by C. K. Rieke
“Elka, Darig!” she cried back. “I love you, please forgive me. It’s all my fault.” She heard her brother and sister’s voices back in the caravan, but they grew fainter as Lilaci drifted further away from them.
Lilaci fought at her bindings, trying to free herself and run back to her family.
“Stop it, girl,” a rough voice said. “Keep fighting and I’ll head back there and cut their throats.”
That was enough to make the six-year-old Lilaci stop. Through the night, she went on with her captors, going through frantic spurts of sobbing, and times of unshakable pain, anxiety and fear. That was the night Lilaci wished she could forget, she hoped it was all only a bad dream. She prayed that her mother and father were still alive, and that she would be safely back in their arms as she cried, and they told her that ‘everything was alright, just go back to sleep, and when you awaken, we’ll all be together again.’ Unfortunately, in the Arr, things rarely worked out in favor of the weak. That night, another young girl was taken from her murdered family, ripped from their arms like a calf from the herd. Out on the sands of that night, under the crescent moon that had darkened to a haunting red hue, no one but her captors would hear Lilaci’s screams for help.
Chapter Two
Ten years later.
1440 Sisen Era, The Arr, The Great Oasis Noruz, City of Voru
“Move your feet, Lilaci! Don’t’ let her strike so easily on that side. Keep your staff up.” Elan yelled from the sidelines. Lilaci was trying to deflect the other’s girl’s blows with the staff in her hand, but the girl attacked with more ferocity than she anticipated. She could tell Elan, her instructor, was getting frustrated. She always got mad when Lilaci fell on the defensive.
Lilaci had the smooth, wooden staff firmly in her grasp, but her opponent had grown quick. Lilaci had more strength than the girl, and she’d beaten her almost every time, but she’d obviously been practicing, and Lilaci was caught off guard.
“Move your feet!” Elan yelled again. “Don’t let her open you up so!”
She moved her feet and their staffs clacked and knocked swiftly. Neither could land a blow on the other, but Lilaci was getting worried. It only took one shot to the body to end the round, and as she was the Oncur of their group, or the most-winning, it would only take a one round loss to push her down in the ranks. However, she’d have to beat this girl two rounds to win.
The girl’s eyes showed more fire this fight than she’d seen before, and as the staffs swirled and thrust, Lilaci had to dig down deep to push through the girls’ speed. She dug her heels into the dirt and shot forward in a burst attack, using her power to overwhelm the girl, and in that second, the girl was caught off-guard. Lilaci used that opportunity to drive the staff hard onto the girl’s thigh. She didn’t cry out, but Lilaci was sure she wanted to.
She tried to hide her limp as she walked back to the outer part of the circle. The other girls from her barracks were standing on the outside of that circle, watching. Elan, in her dark-blue robes motioned for them to spar again. This time Lilaci wouldn’t hesitate, as now she’d found a weakness. They started again in the fight. The other girl came in with the same swiftness, knocking her staff against Lilaci’s from side to side, pushing her back. But, within seconds, Lilaci spotted a momentary opening, and thrust her staff at the same point on the girl’s thigh, and she fell hard to a knee.
Lilaci turned, walked back to her side of the circle, and bowed to Elan, who didn’t bow back, that wasn’t customary. The Lu-Polini, or pale-skinned, as they were known, respect authority and seniority over all else. She’d won, and her only reward was that she remained as the Oncur. It was ingrained in her mind that the most valuable thing to possess, was that— the status of being the Oncur. The other girl stood as best she could, and bowed to Lilaci, who didn’t bow back.
That night, in her barracks with many other girls her own age, she stood up from her bunk and walked over to a ceramic basin to wash her face. It was nearly twilight and candles flickered in the light breeze that flowed through the clay barracks.
She dipped her hands into the flowing cool water in the basin, and lifted it to her face. As she pulled her hands down she looked into the small mirror, like she did every night, but this night she felt different. She saw her own pale, white smooth skin and her black-haired widow’s peak drifting down towards her nose. Moving her head closer in, she looked into her own violet eyes, seeing a faint memory of herself, but it was fleeting. There was a faint memory of a frightened woman’s eyes, a woman clutching her children in tightly as she wept. The thought was so brief and distant, she shrugged it off with a sigh.
In the mirror, she scanned her face, and saw her deep, violet eyes and the scar just at the tip of her eyebrow. Lifting more water to her face, she tried to wash the thought from her mind. She ran an ivory comb through her hair that fell to just below her chest. Once it was straightened and clean, she pulled it back and tied it in the traditional knot behind her, a knot made with a band of thin leather, and a pick set firmly to hold it.
She went back to her bunk, she noticed the other girls watching her, scanning her for weakness, as they were all trained to do. Lilaci was an expert at hiding anything that could be considered that. She lay on her back staring up to watch the candlelight flickering on the clay ceiling. Again, a memory ran through her mind of a night long ago in a tent, and a terrible feeling shot in her stomach. She rolled over and lay on her side, trying to shift her thoughts to something else. So she pictured the stances of the Jonjico, or the battle tactics of the old general Orynix.
Every day here, in Sorock, feels the same. Training, fighting, learning the ways of the Lu-Polini. Nothing out of the ordinary ever happens here. Elan is only hard on me to make me stronger. I’m going to become a great assassin someday, and make her and Commander Veranor proud. Yet— I can’t shake off these thoughts I have. I know they’re real, I just don’t remember what happened. It must’ve happened when I was very young. I don’t know if I want to remember. Every time I see those eyes, it feels like a dagger in my stomach, twisting its way deeper. That’s the way of Sorock, none of us have pasts that are happy and pleasant. We were born to be cursed. All we have left now is to make ourselves the best— the Oncur.
At least I have him to talk to, he’s my only escape from our lives in this place, without Gogenanth, I don’t know how I’d go on.
Chapter Three
Lilaci didn’t remember it, perhaps because she was so young when she was taken, but there was another with her as they walked the sands with her family’s murderers on their way to Sorock. He was just a boy at the time, and she only a little girl.
That night, once the other girls were sound asleep in their bunks, Lilaci rolled quietly from hers, laying her blanket back onto the bed without a whisper of sound, and found her way out the window next to her bed, as silently as a cat in grass.
She stuck to the shadows and avoided the flickering torchlight on the roads. Leaving the barracks past curfew was forbidden, and bode a harsh punishment if any were found out strolling in the moonlight, but Lilaci had become an expert of stealth, after all, she’d been given great training in that skill. She didn’t know the endgame of her training yet, but she’d find out before too long.
Kneeling low, and with her soft hands caressing her bare feet, she dipped under another barracks near hers and shot through an alley between two clay offices to find a boy sitting in a dark recess, in shadow. It was an intersection of two of the high walls of Sorock’s perimeter, covered in vines.
Lilaci ran over, silently, and fell into the recess next to the boy. She pulled her knees up tightly to her chest, looked down at the sand at her feet, and slowly lay her head on the strong boy’s shoulder.
The bright light of the moon drifted over the wall at their backs, letting in white moonshine on the rest of the camp, giving each of the structures a long shadow on that starless night. A cool wind whipped through, howling as it flowed in and out of their windows like
a low-pitched flute.
There they sat for over an hour, not speaking a word to each other, not making any movements to get closer or farther away from each other— just sitting. It was the only physical contact she’d gotten in Sorock that wasn’t aggressive or instructive. At that moment it was just two people, touching, ever so slightly. Occasionally she could even sense their hearts beating in rhythm. She felt a gentle stir come from the boy with the strong face and shoulders.
“Lilaci?” the boy asked in a quiet voice.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“How long have we been coming here?”
“I— I don’t know exactly. Years, at least. Why?”
“I had that dream again last night,” the boy said. “It kept me awake. I saw faces . . . Faces from the past, back from when we were last on the sands. I’m just trying to figure how long ago that was, I lost track of the years long ago.”
Lilaci didn’t respond, but only thought of her own struggles with the faces that drifted in and out of her mind.
“I have nightmares too,” he said. “I have nightmares of the night I was with the Scaethers when they took you, and took your family. I should have been able to do something, I should have tried to stop them. I should have tried harder. I knew what they were going to do, its what they did to my family. I’m sorry, I regret not doing more.”
She lifted her head from his shoulder. “Gogenanth, don’t think that. There’s no more you could’ve done for my family than you could’ve done for yours. You were just a boy, and I a girl. We had no strength or training to stop them and their bloodlust.”
He groaned. “I’m going to kill the one who took my family one day, one day I’m going to leave this place and kill him, and perhaps then my soul will be able to rest.”
“For your sake, I hope you do, and I look for the answer to that question. I don’t know if you’re lucky you remember those times in the past, or if it’s a curse. I know you are a bit older than I, but I don’t know if I want to remember the murder of my family. I don’t know if I want to remember being taken here. It hurts too much when I try to remember. It’s all bits and pieces, like a broken mirror, fragmented. So broken I’d cut myself trying to put it all back together. But I can’t ignore my feelings. I can imagine my mother, her loving eyes, but it always makes me sad. I can feel that my soul yearns for vengeance. My heart can’t rest until it finds it, and then maybe the nightmares will go away. Until then, we’re trapped here, training restlessly. Perhaps that’s a blessing in disguise. To kill the strong, you must be stronger. And when those murderers are dead, maybe then we will know peace.”
“I believe you will find it,” he said. “You’ve become the best of the girls here, I suspect you’ll be moving on with your training soon. Commander Veranor may be grooming you to become an instructor, and more in the coming months. I’ve heard they teach skills beyond what we are learning now. They’ll teach us to escape captivity once they're sure we’re not leaving.”
“Veranor,” she said with disdain. “He may be the commander of Sorock, but I can see it in his eyes, he cares for nothing else but power. He would wish to be a god himself if he were in the Vallenen class, with the kings and queens. I know it.”
“I don’t disagree with you,” he said. “His eyes show me he has killed many, just as the Scaethers themselves bore.”
She looked into his eyes. She looked at his pale face and strong jaw. He was Lu-Polini as she was. He may have had the same features as the other boys in Sorock, but as strong and skilled as he was, when he smiled all of her troubles melted away. There was a tenderness about him she didn’t find anywhere else in their camp. “Someday we’ll have some sort of vengeance,” she said. “But until then, at least we have this.” She saw a smile come to the face of the boy with the dark-green eyes next to her..
“Yes, I’m glad too.”
“In this hell, at least we have each other, Gogenanth.”
Chapter Four
In the golden glow of the rising sun, Sorock began to stir with the instructors preparing for that day's lessons, the cooks preparing fresh meals for the children, and the rows of barracks bustling with their rising students. Sorock itself began to glow from the sun’s rays. It’s high walls splintered from the shadows of the thin vines that flowed down them. The rows of clay buildings with thatched roofs lined the camp separated by boot-worn pathways. In the middle of the desert the camp of Sorock was adorned with dozens of fresh-water fountains, brimming with cool, clear water so the children could drink to their heart's content. And above it all, looming like a temple that only the gods could have built, was the Palace of Voru, Erodoran.
Voru was the sprawling city that Sorock was nestled in. In the lands of the Arr, there were only three cities, all placed upon the Three Great Oasi. Voru was placed upon the Great Oasis of Noruz. At its center was Erodoran, the palace of the royal family. The palace was a high-rising, six-sided pyramid that let the sun’s light reflect off its thousands of reflective windows that cascaded down its long sides. At each of its six sides stood a grand statue, each of solid gold, and each ten times the size of the tallest of men. Each one a representation of each of the six gods, each looking out over the entirety of the city, and over Sorock itself. Lilaci always made it a point not to look at the palace for too long, not wanting its heavy eyes to fall down on her.
After returning to her bunk in the night and getting a full three hours of rest before the rising of the sun and the warm dawn, Lilaci performed her morning ritual. She dipped her toes into her wicker-woven sandals, walked over to the basin, washed her face, and rinsed her mouth. Then, in the mirror, she brushed her black hair back behind her head, and tied it in the formal knot with the leather strip and pick. She then changed into soft, thin linens— her pants tied at her waist with a red sash, and left her knees exposed. Her shirt fell loosely around her neck, but left her arms and shoulders bare. From her back, she lifted her light tan hood over her head. Lastly, she pulled up her leather boots that rose just over her ankles, and put on her two dark-leather gloves that left all her fingers free.
Then she left the barracks in a single-file line with the other girls. Over her shoulder she felt the glare of one of the girls, the girl she’d beaten the day before, Fewn was her name, and Lilaci could tell Fewn had grown jealous of her over the last few months. Lilaci knew she needed to be wary of her.
They arrived quickly at their practice area, and Lilaci saw not only Elan, her instructor, standing by one of the racks of weapons, but the commander himself stood next to her. She instantly recognized him with the crossing scars on his nose and his dark gray eyes. His stern face with thin wrinkles was divided by the distinct widow’s peak that cut almost below his eye line. His presence was noticed by all, with his strong shoulders, tall stature, and long black hair that fell far down his back, lying on his dark-tan tunic. He rarely comes to these sparring sessions, this must be an important one. I must make sure to impress him if I’m called into the circle today. I wouldn’t let Elan down in that.
All of the girls, once they stood in front of their elders single-file, bowed in unison at Elan, and then separately to Commander Veranor.
“Welcome, Lu-Polini—” Elan said, her outfit appeared more formal to Lilaci that day, as it was tighter, and each wrinkle seemed intentional in her outfit, probably because the commander was supervising that day. “Today’s training is going to consist of two parts. First, stealth and dismay, and secondly, a sparring.”
This surprised Lilaci, they almost-never sparred two days in a row, no more than two times in the years Lilaci had been there. It took a physical toll on the girls, particularly the loser. In all of their styles of training, the sparring may have been her favorite. Practicing with a weapon in her hands made her feel powerful, like she had some sense of control of her own life, a sense of freedom. The other styles, however, were not as enjoyable. They taught her in the art of warfare, which was more strategic and historical based, but stealth and dis
may was her least favorite. Stealth and dismay was just their name for killing, and the art of the assassin. They taught her many ways to kill, each more grotesque than the last. She never pictured herself enjoying another’s death, but she still held a part of her deep down that wished for revenge, and that style of training— she knew— would undoubtedly prove itself useful.
While in front of the commander, and while he walked intently in large circles around the girls, they moved in a near-perfect dance of poses, each flowing into the next. They performed the canary pose and dipped down into the brush pose. Then they shot quickly into the dragon pose, a harsh and firm pose, with both feet dug into the sand, and their arms out with each muscle tensed, ready to lash out. Then they went back into the flowing river pose, a stance that left them rustling from side to side, a good position if hiding in the bush.
And so this went on, Elan never called out for poses, the purpose of stealth and dismay was to not make a single sound. At one point, one of the girl's feet moved ever-so-slightly too far out, and made a quiet whooshing sound. Elan stopped her with a movement of her hand, and the girl walked up directly in front of her, and continued the poses. Lilaci watched as Elan made no hesitation to whack the girls’ arms and legs with a thin, stinging stick each time she thought her movements weren’t perfect. If the girls were ever to cry out, they were ushered over to the Keln, or the box, a small enclosure that, when locked in, gave no free movement and was what they all feared most.
The remainder of that session went on, and Lilaci felt as if the commander was paying more attention to her movements than the rest. She had little trouble with the poses, as it was like being in the peace of meditation for her. Her mind would sooth and slow as she flowed through the positions, and the world became peaceful, and she forgot she was a prisoner.
