Bird of Chaos: Book One of the Harpy's Curse (5 page)

The Barracks is a double-storeyed white building in another U-shape, with a cloister along both levels, tucked up beside the palace Wall near the West Gate. At the centre of the courtyard is a flagpole with the Tibutan flag, a gold snake eating its own tail on a black background. It was hanging limp in the still air. Fedwyn Tower cast its shadow over the ground. Hoplites walked along the Wall carrying thirteen-foot bronze-tipped spears and bronze-and-timber shields.

I reached the arena expecting the sound of children’s laughter. I removed the helmet and threw it over the arena wall, wiped the tears from my eyes and put on a brave face to meet my new friends. I clambered up the stones and stood on the top of the wall with my hand shielding my eyes from the sun. It was like taking a giant step towards some undefined goal: growing up, success, or arriving at whatever destination it is we are all working towards. But there were no children in the arena. The immortal stood alone beneath a lone sycamore tree.

Drayk the immortal looked like any other young man to me, though when he smiled there were dimples in his cheeks and his face was covered in a soft blond beard. He had strong bones and a serious expression that could make even the most confident person doubt herself. “You’re late,” he said, thick arms crossed. His dress uniform—the black breeches and slim black tunic—was like a second skin, a part of him. His boots were polished.

“Where are all the children?”

“Your mother feels it is better that you train alone. She doesn’t want you to feel intimidated by the other children, some of whom are gifted.”

I had to concentrate hard to stop my bottom lip from wobbling.

“Once you have trained with me and proven your skill with a spear, I will make the recommendation that you join the Unit myself. Until then,” he cocked his head, “worry less about the restrictions people place on you and more about the restrictions you place on yourself. We have work to do.”

Willing myself to remain calm, I jumped down from the wall and landed firmly on both feet. Drayk passed me the spear; my hand barely fit around its shaft. As his hand brushed against mine I watched for sparks. He was an immortal after all—surely there had to be some sign of this upon his person. Nothing happened. I frowned. “Is it true you are an immortal?” I was blunt the way only children and the brave can be.

“What do you think?” he said. His beautiful grey eyes were full of mischief.

I shrugged. “Nanny Blan said you were magic but I don’t see anything magic about you. You look normal to me.”

“There is no such thing as magic, little miss. The gods made me this way and it will be the gods who unmake me once the gate to the Elysian Fields opens. I am sorry to disappoint you.”

“Can you do
anything
?”

To this he laughed. “I have been on this earth long enough to know a few decent stories. I can tell you about the time of the serpents, the rule of Emperor and the fall of the allegiance between the four nations.”

“Tell me about the serpents.”

So he did.

I dropped my weapon, climbed to the top of the wall and sat with my legs dangling over the edge. Drayk leant against his spear. His voice was rich chocolate. “My mother Avery was the kindest woman you could ever imagine. You see, the women of Caspius are a different breed. They care for their men in a way you Tibutans cannot understand. But that is a story for another time, for when you have grown.”

“Our women care for their men,” I said. I was feeling particularly defensive since my parents’ fight.

“But on the mainland it is different,” he said and was about to continue when I cut him off.

“Different how?”

He looked impatient as if I was ruining his story. “For one, there are no daroons and no consorts. A man is a man. And a woman is a woman. Rai made man first and woman second. She is the wife of man. That’s what the word means. That’s why it’s longer.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said and laughed. “The word ‘woman’ is longer because Shea and Ayfra came down from the Elysian Fields and endowed women with more powers and more potential than man. A man is what’s left when you take away all that Shea and Ayfra gave us. That is why the word ‘man’ is shorter.”

Drayk shook his head. “You couldn’t be further from the truth. But we could debate this until sunset and I have work to do. Do you want to hear my story or not?”

I nodded.

“Then listen. I was born the first time at the start of the Age of Peace in Farsala, Caspius. We lived on the edge of the town square where the buildings had to be washed every few weeks to remove the soot. Our neighbours Fillio and Neos regularly pillaged the outer homesteads while the townspeople defended themselves with pickaxes and forks.

“When I announced I wanted to capture a serpent’s stone, it was my mother who said, ‘Drayk, you can achieve anything you set your mind to’—”

“And your father?” I interrupted.

“Sobrietas had left him. My mother tried to hide it from us but at night he would sit alone in his study, smoking his poison until long after we had gone to bed. Then the demons would enter his body. He would drag himself along the hall, banging and cursing until my sister and I thought we were truly condemned. Afterwards, he would fall to his knees and sob like a child, begging for our forgiveness. In the morning he would enter parliament as if the night’s storm never happened, while my mother and I waited outside. ‘Why not go in?’ I asked her. But she was not permitted to enter that sacred house and all my life she could not tell me what my father did in there.”

“So you left to find the serpent?” I said.

“I intended to capture the serpent stone and sell it. I would use the money to buy my mother and sister a house somewhere far from Farsala. My mother packed my bag, pressed a purse of drachmae into my hand and practically pushed me out the door. I was fifteen years old and I had never been outside our village.

“My coin did not last long and in Neos I had to find work mucking out pigpens. In the next town I felled trees and in the next was apprenticed to a blacksmith. I was in Orion’s Tavern when I heard of the stone. The conversation was rising and falling like bellows when the door opened and two travellers entered. They sat beside me: father and son. From their conversation I learned that they had travelled from the Alati Pan, abandoning their work as salt miners because the tax for each caravan had risen so high it was not worth a day’s work. They joked about travelling to Mount Atha; there was rumour of a serpent there. When I asked why they dallied at the pub instead of hunting for treasure they scorned me and said, ‘Mount Atha is on the other side of the Salt Plains, beyond a vast desert of gritty sand. It is hot and uninhabited except for the Tigrineeks. Slaves from the Spice Isles and travellers like us mine the salt by prying it out in great blocks. We ferry it by mule and donkey to markets just over the border in Caspius. But we could never survive without the Tigrineeks leading us in and out. Only they know where to find water and they would never show us the way over the desert.’ When I asked why not, the son, whose eyes were as blue as his father’s, spoke as if I was a dunce: ‘Because the Tigrineeks are barbarians. They would rather kill you than show you the secrets of their land.’

“I could not believe that collectively an entire people could be so cruel. I was young. I loved my fellow man. I paid for my drink and excused myself. The next day I left for the Salt Kingdom in search of my reward.”

Drayk leant back and stretched and for a moment I feared he would not continue his story. He swapped his spear to the other side.

“Keep going,” I said, adjusting my weight from one side of my body to the other.

“Patience, little miss, patience.” He cleared his throat. “So, I was waylaid by winter, sorry, cheimon, and had to take cover in Alaira, the Caspian capital. As soon as the weather was warm I followed the line of caravans making their way across the border to Ella, the Tigrineeks’ trade centre. Have you been there?”

“I have never been outside Tibuta,” I admitted.

“Let me tell you, in Ella flat dry earth stretches out in every direction. A dusty haze hangs over the earth, distorting the sun. I felt wedged between the heavy sky above and the infinite sand below. I found a tax collector’s hut in a dusty enclave on the edge of the salt flats. It was little more than a pile of twigs covered in animal skins. I paid the tax with the money I had earned as a smithy and joined the Alati Pan miners.

“Every day we set out before dawn, a long line of men and camels plodding through the sand. We reached the salt pan as the sun peeped its head over the horizon. The heat was unbearable. My body was so hot it was cold. Soon I stopped sweating altogether. I was sure I was going to die, that I would fall to the ground unnoticed and my body would become a pile of bleached bones, my flesh consumed by the sand.”

Seeing that I was rapt, Drayk embellished his tale, “My spotter, a Tigrineek who weighed and packed the salt, had skin like the night, flowing robes of hemp, long braided hair decorated with feathers and bare leathery feet that did not feel the heat. He carried a curved sword with a wide blade and wore a bone necklace. He would prod us with his sheathed blade if we were working too slowly. It was he who told us when we could stop, when we could piss—though I never needed to—and when we could return to camp. It was he who let us drink from a pigskin. He fed us balls of sticky rice and little else.”

“But why?” I interrupted. “Why did you tolerate him?”

“I knew I must if I was to possess a serpent stone. That is the nature of success, little miss. We cannot be distracted by our immediate discomfort. Our vision must span our entire lifetime and beyond if we are to achieve anything of any real importance.

“In Ella we slept on mats out in the open. There was nowhere to wash so we lay in our own filth, the sweat and grit congealing on our bodies. At night we could hear the kylons sniffing in the dark or howling to one another. I endured it because I saw hope on the horizon. I was walking back from the edge of the enclave when I saw her.”

“Who?” I said.

“My spotter’s daughter. Hope. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen—except for you, of course your highness—with her hair done in hundreds of tight, tiny braids with beads at the end. She was wrapped in a dusty robe and beneath it she was nude. She looked up at me and our eyes met. I smiled at her. I had discovered my salvation.

“I had seen the girl accompanying her father to the salt pan before and he often made her go without water or food. I knew all I had to do was show her kindness.

“The following day, when her father passed me the pigskin I waited until his back was turned and offered it to her instead. She was surprised but she was desperately thirsty. She took the skin and poured the water into her mouth.

“Later she came to thank me. I was mesmerised. She was the softest of creatures, the lightest, and the supplest. She averted her eyes when she spoke to me as if she revered me like a god.

“After that I did my best to win her confidence because I wanted the serpent stone. I also wanted her as my own. You see, I was falling in love with her—”

“But you couldn’t own her,” I said, cutting him off. “
She
would own
you
if you were to become her daroon.”

“Not in Caspius. In Caspius it is different. Shall I continue?”

I nodded, flicking my short hair out of my face.

“One night we had just returned with a pack of mules from the Caspian border and I was lying on my back looking up at the vast sky when she appeared, like a goddess, at the end of my mat. ‘Walk with me?’ she said and how could I disobey? I was bewitched. I jumped to my feet and we wove between the sleeping mats to the edge of the camp.

“We sat in the sand, which was hot from the day’s baking. I knew I should kiss her, I wanted to kiss her.”—I giggled—“But something stopped me. I cleared my throat. I had to tell her the truth. A goddess like that could not be sullied by my lies and manipulation. So I told her. ‘Kali, I have something I must ask you,’ I said, then told her about my father the statesman, about my desire to buy my mother’s freedom and my sister’s, my poor poor sister. ‘It is my dream to go to Mount Atha and seek the serpent stone.’ I said and she was quiet for a very long time. ‘You want me to lead you across the desert?’ she said and I could hear the distrust in her voice. I told her I wanted her to come with me. I told her about the land beyond the desert, about the vast open grasslands, the rivers and the mountains. I described the wonderful life we would have together if she could only trust me. It was the water, in the end, that made up her mind. She said again and again, ‘There is water for everyone?’ and I replied, ‘And some left over.’

“Kali agreed to show me the way across the desert if I built her a hut by the water.”

“And did you?” I said, eagerly leaning forwards.

“I did. I was very much in love.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died after a wonderful life in our house by the water.”

“And the stone? Did you get the serpent stone?”

“Would I be here if I didn’t?” Drayk said, but not unkindly. He pulled out a tiny red stone secured around his neck on a leather thong. “The giant serpents of old came out of the clouds from the Elysian Fields. They were bigger than any serpent you have ever seen. As big as a whale”—he said this, using one hand like a snake moving through the air—“they could topple an entire forest with a swish of their long curling tails. Their skin was black and scaly and on their breath was the fire.”