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

by CW Thomas

  When the city of Tay came into view, Rab and Padden shared moans of relief.

  “A warm bath,” Paden said, “some oil for my rough feet.”

  “And a bed,” Rab said. Then, with a wink toward Taggart, he added, “Right, m’lord?”

  Taggart smiled.

  Scarlett’s eyes swept over the city before them. Tay looked much different from her home. Its walls were almost twice as tall and built of clean bright stone, none of that dark gray rock from Aberdour.

  “Tay,” Taggart said, pointing. “Have you ever heard of it?”

  Scarlett nodded, wondering if he thought she was a moron.

  “Many are put off by its ferocious symbol of a leopard,” he said, “but do you know why the leopard was chosen to represent the city?”

  Actually, Scarlett did know, but she had no way of communicating it to the prince, so she remained quiet and waited for him to continue.

  “The leopard is considered to be the strongest and most sensual of all the big cats,” he said. “Likewise, Tay is the strongest and most sensual of all the kingdoms on Edhen.”

  “Is that so?” Rab asked with a sly grin at the prince.

  But Scarlett already knew this. She had learned much about Tay, thanks to Brynlee verbally repeating everything she learned. But Scarlett learned things differently than her sister did. Where Brynlee memorized information by repeating it, Scarlett memorized things simply because she could. She often heard something only once and never forgot it. In fact, she knew more about Tay’s flag than the prince did, like the fact that it wasn’t technically a leopard featured on the flag, but a close cousin of the big cat, a cougar. There weren’t any leopards on Edhen, but cougars were known to roam the wilds of the north.

  Scarlett knew enough about Tay to know that she never wanted to go there, and after entering through the city’s main gate she saw first hand all the decadence and excess she had heard of. A large tavern sat to the right of the entrance, and not just any tavern, but an impressive three-story building with balconies on every floor occupied by loitering drunkards and whores. Nearly nude women lounged on a water fountain in the square, while hagglers bartered for pricey gems and jewelry in loud voices.

  To the left of the city’s entrance, across from the bar, stood a row of crosses used for execution. All of them were barren, except one, which bore a man who had been stripped of all his clothes along with some of his flesh. A sign hung around his neck declaring, “Krebber vermin.” Scarlett had never heard of a Krebber before, but she wondered if it had something to do with the realm of Krebberfall, a continent that sat across the sea to the west of Tay.

  And then she saw the legendary Russell Basin, a gold-plated bowl roughly the size of a wagon cart sitting on a stone pedestal in a large stone court. The basin, named for the sailing captain who had built it from the gold he’d plundered elsewhere, was filled daily with a mixture of brandy, wine, sugar, limes, lemons, and nutmeg. The intoxicating drink was available for anyone with a cup to scoop some.

  But the thing that gave Tay the most renown, the reason it was beloved by male travelers everywhere, was its broad assortment of prostitutes. Tay boasted women from all corners of the known world, of every language and skin tone, versed in the sexual practices of so many cultures that not even a lifetime in Tay could exhaust the wealth of pleasures the city contained.

  Though Scarlett knew some of this because she had heard it, she understood little. She knew that men liked women with no clothes on, knew they often acted like fools around them, but she had never given much thought as to why, nor did she really care.

  She rode through the city on the back of Taggart’s horse, watching the women on the streets toss him flowers and praises as he entered. He kissed some hands, blew kisses up into balconies, smiled and waved like a returning champion. His demeanor, Scarlett noticed, was quite different from the prince that she had spent the last month traveling with. He looked, to her, like an actor playing a role as he strutted through town. The real Taggart Elle was a very different man, one who, by her estimation, didn’t enjoy the company of women nearly as much as he did men.

  At long last their horses stopped in front of the entryway to the Elle family castle, a tall light gray structure fronted by a wide series of stone steps ascending to a white portico at the entrance. The castle walls looked nothing like the rugged stone of Aberdour. These walls were bright, almost white, pristine, majestic, and huge.

  Taggart dismounted, groaned at the stiffness in his legs, and then picked Scarlett up off the back of the horse and set her down.

  Rab clamped a hand on her shoulder and spun her around. “Now remember,” he said, “this is a surprise, so be quiet. Oh, wait. I’m sorry, I forgot who I was talking to.” He walked away, chuckling at his own cleverness.

  A stable boy came out to collect the horses. Scarlett caught him eyeing her curiously, but she had little time to eye him back as Taggart picked her up and sprinted up the castle steps.

  Inside, Scarlett’s jaw fell open in awe. The castle was far more splendid and massive than anything she had ever seen. Taggart carried her up a flight of wide marble stairs onto the second floor. He took her down a broad hallway containing many displays of armored suits sequenced by tall paintings of mighty sailing ships. She peaked into a couple of the adjoining rooms to see ornately decorated bedchambers with four-post beds and long heavy curtains.

  Taggart was himself again, giggling as he veered into the last bedroom on the right. Though wide and tall in size, the room contained none of the fancy decorations that permeated the rest of the castle. The bed in this room had no posts. The wood floor was scuffed and warped, and the furniture looked old. The room carried the faint aroma of mint leaves.

  Taggart set her down on a hard surface, and Scarlett flinched when he began to remove her clothes. Paden and Rab came in, each carrying two buckets of water and snickering like schoolboys about to prank their teacher. When they approached her, Scarlett cringed, fearing they were going to dump the water over her head, but then she realized what she was standing in—a porcelain washtub. The two men drained the buckets into the tub and hurried out of the room, snickering.

  “Get down in there,” Taggart said, tossing Scarlett’s ratty dress aside. “Sit!”

  She did as she instructed and lowered herself into the lukewarm water.

  “Stay there,” Taggart said. “Do not come out until I say. Understand?”

  Scarlett was too afraid to move. She watched Taggart skip out of the room, laughing in hushed tones with his companions. Whatever they were up to, she didn’t understand what they thought was so funny.

  She waited, her body still, too afraid to move. Her eyes roamed the high walls with their dark wood panels and antique tapestries. A nearly extinct fire crackled in its hearth across from the bed.

  Behind Scarlett was a trio of huge windows half covered by blue drapes, through which she watched the afternoon sun begin to set.

  Still, she waited.

  The water turned cold, but out of fear of Prince Taggart she refused to move. The blue sky outside changed to purple and the room began to get dark. She started to wonder if they had forgotten about her, or if maybe their intention was to leave her there in the cold water until she drowned, just like that little girl Taggart had told her about.

  Scarlett looked like her, Taggart had said. On the day he bought her from Mungo back in Perth, he marveled at how much she resembled his baby sister, a girl he had called Priscilla, the girl his deformed brother had allegedly drowned.

  Night came. The bath water was freezing, but, still, Scarlett waited.

  She was shivering uncontrollably when the door to the bedroom opened. A man slunk into the room, limping as if hurt. He carried a candle over to the bed and used it to ignite a three-branched candlestick. As the light in the room grew, and Scarlett saw more of him, she concluded that this must be Taggart’s brother, a man whose name she had not yet heard.

  He had begun to undress when h
e noticed Scarlett sitting naked in the porcelain tub. When their eyes locked, he screamed, which startled her and made her start to cry. He ran from the room as fast as his gimpy leg would allow.

  And then Scarlett was left in the silence and cold once more. She sobbed, shivering, wishing she could get out of the tub, but doubting she could even move.

  A few moments later a young woman shuffled into the room. She was small, like Dana, with a tiny waist and compassionate eyes that looked upon Scarlett with a certain horrified shock.

  “Oh, of all the cruel…” her voice trailed off as she ran toward the tub. She grabbed a towel from a shelf next to the window and hurried over to Scarlett. “Come,” she said. “Up you get. Come now, it’s all right.”

  It almost hurt to move, but once she got to her feet Scarlett indulged in the soft embrace of the towel and the young woman’s warm arms. She rubbed Scarlett up and down, her eyes sad.

  “By the gods, you’re frozen,” she said. “Let me look at you. Purple lips. Wrinkled hands. Damn those fools. Damn those proud fools.”

  Taggart’s deformed brother limped back into the room. His unnatural profile was haunting. He moved toward her, and she pressed herself into the young woman who shot the man a contemptuous glare.

  “This is all your brother’s foolishness,” she said.

  “I know,” he replied. His voice was smooth, like water, kind and genuine. His stooped back made him look short, and his hair was much darker than his brother’s. He had haunting eyes encroached with dark circles that frightened Scarlett at first, but she couldn’t deny that despite his horrible appearance he had a gentleness she found calming.

  “I’m sorry if I frightened you,” he continued. “You–you look… unbelievable. You look just like her.” His good hand went to his mouth as he gazed at Scarlett, stunned.

  “My lord?” said the young woman. “She looks like who?”

  “My sister,” he said in a heartbroken whisper. “Priscilla.”

  The woman looked appalled. “Is that why they did this? How long were you in there, love?”

  Scarlett just looked from the woman to the man, helpless to explain anything.

  “Aamor, why don’t you go fetch her some clean clothes,” the man said.

  “Right away, my lord.” The woman hurried out of the room, much to Scarlett’s dismay.

  The strange looking man sat down on the bed, grunting as though it took great effort to do so. He gestured in the direction of the young woman. “Aamor,” he began, “one of the gentlest souls I have ever known. Beautiful. Smart. Worthy of so much more than a life serving a crippled, crotchety curmudgeon like myself.” He paused as though waiting for a laugh that never came. “My name is Tristian. Tristian Elle. What is your name child?”

  Scarlett reverted to the universal symbol for voice by patting her throat. Everyone in Aberdour knew of her disability, and so it had been a long time since she’d had to communicate with someone who knew nothing about her.

  “You can’t speak?” Tristian guessed.

  She nodded.

  “Well, it seems we have two things in common,” he said. “We both are broken, and we’ve both been humiliated by my idiot brother.” He adjusted himself on the bed, pained by something in his left hip. “Regardless, there must be a way to learn your name. Perhaps I should guess it?”

  Scarlett felt the beginnings of smile forming at the corners of her mouth. She always enjoyed a good guessing game.

  “Is it Dingo?” Tristian asked.

  Scarlett huffed out a laugh, a stupid-sounding laugh she had always hated. No voice. Just air passing through her mouth. It had always embarrassed her, until now. In the face of Tristian’s deformities, her shortcomings didn’t seem so bad.

  “No? Well, how about Spotty? No? Shorty? Beanpole? Wait, wait. I’ve got it. Dandelion!”

  She shook her head, huffing her strange, stupid-sounding laugh with no reservations.

  “I think perhaps you should give me a hint,” Tristian said. “I’m not very good at these sorts of games.”

  Scarlett looked about the room for something to use as a clue. She noticed a bookshelf and shuffled over to it. While still snuggled in her towel she scanned the spines of the many books. She did not find the word Scarlett, but she did, however, find a book with a red binding. She pulled it off the shelf and brought it over to Tristian. She ran her index finger up and down the length of the color.

  He looked at the book perplexed. “Night Tales of Old.” He looked up from the book cover. “I doubt that is your name. Is your name in this book? No.”

  She pointed to the color of the book again.

  “The color?”

  A voice from the doorway said, “Scarlett.” It was Aamor. The petite young woman walked over to them with an armful of clean clothes.

  “Scarlett,” Tristian repeated.

  But the moment he said her name, she flinched. Othella had told her and Brynlee not to use their real names. Keep it a secret, she had said. Though the reasons behind the young woman’s warning were a mystery to Scarlett, it was one she intuitively felt she had to obey.

  Slowly she shook her head.

  “No?” Tristian said. “Your name isn’t Scarlett?”

  Again, she shook her head.

  “How about Red? Do you mind if I call you Red?”

  She nodded.

  “Now tell me…” He paused. “Sorry. Poor choice of words.” He thought for a moment. “What are you good at, Red?”

  Scarlett scrunched her face as she thought about what few things she could do, but all that came to mind were the things she wasn’t good at. She wasn’t pretty and brave like her oldest sister, Dana, who could loose her arrows better than any of them. She couldn’t fight like her brother Brayden, or run fast like Broderick. Even Lia and Brynlee had more wit and wisdom than little Scarlett. If there was anything she was good at, she hadn’t discovered it yet.

  She responded to Tristian with a shrug and a frown.

  He patted her shoulder. “We’ll learn about you soon enough, I suppose,” he said. “For now, I think it’s time for bed.”

  Tristian had Aamor make up a temporary mattress for Scarlett of thick blankets, bearskins, and pillows on the floor near the fireplace. She donned a linen shift and burrowed under the warmth of the blankets. Aamor lowered herself to her knees and helped tuck her in.

  “I’m so sorry, love,” she said, stroking Scarlett’s hair. “What they did to you today, they… they had no right to—”

  “Aamor,” Tristian said, “a hand please.”

  “My lord.”

  Aamor rose and went over to Tristian who was sitting on the bed, his weak left hand caught in the tangles of his shirt. Scarlett watched as Aamor gently untied the knotted strings and helped him remove the garment. Tristian thanked her and dismissed her.

  With a slight bow, the girl left.

  “Well, Miss Red,” Tristian started to say, “I hope you can sleep well tonight.”

  And sleep well she did. All at once the exhaustion from months of travel, of physical pain, and heartache, washed over her, buried her in her cushy mountain of blankets and pillows and drowned her in an ocean of rest. She dreamed wild and crazy carefree dreams, and woke to the sun as it caressed her cheek.

  MEREK

  Awlin returned to the campsite half-dressed and dripping with water. She giggled at herself as she stumbled over the low-hanging folds of her dress, and backed up to Merek where he sat on a log by the campfire munching on a piece of bread.

  “Can you button this up, please?” she asked.

  He stood, amused by her clumsiness. “Did you fall in?”

  “No, I wanted to wash,” she said. “The river was cold, but I needed to bathe.”

  “I’m sorry,” Merek said as he reached for the buttons on the back of her dress, “I thought we’d be safe by now, but, I promise, in another day or two we’ll—”

  When he saw the scars on her back he stopped. A feeling like ice trembled
through his body as he examined the whip marks. His mind conjured horrible images of a cruel slave master abusing his sister, Awlin screaming in pain as she tugged against her bonds. The thoughts drained the blood from Merek’s face because he knew that regardless of who put the scars on Awlin’s back that he, Merek Viator, was ultimately at fault.

  “Brother?” Awlin asked.

  He cleared his throat. “Oh, sorry.” He continued fastening up the back of her beige dress, a far too simple gown for someone worthy of so much more.

  Merek sat back down on the moldy log, fearing he would soon lose control of his own shame and burst into tears. For months now he had been hiding it. Ever since he had freed Awlin, he had been ignoring the nagging feeling inside him to tell her the truth. He knew that at some point he would have to admit his guilt, bear her hate, and have it over with, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Having already been shunned by the rest of his family, losing Awlin was a thought too difficult to bear.

  “What were you saying?” Awlin asked as she sat down next to him in front of the fire. “Something about a couple more days.”

  Her words yanked Merek from his inner misery. He found himself lost for a moment in her delicate eyes that still retained so much of the innocence that he remembered.

  “Um, yes,” he said. “We should be at the cabin late tomorrow.”

  “A cabin?”

  “I inherited it from a friend who also used to do my kind of work.”

  “You mean stealing stuff?” Her voice, the way she said it, so naive and unassuming, almost fascinated in a way.

  “But much more successful than I’ve ever been,” he said, which wasn’t entirely true. Anyone who knew him would attest that Merek was one of the best thieves in the business, but he lacked the one attribute that made the best thieves notorious: greed. “I have a stash of gold at the cabin that should be enough to buy passage.”