by K. C. Julius
Just as Borne was beginning to wonder if Halid had fallen asleep against the giant’s chest, the fighters erupted in a blur of motion. The men bucked slightly apart and dropped to the ground, their arms and legs pinwheeling as each tried to gain the hold that would seal his advantage. The bald man grabbed Halid around the waist, hoisted him high above his head, then went into a spin. But before he could slam the lighter man down, Halid twisted like an eel in his grip, forcing the giant to topple to the ground with him. Immediately, Halid went into a roll, using his opponent’s weight against him, and in the space of a heartbeat, the bald behemoth was pinned.
Borne whistled and cheered along with the approving crowd as Kurash himself entered the ring to raise the hand of the victor. The hazar’s hooded eyes found Borne’s, his look giving Borne a premonition of what was to come. He was not surprised when Kurash signaled Mir to his side.
Borne had already stripped off his tunic by the time the Olquarian returned.
Mir grinned. “You understand that my lord Kurash wishes the Gralian herald to try his luck against the local champion?”
Borne doubted the hazar had phrased his challenge so politely, but he nodded and smiled pleasantly back at Kurash before bending to pull off his boots.
Then he entered the ring and bowed to his long-haired opponent, who returned the courtesy.
When Halid came toward him, Borne spun away. After several repetitions of this defensive move, Kurash’s men began to hiss with derision, but Borne continued to stay just out of his opponent’s reach, waiting for Halid’s patience to wear thin.
At last it did, and the Olquarian lunged low, grasping at Borne’s right leg. Borne evaded the move, and Halid changed tactics, grabbing Borne’s left arm in an attempt to drag him to the ground. Borne arched his back and scissored his long legs to wrap his powerful thighs around Halid’s head, breaking the Olquarian’s momentum while trapping him in a vise-like grip as they fell together to the ground. For a breath, Borne thought he had the man, but Halid somehow managed to pull his head back slightly and push against Borne’s chest at the same time. Borne still had a lock on the man’s head, but Halid executed a sinuous swivel and pressed his body tightly against Borne’s, locking his arms around Borne’s waist, which the Olquarian began to squeeze.
The air was slowly forced from Borne’s lungs, and when he started to see stars, he was left with no choice but to relax his own pressure on Halid’s head. As soon as he did, the Olquarian twisted, pulling Borne over on top of him. They somersaulted together, and Borne slammed face-down in the dust, with Halid triumphantly pressed against his back.
It was over.
Halid rolled off and offered Borne his hand. Still gasping for breath, Borne allowed himself to be pulled to his feet, and managed a gracious bow conceding his defeat.
To his surprise, the Olquarian pulled him into a bone-crushing embrace. “Emas!” Halid declared. The word meant both gold and brother. The victor lifted their joined hands to the shouts of both their hosts and the Gralians.
Mir ran forward and thumped first Halid, then Borne on the back. “I stand in awe, my friend!” he shouted as the crowd cheered on. “No one in memory has lasted so long against my brother! You’ve made a great impression with our people!”
Rubbing his aching shoulder, Borne searched the throng for Kurash, but the hazar was nowhere to be seen. Whatever the Olquarian commander had thought of the match would remain his own affair, but it seemed Mir was correct in his assessment of Borne’s standing. The expressions of the Olquarians were decidedly friendlier, and more than a few of them gave him a thumbs-up.
A beaming Balfou came forward. “My dear sir! I’d no idea you could wrestle so well.”
“As I recall, I lost,” Borne replied, rubbing his sore neck.
“Well, yes,” Balfou conceded. “That was a foregone conclusion against the great Halid Al-Zlatan. All the same, you held up our side remarkably well.”
Following the wrestling match, there was a definite easing of tension between Borne’s men and the hazar’s guard. As the days passed, both camps began to mix more freely. On the last night of their journey, once the raki got flowing, there was even a friendly back-and-forth of songs.
Borne was almost sorry when the great dome of the Golden Palace came into view. But riding through the gleaming gates of Tell-Uyuk to the rumble of drums and the clanging of gongs, he recalled what the witch Hinata had foretold.
Your destiny lies to the east.
He raised his eyes to the gleaming colonnades capped by spreading cupolas, the towers flying the white-and-gold banners of the Basileus. Catching sight of the emperor’s sigil, a snow leopard against the rising sun, a line of poetry ran unbidden through his mind.
“A jewel arrayed in niveous dress,
rises above the azuline seas.
Tell-Uyuk—where awaits what you seek to possess
Go forth, and find your heart’s ease.”
Borne spurred his droma on.
Chapter 32
Halla
Halla recalled little of the days following Nicu’s death. Palan himself had beaten her violently for denying him the sadistic pleasure of prolonging her lover’s agony, but that was the last she’d seen of the Albrenian commander. When she’d regained consciousness, she was lying on a hard, narrow pallet, her hands and feet roughly bound. From time to time, Nemia appeared to give her water and to apply poultices to her bruised body. On one occasion the woman tried to force a vile liquid down her throat, but Halla swallowed little of it.
She was surprised Palan had let her live, though she assumed it was for some grim purpose she would rather not imagine. Still, every day and night during her painful convalescence, she gave thanks that the bastard had spared her. More than ever, she prized her life, now that there was a chance she sheltered a part of Nicu in her womb. The idea that a child might be growing inside her occupied much of her waking hours—and the possibility that the beating Palan had so brutally administered might have killed the baby was never far from her thoughts, either. Halla suspected the potion Palan’s whore had tried to make her drink was meant to kill the unborn child, but she had suffered no bleeding, which brought her comfort, although she was admittedly ignorant of these things.
Regardless of the presence of another life within her, she was determined to survive—if only to take her revenge on Seor Palan de Grathiz. For Nicu, for Kainja, and for her daughter, Yenega, who was now an orphan, if the girl indeed still lived.
Which was why when Nemia informed Halla she was being moved from the Albrenian camp, Halla was not pleased. While traveling might offer an opportunity for escape, she couldn’t kill Palan if miles were to soon separate them. When she demanded to see the commander, Nemia only laughed.
Halla pulled on the rough woolen shift and goatskin boots the woman brought her. Her own clothes had disappeared, along with her sword and knife. Someone had also cut off her hair, which felt oddly liberating. The loss would likely diminish her value at the slave market, where Halla assumed Palan was sending her to be auctioned off again. I don’t care, she thought, as the tumbrel in which she sat rolled out of the camp onto the southward road. I’ll escape and find you, you whoreson, and cut off your balls to stuff down your throat.
The journey was long and boring. When at last the wagon trundled to the outskirts of Altipa, the driver pulled up in front of a warehouse where other similar conveyances waited. He disappeared inside the low building, and Halla watched with a sinking heart as he emerged followed by a stream of women, bound wrist to wrist, who shambled past in eerie silence to be prodded into the wagons. Many of them bore disfigurements—burns, scars, or raw, weeping wounds. Some limped. More than a few had crude carvings on their left cheeks, marking them as failed escapees. All of them were broken, and pitiful to see. And every one was å Livåri.
The fat driver pushed several women in beside Halla.
She whispered to the nearest, “Where are you all coming from, sohra?”
The woman turned to face her, and Halla drew a sharp breath at the livid bruises on her neck. She didn’t seem surprised that Halla spoke Livårian.
“Many places,” she replied in a hollow voice. “I was in Halbera, to the east. When my mistress found out that her husband was creeping into my bed at night, she tried to throttle me. She didn’t care to hear that I had fought her man each time he came to me. I was sold the next day.”
Halla didn’t press the others to tell their stories. She’d already heard too many tales of what these women endured as Albrenian slaves from those she’d helped rescue.
The wagons got underway, headed due west. As they neared the coast, Halla wondered if they were to be thrown into the sea as punishment for their transgressions against their owners. Å Livåri as a rule were not swimmers. She was relieved when the ocean came into sight to see a ship anchored on the glittering water, and small boats waiting on the beach to carry them to it.
But the women around Halla began to keen and wail.
“What is it?” Halla looked from face to frightened face. “What do you know? Where are they taking us?”
The woman from Halbera huddled into a quivering ball, but a girl with burned hands answered. “The driver told us they are sending us over the water.”
“To Drinnglennin?” Halla frowned. “That makes no sense. They’ll gain no profit there. Slavery is forbidden by law.”
The girl shook her head slowly from side to side. “No, not to the Isle.”
“Then where?” When the girl didn’t answer, Halla shook her. “Where?”
The girl’s dark eyes brimmed with tears. “To a place from which no one ever returns.”
Halla recalled then Palan’s cruel promise. I will send you somewhere that will make the Abyss seem like a paradise.
The cart came to a halt, and the driver began hauling the women from it. When he reached for Halla, she twisted away from the man’s outstretched hand and jumped down onto the sand.
The driver stepped back and made a mocking bow. “Ah, I forgot. Seor Palan told me that you were to receive special treatment.” He gave her a sharp slap on the cheek.
Halla raised her hand to her stinging face, itching to return the favor. “Where are those ships going?” she demanded, and braced herself for another blow.
The fat man merely chewed thoughtfully on his blubbery lip. “I wonder if you really want to know.”
“I do,” Halla insisted, ignoring her drumming heart.
Beside her, the girl with the ruined hands swayed. Halla wrapped an arm around her waist to steady her.
“Help me get that one to the boat,” the fat man growled, “and maybe I’ll tell you.”
All around them, women were stumbling over the sand. Halla half dragged, half carried the sobbing girl, who had started chanting an å Livåri charm to ward off evil, down to the shore. It reminded Halla of how frightened she’d felt when Bria’s baba muttered such a charm after looking at her palm.
The first group of women was herded into the small boats. One girl with a twisted leg turned to hobble back up the beach, but a driver grabbed her and tossed her headlong into the water. She came up sputtering and didn’t resist when the man pushed her toward the nearest boat.
Halla assessed the chance of an escape and found it to be extremely poor. Better to try at the other end of our journey. She could then carry back with her the whereabouts of all the missing å Livåri. This knowledge alone would be worth whatever lay ahead.
Provided she survived it.
She helped the burned girl into one of the boats, then turned to the fat man. “I did my part. Now tell me—where are we going?”
The man leered at her, revealing the stained teeth of a crennin user. “I usually charge for information, but seeing as it’s you, I’m going to make an exception.” He spat a stream of dark liquid onto the sand. “You sail south with the tide.”
Halla frowned. “South? There’s nothing in that direction, except miles of ocean, not until—”
The fat man’s smile widened. “Until you reach the edge of the Known World.” His multiple chins wobbled as he began to laugh. “You’ve earned yourself a one-way passage to the Lost Lands.”
* * *
For the next three weeks, Halla was miserably, violently ill. From the moment they sailed into the converging waters of the Middle and Vast Seas, the ship was either plunging from under them or heaving toward the sky. Each time Halla vomited up her guts, she thought about the child in her womb, her feelings about its existence swinging like a pendulum between disbelief and anxiety. She had no idea what awaited her in the Lost Lands, but she guessed staying alive would be struggle enough for one, and she despaired at being responsible for two. In her worst moments, she even hoped Nemia had been wrong—but then thoughts of Nicu intruded, and she knew she wanted nothing more than to carry his line and spirit on.
Surprisingly, despite the punishing seas, conditions on board the nameless ship were slightly better than those on Halla’s first voyage as a captive. The food was certainly an improvement—mostly salted fish or pork, served with occasional dried plums, or beer and beans, although few could keep anything of substance down. Halla mostly subsisted on tiny sips of water and the tasteless biscuits the sailors called jawbreakers. Nibbling these without appetite, she recalled with longing the superior taste of elven waybread.
Mithralyn seemed like a dream to her now. Had she really danced and wrestled with elves? In her weakened state, a faerie could have bested her. But at least she was alive. Several of the women, including Ralni, the burned girl, had not been so lucky. And as Halla soon realized, her spirit was still stronger than those of the other women, most of whom huddled together in silence, their empty eyes expressing their desolation.
“Perhaps you’ll find your men in the Lost Lands,” she said to Chooma, the woman with the cruel bruises ringing her neck, in an attempt to cheer her up. The bruises had faded to yellow, but Chooma’s hands went often to her throat, as if she was constantly reliving the horror of strangulation.
“I pray they are not!” Chooma snapped back.
Halla took a shred of comfort from the woman’s sudden vehemence. For much of the voyage Chooma had cowered under her tattered shawl and wept.
Patyah, a year or so older than Halla, was the only woman who’d offered any sort of companionship throughout the voyage. She’d been the bed slave of an Albrenian merchant, and the angry wound carved into her left cheek told the story of why she was on board. It was from Patyah that Halla learned what had been done to her hair.
“Why did you dye it?” the girl asked. “I can see from your roots what a pretty shade of red it really is.”
“Dye my hair?” Halla tried to pull a strand of it into her line of sight, but it was still too short. “What color is it?”
“Black.”
Black? Palan must have ordered this done while she lay unconscious. Perhaps he’d been afraid her flaming hair would be recognized on the way to the ship. More likely, he’d meant to humiliate her by making her appear å Livåri. If so, it had the opposite effect. In her heart, she was as proudly å Livåri as any of these women.
By the time she heard the call of land sighted, she was almost glad, so eager was she to find relief from the gut-wrenching pitch and roll of the hold. When the chains of the anchor rattled down, she breathed a silent prayer of thanks to the gods. She hadn’t seen the sky for three weeks, and the thought of breathing fresh air was almost as intoxicating as the real thing.
There came no order up to the deck to bathe as they approached the harbor, and they were given no new garments to wear. Halla assumed that because there was no need to ameliorate their ragged appearance, it meant there was to be no auction once they were on land. This thought should have brought her relief, but instead s
he felt only trepidation.
She climbed out of the hold with the others into white, blinding light. It had been hot below, but the direct force of the sun felt like a physical blow. It took her eyes a few moments to adjust to the brightness, and once they did, she felt the breath leave her lungs.
They were surrounded by a forest of masts. Colossal ships—hundreds of them—creaked and rocked around their carrack. Halla’s knowledge of seagoing vessels was limited, but from the size of these, they had to be dromons. Ships this big required one hundred men at oar, and were able to carry at least twice as many as passengers. Judging from their armaments—each was bedecked with towers and catapults—they were built for war.
Halla recalled Whit holding forth on the Jagars, the nomadic people of the Lost Lands. They were said to be fiercely private, shunning all contact with the outside world. Little was known of their ways, but the few outsiders who had managed to survive an encounter described them as primitive and brutal. The various tribes sometimes fought among themselves, but all supposedly gave their unquestioning allegiance to their leader, the vaar. She’d once heard Master Morgan say this man posed a grave threat—but she hadn’t been listening closely enough to remember the vaar’s name, or why Morgan thought him a cause for concern.
If the size of the massive fleet left Halla feeling stunned, it was nothing compared to what she felt when she turned her gaze landward to the conglomeration of graceless, densely packed structures under the smoke-stained sky. A cacophony of grinding, pounding, hissing, and groaning reverberated over the murky water of the wide bay, fouled by black, oily liquid pumping from huge pipes into the sea. Beyond the long wharves jutting out from the dockyard, the port was a hive of activity. Workers swarmed back and forth, some manning treadwheel cranes to hoist timber onto wagons, others pushing wheelbarrows, still others driving ox and droma carts towering with barrels or piled high with sacks.
