© 2007 by Alissa R. Ivanovich
“I can’t help you,” Shasistrena Firese’i told her mother, tears running golden down the cheeks of her wooden mask. “I’m too small.”
Nearly swallowed by utter darkness, the seven-year-old girl crouched, frozen at the foot of the woman who had given her life. Her mother wore a plain sleeping gown, and a fall of long red-gold hair blanketed her warm brown shoulders. Even in the dark, Shasi could see the arms of the lesser slip demon clawing their way over her Mother’s shoulders.
A long, sinuous body lacking hind legs, curved from the window, with talonous hands gripping and piercing her mother's flesh. Sickly green glowing eyes seemed to bore into her soul as the demon brought forth its face to show her. She couldn’t even tell which animal it had once been before it was made twisted and dark by the Vile. Its ragged face bore a long snout with extra holes in its jaws, filled with uselessly protruding teeth, and long prong-like whiskers sprouted from its brow. It smiled at her and saliva dripped from black tipped fangs. It was all colored in taint, and it smelled of death.
“Run, child,” her mother rasped as its horrible mouth slowly seized her throat. “Run to your brother.”
Shasi was frozen in place, terrified even to make the slightest move, until the demon bit down. She scrambled backwards tripping over her own feet, and as much as she screamed and cried, she could never take back what she saw.
Not even now, two years later, two years older. She fought to force the memory filled nightmare from her mind, but the more she tried, the more vivid it returned to her.
She wished that something, anything could make her forget, even for a moment… and then her prayers were answered. A whip lashed out, grazing her ear with a fierce sting. The pain returned her to the present.
Startled by the sudden assault, Shasi bumped into the wooden lever she had been holding, sending it forward with a horrible clacking sound. Just above her, one of the tubs on the short tri-cart spilled sideways, dumping sweet-water over her head. She fought with the lever to stop the tub from draining, but her efforts amounted to saving just the smallest ring in the bottom of the vat.
The boys laughed at her, especially the one holding the short whip. She could almost see their mocking smiles beneath the Lifemasks they wore over their faces.
Her own Lifemask bore the shape of an elegantly smiling girl, face lined with star-birds, each affectionately carved into the smooth wood by her mother. Dull beads and nuts hung decoratively from the fastenings of the mask, and twined in her long, blonde-streaked, red hair. Years past, when her family was whole, she had been told tales of wealthier Konilarian families who wore masks of plated gold, set with jewels and chimes. A time ago, Shasi would daydream about those shimmering Lifemasks, but that before. Now, the plain, scraped, wood carving that shielded her reddening face meant no less than the world to her.
Her ear stung where the whip had licked it.
She couldn’t tell whether the blur in her eyes was caused by the spill of harvested water, her own tears, or the constant, light shower from the raintrees above. They stood tall and graceful, their lowest branches 70 measures high. Leafless, smooth and white as bone, Shasi was taught at a young age that raintrees sank their roots deep into the red ground, drinking the water at the bottom of the world for it’s minerals, then released the excess water, sweetened and clean, from tips of it’s branches.
Shasistrena lived in a desert where there was no lack of water. But it was a desert none the less. In mere seconds the warm ground would greedily dry up every drop that fell to it.
Here, among the scattered lines and clusters of raintrees, her mother and father had their farm. Special tubs would collect the water pure, and later be sold to water-merchants by the vat. It was no simple work, carting the tubs, checking and cleaning and filtering. Adding spices to some, sweeteners to others, and keeping others clear and natural. It was said, some wealthy people would bathe in nothing but mintflower raintree water, but Shasi could never imagine that kind of decadence. Not even as she stood drenched by it.
Roj stopped laughing abruptly. At the age of fourteen, he was the oldest of her stepfather’s sons. His Lifemask was carved half like a man’s face, and half like a doven boar, and beneath the fastenings, his dull brown hair nearly reached his shoulders.
“You ignore my brother and spill an entire vat in tantrum?” Roj’s lies were thick with accusation, as they always were.
Shasi didn’t answer, she never answered.
“Stupid child!” he cursed her, sending the back of his hand against the cheek of her Lifemask. “You’ve wasted my father’s money!”
One of the weak fastenings snapped and her mask fell half off in front of everyone. In front of the sky. She hadn’t noticed going to her knees, but there she was, groping at the fixture to pull it back together.
It was against the religion of all Konilarians to show their faces to the sky; to the gods.
“How come she never says anything?” Lok, one of her stepfather’s nephews asked as he kicked a clod of red dirt at her.
“Because she was born stupid.” Beru, a younger stepbrother offered cheerfully as he scrubbed out a filter with a dry brush.
“It’s because that demon that ate her ‘ma ripped out her tongue! Everyone knows that.” Djed, the middle stepbrother snapped.
Shasi hadn’t noticed when her brother had come over from his work, but there he stood. The green eyes behind his smiling wooden Lifemask were smoldering, and his mop of unruly gold and red hair shined in the hot afternoon sun.
At the age of twelve, Priandrellos had more muscle than many of the older boys, all he had paid for with a life of grueling work. He was bare-chested, as were the rest of them, wearing nothing but short cloth pants and sandals. Usually they would wear hooded raincloaks to keep them dry and shaded, but the weather was too hot for anyone to stand the extra burden that day, and Shasi’s brother was the first to discard his.
His Lifemask was the face of a lad with a jovial grin, carved in wood and glazed with bronze lacquer. It suited his personality perfectly, until the loss of their parents. If Shasi’s brother ever laughed now, he’d be scolded and punished by their stepfather for being ungrateful. Where once he had been cheerful and carefree, a life of repression had forced Prian into a corner. Like an animal, he reacted by lashing out to protect the only family he had left: Shasistrena.
It did not surprise her when he stalked up to Djed, who was only slightly older and taller than him. She knew what would happen next.
“What was that you said about Shasi? I’d like to hear it again.” Prian demanded hotly, his head cocked slightly to one side.
He was positioning the boy, Shasi noticed, for every step he took forward, Djed would take one reverse.
“I said she can’t talk.” Djed answered, attempting to sound casual.
“That’s not what you said.” Prian replied, the other boys were jeering at him, but he paid them no notice. Apparently he had Djed where he wanted him, because he stopped moving. “You said you’re sorry for being a piss-faced shit-eater.”
Djed’s face turned red and looked like it might explode. “You…” he began, and never finished.
Prian pushed him with all of his strength, sending his stepbrother flailing into Roj. The fourteen year old would have barely stumbled by the contact, if not for the pair of scrubbing poles behind him. Roj tripped, landing flat on his back, but before he could even begin to rise, Prian was on him.
Shasistrena’s older brother did not waste so much as a second before launching himself over Djed, and landing squarely with both feet on Roj’s chest.
Her eldest stepbrother coughed and choked as all of the air was driven from his lungs.
“Don’t you ever touch my sister!” Prian growled, and ripped off Roj’s hideous Lifemask. He gave it a good throw before the other boys rushed him. Stunned and embarrassed, it took Roj several minutes to regain his breath and find his Lifemask before he could join the others in pummeling Prian.
Shasi wanted to help him, but she was too small. Everyone always said so. Petite even for a girl of her age, she wouldn’t be able to do a thing even if she tried.
In the end it was her stepfather, Gratonderik the Sandthroat, who ended the beating. Her stepfather rode to meet them on his old grey tall-cat, long tattered sashes hanging from the saddle whipped in the breeze. Graton was a wiry man past his prime, with weathered brown skin, and thinning brown hair. He wore a plain undyed tunic and trousers bound by a nut belt.
At his approach, the boys stopped what they were doing and backed away from Prian, all complaining at once about what he and Shasi had done. Roj even complained that Prian had broken all of his ribs, which couldn’t have been true. Konilarians were not that easy to break.
“Sons, nephews, it is hot, and evening is soon upon us. Follow me home.” Graton said no louder than he needed to. He was not a man who gave anything extra, not even his voice. “Not you Priandrellos and Shasistrena. Finish.”
The lean, long legged tall-cat flicked its ears and turned slowly about, leading the line of boys over the field of thin, mild green short-grass that led to the clay roundhouse that Shasi’s great-grandfather had built.
She watched them go, laughing and shoving each other as they made their way home. Her home.
When she turned back to Prian, he was already working again, though he must have been sore from the fight. Shasi wanted to say something, but she didn’t.
Above them, the sky was bleeding red and gold when their work was done for the day. The vivid crimson sunset slowly burned away the light and the day-stars grew ever brighter in the coming of darkness. Her people called the ever bright myriad of stars "the net in the sky", woven by the goddesses of day and night.
Shasi walked with her brother in silence. Every muscle in her body ached, and she could hardly wait to dive into her bed and sleep through the night.
It had taken them hours to finish all of the work they had been left with. Still, she appreciated the absence of her stepbrothers and their kin.
When she looked behind her, the raintrees were black silhouettes twisting into the sky. A long, long way behind them, across the open expanse, the line of mountain summits looked like soft brush strokes in a painting.
Everything was red. Red and gold, like her hair and like Prian's.
She pulled at her brother's arm and he jerked away testily.
"What?" he asked, the kindness in his voice betraying his sharp actions.
Shasi pointed at the sunset.
"What about it? Red?" he shrugged. “Father said red sunsets were lucky ones.”
Shasi took off her sandals to walk in the silky grass barefoot. It always felt so nice between her toes. A warm breeze was blowing, and the soft mewing of nocturnal web-lizards was almost musical.
When they reached the storehouses Prian stopped. There was a heavy cart in front of their roundhouse and it did not belong to their family.
Following the warm mosaic tile, laid down by their father, the children stepped through the arched door and met their stepfather in the hall.
"To sleep, you children," Graton said without warmth, handing Prian a bowl of cold, root paste for them to share. "You've wasted a precious vat and you need to pay for it."
There was not so much as a vegetable or grain in the bowl of thick yellow slop.
"But Shasi's hungry!" Prian complained. "Look at how thin she is! We haven't had meat in seven days!"
"It’s a generous decision, boy. Price for price, I'm the one who will truly suffer."
"We're not numbers, we're people! We're alive!" Prian shouted, balling up his fist.
Shasi cringed and stepped behind her brother.
"Quiet, boy!" Graton snapped. "The Five Faces are ever watchful, they have seen the generous man I have been. And you, you have been a spike in my foot since your mother died."
"You've been a spike since my father died! You and your stupid sons!" Prian shouted. "That’s what the Five Faces have seen!"
Shasi's heart was pounding hard and fast. She thought that Graton was about to hit Prian, but he didn't. Instead he snatched away the bowl of food, hurried them into their room, and locked the door behind them. That’s when Shasi noticed that she was crying again. It wasn't because she was afraid, and she was, but because she was so hungry. They had barely eaten that morning and it was not enough to satiate her through a grueling day of physical labor.
Prian was especially angry and stood at the door for quite some time, just kicking it. When he tired, he joined her in sitting on one of the cots beneath the single round window.
As if sharing the same thought at the same moment, Shasi and Prian climbed the rickety ladder up into the tiny attic above their room. There was a secret passage that could barely fit a grown man, it led directly over the kitchens. Prian had told Shasi that their father had made the tunnel so he could steal deserts before they were served. It would send their mother into a fluster about how he managed to do it every time.
Prian fished out the long hooked wire from its dusty hiding place and loosed the wooden floorboard. Warm light from below flooded the attic passage, accompanied by slightly muffled voices.
"They're in the gathering room." Prian whispered.
Shasi nodded. The gathering room was just beside the kitchen, only separated by a wide archway.
Prian flattened his head to the opening to get a better look while Shasi waited patiently, stomach growling.
Slowly, her brother let down the hook wire and snagged a small loaf stuffed with candied sandfish. Shasi's breath caught in her throat when it nearly slipped from their grasp, but they had it in the end.
The pair sat there for a moment, stuffing their faces unceremoniously, until the muddled voices moved into the kitchen. They both froze, stiff as stone.
"They're yours then, friend, the both of them." Graton's voice was unmistakable.
"What are their ages?" the stranger asked, pacing just below Prian's spy hole.
"Twelve and nine, and hard workers."
"And what of the stilled sweet-water cases?"
"All yours of course, for the said amount."
"Half."
"No."
"A quarter less, or nothing. My voloru needed water and feed for this trip, may I remind you. This farm is most nearly at the border of the Ring," the stranger said decisively.
"Accepted. I am most grateful for your journey. And may I..." Graton's voice trailed off as they returned to the gathering room.
Prian and Shasi crawled back through the passage and slipped back down into their room. When Shasi was safely curled up in her cot, stomach full at last, she asked her brother what she did every night.
"Prian," she whispered shallowly. "What happened today?"
"Well," he began,
settling on the edge of her cot and tucking her into her blankets. "This
morning we strode through the sweetgrass fields on the shore of the
"What does the ocean look like? Please tell me again."
"Well," Prian thought for a moment. He had never actually seen it either, but he remembered their father’s stories better than she did. "It’s like a full vat, only a bit bigger."
"What did we do next?"
"We let our 'cats chase the skeleton cranes on the bank, and when we tired, we returned to Red Roads End. The roundhouses are all white and gold there, and statues of the goddesses line the streets."
Shasi nodded, she knew so well what Red Roads End looked like.
"And when we reached the
courtyard of the House of Faces, we joined in the mid-day feast beneath the red
canopy. There were fruits from the islands, real fish from the 'Sea, and baked
beetles all the way from the
"But they're so good!" Shasi whispered, giggling.
"After that we tended to our studies," he made a face of disgust and smiled. "Visited the lizard garden at sunset, and then we came home."
"It was a good day." Shasi closed her eyes happily.
"Yes." Prian agreed, climbing onto his own cot.
"Prian?"
"Mm?"
"What was Graton talking about, with the stranger?"
"I think we're being adopted, Shasi."
"Really?” she asked in disbelief. “Maybe our new family will be nicer."
"Maybe, Shasi."
The following morning, long before the sun had risen, they were packed into the stranger's cart with the sweetwater vats and no belongings but the Lifemasks on their faces and the clothes on their backs. They had gotten no goodbye from their stepbrothers, or from their step cousins, or from their stepfather’s gaudy sister. Graton was the only one to see them off. His only words to them were that he was doing the right thing for everyone and that the Five Faces knew he had taken the right course.
Shasi was glad to be rid of the lot of them, but something inside hurt when they rode down the dusty road away from the bubbly clay roundhouse and the proud raintrees beyond it. Prian put an arm around her shoulder, and lulled by the swaying of the cart, she dozed off.
With each passing day the stranger forced the tough, horned voloru that led the heavily laden cart to hasten their pace. The harder he pushed them, the stronger they seemed to become, and the meaner too. The orange and white one bared its teeth at Shasi and even tried to bite her once when they were stopped. She decided then that she was afraid of these thick, armored beasts.
She was afraid of the stranger too. Not once did he so much as give them his name. He never spoke to them, save when he told them to eat, sleep, or relieve themselves on their very brief halts. He ate like a man starving at every meal, though he was thin, and she was all but sure that he never slept, unless he did in secret while the cart was still moving. At times she wondered if he was really human at all, or if he wasn’t just a demon wearing a man’s skin.
The farther they were from home, the sadder Shasi became about leaving it behind. Prian was different. He seemed more and more excited about their travels, and she could hear the smile on his voice, though his words traveled through his Lifemask, whenever he would spot a creature they had never seen before.
Things changed all around them day by day. The dusty road became gravel, and other routes crossed their own. They hadn’t seen a wild raintree since their first day on the road, but now they frequently came by shallow puddles surrounded by lean fern trees, and red rocks that jutted out of the red ground.
Herds of copper-and-white striped deer, with their twisting antlers and shoulder spikes, fled from their approach. Long legged lizards with multifaceted hides lounged on the higher rock outcroppings and watched them pass with interest. Prian came up with a name for everything he didn’t recognize and Shasi even whispered her own ideas once or twice.
By the fifth night of their travels even Shasi felt better about leaving home. Prian’s bright enthusiasm was infectious, and she got a fluttering feeling in her stomach when she daydreamed about their wonderful new family. Maybe there would be another girl about her age to play with, and Prian could laugh and smile as much as he liked without being scolded for being ungrateful.
She was swaying with the rhythm of the cart, allowing her fancies to lull her to sleep when Prian shook her shoulder hard enough to startle her.
“Look Shasi!” he said urgently. She could tell he was not smiling.
The cart rolled slowly beside a long column of heavy wagons and trailers halted beside the road. The night was overcast and clouds blocked the bright lights of the stars, but lanterns hung from the caravan line and men were erecting cook-fires. Large teams of voloru snorted and bellowed in their harnesses attached to the great wagons. Some of the heavy, horned beasts were ridden singly, but there were scores of tallcats and even a handful that pulled light chariots. Shasi and Prian gaped with wide eyes.
“Hyktendorrick! It’s about time!” A heavy man roared from atop a round wooden trailer. By the time he lumbered down, the stranger had pulled the cart to a full halt. “You dog-faced son of a whore, I thought you’d leave us without sweetwater! ‘It’ll be selling at five times the price,’ I says to myself. ‘If he don’t bring it, he’ll be in five times as many pieces!”
“It’s here, Stonefist,” the stranger, Hyktendorrick, said. “And I brought you two more, at little cost.”
“Shasi, look- look in the wagons!” Prian said, squeezing her arm, hard.
Fear suddenly gripped Shasi harder than Prian had. She hadn’t noticed before. How couldn’t she have noticed? Most of the wagons were cages with people inside! Now she could hear them crying and moaning, quieter against the sound of the voloru pull teams and the free men making camp. Her eyes darted to the cook fire; three men held down a fourth, and pulled a glowing rod from the coals. He screamed when they pressed it onto his skin.
When she looked back, the heavy man, Stonefist, was staring right at her.
“He sold us!” Prian shouted, both enraged and afraid at once. “Graton sold us!”
“Not so smart though, are they?” Stonefist licked his lips. “The hair though, gold and red, both. That will find them a good price. Yes.”
“Run!” Prian hissed, and they tried, but not far or fast enough.
Strong arms encircled her and no amount of struggling broke her free.
“You won’t be needing this,” the slaver said and pulled the Lifemask from her face. She begged him not to take it from her and he only laughed and crushed it under his boot. When it cracked underfoot she heard her mother’s neck snapping.
The rest was a blur. Shasi was so afraid when they pulled her and Prian to the fires that her body felt numb. But not numb enough to save her from the pain of the searing brand they planted in the back of her shoulder. She screamed and Prian screamed for her, and everything else went black. When she opened her eyes again, she didn’t hear anything. She was being carried away from her brother, away from the fire. Two full-grown men fought to hold him in place. He never stopped fighting, not even when the deed was done and they dragged him after her.
The cages were so packed with people that there was no room for them. Instead, they were placed in a narrow, metal animal crate, which was hooked onto the main cage bars at the tail of the wagon. Their captors smeared a solve over their burns and locked them up, but they both left with bruises and bite marks from Prian. Even after they’d gone, complaining, back to their business, her brother clutched the bars and screamed after them. He screamed terrible things about Graton, and when he had nothing left to say, he just screamed wordlessly.
Shasi just sat and stared.
There was a night breeze blowing now, and the bright light of the stars seeped through a crack in the clouds. The wagons began moving again, some time, and a diamond of clear night sky grew overhead. By the time the gentile wind cleared the sky, Shasi noticed her brother beside her. She leaned with her head on his shoulder, but she couldn’t say when he came to sit.
“Prian…” she whispered. There was no answer. “What did we do today?”
Her brother was silent a long time. “We rode our red tallcats today,” he finally responded in a half-hollow voice. “Through shallow streams, and fields of tall sweet grass. We went to see the ocean again, and somewhere far away we could hear a leviathan singing.”
“It was beautiful, wasn’t it, Prian?” She closed her eyes and saw everything he told her.
“It was. We raced from the ocean to a wood of trees that had leaves, and it began to rain while the sun was still shining, but not because of rain trees. Then, in the afternoon, we rode back to Red Roads End and all of our friends met us on the way. You were so happy, you shined brighter than your Lifemask and the jewels in your hair.”
Brusque laughter shattered the pristine image in Shasi’s mind.
A stocky, muscular man astride a black tallcat was traveling beside them. Thick shocks of white streaked through his dark brown hair, tied neatly back. He was naked of a Lifemask; laugh wrinkles creased the skin beside his eyes and stubble covered his chin. Gold hoops pierced his earlobes from top to bottom and a gaudy purple sash belted his baggy black trousers.
Prian was glaring at the man vehemently, which only made him laugh harder.
“Oh please, don’t stop your tale. It’s the best entertainment I’ve had all night.” The man said with another chuckle.
Prian put an arm protectively around Shasi.
“
“Shut your mouth or I’ll cut out your tongue!” Prian snapped angrily.
This only succeeded in making the man smile and bark more laughter.
“You must be that dangerous raintree runt that bit Steggs. I appreciate your attitude, but your owners will not. They’ll beat it out of you eventually, they always do. Don’t look so angry with me! I’m only telling you what is!” he chuckled again until his eyes met with Shasi’s. For reasons beyond her knowledge, that gave him pause, and he grew serious. For a brief moment, he even looked sad for them.
“One last truth,” he said, wheeling his tallcat in a circle. “the sun does not shine in the rain. Not without your raintrees… not in the real world.”
With that he sped ahead of them, and the dawn followed him.
In the passing two days, Shasi didn’t watch the scenery or the wildlife, she didn’t look at the other slaves or her captors; everything, she saw without seeing. Her nights were haunted by the terrors of life and imagination together. The brand on the back of her shoulder hurt significantly less, something in the salve made it heal quickly, but pain was replaced by an unrelenting itch. She wouldn’t have eaten her meager meals if Prian didn’t force her to.
“You need to be strong to fight back,” he’d tell her. “And you need to eat to be strong.”
It must be easier for him. Prian never stopped fighting. Just like his father, her mother used to say.
Hot desert sunlight poured down on them and heated the metal slave cages to a nearly unbearable degree.
“More water, please,” one of the slaves pleaded piteously from the cage ahead of theirs.
“Shade, cover, something,” another begged.
“Give me a knife and I’ll shave enough human skin to give us all shade!” a third slave rasped.
A whip lashed across the side of the cage, stinging someone’s skin by the sound of the howling that followed. Hyktendorrick rode up and down the long wagon, whip in hand.
“Slaves don’t speak! I hear any more requests, and you’ll be eating your own tongue from the cookfire tonight!” Fat Stonefist bellowed somewhere up ahead, and laughed. “Come now! Just give me another word and it will be done!”
Shasi clamped a hand over her brother’s mouth before he had time to do anything stupid. She didn’t want to see him eat him eat his own tongue. And if it’d make him stronger, he might!
Over the creak of the wagon wheels, the arguments of slavers, and scores of voloru feet stomping and pulling the abhorrent procession down the dusty road, Shasi heard a familiar laugh.
The man with the brown-and-white hair came riding his black tallcat beside them again. This time he wore a huge scimitar sheathed and strapped to his back, and a hefty prong-gun on his side. In the daylight she noticed an old deep scar that ran over one dark brown cheek.
“Don’t want to eat tongues do you?” he laughed, and spit to the side. “Don’t worry, you’re not missing anything. Taste almost as bad as Stonefist stinks.”
Prian jerked away from Shasi’s grip.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“I brought you something.” The man said.
“I don’t want anything from shit-eating slavers!” Prian snapped.
“Ah, you may not.” He laughed, crows feet creasing the edges of his pale green eyes. “But she may. I give it to you with my name, Bariondellish the Nightmare.”
“I don’t like your name, slaver.”
“Pirates do not choose their names. Do not mistake me for a slaver, I only travel with them.”
“Pirates are no better, slaver.” Prian said, getting the last word in. Shasi could see through her brother’s defiant facade that he was curious about the prospect of meeting a real pirate.
Bariondellish the Nightmare rode close and held out a long cloth, navy blue on one side, copper-tan on the other. “Take it, before someone decides to stop me,” he urged.
The cloth brushed against the rusty cage bars, but Prian did not move.
Shasi crawled away from her brother and accepted the thin blanket, pulling it carefully through the bars.
“It is a special fabric to deflect the heat.” The Nightmare nodded. “Put it over you, you’ll feel the difference.”
“I don’t trust a man who wears no Lifemask.” Prian kicked at the bars where Barion’s hand was, but the pirate was too quick. All he managed to catch was a hearty laugh.
“You do not trust yourself?” Barion asked, quirking a brow.
“Mine was taken from me! It doesn’t count!”
“You don’t know what happened to mine, now do you? Do not pass judgment on a man’s life without first knowing it.” Barion chuckled. “And, in turn, never trust easily.”
No sooner than she leaned against the bars of the cage holding her gift, Shasi’s hair was pulled savagely from behind her. Her head hit the bars and she shrieked.
“Give it to me, girl! Give it to me! I need it!” A slave in the cage in front of theirs growled and pulled her hair harder. “I’m burning, you little bitch! Give it here!”
Prian was against the bars instantly, but Shasi’s red-gold hair was long, and he had pulled it through both sets of bars. Try though he may, he couldn’t reach her attacker.
The Nightmare kicked his heels into his snapping tallcat, and spun around, riding to the other side of the main slave cage. He unholstered the heavy wood and iron gun from his belt, aimed, and fired a single steel barb into the back of the slave’s wrist. There was a scream and Shasi felt the grip on her hair release.
Shaking, she scrambled to the other side of the cage and clutched the cooling blanket.
“Hear that, lads?” Stonefist called back from somewhere ahead. “We’ll be having tongue tonight!”
“It won’t work that way,” Barion said casually as if nothing had happened at all. He holstered his gun and wiped sweat from his brow. “Put it over you, girl.”
Shasi looked at him over her shoulder and put the blanket over her head. In the intense heat she felt the difference instantly. She sat for a while, staring at the pirate’s green eyes and scarred face.
“Don’t worry girl,” he chuckled when he noticed her staring. “I won’t ask. Your past belongs to you alone.”
The few strangers Shasi met always asked why she didn’t speak. This man was different than all of them.
Heat melted the red desert horizon, sending watery snakes streaking across the expanse, to warp the rocks and trees in the distance. There were ghosts there too. Sometimes the shapes in the waves of heat looked like houses or animals, and other times they looked like people, haunted and writhing.
She saw those now, just ahead of the slaver caravan. When she heard them shouting to one another she knew they must be real. Some of them were running and jumping, others were screaming at one another. Red dust was billowing up from the hot ground where they fought something monstrous. The newest shape was huge; as tall as her roundhouse and as long as three.
Hyktendorrick came barreling down the line of wagons on his tallcat.
“Nightmare! Come quickly!” he roared when he was half way to them. “Brykton, Salfrez, Akanon, with me! Hurry!”
“Impossible,” Barion’s sharp eyes met with the scene Shasi had been watching. He kicked into his tallcat and sent it into full sprint toward the columns of dust and rippled forms.
Groaning wagon wheels brought them steadily closer. The voloru were the first to balk at the beast ahead. They threw their heads, raised their feathery manes, and bugled loud enough to send the tallcats hissing and sulking.
“Father told me voloru are afraid of nothing. What could scare them like this?” Prian thought aloud, grabbing the hot cage bars. He recoiled and wrung his hands with a sharp, “ow!”
What is it? Shasi wanted to ask but she held her tongue as she always did, and someone asked for her.
“The father of all demons!” a woman slave shrieked.
“The Vile are the fathers of demons, and they’re dead and gone, woman.” A middle-aged man argued.
“A wolf! It’s a wolf!”
“Wolves don’t exist, boy.”
“Fools!” someone croaked. “Did they take your eyes too when they stripped your Lifemasks? That creature there is a noble terror. Prendaeshi!”
A terrible hush went through the cages, and it was not inspired by the whips of slavers. Could it be true? A real Prendaeshi? Monstrous beasts of the sky who preyed on the largest avians and were said to eat their kill in mid-flight. She heard the stories from her brother and passing merchants who enjoyed frightening little girls.
“He’s right! By the Five Faces, it is Prendaeshi – a Sky Lord!”
“Are they mad? It will kill us all!” a slave woman sobbed, and the mad flames of panic spread through the wagon cages like wildfire over a dry field.
“Silence!” Stonefist boomed, lashing at the cages with a long lead beaded flail. “Silence you bastards of plague-whores, or I’ll sew your filthy mouths shut! Some pay more for silent slaves, don’t doubt it! If I hear as much as a bleat from one of you dredge-goats, you’ll have to eat your slop through a pin-straw!”
"Shasi," Prian said breathlessly. "A real Sky Lord."
The slavers and other men were trying to hobble the beast. It was colored like blackened, charred wood; deep brown black, sparsely spotted by golden crescents. Ropes were tied about its clawed feet and cat-like body, with men pulling on the other ends. It was plain to see they were trying to pull its feet out from beneath it, but the beast was too strong. As soon as they pulled its front leg away, the creature wrenched it back, knocking over the men on the rope. The beast's feather mane stood straight on end and everyone paused for half a breath.
One arm free, the creature's claw hooked the rope tied around its wolfen snout and snapped it off. Its fanged jaws yawned open and roared. The deep guttural bellow rumbled through Shasi's chest, awakening a kind of primal dread that made her heart skip a beat. Even Prian's face went pale... but only for a moment.
He shot up to his feet and cupped his hands around his mouth yelling, "Kill them! Kill them!" The tear rolling down his dirty cheek was almost unnoticeable.
Shasi quickly pounced on her brother, clapping a hand over his mouth.
If the Sky Lord killed their captors, what would stop it from killing the panicked slaves in their cages? Despite the apparent danger, she felt a flutter of hope that this creature might lead to their escape. Somehow.
Screams raked through Shasi's ears. The Sky Lord was thrashing its head, a man flailing in its jaws. Pitching its head to the side, the Sky Lord flung the dead man like a child's doll, into a pair of tallcat riders. Both riders fell, and both tallcats bolted in retreat.
Muscles gleaming in the sun, the Sky Lord lashed out with startling speed, rending six men with two strikes that freed its second arm.
The slavers swarmed around it relentlessly, and Shasi caught sight of Barion's black tallcat riding ahead of the chaos. He was holding a two handed gun.
In two breaths, the Sky Lord bared its teeth and focused its sights on Bariondellish the Nightmare, the mass of ropes fell away from its sides revealing huge amber gems embedded in its sides. The gems began to change, warp, twist, and grow, until a pair of huge dark wings were poised, shadowing half of the slavers. Feathers lightly blanketed parts of the bat-like wings, each more than twice the length of the creature itself.
Then the prendaeshi fell.
The Sky Lord cried a mournful song as it went down, struggling. Its head slumped first, then its hind legs. It tried to pull itself back up, but eventually succumbed. The great black wings receded into the gems on its sides and the beast collapsed, unmoving.
Shasi sucked in a breath, not truly knowing if she was sad, frightened, or relieved.
All of Prian’s energy seemed to drain away, and he sat down beside her. She studied her brother’s face, and pulled her cooling shroud over him.
It took the slavers and their companions some time to bind the monstrous creature, and pull it, backwards, into a large wagon-cage that could barely support its girth. An additional pair of voloru were hitched to the massive, rusted cage, totaling to six very displeased beasts of burden. The voloru growled, bleated and bellowed a ragged chorus of protest and set off the other teams and mounts to do the same.
After limbs were tied down and secured, sides bound, and its face muzzled, the slavers laughed and celebrated, and jabbed at the Sky Lord’s limp body with the butt of their long, wicked spears.
"Yeho! Yeho! Join last!" Shasi could hear Stonefist shouting somewhere up ahead. "Keeping the Sky Lord behind our train will make the voloru quicken their pace! Keep a guard of riders at your rear!"
Wagon wheels shuddered and began to move. The caravan train moved past the Sky Lord's cage, and for once, every one of the slaves were utterly silent. Faces old and young, male or female, rugged or fair, stared at the captured predator as they passed it by. As soon as they were away, Shasi could hear some of the people muttering prayers, and others, curses.
When her own wagon lined up with the Sky Lord, Shasi held her breath, half hiding beneath the cooling shroud.
It looks like its sleeping, she thought.
Its sides grew and shrunk with slow breaths and a pang of strange relief ran through Shasi. It was still alive, and didn't seem to be bleeding.
"Sleeping darts." Prian said. "The pirate shot him with sleeping darts."
It might be a her. Shasi thought. How would we know?
The wagon halted so suddenly that Shasi lurched backwards. Six strong slavers surrounded her cage, and wrapped their gloved hands around the bars. One of them was laughing. Shasi recognized him as the man Prian had bitten on their first day.
“Caught another one as rabid as you, boy!” the man called Steggs said with another grisly laugh.
Their cage was unlatched from the larger wagon, and reattached to the back of the Sky Lord’s.
Both Prian and Shasi scrambled to the far corner of the cage, only to be prodded and laughed at by the raucous slavers.
Finally, they settled in the middle of their tiny prison, Shasi’s cooling veil fluttering in the hot, newly born breeze.
Her eyes didn’t move from the Prendaeshi. It looked so much smaller, crammed in the rusty cage, its tail wrapped beside its belly. Ropes and chains belting its body, it hardly seemed the same creature, savage and proud, as it appeared on the rippling desert flats. And its wings…such terrifying and amazing wings.
No question now, Shasi felt pity for the creature. She knew Prian must feel the same way. This beast was just like them now. A slave.
Shasi touched her arm where her brand was nearly healed. She almost wished the slaver’s healing salve didn’t work so quickly. The pain kept her from thinking. It kept her from remembering.
This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. She kept thinking to herself, tearful eyes never leaving the Sky Lord.
Her fingers tightened around the skin of her arm and she pinched gradually harder. The sharp pain filled her mind, numbing away the cage and the slavers, blurring out her step-father and his children. But no matter how hard she pinched, she couldn’t forget her mother. The memory pounded through mind as strong as the pain she felt. Relentless.
“Shasi!” Prian grabbed her and shook her. “What are you doing?”
Startled, she let go of her blood smeared arm where she had reopened a scab on her brand.
When she saw the blood, she began to cry. It was dark outside. When did night fall?
“Don’t ever, ever, do that again!” Prian said angrily. She hardly heard him.
It was awake, and it was staring right at them. Eyes of rich amber, like the molten crescent markings on its dark body, buried themselves into her own.
“Shasi! What’s wrong with you?” Prian demanded, giving her another shake. When she didn’t move, he followed her gaze.
The Prendaeshi just stared and exhaled. The scent of its ebbing breath was sharp, not foul. Its eyes left the brother and sister to flicker at the cage around them.
Prian shot to his feet and rushed the dual bars that separated their cage from the Sky Lord’s.
“Get up!” he said forcefully, but as quietly as he could. “Get up and fight! Don’t just lay there! Get up!”
The Sky Lord jerked backward slightly when Prian hit the bars. The second time, it began to growl, lowly. The parts of its feather mane not tied down by ropes began to stand on end. It watched Prian hit the bars again.
“Prian,” Shasi whispered to her brother, pulling at him gently. “We’re on the gate of its cage. If it breaks out…”
“I know, Shasi,” was all he said in response. But no matter how much he tried to instigate it, the Prendaeshi didn’t move. It finally closed its eyes again.
Prian kicked the bars and slumped.
When Shasi thought it asleep, the Sky Lord suddenly reared its head, raising its feather mane, and cried out. It was a smoother sound than a roar, that was much louder, and echoed off the boulders in the desert. Shasi had to clap her hands over her ears, but still, the sound carried through. At the end of the call, it slammed its back into the top of the cage with such force, the heavy wagon nearly tipped to one side. Their wagon driver was pitched off one side into the dirt. The long team of voloru bellowed and kicked, and like a shockwave, all of the other voloru and tallcats were set to chaos.
The following day was much the same. Hot and miserable. The Sky Lord stared at Prian and Shasi, the slavers jeered at all their captives, but gloated over the Prendaeshi. Whenever they did, however, the creature would emit a sound that would terrify the beasts of burden, or shake the wagon, which almost always led to the driver flailing off the side.
It was like it knew what they were saying.
Eventually, the wagon driver tied himself into his seat to avoid any more “accidents”.
Prian watched the driver and waited until the burly slaver began untying the safety ropes so that he might relieve himself.
Shasi’s brother’s smile was wicked. He got up and began tapping the bars to get the Sky Lord’s attention.
“Now. Do it now,” Prian said, grinning.
The Sky Lord looked up at him for a moment, and then threw its weight into rocking the wagon.
The driver soared over eight feet before hitting the ground, and all the voloru began howling.
Prian and Shasi couldn’t control their laughter.
Was that humor they saw in the Prendaeshi’s eyes?
Two days and two drivers later, the road was changing. It was becoming more crowded, with all of the traffic flowing along-side the slaver caravan. Never had Shasi seen such an abundance of people. From every walk of life, they came down the road. The rich, with their golden tallcat chariots and fluttering silken banners, rode by without so much as a glance. Merchants and craftsmen in their sturdy wagons went by, exchanging news and tips on safer travel. The poor ambled on foot, pushed aside by the upper classes. They occasionally cast piteous glances at the slaves in the huge iron cages, and walked on with an air of subtle pride.
All around the vastly different classes, there were men and a few women, with silver lifemasks wrought in shapes of hideous monsters. On their bodies they wore silver shirts of armor and shoulder guards made of twisted metal. Their saddles were fitted with twin gun holsters, two on each side. They wore great falchions sheathed to their backs and scimitars on their belts.
Shasi saw Prian watching them with feigned disinterest.
“They’re mercenaries,” Bariondellish said, reigning in his midnight tallcat to walk along their cage. Shasi hadn’t seen him since the day he downed the Sky Lord. At the mere scent of him, the Prendaeshi began rumbling disdainfully, a terrible sound that frightened travelers on the road. The slavers had draped a huge canvas over the Sky Lord wagon-cage several days ago. They didn’t bother covering Shasi and Prian’s extension; no one could see the Sky Lord but them.
The Nightmare smiled and laughed at the creature’s baying.
“No hard feelings, beast, a man needs to earn his pay,” Barion looked at Prian. “Those mercs you were admiring… They wear lifemasks. Do you trust them?”
“No,” Prian replied after a moment.
“Good boy.”
“Why do you talk to us?”
“I speak to whoever I like,” Barion responded casually.
“That wasn’t an answer!” Prian said, his temper beginning to flare.
“I never promised you one.”
“You’re the only one who speaks to us, and then you disappear for days!” Prian burst.
Shasi sat, arms around her legs, and looked at the Sky Lord. It was watching her. A chill ran through her, despite the warm weather. She turned back to Barion and watched him instead.
“Last time I checked, I wasn’t your father, boy,” Barion smiled, not nearly as affected as Prian.
“Well you should be!” Prian argued, his temper beginning to smolder. Shasi could tell that he wanted to cry, but he wouldn’t do that in front of this man. “What’s going to happen to us? What’s going to happen to her?”
Barion looked at Shasi and his nonchalance faded away.
“You are not my problem,” Barion said, seriously. “When we reach the coast, I find my ship, and I sail. Pirates do not foster children. And if they did- well, believe me boy, it’d be a damn short life.”
They didn’t see Barion the rest of the day or evening.
The wagons only stopped for short breaks on the congested roadway and Shasi heard talk that they were nearing their destination. She saw the ragged crew from a broken caravan panhandling and explaining they had been attacked by demons on the southroad.It was difficult to look at them and their bloody wounds, so she watched the Prendaeshi instead. Its eyes were squinted, but she could see that it was watching Prian.
“We should name it,” Shasi whispered to her brother.
Prian was dozing and opened one eye. “Huh?”
“The Sky Lord, it needs a name. Like Snaggletooth or something.”
“Vorrion,” Prian said and closed his eyes.
“It might not be a boy,” Shasi complained. Vorrion was a hero of ancient legend. A warrior who conquered a string of fierce islands ruled by gods and monsters. It was said he could transform into a mythical creature called a wolf, and he alternated these forms in battle. At his will, he rode a chariot made of cloud and sea foam, and wielded light and fire against his enemies.
“He is,” Prian insisted.
“Well,” Shasi continued. “He’s not even light, like the real Vorrion was.”
“Okay. So he’ll be Dark Vorrion. Now go to sleep.”
“Good night Prian,” she Whispered. “Good night Dark Vorrion.”
But Shasi couldn’t sleep. The Sky Lord, Dark Vorrion, was staring at her again. True, it wasn’t a rare occurrence, but as soon as she had said its name, and wished it goodnight, its eyes snapped open wide and focused on her with such intensity, she became frightened.
Then those big amber eyes began to soften, then moisten, and soon tears welled within them.
Shasi had never seen a creature cry before, and it was a strange sight to observe. The Sky Lord’s tear ducts began to swell until two solid, red spheres fell from them. Dark Vorrion’s eyes cleared almost instantly. It opened its jaws, as wide as the ropes would allow, and hovered over the solid tears, and then looked at Shasi. It repeated the motions again and again, as if it were trying to tell her something. Finally, it nudged them in her direction and waited.
“You want me to eat that?” she whispered, disgusted by the thought of consuming something that dripped out of a creature’s eye. She stared at the red bulbs, wrinkled her nose, and reached her arm through the bars. Her fingers rolled over one, pushing it out of her reach, but she got hold of the other.
Carefully, she brought it between the bars, and washed it with her ration water. Strangely, it seemed very much like a fruit in texture, and when she sniffed at it reluctantly, it had a sweet fragrance. It would have looked perfectly appealing, if she hadn’t seen where it came from.
Dark Vorrion was staring at her expectantly, and Prian was snoring.
She looked down at the fruit, took in a deep breath, and took a test bite. Syrupy juice erupted from the bulb, dribbling over her chin and clothes. She nearly spit it out, but she tasted the rich, delicious flavor and it gave her pause. It was a greater taste than she had experienced and as soon as she swallowed the first bite, she couldn’t resist the craving to eat the entire thing. Before she knew it, she was licking her fingers and wiping off her face.
Suddenly, she felt strange, queasy, and she wondered why she had eaten that thing at all. She wanted to throw up, but she couldn’t. Dark Vorrion was staring at her.
“
She looked around to see who could have spoken with such power, but the caravan was still plodding along slowly, slavers were dozing in their tallcat saddles, and night was still upon the travelers.
She scrambled over to Prian and shook him.
“I’m awake, father!” he muttered before achieving consciousness. “Shasi. What’s wrong?”
“Why did you make that noise?” she demanded in a whisper.
“What? Did I fart?”
“No!” she said, flustered.
“She look at me, ibrri?” the voice rumbled desperately. “She look at me?”
“Now did you hear it, Prian?”
“Yeah,” Prian stared past her. “He’s never made those muddy, clicky sounds before.”
When she turned, the Sky Lord was watching her, eyes intensely focused.
“She tell end my name, ibrri?” the voice came again. This time Shasi noticed the Prendaeshi making strange sounds. They began when the words began, and stopped when the words stopped.
“Dark Vorrion?” she breathed. It all fell together. That fruit had done something to her. She could understand the Sky Lord. He had a voice now, somehow, and he was speaking to her.
“Dark Vorrion,” it repeated, even louder the second time. “Dark Vorrion. Yes. He thanks her, ibrri.”
“P-Prian…” she began. She wanted to tell him, but she knew he wouldn’t understand. Instead she crawled to the Sky Lord and reached through the bars. The fruit was out of her reach but Dark Vorrion nudged it gently to her.
“Eat this,” she said, presenting the shiny bulb to Prian.
He looked at her quizzically.
“Where’d you get it?” Prian asked, inspecting the fruit.
“Just eat it, Prian,” she didn’t really want to think about where she had gotten it, and she doubted Prian would either.
“I’m not hungry.”
“If you don’t eat it now, someone might find it and take it away from us! I already had mine.” It was possible, she thought, but only a secondary reason for her haste.
“Okay, okay,” he agreed, finally. As soon as he took the first bite, he began to show signs of the same reaction as Shasi had. He devoured the strange fruit quickly, and then looked like he’d be sick.
“What did you give me, Shasi?” he asked, clutching his stomach.
She wanted to explain everything, but when she opened her mouth, nothing came out. She looked back at Dark Vorrion. He was watching Prian now.
“He knows my name, ibrri?” Dark Vorrion asked in a deep rumble, both quiet and deep at once.
Prian looked as if he had been struck by lightning. He stood there, unmoving before the Sky Lord.
“It’s the fruit,” Shasi explained. “He gave it to me. You can hear him now can’t you?”
“I,” Prian started. “I told you it was a he.”
“He is pleased, ibrri,” Dark Vorrion said. “As much as able, in trap. His life has traveled long, and fierce. He hunted, fought, and brought fear. He searched and again. With his one failing, he has found what he was hunting for. He found ibrri. And he found his name. He thanks.”
“You… were looking for a name?” Prian asked.
“Yes, ibrri. My people have not been granted names in a hundred generations, since the tear in the blue, when the masters of death came for the world.”
“You mean since the War of the Vile?” Prian asked just as Shasi was wondering.
“Vile. Yes, ibrri. After war,
changes killed the world we knew. Chaos ruled my people while fear ruled
yours,” the Sky Lord shifted his weight in his cramped confines. “
A chill went through Shasi. The Prendaeshi sat as regal as a creature could in such a state. He was awe inspiring, both frightening and beautiful.
“Can anyone else hear you?” Prian asked, settling himself closer.
“All may hear, ibrri, but only you may understand,” he answered in his gravely deep bass.
“Why?”
“You devoured aedem-kamlan. Ancestors knew it, a feast for the mind, given to us by our creator, so that we may bestow it to ibrri,” Dark Vorrion answered calmly.
“Creator?” Shasi whispered, trying to remember her history lessons.
“So, Sky Lords- I mean Prendaeshi, really were created by the Satraeans?” Prian asked in amazement. It was said that the ebony skinned Satraeans were so skilled with their technology, that they were able to craft living creatures. The voloru were one of those species, and supposedly the Sky Lords were another, but it happened so long ago, and so far away, most Konilarians thought it was a myth or exaggeration.
“Yes, ibrri,” Dark Vorrion answered. “My ancestors were the children of those people. We know this, ibrri. We have not forgotten, and neither will you. Now that we have ibrri again. We may live, yet.”
“Shasi, look!” Prian exclaimed.
Shasi crawled out from beneath her cooling veil and draped it over her head. The late morning brought with it the promise of another hot day, but something in the air felt different. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she settled beside her brother.
A girl about Shasi’s age rode past, sharing a tallcat saddle with her father. Their lifemasks were etched with writing and draped in beads and feathers. Shasi wished she was that girl.
“I said look!” Prian repeated.
Scores of travelers packed the roadway, body to body, beast to beast. Slavers held a perimeter between the masses and the Sky Lord’s cage. Bustling sounds allowed no peace.
Dust clouded the roadway so thick, Shasi thought she saw massive stone bricks floating on air. The wind lent a hand, blowing the man-made dust storm away. It was clear then, and she shrunk back to see a wall larger than any she could imagine. It was taller than all but the greatest raintrees, and wide enough to support small houses. Scores of men walked the wall, their lifemasks glinting in the sunlight.
The road cut through the wall, and the caravans followed it. Roundhouses bubbled up in tall honeycomb clusters all around. The forest of structures were crowded with short, round balconies, laundry or herb filled windows, and knit together by dirt alleys and stone roads. In even the highest buildings, people came and went by way of spiral stairs, rope ladders, and narrow arched bridges. Every so often, they’d pass a different variety of market, with stationed caravans, hooded by canopied tents. The merchants would eagerly call out their wares to the crowds of customers.
The cheering of scores of people could be heard somewhere nearby, and other travelers murmured something about an “arena” as they passed. There was another word Shasi kept hearing. Bloodsport.
“Welcome to Slaver’s Square, maggots!” Stonefist called out.
The wagons turned down a wide, dirty road, into a wide square. It was encircled by parked wagons and wooden hovels, while the center was a maze of cages, stacked like pyramids. Inside these cages, people stood or sat, some of them being prodded by slavers or potential buyers.
“Slave specials begin tomorrow! Return for the best prices in all Vergence!” someone shouted over the noise of the city.
“We separate by gender, beauty, skill, and age! Check in your slaves tomorrow before you unload them, so we may place them in category!” a man said, directing their wagons. “Ah! Stonefist! You know the method.”
“Get out of my way, Skaklen, you son of a whore! Ha ha!” Stonefist boomed. “The season’s been good! You’ll get a fine cut!”
“If I don’t, you’ll be getting a cut of a different kind. And it won’t be fine,” Skaklen retorted with a broken smile. “What’s that you have under the canvas?”
“Isn’t that what you asked your mother? Well it may have worked with her, but not me! This is a surprise, for Bloodsport! Ha ha!” Stonefist replied. “And there will be blood, lots of it. But not until tomorrow.”
Shasi quaked with fear. What will happen to us? What will they do to Dark Vorrion? she wondered. On their ride over she had heard many things about this event called Bloodsport. From the bits and pieces he gathered, Prian explained to her that it was a tournament where people came to fight one another. Some willing, and others not. At points, the audience would be allowed to take part in the killing. So many terrors a young girl would have never imagined. Shasi always thought the big cities would be amazing and peaceful places, supported by kind and loving people. She was wrong.
When the wagons were parked, the voloru and tallcats tethered, the slavers surrounded Prian and Shasi’s cage. They hefted it apart from Dark Vorrion’s, and carted it to a section near the other slave cages.
Dark Vorrion growled.
Something was strange about the morning Shasi awakened to. Everything looked blurry. No, not blurry…cloudy. A cool layer of fog encroached over the city, lulling everyone into a deeper slumber. Or so it seemed. Other mornings, slavers would be stirring by now. But today, this fog crept in and convinced them to rest, like some great spirit of the dreamworld. It was still early.
The shadow of a man riding a tallcat strode through the fog. The tallcat’s tail swishing as it quietly approached. There were guns and swords on the man. It was Barriondellish the Nightmare.
Prian blinked his eyes open, waking, and then jumped onto his feet as if he had been shocked awake by a nightmare. He leaned against the cage bars breathing heavily, and staring blankly at Shasi.
She pointed at Barion. Her brother watched him, but said nothing.
When he was close enough, the Nightmare dismounted, and held out a ring of keys. They had blood on them.
Shasi looked from the bloody keys, to the pirate.
“The man who branded you is dead,” Barion said, and this time, there weren’t laugh wrinkles beside his eyes. “Boy, I will return your freedom to you, but remember: I am not your father. Don’t ever look for me, you may find death in my place.”
After regarding Prian for a time he turned to Shasi, “Girl, you look so much like my little Tylla. Find your strength and you may live longer than she did.”
He slid one of the keys into the lock on their cage door, and swung it open. He placed the keys and a plain silver knife on the floor of the cage.
“My ship is leaving,” he said, mounting his black tallcat. Now he smiled. “You’d better hurry, unless a life of torturous servitude appeals to you. Oh, and you’d better leave those other slaves alone. You had nothing to do with their fate, as they had nothing to do with yours. If you help them, I cannot promise this will remain true. ”
“Pirate,” Prian said, giving Barion pause. “Thank you.”
“You’re
saying that now. The free world is a dangerous place. Good luck finding your
Prian snatched the knife and tucked it under his belt. As soon as he wasn’t looking Shasi picked up the keys. The brother and sister snuck quietly out and crept away from their cage.
“We have to let out Dark Vorrion,” Shasi whispered. But she had no idea how could they possibly do such a thing. Slavers and street folk from the festival were dozing everywhere and were sure to wake.
“We will. I’ll find the key,” Prian said smiling.
As they headed in the direction they had seen Dark Vorrion’s cage taken, Shasi looked at the other sleeping slaves. Some of them looked kind, and she couldn’t bring herself to pass them by. As she and her brother snuck past one of the long cages, she carefully set the keys on the cage floor beside a sleeping slave, and hurried away. After all, she didn’t really understand what Barion had meant in telling them to leave the other slaves alone. They were just poor people, like she and her brother.
The fog was still heavy, coating everything in grey and white, but the sky was getting steadily brighter. The cloud-faded buildings in the great city were grey silhouettes against the soft and icy blue mist. It was hard to imagine the city’s colors ever warming to their natural shades of tan, red, bronze and gold. It was like the world was under a spell, and Shasi was thankful.
They found Dark Vorrion’s cage just around the corner of a triple-decked hovel. The cage was covered, its outer guards, sleeping like everyone else. Prian began picking his way about the guards, searching for a key.
Shasi was so nervous she could barely breathe. They were freed, and walked among their captors. How easily that freedom could be stolen away again.
“Ibrri, come to me,” Dark Vorrion beckoned somewhere behind the cover.
Shasi stepped cautiously toward the cage and slipped beneath its curtain. There the Sky Lord lay, tied and bound. His gold eyes locked with hers.
“Free me, ibrri.”
She looked at him with sympathy, never even considering the possible danger surrounding such a creature, and climbed up onto the platform. She found that she could squeeze between the larger bars of the massive cage, and so she did. Dark Vorrion’s jaw clenched. She heard a grinding sound. The Prendaeshi winced suddenly, and opened his muzzled mouth as much as he could, allowing a sharply chipped fragment of tooth to fall before him.
“Tear with it,” the Prendaeshi told her.
It was covered in saliva, but Shasi picked it up anyway. She reached a hand out and touched his snout. Dark Vorrion’s golden eyes had a gentle fondness in them, a contrast to his monstrous form.
Leaning forward slightly, she began to saw away at the ropes, carefully at first, until she saw how quickly they fell away at the pressure of the broken tooth.
As soon as his mouth was free, Dark Vorrion opened it in a yawn, stretching his jaw, and snapping it shut. Then he angled his head downward and began to gnaw at the ropes around his feet.
Shasi dawdled for a moment and then dashed to his hind feet, cutting them free one at a time.
“My sides, ibbri.”
She obeyed, cutting away the ropes around his girth. As they slid away, she gasped at the set of amber gems embedded on his sides just below the shoulder. Deep, watery and smooth, like round dew drops, Shasi stared at her distorted reflection in them for just a moment. All in an arched row, small to large to small again, the littler gems were the size of her fist, and ranged to the largest, which were bigger than her father’s hands.
“Escape! Escape!”
The shout was so loud, Shasi tripped on a rope and fell against the bars behind her.
Fear overcame her.
Cries and calls echoed through the streets. A bell clanked a warning, and a horn was blown somewhere nearby.
“Stop them! Stop those slaves!” someone yelled. The quiet city was now clamoring with noise.
The sounds of fighting followed Prian as he appeared behind the curtain. He struggled with the keys, his eyebrows furiously narrow as he concentrated. The lock clicked and as he reached to pull it off, an arm wrapped around his throat from behind. He lurched backward, clawing at the curtain, dragging it partway off of the cage.
“Prian!” Shasi shouted in horror. She didn’t realize it was the first time she used her voice since her mother’s death. It didn’t matter. Nothing did. The threat of her brother’s safety consumed her and washed away all of the other terrors of her life.
“Climb me, ibbri!” Dark Vorrion exclaimed in a rumble that turned to a roar at her inaction. “Climb!”
Shasi stumbled around his side and began to climb, using scales and feathers as handholds, he tilted to the side to help her reach his back quicker. As soon as she sat between his shoulders clutching his feathered mane, he growled and rammed himself into the cage door. It creaked and shuddered, and the lock swung, but it did not open. Recoiling, he pressed himself backwards as far as he could, and launched forward again. The lock flung off, the gate swung open, and the Prendaeshi stalked out of the cage, dragging the curtain down with him in a flourish.
Sucking in a long deep breath, the Sky Lord let loose a roar so deep and clear, it sent vibrations through the air strong enough to knock nearby flower pots off of railings.
Where there had been commotion a moment ago, terror replaced it upon Dark Vorrion’s entrance. People watching the riot from the safety of their balconies now screamed in fear at the sight of the Prendaeshi. Unstabled animals of all types cried out and struggled to flee, maddened with fear. The chaos in the slaver’s square doubled.
Slaver’s whipping and recapturing slaves turned about in horror, some of them losing their captives. Camping street folk crammed into the narrow streets, stampeding to escape the predator of the sky. Guards arriving in response to the riot stopped dead in their tracks, some regarding their whips and useless weapons. Shasi saw a dark spot appear on the trousers of the foremost guard as he dropped his flail.
She noticed an unfamiliar feeling in that moment.
Shasistrena Firese’i was no longer small.
From her seat on the back of Dark Vorrion, she shared his twelve and a half foot height. Her long red and gold hair whipped about her, green eyes afraid and searching. How strange she must have looked. The nine year old daughter of raintree farmers, sitting astride the most feared predator in all of Greenshadow.
Scanning the torrent of chaos below, she spotted her brother. He was pressed up against a wagon with the dagger in his hand. Someone familiar- Hyktonderrik- was clutching her brother’s throat. That’s when she noticed that the other end of Prian’s dagger was planted in the man’s side.
“Prian,” she whispered in desperation.
Something touched her leg.
Shasi forced her gaze away from her brother and saw thick black ropes of matter snaking out of Dark Vorrion’s amber gems, like they had that day in the desert. They stretched and twisted and merged and grew into the huge imposing wings she had seen once before. But not all of them took the formation. A pair slithered up and wound over her legs. She screamed.
“Do not fear, ibrri.” Dark Vorrion said reassuringly.
She tried to be at ease, but couldn’t as the ropes wrapped around her waist, in front and behind her. Then they solidified, as the wings had, but took the shape of an organic saddle, sleek and black. She was held firmly, but not uncomfortably, in place.
Dark Vorrion strode forward, eyes set on Prian.
Guards arrived with spears and ropes in hand and began to set a formation around the Sky Lord. One of them boldly charged, spear at the ready.
Dark Vorrion lifted a claw-laden paw and raked the man nearly in half with lightning speed. Shasi squeezed her eyes shut. The Sky Lord began swaying quickly and she opened her eyes to see him rattling a guard in his mouth, and then fling the man into the wall of a building twenty feet away.
“Dark Vorrion, hurry!” Shasi said aloud. Hyktonderrik and another slaver were pulling Prian through the sea of people toward a honeycomb of buildings.
The Prendaeshi bounded forward, cutting through the crowd. Another deafening roar sent people fleeing in all directions away from him, like petals of a blooming flower. Shasi had to cup her hands over her ears.
“Hurry! They’re taking him!” Shasi shouted, panic overwhelming her. Prian was disappearing into the building.
In less than a breath he was gone, and they were left in a sea of hostility. Soldiers had arrived, some carrying harpoons and heavy barb-guns. One shot left a steel harpoon in Dark Vorrion’s leg. His jaws clamped down on it and he savagely ripped it out with a cry of pain, then lunged forward and massacred six soldiers with guns. A shot whistled over Shasi’s head and past Dark Vorrion’s ear.
Doubling back, he shouldered the triple decked hovel, forcing it to collapse on itself and the people within, and used the diversion to take flight.
Spreading his wide wings open, he shadowed half of slaver’s square. He sat, crouched, gathering himself, and sprung into the air. With the burst of wind pressing her down, Shasi felt her stomach hit her feet. In six powerful beats of his wings, they were soaring.
Shasi panicked.
Franticly burying herself into Dark Vorrion’s neck feathers, she clung on for fear the saddle would melt away.
“Do not be afraid, ibrri. I will carry you. You will not fall,” he called over the wind. “You gave me what I sought. You showed me my purpose, now let me fulfill it. Allow me to set you free. I give you my flight. My service. Open your eyes, child.”
Reluctantly, she relaxed her clenched eyelids and blinked, her heart nearly stopping each time she attempted to sit up. She pressed herself up and looked off of Dark Vorrion’s back. The world had slid rapidly away from them. She had never seen anything like it. Fear gave way to amazement, and unfortunately, amazement brought with it dizziness and nausea.
The city beneath them looked like children’s blocks, the people, tiny dolls. From here, the tallcats weren’t tall, and the mean tempered voloru weren’t frightening. But the details of the tan and red city, with its domed and square roofs and golden banners, didn’t call her attention like the great wash of blue that spread out forever over Dark Vorrion’s right shoulder.
“Did the sky break into the land?” Shasi asked frightfully.
Dark Vorrion made a grunt that could have sounded like a laugh if it wasn’t so bestial. “Is great water, ibrri.”
“The sea?” Shasi gasped. For a while, she was entranced by it, her eyes drinking it in. The endless, deep blue.
It isn’t at all how Prian described it. The thought of her brother brought her back into the present. This wasn’t a dream, this was really happening, and somewhere in that dusty red desert city below, he was in trouble.
“Prian!” she cried, the shock wearing away. “He’s still down there! Prian’s still there!”But Dark Vorrion was silent. He banked on his left wing, turning them away from the city and the sea.
The wind wiped away Shasi’s tears even as she created them. High above the ground and headed for the clouds on the horizon, she pounded Dark Vorrion’s back, sobbed helplessly, and made rain.
The Prendaeshi’s only response was to beat his wings harder, and propel them faster toward their destination. Air beat on Shasi, pounding down her lungs, pulling back her hair and pressing her backwards in her seat. The act of struggling to stop from choking on her own breath staunched her tears, but sent her into a different kind of fright. She crouched down and buried her face in Dark Vorrion’s feather mane.
Prian
is gone. Everyone is gone. Shasi thought. I’m flying.
Shock overtook her and departed so many times, she hardly noticed how long they had been flying. When she pulled herself away from the Sky Lord, she found them descending. The desert below was cracked and strange. A tall cliff, sloped on three sides, and sheer on the fourth, was just ahead of them. Growing up the side of the precipice was a tree of enormous size. The ground around the trunk was broken and riddled with gaping caves, and the tree’s branches wrapped about and grew through the cliff itself. The sight was dramatic. It appeared as though this tree had erupted from the ground, and plowed up through the face of the cliff. It must have been several hundred feet tall. And it was green.
A tree with leaves. And it’s not a fern tree. Shasi thought, amazed.
“My tribe,” Dark Vorrion said, for the first time since they were circling the city. “Safety, ibrri.”
Shasi held her breath.
Prendaeshi!
As they flew closer, she could see them everywhere! They were lounging on the sunny cliffside, perched in the huge tree branches, and circling in the sky. She also noticed white ruins partly submerged here and there all the way down the cliff face, some of them swallowed by the trunk, or enveloped by the branches of the great tree.
Where am I? Shasi wondered.
Dark Vorrion howled musically, announcing their arrival. A pair of flying Sky Lords escorted them, looking at Shasi with much interest, before rolling away into barrel-dives.
Slowing by back-beating his wings, and pulling his chest up, Dark Vorrion landed on the cliff where the tree sheltered the rocks. He settled down and made his wings and the saddle disappear. The Prendaeshi began to gather. They stalked over, landed, and bounded down from the tree branches. Adults, youths, adolescents, even babies trundled out under the feet of their mothers. A couple were even larger than Dark Vorrion. While their physical structure was the same as his, no two Sky Lords looked alike. Their coats were a range of browns, blues or white, sometimes accented with gold or green. Some of them were solid, while others had stripes, spots, or marbled patterns over their fur-like feathers.
“Prey?” a deep blue Sky Lord growled.
Shasi was startled. She could understand more than one Sky Lord. She could understand their entire language. It wasn’t as though they were speaking words exactly, something in her mind understood what every growl, hum, and movement related. She could hear their voices as well, but her understanding wasn’t limited to vocalizations.
“Prey here?” The slightly higher pitched snarl came from a lean brown Sky Lord with green stripes. Its ears were flattened, and its vicious fangs bared.
“Small,” said a huge blue-gray.
“Why bring this?” a little light-brown barked.
The gathering Prendaeshi were creeping closer, staring at Shasi with hunter’s eyes. There must have been at least forty of them, and they were pinning their ears and showing their teeth.
Shasistrena was frightened. Here legs were hurting from the long flight, but she didn’t dare move. She sunk slowly into Dark Vorrion’s mane.
“She’s not prey!” Dark Vorrion roared, thrashing his tail. “She is ibrri!”
The Prendaeshi were silent at once. One or two began to whine. The whine turned into a melodic howl, and soon all of them were throwing their heads back in an animalistic song. The smaller cubs padded forward, tripping over each other.
When the song had ended, an old Sky Lord hobbled forward, limping heavily. It was grey-brown, and had solid white eyes.
“Who are you?” he rumbled slowly to Dark Vorrion.
“I am. End living am Dark Vorrion,” he replied, lowering his head. They all lowered their heads. “Land, ibrri.”
Shasi was afraid at first, but something filled her with calm. They no longer looked at her as a predator would. They didn’t look at her at all. Very carefully, she slid down Dark Vorrion’s side, and walked forward a few paces, resting a hand on his neck.
“Protect ibrri!” Dark Vorrion commanded. “There lives another.”
And as quickly as that, Dark Vorrion turned away, summoned his wings, and took flight.
He’s going back for Prian! Shasi thought with relief. Then she looked around. She was completely encircled by the largest and most feared predators she could think of.
“Dark Vorrion,” she whispered. “Wait!”
But he had already disappeared into the clouds.
The warm breeze brushed her hair aside, rustled the leaves of the trees, and ruffled the feathers of the Prendaeshi, but they stood still as statues with their heads down.
The eldest Prendaeshi moved forward, and lifted his head to face her, though he was entirely blind. His off colored fangs shown and Shasi found herself frozen again.
“Who am I, ibrri?” he rasped.
“I don’t know,” she said blinking. A question was the last thing she expected from a frightening beast.
“Who am I, ibrri? Who?” the old Sky Lord repeated. “You gave him Dark Vorrion, who am I?”
“You want me to name you?” she asked, looking at the others, but they didn’t meet her eyes. “Well, are you a boy?”
“End not understand, ibrri.”
“Are you, umm, a male?” she said, recalling the word.
“Yes, ibrri. He is male.”
“Okay, your name can be… Snaggletooth,” she said.
“End living, I am Snaggletooth,” he repeated low and heavy. The old Prendaeshi graciously bowed his head and lay down.
“Who am I, ibrri?” asked a blue, with yellow rings around it’s eyes, and yellow bands on its legs.
“Are you a male?”
“No,” it responded. She noticed it’s voice was a slightly higher tone, though equally animal, and not slightly feminine.
“You can be, Blue Sky.”
“Who am I, ibrri?” another female asked. This one was small and pale brown with golden flecks.
“You’re Gold Rain.”
“Who am I?” two more Sky Lords asked, followed by another three, until Shasi was being positively swarmed.
“Who are my children, ibrri?”
“Who am I, ibrri?”
“Who?”
It carried on until Shasi must have named more than half of them, and was exhausted from trying to think of new names. Each that she named seemed overjoyed and contented. They brushed against her and made happy warbling sounds. The air of danger was gone.
Shasi was not used to talking so much, so she didn’t say anything and let the creatures to themselves, though there were always three or four following her every footstep. It was these four that fended off the rest with their unending requests. The others asked for names, and obsessed about her wellbeing. They offered her things, though their good intentions could be easily lost in translation. These gifts came in the form of small, horribly wounded or dead animals, offered a