Heirs of Vanity- The Complete First Trilogy Box Set

by R J Hanson

  “I love her,” Roland said. “I will never love another.”

  Eldryn was struck dumb. There had been other girls for each of them before this, of course. There was Josylyn, Roland’s favorite tavern girl from Fordir. Eldryn had even seen Roland attempt to court one young lady or another in the past few years but, even then, Roland had a wondering eye.

  Roland had ever followed his intuition, his gut. When he made a decision there was no wavering. Thus far it had not cost him too dearly. Eldryn prayed this would not be the first. For, if it was, it would be catastrophic for both of them.

  “Have you thought about what future you might have?” Eldryn asked.

  “I can’t see one without her in it,” Roland said calmly with a quiet resolve.

  “What about your children? Have you thought about that? What they might be?”

  “If Bolvii blesses us with children, then they will be ours, and we will love them.”

  “Bolvii? You speak of him in the same breath as you speak of marrying…” Eldryn began.

  “Careful,” Roland cut Eldryn short. “I love you as my brother, El’. I love her as well. That is how it is. Now, back to the matter at hand. Shall I hold your purse?”

  Eldryn was stunned. He had never seen Roland this way. He was not angry, not rash, not impassioned, and not diplomatic. He was calm and accepting. He was…happy. As odd as the thought was to Eldryn he could come to no other conclusion. Roland was happy.

  He didn’t run around with a stupid grin, or laugh at the ridiculous. He didn’t day dream or stare off wistfully into the sunset. He was just peaceful. Peaceful, and happy.

  Eldryn then wondered if Roland’s heart had ever known peace. It was as if some great decision had been made and, even if it would lead them both to catastrophe, the act alone of reaching that conclusion had settled him.

  “I’ll care for my purse and my future,” Eldryn said. “I love you too, brother, but see that you care for your future as well.”

  The market place was like no other they had seen. Although, to be fair, neither were exactly worldly men. The market street, the whole city for that matter was…orderly. There was no shouting of bidders on goods. There were no criers offering food, drink, or companionship. There was some conversation, yes. A buyer asking details about delivery, or a seller offering an alternative selection to a discerning customer. Orderly.

  There was a different shop dedicated to each possibility. A different store for everything imaginable. If a product or service could be bought or sold then there was a market for it in Lavon. Alchemists housing stores of potions and herbs, smiths crafting everything from fine jewelry to sturdy pullies for sea going vessels, weapons and armor of all varieties, and fashions and delicacies from all points of the compass.

  Roland’s eye was drawn to the ‘Block,’ as Captain Scalyern had put it. Eldryn followed his gaze and then his path. His concern for what his friend might do was heavy in his heart, but he worked to keep it from showing on his face.

  Roland made his way down the side street to a large open arena near the fifty-foot wall that surrounded the city. Here again, there was order. Men and women to be sold where marched onto a platform in whatever clothing they had been captured in, and chains. The platform was situated parallel to the wall with several rows of benches set out in a semi-circle around it. At the south end of those benches and platform stood what Roland assumed was the jail. The jail he knew from Fordir was nothing compared to the size and structure of this building. But a jail it was. Across from the jail, on the north end, stood a large stone structure easily ten feet taller than the city wall. It was clearly marked with marble lettering as the Office of the Marshal.

  Many of the prospective buyers looked over the people to be sold as one might examine livestock. There were many tax guards present and one man that carried what they learned was a bidding staff. A buyer would signal a bid and this auctioneer would acknowledge and repeat the bid. Other bidders were given two chances to up their offer or be excluded from the bidding.

  Roland, trying to use what his father had taught him, attempted to discern the nature of those on the ‘Block’ by their appearance. He looked for calluses or ink marks on the hands, rub marks from the wear of armor on the shoulders, muscle development that might tell of a man’s type of labor, posture that might indicate formal training or a high birth, and the expressions on their faces. Roland knew that a person’s expressions could be very telling unless they had been trained to hide them, and even the hiding of expression usually told of something.

  Roland looked over thieves and drunks, murderers and deserters. He saw cutthroats and dice cribbers, and even one fat merchant.

  Among them Roland saw a man who must be of the tribes of the Zepute who claim the jungles of the northern parts of Janis. He was nearly six feet in height with a slim, hard muscled, build. His skin was dark brown although Roland had heard them called black. Roland had seen black skin in his encounter with the drow under Nolcavanor and this man’s skin was not black. His head was shaved and he wore skins from animals that Roland did not recognize. What Roland noticed most was the way the man held himself. He stood straight with his head up and shoulders squared. He was proud, even on the ‘Block.’

  Avoid travel or companionship with mercenaries, Roland heard his father’s voice saying. A man that can be bought, can be bought away.

  As Roland moved closer, among the buyers, Eldryn saw Vincst and waved to him. Eldryn was concerned about where this might be heading and wanted another nearby that might help him reason with Roland.

  “What is your name, warrior?” Roland asked the Zepute.

  He was answered only with a hard stare from the dark-skinned man.

  “Perhaps another language,” Roland said and then repeated the question in Slandik and Elven.

  “I speak common tongue,” the prisoner said. “I answer not to warrior. I am hunter. Warrior fight for man who say fight. Hunter get meat, and protect his tribe. I am hunter, no slave to fight.”

  “How did you come to be here?” Roland asked.

  “Pirates,” was his only answer.

  “Would a hunter accept coin to buy his own freedom?” Roland asked.

  “I take no gift.”

  “Roland Aver Sl’Okin,” Vincst said from behind Roland. “What trouble do you stir now?”

  “You are called Aver Sl’Okin?” the hunter asked, and for the first time his expression changed.

  “My friends from the frozen waters call me so for they question my tactics at sea,” Roland said.

  “Tactics? Is that what it was, then?” Vincst said as much as asked.

  “If Aver Sl’Okin guides me to freedom, that I would take,” said the hunter.

  “Your name?” Roland asked.

  “Kodii,” was the simple reply.

  “What is the price on this man?” Roland asked turning to the auctioneer.

  “That one you’ll get cheap,” the auctioneer said. “He’s apparently hard to keep at the oars, or so I’m told.”

  “What was his crime?” Roland asked.

  “Charge sheet here says he’s a looter.”

  “I am no thief,” Kodii said. “I am hunter.”

  “You’re buying a slave?” Eldryn asked.

  “No, I’m purchasing a man’s freedom,” Roland said. Then to the auctioneer, “how much?”

  “Forty silver and this one’s yours.”

  Roland counted the coin out of his purse and placed it in the manacled hand of Kodii. Kodii closed his fingers around it and said a prayer in a language Roland didn’t recognize.

  “That’s not exactly…” the auctioneer began.

  Kodii knelt and stacked the silver on the edge of the Block where it was collected by one of the tax guards.

  “He’ll be taken to your ship,” the guard said. “Once there he is your problem. What ship is it?”

  “The Coarse Wind,” Vincst answered for him. “I’ll meet you there.”

  “You can
ride with us from this port,” Roland said. “We head for Vanthor from here. From Vanthor you may travel to wherever you wish.”

  Kodii nodded.

  Roland and Eldryn began to move away from the platform when a call from behind stopped them. They turned and saw a man who was clearly accustomed to good meals and a soft life. He was dressed well with the exception of the chains he wore on his hands and feet. He was being marched up to take the place of Kodii on the ‘block.’

  “Roland Kin, was it?” the merchant asked.

  “It is not my custom to save users of money,” Roland said, assuming the man’s goals.

  “It is not I that need you,” the merchant said. “My daughter, she is in the market up the street. She is to be sold on the block there.”

  “What is her crime?” Roland asked.

  “Being the young daughter of a tax evader,” was his response. “Please, she is not yet reached her fourteenth year and I know what the buyers in that market will want her for. I am afraid for her.”

  “Dishes and laundry are not so bad a future,” Roland said. “There are many that should be so lucky.”

  “That market is reserved for those seeking carnal goods, if you take my meaning, good sir,” the merchant said. “I beg you.”

  “They mean to take a child for their pleasures?” Roland asked, almost certain that he had misunderstood.

  “I owe a large debt and the buyers in that market will be paying in gold,” was the merchant’s only response.

  Roland and Eldryn began pushing their way through the streets making straight away for the slave market the merchant had spoken of.

  “I’ll hear no word of counsel on this,” Roland said as he marched through the city.

  “Nor would I give any other than in support of this girl’s rescue,” Eldryn said.

  They made their way into a similarly situated market if only about a third the size of the first. The buyers were sparsely populated and seemed to be buying for taverns and houses of pleasure from many different lands. All but one of those offered on this Block were much older than Roland and Eldryn, and by the look of them, much accustomed to the tavern life. Much to their dismay, bidding had already begun on the prize these depraved creatures were hoping to obtain for their abhorrent wants.

  Roland and Eldryn saw a girl with her father’s blonde hair whose beauty must have come from her mother. Her green eyes shone bright with obvious anger and her dress had been cut to leave little to the imagination as to what lay beneath.

  “Twenty gold,” came from the crowd of buyers followed by another call of, “twenty-one.”

  “Twenty-one gold going once,” said the auctioneer.

  “Fifty gold,” Roland said.

  “Now you see here, boy,” called a balding man in fine, if greasy around the collar, clothing. “The next bid is twenty-two!”

  “I said fifty gold,” Roland said. “Can the auctioneer hear me? Should we ask the tax men if the Marshal will accept my fifty gold?”

  “Fifty…um…fifty gold,” the auctioneer called. “Fifty gold going once…going twice…”

  “I have a deed here to a ship!” the plump, greasy man called. “I’ll sell it! It’s worth over thirty gold!”

  “Seventy gold,” Eldryn cried, much to Roland’s surprise.

  “My ship is worth more than thirty gold!” yelled the greasy bidder.

  “Eighty gold,” Eldryn cried in response.

  “Eighty gold,” the auctioneer said. “Eighty gold going once…”

  “You’ll pay for this you young fools!” called the would-be molester while shaking his fist.

  “Eighty gold going twice…” called the auctioneer.

  “Yes,” Roland said to the other bidder. “We’ll pay eighty gold.”

  Roland walked to the platform to take the hand of the girl. He reached up and could not have been more surprised when she accepted his hand and then bit him, hard. Roland, acting reflexively, hooked the fingers of his other hand into her eye sockets just below her eye brows and pulled. She let go her bite even as Roland’s blood was flowing over her lips.

  “Sold to the young gentlemen for eighty gold,” cried the auctioneer over the laughter of the crowd.

  “We were sent by your father,” Eldryn said as he handed the eighty gold to the auctioneer. “We’re not here to take you as a slave. He sent us to buy your freedom, to save you.”

  “My father?”

  “Yes,” Roland said, scowling at her and wrapping his bleeding hand in a cloth.

  “You paid all that gold just to save me? Someone you don’t even know?” the girl asked Eldryn as tears began to well up in her eyes.

  “Well, of course,” Eldryn said. “We wouldn’t let something like that happened to any girl.”

  As the manacles were dropped from her arms she knelt and wrapped her arms around Eldryn’s neck and began kissing his cheek.

  “Be careful,” Roland said, smiling. “She bites.”

  Eldryn struggled to work free of the girl’s grasp and hold her back from him.

  “You saved me, just like in the tales of the Silver Helms,” she said.

  “It’s…it’s…we… It’s not like that,” Eldryn finally managed.

  “My father then,” she said. “You must save him too.”

  “Hold on,” Roland said. “Freeing a girl from what these men surely had in mind and buying a merchant out of bondage for his thievery are two different things entirely.”

  She shot Roland a dangerous look. A look that communicated well what a level crossbow or pointed sword usually said.

  “They have taken everything from us,” she said turning back to Eldryn. “They took our home, our land, our stock, and our family!”

  “What price do they demand for him?” Roland asked.

  “He is wealthy and of a good heart,” she said gesturing to Eldryn. “Your tight purse might not have any grace in it for those who have suffered misfortune, but my knight here does!”

  “Hold on,” Eldryn said. “We will go to see what price is called for. Will that satisfy for now?”

  “Of course,” she said. “I am Mandurelle, daughter of Mattesh. You can call me Marnie.”

  “Very well, Marnie,” Roland said.

  “I said he could call me Marnie,” she said again gesturing to Eldryn. “It’s Mandurelle to you.”

  Business was finalized with the auctioneer and due to the different nature of this market they were allowed to take Eldryn’s new ‘purchase’ with them. They made their way back through the crowded streets to the arena of the Block. They were surprised to see the buyers moving off to other business and the tax guards escorting those purchased away to their destined vessels.

  “You there,” Eldryn called to one of the guards. “There was a man here, a merchant by the look of him.”

  “There were many,” the guard replied.

  “No, no, this one was on the Block,” Eldryn said.

  “Oh, yes. That one decided for the noose,” the guard said. “The Marshal would rather get something for them, but hanging is the law and they have that choice.”

  The world fell out from under Marnie’s feet. She collapsed into Eldryn’s unsuspecting arms. She buried her face in his chest to cover her deep sobs. Her father, her one and only rock in this world was gone.

  “He chose to be hung instead of face a few years of service?” Roland asked.

  “It’d have been a life sentence most likely,” the tax guard said. “For his sort folks mainly only buy them to feed them to lions for a crowd anyway.”

  “You did this!” Marnie said turning on Roland. Anger burned hot within her. “All your talking and dragging your feet. You could have saved him when you were here!”

  “I understand you’re angry,” Roland said. “Please, just calm down.”

  “Calm down! My father’s dead!”

  “Easy, easy,” Eldryn said. “Roland, I’ll take her back to the ship. Get her squared away there and start figuring out what’s t
o be done when we all get to Vanthor.”

  “Very well,” Roland said wanting no more of the situation.

  Eldryn took Marnie around the waist and helped her off to Coarse Wind.

  Roland, concerned about how Kodii might be received by the Slandik crew of the Coarse Wind, sought out Captain Scalyern.

  “He’s your man,” Scalyern said. “You’d not be the first among us to own, or be owned.”

  “I don’t own him,” Roland said. “He’s a free man. His own man. I take it that he must sail out of Lavon, though.”

  “I don’t make it a habit to invite the Zepute aboard my ship, but if he sails with you, and you travel under the protection of King Lucas, then no fuss will be made.”

  On advice from Captain Scalyern, Roland continued to shop, purchasing supplies they might need once reaching Lawrec. It seemed that food, oil, and grain were very scarce in the beleaguered land. After spending the rest of the day gathering what he thought them might need, Roland met with others from the crew of Coarse Wind for ale in a tavern called The Coffin Nail. Eldryn had stayed behind aboard ship at the request of Marnie. According to the crew, she told Eldryn she didn’t feel safe.

  Roland listened to story after story from travelers, merchants and warriors alike, from many different lands. He kept his ear keen for news of the war with Tarborat, and how Prince Ralston fared in his struggles against Daeriv in Lawrec.

  After much of the talk turned to lewd tales and drunken singing, Roland retreated into his own thoughts about how they might proceed. A year ago, in Fordir, he would have been glad to join in the singing and drinking with the rest of the rowdy group but, since falling so heavily into drink as a defense against his nightmares, he had been cautious about his ale. The need he developed for the stronger drinks, such as brandy and the bitter dwarven ales, had scared him. He had seen, and dealt with, many drunkards while in his father’s service and had always viewed them with contempt. Perhaps what drove him to such lengths was different, but his strong desire for potent wine was the same. The weakness of it shamed him and frightened him.

  His considered what Prince Ralston would need and decided he would need much more information to work with, so his thoughts turned to what he could provide to a man that commanded armies. He assessed his strengths and how he and Eldryn might serve. Those thoughts led to Ashcliff.