The guards wouldn’t be whipping him, Rafen remembered with a jolt. Talmon would be. And for Talmon, lashes were only a foretaste. Rafen felt like he was suffocating.
“Move.”
The guard grabbed his shoulders and shoved him out of his open cell door. A chill gust bit into Rafen when he entered the corridor. Numbly, he shuffled forward. After trudging through several silent corridors, rows, and hallways – a completely different route from the one he and Etana had taken yesterday – the guard muttered, “In here.” He pushed Rafen forward.
His freezing, dirty feet clumsy, Rafen stumbled forward into the courtyard. Portentous clouds filled the sky above, and the morning light was faint. The recently appointed General Mainte posed near the execution post. Talmon stood before the well with a long, thin whip, his face passive, even patient. In the back right corner of the courtyard, his five dogs lay in heaps, their tongues hanging out and their fangs exposed. They growled when Rafen entered.
Talmon’s eyes met Rafen’s, a strange light appearing in them. “Come, Rafen.”
“No,” Rafen heard himself say. His skinny form was tense and vibrating.
Talmon raised an eyebrow, apparently expecting this. “I know what you think,” he said in Tongue. “You think that Etana will somehow escape the hundreds of men I have after her. You think that she will call her father, and though she is heir to the Sianian throne, she will plead for a dirty Tarhian slave boy. You think the king of Siana will travel the three months’ journey in the week before your execution and then bring his ship into enemy territory to find you. You think you are important. You are not.
“Now come here, two-three-seven!”
“No!” Rafen shouted, his throat thick with tears.
The guard shoved Rafen forward onto the hard flags of the courtyard. Rafen started to rise, but Talmon seized his neck and threw him toward the execution post. Coughing, Rafen landed on his knees near Mainte, who caressed a coil of rope.
Mainte was the opposite of Roger. He had a nose like an island and a huge head that looked ludicrous on top of his narrow shoulders. His hair was brown streaked with pale silver, even though he wasn’t yet forty.
“Tie him,” Talmon ordered.
Rafen made a move to leap up again. The blanket of ivy glittered to his left, and the black serpent handle beckoned from amid leaves. Mainte seized his arms and pulled them violently forward around the post. For the first time, Rafen noticed the blood stains streaking it. The general looped rope around Rafen’s wrists rapidly. Desperate, Rafen tried to pull his wrists apart. Talmon jerked Rafen’s head backward by the hair and Rafen’s eyes watered.
“Clasp your hands,” Talmon spat in his face.
Mainte had tied Rafen’s hands and now knotted the rest of the rope around the post before stepping back. Rafen’s bonds cut into his skin. He strained against them, his eyes dragged by force to the door to freedom. Talmon had installed a new metal lock beneath the handle.
“You are dismissed,” Talmon told Mainte.
The general’s footsteps receded. Talmon drew his dagger with a soft, hissing sound. Panting, Rafen became still, staring at the post that would be the last thing he would feel a week from today.
The cold point of the dagger rested on his upper back. Talmon slowly drew it down, slicing Rafen’s shirt in two. With special care, he folded back the tattered flaps of material, exposing Rafen’s back before sheathing the dagger.
“Today you are going to learn a lesson, two-three-seven,” he said. “Slaves obey orders. Lean forward.”
He planted his boot on Rafen’s back and forced him to bow to the post. Rafen winced as the rope dug further into his wrists.
Talmon removed his foot. The whip went up with a whistle. With a crack, it landed on Rafen’s back, ripping it open. One. Scorching pain exploded in his body and shuddered through his chest. Rafen bit his tongue sharply and tasted blood. There was a metal barb in the whip. He had not expected it. The whip whistled again. Crack! It tore another ribbon of skin off his back. Two. He was not going to scream. Three. Four, five, six, seven – he had lost count. Talmon sped up, and the hum of the whip intensified. It was eating him. The warm blood coursed down his back and legs. Rafen couldn’t see. Talmon had done the twenty; surely he had done the twenty. Rafen was screaming now. He was sure he had no skin left, and his bloodied spine was naked and gleaming at the sky. Talmon was not going to stop. He had found his rhythm and was enjoying himself. It was never going to end.
“Stop!” Rafen shrieked. “Please!”
No answer.
Rafen realized he had been kneeling before the post for a long time now. The whipping had stopped. Pain undulated through his body, darkness approaching the edges of his vision. His head hung, and blood dripped from his mouth from biting his tongue over and over. Spasms preventing him from opening them, his fists were still clenched tightly. Tears had left his face wet. Distantly, he heard Talmon stride away to get a guard, his boots making clicking noises against the stone.
Rafen closed his eyes against the mind numbing pain. Maybe he was dead, maybe he had floated out of his body. His head felt strangely light.
Then he was cutting through the air, and color flooded past him.
Rafen’s body transformed. He shot upward, his arms becoming muscular, his legs powerful, his hands manly. The wounds in his back closed into scars. His face changed. He ran his hand across it and felt stubble. A sword in his left hand, he stood on the back of a soaring, scaly beast, the world below spinning impressively, the scenes of a battle on it. Grasping a leathery bump protruding from the monster’s back, Talmon crouched directly before him, his face pale and twisted. The wind shrieked past them both. Each pound of the dragon’s wings threw them up and down, but Rafen remained poised for the kill, his footing secure in the tensed, rippling muscles of the dragon.
“You must remember what I said to you in Tarhia,” Talmon snarled in accented Tongue. “Slaves do not matter. I would sooner make one of my dogs king. You have no education, no honor, and your parents are lower than dirt. What do you think your father is doing down there?”
Clenching his teeth, Rafen tightened his grip on his sword.
“You are the very image of your father,” Talmon said. “You will see the cost, and you will betray everyone you professed to love. You cannot change blood, Rafen; you are a traitor.”
Something in Rafen snapped. Freeing himself from the dragon’s tightening flank muscles, he leapt forward. He plunged the sword flashing in his hand into Talmon’s frantic heart. Talmon was screaming, but Rafen’s own bellow drowned it out.
Everything went black.
Chapter Twelve
The
Tarhian Coast
“Rafen?”
The word tickled his ear.
Rafen didn’t move for fear he might break the spell over him. The pain was gone, and he wasn’t even sure he was alive anymore. He had seen a vision – had a wonderful dream – and he wished it hadn’t ended, because he wanted to see Talmon fall from the dragon’s back.
“Rafen, speak to me.” Phil was speaking Tongue again.
Rafen’s mouth was too dry to respond. Phil breathed heavily nearby, and Rafen opened his eyes a crack. The darkness was bliss after the light in the courtyard. A lantern flickered to his left.
Something damp moved on Rafen’s back. The pain returned to him with a jolt as all his wounds seared in unison. Groaning, he realized straw was tickling his nostrils; he was back on the hard flags of his cell. Fragments of the limestone walls around him wriggled in and out of sight like thousands of gravel-colored worms.
“Forgive me, I do not mean to hurt you,” Phil said.
A stab of urgency roused Rafen. “Phil, you’re not supposed to be tending my wounds,” he croaked.
“You’re not going to the mines like this.”
Phil was still obstinately speaking Tongue. Didn’t he realize this fantasy of freedom was over?
“Phil, you’ll get caught,�
�� Rafen said through gritted teeth, slowly like Phil was a stupid child. “Roger told Talmon… he didn’t remember you, but he might—”
“Roger is in a cell.” Phil started to wheeze. “Talmon thinks he was helping you. You blamed him, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t think Talmon would…” Rafen tried to remember what he was going to say.
“Talmon believes you because Roger failed him in this matter, and a king always puts someone in a cell when he is looking foolish.” A pause. Then Phil asked, “What did Etana say to you before she left?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Did she promise she would speak to her father about you? Rafen?”
Phil shook Rafen’s shoulders. The pain brought tears to Rafen’s eyes. “Did no one tell you?” he said hoarsely, staring at Phil. “Talmon is going to shoot me in a week.”
Dropping his gaze, Rafen tried to move the straw away from his nose. He discovered he was lying on his chest with one arm pinned beneath him. He made to move the other, but it protested. He realized he was sobbing, his bare torso shaking against the straw.
Phil’s breathing had become a rasp. “You are not going to die, Raf—”
“I am going to die. And I don’t care.”
“You do care, Rafen.”
“I don’t,” Rafen choked.
“You do care, Rafen. But not as much as I do.”
“I DON’T!” Rafen screamed, almost swallowing the straw before his face. He lifted his head and struggled to see Phil, ignoring the sudden explosion of pain in his back.
Phil’s face swam before Rafen’s, half-shadowed, half-illuminated by the light of the lantern to the left.
“You did this to me,” Rafen said weakly. “You did this.”
“Rafen, lie down,” Phil said shakily, helping Rafen place his head in a more comfortable position on the straw. “You’re not well.”
His eyes closed again, Rafen lay there, hands balled into fists. His torso tensed into a rod, his back still on fire. None of it would go away. Still tending him, Phil was muttering something over and over again like some superstitious chant.
“Etana will come. Etana and her father will come.”
*
Etana staggered across the rocks, her stomach grumbling. She no longer felt remotely like a princess. Her dress was now rags, showing unseemly parts of her torn underpants, and her lank and greasy hair hung in clumps about her sweaty, filthy face. After her escape from the Tarhians, she had eventually run out of strength to continue doing kesmal and had resumed her normal shape.
She had been aiming west. The West was all she could think of. Siana was in the West. The country Zal Ricio ’el Nria was even further west. The people there were broad-shouldered giants with olive skin, rock-like muscles, and blood as green as the blood of leaves. All good things were in the West. If she journeyed far enough west, she would fall off the edge of the disc of the Mio Pilamùr and into the wings of the Phoenix.
It was unfortunate that Tarhia was the easternmost country of the world.
Etana gazed at the pale, glittering sand beneath the rocky platform she stood on. Her legs quaked uncontrollably, and she found herself sinking to her knees and then lying full length on the rock. The heavy, humid air of Tarhia seemed to press her deeper into it.
That was another horrible thing about Tarhia, she decided. The marshland climate was sticky and oppressive. Etana’s father King Robert said King Talmon’s palace had been built where a huge swamp had once been. Her history tutor had explained this was why King Talmon’s palace sat on top of several large coal seams.
At the thought of her tutor, her father, and her home, a tear sprang to Etana’s eye. It clung to her eyelashes momentarily before dropping onto the muddy surface of the rock she lay on. Ahead of her, the ocean stretched in long, slow wrinkles to the horizon. A great ship floated near the coast, another smaller one trailing it.
The bigger ship had five masts: three main ones and two smaller ones at the forecastle and quarterdeck. All the sails flashed a striking red, giving the impression a large aquatic plant had broken the surface of the ocean. Between the cannons and the oars, which were partially submerged and moving sleepily in the waves, Etana made out the glistening words: Phoenix Wing.
With her remaining strength, she leapt to her feet and tore a strip from her soiled and ragged dress, leaving her thighs horribly bare. She waved the material wildly, screaming, “It’s me! It’s me, Etana! Please, anyone! Father!”
She was losing her mind. She couldn’t remember where the last few minutes had gone. Her sight blurred, she dropped to her knees, happy little spots dancing across her vision. She had to lie down, and this time she would not rise again. She was so hungry, and her lips were dry.
Someone raised her to her feet. She wanted to fight because she didn’t want to go back, not to that horrible cell. Then she realized the arms were too gentle to be a Tarhian’s.
“Shame the dinghy took so long to reach her,” someone said in her ear.
They spoke Vernacular, unprofaned by the thick, lilting Tarhian accent.
“She looks parched,” someone else said. “Look at these scratches and bruises.”
Etana opened her eyes feebly, trying to play the moment for all it was worth. Usually Argus, a famed Sianian captain, and Alexander, King Robert’s admiral, would tease her whenever they were at the New Isles palace to speak with her father.
“I’m so hungry,” she croaked.
Above her, Alexander’s scarred face creased with concern.
“It is all right, Little Highness. We’re going to get you to your father. He’s been looking for you and is nearly out of his mind.”
Etana had been thinking of feigning a swoon. It turned out she didn’t have to. A comfortable darkness enveloped her as Argus and Alexander bore her off the rocky platform to the dinghy waiting near the lapping waves.
Chapter Thirteen
Torius
Phil brought Rafen to the first seam of the mine personally. The seven guards clustered about the tracks there looked up suspiciously at their approach.
Phil had bound Rafen’s wounds with torn, yellow cloth and found him another shirt. He had insisted on it, even though Rafen thought the shirt would certainly betray his actions. Though Rafen knew he could never have worked directly after his lashes, he wished Phil had left him alone. They were in enough trouble already. His muscles tightened at the sight of the guards, and pain seared through him like a current. He thought he would vomit.
“You.” An officer detached himself from the group of guards, addressing Phil. Few guards knew Phil’s name, because he was not an important worker. “Why is two-three-seven late?”
“Two-three-seven thought he would faint after his lashes and shirk his work,” Phil said coldly, giving Rafen a shove. Rafen stumbled forward, staring at the ground. “I brought him round and brought him here for you.”
“He is twenty minutes late,” the officer said. “We should lash him again.”
The other guards guffawed. Shaking, Rafen didn’t look up.
“I have heard of two-three-seven,” the officer went on. “He was socializing with a princess yesterday. That probably made him decide he was above working in the mine.”
Rafen wondered feverishly if the officer had also heard he was to come here without his wounds attended to.
Torius ran up to the guards from behind, his filthy hair about his face. He delivered a message in rapid, mechanical Tarhian before glancing over at Rafen with his usual haughtiness.
“One of you will take two-three-seven down to the second seam where his work will be today,” the officer said. “You are dismissed.” He jerked a thumb at Phil.
Phil bowed his head and pushed Rafen toward the guards before turning to go. Then, on an impulse, he turned again as a guard struck Torius across the face for standing around and listening.
“Perhaps one-eight should take two-three-seven,” Phil said. “It seems stupid that one tardy slave s
hould make the guards late.”
This was a policy the guards never employed; Talmon was expressly against it, because it increased the chances of slaves communicating with each other. He regarded any type of friendship among them as dangerous. However, if a guard took Rafen to his division today, it meant Phil’s treachery would likely be discovered.
The officer looked momentarily disgusted. The guard behind him interrupted, “The tunnel collapsed in the eighth division, and everything is still shaking.”
“Who told you that?” the officer snapped.
“One-eight said so.”
Torius looked mildly satisfied. This was the only type of message he liked delivering. When a whole tunnel collapsed, normally a few guards were buried with the workers. Torius evidently found it amusing.
“One-eight, take two-three-seven to the sixth division of the second seam,” the officer said sharply. “If he does not arrive there, I’ll have your blood.”
Phil was already departing as if the outcome of this situation had mattered little to him, and the guards began to move. Rafen had the pleasant feeling that he was invisible. Torius seized his shoulder and started propelling him down the tunnel with sharp pushes. He held his head high, reveling in his new power. With every movement, Rafen thought he would black out. Things spun around him, and in a moment he was on his knees, gasping for breath. He made to rise feverishly, waiting for the customary blow to fall. A guard would hit him until he got up.
Torius bent and lifted him to his feet. “Talmon lashed you?” he muttered, glancing around for any people watching. The narrow tunnel appeared to be empty apart from them. Even so, Torius didn’t have a torch. Someone could be hiding in the darkness.
“Why do you care?” Rafen said through clenched teeth.
Seeing Torius again brought Mary’s death back vividly. Torius had saved Rafen’s life that day, and yet it didn’t feel like a mercy. It was Torius’ way of gaining power over him.
“Keep going, two-three-seven.” Torius shoved him forward. “I am your guard today – ha!”
Rafen (The Fledgling Account Book 1) Page 7
