Soleri

by Michael Johnston

  “Shall we dress you, my lady?” the sprite was asking.

  “Now? It’s nearly night.”

  “Don’t worry. We’re just going to fit the dress. It won’t take long. But we’ll need to scrub you clean first. Come,” said the slave girl. “We’ve got work to do. We need to get you ready for the wedding. The king has felled his tree, and the construction of your chamber is under way.” In fact, Kepi could hear the sounds of sawing and nailing taking place somewhere in the distance, but she could not see the chamber. She saw only a little bailey, the stone wall around the caer, a thin, dirty-looking trench, and the poor, scrubby burg surrounding it all.

  I won’t marry Dagrun. I won’t stay here.

  She knew she told herself lies, if only to comfort her nerves. And yet, she wondered how the people of Feren could stand to have as their queen a woman who disliked them all, their king especially? Once again, she longed for a blade, for the feel of cold iron in her fist.

  “Come now, step into the tub, my pretty lady,” said one of the slave girls as the others bustled around her chamber, setting out pots of ointment, filling the tub with water, unaware of the struggle that raged in her heart, in her trembling hands.

  “I’ve brought you something to eat. The queen mustn’t be hungry. No, no,” said the black-haired sprite. She offered chips of salted quail and a crock of amber.

  “Thank you,” Kepi said as she took the cup and drank.

  The slaves stoked the fire and pushed her bed into a corner.

  “Take off your clothes—hurry, hurry,” the sprite told her, but the others were already stripping Kepi bare, motioning for her to her stand in the wooden tub as they readied themselves to pour water over her shoulders. They washed her with a yellow cream that smelled of salt, and rubbed her skin with a sweet oil. All the while they chatted with her about the king, their silly girlish voices joking about the wedding night, about how fine-looking Dagrun was. “A man like that,” the sprite said, “could keep any woman happy.”

  Kepi could not hide the bitterness from her face. “If he’s such a prize,” she said, “perhaps you would like to marry him.”

  The girl gave a slow, curling smile. “Perhaps I would,” she said, “if I were a king’s daughter from a far-away land.”

  A kind but clumsy girl, with one eye brown and the other gray, gazed at Kepi with sympathy and changed the topic, “But anyway, you’d have to deal with his temper, he’s a difficult man, they say. Moody, angry at times, and … violent, some say.”

  “Shut up,” hissed the sprite, but Kepi told the gray-eyed girl to continue. “Violent?” she asked.

  The gray-eyed girl frowned at the sprite—clearly there was some old tension between these two.

  “Nonsense,” said the sprite.

  “It’s not nonsense,” the gray-eyed girl said. “I heard you telling old Halsie about it last month.”

  The sprite shook her head. “It was not the king but the guards who beat those girls. When the king found out, he put the guards in shackles.”

  Kepi stared at the two girls and was uncertain which, if either, she could trust. In truth, she knew Dagrun no better than his slaves. He was a mystery to all of them.

  When the gray-eyed girl saw concern on her mistress’s face, she smiled her clumsy smile and gave Kepi a sympathetic look. “This poor thing needs to know what she’s facing.” The girl moved to spread oil on Kepi’s arm, but dropped the jar. Kepi wondered if her gray eye was blind, if her disfigurement had set her apart from the others, had made her the object of their scorn. “Do what the king asks,” the girl said. “Do as he says and you’ll be better off.”

  Kepi went cold. Something in the girl’s tone made her think of Roghan. She gulped amber.

  “Is something wrong with my pretty queen?” asked the gray-eyed girl.

  “I’d ask for a blade,” Kepi said, “but I know you can’t bring me one.”

  The slaves all shook their heads and went about the rest of their work sullenly, the tension between the girls making them silent. She could not imagine these slave girls as her waiting women after she became queen, but then she could not imagine being Dagrun’s queen either.

  “Eat,” the gray-eyed girl said. “You are so very thin, my lady.”

  The slaves wrapped the dress around Kepi. She was embarrassed when she realized the dress left her breasts exposed, coming up just to her waist.

  “It’s the tradition,” said the gray-eyed girl, nodding as she fitted the dress beneath Kepi’s breasts.

  Even Merit’s most tasteless gowns cover more than this. She cast about for a shawl, a cloak—but no, nothing.

  “We just need to stitch you up, nice and tight, yes,” said the sprite. “You’re a slender one, but we can’t have you looking like a boy. No, no—we need to make you nice and pretty for your king,” she said as they stitched the fabric to her form with thick wooden needles. Kepi could barely contain her disgust. I wish I were a boy. She no doubt had the body for it.

  Once the dress was properly fitted, the slave girls removed the white slip and Kepi donned her old clothes. A thought occurred to her as she pulled the fabric over head. “The wedding—when is it?”

  “Three days,” said the sprite.

  Three days, thought Kepi. She had hoped for three months, three weeks even. Time to escape, or to hurl herself out the window.

  She’d do either before she’d marry Dagrun.

  32

  Ren saw the horned totem gleaming like a thorny branch in the morning light. The pole, carved with the outlines of eld skulls, one stacked atop the other, marked the edge of the hunting grounds. Ren was nearly free from the reserve, but he paused. There were bits of pale skin showing between the grass and rocks. A body lay awkwardly at the totem’s base, one arm fixed at an unnatural angle, a red puddle turning black against the pale sand. The head was turned and he recognized Dakar’s face, his gray hair and wide eyes. The warden of the Shambles. The one who had given him his hunting dog and his provisions. Ren knelt down and pushed a strand of hair from the warden’s face. His skin was cold and Ren closed his eyes. He guessed this was Shenn’s work. Now Ren knew why Shenn had looked at him oddly when he made mention of the warden.

  He found tools and dug a grave.

  The rocky earth was difficult to move, the digging slow, but he didn’t mind. He needed time to think and plan, to comprehend what had happened on the hunt. Merit, the sister he had never met, had sent a man to kill him. And now her husband, Shenn, was up there on the mountain, wrapped in bloody bandages. Ren wondered if he’d been too lenient with Shenn, if he should have ended him. What if I’ve saved my brother only to face him again? Will I wake with his dagger at my throat? Ren didn’t know, but he was certain of one thing: He didn’t want to be like Merit—he would not kill his own kin. If he had to face Shenn again, so be it. Until then he had more pressing concerns.

  Ren knew what he should do next. He had left the Priory. He had performed the hunt—he held the eld horns. He had done what the empire asked and what his father requested. It was time to return home. He would go to Harkana and take his throne, but there was little sense doing it right now. If I march straight into Harkana, Merit will poison me at my own coronation, or her archers will shoot me down at the wall and call me a beggar or thief.

  Ren would go home, but he would go there with allies. After what he’d learned—the way Merit had first sent her gray-cloaks, then her husband, to kill him—Ren knew he could not walk into Harkana alone. There was no one there he could trust. His father was dead and Merit was not family—not the kind he pictured, at least.

  When I walk into Harwen, I’ll do so with Adin and Tye at my side, and their kingdoms’ armies too. Perhaps Tye’s father could assist them. It was the only sensible thing he could think to do. Right now, walking into Harwen felt like suicide. Ren would take his father’s throne, but he’d find his friends first. It was what he wanted anyway. I promised Adin I would find him when I got out. I’m free and I want
to see my friend. I need his help.

  He recalled how, when he was younger, Adin had stood up for him against Kollen and the older boys who constantly teased and harassed the younger ransoms. Adin had more than once offered Ren his meal when Ren was sick or feeling malnourished. And once, when Ren knocked over the kettle in the refectory, it was Adin who took the blame, because he hadn’t wanted to see his friend suffer. Ren thought he owed Adin something, so he would head to Feren first. If Adin were still alive, he would need all the help he could get.

  Ren took what provisions he could find in Dakar’s cottage, a few crescents, and headed north, toward the woodland kingdom. He took the eld horn and covered it with red clay, disguising it. He tied a leather thong he found in Dakar’s cottage to both ends of the horn and slung it over his shoulder. Leaving the cottage, he tried to entice the dog to follow, tossing it a strip of meat, but the servant would not stray from its master’s grave.

  Not far from the warden’s cottage, he heard a distant whinny and followed it until he found a horse tied to a broken tree. He had seen the creature once before, with his father’s escort. It was likely Shenn’s mount; the saddle was richly made, the horse well groomed. He pulled himself up onto it, gripped the reins, and with a kick bid farewell to the hunting reserve.

  Ren traveled north toward Feren, following an uneven trail, hoping to catch sight of the forest but finding only sheer cliffs he could not scale and rocks too ragged for his horse to climb. More than once he got lost and had to double back or follow a different path. Later, the terrain grew so dense and rocky he had to free the horse and continue alone on foot, heading north and looking for the Rift valley. Soon after, he spied the deep but slender rift. The great gap marked the edge of the desert, a dark gulf from which mountains rose to form the granite face of the Feren kingdom. The sides of that gulf were jagged, the edges cracked like dry desert mud. He traveled the rim, skirting the deep ravine. The gap was often wide, always impossible to traverse. He found a spot where the Rift narrowed and a bridge spanned the gap. Long lines gathered at the passage. From their tools, he guessed the men were craftsmen. A lumberman with a pair of axes walked alongside Ren and a woodworker of some type with a pack full of chisels walked ahead of him. Something was happening in Feren, a gathering of some kind, an affair that required a great number of tradesmen.

  He overheard a gray-haired man talking about a set of chambers that would be under construction for the new queen of Feren. From what the men said Ren gathered that the king of Ferens was marrying in a few days’ time.

  “Who is the king to wed?” Ren asked absently, not really caring about the answer.

  “A Harkan girl, Kedi?” The gray-hair scratched his head, uncertain of the name.

  Kepi. My sister. Kepi is engaged to the king of the Ferens. Ren wasn’t certain what to think about this revelation. He did not know if she was friend or foe. Was she Merit’s ally? Or was she allied with his father and would she assist him?

  The workers kept up their banter. “Kepi’s her name,” said a man whose skin and hair were darker, possibly Harkan. “I saw her once in Blackrock, cloaked atop her horse. They say she’s a wild one, always riding out at night.”

  Ren listened closely, but the shouts of the Feren soldiers on the bridge drowned out the rest of the conversation. If Kepi hid from her family, if she ran from them, perhaps she was not allied with Merit, maybe she was more like him and maybe she would aid him. A queen could be a powerful ally, but that wasn’t all he cared about. He still wanted a family. If his father was gone and his mother had left them, if his elder sister was his adversary, Kepi was all he had left. She was his last chance at a family, so he decided to seek her out when he reached Rifka. I need to know if she truly is family—if she’ll welcome me.

  Ren crossed the Rift valley with a band of woodworkers, staring down into the depths of the chasm, smelling sap from the freshly cut wood. Soldiers guarded the bridge and the pathway, directing the tradesmen, making certain no one strayed from the trail.

  “When is the wedding?” Ren asked aloud.

  “Three days,” he heard someone grumble. “Three days to make the platform, three months to build the Queen’s Chamber—we’ll be lucky if we get any sleep.”

  Little by little, as morning passed into afternoon, as the mountain pass gave way to a deep valley, he entered the Gray Wood, where Ren encountered a sight he had heard about, dreamed about, but never seen—the blackthorn trees of legend, thousands of years old, more massive than any structure on Earth. Soon there were no more stones at all, only a cathedral of ancient trees and the soft underbrush, and the smell of wet earth and plants growing in the moist, rich soil protected from the sun by the thick canopy overhead. He passed carpets of small white flowers shaped like stars, great fragrant bushes of honeysuckle, of jasmine. Ren passed berry patches bursting with ripe fruit and stopped to stuff himself, leaving only seeds for the birds. He stumbled on a patch of wild onion and stopped to gather the plant, tying the green tops together and hiding them in his tunic. It was marvelous, he thought, to be in a country where wild things grew, where the desert had not shriveled every living thing. A green country, and lush, so different from the deserts of the south.

  Soldiers at their back, Ren and the woodworkers came upon a great village where hundreds of slaves gathered between stacks of blackthorn logs, sawing, stripping bark, carving pegs and holes that would all be necessary to create the great house for the queen. There was a second village, he heard, where the king held the Cutting Day ceremony, but Ren didn’t know where it was or how to reach it. The men here were prepping the wood and sending it to the caer, where a second camp took up the finer work. An enormous undertaking. No wonder they needed so many men. The Ferens had slaves, but they lacked craftsmen. Ren hoped he could pass as one.

  “You,” barked a foreman, pointing his whip at Ren. “Yes you there, runt. Where’d you come from, boy?”

  “From the Wyrre,” Ren said. He knew his pale hair would appear strange to the Feren’s eyes. “I was born in Barham, but I grew up in the mountains near the Rift valley,” Ren lied—it seemed easy enough. “I’m just here to split wood.” Ren labored to conceal the accent he had learned in the Priory.

  “Another fluke from the south? What’s wrong—did your island sink?” He motioned toward the saws. “See that you get out of the way when the trees fall, boy.” With that he let Ren pass. There was work to be done.

  Ren picked up a bucksaw and joined the others. He relished the moist, fragrant scent of the forest, so unlike the desert, where the air was dry and lifeless. Alive with sounds and smells, the forest moved always around him—the men cutting, sawing, swearing, hoisting. He was getting more used to being outside now, and yet sometimes when he would wake in the morning with nothing but the sky overhead, he would have a moment when he was not certain where he was, if he was even alive still. If the world outside the Priory was real, or if the sun beating down on his head was the face of Mithra, welcoming him into some other life. But then he would breathe in and out, and feel hungry, and his legs would ache, and he would know once again that he was alive. Alive and usually in urgent need of taking a piss.

  The soldiers fed Ren cakes of crushed potato and strong amber, and he felt for the first time how good it was to work, how useful work was to the mind of a man.

  All that day the glade filled with the sounds of sawing, of nailing. The scrape of wood, the ring of iron, the voices of men telling stories to pass the time. Ren listened to all of it. They might tell a story of the former king’s son, Adin, if Ren were careful enough and paid attention.

  “Seen the Harkan yet?” one of the grunts asked.

  “The wildcat? The witch who killed Roghan?” Another spat. “What he wants with that bitch the gods only know.”

  “Thin as a board and as hard to nail,” someone said, and laughed.

  “Too bad Dagrun didn’t bag the other one.” The man nearest Ren leered. “What I’d give for a piece of that ass.�
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  The one-eyed man made a puckering sound and drew a curvy silhouette of a woman with his hands in the air. “Tits for days and wasted on Shenn—everyone knows he’d rather have Dagrun.”

  Cruel laughter followed that joke.

  “Shut your mouths!” Ren said, inserting himself into their conversation. They were gossiping about his sisters and it angered him.

  “What’s gotten into you?” said the one-eyed man, taken aback, a little frightened. “We’re just havin’ a bit of fun, boy. What do you care about the Harkans? Ya look like you’re from the Wyrre, anyway.”

  Ren stood up. He was taller than the others and young and perhaps a bit intimidating. The one-eyed woodworker’s fingers began to shake from fear or just old age. Ren had the mud-covered eld horn at his side and, likely, the man feared Ren would beat him with it.

  “Nothing,” Ren said, and in the silence that followed he recounted their words, comparing them to what Shenn had said in the Shambles. Merit, they said was beautiful, her hair as lustrous and dark as the kohl beneath her eyes. Kepi, if the men were right, was not a beauty like Merit. Kepi was only a few years older than him. Was she once his friend, his playmate? Who was this girl now betrothed to the king of the Ferens? He wondered if she would find happiness in her marriage, but doubted it. The house of Tolemy arranged most marriages and the matching of the bride and groom, beyond the marriage’s political ends, was seldom considered. The women were not treated much better than the boys sent to the Priory. Except perhaps Merit. He wondered about her, about what the men said about her husband. Merit—he knew little of her, save for her desire to keep him out of Harkana. He thought he should hate her, but somehow he guessed he should just pity her. She seemed like one of the older boys in the Priory—sad and desperate, trying to hold on to a power they could not quite grasp.