Soleri

by Michael Johnston

  More priors hurried down the corridor. Seeing the knife, three of them immediately surrounded Ren. A fourth took Adin and led him away. His friend resisted the prior’s pull. “When you get out, find me, you sons of bitches!”

  “Go, you idiot!” Ren backed toward the wall, the knife feeling heavy in his palm as he faced the priors and an enraged Oren Thrako. At least he’s forgotten about Tye. “May you share the sun’s fate—and all that!” he called to Adin. “We’ll find you sure enough, I promise. If we ever get out of here,” he muttered to himself.

  Adin twisted to look back at his friends, and seeing them in obvious jeopardy, struggled to return to help. He struck the prior who was leading him down the hall, knocking him on the jaw and hurrying back down the corridor. But two more priors arrived, blocking his path. They faced Adin with a snarl and each one took one of his arms.

  “I mean it—come to Feren,” Adin yelled before he was pulled back into the shadows.

  Before Ren could reply, Oren took him by the fabric of his tunic. “You should have dropped the bloody knife,” he said. “I’ll take a finger in payment, or maybe two.” He held Ren by the neck while the remaining priors scrambled to take hold of the blade. It took two of them to restrain Ren while the other pried the knife from his hand, peeling back his fingers one by one. The knife clattered to the floor.

  Oren took a step back, removing himself from the melee, straightening his tunic, and fixing his necklace. His hand came away red with blood from the ugly cut on his neck. “You’ll go to the wells for this, Tye,” the Prior Master raged. He held up his red fist. “We’ll let the sun judge you for your sins.”

  “No,” Ren said. “I’ll do it, I’ll stand beneath the sun. I drew the blade. Let me take his place.” He knew the Prior Master would not pass up an opportunity to punish him, so he offered himself in Tye’s place.

  Oren glanced from Ren to Tye and back again, weighing the matter. Then he grunted his acceptance, as Ren knew he would. “Good enough, Hark-Wadi.” He smiled grimly, as if this was what he had wanted all along. “In place of a finger, I will send you to the sun. You will stand and face the Sun’s Justice,” said Oren.

  Ren had seen a boy survive the Sun’s Justice, had seen the ransom’s charred and flaking skin, his blind eyes and cracked lips, his neck and shoulders dotted with yellow and white pustules that ruptured when the boy bent his arm or flexed his neck. Now it was he who would stand and wither in an oven-sized shaft while the sun’s heat turned the stones around him into searing coals. If he survived the ordeal, he was innocent. If he died, he was guilty and would be sent back to his kingdom in a casket, and the empire would demand a new ransom.

  Already the priors were grabbing him by the hood of his tunic, taking him to the roof. “Go,” he told Tye, who had tears in her eyes. “Forget about me.” At least she is safe. It was comfort enough to know he had kept her from the worst of it. And Adin was free. His friend had escaped the Priory. Ren had spent the better part of his brief life dreaming of the day when the three of them would be free. It was all he wanted for himself and his friends. He tried to take some solace in Adin’s freedom, but his thoughts were a jumbled mess. Soon he would face the Sun’s Justice.

  Strong hands lifted him by the armpits while he kicked and strained. His foot met the face of a gray-haired prior. He kicked again, but a younger and stronger man took hold of his ankle and wrenched the joint into a painful half-turn as they dragged him down the corridor.

  They enjoy this, he thought, they like watching us squirm.

  Ren saw an arch above him, which meant they were on the stairs. He had struggled for years to see the sun, to catch a glimpse of the sky, and now it was here, bright and blistering.

  A door banged open and everything went white. Warm air buffeted his face. Ren squeezed his eyes closed, but sunlight pierced his eyelids, filling his vision with a red-veined panorama.

  “Open your eyes, boy. We’re on the roof,” said one of the priors.

  “No,” he murmured, “I don’t want to see the sun.” In truth, he had wanted to see it his whole life, but now that the moment had come he wasn’t ready. No matter. Ren did as told and saw a pair of crooked teeth smiling at him. The prior turned his head and spat into a lightwell. The spittle hung in the air, falling and falling, then disappearing into the darkness.

  “That’s where you’re going—into the well, to bake like bread, to cook like a goose,” he chortled. “Pain makes the man. Pain makes the man,” the prior hummed the words.

  Two and ten shafts dotted the roof of the Priory—long, narrow cuts dug into the flat stone, wells that fed light into the underground chambers of the Priory of Tolemy, the house for the emperor’s ransoms.

  “Here you go,” said the crook-toothed man as he fed a rope under Ren’s arms and tied a knot behind his back. “Careful not to touch the stones, you don’t want to burn yourself,” he japed.

  Ren closed his eyes, the sun was too bright—he wasn’t ready. The rope tightened around his chest. He felt a tug as the prior led him forward. His eyes clamped shut. He wished he could shut his ears too. The city was loud, almost suffocating. Dogs barked and hawkers cried.

  “No, I—”

  The prior’s foot hit his back and Ren fell, tumbling into the darkness. The rope caught beneath his arms, the knot tightening like a hangman’s noose. He grabbed the cord and tried to steady himself as his feet hung, kicking in the air.

  “Help,” he said.

  A grunt echoed from above as the priors struggled with the rope. Ren was dropped again, but more slowly this time. When he kicked, his foot hit stone. A ledge. He put one foot down, then the other, until he stood on a small foothold within the lightwell.

  “Is this it? Is this where I’ll stand?” he asked, but no one answered.

  The shaft felt like nothing more than a narrow pipe, one that was slowly tightening around him. He wanted broth on his lips and amber in his belly. There was an angry pulsing in his head that only a meal could fix, but he would not eat this morning. There was no knowing when the next meal would arrive, or if he would eat at all.

  I wish I were back in my cell. He had not appreciated how much he had until it too was taken away.

  The priors pulled up the rope and soon they were gone.

  It had all happened so quickly that he had not yet had time to consider what was in store for him.

  He was alone on the ledge. The light shaft provided no shade, nowhere to shit or piss. He could jump, he could end his life, plunge to his death. But even then the fall might not kill him. If he was only maimed, the priors would surely nurse him back to health just so they could abuse him once more.

  The sun was rising, and the rocks were already growing hot. Soon the stone would be too hot to touch, the air too smoldering to breathe, and the sun and his justice would be upon him.

  Ren wanted to be back in the dark, loamy comfort of his cell. I want to eat bread and drink amber and see my friends. A ransom had no other desires, no other privileges. Standing alone beneath the vast sky, trapped inside a veritable oven, the absence of those comforts struck him as a blow mightier than any the priors could strike.

  He pressed his shoulders to the stone. The rock was warm.

  I’m ready.

  A ray fell across his face, and after ten years in darkness, Ren raised his head, opened his eyes, and finally saw the sun.

  2

  “Dear friends,” Merit Hark-Wadi said, projecting her voice across the stadium so that each person in the arena could hear her words, “people of Harkana, honored guests from Feren, on this last day of the feast, I wish each of you a good death.” The crowd applauded as she sat back down on her father’s chair. Adjusting her finely pleated dress, it occurred to her that she did not truly wish each of them a good death. After all, it was the bloody deaths that made the crowds cheer loudest.

  “May you honor Sola with your presence, and Harkana with your blood,” she said as she waved to each of the combatants, her eyes
lingering on a tall and powerfully built Feren warrior in silver armor. Merit settled back into her chair. The first daughter of Harkana was a woman of regal bearing and a cool, calculating gaze. She was a decade past coming into her womanhood but still a grand beauty at six and twenty, with long black hair that fell in thick ebony waves down her back, bronze skin, and full pink lips. Dressed in a dyed-blue linen so new it sweated color on her elbows and ankles, giving her elegant limbs a shadowy, bruised look, she raised one silver-bangled arm and waited—for the sounds of the crowd to die down, for a silence that she deemed sufficiently respectful of her place and position.

  “Take arms and let the contest begin,” Merit said.

  The warriors saluted with a dip of their swords, first toward the visitors from the neighboring kingdom of Feren as a measure of respect, then the Harkans. Only a handful of them would survive the ring, and even fewer would be afforded a good death. But it was early in the games’ last day, and the combatants were still fresh, still convinced of their own strength and skill.

  The contests were an annual tradition and had been around for years, for centuries as far as Merit knew. The Soleri calendar held three hundred and sixty-five days—twelve months of thirty days each, which left five remaining days unaccounted for. During these five days, the people of the empire observed the high festival, the Devouring of the Sun. These five days existed outside of normal time—no work was done, no animal was slaughtered, no field was plowed. Five days out of time—a period of rest, five days to drink and play as the people of the empire waited for the sun to turn black.

  Every year the feasting paused on the fifth day and exactly at noon the moon eclipsed the sun and the sky turned dark. The Devouring. Throughout the kingdoms, the people of the empire gathered together as Mithra-Sol dimmed his light in acknowledgment of the emperor. In the blackthorn forests of Feren they buried torches in the red earth. In the Wyrre, the beggars banged iron pots and smashed clay vessels to ward off the devourer. In Rachis, the mountain lords lit blazing pyres that turned the coal-black sky orange. But in Harkana, where hatred of the empire ran strongest, the people observed the festival in a more personal manner. The Harkans could not work or sow, but they could play and so they played at war. If they must commemorate their own defeat, if they must toast in honor of the emperor, the Harkans would do so with blood.

  Merit shaded her changeable blue-green eyes as she surveyed the field. Below her, the sound of iron striking wood shot through the arena. A Feren warrior cried out in pain as he fell to the arena’s dusty floor. Merit looked away with a grimace. Though it was her duty to order men to commit acts of violence, she didn’t much like watching it. She could stomach brutality as long as she didn’t have to look at it.

  To Merit’s right, the queen’s seat was empty, as it had been for nearly a decade. Her father, the king, was absent. Her brother, Ren, the heir, was locked in the Priory of Tolemy, so it was left to Merit to represent the royal family and to sit on the king’s chair as the combatants clashed swords, a duty that by rights was her father’s, but Arko Hark-Wadi, king of Harkana, refused to display patronage to the empire. The king was hunting in the north as he did each year during the Devouring.

  A thought occurred to Merit. Did the boys in Tolemy’s house observe the festival? Did they stand and watch the sun dim? Did Ren know that his people spent the day battling one another with spears and swords to remind the kingdom of its once-brave history? Her own father, the king, had never served in the Priory. His father had fought a war to keep his son safe at home. She wondered if that was why Arko always left Harwen for the Devouring. Is he too proud to salute the bravery of others?

  “The Soleri emissary will take it as a sign of disrespect, Father,” she had told Arko, watching him ride out with his hunters. “Any slight will be noticed.”

  But her father had dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “Fear not, Merit, I’ll raise a cup when the sky darkens and I’ll offer the emperor’s spies a drink if any are watching.” Then he had left, not even looking back at the place and the people he was abandoning. He did not even acknowledge the burden he had left her to bear. The queen’s duties came naturally to the king’s first daughter, but the king’s obligations were another matter. As much as she tried to fill his place, she was not his heir, and as much as she cajoled and flattered their allies, it was clear that no man save Arko could command their respect, and the king showed little interest in his duty. She longed for permanence, for recognition, for a power that was hers alone. Since her father would not grant her what she desired, she had decided she would take it for herself. She would find her own path to power and if that meant getting a little dirt on her hands, well, that wouldn’t bother her a bit.

  Merit stood up once more, as her duty required, raising her hand to the crowd. “To arms,” Merit said as the second of the matches, the contest of kings, began. This next bout pitted highborn warriors from competing kingdoms against one another in a melee. In practice, the servants and soldiers of wellborn families often fought in the contest, but the rules of the game did allow for the participation of the highborn and even the king’s family. Such participation was rare but not unheard-of in the contests, and so on a day such as this one, a day when the wellborn citizens of both kingdoms stepped into the ring, the games held an added tension, a thrill that was palpable. Noble blood meant the possibility of noble death.

  Finally something worth watching, she thought.

  On the field, a fierce battle raged between the Harkans and their Feren adversaries. Her eye tracked the Feren warrior in silver who had caught her attention earlier. The swiftest and most nimble of the Harkan warriors, a slim figure in a royal set of black leathers, with the horns of Harkana emblazoned upon them in silver, one Merit knew well from many previous celebrations, one the crowd knew as well, advanced on the Feren in the silver, but was driven backward by a pack of Ferens. There were five of them against just the one Harkan, and the Ferens were taller and their swords were longer and heavier. The Harkan had every disadvantage, but the warrior in black was undaunted. The Ferens, with their heavy armor and heavy weapons, moved slowly, giving the Harkan time to lift a short sword from the sand, where someone had dropped it. With two blades, the Harkan held back the five Ferens, parrying blows with one arm while attacking with the other.

  The crowd roared its approval, and even Merit clapped.

  Moving with confidence, the warrior in black executed a deft maneuver, throwing the short sword like a dagger and striking one of the Ferens in the leg, bringing him to the ground while the Harkan slashed at another, knocking the sword from the man’s hand and taking a finger with it.

  The remaining Ferens pressed their advantage. Two attacked from the front while the third came at the Harkan from behind, moving with exceptional speed, thrusting his sword at an exposed patch of the Harkan’s armor. The blade drew blood, and the warrior in black retreated to the edge of the field.

  Merit edged closer to the lip of the platform. She hated when the fighting dragged on like this. The air smelled like blood and sinew and her stomach churned.

  On the field below, the Ferens pressed the lone Harkan. Injured but still defiant, the warrior in black blocked a fierce blow from above while from the side a gauntleted fist pummeled the Harkan’s cheek. A second blow sent the Harkan stumbling. The Ferens pushed in for the kill.

  Damn it all, Merit thought, this will ruin the games. Merit wondered if she should call an end to the match. It was within her right to end the contests, to declare a winner without further bloodshed. She raised a finger and the crowd’s gaze swung from the field to the platform where Merit stood. The people waited. A word would end the melee, but no sound issued from her lips—as there was no longer a need for her to act.

  What’s he doing?

  The highborn Feren in the silver armor had advanced across the ring and was attacking his own countrymen, clobbering one soldier with the pommel of his sword, sending the man crashing to the sand while
taking the second man by the collar and tossing him outside the ring, ending his part in the contests. The last of the three Feren warriors, unwilling to raise his blade against the noble warrior in silver, dropped his weapon. The crowed roared as he scurried from the ring.

  Clever man, thought Merit. He wants her all to himself.

  Two combatants remained, one from each kingdom, the tall and powerful Feren in silver, the small and stealthy Harkan in black. Her head swung from one to the other, watching closely. These next few moments would be the critical ones, the moves that would decide the match.

  The Harkan advanced, feet shuffling in the dirt, stirring gray clouds, sword gleaming in the light.

  The crowd went silent.

  The Harkan lunged with frightful speed, then faltered midstrike.

  The crowd gasped.

  Merit bit her lip.

  Searching for an explanation for the Harkan’s failure, Merit noticed blood seeping from the black armor. Taking advantage of his opponent’s injury, the tall Feren struck at the wounded Harkan, disarming his opponent, putting his blade to the Harkan’s neck, ready for the kill.

  “Halt!” ordered Merit. She swallowed an uneasy breath. “Show yourself!” she ordered the Harkan.

  On the field, the Harkan angrily tore off her helm, revealing the face of a girl of ten and six years with close-cropped hair and brown eyes.

  Harkana’s last warrior in the field was Kepi Hark-Wadi, second daughter of Arko, king of Harkana. Merit’s younger sister. I told her to stay out of the games. Merit had urged Kepi to sit alongside her on the platform, but her sister had little interest in Merit’s advice—little interest in anyone’s counsel save for her own.

  The tall Feren took off his helm. His dark, wet hair was plastered to his head, his strong jaw lined with dark stubble. He was Dagrun Finner, the young king of the Ferens.

  Below Merit, the crowd surged with anger at Kepi’s defeat.