Blinded by the Sun (Erythleh Chronicles Book 4) (7 page)

"Yes," Kavrazel nodded. "An invading force is not a whole nation. We will have the advantage of numbers, both living and dead. I know that the giants have provided us with more than enough reason to declare war against them, but I want the other kingdoms to be in no doubt. The giants started this, but they will not prevail. Their defeat, their humiliation, will be the result of their own arrogance."

"But what about the innocents?" Otal asked, and Kavrazel could tell he was asking the question for much the same reason that Multha had asked his. "What about those Vuthroans who live on the coast, who live on the path the giants will take to Vulc? They will suffer under the invaders."

"We will begin to make ready immediately," Kavrazel instructed. "We will not wait for the ships to make land. I want to know as soon as sails are sighted on the horizon, but in the meantime, we will prepare. Where we can, we will clear the path for the giants. They will not find this land waiting to be plundered, they will find it barren and empty. We will coax them into the Valley of Celca. They do not know our geography well, they will not know what awaits them. We will attack them there with the advantages of surprise and the high ground."

"You've thought about this," Multha said with a wry smile.

"No matter how much I have hoped for a continued peace, I have known the result would be war. The giants were responsible for the death of my parents."

"That has never been proven," Otal advised gently. He knew well how Kavrazel felt on the subject, but had always counselled him to be obtuse about the matter in public.

"No, it hasn't," Kavrazel agreed, "but they will answer for it anyway. They will answer for it with their own blood."

"We have much to do then, Majesty," Multha stated.

"Indeed we do." Kavrazel nodded. "I want the army readied, and the people who live along that portion of coast to be made safe as a matter of priority. It won't be long before the giants realise they'll have to make the effort to bring the war to us."

Every person in the room thumped their fist on the table, a rhythmic beat to show agreement and support for their monarch's decision. Kavrazel accepted the accolade momentarily, then held his hands up. The banging ceased, and his cabinet filed out to begin their work. Kavrazel sighed and looked down at the ruined body of the hawk. His plan was solid, but it was the way of war for things to go awry. He had no doubt that the coming campaign would be hard, and he knew that he would not always enjoy such devoted support, even from those closest to him.

He picked up the remains of the hawk and tucked the limp body back into the box. He took the box over to the fireplace, bent down, and tossed it into the heart of the roaring blaze that was heating the room. He remained, crouched, his elbows resting on his knees, as the grim message began to burn.

~o0o~

A confident knock sounded at the door. Kavrazel turned from the parchment he was writing and called out to grant entry to his visitor. He was not surprised to find that it was Shinu who opened the door; he had been expecting this conversation.

"Do you have a moment, Sire?" Shinu asked.

"I do." Kavrazel nodded, but continued to write. Shinu shut the door and waited patiently without approaching the desk until Kavrazel was satisfied with his scribbling and had rolled the parchment closed.

"Come. Sit." Kavrazel motioned to the chair on the opposite side of the desk. With a nod of the head and a smile, Shinu obeyed the invitation.

"I think I can guess why you're here," Kavrazel said.

"Indeed. Lathriss is to be married this moon. If you have a favoured choice for her replacement, I can ensure that they are given the proper instruction. If not, I shall need to visit the markets."

Kavrazel relaxed back into his chair and considered his options. He was not knowledgeable about all the blood slaves that serviced the residents of the castle, but he was aware of the ones that were considered of a suitable temperament and intelligence to service the king. The number of such souls was not large. Specific qualities were required to be the standing blood slave to the monarch of the realm. The chosen person might well be present at diplomatic events; they had to have, or be capable of learning, the proper etiquette and manners. There were also occasions when the blood slave might be present at private meetings and be privy to sensitive information; they had to be able to keep the king's secrets.

"I think that some new blood might be in order," Kavrazel eventually replied. "I can think of one or two that might do, but they might find such a drastic change in their circumstances difficult to adjust to. Life is about to become harsh and dangerous, particularly for anyone associated so closely with me. I need my confidences kept more than ever."

Shinu nodded. He well understood that the requirements for any kind of consort for the king had recently become more specific. "There is an auction tomorrow. Several merchants are rumoured to be bringing a quantity of new goods."

Kavrazel made a sound of scoffing impatience. "Bruised and broken, no doubt."

"They believe themselves untouchable, since they are so often beyond your authority."

It was a topic that Shinu and Kavrazel had discussed before. As Blood Father, Shinu was responsible for the training of new blood slaves, but his first task was usually to repair the damage that the traders had wrought on their goods. New slaves were traumatised and afraid, and often rightly so. Their only experience of Vuthroans, prior to arriving in the country, was usually brutality and horror. Kavrazel had no power over the activities of the traders while they were on foreign soil. By the time they arrived within his sphere of influence, it was often too late.

There were few rules about how blood slaves were treated once they became the property of their new owners, except that Kavrazel had outlawed the practice of children being used for blood. The decision, in his opinion, had been long overdue. Children rarely bore the burden well, although their blood was considered to be sweeter. The ordeal of capture and relocation, plus the demands of their duties, often proved to be more than their sanity could endure.

The mixing of sex and blood was not synonymous, it certainly wasn't for Kavrazel, although that was not always the personal preference of each owner. Some did demand extra services from their slaves; some kept them as pampered pets. More often, the slaves became a something of a member of the household, helping with chores and childcare. The blood slaves resident in the castle at Vulc generally assisted with the lighter housekeeping duties, if only to stave off boredom and resentment.

"I will attend the auction with you tomorrow," Kavrazel said.

Shinu smiled, and his blue eyes twinkled with understanding. "If their king shows his displeasure at the state of the raw product, they might rethink their ways?"

"Perhaps I can identify the worst offenders. I will do what I can. It isn't good for Vuthron to have so many residents who have good reason to hate it, especially at present. I trust your judgement." Shinu nodded in acknowledgement of the credit. "But I need the utmost discretion and intelligence. I should like to see the offerings for myself."

"A wise decision, Sire," Shinu agreed.

"Tomorrow then. We will set out early. I wish to see the full offerings, not just the dregs." Kavrazel tried to sound more enthusiastic for the endeavour than he felt, but the slave markets had never been known as anything other than an exhibition of the worst of human behaviour, a necessary evil to perpetuate the Vuthroan way of life.

Since the blood toast was not a tradition that he intended to try and legislate against, the least he could do was make life bearable for the slaves, and the greatest headway could be made in their introduction to the Vuthroan culture. It was no wonder that many arrived expecting their masters to be tyrants; the slave traders were a selfish and unscrupulous lot. Kavrazel hoped to see that change in his lifetime.

"I will send word. If they know the king is to visit, they will hold their stock for your arrival."

"Bring a large purse, I expect our household to be grown by more than one body tomorrow."

Shinu smiled indulgently. There was a good reason that the king's visits to the slave markets were a rarity, and it was not because of the time-consuming burden of his duties.

"You are a good man, Sire," Shinu said gently.

Kavrazel spoke the only truth he was halfway certain of. "I am merely a good king."

Chapter Seven

She had been right about Seff's preferential treatment of her driving an incontrovertible wedge between her and her fellow captives. All of them, even the ones who were mere wisps of the women that they had been, looked on her with scorn and hatred. The group had divided into two parts. One might have supposed that it would have divided into the strong and the weak, but that had not been the case; it had divided into Lyssia versus everyone else. She had grown thin through lack of food, and weak through lack of exercise.

Having to remain awake to avoid being stabbed in her sleep had taken its toll. The girls fashioned weapons from whatever scraps they could find, often working on them for days. Sometimes they tried to use them against their tormentors, but that never ended well. For the most part, they reserved their illicit blades for Lyssia. Some seemed to wish more to maim her, as if destroying her worth and rendering her at their level would grant more satisfaction than her death. Lyssia had learned to arm herself, and to fight, even with her limited range of movement. She felt as though she might be losing her wits and all her senses. Everything had a veneer of unreality, everything except pain.

The journey to Vulc, the capital of the country, had been no less horrendous than any other part of the nightmare. The rickety cart had jarred her aching leg. It had been almost three moons since she had been made lame, but she was still frightened to take the splint off, or to try and walk without the aid of some kind of crutch. She hadn't been able to fashion any permanent support, and even if she had, the other girls would have smashed it to pieces to spite her. The mind-twisting pain had lessened to a grinding ache, but the progress had not assured Lyssia in any way that she would ever have full use of the limb again. Her torn skin had healed, leaving a patchwork of shiny, pink skin. It was not the first scar on her body, but it was by far the worst. The flesh was indented and uneven where an inevitable infection had taken its due.

Lyssia arched her back and rotated her shoulders to work out the knots in her muscles and the stiffness in her joints. She and the other girls had been herded into a building was long and low, and constructed from the dusky grey stone that she had seen quite often on her journey through the country. It seemed to Lyssia that the glassy black bricks were reserved for buildings of higher value or importance, but there was no one that she felt she could ask to confirm her assumption. The only thing she knew for certain was that they were currently in Vulc, the capital of Vuthron.

The interior had proved to be something between a jail and a holding pen. There were cells of varying sizes, and other facilities, not all of which Lyssia had seen, but she had heard snatches of conversation as people walked past her door. She had been left unbound and ungagged, but the stone floor and walls were not at all comfortable. There was a scattering of musty straw, a bucket, and a blanket that contained more holes and fleas than it did strands of yarn. She had rolled the blanket up and shoved it into the farthest corner of the room, preferring to be cold rather than bitten half to death. After seven days, she was considering offering herself to the parasites.

She had been left entirely alone, apart from the occasions in the morning and evening when someone opened an iron hatch in the thick wooden door and shoved a bowl of porridge and a pitcher of brackish water through it. Lyssia supposed that they might have forgone the precaution of binding her because they knew she was too weak to even think about escaping, let alone able to summon the strength and speed necessary for actual action. Considering that they discussed her as having a high value, she was not receiving any preferential treatment, other than her exception from the rapacious attentions of the slavers.

When she heard the grating clank of a key in the lock of her door, at around a time that might have been midday, she wondered if that might not be about to change. Lyssia wasn't at all assured to see that her visitor was a woman.

"Allo, ma dearie. Let's get you polished up then."

The woman sounded friendly enough, but she looked like a crazy person. Her dress was visibly worn and mended with patches of material that bore no relation to the original fabric, the hems were frayed. Her black hair was liberally streaked with grey and stuck out at crazy angles from her head. Despite the woman's lilting voice and smile, Lyssia pressed herself back against the stones of her cell.

"Now now, no need to be skittish," the woman crooned.

She came closer, but was approaching Lyssia with the caution that one reserved for frightened animals, or temperamental sand dragons. Lyssia had a sharpened stake of wood, about the length of her palm, secreted in her bodice, but she couldn't presently reach for it without the woman seeing that she was doing so. She wanted to say something, anything, even if it was only a grunted 'Fuck you', but her voice had been so little used for anything other than groaning or screaming for so long that it appeared she had forgotten how to use it for words.

The woman smiled more broadly, but it did not put Lyssia at any more ease. It was the smile of someone who had a trick up their sleeve. Indeed, the woman reached into a pocket in her voluminous skirts and brought out a vividly green apple. It was the first piece of fruit that Lyssia had seen within her reach for more than two moons, and she didn't wonder if it wasn't the monochromatic colour scheme of the world she now found herself in that made the apple appear to glow in the woman's grimy hand.

"You must be peckish, dearie. They never feed you well. You're never here long enough for them to care."

Lyssia swallowed, and tried to speak. The sound that came out was a strangled croak. She swallowed once more, and tried again.

"What... what are you... going to do with me?"

The woman took another step, still holding the apple out, her arm steady. "Just clean you up a bit, dearie. You won't fetch any sort of price smelling like a bucket of hog's piss."

Even though none of her current situation had been of her making, Lyssia still flushed with shame knowing that the woman was not wrong about her. She stank, and she was coated in a layer of dirt so vile that she thought she might never feel clean again. The woman didn't need to offer her food; if she had placed a bath in the cell, Lyssia might well have attempted to skip to it. She considered her options. At the moment, it was just the one woman, but this person was able-bodied, where she was not. If she struggled, or attempted to fight, she might likely be gagged and bound again. They might send more people to subdue her, They might send men to break her spirit. If she submitted, or gave the impression of submission, she had more chance of finding an opportunity to escape. If she ate the apple, she would have a degree more strength than if she didn't.

Lyssia held out her hand. Her arm trembled, which made her want to sob with frustration.

"That's a good girl, dearie." The woman placed the apple in Lyssia's shaking fingers and took two steps back. "You need to be gettin' your strength back."

Lyssia had no reply to that. She didn't want any part of the end results of her getting her strength back. She didn't want any part in the progression of her day from here on out. Still, her stomach rumbled impatiently. She clutched the apple in greedy palms and bit into it. The juices flooded her mouth in a wash of tart sweetness, causing her to almost drool. She swiped at her lips with the back of her hand, flushing with shame again, but hurriedly took another bite. She tried not to devour the feast, lest she bring it back up again, but she wanted to eat it so that it couldn't be snatched away in a cruel trick. She was more than half way through the crisp, white flesh, when the edges of her vision began to swim.

"It's drugged," she slurred, around a crunchy mouthful.

"After a fashion, dearie. I can't carry you out of here by myself." The woman's smile hadn't moved an inch on her face.

Lyssia tried to curse, she tried to curse the woman and she tried to curse her own stupidity, but her body would no longer answer her. Her mouth would no longer chew its contents. Her jaw fell slack, and the half-eaten apple fell out onto the grey stones. The world began to twist and shimmer, making the few bites of fruit that she had swallowed churn in her stomach. She listed to the side, and tried to catch her fall, but her arms were feeble. As she slid down the wall into the dirty hay, the grey of the stones rose up to meet her, and became a dense fog that swallowed her whole.

~o0o~

The pain of the splint being removed from her leg made her open her eyes, but it did not rouse her completely. The world was still a blurred and muted place. Voices were mumbles to her ears, and her eyelids seemed to belong to a foreign entity. There was a bitter taste in her mouth, the remnants of the drug as much as much as her own stupidity.

Lyssia felt hands on her, a hundred hands, two, four, she couldn't tell. She tried to swat at them, but her own limbs were lethargic and leaden. She tried to twist, and heard her own grunt of effort as if from far away. Someone muttered a curse. Someone else muttered an admonishment, but the hands remained at work. They were undressing her. She could vaguely feel them pulling and tugging at her clothing. There were whispers of cool air across her skin as it was bared. A tear leaked from her left eye as she felt them discover, and remove, the sharpened stake that she had coveted.

Someone started to work on the bandages around her leg. She tried to struggle again. She was sure she was about to be tortured. There seemed no other explanation than that agony was but a moment away. She tried to shout, although she knew that no one would come to her rescue. She could not submit silently. A rag appeared under her nose; it emitted a floral scent with a too sweet edge, like rotting fruit. The world began to swim again, but Lyssia did not lose consciousness completely. She had a notion of what was going on, but she could neither feel nor respond.

When all of her clothes and bandages had been removed, and she was completely bared, she realised that the cool air was only cool because she was naked and on a stone floor. The room was actually filled with steam, at least, she thought that was what gave it the sheen of fogginess. She felt herself lifted and carried. She mentally prepared for pain. If she had been capable, she would have flinched at the touch of water on her body as she was lowered into what must have been some sort of bath.

Since Lyssia was unable to open her eyes well enough, or to focus to see details in the room, she had to guess. Hands remained on her as she sank into the hot water, so the bath must have been more of a pool, large enough to accommodate a number of people. Her mind was pulled away from thinking more on that subject when she felt the sweep of coarse cotton, slickened by greasy soap, across her limbs and torso. The sweeps became firm rubs, and then scrubbing. She was being washed. As much as she feared what was coming, she could not deny the glorious feeling of being clean once more, it had been so very long. She almost didn't mind when they cleaned her intimate areas; there was nothing she could have done to stop them anyway. She didn't have the capacity to react at all, and their touch was not inappropriate. At any point she expected the attentions of her mystery servants to become an assault, but they never strayed from their task.

When they moved her leg, the bone ached, but the pain was deep and blunt. The sharp screaming fire had been dulled by time and healing, and by whatever they had drugged her with. The cloth moved more gently over the ruined skin of her leg, although no less thoroughly. Lyssia would have enjoyed the tenderness, if she hadn't expected it to disappear at any second.

It seemed that her attendants were satisfied with her cleanliness. She was allowed to float for a moment, untouched apart from one person behind her supporting her head and shoulders and keeping her from slipping beneath the now oily water. The respite did not last long, although they focussed their attentions now on her hair. The braids had become matted and tangled, since she had no way of attending to them. She was lulled into a trancelike state as nimble fingers worked to untwist the knots. Lyssia realised that at some point she must have truly fallen asleep, because she was wakened by the snagging of the bristles of a brush being pulled through her hair. If she had been able to, she would have struggled to sit up at the surprising sensations. She hadn't felt a brush run through her hair since before she had left her village. Her scalp was massaged, and only because the skin was so much more sensitive there was she able to perceive in her drugged state that oil was being worked into her hair.

The hands disappeared once they had satisfied themselves with her hair. When they returned, they seemed to only be interested in specific parts of her body. At first her confused mind struggled to understand what appeal her armpit might hold, until she felt the scrape of the edge of a metal blade. The razor was skimmed over her skin carefully several times, and then they turned their attention to her other side. She was afraid that they meant to shave her newly cleaned hair, but they moved to her legs next. It pained her when they shaved her damaged leg, but even muddled, she could discern that it was not pain, just unfamiliarity. The skin was no longer used to contact with anything other than tight bandages, now it felt only discomfort when touched with anything else.