David: Savakerrva, Book 1

by L. Brown

  A muffled cry escaped from the crowd, but Tusk read on: “Itahk — Uzul — Ahzdra — Ezrir—”

  One woman sobbed, another collapsed, an old man shouted a furious kek! — but Tusk kept reading while the warriors disembarked. Single file they left, and as they passed an old brick firepot, each fueled the flame with his cloth, with the black square embroidered with a blood-red iceboat.

  Swallowing hard, Garth understood. Not just fodder, video game grist, the names read by Tusk were husbands and fathers and sons, men who died for the fraud in the vest.

  Garth locked up, couldn’t move. Then Dahkaa nudged him, and flanked by his vaalik, he led onto the pier. Walking mechanically, every motion forced, Garth found himself following, but his gaze stayed on the ground. He heard Tusk read the final entry, and now, the last man ashore, the captain fed the flame with his scroll, with every lost warrior now only smoke.

  Sweaty with heat, the glare of all blame, Garth wanted to shout his innocence. Wanted to, but he couldn’t, for as they weaved through whispers and sobs, it was all he could do just to follow Dahkaa’s boots. But when a small boy and girl blocked his path, he couldn’t help it, he stopped.

  “Savakerrva?” the boy hopefully asked. And though the girl said nothing, she offered a handful of plucked flowers, petals red and white.

  Say nothing Dahkaa had warned, but as Garth met their stares, he softened, pitied their distress. And didn’t children deserve the truth?

  “Sorry,” Garth replied. “But it’s all a mistake.”

  Perplexed by his words, but reading his eyes, the girl started to tear.

  “But I love your flowers,” Garth added. “Did you pick them yourself?”

  And then, he smiled.

  “Cheg!” snapped the girl’s mother. “Chegga toh!” she yelled, and venting a gust of crackling Clan-speak, she shielded her daughter and pummeled Garth’s chest.

  Not catching her exact meaning, Garth did catch her fist, and though he tried to retreat, widows and mothers raged and scolded and pressed on in.

  “I’m sorry!” Garth yelled. “I didn’t — it’s not my fault!”

  “Retta Dahz!” retorted a grandfather. “Retta Dahz!” echoed the little girl, and as hands balled into fists, Garth braced for a mauling, for the wrath of the bereaved.

  “Vahna!” shouted Dahkaa, trying to break through. “Vahn, vah na!” He reached out for Garth, and without his vaalik, hoisted him up and hustled him off.

  “Did you not hear my words?” Dahkaa yelled.

  Garth wanted to reply, wanted to blame Dahkaa for every calamity since the Greenland cave. But it’s hard to blame the lifeguard, the one who hauls you out, so Garth said nothing, just shadowed Dahkaa while he leapt up a stairwell and bulled through iron doors.

  “Stay with me, don’t lag!” ordered Dahkaa, and after barring the last door, he hurried up an enclosed corridor, a ramp rising away from the pier and toward brighter light. But when they reached its end and emerged, Garth not only lagged, he stopped. Struck by the view, he wondered at the marvel that could be a castle, the winter palace of some far-star’d Czar.

  Spires of riotous color, onion-shaped domes — the great structure dominating the square had a flavor of old Moscow, St Basil’s without snow. Though upon further gape, its edifice owed more to nature and less to design, for both hanging stalactites and up-thrusting stalagmites formed its great exterior wall. But while the jagged geometry intrigued, its inlaid stones amazed, because just like the bright ridgelines seen from the barge, every stone glowed. Yet unlike the pale light previously seen, theses castle stones blazed an incitement of hues, meandering variations from burning reds to freezing blues.

  “David?”

  Dahkaa called, but Garth didn’t stir. One moment mesmerized, the next just confused, he wondered who lived there, what stories played out in a castle of light in the land under ice.

  “David!” yelled Dahkaa, and gesturing ‘hurry-up,’ he led Garth toward the castle via an alley zoned not for royalty, but the rest. Boxy stone huts without verve or curve, these castle-adjacent acres were also, Garth observed, devoid of voice and clatter, of every cooked-food scent.

  “We’re late,” Dahkaa muttered, hurrying up the castle’s imperial sweep of steps. “Our evasion down the drop put us behind, so don’t be surprised if they rush your feast, they’ll want to hear you speak. But don’t be anxious, you should feel at home. Because, in fact, it is.”

  Garth stopped in mid-step. “Home?”

  “Your home,” Dahkaa affirmed, and pausing as well, he gestured to the walls and towers, every last stone. “The Castle of the Clans has seated our kings for three-thousand years. They first carved it from the rocks, then from a mine, a great vein of radiance.”

  Garth’s brow furrowed. “A vein of—?”

  “Huh? Oh, yes, well — radiance is stone, a charmed kind of rock. And when heated—” He grabbed Garth’s hand, then made him touch an inlaid stone; an act, strangely, that made the touched surface glow. “You see? Heat brings light. And depending on the mix, radiance will even explode.”

  Garth retracted his hand. “Rock?”

  “Radiance,” Dahkaa corrected. “But yes, they’re also rocks, so we use them to both build and destroy, the silver and blue love to ignite. And yet—” Dahkaa looked across the quiet huts to the silent fields beyond. “Even with a mountain of radiance, we couldn’t stop the G’mach. Their weapons slaughtered, their craft overpowered — and when we finally retreated? When even the proud Zahlen took shelter under the ice, we died even more. The Worms spoke of this, you already know?”

  Unsure what he meant, Garth narrowed his eyes.

  Dahkaa sighed. “After the G’mach invaded—” He slowly resumed his climb. “After Atta Ra began to build his J’kel, both Tribe and Clan attacked, struck wherever we could. The Tribes hit from the Greater Sand, we raided from the Great Ice, and though our frozen sky protected, was our wall against pursuit — Atta Ra found another way in. And within a few moons, after ninety-six of every hundred under the Great Ice lay dead, the G’mach had prevailed not by force, but breath, by the wind they fouled with plague.”

  Garth shuddered, chilled from the word recalling stories of rats and fleas and Black Death bodies stacked by the cord.

  “And though your father and I fled to your world, others — most in our Clans died within days. Same for the Hot Side, the Tribes lost millions as well. But the Worms?” Souring at the sound, Dahkaa hurried up the last dozen steps. “As for the enlightened of Hala, they struck a bargain with the G’mach, and if they helped build the J’kel, their lovely corruption of a city would, till the very last, be spared. And to keep the Worms of Hala agreeable, those not taken to labor or serve? Atta Ra pays them with drink, a monthly ration colored like fire. And though it pleases the tongue, it also addles the mind and infests the flesh. But should any Worm refuse—”

  “They’re killed?”

  “They’re exiled, sent to the ice.”

  Garth stopped. “Sent — to the Machine?”

  “If by ‘Machine’ you mean ‘ravager,’ that monstrous engine beneath which you toiled? Then yes, quite right, those who refuse the drink are sent to scrape the J’kel. I’m not sure why it matters, but Logaht says the charge in our air stains it, blights its skin at birth.”

  His climb complete, Dahkaa led toward a castle entrance, two brass doors inlaid with glowing radiance stones.

  “But as for your birth—” Dahkaa strained against a door, then gestured for Garth to help. “Your arrival feast is long overdue, but finally the Generals will meet — our Savakerrva, the Promise foretold!”

  Hinges creaked as the door swung open to a quiet courtyard, a muddy field of cold campfires and empty tents.

  “Dahkaa?”

  “I think we’re late.”

  Dahkaa said nothing, just squinted with a confusion worthy of Garth. A glass clank then startled them both, but while Garth reflexively ducked, Dahkaa drew his X-blades and twisted toward the
noise, a second floor balcony shrouded in shade.

  “Haik!” Dahkaa yelled. “Toh haik!”

  A pair of shadows rose from a balcony chair. Or so it first seemed, but as the shapes approached the rail, Garth discerned not two, but one, a single large mass subtracted of cloth; which meant, by the math, he wore no clothes.

  She?

  Unknown, Garth couldn’t tell. Inked and pierced and lumpy with flesh, some Balcony Watcher straddled the gender centerline, just swayed to the rail with stops in both lanes. But as Dahkaa shouted and the Watcher replied, Garth noticed something else.

  Silhouettes behind the balcony’s lace-wire door, the figures looked unambiguously curved. And though Dahkaa’s shouts now escalated, though he and the Watcher traded what sounded like barbs, Garth just wondered about the women, why they stayed behind the door. Were they trapped in this castle, somehow locked in?

  Then sounding incredulous — “Savakerrva?” — the Balcony Watcher glared down at Garth. Examining his appearance, the bear vest muddy and ill fit, the Watcher slid into mirth, into subcutaneous waves rocked by the call of “Rhetta Dahz!”

  Surprised by it, the same phrase just flung at the pier, Garth wondered what it meant. But before he could ask, Dahkaa stormed toward the courtyard exit, a wide-open gate to blue-green hills.

  Yet departing or not, the laughter behind only grew, and as the women behind the door joined in, they also squealed “Retta Dahz!” But as their arms snaked through the lace-wire door, they didn’t point at Dahkaa. Instead, Garth noticed, they’re pointing at me.

  Chapter 14

  Ink and Ash

  He had to ask.

  The bereaved at the pier, that Watcher on the balcony and those women behind the door — a more diverse humanity could hardly be found, yet in just a few minutes, they’d all shouted the same two words, hurled them straight at Garth. And by Dahkaa’s reaction, the set of his jaw and the lean in his stride, whatever the meaning, it likely wasn’t ‘good luck.’

  “It’s an insult?” Garth asked, deliberately keeping an extra step behind. “I mean, is ‘Retta Dahz’ another term of affection, something else a girl shouldn’t hear?”

  Dahkaa ignored, just kept his pace, and though Garth was curious, wanted to press, provoking a man with an excess of scars didn’t seem wise. Hoping for the best, but sensing ‘Retta Dahz’ tilted toward worse, Garth tried to lose himself in the view, in the deep turquoise highlands under the ice-gray sky.

  The occasional hut anchored a field, and though far removed from the boxy dwellings near the castle, they shared the same DNA. Flat-topped dens of indeterminate age, every home seemed built for either an enforced sobriety or cheerless lament, and the lack of color implied not just an ignorance of pleasure, but paint. Yet there was no shortage of gray, and the more Garth surveyed these homes of the Clans, the more he wondered if he also glimpsed some part of their soul, a people as thick and cold as their sky.

  “It means nothing,” Dahkaa finally replied.

  Jostled from his thoughts, Garth hurried to catch up. “Huh?”

  “Nothing, it doesn’t matter. Now, stay with me, we’ll stop a moment here.”

  Veering off the path, Dahkaa led his vaalik up a short hill, an overgrown slope topped by a typical house. Which, Garth observed, joined to a most atypical addition, for tight beside stood a lighthouse-shaped tower. A shotgun wedding of line and curve, the conjoined dwellings broke the mold of Clan abodes, a disruption of the norm skewed even more by the tower’s burnt-orange paint. Weathered, to be sure, it needed a fresh coat; and just like the paint, the mortar joining tower and home showed cracks, evidence of stress.

  “Someone lives here?” asked Garth.

  “That is my hope.”

  Garth followed. “I mean, do you know them? And can we get food, can we finally eat?”

  “You should have ate on the boat, crab kisses the tongue and nothing fills like grub. And warriors, you must learn, eat when they can.”

  “I’m not a warrior.”

  “And I’m not the son of a king, but whatever our purpose or fate, we’ll never stop the J’kel unless we catch the Generals, they’re preparing to leave. Or so the Keeper said.”

  “’Keeper?” echoed Garth, recalling the Watcher. “You mean that, uh—?”

  “He minds the castle,” said Dahkaa. “Secures the doors and guards the stock, keeps them fed.”

  Garth thought a moment. “So the castle has animals, things like goats?”

  “It’s not a farm, David, the Keeper keeps our slaves.”

  Garth slowed a bit. Unable to reconcile Dahkaa’s honesty and courage with trade in human flesh, he needed clarity, a simple yes or no. “You — have slaves?”

  “In the castle, only the king has slaves. And that, David, would be you.”

  Garth stopped.

  “Or will be you, you’re not King of the Clans just yet. First we present you to the Generals, and when three of five agree you’re the son of Kel Vek, only then may you claim your spoils. But I warn you, many of your women were taken in raids, so most come from the Tribes.”

  Hoping it was a joke, Dahkaa’s first, Garth waited for the smirk.

  “Now, you stay here,” Dahkaa said straight-faced, “and I’ll soon return. But think, huh? Make use of your time, because when we catch the Generals, they’ll ask for your plan, how you’ll stop the J’kel. So clear your head of the castle, David, your spoils can wait.”

  A thump and creak interrupted, the sound of a tower door flung open hard. Tall brush obscured his view, but Garth soon glimpsed a blur, a flash of blue racing their way. And whatever it was, it scared Dahkaa’s vaalik, for not only did the squid-thing whimper, it outright fled. But before Garth could follow, a woman in blue crashed through the brush and into Dahkaa’s arms.

  They kissed. Not platonic, not even close, so Garth looked away, just tried to ignore the gibberish and sobs while watching the vaalik hide in a ditch. But given the seconds, then a few murmured more, Garth wondered who she was, what sort of woman falls for a Man of Scars.

  True, Garth had no long term experience with females, his Eylahn moments were all he knew. But didn’t most couples tend toward balance, a parity of looks? Then he felt pity, an uprush of sorrow for her likely commensurate flaws, some imperfection to balance his scars. But as he fidgeted a bit, stole a glance back, she certainly had no poverty of hair; and struck by its depth, some ransom of gloss, Garth discerned a mane nearly liquid, a silken black rain.

  “Ioso—” Separating now, maybe just breeching for air, Dahkaa tried to refocus. “He’s here, Ioso, shall we not meet him? Greet the son of—?”

  Blessed with passion, likely good lungs, she pulled Dahkaa back and relit their kiss. So again Garth turned, just looked at a tree, at a tiny, climbing bug. Jealous a moment, he knew this madness would end if he, too, could flee, just shrink to nothing and hide in a tree.

  “Ungh,” Dahkaa grunted, again pulling back. “Yes, I missed you, too, but we found him, brought him back; shall we not welcome our guest?”

  Bracing a bit, determined not to stare, Garth turned to meet her, this woman at ease with scars.

  “Hi,” Garth mumbled, watching her turn. “Nice to meet you, I—?”

  Losing his words and most every sense, Garth beheld an assumption in collapse. Not Dahkaa’s double, she seemed more a wish, a vision of such feature and form that Garth’s courteous smile devolved into Neanderthal slack. And then, she opened her eyes.

  Impossible, his first thought, but no second or third came, so he just stood there, just stared into eyes entirely black. Or nearly black, a stray ray of light did shimmer some violet halo of iris, but since no snowy sclera provided contrast, her gaze defied discernment, revealed no more than a moonless night.

  “David—” The awkward silence broken, Dahkaa nodded to Garth. “This is Ioso. And Ioso — meet Savakerrva, son of Kel Vek and our Promise foretold.”

  Maybe Garth wasn’t her first Savakerrva, or maybe she was just ha
rd to impress, but after the briefest of looks, Dahkaa’s enigmatic Ioso turned away.

  “Right,” said Dahkaa, lifting her up. “Then we’ll just call him ‘David,’ huh? Yes, David will do.” Nodding ‘wait here,’ Dahkaa carried her to the drab box of house.

  And when the square-cut door shut them both in, Garth missed Eylahn like never before, wished she were here so he could handle it all, the awful unknown to come. But the girl who saved him was gone, would never return — so neither, Garth decided, would he. Inspired by the bug, maybe just scared and alone, he decided to run.

  Hills and forests beckoned at every turn, and if ninety-six of a hundred homes stood empty from plague, then could he find one and hide? Flee this Savakerrva delirium, just live like a hermit and never be found? Maybe, but he had to act now, so easing toward a path through tall brush and ferns, he prepared to bolt, flee the lunacy till whatever end came.

  “And now, he runs.”

  Jolted by it, the ground-gravel voice, Garth glimpsed a shadow ascending the path.

  “Afraid of everything, the Son of the King proved, in the end, he was really just a boy.” His greeting complete, the shadow lugged a boulder with seven-fingered hands.

  “Logaht?” sputtered Garth.

  Too busy to respond, likely just indifferent, Logaht hauled the rock behind the house. A place, by the sound, now rocked by discord, by Dahkaa’s pleading and Ioso’s rebukes.

  Confused less by Logaht and more by the flip, by Dahkaa and Ioso’s pivot from love to war, Garth reconsidered his flight. Was it viable, did he have a chance? Wavering between a sprint down the path or a flop in the grass, he took a last look around. No alternatives awaited, no other choice, nothing intrigued but the open tower door, the darkness within.

  Moments later and moving at a creep, Garth peeked around the door. But he discerned very little, darkness stuffed the tower with a palpable gloom. The sole illumination seeped in from above, so seeing no point, no safe way in, he turned to go. Yet though his mind urged retreat, something nettled, tempted him in.