The Fall of Ossard (5 page)

Sef became my closest friend, and, for me at least, part of the family. He had great patience. Not only did he watch over me, but he also talked and played, telling me stories of his adventures in Fletland.

Few families in Newbank could afford such a luxury, but it did keep me safe. Meanwhile, around us, the abductions not only continued, but worsened.

My burly swordsman never again had to raise a blade to defend me - well, not back then. In my early years I thought it was because I was unique, you know, like most children.

I was special!

The adults around me reinforced the notion by the way they watched me grow. I thought they were looking for
something
, some telltale sign of my hidden glory beginning to bloom. There wasn’t any. Later, I realised that they were just watching my all too ordinary progress into womanhood.

With its arrival the adults began treating me differently, like some kind of precious jewel. Only Sef didn’t. Secretly we joked that the biggest threat to me came from my overprotective mother and her countless rules.

My father, an observant and warm-hearted man, asked me to be patient with her overbearing ways. He explained that my grandmother’s dying wish was for my mother to take good care of her yet-to-be-born children. He said it plainly, telling me for the first time that Grandma Vilma had died in the riots that saw the Inquisition forced from Ossard, during the dark days known as
The Burnings
.

That moment had been a turning point for the city.

The expulsion of the Black Fleet marked the beginning of a new age of prosperity for Ossard, even for its marginalised Flets. Gradually the era faded, growing corrupt and wrong. That was when the child stealing had begun.

They never found the bodies, not even their clothes. Rumours abounded to blame everything and everyone. Occasionally, unfortunates would be set upon by accusing mobs, yet the kidnappings continued. It seemed that nothing could stop them.

The only thing the missing children
did
leave behind were their heartbroken parents, parents who carried unseen but deep wounds. Such hurts don’t heal, instead they’re re-opened by memories as if cut afresh every day. Left untreated they only spoil.

A city is the sum of its souls - when some begin to turn, all stand endangered.

It begged my maturing mind to ask what kind of city could allow such a thing? Perhaps a city too distracted by its own success.

Who cared if Flet children were being stolen from the slums? Not the Heletians ruling Ossard. In the city of
Merchant Princes
, anyone with the power to help was too busy doing business. In truth, it would take the theft of one of their own before they’d even notice the problem.

In many ways the city was as lost as its stolen children. And as the years passed and I began journeying through my teens, I felt lost too.

As my seventeenth birthday neared, my days revolved around little else than my mother grooming me for marriage. I didn’t know to whom. Nothing had been arranged, but whatever the future brought, a pairing would have more to do with influence and wealth than love. I didn’t care much for the notion.

The rude realisation that I’d soon have my own household and eventually children left me cold. I wasn’t ready for it. I could only hope for a kind man with a good heart, with whom my feelings might change and grow.

In truth, I think my real fear was of becoming like my mother.

Meanwhile, the abductions continued, three or four a season and always of children under twelve. It was a tragedy, but it meant that I was well and truly safe, and that meant that Sef was no longer required.

We all seemed to come to that realisation at the same time, both Sef and I, and my parents. It left me numb.

Surprisingly, Mother insisted on keeping him on. We were too used to having him around and wealthy enough to afford it.

As it turned out, he was as relieved as me that he was being retained - if now on broader duties. I can still picture him standing in our sitting room, anxious, as my father gave him the news. It left him with a huge grin and trying to blink back tears. Seeing the big man so vulnerable made me giggle. He went a deep red at the sound, but then burst out laughing. Even my parents had joined in.

I was so happy. We all were.

If we hadn’t offered the work, I think he would’ve returned to Fletland, but I knew he didn’t want to go. He was afraid of that place, haunted by memories of bloody battles he’d fought, and adventures that hadn’t always ended well.

Soon enough, he gave me another chance to giggle at him. This time it wasn’t because of held back tears, but my approaching coming-of-age. He began to get awkward around me, just like my father. It was very endearing.

Mother spent her days teaching me the skills of a lady; etiquette; how to manage a household; and how to master various crafts.

It was a bore.

In the afternoons, she’d send me to my loft bedroom with stitching to complete or some other
enthralling
task.

I’d often end up sitting at my window lost in the caress of the summer breeze. Once there, it’d not take long before I’d let my thoughts escape the monotony of my work to seek the freedom of lazy dreams.

Being from amongst the wealthiest of Flet families, I was destined to marry a Heletian to help Father’s business bridge Ossard’s cultural divide. The thought frightened me. Unlike the blue-eyed and blonde Flets, the Heletians with their dark hair and eyes matched to olive skin seemed so different and stubbornly traditional.

My mother sensed my apprehension, so she started adding a lotusbased concoction to my meals. It was reputed to induce thoughts of motherhood, love, and even lust. I didn’t notice any change, well, not at first…

Finally, and much to my mother’s relief, I began to look at the idea of a husband,
my
husband, with a fresh and hot-blooded heart. He became the focus of my dreams, shameful things, as my mother strengthened the dosage so that the fantasies crossed increasingly into the waking day from the sleeping night.

It threatened to become an obsession.

I could see him, handsome and wealthy, but at the same time gentle and loving
-
a Heletian merchant prince.

He would be my hero, standing alongside me through the travails of life, living for me as I did for him. Together, as best friends, partners, and lovers
-
nothing less than a true couple. We would be inseparable…

Soon enough, bored with my mother’s lessons, the daydreams became an escape. More and more, when I wasn’t lost in a lotus inspired haze or taking lessons, I sought them out at my bedroom’s loft window, most especially at the end of the day.

In contrast, in the waking morning, when the grip of the lotus ran at its weakest ebb, my head often grew heavy with pain. At such times I felt trapped by a destiny promising comfort, but no excitement, where I could see a lingering lifetime only to be mercifully ended by the hand of Death.

Such bleak moods only fed my hunger for lotus.

I dreamt of a sacred union, of two souls joined by all things honourable in a partnership heralded by angels. It would be so beautiful that even the gods would weep. In time, with the passing of many happy seasons, children and prosperity would strengthen our most important gift to each other
-
our love…

I knew it was just a fantasy, but I couldn’t get enough of it.

I was being enslaved.

To my surprise, a respite surfaced in the strangest place; my sleep.

It began a little over a week out from my coming-of-age. At first it was just an image, like a glimpse of a distant land. It wasn’t until after its first few visits that I realised how much I needed it - something to counter my growing dependence on the lotus.

Every night this new dream came stronger and longer. It pushed aside stubborn scenes of handsome husbands, breathless kisses, and naked, sweat-covered shame. It ran like a vision, as if I flew free with the birds, seeing me glide high above a green and beautiful land.

Without the passion and lust of the lotus dreams it might sound like a bore, but it stirred something deep within. It gave a sense of life, hope, and liberation: It was of freedom.

Within its sleeping caress, I dove down into steep mountain valleys and soared up by rugged, snow-dusted peaks. Eventually, that landscape gave way to a rock-lined sound where the sea spilled in. Behind that coast rolled green hills that grew in height and grandeur, and not much farther back, a shadowed canyon cradled in their midst.

A sanctuary.

The canyon was warm, lush with life, and full of water’s song. Little streams trickled down tier after tier of the canyon’s moss-covered sides, falling lazily to its mist-shrouded and fern-forested bottom.

But the lotus always fought to reassert itself…

And out from that mist-veiled fern forest stepped my naked husband, his olive skin glistening, while the curve of his muscles caught the overhead sun. With a cock of his eye and a strong hand, he beckoned me, demanding that I come and make love to him…

Even my sanctuary could be violated.

My mother kept increasing the dosage, determined that I fall for the first man presented to me. She knew I could be rebellious and feared my initial reluctance. She wanted me nice and agreeable.

Amidst all this my headaches continued. At first I thought it was the lotus causing them, yet in the end I realised that the stronger doses actually worked to quell their pain.

After our courting, when finally he came to propose, the question would be asked with flowers - red roses.

I’d always said; the first man bold enough to give me such a gift of scandalously coloured blooms would be welcome to my hand, for surely anyone so daring would have already won my heart!

Such daydreams were best had sitting at my bedroom window oblivious to the household and the crowded streets below. It was on one such afternoon that I found myself settled in and looking out at the maze of moss-covered rooftops, the whole vista still damp from a long morning of showers.

The soft green ridges reminded me of the rolling hills of my dream sanctuary as the afternoon sun peeked between clouds to highlight them with passing shafts of gold. Beyond that living mosaic climbed the sides of the steep valley we lived in; the Cassaro, Ossard’s cradle, and whose exhausted silver mines had given the city life.

The ancient range made the surrounding
Northcountry
difficult to farm. All about us, its granite pushed through the thin soil to loom rugged and stark.

The Northcountry was a treeless place.

The pine forests that had once veiled so many of its hills and mountain slopes had succumbed to a blight over a century past, and its few survivors long since been felled. The city’s symbol, its famed rose-tree, was also gone. Thickets of it had once lined the gullies and riverbanks along the valley-floor, but the same blight had also stolen it away.

Such a history saw the present slopes and valley-floor given over to pasture and crops, or where too boggy or steep, abandoned to herbal brush and a hardy oleander. The latter had spread without invitation many years ago, growing its long branches full of thin and poisonous leaves. The shrub’s one blessing came in its bright pink blooms, while pretty, they were also deadly. It was certainly no rose-tree.

But all that lay to the sides of my view and the inland depths behind, in the distance spread something else; the Northern Sea.

The port crowded the far side of the city. There, the sea’s deep blue drew a dark line between the mossed roofline of Ossard and the cloud-streaked sky above. In one place, partially hidden by a set of church towers, it glittered golden as it reflected the late afternoon sun.