“I’m going to die,” he muttered to himself, heart thumping.
He glanced around his cell, wondering if his phoenix feather was concealed in it. Stepping up to the door, he held his hands to the flickering light that issued through the barred window, checking them for any trace of the dirt or dust that he had been crawling through. Nothing. In the back of his mind, he saw a wall of rock amid shadowed trees, knowing it was somehow connected with the feather he desperately wanted.
Nothing made sense. He wanted to scream. Lowering himself onto his straw again, he clutched his knees.
He couldn’t sleep.
*
Standing by the wood and limestone table in his hall near the guard’s rows, Talmon held the parchment closer to the lamplight. He narrowed his eyes in disgust at the childish handwriting of the Sianian King Robert.
Due to the undeniable evidence (a Tarhian bridle and saddlebag dropped near the scene of Etana’s abduction) we urgently request that you undertake an investigation. We expect to visit your courts in three months.
Talmon lowered himself into the rickety chair. He glanced around the long room, at the dark corners and the sets of double doors at either end, expecting his Master to step out of the shadows and praise him for luring Robert into this mess. At the foot of his table, Talmon’s five dogs were humped together, their frantic panting sounding like wheezing laughter.
So Robert was already on his way. Annette had done her work well. Because of this remarkable bonus, Robert would arrive directly after his daughter Etana, meaning that Master could get to work right away.
Talmon smiled, placing the parchment on the already cluttered table. This, after all, was why he served Master, this unbeatable nature, this immense power to want and to have at will. Admittedly, there had been a twenty-four year long wait. However, the Lashki had been busy. He had traveled throughout the world, building up supporters, raising riots in cities, regions and countries, so that his kingdom grew little by little. They had a great portion of Burrek, the lower half of Zal Ricio ’el Nria, much of eastern Hara, parts of the Haer Mountains of Siana, and some major cities in Sarient. In the lowlands of Tarhia itself, the Lashki had been building an army with which to overrun Siana. In a sense, Talmon’s Master could stand the wait, if only it wouldn’t mean a long siege, a time-consuming battle. The actual attack must be fast, the fall blindingly quick.
Yet Talmon thought it could have been quicker. He shuffled through his parchments, searching for something blank. He would have his scribe reply to King Robert’s letter.
Yes, the whole thing could have been quicker. Why twenty-four years? Sometimes Talmon didn’t see his Master for years at a time. And it wasn’t always because the Lashki was in some foreign country. He was often on the Eastern Frontier of Tarhia, the very edge of the world, mesmerized by the impenetrable wall of spirits that constituted Nazt – Talmon’s Master’s Master. Where did all the spirits come from? Master said from the air, from the dead, from the living who had yielded themselves up; and they all whispered desire and fulfillment of desire. How long would Master listen to Nazt? Talmon supposed the Lashki stayed months, paralyzed by the enchanting thought of the revenge he wanted against the Sartians who had settled in his country, stealing his throne, and making him a sacrifice for civilization.
Curse it, where was that blank parchment? Talmon stood up, running his hands over his pockets.
“Twenty-four years,” he muttered to himself. “No great matter.”
After all, now there would be another Sianian regicide, along with the murder of the Sianian heir. And Talmon supposed that as the Lashki’s instrument, he would get his own share of power when everything came through. It was only a matter of time now.
“Guards!” Talmon barked in Tarhian to the men outside the double doors at the opposite end of the room.
A guard burst through them. The dogs at the foot of the table all started barking.
“Dogs,” Talmon threatened. They subsided. “You,” Talmon said to the guard, “get my scribe. And some blank parchment.”
The guard bowed low and left the room, shutting the double doors behind him. Talmon would write immediately. King Robert must come and dine with Talmon when he arrived, for Talmon had important information for him – some elaborate lie he would concoct to keep the Sianian king busy.
“Come soon,” Talmon said in the Tongue, mockingly polite as he glanced back at the unanswered letter on the table. “I have missed my long-time comrade.”
His lips peeled back into a smile.
Chapter Six
Awakening
The filthy pit-pony whinnied as a guard jerked it toward the waiting coal truck. In the narrow, hollowed out tunnel of rock, the sound fell lifelessly, like a stone on cotton. The guard retrieved the pit-pony’s driving yoke from the ground, a necessarily strong harness so the animal was not crushed by the truck it led when descending the sloping tracks nearby.
Above, a truck rattled over the low roof, sending stones showering down. The pit-pony shook its head and shied away from the guard who approached it. Another thickset guard with a torch kicked the pony hard, and it bucked indignantly against the side of the full truck. The laden cart started traveling down the sloping wooden tracks, gathering speed, the rumbling increasing in the smothering atmosphere.
“Someone please help!” a child shrieked.
Thomas’ anguished face flashed through Rafen’s mind from the dream the night before. He dropped his armful of coal and dashed alongside the tracks, stumbling over his own torn and cut feet, shoving through bone-thin children gathering handfuls of coal.
The guard who had been controlling the pony sprinted alongside the truck, attempting to rough lock the rear wheels with a long wooden pole that had been lying beside the track. In seconds, he gave up. Children parted to flatten themselves against the narrow tunnel walls on either side of the coal truck, and Rafen glimpsed Mary frantically trying to tear her ragged shirt from the tracks ahead.
He threw out his hand, brushing her fingers just as someone seized his shoulders and pulled him back. Mary’s eyes widened for an instant, and in her blackened face Rafen read fragmented memories of the mother whom King Talmon’s men had torn her from at five. The rocking side of the truck flashed before his eyes. He stared at the gleaming black wall across from him.
A similar incident had nearly killed Rafen the day before, and she had saved him. He had been too late. He was always too late. He remembered Thomas’ corpse rolling to a stop at his feet and screamed in frustration.
The truck clattered unsteadily away into the darkness, some coal tumbling out of it. Near the pit-pony, the two guards argued about who would go and fetch the runaway cart.
“What did you think you were doing?” Torius hissed, spinning Rafen around.
At fifteen, Torius stood three heads taller than Rafen. Torius was forever stealing other workers’ food and stepping all over children to get to the water first. He glared at Rafen, his amber eyes burning in his hard face.
Rafen had always thought Torius had never had parents. He had sprung from the ground, a random phenomenon of nature, created for one purpose – freedom.
In his mind’s eye, Rafen saw grass – vibrant green, and soft. Torius and he sat on it, and it sprang up lushly around their bare legs. They spoke little, simply enjoying the free air. Torius kept his eye on Rafen.
Rafen rose. Mary stood in a little glade beyond them.
Torius stirred. Like an older brother, he said, “Do not go anywhere, Rafen. We have all we need here.”
“Mary!” Rafen called. She looked further and further away, dancing and twirling in silent ecstasy. Rafen made to run past Torius toward the shrinking figure, but Torius leapt up to block his way.
“She slowed us down,” Torius said, and the grass and cool air was gone. Rafen was back in the mine with Torius facing him. “We could afford to lose her. You’re fast. We need you.”
Feeling the blood rushing to his face, Rafen pull
ed away, stumbling backwards onto the bloodied tracks.
“NO!” he roared, glancing behind him at the small, unrecognizable heap shining with dark red. It was hard to form words. “She - she mattered!”
King Talmon stepped between him and Torius.
Rafen stared into the king’s indifferent brown eyes. The king only visited his coal mine once a month, and Rafen had forgotten he would be coming this week. His heartbeat hurt his upper chest. King Talmon gazed at him with the interest a man takes in a stray cockroach.
“Slaves,” he said coldly, “do not matter.”
The words slipped out from between Rafen’s teeth like venom: “I hate you.”
He realized what he had said. Behind Talmon, Torius’ eyes widened with shock. Talmon laughed. It was the laugh of the nobility, not the barking laugh of the guards.
“Everyone hates me.” He spread his hands.
“Your Grace! We have the Sianian girl!”
Talmon’s head snapped around. He turned and strode up the sloping tunnel toward the distant guard.
Behind Rafen, another guard lifted Mary’s corpse off the tracks and pulled a sack over it. Rafen’s hands were vibrating fists. He wanted to screech at Mary and wake her up. She was going to leap out of the sack, and they were going to run in great, unconquerable strides to the surface, leaving this hell behind. Out of the corner of his eye, he dimly saw Talmon turn again, aim a pistol past the children still flattened against the tunnel walls, and shoot. Rafen flung himself backwards toward the wall. Torius grabbed his shoulders and jerked him to safety. The back of Rafen’s head struck Torius’ chest, and the bullet whizzed past. It stirred Rafen’s filthy hair as it sailed into the darkness further on in the tunnel. His blood pounded painfully in his ears. Torius still clutched him with trembling fingers, and he wasn’t the same Torius of yesterday, who had walked all over Rafen.
“You and I were not meant for this place,” Torius hissed.
Panting, Rafen watched while Talmon continued journeying up the tunnel with yet another guard, as nonchalantly as if he expected Rafen – or someone, at least – to have died.
*
The Tarhian threw Etana down onto the stone floor of a long hall. She lay in a heap, her eyes stinging from crying too much and her head light. Her arms and wrists ached from being bound until now.
Etana had recognized her captors’ language months ago, at sea. Until now, the Tarhians had been allies of the Sianians. King Robert had always praised King Talmon for his efficiency and intelligence in the ruling of Tarhia.
The man above her spoke in rapid Tarhian to someone who had entered the room through a side door. He bowed and departed.
It was all a horrible dream.
Somebody seized her shoulder and dragged her to her feet. Etana cried out and began to squirm. A hard hand slapped her face. The taste of blood in her mouth, she burst into tears and stood still, supported by the man holding her. His free hand closed around her pointed chin and raised her head.
The Tarhian holding her had a chiseled countenance, devoid of sympathy. His cold brown eyes scanned Etana.
Etana was pale from three months spent in the hold of a ship. Her dark red hair, streaked with gold, was knotted and hung lankly about her face, which was still recognizable as that of royalty. It was sculptured flawlessly – a perfect nose, a perfect pointed chin, perfect high cheek bones – but Etana’s once blazing blue eyes were now red-rimmed and puffy, and her ivory skin was streaked with dirt. In a few months, her figure had crossed the thin boundary between delicate to malnourished.
She ducked her head while King Talmon stared at her. When he released Etana’s shoulder, she collapsed on the floor again and rolled up into a dirty little ball.
“The princess Etana,” the king said in his lilting Tarhian accent, “the sixth Secra and future queen of Siana, whose kesmal is said to be unsurpassed.”
You animal, Etana thought.
King Talmon couldn’t perform a spark of kesmal himself. If only she could return to those years when instead of a body she had had everything else: strength, purpose, purity. She would smash him with her kesmal.
“Where is your father?” King Talmon said. “He would do well to protect you. I do not let my heir wander the countryside so that anyone can snatch him.”
You don’t have an heir, Etana thought.
If she’d had strength, she would have observed the various doors around the hall, and how far she was from them. However, Etana was too weak to run, and she couldn’t find her way out of the palace. When she’d been brought in, besides being half unconscious, the Tarhians had carried her in a sack so she hadn’t seen anything.
“No matter,” King Talmon said. “Do not expect luxury, Etana. You will not be ransomed. I hope you realize you will be here for some time… until your father comes. I will contact him for you. Master would not want Robert to be late for his funeral or yours. Siana will be much changed when Master is ruling.”
Master? Did King Talmon serve someone more horrid than himself? Was the Lashki still alive after all? Her breath catching in her chest, Etana glanced up. A pitiless smile curled King Talmon’s pale lips.
Chapter Seven
Plans
Etana tried to arrange herself into a more comfortable position on the stone floor. Her ankles and wrists still hurt. She glanced warily at the man who shared her cell.
Lying against the slimy right wall, he looked unconscious or dead. In the scant light that slipped through their tiny barred window in the cell door, he appeared gaunt, his body elongated. His shabby clothes stank of something which ordinarily would have embarrassed Etana terribly.
Trembling, she closed her eyes and tried to take a deep breath. She couldn’t. Her eyes flew open, and she looked around wildly. Surely there was a way out of the cell.
A handful of moldy straw lay on the floor before Etana, and a rotting wooden bench stood against the left wall. The large, crude door was firmly locked and bolted on the other side.
Etana’s stomach clenched with hunger. Her last meal had been an age ago. The guard had brought two crusts of bread, one for the man. Etana had placed the crust next to his limp hands. He hadn’t touched it, and as her head felt lighter and her stomach more contracted, she began to think that maybe he wouldn’t miss it.
He stirred with a rustle. Etana recoiled against the back wall.
Catching sight of her, the man murmured something in Tarhian.
“I can’t understand you,” Etana said.
Everyone in Siana spoke Vernacular excepting the Ashurites, who spoke some language the most talented philosophers couldn’t make out.
The man said something else in Tarhian, and Etana eyed him suspiciously.
“Curtis.” He jabbed his chest with a bone-thin finger.
“Etana.” She pointed to herself after a moment’s hesitation.
The man indicated his bread crust and then Etana. She shook her head and tried to show him she’d already eaten. He devoured the bread in seconds. Regret washed over Etana.
“Princess,” she said, pointing to herself.
Feeling around in the neck of her dress, Etana removed her amethyst, a symbol of her membership in the royal family of Siana. It hung on the heartstring she had received from the Phoenix Zion himself when she was four. This cord indicated she was the sixth Secra. A few glittering particles of phoenix dust clung to it. Thus far, the Tarhians had taken no interest in her necklace, and she thought that perhaps they were scared.
Curtis leaned forward, a wondering expression on his face.
“Sianian,” Etana said. “Sianian princess.”
Curtis nodded vigorously. Pointing to the cell door, he said something in Tarhian. Etana tried signing to him that she wanted to run out. He nodded again, raised a skinny finger, and tapped three times against his temple.
“Think,” Etana said, copying him.
With great effort, Curtis opened his mouth and said indistinctly, “S-ssink.”
*<
br />
“He tried to shoot you?” Phil said numbly. He was speaking Tongue, and Rafen hated it. The language reminded him of impossible freedom.
“That’s what I told you,” he replied bitterly in Tarhian, standing before his broken bench and staring at the wall above it. Greasy curves moved across the limestone where Phil’s torchlight touched it.
Phil moved from the door over to Rafen, his short figure outlined by the soft glow of the torch he held in his right hand.
“Rafen, you must leave Tarhia.”
“You’ve been saying that for five years.”
Rafen couldn’t stand talking about this; every word felt sharp as a knife in his tight throat. Mary’s corpse kept flashing before his eyes.
Phil’s forehead creased, his pale blue eyes agitated. A faint bruise on his temple sent a stab of anger through Rafen. The guards in the barracks had been treating him badly again.
“Five years, and it is still true,” Phil said. “Somewhere in the world, there is green grass and birds that sing in the morning, trees that cast long, cool shadows, feather beds, steaming food that never runs out, children laughing in the streets – and safety, justice, goodness, Rafen. I know you believe in it now, and you can never go back. You must go on.”
Rafen closed his eyes, trying to picture it all. Deep longing twisted his insides. The little white branded numbers above his ankle appeared in his mind, and then he heard Mary’s scream. His eyes flew open.
“STOP IT!” he yelled in Tarhian, and Phil’s eyes widened as he frantically motioned silence to Rafen. Rafen kept shouting, “SHUT UP! IT’S NOT REAL, I DON’T BELIVE IN IT. I DON’T CARE!”
He sank down on his bench, tears stinging his eyes.
“Rafen,” Phil pleaded, reaching out to him with his free hand.
“I try to see what you see,” Rafen said softly, “but I can’t. There is nothing beyond Tarhia. There is no freedom… only death.”
“Listen, Rafen,” Phil said, “though you may not be able to reach that world, it has reached you.”
Rafen (The Fledgling Account Book 1) Page 4
