The Third Scroll (2 page)

I had sworn many times that somehow I would find out how and for what purpose she had died. I had sworn to the spirits that someday, when I was a true healer and had enough crystals to afford the long journey, I would find her resting place and recite the Last Blessing over her grave.

After her death, many a night I had lain on my tear-soaked pillow, wishing to be a sorceress of old, so I could curse the Kadar. But as time passed, I let such thoughts drift away with the outgoing tide, for I knew they would have saddened my mother. She could not have borne to see me with hatred in my heart.

Still, forgiveness did not come easy. The Kadar made war, brought injury and misery, while the Shahala healed and lived in peace. I used to think the good spirits that sometimes rested on top of the numaba trees must have been the spirits of the Shahala who had passed on. The bad spirits that lived in the depths of Mirror Sea to grab after anyone who sailed it, I believed to be those of the anguished Kadar who had died in war, not finding peace even in death.

I was not surprised that Mirror Sea churned under the slave ship. I could almost see all those restless Kadar spirits angry because the traders no longer brought them slaves, trying to pull the ship under so they would have servants once again.

When I finally slid to the ground from the lowest branch of the tree, I kept the building between the traders and myself as I made my way to our home. Better to sneak in from the back and retrieve my clothes before they saw me. I did not want to shame Jarim or my mother’s memory.

Bending low, I rounded some boulders, ran down the stone stairs and kept to the bushes until I reached the side entrance of the wooden house. The men made loud bragging noises as they talked in the front. I frowned at the sound. Polite people talked little and pleasantly, bringing no more attention to themselves than necessary.

To talk so loud was as if one painted a sign on one’s forehead:
Here I am, look at me
. Then everyone would have looked at him and seen him for a fool.

I hoped they did not come for healing, for I feared what people such as them would do when disappointed. Maybe they had come for medicinal herbs. Dried herbs I had aplenty.

I hurried to my room and pulled on my short tunic, regretting for a moment that not one piece of my worn clothing matched any other. We had better clothes when my mother had been alive. We had fine robes and food and laughter. Sometimes those memories seemed less than real, like legends of a golden age.

I wrapped my veil around my head in the proper manner for a healer, then put away my vanity and walked toward the front. I pushed through the wind-torn curtain that covered the entrance.

“Apar,” I greeted Jamir—calling him father for the last time.

The traders fell silent. Their gazes poured over me like icy water.

Shells and small disks of metal decorated their clothes in a dizzying array of patterns. Jarim noticed my looking and smoothed down his thin tunic. He wore better clothes than I, but still you could have mistaken him for a servant next to the strangers.

“Everything you say is true?” the tallest one, made taller yet by his wrapped silk headpiece, asked Jarim.

I sucked in my breath at his rudeness. Though no Shahala blood flowed in Jarim’s veins, since he’d been married to my mother, people had always extended him the same respect. And to question the word of a Shahala was unthinkable.

“Very good healer. Only daughter of a Tika Shahala,” Jarim boasted just as rudely, as if not at all offended. He spoke a little of most languages used around our area. I knew them as well as my own, learned from the many visitors who had come to my mother.

I wished Jarim had not said such a thing, even if he said it only because he did not want to shame me.

The leader’s eyes narrowed. “Ten blue crystals.”

Too much, more than we had seen in a long time, many times more than my help was worth had I been willing to give it. I tugged Jarim’s sleeve.

“She is worth twice that,” Jarim insisted and hushed me when I tried to speak.

I had never seen him like that before. A healer did not bargain over healing or ask payment. The sick gave gifts according to their abilities, despite reassurances that no payment was necessary.

“Twelve.” The trader’s impatient tone signaled the end of bargaining as he handed Jarim a worn leather bag.

To my horror, he counted the crystals.

Then he nodded. Perhaps he did not feel the need to show manners in front of people who had none, I thought, dazed, and when the traders started toward the ship and motioned to me, I obediently followed but stopped after a moment when my mind cleared a little.

“My herbs.” I turned toward our dwelling. I should probably take a little of everything.

“You will not need those,” the one who had bargained for my services told me.

Of course. They traveled many waters. They probably had their own herbs on the ship. Maybe I would even see something new and exotic.

I looked at Jarim, but he would not look at me.

“Come,” the man ordered.

And I followed him.

I hoped they wanted me to heal slaves, although I was unsure whether my ministrations would be much help. But trying would have been easy, as my heart went out to the unfortunates. And I had to try now, whether master or slave languished in the sickbed—Jarim had already taken the payment.

Our shore met the sea not with a sandy beach but with veritable cliffs the waves beat against. Because of this, most ships docked in Sheharree, and our visitors completed the journey over land. But now a grizzled man, wet from the spray, waited for us, holding the rope of a massive boat wedged between two scarred rocks, each as large as the boat itself.

I eased in, fear stealing into my lungs as we shoved off. The next wave could push us back and smash the boat against the rocks. But the men who handled the oars handled them well and mastered the waves.

What would they do to me if my healing failed? Would they bother to bring me back and demand their crystals? I could too easily see them tossing me overboard, into the rolling sea.

I wanted to tell them I was a fake, that I was sorry my father had taken their payment. But none of them talked, so I too remained silent. I did not want to make them angry, these people who stole others’ lives to sell.

My heart beat a hurried rhythm at the unfamiliarity of the boat ride. I squeezed my eyes shut against the fury of the sea. My mother had always forbidden me from taking to the water, a habit I had kept even after her death. The boat tossed, and I grabbed its side, trying to pretend I stood atop a numaba tree, the branches swaying under me in the wind.

A welcome calm spread through my limbs, until the waves sprayed water in my face. I told myself I stood atop the numaba tree, and the rain began to fall. But my mind no longer believed the tale.

After an endless time, the traders shouted, and I opened my eyes. We had reached the dark vessel, the side covered with scars, the wood smelling moldy and sad. Maybe the sadness of the slaves had poured out into the ship. I looked at the traders and wondered if anyone sailing on such a ship could ever be anything but unhappy, but their faces were closed and hard as a naga shell, so I could not tell which way they felt.

I climbed the rope ladder second after the leader, the rest coming up behind me. I did not mind the short climb, the ship not nearly as tall as the trees on our hillside. But I did mind when the wind snatched my veil. The length of fabric, like a dead bird falling from the sky, tossed on the waves but for a moment before it disappeared under the churning water.

The man behind me did not give me time to worry about the loss, he growled at me to hurry.

The deck stood deserted, the boards weather-beaten, the black sails frayed. Worn ropes tied down a tall pile of firewood to my left, two wooden buckets secured to the pile with twine. A handful of barrels lay tied to the ship’s railing on my other side.

The men shoved me down into the belly of the ship that swallowed me like a large fish that had not eaten for many days. I shivered even as my forehead beaded with sweat from the hot, stale air. I opened my mouth to ask how many were sick, but a rough hand in the middle of my back shoved me forward into a dark cabin. The door closed with a loud thud behind me.

“I will need a lamp,” I called through the door. “Or a torch.”

Nobody answered.

I turned back to the darkness and lowered my voice. “Is anyone here? Anyone sick?”

I moved forward until I bumped into the wall, then laid my hands on a roughly hewn wood plank and followed it. When I reached the door, I pushed against it to no avail. I felt around for some furniture but found none. I was in an empty cabin somewhere in the middle of the ship. With nothing else to do, I sat down and waited for them to bring my patient to me.

My heart shuddered when I heard the scrape of the anchor being pulled up. Voices rang out on deck. Sails snapped somewhere above me. And I finally realized there would be no sick coming.

I, Tera, daughter of Chalee, Tika Shahala, had been sold by my own father to be a slave.

~~~***~~~

CHAPTER TWO

(Onra)

I spent eight, maybe nine, days on the ship. I tried to keep track of time by my meals of overcooked fish, but they did not feed me every day, so I could not be certain.

We caught the edge of a hardstorm, and the ship lurched and rolled without stop, battered by waves. Thunder clapped all around as the wind tossed us carelessly. I could think of little else but the bad spirits of the Kadar under the water, trying to pull us down into the deep.

I hated the dark, moldy room, the stale water I found to drink, the bucket in the corner and its stench. I hated being alone the most. I started to think maybe a giant fish had swallowed me, maybe I would never again see the sky, the twin moons, or the numaba trees on our hillside. I had thought maybe—despite my mother’s reassurances—the spirits had not forgiven my family for my great-grandmother’s sin—whose name was not to be spoken—and were now punishing me for her terrible deeds.

Then as suddenly as they had thrust me into my prison, the traders grabbed me from it again, dragged me roughly into the light. I squinted hard as I stumbled forward.

A merciless wind whipped the strange harbor we had reached, cutting through my threadbare clothes to my trembling skin, its icy fingers reaching for my heart. Even with the sun high in the sky, I shivered and wrapped my arms around me.

Nearly a hundred starved-looking men and women huddled on the dock, chained together in heavy iron, some holding listless children in their arms. They avoided looking at each other, as if ashamed of having given up hope.

I did not belong among them. I wanted to insist that someone had made a mistake, that I had only come to the ship to heal the sick. I looked up at the man who dragged me—the lead trader. I opened my mouth, but no words came.

A tall stone wall blocked the view of the city. Kaharta Reh, I heard the traders say. Poles as thick as my waist made up the gate, held together by massive strips of metal. The gate stood as tall as our ship’s mast and wide enough to let four ox carts in side by side.

We waded into the port crowd. Merchants offered their wares, mothers shouted at their children to keep up, people argued over deals. The people were loud beyond bearing, offensively so, the city the least welcoming place I could imagine. Sheharree, our Shahala port, had neither walls nor gate; indeed, such things would have been considered highly rude and inhospitable by my people.

As we passed into Kaharta Reh, once again I had the ominous feeling of being swallowed. I could too easily see the monstrous gates swing close and trap me forever.

We went to the auction house first, where the men led the other slaves into a holding pen. The leader still had my arm in his grip, and he looked at me for the first time. I trembled, thinking he would now chain me to the rest.

“I am a healer, daughter of Tika Shahala. I came on board to heal the sick. Someone must have forgotten,” I said, although even I no longer believed it.

“I paid fifteen blue crystals for you.” The words slithered out of his mouth with only the slightest movement of his lips.

Twelve crystals, I wanted to tell him. “I can earn more and pay you back,” I said instead. I would have said anything to escape, too young to know that my fate had been decided beyond bargaining.

He dragged me on without a word, and I stumbled after him down narrow streets, passing people who hurried by on their daily business, paying little mind to us. In the biting cold, I looked at their strange clothes with envy.

The men wore tight leather leggings with bulky fur tunics on top, the women the kind of one-piece robe the Shahala men wore over their thudrag. A thudrag was very much like a woman’s thudi, but not tied at the ankle. I saw neither thudrag nor thudi peeking from the women’s heavy wool robes. Under all that billowing material, they walked around naked!

An evil land of backward people, I thought, where men wore women’s clothes and women wore men’s, where the sun shone without warmth, where a person could be bought and sold like a basket in the market.

My teeth chattered by the time we stopped in front of a hammered iron door, bolted into the stone wall of an enormous building. The trader shouted for entry. We waited until a bent old man opened the door, holding it with gnarled fingers that were blackened at the tips. No eyelashes shaded his small eyes, his gaze sharp like the knar eagle’s, his mouth thin as a blade.

My heart banged against my ribs, wanting to run away in panic and leave the rest of my doomed body behind.

The man shuffled back and closed the door in our faces. He did not want me. I nearly sank to the ground with relief.

But the light feeling of having escaped a fate too horrible to contemplate did not last long, for I realized what would happen next. I would be taken back to the market to be sold on the block with the others. Panic plowed into me, and I sank to the cold stones of the street.