by Alec Hutson
Once inside, she climbed to her feet. She couldn’t hear the waves anymore, or the wind, so her breathing sounded loud in the silence. Didn’t smell as musty as she’d have thought it should, so maybe Kay’s grandma came here pretty often. But what was here?
Slowly, Sella’s eyes adjusted to the little light trickling through the chinks between the stones filling the windows. Looked to be a few long tables scattered around most of the space, with something larger hunched along the far wall. Maybe a bookcase or a cupboard. She stepped closer to the nearest shape and ran her hand along it—yeah, it was a table, smooth and hard. Her fingers bumped against something lying on the table, and she felt its edges. Small pieces of wood, little knots where they joined together, cloth…
It was a doll, she’d wager anything. But what was it doing here? Holding the doll in one hand, she kept moving her fingers over the table. More dolls, sprawled out like someone had been playing with them. Her eyes were pretty good now, and she could see that the other shadowy shapes in the room were tables as well, and that they were also strewn with dolls. Twenty, thirty at least.
How strange. Sella stroked the bristly hair of the doll she held with her thumb, wondering if this was where Kay’s mother had once played. She remembered Esme, the doll Mam Ru had lent to her, and how that fat fool Malik had used the doll to lure Kay out into the forest. That memory made her smile—watching Kay beat those boys had made her heart feel big enough to burst.
Kay’s grandma certainly wouldn’t be angry if she borrowed one of these dolls to play with while they waited for her to finish teaching Kay. Maybe Kay would even be interested to see a doll that had probably belonged to his ma. It’d be tough to climb down the rocks with only one hand, but Sella thought she could do it. Or maybe she could tuck in her shirt and stuff the doll down the front. Yeah, that was a good idea.
Gripping the doll tight, Sella made her way back to the hole in the wall. Then, squirming through the little gap, she emerged again into the brightness of the day.
After her brief audience with the Stag thane, Verrigan led Cho Lin over to a table where she recognized some of the warriors who had brought her to Nes Vaneth. She wanted to confront Jan again later that night, but Verrigan counseled firmly against it—if the Skein king summoned her, then she must approach the dais once more, but otherwise she should avoid the White Worm thane’s attentions. Cho Lin was about to inform the Stag captain that she feared no man, but the look on his face stilled her tongue. Best to wait until the morrow, he advised, and corner the skald when he was not seated beside the most dangerous man in the Frostlands.
So instead Cho Lin choked down a blackened chunk of unseasoned meat carved from the creatures turning on the spits. As the Skein around her feasted and drank, she kept her eye on the king and his entourage through the smoky haze, but they seemed to have settled on the dais for the evening—more warriors had joined them, and it almost looked to Cho Lin like they were all listening intently to Jan as he regaled them with a story. Or was he singing? Could he truly be a skald? She had thought it just a clever ploy to explain his journey to Nes Vaneth, but perhaps not.
As the evening waned, the Bhalavan began to empty. A few of the Skein warriors slumped forward on the benches, finding space to sleep among the spilled ale and scraps of meat, while others stood and stumbled towards the great hall’s shadowed recesses. The great cook pits were extinguished, and the thralls stopped replenishing whatever was used for fuel in the iron braziers. Shadows draped the hall, and through the rents in the Bhalavan’s roof Cho Lin could see the distant glimmer of stars, visible now the smoke from the cook pits had cleared. A heaviness had begun to press against her eyes, and even the thought of staying the night in such a cold and cursed place could not keep her from yearning for sleep.
“Is that where the bedchambers are?” she asked, pointing to the end of the hall where she had seen the Skein warriors drifting.
Verrigan blearily looked in the direction she was indicating. She was actually quite impressed that he was still conscious—from the amount she had watched him drink, she was certain there was more ale than blood flowing through his veins.
“Bedchambers?” he slurred, blinking as he tried to focus on her. “Just one chamber. Big enough for hundreds to sleep. Warm, but smells terrible.” He stared into her eyes intently, as if to impress upon her the seriousness of what he said. “Terrible.”
The thought of trying to find sleeping space among countless drunken Skein warriors passed out cheek to jowl made Cho Lin shiver with revulsion. But where else could she bed down?
“Thralls,” she said, catching sight of an older woman who was collecting tankards from a nearby table. Most of her hair was gray, but she still had a few of the red curls that Cho Lin had come to associate with Dymoria. She was moving with exaggerated care, so as not to wake a sprawled Skein warrior.
“Thralls?” Verrigan said in confusion, swaying slightly as Cho Lin rose beside him. “You want to be a thrall now?”
“No. I want to sleep with them.”
“That’s a good idea,” she heard him mumble as she moved towards the red-haired thrall. “If you see a pretty one, send her to me.”
The woman started as Cho Lin laid a hand on her arm, nearly dropping the half-dozen tankards she had collected from the tables. She turned, letting out a little squeak of terror when she saw who had touched her.
“Do not be afraid,” Cho Lin said, forcing her most comforting smile. “I am a guest in this hall. I…” She hesitated, realizing that what she was about to say would be considered absolutely horrifying to any other daughter of a Jade Court mandarin. “I want you to show me where the servants sleep.”
The woman stared at her blankly, and for a moment Cho Lin thought she must not speak Menekarian. But then she shook herself, as if making sure Cho Lin wasn’t some spirit, and set the tankards down on a nearby table.
“You want to sleep with the thralls?”
Cho Lin nodded, relieved that she had been understood. “Yes. I do not want to sleep with the Skein.”
The woman glanced in the direction of the warriors’ quarters. “Wise decision,” she said, motioning for Cho Lin to follow her. “They’ve been feasting and drinking for days, ever since they killed all the Bear.”
“You were here before the battle?” Cho Lin asked as they threaded their way among the tables, towards a small archway set in the far wall.
“I’ve been here since I was a girl, more than forty winters ago,” said the thrall. “First it was the Raven, then the Bear. Now it’s the White Worm. I can feel it in my bones that bad times are coming. The Bear and the Raven, they were not cruel. Sometimes even kind. But these new Skein from the north…” She shuddered. “Three girls have disappeared in three nights. Some are saying they ran off, scared by this new king. But I don’t think so. Where would they go?”
The thrall led Cho Lin down a short passage, to a large chamber scattered with piles of rushes and small mounds of furs and clothing. There was a fire burning in a pit in the room’s center, and the only furniture were a few ancient looms and a stool where an old crone hunched wearing filthy rags.
“You can sleep where you wish,” the thrall said, gesturing at the bedding. “The other kings didn’t allow it, but these feast days most of the pretty girls are getting dragged off to warm some warrior’s bedroll. Some might come back before morning light, but there’s still enough space for everyone.”
“Thank you,” Cho Lin said, and the woman blushed and looked away.
“Ain’t nothing,” she murmured. “The Bhalavan is a bad place, but this room here is safe. No Skein warrior would ever be seen going where the thralls stay. Just be careful everywhere else in this cursed city.”
As the Dymorian thrall had said, there were plenty of empty piles of rushes when Cho Lin awoke the next morning. She wondered whether more girls had disappeared during the night, or if they
had been forced into the bedrolls of the Skein warriors in their sleeping hall. Perhaps she’d slept in too late, as a few of the women were already moving about the chamber. One was stirring the embers of the fire, while another was pouring water from a bucket into a metal container. Two more of the thralls were seated on the ground slicing up vegetables, while the crone on her stool didn’t seem to have moved at all since the night before.
The woman wrestled her heavy container sloshing with water over the flames, then noticed Cho Lin watching her from across the room. She nudged the shoulder of the other thrall who was trying to coax the fire back to life and murmured something softly into her ear. Cho Lin climbed to her feet, brushing dirt and clinging bits of stale straw from her clothes. By the Four Winds, she’d give anything for a hot bath and a few pieces of crispy fried yautiao right now.
She tensed as she noticed the woman who had been poking the embers approaching her. Tentatively, the thrall held out her hand, avoiding looking at Cho Lin directly.
“Breakfast,” she said softly, and Cho Lin saw that nestled in her palm was a small speckled egg. “It’s cooked.”
Cho Lin murmured her thanks as she accepted the egg, and the thrall scurried back. The other women in the room watched this exchange with mingled awe and trepidation.
“Thank you,” Cho Lin said again to the entire chamber, feeling a tightness in her throat. The actions of these slaves reminded her of how the servants in the Cho house had treated her when she was a girl. Why was it that those with the least often showed the most kindness?
She peeled the egg as she passed through the corridor to the Bhalavan’s main hall. Most of the benches were empty, which suggested the warriors had not yet risen for breakfast. Verrigan was there, though, nursing a tankard in the same place he’d been seated when she had left him the night before. Cho Lin suspected he’d never made it to the sleeping hall.
“Good morning,” she said, sliding onto the bench across from him. The Stag captain blinked bloodshot eyes at her, as if he was still having trouble focusing, and grumbled something unintelligible.
Cho Lin ate her egg in two quick bites, glancing at the empty dais.
Verrigan noticed where she looked and shook his head.
“Too late,” he mumbled into his tankard, and Cho Lin felt a chill go through her.
“Too late?”
“Already left before dawn.”
“Tsanme?” she cried, leaping to her feet.
“What?”
“What? Where did Jan go?”
Verrigan motioned for her to sit again, his face suggesting that just watching her jump around was making him nauseous.
“Hunting. The king and the thanes and their favorites left this morning on a hunt to celebrate the killing of all the Bear.”
“You told me to wait until the morning,” Cho Lin said angrily, restraining herself from grabbing the Skein and shaking him.
“I did, I did,” Verrigan said with a hint of an apology in his tone. “The hunt is—how to say?—tradition. But I did not think they would leave so soon. Or that the skald would go with them.”
Cho Lin glanced at the hall’s great bronze doors, which were permanently cracked open, gauging the time from the color of the light. It looked to her to be mid-morning, which meant that the royal hunting party had left at least a few watches past.
Verrigan waved his hand, as if to dismiss what he knew she was thinking.
“No. You can’t go after them. They went north, into the wilds. There are wraiths and bears and yerclaws in the forests—even the strongest Skein warrior would not go unless with many others.”
“I cannot let Jan get away –”
“He not getting away,” Verrigan assured her, taking a swallow of his drink. “Where would he go? And if he does, better for you. If they return with no skald, you can go chasing him again, and there would be no thanes to stop you from catching him at that time.”
There was some wisdom to his words. Jan had come to Nes Vaneth for a reason, so likely he would return. And if he did not, then Cho Lin could continue her pursuit without the interference of the Skein.
Verrigan seemed to sense her resignation. “Sit. Have some drink. Hunts only last a day or two.”
Cho Lin licked her lips as the Stag captain took another swig from his tankard, realizing how thirsty she was.
“What is it?”
Verrigan belched contentedly. “Drink of the gods—mead.”
Cho Lin grimaced and turned away from the Skein captain, the memory of the last time she’d drunk mead making her gorge rise.
“What? Is delicious.”
The hunting party did not return that day, and Cho Lin kept her impatience at bay by wandering the Bhalavan and the small section of Nes Vaneth that had been settled by the Skein. Like the city, much of the king’s great hall had been abandoned—passageways curved away into darkness, the dust of many years undisturbed upon the stone. She considered exploring a ways, but then wondered if this would violate some law of the Skein and bring down punishment upon her head. Also she had to admit to a trickle of fear staring down the empty corridors—who knew what lurked in the recesses of this cursed place? Did some dark magic still linger? Surely the Skein avoided these hallways for a reason.
Cho Lin did discover that the vague shapes she had seen looming at the edge of the great hall’s light were indeed statues: men carved from gray stone in intricate detail unlike she had ever seen before, their elaborate armor strangely ornamented. Incredibly enough, in one of the statue’s open mouths she could actually distinguish individual teeth. A snake coiled around the arm of that statue, scaled with strange designs, and on the shoulder of another perched a bird, its head a nub of chipped stone. The fear and anger etched into the warriors’ faces made Cho Lin shiver. Who would carve such things?
She also spent some time visiting the horse Verrigan had gifted to her after the wraith ambush. Despite the Stag captain’s admonitions about the horse, she’d found herself growing fond of the shaggy fellow.
A hundred tents of hide and bone had been pitched beside the Bhalavan around a long, wide building of crumbled stone that looked to have been used as a stable in Min-Ceruthan times. The owners of these tents must have moved inside the great hall, as the camp seemed populated only by boys and large dogs which looked to have more than a little wolf in them. They snapped and snarled as she passed, and Cho Lin was glad of the leashes that kept the dogs from trying to savage her. She found her horse pressed in with dozens of others inside the stables, and she refilled his water trough from the well outside and carried several armfuls of hay over to him from where it was mounded near the entrance.
The revelry that night in the great hall was much more subdued, and Cho Lin attributed this to the absence of the king and the thanes. It may have been her imagination, but she thought that the other Skein were giving her a wide berth—perhaps the story of how she had felled a Crow warrior had spread. She ate quickly, ignoring Verrigan’s attempts at conversation, and retired early to the thralls’ quarters.
The next morning, she found a stream of Skein warriors rushing from the sleeping hall towards the Bhalavan’s great doors. She glimpsed Verrigan among the tumult and fought her way to his side.
“What is it?” she asked, loud enough to be heard over the excited babble.
“The hunt has returned,” he replied.
They joined the throng and pushed their way outside; Cho Lin blinked and shielded her eyes from the dazzling sun, blinded from spending so long in the Bhalavan’s gloom. She gasped when her vision finally cleared, clutching at Verrigan’s arm.
Dozens of Skein warriors and their horses were approaching up the broad snowy avenue that led to the Bhalavan, light glittering upon spearpoints and helms. The dark-haired Skein king, Hroi, was in the lead, clad in the same gray wraith-leather armor that Cho Lin had seen the Flayed wearing e
arlier, a twisted black crown upon his brow. He wore a patched and mottled cloak—it looked like something a beggar in Shan might wear, but she remembered what Verrigan had said, and she shivered. Beside the king on a smaller pony rode the shaman of the White Worm, and he looked to be only sixteen or seventeen winters old, hardly more than a boy. Behind this pair came the rest of the warriors: Kjarl and his warband, the tines of their helms flashing; a contingent of the Flayed; and a host of Skein with black feathers threaded in their hair. And there was Jan riding among them, a sword of much finer make than the one she had bought for him outside Herath at his side. Apparently the king had decreed that he at least could bring his weapon inside the walls of Nes Vaneth.
But Cho Lin had not gasped because of anyone in the hunting party. No, it was what they had returned with.
On a makeshift sled drawn by two horses lay a head unlike anything she had ever seen before. It resembled a great lizard, as it was scaled and horny protrusions encircled its dead eyes, but its face was longer and more tapered than the smaller lizards she had seen in Shan. A forked tongue the length of her arm dangled from its slack jaws, and the fangs Cho Lin glimpsed more resembled daggers than teeth. That mouth could have easily crushed a horse’s head in life, she thought. It looked like something no one in the Empire of Swords and Flowers had seen for a thousand years.
“Is that a dragon?” she whispered, and beside her Verrigan chuckled.
“Nay, lass. That’s only a wyvern. A big one, though, to be sure. Dangerous.”
A wyvern. She had learned about them in her studies—the spawn of true dragons, stunted and mindless. For every egg that contained a dragon, a hundred more hatched wyverns.
Hroi shouted something in Skein when he reached the swelling crowd outside the Bhalavan, and the warriors bellowed back a cheer. He was younger than Cho Lin would have thought to already be king, not yet close to his middle years. His hard eyes scanned the gathered Skein as he cried out again, then he lifted something he had been holding.