“In a way, yes.”
“What about the Harlequins? What about your words on brotherhood? Were they all lies?”
Chtomio remained silent.
“Are you or are you not a Harlequin, Chtomio? Answer me!”
“The lies I told you were for both of our sakes.”
Once again I’d been betrayed; by the very chrome I had placed all my hopes in. I was no longer paying attention to his words. He had used me.
“You must not despair Asheva. Every word I told you about the chromes and Harlequins is true. And I do believe in brotherhood, but someone has to lead and decide for the greater good of all.”
“Someone like you, you mean? Like the way you lead here in Samaris? With castes and injustice?”
He sighed. “There are many things that you cannot understand about the ways of the Red because you are not one!”
“I may not be a Red but I know your ways well; they’re no different to those of the Black. Those in power use force and deceit to keep the others in check.”
“That is enough Asheva! You are not a king! You do not know what it means to be a ruler!”
The throne room doors opened. “Father?” It was Cestia. “Is everything all right?”
When the princess saw me without the mask she turned to the king again. “Who is he?” she asked.
I remained silent. Chtomio said: “Go on, my love. I will be with you soon.”
Cestia bowed to him and with an uncertain glance at me, reluctantly left. When the door closed, Chtomio spoke with a catch in his voice. “You must leave and return to the pine forest. This is not your home and I cannot protect you here.”
“Wait — Chtomio…”
“And you must do it now!”
“But…”
“Quiet and listen! The guards will escort you outside of the city walls. You will leave Samaris with the first lights, do you hear? You are to go back to where you were and wait for my orders. You shall never set foot in Samaris again. Is that clear?”
I listened to him with a lump in my throat, trying my best to hide my emotions. I quickly put my mask back on.
“I don’t want to be protected. After what I’ve seen, I don’t want to have anything to do with your plans. I am free and intend to stay that way for the rest of my life. Free from the Blacks, free from the Red or from any other color.”
“Know this then,” he said, “by going against me you have nothing to gain and all to lose. Think about that on your way back to the Violet territory.”
Then, without waiting for a response, he called his guards and commanded them to escort me safely out of Samaris.
It took all I had to leave his side. Back in the garden, I caught Minister Oris staring at me. He had been waiting all this time to see what the king had planned for me.
The guards led me down the terraces, which were now all adorned with candles. We went past the checkered courtyard, where chromes of all ages seemed engaged in a game where each player tried to blow out the others’ candle while protecting the flame of his or her own. The only one who did not participate was Cestia. She stood away from the board and followed me with her mask as I was led past. I would have wanted to tell her so many things, but the guards carted me off. Little did I know then in what dire circumstances we would meet again.
17. Dawn of Darkness
The guards marched me through the Ashi tunnel past the cage where I had stood but hours before, convinced I was about to be impaled by spikes, along the dark passage to the entrance and out past the gateway into the shadow of Adio and Adia. After making good and sure that I wasn’t about to make any attempt to re-enter the city, they went back inside. I heard the clanking sound of the gates and door closing echo out. I was alone. It didn’t take long for me to do what I had felt like doing ever since Chtomio had revealed his true self to me. I sank to my knees, put my face in my hands and let a loud cry escape from me. I felt empty and completely alone. But I also felt angry, for placing my trust in someone that wanted to use me.
I longed for my old life, my Mother and my house in Axyum; for a world that was simpler than the one I had been thrown into from the moment we had been summoned to the Palace of Elders to be told of my father’s death. When I finally got up and looked up at the statues of Adio and Adia, they seemed to mock me: “Look at the weak and feeble tears of the worthless young Black, begging for our pity!”
“You know nothing of me!” I shouted at them. “Nothing!”
“Asheva!” The whisper came out of the darkness.
“Who is it?” I said, turning towards it.
“Over here!”
I followed the voice until I saw two shadows moving in front of me.
“You made it!” came another hushed voice. “You actually made it back alive.”
Daerec and Enyac, my merchrome friends, moved through the shadows towards me.
“What are you doing here?”
“We followed you ever since you left us!” said Enyac.
“You didn’t think we’d miss this did you? I mean, no one ever tried to enter Samaris like you did tonight! No one!”
My anger and rage fell away in an instant. Here were two true friends who thought enough of me to give up their fishing and wait all night for me to come back from the prohibited city. We clasped arms and then they bombarded me with questions. How had I managed to get inside? What did the city look like? Were noble female chromes as beautiful as everyone said?
I told them about most of the things I had seen, from the older chromes and their heated debates about useless trivialities to the checkerboard dances of the younger chromes, the astounding beauty of Princess Cestia and the way I had made the conceited buffoon Erai pay for his arrogance. This last story had the pair of them staring at me in open-mouthed awe.
“Did you find your friend?” Daerec finally asked.
It was easiest for me to lie. Less complicated. How could I possibly explain what had happened and expect them to make any sense of it?
“No, I looked and asked. He is travelling in the territories, away from the Red Kingdom.”
Thinking about Chtomio reminded me of what he had asked of me and I immediately grew sad again.
“My time here is at an end, my friends. I must leave you.”
I wanted nothing more than to stay with them and become a merchrome, but I would do as Chtomio had requested. He had saved my life and I was still very much in his debt.
“Where are you going to go? Back to the Violet territory?” asked Enyac.
That was a question I didn’t have an answer for. But then an idea began to form in my head.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But it will be wherever the wind will take me. I’ll be free. Why don’t you both come with me? I would show you cities and places that you would have never dreamed of.”
Enyac turned his mask towards his brother. “Explore new territories!” he said, almost garbling the words in his excitement. “Imagine that, Daerec!”
“And no one would see you as a Janis any longer, only as a free chrome,” I added.
Daerec remained silent.
“Think about it!” I said, facing him. In that moment I wanted the companionship of these two more than I wanted anything. “What do you have to lose? If you stay here, you will only face more injustice and misery. Come with me and live!”
“He’s right brother!” said Enyac. “What’s the point of staying here and wasting our lives in these forsaken marshlands?”
Daerec considered me a moment before he spoke.
“Come this way,” he said, “I must show you something.” He headed off in the direction of the encampment. I was left to glance at Enyac, who was no wiser than I about where his brother was going or what it was we were to see. We marched silently through the night with only the sound of crickets accompanying us.
“You’re right,” Daerec finally said. “Things could be better for us away from our land. Much better.” He sounded rueful. “We could be treated differently, t
here would be new places to see and chromes to meet and customs to learn.”
“Exactly!” said Enyac. “So why don’t we go?”
We had reached a point on the pathway where a view of the encampment village opened up below us. His brother stopped and indicated the huddled shacks and forlorn huts gathered between marshland and the water’s edge, dimly lit by the stars above us. “Because this is our land. It’s where our father and his father were born. This is where Enyac and I have grown up. And this is where we need to stay and fight for what’s right, just like our father did.”
“But he died Daerec,” said Enyac, “and nothing’s changed. I don’t want to die like him. I want to live!”
“You disrespect his memory!” snapped Daerec.
“I don’t! Do you really think he would want us to live as we do, if we had a chance to leave?”
“If we leave, he will have died in vain!” said Daerec. Then he turned to me. “We cannot come with you Asheva, I’m sorry. For better or for worse, our place is here.”
I looked at both of them. It was clear that Daerec would have the last word over his brother. So I nodded. “I understand more than you can imagine. And it was not my intention to have you two quarrel. I shall leave knowing that I have two real friends in the Red kingdom.”
“Aye,” they both said and we all laughed. We talked and stayed together until we saw the first rose-colored streaks light up the night sky. That’s when we decided the time had come to part ways. They went down towards the encampment of the Janis while I hiked away from the Janis marshland out onto the plains to continue my journey into other territories. Or so I thought.
As I made my way through the plains away from Samaris, I noticed that a thick fog had begun covering the land. The twilight sky had colored the fog of a strange purple. Purple, the color of death in Axyum.
It was then that I heard my name again. “Asheva!”
It was Tiara. She was panting and I thought she must’ve run all the way from the Janis’ huts. Her fists were clenched.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her, surprised.
“You didn’t say good-bye!” she said angrily. “Your friends told me you were leaving. You didn’t even say good-bye!”
I was in no mood for laments. “You must go back to your hut!” I said, and started walking away. She began to cry.
“Why were you nice to me? I thought you were good but instead you are bad, just like everybody else!”
I stopped and turned around. “Go on back, Tiara.” I said.
She shook her head.
“I have to go Tiara,” I told her, this time more softly. “I can’t stay here.”
“Take me with you?” she pleaded. “My mother…she said it’s all right!”
I thought about what Daerec and Enyac had told me about her parents and how they were probably both dead. “Look Tiara-”
“Please?”
I wanted to tell her I had no place to go, so I couldn’t take care of her. But then I thought about her harsh life amongst the Janis, and how her words had saved my life in the tunnel of Samaris.
“All right,” I sighed. “You can come with me, but you have to do as I tell you, every time. No arguments.”
She ran forward and hugged me tight, almost squeezing the breath out of me as her little arms clung tight around my neck and throat. “I promise.”
“It won’t be fun!” I warned her, holding back a smile inside my mask.
And so we set off together in the direction of the great Cancerian Road.
Tiara started running in front of me.
“Look at the purple fog! It’s magic!” she said, while dancing and running in circles.
“Don’t get lost!” I warned her.
I looked back at Samaris one last time. It had disappeared in the fog. Unfortunately, I could not make my feelings about Chtomio disappear as well. Nevertheless, I could not go against the will of the chrome who saved my life.
My thoughts then drifted to Princess Cestia and a feeling akin to homesickness welled up in my heart. Just then, Tiara called my name. “I saw a tree walking!” she said, pointing out in the plains. “Can they do that?”
Instinctively I unsheathed my dagger and pulled Tiara into a crouching position beside me. Visibility was bad. Maybe it was just a trick of Tiara’s mind, I thought. “Where is it?” I whispered.
“I can’t see it anymore,” she whispered back.
I concentrated and listened. A soft, continuous thumping sound, emanated from the ground.
“I can see it again,” said Tiara, pointing. “Over there!”
I squinted in the fog. Yes, something tall was moving. Then I realized it was a moving siege tower, used by warriors to scale city walls and to give them protective height so they could shoot volleys of arrows at an enemy. More towers flanked the first one. To my horror, the entire horizon line was awash in soldiers and weapons! Their battle flags and standards were of one, unequivocal color.
Black.
“Who are they?” cried Tiara in fear.
“The Black Army,” I said, barely able to form the words in my shock.
The warriors marched toward us at a steady pace, but I knew better. They were moving quickly to take the Reds by surprise. I was tempted to leave the Red kingdom to its destiny – the Blacks were, after all, my folk. But this thought lasted only a moment. There were too many people who meant too much to me in Samaris, unaware of what was coming their way. I couldn’t leave them to their fate. I took Tiara’s hand and we started running.
When we reached the wall of statues, I said to Tiara “find Daerec and Enyac. Tell them the Blacks are about to attack the city. The Janis must set sail in their Tartans. The sea will be their only means of escape.”
“But what about you?”
“I need to warn the king. I’ll meet you on the beach.”
“But they’ll kill you if you try and enter!”
“There is no other way to get to the castle.”
“Yes, there is! Through the caves.”
“What caves?”
“It’s a secret my mother told me. That’s how she and my father met.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You want to see the king, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“Then follow me!”
She ran towards the sea and dived in.
“Hurry!” she said, as her head emerged from the foamy waves.
“All right,” I mumbled. I took off my mask and dove in. The water was cold, so cold I had to work hard to move my arms and kick my legs in order to propel myself along through it. I gamely swam over to Tiara, less than a rod from where the waves crashed against the cliff. “Take a deep breath and follow me,” she said and plunged deep under the water. My lungs felt crushed by the icy cold water but I filled them with what breath I could and followed her. Tiara swam with quick, confident strokes, as if she had done this a thousand times. We kicked our way down to the front of the cliff base. The deeper we went, the more I wondered where I was being taken and whether I would ever have the breath to get to the surface again. By the time Tiara beckoned me one last time, before allowing herself to be propelled by the current into a large, underwater cave, my lungs felt as though they were full of burning coal and I felt sure I was no more than a couple of heartbeats away from drowning. When I swam in close, I too was swept inside with the tide. I prayed to the gods to help me reach someplace where I could breathe again.
Everything was dark, but the water was no longer cold. I felt as if Adio was pulling me up to the surface again with an unseen hand. When I emerged, I coughed out water and took long, deep lungfuls of air in. Then I felt a hand touch me. Tiara floated at my side. I caught a point of light in the corner of my eye and looked up to see something so surreal and beautiful that for a moment I thought that we must have made our way outside again somehow, for there, surely, was the sky above me, a night sky illuminated by a thousand bright stars reflecting their gl
ow off crystals embedded in the cave ceiling. “It can’t be!” I gasped. As if by magic, many of the lights darkened.
“Shh, if you speak too loud, you’ll scare them,” Tiara whispered.
“Them?” I said.
“Glowing worms,” she answered, “but I call them sparklers. The caves are full of them.”
We climbed out of the water. I was astounded by the light show. When the sparklers glittered, they were able to illuminate even the deepest, darkest parts of the cave. The walls were full of tombs. This was where the inhabitants of Samaris came to bury their dead. And it must be the place Tiara’s parents were buried, not at sea.
“Over here,” said the little chrome as she made her way deeper in to the mountain. At first, our feet sloshed through hot, gurgling water on a downward slope. But then we began to rise and before long the ground turned to dry solid rock. We wound our way through a maze of crystal stalactites. Tiara confidently led us through new tunnels and burrows which climbed ever upwards until we finally entered a passage through which I could feel air flowing. Within moments, we reached the end of the passage, which emerged out from a grotto inside the royal garden of the castle.
“I told you I knew the way!” whispered Tiara.
I nodded and murmured: “You will be made a heroine for this! Now, I need you to go back down to the beach and find Enyac and Daerec. Tell them about the Black army and tell them to set sail with their boat together with you.”
“What about you?” she said.
“I’ll be all right. I’ll come back to get you.”
“Promise!” she said.
“I promise. Now go!” Tiara scampered off inside the passageway back towards the caves again while I headed silently across the garden for the tower and the throne hall. The fog was now quite thick, making it difficult for the guards on top of the castle to spot me. I climbed the stairs of the horned tower, towards the hall of the throne. As I got to the top, a terrible sight greeted me. Two of the Kings guards lay slumped by the door, their tunics and robes coated in blood. Their lifeless eyes stared up at me through their masks. My blood ran to ice as I thought about what this could mean for my friend. Choking back fear and rising dread, I moved on into the hall of the throne.
Kingdom of Deceit Page 7