‘Grandmother sent us here,’ I said. ‘She hesitated at the thought.’
‘Grandmother or not, you can never tell if they are really honest and cuddly,’ Albine said with childish gusto. ‘And you lie.’
‘About what?’ I bristled.
‘About your grandmother. She did not send you here,’ she said.
‘How do you know that, kid?’ Lex asked, bewildered. ‘You keep calling people liars. Dangerous habit that.’
‘She did it,’ Ulrich grunted from behind. ‘Your sister.’
I began to answer but shut up, glancing at the expectant Albine, hanging on my words. ‘Stop hovering over me and help your brother,’ I told her, aggrieved.
‘What?’ she asked and stared at me incredulously.
Lex was massaging his temples. ‘We will work this out, later. Well, we are all in the same leaking boat and tired so can we stop fighting. Let her be. What are they?’ Lex asked, looking at the deadly beautiful women following us.
‘They look like the Medusa,’ I said with a small voice. ‘You know, from the Greek mythology. There are three sisters, they say, but these cunts seem numerous. I don’t know, somehow not as deadly. Killers yes, but not … epic? I read about them in Father’s books. He used to study classical texts before he inherited the estate.’
‘I wasn’t much for school and studies,’ Anja crumbled. ‘Told you. We worked in a store. Sometimes. Made a mess of it, usually.’
‘Aren’t they supposed to be evil?’ Able asked.
‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘That’s right, they are evil,’ I said as I placed a hand on his shoulder. I liked him, the least irascible of the people around me.
The Russians laughed softly if mockingly. Able blushed. ‘They should be able to … I can't remember,’ he said.
I clapped his back in a conciliatory manner. ‘I know. You meant they should be able to turn people to stone with their look. Gorgons are supposed to do that. Says the legends. There was a book—’
The Russians were laughing with tears in their eyes, and Lex looked embarrassed. ‘Leave her alone, I said.’
‘They hate me, Lex,’ I told him. ‘Nothing’s changed.’
‘Never mind them,’ Lex said, embarrassed. ‘Legends, eh?’
‘We can hardly scoff at the legends anymore,’ Albine said darkly. ‘The Northman and the old Germans had a legend of the nine worlds. She mentioned the Nine, didn’t she? And the Tenth. Our world.’ I nodded. She was not ignorant, and I rather liked her, despite her calling me a liar every other sentence. And I liked Anja as well. She was right. We should be a team. Dana. She was my sister. Did she want to team with anyone?
‘Silence,’ said one of the women behind us. ‘Two more stairways.’
Up the stairway, there was a simple iron door, which opened up soundlessly. We stumbled through, shivering with cold as a bitter gust of wind whipped through the room. It was a large foyer with a simple iron chandelier swinging in the wind. The walls had formerly been plastered with some red paint, but only fragments remained now. Some of the stones had been blackened. A fire had once raged in the place, leaving it a husk of its former glory. Another door led back down, one up, and there were doors that were open to outside, richly carved, wooden doors with leering monsters as handles. ‘This is rather creepy. Not something one will enjoy,’ Dana murmured as we saw eerie carvings drawn across ancient wooden doors.
The tall snake woman turned to address us. She was thickly muscular, her arms powerfully corded and her chest covered with heavy golden chains. The skull-like tattoo on her cheeks quivered as she eyed us distastefully, the snakes writhing angrily, echoing her mood. She grinned at us and nodded outside. ‘This, Tears, is the Fanged Spire. The tower and the island comprise the Grey Downs and that is all you need to know. You were already told to obey. That means when addressed, you shall answer, “Yes mistress.” That is likely the best answer to everything. Go and see for yourself and enjoy it, my urchins, for you won’t go out for one year.’ She waved her hand lazily. ‘Go on.’
We walked to the doors cautiously. They swung in a light breeze as we shuffled forward. The sun was shining brightly in a blue sky, but, of course, it was not our sun, but some other star, and they had called it … Mar? Perhaps it was larger than ours, more golden than yellow. There was a balcony of yellowed and orange stone and a railing of finely twisted iron. We stepped forward timidly. We looked at each other, feeling clumsy, looking around for a danger. Only Dana was brazen as she walked, her arms thrust to her sides as if welcoming the strange sights. We reached the railing and stared at the vast horizon. Around us, an island of ruins, labyrinthine mazes of apparently once fabulous palaces and mansions and rundown buildings spread out. Some had crumbled and fallen; others had likely burnt and even melted. Pyramids and spires thrust up from amidst greenery and golden trees and white and gray rubble. There was moss and vegetation all over, creating a jungle-like appearance in some parts of the ruins, and we all felt it had once looked grand. It stretched far, far to the horizon, the once finest jewel in the world as Cosia had called it. I turned to look up. The white-bricked tower, the Fanged Spire was perhaps leaning a bit to one side, reaching the heights. It was round and squat and on the top, rounded with apparently a golden silvery cupola. Thousands of windows dotted its sides. Birds were flying around it, some huge and white, many dark and small, dipping and climbing, hunting for insects.
Around us, a sea. No, an ocean, I decided, not really knowing the truth.
It was dark blue mixed with brilliant green and gray, choppy with waves that rolled in an endless race to reach some far shores. Not unlike the Irish Sea, but vast, feeling more ancient and far deeper. The tattooed gorgon woman stood near us, staring across the water. ‘That hateful sight, students, is the Dancing Bay. It looks peaceful and kind, does it not? In reality, it is where the Houses fight out of sight of their lords and the Regent and where the pirates of the Serpent’s Run raid the shipping lanes of the north. There are no ships on the island; nobody sails here under pain or death. Some try, of course.’
She pointed down to the beach.
A wreck was beached on it, still looking sleek and fast, but rotting nonetheless. Others were scattered around it.
The woman continued. ‘That’s the last visitor to this island. Tried to rescue someone. Fools. As for the sea? Underneath those waves, there are creatures much like in your ball of filth. Were they not all from here? Yes. Yet, there are many other creatures here, those who never left Aldheim. What you have in the Tenth, my lovelies, your sharks, for example, are but little mackerels in comparison to these. I would not venture out there without a sturdy boat, should you get a chance, which you won't. Suffer, my young friends and learn what we shall teach here for two years, and your masters will decide what freedoms you shall have. Call this your home for now.’
‘What is the Regent?’ Dana asked, eyeing the sea, leaning on the railing with the wind whipping her hair. ‘Or who?’
The snake woman regarded her and slapped the whip on her thigh. ‘Yes, mistress, do you remember?’
‘Yes, mistress,’ Dana said with a bow.
The snake woman laughed with a singing voice, and then she shrugged. ‘You will take lessons, soon and get to know the worlds eventually, but the Regent is called Almheir Bardagoon. He rules Ljusalfheim, the heart of Aldheim, in the island continent of Freyr’s Tooth. Freyr, who is the god resident in Aldheim. Or was.’
‘You have a resident god?’ Lex said in awe. ‘Freyr? Yes, mistress.’
The orange snakes dipped in annoyance. ‘You are an amusing one, are you not? I think I’ll flay you and eat your skin, later. But I’ll humor you. Freyr is a god. Just that, like any other. There are many. There is one true god to us all and the maa’dark are its true children. You have heard and seen it.’
We nodded, for we had and resented we no longer could.
She giggled. ‘Ah, to lose it. I know, I know. But you shall use it daily here though not all the time. You wi
ll miss it like a mother, but meet it like a mistress. Be happy, if you can. If not for Cerunnos Timmerion, the fool who took to himself to make his own world, the manipulator of your race, there would be no humans who can see the Shades. Not all do, not even of the mighty, older races. So, you are rare and precious. And very useful to us.’
‘Are there humans in Aldheim, and …’ Albine began but went silent.
The serpents hissed as the French girl looked down quickly. The creature was waiting for respect, and the idiot teen did not give it. The whip hovered in the air, and I moved slowly before the small teen. The serpent woman nodded in amusement. ‘The Shades do not keep you safe, little one. It cares not for the saa’dark, or one day, with luck of the gods, even if you should be a maa’dark. What humans there are in Aldheim, the Shades care for even less. They live, they breed and rule their own, but they obey. Like you will.’
‘Will we meet them, mistress?’ I asked. ‘The gods?’
She laughed with her sing-song voice and smiled when she was done, shaking with mirth. ‘You? No. Why would they meet worms? And the ways are broken, sundered, and there are no gods in Aldheim. His Highness Almheir of House Bardagoon is the Regent, did I not tell you? Forget the gods.’
‘Is Almheir a human?’ Anja asked unwisely. ‘Like us?’
Mistress stared at us in stupefaction, shocked enough not to punish her for omitting the words of respect. ‘Human? I just told you. Humans obey. How dare you? You are slaves and useful soldiers. You are the youngest and least graceful of the many races. You must learn this quickly and save yourself some pain.’
‘Never,’ Albine said stubbornly and moved away from me. The snake female’s yellow eyes went to slits, the whip went up and came down, in an eye blink, and I could not help her. Albine screamed and held her face, sobbing and struggling to stand up, and I grabbed her to me, glowering at the violent female.
‘You call me Mistress Bilac,’ the savage creature spat. ‘The Fury Whip Bilac of the Dark Water Clan. We have a gallery for you young lordlings and ladies. Tomorrow we shall begin. It will be hard. Very hard. You will be sorely tested. Every single day, each moment of your sorry lives. Do well, you suffer less. Ask few questions and be patient and happy, or not and suffer pain and punishment. You will see human life is expendable across the Nine, even in Midgard, where your race was born. It is so in your sad colony as well, the cuss pit you hail from, the Tenth. You have seen it. Your race is a mess.’ She pointed her whip back inside, and we all turned to go, as I was supporting Albine.
‘Help her,’ I whispered to Able, who just looked away, and so I cursed him, toiled with Lex, and we half-carried her inside. ‘You damned idiots, help me,’ I told Dmitri. The Russians were shaking their heads incredulously at us, and I cursed them too. Dana was the last to come and turned to look at the sea, her eyes calculating, brave, free, despite our obvious helplessness. She was making plans, perhaps thinking where she would one day pitch her palace.
The women pointed us to the staircase leading up the Fanged Spire, and they climbed before and after us in silent guardianship. Their yellow eyes glared at us as we made our way up, and it was cold going up the drifty tower, the walls glistening with moisture and the few torches burning in sconces were sharing no joy nor warmth. They herded us along in the tight corridors, and then stopped us abruptly at the first floor, and we entered a room. It was circular, with old, water ruined paintings covering the ceilings, some high on the walls. There were no windows and some remains of wooden and stone furniture, old as age, the room apparently having been raided and robbed long ago. A small ball of light was burning high up in the wall, amidst the remains of the paintings, strange and magical, apparently needing no care.
The room was not totally empty.
It had been converted into a gallery.
Inside were life-sized statues of humans with fantastically realistic expressions, figures by a hundred. We stared at them in stupefaction from the door, even Dana. ‘The sculptor is pretty good,’ she said.
‘Like da Vinci,’ Albine added.
‘Bernini, perhaps?’ I said and grunted appreciatively. She knew something of the art. Perhaps of history as well. I had read a book about sculptures, but she had probably seen the real things.
She glanced at me. ‘I actually went to school, unlike the others. We were fairly wealthy. Merchants, you see.’ Anja was frowning at the statues. Both bald boys were open-mouthed and wondering, taking small steps forward.
‘Get in, girls and boys,’ Bilac hissed and booted Alexei, who flew by us into the room. We filtered in after him and stared around. ‘Where will we sleep?’ Bilac mimicked the obvious question with her singing voice.
‘Where shall we feed?’ Cosia joined in and added the answer with a grimace of disgust over Bilac’s shoulder. ‘Here. This is it. You shall relieve yourself in that far corner.’ There was some sort of a seat with a hole in it there. ‘Soap is there, as well. Brushes for your teeth, paste. When you bleed, clean yourself dutifully with the towels we have provided.’ There were no beds, only the cold floor. We were given neither beds nor sheets. Not even a blanket.
Bilac pointed at the far wall. ‘That is where you will wash yourselves. Every day.’ There was a large stone bath amidst the statues.
‘It’s empty, and there is …’ I began as I tiptoed to gaze at the far wall and the dubious bath.
‘It will be filled,’ Cosia interrupted me. ‘Every evening, it will be filled. You will eat your dinner here as well. Quarrel, plot or even laugh in a way that displeases us, and we shall come to break bones. This is your home until you earn better. And you shall not hurt her.’ She pointed a finger at Dana. ‘I’ll flail the first one to so much as push her. Endure your losses, Ulrich. There will be more.’
‘And how do we earn better?’ Dana asked, her eyes glinting with ambition. ‘Mistress.’
‘Be ruthless,’ Bilac laughed. ‘Just keep doing what you do.’ They closed the door. I shook my head at those words and led Cherry and Albine, with Able trailing us to the corner, and Lex brought me the hem of his robe to daub Albine’s face with. Dana sat near me, eyeing the statues as I checked on the hurt teen. The whip had torn her cheek open, and it was bleeding profusely.
Anja was slapping her hands on her thigh. ‘You need help?’ she asked me.
‘Not sure,’ I whispered.
‘I have some experience with the idiots and their many injuries,’ Anja said, but Albine shook her head at her. I kept dabbing the wound with the rag. Anja was walking around slowly, looking bored. ‘Well, at least we have these statues to wonder at. Perhaps we can learn something from them.’
‘We sure can,’ Dana whispered. ‘That statue has a similar scar as Albine does.’
I gazed at a figure of a young woman, her hand held out. True enough, it also had a whip mark chiseled on the face. ‘Very lifelike,’ Lex murmured.
‘What the hell is your point?’ Ulrich demanded of Dana. He got up, staring at the statues. ‘You don’t mean …’
‘It was once like us,’ Dana said with a slightly nauseous face. ‘This one has a bit of robe left.’ The statue Dana was leaning on had a sleeve that was brittle and rotting as Dana tugged at it. ‘They do care if we misbehave, yeah.’
‘Stone?’ Anja said, rising up to touch one. ‘They can turn people to stone. Like Medusa, what Shannon said!’
‘But we looked at their eyes and nothing happened,’ I said, horrified as I stared at the statue. She had been fair once, then dead. I felt the urge to run around and stare at all of their faces, but held on to Albine and kept checking her face, swallowing panic.
Albine shook me off and grabbed the piece of robe, holding it on her face herself. Ulrich was up and running a finger across a man’s stony face. ‘These are minor demons, these women we are to bow to. They mentioned they serve this Shrouded Serpent Trade House and its mistress. I don’t want to meet that one. We have to decide what we shall do. Die one by one or make plans to escape. We could have
used Ron, he at least knew what he was doing.’ Ulrich walked over and went to his haunches before Dana. ‘Except for you. I don’t want you in my plans. They favor you as if you were one of them. Are you?’
‘They do,’ Dana smiled dangerously. ‘But I am mine alone.’
Ulrich shook his head. ‘I’ll not forfeit my life for killing you. Not now. But for my brother, there shall be a reckoning.’
‘Rather him than my sister,’ she told him softly. ‘Soon, your brother would have chosen another if he could have. He was eviler than I am. As for your threat? I’ll wait. And I shall think of Ron’s face as he burned.’
There was a shocked silence in the room, and Ulrich licked his lips at Dana’s baiting and wiped his brow free of sweat, a ferocious grimace on his strong face. ‘Don’t push it, bitch,’ the large dark-haired man said brutally. ‘For now, we are supposed to work together. But you are a problem. Untrustworthy. Dangerous as shit. Working for your own damned goals. Or your sister's wellbeing, seeing how she failed to call forth any power.’ His eyes measured me as if I was a dangerous beast best killed. ‘Likely the least useful of us, she is.’
Dana nodded with a dangerous glint in her eyes. ‘She is alive. He is dead. They did not say we are supposed to work with each other. Indeed, it might be we are expected not to. Back off, Ulrich. Go and stare at the statues and decide if you wish to attack me. You would make an ugly sculpture, like an ape. Perhaps they would throw it into the sea rather than stare at it. If they don’t, I’ll sleep at its feet and titter at you.’
‘Stop fighting,’ Anja spat. ‘That is what they want. Let the time pass, Ulrich. But know Dana, we will keep an eye on you.’ Both the Russian boys nodded, their bald heads glistening in sweat. ‘We saw what took place there. It could have been any one of us. Even if he deserved it.’ Her eyes turned to me, gauging me, probing me to build bridges, to be part of the group. I looked away. Dana was my sister.
The Dark Levy: Stories of the Nine Worlds (Ten Tears Chronicles - a dark fantasy action adventure Book 1) Page 11