by Watson Davis
Contents
Prologue
The Clean Up
The Escape
The Rift
The Amulet
A Local Priest
Captured in Fizer
A Mother in Timyiskil
The Helpful Abbess
Studying The Spells
Rucker's Father
The Traps for Caldane
Captured
Battle for the Amulet
Aftermath
Glossary
Character List
About the Author
Prologue
I counted twenty men tumbling out of the three small boats, splashing and cursing in the icy water, bundled up in the furs of icefangs, bears, and wolves. They dragged the skiffs up on the pebbled shore, near the bonfire my father and Shaman Eddard had built for them.
“Welcome, traders,” my father said, spreading his arms in hospitality, his lips twisting into an unaccustomed attempt at a smile. Two axes swung from his belt, one from each hip, his leather pants loose, the breeze nipping at his thin woolen shirt, thick platinum braids hanging from his head, the ends secured with beads of lapis lazuli.
The traders rushed to the fire’s side, holding their shaking hands before it, rubbing their arms, trembling as though they were cold, even though the sun blazed high in the clear sky, a warm glorious day. Shaman Eddard backed away, his face impassive, staff in his right hand, his left hand contorting, a spell prepared and ready to discharge.
The three reindeer, my charges, a great responsibility, snorted at the stink of these southlanders, reeking of human excrement, bodies unwashed for far too long. Enita shook her head, refusing to share her air with these intruders, jerking away from my hand, threatening to take her load of ice-wyrm hides with her, but I whispered magical words, touching her mind to mine, calming her, luring her back to my side.
“Greetings, Onei.” One trader stumbled forward, reaching out his hand, not even taking off his thick glove, his greasy hair a dark brown. “I am Haral.”
My first time seeing southlander traders up close, I wondered if the reddish-pinkish color of his skin was simply because he hadn’t washed, if maybe these southlanders would have skin as white and pure as ours, as the Onei, if only they’d bathe.
My father took the man’s hand, pulling him closer, slapping the man’s shoulder. “Greetings, southlander. What have you brought for us?”
The man, releasing my father’s hand, gestured toward the boats on the shore, to the packages jammed within. “We’ve brought a bodyweight of sugar, another of salt, a case of Fosler’s Ale from Timyiskil, and a couple of bodyweights of flour.”
My father crossed his arms over his chest, the more normal frown returning to his lips. “I’d hoped for at least three bodyweights of salt.”
“You have to understand, the empire is cracking down on us, making it hard to trade outside the borders.” Haral shrugged. Two more traders left their spots by the fire, joining the first, concerned expressions on their filthy faces. Haral said, “The folks of Hafbergen and Timyiskil, they’re not the same anymore. They’ve lost their will to fight. They’re all good little imperial citizens now.”
My father grunted. “Last time, you told me you’d get at least three bodyweights of salt for us.”
“I said I’d try.” Haral pointed out to sea, to the dark double-masted ship in the bay. “All of this is supposed to be going to General Silverhewer in Windhaven, and she’s very jealous of her supplies.”
I inclined my head at the mention of Windhaven, out of respect for our beloved ancestors who had ruled there, out of respect for the ghosts of the Onei who’d died defending it: Tethan the Great, Farara of the Icefangs, Mokos the Wise.
My father turned to me, pursing his lips, pointing at Enita. I whispered more magical phrases, commanding Zee and Bard to stay, drawing Enita forward, the stones crunching and shifting beneath her hooves. I led her around to stand before the traders, turning her so she faced the forest behind us, ready to send her running back to the safety of the rest of our tribe hidden in the woods if father’s negotiations soured.
Father patted the ice-wyrm hides on her back, the silvery scales as hard as mage-forged steel, prized by armorers everywhere. “I’ll give you this.”
“No.” The trader shook his head, stepping back. “That was not the deal.”
My father held his forefinger in the air, raising his eyebrows, wagging his finger back and forth, saying, “My point, exactly.”
Following Haral’s lead, the traders slid their swords from their scabbards. My right hand dropped to the axe on my hip, my left resting on Enita’s shoulder, ready to order her back to the forest.
My father laughed.
An arrow slammed into Haral’s blade, the impact knocking the weapon from the trader’s hand. All the traders whirled, crouching, waving their weapons at Eddard and me, searching for the source of that arrow.
“Haral, Haral.” My father shook his head, kicking at a stone at his feet, his fists on his hips. “My wife loves me, and she is an archer without parallel. If you threaten me, she will pierce your eyes with arrows. So let us be friends.”
“Everyone calm down.” Haral stepped forward, hands motioning for his men to step back and stand down, but his brown eyes stared at the tree line, searching for my mother. “If you throw in some of the furs, I’ll send back to the ship for a half a bodyweight more salt.”
“Caldane,” my father said.
I turned to him.
He said, “Bring Zee over, and let’s finalize this deal, Silverhewer-be-damned.”
# # #
I secured another bag of salt to Zee’s back, tugging at the rope.
“I expected more of a fight,” Eddard said, laying a bag of flour across Enita’s back, his staff inserted into the ground beside Enita’s head.
The rest of the warriors of our tribe, the Brightfoxes, waited among the trees, keeping watch on the traders’ boats rowing back to their ship in the bay.
“No.” My father lugged a bag of salt to Bard’s side, shaking his head. He spat on the ground. “They live in cities, protected by their walls, sucking at the empress’ teats. They are weak and useless in battle.”
“Our forefathers ruled in Windhaven, right?” I said, hesitant to raise my voice, me not yet considered a man by the tribe, to add my voice to my elders, especially against my father, but feeling the point needed to be made. “They had lots of cities, even Timyiskil and Morrin were ours. Mokos the Wise lived in a city, and he was not weak.”
Eddard chuckled.
“You fill his head with nonsense,” my father said, tightening a rope on Bard’s back.
“Only the truth,” Eddard said.
“Our forefathers grew fat and weak, and the empress nearly killed all the Onei except the traitor,” my father said, striding past me to pick up another sack of flour. “Did you teach him that truth, Shaman?”
Eddard nodded. “They grew proud, and thought their power granted them safety, until the empress taught them humility.”
A sack balanced on his shoulder, my father reached out, slapping the top of my head. “Perhaps one day, someone will reunite the tribes and teach the empress a lesson or two.”
Eddard’s gaze drifted, staring off into the distance, a lop-sided smile on his grizzled lips. “I would love to walk through the libraries in Windhaven, to drink in the lost wisdom of the ancients.”
“If your foot touches the ground of Windhaven, you will have a collar around your fool neck,” my father said.
I picked up the last sack of salt. “Nothing could ma
ke me go to Windhaven.”
The Clean Up
I trudged into the Chamber of Sacrifices, holding a bucket of soapy water in one hand and an empty wicker basket in the other, my hands trembling. My head down, my eyes low, I tried not to stare at the remains from the previous night’s sacrifice, at the burned herbs and minerals in the runes cut into the stone floors, at the drying blood splattered on the walls, puddled on the floor, at the bits of flesh and bone, a hand here, a finger there, a nose, some teeth. A misty haze of bodily fluids choked the air, stinging my eyes, a little corner of a forgotten hell to which no one should ever go, and to which I never wanted to go again.
The little boy beside me, a new sacrifice from somewhere in Hafbergen delivered a week or two before, younger than me by several years, dropped his bucket and basket, fell to his knees, and puked on the floor, adding to the mess we had to clean up. He clawed at the black collar around his neck and retched. Filthy brown hair hanging down in strings on his forehead, he peeked up at me with wide, green eyes and, his voice shaking, whispered, “How come you’re still alive?”
I ignored him, considering him a ghost, his name already forgotten, something with an “R”, something I didn’t need to remember. I was not going to be his friend. I didn’t need to lose another friend, and he had died when the empress’ soldiers marched him through the Dragon’s Gate, when he’d been handed over to the monastery as a sacrifice. He was dead but didn’t know it, yet.
I’d talked myself out, explaining the ritual, describing the steps, warning people. Maybe someone else would survive if I didn’t talk to them about it beforehand, maybe he’d be the first, but I doubted it.
I tiptoed around the edge of the worst of the carnage, positioning myself near the archbishop’s entryway.
“You’re not started, yet?” Lyu-ra, a newly assigned assistant to the overseer of the monastery’s slaves, strode up the stairs from the south, the hard soles of her boots clacking against the stone steps, her red and gold silk tunics fluttering in the chill wind, hinting at the gentle curves of the body beneath, a foreigner from a land across the sea, an imperial from Nayen, with skin the color of aged parchment, shiny hair and hooded eyes blacker than night, her face wide, lips smug. She carried a thick book tucked beneath her right elbow, loose pages sticking out the side, and she held a quill and inkpot in her left hand. “Hurry up. We have to get this place spotless.”
I knelt and pulled a rag out from the soapy water in the bucket. I scrubbed the floor, digging into the runes cut into the stone, leaving no trace of the flames that had burned there, of the magical powders and ingredients used, tossing the bigger bits of my fellow sacrifices into the basket, rubbing at the sticky blood that hardened as it dried, ignoring the boy’s gagging as he tried to do the same. This was his first time, his first introduction to what was coming, and what was to come for him.
As we worked, Lyu-ra sat down and studied, murmuring magical phrases, working on her pronunciations, occasionally rising to practice the movements of a kata, the physical component of the spell that directed the flow of the magic.
I eavesdropped on her as I did with the acolytes going through their lessons, a useless pastime, storing the lessons in my mind, imagining that I wore no collar, that I could cast magic, practicing the words she spoke, memorizing her movements, adding them to the repertoire I’d learned from my shaman, Eddard, before Silverhewer slew him.
Tossing my rag into the bucket, I stood, stretching out my back, glancing at Lyu-ra to make sure she was not watching too closely. I set my foot on one of the more complete hands laying on the floor. I kicked it forward, sending it to slam against Lyu-ra’s table leg. I fell back against another of the votive tables, the one with the bells, catching myself on its side, setting the bells to tinkling.
Lyu-ra jerked back, pulling away from the disembodied hand now lying at her feet, and glared at me. “What is wrong with you?”
“I’m sorry, master.” I scrambled to find my feet, holding on to the edge of the table, my feet sliding in the blood and guts beneath me, the bells humming with muted tones. “I didn’t see the hand there.”
She sighed, shaking her head, kicking the hand back toward me, huffing indignantly, and returned her attention to her studies.
I turned, placing my body between Lyu-ra and the table, shielding it from her so she couldn’t see, wrapping my fingers around a bell, lifting it from the table. The bell tucked against my thigh, I knelt down, resuming my position on the floor, setting the bell into the basket full of body-parts, nestling it in where it would make no sound, stuffing it with gore, hoping I could use this to devise a way to disrupt the sacrifice.
I looked across the room and my eyes met the boy’s. He’d stopped moving, stopped cleaning, and just sat there staring at me, his face pale. I shook my head at him and gestured for him to start cleaning. He nodded and knelt back into it, scrubbing vigorously, but still staring at me with wide eyes.
Lyu-ra rose from her chair. My breathing grew difficult with each step she took toward me, my heart pounding in fear. She stood beside me as I worked, as I moved the rag back and forth, both of my palms pressing it down into the sticky blood, her fragrance so different than the blood, than myself, the scent of her so pure and clean.
“Is there a problem, slave?” she asked.
“No,” I said, shaking my head, pressing down even harder on my next stroke.
“Not you,” she said, kneeling down, gesturing toward the other boy.
He shook his head, not looking toward her, dipping his rag in the bucket next to him, pulling it out and squeezing it.
“Really?” She raised her hand, tightening her fingers.
The boy’s collar, normally a black glass-like substance, glowed blue, rising up against the boy’s jaw. He ground his teeth together, squeezing his eyes shut, his arms spasming, tears streaming down his cheeks.
She released her hand. The boy relaxed, collapsing onto his shaking arms.
She asked again, “Is there a problem?”
He raised his hand toward me, saying, “He stole a bell.”
Leaving the rag on the floor, I sat back onto my shins, laying my hands in my lap, my eyes on him, trying not to blame him, not succeeding.
“Is that true, Caldane?” she asked, not angry, not surprised, like she was talking to a recalcitrant child.
Slipping my hand through the slimy bits of flesh in my basket, I retrieved the bell, holding it up for her, gooey blood dripping from it in long streamers.
“Rinse it off,” she said, moving away from me, her hands clasped behind her back.
I dipped it into the water and pulled it back out.
The pain started, shooting up and out of the collar, my muscles quivering, my breath catching in my throat, my lungs burning. My leg muscles clenched, pitching me face first into the stone floor, face down in the muck and the blood, busting my nose, splitting my lip.
I dropped the bell.
# # #
The boy fell to his knees, the yoke across his shoulders carrying the baskets of humanity and buckets of foul water tumbling from his back, spilling the contents on the wide white-marble steps leading up to the site of Archbishop Diyune’s new Hall of Meditations, the murky water puddling and dribbling down the steps, one bodiless foot bouncing to a stop on the step before me.
“We do not have all day,” Lyu-ra said, clapping her hands, standing on the step above where the boy knelt, panting to catch his breath.
Tears trickled from his eyes, his lower lip trembling, a bubble of snot blowing out of his nose.
A blessed chance for me to rest my own legs, weak from surviving on so little food for so long, I lowered myself to one knee, settling the buckets and baskets balanced on the yoke on my shoulders to the step, relieving the weight on my back.
Legs shaking, the boy tried to stand, his yoke now unbalanced.
“You idiot,” Lyu-ra said, bending at the waist to scream down at him, “you have to gather up the scraps first. We
can’t just leave all that mess here.”
He set the yoke down, and he crawled to place the bits of flesh and bone back into his baskets.
The baskets full, he tried to stand, raising the baskets up a finger’s breadth, groaning with the strain, sinking back down. He tried once more, and failed once more.
“Just put the baskets on my yoke,” I said, blurting the words out before I could stop myself, regretting them even as they escaped from my lips.
“Thank you, Caldane.” He dropped his yoke to the stone steps, hurrying to pull the baskets off, grunting even to lift them up and slide them on the ends of my yoke.
“Good.” Lyu-ra nodded her approval, whirling and skipping up the steps, clapping her hands. “Let’s go.”
The boy dragged his yoke, huffing and puffing for breath, using his hands to help his legs lift him step to step.
With the added weight, my legs burning, my breaths grew shorter, more ragged, the yoke mashing down harder on my neck, the weight of the baskets and buckets growing heavier with each trudging step, but I reached the summit.
Rectangular stones of a white marble with bright blue veins lay in stacks. Gray-skinned wights, controlled only by the black glass-like collars around their necks, picked the stones up in teams of two and four, carrying the stones to the workers, setting the stones in place as instructed, their eyes dead, mouths hanging open, teeth discolored with blood and rot, brackish drool dribbling down their chins.
“Where have you been?” Overseer Fi Cheen, frowning as usual, stomped toward us from the platform where he stood directing the wights, his left hand pressed into his lower back, his right hand held before his chest, relaxed in a loose fist, his thumb rubbing the band of the onyx ring on his forefinger.
Lyu-ra bowed. “The boy is useless.”
“Do not blame your tools,” Fi Cheen sneered, glowering at Lyu-ra, waving his hand at her. “Whatever your name is.”
New to her position, Lyu-ra wilted before him, bowing her head deeper, touching her forefinger to her forehead, her back rounding, shoulders slumping. “Yes, Overseer. Your pardon.”