She pulled a dagger from his side and, using all her strength, stabbed him in the neck. His torso slumped and blood gurgled from the wounds. Tamza was panting. She unpeeled her fingers from the hilt of the daggers and looked at her bloody hands. That was the third life she had taken that night.
She whispered to the stars, “Forgive me, Bear-God. But it is necessary, it is something I should have done weeks ago, but until now I was a coward.” She wiped the blood on the long grass and stood. “But I am not a coward any longer.”
Tamza barked to get her bears’ attention, to reveal her position. A noise that was often heard at night in Vaasar from the dancing bears, and one which soldiers nearby wouldn’t be alarmed by. She barked again and could sense the bears approaching the tree line.
Rae-bear answered her with a loud huff, blowing air through his nostrils.
“We leave. Now. Come, all of you. Be silent,” Tamza said.
Rae-bear ran to her, across the training ground, past her old home, past the headless body of Ursah-bear, ripped apart by the vultures and already stripped clean. Twelve more bears followed him. She opened the gate for them, and they slowed to pass through it one by one.
“Pilly-bear, please get Sumear’s bones. Jori-bear please collect Ursah. We take our loved ones with us and send them to Bear-God properly with a burn.”
Pilly-bear, the second largest male after Rae, ran around the fence and grabbed the skull of Sumear in his strong jaws. The adolescent Jori snatched up one of Ursah’s huge paws, claws still intact.
“Rae-bear, may I ride you?” Tamza asked with a respectful bow.
He snorted and lowered his head so she could climb up.
Tamza looked one last time at her old home and whistled directions to Rae-bear. To the bears behind she clicked, “Follow us, if you sniff any other human nearby, kill them. Do not let any live.”
They ran past the enclosure, away from the palace and towards the houses that sprawled up the hill. Rae turned up a steep, winding alleyway, the bears followed. The smallest, Fir-bear, lagging behind.
The alleyway was deserted, the houses dark and empty. The little procession of brown bears met nobody as it ascended the hill. The buildings suddenly stopped, as the slope became too steep to build on. This was where the mountains began. There was a strip of scrubland which led into large rocks and scree before a near vertical cliff. Above this cliff were tall trees, their roots growing over the lip of the cliff. This was the natural northern edge of town. Tamza tongue-clicked for Rae to pause and allow the others to catch up.
This spot afforded a magnificent view over the town, of the harbour and out to sea. Beyond, the dunes spread for as far as the eye could see. She used to come here with Ahmed, before he left on the boat with her brothers. To the east, the palace glowed with the candles burning there, and a line of lights glimmered in the south, along the new wall.
The bears waited her instruction.
“Up the cliff, into the forest!”
They scrambled over the rocks with ease. Using the long claws on their paws to find gaps and small ledges, they hauled themselves up the sheer cliff face, reaching the top and scrambling over the lip. Brea-bear was the first over, and he turned back to help the others up.
Rae-bear waited for the group to go before him, stood on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. He turned back to the town, his deep voice rumbling, “A man comes.”
Tamza clapped and a small blue circle appeared. She cupped her fingers around the doorway and held it in her hand.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” It was Burrington, his face coming out of the shadows at the edge of the town.
Rae-bear snarled, and Burrington stopped, twenty paces away from where the rocks began. He clutched two daggers in his hands. Tamza glanced back, all twelve of her bears were up the cliff, peering their snouts down at her.
Her voice steady, Tamza said, “The King is dead. We are leaving. You can try to stop us, and be mauled by my bear, or you can let us go. I do not want to take another life tonight.”
“Edgar is dead?” Burrington bent in half, as if the wind had been knocked out of him.
Rae-bear growled.
Burrington’s shoulders started heaving.
Is he crying?
No, he’s laughing.
The man stood up, chuckling, clutching his sides with his hands. They still clasped the daggers.
“What’s funny?” Tamza said.
“I came up here as it’s the only place in this entire town that doesn’t stink of fish and here you are, escaping. You tell me you’ve just murdered the King! What I’ve wanted to do for years! That means I, as his nearest kin in this shithole, take command. Lian-by-Sea is mine. You’ve done me a favour. By all means, be on your way.” Burrington gave her a little bow. “Just never come back.”
“Let’s go, Rae-bear.”
The brown bear turned and jumped at the rocky cliff, scrambling up. Tamza clung to him with one hand, her other still clutching the second doorway, looking up at the lip as it came nearer.
A sharp pain blazed between her shoulder blades and she lost her grip on Rae-bear. She fell fast, her body slammed on the rocks, head smashing. Her vision blurred, she struggled to breathe, the impact forcing all the air from her lungs.
Rae-bear roared.
Burrington shouted, “That brute Edgar kept me alive for two reasons. Not because I’m kin. He killed his father, brother, his cousins. First, because I’m clever, and second, because I’m a champion dagger thrower. Bet you didn’t know that... not as pathetic as you thought, eh?” He laughed some more and Tamza heard a whooshing noise. The second knife was flying for her.
Rae-bear stood over her and took the dagger in his chest. He huffed. That would barely penetrate his thick skin. A nick. Burrington, out of daggers to throw, started running back towards the town, shouting for soldiers, for archers.
Rae-bear attempted to pick up Tamza with his teeth, but she was too heavy and slumped awkwardly between rocks.
“Take this. When you’re safe in the forest drop it on the ground. I have enough strength to open it from here. Humans will come through the doorway, Vaasarians like me, protect them in the forest. Help them to find safe ground.”
Tamza uncurled her fingers, and the circle doorway glinted in the starlight. Her palm was singed and burnt raw from squeezing the smoky swirls. Rae-bear stuck out his tongue and she carefully dropped the doorway there. It floated a hair’s width higher than the pink flesh. He pulled his tongue back and carefully closed his teeth around it.
“Go, Rae-bear!”
The brown bear grunted and Tamza sunk back into her rocky resting place. I must stay alive long enough to open the portal…
She felt her body shift, lifting clear of the rocks. Bears surrounded her, biting her cloak. Hauling her up and over the rocks towards the cliff.
Pain shot through her and all was black.
17
Tamza’s consciousness returned in pieces. First was the pain, throbbing, obstinate. Then, under the left side of her body she could feel twigs, cool earth, something damp and squishy like moss. The smell of the forest, trees, dirt. Her mouth tasted of blood, and she was thirsty, very thirsty. Gradually she became aware of where she lay, in a small clearing in the forest.
Her headscarf was loose and Fir-bear licked at the scar on her cheek, his rough tongue scratching her skin. The cub’s breath hot and acrid on her face. It was comforting yet also, uncomfortable. It sharpened her senses.
She forced herself to see.
Rae-bear had dropped the doorway a few paces away. She channelled all her attention on that circle, drew all her energy up from the depths of her toes, from every space in her body and, in her mind, threw it at that doorway. It shimmered, and slowly grew large, a perfect circle that glowed bright blue in the dark forest. It lit up the eyes of her bears.
Please, Bear-God, grant me the strength to have opened the first d
oorway just as wide, back in the hall with Maryam and the other prisoners.
A few moments passed and then Vaasarians started stepping through into the forest from the black hole. Tamza tried to count the people, one, two, three... But her strength was faltering, her energy pouring from her body in the blood that flowed from her wounds.
Her eyes flickered. No, do not lose the connection, do not close the portal, not yet… not yet…
Fir-bear licked her face again and she prized open her eyelids, the doorway was shrinking. The people clambering through scratching themselves on the thorny edges around the centre of the blackness.
She felt a hand on her face. Maryam. “Close it Tamza, close the doorway, we’re all through! The soldiers…”
Tamza glanced at her doorway as a sword came through the black hole, followed by a head and torso.
“What the fuck?” the soldier yelled. “They’re all here…”
But he didn’t get a chance to finish as Tamza tugged one hand to the other, that was burnt and raw from holding the doorway too tight. With everything she had left, she clapped.
The circle shrunk and the sharp teeth around the black hole cut the man in two before disappearing. The soldier’s torso rolled on the forest floor, just as his legs would be rolling in the Usefuls’ hall back at the palace.
Tamza had nothing left.
18
She awoke with a cool breeze on her back and Maryam’s soft fingers working their magic, knitting her flesh back together.
The Vaasarians sat around a fire, huddled together, warming their hands. She saw Farouk the boatbuilder, and Dhabat the farmer, Laila the baker and the famous butcher, whose name Tamza couldn’t recall in her hazy state. They have a new life, no longer prisoners.
Tamza could sense her bears. They surrounded the little Vaasarian camp, at a distance, out of sight, but watching, noses high to sniff out any danger.
Rae-bear grunted from the shadows and she managed a faint huff in reply. He emerged from the woods, followed by Fir-bear. The Vaasarians parted respectfully to give the bears plenty of space, only Maryam didn’t move, intent on her healing. Rae paused in front of Tamza and dipped his head so she could see what was there. Between his teeth was Sumear’s precious skull, and Fir-bear carried his mother Ursah’s huge paw.
They padded to the fire and flung the bones into the flames. A proper send off to the Bear-God. The huge brown bear roared, and Fir joined in with his little voice. Unseen, eleven more bears roared from the forest. Tamza’s lips twitched into a weak smile.
“Thank you,” she clicked, as the bears withdrew back to the shadows.
Tamza drifted in and out of consciousness, but heard the urgent words from Maryam.
“She’s lost a lot of blood… too much blood… Knife wound, head wound, broken bones and ribs, possibly some internal injuries. If I had my herbs and tools here…”
Tamza groaned and Maryam leaned in to her. In her soothing voice, the healer repeated, “You’re going to get better, my love. You’re going to get better, my love…”
Tamza’s awareness of the world darkened. I may have taken three lives tonight, but I have saved plenty more.
And then, it darkened still.
I finally got up on that stage on my own, Papa. And what a show.
Author’s note
Enjoyed what you just read? Then you might like my epic fantasy novel MELOKAI, the first instalment of the In the Heart of the Mountains trilogy, which is available from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Google Play Books and Smashwords.
THE FALL OF VAASAR is set 2,000 years prior to MELOKAI, and tells of the event that sparked a bitter, bloody feud between the two countries of Drome and Fertilian – a deep wound which, thousands of years later, is still festering.
Subscribe to my email newsletter to be notified about new releases, and for giveaways, price promotions, free books, free short stories and novellas, as well as exclusive extra content. You can sign up here: www.rosalynkelly.co.uk/subscribe
Thank you for taking the time to read THE FALL OF VAASAR.
Rosalyn Kelly
August 2017
About the author
Rosalyn Kelly grew up in the magical New Forest in the south of England and has lived around the country as well as in the Middle East, and travelled all over the world.
She studied English Literature and Language at Oxford Brookes University before embarking on a PR and marketing career.
After ten years telling the stories of international brands and businesses, she decided the time had come to tell her own and her debut novel MELOKAI was written in 2016 after quitting her job, going travelling for four months and then writing solidly for the following four.
The inspiration for her epic fantasy trilogy came when she was trekking in the mountains of Nepal's stunning Annapurna Sanctuary.
When she's not putting her heart and soul into book two of the In the Heart of the Mountains trilogy, she daydreams about where to travel to next, paints with acrylic, reads voraciously and writes book reviews on her blog.
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Copyright
The Fall of Vaasar
by Rosalyn Kelly
Text copyright © 2017 Rosalyn Kelly
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
This edition (1) published by NValters Publishing, UK August 2017
Cover © Everpage Designs
Publisher’s Note
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and events in this book are fictitious. And any resemblance to persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental and unintentional.
License Note
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into, a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written consent of the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.
For more information about this and other titles by this author, please visit: www.rosalynkelly.co.uk
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