He opened his mouth to say something but failed, only a rasp emerging. The pain around his eyes grew, a faint frustration that was hampered by the agony he was sure to be in. There was a sense of fading light in his eyes, and she saw it, knew the end was close.
“Go on,” she said, not breaking eye contact.
He stared at her, his face a mask of pain, then spoke, a soft, wheezing rasp. “Tell … my daughter …” His last breath came, a sound that rattled just a little as it left his body. His face went slack, head tilting as his neck lost the fight against his sagging muscles. With surprising gentleness, Martaina eased him to the ground, dragging him off the root so his body could lie prostrate. With a last touch, she closed his eyes.
“So much for that hanging,” Longwell said, but he didn’t seem too fussed about it.
“It’s a shame,” Thad said, and the hardness of his words were difficult for Martaina to hear. “What he did to us, to Sanctuary—”
“Is over now,” Martaina said as she stood, looking down at the unmoving dark elf.
“I suppose,” Thad said, as though he didn’t really believe it. “But the dead, the destruction … the dark elves have truly wrecked our home—”
“Home,” Martaina said, rolling the word around in her mouth, ignoring the rest of what Thad said. “I want to go home.”
There was a pause, and Longwell was next to speak. “I suppose we can. Should we bring the body back to—?”
“No,” Martaina said, and looked down at the corpse once more. “There are plenty enough of them crowding the grounds of Sanctuary as it is. Best leave this one where it lies.”
“Wizard,” Thad called out, and somewhere in the hunting party Martaina could hear murmured assent from the person Thad called to, “cast us home.”
A faint light glowed as the spell began. Martaina looked her last upon the body. The general’s eyes were unmoving, no life in them, no steady breathing, his days at an end. He looked … peaceful, as though he had simply fallen asleep. The light of the torches played across his navy skin, the firelight giving it a hue of liveliness that would surely not last past their leaving. “Goodbye,” she whispered, so low that none of the others could hear it, and felt the warmth of the magic as it spread across her skin, carrying her home, and back to a comfortable bed.
A PRINCESS OF SOVAR
You do not know Sovar. Humans hear the name Saekaj Sovar and think of one large city, the dark capital of the shadowed elves, and know naught else of it but a name, a tremble, a fear to wake to in the midst of a nightmare.
Whispers of slavery, of men and women in chains harnessed to some dark purpose, are bandied about in cities of free men like Reikonos, where even the despised dark elves are only occasionally harmed. Reikonos is a pleasure palace for dark elves compared to the horror that would await a human in Saekaj and Sovar, the twin chambers where most of the dark elven population dwell in the darkness beneath the rocky surface of Arkaria. But humans do not know them as separate entities or that they are beneath the soils, that they are in a darkness so complete that any human brought down to the depths goes blind within a matter of mere weeks, stumbling sightlessly for the rest of his days.
No, you do not know Sovar, nor Saekaj either. But I know them. I know them all too well—the wealth and splendor and exclusivity of Saekaj, and the bitter, clutching, ravening poverty of Sovar. I have tasted the latter, tasted it like bitter clay that is all the poorest have to eat on the worst days, and it sits on my tongue like the sediment that it is.
I know Sovar, I knew it well until the day I left—left and never looked back. I know it still because Sovar never changes. It is a fixed point, an unmoving star in the night sky, and remains constant as rain on a summer’s day falling across the grasses of Perdamun. I can tell you about Sovar, give you a glimpse into the darkness, let your human eyes see as most never do.
Come with me into the dark, into Sovar, and be illuminated in a way that I never was until the day I escaped from her shadows.
*
I was born in poverty, I lived in poverty, and if I had stayed, fulfilling the wish of the Sovereign for all dark elves to remain in their born stations, I would have died as impoverished as I had begun.
In Reikonos, a dark elf can become a dockworker, save money, become a merchant, perhaps work his way up to owning a farm outside the city. I know of a few dark elves who have even bought houses on the bluffs overlooking the Torrid Sea, a privilege that is supposedly only for humans and the occasional wealthy elf. This happens in blatant defiance of the Council of Twelve’s sumptuary laws on the matter, but even they turn a blind eye. Gold is the god of Reikonos, no matter what Virixia or Ashea might receive in the way of temples, and even the Council of Twelve is subject to that particular divinity’s good graces.
In Sovar, though, it is said that the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have all been cut out. Certainly, you hear a few tales now and again of those who faithfully serve the Sovereign moving up in the world. Everyone knows the legend of Amenon Lepos, who was born in Sovar, who lived in Sovar, and who rose to take the second-greatest manor in Saekaj. His name is on the lips of every boy in Sovar; all of them want to be him, and all the girls want to marry the next Amenon Lepos before he leaves the squalor behind.
None of them will, though.
The last census taken of the Sovereignty found almost two million people living in the capital, and all but two hundred thousand of them were in Sovar. One hundred and fifty thousand of them are servants who live and work in the manor houses of elite of Saekaj. If not for this then they, too, would be in the depths with the rest of us.
Only one noble—ONE of them—has risen from Sovar.
One in two million.
The rungs of the ladder are indeed removed, misplaced, chopped out so that Saekaj can remain the exclusive club that it has always been. The story of Amenon Lepos keeps the youth hoping, though, until they become too old and beaten down by the workaday labor offered hauling clay or toiling in the pits or fishing the Great Sea below to realize that they have been deceived. Even the army officers buy into it in order to live near the Front Gate, the more upper-crust section of Sovar, rather than in the Back Deep. The brightly dyed fabric has been well and truly pulled over their eyes, though; they don’t even realize it until they’re too worn down to do anything about it.
The people should see the truth of it on the day when the League heads come down from Saekaj to examine all the poor children of Sovar for magical abilities. It’s a show, all of it. Once per year they turn us all out from our ramshackle abodes, from our dirt homes cut into the mud or built atop other shanties in the depths of Sovar. They set the time, ring bells in the streets and we all come running—the youth, those not yet broken down by a life of labor—fresh with the possibility of being the next Amenon Lepos.
Fools, all of them, for only a handful are chosen in a good year, and in some years, none at all. There are never any chosen from the Back Deep, that pit of despair on the downward slope of the cavern where the poorest of the poor make their homes. For them, the dream should be dead right then and there.
But it doesn’t die, it morphs into the glorious idea of becoming a spearman in the army and somehow worming one’s way into the middle class, a small cottage in the Middle Grounds of Sovar, or in the Carved Caves out of the main chamber. Or even a small shell house near the gates of Saekaj, at the lowest end of the elite class. Only one in a generation does this, but it keeps hope alive.
And hope is all we poor fools have.
*
On the day they turned us out in my twelfth year, I was to be subject to the testing. I had woken early, the earliest riser in my shanty, a cloth structure spun from silk webbing on top of a three-story clay home. Eighteen families lived on the four floors, counting the three who shared the tent space on the roof with us. I knew them all now, but they had been strangers when I was assigned the dwelling a few years ago by the Sovar Housing Authority, a fancy name for a man
with bad breath who chortled a lot and was flanked by eight guards everywhere he went. I’d heard the women around me curse his name after making certain he wasn’t in earshot, and even at the age of twelve I knew he demanded things for choicest housing. He had his favorites, that was certain, and he gave his favors in exchange for things I didn’t want to know about. “Foul men beget foul deeds,” was an adage I heard early on in life.
I woke in the wee hours of the morning. Through a seam of the tent I could see the phosphorescent glow of the cave ceiling a hundred feet above me. I could hear whispers in the next building, out one of the mud-brick windows, their house not afflicted with a cloth tent on top. A woman on the third floor was one of the favored of the Housing Overseer. Only eight families lived there, on four floors, and the third only had one within its walls. I wondered at the luxury, thinking it couldn’t possibly be any better in Saekaj. After all, who could conceive of one family living in one house?
When I woke on the day of the testing, I stared up at the top of the tent for a time. I could hear the snoring of Theratas Gruhm, the kindly old man who lived in the corner of our room with his wife. They were elderly, unable to work as full-time laborers any longer and as a consequence were reduced to petty odd jobs. A lifetime of effort had left Gruhm’s hands gnarled and his back bent. His wife did not speak but was much the same, save for the bent back. She had been a seamstress, I was told, and her arthritic knuckles showed it, forever locked into an unmoving position.
Theratas was one of the few who had time for me. I was an orphan, and few even in my own dwelling had any interest in associating with one of the Sovereign’s wards, the lowest of the low. Gruhm answered questions, was quick with a smile, and was the only person close to being a friend I had in my home.
After a time of listening to the others in the room breathe, I got up and dressed. I had two dresses, and in this I was fortunate; most of my peers had only one. They were both dyed dramatic colors, as dye was the only thing we had plentiful amounts of in Sovar. It was a byproduct of wildroots, one of the most common and cheapest foods eaten in Sovar, and so it was always available and the color provided a little light in our dreary lives.
I took a deep breath of the stale air, the smell of all the bodies crammed together with only a few chamber pots, not enough to overwhelm me. In the mornings our waste was given to a man who had a special cart to collect it, where it was taken into the pits of the Depths to cultivate mushrooms and beans for our daily ration, which was desperately small. Waste not, still want.
I stuck my face out between the cloth walls of our dwelling, taking care not to step on a child who was sleeping in the corner. My eyes found the city skyline. The shanties gave way in the distance toward the Front Gate—the small, more elite section of Sovar where the mid-ranking officials lived. They were guard captains, bureaucrats, servants of Saekaj, but they were not allowed to live in the upper chamber. Their mud hut houses were so far up the slope of the cave floor as to be miles away, close to the entrance to the tunnelways that led up to Saekaj and, eventually, the surface. I had never been to either, of course, and wondered what they might be like.
The vast majority of spell casters were in the upper class; of course, the League academies were all in Saekaj. Taking a breath, I dared hope that this day I might indeed see them for myself.
I scraped the last of a sprout and bean stew, the staple diet of Sovar, out of the pot in the corner. It was cold and greasy and slick, and I didn’t care. In an hour everyone else would wish that they’d arisen early to get it, and I wouldn’t care then, either. The thick aroma of it wafted as I shoved it in my mouth with my fingers, the slick, oily residue running down my chin. When I was done, I used the fractional amount of water I had left to rinse my face. That was a luxury that didn’t happen every day, washing one’s face (let alone the rest of the body, an unbelievable custom that I found out about in Reikonos later in life). When done, I made my way quietly down the stairs into the house.
I paused at the stairwell on the third floor that led down to the second. Merin Nemy lived below, a spoiled brat of a little girl who had five dresses and never let me forget that I only had two. Her father was a lieutenant in the guards; she never let anyone forget this, either. She was, of course, exactly my age, and involved herself in every single thing that I did. I assumed that this was all so that she could torment me, but I wasn’t above heaving a little well-aimed cruelty back at her. She had a very flat nose, an unfortunate feature that made her look a little like a vek’tag—those enormous, lumbering spiders that pulled carts all around Saekaj and Sovar.
And I never let her forget that, either.
I took a breath before I began my descent. If fortune and Yartraak favored me, I’d pass her floor and be on the ground in moments, unhindered by her wicked tongue. If that happened, though, it would be more grace from Yartraak than he’d ever given before. I steeled myself and began to descend, taking care to ease my way down so as not to wake the sleeping vek’tag if she wasn’t already shuffling about, ready to hitch herself to the wagon for the day. Or come to testing. Whichever.
“Well, if it isn’t little Erith No-Name.” Her voice was unmistakable and filled with wicked amusement. She referenced my lack of parentage with all the glee in Sovar. All of it. Some poor child in the Carved Caves would be without their morning dose of glee because Merin Nemy had stolen it all just to be a snot to one of her lessers. It was a normal thing for her.
“It is,” I said, resuming a normal pace down the stairs. “I’m up early so I can be tested for magical talent. I assume you’re up early because you’ve got a hard day of pulling wagons ahead of you?” I didn’t make a face at all as I said it, just let it drop, deadpan. “Because if so, you’re certainly wearing the right dress for it.”
I could feel her anger even if I hadn’t seen her face across the crowded room. Everyone else had the good sense to be sleeping at this hour, though one person did stir in the corner. “At least I have more than one dress. And walls around my dwelling.”
“Why, Merin, we live in the same dwelling,” I said, walking at a leisurely pace toward the stairs down to the first floor. “The only difference is that my part of it has a view and yours does not.” I cast a look at her over my shoulder. “Also, your dress has vek’tag dung in it.” I pretended to peer closer. “Oh, I’m sorry, that’s just you. My mistake.”
“I don’t know why you’re bothering to get up,” Merin said, standing, outraged, from her place at the table. Her hands ran self-consciously to her dress and she smoothed it, as though she could use the magic she hoped she had in her hands to transform it into a prettier one, one I hadn’t just insulted and made her feel bad about. “Everyone knows that low-bred trash have no magical talent.”
“Yet every year they turn out all the children for testing regardless,” I said, pausing at the top of the stairs. I was within a few feet of escaping her, but this exchange was going far more in my favor than it usually did. I realized it was because Merin was bereft of an audience to point and laugh at me, jeering as they took her side. Alone, with no one to find her snottiness amusing, she had less impact. “But I suppose Merin Nemy knows something that the Sovereign’s best do not.” I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Quickly! Tell the Tribunal that this year’s testing is to be canceled as Merin Nemy knows better than the Sovereign’s wizards and healers that there is no magical talent to be found in the Back Deep!” I let my hands fall to my sides, not touching my dress, as I gave her what I can only describe as my evil smile. “You realize though that if what you say is true, then you have no chance of magical talent, either?”
“I’m not like you,” Merin sniffed, her hands coming away from the dyed pink fabric of her dress. Even a fool could see it was better made than mine. “I won’t be here for long; Daddy says we’ll move to the Front Gate, and then I won’t have to see your ugly face again, Erith No-name, except when I pass you in the streets and laugh at your two pitiful dresses. You’re just a
poor, bossy little parentless waif who thinks she’s a princess.” She cracked a mean-spirited grin.
“I’m sure it’s lovely to have a daddy who does everything for you,” I said, letting my irritation mask the sting of her words. I felt sick in my heart, in my gut. “And won’t he be disappointed in a few years when you’re wearing the exact same dresses—dyed brighter but the same size as they are now so you can show off ample flesh when you become a harlot.” I broadened my own mean grin, now hollow, and disappeared behind the stairs, running down them before I could hear her reply. She was sputtering in rage, but I had no doubt she’d come up with something artful sooner or later.
I pushed aside the cloth door to the dwelling and felt my feet land in the soft, impressionable dirt on the street. I looked to either side and saw only minimal activity. There were a few torches burning here and there, leaving spots in my vision. I preferred the natural luminescence of the ceiling phosphors, but sometimes there was a need for more lighting. Guards carried torches down the street, merchants worked by lamplight. Even though the city’s patron was Yartraak, the God of Darkness, concessions had to be made in order to get things done.
I took in a sharp breath of cool air, catching the scent of Sovar; the manure gatherer clearly had not been by yet this morning, and the whole place stunk more than it usually did. I still felt the jab of pain in my gut, that raw combination of nerves and humiliation. The truth was that I was far more likely to become a harlot than Merin Nemy ever was. She had a father with some money and the possibility of advancement, which was an uncommon thing in Sovar.
People lived and died in the same structures, took over the jobs of their fathers and mothers, never moving more than a few hundred yards their entire lives. Their paths were set; mine was not. I had no path, save for what the Sovereignty bid me do. No apprenticeship waited for me, and should I fail to find a husband—something I had little interest in at this point, all my peers being dullards interested only in sport and jokes about feces—desperation might set in when the day came that I was no longer a ward of the Sovereign. I knew older girls who had done it, and they certainly dressed better than I did.
Sanctuary Tales (Book 1) Page 11
