Reluctant Concubine

by Dana Marton

  He reached to the brooch at his neck. Gold bands held in place an emerald nearly the size of a grape in the middle. He unclipped this brooch from his doublet and handed it to me.

  “My lord…” My gaze flew to his as I tried to give back his stunning gift.

  But he turned on his heels without a word and left me standing in the hallway, my mouth agape.

  I gathered myself at last, after another moment, and flew to my chamber, for the mist was upon us fully, and I was ready to learn my destiny.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  (The High Lord’s Return)

  I hid the brooch once I reached my chamber. Never had I owned anything as beautiful and valuable. It would buy my passage with the caravan, I thought with a sudden thrill.

  Tilia brought food, charms jingling on her belt with every step. Tension sat on her forehead. Nobody liked the mist, but out of everyone at the palace, the oldest servant women liked it the least.

  “Thank you, Tilia.” I made a show of stifling a yawn. “I should not require more of your kind help today. I think I shall retire.”

  She bowed, relief evident on her lined face. But no sooner did she leave than Leena came in.

  I made another show of yawning. “I am retiring for the day. I shall not need anything until morning. You may return to seek your own bed.”

  Although I had given Leena leave to use an empty chamber in Pleasure Hall, she would not hear of it and continued to live among the servants.

  When the mist descended on the city, the servants preferred to keep to their own quarters. Leena had told me some even barred their doors, the most superstitious among them painting the wood with symbols of protection.

  She laid my sleeping gown out on the bed and assisted with unlacing the maroon dress I had worn all day. “I will stay and make sure the fire burns warm, my lady.”

  The mist did bring a certain grayness and chill, but I opened my mouth to protest. Then closed it. I had not yet once succeeded in talking Leena out of doing things she considered her duty.

  While she shook the wrinkles out of my gown and folded it over the back of a chair, I sidled to the jar in the corner for a sleeping stick. I held the end of the stick into the flame of the candle burning by my bed, then set it into an empty tankard. The stick did not burn with a flame but rather smoldered, letting off a thin, snaking plume of smoke.

  I held my breath as I inched forward.

  Leena suddenly sagged against the bed, than sank to the floor little by little, her eyes closing. She blinked a few times; then her eyes stayed closed as she gave in to what must have been overwhelming sleepiness.

  I grabbed my Shahala clothes from the wooden chest and ran for the door, my lungs burning. I did not dare take a breath until I was outside my chamber.

  I donned the thudi and tunic, then cut through the empty Pleasure Hall and peeked out into the corridor that stretched on the other side of the great carved doors. I could not see a soul, but some indistinct voices reached me from behind the turn in the hallway. I drew back and waited until the servants passed, then a few moments later checked again. All quiet.

  I hurried to the kitchen, hoping to exit the same way as I had before, but this time, I could hear people talking as I approached, two servant girls gossiping about the blacksmith’s son. I did not have time to wait until they grew tired of the topic and retired to their quarters.

  After a moment of hesitation, I sneaked to the stairway, then down a flight, into the storeroom where great piles of firewood towered to the ceiling. A narrow chute connected the room with the street. Up into this filthy chute I squeezed myself, my hands and feet slipping on sawdust and dirt.

  I conquered the climb and, reaching the top in short order, crawled out. Nobody walked the streets but me. Even if the mist caught some unfortunate soul out there in the middle of running some errand, he would not have seen me unless we bumped into each other.

  I placed a hand onto the palace wall and walked, not breaking the connection, toward the cliff. Once I reached the rock wall, I felt for a foothold, then a handhold, and began the climb.

  I found my way to the Guardians without trouble. The Guardian of the Cave and the Gate greeted me warmly and offered food; the Guardian of the Scrolls nodded from the back where he sat bundled in his robe, even his bald head covered, his face in a frown.

  “He looks tired,” I thought, and did not realize that worry pushed those words from my mouth, until the Guardian of the Cave beside me nodded.

  “And complains of it enough to drive us mad,” the Guardian of the Gate grumbled from next to the fire, his carved stick lying next to him. “Had you any trouble getting away?”

  “No one walks the streets. They think man-eater beasts roam the mist.”

  “Oh, for all that is sacred,” the Guardian of the Scrolls grumbled loudly in the back.

  The Guardian of the Cave chuckled. “Not one of us has been down there for at least a hundred years.”

  “My grandfather used to visit. He told me many tales,” the Guardian of the Gate said. “Man-eater beasts…” He snorted.

  “They say people sometimes disappear into the mist.” I repeated what I had heard from the servants.

  “Two,” the Guardian of the Cave exclaimed. “Two, in how many centuries?” He shook his head, then continued in a calmer tone. “One of the old Guardians, a wanderer, saw more than the others. Twice he brought a slave from Karamur. Both were badly abused by their masters.”

  I stared at him, beginning to understand.

  “The slaves had been flogged harshly enough so that everyone knew they could not have moved on their own. Their masters had left them tied to the whipping post at the market place, a warning to the others. When those battered slaves disappeared, rumors must have started among the Kadar,” the Guardian of the Cave explained.

  I shared their meal, barley soup and meat cured into strips as tough as leather. I chewed; they gnawed. They did not have many teeth. A comfortable silence surrounded us, interrupted only by the crackling of the fire. I had many questions, but I waited respectfully for them to speak to me.

  “The scrolls are calling,” their guardian said suddenly in the back, his voice sour, as if that made him exceedingly unhappy.

  I turned to him. “What do they say?”

  He shot me a dark look.

  I tried another approach. “Grandfather, would you tell me what is written upon the scrolls?”

  He looked at me as if he had never heard a question with less merit. But after a lengthy silence, he deigned to speak. “No one knows, of course.”

  He pushed to his feet painfully and shuffled forward to sit by us. “We believe they will tell us how to defeat the coming enemy.”

  “Mayhap reading them could prove useful,” I suggested in a tone as respectful as I could manage.

  He looked at me with disdain.

  The Guardian of the Cave replied in his place. “He cannot. His duty, as was his father’s before him and will be his son’s after him if he joins the spirits before the battle begins, is to guard the scrolls for the time when the one who can read them appears.”

  “And when will the reader come?”

  Hope and sorrow mixed in the old man’s gaze. “You, Tera of the Shahala, are the one for whom the scrolls await.”

  I blinked hard. My heart missed a beat. “Maybe you are mistaken, just this once,” I suggested while bowing politely. “I have no special powers.” I did not want great powers. Indeed, I feared the thought, having learned well the lesson of my great-grandmother.

  They said nothing. They were perhaps the three oldest and wisest men in the world. They probably did not make many mistakes.

  You, Tera of the Shahala, are the one for whom the scrolls await.

  I forgot to breathe.

  Jarim flashed into my mind unexpectedly. Jarim, whose evil spirit my mother had softened with her own until he could not kill me, not even when the war neared. He had sold me into slavery that brought me to Karamur. And
all that time, the scrolls had waited.

  If this was my destiny, Jarim had done nothing but help me fulfill it. Had he had a choice? Had my mother? Could I do anything else but follow the path before me?

  I tried to find answers to those questions in my heart, but I searched in vain.

  “And you guard the cave?” I asked the Guardian to my left, determined to at least learn as much as could be learned from the three of them.

  He nodded with pride. “The Sacred Cave that holds the Sacred Scrolls. And my father before me. And his father before him, going back all through history.”

  I glanced around, looking for some sign of the extraordinary. “Is this the Sacred Cave?”

  “You will enter the Sacred Cave when the time arrives.”

  Impatience welled in me to know more, but pushing for more answers would have been impolite, so I turned to the Guardian on my other side.

  “I have not seen any gates.” The Forgotten City had no gates, nor did it need one, for the mountains and the power of the Guardians provided sufficient protection.

  The old man smiled at me with indulgence, as a father might smile at his young child. “I guard the Gate.”

  The Guardian of the Scrolls glared at him. The Guardian of the Cave cleared his throat.

  “She is The One. She should know,” the Guardian of the Gate told them, his hands coming up in a defensive gesture.

  And then I finally understood. “The Gate of the World?” I swallowed. “Is it here?”

  He smiled again. “On the other side of the mountain.”

  “Will you tell me more about it, Grandfather?” I asked, expecting him to say “when your time is here,” so when he began the tale, my heart thrilled.

  “At the beginning of time lived the First People.” He leaned back to grab a chunk of wood to throw on the fire, but the wood must have been wet because smoke rose between us.

  The Guardian of the Scrolls mumbled something about fools, but the Guardian of the Gate paid no mind to him, just cleared his throat to continue.

  “As the only people in the world, they lived in peace. They had land aplenty, and it provided all they needed, never a fight among their men. And these First People multiplied and filled many islands. On each island, their customs and ways changed a little to fit the land, but they still remained brothers and called themselves one nation. The First People respected the spirits of their ancestors, and those ancient spirits helped them, some say even walked among them.”

  I barely noticed the acrid smell of smoke as I leaned forward so I would not miss a single word.

  “And the wisdom of these First People stretched without end. They commanded the first metals out of stone and shaped rocks and fitted them together to create cities.”

  “They built the Forgotten City too,” the Guardian of the Cave interjected, then fell silent again and nodded to the other man to continue.

  “They could build many things, the way of which is now lost to us. They built the first ships and sailed them even over the ocean.”

  “The wild ocean?” I gasped.

  “All the water was not so wild back then. Like Mirror Sea, the waves stretched in peace and could be sailed. But as centuries passed, the hardstorms grew more and more frequent and soon made the wild ocean impassable. So the First People built Gates to connect their nation from island to island, land to land. In their time, all the islands and lands had many Gates, but as the people of each land grew more and more different, the time came when they forgot they were all brothers.”

  He gave a sad, resigned sigh before he went on. “Rugar was the leader of a far distant island, his heart filled with darkness. The hardstorms spilled over his land and brought famine to his people. When they cried out in need, he looked with envy upon a neighboring land. He trained the first warriors and traveled through the Gate and killed his brothers.”

  The Guardian of the Cave nodded gravely. The Guardian of the Scrolls huddled under his robe and stared into the flames.

  “Thus the first war began, and the unjustness of this great killing rose to the spirits and made all mankind distasteful to them so they no longer walked among men. And when they so abandoned the people, more famine came, and more war and diseases with it. And the number of those First People waned like the moons. Many of the Gates were destroyed in those times. On all the islands of Mirror Sea, only one remained.”

  Which was all right, since our Mirror Sea was one of the few waters where hardstorms rarely reached, so our waters could still be sailed.

  I had heard of the Gates before, from travelers who had come to seek my mother from distant lands. But back then, the stories seemed like children’s tales to me, and only now did I understand the full wonder of such a creation.

  “Ages after that, new people arrived from faraway kingdoms and repopulated the islands, but they knew little of the First People or their extraordinary ways,” the Guardian of the Gate said.

  “In places, the few First People who remained were hunted and tortured for their knowledge. They were enslaved and abused until the last of them died. Their brothers, hearing of this on other islands, hid and never passed on any of their wisdom. When the last of them disappeared, so did their secrets. Some of those distant islands still have Gates, but no one knows now how to open them, so the people who live there are trapped.”

  I drew closer to the fire to keep warm as I listened to the Guardian.

  “On Dahru, our people the Seela showed great respect for the First People, and thus they shared their knowledge with us. They knew, I think, that their race was coming to an end. A new world emerged, with new ways that left little room for theirs.”

  “It is said the blood of the First People mixed with that of the ancient Seela, and we carry it on still,” the Guardian of the Cave interjected.

  The Guardian of the Gate nodded. “So say the legends.”

  He poked the fire before he went back to his tale. “Those lands that have Gates use them if they can and guard them, for they are true treasures the likes of which can no longer be made. Those who settled on lands without Gates or lost the knowledge to use their Gates are cut off. They no longer remember where they came from and forgot the rest of us. There are many islands and lands like that and many people. We call them ‘Sorlan’—Beyond.”

  He shifted on the hard stone of the cave floor. “Some of the islands of Sorlan are thick with magic, they say, and ruled by sorcerers.” He fell silent.

  I had heard some of this before, as parts of the story were familiar to my people, but not the whole history. I knew little about the First People, and I had never before heard of the people of “Beyond.” The Shahala stories spoke mostly about our kind, how they came from afar and settled on Dahru where they found sanctuary. And how the Kadar came after that. My people thought the ancient race of Guardians long extinct.

  The Kadar warriors protected the island, and when their numbers grew greater, they went away to fight foreign enemies in faraway places, never giving those enemies a chance to reach our shores. The Shahala lived in peace, and the power of healing in them grew even stronger, and they repaid the Kadar by healing them from the wounds of war when their services were called upon.

  I told the Guardians as much, and they nodded, for they knew that tale as well. And the Guardian of the Cave knew even more—the names of all the great healers of our people and the names of all the great High Lords of the Kadar, from Coulron all the way to Batumar.

  At the end, my thoughts circled back to the Gate. “I never knew our Dahru held the Gate of the World.”

  “Not many people do.” The Guardian of the Scrolls glared at the Guardian of the Gate again. “We do our best to keep the Gate’s true power concealed, lest it become a prize fought for by evil men.”

  “Most Gates can open only to a handful of other Gates, their range limited. The Gate of the World can reach all the other Gates,” the Guardian of the Gate said with pride.

  “As long as it has a true Guardian
,” the Guardian of the Cave added.

  “Why do you stay hidden?” I asked them the question burning in my mind. “If you have the powers of the First People, you could do such good in the world.”

  “We have little of the power of the First People, but even for that little, our ancestors were hunted without mercy,” said the Guardian of the Scrolls. “Other nations came to Dahru before the Kadar and Shahala settled here. Some of those nations used the island as a resting place on their way to other destinations; some sought to conquer our people the Seela and stay here.” He fell silent for a moment, and I knew he had more tales of those dark times, tales he did not care to share.

  His frail body shuddered as if wanting to shake off his grim interloping thoughts the way furry land animals shake off water. He rubbed his knee and went on with the tale. “The wind of centuries blew away the conquerors. They died of wars and diseases, hunger and treachery. We feared that soon the Seela too would perish, so we hid ourselves in the mountains and swore to protect the last of our people so we could go on preserving our ancient knowledge.”

  We talked about the past for some time, mostly about the First People, until the Guardian of the Gate pushed himself to his feet with effort. “The High Lord is returning. We should not hold the mist much longer.”

  I had wanted to see my mother’s grave again, so I stood with some disappointment but said farewell, even to the Guardian of the Scrolls, who did not seem to notice I was leaving. I hurried back to the palace after a brief glance at the path that led south through the mountains. Freedom still awaited there, but many warriors would be coming home from battle who would need my help with their injuries. I found I could not desert them.

  I reached the palace unnoticed, just as the light of morning broke through the disappearing mist. Walking into my bedchamber, I left the door open behind me to allow in clean air and held my breath as I dipped the glowing tip of the sleeping stick in water. I changed into my gossamer nightrail, lay upon the bed, and pulled the cover over me.

  Leena’s eyes fluttered open after a short while. I closed mine and listened to her move about the room, readying my clothes for the day.