Where Serpents Strike (Children of the Falls Vol. 1)

by CW Thomas

  Merek held up his hands. “Wait. You want to rob the very man you owe money to? Are you off your feed?”

  “You don’t understand. This man has so much gold he won’t know that the money I’m paying him with came from his own vault.”

  Merek shook his head in disapproval. Then he shrugged. “What do I care? So what are we doing here?”

  “I wanted to make sure that Adairous was, in fact, really here, and I also wanted to prove to you that I wasn’t lying about Awlin.”

  Merek’s interested piqued. “You mean she’s here?”

  “We don’t have much time,” Patryk said. “So I’ll let you say hi to your long lost sis, but then we need to leave. I swear to you we’ll come back and get Awlin. Understand?”

  “Where is she?” Merek asked.

  “Do you understand?” Patryk said with careful enunciation.

  Merek stepped back and regarded him through a taut visage. “Yes. Now where is she?”

  Merek followed Patryk’s instructions and descended deeper into The Pit, relived to find the first underground arcade significantly cooler, although no less crowded.

  The enorbears were tall enough that their heads floated level with the feet of the second story spectators. The two beasts continued roaring and swatting at each other, tearing out tufts of fur and flesh in bloody streaks.

  Merek walked down a long row of cages that lined the outer walls of the arcade. The first cage contained two copper-skinned male slaves in loin clothes and shackles. The second cell contained a much larger group of male slaves, some lying down on the rock floor, others seated on metal cots. They looked like good stock for wealthy landowners in need of farmers and woodsmen.

  Merek wasn’t surprised to find the third cage filled with scantily clad young women. Once those who had made bets on the fights had claimed their money, they’d be ready to purchase a slave, if not for business than for pleasure. He moved his eyes from one frightened feminine face to the next, dreading the moment when he recognized Awlin among them. Fortunately, such a moment never came. He exhaled with relief.

  With clammy hands he moved onto the fourth cell. What stared back at him from the far wall was a face he remembered more vividly than any other. Her green eyes hadn’t changed, neither had her tiny frame or dirty blonde hair, although it was a bit longer than he’d seen it last, and far more unkempt. She was clad in a dirty brown shift, roped at the waist and tattered at the hem.

  When he said her name, her eyes shot upwards and pierced him like daggers.

  She rose to her feet, eyes welling with tears of disbelief and joy. “Merek?”

  He nodded, a single dip of his head that brought the girl sprinting toward him. She plunged her arms through the bars of the cell and wrapped him in the sweetest embrace he had ever known. For a moment, Merek could do nothing but hold her.

  “I can’t believe I finally found you,” he whispered. “I’ve been looking for so long.”

  “I thought you were dead,” she said. “After the match, back in Turnberry, they said you had been dishonored. They said the blood march had killed you.”

  Merek shook his head. “We’ll talk about that later. I’m here to get you out.”

  “Thank the Allgod,” Awlin breathed.

  “I just need you to wait a little bit longer,” he said. “I have a job I have to do, but I’ll return before dark. I swear it.”

  Awlin’s hands clutched his shirt through the bars of the cell, holding him in place. “You can’t go.”

  Merek touched her face, cupping her smooth cheek, wishing he had the strength to rip the cell door off its hinges. “I won’t be gone long.”

  “No. You don’t understand,” Awlin said. “If you don’t get me out of here now you won’t find me again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Adairous is selling me after the fight. He says I betrayed him. He’s going to tell the crowd that–that I’m a…” Her words become lost in her hesitancy.

  “You’re a what?”

  “It doesn’t matter. There’s no telling where I’ll be carted off to.”

  All at once Merek’s world came crashing down. On one side of a wall of dark metal bars he saw his sister; on the other side was a friend who was desperate for his help. He clenched the bars in his hands, battling with the choices that lay before him.

  “Please,” Awlin said. “Don’t leave me.”

  Merek pictured Patryk waiting for him outside, anxiously digging at the ground with the toe of his boot. He hated to let him down, but Awlin couldn’t wait.

  “All right,” Merek said. “Where is your master?”

  “Adairous? Probably on the ground floor. He likes to watch the fights up close.”

  “Let me go talk to him. I’ll—”

  “No!” Awlin blurted. “It’s impolite to interrupt him during a match. He’ll have you thrown out.”

  And yet another reason Merek hated Malium. It seemed to be where the pompous and the wealthy gathered to waste their riches on gambling and whores.

  A hand latched onto Merek’s arm and pulled him away from the cell. “All right, time to go,” said Patryk. “The fight’s almost over.”

  Right then half the crowd booed as the other half cheered. Merek could only assume that one of the bears had finally been killed. A moment later the arcades of The Pit became a hub of greedy joy and despair as some men collected their winnings and others gave away their fortunes.

  “We need to leave,” Patryk said.

  “No. I’m sorry. We’ll have to do it later.”

  “Haha. You’re funny. Let’s go.”

  Merek grabbed Patryk by the arm. “Adairous is going to sell Awlin. If I don’t get her out of here now I may not have a second chance.”

  Patryk grit his teeth and stamped his foot. “I knew it!” He stepped toward Merek, shoving a single finger in his face. “I knew you’d back out.”

  “I’m not backing out. I will help you. We’ll do it—”

  Patryk threw his hands up in the air. “I’m a dead man. Thanks to you I am now a walking dead man.”

  “I said I would help you, and I will, but I—”

  “If I don’t get that pig-nosed bastard his money today then he’s going to take in flesh what I owe him.” Patryk was sweating, and far too frazzled to think clearly.

  “Relax. He will get his money,” Merek said. “You just need to get out of here. Find a place to lie low and wait. Meet me at the—”

  “Never mind. I’ll do it myself.” Patryk wheeled around and began pushing his way through the crowd. “Thanks for nothing,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Patryk!” Merek shouted. “Just wait!”

  But his friend didn’t stop, and before long he disappeared in the dark, cramped mob of the stifling arcade.

  A hefty brute with thick arms and an even thicker neck shoved Merek aside. In his hand rattled a ring of black keys, one of which he applied to Awlin’s cell door.

  “I want to buy her,” Merek said, pushing his voice above the commotion in The Pit.

  Customarily bidding wasn’t open until the slaves were presented to the crowd, but Merek knew it wasn’t unheard of for deals to be struck behind the scenes.

  “Did you hear me?” he pressed. “I said I want to buy—”

  The brute pushed Merek aside with the cell door as he swung it open. “Biddin’ starts in the arena,” he said in lazy Efferousian.

  Entering the cell, the brute clamped a pair of wrist cuffs on Awlin and escorted her below to the arena floor.

  Wrist cuffs. The appearance of them at this juncture was not a good sign, Merek knew. At an auction such as this slaves wore shackles at all times unless they were one of two things: highly valued or prostitutes. In these cases their masters didn’t want their skin damaged by the chaffing of metal bands and so shackles often weren’t applied until they were brought out for bidding. Awlin, he feared, was not about to be sold cheap.

  The arena floor had been cleaned of the eno
rbear carcass, its spilled blood raked into the dirt. The battle’s champion had been escorted away to some secluded chamber to lick its wounds.

  Over the next several moments The Pit was transformed from a barren dirt floor ring to a showcase for slaves complete with a wooden presentation platform.

  The most able bodied of the male slaves were stripped to the waist, lean muscles showing under clean-scrubbed flesh. The women were draped in long white shifts and nothing else, hair pulled back, beautiful faces exposed.

  A male caller in a vested red and gold tunic hiked up onto the platform, his generous belly limping over his thighs as he climbed the steps.

  Merek pushed his way through the crowd gathering on the arena floor. He tallied in his head the amount of gold and silver pieces in his purse, but he knew it wasn’t enough. With deft fingers he lifted a leather moneybag from under the purple cloak of a rich looking citizen, and then took a velvet pouch from the belt of a well-dressed man. Both purses contained a mixture of silver and gold with some copper, but it didn’t look like enough to buy a female pleasure slave.

  The crowd started jeering and Merek’s eyes darted toward the stage where a quivering man in peasant’s clothes was escorted up onto the platform by a local enforcer of the law.

  “Make it quick,” said the caller in the red tunic.

  The lawman pushed the peasant in front of a waist-high wooden box. He then shoved the man’s hands through two round holes in the top and chained them in place. The front of the box was open, exposing the peasant’s vulnerable fingers as they dangled below.

  “No! No! Please, n–n–no!”

  The lawman turned a crank that activated two barbed wooden rollers within the box that rose up and consumed the twitching fingers. Wails of agony exploded from the peasant’s mouth as his hands were crushed in the mutilating device.

  Black money. That was the name given to silver and gold pieces that had been debased by men hoping to outsmart the system. The peasant had likely been caught trimming silver coins or trying to pass off various other ores as the real deal. When he lifted his broken, bloody fingers from the box it was clear that he would never be able to do such careful work again.

  “Get him off my stage!” the caller said, and the lawman dragged the peasant away.

  “Nice to see justice served,” said a man to Merek’s right.

  He looked and saw a tall, well-groomed nobleman in a red cloak and a gold shirt with silk brocade sleeves.

  “People like him waste their lives shaving such little bits of gold and silver off coins. It hardly amounts to, what, an extra rosi or two?” He spoke in perfect Efferousian, the product of a refined and expensive education.

  “They should hang the dog,” Merek said in the best Efferousian accent he could muster, which was all but flawless.

  The auction started and moved at a good pace, beginning with the male slaves and finishing with the women. Each man was asked to face front, turn around, lift his arms, and squat to ensure that he was more than just a handsome specimen. Meanwhile the caller would shout out information regarding the slave’s age, physical abilities, health, looks, skills, and education. The women were put through a similar display, but not always with their clothing on.

  Merek felt his heartbeat growing faster as Awlin’s turn came up. If they stripped her naked before the crowd he doubted he could resist rushing up onto the stage and carrying her off. He’d be a dead man if he tried.

  Even more disturbing was the high price of slaves in Slavigo. The male slaves sold for the equivalent of a commoner’s yearly wages, which wasn’t a stretch for the wealthy bidders in the crowd. Women, on the other hand, were going for two-to-four times that amount depending on their skills, and, more importantly, their beauty.

  “There’s a lovely one, isn’t it,” remarked the nobleman as Awlin stepped up onto the stage.

  Merek wanted to punch him.

  Awlin looked nervous, her eyes scanning the crowd for Merek, but he made no move to catch her attention. He didn’t want her noticing him and becoming even more agitated than she already was.

  “We have here a foreign woman, as is evident by her lovely blonde hair. A rarity, gentlemen,” the caller said with a grin, deriving a few approving sounds from the crowd. “Brown eyes. Don’t see many like those around here. She speaks Tangmuta and Efferousian. A gifted cook and nursemaid.”

  Merek liked what he was hearing. The announcer’s description of Awlin painted her as a simple girl, someone who was being sold as a homemaker or a caretaker of children. Perhaps she would sell for cheaper than he was expecting.

  “Her name is Awlin,” the caller continued. “She was educated in the kingdom of Turnberry in the realm of Edhen. And her previous owner wishes me to point out the fact that,” he paused for effect, “she is a virgin.”

  And just like that the tables turned. The red-blooded lust of the male bidders rose high while Merek’s hopes plummeted. If any kind of slave could raise the stakes at an auction it was a beautiful virgin woman.

  The nobleman to Merek’s right raised his hand and doubled the current bid.

  Merek couldn’t wait any longer. He raised his hand and shouted, “Four rosdium.” That was four year’s worth of wages for the average commoner, and Merek knew as soon as the words left his mouth that he didn’t have that much money with him.

  Without missing a beat the handsome nobleman upped the price by half.

  Merek’s eyes locked with Awlin’s. She looked at him, her expression frozen in silent plea.

  “Let’s see her!” came a shout from somewhere in the audience. “Take her clothes off!”

  The caller chuckled. “Someone doesn’t know the rules.” A few others in the crowd laughed with him. “Such a virgin as this foreign beauty cannot be exposed to you disgusting lot,” he joked. “No, her gifts are all for her buyer alone.”

  A man up in the second level of the arcade called down a price that made Merek’s skin go cold.

  The rich nobleman raised it.

  Merek threw up his hand and said, “Three pupium.” It was a price worthy of twelve rosdiums, three times more than Merek’s last bid.

  The man in the second level arcade outbid him again, but not by much. Merek took it as a sign that he had reached his limit.

  The nobleman bid again. “Sorry, my friend,” he said to Merek. “I do love those foreign virgin ladies.”

  Merek wanted to offer a higher price, but he knew it was pointless. Even if he did win the bid for Awlin he would find nothing but trouble when he attempted to collect her without enough money.

  The bidding ended and Awlin was escorted off the stage. The nobleman moved forward to collect his prize, his satisfied smirk still planted across his face.

  Merek followed him, half wanting to kill him, but knowing there would be no escaping that kind of crime in a crowded place like The Pit.

  The nobleman ordered Awlin’s shackles removed and then kissed her hand. “Such precious skin should never be calloused by chains,” he said.

  With so few options before him, Merek decided to play the only card he could think of.

  “Sir?” he said, reaching out for the man’s golden sleeve.

  The nobleman whipped around and regarded Merek with a sly grin. “Ah, yes, the man I outbid. Don’t tell me you’re a sore loser.”

  “I implore you, please, she is my sister. I beg you to let her go.” Merek didn’t believe that sentimentality would work on the nobleman, but he figured it was worth a shot.

  For a moment the man looked at Merek with a kind of curious sympathy. He looked touched, even, but not for long. He pulled Awlin close to his side and pushed past Merek, his sly grin returning.

  “So sorry for you,” he said, his voice flat. “But I want what I bought. You may go away now.”

  “Merek?” Awlin whimpered as the nobleman led her away.

  “You do not speak to him,” the man scolded.

  For a moment Merek could do nothing but gape after them, un
willing to accept that he had come so close to his sister only to be stopped by a selfish, unreasonable man. No, this couldn’t end here. He wouldn’t let it.

  Merek’s hand went to the pocket of his tunic that contained the six broken shards of the regenstern. Before he had completely processed what he was considering, he followed after the nobleman once again. He caught up with him in the bottom level of the arcade. Scooting in front of him, he blocked his path.

  “Will you take one of these?” he said, offering the man the gem.

  When the nobleman’s eyes fell upon the milky white stone he became transfixed. His eyes moved from the gem to Merek, where he held his gaze for an uncomfortably long time. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “A regenstern,” Merek said. “From Edhen.”

  The nobleman reached out and took the gem as gently as if it were an infant. He turned it in his hands, devouring the sparkling rainbow in its core with his eyes. In case it wasn’t enough, Merek offered him another.

  “How many do you have?” the nobleman said, taking the second gem.

  “I cannot part with them all,” Merek said. “Two is the most I can give you.”

  The man thought for a moment as he held Merek’s gaze. He seemed to be looking beyond his expression for an answer hidden in his mind.

  “I require four,” the nobleman said. “Four, and your sister is yours once more.”

  Without hesitation Merek reached into his pocket and withdrew two other pieces of the gem. He handed them to the nobleman whose eyes and smile widened. The man turned and walked away without another word.

  And then Merek and Awlin were left standing alone in the dark, stuffy arcade. Merek looked at his sister, finally free after so many years. When she threw herself into him, he scooped her up into his arms and held her tight.

  “Thank you! Thank you!” she cried, kissing his cheek and squeezing him even tighter.

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t come sooner,” Merek said. “I tried, Awlin. For years, I tried. I looked for you—”