by Ted Neill
“I’d rather have information.”
“Take it. Your friend here looks as if he needs it. Information is free. Mornaport is a friendly one.”
Vondales looked at him with hungry eyes and he nodded. Vondales took the ear of corn, broke it in half, and held out the larger half to Sade. Sade took the smaller one. He never would have admitted it but he relished giving his brother small treats. By the way Vondales bit into the corn, Sade knew his brother was grateful for his generosity.
“I’m Timos,” the boy said, extending his hand. Sade shook it and introduced themselves as Patrick and Gerry. Timos was unsuspecting. He had no more ears left and he shook out his basket, a few stray kernels falling to the muddy ground.
“Where can we sell something, Timos?”
“What is it you want to sell?” Timos’ eyes dipped down towards Sade’s satchel.
“Books,” Sade said carefully. “Spells books we think, for weather working.”
“Oh you can sell those at the market. I’ll show you the way. I’m headed through there anyway.”
Timos started down the seawall without looking back to see if they followed. Vondales gave Sade a questioning look.
“He seems harmless enough,” Sade said. “Can’t hurt to follow him, learn the port a bit better.”
They caught up with Timos as he was about to disappear into the crowd. They wove between fishmongers selling their catch, women shucking oysters, and girls carrying water on their heads. The sight of the girls reminded Sade of the girl he had run down in Linusport, but he dug his nails into the meat of his hands and suppressed the feelings that troubled him. Instead he focused on the bustle of the port and the characters around them. Timos passed through the crowd with barely a glance but Sade was taken with the variety of people, young, old, rich, poor, strong, and weak. His attention fell on a trio of armed men escorting a harbor master who was collecting fees from the bigger ships. They were fell looking warriors armed with maces and axes, but they were nothing compared to the dozen spearmen that crossed the market square protecting a liter carried by six slaves.
“Who’s in there?” Sade asked.
“Not who but what,” Timos said. “It’s a spice shipment, more precious than gold.”
The streets were dirty with horse droppings and fish offal. These mixed with the smell of sweat, cooking oil, and tobacco into a heady aroma that made Sade’s eyes water. He missed the fresh air of the sea. Timos turned down an alleyway, hopping over the gutter in the center. He stopped by a shuttered window and knocked.
“Tis the house of ladies,” he said. “They will show you their tits for five pence.”
Vondales was pressing up against him just as the shutters opened. A young girl, just a few years older than them, in a loose fitting saffron dress waited on the other side. Sade couldn’t help his eyes from falling on the cleavage between her ample breasts.
“Timos, how is the day? You have friends,” she said.
“Patrick and Gerry, meet Germaine.” He reached in his pocket and placed a five-pence coin on the sill. “We were hoping for a show.”
To Sade’s wonderment, the girl did not take offence and instead unbuttoned her top to let her breasts with their flowery pink nipples spill out. Vondales pushed him off balance as he craned for a better look. She turned her shoulders to point one, then the other, in their direction. With her hands she massaged and squeezed them in a way Sade thought impossible.
Timos glanced sideways. “Want to see more?”
“Yes,” Sade heard himself say.
Timos escorted them down the alleyway through a door that led to a dark hallway. The smell of perfume touched Sade’s nose and was as beautiful and desirable as the smells of the city outside were detestable. They came into a long room where girls reclined on couches and Germaine was turning back from the window and pulling the shutters closed.
“What have you brought us, Timos?” said a woman who, by her features, could have been Germaine’s sister.
“These are Patrick and Gerry, two friends I made at the port today. We’re on our way to the book market.” The older woman, her chest breathtaking, loosed a lace on her bodice and twirled it about her finger.
“Oh, are you in a rush or do you have time to play?”
Sade could not believe their good fortune; he answered that they did. The girls seated them on the couches, Germaine, her sister, and a olive-skinned girl with long flowing black hair surrounded them, bare chested. Sade did not know where to look. He saw such paradise in all directions, such perfection. He felt warm and shook as if he might explode, faint, or both. A fourth girl, a younger one with auburn hair, came over, unlaced her top and handed Sade and his brother goblets of grog.
“Men on men’s business need a man’s drink,” she said.
“Of course,” Sade said, gulping down the mix of rum and water. It bathed his chest in a warm glow. His limbs no longer felt like they would tremble off. His brother had bravely reached out to squeeze Germaine’s breast. She giggled and sighed. Sade took a second drink then lifted his head closer, closer—he wanted to touch one with his mouth. He no longer was self-conscious, but the room was spinning violently. The objects of his desire seemed to recede just out of his reach, and darkness closed in on the sides.
When they woke on the beach under a pier, all their possessions—satchel, books, hatchet, change purse—were gone. Even their shoes and the buttons on their jackets had been stolen. They had nothing left but the clothes on their backs.
Chapter 12
Dancer
The Kejelin were not difficult to track. Their path led out of the forest and into the moorlands. Gabriella ran between thickets of heather, keeping as low to the ground as she could while running to catch up with the riders. Her clothes were soon streaked with red from slipping through the bushes. She was surprised how easily the pigment rubbed off from the leaves. When she crushed one between her fingers, her hand was quickly covered in scarlet sap, as if she had cut herself deeply.
From what she knew of the red riders, they had no mercy for their captives and they sought to make examples of those trespassers they captured. Her imagination conjured horrible endings for her friends: she was certain they would execute Omanuju, perhaps feast on Adamantus, and leave the bones of both of them to rot on the seashore as warnings to other landing parties.
She was far from the Elawn now, and Gabriella wondered if she could even find her way back in the dark. Why was she even following, she wondered? She had no plan, no help, no weapons that could aid her. And yet she knew she could not leave her friends to face their fate alone, even if all she was to do was witness their ends.
No, there had to be something she could do.
Think, Gabriella.
Gabriella was weary and shaking with worry by the time the Kejelin reached the rocky shore of shingle. She crept through the heather, bolder now, with the sound of the breaking waves and gusting wind to cover the noise of her pursuit. The shore of Kejel was similar to Harkness. Gnarled Caledonian trees grew sparsely along the shore of both islands and the riders made camp under a copse of the trees. When the riders loosened Adamantus’s bindings, the elk struck at the nearest man with his antlers, sending the man tumbling. He gashed another man in the face with a hoof. The Kejelins rallied, wrapping his neck and the base of his antlers in thick ropes, then fastening the ends to the trunks of the nearest trees. Adamantus was left standing, but stuck, unable to run or move his massive antlers.
This was a spot where the riders had camped and killed before, with a fire ring already built around a large flat stone that Gabriella took to be an altar. The altar was high enough that there were steps that led to its top. It looked out over the breaking waves, its edges lined with skulls and an assortment of bones, its surface cut with deep channels for catching blood.
The Kejelin led Omanuju up to the top of the rock and left him there, waiting, lying bound on his side, his face swollen, his gag bloodstained. They built a fire and sh
arpened their swords on wet stones while Omanuju’s watched, his eyes wide and white with fear. There was clearly some ritual associated with the coming execution. The riders erected torches at the four corners of the altar and lit them so that their flames burned against the gloaming sky. After each torch was positioned, the rider at its base would kneel down, press his forehead to the altar, and mumble some type of prayer, the words lost in the sounds of the sea and the blowing night wind.
Many of the riders had their masks up as they worked, and Gabriella could see the Kejelin were a swarthy lot with olive skin, very different from the light-skinned people on her island. Gabriella recalled stories of the Kejelin and remembered that they were indeed a people of complex ritual who saw deep meaning in symbols and ceremony. A sailor from her home island had watched a harvest festival in the town through a spy glass from his ship. He saw maidens, their bodies covered in the red dye from the moors, who danced all night around offering fires, the Kejelin men and women chanting in unison. Gabriella wondered if the Kejelin worshiped their ancestors, or did they pray to the same gods the Harkenites worshipped, or were their precious dyes their gods?
She looked down at the oily red substance on her legs and arms. It had a buttery smell and spread easily on her skin. If nothing else, the Kejelin held ritual dance in high regard like the people of her island. Gabriella crushed more leaves between her palms and felt the stirrings of a plan.
The camp was ablaze with light from the torches and the roaring fire. The Kejelin had fashioned a spit over the fire for Adamantus. The elk was still tied between the trees, and although he strained against his bindings, the ropes were strong and had not given way. Omanuju remained where he had been left and had been otherwise ignored although the riders had attended to the offering space around him, laying down clay pots and bowls at the edge of the great flat rock in order to catch his blood. The blades had been sharpened and were waiting next to the bowls and pots, their edges catching the yellow shine from the fires.
Gabriella crouched in the bushes, rubbing her skin with the red stain, her nose overwhelmed with the smell of the sap. She was worried that the sweat dripping from her brow would ruin the extemporaneous guise she had fashioned. She swallowed hard. Her plan had only two outcomes, and one meant death for all three of them. But what other choice did she have?
As she stepped out of the bushes, she recalled that moment at the summoning just days before when all her own thoughts had rushed out of her, her own personality suppressed under something greater. The gods or the dead—whatever it had been—would not have taken possession of her, would not have prophesized through her, if there was not a greater purpose to be fulfilled. A divine purpose, she reminded herself as she walked down the beach into the firelight.
She had conducted an inventory of all that she had—it was not much. But she was not without resources, the gods had seen to that. As fair as she was, Gabriella would have stood out as a foreigner, but the oil of the heather was her disguise and, she hoped, their salvation. Her body was uniformly red, casting her in the role of a harvest dancer.
She had done more than simply paint herself. As unused to it as she was, she knew her body had the emerging curves of a woman. Her hips and her breasts had grown in the past months. She felt like a child still, an imposter trying to fill the role of seductress—her breasts too small, her hips too narrow. But she was a maiden, and perhaps that would be enough.
She had disrobed as much as she had dared. She had removed her shirt and tied it in a band around her breasts that left her shoulders and midriff bare. She had rolled her undergarments up to her waist, exposing her hips and buttocks. She felt a fool, but from what she knew of men, even at her young age of fourteen, she knew it did not take much to distract them. With the pigment covering her body in the growing darkness, she prayed she would prove enticing enough.
Gabriella had one last asset dangling between her breasts: the whistle. It was likely least among her resources, but she was determined to use everything at her disposal. Its piercing sound was an other-worldly tone that would serve her now as the chord to strike upon her entrance.
It was time. The tide was out, and the breakers were crashing far out to sea, revealing a shore covered in pools and puddles riffled by wind. It was an empty wasteland, with no place to hide. The wind gusts fanned the flames of the fires, carrying the Kejelins’ voices and their strange tongue on the air. They waited in a halo of light, outside of which was thick darkness barely diluted by the sliver of moon. A moon that was waxing. Time was slipping past, for Omanuju, for Adamantus, and for the journey’s prophecy to come true. With one last prayer to the gods and her faith in forces beyond herself, Gabriella stepped into the half-light, lifted the whistle to her lips and blew.
The sound was as she remembered it, piercing, overriding, and pure. It startled the horses, who twisted at their restraints, some of them pulling free and galloping down the beach. Three Kejelin ran after in pursuit, but the rest stood stock still, arrested by the sight of her.
Gabriella paused in their midst, a vermillion phantom, having materialized out of the darkness. Her body, her clothes, even her hair was stained the color of roses, of wine, even blood. Whether they took her for one of their own or an apparition, it mattered not. Gabriella knew the spell would only last so long.
To prolong it, she had to perform.
Gabriella leapt forward to the fire, dipped her head down and whipped her hair upwards in a fury. She channeled the motion of all the dancers she had ever seen throughout her life at carnivals, festivals, and summonings. It was her wildest hope that perhaps one of the gods would take possession of her again, guiding her steps and inspiring her movements. But feeling very much herself, she was forced to press onward with a dance of her own invention. She was by turns sensual, then coy, aggressive, then retreating. A crimson temptress.
Whether it was simply the surprise of her appearance or her glistening body, Gabriella held the Kejelin captivated. Some of them even clapped as she twirled herself around close to the fire. She could not understand the words they were shouting, but their intent was clear enough: their own hoots and whoops of approval ringing out with each provocative move she made, every suggestive gesture she performed. She felt a rush throughout her body that was in part horror of self-consciousness and in part the frisson of freedom, as if breaking off the shackles that had held her for a lifetime. She was nearly naked, her flesh exposed, yet for a bit longer she felt protected by something sacrosanct: the protocol of ceremony, the spellbinding power of lust. Perhaps the gods were looking out for her, after all.
But her time was running short. Gabriella had to press what advantage she had while she still held it. She moved close to one Kejelin who was seated on a rock and made a theatric reaching motion towards his waist. The other men laughed while he shifted his feet. She made the motion again, her fingers drawing closer to his belt and pointing downward. He wiped his brow and licked his lips as she went down on one knee and slowly reached for the pommel of his sword. Now the men laughed even louder, the seated Kejelin’s face flush with embarrassment at his own salacious thoughts. Relieved, and somewhat abashed, he drew his sword and held out the handle to her, a prop for her dance.
Gabriella did not take the weapon immediately. Instead she made exaggerated expressions of awe, fawning over it, moving her hands along the length of it, not unlike the way she had seen sword sellers do when hawking their wares. She touched her fingers to the blade and pantomimed injuring her hand. This produced hearty guffaws in her audience. Now she knew she had them. She spun away from the seated Kejelin only to swing herself back and grab the sword. He released it smiling, pleased with himself, his benevolence, and the role he was playing in the show.
The sword was heavy in Gabriella’s arms and she had to rein in her movements and shorten her swings so that she did not trip or fall as she danced with the added weight. But the spirit of the moment was still strong in her, and soon Gabriella moved with the sword
as if it were an extension of her own body. She fought invisible foes using forceful strikes and grandiose parries. She even made a show of challenging some of the men, leaping towards them, shaking the blade and crying out with a sharp yelp. Some of the Kejelin flinched, startled, but the others made a brave display of not moving, even when she came close, hissing and barking like an animal. She was not sure what had taken over her, but she no longer felt like herself. She wondered if this was what it was like to be drunk, to be in the same body but to feel so free, different, and brave.
But time. She was constantly aware of time, even as she beat it out in her measured steps. She knew the third act had come. Gabriella had been phantom, then temptress . . . now it was time to be huntress. She turned towards Adamantus, raising her arms in surprise and rocking back on her heels to feign fear. She stalked the elk as a huntress might stalk her prey, holding the sword at the ready, the firelight glinting on the sharpened edge. Even Adamantus was taken with her performance, as he pulled at his bindings and rolled his eyes in fear. The elk fought his restraints, the lines taut and twisting. Gabriella danced closer, wielding the sword, moving it about the elk’s body, the point hovering over his neck as if she would be the one to sacrifice the beast.
The Kejelin were silent now, unsure of what was about to unfold. Time was fluid in that last moment, bending and stretching so that the span of a heartbeat felt to last an eternity, an eternity in which Gabriella was acutely aware of her surroundings, her body, and the encroaching danger and the spell about to be broken.
She heard a wave break out in the darkness, the torches snarling in the wind, and the rocky shingle shifting under her feet. She was aware of her own flagging strength. The exhilaration that had steeled her against the cold, the rocky ground, the heavy sword, was fading, draining from her. Her toes were numb, and the soles of her feet painful. Her palms were slick with sweat, making the sword handle feel as if it was covered in cooking oil. Goose flesh formed on her skin, and the red she had painted on herself felt as if it were smearing, fading with each sweep of her arms. She was no longer brave—she felt scared, sick, exposed, foolish as she swung the blade downward with a sudden cry. The spell protecting her all but ended.
