by K. C. May
She crept along the length of the building, appraising the white statues spaced a few paces apart along its exterior walls. Each depicted a warrior in a battle pose, his body thick with muscle and clothed in leather clothing and mail tunics not unlike the modern day Legion. Their knee-high boots were fashioned with tabs fastened on the outside of the calf by makeshift leather buttons, which appealed to her as a leatherworker. Though dressed similarly, no two statues were identical. Each face was different, though all were taut with fury and bloodlust. So violent they were, and bigger than normal men. They were tall and broad, with forearms as big as her thighs, and she wondered whether the legend was false—that they weren’t real men trapped into stone by the hand of the Gatekeeper but simple statues chiseled by the hand of a sculptor. Perhaps when she released one of them, he would shrink to a more natural size.
She turned the corner and continued around the building, examining each statue, looking for the right one. With their weapons poised, most looked like they were on the verge of slaying their enemy. Jora didn’t want to be attacked before she had a chance to greet her potential champion. She walked around the side of the building to the rear. The stable, a couple dozen yards away, was quiet and dark.
One warrior caught her eye. Like the others, he was tall and broad, dressed in leather breeches and a mail tunic with sleeves that ended at his elbows. Clutched in his hand like a walking stick was a glaive, its butt on the ground and bladed end pointed toward the night sky. His face was hard and determined, his eyes directed ahead. This one would do. She would have a few seconds to explain herself and beg his help before she had to defend herself.
Jora whistled for Po Teng. “Be ready to turn this warrior into a statue if he tries to hurt me, all right?”
Po Teng nodded and moved into position behind the statue.
She swallowed hard and stepped up to the stone. How’s this going to work? She was supposed to touch it and play the command phrase at the same time, but she needed both hands to play the flute. She raised the left sleeve of her robe and pressed her elbow against the cool stone. Tentatively, she began to play.
“Free from stone, let blood flow through.”
A tingling warmth emanated from the statue. The sensation was so surprising that she flinched, breaking contact with the stone. She waited and watched, but nothing happened. Sundancer had said she needed to keep touching it until the phrase stopped. She’d played the entire twenty-four-note sequence, but nothing more was happening. She pressed her elbow against it again and noticed it had returned to its cold, hard state. She tried once more, this time, when the warmth began, she maintained her contact with it, even after the last note faded into silence.
A resonance within the stone matched the last note she played, not unlike that in the Spirit Stone every day, though not as intense. She felt it, but it didn’t sing through her bones like the daily tones did. The longer she kept contact with it, the warmer it grew, and softer, the stone’s surface feeling more and more like skin every moment. At last, the resonance dissipated, and the statue, now a man with bronzed skin and long, dark hair, took a deep breath.
Jora stepped away, gazing up at his chiseled face while his bluish-green eyes shifted to take in his surroundings before coming to rest on her. He hadn’t lost any of his height. In fact, he seemed even bigger now, if that was possible. She’d have guessed he was at least seven feet tall.
He flinched and looked about, as if now aware of his new surroundings. When his gaze fell on Po Teng, he dropped into a battle stance and leveled his weapon at the ally. “Beware thine afstand, foend.” His accent was so thick, Jora wasn’t sure he was even speaking her language.
“No,” she said, “don’t hurt him. He won’t hurt you.”
The warrior took his eyes from Po Teng just long enough to glance skeptically her way.
“He’s not a fiend. He’s my ally. My friend, as I hope you will be if you’ll lay down your weapon.”
“Hope is a beggare. Thy froend is a monstre.”
“No, he was a man, a soldier like you, but he was slain in the forest while under the influence of the god Retar’s magic. That’s why he looks this way.” She put a gentle hand on his weapon and pushed its point away from Po Teng. “He won’t hurt you unless I tell him to. He protects me.”
The warrior glared at Po Teng a moment longer before he lifted his glaive back into its resting position with its butt end on the ground and tip skyward. “I am dreaming? What place is this?”
“We’re in Serocia, in the city of Jolver.”
“Joliva? I agnize nie this structure nor the sculpteries. How long was I asleep?”
“What?” With his thick accent and strange way of speaking, she struggled to understand what he said.
“This is the night,” he said, waving his free hand across the deep blue dome of the nighttime sky. “How long was I asleep? Thou hast awaken’d me.” He spoke more slowly, enunciating his words as if he thought it would help.
“Oh,” she said, finally understanding. “You weren’t asleep.” She pointed to the statues down the row. “You were like them. A statue.”
The warrior’s eyes widened with horror. “Drusis? Scipio? Ludovicus!” He rushed to the third statue and touched its arm tenderly. “My bro’er.” He wheeled about and advanced on Jora, his weapon pointed at her throat. He froze like that, his skin, clothing, and weapon turning alabaster.
“Po Teng, it’s all right,” she said. “I don’t think he would kill me. He’s concerned, that’s all. Let him go.”
With one touch of the ally’s finger, the warrior returned to his flesh form. A dark fury stormed across his countenance. “What hast thou done to him?” he asked, displaying no sign that he sensed he’d been turned to stone and back again.
“I did nothing to him,” Jora said. “I released you from the same fate. I’m not your enemy.”
“Free him. Free my bro’er.”
“No,” she said. “I won’t free anyone else until I’m sure you won’t hurt me.”
The warrior glared down at her for a moment, their eyes locked, before slowly lowering his weapon. He towered above her, flexing hands so big that each one could wrap completely around her neck as easily as an adult could grasp a child’s wrist. Though she trembled with fright at his size and the strength of his bearing, she stood her ground.
“I shall nie harm thee, boy. Thou hast my word on it.”
“My name is Jora, and I’m a girl. A grown woman, actually.”
He looked her up and down with a grin. “A girl wythout har? A pate bald as a marble.”
Did he just make fun of my bald head?
“Thou speakest curious.”
“I’m not the one who speaks curiously.”
“Jora.” He said it slowly, as if rolling it around his mouth like a fine wine. “Thy name is as lovely as thine eyne.” He bowed. “I am hight Archesilaus Asellio.”
She tried saying his name and got tongue-tripped on the first try.
“Archesilaus. Asellio.”
It was a noble-sounding name, but the people of Serocia tended to have shorter, simpler names, and it felt as foreign on her tongue as it sounded to her ear. “Do you mind if I call you Arc?”
He said something else, but Jora shook her head with an apologetic smile, not understanding. “Sorry,” she said. “You’re going to have to learn to speak like I do.”
“There be naught amiss wyth the manner that I speak.”
“People might have spoken that way five hundred years ago, but not anymore.”
“Fif hundard yeres?” Arc’s thick brow drew down over his heavy-lidded eyes.
“Yes. That’s about how long you were a statue.”
“How can that be?”
“The history books say Cyprianus, the last Gatekeeper, did it.”
“Cyprianus of Labrygg. The portwatcher. We wert him hunting.” He looked at the row of statues along the wall. “This loketh as we were craven.”
“Craven?
I don’t think so. That means cowardly.”
“Lafaard?” His eyes narrowed, and he loomed over her. “A Colossus from Joliva is nie a lafaard.”
She drew back. “I’m not saying you’re a lafaard, whatever that is, but our language has changed since you last spoke it. Craven doesn’t mean what you think it means. Not anymore. At your height, you’re going to stand out enough as it is. You should at least learn to talk like a modern person.”
“Lerne me, then.”
She smiled. “I’ll try my best. And you would say, ‘Teach me,‘ not ‘Lerne me.’”
Arc raised one eyebrow. “Teach me, then.”
“Much better.”
“How didst thou free me vom stone? Thou seyed ’twas a thing the portwatcher did.”
Jora swallowed. He hadn’t put it together yet, and if the Gatekeeper was his enemy, he might not take kindly to her answer. “I’m the Gatekeeper now, but don’t worry. I’m a Serocian. I’m loyal to the King of Serocia.”
He cocked his head and looked her up and down once more. “Thou art forsooth the portwatcher?”
She nearly giggled at his archaic speech. “I am, but we say Gatekeeper now, not portwatcher. It’s how I was able to set you free.”
“And thou livest in Joliva?”
“I do. The city is now named Jolver.”
“Then the war is over.”
“The Great Reckoning, yes,” she said, “though another war rages on.”
He considered her for a moment, perhaps weighing in his mind the idea of being allied to the Gatekeeper. “’Tis good to have the portwatcher wyth my side. Jora, free my bro’er anon, if thou wilt.”
“Not yet,” she said. “First, help me with something. Then I’ll free your brother and the rest of these warriors.”
“What help dost thou need o’me?”
The hour was late, and she needed to get back to the dormitory. “I’ll return tomorrow to explain everything. For now, I need you to wait here.” She pointed to the ground where he’d stood for so many years. “Would you mind?”
He shuffled to the place she indicated. “And do what?”
“Just wait.” She flicked her gaze to Po Teng. “Stop him.”
And with a touch of the ally’s twig-finger, Arc was a statue once again, though his position and pose were slightly different than before. If she was lucky, no one would notice the change.
Chapter 15
Jora spent the following morning in her lesson, tapping her foot impatiently, eager for the day to pass. Her mind drifted periodically to her adventure the previous night and the big warrior she had befriended, and Bastin grew increasingly annoyed at her lack of attention. In the afternoon, she stayed focused during her meeting with Elder Devarla, partly because she did most of the talking and partly because Elder Gastone and another elder named Alton joined them. She tried to explain the concept of the language of Azarian without teaching them how to decipher Elder Kassyl’s book of tones. Fortunately, they each had court cases to hear and criminals to sentence, and so the session lasted only two and a half hours.
Jora returned to her room and tried to study, but the combination of boring text and a disrupted sleep the previous night made her eyelids heavy, and she dozed until supper, then spent the evening alternately pacing and gazing out the window.
Hours crawled by, and the dormitory gradually quieted. She wasn’t sure how she was going to get out this time, since she’d returned Korlan’s keys to his pocket before sneaking back to her room the previous night. While the ’twixt allowed her to slip through the city unseen, unfelt, unheard, and unsmelled, it didn’t allow her to walk through walls or locked gates. She needed a key… or another way out.
Outside, she crept around the interior perimeter of the complex, searching for a tree to climb that would enable her to scale the eight-foot stone wall that encircled the dormitory and rear of the justice building. The wall behind the privy was lower, but still intact.
As she was walking past the dining hall on the ground floor of the dormitory, the sound of quiet laughter put a momentary hitch in her heartbeat. It was coming from below and growing more distant, the soft snickers of men who didn’t want to be overheard. She crept down the staircase at the far end of the building opposite the exit that led to the walkway. The corridor was dimly lit by candles spaced every twenty or thirty feet. No doors eased shut, but she could still hear the muffled sound of footsteps. A door on the left looked different than the others. She approached it, took a breath to ready herself for whatever was on the other side, and pulled it open.
Recognition bloomed in her mind. It was the tunnel that Korlan had carried her through after her punishment. She’d been in too much pain to walk, and the enforcers weren’t permitted to use the door at the other end of the building. The dim glow of a candle emanated from the left and went out. Then all was quiet, the footsteps and whispers gone.
Remembering that Korlan had blown out a candle and put it in a basket, she felt around on the wall, found the basket, and lit it from one of the candles in the corridor, tiptoeing so as not to wake the enforcers sleeping nearby.
The tunnel seemed longer than the above-ground covered walkway between the two buildings, but maybe it was because it was narrow and oppressive. The single candle gave off enough light to see a good dozen steps ahead. When she came to another tunnel on the left, she turned, thinking that was the way the others had gone ahead of her. What she would find at the end remained to be seen. She was both excited and scared. If she were caught trying to sneak out, she would no doubt be punished. But if luck was with her, she was about to find a way to sneak in and out of the justice complex without anyone knowing.
At the end of the tunnel was a door, not as smooth and well-built as the ones in the justice building, but it looked sturdy. She pressed her ear to it and heard nothing. She pushed it open, cringing when it scraped the stone floor, but no one came running. It was a storeroom, she saw. Wooden casks sat on the floor along the walls, some stacked two and three high. There were a few crates as well, and a large burlap sack. On the floor beneath the sack were a few crushed peanut shells.
On the other side of the room, a steep staircase rose up to a door. Light spilled out from around its edges. She climbed the stairs and pressed her ear to the door. She could hear the hum of conversation punctuated with laughter and the occasional clink of glass. A tavern. When she opened the door, the sound rushed at her.
She found herself in a kitchen. A girl in an apron, her dark hair wet with sweat, stood over a wash basin rinsing out mugs and setting them on a table. Jora eased the door shut, hoping to slip out unnoticed, but the girl turned, her face aghast.
And then a smile curved her lips. “A novice, are you?” she asked. “Slipping out for a little fun?”
Jora nodded and put a finger to her lips.
“Oh, don’t mind Nob and them. They’re not supposed to be here, either. If they tell on you, they’ll have to explain why they were here. Go on, have a seat out in the main hall. Ganda will bring you an ale—unless you prefer wine.”
“No, no,” Jora said. “I’m actually… is there a way out where the enforcers won’t see me?”
The girl pointed a wet hand to Jora’s left. “You can go out that way. You sure you don’t want a drink first?”
“Perhaps next time,” Jora said. “Thank you.”
“We close at three,” the girl said. “Don’t be late, or you’ll be locked out of the Justice Bureau ’til sunrise.” She lifted her chin toward Jora. “And you’ll have a hard time explaining why you’re not in your purple robe.”
Jora wondered how popular this place was among the justice officials. “I won’t.”
When Jora arrived at the Legion headquarters, she noticed that Archesilaus was not only slightly out of position, but he looked cleaner than the others, as if five hundred years of dust and grime had been scrubbed away. Hopefully, no one else had noticed. She summoned Po Teng and told him to release Arc from his statue form
.
Now of flesh and bone, Arc looked down at her. “How long wilt thou be afield?”
“I’m back. A full day has passed since we last spoke.”
He laughed. “Thou art a trickor.” And then his smile fell away when his eyes scanned the sky. “The stares have moven.”
She looked at the dark sky, impressed that he noticed that the stars had changed position. “It’s later now than it was when we met last night.”
“How can that be?”
“I’m the Gatekeeper, remember?” she said with a grin. “My ally made you into a statue again and released you on my command.”
He looked her over again, then gave Po Teng a sidelong glance. “And ere that, fif hundard yeres?”
“That’s right. Five hundred years. Say it that way.”
“Retar is the god, thou didst say? Nie Hibsar?”
“That’s right. Retar challenged Hibsar and defeated him on the Isle of Shess. He’s unlike the gods before him. He was the first to pledge allegiance to the people of the world, rather than insist on the reverse. He helps us by sharing knowledge and insight.”
“The god talks to thee? Thou hast spoken wyth the god thyself? And he spake to thee?”
“I have. He has. He’s quite a pleasant fellow, too, with a sense of humor.”
The drone of crickets in the weeds grew momentarily louder.
“See? He agrees.” She smiled.
“It is amazing.”
“Before I came to set you free the first time, he told me I needed an army.”
“Wherefore?”
She started to tell him about the godfruit smuggling and realized she first needed to explain what godfruit was. “After Retar defeated Hibsar, Retar’s brother planted a tree in the blood of the fallen god. That tree now gives us godfruit. Those who eat it can survive one death.”
“Gar!”
“It’s true,” she said, amused at his surprise. She thought of her own averted beheading. Godfruit couldn’t possibly have saved her from that. “Mostly,” she added.
“Telle me more o’this godfruit,” Arc said.
