Slave of Sondelle: The Eleven Kingdoms

by Bevan McGuiness

  Over her head was draped a heavy veil. Red in colour, it fell across her shoulders and down to her waist. A piece of sheer lace formed a window over her face, allowing her to see while partially obscuring her from others.

  On her feet she wore only simple leather sandals, designed to remind her of how desperate the Mertian people were when the Acolytes of Varuun stepped in to help.

  By the time she had eaten and dressed, the sun was as high as it would go so far north. Myrrhini smoothed down her outer skirt and adjusted her veil.

  ‘The Wielder of the Key awaits your presence,’ the Bane intoned, following the time-honoured ritual.

  Myrrhini gave the required bow and answered in a flat tone: ‘The Eye of Varuun hears the call of the honoured Wielder and obeys.’

  Onaven led Myrrhini out of her room. Once in the wide corridor, she turned left and walked slowly, with solemnity, towards the huge doubledoors at the end of the passage. At the doors, she stopped and knocked three times. A small, latched shutter opened to reveal the eyes of a guard.

  ‘Who seeks entrance?’ he demanded.

  ‘The Eye of Varuun comes to enlighten the Key while seeking comfort for her people,’ Onaven replied, her voice a study in detached recitation.

  ‘Let the Eye step forwards.’ The guard continued the ritual.

  Onaven stepped aside to allow Myrrhini to move into view of the guard. When he saw her, the guard raised his left hand and placed it, fingers spread, across his face. It was an ancient Mertian sign, the meaning of which was lost.

  ‘Be welcome, Eye of Varuun,’ he said. ‘The Key awaits.’ He stepped back, and slammed shut the latch. After a moment or two, she heard the rattling sounds of the massive lock turning and the doors swung inwards.

  It had often occurred to Myrrhini that the whole process of meeting with the Wielder of the Key of Varuun was designed specifically to humiliate the Mertians, reminding them of their subservient role in the alliance.

  As always, she strode into the vast audience chamber with its vaulted ceilings, mosaic floor and mural-covered walls with her back straight, her head held high and her stride purposeful. Despite her outer courage, her heart often quailed at the sheer scale of the room. From the entry doors to the line made of pure gold poured into a groove in the floor where she stopped in front of the throne was one hundred and seven paces. She counted thedistance every time she came to present herself to Joukahainen, the Guardian and Wielder of the Key of Varuun.

  She gracefully lowered herself to her right knee at the gold line while bending her head before the Wielder. She waited thus, bowed and kneeling until Joukahainen deigned to notice her.

  ‘The Eye of Varuun must arise, for the times need her vision,’ Joukahainen said.

  At his words, Myrrhini shivered. Every word of greeting and dismissal was part of the ritual of whatever ceremony or task she was to perform. Each rite had to play out in its entirety and those words began the Ritual of Kantele. Myrrhini forced herself to her feet and made herself regard Joukahainen through the mist of tears that was already forming.

  ‘May the Key open the way to enlightenment,’ she intoned, completing the first stage of the ritual.

  ‘My thoughts exactly, dear Myrrhini,’ the Wielder whispered. His voice was soft and sibilant, the kind of sound Myrrhini imagined a snake would make as it slithered over bones.

  There was no surprise in one considering bones and death when meeting the Wielder. The old man was very thin, with ancient skin stretched over jutting bones, deep hollows in his face. His grey hair hung lankly over his shoulders, tangled and dirty. Whenever he smiled, thankfully rare, he revealed yellowed teeth more like fangs than anything a human might have. His eyes were dark splinters set deeply under his jutting brow.

  He was clad in a green robe that extended fromhis neck to halfway down the steps of his throne. The robe was elaborately embroidered in gold and silver thread showing stylised images of the mythology of Varuun. From the sleeves of his robe protruded spidery hands. His fingers were never still, always skittering around on the armrests of the granite throne, with his long fingernails making tiny scratching noises.

  They were skittering now as Myrrhini awaited his next pronouncement.

  ‘There is a darkness that lies at the heart of our world, Myrrhini,’ he said. ‘Have you felt it?’

  Myrrhini nodded. She had felt the dark, ancient evil that lurked beneath her. At times it had stirred, but mostly it lay quiescent, as if awaiting some suitable moment.

  ‘It has awakened, you know that too,’ Joukahainen went on.

  With a sinking feeling, Myrrhini knew where the Wielder was leading her, and why the Ritual of Kantele was being performed. She had hoped the source of her sense of dread had come from elsewhere, but she knew it was vain. It had awakened, it had been loosed and it would soon come screaming out of its prison seeking … something. The fact that she had no idea what this vast ancient evil wanted frightened her almost as much as its stirring did. She lowered her head in acceptance of what must now come.

  ‘Ah,’ Joukahainen whispered. ‘I see you have discerned Varuun’s use for your skills. Your intelligence pleases me almost as much as your exquisite body.’

  Myrrhini shuddered but kept her gaze steady as she wondered how this sinister, deeply disturbing man could have seen her body.

  When had he spied on her? How had he spied on her?

  Exquisite?

  Maybe the Wielder has been spying on the wrong woman.

  Joukahainen, the Wielder of the Key of Varuun, lifted his left hand and placed it, fingers spread, across his face in the Mertian gesture of greeting, formally beginning the Ritual of Kantele.

  ‘Eye of Varuun,’ he hissed. ‘The Key summons your gaze. It calls across the vastness of the Sixth Waste to you. Will you hear and fulfil your blood oath?’

  ‘I hear. I will fulfil my oath to Varuun,’ Myrrhini recited. With every word, her stomach heaved, threatening to undo her. She knew the Ritual of Kantele and it both sickened and terrified her.

  ‘Return here, nine days hence, Eye of Varuun, after completing the required purification and meditation.’

  Myrrhini bowed and left the great audience chamber.

  5

  The sun was a savage ball of white in a cloudless sky. Pain lanced through the slave’s eyes into his brain. He clamped his eyes shut against the assault, but without success. Brightness he had never imagined possible turned the inside of his eyelids red and made him gasp in dismay.

  A sound close to him made him open his eyes a slit and look around at his surroundings. He was standing at the side of a street. At his back was a building that reached three storeys into the harsh sky and across the way was a similar structure. It had to be around midday, he reasoned, for the street was narrow and the sun would not shine down so brightly on the paving stones beneath his feet for too much of the day.

  The noise that had alerted him was that of an approaching crowd. He looked to his right to see a mob of people surging towards him. They filled the street with bright clothes, shouting and chaos. The slave looked around in near panic, but there was no escape beyond flight. He turned and ran from the rushing horde.

  No matter how hard he ran, they followed him. He glanced down each alley he crossed, only to see another crowd rushing at him. His heart pounded, but he kept running. The sounds of the crowd built up all around him until he could hear nothing else. From every possible opening and alleyway, people were pouring onto the street to throng together. The slave skidded to a halt and looked around, but there was no escape, the people surged towards him. The first wave of humanity reached him, and instantly the slave was immersed in the noise, the smell, the press of a fast-moving crowd of people. Bodies buffeted against him, hands grasped at him, mouths gaped and eyes stared. The air became thick with the smells of others. His stomach heaved in protest, his head swirled, unable to process the vast flood of information his senses were feeding him. A feeling built within him, a feeling of anger
, of desperation, a need more basic than anything he had ever felt. His lips peeled back in a snarl and his hand slipped inside his tattered jerkin to grip the Warrior’s Claw. The feel of the warm metal gave him an odd sense of comfort, allowing him to regain his breath. The crowd surged around him, driving him along with them like some animal in the midst of a stampeding herd. He pulled the Claw out of his jerkin. As if by magic, a small space opened up around him as people saw the glinting metal blades.

  ‘You came prepared,’ a voice at the slave’s left shoulder said.

  The slave shot the speaker a hard stare, shocking him into silence. The man’s eyes widened and his mouth clamped shut.

  Even with that slight increase in space, there was still no escape from his moving human prison. The slave, weapon in hand, put his head down and ran along with them.

  He was unable to discern anything beyond the yelling, rambunctious crowd and the painful brilliance of the sunlight. His skin was starting to feel hot. The back of his neck, his shoulders were tingling with pain from the brutal assault of the sun.

  Suddenly, the buildings that were lining the street were no longer there. The crowd was spilling out into a large open space, but it was apparent from the swelling noise that even more people were joining the throng from other streets. Over the heads of those in front of him, the slave could see a huge building. It rose majestically above the surrounding city, dwarfing everything around it.

  The crowd was flowing towards a large black opening in the building. Once inside, the unruly mob took on structure, dividing into two streams of people — one group, the largest, headed right, while the others kept going straight. The slave started to head right when he was grabbed by the man who had spoken to him earlier.

  ‘Come, friend, you can’t take a seat armed with that.’ He gestured at the Warrior’s Claw still gripped in the slave’s left hand. ‘You and I have to face our moment on the sands.’

  The slave looked blankly at the man for a moment before following him out of the dim tunnel into the sunshine once more. They were greeted by a roar from thousands of throats. He looked around, trying to orient himself.

  There were maybe a hundred of them standing on the sandy floor of a vast arena. Every one had a look of desperation or fear, or a combination of the two. Most of them were armed and few of them were dressed much better than he was himself. They were all staring, some apparently lost and bewildered, some angry, while some had the look of hardened predators.

  Looking up, the slave saw thousands upon thousands of baying people arrayed in ascending rows of seats, rising at least twenty levels high. He had read many books in his life and the slave felt a sinking coldness in his gut as he realised what was about to happen. Blood would be spilled here for the entertainment of a depraved mob.

  The reasons for the spectacle were irrelevant, so he regarded those who would share his fate and decided that his blood would not be left here without a struggle. He gripped his Warrior’s Claw and turned to face the man who had spoken to him earlier.

  ‘Do we fight now?’ the slave asked.

  ‘We do.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It is the Day of Release,’ the man said, as if his words explained everything.

  The slave shrugged. ‘That means nothing to me.’

  ‘Too late now to explain it to you.’ With that, the man drew a knife and slashed at the slave.

  His attack was clumsy and slow. The slave evaded it easily with a simple dodge and as the man stumbled past him, he struck at his back withthe Claw, ripping him open. It was the first scream, but not the last.

  Initially, the fighting was as uneven as the slave’s encounter, with the untrained, unskilled fighters falling before the hard men — and women, the slave was shocked to note. Many of the fallen were not killed. Some seemed to yield and this was apparently enough. When their opponent accepted their surrender, they picked themselves up and wandered off the sand. He looked down to where his first opponent lay, face down, no longer moving, and regretted his killing stroke.

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ a voice snarled. ‘It was his fourth Day. He deserved to die.’

  The slave turned to face the speaker. He was a lean, wiry man with whipcord muscles and a sword. Old scars crossed his arms and legs and his chest was bleeding from a long, narrow slash. When he saw the slave’s face he hesitated.

  ‘Ice and wind,’ he hissed. ‘What did that to your face?’

  Instinctively, the slave raised his free hand to touch the twin scars running from brow to jawline. He lifted the Warrior’s Claw.

  ‘This did,’ he said.

  ‘And you lived?’

  ‘Lived to claim the weapon.’

  Fear flickered across the man’s eyes as he considered what that statement entailed, but he was committed to battle. With a cry, he sprang forwards. The slave dodged the thrust with little more than a sideways sway. As he counter-attacked with his Claw, a boiling rush of energyflooded up through his mind and body, filling him with a black haze of anger. Unrestrained, insatiable violence rang through him. He cursed in a language he did not recognise and unleashed a slashing attack on the swordsman.

  The black rage took him over utterly as he sliced the man open before spinning away from the body in search of more prey. The slave lost track of both time and himself as he attacked anyone who stood in his way with insensate malevolence. He was unaware of the gradual stilling of the crowd’s noise as they were shocked by the display of raw, visceral savagery the slave unleashed on the fighters in the arena.

  Only when he stood alone amid the hacked corpses, with his chest heaving, the blood of his victims dripping from his Claw, did he look up. Thousands of people sat in silence, watching as the horribly scarred man raised his clenched fists above his head and roared an ancient curse in a forgotten language.

  Down on the bloodied sands, the slave lowered his arms, feeling the rage leave him. He looked around at the carnage and then back up into the crowd of watchers and felt fear. Still grasping the Claw, he sprinted from the arena, seeking to vanish from sight. The stunned silence broke as he ran, shifting into a bestial roar torn from the throats of all those who had witnessed his rampage.

  Outside, the slave hesitated, momentarily disorientated, but the sound of pursuers gave him all the information he needed. He ran across the open area outside the arena and into the city. The sounds of pursuit rapidly faded as he lost himselfin the intricate labyrinth of near-deserted alleys and streets. He ran with no regard to where he was or where he was heading; his only thought was evasion, escape.

  When he stopped running he leaned against a wall, his chest heaving, sweat pouring down his body, leaving lines in the blood and red drops on the dusty ground. A sense of disbelief built within him as he tried to remember what had happened inside the arena. He recalled the brief conversation with the man he’d met earlier and he remembered killing him.

  Why did I kill him? he wondered. All the slave could recall after that were fragments of violence, killing, screams, blood. Disjointed images flickered across his memory like scenes from someone else’s life. ‘What happened to me?’ he asked aloud.

  The sound of running feet reached his ears. He tensed for flight, but they were not coming towards him. His pursuers seemed as lost as he was — which might give him some time to catch his breath and consider what to do next.

  It was not as if he had never killed before. His master had given him many opportunities to kill, and he had become very efficient at it, both in a fair fight and as an assassin. He could kill quickly and well, but always he had been controlled and calculating — never had he so utterly lost his head, nor track of time. When he had entered the arena, the sun had been high, now it was low in the west, sending shadows across the city.

  The sounds of pursuit came closer again. The slave dragged his mind out of the events in thearena to his present situation. He could distinguish six pursuers, in two groups of three. One group was heading towards him, but the other
was fading away. Three he could deal with.

  A hand touched him gently on his shoulder. Instinctively, the slave spun around to face what he believed to be an attacker. Instead of an armed hunter, he saw a small man, shabbily dressed and soft-looking, pulling back from the raised Warrior’s Claw.

  ‘What do you want?’ the slave snarled.

  ‘I can help you evade your pursuers,’ the man said. He backed away further, moving into the darkness of a recess.

  The slave looked around him. There was no one else nearby. He hesitated.

  ‘Why would you help me?’ he asked.

  The small man stopped retreating. ‘From the look of you, I would say you are in need of a friend. I know what that is like.’ He seemed about to say more when the sound of running feet intruded. The slave looked around and decided. He followed the man into the darkness.

  6

  They approached the city of Jooure from the north-west. As they rode, Keshik kept divesting himself of his thick furs, starting with his cap. This allowed his long, glossy, black hair to fly in the wind. Maida regarded his flowing ponytail with envy. Her own hair, long and deep red, also hung to near her waist, but lacked the shine and glossy health of Keshik’s. His hair, as much as the twin white scars across his face and his surprisingly short stature, ensured that he was easily recognisable, even before his virtuosity with the sword was in evidence.

  She had not been surprised by the Kifud tribesman’s response when he saw Keshik. Neither was she surprised by Keshik’s violence. His controlled ruthlessness, his ability to bestow horrible death without changing his facial expression — or rate of breathing — was one of the things that struck fear into so many opponents. Maida tried to put out of her mind the many men who had died at his hands for making a remark about her or giving her the wrong kind of look.