Red Madrassa: Algardis #1

by Edun, Terah

  RED MADRASSA

  By

  Terah E. Edun

  Published by Terah E. Edun

  Copyright © Terah E. Edun, 2012

  Edited by Floyd Largent

  Cover art by Amalia Chitulescu

  e-book formatting by Guido Henkel

  ISBN-10: 1622094026

  ISBN-13: 9781622094028

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. Individuals known to the author inspire neither individuals nor incidents mentioned in this novel. All incidents are inventions of the author’s imagination.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Acknowledgements

  To my best friend, Audrey, thank you. There is no way I could have done this without you. As always I’m grateful for the support from my family and my awesome book crafting team.

  Prologue

  Allorna:

  The sun was bright and the wind brisk as she walked along the beach, kicking up tufts of sand in her wake. She felt guilty – but not enough to turn back and apologize.

  The man who stormed toward her was not happy to see her. In the past, when she was younger, he had often tossed her high in the air, her shrieks of delight ringing out like silver bells as he caught her safely in his arms.

  Today was not such a day.

  “Father…” she began, as he reached her.

  He held up a hand to forestall any excuses. “Allorna,” he said tightly, “It breaks my soul, but the prince is quite clear. You are not to guard him or his companion.”

  She was only 14, but already the responsibilities of the gardis hung heavily upon her. She simply nodded.

  “I have a good idea of what you did,” her father continued through gritted teeth, as they walked side by side in the morning sun.

  “But Father,” she protested, with the fire of youth inspiring her words, “The Prince is not worthy of our protection! He’s an insolent, self-important whale with no care for his people or the Guardians.”

  “He is our Prince, son of the Emperor and your future ruler!” her father shouted. “You have maligned the name of gardis, which our family holds dear!”

  He paused long enough to take a cleansing breath. Then he stopped being her father, at least for the moment. “From here on out,” the Commander of the Imperial Guard continued icily, “you will serve as a true conscript should. You will be assigned city cases in the morning.”

  He spun on his heel to walk away, then turned back to glare at her. “Do well, Allorna. I will not be able to protect you from here on.”

  As her father and Commander stalked away, Allorna slumped in the sand with her face on her knees. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry or shout her anger to the skies.

  For a thousand years the royal family had ruled, through times both peaceful and turbulent. Yet she had been assigned to the one future ruler who was absent in care or fidelity for his position…‌in other words, a complete idiot.

  She sat there for a few minutes, then rose, dusted off her breeches, and gathered in her dignity. If she was to be a common watchwoman, fine. At least she no longer had to deal with the insolence of the Prince and his amlah. Heaven protect whoever did.

  Vedaris:

  He tossed and turned, wringing his sheets and soaking the bed with familiar night terrors.

  The laughter and warmth of the day lingered in his dreams. He ran through fields of green vines that twined around sticks in the ground. It was late spring, pruning season for his mother’s gardens. Heat exaggerated the vegetable scents that hung heavy in the air. Sunrays shone down with unrelenting force, scattered in an almost grid-like pattern.

  He ran through the sunbursts that danced like spotlights through the twining irrigation canopy overhead. As any true Sahelian knew, basking in the splashes of sun was the best part of spring and summer.

  If felt like heaven to have these rays of heat and warmth on his skin. He’d been told that upon gaining his wings, a long day in the desert sun would be more intoxicating than any opiate‌—‌whatever that was.

  As he continued his play, he stumbled closer to his mother. He could see her through the vines, although she was turned away from him. Clad in gardening gloves and an apron, from behind she looked like any Human scullery maid.

  He saw that his father, strong and lean with ivory skin, was sneaking up on her. With her exceptional hearing, she turned to him first, of course.

  Normally, now would be the time for Vedaris to leave. Usually it got super-gross super-fast, what with the kisses and touches and all.

  As he turned to do just that, the tension in his mother’s and father’s stances halted him. He saw that they faced each other silently in the garden clearing. They stood just a few feet apart, but with the unhappiness radiating from his father’s stiff shoulders, it might as well have been miles.

  “Did you petition the healers for an annulment of our union?” his father asked.

  She raised her chin and said, “I did.”

  “Why…‌is our family not enough? Was our love not strong?” He kept his voice low, speaking through clenched teeth, mindful of his children sleeping in the house.

  “Our love was strong,” his mother replied, “but our union was not.”

  As he surged up out of the tangled sheets in the dark night, the last thing Vedaris remembered was the stricken look on his father’s face.

  He shook as the fading glimpses of his past slipped slowly away.

  Sidimo:

  Healing was his passion, cultivated as an art for centuries among his clan. Now his talents were considered a weakness at best, but more often were reviled as a curse.

  As he knelt beside the injured man, he stared at the festering wound. A haze of grayish-green fog hovered over the infection. From the sickly hue, he could tell that the illness would only worsen. He pursed his lips and glanced at the woman kneeling by the man’s head. “I’m sorry,” he said, “But the infection will spread…‌his organs will sicken, and he will die a slow, painful death.”

  The man’s wife had held out against despair, knowing that the illness looked bad, but also knowing that her man was the only reason their farm prospered. That, in turn, was the only reason she had pleaded for Sidimo’s help. Even a youth was better than nothing in such a situation.

  Her sister, hovering behind her, tossed a couple of coins in his general direction. With a sneer she spat, “Aye, there was no doubt of his death; and now we spend the last of our coin to hear it from a Deathkeeper’s lips.”

  The fear and hatred in her eyes was palpable. Sidimo scrambled up and left through the door of the one-room cottage, the sobs of the women ringing in his ears.

  Before his clan had been turned away from their healing arts, they had been known as Deathkeepers. In times past, the term had been a thing of honor, bestowed because they halted death at the doorsteps of the living, and pushed it back from the beds of the ill. A hundred years ago, that had changed. Plague had swept through the lands, sparing none, leaving Human, Octupani, and Sahelian alike dead in its wake. The Deathkeepers above all had sicken and died.

  The old healing knowledge had been lost. The ability to diagnose illness and the stage of its peril had remained; and so those who had once stopped death in its tracks had instead become little more than heralds of its advance.

  Sitara:

  She wandered through the Weaver’s Hall, eyeing the threads of brightly color
ed yarn extending from the spools high in the ceiling down to the giant looms below. This was the factory that would make the handsome tapestries of lore for the Prince’s ball. Begun a year before, the preparation was arduous work. She was careful not to distract the hardworking weavers as she wove from loom to loom in search of her sister.

  A once-beautiful girl whose eyes were shadowed by the horrors of the past, Saras worked the looms to make ends meet. It was almost unheard of for an Octupani to take work outside the home, especially manual labor, but she saw no other choice.

  Saras had been married once, and that time haunted her still. Though only a few years older than Sitara, she acted as if youth and motherhood had passed her by half a century ago.

  Having found her at last, Sitara said in a low voice, “Saras, it will be soon. Soon, we will rectify what they have done.”

  Saras, consumed with work, only looked to the loom of purple. She did not acknowledge Sitara’s words; but then, she never did. She never spoke to anyone, minding only her workplace tasks. Knowing that this was so, Sitara continued to speak. She spoke of the past and the future, the weather and politics. What she never spoke of was home and marriage, because she had none.

  She had only Saras, and her dreams of what was to come.

  Chapter 1

  The Palace of Sandrin, Third Floor, Inner Walls:

  Allornadara bint Gardis crept along the tiny servant’s corridor between the walls of the palace apartments. A ball of blue core-fire preceded her, floating above the palm of her right hand.

  Silently, she cursed her decision not to change out of the golden taffeta dress. In a passageway just wide enough for a single person to walk, the cascading fabric was bunched against the stone walls, surely sweeping up a lovely patina of dust. Dirt clung to the trailing fabric, and she could hear the scratches of mice‌—‌she hoped they were mice‌—‌ on the floorboards around her.

  She knew her father would kill her, if Marget didn’t get to her first. The Head of Housekeeping had a very strict sense of propriety and schedule. Creeping along the servant’s corridor late at night wouldn’t be included in either. But she couldn’t let the boy die, and she certainly hadn’t had the time to retire to her rooms for more convenient attire. What did one wear to a tower breakout, anyway?

  Her destination lay just ahead. Even though the corridor was pitch dark except for the lone blue flame, she knew that she was just below the Royal Quarters, in a corner of the castle with five terraces stacked along a huge stone tower facing the open bay.

  Allorna shook her head, sighing quietly. Here she was, hiding in the walls, sneaking to Sidimo’s at midnight‌—‌straight from the arms of a rather gallant lord who was singularly good at the traditional waltz, and didn’t mind stepping below his station for a little fun. He also happened to be the target of a palace guard investigation into bribery and land hand-offs. It was just her luck that on the one night when her investigation didn’t lead to a drunken sot with no legs, something else came up to take her away from it.

  It had been her job to record the lord’s confession on a small voice-gem, which was currently lodged in the gilded bracelet on her left wrist. But as any good gardis knew, there were small fish, and there were big ones. Murder trumped bribery any day. She just hoped her father felt the same way when he learned why she’d left her target’s side.

  Coming to Sidimo’s apartments, she doused the light and placed her hand to the wall, hoping he hadn’t changed his combination recently. Gathering her will, she whispered, “A friendship brings heart,” and grimaced, thinking, We really need to update our passwords. I sound like a five-year-old.

  With a final spark of power, she commanded the passage to open. She couldn’t do much with her gifts, but at least this was one of them. It was useful when (equipped with a warrant, of course) she needed to break into a street hideout protected by magic.

  The wall panel beneath her hand slid silently to the left, and she slipped into the darkness beyond. Standing near the east corner of the smaller room, which served as Sidimo’s bedchamber and water meditation den, she waited.

  A shuffle from the direction of the bed broke the silence. “Allorna?”

  “Who else could it be?” she whispered, walking toward his voice and waiting for him to light his morning oil. A green flicker of flame, characteristic of his magic, answered her expectation; and soon the bedchamber was filled with light emanating from a wide-rimmed chalice standing off to the side.

  Sidimo was sitting on the four-poster bed in silken pants and a very loose linen tunic. He was only a year older than she, but had the presence of someone who had seen much more. “What do you think you’re doing?” he said slowly, directing his piercing blue eyes at her. “You’re supposed to be at the ball.” When she didn’t answer, he said with an exasperated sigh, “Never mind. Why are you here?”

  Ignoring his query for the moment, she slid into the space between Sidimo and the pillows leaning on the headboard. After a quick five-minute interrogation‌—‌consisting mostly of variations on “When was the last time you ate?” and “How is your petition for a city apprenticeship going?” and the resulting replies‌—‌she got down to business.

  “We can’t let him die,” she said in a fiery tone. “He belongs with us.” This declaration was accompanied by an adamant gesture. Sidimo didn’t even have to ask who she was talking about. They’d gone over this business of the mage boy Allorna was determined to save countless times before.

  He sighed and looked at her expectantly.

  Across the Sahelian Sea:

  Vedaris sat up and looked at himself, wincing at the blood and the rips‌—‌well, the new rips‌—‌in one of the only two shirts he owned. He’d been caught counting cards at the tavern in the merchants’ arena again. It wasn’t illegal, but that just meant the moneygrubbers had to sic their personal guards on him rather than the City Watch. How he’d ended up still alive in this alley, with only bruises on his face, a split lip, and torn clothes to show for it, was a mystery to him. Frankly, he would have preferred death.

  He’d sunken so low already. As one of the few among the Sahelian race who could neither shapeshift nor control the elements, he was an outcast, a pariah. This rankled Vedaris as nothing else did. In a society that prided itself on power and magework, he was a freak‌—‌considered by some to rank lower in caste than a Human. The caste system was a fickle master, based on power, race and wealth…‌in that order, and often in combination.

  Usually, being born a dragon meant an inheritance of primacy in all three. But he was one of the lucky few Sahelians to be born with no power and no wealth, shunned from childhood by all those who knew the truth.

  He’d been orphaned at an early age by the death of his father, a Steel Magecaster. His father had been normal. He had possessed extraordinary talent, and the ability to cast steel weapons, dragon armor, and magical objects alike. Indeed, he had been known throughout the medina as the best dragon armorer in centuries, sought out by both the nobility and the merchants.

  Vedaris, on other hand, was sorely lacking in both his father’s ability and his race’s natural talent to transform and fly…‌although he did look like his father, with skin the color of ivory and hair so black it shone with hints of blue. Yet if his father had survived past Vedaris’ fifth birthday, he himself would most likely have killed Vedaris within the next year. By then, all his natural abilities should have manifested, had he possessed any, which he did not. The shame of a nobleman having produced one of the Powerless would have been too much to bear otherwise.

  He guessed that being without family had been a blessing, in some ways. His father had never known of his failure. Otherwise, it was a curse, especially as he had no one to watch his back on the streets.

  It was midmorning now, and he had two choices. I could go to the whore’s dock and beg the madams to take me on as some rich nobleman’s amusement, he thought sourly, or‌—‌and here he took a deep breath‌—‌I could ste
al aboard a merchant ship as a Human runner. The latter was a risk; he’d have to avoid all the merchantmen he’d tried to shaft last night, and make sure no Sahelian caught so much as a glimpse of him. Sahelians could sense each other easily, not merely when an individual used the magic unique to his race, but also by eyesight.

  Any Sahelian who could transform‌—‌which meant all of them except him‌—‌had golden eyes with flecks of green in them. Their eyes were a warm brown when born, gradually lightening as they grew. The green flecks, a sign of power, appeared during the first tests of childhood.

  His eyes had never made the transition, though he remembered his father saying that it would come. He remembered a particularly frustrating instance at age four and a half when he had been trying to lift a freshly baked meat pie off his mother’s kitchen countertop without her noticing. His sister, Noor, had been able to do that trick at age three. His father, coming in from the steam baths in the garden after a long day’s work, had‌—‌with a wry glance at him‌—‌mage-pushed the meat pie over, along with a cold breeze to cool it down.

  He got the feeling his mother knew what his father had done. She probably would have stayed had Vedaris been the one to actually do it.

  Well, that chapter of his life was closed, never to be reopened. His father was dead and his mother, as much as the Human term could be applied, was gone. She had chosen her duties and taken Noor with her, abandoning Vedaris to his fate.

  Since being orphaned, his lack of magecraft had allowed him to masquerade as a Human, first in the cloister and now in his hardscrabble life on the streets. The appearance of Humanity was often the only thing that saved him; that and the fact that the gangs and feral packs always underestimated the strength in his wiry frame.