Jalia At Bay (Book 4)

by John Booth

  Her legs started to cramp and she had to move. She gasped with pain as her bottom rubbed against the hard ground.

  Jalia turned to her and smiled in a kindly manner.

  “I was publicly whipped when I was twelve,” Jalia said casually. “It wasn’t the pain I objected to, it was the humiliation of being naked and screaming in front of over a hundred men.”

  “Why… why were you punished?”

  “I tried to steal some books on alchemy from the Guild of Alchemists in Bagdor. That was an offence meriting death, but I was the only child of a wealthy businessman and they let me off with a public whipping.”

  “What’s alchemy?” Hala asked wide-eyed. The idea of risking death for a book seemed insane. Alchemy must be something very important.

  “It’s a silly thing,” Jalia said dismissively. “People have found out that if you grind, boil or burn some rocks or special soils, and mix them together in just the right amounts you can make new substances that are useful. The Alchemists Guild hide their knowledge from people so they can sell those preparations for a profit.”

  “I’ve always been interested in how the universe works and the only other guild in Bagdor of any status was the Assassins Guild. I already knew how to do their work, even when I was twelve.”

  “Couldn’t you have joined this Alchemist’s Guild?” Hala asked, fascinated in spite of herself. She had never heard of guilds before.

  “They only take men as apprentices, and they have to be adults. That’s seventeen years old in Bagdor. I couldn’t wait.” Jalia grinned.

  “So you never did learn?” Hala sounded disappointed. In her mind, she had raised Jalia to the status of someone who never failed.

  “Oh yes I did. While I was being whipped in that square, hung by my arms from the crossbar of the post and swinging wildly from side to side in pain, I noticed that one of the apprentices watching me was enjoying himself.” Jalia stopped talking as she realized that the story of how she exploited Marco Rawn’s weakness for young girls was probably not suitable. “In any case, I found an easier route to the books I wanted than that of stealing them.”

  “Oh,” Hala said, not really understanding. She moved closer to the fire and winced in pain as she sat down again.

  “Daniel has… There’s some ointment in one of the saddle bags. I’ll go and get it for you.”

  When Jalia returned, she found Hala standing with the sword and knife held out to her, hilts first. Jalia took them without comment and handed Hala a small metal box with a hinged lid.

  “Would you like me to put it on you?” Jalia asked and Hala nodded. “It will sting at first, but it will soon make your bottom numb and aid its healing.”

  Hala lay face down by the fire, trying not to scream as Jalia gently applied the ointment to her buttocks. She found herself wondering why Jalia bothered. She was sure she was going to be killed. Suddenly, the waiting for death became unbearable.

  “Please kill me quickly,” Hala blurted out. “I know I deserve it.”

  Jalia stopped applying the ointment and tried to find the right words.

  “You came here to kill me, but instead you saved my life. It is my choice whether you live or die and I have chosen to let you live.”

  “Why?” Hala asked in a small voice.

  “There has been enough death here, this day,” Jalia said. Suddenly she brought her hand down hard on Hala’s buttocks raising a scream of pain. “So, arrange your skirt and I’ll make us both supper. Unless you insist that I kill you?”

  Jalia was not the best maker of meals, but there was the bag of provisions that Kayla and Attala prepared at the beginning of the day and even Jalia could break off a lump of bread and cut a chunk of meat. Had Daniel been there, he would have conjured a feast out of their meager provisions, using some of the exotic spices he preferred to trade in. Jalia didn’t touch his bags of spices; it would have been too painful.

  “You must ride very well to have kept up with us,” Jalia said as she offered Hala a cup of tea. Daniel often claimed that Jalia was the only person he knew who could burn tea, but Hala seemed satisfied with it.

  “My father taught me,” Hala said slowly. “That’s his horse, Blaze. Malda was using him as a cart horse yesterday, and he is much too good a horse for that.”

  “You see, you are not even a horse thief,” Jalia said smiling at the girl. “You should have inherited your father’s horse at the least.”

  A cloud seemed to pass over Hala’s face. “He killed the man who owned it just because he wanted the horse. My family was not good people, Jalia. I am not a good person.”

  “It isn’t who you were, it is who you choose to be,” Jalia told the girl and put an arm around her shoulder in an awkward gesture of sympathy. Jalia had never been very good at emotional things.

  “I don’t know how to be good,” Hala said, and burst into tears.

  Jalia held the sobbing girl to her and wondered if she had made a mistake letting Hala live. At least dead bodies didn’t go around embarrassing you. Jalia smiled as she remembered one or two dead bodies that had proved to be an embarrassment.

  “I don’t know how to be good either,” Jalia whispered to the trembling child. “That was what Daniel was for, and I don’t know what I shall do without him.”

  Next morning the two girls held a silent breakfast together before breaking camp and heading back the way they had come to the valley’s side. They planned to make the long trek around the outside of the valley in pursuit of the people heading for Slarn.

  Without discussing it, it was clear to both that Hala was going to travel with Jalia. If she went back to Sweetwater, she would probably be hanged or burnt at the stake for stealing the horse. Hala had nowhere else to go and would certainly not survive on her own.

  They must have chosen the wrong way to circle the valley because it took them the whole day. Jalia cursed with frustration at the delay and Hala stayed well back and silent as they picked their way through bushes, gorse and nettles. For a girl stupid enough to try and kill Jalia al’Dare, she quickly picked up the only successful approach to traveling with Jalia when things were going wrong.

  The sun had almost set by the time they made their way to the top of the ridge at the far side of the valley. The girls were hot and sticky with sweat and frustration. The horses were covered in bramble thorns and Jalia legs were dripping with blood from a thousand painful scratches. Flies had been circling them for hours, driving Jalia crazy with their incessant buzzing, not to mention their bites on her arms and legs.

  There was a trail on this side of the valley. Jalia cursed when she saw the easy road that joined it from the other way. It is one thing to know you have picked the wrong direction to travel, it is quite another to have the fact rubbed in your face.

  As they came to the top of the ridge they went around a bend in the trail and Jalia saw a figure sitting on a large boulder. It was difficult to make him out in the fading light as he jumped down from the boulder and walked towards her.

  “I thought you’d never get here,” Daniel told her. His clothes looked freshly washed and there wasn’t a mark or a sign of sweat on his body. “What kept you and what have you done to Jet? He looks like he’s been pulled through a hedge backwards.”

  Jalia launched herself through the air at Daniel, much as she had launched herself against the wolves. Her sword was in her hand and it swung towards him with all the pent up emotions of believing him dead and then finding him infuriatingly alive. Hala screamed as the death stroke fell.

  13. Ygdrassal

  The ground gave way beneath Daniel’s feet sliding him a couple of yards into the bog where he sank up to his waist. Jalia giggled until Daniel tried to move and sank another six inches into the water.

  “Don’t move, Daniel,” Jalia shouted and looked around for anything to use to reach him. They hadn’t brought rope with them as it was among the many items Adon sold to the traders. A hundred yards back the way they came she saw a stand of stu
nted trees. “I’ll go and cut a branch to pull you out with. Just stay still.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Daniel told Jalia dryly. It was a mistake to speak, as he promptly sank another two inches.

  “And shut up!” Jalia screamed at him.

  Daniel watched Jalia run towards a stand of trees in the distance as though a demon was chasing her. He sighed and tried to keep still. It did no good. He sank with every breath. The water was up to his armpits before Jalia vanished out of sight.

  At some point, Daniel knew he was going to have to struggle to free himself. He would be underwater long before Jalia got back. The question he faced was when to start to struggle. If he was going to drown, he intended to go out fighting and not waiting patiently for rescue.

  Daniel heard a sound like a massive sheet of canvas flapping in the wind. He looked into the sky and could see nothing to cause it. Then the sky went dark and he was dragged out of the water. Whatever grabbed him held his arms rigidly at his sides. Daniel struggled to get free. He could see immense claws like those of a bird holding him as he was lifted high into the air.

  Daniel felt a vibration run through him, like a shiver, but not of his bodies’ doing. He looked down and saw the ground had receded into the distance. He was flying over land that looked nothing like the swamp and was being held aloft by a massive beast with iridescent shining scales. He had been caught by a dragon.

  “Do not panic, Daniel al’Kebar,” a voice said within his mind. It was a deep voice that echoed between Daniel’s ears. “I have rescued you and you are safe. Do not struggle as we will soon be in my lair.”

  Daniel wanted to tell the dragon he had got his name wrong, his name was al’Degar not al’Kebar. For some reason he could not explain, the name al’Kebar sounded familiar, as though he had been named that by someone. Whoever it was that had used that name, Daniel forgotten him.

  All thoughts of incorrect names were driven from Daniel’s head by the sight ahead. They were flying straight towards the side of a mountain. An incredibly steep cliff was coming straight at him. He was going to be smashed to pulp against hard unyielding stone. Daniel closed his eyes as the rocks got so close he could see the moss clinging to them.

  Daniel opened his eyes to find they were flying inside a tunnel. His feet were inches from the stone floor whizzing beneath and he lifted them up in fright. Then they were in an immense cathedral of a cave. It was by far the biggest cave that Daniel had ever seen. A massive circular fire, contained by shaped stone lit the cave from its center. The smoke from the fire drifted up into the darkness. Daniel was flown in a neat circle around the cave as they slowed and then dropped gently to the floor.

  The sound like rustling canvas was heard again as the dragon landed a couple of yards from Daniel. The dragon folded his leathery wings against his body. Large golden eyes stared at Daniel from the depths of an immense snakelike head.

  “Welcome. Daniel al’Kebar, who still thinks of himself as Daniel al’Degar, to this, my humble home. My name is Ygdrassal and I am one of the few remaining dragons of Jalon.” The dragon tilted his head and gave Daniel a closer look. “You may wish to wash yourself and your clothes in the pool you will find behind you. I have placed towels there. Your clothes will soon dry out if you place them close to the fire.”

  Daniel gave Ygdrassal a suspicious look.

  A deep rumbling laugh that never touched Daniel’s ears echoed inside his head. “I don’t eat sentient creatures, do you?”

  “No, I don’t, and I thank you for your rescue,” Daniel replied and the dragon nodded his massive head in approval. “But my companion, Jalia, will be in a state of panic by now and I must return to her at once.”

  “Your companion must walk her own road for a while and in any event I cannot take you back tonight. I fly by magic, as do all dragons since the air thinned millennia ago. We did not pass through the space between here and there and it will be tomorrow before I can do such a thing again.”

  “How do you know who I am? Did you read my mind?”

  “I knew of this meeting from the moment my egg hatched and I was told your name by a prophet who died eight hundred years ago. He asked me to do three things for him,” Ygdrassal replied gravely.

  “He asked you to rescue me?” Daniel tried to make some sense of this strange conversation.

  Ygdrassal laugh again rumbled in Daniel’s head.

  “I was always bound to rescue you. Our fates were entwined long ago. I have saved your life and you have saved mine, or to be temporally precise, you will save mine. The past, present and future are a little mixed for dragons, as I will explain to you shortly. Please wash while I prepare you an evening meal. I am well versed in the arts of cooking.”

  Daniel decided to do as the dragon asked and leave his many questions until later. He found the pool the dragon had mentioned thirty feet behind him, close to the cave wall. It was five feet in diameter and when he got in it, he found it was about four feet deep. To his astonishment, the water in it was comfortably warm. He washed his clothes and boots in the water, noticing that the water flowed in and out of the pool from somewhere, the muddy water from his clothes clearing quickly.

  Daniel washed himself after his clothes and luxuriated in the warm water. After the long day on the road, this experience was close to bliss. He found the towels to one side of the pool, thrown down randomly in a loose pile. They were the softest towels Daniel had ever experienced and sucked the water away from him as if by magic. They could have been magic for all Daniel knew.

  He walked back to the fire with one towel tied around his waist like a skirt and a second draped across his shoulder. Daniel was certain by this point that the dragon was friendly. Dragons were creatures out of legend and he had never met anyone who had even claimed to have seen one. Stories said that they could be great friends or deadly enemies, but those stories came from the days of the Magician Kings and were well over a thousand years old.

  There was a strong smell of stewed rabbit that had Daniel’s mouth watering. There was a stone table on the other side of the fire with a stone bench next to it. Daniel walked to it and sat.

  A large iron pot, perhaps six inches in diameter and nearly a foot tall, floated across the table and sank into a hole cut in the stone. The hole was exactly the right size to hold the pot halfway in. The pot glowed red on the outside from the heat of the fire, while chunks of rabbit, garlic and onions bubbled merrily inside it.

  “This is the manner of cooking of the people of Slarn,” Ygdrassal voice rumbled in Daniel’s head, “Though they also cook in other ways that are far less dangerous.”

  “How do I get at the food?” Daniel asked. A spoon and knife appeared before him.

  “You are skilled at magic,” Daniel commented.

  “Thank you.”

  The dragon curled himself into a circle on the other side of the table where a similar pot had dropped into another hole. “We are born to it, you and I.”

  Daniel stared. “You are mistaken, sir. No human has been capable of magic since the Magician Kings were killed by the Fairie.”

  “I was asked to tell you three things, or more precisely, to tell you two things about the world and then to present you with a gift and an explanation of it. Sit and eat and I will tell you about who you are.”

  Daniel cautiously took a spoonful of the stew and put it carefully to his lips. It tasted delicious once he had blown twice upon it to cool it down.

  “When the Fairie rose in their wrath to kill the human’s with magic powers, those eight magical families planned to ensure, at the least, a single survivor of their race. A dagger was created that looked so ordinary that it might be taken for worthless. It shielded the owner from the Fairie just as it blocked his power. It granted the owner a single magical power, to bewitch an appropriate woman and thus make her pregnant with a male heir, to whom she would pass on the dagger. The woman was to be told the lineage of the heir, and commanded to tell her son who he was on his seventeenth
birthday. However, she was to pass the dagger on when he was younger, as magic can be detected from an early age.”

  “How can you possibly know this?” Daniel asked.

  “I was told this tale by a prophet eight centuries ago, the very prophet who asked me to tell you this story. He said to tell you that your brother, Yousef, knows this to be true and will confirm it when you ask him.”

  “You are saying that I am a descendant of the Magician Kings. That the dagger my mother gave me was a gift from a man who cuckolded her husband, the man I have always believed to be my father. And that I am doomed to enchant some woman into my bed when I am older and get her pregnant to carry on the line?”

  “The magic of the dagger changed when the Empress Clea enchanted it for the second time. It will no longer enchant women. The prophet I spoke of persuaded Clea to pretend to be in trouble for your benefit, so that when you rescued her, she could gift you with that magic.”

  Daniel rose to his feet in anger. “So my meeting with Clea was a lie. Why would she do that? And she told me she was a princess, not an empress.”

  “She has been both and will be again. Princess means former Empress in the hierarchy of the Fairie. It was destroying the Black Pyramid that has raised her to Empress again.”

  “I don’t understand,” Daniel said despairingly as he sat again.

  “You will one day,” Ygdrassal said comfortingly. “For now, let us talk of lighter things. Tomorrow I will tell you of the Fairie and I will also gift you with something of great value from the city of Slarn.”

  Daniel awoke inside a cave that was surprisingly well lit. At first, he thought it was being lit by magic. As he looked about more carefully, he discovered he was wrong. Light shone in through holes cut through the sides of the cave all the way to the outside. The strange thing was how much light entered from each of them. The sunlight showed as bright beams across the cave.