Guardians of the Keep

by Carol Berg

  “What is it?” growled my companion, holding the candle in front of his chest and pulling the door slightly open.

  “Sir, Dujene has two more collars for this lot and wants to know if you intend to set the seals. He had already sealed the first, when I told him of your desire to set more of them yourself.” I could not see the speaker through the narrow opening of the door.

  “Good.” The man snuffed the candle and set it on a stack of crates beside the door. “Yes, I want to be there for all collarings until further notice. I’ve had too much work and too little pleasure lately. Nice when one can experience both together.” He stepped out and closed the door behind him. The rattle and snap of a hasp left me feeling not at all secure.

  For half an hour or an hour I huddled in the dark room. It seemed to be a storage room for ledgers and documents of various kinds. My anxieties were not soothed by the bone-chilling screams that occurred twice more. Shortly after the second instance, I heard voices outside my hiding place. “Is that all, Slavemaster?”

  “I’ve no more need of you tonight. I plan to sup, to make one more attempt to find the records Gensei Seto requested, and then to retire.”

  “As you wish, Slavemaster.”

  A door closed. Shortly thereafter, my own was unlocked and opened. The Zhid shoved a small flask and a plate of meat, cheese, and bread into my hands. “I would recommend you eat this. You’ll get nothing decent until your mission is complete.”

  “Thank you.” I touched the small round loaf. It was cold and dry.

  He lit the candle with a touch of his finger. “None but I have entry to this room. Nonetheless, I will lock the door until I come for you in a few hours. Do you have the scarf to cover your hair? No female servant is permitted to have uncovered hair.”

  I pulled the red kerchief from my pocket. “I have it.”

  “Don’t forget it. I wish you a safe night. May our work be the redemption of the worlds.” He didn’t sound like a man who could have caused such screams as I had heard, but I suspected that he was. Perhaps that accounted for the diseased look of him.

  The door closed behind him again, the lock snapped, and I was abandoned in the pool of candlelight. As I picked at the tasteless cheese and bread and sipped from the flask of warm ale, I imagined with a twinge of jealousy how Paulo would curl up on the hard floor and be asleep in an instant. I didn’t know if I would ever be able to sleep in Zhev’Na. Of course, as is often the case when sleep seems impossible, at some point in that night, my mind let go and I drifted off. But some time later, when the key turned in the lock again, I was on my feet, wide awake, before my host reappeared in the doorway.

  “Quickly. Quietly. Follow me.” He led me through a large, bare room with a wide desk and a single chair, and then through a dim passageway rife with unwholesome smells. Just outside a wooden door fastened with a long bolt, he motioned me to be still. After a moment’s listening, he quietly guided the bolt from its latch, cracked the door, and peered through. Beyond the door a goodly number of people were murmuring and milling about. A harsh-voiced woman shouted for attention.

  The Zhid closed the door, grabbed my arm, and drew me close. He held up three fingers and pointed toward the door. I didn’t get his meaning until he motioned again, counting one finger and then two. . . . When the third finger came up, he cracked the door open just wide enough to shove me through. I stood at the rear of a line of fifteen or twenty rumpled, sleepy people moving slowly forward through a cavernous room. All were dressed as I was.

  Another, larger group of Drudges—perhaps fifty altogether—were being led through a wide door into another room, prodded by three Zhid with long sticks who kept yelling at them to be quiet or he’d have them eating sand for a week. Behind them a gaunt man, barefoot and wearing a short gray tunic, dragged a wheeled sledge piled high with rough mud-bricks. The wide metal collar around his neck told me he was a Dar’Nethi slave.

  Near the head of the line in which I stood, three Zhid stood at a fuzzy discontinuity in the air that I now recognized as a magical portal. One of the Zhid, a woman, questioned those in line and ticked off items on a list. Another seemed to be matching the responses with the ear tag. A third Zhid laid his hand on the head of every person before they passed through the portal. Hunting Dar’Nethi, certainly.

  “Name and service,” snapped the woman writing the list to a hunched man in line ahead of me.

  “Grigo, butcher.”

  “Step through.”

  “Name and service.”

  “Mag, scrub.”

  “Step through.”

  “Name and service.”

  “Eda, sewing.”

  “Step through.”

  And so I did and found myself at last in the heart of all my fears—Zhev’Na.

  CHAPTER 28

  I stepped from the portal into a barren courtyard: pounded red dirt surrounded on all sides by buildings of dark stone or red mud-brick. Gray wisps of night lingered in the dim colonnade that marked the east side of the yard, while the rising sun had already heated the broad square. Despite the heat, I crowded together with the other drab, silent bodies, all of us shapeless in our brown tunics and black skirts or baggy trousers.

  The guard handed his list to a tall Zhid woman who announced herself to be Kargetha, a supervisor of uncollared servants in the fortress. Kargetha clearly did not relish being saddled with twenty dull, sleepy Drudges, and dispatched us to our duties as quickly as possible. Some were sent to the kitchens, others to the stables or the smithy, herded along by Zhid assistants.

  I was the last on the list, and by that time, Kargetha had no subordinates left to show me the way, so with an ungracious poke of a sticklike finger, she pointed me toward a set of worn stone steps on the north side of the courtyard. Down the steps and to the right was a low-ceilinged, windowless room with pallets laid out on the floor—a dormitory where twenty or thirty people could sleep. The room was stifling and smelled as if it had been neither cleaned nor aired since this part of the fortress was built, long before the Catastrophe.

  “This is your sleeping place. Leave your things.” I dropped the small bundle that Gernald had provided me next to the grimy pallet Kargetha indicated. Then I followed her back up the steps and across the courtyard toward the long mud-brick building backed up against a high wall. She led me through one of the many open doorways into a crowded, wood-floored room. In the front of the room stood a broad table, piled high with rolls of brown and gray cloth and stacks of flat, cut pieces of the same. Two women dressed like me stood next to the table stitching the pieces into garments. At another table, three more women were hemming a huge square of raw linen. Without any introductions, I was assigned the fourth side of the square. “Do as they do.”

  I picked up a needle from those stuck into the wood frame of the table, threaded it with cotton from a large wooden roll, and began to fold the edge and stitch as the others were doing. Kargetha spent the rest of the morning at my shoulder, ripping out stitches that she judged too large or too uneven or too crooked. She was very particular and demonstrated her displeasure by rapping a short stick across my knuckles.

  As the morning passed, the sewing room grew hot and stank with the sweat of the women. Kargetha decided she’d seen enough. “You’re slow and incompetent,” she said with a snort. “I don’t know how you’ve survived this long. You’d best improve your skills or you’ll be sent into the desert for hunting practice. Here”—she nudged me toward another of the women—“that’s Zoe. Do as she says.”

  Zoe was an older woman with broken yellow teeth and mottled skin. She and the other Drudges wore the faces of brutalized women everywhere: old beyond their years, worn and battered by filth and poor food, eyes holding little intelligence and no hope. Once Kargetha had gone, the women began to talk quietly as they worked, mostly about the heat, and the dullness of the needles, and the coarseness of the thread with which they were expected to do decent work. Unlike the Dar’Nethi slaves, Drudges were per
mitted to speak without asking permission.

  Zoe, being in charge of the group, took it on herself to question me about how I had come to be sent to Zhev’Na. She nodded sagely as I finished my story. “Aye, there’s a deal of us here as have lost a mate or three in the camps.” Zoe pointed her needle at a younger, slack-lipped woman. “Dia’s whole village was hit and burned for a testing. She was gone to midwife a cousin and come back to her village to find everyone dead, her mate and offspring and all. So it goes.”

  “How awful,” I said, horrified. “Your children . . . all of them?”

  The slack-mouthed girl shrugged. “Aye. There was five, six of ’em . . . I don’t know. Who ever knows how many there are? I’ll get more if the Worships say it.”

  Several of the women had similar stories. No one seemed particularly bothered, even about losing their children. My strong reaction seemed to unsettle them far more than their own horrific tales. I took the warning, and from then on did my best to keep my feelings controlled and my expression like theirs. I let them ask all the questions they wanted, which were not very many, but for the time, I asked no more of my own except about the work.

  In the middle of the day a blank-faced girl carried in a tin pail and a cloth bag. Each of us took a wooden bowl from a stack of them in the corner and filled it with dark brown ale from the pail. Then we each took a piece of bread from the bag. In scarcely time enough to cram the bread down, gulp down the tepid ale, and throw the wooden bowl back on the stack, we were back at work. I thought we might stop when the light faded, but lamps were lit, and we sewed for two hours more. By the time Kargetha returned to review our day’s work, my fingers were sore, my feet throbbing, and my eyes blurry. We filled our wooden bowls from a pail of thin soup. I did as the others, swabbing out my bowl with my hunk of bread, and then refilling it with ale from a second pail set by the door. While we ate and drank and stacked our bowls back in the corner, the Zhid woman inspected every piece of our work. Only after she gave her approval were we dismissed to the dormitory.

  The women mostly fell on their pallets still dressed, joining others whose snoring rattled the low roof beams like a thunderstorm. There was no outer door to be locked, and in two hours of heavy-eyed observation, no guard or other watcher came to check on us.

  One more venture before I slept, I thought. I wanted to get my bearings. I crept between the rows of sleeping women, through the open doorway, and up the steps to the courtyard. The night was cold, the sky hazy with smoke and dust. No stars visible. No moon. A single yellow torch burned in each corner of the yard, allowing a limited view of what lay beyond the enclosing walls.

  Directly across the courtyard, to the south as I remembered from the morning light, was the plain building of two stories that held the sewing rooms and other such shops and workrooms. Behind me, above the dormitory, thin, angular towers of dark stonework rose into the night like spikes against the sky, pierced by many tall windows that shone dark blue or green. I judged this massive structure to be the fortress keep, as it extended well beyond the open colonnade that formed the eastern boundary of this courtyard—the Workers’ Court, I’d heard my new home called. The L-shaped keep wrapped around the far corner to my left, forming the eastern boundary of the fortress.

  The colonnade separated the workers’ compound from another courtyard, formed by the keep, its eastern wing, and another towered stone building. Facing the keep across the courtyard, that building appeared somewhat less imposing than the keep, but certainly more grand than the workrooms. It also showed a few lights.

  To the west—my right as I stood on the dormitory steps—were a series of low brick structures that might be guard barracks, more workshops, or perhaps dormitories for male servants. Something else lay in the dark, even farther beyond, something that smelled foul, like stables poorly maintained.

  “What are you doing?”

  I whirled about and faced Kargetha’s empty stare. Quickly I dipped my knee and cast down my eyes. “The latrine, your Worship. No one told me where such was to be found.”

  “You should have taken care of that earlier. Wandering about in the dark is not permitted.” She pointed to a corner of the courtyard. “You’ll find what you want there. Return to your sleeping room immediately after.”

  I dipped my knee again and hurried to the dark corner to which she had directed me. She didn’t come to check that I had obeyed her, which was a great relief. I didn’t want to attract further notice. I hurried back to my pallet, pulled a thread from the hem of my skirt, and laid it carefully under the corner of my bed. One day gone.

  Fourteen days. So much to learn. I couldn’t ask everything at once, yet I couldn’t put off my investigations until I was more settled here either.

  Our dormitory was indeed part of the keep cellars. The Lords themselves lived above us, so I was told, though none of the women had ever seen them. They had heard all manner of tales about the Lords: that they were gods or giants, or creatures of spirit, rather than flesh. They all agreed that the Lords could read your soul, assuming you had one. The Zhid claimed that Drudges had no souls because we had no “true talents”—no power for sorcery. All of the women believed that it was only right that we serve such powerful masters in whatever way we were commanded. Such was clearly how the world was meant to be, and whatever else was there to do?

  I asked Dia, the woman who had been a midwife, if many children lived in Zhev’Na. She looked puzzled. “No breeding is allowed in the fortress. How could there be offspring?”

  “I just thought I heard a child’s voice last night. That’s all,” I said. “When Zoe sent me to get the scraps of leather at the tanner’s.”

  “Well, children’s voices . . . that’s different,” said Dia. “I thought you meant new-birthed offspring. There’s child slaves brought in from time to time, though they can’t speak but when they’re told. And sometimes there’s young ones among the Worships”—Worship was the Drudge title for the Zhid—“ones they train to become Worships, too.”

  “I thought all the Worships were grown,” I said. “Not many warriors ever came to our camp. Didn’t know Worships could be young ones.”

  Dia glanced over her shoulder and gave a shudder. “They’re not nice young ones.”

  I dropped the subject, so as not to seem too interested. But on that afternoon I made sure to stand by Zoe while we attacked the mountain of plain brown fabric that was being turned into underdrawers for the Zhid soldiers. “Dia says the Lords breed offspring. Is that true, Zoe? We never heard that in my work camp.”

  “Pshaw! Dia would stitch her fingers to a sheet if you didn’t tell her not. The Lords are Worships, and Worships don’t breed.”

  “But she said they made a boy that lives here like a prince, so he must be a child of the Lords.”

  Zoe wrinkled her pale dirty face and licked her fingers as she threaded her needle. “There is a boy what lives in the Gray House and is favored of the Lords. Gam saw him when she was called to take new towels there. She said he has the mark of the Lords on him, so she was ever so careful and respectful.”

  “The mark of the Lords? I don’t know of that. I’m so ignorant, being new here at the fortress.”

  Zoe leaned close, the wrinkles around her mouth deepening into desert crags. “The jewels, you know.” She laid her finger on her ear tag. “It means whatever you do or say, the Lords will know it. The boy could kill you with a look if he took a mind to. You go careful if you see the mark of the Lords, Eda.”

  Gar’Dena had warned me repeatedly not to reveal myself to Gerick no matter what—not until the signal came. A wise warning, it appeared.

  The Gray House was the structure that faced the keep across the courtyard beyond the colonnade. On the fourth night of my stay in Zhev’Na, I decided to venture a bit farther afield and see what I could learn about it.

  We had worked a bit later than usual, for Kargetha had been displeased with our day’s stitching and made us rip out half of it and do it over a
gain. By the time my companions fell snoring onto their pallets, the compound was quiet and empty. I waited perhaps an hour, then slipped through the darkness to the colonnade, crossing into the next courtyard by way of the opening closest to the corner next to the keep.

  As I stood in the dark corner, shivering in the cold air, I longed for a cloak, longed to be anywhere but this awful place. The courtyard between the Gray House and the keep—the Lords’ Court, the women called it—was much larger than the Workers’ Court, and was paved with large squares of stone that were carved with all manner of devices and symbols. Rather than trees or plants, statues of fantastical birds and beasts were set in ordered rows across the barren enclosure. The entrance to the keep was a columned portico at least six stories in height, flanked by gigantic carvings of warriors and beasts, and lit by great bowls of flame mounted above the portico. The bowl torches were so immense, no servant could possibly reach them to set them alight or refresh their fuel. I shuddered, feeling quite small and alone.

  The Gray House that faced this portico across the courtyard was more modestly proportioned, but of the same severe, angular construction. No elaborate entry, but only an iron gate opened onto its interior courtyard. Despite four torches that flanked the Gray House gate, I couldn’t see into the darkness beyond it. Few lights were visible in the house, but I tried to note where they were: ground level, just to the right of the gate, second level, just above the gate, and third level, to the rear.

  No guards were anywhere in evidence, and I thought perhaps I’d run quickly across the courtyard and peek through the iron gate of the Gray House. Only my uncertainty as to how to proceed made me hesitate long enough to hear the quiet sneeze not twenty paces from me. Despite the chill of the night, I broke into a sweat, while attempting the difficult task of shrinking further into the shadows without moving at all.

  Moments dragged past as I huddled in my dark corner, scarcely daring to breathe. At last a man stepped from the corner of the courtyard at each end of the colonnade, just as two guards emerged from the keep. The four met briefly in the middle of the courtyard. Then, while the two who had been on watch strolled back toward the keep, the other two began a circuit of the dark peripheries of the courtyard. Their path would leave them right at the posts so recently occupied. Heart pounding, I retreated into the workers’ compound before they completed their rounds. I would need to go again to learn how often the guard was changed, and how long it took the two to make the circuit. Tomorrow.