A miracle had saved me back then, but there wasn’t one to save me now. His feral gaze left me shivering in the mud, and I thanked the Thirteen he wasn’t my brother. If he had been, I’d already be dead.
“Ilan wanted the honor of killing the mighty Ida, King Leon’s sepier and whore, but he’ll have to forgive me this,” he said.
I let him step into my space as he blathered and I slid my fingers into my boot cuff. As thunder rattled overhead, I shoved my knife into his heart. He grunted with surprise, then fell to the ground.
The rain pelted me, washing off the mud and blood as I stood, chest heaving in the cold. My hip throbbed, the scar at my neck pricked a million pins, and my stomach churned. As much as I wanted a strong ale and good, long nap, both would have to wait. Unlike his new recruits, Ilan wasn’t stupid. Too long without checking in, and he’d know something was up, so I left the bodies in the alley and set off for the barn at the town’s edge.
And prayed to the gods that I wasn’t about to get myself killed.
~*~
The hay door still flapped in the wind, though a little less now that the rain was easing up. Ilan. He’d been my best friend and the first man I’d ever loved. He was family. Or had been ‘til he’d held me down while my brother slit my throat.
Could I kill him as casually as I’d killed the two Amaskans in the alley?
From the rafters, I could kill him with one throw of my knives. It’d be done. And the past could stay in the past—where it belonged. Leon never need know about who I had been or how I’d gotten my scar.
But was that the Amaskan in me talking? The killer in me? Or was I more than that now?
I shook my head, and a few pieces of hair that had escaped my thick braid in the fight stuck to my neck. The front door slid open without much effort, and Ilan grinned when I stepped inside. He held no visible weapons, but I wasn’t foolish enough to think him unarmed. No Amaskan ever was.
“It’s been a long time, Shendra...or should I say Ida?”
“Shendra died when her brother slit her throat,” I said. His authentic smile caught me off guard, and I asked, “Does he know?”
“Who?”
“Bredych.”
“Aren’t you curious how I found you?” he asked as he pulled out a piece of parchment bearing King Leon’s seal. “It was a beautiful thing. A King choosing his lover for his sepier. A woman who’d saved so many at the Little War of Three only to rise through the ranks to Captain of the Royal Guard. It’s unusual for a woman to make it that far, so when the rumors reached me, I was curious, as I’m sure you understand. And my plan worked! Kill a few women, and you come running. You never were good at staying dead.”
He was curious. He killed the women. Not my brother, Bredych.
I rushed him, sword before me. It was a risky move—one knife and he could end me—but he’d be expecting me to play it safe. To be the same Shendra he’d known before.
And he’d be wrong.
He was still talking when my sword plunged into him. Ilan’s eyes widened as his mouth moved soundlessly for a moment. “Ya always had to gloat, didn’t ya?” I said as he dropped off my blade and fell into the hay.
Unlike Red-Beard, there was no apology. No remorse to make his death easier to bear. Just the same smirk he’d worn when he’d held me down and betrayed me twenty-five years ago.
“Itova be merciful,” I whispered as I closed his eyes. “But not that merciful.”
Five murdered women had forced me to face my past. What would these three dead Amaskans do to me?
My hip, which had stopped aching somewhere in the fight, reminded me that for the moment, I was alive. I left the barn and walked into the night.
And into my future, whatever that would be.
~***~
Award-winning and bestselling speculative fiction author Raven Oak is best known for Amaskan’s Blood (2016 Ozma Fantasy Award Winner and Epic Awards Finalist), Class-M Exile, and the collection Joy to the Worlds: Mysterious Speculative Fiction for the Holidays (Foreword Reviews 2015 Book of the Year Finalist). Raven spent most of her K-12 education doodling stories and 500 page monstrosities that are forever locked away in a filing cabinet.
When she’s not writing, she’s getting her game on with tabletop and video games, indulging in cartography and art, or staring at the ocean. She lives in the Seattle area with her husband, and their three kitties who enjoy lounging across the keyboard when writing deadlines approach.
THORN GIRL
CONNIE J. JASPERSON
When Piers Arnesson was brought here yesterday, I was summoned to the dungeon. It was afternoon, which is unusual, and my master was in a frenzy. Lork opened the cell door, his eyes wild, forcing a bag containing several pots of healing salve into my hands. “They roughed him up, but he belongs to the Highest. Make him presentable. I’ll question him when you’ve finished.”
When I entered the room, a tremor of shock rolled through me. I found myself gazing at a priest of Aeos. All her priests are mages, and the yellow lightning bolt tattooed on his cheek proclaimed his element of lighting. He was about thirty-five, handsome, and defiant.
“I’m Piers Arnesson. And you are?”
I knew he wouldn’t understand the hand language, so I gestured to my mouth.
He nodded. “And you are Silent. I’m so sorry for what you must have suffered.” Rage passed through his eyes, belying the crooked smile on his lips, “They dosed me with silf. If I still had my abilities, I would get us both away from here.”
I took care of him as well as I was able. He showed no fear or any sign he felt pain as I tended his wounds. After I finished, he thanked me.
I returned to my alcove but couldn’t get him, or my situation, out of my mind.
A slave has no choices in life, a fact that was made clear to me the day the slavers came. When they cut out my tongue, they left enough so I could learn to swallow again once the scar had formed. I still taste and enjoy some flavors, but food holds little interest for me, save it fills the emptiness in my stomach. They took me through the portal to the Bull God’s world, Serende, so different, so hot and dry—so full of minotaurs.
I was trained to be a lady’s maid, but when my lady died I was inherited by her son, a priest of the Bull God. Fortunately for him, Tauron’s priesthood, those minotaurs with the ability for magic, had been decimated by the plague. That allowed my master to rise to a rank he would never have gained had those with more intelligence survived. For a time, all went well, until Lork was assigned to a high position in the personal household of Baron D’Mal, the highest priest and absolute ruler of the Bull God’s worlds.
The servants remained in Serende, except for me. Because Neveyah is a colder world than Serende, I was issued new garments and heavy boots, and a thick cloak for the journey. I found myself and all the rest of the baggage belonging to the House of Lork tightly crammed into wagons and riding back through the portal to the world of Neveyah.
This time I was taken to the wilderness and brought to the ancestral home of Tauron’s highest priest.
Life in this empty, haunted place, is a test of my endurance. Most of the time, I sit in the vacant servants’ hall mending my master’s garments, listening to the guards nattering in the mess hall next door.
They whisper that the Baron remains in Serende but forges a mental link with Lork through a magical artifact hidden within the Keep, ensuring his fist is closed around his lands in both worlds. I can’t imagine what relic could enable this or why this link between the worlds is possible. I only know that Lork’s strange connection to the Baron increasingly affects his sanity.
Nightly, he paces his rooms, raving, drinking himself senseless. Lork believes he’s the Baron’s chosen successor and will rule both worlds. I believe he is less than a slave, an empty vessel for the Mad Baron and the dread Bull God to use in their evil rites.
This place is rife with shadows, even in the well-lit corridors. I know why the guards call this keep the
Shadow Castle—the shadows are as thick as fog, and at times they surround me. It’s whispered that the shadows are the souls of the dead king and his family.
Each prisoner in the upper tier of the dungeon is housed as a cherished guest. The cell is beautifully furnished, and the food is prepared by the Baron’s two personal servants. They only cook—Lork is supposed to handle the rest of the prisoners’ needs. But I’m Lork’s property and he requires me to serve these pitiful creatures in his place.
Every morning, I make sure I am out of the dungeon and well away before the Baron occupies Lork’s body. I suspect he has never examined Lork’s conscious mind, despite his use of my master’s body. Possibly it’s beneath him, or he doesn’t want to know. Regardless, Tauron’s highest priest has no idea that his special prisoners are being cared for by a slave, a woman who remains a child of the Goddess Aeos.
~*~
Today is the second afternoon of Piers Arnesson’s captivity. Before Piers, I tended to two men held in that cell. When they went to the altar, they never returned. Unlike the others, Piers has a strength of will as strong as any priest of Tauron.
When I enter his cell, I want to weep. His weapons and armor have been left lying there, deliberately arranged to taunt him. He appears free to move, but is bound by a magic geas, unable to touch them.
Piers is raving and weeping, so battered he’s nearly unrecognizable. Blood trickles from his right ear, and I fear he will lose one eye. Livid stripes on the soles of his feet and the backs of his legs and buttocks vie with deep purple contusions on his naked body, clearly the marks of both lash and fist. He begs his lover’s forgiveness, weeps for the loss of his magic. He appears broken physically and emotionally, yet he’s still unbroken—I don’t know how else to describe it. They cut him off from his magic, but whatever it is that binds him to the goddess Aeos hasn’t been severed. I do what I can, bathing him and applying balm to his wounds.
When I have finished tending his injuries, Lork enters the cell with the drugged tea and sits beside the prisoner. I still have work to do to finish changing the man’s bed and cleaning the room, but my master directs me to wait outside the door.
Piers has calmed and remains silent while Lork uses twisted logic and guile in his attempt to convert him to Tauron. But Piers remains steadfast, even knowing that what he has already suffered over the last two days will be nothing to what lies in store for him tomorrow. His lips are swollen, but his words are clear. “I didn’t offer you my body. You used me against my will.”
“Not I. Only the Highest can perform such a sacred ritual. To partake in the holy sacrament of the joining is a privilege granted to few—how fortunate you are to be so chosen! Only through pleasure and pain can we see the true nature of Heaven. Only through pain and sacrifice can we be deemed worthy of pleasure.” Lork repeatedly swears that he didn’t wield the whips although his hand held them, that he isn’t in his body when the high priest and the dark god perform the ritual.
My thoughts halt as I process what Lork is saying. I can hardly breathe as my master attempts to reconcile rape and torture as a religious experience. It must have been a secret closely held by the priesthood, and under normal circumstances, a mere slave wouldn’t have knowledge of any part of their sacred rites.
But I know, now, and despise my master for his cowardice and dishonesty.
To Lork’s platitudes, Piers only replies, “You will break my body, but I will die unbroken.”
Lork has finished and orders me to complete my tasks. He departs, intent on finding his wine bottle. I can no longer look at him, but he, being who he is, doesn’t notice.
I am as gentle as I can be, and Piers seems grateful. I can’t whisper comforting words to him, and even if I could, they would be hollow.
Something must have conveyed my horror and compassion to him. He allows me to hold his hand for a moment and then expresses sorrow for my plight as a slave.
I am shocked that this man considers me unfortunate when his final hours will be spent in unimaginable hell. He speaks of his life, of his lover, and his sadness for what he is leaving behind. Yet I sense he’s at peace with his fate, feel the strength of his conviction that his soul will find a place at Aeos’s Great Hearth. His only sorrow is for the loss of his bondmate.
As I prepare to leave, Piers begs a favor of me. “Please. Take my sword to Abbott Garran in Braden. He must be told what happened here.” He stumbles over his next words, barely able to say his lover’s name. “Tell...Moran...how much I love him. Tell him...loving him was the best part of my life. Tell him, please.
My first instinct is to shake my head and back away.
But I don’t. Long ago, my first mistress told me that in every life a time will come when you arrive at a precipice. You must either leap the chasm or fall to your death.
I stand at that place now. A moment ago, I was a slave, an obedient woman of twenty-two who never had to fend for herself, never lacked for food or shelter.
But now? To attempt this is to seal my own fate. Yet, I have felt Piers’s kindness, the way he cares about people, even one as lowly as me. I want to ease his pain in some small way.
I find myself nodding, agreeing to his request.
Piers weeps in relief, unaware that I have agreed not just for him, but because I am disturbed beyond explanation by the circumstances in which my master has placed me. Lork has made me an accomplice, and I can’t live with the guilt.
I feel such terror, such trembling, as I pick up his black leather sword belt, finding it heavy and ungainly. A silver-handled blade rests in the black scabbard, and I have no idea why I am doing this.
Piers’s thankfulness as I fumble, strapping the sword belt on, tells me I’m a coward. I retie my servant’s belt over it, covering the blade with my apron.
As I leave his cell, I can’t say if my dread is more for the decision I made impulsively or for this weapon I don’t know how to use. Either way, I am committed. An oath of honor now binds me to go to a city many days away in a foreign country and give the blade to a man the legions call the Red Abbott, a man who terrifies them. Then I must tell Piers’s lover what happened.
Two separate tasks I can’t imagine completing.
The halls are empty as always, but the sensation of eyes on me makes me jittery as I scurry to my room in the empty servants’ quarters. Not eyes...shadows, dark and swirling around me as if to conceal what I carry.
Such a fanciful thought. When he dies, will Piers become one of the shadows that haunt this house of horror? Perhaps, but maybe if I do this one favor for him, his soul will go instead to Aeos’s Great Hearth.
It’s winter and the nights are bitter in Neveyah. I spent all my years of servitude in a much warmer world but dress as warmly as a person who lives their entire life indoors can, putting on all three sets of my clothes, one layer after another. I wish for gloves but have none, so I’ll have to keep my hands inside my cloak as much as possible.
Now I stand at the unguarded kitchen gate. Hesitating, I look out at the dark kamtara forest, the plant the minotaurs believe is holy. I see only league upon league of thorn bushes as tall as a man, some head high to a minotaur. Thorns are all that grows in this part of the valley, except along the streams, so I will have to follow the water.
No guards are ever posted at the outer doors here, and if I was seen leaving, no one follows me. Something important is kept in this fearsome place, a holy relic claimed by the deities of both worlds. Since Tauron now has possession of it, the perimeter and outside doors are left unguarded as a lure for the priests of Aeos, a trap that had ensnared Piers. The guards are stationed at various doors inside the main residence, areas I rarely had reason to be in.
Except for the unwieldy bar of steel that bangs against my leg as I walk, I am unarmed. The purse at my belt contains scissors, a sewing kit, and a comb—the tools of a lady’s maid. I doubt they’ll do much damage to the beasts who stalk the kamtara forest, but I can’t part with them. They’re all I
have left of my dear, dear lady, who would be so mortified at what her son has lowered himself to.
I’m committed but still hesitate, fear filling my mouth with the remembered taste of iron. Other than the sword, I own nothing and have taken nothing. I have no provisions, only the garments and tool-purse of a slave, a sword I fear, and scant directions of how to get where I must go— “Follow the Escarpment south to the Gap.” If I live to arrive at the Gap, the only way into or out of this valley, I should find a road that will lead me to the City of Braden.
Piers warned me that before he’s allowed to die, he will be pressed hard and will eventually tell Lork what I am doing for him. He said he would try to hold out, to give me as much time as he was able. The look in his eyes...
But Lork is lazy and will see no reason to hunt me down. The guards say that the land is so hostile that none who escape the Keep survive. Certainly, a lady’s maid won’t last even a day in the wilderness. Water-sprites lurk in the weeds beside every stream, drenching the unwary with their water magic. Scorpions and soldier-wasps rule the kamtara forest. Other, more deadly beasts roam the wilderness, and I mustn’t forget it.
Somehow, my feet carry me forward, as if they don’t hear my mind screaming to turn back. Once through the kitchen gate, I enter the forest of thorns. I find what seems to be a path of some kind and begin walking.
I know a few edible plants from my childhood in a gentler part of the valley. The few yar blossoms and noe roots at the edge of the shallow creeks will keep me alive, but hunger is my companion. With my mutilation, I must chew carefully, chew and chew until they’re soft enough to swallow without choking.
Squads patrol the wilderness, hunting for their meals and pretending they are too busy to return to Shadow Castle. The ground shakes with the rhythm of their marching as they tramp through the brush. Many times, I must hide beneath the thorns, watching as their heavily booted feet trudge past. Yet they can be silent when they choose to be, which makes me wary of blundering around blind corners.
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