by Victor Poole
LEED FORGES AHEAD
"Don't you want to go over to Saroyan now?" Delmar demanded.
"No," Philas said. "I want Leed to make me a crown out of magic. And I want to learn how to fly."
"What?!" Delmar said. Ajalia was sure that Delmar was not trying to sound hysterical, but a note of impatience was creeping into everything that he said.
"Ajalia's been right about everything else," Philas told Delmar reasonably. "She might be right about this, too."
"Thank you for that vote of confidence, Philas," Ajalia said to her fellow slave.
"You're welcome, Ajalia," Philas said seriously.
"Oh, stop helping her to feel smug," Delmar snapped. "You should not be feeling smug," Delmar told Ajalia sternly. "She doesn't know any of the old stories," Delmar told Leed, and Ajalia saw that Delmar was trying to find someone in the room who was on his side. Leed was looking at Delmar with a crimped-up mouth, and Delmar, after uttering a light grunt of anger, sank into a chair. "On your heads be it," he said ominously to Philas and Leed, "when we're eaten alive by a black dragon later on."
"I've already killed one of them," Ajalia said. "I don't know if the other one will come and bother us yet. I want things settled here before we run off half-prepared across the sea." She saw Philas perk up with interest at what she said. "I'm probably not even coming," Ajalia added, trying to keep the acid from her voice. Philas sunk down a little. "And don't be all droopy about it," she added, "because Delmar tells me they want a magic king, and now you'll learn magic. They can hardly keep you from the throne if you fly into the castle."
Philas grinned with boyish delight.
"She's right, you know," Philas said to Delmar. "I told you she was probably right."
"Is your half-brother, Silas, a failure as much as the other kings were?" Ajalia asked Philas. "Delmar told me about the other kings," she added. Philas grinned, and Ajalia saw that he was thoroughly pleased with the situation.
"I won't go back to drinking now," Philas said. "Leed has promised to maul me, if I think about it. Haven't you, Leed?" Leed, who had sat down, nodded without smiling. "Leed's going to knock me into shape. And yes," Philas added, "Silas is a failure. He's very stuffy, and serious, and he doesn't think very quickly. Only the bureaucrats like him, because he's very quiet in meetings, and they can do what they like to the legislation when he falls asleep."
"He sounds marvelous," Ajalia said.
"Hang on," Delmar said. He was sitting in a chair, and frowning. He reached out one hand, without seeming to think about it, and the cords of thin gold that still lay across Philas's empty chair slithered over the floor, and sank into his hands. Philas watched this happen, his eyes wide.
"I can see all of that," Philas said, sounding utterly satisfied with life. "Isn't it beautiful?" he asked Delmar.
"What?" Delmar asked peevishly. Leed frowned, and Philas looked quizzical. "Did you say," Delmar said to Ajalia, "that you saw a black dragon?"
"It didn't really look like a dragon," Ajalia said. "It was a fat worm with red eyes. It was just a big black worm," Ajalia said. "I killed it. That's what made all those little black stones," she added, looking at Leed.
"Wait," Delmar said, and he looked as though he were experiencing a heart attack.
"They aren't prepared to actually think of you as the sky angel," Leed explained to Ajalia. "They all say you're the sky angel, but they're too weak to realize what that really means."
"What does it mean?" she asked Leed. Leed grinned mirthlessly.
"It means transcendence," Leed said. "And it means the end of Slavithe. I think no one wants to feel uncomfortable with how evil they actually are, so they just say the words, 'sky angel', and then act as though it's a fancy dress part. It's more than that," Leed told Delmar. "You should know about the sky angel prophecies."
"Those are from the old books," Delmar said easily, as if he spoke without thinking. "None of those prophecies are real."
"She will come from the East," Leed said remorselessly, raising one finger into the air. "She will wear red and gold in her heart." Leed raised another finger. Delmar and Philas both opened their mouths to speak, but Leed plowed on, his voice raised in anger. "She will bring the dead falcon to life," Leed said, "and she will reach up to the sky. She will speak a strange tongue, and she will restore the fallen king of Saroyan to his heritage of magic. No one in Slavithe pays any attention to that prophecy," Leed told Ajalia, "because they're snobs, and they only think about themselves, but it's a prophecy that Bakroth's wife made. And also," Leed said sternly, "the sky angel will link together the lands of Slavithe and Talbos, and she will burn away the darkness, and lead us who are pure in heart into the sky kingdom. All of these prophecies are known," Leed told the two men sternly. Leed turned to Ajalia. "They're cowards," Leed said. "The people here in Slavithe, and in Talbos, are all cowards. They are all going to run away, when you fly openly, or they will try to kill you, the way they killed the first sky angel."
"Ocher told me that she fell from the sky," Ajalia said. Leed laughed a harsh laugh.
"That's a stupid way to say that they killed her," Leed said. "She didn't fall. She was going up to the sky kingdom to stay, because the falcon had died, and the people turned against her, and those who could do magic pulled her down, and she died in the quarry." Leed turned with ferocious eyes to Delmar, and to Philas, who looked a little pale before his wrath. "Ajalia is obviously doing all of those things," Leed said. "If she has already fulfilled half the prophecies, why on earth won't she work out the other half? And you two both want to sit there, and play kings in your own lands, and argue about what we should do first. Why don't you just sit still and listen to what Ajalia wants? That would be useful," the boy said forcefully. Delmar was staring at Leed, and his mouth had turned in a tiny smile. Philas was staring at the floor. Ajalia could sense an apology coming from the slave, and she turned to the bastard prince of Saroyan.
"Don't apologize to me anymore," Ajalia said. "Okay?" Philas looked at her, and then he nodded, and stared at the ground, his lips working.
"I will do what Leed said," Delmar said. "What do you want me to do?" He looked earnestly at Ajalia, and Ajalia felt as though she were going to cry, or to laugh. A shaking sigh came out of her lungs, and she rubbed at her temples.
"Your knife needs to be sharpened," Ajalia told Delmar. "You need to get what clothes Calles has finished. You need to have lessons with Leed," she added. "I think you are the only man in the house who can't see the lights clearly. Take care of that now," Ajalia told Leed. "I'm tired. I will see you all after I have calmed down," she said, and she stood up. Leed was at her side in a flash.
"Give me the dagger," Leed said. "I'll get the clothes, and the sharpening done. I'll just get my own knife, now," the boy added, and he grinned at Ajalia. She smiled at him, and gave him the dagger from her bag. "Oh, give me those two books as well," Leed said. "You don't need them. Delmar can read them both, and then he'll know more than anyone." Leed held out his hand, and Ajalia, who felt as though the boy were putting her under a kind of spell of efficiency, handed over the two slim leather books.
"Won't I need to read them?" she asked, feeling a wave of aching sorrow and weariness cascading through her shoulder blades. Now that Leed had said so forcefully what the sky angel was, and had explained why everyone in Slavithe had been so reticent about the legendary figure, she felt quite overwhelmed.
Ajalia had been used, ever since she was a child, to thinking pragmatically of herself as a nobody from nowhere. Even now she did not agree that she was a figure of myth. She thought that she was sensible, and that she was willing to take action where others were not, but she hardly counted this quality in herself worthy of prophecy or hero worship.
She knew she was an excellent slave, and she had built up most of her adult vision of herself along these lines; she found out what her master deeply wanted in his heart, and she made his desires materialize.
Her master had sent her, she t
hought, to Slavithe, to conquer it, and to deliver it up to him in a neat package under the guise of trade relations. She had readied Slavithe, and had built up a state of affairs in the city that would respond easily to her master's presence, and in the next two weeks she expected to make the city quite a lot more appealing, with a settled government, favorable trade relations with the neighbors in Talbos and Saroyan, and an ultimately peaceable governance of the people.
Once the witches were eliminated and controlled, Ajalia thought, and the priests were put under constraints, or eradicated entirely from the city, and once the laws on marriage were abolished, and the living conditions in the mines and quarries were upgraded and expanded, there was no reason, Ajalia thought, that Slavithe could not grow into a thriving and wealthy jewel city of Leopath.
She was sure that her master would be pleased with what she had done; she was even sure that she could create a peaceful agreement between her master and Delmar, that would ensure a profitable relationship on both their sides. She had no wish to put Slavithe under outside rule, and now that she had seen Delmar becoming the man he would be out from under his parents' control, and the Thief Lord that he would become, she was confident that her master would not seek to wrest control of the city from Delmar. They would be strong allies, she thought, and when the canal road was cut through the center of Leopath, and the journey by barge between the Eastern lands and Slavithe became a reality, her master would be able to come to Slavithe often, and to devise profitable schemes in the desert city to his heart's content.
Ajalia was not concerned with the possibility that her master would seek to wrest the governance of Slavithe from Delmar. If, she thought, for some reason her master changed from the man he had been, she would find a way to defend Delmar from him. She had never fought her master, but she knew him, and once she knew a man thoroughly, she did not wonder if she would be able to overcome him in a conflict of wits. Ajalia had never tested her strength of will, or her ingenuity, against that of her master, but she had chosen to be sold to him precisely because of the kind of man he was. She, in her mind, had eliminated the need for conflict by belonging to the right master in the first place.
Ajalia blinked. Leed was standing in front of her, and Delmar and Philas were glancing at each other. Ajalia thought that Delmar looked a little abashed.
"Won't I need to read these books?" Ajalia asked again, looking at the slim leather volumes in Leed's hands.
"No," Leed said. "You already know what to do. You go away, and do whatever. I'm going to arrange things now." Ajalia could not hold back the smile that rose up into her cheeks at Leed's expression, which was dead serious, and almost grim.
"What happened to Coren?" Ajalia asked Delmar. The idea of Coren being carried off still nagged at her a little; she thought that Delmar had looked ready to rush off after his little brother after he had learned about the visible marks from the curses the witches had laid on the child, but Delmar had since calmed down.
"Denai's taking him away to the harbor to be carted off and sold," Delmar said. He frowned. "I thought I told you that. But I was concerned, after you said that he had part of Bain's soul. If the shadow soul was still in him, I would have to go after Coren, and destroy it, or him."
"Why?" Ajalia asked. She felt more and more tired; her insides seemed to be crushing into piles of dried-up powder. She didn't ever feel any more like she was going to faint; instead she felt charred inside, as though her emotions had burned her up, and made a powdery taste of ash on the edge of her tongue.
"If Bain was using my little brother's soul to appear and disappear, and to escape the witch hunters," Delmar said, "then Coren was infected with the power of the black dragon. But the mark of the beast has been destroyed," he said, "and you said you got out the piece of Bain. Coren can cause little damage now. He is like a vessel that is cracked, or like a lamp without oil. He knows things that make him dangerous here, but he will not be able to work evil far away."
"How do you know that?" Ajalia asked. She was imagining, in the back of her mind, her bed upstairs, and she was thinking of how cozy it would be to curl under the blankets, and hide away from everything. She half-hoped that if she went to sleep, and ignored everything and everyone for a few days, that this business about the sky angel would float away, and never be mentioned to her again. She did not like what Leed had said, about cleansing the city, or the city falling. Her mind skipped over the words that Leed had used, and she could not have said exactly what he had enumerated as the prophesied tasks of the sky angel. Rising to the cloud kingdom had had something to do with it, she thought, and she stifled a sigh. "How do you know?" she asked again. Delmar had only just begun to answer her; Ajalia's mind was racing, and her thoughts careened around her like the scraps of water in a raging river that crashes and cascades down a thick rocky bed.
"He can't reach the darkness," Delmar said. "When the curse is broken, it cannot be reformed. Coren won't be able to do any harm, or touch the darkness anymore. That is why the witches came for him," Delmar added. "They knew that if he was compromised, their work would be lost. If they were using Coren and Bain to reach the evil powers, he was very valuable to them."
"So it is better for him to be sent away," Ajalia said, "so that they don't hunt him down in revenge."
"Delmar will come and tell you all about the black dragon later," Leed told Ajalia. Leed pushed at her. "Go away. I want to be in charge now." Ajalia laughed.
"I thought we were all going to do what I said now," Ajalia reminded Leed.
"Yes, and my job is to make what you say, be," Leed replied. He looked fiercely at Ajalia, and his small mouth was in a carving frown. "You said you were going to calm down. So do that."
Leed stared at Ajalia; he did not look angry, but his eyes were determined.
"I shall be commanded by Leed," Ajalia said drily, and she went to the door of the room. "I lock my door, on principle," Ajalia told Delmar. "Leed told me he was climbing down from the roof. Do you want to try that, or do you want my key?"
"I like climbing," Delmar said. Ajalia thought that Delmar looked quite pleased with the prospect of climbing from the roof of the dragon temple to the balcony of her room. She could see him making pictures of romantic entrances in his mind, and she felt a sudden desire to giggle.
"Philas," Ajalia said, pausing at the door.
"If I ever even think for one moment about climbing into your room, you will castrate me, and then Delmar will beat me to a pulp," Philas said instantly. He looked at Ajalia. "And I know you carry a knife, and I don't think I would live through that. And Leed is going to get me a wife," Philas added, looking rather pleased. Ajalia wanted to tell Philas that he was probably capable of getting his own wife, but she stopped herself. She went out of the room without saying anything else, and walked towards the stairs at the back of the hall. She could see gleams of light from the room behind her, and her body made a long, thick shadow in front of her, from the spilling lamplight that hit her back.
Ajalia, as soon as she was a little away from the room, and from the murmur of voices that was rising inside, felt as though her whole body was beginning to vibrate with stress. She wanted to hide in a hole in the ground. She wanted to go back to yesterday, and fight with the witches and priests. She had not been special, ever, she told herself, and she tried to forget what Leed had said, about the sky angel.
She remembered what Ocher had told her, about the sky angel falling into the quarry, and all the people in the city looking up, and seeing her fall. That must have been long ago, Ajalia thought, and she wondered who the ancestors were who had fought with the black dragons. Ajalia told herself that the two black worms of darkness had been more like clumsy, ugly snakes than like dragons.
She looked up at the back wall of the temple, where the darkness in the hall obscured the dragons carved there, and she thought that the carvings looked like proper dragons. The dragons in the East, or the pictures and legends of dragons, were not like the carvings
that filled the walls, and climbed the facades, and twisted around the pillars in the dragon temple.
The Eastern pictures of dragons were fierce, and hard; the dragons were shown with wings that extended out in long and cruel lines, and the faces of the dragons were like vicious snouts, filled with elongated teeth. In the dragon temple, the dragons were friendlier, and had rounder edges. Their teeth were sharp, but they were sharp in the way a tiger's teeth are sharp. The Eastern dragons had teeth like myriad violent needles thrusting out of the mouths of the monsters. Dragons were not supposed to be real; Ajalia's master had told her once that dragons represented, to the merchants in the East, everything that their grand ancestral houses had held in highest esteem.
"We are the dragon," her master had said, tapping himself against the chest. "We find the greatest treasures, and the safest valleys, and we take them, and shape them into homes of great peace and elegance. We shape the world, and in this, we are dragons."
He had told her, when she had still been a child, that she would grow up to be like a dragon someday. Her master had not spent much time with Ajalia when she had still been a child, but he had paid some attention to her, and he had taken her aside once or twice, to speak to her. The other slaves had noticed this attention, and grown jealous, and her master, seeing this, spoke to her only once more. "You have heart, little Ajalia," her master had said. "I can see into your soul, and you will be a fine slave to me someday. I want you to see yourself as I do. You are my dragon. You will go forth, and you will conquer the world. Remember what I say, and keep open your heart to what may come. If you are a good little dragon, you will grow very great indeed someday."
Ajalia had not thought about her master's words for a very long time. She came to the stairs, and began, very slowly, to climb them. She had fixated for weeks on what her master had said, and had studied the senior slaves assiduously. She had learned to negotiate, by studying what those in power did, and when she was first sent on a caravan to another city, she absorbed everything around her with wild wonder. She had thought then that there was no greater happiness in life than to parade through the streets of a foreign place, and to stare at strangers with the imperious painted face she had worn then, as a child.
