by Marc Secchia
“Watch out!” Shioni cried out.
Haile strode forward, throwing out crackling blue lightning-bolts that sizzled through the air and scorched whatever they touched, but the lioness danced between them with uncanny skill. Samira circled, snarling low in her throat, her yellow eyes blazing with a fire all of their own. The sorcerer’s eyes darted between the two of them. Shioni tried to form an attack but he swatted the half-formed magic aside. She could almost see him sucking on the staff for strength–because it was not within him, or what he had was a well long run dry.
Where had his power come from? This power to corrupt and control, was it even his? Ever so subtly, her eyes flicked to the staff. She imagined it wrapped in stone.
Haile faltered. The staff stopped glowing. Had it run out of power? Had she succeeded in breaking that unnatural link? Haile stared at the staff in surprise, and then gasped as Samira sprang for his throat. The lioness snapped her teeth down on a mouthful of wood. Samira growled, clawing viciously at his hands, driving him backward by the force of her attack. For a long moment they struggled, the madman and the lioness, wrenching the staff this way and that as they battled over possessing it.
“Come on, Samira!” cried Shioni. And then, “Oh, the dagger! Watch–”
But it was too late. A blade flashed beneath her body. Samira groaned and fell, dragging Haile to the brink of the outcropping. As he teetered there, Shioni saw her chance.
Her legs drove her forward, up the slope, thrusting with all of her strength, her head lowered like an angry goat attacking its rival, her manacled hands still locked behind her back, a scream rising in her throat as she vented her rage and sorrow, squeezing her eyes shut at the moment of impact. Her head struck near his hip. The snake staff flew into the air. With a terrible shriek Haile, the false King of Gondar, toppled over the edge and splashed heavily into the river below. The staff bounced twice and twirled lazily, one-eyed, down into the water.
Shioni saw his head break free. He fought the strong current, but the river swept him away into the darkness.
She thumped down on her tailbone.
“Samira?” Shioni rolled toward the lioness. “Samira? No!”
The lioness’ mouth opened in a bloody grimace. “Don’t count me dead yet, Graceful Strength of the Dawn.” But her head dipped, and pain clouded her eyes.
Shioni tried to press her legs beneath Samira’s jaw so that the lioness could rest her head upon them. “Oh, brave Samira … don’t give up. We’ll fetch you help.”
The lioness sighed.
“Here, let me …” She stretched herself out beside Samira. She tried to position her hands to stop the bleeding. The blade had penetrated her stomach deeply, and she felt warm blood trickling through her fingers despite her best efforts.
And that was how General Getu and Princess Annakiya found them, the slave-girl and the lioness, lying side by side near the edge of an underground bluff.
Chapter 20: A Family Reunion
For Several Hours, The combined Sheban and Gondari forces combed the caverns beneath Haile’s false throne room, but as the evening deepened into full darkness, even King Meles became tired and demoralised. “What did that traitor say?” he demanded, for the tenth time.
“That they’re locked in a secret chamber beneath the throne room, my King,” Shioni replied, for the tenth time.
“He has hidden them well,” said Annakiya. “Shioni, won’t you let a smith remove those chains?”
“No. The King’s family comes first.”
Shioni wore a shirt ‘borrowed’ by royal command from one of the Sheban Elites. It covered her almost to her knees. It was Annakiya’s first action after her precious response when she, the General, and the warriors stumbled upon Shioni alive. Azurelle, being Azurelle, snidely suggested Shioni had slept while everyone else fought the battle for her. General Getu suggested the Fiuri find herself a large spider’s web in which to spend the night. But once Shioni had been decently covered, Azurelle insisted on riding in her pocket and only in her pocket, on pain of various unspecified but terrible punishments.
“Don’t look at me as though I’ve grown horns.” Annakiya pressed a hand to her grimy forehead. “We’ll cut fresh torches and continue the search.”
Meles sighed, “You and your people have done enough, Princess.”
“With respect, o King–”
“We’re being stupid,” Azurelle piped up, cutting her off. “There are two throne rooms. It has to be the other one–the one inside the Palace.”
Meles, who had explained that he had grown up in the Palace since he was an infant, and knew that there was nothing but rock beneath the throne room, growled, “And who invited you to speak, you green-eyed pest?”
The Fiuri leaned out of Shioni’s pocket, batted her eyelashes at the King, and said, “I have a feeling in my antennae, o stupendously magnificent King of Gondar.”
“Is she always like this?” Meles asked from the corner of his mouth.
“Always,” said Annakiya. “Especially when she’s right.”
Azurelle, who had begun to grumble, changed her expression instantly to a sweet smile.
In the torchlight, Getu’s face was as forbidding as a craggy cliff face. But even he nodded. “Let’s do what the Fiuri says.”
Carrying their flaming torches, the Sheban and Gondari warriors tramped out of the caves. Emerging into the gloom beneath the towering trees, Shioni had never been so glad to feel the night-time air on her face, cool and fresh. Unexpectedly, the General’s hand gripped her arm as they scrambled over a low stack of boulders. She was grateful for the assistance.
In the corridor between the Princess of West Sheba’s quarters and the main Palace building, they detoured around Tensi, who had both hands wrist-deep inside Samira’s stomach, sewing up her innards. Tensi waved cheerfully at Shioni. “Going well here. No news?”
“Nothing so far.”
“You can sew this one up later,” said Getu, clapping his hand on her sore shoulder.
Before hurrying after the warriors, Shioni blurted out, “Save the lioness, Tensi. She rescued my hide down there.”
Tensi waved a bloodied hand. “Go, Shioni. Just a few more hours sewing and I’ll close her up. Don’t worry.”
General Getu, who had overseen Castle Hiwot’s repairs and was a capable builder and architect quite apart from his warrior and leadership skills, stumped around the throne room muttering to himself. Twice, he disappeared outside to double-check the dimensions. He demanded sight of the plans; King Meles immediately assigned two servants to track down the Archivist, wake him up, and find out if the Kingdom of Gondar still possessed those plans. The Palace, Meles told the Princess, was over a hundred years old.
Shioni wished she had found time to have the manacles removed. Her arms felt ready to drop off.
“Hammers! Chisels!” the General shouted somewhere outside.
King Meles startled. “What’s that madman doing to my Palace?”
“Breaking a hole in the back wall, o King,” Princess Annakiya said primly.
“It’s over four feet thick; solid stone …”
“Getu said, ‘Not for long’.”
Meles’ expression told them exactly what he thought of the General’s idea. However, as Shioni watched, his face crumpled. Gone, the mask of a king. In its place, the desperate hope of a father and husband. His eyes filled. “It’s my family,” he said.
Neither Annakiya nor Shioni could keep pace with the King of Gondar as he stormed out of his throne room and around the side of the Palace. When they caught up, he had a hammer in his hands, snatched from one of the warriors. Great blows smashed splinters off the stone blocks. He sobbed as he swung.
“Hit the mortar, o King,” said Getu, holding a chisel for him. “Strike here.”
Beneath the fiery light of upraised torches, the warriors and the King toiled to break out several interlocking blocks of dressed stone. Within, they found a dark space. A small warrior crawled w
ithin; another passed him a torch.
“Steps!” he called. “Steps, above my head.”
Shioni jumped as a trunk touched her shoulder. “You still with us?” Shifta rumbled. “Glad to hear it. Anything I can do here?”
“I sent for him,” Getu growled at Meles, whose bemused expression was priceless.
“I said nothing,” the King defended himself. “Will I have a Palace left when you’re done, General?”
“Shioni!” he barked. “Put Shifta to work!”
In this mood, General Getu might well tear down the entire Palace, Shioni thought. Ten warriors inserted what appeared to be half a tree into the hole. In a moment, a thick rope appeared. Shioni had the warriors hitch up a makeshift harness while she stood impatiently by and fiddled with the manacles. She gave Shifta instructions–not that he needed many. Once the log was in place, the powerful elephant tore a hole in that wall that twenty men could have fit inside without any trouble.
Warriors swarmed forward, heaving the rocks aside to clear the hidden stairway’s base.
“Well I…” King Meles said, rubbing his great head. “This was behind my throne all these years? My brother was listening in here?”
“Accessed from above,” said Getu, craning his neck. “What’s up there?”
“The royal family’s apartments,” said the King. “My sons’ rooms–where they used to be.”
“My Lord! A way down!”
King Meles stared. “Oh, God,” he said. “Beneath the throne room. Beneath my own feet …” Snatching up a torch, he forged forward.
“Hold!” roared Getu, using his battle-trained voice. “Shioni goes first, with the Fiuri. They’ll have a chance to detect any traps your brother might have set.”
The King’s gaze took in Shioni’s dishevelled appearance and imprisoned arms. He smiled. “Only if I may hold the torch for her.”
Willing hands helped Shioni over the rubble. In a moment, she set foot on a long, uneven flight of stairs which descended into the bowels of the hill crowned by Gondar’s Palace. It must be riddled with caves, she realised, trying not to dwell on how little she enjoyed enclosed underground places. Compared to this, the lion pit seemed open and airy. What sounded like half the population of Gondar tramped downstairs behind her. The stairs turned on a small landing, and Shioni paused. Careful. Concentrating more deeply now, she tried to discern what had given her pause.
Behind, Meles ordered those following to stop.
“Zi, is that a crack in the floor?”
“Get me down and I’ll take a look.” Shioni knelt. Azurelle swung neatly down from her pocket and darted across the floor. “Yes, a crack.” She cast about. “And a lever back here, Shioni. Wait. Don’t come that way. You’ll need a warrior’s spear.”
“I need a spear, General.”
A few moments passed before a spear appeared in General Getu’s hand. “What have you found?”
“A pressure plate, gashe, and a secondary trap on the landing. I think.”
“Poke the spear over here,” Zi instructed. “Here, General.”
It took Getu three tries to spring the trap, a set of poisoned steel spikes that sprang out of the wall. The mechanism had been recently oiled. Zi coached a warrior around the outside of the danger area on the small landing, and he shifted the lever for them.
“Right,” said Zi. “Come on, Shioni.”
Down they moved again. The tunnel was almost too narrow for the huge King to pass through. Shioni paused to listen. “I thought I heard voices,” she whispered to King Meles. “But they’re so far away … or muffled by something …”
He whispered to General Getu, who whispered back, “A magical trap?”
“Be silent,” said Shioni, on a hunch. “I need complete quiet.”
“Quiet. Quiet.” The order moved upward.
Shioni tilted her head, listening intently. When she could not make out anything unusual, she tried listening again with the help of her powers. There–what was that? A slight humming? A sound like bees trapped in a box? Shioni stretched further, feeling her way with the greatest care. Ah, there was something here. Mentally, she tiptoed around it. Yes, these strange creatures, similar in form to wasps but a hundred times more venomous, should not exist … she willed them away. Go, little ones, go back to wherever you came from. Vaguely, she felt Meles’ hand catch her manacles as she swayed.
“Shioni?”
“Thanks,” she breathed. Her heart pounded so strongly she feared it wanted to burst out of her chest. “That was close.”
“Found something?”
“Magic. We would all have been killed.”
“My brother.” Shioni heard a world of hurt in his voice. “He was an odd one, always preoccupied with strange and dark things. He must have been lying in wait for many years, laying his plans, spying on me and my household. A year ago, he seized power. Last month, he kidnapped my family and tried to force me to abdicate the throne.”
Shioni’s feet felt carefully for each rough step. “My King, I felt his power take over my body. If he was controlling you …”
“How could this be?” King Meles chuckled uneasily. “I do not know how, but I was able to resist him. Not easily, nor in many ways. But things changed when we learned you Shebans were coming. Perhaps it stayed his hand.”
Shioni saw the bottom of the steps. She heard the slow breathing of sleeping people; someone was snoring. “He desired my power.”
Meles’ torch wobbled overhead. “Is this–snakes alive!”
The King’s knee cannoned into her back. Without a hope of catching herself, Shioni pitched forward. She tucked her head in, tumbled painfully head-over-heels, and crashed into the bars of the room below. A second later, the huge King of Gondar landed partly on top of her.
She heard: Click.
With a dry, rustling sound, several large cobras dropped into the room from beneath panels hidden in the walls. Within, someone screamed. Children’s voices called out sleepily.
“Quiet!” Shioni commanded, backing her words up with a mental command similar to what Haile had used on her. To her surprise, silence spread out like ripples across a pond. The children still asked questions, but their voices seemed smothered beneath layers of blankets. Now she reached out to the snakes, finding slippery little minds consumed with irritation and hunger.
Nothing here, she soothed. There’s a nice hole here you can sleep in.
Breaking through was difficult. Shioni wondered if she should be able to control such a simple animal brain, given what she had learned from Haile, but they were so strange and alien, she felt as though she was trying to grasp wet, mossy pebbles in a river. Maybe she could misdirect them?
Food. She pictured a fat rat in the nearest corner.
Tongues flicking eagerly to test the air, four large cobras converged rapidly on the corner. Her eyes fell briefly upon King Meles. His face was a mask of horror.
“Give me your cloak.”
The King of Gondar seemed quite happy to take this order from a slave-girl. Shioni took the proffered cloak and flipped it neatly over the snakes. Now she tried to coax them to sleep. As she did so, General Getu and a number more warriors filed down into the underground chamber. The entryway was narrow, barred in a way that reminded her clearly of the dungeons they had cleared out at Castle Hiwot. Beyond, she made out a room with beds down either side, but it was impossible to determine how far it extended.
Shioni turned to the General. “Nice work,” he said, and clapped her sore shoulder again.
“I need a basket with a lid,” she replied. “Too much noise and vibration … it’ll aggravate the snakes …”
“And a locksmith,” said King Meles, examining the door with an air that suggested he was considering breaking it down by force. “Girl, did you put them all to sleep in there?”
“I’m sorry. I can–well, I think I can–wake them up.”
Her head ached from tiredness and from trying to force her mind to work in ways
it was not accustomed to. She found she first had to undo her previous command, and then she could begin to lightly touch the minds behind the bars.
Behind her, Getu noted, “And that, o King, is why we usually leave her chained up.”
Meles laughed. His huge hands gripped the bars fiercely as, with a sleepy patter of feet, the first of his daughters came wandering toward the torchlight.
The little girl blinked drowsily. “Is it morning yet?”
“Hello, Bezalel, my precious jewel of Gondar.”
“Daddy?” She could not have been more than four years old, a beautiful girl with her hair done in shuruba braids. “Daddy!”
Laughing and crying, King Meles stretched his hands through the bars. “Come to me, my daughter.”
Chapter 21: The Feast
Patched up in more places than she cared to count, Shioni entered the banqueting chamber a step behind the Princess of West Sheba, as was proper. She had been warned something very improper was about to occur. Strangely, this made her even more nervous than clambering down that long staircase to the dungeon the previous evening. She had scrubbed the brown herbal wash off her face and hands, and Annakiya herself had dressed Shioni’s hair in shuruba braids and several of her own jewelled clips. Shioni had left her weapons behind–carrying them in the King’s presence was a grave insult. Her hip felt bare without the long dagger. But could it be, she mused, that her most potent weapon sat on top of her shoulders?
That said, her allegedly best weapon might be mistaken for a large rock that she kept ramming into any trouble within a hundred days’ ride. Shioni grimaced.
For all his cruelty, the King’s brother had taught her a great deal about the use and abuse of magic. ‘May I never become like him,’ she vowed in her heart. But how would she protect herself from the temptation to use that power just a little too much?
A long table dominated the top of the hall. Behind it, the King’s throne stood empty. Instead, he sat at the long table with his wife, four sons, and three daughters. Three of his sons appeared to be on course to become as large as their father. The girls were all as slender as their mother, and took after her in beauty. Many other guests graced the room–nobles, Captains, General Getu, Abba Petros, and many more. The guests wore their finest gabis or flowing white dresses, but the styles and hand-stitched patterns were very different to Sheban styles. Out in the gardens, beyond a row of pillars, a separate feast for the warriors had already turned rowdy and celebratory.