INBORN (The Sagas of Di'Ghon)

by Lawrence, J.

  “Thank… you.” She said after they turned a corner and headed into the final stretch of the line. But the one time he caught her darting eyes, the fear he saw there was still palpable. She was right to be afraid. Thaniel swore he could feel the man drawing closer by the minute. They weren’t anywhere near being in the clear. Come to think of it, what would they do next? How would two slaves in a walled hold somewhere in the midst of the vast Anwar Mountains evade a soldier who had the run of not only the castle but the entire village as well? His heart sank as he realized that this all might be just a matter of time.

  The spiraling dra carving was only a few couples ahead now. Thaniel felt his stomach flutter at the thought. The carving was exquisitely done. Why did it bother him so much?

  “Don’t thank me yet.” He warned as muffled complaints from behind prompted him to peek over his shoulder. The crimson clad warrior was brushing his way forward.

  “Not for that.” She squeezed his hand. “For this.” She stuck the crumpled blossom back in her hair just as they stepped up to the carving. She had managed to hold onto it through their run down the cistern way.

  Thaniel breathed a sigh of relief as he recognized Irkhir, the massive leader of the First that was standing with his arms folded, forearms rippling, to the left of the dra… carving. The other two guards were shaking their heads impatiently. Of course... Thaniel relayed the message himself about the shipment of ale arriving a few days earlier for the Festival of the Caller. Anybody holding up the line was likely to get cuffed.

  “Keriim, what happened to you?” Irkhir’s voice was like steel. It was directed over their shoulders.

  “I fell.” Came the grating voice directly behind them. The man laid a big hand on Thaniel’s shoulder.

  “On a wench no doubt.” The soldiers all laughed. Irkhir noticed Keriim’s beefy hand gripping Thaniel’s shoulder and he added, “Is there a problem with the messenger and his kiss?”

  “We have… business.” The grip tightened and Thaniel winced. Beside him Elycia had turned completely white.

  “Whatever.” Irkhir sucked at his teeth distractedly and waved the matter off. The soldier’s hand started to steer him away. “Wait. They have to touch the dra first…”

  Keriim grunted and pushed him forward.

  Ontar Hold’s walls were spotted with all kinds of carvings. Yet none of them compared to this one. The dra’s body spiraled around a massive head. Its sinuous hide was carved with different symbols. The tail was covered in violent storm cloud patterns. Then as it worked closer to the head, the pattern transitioned into ocean waves. From waves into lightning, into trees, into fire, into hammers and drums, into beasts, into sundials, and then purposeful blackness somehow was worked into the stone. The dra's head, easily the size of his own, was set just slightly off center. For the first time Thaniel noticed how torchlight caught the two blue gems set as its eyes, intermittently spraying the walls in tiny blue flecks of dancing light. It was mesmerizingly beautiful.

  Even so, a shiver worked its way down his back. It didn’t help that once he touched it, he, and probably Elycia, were as good as dead.

  “Move.” Irkhir growled and Thaniel felt his feet lurch forward reflexively.

  “Do it right, messenger. Or I’ll send you to the back of the line, without your kiss.” Simeone, one of the huge soldiers, also knew who he was. Thaniel kept his eyes averted from the men and quickly reached for the dra head. Palms on the jowls, he fit his fingers into its cranial ridges and waited to be dismissed.

  “Next.” The second guard called out.

  Thaniel dropped his head, let out a sigh, and waited to be led away to his death. He went to pull his hands away but something was wrong. His hands were stuck. He must have caught his cuffs on something.

  “What in nine hells is the problem now?” Irkhir growled.

  Thaniel pulled harder, intending to rip free whatever was snagged before Irkhir made an example of him. Yet, his hands just wouldn’t pull away.

  Then, directly in front of his face, the gemstone eyes of the dra glowed in the brightest azure he had ever seen. As if the sun was shining behind the settings. Instinct screamed for him to run and he heaved at his hands in bone popping lunges. Sharp pain raced up his arms letting him know that if he yanked any harder he would walk away with bloody stumps. Then, beyond all reason, the pale gray stone carving took on color. It started around the eyes and bloomed like an ancient evil come alive. The entire dra's head burst into vibrant light. Dark reds, yellows, and a deep orange that looked more like gold on fire painted the scales along the length of dra's body, instantly bathing the dreary hallway in a fury of reflecting color. Then even the carved patterns bloomed.

  Someone was screaming. Was that Elycia?

  Yet when Thaniel turned, he saw people everywhere shouting, filling the hallway with echoes of alarm. Fear instinctively flooded through him, clouding his vision in a white haze.

  All at once Thaniel’s hands came free and he tumbled backwards. He scrambled back to his feet, ready to run for his life, when a boom reverberated through his bones, rolling down the hall like thunder, stilling the screams of the people he had forgotten were still there.

  One hand shielding his eyes from the blinding colors, he couldn’t help but watch as the light coalesced into an azure line that split right down the middle of the dra's head and then stretched from floor to ceiling.

  With a crack the entire wall split in two.

  Immediately the split dra started fading back into gray granite, and with the grating of stone on stone, the wall opened, revealing a large dark chamber within. Thaniel knew he should run, but his legs had forgotten how, and he just sat there frozen in awe and fear.

  “Seize the Caller.” Irkhir’s hard voice bellowed.

  Everyone he looked at seemed scared witless. Han, the big mason, had protectively put his body between him and Heralin. Elycia frantically scrambled backwards away from him. He would have traded anything not to have seen the look in her eyes, as though he carried the plague, and being anywhere near him was the worst thing in all of Arth.

  An instant later two soldiers had his face pressed hard against the floor. Right there in front of his eyes the bright red ice blossom lay trampled on the cold stone.

  Chapter 7

  Caller

  Once the magical colors fully subsided, at least the terror ebbed out of most of the faces in the hall. The emotions left in its wake were of every shade imaginable. He saw hesitant amazement in some. A few people knuckled their eyes, doubting that they had actually seen the stone dra transform or the wall split down the middle in a blazing azure line. It was as if they refused to believe that it swung wide open all on its own, revealing a hidden vast chamber beyond. Many people stared at him with their hands over their open mouths. The revulsion he saw there couldn’t have been any plainer. Elycia was among the latter.

  Thaniel couldn’t bear to look at her anymore. He stared at the blossom instead. It was little more than a crimson stain on the polished stone floor now.

  There was so much he didn’t want to think about. He wanted to forget his mother at the hands of those men… the white in her eyes… or his sister disappearing during the miserable trek into the north... how the silence answered him as he screamed out her name no matter how much the slavers hit him…the block where he was sold like a cow... the beatings once he got here.

  How else was he supposed to make the best of things? Forgetting what was behind allowed him to claim a life where there was so little of it to go around… Through it all he had managed to keep moving forward, knowing better things lay ahead. Yet when he saw terror and revulsion in Elycia’s eyes, directed not at the dra carving, but at him... He didn’t see how he would ever be able to forget that. Like Jorel said, might as well forget your sock was full of nails.

  It took a mountain of effort just to dare another glance in her direction, in case something had changed. … His heart sank and he immediately dropped his eyes, preferring
the cold stone floor over what he saw there, but not before registering Keriim inching closer to an unsuspecting Elycia. Thaniel cringed at the thought that he would be the diversion the brute used to snatch her away.

  Keriim flashed Thaniel a smile.

  “No.” Thaniel croaked, evoking an even heavier knee in his back.

  At the last second Elycia flinched away from his grasp, letting out a ragged squeak in the process. Keriim surged forward, a hand outstretched for Elycia’s shoulder.

  “First.” Irkhir’s sharp tone startled the entire hallway. Heads snapped in his direction. The massive leader of the First stepped forward, eyes narrowing as he took in every inch of them. “The Caller and his kiss,” Irkhir inclined his head in Elycia’s direction as he continued, “are both under my protection. If any of you has business with either of them, it stops here.” His eyes went from man to man, stopping at Keriim.

  “Get the Ontar.” Irkhir snapped, directly at Keriim. “Tell her that the Caller has returned.” Irkhir’s tone was sharp. Instructions meant to be obeyed. “Run.” He roared at the man.

  Keriim’s eyes daggered into Thaniel’s before he grunted and spun away.

  “Sir?” Elycia managed.

  Irkhir answered her with his eyes.

  “I am not his kiss.”

  “No.” He smiled. “Didn’t you come to the dra with a blossom in your hair holding his hand?” Irkhir pointed to the floor where Thaniel was pinned, the wind driven from his lungs by the hard knee in his back.

  Elycia sniffed and nodded.

  “But, he’s…”

  “You prefer Keriim?” He studied her with a cold appraising stare until she shook her head, wiping tears before they fell from her face. “Then shut up. Somebody has to be the Caller’s kiss.”

  “Never.” Elycia buried her face in her hands and crumpled to the floor in tears.

  “Seems you don’t have a way with women, Caller. We’ll see how you do with Lisella Ontar.”

  Chapter 8

  Nightmares

  “Come inside Mistress. You will catch your death out there.” Farina, her handmaiden, called from inside.

  “You have no idea…” She mumbled under her breath.

  Since she had taken the mantle of rule and had to push love away, Lisella tried not to open the heavy shutters of her balcony for any other purpose than addressing the crowd during the Festival of the Caller. Not only was the balcony just high enough so that the castle walls didn’t shield the spot from Anwar’s ever present icy wind, but the memories that greeted her there were almost too much to bear.

  She had steeled herself against his charms before she went out to address her people. She didn’t dare let her eyes settle on any man in crimson and armor lest it be him. But then, her traitorous eyes picked up on the tiny movement a soldier made as he scolded two young men in the crowd. She nearly bit off her tongue when she realized who the soldier was.

  There, in the midst of the two young men, stood Tristan.

  It wasn’t her fault that the man was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. It couldn’t be wrong for her to see the man by accident. She had eyes after all.

  Yet, it was the second look, the one he didn’t return, that she was so mad about. She couldn’t blame him for moving on. After all, she drove him away. What was the man supposed to do? Wait for nothing? At the time she made it all too clear. The ruler of Ontar couldn’t be the mistress of a common soldier.

  She wondered what her father, whom she’d never met, would say. He died in battle two months before she was born. Theirs being a marriage of alliance rather than love, her mother never spoke of him. All she had ever known of her father came from Irkhir’s scolding. He meant well enough. At least the man waited until they were alone. He always had opinions of what her father would or wouldn’t have done in all kinds of circumstances. Whether or not they were an accurate picture of the man she didn’t know. She hoped so. Irkhir’s advice was usually sound.

  Her mother wasn’t the type to be bothered with the day to day concerns of running a kingdom, nor the type to take advice from one of her dead husband’s trusted First, and they had all suffered for it. After a decade their fortunes had dwindled to a trickle of what they had once been. Half of their lands simply stopped paying the tribute, and she did nothing.

  When she died, after slipping from the castle wall through a rain wash-out, the rule of Ontar fell to her older brother. Within a week he took off, leaving her to run the hold.

  Irkhir didn’t waste any time preparing her for what was next.

  It wasn’t long before word of her brother’s extravagances got back to her. While he travelled abroad he was squandering the meager funds they had left. There was no end to his appetites or what he was willing to pay to quench them. The ledger agreed with Irkhir’s opinion. There was no way they would all survive him. Someone had to do something. If she hadn’t arranged his “accident” the fool would have brought Ontar to ruin within a month.

  Lisella closed her eyes and chose to remember her brother when they were younger, just two children playing in the hold. Flawed as he was she still missed him. She wiped away the single tear that sprang from the corner of her eye and flung it into the wind, allowing the heavy scent of pine to clear her mind. What was done was done.

  The Code sang for whom it chose.

  “My Mistress.” A harsh voice called from the entrance of the balcony.

  Lisella Ontar turned to find one of the First kneeling.

  “What is it?”

  “Irkhir sends me with word.”

  “You obviously wouldn’t have been allowed in my chambers if that wasn’t the case. Get up.”

  “The… Caller…” He stayed on his knees.

  “Spit it out.”

  “The Caller has returned, my Mistress.” When the man looked up his face seemed twisted, like he had a fever or something. “I’m to escort you to the hall.”

  “You lost a bet, Keriim? Irkhir put you up to this?” Lisella Ontar smirked at the man, searching for the joke that surely was being played on her.

  It wasn’t completely absurd that Irkhir would play a joke on her, although she couldn’t see where this one could be going... From time to time her personal guard were allowed a few indulgences others wouldn’t be. They earned it. If ever she was attacked they would die to a man before she did.

  Yet, why Irkhir sent this man was a mystery. She would expect it from Hogan or Neel. The two of them were the type. If it were either of them she would be expecting the other to come jumping into the chamber wearing a painted dra costume. Yet, she knew this man. There wasn’t a humorous bone in Keriim’s body, not for something like this. He was one of the finest of her guard, a vicious and cunning warrior, but a practical joker? Never.

  Lisella stared into his eyes, seeing something there she couldn’t quite place. He returned her stare, eyes almost level even though he was still kneeling. There was something about this man that had always reeked of menace. She shook it off. After all, it was a quality she should probably be happy to have in one of the First.

  “I swear on my mother’s fingers. We have him in the hall.” He said.

  “Wait outside.” She waved him away, shaking her head.

  Lisella stared at the big leather book still sitting on her table. The title, Prophecies of the Code, swam in her vision. Like a nightmare come to life, the spiraling dra seemed to stare back at her.

  He was not joking. It was impossible, she knew, but he wasn’t joking. Lisella had to remind herself to breathe. It couldn’t be all real. It couldn’t be.

  “The code sings for whom it will.” She mouthed the words her mentors had drilled into her as a child.

  Then she threw up.

  Chapter 9

  Crushed Blossom

  Thaniel’s knees shook uncontrollably. He had a soldier on either side of him, each holding one of his arms.

  Lisella Ontar ignored the slaves still half cowering down the hall. She threw up a hand
to silence Irkhir’s greeting as she walked right by him and up to the dra head that was now divided, each half set on one of two massive stone doors where there was once only a wall.

  Irkhir’s head bowed reverently as she passed, but the sidelong glare he shot Thaniel told him he was going to wish he hadn’t witnessed the leader of the First being snubbed so casually.

  Lisella Ontar was usually the picture of noble composure itself. Now she stood leaning precariously to one side as if drunk. Her mouth was open, face completely flushed, and her chest heaved in and out like she had run all the way from her quarters. She was absent-mindedly tracing her fingers along the cranial ridges of the dra’s head. Her hair, which had been intricately tied with a crown of red ribbons, now looked more like a bloody bird nest. As was the custom for the Festival of the Caller, her normal red weave tunic had been exchanged for flowing crimson robes. The ice cold draft sweeping down from the dark chamber was just strong enough that her silky garments rippled lazily. Earlier the bright red silk made him think of an ice blossom, like the one he had given Elycia that was now ground into the stone floor. Now her festival attire reminded him of flowing blood.

  Thaniel swallowed.

  She shook her head as if to snap herself back into reality and regarded him with the slightest incline of her head. Her green eyes seemed to weigh his every inch instantly and Thaniel got the feeling she wasn’t the least bit impressed. Even with the icy breeze in his face Thaniel suddenly felt like he needed more air.

  “What is his name?” Lisella wasn’t talking to him.

  “Thaniel. One of the messengers, my Mistress.” Irkhir answered.

  “Thaniel.” She repeated to herself, committing his name to memory. The whites of her eyes registered something far beyond amazement, past even shock, as she stared back and forth between him and the split dra head.