Gods & Dragons: 8 Fantasy Novels

by Daniel Arenson

  “Why do they hate us?” Garet whispered to Salick.

  She whispered back without turning her head from those staring eyes. “Part of it is the fight between Adrix and the King. The other part is older and harder to explain.” She paused for a moment and deliberately turned away to face Garet, her back towards the Duelists.

  “They play with swords and risk their lives in silly duels, but they all know that if a demon came into this place, all their skill, all their swords would be useless.” Her lips twisted in a tight smile. “Every time they see a Bane’s sash, they are reminded of how brittle their courage really is.”

  As Garet tried to puzzle this out, he saw Salick’s cousin, Draneck, detach himself from a group of his companions and walk reluctantly up to them. Salick, seeing Garet’s gaze, turned to face her cousin.

  “What do you want, Banes?” Draneck asked in a loud voice. “I don’t think you’re welcome here.”

  Salick scowled at him, but Garet suddenly realized what had changed about the Duelists: the young man, and all the other men and women in the yard were wearing sashes! A narrow band of purple cloth, edged in red, cut across Draneck’s chest and held the sheath of the sword bumping at his hip.

  “Draneck,” Salick snapped, “what under Heaven are you wearing?” She pointed at the sash.

  Draneck smirked. “Do you like it? It’s a favour from the King.” He turned and waved a hand, indicating everyone else in the yard. “His majesty wished to recognize the loyalty,” he stressed the word, “of the Duelist’s Guild.” He touched the sash. “King Trax even allowed us to wear the royal colour.”

  “And the red?” Salick asked tightly.

  “For our willingness to shed our blood for the King,” a new voice replied. Another Duelist, followed by several others at a short distance had joined Draneck. With a shock, Garet recognized the leader as the young, long-haired man that Draneck had fought in the Temple plaza, Shoronict. Now the taller man draped his arm around Draneck’s shoulder and faced the Banes. “Surely the Banehall’s demands don’t include keeping all the colours for themselves?”

  His friends laughed and Garet noticed that most of the duelists had gathered behind Draneck and Shoronict. He stepped closer to Salick and tried to look confident.

  “Draneck,” Salick said, ignoring Shoronict and the men and women grouped behind him. “Your father asked me to tell you that it’s time you returned home, time that you left these games and took up your duties.” She looked around the small yard with disdain and several Duelists lowered their own eyes in response. Shoronict merely glared and stepped forward.

  Draneck grabbed his arm to stop him from advancing on the Banes. His tone was cold. “Tell my father that this is my home now. If he thought this was a passing fancy, he is mistaken.” Several of his friends nodded their heads and murmured in agreement. Draneck’s voice rose. “Tell him that, unlike the Banes, I know my ‘duties’.” He was yelling now, his face red and the muscles of his neck standing out. “And unlike you Banes, I serve the people of Shirath, and the King!”

  The duelists exploded into cheers behind him, and Garet took advantage of the chaos to pull Salick out the gate and down the lane. The noise continued behind them, coalescing into a chant: “Our swords for the King! Our swords for the King!”

  Salick allowed herself to be guided back to the Ward’s main gate before she pulled away from Garet’s grasp. Clearly shaken, she strode out of the Ward and kept walking until she found an isolated bench in the cold shadow of the Palace. She sat down, and Garet was surprised to see tears running down her face.

  “Uncle will be so upset,” she said, brusquely wiping her cheeks with the back of her sleeve. She looked up at Garet and sighed. “He raised me, after my…father…became a…” The word ‘father’ seemed to trip up her speech, and she spat it out after a moment’s struggle. She shivered in the shade but made no move to leave the bench and return to the sunnier parts of the plaza. Garet sat quietly beside her.

  “My father was like yours, only worse,” Salick told him, her long braids hanging forward to hide her face from him. He leaned forward a bit to see her eyes. They were closed.

  “He was a braggart and a bully, but he was also a man of power.” She sighed, and then straightened up, still looking away from Garet. “He beat me, and my brothers and sisters. My mother died when I was born.” Her voice broke. “It was my fault, I suppose.”

  Unsure of what to say, Garet put a gentle hand on her shoulder. She didn’t pull away.

  “My father was Lord of the Third Ward, the one with all the potters and coppersmiths.”

  Garet remembered the pure sound of ringing hammers and the deep hum of the spinning pottery wheels as Marick had dragged him past open courtyards on their way to wheedle sweets from one of that Ward’s bakers. He nodded at Salick to continue.

  “He was a drunkard and a womanizer, especially after my mother was gone. Finally, the King, Trax’s father, wouldn’t stand for it any more.” She wiped her eyes again. “The people of the Ward were complaining, and he never held court or helped in the greater work of the city, so he was removed as Lord.” She looked up at the windows of the palace; their glass eyes were black. “He killed himself, or maybe fell drunk off the city wall down into the herd yards. I was already a Green.” Her smile was bitter. “I suppose he made me a Bane, with the beatings and threats and all. But for years before his death, I had lived with my uncle. He took all of us in, with the King’s permission, and moved us to the Sixth Ward, behind the Temple.”

  A chill breeze ghosted along the walls of the Palace and lifted the hairs on the back of Garet’s neck. Had his father also made a Bane of him?

  Salick rubbed her face. “Come on. We both look a mess!” She led him to a small fountain by the Palace walls, perhaps put there for the servants to draw water. She washed her face. Garet followed suit, gasping at the bite of the cold, shadowed water. He blotted his face with his sleeve, as much for warmth as for dryness and looked up at Salick.

  She was sitting on the curb of the fountain, looking back at him.

  “I don’t think I’ve cried like that for years, since my Uncle took me away.” She pushed back a braid. “I don’t think I could have cried with anyone else, Garet.”

  “Why not?” he asked, and belatedly realized his question should have been, ‘why me?’

  She looked down at the dark, reflecting water. “To Master Mandarack, I’m the apprentice he relies on, to Marick, Dorict, and the others, I’m the one who’s always sure of herself.” She dipped a finger in the cold water and moved it in small circles. Larger circles expanded from her touch, and Garet watched the ripples continue to the far rim of the fountain.

  “But you came from outside,” she continued, still looking down. “I didn’t have to be anything for you. And once I saw your father, I knew that you were like me, that you might understand what I’d gone through.” She raised her eyes and smiled slightly. Her fingers rested on the curb and drops of water fell back into the pool. “That’s why I was so hard on you at first, you know?” She raised her eyebrows in question, but Garet could only shake his head, not sure of her meaning. She sighed. “Well, I always felt that if I had been a boy, I could have stood up to my father. Or I would have pleased him more.” She paused for the briefest moment. “I thought that not being a girl would have made him love me.”

  She stood up suddenly and looked off to the gate of the Third Ward. At this distance, only the shapes of people could be made out, none of the details. Salick turned to Garet and continued. “But your father treated a son with the same contempt mine treated a daughter, and at first I hated you for not being strong enough to make the difference, instead of realizing that nothing would have mattered.” Tentatively, she moved beside him and laid her hand on his. “That’s why you’re the only person who could see me cry like that.”

  “Salick, I…” Garet began and then fell silent. Salick had said all that needed to be said. He nodded at her, patted her han
d awkwardly and stood up. Silently, but with a deeper comfort in each other’s company, they walked back into the sunlight edging around the Palace.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE MECHANICALS

  The pair remained silent as Salick led him across the Palace plaza towards the Temple. There were fewer people on this side of the plaza, and they moved slowly, their eyes on the ground before them. Many men and women walked in the gardens, travelling the twists and turns of the patterned walkways as if in a great, slow dance. Garet paused, captured by their peaceful movements.

  Salick smiled and said, “Don’t worry, we’ll come back another day.” Tugging lightly on his sleeve, she added, “We still have one task ahead of us. An official one, this time.”

  Garet reluctantly followed, skirting the smallest Temple on the north end of the complex. The white walls were blinding in the sun, making them waver before their eyes. The round blue-tiled roofs seemed to float above those blazing walls rather than rest on them. Salick had to keep her hand on his arm to guide him around Temple-goers as he refused to take his eyes off the buildings to look where he was going. The last of the Ward gates in the wall surrounding the plaza was only half open. A knot of men and women, most uncharacteristically, at least for Shirath, wearing drab grey tunics were working under the orders of men in the subdued leather and brass armour of Ward guards.

  One stout guard was directing the group with a stream of splendidly abusive language. “Jaws bite you! Pull harder there!” He pushed a fellow guard into the effort. “All of you Beast-born weaklings, pull!”

  The chains they had attached to the cross beams of the gate groaned as they tightened with the workers’ efforts. After a squealing protest, and an ominous sound of snapping metal, the gate began to open wider. A cheer went up and the supervising guard removed his helmet, the brass scuffed and the plume bent, to wipe his brow.

  “Gonect!” Salick called. “What have you done to the gates?” She smiled at the short man whose prominent belly strained at the straps of his armour.

  He tossed his helmet through the open window of the gatehouse and grinned at the Banes. “Salick! I haven’t seen you in weeks. And a Gold now!” He enfolded her in a bearlike hug. “Your uncle will be happy to see you again,” he added, holding her at arms length. “And, for your information, these gates are trying to recover from another of our Ward Lord’s brilliant ideas.” He pointed to a set of bronze springs fixed to both the wall and the gates themselves. “Those are supposed to let one guard open and close the gates more quickly.” He released Salick and waved angrily at the contraption. “But they don’t allow us to open the clawed thing at all!”

  Salick laughed and said, “Don’t worry, Gonect. I have to see Lord Andarack today—as well as my uncle,” she added, to forestall the guard’s protest, “and I’ll pass on your high opinion of his latest project.” She turned to Garet. “Gonect, this is a friend of mine, Garet.” She pulled him forward. “He’s from the Midlands.”

  Gonect eyed him appraisingly. “So this is the boy Master Mandarack brought back.” He held out a hand. “Welcome to Shirath, lad.”

  Garet grasped his hand and was rewarded with a friendly, if bone-crushing, clasp.

  “I’m glad to meet you, Guardsman,” Garet said, keeping the pain out of his voice.

  Gonect released his hand and looked meaningfully at Salick. “A strong one, eh. And well-spoken too. You better keep him happy, or we’ll steal him for the ward guards!” he laughed, slapping Garet on the back and propelling him several feet.

  At least, thought Garet, as Salick steadied him, the man shows none of the resentment and anger I’ve noticed in many other citizens of Shirath.

  A rattle of chains signified that the workers in grey were loading their equipment into a hand cart, ready to leave. Gonect waved the Banes on and turned to thank the workers.

  Salick nodded to Garet. They crossed the small entrance plaza and took the left-hand lane. A high, blank wall loomed on their left. On their right, narrow townhouses, similar to what he had seen in the Palace Ward, sported many small windows, the bars across them mostly swung open, with boxes of herbs fixed beneath. Old men and women sat in the doorways, minding the children that climbed past them to run up and down the street. A boy no taller than Garet’s waist almost ran him down with an iron hoop he rolled in great wobbles over the cobblestones.

  Salick waved or stopped to say hello to many of the ancients on the steps. She smiled more often than Garet had ever seen. The Banehall might be her home now, he thought, but this is the home of her childhood. He looked around, wondering what a childhood spent surrounded by other children would have meant to him. On their left, a red gate broke the long sweep of walls. Stopping in front of it, Salick examined a rope hanging down from above. It had a wooden handle on its dangling end, but its upper end looped over a hook and disappeared over the top of the gate. A small wooden plaque hung from the handle. On the plaque was painted a single symbol: “pull.” Salick shrugged and cautiously pulled the rope. A bell sounded dimly inside and a door cut into the larger gate was opened before the clanging stopped. The guard who opened it looked with some alarm at the two Banes.

  “There’s no reason to fear,” Salick hastened to tell him. “We are merely on Banehall business and need to see your Lord.”

  The guard nodded, his plume flipping back and forth sharply as he beckoned them inside the door. He bade them wait by the gate while he ran to the house and summoned his master. Garet looked around. The courtyard fronted an impressive house, wide and two stories tall. The other three sides of the court ended in blank walls. Nearly as big as the Banehall’s courtyard, the space was almost filled with a jumble of unharnessed carts, two draft horses munching on heaps of hay, piles of wood and bricks, and a curious wheel-shaped device, its central shaft reaching up into the air to connect by a gear with a similar shaft coming through a hole in the house wall. Spokes came out from the machine, but its purpose was not apparent. The draft horses were yoked to these spokes, but seemed unconcerned by the strangeness of their condition.

  The guard came trotting back and asked them to go ahead into the house on their own as the Lord was presently engaged. If they would wait in the great hall, he would see them there. As they walked across the crowded yard, the gate opened behind them, and the grey-clad workers they had seen earlier came in, pulling their handcart full of chains and tools.

  Once inside, the warmth of the house engulfed them. A servant was waiting, a silent, bent old man. He led them at an arthritic pace down the hall and through a stone arch into the great hall. Here, as Garet knew from Marick, a Lord would entertain, instruct his servants and retainers, organize trade missions with the merchants of his Ward, and hold court to punish or reward his subjects. But nothing in this explanation had prepared him for Lord Andarack’s great hall.

  It was as cluttered and bizarre as the courtyard. The timber shaft from outside pierced a roughly cut-out hole in the brick wall, connecting to what seemed to be a cider-press. The hearth was surrounded by sand-filled baskets, and several braziers sent smoke up to the high ceiling, explaining the warmth they felt on entering the house. Long tables, to be used for feasting, now stood haphazardly here and there, their scarred surfaces covered with tools, drawings, and half-eaten meals. What should have been the Lord’s seat of judgement had been replaced on its dais by an anvil. More of the men and women in grey were already here, some hammering at metal, others shaping it with files and grindstones, and still more poring over plans and waving their hands at each other. Garet looked at Salick. Her mouth had dropped open as she looked around the room, eyes blinking rapidly as if she didn’t trust them. Well, thought Garet, at least this time I’m not the only one stunned.

  One of the men came over to them, wiping his hands on his grey tunic before holding one out in greeting. “Banes! You are unexpected but welcome.” He stopped and looked carefully. “Salick? Is that you?” He beamed at her and pumped her hand enthusiastically. “This i
s a pleasant surprise. Have you been to see your uncle? Not yet? Well, I imagine he’ll be just as pleased as I am.” While he talked he led them to a side table that held several pots of tea and many cups, a few still unused.

  “I have a message from Master Mandarack, my Lord,” Salick said, her eyes still sliding from the man to the chaos of the room. “Lord Andarack, what have you done to your hall?” she blurted out, and immediately coloured as she realized how impolite she sounded.

  The Ward Lord, however, took no offense. Looking him over, Garet saw that he was as tall as his brother, but thicker at the waist. Unlike his brother, his hair still had streaks of blond among the grey. He laughed and poured them both a cup of tea. “It is a mess, isn’t it?” He handed Garet his cup and motioned them to three-legged stools by the table. “But the Mechanical’s school was overcrowded, and there were several things we needed to build that wouldn’t fit.” He gave Salick her tea, then poured a cup for himself. “Dasanat! Watch the colour of the glass!” he yelled, jumping up and spilling the greater portion of his drink.

  A young woman near the hearth looked up and nodded. Part of the hearth had been closed in with hasty brick work to form a glass-blower’s furnace. Dasanat carefully examined the glob of molten glass on the end of her pipe. Shaking her head, she placed that end carefully back in the furnace before standing back and wiping the beads of sweat from her face.

  Andarack sat back down and resumed his conversation with the Banes, but kept an eye on the furnace. “Forgive me, but if the temperature is wrong, the beakers made from that glass will shatter when heated.” He reluctantly turned back to them. “I thank you for your troubles, Salick and…” he paused, his eyes on Garet.

  “My name is Garet, Lord Andarack.” He stood and sketched his best bow. “Your brother brought me here from the Midlands.”

  Andarack’s eyes lit up. “Did he indeed?” He grabbed Garet’s elbow and steered him to where several of the hall’s chairs had been placed beneath the narrow windows. “Sit here,” he directed and quickly sat beside him. He gently turned Garet’s head this way and that, examining his black hair and brown eyes in the shafts of sunlight. “Is it true that the field snakes of the Midlands carry their young wrapped around them until they are grown?” he asked eagerly.