“Yes,” I said.
A call rang out from the road ahead. I looked over my shoulder, craning to see who was there.
“Where are you going?”
“Al’Karida.”
“Can we join your caravan for safety along the way?”
“I’ll bring you to the Captain of the Guard. He will decide.”
I tried to catch a glimpse of the new people, but I couldn’t get a good view of them, just the edges of horses and packs and dark cloaks.
“Tylira,” Amandera said. “Please, attend.”
The new people followed the lead guard as he led them further into the caravan. I counted eight horses nearing the palanquin. They were men, tall, strapping and riding gorgeous dappled horses with arched necks. Their hoods were pulled down low so I couldn’t see their faces and under their hooded cloaks they wore close fitting breeches, tall leather boots shaped for riding and long coats. There were no flags, no colors, nor head wraps. They appeared foreign or very low class, but not slaves or they would wear their mistress’s colors.
“Tylira!”
As the last man in the line passed, he looked up at me through a gap in the curtain. I saw his face in his dark hood at the very moment that he smiled and winked. I gasped and stiffened. He saw me. He winked. He was my age with chiselled features, a hint of dark shadow around his jaw and warm honey-brown liquid eyes with a hint of laughter in them. All I could think of was honey, slowly dripping down the side of the bowl and of licking it up.
The stone in my hand grew hot and I yelled, dropping it.
“That’s two laps for tonight, Tylira, and there will be two more for every time that you drop the stone. I am not here because I enjoy wasting my time. Are you?”
Didn’t she realize that I didn’t want to be here at all? Maybe I should try to run away tonight. But then again, Jakinda said she was under orders to force me to obey Amandera. Would I want to see how painful Amandera could make that trick of hers?
“Now,” Amandera said, “No more fooling around. Focus. Find that connection.”
I’d have to forget about honey if I was going to keep from running laps all night long – or worse. There would be plenty of time to think of that later. Tonight. In my bed. I started, realizing that I was wasting time and the stone was growing hotter. Slow breaths. Breathe evenly. Focus on the stone.
Oma Evereed and Ada Betina spoke together quietly as I joined them. Beside them a woman so old her skin looked parchment-thin sat on the ground in her own meditation position. Her white hair was shorn and her clothing was strange and foreign so that I couldn’t tell if it was designed for a man or a woman. She did not open her eyes when I arrived. She was singing a nursery rhyme that I’d heard a thousand times, only never sung in such an irritating rhythm. Between that and her thick accent my childhood lullaby sounded foreign.
Ring around the heavens,
Can see it in a thick lens,
Falling, falling, under the snow.
Ring around the mountains,
It baffles all the high plans,
Falling, falling, under the falls.
Ring around the God’s Teeth,
Shaped like a thick wreath,
Falling, falling, under your nose.
Ring for when the earth bends,
Ring for when the mother ends,
Follow, follow, follow it home.
“Ridiculous.” Had I said that out loud?
“Don’t mind An’alepp,” Ada Betina said as she broke away from her secretive huddle with Oma Evereed. “She’s so old that she was ancient when I was young.”
“Her mind is likely gone.” Oma Evereed adjusted her sarette uncomfortably. “But she wanted to see you. And none of the rest of us are willing to stake our souls on you so we thought it was worth a try.”
“Your mind goes in the afterlife?” I peered at An’alepp. Why did she want to see me?
“This isn’t the afterlife.” Ada Betina twisted her fingers together. “We aren’t really here. Or at least, not permanently.”
“So you’re just here to guide us before you move on?”
“In a way,” Ada Betina said glancing at Oma Evereed. “We have a certain amount of ourselves to...invest in the next generation.”
“Why does she want to see me?” I asked.
“Who knows?” Oma Evereed smoothed a last fold of sarette into place. “She heard us talking about your difficulties and the next thing we knew—”
He words cut off along with my meditation as my heartstone grew too hot for me to maintain focus. I hissed, dropping it to the floor of the palanquin, tears streaming from my eyes.
“Terrible progress,” Amandera said, lifting her china cup delicately to her lips and sipping with a tiny smile on her face. She marked a tiny parchment in front of her with four ink lines. The laps I would have to run. “Again.”
I sank back into my meditation.
As soon as I saw my ancestors I said, “I’m in a hurry today. Amandera will punish me every time I fail to connect to the Common.”
Ada Betina frowned and shared a glance with Oma Evereed before she spoke, “It doesn’t work that way.”
“Please!” I said.
“Well, sit down, child,” Ada Betina said. “We’ll discuss the possibility of...”
I grunted this time as I dropped the stone, wiggling my fingers to make sure they still had feeling.
“Again,” Amandera said, opening a tiny leather book with golden filigree around the corners. “We will do this all day until you find the Common. If you fail today, we will do something harder tomorrow.” She smiled to herself with her eyes narrowing in satisfaction. “Pray that you find the connection today, I have some creative ideas I would like to try.”
Chapter Six: Moonlight
Was she serious? Did she really think that twenty laps around the camp in the gods-forsaken dark was going to make me discover my magic more quickly, or was this just a punishment for being me?
Youch! I hopped up and down on one foot, tears leaking out of my eyes. Where did that rock come from? It wasn’t there on the other twenty laps, but maybe I was just getting dizzy from all the running. My next few steps were more of a hobble as I tried to keep from crying out.
The sun was sinking slowly over the distant hills and the dusk was purple and warm. Fireflies flickered across the camp and the glow of cook fires filled the center of the caravan. Amandera’s huge purple silken tent glowed at the heart of the activity while rougher tents were pitched all around it. The sounds of eating and enjoyment rang out from the guards and slaves. None of them had to run twenty four laps around the huge encampment.
My stride evened out as the pain dissipated. Good thing they made me run like this every morning – well, maybe not like this. That was more like the first two laps. I was going to be sore tomorrow morning. I was working around towards where the elephants were picketed. The twenty-foot high beasts stood like a small range of mountains. I could probably run this circuit blindfolded now – here was Alsoon. I smiled and lifted my hand as I ran past. The first few times I had waved energetically, but my limbs were heavy and aching now. He lifted his trunk in imitation.
The evening breeze cooled the sweat on my forehead and torso. Of course Amandera would make me run in a place where there was no water to wash with. I already felt like I badly needed a bath. Was this going to be my fate from here on? Worked to exhaustion and being humiliated and tormented by anyone with the power to turn my own people against me?
My feet thudded along the path I’d worn with my laps. And then, what was that I heard? Another set of feet? A figure joined me, running through the night.
“How many more laps, princess?” a deep baritone asked.
“Who wants to know?” I asked, panting from the exertion.
“The wind,” he said, and humor echoed in his tone.
“Go ahead and laugh.”
“Oh, I’m not laughing. Actually we’re all impressed. At this rate you could al
ready be at Al’Karida.”
“And get there too soon for the Great Sounding?” I asked, straining to see him in the falling dark. He was nothing but a silhouette.
“Do you want to see the Sounding, princess?”
“I want to dance to the music and stand in the Great Square when the announcement is made and watch the first racers fly through the door,” I said.
“My father told me that those who entered the race could win fame, fortune, and even freedom,” he said, his voice full of some great emotion. Was it hope?
“No one is free.” One lap left. I dug in and sped harder.
“Silly words coming from royalty,” he said, keeping pace with me.
I stopped abruptly. He couldn’t stop for a few more steps, and when he did, he leaned his hands on his thighs, panting. The talking, combined with exertion must have been too much. I walked to where he was, and as I drew up in front of him the moon slid over the hills. In the silver light I could see the sculpted planes and honey-brown eyes that had winked at me. The dark cloak and coat were gone, and the moonlight picked out the fitted lines of his pants and glimmered over his bare torso. He was trim and muscled like a warrior with an easy gait and easier smile.
“When I arrive at Al’Karida they will fasten a silver chain to my left hand and it will remain there for many years. They will chain me to a man I have never met and I will not be rid of him until the High Tazmin agrees that it be so. You call me free?” I asked. My whole body heaved as I gulped in air between my words. A shake was beginning in my thigh from stopping so quickly.
“I call you beautiful,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. Beautiful? No one had ever called me that before. And what was he doing telling me that? Did he want something he thought I could give him? I had nothing anyone would want. He looked at me with a pained look of great sadness, and his lips were pursed. “What will you do to the man on the other end of the chain?”
“Do to him? Nothing. I’ll have to tolerate his unwanted presence and constant nagging,” I said. “Are you going to race at Al’Karida?”
“Perhaps,” he said, with a sly half-grin. “I’m good at running.”
“Then I call you free,” I said. The moonlight played over the tight curls shadowing his scalp and the rolling mountains and valleys of his shoulders and taut arms. I traced them like I was trying to burn them into my memory. Maybe I was. When would I next be alone with a man other than the one they were going to chain me to?
“Do you wish you were going to race?” he asked me. His full attention was on me, and I almost shivered with the intensity of it.
“I want to do all the things of legend,” I said. “I want to race for the Teeth of the Gods in the Great Sounding. I want to climb the Avanrest and fjord the Chan’leird River. I want to smell the pines of Sidonia and taste the Pluberries of Rusaria in summer. I want to taste the brine of the sea on the edge of the map and fall over the edge-fall into the world of the Gods.”
He laughed. I wanted to hear that sound ring in my head forever. Was I blushing? My cheeks were furiously hot with only the cool breeze to soothe them. This was what I got for talking about my dreams with a man – even a young one. If the tutors of the Silken Gardens could see me I’d be eating nothing but gruel for a week. If Amandera saw me... I glanced quickly around. She wasn’t looking, was she? Was anyone looking? We seemed to be alone.
He leaned in close and whispered. “Someday I’ll take you to all those places, and you can taste whatever you want.”
Could my cheeks get any hotter? Could my heart beat faster? Was it foolish to fall in love with the first man your age that you met who wasn’t a guard or slave? Probably. If Amandera could see me she’d make me run all night, but I’d be thinking of those gleaming muscles and that easy smile the whole time.
I swallowed. “Someday I’ll take myself and if you’re lucky I’ll let you come.”
He laughed again, low and throaty. Maybe I needed a drink, because I was swallowing again. Yes. I definitely needed water.
A branch cracked behind me and I turned to look back. Jakinda was outlined in the moonlight. I turned back to the stranger to tell him not to worry, but he was gone. Had she seen us together?
“Are you done running for tonight, Tylira?” Jakinda asked me.
I sighed. If only I could have learned his name. “I just need to walk the rest of the lap.”
“Then I’ll walk it with you,” she said, falling into place beside me.
I shook my legs out in between steps. The burn in my muscles was only going to get worse. I hadn’t felt the tiniest flicker of connection with the Common all afternoon. One failure after another. I was never meant for this life. I was meant for a life of whispering about adventure and beauty to men with warm voices.
“We’ll be in Al’Karida in three days, weather permitting,” Jakinda said. “Tomand told me that the High Tazminera will be staying at the Grand Hall of the Doves which belongs to the Lesser Tazmin of Al’Karida.”
“Of course,” I said, stifling a yawn.
Jakinda cleared her throat and then continued, “I have taken the liberty of sending a rider to find us a suitable inn.”
I stopped. An inn! An inn away from Amandera! I could hug Jakinda. Instead, I remembered myself and I bowed slightly before I spoke.
“Thank you for your competence, Jakinda.”
My pace picked up slightly. This was going to be great! I’d get to see Al’Karida without Amandera. I might even be able to see the Great Sounding. This was unbelievable!
“Of course, Tazminera,” she said.
And now she called me Tazminera! Could the night get any better? We stopped outside a low tent. Two of my guards were stationed on either side of the entrance, their gazes straight ahead of them like bronze statues.
“We set this tent up for you, Tazminera. Your things are inside.” Jakinda gave me a slight bow of respect. “Oh, and I forgot to mention it. We allowed a small group of travellers to join the caravan. Stay clear of them. We can protect you, but they are reckless men—drifters and cutpurses, no doubt—and not fit to be near the Tazminera.”
Reckless. That sounded exciting.
“Thank you, Jakinda.”
I ducked into the tent, closing the flap behind me. I could already feel the blankets around me and my eyes closing in sleep. When had I last worked so hard in a day? Someone had lit a lamp in the tent. I finished tying the flap shut and turned to see how they had set up my sleeping quarters.
Sitting on a folding cot in the center of the tent was Amandera.
“I hope you enjoyed your running, Tylira,” she said. “Because there will be twenty more laps tomorrow morning if you fail to light a candle with your connection to the Common.”
My head spun. I was so tired. I couldn’t light a candle when I wasn’t exhausted, never mind now.
“Are you lazy, girl?” Amandera asked, hauling me by the back of my sarette farther into the tent. I stumbled over a small rug and fell to my knees. “Get up! I’ll have no lazy girls here. No wonder you did so poorly in the Silken Gardens! You have no discipline. No toughness.”
I stood up, swaying in place. I should have started that first lap and just kept on running across the desert.
“Now, focus and plead with your ancestors to help you. You have five minutes to light this candle,” Amandera said, placing an unlit candle on the cot. “Fail, and you will know pain.”
From behind her back she produced a long, wicked looking whip.
I gasped. “You can’t.”
Amandera smiled slightly. “Wrong. There is no one here who will stop me. I will not bring a useless daughter to the High Tazmin. One way or another, we will find a way to make you a useful tool. Begin. You are wasting your five minutes.”
I concentrated, sliding quickly into my meditation, but the ancestors were not there. Instead I stood in a vast empty space completely alone. I had never come here without meeting ancestors, and I had never before noticed that it
was so lonely. Had they finally given up on me?
I needed to focus. I was so tired. I sat down on the cracked earth. Beside me, a pool appeared, wreathed in mist. It looked just like my cloudy heartstone.
“What color do you want to be, pool?” I asked it. “Where is the Common that everyone else can tap into?” I banged the heel of my palm on the ground, exhausted and frustrated. “Why can’t I find it? Am I defective?”
I felt something – like a cross between a taste and an echo – unravelling across the sky. It spun, and from it trailed scented echoes, branching away. I was so tired that nothing was making sense. I blinked, my head beginning to nod in sleep.
Crack! I yelled in pain, back to the real world and the mat on the floor of the tent. My hand tried to reach the welt on my back, but I couldn’t twist far enough to feel the broken skin.
“If you want to save the sarette you should remove it. Blood will stain it and the whip may break the threads.”
My mouth fell open as she spoke and my back was screaming with pain and heat. She would pay for this! She would pay! I lunged towards her, but my body exploded in fiery heat and I fell to the ground, writhing in pain.
“I will give you a moment to disrobe if you wish,” Amandera said, flexing the whip between her hands. “And then we will try again.”
Chapter Seven: Wringing
If I could pick just one way for Amandera to die, I think I would choose Chupaca snake bite. Then her perfect face would swell up purple and bulging and her whole body would be covered with hives. No. Wait. I think I would choose throwing her off a high cliff, because then I could hear her scream for a very long time before the splat. No, Tylira, you are better than that! Think! If I could choose just one way for Amandera to die I would lock her in a box with mirrors for walls so that her own soul-sucking stare could suck the soul out of her reflection a thousand times a thousand times.
The slipper struck and I flinched and hissed. My body was a mass of bruises. She’d left five long welts with the whip before switching to beating my mostly naked body with a slipper instead. Twice I’d attacked her, only to curl into a whimpering ball when she set me aflame within. Three times I had tried to run, but cords of air held me still. One thing I refused to do—cry. She would not see me so weak. Not once had I felt even a flicker of connection to the Common. I probably don’t even have a connection. Talking to Alsoon was just a coincidence. My mother should have brought me with her to her early grave instead of leaving me here to suffer. Why couldn’t Amandera just realize that this wasn’t going to happen?
Teeth of the Gods Page 4
