“I will do whatever it is you want me to do.” Romana replied “And I will do it to the best of my ability.”
“But what would you like to be doing?” Hana insisted.
She didn’t have a clue what there was she could be doing.
“I was good at cleaning.” She replied, “In the Slave Shop, I used to clean the Slave Masters apartments and some of the visitors areas. And I used to write some of his messages to the elves, because he couldn’t write in or speak elvish.” The prince had been told this as well though, she thought, that’s why he’d told her she’d be cleaning and writing here.
“You were assigned to clean the most important rooms?” Hana replied
“When I wasn’t writing or fighting.” Romana inserted.
“What? You weren’t sure which was greater, the pen or the sword so you decided to learn to do both?” Hana joked.
“Something like that.” Romana replied, serving her a second helping. “It was fist fighting, but I did want to learn to fight properly after I’d mastered it.”
“We could always ask the prince if you could keep fighting here,” Hana replied, “After we put you in the dungeons for fattening me up with second helpings. You’re such a good cook it should be illegal.”
“I’m glad you think so.” Romana replied “and I didn’t think women were allowed to fight in normal circumstances. I was only allowed to do so in the Slave Shop because I was an elf and it kept some of the edge off being kept in the same small space for such a long time.”
“We could probably use the same excuse here.” Hana replied “It’d be a waste of good talent otherwise. I take it you were good?”
“The best there and all the fights were fair; I wasn’t allowed to use elvenstrength or elvenspeed, not that I wanted to win by what they would have seen as cheating.”
Hana nodded and glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner.
“O-my-good-Ancients!” She exclaimed, wolfing down the remainder of her roll, before jumping up like a spring. “I’m late again. Damn you for being such a good cook.”
“You can join us for breakfast any time.” Romana called as the head maid took off at a speed she wouldn’t have believed possible for someone of her size.
“I’ll talk to his highness about getting you those lessons, bye!” Hana called back.
Katelyn, who had been suspiciously quiet throughout the meal laughed. “She’s funny.”
Romana smiled “She’s also a very nice lady. Now get dressed.”
“Why?” She asked.
“Because I’m going to take you somewhere you’ll like.” She’d heard the maids working there complaining about how long it was taking one child’s parents to come back late that night.
“How do you know I’ll like it?” Katelyn asked.
“Because I’m smart like that,” Romana replied.
Katelyn rolled her eyes, and left the room, reappearing minutes later in the dress they’d bought for her yesterday.
“I’m ready.” She informed an amused Romana.
“You’ve got it on backwards.” She replied. “And you haven’t brushed your hair yet.”
Katelyn looked down and her cheeks turned an adorable pink before she ran back into her room to fix it.
Three minutes later and she was back out again, the dress on right this time, and her hair brushed back in angelic blonde waves, bleached that way by the desert sun.
“I’m really ready now.” She insisted. “Now where are we going?”
“I was listening last night,” Romana began “And I heard about a place where all the children in the palace go to play when their parents are busy. I thought you might like to try it out, meet some people your own age, play.” Do the things that being a slave had never let her do.
Katelyn didn’t look convinced, but followed her back through the corridor, right at the end, left at a corner and left again into a small corridor. When they turned again it was into a colourful room where children sat in a circle on the floor, with two maids sat together on chairs with their backs to the door. Desks and tables with coloured chalks and paints had been pushed to one side to clear the floor and the children were playing a word game.
Romana knocked on the open door, and the one of the maids turned and came over.
“Hi,” Romana began “We just came into working for his highness, and I heard that the children could stay here for the day. I was wondering if you had space for one more?”
“Of course we do.” The woman replied “I’m Rebecca, and my colleague here is Diane. We run the playroom from five in the morning till nine at night, and if you’re a boarder we can bring your little one back to your room.”
“I’m Romana and this is Katelyn, we are boarders, and she’ll probably be here fairly often.”
“Oh, yes we’ve all heard about you.” The maid replied, and then rushed to explain at the questioning look on Romana’s face. “You’re the only elven maid working here, you’re hot gossip.”
“Well, I’ll most likely be back to pick her up, but if I’m not then Katelyn here knows where I put the spare key to our rooms.” Romana finished “Go-on.” She added to Katelyn “Have fun with these other kids and behave, ok?”
Katelyn nodded, and Romana squeezed her hand in reassurance before pushing her away slightly. The girl needed to know that she wasn’t always going to be able to go everywhere with her. Elves were solitary by nature, and no matter how much she may like Katelyn in the end she was going to end up walking alone.
As she left she glanced back slightly, and corrected herself. She knew she had the dedication to stay with her friend through Katelyn’s entire life, but it wouldn’t be fair to her. While her human friend aged, Romana would live for hundreds of years in the same state she had been in when she’d reached her maturity at sixteen, even at eighteen she looked twenty and when she was eighty she would still look twenty. Katelyn needed human friends, who would age with her, and with whom she could share the mortal joys of life.
Of course, Romana acknowledged she would die one day. She wasn’t immortal, and her life could be ended in the normal ways, but it would have to be more violent than a riding accident. She would heal faster than humans; elven physiology could even repair paralysis if given time.
She walked out to the stables, and saddled up Jayde, intending to go for a ride through the forest. To see for herself the huge gaps in the wall that Hana had talked about. She opened up the door to the stall, and led Jayde to the mounting block, where she tightened the girth strap and checked her stirrup lengths. She put the lead rein into the small pack on the back of the saddle, and mounted.
Jayde, who had been silent throughout this time, whinnied nervously; unused to anyone but her previous master riding her.
“It’s just me girl,” Romana whispered in elventongue, the language that her people shared with animals.
Then she squeezed gently and Jayde was off.
The black mare was fast, Romana thought; she was built for speed and agility and Romana knew that she could probably go a days walk in trot, maybe further.
She whispered in elventongue to the mare, and Jayde slowed to a walk. They stayed at that speed for a while, and after a half hour of silence Romana decided to let her elvensense loose of the stranglehold she’d had over it in the playroom. Soon she could hear the birds in the trees leagues away, and see through the trees with a clarity no human would ever imagine. She relished the freedom, even if it was only of part of her nature that she was letting free. In the Slave Shop she would never have been able to do this, relaxing and extending her senses till she could hear, smell and taste everything on the air for leagues.
Then they came to the wall.
It was patrolled; she could hear the guards chatting away. They didn’t find their job here too serious, and were playing poker in the guard house a few yards away from where she and Jayde had stopped. And she could see their point; they were on the edge of the palace grounds, in a piece of land that wou
ld be impossible to navigate unless you had extensive maps. It was one of the least likely points to be attacked, even if they weren’t in a time of peace.
But it was also a huge vulnerability. She looked across the wall, or rather, what was left of it. In places the wall had been broken, by what must have been catapults. There were huge gaps in it, some low enough that Romana could easily climb over, and in one place it had been levelled to the ground for about ten foot across.
She walked Jayde over to this place, knowing that none of the guards would have seen her, and carried on riding, exploring the sounds and scents she’d always known she could hear, but never had the chance to.
Chapter Six
THE CAVE
Eventually, when she pulled herself out of the trance she’d been in, she noticed it was dark.
“Damn.” She muttered. She’d been riding for most of the day. Reaching down, she patted Jayde on the neck, noticing as she did so that the poor girl was tiring.
She pulled back gently on the reins, and Jayde stopped immediately, snorting as she did so.
Romana dismounted, sliding gently onto the ground, and led Jayde over to the steam they’d been riding along next to. The mare dipped her head and alternated between drinking and nibbling at the grass for a while, while Romana ran the stirrups up, and loosened the girth strap.
After she was done, she still had to wait for Jayde to finish, so she looked around. The dark was no obstacle to her sight, she was still seeing through elvensight. The road they’d wandered onto was taking them down along the bottom of a gorge. On either side rocky walls rose up around ninety feet, trees and plants clinging to them in a valiant effort to stay alive.
The road along the riverbank was a sandy yellow-orange, and Romana could hear the sound of a waterfall somewhere ahead, along with…Singing?
She left Jayde, with her reins tied around a tree branch, to follow the unexpected sound, curious to know who else was in the forest, this late at night, and who was that unafraid of bandits that they were singing.
The river turned, and sure enough there was the waterfall, as beautiful and pale in the moonlight as it was deafening, but Romana’s elvenhearing, now having been used for quite some time, adjusted to focus on the music. She tuned-in to the small sound of the singing, and followed it. The path stopped at the waterfall, and a narrow wooden bridge had been built in front of it.
The sound was loudest here, but Romana couldn’t see where the singer was. The voice seemed to be coming from the waterfall itself.
She cautiously put one foot in the water, and, deciding her new boots were waterproof, walked across the shallows and up to where the water ran in a gushing stream from above. When she reached the waterfall, she realised the sound was coming from the rock behind it.
Taking a step backwards, she studied the granite surface. Was she going crazy? Then she put her hand out to touch, and the rock shifted.
She wasn’t imagining it; the rock in front of her was sliding away, moving forwards under her touch and then sliding along, away from the waterfall. A door? She peered inside, wary of anything or anyone else that might live here. Maybe it was a dwarven mine. But the dwarves were only supposed to live in Coal Mountain, and she couldn’t have ridden that far in a day.
The cave seemed like an average cave, if you didn’t count the strange door. Maybe it would be a good place to stay for the night, she thought, looking around. It was dry, and with the door closed no-one would know she was there, so the possibility of being robbed was slim.
But the singer still wasn’t there, she realised, stepping inside. The wonderful song was still being sung in a language that was eerie and comforting at the same time. She followed it to a wall, but this time she hesitated, if the wall was another secret door and behind it was someone random, who would demand an explanation for why Romana had suddenly barged in on them did she really want to open it?
But if the person was kind enough to offer a stranger food and a dry place to sleep, did she really want to miss out and take her chances in the forest of carnivorous animals and thieves.
She pressed her hand to the wall and prayed silently that the person behind the wall was the nice, traveller helping, kind.
She was right about the door; it slid back and along, closing the other at the same time.
The first thing she noticed when she looked in was the crackling fire in the centre of the round room. The thick red carpet that covered the floor, covered in golden embroidery, had been cut in a circle around it. The second thing she saw was the hole in the floor, with a ladder leading down and up. She crossed the room, noticing as she did the neatly made sleeping pallets on the floor, and the cushions that were clearly meant for sitting on around the fire. The singing was coming from below, and she grabbed hold of the ladder, swinging herself onto it and climbing down.
She emerged in a room far more complex than the simplicity of the first. The walls here were chiselled smooth and painted white, where they weren’t covered in bookshelves.
There was a fireplace directly opposite the ladder, marble, she noticed in the back of her mind. Her attention caught by the white-blonde haired woman sitting on a rocking chair in front of it.
“Hello?” She tried, in human tongue.
The singing stopped. The woman rose, black silk robes shimmering in the firelight, and she turned to face Romana.
Her breath caught. The woman was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Her face was chiselled chalk, pale and angular. Her eyes seemed as if they had been formed from orbs of molten gold and Romana sensed the sadness in them as their gaze settled on her.
Then she walked closer, and Romana saw she was carrying a wooden box, about the size of a case, which had a scroll tied to the top with cord. The woman silently handed over the box, her expression blank. Romana took it, surprised at the lightness of it.
She opened her mouth to ask what on earth was going on, but the woman placed an elegant finger to her lips and began to glow.
The glowing was slow at first, a golden light that could’ve been given off by the dusk, but then it intensified, causing Romana to shield her eyes. When it finally receded, the lady, whoever she’d been, was gone.
Confused and more than a little unsure about what was going on, Romana took the box over to the chair the woman had recently vacated, and slid the scroll out. Unrolling it she saw words in elvish spiralling across the paper:
Dearest Romana,
Please accept these caves as a gift and consider the caretakers, Acis and Lena, to be at your disposal. I hope you will find them to your liking. Within the box is something that will be both a blessing and a curse for you. A blessing in that it will give you a freedom you have been denied your entire life, but a curse in that it will be a secret freedom. It will allow you to help others under cover of darkness, as another elven woman once did. Hide this letter well.
There was no name that she could see, but the seal was intricate and done in green wax, signalling that the letter had been written by an elf. She set it aside, and opened the box. Inside was a pile of black fabric, she pulled it out. It was a black catsuit; a very leather, very black, very tight looking catsuit, and a dark sapphire hooded cloak, that would come to the back of her knees if she put it on. Something very impractical for a practical elf. She pulled out a strip of leather from where it had fallen to the floor and found that it had two eyeholes in it; a Venetian style mask.
Oh, no. No way was she ever even thinking of wearing that. She shoved it back into the box, mortified.
“Mistress?” A small voice came from behind her and she turned quickly, hoping the woman would be back to answer the million-and-one questions in her head.
What she saw was very different to what she’d expected. There were two of them, three foot high to her six, with pointed ears that curved at the tips. Their hair was brown, but greying in places. One was clearly a woman, her stick figure hung with a faded mint green dress and her feet bare. The other, clearly a man
now she looked, wore twisted wire spectacles, with a brown tunic, again with bare feet.
Brownies, she realised. Had they called her mistress? Were they the caretakers in the letter?
“Yes?” She asked.
“Was there something wrong with the clothes?” The woman asked, looking concerned.
“Oh, it’s nothing.” She replied, wanting to change the topic. “Are you Acis and Lena?” She asked
“Yes mistress.” The man replied “I’m Acis, Lena is my wife.” He gestured to the woman on his left. “We’re at your service.”
“I really should go get my horse,” Romana said, wanting to get out of the caves as soon as possible. Weirdly beautiful women didn’t give you leather catsuits in the real world. Okay, it wasn’t one of those skimpy things, and it didn’t look too tight, in fact it was more like exceptionally compact armour. But there was no way she would wear it; she’d look ridiculous.
“No need, mistress. We’ve already brought her into the stables, and fed her properly.” Lena replied. “I started on your meal as well.”
“Thank-you.” She replied. All excuses for getting out of this situation disappearing.
“Would you like to look around mistress?” Acis asked.
Yes thank-you.” She replied, all the while trying to find a way out of this situation. She could always run, but that would offend the brownies. And they didn’t seem that bad, despite the circumstances.
She turned back to them, to find both of them gone.
Oh come on, was everyone going to disappear now? She put the box down on the chair and walked over to the single doorway, navigating around the two cinnamon brown sofas and the nest of tables. The corridor was lit by oil lamps mounted on the walls. The doors here were the wooden variety, thank goodness, and she pushed open the first to find a large kitchen that also served as a dining room, with a pot boiling over the fire. The second door, opposite the first, led to a laundry room. Another door leading off from this room, led to the stables, she saw, which in turn led outside, through another hidden door.
Romana's Freedom (Soul Merge Saga Book 1) Page 4
