“You think word travels that fast? They’ll know what you did?”
“Kuda Varai is large, but our numbers are small. We don’t often turn on each other. When someone does, it’s newsworthy.”
The topic made him look unhappy again, so she changed the subject.
“How far is the city?”
“We’ll be there by the night after tomorrow.”
Her stomach twisted with anxiety. They were so close already.
He was already writing something else and didn’t notice her distress.
“Vondh Rav is beautiful. I wish I were taking you there under more pleasant circumstances. I could show it to you.”
She tried to imagine getting a guided tour of Vondh Rav, and the image was so strange and ridiculous that she almost laughed. “What is it like?”
He thought. “It’s the only city I’ve been to. I don’t know what to compare it to,” he said, looking a little regretful. “It’s noisy. Even during the day. Too crowded. But it has everything. You’d never get bored there.”
“Did you grow up there?”
“No. I grew up in a village like Shadri’s. I moved to Vondh Rav when I got older…and then quickly moved away again.” He smiled wryly.
“I did the same with Valtos,” Novikke wrote. She twirled the pencil in her fingers, watching him. “I could show you Ardani.”
He said nothing. She knew what he was thinking without him having to write anything.
“If you need to leave Kuda Varai after this, I’ll take you. I meant it when I said I’d help you.”
He glanced up at her again before he wrote, his eyes lingering on hers. “Have you ever seen other Varai in Ardani?” he asked.
She hated to tell him the truth. But she couldn’t lie. “No.”
He gave her a dark smirk.
“That doesn’t mean it’s impossible,” she added.
“How do you think a Varai would survive outside Kuda Varai?”
“Carefully. With the help of a local. The same way I survived in Kuda Varai.”
He closed his eyes, cheek propped on his hand. Rain drummed against the walls and on the ground outside.
“I would like to see Ardani,” he wrote after a while.
Novikke smiled.
“I dreamed of traveling there, when I was young, before I learned it was impossible. I’ve heard Valtos is so large that all of Kuda Varai could fit inside it. Is that true?”
“No. But it’s still pretty big,” she wrote.“You’ve never been outside Kuda Varai?”
He slowly shook his head.
“There are deserts in the southeast, plains across the middle of the country, and snow-covered mountains to the north.” Her eyes went wide suddenly. “You’ve never seen the ocean,” she wrote.
He shook his head again.
“When we finish this, I’m going to take you to see it.”
He smiled in a way that made her think he wasn’t taking her seriously.
“Why—” he wrote, then stopped. Novikke’s gaze hovered on the word. She raised an eyebrow.
He abandoned that beginning and started anew. ”I’ve done nothing but hurt you, and you’ve done nothing but help me.”
“You protected me when I couldn’t protect myself,” she wrote.
“Not as much as I should have.”
He still regretted the way things had happened when they’d met. But when she thought about it, she couldn’t see any other way that things could have gone. He’d done all the right things to protect himself and his people, and had still been as fair to her as he could. There was a good reason that humans were kept out of Kuda Varai, as had been made clear after they’d run into the Ardanians. That the two of them had managed to protect each other, in spite of so many people working against them, was a miracle.
She turned the page and realized that the next page was the last in the book. They might need that last page for an emergency.
“Sleep?” she wrote.
Dawn light leaked through the cracks of the shuttered window. Aruna nodded.
Chapter 5
It was the next evening when Novikke saw rectangular shapes looming between the trees in the distance.
The narrow path had widened until it resembled a road—something she hadn’t thought existed in Kuda Varai. She could only guess that this meant they were coming to someplace important. And there was only one place of real importance in Kuda Varai.
Aruna stopped and wrote in the notebook. “Vondh Rav is ahead,” he’d written, confirming her suspicions.
“How do we get in without being seen?”
“We don’t.” He gave her a guilty glance. “I go in through the front gate, with my captive.”
She frowned at him. He reached inside his pack and pulled out a coiled length of rope, which he showed to her as if asking permission. Suddenly she understood why he hadn’t explained more of the details of his plan earlier.
“And after we get in?” she wrote, realizing it was only going to get worse once they were inside the city.
He pressed his lips together and bent over the notebook as he wrote. “No one will give you a second glance if they think you’re a slave.”
Novikke’s lip curled. But he wasn’t wrong. Like Neiryn had said, no non-Varai went to Vondh Rav except as slaves. There was no better way for her to blend in.
She held out her arms. Aruna gave a short nod and pulled her hands behind her. She almost protested when he took Zaiur’s sword from her and strapped it to his hip, but bit her tongue.
“Just like old times,” she muttered. She twisted her wrists, testing the rope. It was looser now than it ever had been when they’d first met. She’d be able to get out of it on her own, if she wanted to. But the sensation of rope around her still gave her a sense of Panic encroaching on her thoughts.
Aruna wrote something, and held the book up for her to read. “Thank you.”
He pulled up his hood, shrouding his face, and put a steadying hand on her arm as they proceeded.
As they went farther down the path, buildings climbed out of the dim of evening. Just a few scattered homes at first, and then more. It was nothing like Rameka. As they went farther down the road, they grew larger and more closely packed.
It was much like the area surrounding the walls of Valtos. The notable difference was the way that trees and brush grew between buildings and even in the road. Wherever they could be left alone, they were. The Varai only cut the trees that they absolutely had to.
Night was falling, and people were just starting to wake and emerge from houses. A few of them tossed Novikke angry looks when they saw her.
Just the sight of her was enough to anger them, and she wasn’t even wearing her Ardanian uniform anymore. She wondered what they thought she’d done to deserve their ire.
Ahead, the road came to an abrupt dead end. Bizarrely, a wide set of stairs led into the earth where the road ended, covered by an ornate stone overhang and guarded by several armed and armored men and women. As they approached, Aruna’s hand tightened on Novikke’s arm. She didn’t have to work particularly hard to look nervous.
She was willingly walking into Vondh Rav under the supervision of a Varai man, who she’d allowed to take her weapon and bind her hands. It occurred to her that she might be the most foolish person in the world. She was sure Neiryn would agree, at least.
The guards barely looked at them as they passed. There were no extra security measures to get into the city, evidently. Being Varai was enough to be granted entry.
She breathed out a shaky breath as they left the guards behind and started down the stairway. Aruna squeezed her arm a little, and she silently cursed him. That had only been the beginning. An entire city full of people who wanted to kill her awaited them.
The stairs descended deep into the ground, down a long, straight tunnel lit with torches that were too far apart for her human eyes to make use of. Twice she slipped over an uneven stair and would have fallen if Aruna hadn’t hastily
pulled her upright.
At the bottom of the stairs, the tunnel opened up into a cavern. Novikke gaped.
They were in an enormous underground city square, dimly lit by fire and mage lights. Buildings were made from stone blocks or carved from the stone of the cavern itself. Apartments built into the walls lined the sides of the cavern. Novikke saw a woman halfway to the ceiling emerge from a doorway to shake out a rug over a balcony. Lines of drying laundry hung across windows.
Suddenly there were night elves all around, entering or exiting the square through tunnel mouths that led deeper into the earth. A group of children played near a patch of trees and ferns that were somehow growing here, in the dark, in the middle of the cavern. In the distance beyond the trees she could see something resembling a marketplace.
She’d thought there were a lot of Varai at Rameka. This was another experience entirely—one that she had not been prepared for.
She’d expected more hateful stares, but hardly anyone looked in her direction. Scanning the space, she saw a few other pale-skinned heads sticking out of the crowd. Perhaps her presence here was not as noteworthy as it had been outside the city.
Aruna had paused at the base of the stairway, allowing her to take everything in.
She turned and made a motion with her arms, drawing attention to her bound wrists. The other humans she saw were walking about freely, unrestrained. Aruna scanned the cavern until he spotted another human. He glanced at Novikke and nodded toward the man, then pointed to his own neck. It was then that she noticed that all the non-Varai were wearing identical leather collars.
Disgust crept up her throat. She turned a mistrustful eye on Aruna. He took out the notebook.
“It’s how we know they’re accounted for,” he wrote. “The names of their masters are on the collars.”
He wanted to put one of those on her. She gave a disgusted scoff.
Aruna stared at her stiffly. Novikke regretted that her hands weren’t free for her to write, or she’d have told him exactly how she felt about this terrible idea.
His brows tipped inward a little. “It will help you blend in,” he wrote. “People will wonder about you if you don’t have one.”
Against her better judgement, she nodded. Satisfied, Aruna pointed to the “thank you” he’d written earlier.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Novikke muttered. He took her arm again and pulled her into the crowd.
They walked through the square and into another tunnel, down another series of steps, and into an even more massive cavern. Novikke wondered at how it all held itself up. The space was the size of a small town, and it was all under a dome of rock deep in the ground.
It was too dark for her to see where she was stepping. The only light came from too-dim mage lights and occasional flickering torches scattered around on walls and paths. The lack of vision was disorienting. Bodies she could hardly see brushed past her, further confusing her. The air was thick with words she didn’t understand from sources she couldn’t see. The longer she was here, the more alien this place felt. It was so much bigger and more overwhelming than she’d anticipated.
She focused on Aruna’s hand on her elbow, clinging to that solid touch in the midst of this sea of strangeness. Suddenly she was terrified that he’d let go and she’d be alone, trapped.
Every once in a while, they passed another slave. Novikke’s eyes would curiously dart to theirs, but they rarely returned her gaze. One woman she passed had bruises all over her face. Anger and fear flared hot in Novikke’s chest as she looked at her. She averted her eyes, resolving to stare at the ground from then on. Aruna’s hand squeezed her arm again, in a way that she supposed was meant to be encouraging, but it was a struggle not to jerk away from him.
Aruna stopped beside an open doorway on the bottom floor of a narrow building. Novikke stepped up behind him, glad to be out of the crowd. It was brighter inside, with candles flickering in sconces on the walls. It was a leatherworker’s shop, judging by the wares on display.
He gave her a cautious glance, then took out the notebook and had begun writing something when a voice from inside the shop interrupted him.
A man with graying hair appeared in the doorway, glanced at Novikke, and ushered Aruna inside. Novikke watched him narrowly, immediately disliking him.
Words were exchanged. Aruna’s voice swung with the same quick, disjointed cadence of all the voices outside. He finally unwound the rope on her wrists.
The man disappeared behind a counter and came back holding one of those damned collars. He gestured toward a chair in the middle of the room. Aruna shoved her, and she stumbled into it. She shot him an annoyed glance, which he didn’t acknowledge. He watched her expressionlessly, arms crossed.
She saw the shopkeeper approach with a needle and thread, and realized that he was going to sew the thing onto her so that it couldn’t be removed. His hand palmed the back of her head and shoved it forward so that her chin touched her chest. Leather wrapped around her neck. He positioned it so that the ends overlapped, leaving a square of material where he could sew the leather to itself.
The shopkeeper said something, and they both laughed. They talked as he began to sew. The tone of the conversation was so light, they might have been discussing the weather. She looked at Aruna’s feet. He seemed very far away even though he was standing just in front of her. He leaned forward to brush her hair away from her neck and hold it out of the way while the other man worked.
The needle stabbed her as it jabbed through the leather, and she jumped. The man made an annoyed comment and Aruna’s hands appeared on either side of her head, holding her still.
Unwelcome images cropped up in her mind—memories of being held down by strong, unkind hands, of being bound, of blades slicing through her skin, of blinding terror. Suddenly it was hard to breathe. Her heart pounded unevenly.
What had she been thinking, coming here, letting them do this to her, putting herself at the mercy of people who hated her? Everything depended upon Aruna. If he could protect her. If he would protect her.
How easy it would be for him to decide he liked her better this way, and just never take off that collar. What was the difference between pretending to be a slave and truly being one, really? She already looked the part. She was already helpless and alone. He could…
A tremble of Panic vibrated up her throat.
Don’t. Stop thinking that.
Calm down.
Calm down.
The needle pricked her skin again, and she flinched. Their voices carried over her head, strangely distant. Every muscle in her body was taut. Her fingers gripped the arms of the chair so hard that she half expected the wood to splinter. Her shoulders were hunched to her ears. Aruna’s hands were still on her head, and the shopkeeper’s fingers dug into her neck. They wouldn’t stop touching her. The collar tightened around her, choking her.
After ages, he finished, knotting the thread and then snapping it off. Novikke stared at the floor, frozen. She heard more talking, and then someone took her hand and pulled her to her feet. The world was distant and unreal. She couldn’t really see her surroundings, and it had nothing to do with the dark.
She let herself be pulled out of the shop and onto the street. Bodies pressed in again. Unfamiliar words floated all around. Her throat tightened.
Someone—Aruna—said something she didn’t understand. She saw a dark path with no one on it. In a rush, she pulled away from him and darted into the alley beside the shop, away from the crowd. In the relative seclusion there, she put her back against the wall and tried to breathe and not vomit.
Aruna, a stranger, appeared in front of her. His hands were on her arms, his bright eyes wide. His mouth moved, saying words she didn’t know. She didn’t know why he bothered.
She shook her head, putting her face in her hands. She was so weak. She’d thought she’d been getting better. It hadn’t been this bad in a long time.
”Havash kuva, Novikke,” she heard him
say.
He tried to come closer, and the wall was still at her back, and the idea of being trapped between his body and the building sent her into another spiral of panic. She shoved against his chest, holding him back. To her relief, he stopped and took a step back. One hand was still on her wrist, annoyingly refusing to let go, but his grip was light enough that it didn’t make her heart stutter and her vision blur with fear.
Night Elves of Ardani: Book Three: Invocation Page 5
