by Dana Marton
The young Guardian of the Scrolls seemed softened toward me somewhat as he led me through the countless passages until at last we reached the scrolls. He stopped a few times to hesitate but found the Sacred Chamber. He would not enter it, so I walked in there alone.
This time, I carried a small blade, for whether the remaining scrolls would readily open or not, I needed their wisdom. I did not open the first scroll, as I knew the prophecy by heart. I reached for the second. As I tugged, the strip of hide holding it together detached easily.
I held my breath as I unrolled the scroll. Oh, but when I read the words, I could have cried. Nothing but old stories, from the history of the First People all the way back to the creation of the world. What a cruel joke of the spirits to crush the hopes of my heart.
I lifted the third scroll, praying that this one at last would be useful to us. The binding held tight and would not give, so I pulled my blade, cut off the binding and unrolled the scroll.
No words. No even a single picture. Not a scratch.
The coldness of the cave seeped inside me and squeezed my heart.
We had been left to our fate by the spirits.
I said nothing of this to the Guardian of the Scrolls, or to Batumar as we returned. And Batumar did not ask me until we were in his chamber that night. “Have the scrolls revealed a way?”
“Not today,” I whispered, snug in his arms in the bed in the dark. I saw no path to escape. “We will have to fight the war.”
“A strong alliance with Lord Karnagh is a fine start,” he said. “He is a good one to have on our side.”
“But not sufficient. We will need more. And the Shahala will not fight, although they will heal the wounded.”
The last flames of the dying fire played a shadow game on the wall.
“That will be help enough.”
“But maybe they can do more.” An idea formed in my mind. Shahala healers spoke many languages learned from those who sought them out from the faraway corners of the world. “The name of our people is known and respected. If I returned to my people and told them all I saw at Mernor, they could travel to other nations to pass on the tale and bring us more alliances.”
To this, Batumar said nothing. But I felt his searching lips on my cheek, then on my lips.
And as much as I enjoyed it, as much as I had missed his touch and ached for it, I recognized the kiss for what it was, a military maneuver, a distraction.
With a sigh, I pulled away, yanking the furs back as they would have slid from my body, baring it to the chill. “Have I not earned your trust, my Lord? Do you doubt my loyalty?”
He gathered me back to him, skin to skin. “Do not ask me to put you into harm’s way.”
“None on Dahru will be safe if we do not fight back the Kerghi.”
“If this life be short, I want you until the last minute by my side.”
“And there I will be when the war comes. But if I can do anything to help us to victory—”
He kissed me again, and this time I did not move away.
“I would trust you with my own life. Indeed you have saved it,” he said after a long time. “I will trust you with yours.”
I kissed him then, and he caressed me, and we did not let go of each other for the rest of the night.
The following morning, I left for Sheharree with a full unit of Palace Guards, twenty-four seasoned warriors. Along with what I packed for the road, I also carried a full chest of new gowns at Batumar’s insistence. They were a gift from him and all fit for a queen. And I would wear them, as it gave him much pleasure. I knew at last who I was. It had little to do with whatever dress I was wearing.
I did not take Leena with me. She was terrified of the manyinga, as were all Kadar women. Nor would I take her from Batumar, who had acknowledged her as his mother to the whole palace while I had been ill. She now sat at the high table at the feast.
We rode to Kaharta Reh on the beasts, the guards keeping the defense formation the whole time, so I saw little of the landscape as we traveled. A straight row of five guards rode side by side in the front, another row like it behind them. I rode in the middle of the third row, two guards on each side. Two more rows of five guards each followed. The formation was a square of five men on each side, with me in the middle, protected to the depth of two men in every direction.
Most nights we camped. I occupied Batumar’s tent, the guard sleeping in smaller ones, four men to a tent, set up around mine. We stopped briefly at the House of Joreb to take on fresh food and water, for the warriors did not want to waste time by stopping in the woods to hunt.
When we reached Kaharta Reh, we rested a night at the House of Tahar. My stomach drew into a hard ball at the thought of facing Kumra, but I set aside that weakness and reminded myself that I was no longer a maiden, a servant in her power.
~~~***~~~
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
(Onra)
As the High Lord’s favorite concubine, they led me to the best chamber at Tahar’s Pleasure Hall—Kumra’s. Small it seemed now, and not nearly as opulent as I had remembered.
The concubines greeted me respectfully and kept out of my way, admonishing their children to be quiet. I saw neither Kumra nor Keela. Perhaps Kumra was unsure of how well I would remember my days under her power and had thought it better to stay out of sight.
I carried no thought of revenge in my heart. My mind was on other, happier things. At once I sent for Onra to stay in Keela’s chamber next to me, claiming I needed her to attend my needs.
My heart thrilled to see her. My eyes filled with tears as she entered and fell to the floor before me to kiss the hem of my dress, her charms clanging on the floor.
“Stop that foolishness, Sister.” I reached for her and pulled her up to enfold her in my arms as she cried tears of happiness on my shoulders. We embraced awkwardly, for she was swollen with child.
“Come sit.” I walked with her to an array of silk pillows by the wall, filled plump with feathers. “How fare you, my friend?”
She patted her belly. “As heavy as a manyinga and twice as wide.” She smiled. “But the babe seems strong. I can scarcely sleep from his kicking.”
“A boy, then?”
She nodded. “His father paid for the soothsayer before he left.”
“He must be pleased with the news.” Kadar valued male children above female. Not surprising for a nation that depended on the strength of its warriors.
“I have never seen him laugh like that.”
But for all the happiness in her words, I noticed the sad shadow in her gaze. “What happened?”
Tears filled Onra’s eyes anew. “The High Lord ordered all the warlords to Karamur, but Lord Tahar had already promised his men to some small kingdom. Not far, he said. They would come and go. Loot would be his payment. It would pay for more armor for his warriors for the big war.”
She rubbed her swollen belly. “Charuk was going to ask Tahar for me after the battle, to be his concubine so the babe could be born in his hut in the back row.” Her voice filled with sadness and wonder. “Me, a servant. And after all the others. Can you imagine such a thing?”
I could, for in my eyes she deserved that and more. But I feared I knew how the story ended. “He did not return?”
She shook her head.
I knew well that the sorrow in her heart was not only for the man she had loved, but for her babe too. As a warrior’s concubine, her child would have been an acknowledged son, a free man to take up a trade or train in the art of war when he was grown. But now he would be born a slave like his mother.
Lord Tahar held no feast for me that night, for I was but a woman, but the servants brought food aplenty to my chamber. I ate and drank nothing save for what Onra carried in her own two hands, assuring me she had seen Talmir prepare it directly.
Talmir I could not meet, but I sent him greetings. As a male servant, he would have been much punished if caught near the High Lord’s favorite concubine.
&n
bsp; When we left the following day at dawn, I had one of my guards ask Lord Tahar for Onra so she might accompany me on the long trip ahead. And so she was given into my possession before we left for the harbor, and more slaves offered, which I declined.
The warriors had taken our manyinga to the stables upon our arrival to Kaharta Reh and did not fetch them now, as we feared the beasts would not survive the long trip in the belly of the ship. Nor the ship, in all likelihood, their thrashing, should we encounter a storm that frightened the beasts.
How different the harbor seemed as I looked around this time, surrounded by the Palace Guard, with Onra by my side and a long line of Tahar’s servants behind us, carrying food and water for the voyage. No slavers bobbed on the water, but a magnificent ship with sparkling white sails that reflected the sun. Batumar had ordered the flagship of his fleet to speed us to the Shahala shores.
Still, my heart tightened as I walked up the plank, for I remembered the last time I had traveled in a ship. But this one was clean and bright, my cabin lit with sunshine that streamed through a porthole. A bed as comfortable as my own at Karamur was nailed to the floor and piled high with pillows.
“We shall need another cabin prepared,” I told the captain and smiled at Onra.
She did not appear pleased but grabbed for her charms instead as she stared at the bed.
I looked but could not see what scared her so. “Is anything amiss?”
She glanced at her feet. “I have never,” she whispered. “What if I should fall out and hurt myself and the babe?”
She had never slept on anything as high as a bed before. So we quickly decided that we would share my cabin, and asked for more pelts and pillows so she could make herself a comfortable place to sleep on the floor. The captain left, and men returned with all I had requested.
As neither of us needed rest yet, I searched through my trunk and gifted her with one of my gowns, which she accepted after much protest. We spent the rest of the day altering it to fit her swollen figure.
That evening, Onra and I ate in our cabin but went up on deck afterwards for fresh air. We found the warriors training with the sword. They looked at Onra with curiosity, for she had come upon the ship as a slave but now wore the fine gown of a lady.
I took her hand and walked to the Captain of the Guard. “This is Mistress Onra,” I said in a loud enough voice so all would hear and know that from now on she was a free woman. “Although we do not share the same mother, she is the sister of my heart. Protect her as you would protect me.”
The captain bowed, and we moved on to the stern of the ship, Onra squeezing my hand in gratitude, her eyes flooded with tears.
“It is a happy day,” I told her.
“Most happy.” She wiped her tears. “Forgive me. I have been crying over every little thing with this babe in my belly.”
I was grateful for her company as we sailed to Sheharree. We spent the days walking on the deck, watching the fish that swam beside the ship, and talking about the old days at the House of Tahar. She told me what had happened since I had left, how our old friends fared.
She had many tales about Kumra and her daughter. Keela had to be given to a warrior after she confessed her lost virginity to Lord Tahar to avoid disaster. Had she been given to another warlord and found without her maidenhead, it would have been a grave insult. Tahar held Kumra responsible, so she lost a lot of her power, which made her even meaner.
In turn, I told Onra about Batumar and Karamur, and the approaching war. We spent the days like that, happy to be together again, grateful that we were both still alive to enjoy each other’s company.
When at long last we neared the Shahala shores, I asked the Captain of the Guard to request from the captain of our ship that we might sail by the rocky beach where I had grown up. As I watched the familiar shoreline, my heart filled with sorrow.
I returned home at last, but my homecoming was different from the way I had so often imagined during my days of terror under Kumra and later in Karamur. I was not coming home to stay.
The first thing I saw was the green of the hillside and the numaba trees that reached to the sky, full and tall, their spreading branches swaying in the wind that blew from the sea. Like friends they greeted me, as if all this time they had waited. My gaze searched our home as we sailed closer.
A tall pole stood in front of what once had been a tent for the sick. But the tent was gone and so was the woodhouse where I had grown up; whatever escaped fire had been blown apart by the strong winds. My heart sank at the sight.
At my request, the captain dropped anchor, and we went to shore in a boat, leaving Onra behind with the crew and a single guard. She did not wish to climb the rope ladder to the boat with her unwieldy belly, and I would have tried to dissuade her if she did.
As we reached the rocks and climbed them with much effort, I noticed something atop the pole, and after a little while when we reached closer, I could make out a human skull. Half the warriors had gone ahead; the rest stayed by my side. As we walked closer still, I saw some of the men by the pole, examining a bunch of sticks on the ground.
No, not sticks—bones.
The men still with me tried to reason with me, to hold me back, but I rushed to the pile of bones bleached by the sun, some half-buried in the sand. Something else was there too. I bent and grabbed hold of a piece of shrunken leather.
I had stitched it enough and now recognized my mending. I stepped back as Jarim’s shriveled sandal slipped from my fingers, many different emotions swirling inside my heart: anger so strong it scared me, but some remnant of love too for the man I had thought of as father when I had been a child.
“Shall we bury the bones, Lady Tera?” the Captain of the Guard asked.
I nodded without words.
But when one of the men picked up a large shell and began to dig a hole in the soft sand, I said, “On the side of the hill.” Whatever else he was, he had been my mother’s mate. She had shared her spirit with him. I could not let his bones be scratched into the sand like some animal’s.
I did not stay to watch as a couple of men knocked down the pole to gain Jarim’s skull so they could put it in the ground as well. I ran into the woods and climbed to the top of the tallest numaba tree, as slow as an old woman, for it had been a while since I had climbed, and my gown held me back.
I had no phial for the moonflower’s tears, but I had not come for that. I came because nowhere else did I feel so close to my mother, not even at her grave.
The branch swayed under me, and I felt like a bird about to take flight to soar in the sky. Such freedom I had never known anywhere else. The warm breeze caressed my face as I looked toward the harbor and saw the ship bobbing on the water.
A lifetime had passed, it seemed, since I had seen the slaver in that same place. I was a different person, and it was a different world around me. Or perhaps the world had always been this dangerous and filled with evil, and I had just been too young and naïve to notice.
When I saw the guards walk from the hillside to the beach, finished with the burial, I climbed down to the men who waited with concern—and some poorly hidden disapproval. They followed me back to what once had been my home.
I searched through the ruins but found nothing of my life left there.
The two people who had raised me were gone, as was any evidence of the happy childhood I had in that place. With time, the wind would blow enough sand over the ruins so that no sign of anyone ever having lived there would remain. Sorrow grew inside me at the thought, but despair could not command my whole heart.
Home was more than a house, more than a collection of memories. Home was where I loved and was loved in return. I had not realized it until then, but for some time now my true home had been the High Lord’s palace. I hoped we would be returning there shortly, bringing with us new alliances.
We made our way back to the ship and sailed on to Sheharree, but a short distance from the beach. I had never before approached the c
ity from the water on the harbor side. My mother had forbidden me the use of any boats and tried as best she could to keep me from the sea. Perhaps she had somehow known that across that vast water, I would be carried to slavery.
The harbor looked plain and flat compared to Kaharta Reh, smaller than I remembered. No colorful banners proclaimed who ruled the city, no defensive walls of any kind, no gates, no fortifications. Indeed, my people had no need of them in the past, and I prayed to the spirits it would remain so. But the memories of our journey to Mernor insisted otherwise, and I feared for the Shahala, who had laid themselves so open to the sea, utterly defenseless.
By the time we docked and were ready to go to port, a delegation of Shahala Elders had gathered to greet us on the wharf. They looked like white seabirds ready to take flight as their thin robes billowed in the wind, revealing the straight thudrags they wore beneath. The only difference between their wear and that of other Shahala men was the wide strip of red embroidery around the neck of the Elders’ robes that displayed the sacred symbols of our people—one for each of the nine original tribes.
How I wished for a Shahala thudi and a dress. My Kadar gown, the lightest one I owned, seemed unbearably hot under the beating sun. I worried about Onra, who was snowborn and not used to such heat. She did come to shore with us this time.
I recognized only five out of the three men and four women. The men all had long, white beards that waved at us with each gust of wind. The women too were old, grandmothers many times over. The ones I knew had grown even older while I was gone, and with a sharp pain, I realized that my mother’s closest friends, Robun and Tureb must have died and had been replaced. The Elders bowed as I approached them, surrounded by the Palace Guard, coming from the flagship of the Kadar fleet.
I bowed also, deeper than they, to show proper respect. “The spirits may heap their blessing upon you and upon your people,” I said in Shahala.
