by Aderyn Wood
The temple priests stood on the dais by the obelisk. They’d said their words and various chants read from the tablets and asked Phadite to bless them. Heduanna had stood on the very edge of the platform to tell them to go forth and love each other in Phadite’s name to help expel the darkness and demons from the city.
As always, Danael couldn’t take his eyes from her. Even under the heavy cloak, he could appreciate her form, her beauty.
“Admiring the view, barbarian?” Ru whispered in his ear.
Danael gave him a smirk. “And you’re not?”
“Our princess is beautiful, but she is not my type.”
“You’ve never known a woman, Ru. How could you know your type?”
Ru shrugged. “Word has it that our princess is not all that inaccessible. She praises Phadite in more ways than prayer and poetry.”
“What do you mean?”
Tizgar laughed as he brushed past to wrap an arm around Ru. Danael blinked and looked away, suddenly uncomfortable. It was no secret the pair were lovers, paramours they called themselves. But they rarely advertised the fact.
“Don’t get our barbarian’s hopes up, lover,” Tizgar said. “I’ve heard the princess no longer enjoys the pleasure of the flesh since her admittance to the temple. And who could blame her. Those stuffy priests would be enough to turn me away from lustful desires.”
Ru raised an eyebrow. “I doubt anything could have that power, lover. You’re nothing but a horned beast.”
“Is that right?” Tizgar drew his paramour closer.
Danael averted his eyes once more. Music now emanated from the band of musicians that had replaced the priests on the dais, and a heavy thrusting beat pulsed over the crowd. Everywhere couples were embracing, dancing and kissing openly, unafraid of who may see them. There was no where to look. Danael’s Drakian sensibilities were ever challenged in the face of the Zraemian acceptance of open affection.
“I’ll leave you two be,” he said and took a step away.
But Ru tore away from Tizgar and grasped Danael’s arm. “Remember, tonight is the night for Phadite. She bids us to find pleasure in each other.” He smiled. “You’ll easily find a partner, a woman who will please you. Or a man, if you’re keen for it.”
Danael left them and pushed through the crowd. A few young women gave him a look that told him he could dance with them and much more as well. He wasn’t closed to the notion, he just needed time to take it in. And beer, dear Prijna, he needed beer. At a beer-house he was given a cup of strong ale by the house-keeper who praised his fight with the general in the ring.
Danael thanked him and gulped it down. The beer was bitter and warm, and the keeper insisted on him having another. “You are tall and strong, barbarian, you need twice as much and more.”
As the night wore on, couples drew closer their passions on full display, and soon the streets became less crowded as lovers withdrew to their privacy.
Later, Ubranum came toward him, visibly drunk with a young woman in each arm and a wide grin on his handsome face. Danael wasn’t surprised. Ubranum was good looking with simmering eyes that the girls loved. His conquests were many and famed. “Danael, my friend, Tartha here would like to know what it is like to dance with a barbarian.”
Tartha giggled, but gave a smile meant for him alone. She had straight silk-black hair and wore a cloak that opened when she waved a hand at him to reveal her linen dress underneath and the pair of fine breasts that filled it.
Danael’s voice croaked as he spoke and he cleared his throat. “I know not dance.”
The girls giggled and Ubranum smiled. “Have you danced in the bedchamber beneath the sheets with a woman?”
“You know I have, arse,” Danael lowered his voice at Ubranum.
“Well, dancing is not very different.”
It was true. The way people danced mimicked lovemaking to excruciating details.
“Ubranum,” a new voice came to them and both Danael and Ubranum turned to see the princess approach. Her lush hair fell over her shoulders. The fine stroke of kohl beneath her eyes, her only makeup. By Prijna, she was beautiful.
Ubranum stood with his mouth wide open before getting a hold of himself. “Princess?”
“I require a dance.”
She looked at Danael when she said it. But held her hand out to Ubranum.
The soldier looked between her and Danael, as the two girls slid away. “You want to dance with me?” Ubranum asked.
Heduanna kept her gaze on Danael. Her eyes ran down his chest, to his waist and back up again. “Yes, I wish to dance with you.” She removed her cloak and gave it to one of the girls. She wore a thin stretch of linen and her body beneath was barely concealed.
Danael’s breath caught in his throat. Heduanna kept watching him as Ubranum led her to a space amongst the crowd to dance.
Danael couldn't help the arousal as he watched her, moving her hips ever closer to Ubranum who wrapped his large soldier hands around the small of her waist. She was utterly unattainable. A princess and soon to be priestess. There was nothing in the world he wanted more.
Danael took a few steps away from them. The music seemed louder now and the remaining couples danced ever closer, their hips moving together in provocative waves. He walked in circles, his heart beating hard. His cock throbbing harder.
She came back into view. Ubranum had a hand on her breast. A foul mix of lust and irritation clashed together in Danael’s mind. This was too much. He turned toward the palace, but then Tartha stood before him. A smile on her face.
“Would you dance with me?” she said.
“Yes,” Danael's voice cracked again, and he winced. But her smile widened and she stepped to him. Mere moments later she took his hand and whispered in his ear, “Come with me.”
Part XIII
Estr Varg
Dark Wynter
Sixth year of Khanassa Ashrael’s reign
5,846 years ago…
Sargan
“How many gods are there?” Sargan asked.
Ana wiped her brow. “We don't really count them. I could list them for you, and you could count them, but there are only nine Drakas.”
Sargan sat at the table in the middle of Ana and Petar's rondhus. It was the last day of the Reaping, or Dark Wynter as the Drakians called it. Outside it was snowing again. Sargan thought his feet would drop off when he helped Yana with the ducks that morning, but it was warm in the rondhus with its double-stone walls, and Ana kept the fire burning day and night as she worked on her potions and tinctures.
He moved a clay tablet closer and wrote a title at the top. Gods. There’d been so many things to learn. So many experiences, and he wanted to document as much of this new world as he could.
Winter was much colder here than in Zraemia, and the first time Sargan saw the snow fall he’d thought the world was ending. Then, when it covered the ground like some kind of cold frosty sand he thought he’d gone mad. But he soon learned it was nothing to be feared. Yana showed him how to make a snowman and they had a snow fight with some of the other villagers one day. He’d tried to hurl a large snowball at Yana but had slipped at the last moment. His snowball launched into the air and came straight back down to land on his face. Yana laughed so hard she’d also slipped and fallen.
He had to admit he was beginning to enjoy life here. It was a harder life, that was a certainty. The days were filled with an endless set of chores that for Sargan began with chopping wood and ended with mucking out the goat-hus so it didn't stink so much during the night. But he had never felt such good health, such contentment. Most days he had time to write a verse or two by the riverbank. And there was no sword practice in Estr Varg. No facing his Uncle-general every quarter-moon. No Hadanash, and no Ilbrit or any of his annoying royal cousins for that matter. The people were kind, mostly, or they left him well alone. He found everything about them rather fascinating. And now, during the Dark Wynter, there'd been time for Sargan to begin chronicling all he'd le
arned.
“The Drakas, they made your people, yes?” Sargan’s stylus hovered over the tablet. There was to be a feast tonight to celebrate the Dark Wynter festival. It seemed a good time to turn his attention to the Drakian gods. He’d already documented a library’s worth on various other Drakian customs and habits. He’d soon need to try his hand at making more clay tablets.
Ana continued to stir the pot full of aromatic herbs as she responded. “Yes. The Drakas were powerful gods who came from over the seas and carried the first of our people on their backs.”
Sargan frowned. “On their backs?”
“Aye, the drakas were shape changers. They could appear as powerful firebeasts that flew in the sky, or as a person such as you or I. They are all warriors, though. Every one of them.”
Firebeasts? Dragons, perhaps.
“The Drakas summoned fire and land from the sea, and up thrust our mountainous isles – our home. Prijna is the Great Mother who gave birth to all we know. She gave us the birds, forests and animals and everything we need to survive.”
Sargan thought it was more likely the early inhabitants of these isles brought the animals with them, somehow, but he kept such musings to himself and concentrated instead on that word, Prijna, sounding the letters out with his lips. He wondered which glyphs would adequately convey the name.
When he first began documenting the Drakian’s way of life, Sargan had marveled at the new words he was adding to the Zraemian language, and decided it must have been the kind of excitement the famous scibes Hatanum and Johat would have experienced when they first studied Tarzyshta. But it was also proving frustrating, this inventing new words. He wanted to get it all down as quickly as he could and the new words kept stalling him. He let go a sigh, finally deciding on four glyphs that would adequately capture the goddess’s name. Next to ‘Prijna’ he scribed, ‘Draka, goddess and the Mother of the world.’
Yana walked into the rondhus bringing icy air and carrying dead ducks in both hands, their heads dangling.
Sargan caught a glance at a blue eye, still open, and he winced and looked away. He knew that duck. He knew all the ducks. He helped Yana to raise them, it was part of his chores now. She knew them too. She knew their similarities and their differences, their fears and their hopes. It seemed ridiculous that a duck could hope for anything more than a fat slug, but Yana had asked him what was wrong with such a hope. And the more Sargan watched her with the flock, the more he believed her. Her relationship with them was something magical, and it was rubbing off on him. He frowned, wondering how she could bring herself to kill her friends.
“Ready to pluck, Ma,” Yana said in Drakian, as she dumped the five carcasses on the wooden table.
Sargan reached out and touched the soft feathers. They were cold now. Yana had dispatched them earlier, with a swift cut to the neck severing the arteries and the spinal cord. Then she’d hung them outside until their blood flow stopped. It hadn't taken long for the cold to seep in, but when Sargan rubbed his fingers deeper warmth lingered still among the soft inner feathers.
Yana was looking at him. Her black eyes unblinking. “It is their purpose, Sargan.” She switched to mountain speech. “They have had a good life with me, but this is their purpose. They do not know it. Sometimes not knowing things makes for a happier life.”
Sargan nodded. Yana didn’t tease him. At home his brother, his uncles, or even his friends would have called him soft for feeling sorry for the ducks. But Yana never teased him. Not once.
Sargan had noted the way the other villagers avoided Yana, but whispered behind her back. Perhaps they shared more than they knew, he and Yana.
At home, Sargan always had his sister to stand up for him. A stab of homesickness struck through him, and he realised his sister was the only thing he truly missed. Well, her and the temple library. And Zamug. It would be wonderful to see Zamug again and tell him all about the Drakians. Sargan hoped he would see them both again one day, but if he had to stay here and live with Yana and her family until the end of his days, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. He’d be rather happy about it, actually.
Even Petar had grown to accept Sargan. Yana told him how her father was bound to the longhus in Adala Isht when he was still young, not yet a man. He’d been bound as a hus-thrall for half a year as punishment for a jest that went too far. Sargan could well imagine Petar causing havoc as a young man, playing japes on his fellow villagers, but the experience had invoked bitter feelings about slavery and Petar challenged anyone who called Sargan thrall.
Yana filled the big pot with water, stoked the flames of the fire, and began dunking the ducks.
Sargan cleared his throat and spoke in Drakian, one of the easiest tongues to master. “So this Prijna. She is a kind of authority, over the other gods?”
Ana paused her work to stare up to the roof, a look of concentration on her face. “I suppose she is. She certainly has power over all. Apart from the Netherworld, of course. Though she could send the death god there, if she so wished to impart a message.”
“The death god, his name?”
Yana dumped the bird now wet and steaming on the table. Warm droplets sprayed on Sargan’s arm and the tablet and he wiped it clean as he gave Yana a grimace.
“We don’t talk about him,” she said, also in Drakian. “It will catch his eye.” She began plucking. The stench of hot feathers filled the room and Sargan scrunched his nose.
Yana squinted at the tablet. “I still don’t understand this magic,” she said.
Sargan smiled. “It’s no magic. It’s simply a way of recording our words. Just as you make your statues to represent your gods. Or the way your sagasts regale their tales. It’s very similar.”
“Those squiggles and lines – they actually say a conversation?”
“Well, very similar to. I am writing down some of the words your mother is telling me about your gods.”
Ana stepped toward Sargan, wiping her hands, to inspect a tablet. “You've written down my words?” Her dark eyes lit up with curiosity.
Sargan nodded. “This is the first line. It says, Prijna, goddess and the mother of the world.”
Ana's eyes widened. “That’s exactly what I said. Yana is right. This is some kind of magic.”
“No, it is no magic. Anyone can learn to scribe. I can teach you if you like.”
Yana sniffed and walked back to the other side of the table where she started pulling at feathers again. “No, thank you. I've more important things to do than stare at squiggly lines all day.”
“Yana,” Ana said shaking her head as she hefted another duck carcass into Yana’s pot. “What have I told you about being polite? You should thank Sargan for his offer.”
“It's all right,” Sargan said. “I know Yana jests with me.”
Yana shook ahead. “Squiggles on a tablet will not feed us.” She glared down at the duck then back at Sargan.
“Oh, of course.” Sargan put his tablet back in his satchel and stood. He sometimes forgot he was not a prince here. The way people worked in this village was very different to the way things worked at home. Everyone was expected to contribute. Whether it was making clothes or hunting tools, or raising vegetables or ducks for eggs and meat. Or helping to prepare the evening meal. Even the Khanassa washed her own clothes in the stream. Even though she had slaves to do such work for her.
Ana dumped the now wet and steaming duck on the table. Sargan moved toward it, breathing through his mouth to avoid the hot stench of it. “I’ll pluck this one, Ana.”
They finished all five carcasses and Yana had stuffed them with with rosemary and mountain garlic, and finally the ducks sat on the table, dressed, trussed and looking transformed into something delicious rather than old friends that Sargan had once enjoyed watching play. Sargan was considering returning to his tablets when Petar rushed in, bringing the cold of the Dark Wynter with him. Snow dusted his cloak and beard, but excitement burned in his blue eyes. “They're here!” His smile was broad.
Ana embraced her husband. “Wonderful, my love. Tell your brother to visit immediately.”
“I’ll come too!” Yana jumped up from her chair.
“What about these?” Ana said, pointing to the ducks. “They need to get to the longhus to be ready in time for the feast.”
Yana’s face fell. “Can’t I do it when I return? It’s been ages since I’ve seen Uncle Gregar.”
“It will be too late then. They need to go now.”
“I will do it,” Sargan said.
Yana smiled and gave Sargan a hug. Sargan wasn’t sure what to do so he kept his arms held straight by his side, but secretly relished the warmth that emanated from Yana’s little body.
That night the longhus hall brimmed with people as guests from Westr Varg joined the clan for the Dark Wynter festival. At the feast, Sargan closed his eyes, appreciating the pure deliciousness of the tender cut of duck in his mouth. Once again he was reminded that despite the rudimentary cooking and flavours, Yana’s duck meat was quite simply the best he’d ever experienced. And that was saying something. His father employed the best cooks in Azzuri, and they had access to a broad range of meats from hunters and traders from all over Zraemia as well as the catches from the river, and the goat meat from goatherds along the plains. But none of that matched the delicacy of Yana’s duck meat.
“This is your thrall?” Gregar asked his brother, Petar, as he looked Sargan’s way.
Sargan gulped down a slug of ale, and looked at Petar who was smiling at his brother. The two brothers looked alike. They had fine features for Drakians, though Gregar was taller, bigger and his hair was much lighter. “Sargan is not our slave, he is our prisoner,” Petar said with a wink.
“He is our guest,” Ana corrected her husband.
Sargan gave her a smile of thanks.
Gregar frowned. “He understands us?”
Petar gestured at Sargan. “Well, Sargan? Do you understand us?”
