Soleri

by Michael Johnston

  Seth reached across the table and held her hand. He gave her another piece of bread.

  Kepi drained the last of the amber from her cup. The cool liquid made the downy hair on her arms prickle and her cheeks feel numb. The cut on her neck no longer ached and her bruises had ceased their throbbing. She dropped her cup and the clay chipped. Lamplight flickered in the alcove. The crowd thinned. Her head was already spinning, the drink flowing through her veins as she motioned for the girl to bring more amber. She locked eyes with Seth. I should end this, I should set him free, but I can’t. Not yet.

  She didn’t want things to change, not with the boy from Barsip, the boy who knew nothing of the ways of kings and courts. She wanted to stay here and pretend they were just another boy and girl in the back of the Elba, sharing what was supposed to be a wedding cake.

  14

  “Halt! Stop where you are, boy,” the soldier said, his armor gleaming in the sunlight. Carefully etched symbols depicting a raven and an eye decorated the chest plate. The marks, Ren knew, were wards—blessings from the gods to protect the man from harm. This soldier belonged to the Alehkar, the Protector’s sworn men. He stood before an arched opening in the Dromus, brandishing a spear. The soldier guarded the eastern gates of Sola. Ren would be free once he passed through the arch.

  “I’m bound for Harkana,” he told the Alehkar and held up the scrolls. The long walk from the gates of the Hollows to the great wall that marked the edge of Sola had left him exhausted, but he tried not to look it.

  “Come closer,” the man said, motioning for the scrolls. He noticed Ren’s sunburnt skin and his eyes narrowed. Behind him there were more soldiers, spearmen at the gate and archers on the walk.

  “Alone?” the man asked.

  Ren nodded. Of course I’m alone. I’ve just been chased though the Hollows and half of Solus. I don’t trust anyone in this this kingdom.

  Ren turned over the rolled parchment and the soldier bent to study the seal. Swirling grooves of hardened yellow wax clung to the leathery sheet. The paraffin was as hard as rock and had already chipped in one spot, but the detail was still legible. The soldier chewed some awful-smelling thing in his yellowy teeth, taking his time as he studied the wax.

  A feeling of dread shivered through Ren’s body. If they turn me back, I’ll have no way to reach Harkana. He studied the soldiers on the wall. There were too many to fight and he had no weapon.

  “You’re the dingiest messenger I’ve seen in weeks,” the Alehkar said, spitting as he talked, wrinkling his lip as he looked Ren up and down. “Well, what’re you waiting for, boy? Move on—Suten doesn’t like his messages to be delayed.” He lowered his spear and motioned for Ren to pass through the gate.

  “Can I have a bit of—”

  “On your way, boy, I’ve got no time for your questions,” the soldier said.

  Ren had only wanted to ask the man if he could spare a bit of bread or a sip of amber; he’d had neither since he left the Priory. He thinks I’m below his courtesy, a lowly messenger not deserving of his time. The soldier had already turned his attention to a group of pilgrims.

  No matter, thought Ren. Past the gate, he found a narrow ditch filled with muddy water that belonged to the men’s horses. It was dark and smelly, but Ren dunked his head into the muddy trough and drank all he could. He swallowed, sipped again, grinning. He drank his fill before a soldier noticed and he had to run away again.

  He ran for a long time before stopping to look one last time at the wall, the great barrier that marked the edge of the kingdom of Sola.

  He was outside the Dromus now. He was about to think himself free when he caught sight of riders in gray cloaks. This time, the men followed at a careful distance behind him, talking softly and greeting the carriage drivers and pilgrims who passed them.

  What do you want? Ren thought as he faced his pursuers. You came for me in the underground city, why not come for me now? He lingered for a moment, then turned back to the trail. The great basin of Amen stood in front of him. To the east, across the basin, lay Harkana. The road that stretched between them, the Plague Road, would take him home, as the dry, beaten path was the only road connecting the two kingdoms. Perhaps that was why the gray-cloaks kept their distance. If Harkana lay at one end of the trail and Sola at the other and everything in between was desert, Ren was as good as trapped. There was nowhere else to go, no other path to take. They’ll kill me in my sleep. They’ll come when the road is not crowded, when no one will notice another dead desert rat.

  The gray-cloaked men kept their distance, ignoring Ren for the time being, but never disappearing from his sight. Just as well. Two against one isn’t terribly good odds. It’s better to run, better to stay alive. He had forsaken Suten’s guards to take his chances on his own and he vowed not to regret it.

  He hoped to reach Harkana before nightfall, but he was uncertain of the distance. He had seen maps, and had studied the history and geography of the empire, but it was one thing to look at illustrations of roads and another thing to walk upon them. I’m a stranger here. He studied the wide expanse of the desert. I’m a stranger everywhere except that awful cell in the Priory.

  The sun was beginning to sink in the sky when, on the horizon, he spotted the first mud-brick buildings and black stones of a distant town, and rising above every house was a badgir, the angular wind scoops that cooled every Harkan home. They were smaller than he had imagined. Less grand. The city’s defensive walls were cracked and crumbling—sticks and logs poked from the muddy surfaces and black handprints dotted the sun-caked turrets. It looks like a wasp’s nest, he thought, having once seen the insect’s muddy tubes from the window of his cell. While the white walls of Solus had a solid, stately appearance, radiating strength and longevity, these walls were more suited to a beggar’s hovel. This is only a border town, he had to remind himself. This is not yet Harwen.

  As he made his way toward the city, Ren spied the gray-cloaks. Fearing they would come at him before he reached the gates, he abandoned his slow march toward the city walls and dashed through the gate and into a yard. He looked for Harkan soldiers, for anyone who might help him, but the town was quiet, locked down for the night. The streets and buildings were dirty, the open sewers in the middle of the road choked with garbage, filled with human and animal waste, and the stench was immense. Graffiti covered the walls of the buildings, spelling out crude warnings and curses worse than the ones he and his fellow ransoms had scrawled in the Priory.

  Ren slipped down a back alley and tried to look like one of the townspeople. For a moment, he regretted returning home without the Soleri entourage that would mark him as the king’s son, returned.

  Down narrow streets and dark alleys he went, trying to keep the wall at his back so that he would not walk in circles, but the wall disappeared behind crumbling buildings, and before long Ren was lost.

  He came upon a clearing, where a fountain splashed underneath a horned statue. Water! So much of it! The sound of it—the wet splash, the sound of water running—left him half-crazed, and stumbling forward nearly on his knees he cupped his hands below the cool stream, gathered as much as he could, and drank deeply. He splashed it on his face, letting it run over his chest and down his back.

  Then pain—a man was slapping him hard on the ear.

  Ren fell backward into the dust.

  “The water belongs to the god,” his attacker barked.

  Ren gazed up at the fountain. A word came to him from someplace deeper than memory—Vatuk, the horned god of ancient Harkana. The statue did not depict the first king, Ulfer Wat, wearing his ram’s horns as he had assumed, but one of the ancient gods, from the time before the Soleri.

  The fountain was not a fountain at all, but an altar. As Ren stood and peered into its depths, he saw it had no pool, no bottom: the water fell without splashing, disappearing into endless dark depths below the city.

  Ren had drunk from the god’s offering. I know nothing of my people. How will I ever rule
here?

  “Forgive me,” he said, making his best, most sincere apologies. “I am new here, and thirsty. I am afraid I saw nothing but my own relief.” And I had lost my wits at the sight of that water.

  A curious grin grew across the stranger’s face when he heard Ren’s imperial accent. Ren tensed. Out of one kind of trouble and into another.

  “I must go,” Ren said, but the man who struck him was already shaking his head, his lips curling into a dreadful grin.

  “I’ve found the boy!” he cried out, and Ren saw that there were others, hidden in the shadows. They emerged with swords drawn, and with dismay Ren noticed that the men wore the gray homespun of herdsmen and crofters—the same cloaks worn by the men who had pursued him through the Hollows. His assassins. He cursed himself for his lack of foresight. They had found him.

  I’m a damn fool, he thought as he bolted, heading down a narrow street, through a crowded market where women haggled over rough linen and hard bread. He rushed down an alley and into an intersection; the gray-cloaks close behind, Ren stumbling. The alley ended in an intersection. He looked right and left, but there was nowhere to flee—the men approached from both directions. Ren took one step back, then a second, nearly tripping over a hunk of wood. He lifted the heavy timber. It was no weapon, but Ren didn’t care. I’d rather fight—I’m tired of running. He was tired of cowering, tired of scurrying and hiding. If he bolted once more, they would only catch him, he saw that now. There were too many men, approaching from too many directions. He retreated to the edge of a courtyard, his hands gripping the wood. The club made him recall the blade he kept hidden in his cell. It reminded him that he was not defenseless.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” he asked, but the gray-cloaks did not respond, nor did they approach. Instead, all but one backed away, hiding their weapons and disappearing into the crowd. The remaining gray-cloak drew a short sword from beneath his cloak. Raising the weapon, he threw himself at Ren, sword flailing, anger on his face. Finally, a decent fight, thought Ren. He swung, as did the gray-cloak, but the blows never landed. An arrow pierced the gray-cloak’s shoulder, arresting his advance, dropping him to his knees where a spearman struck the deathblow.

  Ren let go of the hunk of wood and turned to see who had done this.

  Harkan soldiers packed the courtyard.

  The men surrounded him, their faces awed and respectful, the eyes of the nearest man focused upon the ring Ren wore on his third finger.

  He had forgotten about the silver band. The ring that Suten had returned to him glittered in the lamplight. It was Arko’s ring, and his father’s before that. The ring worn by the Harkan heir.

  Their captain, a stout, hardy man with a dark beard wearing a full suit of black leather armor, his hands gauntleted, moved closer to inspect it.

  Ren cringed but to his surprise the man bowed deeply. “My lord,” the captain said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  15

  Crow-hopping his horse between a broken chariot’s shattered wheels, cutting around the trunkless legs of a half-buried statue, Arko Hark-Wadi, king of Harkana, pursued a pack of horned deer to the edge of the Shambles, Harkana’s sacred hunting ground.

  Breathing fast but even, Arko turned his mount with his knees, leaving his hands free to nock an arrow in his longbow and take aim. He had chosen the largest buck of the herd, a ten-point beauty the size of two strong men. For weeks he had pursued this particular deer, the oldest and craftiest of the lot, losing it time and again as it disappeared into the heaps of brush, the broken trees and ancient cities of stone ground to dust by the wind.

  Nearly three and fifty years, his dark hair flecked with silver, Arko was strong-featured, with an angular nose and a cleft chin covered with a week’s worth of stubble he never bothered to shave. A white stone hung from his neck, a charm that he always wore. His golden-brown eyes took in everything in one great sweep—the desert, the plain, the herd—and found it lacking. Himself, most of all. Thick and strong-limbed, shoulders as broad as his horse’s withers, he was a formidable hunter and a formidable man, but his people called him the Bartered King, and more often than not he felt he deserved their contempt and to be called such a name.

  The desert plains were baking under the midmorning sun. Spiky patches of needle grass rose like enemy traps amid the scattered stones. To the east were distant gray hunchbacked mountains, while to the west the verdant green line of the riverbank cut a lone lifeline through the arid landscape. He sighted along the arrow for the sweet point just behind the deer’s pumping forelegs, but as soon as he let fly, he knew it was too soon. The buck jumped around a jutting piece of rock and the bolt sailed free, skittering across the field littered with the bleached skeletons of old ballistas, rusting arrowheads shot long ago. The herd bounded away, unscathed.

  Arko cursed his luck, the deer, the desert. His mind wasn’t on the hunt, not anymore. Not in this place.

  He gulped amber from an oilskin. His love of hunting was exceeded only by his love of drink. He emptied the oilskin and drew forth a second, wondering if it was time to leave the Shambles, guessing he had stayed too long. The five lost days had come and gone, and the sun had not dimmed. Time to go home, he thought, but not before I fell this deer. He kicked his horse again and started off after the herd, ignoring the Harkan soldiers waiting at the edge of the field, shading their eyes warily.

  The deer fled into a rocky outcropping some distance away, the buck leading, sniffing the air, nostrils flaring. Arko rode to the far side and waited for the herd to emerge from behind the rocks. He stilled his heart, his breath. Soon those magnificent antlers would come into view, and he would loose another arrow.

  The stillness did little to allow him to forget where he stood, what had happened here.

  This place had a name that stuck to him like a shadow, like a reproach. The Blood-Dyed Reg. It was on this field that his father stood against the empire, it was on this sunbaked patch of desert that so many of his father’s men fell to ensure one boy’s safety. His. They had died to prevent Arko from doing what every Harkan heir had done for two centuries—serve in the Priory until their fathers died. Five times a thousand men had died in the Children’s War, had died for Arko when he was still a child. A war to keep him home with his mother and father, a gift of which he had never felt worthy, or able to repay. The war, the men who died for his freedom, shadowed his every thought. He wished only to be free of the burden of that guilt.

  At last the buck took a tentative step from behind the rocks out onto the sandy field, lifting its head, its haunches still hidden by the stone. Arko had grown patient in his age, no longer the impetuous youth he once was, and weeks of chasing this particular buck had taught him the value of that patience. Too many times he had lost his chance at victory to recklessness, a too-quick movement here, a bad choice of cover there. Not this time. I plan on drawing blood before I take my leave.

  He drew his arrow with his full weight. Breathed in. Waited.

  When the buck took his next step, exposing that sweet spot behind its front haunches, Arko released the string, sending the bolt flying straight and true. It passed through the buck’s foreleg and out the other side, frothy pink blood bubbling up from beneath. A perfect shot. The deer tried to take off, but Arko was on it in a heartbeat, jumping off his horse, drawing his knife, and slitting the animal’s throat, ending its pain along with its cunning.

  His black leather armor covered in blood, Arko felt a great emptiness at his core. This small success only served to remind him of the many failures he had suffered, was still suffering. The memory of his father’s strength—the strength of his love, the strength of his courage, had done the opposite to his son. It always made him feel a lesser man. Koren, after all, had lived to survive the Priory. For all his life Arko wished he could say the same.

  Ten years ago Arko had delivered his only son, Ren, to the Priory. He had no choice, he told his wife. He was not Koren, he was not his father, and he did not aim
to be. Sarra had complained bitterly, she’d told him to fight, told him to stand up for his family, but Arko possessed neither the funds nor the fighters to wage war against the emperor, and even if he had, the people of Harkana still had painful memories of the last campaign, an entire generation of young men lost. He felt it when he walked among the people, their accusing eyes, their resentment. How many had lost a father, a grandfather, to keep him out of the Priory?

  But money and manpower were only excuses. Arko knew that if his father had been no match for the imperial forces, no one was. Your father did not send you, yet you will send your own son, Sarra had said, holding their baby in her arms. My son will never go to the Priory. You are a coward. And coward he still believed he was, even if he knew he had done the right thing, that one man’s life, even a king’s life, should never be worth more than any other one.

  Now Ren was ten and three, and his emissaries in the capital had heard rumors that the boy had been released from the Priory hidden inside the great city of Solus that Arko himself had never seen. A boy returning from the Priory before his father’s death was unheard-of; it had never happened before, and why it had occurred, and what Ren would do when he returned, was anyone’s guess. For all Arko knew, his son was coming to kill him and take the throne. I wouldn’t blame him if he did.

  He was within earshot of the camp when he saw riders approaching fast from the south. Two were soldiers on horseback, carrying a third, smaller figure before them in the saddle. Arko drew his dagger. Even on Harkan land, he had learned to be cautious: the emperor and his agents were nothing if not unpredictable.