Moths to a Flame Page 3

  Laili just stood shivering, her arms still clasped about her.

  ‘Why are you weeping, child? Think of those other poor minxes bought by the House of Black Khassia, sent to the stews of Perysse, think yourself lucky you are not one of them.’

  Laili shook her head, unable to contain the shuddering tears that racked her body.

  ‘Stupid little hussy!’ The Torella turned away from her in irritation. ‘You will ruin your complexion with this constant crying. I should be crying – throwing away six hundred eniths on that madman brother of yours! If that pig of a trader doesn’t give me all my monies back, I—’

  ‘Lai,’ whispered Laili, turning away. ‘Oh, Lai …’

  An oil cresset sent up a smirch of smoke-tainted flame into the frowsty darkness; Lai sat slumped on the filthy straw, staring at the wavering light. All around him others slept, he could hear the wheeze and snore of rotting lungs, air-starved lungs, confined too long underground. He had almost become accustomed to the foetid stench of the place; the human detritus of Perysse had been swept in here and left shackled to the dripping walls. He was only glad that Laili was not here with him, condemned to this airless, lightless life-in-death.

  His skin burned in an agony of louse-bites. But he had hardly the strength to lift one manacled hand to scratch any more. The meagre slops of watery gruel they were given left him so hungry that his stomach cramped with emptiness. Once there had been a whole loaf of black bread; the others had scrapped viciously over it like pyedogs and he had listlessly hung back and left them to it. Next time, he feared, he would be driven by hunger to join the fight.

  What he could not understand was why there were so few of his own age in the donjon vault; most of the inmates were grey-haired, gap-toothed … Several had stared at him, nudging and whispering when the tarkhastars first kicked him inside. He had tried to ask them how long he might stay here, would there be a trial, what punishment might be given—

  They had shaken their grizzled heads and turned away from him.

  In the darkness, he tried to remember the sacred words of invocation, of praise, of thanks. The chants for the morning, for the noon, for the coming of dusk.

  Goddess, forgive me. I have broken my vow to you, I have taken another’s life. I am no better than these heathens, I struck out in anger and killed. I am no longer worthy to be called your initiate.

  Lai blinked furiously, feeling tears prickling his eyelids.

  Laili …?

  Not even a whisper of an answer.

  They had never been apart before. What were they doing to her? She was resilient, level-headed, so much more so than he – and yet vulnerable beneath her seeming calm.

  He had tried to save her. And now he could not even save himself. He would never know what had become of her. He would never see her – or the whispering balsam groves of Ael Lahi again. And suddenly the hot tears were rolling silently down his bruised cheeks and he could not check the flood, bitterly ashamed to be weeping, yet so tired, so achingly tired and alone that he could not stop.

  Oh Laili, where are you?

  * * * * *

  The Torella’s courtyard garden was surrounded on three sides by an arched walkway. Laili sat alone, staring at her reflection in the reed-shaded pool. The Torella had sent her outside to gather the last pale roses … but they were dying, their bruised petals tumbling one by one into the glassy water. Laili trailed her fingers listlessly in the pool.

  Where are you, Lai? I know you are not dead, if you were dead, I would have felt the link that binds us together – severed.

  She knelt up, pressing her fingertips tightly to the moonmark on her forehead, trying to centre herself, her mind, in meditation.

  ‘Goddess?’ she whispered. Perhaps in this rare moment’s solitude she could rediscover the solace of that eternal stillness … but whenever she closed her eyes, she saw blood, blood coursing down Aela’s wrinkled face, blood trickling from the slashed throat of the soldier, blood on the blade in Lai’s trembling hand …

  ‘He did it to save me. Let me take the blame upon myself, let me atone for his crime …’

  Petals, pale as moonflecks, came drifting down about her head to float on the dark water.

  At this hour, close to dusk, the adepts gathered on Ael Lahi to welcome the first stars. As a child she had heard the voices rising from the Sacred Grove and she had believed them to be spirit voices. She had always longed to join with them, to spiral upwards into the twilit skies, lost in an endless trance of music.

  The melody of the invocation wreathed into her mind, her lips began to move, her fingers reached upwards … and haltingly, she began to sing.

  There was a dreaming kind of comfort in the familiar ritual; almost unconsciously she let herself sway to the rhythms of the eternal dance, her fingers uncurling gracefully to form the sacred gestures: moonbirds flying, moonlily buds slowly opening …

  Only gradually did she become aware that she was no longer alone. She was being watched. A shadowed figure stood in the furthest archway, silently observing her.

  The song dried to silence on her lips. She stopped, hands trembling.

  ‘Wh–who’s there?’

  ‘Don’t stop.’ A man’s voice from the gloom-shrouded archway. A cultured voice, soft and pleading. ‘Please don’t stop.’ What was he doing, trespassing in the Torella’s gardens so close to nightfall, spying on her?

  Terrified, she turned and ran indoors, scattering petals as she went.

  They hauled Lai along endless tunnels to a bare room; a sudden shock of cold daylight made him screw his eyes up tight.

  ‘Next!’

  A balding man in robes of crimson velvet was seated at a desk, scribbling with a scratchy nib; he had barely bothered to glance up from his ledger.

  ‘Name?’ he said disinterestedly.

  ‘L–Lai D–Dhar.’ Lai was shivering with cold; how soft the crimson velvet looked and how luxuriously warm. The last day and night he had been gripped with a bloody flux and now he felt so weak he could hardly stand.

  ‘Ah yes. A grievous crime. Wounding an officer of the Arkhan—’

  ‘He’s not dead?’ cried Lai. A kick silenced him.

  ‘Luckily for you – or you would have been condemned to the spikes without hope of reprieve. The usual practice in cases such as yours is to have the miscreant gelded and put to work in the dye works.’

  Lai heard the words of his sentence through a blur of nausea; his bowels still churned and rolled, although they had expelled the last of their contents earlier and his breechclout was slimed with his own excrement.

  One of the tarkhastars moved forwards and whispered in the man’s ear.

  ‘It looks as though it may have been decided for you; the Tarkhas Memizhon are short of one bladesman for the rites. If their trainer judges you suitable, you will be handed over to him. If not … then the dye works and the gelding knife …’

  Pains griped his empty belly; he rolled over in the foetid straw, drawing his knees up to his chest to try to soothe the ache. If he closed his eyes and tried to remember Ael Lahi, he could force the pains to recede to the edge of consciousness, to where they were almost bearable …

  Remember the shore at sunset … So many times he and Laili had walked barefoot along the soft saltsands to watch the drifts of silvered seabirds wheel up into the dying light …

  Voices murmuring … The twilit strand dwindled as the voices penetrated his dreams …

  Hunger gnawed, sharp as a wolf’s fang, as consciousness returned.

  ‘Leave me alone …’ he groaned, turning on his other side, trying to recapture the dream.

  On Ael Lahi’s deserted shore night had cloaked the sea; the sky faded from mauve to indigo, jewelled by one bright star. Duskstar. A child’s wishing star.

  ‘This one? The red-head?’

  Faces loomed over him. Nightmare faces. Spirit masks, lemur-striped, moon white and shadowblack. They had come to suck out his soul.

  ‘G–g�
��go away! Let me alone!’

  Lai cowered on the straw, manacled hands over his head, the chains clanking cold against his face.

  ‘He’s sick!’

  ‘He’s foreign. He’s not used to the water.’

  ‘Your water’s polluted. It’s not fit for dogs to drink.’

  A lantern-flame flickered, the light falling hot on Lai’s closed lids; he tried to open his eyes, screwing them up as the light dazzled.

  ‘Here’s five eniths for you. Give him powdered arrowroot and poppy to bind his bowels. Prepared with clean boiled springwater. Another five eniths for you when I hear that he’s cured.’

  Physic? Na … Must be dreaming … Who would care one enith whether he lived or died in this human cesspit – let alone ten?

  Lai’s eyes slid open: a receding lantern flame wavered through the darkness like a corpselight over marshland. Two men were picking their way over the sleeping prisoners. As one bent with a jangle of keys to unlock the door, the other turned and glanced back over his shoulder at Lai.

  The leaping shadows, the golden lantern-flame lit the man’s face for the space of a missed heartbeat.

  Daemon mask, one side smooth, olive-skinned, the other a mockery of perfection, hideously pitted and scarred.

  Lai rubbed his eyes and looked again. There was no one there.

  Na … It must have been another dream …

  ‘Wake up!’

  A sharp kick in the ribs brought Lai to his senses. Blinking in the bright torchlight, he could see a tarkhastar holding high a torch which dripped gouts of fire onto the piss-soaked straw.

  ‘On your feet!’ The tarkhaster jerked hard on the chain about his neck; he staggered to his feet, half-choked by the metal collar. ‘Djhë! You stink like a midden!’

  ‘Wh–where are you taking me?’ gasped Lai.

  The tarkhastar tugged on the chain viciously, making him gag.

  ‘Have you forgotten your manners? How do you address your masters?’

  ‘Zhan,’ said Lai in a choked whisper.

  ‘Like it or not you’re going to the Tarkhas Memizhon to be trained as a bladesman for the arena.’

  Lai stared at him in dulled incredulity.

  ‘I suppose that wherever it is you come from you haven’t heard of the arena? I thought not. Once every year, the Arkhan holds a contest to celebrate Mithiel’s Day. Memizhon bladesmen against Zhudiciar. All Perysse crowds into the arena to see the bladesmen fight. If you fight – and win – the Arkhan grants you your freedom.’

  ‘Freedom?’ Lai repeated dazedly.

  ‘You fight if – and only if – you complete your training to the Arkhan’s satisfaction. If you are not satisfactory then we return you to the donjon. And the gelding knife.’

  A brazier of coal glowed in one corner of the subterranean chamber, tainting the air with its thin acrid fumes.

  ‘Memizhon or Zhudiciar?’ A wizened old man in a leathern apron hobbled forwards to squint up into Lai’s face.

  ‘Memizhon.’

  The old man spat and turned his back on Lai, hobbling back to the brazier.

  ‘Give him a mouthful of the draught.’

  ‘Here. Drink.’ The tarkhastar thrust a dusty bottle between Lai’s lips, tipping it until a wash of burning liquid spilt into his mouth, his throat, splashing down his unshaven chin until he choked.

  Fierce spirit on an empty stomach; suddenly Lai’s head was light, swimmingly, dizzyingly light. He no longer cared what they did to him. When the tarkhastar gripped hold of his arms behind him, forced him back on the couch, strapping him down, he did not resist. What was the point. What was the—

  The old man’s face loomed in front of his, the stained needle jutting towards his naked eyes. Mazily he realised what he was about. The obliteration of the Goddess’s sacred moonmark.

  ‘Don’t – d–don’t do this to me—’

  And then the needle seared into Lai’s forehead, drilling into his brain where the pain raged with incinerating wildfire. His body went rigid; the tarkhastar pinned him down as he tried to master enough self-control not to cry his pain out aloud.

  ‘Now you belong to the House of Memizhon.’ Lai half-heard the words through the singing whiteness of the pain …

  And the wildfire was dying, cooling to a more bearable emberglow. Lai opened his eyes and saw through the painglaze the old man shuffling back with a crystal phial and a pad of soft cloth. He poured drops of an opaque blue liquid onto the cloth, dark, indigo blue, pressing it to Lai’s forehead.

  Lai flinched at the first cold kiss of the liquid – then sagged back as it seeped soothing balm into the pierced skin.

  Tattooed. A slave, condemned to bear the mark of his servitude, etched into his forehead, for life. His head drooped, his rats’ tails of filthy hair hiding his face, his brimming eyes.

  ‘Head up!’ The tarkhastar forced Lai’s head back so far that Lai feared his neck would snap. The old man bent over him to scrutinize the tattoo, his breath as fustily stale as the stifling air of the claustrophobic chamber.

  ‘It’s taken well …’

  Lai stood in the donjon courtyard, hunched against the wind in a threadbare jacket several sizes too large, screwing his eyes up against the glare of daylight. The tarkhastars had struck away the collar from his neck and wrists; his skin was chafed raw from the bite of the metal.

  ‘Move!’

  One of the tarkhastars gave him a shove in the back; he stumbled, his legs so wasted from lack of use that he fell to his knees.

  ‘Is this the boy?’

  Lai slowly raised his glare-dazzled eyes. A dark-skinned man towered over him.

  ‘He’ll never make it up the hill,’ the giant said scornfully.

  ‘That’s your problem, Orthandor!’ The tarkhastar walked away, laughing.

  ‘Do you know who I am, boy?’ demanded Orthandor.

  ‘N–no, zhan,’ said Lai. He tried to hold his head high but the cold of leaf-fall made him shiver, clutching his ragged coat closer to him.

  ‘I am Orthandor. The Arkhan’s slave-trainer. The Tarrakh. From now on you answer to me and me alone.’ Ivory teeth gleamed in a tattooed face the rich brown of burnished chestnuts. ‘You’ve a long climb ahead of you. And just so’s you realise how lucky you are to be chosen, we’ll take Dyer’s Lane. Straight past the dye works. You’ll smell them before you see them …’

  The pungent odour of dye, blown on the wind, tainted the air long before they had reached the lane.

  ‘Faugh!‘ said Orthandor. ‘Imagine. To spend the rest of your days in this hellstench. What are they boiling up in there? Rotten eggs? Cat’s piss?’

  They passed the low-roofed sheds lining the river bank. Lai caught a glimpse of vast vats of bubbling dye stirred by toiling, sweating workers, their bare arms, flesh stained weirdly unnatural hues of purple, bright blue, green …

  ‘Over there,’ Orthandor said, pointing.

  Shaven-headed, emaciated, shuffling along, chained by the ankles, they were carrying a steaming tub of some vile-smelling liquid. An overseer cracked a leathern flail over their thin shoulders, snarling orders at them. Liquid slopped onto the ground; the flail lashed down mercilessly again onto bent, wasted bodies. Lai turned away, sickened with anger.

  ‘Once they’ve been cut,’ Orthandor said dispassionately, ‘they lose all strength in the arms. And some grow fat. Obscenely fat. The good-looking ones are lucky … They might be picked as stewards by rich families. A handsome eunuch makes a pleasing ornament to a torellan’s household – and a suitable companion for his consort. No threat. Or so they say … But I’ve heard …’

  The dyers had taken advantage of the brisk morning breeze, and skeins of drying silk dangled from every crumbling window ledge, broken roof and dilapidated balcony like the trails of old man’s beard garlanding the autumn hedgerows.

  They began to climb. The air grew cleaner, sharper, sweeter, free of the foul taint of dye. Lai gazed upwards; far above them he could see the Palace of Myn-Dhie
l, rising out of the river mists, its gilded roofs glittering in the brittle leaf-fall sunshine.

  ‘We’re going to – to Myn-Dhiel?’

  Myn-Dhiel. The Torella’s tasselled palanquin had taken Laili to Myn-Dhiel. Was she still there? Might he even catch a glimpse of her? Might—

  ‘Don’t you understand anything? You belong to the Tarkhas Memizhon now. The Arkhan’s bodyguard.’

  The barracks of the Tarkhas Memizhon, the Arkhan’s bodyguard, was situated beneath the terraced pleasure gardens of the Palace of Myn-Dhiel. As Orthandor and Lai approached, two tarkhastars on guard at the high-arched gateway, their azure coats like sun-rippled water, saluted Orthandor and drew back their blue-tasselled halberds to let them pass.

  ‘See?’ Orthandor gestured towards the grey-stone Tarkhas House with its fluttering pennants, argent, gold and azure. ‘That’s what every slave aspires to. The Tarkhas Memizhon. The Arkhan’s fighting clan.’ He struck his broad chest with his fist. ‘But first you have to prove yourself in the Arena – first we have to make a bladesman of you.’

  They passed a broad parade ground on which a troop of tarkhastars were at manoeuvres and came to a separate compound, dour and bleak, on the windy side of the heights. Slavering watch-hounds bayed and strained at the leash as they approached: Lai recoiled from their snapping fangs but Orthandor threw back his head and bellowed with laughter.

  ‘That’s right! Get a good scent of him!’ He turned to Lai. ‘This is my night patrol. I let them loose at nightfall in case any slave is rash enough to try to escape. Not that my troop have the energy to make a run for it. They want their sleep. And so will you after a day in the pit.’ He gestured to Lai to follow him.

  In a sheer-sided pit far below, men were wrestling on the dusty ground in unarmed combat; Lai could hear them grunting and gasping for breath with the exertion of the struggle.

  ‘Jhered-nai,’ Orthandor said, ‘an essential discipline for a fighter. You’ll join them tomorrow.’

  ‘I am no fighter, I—’ Lai began but Orthandor interrupted him.