The fire was still hot and its warmth relaxing. His full stomach bade his body toward lethargy, but among the heat and the heavy meal weighing on his stomach he still found that he could not sleep—his eyes ever found their way to Shahla. He could not bring himself to keep his eyes closed. He could not take his gaze off her. What if someone attacked or snuck into the camp while he was asleep? What if someone harmed her or took her away? He had to watch her, even though she was not five paces away. He had to watch over her.
So Zar sat through the night, resting his body and mind—but his eyes were still at work, hovering about the place where Shahla slept. He sat there so long that he thought he had fallen asleep. In what seemed like a dream Shahla awoke, lifted her head and looked at him. Zar was reminded she had easily the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. With those eyes she gazed into his. She didn’t say a word.
Zar swore he had dozed off and it was some sort of enchanting dream, or that he was simply too tired and his mind was playing tricks on him.
But then she spoke. “Why don’t you sleep?”
“I’m not tired,” Zar lied. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll get some sleep.”
“Not if you’re watching me all night, you won’t,” said Shahla.
“I’ll be fine,” Zar insisted. “You should get your rest.”
“I’ve slept for hours and hours,” said Shahla, rolling onto her stomach and crawling towards him. “I’m not tired anymore.” The blanket, still wrapped around her, dragged over the ground.
The girl rested against the tree beside him, turned towards him and squeezed next to him. She rested her head against his shoulder and sighed deeply. Shifting her body a few times, she tried to make herself comfortable, and when she was finally still, Zar noticed that one of her hands had dropped into his lap. It had become quite busy, too, rubbing over his thighs, climbing up his chest.
Zar denied to himself that her touch made his blood stir. He couldn’t bear to admit how much he wanted what she seemed to be initiating, but he was ashamed of it, and how strange the feeling was of neither being able to indulge nor reject something so pleasurable and forbidden. Zar buried these thoughts just as quickly as they surfaced. Shahla was happy to be safe and back with a friend—back with family. That’s all it was.
“Zar,” Shahla spoke. “Yes.”
“Do you remember on the way to Gara? You bought a room for me at the inn, but you slept in the wagon to protect the wares.”
“Aye.”
The woman giggled. “I was outside the wagon that night for a short while. I wanted to join you, but couldn’t bring myself to.”
“I knew I heard someone.”
“But we’ve been alone other times since then. Do you not find me beautiful?”
Zar scooted away from the woman and sighed. “I am good friends with your father, and I’m sure it was his intention for me to look after you, as I always have, not take you to bed. I must keep that in mind—however I find you.”
Zar rolled to the other side of the tree until he could no longer be tempted by feeling Shahla next to him, her silky locks of hair brushing against his neck, her unashamed hands casually caressing him.
They made it back to the meadow the next evening, and Barek breathed a great sigh of relief, hugging his daughter as tears welled up in his eyes. Watching the man welcome his daughter home made Zar realize the pain Barek must have been suffering through, for the man wore a face of wonder like Shahla had come back from the dead.
Barek asked Shahla all about what had happened, and she told him what seemed to be a much longer yet less specific version of the story she had told Zar. She didn’t mention her attempt to shoot her attacker or about hearing the distress of other captives being violated by the guards. He did learn from what she told Barek that they had been given bread and water each day to keep them healthy, and that she had been in the same stall the whole time since she was brought there. Barek had explained to them he had also been searching the land for her and telling everyone he knew to keep an eye out, but Zar was happy he had been the one to find her. For some reason, and an admittedly selfish one Zar conceded, if Shahla would have been rescued by anyone else it wouldn’t have been nearly as satisfying. Rescuing her made him feel like a good man, and Zar would give nearly anything to feel as such more often.
After he had been back in the meadow for days comforted by having Shahla back, and celebrating with Barek and her nearly every night that she was returned safe—he grew angry.
It never should have happened.
When he had rescued her he was so relieved and happy there was just no room for anger. But now that she was back and safe Zar dwelled on the absurdity of the situation—the people of Krii were not safe because of their king. The very idea was unacceptable.
“Tiomot has a secret.” But what did it mean?
So it was one late morning when Barek and Zar were sitting outside the cottage that Zar asked, “Would you let me use Dancer once again for a short while? I need his speed.”
Barek looked long into Zar’s eyes. “Let it alone, son. She’s back. She’s safe.”
“I cannot. He will hear my mind.”
“But he won’t,” said Barek. “You will never get an audience with the king.”
“Then his guards will relay my curses.”
Barek said nothing.
“I’ll make sure Dancer’s returned to you, but I won’t come back here for some time. I will have no danger follow me back here. I’ll call Asha when I’m far away.”
Barek’s face was grim and his eyes squinted disapprovingly. “The witch’s whistle,” he said.
“Aye.”
“Go if you must,” said Barek.
Zar left within the hour. He needed only to eat a good meal, fill up a water skin, and grab a shield from Barek’s forge before he left. He hugged both Barek and Shahla long and tight, hopped onto the stallion’s back and made off to the west. As he galloped away Shahla cried out, “Make sure Dancer comes back unharmed! And you too!”
As the stallion galloped away Zar chuckled quietly to himself, not knowing what he hoped to accomplish. But he would not sit silent. He would have the reckless king know that his affairs were known to the people, so he would go to the capital and make them known. He felt it was something he must do, filled with almost as much purpose as when he was off to rescue Shahla. He felt alive in those moments, when his friends and family were threatened and it seemed only he could do something about it. He had grown to enjoy the feeling.
Dancer’s run brought them quickly out of the meadow, and Zar travelled the high plains for hours as the sun passed and changed his day from a bright and fervent noon to a dim and quiet dusk. He made camp that night with the city in sight, the tall, white structure of Snowstone Castle standing prominently in the distance.
He made a small fire and quelled his hunger with a few large pieces of jerky. Not having Asha to talk to, he sat quietly and contemplated what he would do on the morrow when he would ride into the city of the king and attempt to make known to the people the extent of his affairs—but Zar didn’t know the extent of them. For what would have become of those girls had he not saved them?
The night was long and Zar’s thoughts kept him awake. What he had planned seemed to him the most foolish yet most important thing he would ever do. He would curse the king at his own gates for Shahla and for Barek, and for all the other women he had rescued and for their mothers and fathers, and for the women of the past who hadn’t been fortunate enough to be rescued—the lost and the unknown. Though it seemed both noble and childish, he felt deep down somewhere in his soul that his actions would serve some purpose. The king would know his deeds were discovered and known by the people of his own city. It must change something.
It was morning, it seemed, a few moments after Zar had closed his eyes. He arose and grabbed his water-skin, tilting it high and drinking long, then sat still in the cool morning air. He fed himself again with dried meat from his saddle ba
g, but this time added some raw, wild greens to his meal which he found growing nearby. He expected he would have to flee the city for his life this day, and he needed every extra ounce of strength and nutrients to keep his body at its best.
After eating, he sat still for several moments longer, letting his food go down, and preparing himself in quiet meditation for what was to come. Once his stomach was settled and his mind set to his task, he climbed onto Dancer’s back and rode straightaway for the capital.
The trees of the mainreach had thinned out as Zar moved farther west towards Snowstone. There were now grassy steppes decorated with white stones and flowers, and a few rocky hills which were mild and were traveled over without much trouble. At the bottom of the last gentle incline where the steppe flattened into a vast green plain mottled with clusters of white stones, the city of Snowstone lay, filled with cottages and shops, inns and sentry towers. There were more buildings there than any other city, and their arrangement was uniform and neat, with cottages in straight long rows.
Not far outside the city a stream ran through the fields, and Zar left Dancer there to drink as he headed into the city on foot. He didn’t suspect it would be long before he was running back out, and he knew the stallion would be there in that very spot when he did.
He continued until he reached the gates, glancing a moment at the two sentry towers that stood on either side of it. The archers looked down grimly from their places in the towers, and Zar fixed his gaze straight ahead as he marched through the open city gates.
Tall white palisades fenced in the city on all sides, leaving access only though the front gate by way of the main road into the city, and the rear gates that guarded the royal road up to the castle. Guards were nearly as common as city folk, and the great castle of Snowstone stretched so tall it seemed the city lay just underneath it as one looked up to gaze upon its high, white walls.
Zar made his way into the city about one hundred paces, wishing he could march all the way back to the rear gates and cause his scene there, so that the king or someone else of importance might actually notice him. But Snowstone was too big, and it would take too long to march all the way down to the opposite gates. Furthermore, that gate stayed shut and more heavily guarded, and if he caused a ruckus down there he doubted he would ever make it out of the city, for even if he did somehow manage to work his way back to the front gates they would have long been closed. No, he was precisely where he needed to be—just inside the city gates.
It was guarded by two guards on foot in the front, another two on foot just inside the gates facing the city, and the pair that were looking down from above in the sentry towers. There was an inn nearby and a general shop, and seeing those amenities made Zar even more assured in the place he had chosen to make his announcement. It would be heard by soldiers and civilians alike. He drew in a deep breath, his eyes bouncing back and forth from both sentry towers above him—to watch for arrows—and yelled, nearly as loud as he could, “Your king is a dog!”
Townsfolk around him stopped and looked, and the sentries peered down curiously.
“Your king,” Zar shouted loudly, albeit, warily, “the lecher king, and rightly so called, is stealing your women away in the night!”
“Silence man!” a sentry called down, a steel arrow tip glimmering as the man knocked the shaft.
“Your king is a crook! Your daughters, your sisters, your mothers—how long will you let Tiomot take them away?”
Zar scurried to the side as an arrow flew down from the tower left of the gate. He pulled his shield from his back and darted back closer towards the gates, still yelling.
“He has ordered women to be taken from their homes! I saw them in his storehouse in Red Valley, chained in horse stalls, lying in manure, caged like animals!”
A guard lunged out and Zar held up his shield. His right hand drew his sword from his shoulder, and stabbed it into the man’s thigh as he kept moving towards the gate. He wanted to be right in between the gates so he could dart out if they attempted to shut them, and where the archers in the towers wouldn’t have a clear shot at him. Two other guards attacked him and Zar left them both bleeding, striking one in the throat and stabbing the other after deflecting the attack with his shield.
“Your king is a dog!”
Zar caught an arrow with his shield, fired by one of the sentries who had descended from his tower, and Zar rushed the man, cut him down, and darted out the gates that were squeaking shut. He slung his shield over his back and tucked his head below it as he darted away from the gates, sprinting over the plain towards Dancer who had lifted his head from the grass and was looking at him.
Zar mounted the stallion, but stayed in the field by the stream. The half-closed gates opened as soldiers filed between them, a few shooting long bows at him. The Snowguards aim was shameful at such a range. The few bolts that did make it near him, Zar caught with his shield, or swatted away with the flat of his blade if he anticipated they might hit Dancer.
And all the while he yelled, “Your king is a dog!”
14
IN THE PLAINS OF SNOWSTONE stood a high, steep hill with sharp white crags jutting out from its walls like teeth from Leviathan’s jaws. Atop the great hill stood Tiomot’s beacon of power, a tall, white castle built from the same pale stones that adorned the surrounding hills and fields.
All things about Snowstone Castle were austere and impressive—the high hill it was built upon, the staggered double octagonal curtain walls that enclosed it, the height of the building itself that rose like a mountain peak into the sky, and the great iron castle gates that were blacker than coal and looked impenetrable. For most men the only way up to the castle was the royal road guarded by soldiers and watch towers, and if you weren’t royalty or invited by the like, traveling that way would most certainly be futile, perhaps fatal. But Stroan’s trip would be neither. The sentry’s at the lower road immediately recognized him and let him pass, and on the higher road, passing the sentries stationed about the castle gates was just as easy.
“It is I, doctor of the king’s servants,” called Stroan.
A guard squinted down through his helmet’s visor, standing in the wall tower built beside the gate and nodded approvingly to his fellow guard stationed in the tower across from him. He called down to the guards within the gate, and the black iron portcullis lifted slowly from out of the dirt, its sharp bottoms pulling out from the ground like spears from a wound.
The courtyard was quiet at dawn, and the two guards standing beside the castle’s doors wore grim and tired faces. As Stroan approached, they looked on curiously.
“I am the doctor,” said Stroan, “I come here this time every month—”
“We know who you are,” said one, “go on.”
Stroan entered the castle and walked past the sets of stairs and back to the servant quarters behind the kitchen and storeroom. Trinik, Tiomot’s steward, was there, and showed Stroan back to the servants’ washroom where the women were lined up and waiting for inspection. The steward needed to know who was healthy and who was not, if any were with disease or if any were with child, and Stroan would provide answers. His answers, however, were as good as any man’s guesses or fabrications.
Stroan was a man of many professions—supposed professions—in which he had no real skill, but could thoroughly convince others who had no knowledge of the field otherwise. He had become the servants’ doctor Tiomot’s steward called on by intercepting a letter from a reputable doctor to the steward, editing the message, and killing the doctor. Now he was permitted to check on all the servants every month, one by one, to make certain Tiomot’s dainties were ever in perfect health and did not upset him with news of being with child. He would place his hands across their back and tell them to breathe in deeply, rub his hands across their belly in a circular motion, have them stare at the burning wick of a lit candle as long as they could without blinking, and anything else he could think of that might seem obscure to normal folk but done by
doctors.
Stroan remembered the first time he had seen them all—white clad in cotton robes that were thinner than sheets, sitting on the floor in a long line that curved around the room’s perimeter. His mouth had nearly dropped in wonder. He had never seen so many beautiful women in one place. All of the servants were women except for the steward, Trinik, and they all wore nothing but the fine white robe that the lecher king no doubt designed to be easily seen through and easily removed.
But now he was accustomed to the process, and waltzed back into the washroom quite casually to begin his usual inspection. The first was a Cyanan woman, Stroan noted by her brown skin and curly red hair; she must’ve been new, for he hadn’t seen her before. Her big, shiny eyes looked timid as he approached, and Stroan looked her over. Her top lip puckered out over the bottom one, and her narrow chin lowered under high, prominent cheek bones. The woman was exceptionally beautiful, and as Stroan opened her robe and rubbed his hands across her stomach in affected doctoral fashion, he thought it a shame she would spend her days in a vile place such as Snowstone Castle with a man like King Tiomot. Tiomot didn’t deserve this woman’s company.
He felt sorry for them all—for the pale, golden-haired girl who grinned curiously despite being surrounded by women who wore fearful and anxious faces; for the stout- framed, big-bosomed woman with green eyes so captivating he could scarcely look away from them; for the woman whose unblemished, onyx-colored skin was the smoothest he had ever seen; and most of all for the brown-haired, brown-eyed beauty whose hair hung in loose curls, whose touch meant the world.
Stroan slid his hands into Yuna’s robe. Their eyes had been locked intimately since he sat down in front of her, but Stroan broke the connection to see who was observing them and how closely. The first few inspections he had conducted had been much more difficult, for the steward Trinik would stand by and watch as Stroan performed his would-be doctor’s procedures, and the other women looked on curiously. Now Trinik rarely even stayed in the room for the inspection, but would continue with castle affairs and check back in after a time to see if he had fini shed. The other girls had also grown bored of his antics, which left Stroan to simply retrieve Yuna’s messages without much more than a glance about the room.
Roads of the Righteous and the Rotten (Order of Fire Book 1) Page 14
