by John Booth
Daniel had no plan to tell his brother about the magic dagger and remained stubbornly silent. Yousef rage intensified at his brother’s insolence. He took his belt and started whipping Daniel on the back.
Eventually Daniel could bear the pain no more and begged his brother to stop. He told Yousef about meeting the fairy and how she bewitched his dagger in return for him saving her life.
Daniel undid the dagger from his belt and gave it, sheath and all, to his brother who took it, laughing in derision at such an absurd story.
“You expect me to believe a fantastic story like that, little brother? Magic Sword, my ass!”
Revenge
Jalia stood on the top of a flat roofed house with a worried Marco Rawn at her side. They watched a series of explosions rip chunks of masonry out of the sides of buildings along King’s Street in the center of Bagdor. People screamed and ran for cover, shouting out such unlikely things as ‘The invisible giant is among us!’ as well as the more practical, ‘Flee for your lives!’
Small bags of gunpowder exploded in sequence along the street, creating the illusion that an invisible vengeful giant was venting his rage with his fists as he strode by. As a conjuring trick it was working exceptionally well.
It was the second night of such sights and the populace had become convinced of the invisible giant’s existence. Jalia believed that you could never underestimate the gullibility of the people of Bagdor.
As she stood on the rooftop watching the chaos and fear her plan was generating she thought back on her life and how events had led her to this place. It would have been so different if either of her parents were still alive.
Jalia’s mother died when she was five years old. She remembered her mother as mysterious and exotic, the only blonde-haired blue-eyed woman in the known world. She returned to her mysterious birth place on an ambitious trading expedition and never came home again. After many months, a courier arrived to tell her father that his wife was dead. If you were a trader by profession, such messages were typical of how you discovered a loved one had died, if you received any word at all.
Jalia’s mother had taught her daughter all about adding numbers. From her mother’s death she managed the books of her father’s business. Her father was a successful merchant and as a result of his wealth, Jalia was sent to the Royal School to be educated. She sat alongside the children of noble families and master guildsmen’s. She graduated at the age of twelve. While the right to own property came at seventeen, the age at which you were expected to go out and earn a living was twelve by ancient tradition.
By that time, she had developed a reputation as a tomboy and a generator of trouble. She was dangerously proficient in all forms of martial arts, while being notorious for her miraculous luck in any game where money was gambled.
Her peers at school soon learnt it was safer not to challenge her with sword or bare fists and the old men who sat in the park refused to accept her challenges in chess or any other game that she might inflict further humiliation on them.
What Jalia wanted above all else was to become an alchemist. Bagdor was famous for its two great guilds, that of the Alchemists and the Assassins. Unfortunately for Jalia, the Alchemists Guild only accepted young men as apprentices and then not until they reached the age of sixteen when they were considered old enough to be sure that it was what they wanted. Joining a guild was a one way thing; no one was allowed to share guild secrets with others. To attempt to leave a guild was much the same as deciding to commit suicide only a lot more certain.
Jalia never believed that any of society’s rules applied to her and so she tried to steal the knowledge she craved. Caught in the grounds of the Alchemist’s Guild the year she left school with a stolen book in her hand brought her perilously close to death. Had she been the daughter of a peasant they would have hanged her on the spot and had done with it. As it was, she was stripped, tied to a whipping post and strapped by the Master of the Guild in front of all the novices. The Master only stopping when he was sure that to continue would have killed her.
It was while enduring that punishment that she saw Marco Rawn for the first time. He was showing visible signs of enjoying the sight of her punishment. Even as the whip cracked across her buttocks and back she made plans to seduce the information she sought out of novices just like him. To Jalia, her body was simply a tool to use to get the things she desired.
Jalia was a stunningly attractive girl, she inherited the blue eyes of her mother and her skin was paler, and milkier than that of other girls. She used her looks to get her out of trouble as much as she used her brain, and Jalia always used her brain.
She became Marco’s lover in exchange for access to his books. She was so much better at alchemy than Marco that she soon began writing his coursework for him. Jalia spent many a happy night at his workbench while strange brews fumed and liquid in vessels boiled down to colored powders. Though she never let Marco know it, he was far from her only lover and she obtained secrets from other alchemists in the guild who had a taste for young female flesh.
Life was good for Jalia until she reached her sixteenth birthday. It was the news just days after it that was to send her life spinning out of control.
Her father, Turan al’Dare, had been unusually secretive about his latest venture. He had told her that it would set them up for the rest of their lives. Turan borrowed money from practically every noble and tradesman in the city before leaving Bagdor on one last big expedition.
He never returned. Word eventually came back that the deadly sand fairies living at the edge of the Atribar el’Dou desert had killed him. Jalia found herself beset by her father’s creditors, who took the roof from her head and the clothes from her back in an attempt to get compensation.
Jalia set out to kill a giant with a bounty on his head. After she killed him the King refused to pay the bounty. That was the reason she and Marco stood watching walls of buildings explode in the sequence she had designed herself.
“Why can’t you just steal the money?” Marco whined. He was cold in the night air and knew she could have easily broken into the palace to take the money she was owed. She broke into the Alchemists Guild regularly and that was probably better protected.
Jalia pouted her lips.
“It’s the principle of the thing, Marco. I want this toad to honor his word and place a large sack of gold into my waiting hands.”
Jalia stood defiantly, looking out across the city, her legs spread a little apart and her hands gripping tight to her waist. She defied civilized conventions by wearing men’s clothes in the shape of a pair of dark trousers. That, and a black hooded jacket, made it difficult for Marco to see her in the moonlight.
“You will never be able to live here again,” Marco continued. “This is your home, Jalia, where will you go?”
“It’s a big world out there. I dare say I will get by,” Jalia said contentedly. She turned to him and smiled wickedly. “No one out there knows not to play cards with me, do they?”
Marco nodded, conceding her skills in games of chance.
“I suppose not. But if the guild finds out you know the secret of making black powder and that I helped you with this trickery, we shall soon be dangling from the end of a rope with our blackened tongues sticking out.”
Jalia grinned. “Then we had better make sure nobody finds out.”
She grabbed Marco’s hand and hustled him to the edge of the roof. They made the easy climb down to the next roof. From there, they climbed to the ground using a ladder that Jalia placed against the wall earlier in the day. She had an appointment at the palace that she planned to keep.
When Jalia was thrown onto the streets by the palace guards some days earlier, she had made her way to Marco’s room in the Guild, evading detection and those guarding the building almost without thought of them. There, she explained her plan to a disbelieving and increasingly frightened man.
The making of black powder was the most closely guarded of all the Alche
mist Guild secrets and even Marco didn’t know how it was made. The only thing he knew was that brimstone and charcoal were two of its ingredients. The secret of its making was split between guild alchemists and no one below the Guild Master was allowed to see the total process.
Jalia found out how to make it over a year ago, though it had cost her plenty in terms of the depraved acts her teachers required her to perform. Those tutors had been dead for nearly as long. Each being found in a locked room with their throats cut from ear to ear. The Guild had hushed up their deaths as Jalia anticipated and doubled security in the guild grounds. Trebling it would have been just as ineffective.
The Alchemists Guild was frightened of black powder. They feared its explosive force and had not yet worked out how to make a reliable fuse to trigger it. Jalia developed a fuse wire shortly after learning how to make the powder. She soaked thread in a liquor of dissolved powder and let it dry. The thread burned at a steady rate and she could set a time simply by cutting the right length. She would have become the most respected alchemist the guild had ever known if she had been born a boy.
Over the past year she had made a ridiculously large amount of black powder, complete with long lengths of her fuse. They were hidden behind a false wall in her father’s warehouse. It had been the work of a single night to recover the materials and take them to Marco’s room. Marco hadn’t been entirely pleased when he realized the powder could explode and blow up both him and his guild.
Two days earlier, Jalia and Marco placed a number of the small bags of the powder on buildings creating a circular route that skirted the edge of the city wall. The fuse wire dangled not far above the ground. As evening came to the city, Marco dressed up as a hawker and lit a blazing torch. He shouted out his wares as he lit the fuses in the sequence Jalia planned.
The first explosion blew a large hole in the city wall. Smaller bags of powder exploded like fists hitting the walls. Jalia, dressed as a boy, shouted out that a giant was attacking them, a terrible invisible giant. Within seconds, everyone on the street was sure that they too had glimpsed this invading monster.
Marco nailed a crudely written message onto a convenient wall. Later, at least a dozen people would tell the King’s Guard that they had seen the giant pin it there with a single tap of his mighty thumb.
The message stated that Grog, the brother of Drog, wanted vengeance on Jalia for the death of his brother, and that the city would be reduced to rubble if she was not given to him before the end of the day.King Brun Trep sent out his Guards to find Jalia. Everyone in the city searched for her, but she was nowhere to be found.
Brun Trep paced his throne room in a seething rage.
“Why have my guards not dispatched this monster or found Jalia?” he demanded of his Chancellor.
The Chancellor steepled his fingers and chose his words with great care.
“We don’t know where the giant has gone. We only know where he is when he is destroying the city.”
“What if he attacks the Palace?” the King demanded, “Will I be slain as I sleep?”
“He is looking for Jalia al’Dare, and it is known giants can identify a person by the scent of their blood. She is not in the Palace, so he will not strike here,” the Chancellor explained patiently.
“And you would have to be able to sleep through the end of the world to miss him coming for you,” he couldn’t help adding.
The King glared at him. People who made fun of the King didn’t last long in Bagdor. “I wish I’d paid her now. At least we would know where she was. She has always been trouble, that girl. My son once came running home with a bloody nose after she punched him.”
“I always thought Jalia was a wonderful little girl,” the Chancellor remarked, much to the King’s annoyance. “She is also very clever, as I remember.”
“If all you are going to do is disagree with me, then you can get out,” the King shouted, and the Chancellor backed out of the room, bowing low as he went.
By the early evening, the King was jumping at shadows. His wife and son had been moved to most secure part of the Palace. Apart from the guards outside his throne room, the King was alone.
When he heard the sounds of smashing stone getting closer and closer to the Palace he called his guards to attend him, but on one came running. He went to the door and flung it open. The guards and his courtiers were lying on the floor. He walked to the nearest of them and kicked him, but the man didn’t so much as stir.
“They have been drugged, I’m afraid,” Jalia told him in a cheerful voice that seemed to be coming from the ceiling. The King looked to find her perched nonchalantly on the sill of a high window, twelve feet or more above the ground.
“Did you do this?” The King was almost apoplectic as he waved his arms at his sleeping men.
“Actually, I did.” Jalia launched herself from the window and swung down to him, using a rope attached to a chandelier.
The king pulled one of the guard’s sword’s from its scabbard. He had never been in a real fight. The cities of Jalon were far enough apart for there to be no gain in war.
Jalia drew her sword from across her back. It was far shorter than the one the King held. However, the King was in no doubt who would win if they were to fight. Jalia’s reputation with the sword was well known at court and the King was well aware how limited his own skills were.
“All I want is my money for killing the giant and I will be on my way. I expect that this giant,” she nodded in the direction of the explosions, “Will follow me and leave Bagdor in peace.”
The King was secretly delighted at Jalia’s suggestion. He could give her the money and nobody would know. He would tell the people that his guards drove off the giant.
“I will get the money.” The king walked back to the throne room where the petty cash was kept and returned with two hundred pieces of gold in a bag. He threw it down onto the table. “Now leave Bagdor and take your giant with you.”
Jalia picked up the money bag and walked to the far doors. As she approached them, the servants behind them pulled them open. At least a dozen servants stood just beyond the door, having heard every word the King had said.
Some of the servants scuttled off to their work. King Trep realized wearily that everyone in the city would know the detail of his confrontation with Jalia before dawn broke.
“I told them to wait outside, but to listen well,” Jalia shouted mischievously before running from the room, her laughter echoing against the walls.
The sound of the giant stopped as suddenly as they began. The last bit of building destroyed stood near to the palace gate. People were to say later that the giant disappeared the instant that Jalia was paid.
Yousef
Yousef was dreaming. It was a repeated dream that started in his childhood and grew longer with the passing years. It was as though his conscience was determined to remind him of his sins. In recent times he woke screaming in pain. But then, he always woke up screaming in pain these days.
The dream began with events that took place just a few days after Yousef’s eighth birthday. He was an only child and used to getting what he wanted.
His father had been sent to Bagdor, to train their King’s Guards in swordsmanship, having been sent as a gesture of friendship by Delbon’s King Dran. Yousef and his mother lived alone in a small house in a secluded part of Delbon awaiting his father’s return. His father had been gone for over a year.
Yousef knew his mother was beautiful. His friends parents would often comment on it when he visited them. His father was highly regarded in the Guard and as a consequence they had a lot of friends. Nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of a man who had the King’s ear.
However, for the last few months, his mother regularly took into their home a mysterious man called Hasan al’Kebar and people were talking about it. Yousef friends made scurrilous comments about his mother. As a consequence, he decided to hide in his mother’s bedroom to prove those accusations as lies.
It didn’t work out the way he anticipated and he witnessed his mother and Hasan making passionate love in his father’s bed. Terrified he might be discovered he kept very quiet.
“I’m pregnant,” Kenda told Hasan. “I don’t understand how this can be since I have been faithfully taking gintel tea.”
“My family’s seed pays little attention to such things when its time has come,” Hasan replied.
“I won’t leave David for you.” Kenda sat up in bed and pulled a cover over her naked and sweaty body. “I don’t know what possessed me to have this affair in the first place. I love my husband more than I love life itself.”
“You had no choice.” Hasan said wearily. He got out of the bed and began to put on his clothes. “I am more than you think and our son nestling in your womb will have a hard life, as I have done before him. Will your husband keep you when he finds out about the child?”
Kenda sounded distraught when she answered him.
“I don’t know. I can only hope. And what do you mean, our son? How can you know the child will be a boy?”
“It always is.” Hasan pulled up his trousers. “My line always produces just one child and it is always a boy. I was born in similar circumstances with a cuckolded husband.”
“I don’t understand, Hasan. Why must you talk in riddles? Don’t you want to know your son as he grows?”
Hasan looked down on the woman he had shared a bed with. His next words would be a version of the words his mother told him the day he reached his majority. He wondered if Kenda would believe him.
“I will likely be dead within the year. The Fairie seek out my line and destroy us when they find us.” Hasan straightened up and looked almost regal as he continued to explain.