“Now, Talmon, is the time.” The Lashki drew closer on slimy gray feet. “I have waited twenty-four years and yet have not grown old. They think I am dead, when I have grown stronger all around them in the presence of my servants. Now I can strike them unawares, and not just Siana will fall to me, but the world itself. But first, Siana. We must start with Siana.”
“Yes, Master,” Talmon said. He longed to shuffle further backwards on his knees, even though he was already backed into the dilapidated well in the center of the courtyard.
“I have been patient to win Robert’s daughter,” the Lashki said. “Annette will hand over her sister now.”
The heir to the Sianian throne, Etana had been a target in the Lashki’s plans for a long time now. Talmon wondered exactly who King Robert’s daughter Annette was handing Etana over to.
“Will you kill her in person?” he asked softly.
“I have a better plan. You will send men to Siana to capture Etana. She does not do kesmal, so it will be easy. They will bring her to Tarhia, and you will send for her father. When he is oceans away from all his protection, then—”
The Lashki swung the tip of the long copper rod – which now glowed faint blue – down to point at Talmon. The king yelped and lunged sideways on all fours, away from his Master. In that blue tip, he could see the faces of all the people his Master had killed.
The Lashki laughed deep his throat. “Afraid, Talmon?”
“I will dispatch the men immediately,” Talmon quavered.
The Lashki dipped his moist head in approval. “Have you been watching the boy?”
Talmon feverishly brushed moss off the knees of his breeches. “Rafen? Yes, of course.”
“Remember what I said, Talmon,” the Lashki said. “If he tries to rebel, kill him. If not, he shall be my slave.”
Talmon vaguely remembered the two-year-old he and his Master had reserved to work for them in his adulthood. His Master had bewitched the boy when he was seven, creating a realistic dream in which he and Talmon had interviewed Rafen. In reality, it had been ten years since Talmon had seen, or even thought about, Rafen.
*
Etana stooped to pick up more herbs. She hitched up her white dress, groaning with the frustration that only being a princess could bring.
Never mind that, Etana thought. Today I’m allowed to go out with my sister.
The endless speeches and lessons were put aside for now. She was going to enjoy herself.
If being a princess brought responsibilities, being a Secra brought even more. A special female with a preexistent soul set apart for service to the Phoenix Zion, Etana was supposed to help save the world from Nazt, some horrible supernatural force in the East which she didn’t quite understand. It was something to do with kesmal, which she had learned was also supernatural and able to be controlled by individuals. Because she was a Secra, Etana would one day be queen of Siana and helpmeet of the Fourth Runi, the greatest king of all time, who also had a preexistent soul and had once communed intimately with the Phoenix.
Being a Secra translated to one thing for Etana: lessons. Etana loved learning and studying, though she often failed at the most important of tasks. Once, the tutor who taught her practical kesmal was explaining to her how to move things like small stones. Etana had attempted it. Her control over kesmal was nonexistent. An entire bookcase had hurtled through the air, and her tutor had to leap out of a nearby window to save himself. He had been discovered on a windowsill several stories down five hours later. It was a good thing those windowsills were so wide.
“Disgraceful for a Secra,” Etana’s mother Queen Arlene had said coldly.
Etana had pretended not to hear, but that night she had cried herself to sleep. The only lessons she did well in were academic. Anything practical she messed up; her kesmal either didn’t work or worked too much. Her father, King Robert, said it was because Etana was only eleven, and she was sure to improve. Etana didn’t like to blame ineptness on age.
Yet today, Etana was picking herbs with Annette, and all was well. Normally Etana was confined to the palace for her own safety. Her family had a bad history with a certain Ashurite called the Lashki Mirah, who had gone very wrong. In fact, the Lashki Mirah had become invincible by killing himself and creating a new and hideous body. Then he had killed her grandfather, her step-grandfather, and her Uncle Thomas, always aiming for the Sianian throne, of which Etana was the heir. However, the Lashki hadn’t been seen for years now, and King Robert had said Annette, the oldest of the Selson children and the most skilled with kesmal, could be trusted with Etana’s protection for the afternoon.
“I must thank you for coming with me, Annette,” Etana said, glancing around for more useful herbs.
They were on the outskirts of the Cursed Woods, not far from New Isles, the capital of Siana. On a pedestal of flat-faced ascending rocks, partially protected from the noonday sun by a semi-circle of trees, they searched for small plants.
“It was my pleasure,” Annette said in her low voice.
Annette was tall for a woman, and elegant. Her heart-shaped face was framed by night-black hair, which slipped down to her ribs. She had hooded, pale green eyes, and her nose was pointed and sharp. Annette liked to wear dark dresses with excruciatingly tight bodices and low-cut necks, which made Etana feel uncomfortable. She had heard her mother Queen Arlene hissing to King Robert that Annette dressed in ‘harlot garb’. Then again, Queen Arlene was always a little harsh.
“I do wish,” Etana said, unable to stop the words spilling over her lips, “that Mother wouldn’t scold so. Don’t you, Annette?”
“Perhaps.” Indifferent, Annette squatted to pick up a frond-like herb. “Yet Father is not so hard to please.”
“Oh, yes! I love Father,” Etana gushed.
His pale, freckled, fat face appeared in her mind, complete with the drooping red moustache and the faintest trace of a beard along his wide chin. His chin-length red hair fell past his ears, which stuck out like cup handles, and his melting watery blue eyes looked at her with concern and compassion.
King Robert would always say to Etana, “Now, when you’re queen, my dear ...” And then he would often add, “And what a wonderful queen you’d make, quite wonderful.”
Whereas Queen Arlene would often wonder aloud if Etana was fit for the throne.
“Only a fool couldn’t see Etana’s kesmal lacks something,” she would say.
Etana could see her in the usual pale pearl gown, her platinum hair tied in wreaths on the back of her head, her long neck like a tower of ivory, and her cold gray eyes eloquently disapproving.
“Do you believe the others think the same way about Mother?” Etana bent with her back to her sister to examine a moss patch.
Perhaps her brothers, Robert and Kasper, would agree with Etana about Queen Arlene. She always had a cutting remark for them. Though Robert and Kasper were really men now, they still got up to mischief, and they went hunting frequently, returning with the most beautiful foxes, and braces and braces of quail. After them came Bertilde, Etana, and then Bambi, Etana’s younger sister whom she always liked to look after, even though Bambi would snap that she was perfectly capable of caring for herself.
Annette hadn’t replied. Brushing her gold-streaked, dark red hair out of her face, Etana said, “Annette? You know, Father told you never to leave me.”
She stood up. Footsteps sounded on the rock behind her. They weren’t Annette’s soft footfalls.
Etana turned around, her hands tight little fists. Annette was gone. A great pillar of a man with a jagged brown beard and skinny face stood before Etana. His belt held three tooth-like knives of various lengths. He gripped a pistol in one hand and a length of rope in the other.
Behind her back, Etana feverishly slipped her silver ring off her left index finger. She tried to transform it into the thin silver scepter she used to perform kesmal with. Today it wouldn’t work. Her hands were sweaty.
“Oh,” she said, speaking unnat
urally high, “are you hunting? I must introduce you to my sister. Annette!”
Her cry flew out into the trees and rushed back into her face, unanswered.
The man said something in a language she couldn’t understand, before lunging at her.
The ring slipping from her fingers, Etana darted left, aiming to run down the flat-faced rocks to the ground. The man seized her arms and jerked them behind her back. They felt like they had been ripped from their sockets.
“Annette!” she screamed, struggling desperately. “Annette!”
Another man clapped a heavy hand on her mouth.
Etana tasted blood on her tongue.
Writhing, she caught a last glance of the swaying trees around her, the brilliant blue sky… and then something struck her head.
*
Etana’s eyes fluttered open. Her head thundered. She lay on a hard wooden floor, her back propped up against a barrel. Piled up around her body, crates and other barrels populated the cramped, shadowed room. She tried to move, then discovered her hands were bound behind her back, and her ankles were tied too. A rough cloth smelling of fermented wine tightly covered her mouth.
The floor was rocking.
Tears started to sting Etana’s eyes, and she moaned piteously behind her gag. She was on a ship, bound for who knew where. She should never have agreed to go and pick herbs with Annette. If Annette had been captured too, Etana would have heard it. Her sister had, inconceivably, left her. Etana wanted to bite Annette, to scream at her like an animal.
She would never see her father again.
Now when you’re queen, my dear …
His rumbling voice echoed in her spinning head. Yet Etana, the Secra, lay bound and gagged in the hold of a ship. Usually she felt older than eleven. Sometimes she even remembered the time before she was born, soaring in the company of a protective, fiery presence, existing amid green, living things. It had all been a dream.
She would never see her family again either. Their faces flashed through her mind. Breathing heavily, she wanted to rip the gag off and shriek for her father, and he would burst in like that time one of his advisors had been threatening her, and he would make everything right.
Everyone who had been expecting such big things of her was going to be disappointed. She was a failure.
*
Rafen tumbled onto the stone floor of his cell as the guard Haman kicked him again. Cursing Rafen, Haman slammed the door savagely and locked it. Rafen scrambled to his feet, panting, teeth gritted. Furiously, he swung his bare foot into the lopsided bench in his cell. It banged against the wall pointlessly. Pain exploded in Rafen’s toes. Though an oath was on his tongue, he bit it back. Phil would never tolerate Rafen swearing like the guards.
“Rafen, you are not one of them,” he would say.
Rafen growled in his throat. Phil had said that forever. Since Rafen was seven, Phil had been telling him he would escape one day. Rafen was now twelve, and he was still a slave. The only thing that kept Rafen holding on was the phoenix feather he had dreamed about when he was seven. That night, he had learned that dreams were rooted in reality. One day, he would find that feather, and it would change his life.
However, today had been a reminder of his slavery. King Talmon’s coal mine was divided into two main branches, the first of which was three leginis (one and a half day’s horse ride) from the palace. The second was directly beneath King Talmon’s palace. Rafen always worked here, even though he sometimes wanted to work in the other branch for variety. The branch beneath King Talmon’s palace exploited four coal seams – one small, two large, and one medium. All of them existed on different planes, and King Talmon had a rectangular network of tunnels hollowed out in each. The medium and smallest seams were the lowest down, and Rafen hated working there, because the air was too bad for the pit ponies. Therefore, the children were required to pick up after the men and additionally carry loads on their backs up steep slopes, through narrow tunnels, and up rickety ladders until they eventually reached a coal cart.
Today, that had been Rafen’s lot.
Torius had stolen his bread from him, and Rafen’s hunger pains had doubled him over. At this, one of the guards had struck him across the chest with the end of a pick. The bruise still throbbed. At the time Rafen had wondered if his collarbone was broken. To make everything worse, Roger had yelled something inarticulate at the guard with the pick and slapped him across the face, before coming to Rafen and feeling beneath his shirt to see how bad the damage was. His entourage had half followed him, bewildered. Rafen was horrified. To be treated like this by one of the guards was a humiliation. All the other slaves thought you an enemy. When the general did it, they became murderous. Torius had purposely shoved Rafen into the dirt and trod on his shoulders later when the guard had come with water, and someone else had pushed Rafen on the tracks into the path of an oncoming coal truck. A ragged, sickly girl seized his arm and pulled him clear of the tracks. Rafen clung to her as if she were part of a celestial world. He asked her number.
“Don’t call me a number,” she murmured, so that no one nearby would hear. “Call me by my name, Mary—”
Before she could finish, a guard came and dragged her away, barking, “Back to work, you wench!”
The wonder of her little black face and tired voice stayed with Rafen throughout the day. He hadn’t thought kindness existed in the mines.
Later, Rafen had tried to run from Haman when he had come to take Rafen back to his cell. He had earned himself another beating. Haman was one of the vilest guards. In his nightmares, Rafen often felt his oily touch on his skin.
Rafen clutched his aching toes, which temporarily distracted him from the pain in his collarbone and shoulders. He collapsed onto his moldy straw. Something tickled his leg, and he looked to see cockroach crawling up it. Grabbing it between his fingers, which tingled with a sudden rush of warmth, Rafen hurled it toward his cell door. The cockroach flew through the air in a perfect arc, legs wriggling. Meaningless sparks flashed from Rafen’s fingers and went out instantly in the air.
Rafen froze on the straw. It was impossible. He stared at the place where the sparks had been. Pale, flickering light from the torches in Rafen’s corridor slipped through the bars in his cell door. Apart from that, nothing disturbed the black that was his constant companion in Tarhia.
Slowly, he lay back to sleep, mind whirring.
Chapter Five
The Dream
He had it! In mid jump, he had caught it in his left hand, even though moments before it had been far away.
Warmth rushed through him, and Rafen could have died right then and been happy. The coal slid from his skin, and he felt properly clean for the first time in his life. Clutching the phoenix feather, he crashed to the ground, rolling to a stop at Thomas’ feet. Thomas turned to give him a quizzical look.
Then the sixteen-year-old staggered out of the shadows before Fritz.
“Alakil?” Fritz questioned with concern. He used the name the sixteen-year-old’s mother had given him, rather than the title ‘Lashki Mirah’, which he would later give himself.
Alakil’s face twisted and he clenched his fists, his frame shooting rapidly upwards. His skin turned gray and rotted visibly, dripping. Dirt rose to robe him and hissing black dreadlocks flowed from his scalp to his angular shoulders. Raising a long copper rod, he stepped before Fritz. Fritz backed into Thomas, who nearly stumbled over Rafen. Rafen leapt up from the ground, stepping clear of Thomas’ feet.
Eyes widening in horror, Fritz’s hand went to the sword at his right hip. Before the weapon could scrape clear of its sheath, a blinding blue flash shot from the end of the copper rod and struck Fritz between the eyes. Fritz reeled. Alakil swung the rod into Fritz’s chest, sending shivers through his dying body.
Fritz groaned, swayed sideways, and rolled down the craggy slope, bumping over rocks. Shaking so badly he could barely stand, Rafen reached instinctively for a sword at his belt. There was none. He seize
d a large stone from the ground with his free hand and looked wildly around for Alakil. He was already after Thomas, who scrambled madly up the rocky slope to Rafen’s right. Though the crumbling debris slid down to Rafen’s feet, Alakil ascended the crags like they were steps.
Thomas glanced over his shoulder and screamed, “Rafen, help me!”
Rafen dashed up the slope behind Alakil, preparing to throw the stone. Before he could, he tripped on a rock and fell to his knees. Another scream. Thomas’ corpse jolted to a stop beside him, his eyes staring unseeingly at the invisible roof of the cavern above.
“No,” Rafen panted.
“Now,” Alakil said, and suddenly, horribly, Rafen recognized that accent. Alakil descended the rocky slope, his black eyes meeting Rafen’s. “I have waited long for this.”
Remembering the stone in his hand, Rafen raised it. Alakil lifted the rod and sent a shiver of blue into its center, blasting the stone to pieces in Rafen’s hand. The impact jarred up Rafen’s right arm.
“Please,” Rafen said.
Alakil directed the copper rod at Rafen’s heart. Helpless, Rafen crawled backward on the stony ground, the feather clasped in his trembling left hand. Alakil was smiling that demented, yellow-toothed smile of his, and the end of the copper rod radiated blue again. A bolt detached itself, rushing toward Rafen’s head.
Rafen’s hands flew to his temples. He sat up on the moldy straw in his cell, gasping and slicked with sweat, staring around himself feverishly.
He was alone.
Yes, alone. Fritz and Thomas were dead. Tears stung his eyes, even though he told himself: It’s just a dream.
He knew it wasn’t.
He leapt up and backed away from his cell door, expecting Alakil to walk through it. It had been his voice Rafen had heard in that interview at seven. Alakil was Talmon’s Master.
Rafen (The Fledgling Account Book 1) Page 3
