City Under the Sand: A Dark Sun Novel (Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Sun)

by Jeff Mariotte

  “It’s perfect!” Rieve cried. “Like it was made just for me! I mean, I know it was, but—”

  “There is,” Aric affirmed.

  Rieve stopped slashing at the air and approached Aric. She held the sword in her right hand, and with her left she took his right. Her hand felt impossibly soft in his hard, callused one. “Thank you, Aric,” she said. He felt like he could fall into her cinnamon eyes. “I love it.”

  “It was a pleasure. I am proud of that one, I must say. It’s balanced just right, and that blade will hold its edge.”

  “You are a true craftsman,” she said. She held his gaze with her own. Much as he wanted to watch the way her plump pink lips moved as she spoke, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from hers. A smell like fresh apricots surrounded her.

  “I thank you.”

  Finally, she released his hand. Aric hadn’t even had that much physical contact with her when he had measured her—hand, arm, and leg—to be sure the sword would be just right. His hand felt as if he had leaned it against the forge at white heat.

  “It didn’t even take you terribly long,” she said. “Did you do nothing else but this?”

  “Slept now and again,” Aric said. “Ate some meals. But I did no other work, not while I was engaged with that one.”

  She carved the air a little more, and Aric took an involuntary step back.

  “As I was saying,” Tunsall said. “Now that she has a fine blade, she needs instruction in its use, wouldn’t you say?”

  “She … seems to have a natural affinity,” Aric said, hoping the patriarch wouldn’t notice his lie. “But instruction is always a good idea.”

  “I’ve heard tales of your prowess with a sword, Aric.” Tunsall touched his own eyebrow, right where Aric’s scar was on his. “Impressive.”

  “A fluke,” Aric said.

  “Not at all. I wonder if you would mind giving her some lessons. I would pay you, of course, for your time.”

  Aric could hardly believe his senses. “I … I am no combat instructor,” he said.

  “Oh, that would be wonderful, Aric!” Rieve said. She bounced enthusiastically. Her skirt flounced almost to her smooth thighs. “To learn from you …”

  “I suppose I do know a bit about the practice of swordsmanship,” Aric admitted. “Just from having worked with them for so long, you understand.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Tunsall said.

  “I’m sorry,” another voice said. Aric turned to see a tall woman, with thick auburn hair tightly coiled almost to her waist, enter the courtyard. “I am Solyara,” she told Aric. “Rieve’s mother.”

  “Enchanted,” Aric said.

  “I’m afraid that Rieve’s father has already engaged the services of an instructor for her.” Her voice was steady, with the even, confident tone of someone who rarely expected argument.

  “Oh,” Aric said. “Well …”

  “Who?” Rieve asked.

  “Who else but your betrothed, Corlan?”

  “Corlan?”

  “Why not? He’s of our class, he’s had martial training, unlike young Aric here. And he’s known to be quite skilled with a sword. Anyway, your father has made the decision, so it’s settled.” She turned her flat gaze on Aric. “I’ve nothing against you, Aric, and neither does Myklan, Rieve’s father, who after all advised my father to hire you in the first place. We’re quite tolerant of all sorts of people, you’ll find. But he has made Corlan an offer, and we can’t go back on it now.”

  “I understand,” Aric said. He couldn’t deny his disappointment, although he tried to disguise it. And in spite of Solyara’s self-proclaimed tolerance, he wondered how much it had to do not with his commoner class but with his half—quarter—elf nature. Elves, everybody knew, weren’t to be trusted, especially with the daughter of a noble human family.

  “Did I hear my name?” Another unfamiliar voice, this one booming, but with a friendly sound to it. A burly young man about Aric’s age swept into the courtyard, square-jawed and clean-shaven, wearing a light tan sarami. His expression was fixed in what looked like a perpetual grin, blue eyes dancing in the torchlight.

  “Corlan!” Rieve cried. She put down the sword and ran to him, throwing her arms around him. He squeezed her tightly, then released her.

  “Who’s the stranger?” he asked. “I’m Corlan, of House Tien’sha.”

  “I’m Aric. I crafted Rieve’s new sword.”

  Corlan crossed to the table and examined it. “It’s a beauty,” he said. “You do good work.” He lifted it, took a fighting stance, and whisked it a couple of times through the air. Unlike Rieve, he knew what he was doing. “I stand corrected, Aric. You do excellent work. Perhaps you can make me one sometime.”

  “Just say when.”

  “I will, don’t worry.” He turned back to his fiancée. “And you, love? How do you like it?”

  “I like it very much,” Rieve said. “I’ll like it even more after you teach me how to use it.”

  “That will be my great pleasure,” Corlan said. “I only hope your lessons will be worthy of the instrument itself.”

  Aric hated how completely Corlan had drawn Rieve’s attention away from him. But he had to admit that they made an attractive couple, and he couldn’t bring himself to dislike Corlan. He had been nothing but friendly, seeming not to even notice Aric’s racial background.

  “Oh, I’m sure you can teach me wonderful things, Corlan,” Rieve said. “And I’ll have a wonderful tool to learn with, thanks to you, Aric.”

  Aric was about to take his leave when the group was enlarged again. A young man, perhaps a year or two older than Rieve, stormed into the courtyard. His mood was dark, brow furrowed, hands tightly clenched into fists, and he walked with his muscles tightly coiled, as if at any moment he would strike out at whoever was nearest. He was dressed, if that was the word, much like Tunsall, with a loincloth his only covering. His footsteps were tentative, as if he had burned the soles of his feet here on a previous occasion and was afraid of doing it again.

  “That wasn’t it!” he complained, loudly. “Not it at all! It never is, never was, never never!”

  Rieve shot Aric a quick look of apology, then turned to the newcomer, her face instantly softening. “Pietrus, dear, now isn’t the time. We have guests.”

  “Her brother,” Corlan whispered. “There’s something wrong with him. With his mind. Or he’s possessed, is what some say.”

  “Time, time, time, time,” Pietrus echoed, stomping around in a tight square as he did. “Never time, never right, never never!”

  Rieve reached her brother and put her hands on his arm. He seemed to melt a little at that, his tensed muscles relaxing a bit. But he glowered at Corlan and Aric, and Aric was afraid he might come over and attack. How would he defend himself against Rieve’s brother, in their own home?

  It didn’t come to that, however. Rieve and Solyara flanked him, and then another woman entered the courtyard, this one closer to Tunsall’s age, with long silver hair bound in several places. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just turned around for a moment and he was gone.” She flashed a gracious smile toward Aric and Corlan. “I apologize for the interruption,” she said.

  “That’s quite all right,” Corlan said. “It’s good to see you, Sheridia.”

  “And you, Corlan. And you, young man,” she said to Aric. There was a calming air about her that seemed to flow across the courtyard in waves.

  “I am Aric,” he said. “It’s an honor to visit your home.”

  “Come any time,” she said. She moved with brisk efficiency to where Rieve and Solyara had, ever so subtly, pinned Pietrus in. His brow had not lost its wrinkles, and his eyes darted about, but he was more at ease than he had been, and he allowed Sheridia to lead him away. “Come with me, Pietrus,” she said. “Let’s have some cool water.”

  “Thank you, Grandmother!” Rieve called after them.

  When they had gone, Rieve turned to Aric. “I’m sorry you had to see t
hat, Aric. He is my brother, and I love him, but as you can see, he is … disturbed, you might say. ”

  “I’m sure that was not comfortable for you,” Solyara added.

  “Think nothing of it,” Aric said. “He lives here, not me. He’s entitled to go where he will.”

  “Thank you, boy,” Tunsall said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m afraid we have rather a busy schedule today.” He had procured a small cloth bag from somewhere, and it jingled as he handed it to Aric. Its weight was comforting. “This should cover things.”

  “Are you certain?” Aric asked. “It feels like too much.”

  “You’ve done excellent work, my son. Take it.”

  “My thanks, sir. My great thanks.”

  After more goodbyes, and another clasping of hands, soft on rough, with Rieve, Aric found himself hurrying down the Snake Tower with a pleasant bulge in his pocket that hadn’t been there on the way up. He realized halfway down that he had forgotten the blanket he had carried the sword over in. He thought about going back for it, but decided not to. He had been dismissed, without equivocation—invited to return, but clearly they had other things to do at the moment. Anyway, they could burn the thing, for all he cared. He had enough coin now for another several blankets, and then some.

  As he headed home through Nibenay’s chaotic streets, he thought about their home, so different from his quiet, often lonely place. The House of Thrace was crowded, bustling with activity and life. The family had its problems, clearly, but while Aric had heard gossip about most of the city’s noble houses over the years, most people spoke well of this one. He’d never heard any discussion of Rieve’s crazy brother, for instance, and that was the kind of thing people couldn’t resist sharing.

  Alone, he walked through busy lanes, and he couldn’t help feeling a little sad, and a little envious, that his life was not like the one he had so briefly stepped into.

  But he had a bag of coins and no immediate obligations. He thought he could find a way to put that envy and sorrow behind him. He would get busy on that, as soon as he had collected Ruhm.

  III

  THE HIGH CONSORTS’ COUNCIL

  1

  As befitted his name, the Shadow King kept to the shadows, even when making a public appearance. To give him his due, Kadya decided, this appearance was only somewhat public, and the idea that Nibenay, king of the city-state that bore his name, would deign to make public appearances at all was a new one. For a thousand years, or so people said, he had stayed out of sight of his subjects, hidden away in the Naggaramakam, the Forbidden Dominion within Nibenay, where only the king’s family, his templar wives, and their slaves were admitted. No free person had ever entered the Naggaramakam—none, at least, who had ever then left it again. And Nibenay had rarely ventured forth.

  But Athas was changing, faster than Nibenay found comfortable. Events in Tyr, including the death of that city’s sorcerer-king—at the hands of mortals, no less—had made those changes disturbingly apparent to all. Nibenay had realized he had to make changes of his own, in order to ensure that his own subjects didn’t decide he needed to be assassinated as well.

  His plan was to remake his image into someone who was accessible, attentive to the needs and concerns of the populace. At the same time, he meant to build up Nibenay’s already powerful military to the point that anyone considering an attack from without would decide the effort was bound to be suicidal. He was, to be blunt, trying to put a more positive face on his rule … without, in fact, showing his face much at all, while pretending to show it far more than he had in the past.

  And the truth was, Kadya thought—although thinking this way frightened her, since it would be no large matter for Nibenay to dip into her mind and see it—he was not the most handsome creature ever to walk Athasian soil. He was striking, in his way. And power had a kind of aphrodisiac effect on many people, making them willing to overlook his physical defects. She included herself in that category. Kadya’s parents had decided, shortly after her birth, that her life would be dedicated to the priesthood. At seven she was enrolled in a state school, run by templars, and by fourteen she was initiated into the priesthood. Shortly after her sixteenth birthday she was married to Nibenay. All of his other templars were also his wives.

  Fortunately, since as time passed she found him less and less appealing, he did not summon her to the marriage chamber more than once or twice a year. She was allowed to have slave concubines of her own, to meet her needs, as his needs were met by his vast harem of templar wives.

  But Kadya was a woman of ambition, and smarter than her parents had expected, or they’d have kept her back and given one of their other daughters to the cause. So she kept her thoughts to herself, gave herself to him willingly when she was so called, and in the best tradition of Nibenay’s templars, schemed to improve her standing in the hierarchy. That scheming had brought her to this place, the High Consorts’ Council, where those templars who had responsibility for the administrative temples of the government came together to hear pleas from the city’s residents and to pass judgment on issues as needed.

  Today, as he did a few times during any given month, Nibenay himself attended the council. The council chamber was a long rectangular room inside the Temple of the King’s Law, with an arched roof, the low points of which seemed to droop to the floor as a series of columns. Torches flickered on each of the columns, but there was a corner, near the back of the room, where those torches had been extinguished. That’s where her king stayed, letting the darkness conceal himself. The golden crown atop his head caught the light from more distant torches and refracted it into the shadowed corner.

  The high consorts, the five templars representing the five governing temples, sat in chairs of equal size, arrayed in a half-circle facing the long end of the room. The beseechers sat or knelt on a floor of cool tiles before them, and most knew better than to address the Shadow King directly. The audience, made up of lesser templars like Kadya, sat on the floor around the room’s walls or against its many columns.

  “Can I be expected to run my business if his thuggish friends keep running drunkenly down the lane and knocking down my stall every night?” a merchant was complaining. Kadya realized her mind had drifted. One petty dispute after another wore on her. “There are nights I think it’s a contest—see how many minutes after Rahede gets his stall set up one of them can slam into the posts and guylines and bring it all down again!”

  “Your stall is in the Western District, yes?” High Consort Kahalya asked. The matter was no real concern of hers, as she was the templar overseeing the Temple of the House—unless she was looking for a way to increase this poor merchant’s taxes, which was always a possibility.

  “Yes, on the Lane of Seven Beggars,” the merchant said. He had a plump face, a round belly, and sweat streamed from beneath the checked krama wrapped about his head.

  High Consort Rejan spoke up. This problem really fell under her bailiwick, the Temple of Trade. Like the other high consorts, she was entirely naked. “Then you can hardly expect not to encounter a … shall we say, a rugged element, can you?”

  “I’m prepared for rugged, High Consort,” Rahede said. “It’s deliberately destructive I have a problem with. Short of killing my neighbor, I see no other way out of this. And if I killed him, I would miss the breads and rolls his bakery provides.”

  “You could move,” Kahalya suggested. “Perhaps space could be found for your stall in the Palm Marketplace. Of course, a tax would have to be levied accordingly.”

  “Isn’t there some way he can be reasoned with? Or threatened?” Rahede pleaded. “Or just told to keep his thug friends from visiting when they’re drunk?”

  Nibenay cleared his throat, back in his gloomy corner. “Merchant, it seems to me you have two choices available to you. No, three. One, you kill the baker. Perhaps we don’t remember you threatening to do so in our very presence, and perhaps the Temple of the King’s Law doesn’t choose to pursue justice for the de
ad.”

  High Consort Djena’s chuckle was a singularly unpleasant sound. She was their host for this forum, as the templar in charge of the Temple of the King’s Law, hers was position second only to the Shadow King himself. The temple controlled crime, punishment, the enforcement of laws, and all the dungeons and slave pits with which those who broke the laws might find themselves intimately familiar. But Nibenay had undercut his own system by installing a fierce young protégé, the fifteen year old psionic prodigy Siemhouk, as high consort over the Temple of Thought, and Siemhouk answered to none but the Shadow King.

  “Yes,” Djena said after her chuckle had sent a shiver running through the poor, fat merchant. “Perhaps I would forget those things. If you’d care to find out how sievelike my memory is …”

  “Choice two,” Nibenay picked up again. His voice gurgled like water trickling though pebbles. “You could move your stall elsewhere. Cliff side might be a better fit for you than the Western District. Palm Court, even, if you could afford to lease a space in either place. As Kahalya points out, the taxes would be higher than where you are now, but with a corresponding improvement in security as well.”

  “Yes,” Rahede said, forgetting the rule about addressing Nibenay directly. “Perhaps …”

  “Or choice three,” the Shadow King interrupted, a sharper edge to his voice than before. “You could pack your—what is it, ceramic bowls, cups and jugs and get out of my city before the sun rises again. I’m certain there are others who deal in similar objects, so that none of my fair subjects would go wanting for a new bowl or mug.”

  “Make your decision,” Djena suggested. “Make it now.”

  Rahede looked at the naked women before him, sitting straight in their high-backed chairs while he crouched uncomfortably on the floor. From Siemhouk, barely fifteen, to Djena of a certain age, they showed a variety of body types and facial expressions. None, Kadya noted, looked particularly sympathetic, but if he were to throw himself on the mercy of one she thought it would be the mul Bamandji, High Consort of War, who was so unconcerned with these sorts of squabbles that she hadn’t said anything for the last hour. Kadya wasn’t certain she was still awake, although her eyes were open and the beginnings of a smile played about her lips.