, with the two elements (plot and characters) considered as two discrete entities. Events shape characters, and characters also shape events. There should always be the feeling that the plot would have turned out entirely differently with a different set of characters, and also that the characters would have been quite different (or at least that their development would have been different) had they been shaped by a different set of events.
Enjoying this story, and I love this piece of advice. I've never heard this expressed in this manner, and it is a very thoughtful bit of wisdom.
“Dragon’s balls, you two, put your backs into it! We’re not going to reach Nibenay by nightfall at this rate.” Enamdis thumped the skimmer’s wheel in disgust and frustration.
Chanya and Larech wisely ignored the half-giant. She’d been yelling at them on and off like that for the past two hours, but it was obvious to everyone – doubtless including Enamdis herself – that the two of them were working the skimmer’s capstan as hard as they could without actually crippling themselves.
But the skimmer’s hold was packed full of trade goods, there was still no wind to speak of, and we were badly short-handed thanks to the sand devils. Of the eight of us aboard, only Chanya, Larech, Bayl and Enamdis had the strength to operate the capstan at all, and Neren had decided that it was better to have two pairs working it in shifts, rather than risk all four becoming exhausted at once. So we crawled along at barely a brisk walking pace.
Had it been up to me, Bayl would have been at the capstan all day, with the other three adding their strength in shifts. But Neren, for all that he was an intelligent and educated man, was still quite touchingly naïve in some respects. House Neren did not keep slaves – a tradition that went back to some outlandish philosophy expounded by one of its founders – and so Neren had little real knowledge of the mul. No matter how much I, Enamdis, or even Bayl himself had tried to persuade him, Neren still refused to believe that Bayl was capable of such a feat of endurance.
“Stubborn as a dwarf, that boy,” Enamdis had muttered, with the exasperated affection of an old nursemaid. Then she’d stumped back up the steps to the helm and had proceeded to spend most of the next two hours taking out her annoyance on poor Chanya and Larech.
At last, she must have felt that they’d suffered enough. “Alright,” she sighed. “Go have a drink and a rest, you two. The mul and I will take over for a bit. Mei! Come steer this creaking pile of junk.”
As we slowed to a halt, Neren came over to join me at the bow rail. “Have you ever seen a forest before?” he asked, nodding towards the cloak of dusty grey-green that had started to spread out around the foothills of the Stormclaw Mountains as we reached the southern end of Bremil Pass.
“I have seen the Crescent Forest before, yes,” I replied absently.
Seeing Abhivada again, and now the Crescent Forest, had brought back memories of Chanthou, with whom I had shared so much in those early years in the Naggaramakam. It had been three years since our lord and husband had sent her into the forest to serve among those templars who guarded the Temple of the Eye. That ancient ruin was spoken of with a sort of horrified fascination among the Shadow King’s wives. Even High Consort Siemhouk claimed to have no idea how old it was, or to which long-dead god it had been dedicated. Supposedly, there was a network of catacombs beneath its black altar, but none who had explored them had ever returned. Few even of those templars who were sent to watch over the forsaken place were ever seen within Nibenay again. Was Chanthou still alive, or had she too disappeared into that smothering darkness?
“I know so little about you, Ysuun,” Neren was saying. “I would surmise you were born in Nibenay. You say you have seen the Crescent Forest, and you don’t look Gulgan, nor do you sound like a nomad tribeswoman.”
I forced my lips into something resembling a smile, avoiding his searching gaze. Why did he have to suddenly become so damned curious, so close to the end of our uncomfortable journey? “Now, now, an air of mystery is a woman’s prerogative,” I said, aiming for ‘casual’ and instead managing to hit ‘coquettish’. I almost winced.
Neren chuckled. “You’re not a noble travelling in disguise, are you? If you are, please be so good as to let me know before we enter the city. I’d like to have some warning before your house guards turn up and accuse me of kidnapping you.”
I pushed my growing sense of panic back down beneath a mask of playful good-humour and forced myself to laugh along with him. He’d obviously meant it as a joke, which logically implied that the notion I might be a templar hadn’t even crossed his mind. At least, not yet.
We were moving again, rather more quickly now that Bayl and Enamdis worked the capstan. There was just enough of a breeze to waft my long, dark hair lazily against my cheek, and the silt skimmer’s gleaming white sail bellied and rippled, but there was still no real force behind it.
The Crescent Forest slowly took shape, its faded grey-green carpet resolving into ragged clumps of takian, meranti, teak and the massive buttress-rooted sishumu. Between these verdant groves were large areas of bare, sallow earth, from which jagged grey stumps jutted like arrow-shafts broken off in the flesh of a corpse. Timber from the Crescent Forest was one of Nibenay’s greatest resources, transported by argosy all across the Tablelands. When I had last passed this way, three months before, such signs of industry had been reassuring to me: a profound demonstration of how my lord and husband’s indomitable will would eventually bring all the world beneath his wise dominion. But today, the slaves toiling to cut down the great trees and drag them away seemed like ants crawling over the dying body of some great and once-noble beast. The swathes of bare earth were larger than they had been three months ago, and many of the trees that remained were too small to provide much valuable lumber. It hardly seemed worth felling them.
“They’ll soon have to abandon this area and move further west,” Neren said, as if reading my mind. “There will be war with Gulg within the year, you can depend upon it.”
I shrugged. “We’re not exactly at peace with Gulg now.”
Neren smiled ruefully. “You have a point there, Ysuun.” Then he grimaced. “I suppose I’ll have to ask Chanya if she wants to return to Gulg. It would not be fair to prevent her from rejoining her dagada if she feels that her ultimate loyalty lies with her own kin.”
Was it just a coincidence that Neren should raise the subject of ‘ultimate loyalty’ just now, standing beside me? The man was dangerously perceptive and, while he might not have guessed my true identity, I was sure he remained suspicious that I was more than I claimed.
It was ironic that I had first taken him for a naïve, even gullible, youth, while seeing his guardian, Enamdis, as the true danger. Bayl had won over the half-giant in the most direct manner possible, and it was clear from the enthusiastic noises that would drift from the quarterdeck whenever there were moments to spare that they couldn’t get enough of each other. Meanwhile, Neren and I seemed eternally locked in this exhausting dance of mutual distrust.
Not that I had any intention of following Bayl’s example. I couldn’t deny that Neren was a handsome young man, and his courage and compassion were admirable, for all that I recognised the dangerous foolishness of his idealism. A small, treacherous part of me wished that I were really the free spirit I claimed to be.
But I had sworn my love and loyalty to the Shadow King.
As Neren moved away, I watched distant figures sweating and toiling in the desolate wasteland they had hacked from the green world of the forest, and my fingers clawed at my neck as though I too wore a slave’s collar.
Neren called a halt, for there was no point in risking damage to the silt-skimmer’s wheels from unseen obstacles in the darkness. Whether we arrived tonight or tomorrow made little difference. The road between Bremil Fort and Nibenay’s Mekillot Gate was undoubtedly one of the safest stretches of road in the Tablelands, thanks to the regular crodlu-mounted patrols sent out from both fort and city. The last patrol had passed us less than an hour before, heading back towards the fort, and I could still see the light from their torches bobbing along the road behind us.
Abhivada had allowed Neren to buy a small quantity of fresh food and water from Bremil Fort’s extensive stores before we left that morning, and we all tucked in to our evening meal with satisfaction, sitting in a companionable circle on the main deck.
Enamdis was still grumbling about the lack of wind. “We should have been in the city by now,” she growled. “I’ve never known this road to stay windless for so long.”
Chanya looked up from her food, her eyes gleaming white against her dark face and the darker gloom of the night. “Damned wind-spirits,” she said.
Some of the other crew laughed, but it didn’t seem to me like she was joking. Gulgans take the so-called ‘spirits of Athas’ very seriously, for they are, in general, a credulous and superstitious people. Unlike my lord and husband, who promotes high culture and rational, logical thought among his subjects, the self-styled ‘Forest Goddess’ of Gulg keeps her people in a state of constant childish terror of the ‘malevolent spirits’ that only her ‘divine power’ can shield them from. Such hypocrisy sickens me.
I noticed that Mei seemed troubled by Chanya’s words. She had stopped eating, a mouthful of rice halfway to her mouth, and was frowning thoughtfully.
I squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t look so worried,” I said softly, so that Chanya wouldn’t hear. “Spirits are weak things, fading vestiges of a more barbaric age. They are not really capable of such things. The winds through Bremil Pass can be difficult to predict, but there is doubtless a rational explanation for this lull. Winds are ultimately driven by the Sun, not by ‘spirits’, and their patterns may be complex, but there’s nothing mystical about them.”
The girl smiled up at me, but she did not look reassured.
I sighed and went back to my meal. I still wasn’t sure how Mei truly felt towards me. For all that she laughed and joked with Enamdis and Bayl, she had been strangely distant around me since our battle against the sand devils. I did not think she blamed me for Tamar’s death, and Neren had assured me that she was grateful that I had saved her life. I know that many people would regard being healed by a defiler to be worse than death, but Mei obviously shared Neren’s more open-minded view of magic.
And yet… every time she looked at me, I could see some discomfort in her wide blue eyes. She often seemed to be on the point of asking me something, but always shied away at the last moment.
I suppose I must have seemed just as much of a mystery to her. And just as uncomfortable. There was, after all, still the question of what I was going to do when we reached Nibenay. Most of the time, I could put it out of my mind. But, every time I looked at Mei, I remembered that I would soon have to choose between these people who, through seemingly random circumstance, had become my companions, and my duty to my husband and my city.
Worms of doubt chewed away in the recesses of my mind. This was a worse torture than anything the sand devils had inflicted upon me. The fiends had tried to break me, but they had failed, for I had been able to hold onto my sense of duty, even when all else dissolved into agony and terror. Now, I felt like I was drowning in the Sea of Silt, and there was nothing at all to hold on to. My duty had become a great stone, tied to my ankles, dragging me down into suffocating darkness.
I did not sleep well that night.
And not for long, either. I came awake to Bayl shaking me by the shoulder. When had he become so familiar that he felt he could do such a thing without risk of punishment? When had I grown so comfortable with his presence that I would allow it?
“Mei is gone,” he said simply.
I blinked and glanced around. Everyone else was awake too, their faces drawn with anxiety, but it was still night. Guthay, the yellow moon, rode high in the sky, but its larger green sibling was still below the horizon. I realised immediately why they had awoken me. My hated father’s eyes: I was the only one here who had any chance of seeing for any distance by Guthay’s faint light.
I ran to the silt-skimmer’s rail, pulling my robe around myself. The scrubby plain to the south was empty of all movement. I went to the other side of the deck, sick with dread, and looked out towards the black wall of the Crescent Forest.
And there she was, a slim, pale shape, just disappearing between the trees. I pointed, wordlessly.
Chanya swore under her breath, but she did not sound at all surprised. “The forest spirits have taken her!”
“The forest spirits can go to the Black,” Enamdis growled. “Come on, Bayl. Let’s go get her back.” She glanced at Neren, then at me. “Unless anyone objects?” Her green eyes flashed with barely-controlled fury, as though daring either of us to voice some protest. She needn’t have worried. Despite my better judgement (and possibly as a result of sleep-deprivation), I felt just as protective of Mei as she did at that moment. And I know Neren would never have dreamed of trying to stop her.
“I’m coming too,” I said. I spoke a Word, and my lotulis was in my hands, its runes glowing with power.
Enamdis seemed a little taken aback at my enthusiasm. She glanced at Bayl, who just shrugged. “Best not to argue with her,” he grunted, though I could tell he was just as surprised as she was.
Neren opened his mouth to speak, but Enamdis shook her head. “Three’s plenty to be crashing through the forest in the dark, Neren. Besides, your mother would have my head on a spike if anything happened to you.”
“Both valid points,” he conceded with a wry smile. But his humour evaporated again almost instantly. “Bring her back safe,” he said, in a voice that forbade even the possibility of failure.
It was only much later that I realised he might not have been referring to Mei.
Bayl went ahead of us, the soft lavender glow of the chunk of quartz I’d enchanted spilling out from between the fingers of his upraised left hand. His feet made almost no sound as they compressed the soft, rich loam. His broad back slid to one side, then the other, casting long, monstrous shadows as he ducked and danced around branches strung with rope-like vines and bearded moss.
Guthay was blind here, the moon’s warm, golden light lost in the upper reaches of the forest canopy. Without my magic, even my half-elven eyes would have been useless in such deep gloom.
Enamdis strode by my side, stiff-backed, her strong, beautiful face still set in an expression of mingled anger and worry and the fathomless love I had only ever seen on my mother’s face. Unlike Bayl, she made no attempt at stealth. She seemed almost to take satisfaction in smashing aside any errant branch that crossed her path, tearing down any dangling creeper that sought to entangle her. Young saplings, doomed to a slow death anyway in the murky gloom of the forest floor, died in splintered ruin under her heavy-booted feet.
I had tied my robe up around my hips to stop it from becoming snagged amid the undergrowth, but I still had to scramble to keep up. I had recovered most of my old strength in the days since Bayl had rescued me from the sand devils, but I am not tall even by human standards, let alone long-legged enough to keep pace easily with a mul and a half-giant. Besides, I’ve never had much opportunity to wander through thick forest like this. Vines and branches seemed to claw at me, and my face, arms and legs bled from a dozen shallow but painful cuts. The forest no longer felt quite so majestic, and I was already beginning to curse my earlier moment of foolish romanticism: the sooner my husband’s slaves hacked this awful place into so much lumber, the better!
Bayl halted abruptly, and I nearly stumbled into him. “The birds have stopped,” he whispered.
“Dragon’s balls!” Enamdis swore under her breath.
It was true: the incessant, discordant chorus of chirps and howls and screeches that was the cadence of the Crescent Forest’s sleeping breath had ceased. Even the night wind’s soft rustle in the branches overhead had faded into silence.
It was as though the forest was waiting, expectantly.
“There’s a clearing just ahead, I think,” Bayl said, still keeping his voice low as he set off once more.
The heat of the day had faded hours before, but the sweat that tricked down my back had nothing to do with the temperature. The forest wasn’t just waiting, it was watching us, with a thousand thousand eyes. For all that I knew spirits were mere shadows of life, echoes of the world’s fundamental elements given a rudimentary sentience, laughably weak in the face of true sorcery, that did nothing to stop my growing sense of panic. Here, in the dark, deathly silence of the forest, I could understand why Gulgan savages such as Chanya feared them so. For the spirits did not merely observe with the impassive serenity of an uncaring world. The countless unseen eyes burned with a hatred that stabbed through my heart with a hundred knives of ice-hot steel.
My companions felt the usual fear of the unknown, of unseen terrors in the night, but this was different. This was… personal. The wind no longer whispered through the trees, but the trees themselves whispered all the same. They whispered the name: Defiler.
“I should not have come,” I gasped. The forest’s hatred was a physical thing, a fist crushing the breath from my chest, the thoughts from my skull. I staggered and fell, and the stone-hard roots that made up the forest floor seemed to leap up like a rabid dog to bite at my limbs. I cried out as they scraped the skin from my limbs. My blood smeared across the roots, dark and glistening in the purple light.
Bayl hauled me to my feet. “We’ve found her,” he said. I saw his lips move, his face lit like a spectre by the glowing crystal he held, but all I could hear was the rushing torrent of the spirits’ rage and hatred.
I looked past him. Mei sat, legs folded beneath her, in the centre of the clearing. She was entirely naked, her pale skin and silver-gold hair glowing in the moonlight that shone down through the hole in the forest’s black canopy. She seemed to be asleep, or meditating, her face radiant with silent joy. For a blessed moment, the forest’s oppressive hatred seemed to fade, as though tamed by Mei’s own boundless serenity.
Something stepped into the clearing: a dark shape that might have been a kirre, or a lirr. Its form seemed to blur and change even as I watched. It stalked around the periphery of the clearing, sniffing the air, growling softly deep in its chest. The moonlight did not touch its dark pelt, but its eyes blazed with golden fire.
The beast padded silently towards Mei. I wanted to rush forward, for I was sure it was about to tear her fragile body into bloody shreds, but my limbs would not obey me. Somehow, I knew Bayl and Enamdis, too, were paralysed.
But there was someone else in the clearing: someone I could not see. But Mei smiled up at the newcomer, and the beast halted, bowing its mighty head to the ground as if in deference.
Someone was standing between Mei and the beast. Why couldn’t I see him? No… not ‘him’…
The beast raised its head again. Somehow, I had stumbled into the clearing. The moment of peace had passed, and the forest’s ageless rage poured down upon me once more. The beast roared in the voice of a thunderstorm, its eyes burning into my soul.
I once saw a mob of women in the Palm Court lynch a man they suspected of raping several of their children. They cut the meat from his bones with flint knives, even as he shrieked his innocence and pled for mercy. When they were done, the bloody remains were barely recognisable as human, save for his eyeless head and the tiny, shrivelled morsel of flesh they had pushed into his broken-toothed mouth. The rage I had seen in the eyes of those women, that burning goad that could drive loving mothers to bloody butchery: it was the same, the very same fire, that burned in the eyes of the beast-spirit as it looked upon me. Upon a defiler.
There was no reasoning with such bitter, consuming hatred. No pleading. No possibility of mercy. I knew that I was dead.
Blood roared in my ears, drowning out the forest’s thundering rage. The world spun around me. I fell awkwardly as my legs turned to water. My lotulis clattered on the hard ground, and somehow I was half-sprawled on top of it. I felt a razor-edged crescent of rune-carved bone slice into my knee.
Then a strong, grey-skinned hand dragged me back into the undergrowth at the edge of the clearing: Enamdis. Bayl stepped smoothly in front of me, alhulak whirling in his hand as he faced down the snarling beast-spirit.
I saw something hanging at his hip: the remains of a carrikal, its jawbone blades broken and useless. It seemed to me that it shone with the same inner light that had suffused Mei’s pale form.
Mul and beast-spirit stared at each other for a long moment. Then the beast turned and looked back to where Mei still sat, serene in the moonlight. Her eyes were open now, wide and luminous. Slowly, solemnly, she shook her head.
The beast vanished. The forest withdrew its terrible presence so suddenly that I gasped as though struck. The normal sounds of the nocturnal forest returned in a deafening rush.
In the centre of the clearing, Mei bowed her golden head and, as slowly and gracefully as a felled tree, toppled sidelong into the moss and loam.
Two updates in as many days, great stuff.
Two updates in as many days, great stuff.
Well, given that it was two weeks since the instalment prior to those two...
Anyway, I'm considering running some sort of unofficial "build a character from this story as a PC" competition. Would there be enough interest to make it worthwhile, I wonder?
EDIT (8th August): Added the second half of this section.
***
Enamdis was already past us, kneeling in the soft, dark moss beside Mei’s sprawled form.
With Bayl’s help, I rose shakily to my feet. The colossal, buttressed trunks of sishumu – called ‘ancestor trees’ by the Gulgans – seemed to march in tightening circles around me, an army of ancient, knot-fleshed giants. My stomach lurched, as much from the after-effects of terror as from dizziness. Pain flared in my right knee, and I looked down to see blood trickling down my leg from where my own lotulis had sliced into me.
It didn’t even occur to me to draw magic to heal the cut. I knew without any conscious thought that the forest’s tolerance of my presence was provisional. It would not have survived a defiling, and nor would I. I tore a strip of cloth from the hem of my robe and bound the wound, then, leaning on Bayl’s strong arm, I hobbled into the clearing.
“She lives,” Enamdis said as we reached her, her voice thick as relief warred with the last remnants of fear-forged fury. Her emerald eyes shone with unshed tears.
I tried to kneel, but the pain in my leg forced me into an awkward half-sprawl-half-crouch. Putting aside my lotulis, one blade of which was still smeared with my own blood, I held my hands out over Mei’s chest, palms down, fingers splayed. I closed my eyes and, as gently as I could, sent my awareness out beyond my own skin…
With a strangled gasp, I fell back into the moss. My hands burned. Shocked, I stared at them, half expecting to see smoke, charred flesh, blackened finger-bones. Bayl and Enamdis seemed just as alarmed.
“What happened?” Enamdis demanded. “Is she…?”
“She’s fine.” I did not recognise my own voice for a moment. I took a deep breath, tried to calm my shredded nerves, to slow the heartbeat that hammered in my ears. “She has no need of my skills.”
Mei’s spirit was a living flame. All living beings have such a flame inside them, spreading its radiance through their body, heating all they touch, and lingering on as glimmering echoes in their words and deeds, like the livid blotches one sees after catching a glimpse of the sun’s reflection in something polished. It is the ability to see these flames, and to manipulate them, which allows me to heal wounds and ailments. It is this flame that I bind into bone and wood and horn and stone, to create talismans of power and devices that move as though alive. It is this flame that burns living matter to ash when it is drawn forth by the defiler’s Art. Some souls burn brighter – and hotter – than others, but this is nothing so simple as a measure of power. My lord and husband’s ancient soul is kept hidden behind so many veils of shadow that even I can barely see it, like a cold, glimmering star in a cloud-wrapped sky. Abhivada’s shines bright and warm, for all her chilly demeanour, and for all that her magical talents are modest at best.
But Mei’s was the brightest I had ever seen. Which made no sense, because I had seen her soul-flame before, during the battle against the sand devils, and it had been quite unremarkable then. Now, it blazed like the sun, as though the girl were armoured in burning light.
As much as the sudden unveiling had rattled my composure, the riddle it provided intrigued me. If only I had had the time to consider the question properly, some of what happened later might have come as less of a surprise to me.
Or perhaps not. For not everything in this world is as easily explained as the blind interaction of unfeeling machines. There were forces at play that night that were as much beyond my understanding as the arcane equations of magic are beyond the grasp of a mekillot. Love, for one.
Enamdis carried the sleeping Mei cradled against her chest, and I hobbled after them, leaning on Bayl. He didn’t ask why I hadn’t yet healed myself and I wondered whether, this close to Nibenay, his old deference might be returning. It was about time, I thought sourly. Tomorrow, our journey would reach its conclusion, and I would have to be the templar again. Tomorrow, I would have to deliver our friends up to the Shadow King’s justice.
It would have been far kinder to leave Mei in the forest.
I waited until we were at least halfway back to the silt skimmer before drawing a little magic into my injured leg, wincing slightly as I did so. Healing oneself is always more difficult than healing another, for the disturbing sensation of quivering skin and muscle moving of their own accord, and the sudden sharp pain as they knit together, makes it difficult to maintain the concentration required.
My leg whole again, we continued on, leaving behind two small patches of grey ash marring the yellow grass where I had stood. I thought that I heard a low growl from the dark forest behind me, but perhaps it was just my imagination.
Neren’s young face was a pale mask of worry in the moonlight as we came within sight of the silt skimmer. “Is everyone unhurt?” He demanded, almost leaping down the skimmer’s stepped ramp to meet us. His jade-green eyes met mine first, wide with concern. I glanced away quickly. I had just been brutally reminded of who I really was, and I could not afford to let him read that truth in my own eyes. It wasn’t that I feared he would harm me if he knew I was a templar. Just the opposite.
“The silly girl’s just sleeping,” Enamdis growled. “She seems none the worse for her little night-time wander.” She was trying to sound unconcerned, but she wasn’t very convincing.
“We heard… something. In the forest. Like the roar of some great beast…” Neren touched his long, delicate fingers to Mei’s brow. “No fever. And she’s never been one for sleepwalking before.”
“Unlike certain others here, eh, Neren?” Enamdis drawled.
Neren shrugged, but I could see the colour rising in his face even in the jaundiced light of the yellow moon. “My episodes only lasted a few weeks. And it’s hardly uncommon among those awakening to the Way.” He glanced up at Enamdis, suddenly grinning. “And I seem to recall my uncle told me something of your awakening, dear Enamdis…”
“No need to go into that now,” the half-giant spluttered. “Are you sure Mei is going to be alright?”
Neren caught my eye again, his expression unreadable now. For some reason, I found that infuriating. “When can we ever be truly certain of that? For any of us? Still, I don’t think she’s in any immediate danger.”
As we carried Mei up the boarding steps, Bayl turned to Enamdis. “Didn’t realise you were a master of the Way too.”
The half-giant shrugged. “The Way helps me fight. It’s just another weapon as far as I’m concerned.”
Neren glanced back at us, green eyes twinkling with mischief. “Dear Enamdis refuses to refine or develop her talents, though. Just doesn’t have the patience for it. She’s what we call a ‘wilder’.”
Bayl grinned at that, but a baleful glare from Enamdis persuaded him to keep silent.
Next time: Nibenay!
The wind picked up again near dawn, a powerful yet steady easterly that filled the silt skimmer’s wyrmsilk sail easily, and the crimson sun had barely cleared the horizon at our backs when we reached the edge of the first Nibenese noble holding. The eastern sky was a lurid green, as often happens around dawn when there have been dust-storms in the distant Sea of Silt. Gazing out in that direction, I could just make out – with my soul’s eye if not my mortal senses – the distant spike of power that was the Pristine Tower.
I am always aware of it, just as a lodestone always knows which way is north. Orienting myself by its sorcerous beacon had been the first exercise my lord and husband had set me when I was delivered to his inner sanctum by High Consort Siemhouk. I smiled at the memory, and at my childish fear that Siemhouk had become jealous of my abilities and was sending me to my death. The Shadow King had not been present at the ceremony in which I was welcomed into the Temple – though we templars are called ‘wives’, most of us are not considered worthy to consummate our marriage physically – and this had been the first time I saw his true form. I was still young and foolish then, and I thought him a monster set to devour me.
The young and foolish often see truths hidden to older and wiser souls. But, ironically, that realisation would only come much later. As we travelled through the petty demesnes of Nibenay’s indolent nobility toward House Mentsu’s own holdings, my soul was torn between my wifely duty and the unwelcome demands of conscience and compassion, but it did not seem then that I had any real choice in the matter.
Or do I deceive myself even now? Do I simply make excuses for the sins of my past? Even when obedience scours the soul with darkness, it is still a far easier path than following the beacon of one’s own conscience. As Neren says, this is the true curse of this fallen world: that the easy roads lead down into the Black, while all the others are so hazardous that few dare tread them.
After the arid desolation of the Tablelands, the rice paddies, orchards and irrigation ditches outside Nibenay’s walls always seem like a Paradise, a green memory of a lost age. We made good speed now, for the wind itself seemed to be refreshed. Chanya looked often upon Mei’s still-sleeping form, fear and wonder in her soft brown eyes, whispering something about spirits and their blessings.
The girl awoke just as we reached the House Mentsu compound, a simple rectangle of mud-brick walls surrounding a cluster of sheds, silt skimmer hangars, barracks blocks and warehouses. Neren’s family had a more impressive dwelling inside the city’s walls, of course, but it is difficult to navigate the narrow, tangled streets of Nibenay in any vehicle much larger than a palanquin, so the silt skimmer would unload its cargo here.
Mei seemed stronger and more beautiful somehow, her eyes an even more startling blue, as though her strange encounter in the Crescent Forest had unlocked a door deep within her. She smiled radiantly at me, and I was reminded of what I had seen with my soul’s sight. I tried to return her smile, but found all I could manage was a wry grimace. Even her joy seemed a rebuke, and part of me recoiled from her, like a naughty child avoiding her mother’s gaze.
House Mentsu servants had seen our distinctive sail from afar and had already hauled open the compound’s large agafari-wood gate by the time the silt skimmer reached it. Chanya went below-decks to drop the loading ramp, and crew and servants between them began unloading crates of pomegranates and oranges from Draj, dried berries from Urik, and amphorae of wine from Raam. With everyone’s attention on the valuable cargo, it would have been easy for Bayl and I to slip away unnoticed. But we did not. I felt I owed Neren and Mei a farewell, if not an explanation. And I knew better than to deny Bayl a last few moments with Enamdis.
I found Neren inside a small, low building that obviously served as some sort of administrative office, talking animatedly with a pair of dwarfs so similar they must have been brothers. He turned as I entered, his gaunt face breaking into a boyish grin. Just for a moment, I allowed the warmth of his presence to touch me. He was the worst sort of naive idealist: a most dangerous man, whether he knew it or not. Yet, I knew he was also that rarest of treasures: a genuinely good and noble soul. He did not deserve what was going to happen to him. And that I would be the cause of his suffering broke my heart.
“Ysuun…” Even the way he spoke my name felt like an embrace, warm and comforting: obvious desire tempered by… not shyness, but a careful reticence born of his unwillingness to intrude where he was not yet invited.
I could not bear it. I interrupted him brusquely. “Bayl and I thank you for your hospitality, Lord Neren, but we must leave you now. My… sister is expecting me. She will be worried sick, for we are already a day late.” I had intended to say that my husband was waiting for me, which would have had the advantage of being true, but I somehow could not bring myself to declare to Neren that I belonged to another.
Besides, or so I convinced myself, it might have sounded strange that a married woman would travel so widely beyond her native city without her husband. A merchant house matron might do so, but not a simple healer. It might have raised questions. Neren is probably the most intelligent man I have ever known aside from the Shadow King and, perhaps, his son Dhojakt. He might easily have realised that a Nibenese woman travelling the wastes with only a mul for company, then hurrying so urgently to meet her husband upon arrival in the city, might easily be a templar.
Neren seemed a little taken aback. “I had hoped you would grace me with your company for a little longer. After what you’ve been through, you deserve a few nights’ sleep in a proper bed, at least. Some decent food, rather than dried inix and ship’s biscuit. A… a real bath,” he finished lamely.
This was unbearable. To leave him pining after me like a boy whose pet has gone missing would be unspeakably cruel. I wanted him to be glad to see the back of me. “Lord Neren,” I snapped, trying to sound scornful, even insulted by his suggestion, “I am not your woman, to be wined and dined and bathed and bedded. You are noble-born. I know you must think you are entitled to have any woman you fancy the sight of, but I’m no ****. I will not endure the scorn of your family and servants. I will go to my sister’s house and be among my own kind again.”
As I turned to leave, I heard Neren call my name, his voice filled with confused dismay. The dwarves were s****ing.
I found Bayl gazing longingly at Enamdis as, single-handedly, she carried heavy crates of fruit out from the cargo hold, handing them off to a chain of human and dwarf labourers to take into a nearby mud-brick warehouse. She had stripped down to her loincloth and a strip of cloth tied across her breasts, and her athletically muscled limbs gleamed with sweat in the hot sun. Despite my heartache over what I had been forced to do to Neren’s hopes, I could not resist smiling in memory of that mental image Bayl had accidentally projected into all our minds when he first met the half-giant woman. I had to admit, his imagination, vivid and lust-fuelled though it had been, had also been quite accurate.
“Time to go, Bayl,” I said, quietly. “I hope you’ve said your goodbyes.”
He nodded glumly, his eyes still on the half-giant woman’s splendid form. “I know you don’t understand what I see in her, lady…” he began.
I smiled again, though this time it was mostly to stop myself from weeping. “But I do, Bayl. She is strong and brave. And, yes, she is beautiful.” I managed to avoid adding the words “for a half-giant”.
He nodded again. “She tore the head right off one of those sand devils. Put a foot on his chest, grabbed his horns with her bare hands, and just pulled. It was glorious! At first, she reminded me a bit of one of my fighting partners. But even Skafra could never have done that.”
The significance was lost on me. It was only much later that I remembered the story. Skafra had been a one-eyed mul woman who was Bayl’s lover, as well as his fighting partner, for a year or so when they were both still slaves in the arena. Until the templar in charge of arranging matches decided it would spice things up if the two were entered into a death-match against each other. Bayl and Skafra had marched out onto the sands, and then simply refused to fight, so the templar ordered her archers to kill Skafra and then sent half a dozen guards to drag Bayl back to his cell. Enraged by the callous execution of his lover, he killed them all. Very bloodily. The crowd cheered so wildly and were so clearly on Bayl’s side that the templar did not dare to challenge his ‘victory’.
That templar disappeared soon after, although body parts that might have been hers did turn up in the arena beasts’ food trough. There was never any evidence that Bayl had had anything to do with that, of course, and his popularity was so great by that point that the templar’s successor (who presumably was just happy for the sudden promotion) never raised the issue.
I will give him this much: Bayl did try to warn me.
The ancient road to the Mekillot Gate is straight and wide enough for three argosies to pass side by side with room to spare. The paving slabs, each some four yards across, are irregularly shaped, yet fit together so closely you could not slide even a hair between them. Even after countless millennia of heavy traffic, the wagon ruts that mar their dark blue-grey surface are at most a quarter-inch deep. Like the fort and causeway in Bremil Pass, the Caravan Road was built to last out the ages.
Before us rose the walls of the city and the Mekillot Gate itself. These were true Nibenese architecture: built of yellow-brown sandstone that had darkened over the centuries to almost the colour of slate, and covered with the figures of dancing templars and battling warriors exquisitely carved in high relief. The gatehouse was built in the form of two seated templars, each gazing out along the top of the wall to either side, with the proud and handsome face of the Shadow King’s human seeming gazing down imperiously from above the corbelled gateway arch itself. Stone galleries ringed the seated figures, worked seamlessly into their elaborate carved clothing, and spaced along each gallery were the bamboo stakes used for public executions.
Only the most serious breaches of the King’s Law, such as high treason or the murder of a templar, merit impaling, for it is a particularly slow and agonising way to die. The Shadow King and the Temple of the King’s Law do not shy away from necessary cruelty, but Nibenay is not Draj. Lesser criminals are sold as slaves, thrown into the arena or, if execution is warranted, simply beheaded.
But, today, several of the stakes were occupied: four men and two women hung suspended above the Mekillot Gate, dark streams of blood running down their legs to drip slowly from their limply dangling feet. We knew to expect the sight long before we reached the Gate, for we had smelled the fragrant incense that burned in stone censers below the traitors, the clouds of blue-white smoke warding off both the flies and the stink of blood and loosened bowels. As I said, Nibenay is not Draj. Even in our cruelty, we are careful to minimise its less sanitary side effects.
The traitors’ bodies glistened with sun balm. In theory, they ought also to have been given water at regular intervals by the guards, who would push sponges or wads of cloth soaked in water into their mouths upon long poles. But, whether out of laziness or compassion, this was often conveniently forgotten, so that the impaled expired within a day or two, their suffering ended prematurely by what was poetically termed ‘the Sun’s Mercy’.
One of the women could not have been much older than Mei, though her skin and the long hair that mercifully hid her anguished face were dark. I tried to tell myself that Mei was only an associate of a traitor, not a traitor herself. If High Consort Djena was utterly without mercy, she was at least inclined toward justice rather than vindictiveness, and I was sure I could convince her that Mei did not deserve such a fate. She would probably still have to die, but not like that.
Thankfully, none of the men – two Gulgans, a copper-scaled dray and an elderly dwarf – looked anything like Neren, and so I could for the moment avoid thinking of the fate I would send him to.
Bayl, at least, was wise enough not to look up as we approached the Gate, but I could sense a certain stiffness in his bearing, a tightness in his square-set jaw. I had not considered whether he too might have realised what was bound to happen to our erstwhile companions once we reached Nibenay and I reported what I had discovered. If I could spare Mei the agony of a traitor’s death to salve my own conscience, could I do the same for Enamdis, for Bayl’s sake?
A queue of merchants and other travellers waited ahead of us as their credentials were carefully checked, but one of the Gate’s guards recognised Bayl and waved us through without question.
The Caravan Road continues through the Mekillot Gate, running as straight as a lance through the Sages’ District to the Temple of Trade at the foot of the Naggaramakam’s monumental walls. First-time visitors to Nibenay are often surprised at how cosmopolitan this part of the city appears, in contrast to our reputation for narrow-minded traditionalism. In truth, the parts of our city frequented by merchants, elves, dray and other strange folk who wander in from the wastes have such an inclusive, even permissive, atmosphere precisely because such people are carefully kept separate from the rest of the city, which is every bit as conservative as the stereotype suggests.
Sages’ District is always busy, its streets packed with inix-drawn wagons carrying trade goods from as far away as the Forest Ridge and the closed city of Eldaarich; nobles lounging amid the silken cushions of their palanquins, their naked bodies painted with gold and silver leaf and bedecked in jewels; human and mul slaves in their shapeless kurta, running errands for their masters and mistresses; dray mercenaries in their scaled armour, clawed hands on the hilts of their weapons, casting ferocious glances at anyone who comes too close as though looking for an excuse to start a fight; tall, long-legged elves in their desert robes, slanted eyes always on the look-out for someone to swindle or something to steal.
Even navigating the wide thoroughfare leading to the Temple of Trade required a certain amount of dodging and weaving. Smaller pedestrians gave Bayl a wide berth, but even he could hardly shoulder-barge his way through knots of dray mercenaries or walk through the wooden walls of traders’ wagons. I remained in his shadow, uncomfortably reminded with every unthinking jostle (and the occasional quite deliberate grope) that I was not wearing my symbols of office. Strange how the lack of a few baubles, of little intrinsic worth, can so utterly change how others treat you. Part of me wanted to speak a few well-chosen Words, to drive these ignorant louts to their knees with that irresistible magical compulsion we templar-wives call the Voice of the Shadow King.
But, despite the crush, we reached the Temple of Trade soon enough. A small but incredibly ornate building in the shape of a cross and topped with multi-tiered spires, its walls are carved so that the whole building appears to be formed from the interlocked figures of dozens of merchants, each hawking their wares or negotiating deals with one another.
Bayl and I paused outside the wide, square doorway. Inside, we could see slave scribes moving among the offices and scriptoria, but after a moment we saw who we were looking for.
The templar turned to face us, frowning, and opened her mouth to berate us for gawking like ignorant foreigners. I spoke directly into her mind, giving my name and my position in the hierarchy of the Templarate. Her mouth snapped shut.
“I apologise, elder sister,” she quavered, ushering us into the blessedly cool interior of the Temple and guiding us into one of the smaller offices beyond a curtain of amethyst beads. “I did not recognise you without…”
I smiled reassuringly. “No matter, sister. I am returning to the Naggaramakam after a long journey. I do not require anything of you save access to your snake’s door.”
The so-called ‘snake’s doors’ are a secret known only to the templars of Nibenay and a handful of particularly favoured and trusted servants, such as Bayl. All the main Temple buildings have them, as well as a few supposedly empty buildings dotted around the city. Each door is well hidden amid elaborate relief work, and leads into a network of narrow passageways that link to the Naggaramakam. Approaching from the Mekillot Gate, the snake’s door within the Temple of Trade is the quickest route to the Shadow King’s palace, avoiding as it does the tangled network of narrow streets that makes up the Reservoir District.
I turned to Bayl. His expression was unreadable, his yellow eyes strangely lifeless.
“I won’t be needing you for a while, Bayl,” I said, trying to keep my voice from quavering. Where had this sudden fear sprung from? As he had so fiercely promised when he rescued my from the sand devils, Bayl would never harm me. Besides, why would he want to? Even if he had realised that I would have to report Neren’s connection to the Veiled Alliance, he surely must also recognise that I wasn’t responsible for the choices he and Enamdis had made?
“I’ll send for you this evening. Don’t get too drunk.” I attempted a smile, but I think I probably just looked queasy.
Bayl grinned then, and I relaxed a little. With a grunt of assent, he turned and made his way back out of the Temple.
The cool darkness of the snake’s passage was a blessed relief from the harsh glare and oppressive heat of the crimson sun, which had made even the stone-walled offices of the Temple of Trade feel unpleasantly sticky. A shelf next to the door held half a dozen full oil lamps, but my half-elven eyes adjusted to the gloom easily enough and I left them untouched.
These passageways were immeasurably old, and primitive, their walls built of bricks rather than carved sandstone, the floor of beaten earth so dry and compacted that it might as well have been stone. The walls of some of the deeper passageways, I knew, occasionally crumbled and fell in, allowing access to the rubble-choked ruins of a buried city far older than Nibenay. Once, centuries ago, a group of templars had encountered a tribe of savage albino elves living in these lightless ruins. They had exterminated the foul things, of course, and brought back their strange crystalline artefacts to the Temple of Thought for study. But the records of that research had been destroyed on the orders of the Shadow King and nobody but he knew where those artefacts were now stored.
We bury our secrets deep in Nibenay.
The passageway soon began to ascend at a pitch almost too steep to climb without stairs, eventually reaching a narrow platform and an ornate agafari-wood door whose distinctive Nibenese carvings marked it as much newer than the flaking brick walls.
I put my lips to the carved mouth of the Shadow King, portrayed in his true draconic form seated upon his throne, and breathed a Word. Magic pulsed through every fibre of the door, invisible to normal sight but glowing like sunlight through amethyst to my eyes. It swung open silently on oiled hinges, and I stepped into my husband’s palace.
This part has now been rewritten and extended, since I was never really happy with it. The new version will be up on Athas.org in due course. Ignore this version for now.
The stone halls of the palace of the Shadow King are never truly silent, filled with the endless susurration of whispered voices even in the dead of night. The carved templars lining its twisting, labyrinthine corridors in high relief seem trapped in an endless dance, stone limbs writhing in tranced ecstasy as the flickering torchlight plays upon them. One is left with the disturbing impression that these stone women are the source of the endlessly echoing murmurs, the true living inhabitants of the palace.
From the outside, the palace itself is not a large building, being home only to the Shadow King himself, his son Dhojakt and a handful of his most favoured wives. But the way its passages and chambers are so tightly coiled around one another makes it seem much larger. It is easy to get lost if one is not familiar with its twists and turns. Supposedly, the palace’s layout shifts and changes to match the Shadow King’s own subtle mind, and it is said that even Dhojakt occasionally has difficulty finding his way back to his own quarters – certainly the prince has been observed on more than one occasion hurling his warped body against the walls, howling in rage and frustration.
But I remembered the route to my lord and husband’s personal apartments at the heart of the palace. I had spent most of the last three years working in his personal arcane laboratories, while my own living quarters remained in one of the buildings that formed part of the Temple of Thought, within the enclosure of the Naggaramakam, but well away from the palace itself. It was a journey I had undertaken almost every day.
Yet still I came to the portal to the Shadow King’s apartments sooner than I had expected. Did the passageways contract to bring me there more quickly, at his will, or was I merely too preoccupied with thoughts of Neren, Mei and Bayl to notice how time passed?
Before the great agafari-wood doors to my lord and husband’s private rooms is a large antechamber, filled with the statues of those wives he favoured most highly throughout his centuries of life. Some, especially the oldest, are depicted as warriors, clad in highly ornate armour and wielding swords, axes, spears and bows. Most of the later statues are dressed in crown, collar and sampot, recognisable as the garb of a templar-wife today, and hold the brush and scroll of a scribe, the rod of a magistrate or the whip of a slavemistress. Only in death is a templar-wife worthy of being immortalised in this chamber, for a living wife – even the most favoured – is always at risk of failing her lord and husband, whether through mischance, incompetence or deliberate treason. Many of those early warrior-templars died in battle, defending the Shadow King from assassins or enemy soldiers. Later wives died to the knives or poison of jealous rivals, or simply to old age.
On past visits to this room, it had often seemed to me, gazing upon the implacable basalt faces of these ancient wives, that we had become somehow less noble, less pure in our devotion over the centuries. That there was something honest in pledging our lives to guard our lord and husband that was lost when we became merely administrators, fighting our battles with brush and ink, with numbers on a page. Or with the subtle knives and vitriolic poisons of ruthless ambition. There was nothing noble in dying for the advancement of a sister-wife. Thankfully, I had always managed to avoid such sordid rivalries, better suited to a seraglio of courtesans than to the templar-wives of a king.
As I stumbled into the antechamber, distracted and uncharacteristically anxious, I saw the doors to my husband’s apartments open silently, and a tall, slim, golden-skinned figure emerged into the flickering torchlight. My breath caught in my throat and, for a moment, I forgot Neren’s warm smile, Mei’s unintentionally accusing eyes – everything of the three years since last I had set my own eyes on this unexpectedly welcoming sight.
“Chanthou.”
I had not even realised I had spoken, but she turned abruptly at the sound of her name, her long, jet-black hair swirling around her like a cloak of shadow. Her eyes – the deep, dark purple of the ayame, the desert iris – were wide, dilated, the soft skin of her high-boned cheeks delicately flushed.
With all the easy grace of the dancing girl she had been before entering the Templarate, she slipped easily between the statues and enfolded me in a warm, smiling embrace. “Ysuun. Dearest of all sisters. It has been too long. Far, far too long.”
If there was a hidden bitterness behind the soft words, I was too overwhelmed with unexpected joy to notice it.
So, there will be no more updates to this story here. I am looking into finding somewhere else to post the rest. I'll put a link here, as well as in my sig, when I've sorted something out.
Needless to say, I am a little bit annoyed by the whole thing.
However; we're only on Part 10 with weekly postings, whereas Duskweaver posted up to Part 18 here. So we've still got a while to catch up.
You can stay up to date with the site update here: athas.org/news.atom
I should've known to check athas.org.
Especially since the link has been in my sig for a couple of months now.
Part 18 has been rewritten and extended, BTW. Ignore the version posted here and wait for the 'real' version to show up on Athas.org in (I think) five weeks.
Once, centuries ago, a group of templars had encountered a tribe of savage albino elves living in these lightless ruins. They had exterminated the foul things, of course, and brought back their strange crystalline artefacts to the Temple of Thought for study. But the records of that research had been destroyed on the orders of the Shadow King and nobody but he knew where those artefacts were now stored.
I like this inclusion!!
I look forward to the new content!
Only a preview paragraph of Part 19 ended up being posted on Athas.org.....drat!
Try the link without being logged in...for some reason it comes up that way (for me). I logged in to post on the arena, and tried looking back at part 19 again and only the snippet came up. Logging back out fixed it. I'll try to get someone to fix it for ya'
edit...
Raddu posted this on the arena:
Thanks!
Here’s the correct link:
“Lady of Shadows: Part 19”:http://athas.org/articles/lady-of-shadows-part-19
athas.org/articles/lady-of-shadows-part-...