The khalif stopped in front of the doors to the catacombs, and Surfeyn, misunderstanding the hesitation, opened the door with sword drawn, as pleased his master. “No, Surfeyn.” Ahmaad glanced over his shoulder, eyes narrowed. “Cragyn has prepared the way. There is no need for the sword.”
Displeased, Surfeyn bowed until the tassels of his turban swept the floor. “As you wish, my master. May you live forever.”
Ahmaad’s lips turned in a slight smile, then he glanced back at the hall, cast in flickering torch light. “Live forever? To survive the night will suffice. By the Brothers, I saw the Harvester in a dream last night, come to gather my soul. I sense your displeasure. Come, trust me tonight.”
The wizard led Ahmaad and his bodyguard into the catacombs, chill and dank beneath the palace dungeons. They passed below the catacombs, into mad King Toth’s secret apartments and passageways. Small creatures scrabbled and hissed in the darkness, but fled when Surfeyn drew too close with his torch. At last Cragyn led them to the rooms he had prepared. He bowed, then scuttled back into the darkness in the direction from which they’d come. Surfeyn watched him go with a sense of release. There was no sound but their own breathing and the crackling of the torch.
Surfeyn drew the khalif inside, then lit the candles set out by the wizard, dipped from strange-smelling wax that burned with ghostly blue light. He helped Ahmaad ready himself for bed, then covered him with several blankets.
Ahmaad gripped his wrist with a palsied hand. “Stay awake, my friend.”
Surfeyn bowed low, ignoring the blue foam that flecked his master’s lips. “Yes, master.” He drew his scimitar and turned to guard the door.
Surfeyn hated himself for despising the khalif at moments like this. He reminded himself of the man Ahmaad Faal had once been. He’d rebuilt the aqueducts, driven the stone giants back to the mountains, and commissioned seven new cities to reap the trade flowing east along the Tothian Way. He’d commanded such respect and love from the other khalifs of the eastern plains that they’d crowned him high khalif, with the power to tax their cities and command their armies. When Josiah Saffa, former enemy of Veyre, gave his favorite daughter Tainara to Ahmaad Faal for wife, the people of both cities celebrated for two weeks. Ahmaad built the famous hanging gardens to honor his new bride.
Tainara Saffa lacked the beauty of her sisters, but as a queen she had no equal. She loved the people, and turned her husband’s heart to mercy. He lowered taxes in her name, forgave debts at her request. On their fifth anniversary, he emptied the treasury to feed the poor, just as the five brothers had fed the world with the work of their creation. That night, an assassin poisoned Tainara’s wine. Two days later, the khalifa lay atop a tower of silence outside of Veyre, her bones picked clean by ravens and vultures.
Surfeyn’s heart tightened in grief. Had it really been ten years? So long, but such a short time for a king to wither and die. To give the scepter of power to his wizard and his vizier to rule in his stead.
Surfeyn heard a noise in the hallway outside the door. It began as a whisper, followed by the patter of feet and a chill breeze that bled through the key hole. He drew his sword and climbed to his feet.
He peered through the key hole, cursing the paranoia that kept the khalif from guarding his rooms with an entire regiment, as he’d once guarded the rooms of his wife. Still, Surfeyn had killed assassins before and might yet preserve the khalif’s life. But what he saw clenched his stomach with fear.
Wights. At least ten of them, glowing with a pale blue light, milling outside the door as if waiting for something or someone to come. What could bind so many at one time? Only dark magic could keep so many hidden from the Harvester, who collected the souls of the dead lest they pollute the world with their madness. Surfeyn pulled back and looked for something to block the door.
The door rocked backwards with a terrific blow. Behind, Ahmaad sat up straight in his bed. “The Harvester,” he whispered, drawing his blankets up to his neck. His face paled and his hands trembled. “Don’t let him take me.”
No, not the Harvester. Surfeyn would have welcomed the dark gatherer’s presence now, as the wights would flee if he appeared. Surfeyn braced himself.
The door rocked backwards again. Splinters burst outward and the hinges sagged. Again and again the door rocked until at last it burst open in a shower of splinters.
Wights poured into the room, setting into him with teeth and claws. He drove them back with his sword. He chopped the head of one from its shoulders and it dissolved with a scream, then fled like a shadow back to the halls. Not dead, but rendered harmless. He destroyed another, and the rest hesitated
And then she stepped into the room. Unlike the crippled wights surrounding her, she stood taller than she had in life, a tiara blazing on her forehead. She who had once commanded every khalifate from here to the mountains. She who had once ruled the khalif’s own heart with love and tender advice. She reached out a pale blue hand to point at Surfeyn. “Out of my way, worm.”
“Tainara,” the khalif whispered behind Surfeyn, his voice a mixture of awe and horror. “You’ve come for me.”
“Yes, my dear. I’ve come to take you away from this frail body,” she said, her voice so deadly beautiful that Surfeyn wept under its power.
At last Surfeyn understood. The blue candles, the blue poison given the khalif at dinner, the blue light cast by the wights. Cragyn. The wizard meant not only to kill the king but to bind his soul. Yes, much as he must have done to the khalifa herself. Corrupted her strength and goodness with dark magicks.
Surfeyn tore himself from Tainara’s spell. He let out a terrible cry and swung his sword at her head. But the other wights reached him first, driving him to the ground. They stripped the sword from his hands and ripped at his face and belly. Surfeyn stood no chance.
The queen stepped toward her husband with outstretched hands. In one palm lay a dagger. Ahmaad Faal’s eyes widened in horror and madness. She clasped him in a deadly embrace.
And thus was the high khalif murdered in his bed. Murdered and bound into the service of Cragyn the Wizard. And such had grown the wizard’s power that none in Veyre dared challenge his right to the Iron Throne. The other cities of the eastern plain shortly fell under his sway. Soon, he turned his attentions to the western khalifates and to controlling the length of the Tothian Way, all the way to the Citadel lying over the mountains.
1
Before the corrections guild sold his family into slavery, laughter and beautiful things filled Darik’s life. Every year, his father acquired more slaves and servants to buy and sell his wares, and every year he added to his shops in the heart of the Merchant Quarter. Men came to his father to borrow money or beg his support for claims against the other guilds. There was even talk that the grand vizier would appoint him to guildmaster, Balsalom’s most powerful position outside the walls of the palace. The khalifa herself invited Darik’s parents to the Feast of Summer’s Eve at the palace.
At the height of their wealth, Darik and his parents moved from their house on the edge of the quarter to a lavish three-story manor with a courtyard, gardens, and forty slaves. Father tore down the manor to the east and built a children’s garden in its place.
And then, after three failed birthings, Darik’s mother gave birth to his sister Kaya. She was a beautiful child, with eyes like her mother’s, but her birth cost Darik’s mother her life, and would soon cost the family their fortunes.
Darik spent most of his time after the year of his fourteenth birthday in the garden, losing himself in daydreams among the statues of griffins and giants and other strange and wondrous beasts. Wild roses tangled the walls, and monkeys chattered in the trees as they fought over figs pilfered from the kitchens. Sometimes he fell asleep in the shade and dreamt of his mother holding him in her arms. That year was like a glass of fermented coconut milk, both sweet and bitter at the same time.
The family’s fortunes held the first year after his mother’s death, then coll
apsed. Darik heard rumors of bad loans, of trading partners cheating his father, of caravans lost on the Tothian Way as it snaked through the mountains. Father retreated to his rooms and drank too much wine.
Darik soon learned what the rest of the household thought of his father. Darik and the stablemaster’s daughter, a pretty girl with curly black hair named Lassa, had gone to the stable lofts. Lassa was a year older than he and Darik noticed her swelling breasts every time he passed her in the stables. How long had she worked in the stables with her father? He had no memory of her until a few months earlier. Perhaps she had lived elsewhere, but he thought it likely that he had simply never noticed her before.
One afternoon she had whispered to him while he brushed his horse, and beckoned wickedly for him to follow her up to the loft. Darik obeyed, heart pounding as he climbed the ladder behind her, watching her hips swaying seductively with every step.
Up in the loft she pushed him into the hay and kissed him hard on the mouth. Her scent mingled with the sweet smell of fresh hay. Startled, he pulled away. He scrambled toward the ladder. But when he turned around to climb down, she pulled her robe down from her shoulders to bare her breasts. She grabbed his hand and put it on her breast, pulling at his tunic with a shocking urgency. Her touch was like fire against his skin and he felt a sudden shame.
Voices sounded below and Darik sat upright. He straightened his tunic. Had the stablemaster followed them? The stablemaster had a terrible temper, raging against the hands when they reported late for work. Darik feared the man would beat him senseless for daring to touch his daughter. Lassa giggled and Darik put his hand over her mouth to quiet the foolish girl.
It was the stablemaster, but he wasn’t looking for his daughter. He spoke instead with another man, so loud and brash that it was clear that he meant to hide no secret. And he spoke treason against the family.
“Not a bad offer,” the stablemaster mused. “Yes, I think I’ll accept. Kerack has nothing but nags in his stables anymore. There’s nothing for me here.”
“The offer is only good if you bring along Kerack’s chief cook. My master has taken a liking to the cook’s game hen pie. You are friends with the cook, aren’t you?”
“Oh yes,” the stablemaster said. “If I tell him to come, he’ll come.”
“How long?” the other man asked. Darik looked through the wooden slats in the loft. The other man wore the purple robes of a master merchant’s chief steward. Sent by one of Father’s rivals? Or maybe even a friend. None of his father’s friends amounted to much these days.
“A fortnight, no more.” The stablemaster grinned. “Long enough to pay a final visit to my favorite wenches in the kitchens.”
The other man laughed. “And what if you leave, and Kerack rights the Nendra family fortunes? There was a time when people thought he’d rise to guildmaster when the khalifa tires of Fenerath’s petulance.”
“Nah, they’re finished,” the stablemaster said. “Give them a year and the Nendras will be no higher or lower than any other family in the guild.”
The girl grabbed Darik to pull him into the hay again, but he pushed her aside. He climbed down the ladder with an angry curse, completely forgetting that the stablemaster’s daughter still lay half naked upstairs.
“Go then,” he shouted at the stablemaster. He picked up a clod of dried horse dung and hurled it. The dung struck the stunned man directly on the forehead. “Leave, if you’re so anxious to betray your master! Or stay and muck stalls because your days as stablemaster are finished.” Darik ran from the stables, face flushed with rage.
Later that afternoon when Darik approached Father with news of the man’s treacherous words, Father merely sighed and turned to looking out the window at the courtyard. He’d had a statue of mother built and he liked to look at it. Father poured himself another glass of wine and sent Darik away.
As it turned out, the stablemaster was wrong. Within a year, the family dropped much lower than the merchants who Father had once called friends. Rather than selling some of his markets and property to satisfy debts, Father determined to cling to his status as long as possible. He borrowed more and more, convinced that his fortune would turn. Soon, debts mounted so high that moneylenders refused to grant new funds, and voracious interest payments ate every dinar he earned and then some.
At last, angry merchants cast him from the guild, and with no license, he couldn’t buy or sell goods. Even then he might have salvaged the family honor if he had sold everything at once, satisfied his debts and begged mercy from the guild. Instead, he wasted time appealing to his friend the grand vizier. The vizier was sympathetic, but he needed the guilds to raise tax money to finance the new tower to honor the fifth year of the khalifa’s reign. By the time father decided to sell it was too late. He found no buyer before the guildmaster moved against them.
The Nendra manor sat quietly for three weeks after the money counters left father’s employ; father could no longer pay them. Servants slipped away during the night, or begged release to visit a sick relative or take care of other pressing business. Father railed against their faithlessness but was powerless to stop them. The slaves and a handful of loyal servants remained behind, together with Darik, his sister Kaya, and Kaya’s nursemaid.
Darik woke one night to an insistent pounding on his chamber door. He pushed aside pillows that had built up over his head while he slept, pressing in with a smothering heat. Still groggy, he opened the door and blinked at what he saw.
A man stood in the hallway, wearing thick purple robes, clasped with a broach with a giant emerald that stared at him like a green eye. A silk turban sat on his head and rings sat on every finger, so big and heavy that they made his hands look like claws.
“Come with me, slave,” the man said sharply. “Hurry, boy.”
“I’m not a slave,” Darik said, heat rising in his cheeks at such insolence. “And who are you? Where are the guards?”
The man laughed without fear and Darik blinked, suddenly recognizing the man. Father had pointed him out at every feast, complained about him too many times to forget. Fenerath, the guildmaster, and father’s enemy. Fenerath was young for a guildmaster, several years younger than father, with a lean, cunning look in his eyes.
The man standing to the right of the guildmaster wore the blue turban of a Selphan and held scrolls of disbursement in his hand, closed with the grand vizier’s seal. The grand vizier had given similar scrolls to father when he’d brought judgment before the guild courts against a business partner who’d cheated father during a trading mission to Eriscoba. All of the man’s properties and markets had been forfeit by such a document.
Two armed guardsmen stood behind Fenerath’s shoulder, scimitars in hand. The guildmaster beckoned with one jeweled finger. “Come, boy,” he said, voice softening slightly. “It will be easier if you don’t fight it.”
Kaya cried out down the hall, sounding frightened as Fenerath’s men carried her from her nursery. Kaya’s nursemaid wailed out in terror as men dragged her from her room. At last Darik woke enough to understand. It had ended. Father’s business, his hope for reconciliation with the guild. The family. He looked wildly around the room for something with which he could fight. He would not be taken as a slave.
The two guardsmen stiffened. “Boy!” Fenerath warned.
Shouts came from down the hall. “Let her go, you bastards! Let her go. The Harvester take you all.”
The two guardsmen looked to the struggle down the hall as Father struggled against the men holding his arms. Kaya cried out and tried to reach her father, while the child’s nursemaid wailed and tried to reach the girl as well. Darik moved quickly.
He grabbed the sword from the nearest guardsman, wrenching it free before the man could pull the blade away. He slashed at the guardsman to drive him out of the way, then shoved past the startled guildmaster to run to his father’s aid.
Two of the guardsmen surrounding his father stepped to block the way, swords drawn. Darik lunge
d at the first man, who easily turned his blade. The second man grabbed his wrist and wrenched it sharply toward the flagstones until Darik winced in pain and let the blade drop.
“Bring the boy here,” Fenerath said.
“Leave him alone!” Father roared, but the other men dragged him down the hall, together with Kaya and several slaves.
Fenerath’s eyes hardened. “Very well, slave, you make this difficult. I’d thought to spare you humiliation, as requested by the grand vizier. But we will do this as guild law allows.” He fingered the broach around his neck and turned to the guardsmen. “Summon the Corrections Guild. They shall accompany us to the slave blocks.”
They dragged him into the courtyard just inside the gates and stripped him naked. He stood shivering in the chill air of pre-dawn, while Fenerath’s men brought the manor slaves to stand naked by his side. Kaya’s nursemaid clenched the child to her breast and wept. Two men from the corrections guild lashed their whips at any slave who dared step from the line, and thrashed Darik across the shoulders when he tried to move closer to his sister. Another corrector came a moment later to bind them all together.
The destruction of a family house cursed all who worked within its walls—anyone who could be sold as property, that is. Father’s slaves looked just as stunned as Darik felt, accustomed as they’d become to the family’s wealth and honor.
The correctors brought his father to the courtyard just before dawn, his face bruised and swollen. He stood too far away for Darik to speak with him. But it was just as well. A rage burned in Darik’s gut, much of it directed toward his father.
It was his fault. He’d led them to this point. Such thoughts shamed Darik in their petty cruelty, but he was helpless to turn them aside.
The manor gates opened at dawn and the correctors lashed their whips and drove the naked slaves into the streets. A curious crowd gathered in the streets to watch. Such slave processions were rare. The fortunes of few families changed so spectacularly. More often, a wealthy man’s fortunes might slip until he became another man’s servant, while a bondsman might climb his way from apprentice to journeyman to master guildsman to take his place in the order of things.
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