The Grey Ghost: Book Two of the Archaic Ring Series

by Reed R. Stevens

  Chapter Eleven: Slave Auction

  “Why do you keep dragging me to that damn alchemy store?” Jason let out a yowling yawn. “What am I, cheap labour?”

  “More like free labour.” Nolan bit into the meat skewer he’d just bought, the favoured snack in this city. “Alchemy seems like a good thing to know in this world. If we can learn how to concoct even the shittiest medicinal pill, or pellet or whatever, then we can still net a decent profit.” That, and there was no harm in having more gunpowder on hand.

  Jason put on a thoughtful look as the two of them wound their way through the cacophony that was the southern district’s main road. Though the people here were mostly of the commoner class, it was evident that extra care had been taken to make sure that it appeared as wealthy and well-kempt as any of the other districts, the extravagant business strip aside.

  “I pity anyone who got on your bad side in high school.”

  “And you should. Now shut up and eat your breakfast.”

  “What are you, my dad?” He glanced at Nolan’s hand. “You sure you don’t want to bandage that cut?”

  “You’ve seen what my body’s been through. What’s a small cut like this?”

  Back at the alchemy shop he’d been inspecting a small vial of tempered glass when he’d pinched it a bit too hard and accidently fractured the container. The clerk at the front desk had assured him just minutes before that someone at his level would have a hard time breaking such a high-class piece of equipment, though he’d broken it with a firm pinch that caused a small cut to appear along the tip of his index finger. High-class, yeah right.

  A full week had passed since they’d arrived in Greenwall, a span of time that he and Jason put to good use. They had spent nearly every day at the same alchemy store where they’d concocted their first batch of gunpowder. Nolan had sold off a few miscellaneous objects and exchanged the profits for three low-grade spatial bags, along with more ingredients to make gunpowder.

  Nyla and Quin had spent the week on an extensive sightseeing tour where they traversed much of the sprawling cityscape in order to visit every monument and statue that they could think of, even the small and insignificant ones.

  “You think Kam is gonna show up today?”

  Jason’s question reminded Nolan that it was the day of the grand tournament, the highly anticipated event that had caused the city to swell with activity during the days following their arrival. Large banners had been erected on the main streets, with floral artistry hanging from the surrounding buildings, streetlamps and larger stalls, as if decorated by tapestries of woven flowers taken directly from the colourful countryside.

  “I can’t see why not,” Nolan replied. “Wasn’t it his dream to witness the tournament at least once in his life? I can’t see him skipping out on a free pass.”

  While walking down the road, Nolan noticed a small object slip from the pocket of an old man that was hurrying through the endless flow of pedestrians as fast as his old body could allow. Walking up to the fallen object, he knelt down to retrieve the tightly bound scroll, intent on catching up with the man and returning it to him. Just as he reached out, an electric jolt ran up his back in response to an alarmed voice echoed throughout his mind.

  If you touch that scroll, you will regret it for the rest of your life.

  Frozen in place, Nolan’s expression warped into something between shocked and disturbed. What the hell was that? Did he really just hear a voice in his head? Don’t tell me I’m going crazy… He paused mid-stoop, listening for the aged voice that’d just resounded through his mind like a wartime siren.

  Jason frowned at the uneasiness written across Nolan’s face. “Are you okay?”

  “I—I’m not sure.” Nolan decided against retrieving the scroll and quickly left the scene. That voice hadn’t belonged to the old man that had gifted him with the Ancestral Body Technique and also the mysterious mass of latent memories.

  They arrived at the Southern Square around midmorning and were surprised to find the vast plaza teeming with thousands of people, much more than usually filled the area. Was some sort of event going on? Nolan’s curiosity was dampened by thoughts of the sudden exclamation that he’d heard within his mind, but Jason seemed eager to know why so many people had gathered.

  A large wooden stage had been set up at the heart of the square, atop which stood a gaping curtain of thick scarlet fabric. The setup kind of reminded him of the way the stage always looked during the plays his high school used to put on, though they would never have put on such a disturbing production. The curtain had been parted about halfway, drawing focus to the young man who stood chained to a metal post that extended through the wood and down into a weighted mechanism below. His naked body was covered swathes of grime and marred with many ropy scars.

  A robust man dressed in flowing black robes stood at the fore of the stage, in the midst of addressing the crowd with a sonorous voice.

  “—fifth item on sale today, a young warrior from the plains region just to the south of the kingdom. At only seventeen-years-old, he’s already reached the peak of the fifth level of Body Nourishment. Although he’s refused to reveal which tribe he belongs to, he would have surely been their future patriarch had he not chosen to journey away from his homeland. Who better to fetch your meals and measure the servings of your evening wine than one formerly destined to rule over his people? The opening bid will start at twenty golden cards!”

  The surrounding area had been fairly quiet despite the stifling density of the crowd, but an eruption of chaotic voices pierced into Nolan’s ears as soon as the man on the stage finished speaking.

  “What is this?” Jason muttered. A bitter expression betrayed his understanding of the situation.

  “Seems to be exactly what it looks like.” Nolan narrowed his eyes as he glared at a large area to the right of the stage that had been sectioned off with several curtains wrapped tightly around half a dozen wooden posts. Although he couldn’t see what lay behind the thick fabric, Nolan could sense the life force of over thirty people on the other side of the scarlet wall.

  “Then these people…”

  “Are here to buy slaves.”

  The young man on stage was eventually sold off to a wealthy-looking man with long, peppered hair, for a sum of thirty-one golden cards.

  The next slave to be sold off was a young woman who couldn’t have been much older than Nolan and Jason. Like the young man before her, she was stripped from her tattered clothing the moment that she stepped on stage, and was immediately chained to the same metal post. Shying away from the eyes of the crowd, she did her best to cover herself as the man on stage began to advertise her to the people below.

  “Nineteen years old, from the southern city of Grey Rock in the province of Boulder. She was recently off by her father in order to pay back some outstanding debts. At the peak of the second level of Body Nourishment, she has experience in gardening and also has knowledge of the baker’s trade. Although she seems quite frail, I’m sure that can be fixed with a few meals. And don’t worry; her old man assured us that her purity is still intact. Starting bid is fifty-five golden cards!”

  Dozens of men began yelling loudly in a bid to acquire the young woman.

  “This is horrible…” Jason turned to Nolan. “Should we buy her?”

  “What are you, sick?”

  “No! I mean so that we can save her, you know, set her free. Jesus, Nolan.”

  Truth be told, Nolan had similar thoughts the moment that he saw the helpless and pleading look in the girl’s eyes. How could he just sit back and watch such a terrible scene play out before him? Despite harbouring such feelings, if he did buy this girl’s freedom he couldn’t just release her back into the city. A girl with her strength, with no money or home, what kind of fate would await her in a world such as Venara?

  If he did buy this girl’s freedom, he’d have to let her tag along with him and the others.

  Gritting his teeth, Nolan did nothi
ng. There were thirty-three other signals of life force from behind those thick curtains. If he bought this girl’s freedom, then he’d feel obligated to free the rest of the slaves as well. How was it fair to the others if he freed one but not the rest?

  The hoard of buyers didn’t allow for his conflicted heart to settle on a decision. A charming voice eventually overrode those of the surrounding crowd, which instantly settled into idle whispers. It seemed that none were intent on competing with such a steep price. The girl was sold to a brown-haired woman whose tight-fitting robes left little to the imagination, as the soft fabric of her clothes seemed to outline every curve and contour of her athletic body.

  Nolan felt a little more at ease after seeing that the girl had been sold off to a woman.

  He watched as all of the slaves were brought up on stage, one by one, until only a single person remained behind the curtained area. Oddly enough, the lift signal was extremely weak, like a flickering star behind a cloudy sky. He noted that of all the girls and women that had been put up for sale, every one of them had been purchased by that same woman in those close-fitting robes, and always for much higher than the current bid. He couldn’t help but admire her after witnessing her selflessness.

  During the brief interlude that preceded the final sale, the area around the stage was abuzz with excitement. The host had promised the crowd a pleasant surprise before retreating behind the curtain onstage with a greedy smile.

  A rugged man looked to the youth beside him. “What do you think, kid? Will it be a beautiful lass or a powerful warrior?”

  The young man laughed. “The first of the two and I’ll be going home with empty pockets!”

  A broad-shouldered man overheard their conversation and clapped the wealthy-looking youth on the shoulder. “What heavenly luck you must have if you think you can outbid Ms. Crim on another one of her ladies!” He glanced at the woman who’d bought all of the female slaves thus far in the auction.

  “Either way works for me!”

  The three men shared a knowing chuckle.

  As many similar conversations played out around them, both Nolan and Jason came to a dreadful realization.

  “My God! Nolan, I thought she was saving them!”

  The host ushered a teenaged girl onto the stage, though this time he refrained from stripping her from the unspeakably wrinkled clothing that she wore, which seemed to have recently undergone a simple washing. Her tawny hair was frayed and corded with grease, the smooth skin of her youthful face sagging down in a forlorn frown, eyes hollow and unseeing. Once they got a look at how the girl was dressed, the crowd erupted into a frenzy of enthusiastic voices.

  “Name brand clothing…” Jason mumbled. “She’s from Earth!”

  “Quiet down everyone!” It took a few moments for the host to quell the surrounding people. “What did I tell you? The last item on the menu is none other than an Interspatial Migrant!”

  “An Otherworlder!”

  “What strange apparel!”

  “She really has no cultivation. This is the real deal!”

  The host raised a hand, straining his voice so that it carried across the crowd. “Believe it or not, at the moment of the Interspatial Migration this girl happened to appear right inside of an empty cage within our warehouse. What a pleasant surprise it was to hear the echoes of her strange language within the storage area on that historic evening!”

  Enough people in the crowd chuckled at the girl’s horrible luck that the host had to stop speaking for a moment. “The bidding will start at…two thousand golden cards! For all you cultivators within the crowd, we also accept spirit stones!”

  A furious bidding war quickly ignited as dozens of bids began to pour in from the crowd. Two thousand golden cards was no small sum, but apparently the allure of a legendary Otherworlder was too strong for even the calmest observers to ignore. Within minutes the price had already risen to twenty-eight hundred golden cards and showed no signs of capping off any time soon.

  Jason’s expression was one of steel. “You’ve got eighteen spirit stones on you, right? Including our golden cards, how much do we have in total?”

  “Remember that store that I got all that free stuff from? I was waiting to surprise you guys, but I sold most of those things at the place next-door. Right now, I’ve got sixty-nine spirit stones on me…”

  Jason’s eyes widened with incredulity, but he sobered quickly. “We’ve got to save that girl. We can’t let another one wind up in that brothel!”

  “You know the way to the inn from here?”

  Jason nodded. “I’ll head back and wait for you at the food stall just down the street, the one that sells those meat pies that Nyla and Quin always buy. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  Jason disappeared into the crowd with a determined glint in his eyes.

  Nolan ducked his head and began making his way to another spot within the crowd, slipping on a red mask he’d obtained from the store he’d previously mentioned. He also tossed on an old cloak that he purchased a few days back and then hurried on his way.

  By the time he was close enough to the stage, the bidding had begun to stagnate at forty-one hundred golden cards, the supposed brothel owner holding the highest bid. Nolan had put a fair distance between himself and the seductive woman, who stood over a hundred paces away with a smug smile on her thin, painted lips. He had been keeping an eye on her since he realized her true nature, and had a feeling that the current bid was nearing the limit of what she was willing to spend on a single ‘worker.’

  Nolan’s voice cut across the square with a powerful shout. “Forty-five spirit stones!”

  The wealthy woman shot him a nasty glare, though he ignored it along with the gazes of countless others.

  “He sounds like a young man,” an elderly fellow said. “Could he be part of the nobility?”

  “Nobles don’t buy slaves. Not in public, anyway,” another man called out. “It’s against their ‘etiquette.’”

  “Who else could throw out such a sum if not the nobility?”

  “He has to be a noble. That’s why he’s wearing a mask.”

  Dozens of people began speculating as to who might be hiding behind that mask of deep red, but Nolan ignored them.

  After a few moments’ pause, the woman called out, “Forty-eight spirit stones’ worth, in gold.”

  Nolan responded without missing a beat. “Fifty spirit stones!” It pained him to part with so many of his precious stones, but he needed those around him to think that he was some loaded young master. If people thought that he was a part of the nobility, then they’d think twice before attempting to make things difficult for him.

  The woman gave one last glare before turning her head and leaving to collect her slaves.

  Nolan’s bid was the last, and so the girl was sold to him. The crowd began to disperse almost immediately. Meanwhile, the auctioneer directly stepped down from the stage and motioned for Nolan to follow him over to the curtained area, where many buyers were already lining up.

  The auctioneer patted an armoured guard on the shoulder as he led Nolan over to the girl he’d just bought. “Tell the other customers to wait a bit, would you?”

  The girl glanced at Nolan for a brief second, grief seeping into her previously lifeless expression.

  The auctioneer ordered a servant to fetch something and waited for a moment before the young man returned holding a small scroll bound with a thin, metallic chain.

  Wait, what? It was perfectly identical to the scroll that Nolan had almost picked up just a short while ago. Suddenly suspicious, he handed a rucksack bag to the black-robed man. Inside were fifty spirit stones.

  After counting the payment with an avaricious grin, the auctioneer slipped the chain off of the scroll and unravelled it. Though it was blank, Nolan was able to sense a strange aura emanating from its smooth surface now that the chain had been removed. “Your fingerprint. In blood, if you please.”

  Hesitating for a moment, Nolan twist
ed the cut on his finger so that fresh blood spread around the tip, and then he pressed it down onto the parchment. The auctioneer turned around almost immediately and grabbed the girl’s right hand. He withdrew a dagger from his robes and poked the end into her one of her fingers, drawing a thin trail of blood as the girl yelped in pain. Forcing the finger onto the bottom half of the parchment, the strange scroll began to emit an odd golden glow that gave off a strange heat, though it soon crumbled away into a cloud of dissipating ash.

  “Ah!” the girl cried. She fell down in hysterics. “What’s happening? It hurts! It hurts! Stop it, please!” Once her cries had subsided, she lay whimpering on the ground, racked with shivers. A black tattoo suddenly appeared around her neck, a simple collar of dark ink.

  Without batting an eyelid, the auctioneer turned to Nolan and flashed a satisfied smile. “The master-slave contract is now complete. Thank you for your patronage, we hope to see you again.”

  Nolan hefted the girl to her feet and left without a word, dragging her along as her whimpers faded into sleep along with jagged lines of silent tears.

  Chapter Twelve: Core Disciple

  A little over a month ago, Netherwolf City had been the grandest and most imposing community within the entire Southern Plains region. Of the thousands of tribes that made up this area of the continent, its warriors had been revered as the strongest and its coffers had run many times deeper than any of its reputable adversaries.

  With a unique heritage that dated back several hundred years, the tribal society operated on a warrior-caste system which had transformed their unremarkable village into a thriving metropolis. After centuries of constant war and expansion, its superior resources and extensive manpower allowed the Netherwolf peoples to nurture four powerful warriors at the Profound Entry stage, any one of whom would be viewed with great respect by the neighbouring peoples.