THE KHOLLEK MOUNTAINS

FROM BROKEN DREAMS

CHAPTER I

“...what loosed the Nine Hells black and deep

let Mother’s mourn, let freedom weep...”

Kodyeh Njarwn Gusya XIII

1:2:4:4/5, III:IX

Larin could taste soot in the snow swirling across the auction block, and she appraised the small gathering of bidders. In a sibilant language like nothing she’d heard before, the auctioneer screeched above the wind to begin the sale, shaking a fistful of Larin’s blonde hair toward the crowd. A harsh cacophony broke out in reply, and Larin quashed the homesick panic rising in her chest. She refused to long for Kanata, her old prison of sugar cane and sunlight, when the icy crags bearing down on her would prove no different in the end.

Analyzing the waterfall of consonants spouting from all around, Larin fought to find meaning in the occasional vowel bubbling through the chaos. The language couldn’t be any form of Allanic, which had united most of the Known World for centuries. “And I have ten thousand, do I hear fifteen?” shrieked the auctioneer, brandishing her by the scalp. “Fifteen thousand for this stunning young virgin!”

Though the words meant nothing to her, the crowd’s surge of intensity spoke volumes. Calls burst forth from every direction, and a tall man loitering back from the rabble flicked two fingers in the air to join the bid. Polished silver capped the sharp points of his backswept ears, and his pale yellow horsetail shone white in the overcast glare of midmorning. Head and shoulders above the dark-haired crowd, he made a fist to bid again, his handsome features contorting into a crazed smirk when he noticed Larin’s scrutiny. Startled, she snapped her gaze up to the sharp ridges over the town, but the elf’s manic grin lingered in her mind’s eye. Sweet Mother, she prayed, don’t let him buy me!

He stepped forward with another bid, and the once boisterous mob scrambled to make way for him. “And I have eighty, eighty-five?” Across the square, one resolute competitor continued to bid, until he recognized the elf strolling toward him through the parting throng. With his hand half-raised, the pudgy man stiffened, blanched, and let his arm drop, backing away from the block as if it had tricked him. Wasting no time, the auctioneer pronounced Larin sold and shoved her toward his guard, dragging forth the next girl before the nervous crowd could disperse any further.

Barefoot at the edge of the auction block, Larin surveyed the sharp stones below, and she checked the leather cord lashed around her wrists. Escape would have to wait for somewhere less public, but she could lose the elf in the tangled alleyways of the dingy port city, provided she left no bloodied tracks across the shale. The nearby docks harbored a few ships with Allanic names, and Larin doubted she’d have to stow away long before they shoved off from the dismal rock and made for greener lands.

Her features frozen into a passive mask, she watched her new master swagger around the block and drop a single pewter coin into the guard’s outstretched hand. After pocketing the two coins he received in exchange, the elf tied a lead to Larin’s wrists, his lips crooked into a precarious smile. You’re not fooling anyone, thought Larin, suspicious of his strange civility.

They meandered in silence away from the auction and inland, the end of the lead dangling between the elf’s knuckles. As the crowd thinned, Larin twined the lead around her cold fingers, ready to make her escape when they found themselves alone. Her opportunity came in an unpaved alley, where she grasped all the slack she could and broke into a run.

Her bid for freedom lasted less than an instant. Somehow, the elf flicked his wrist twice around the lead and jerked her backward before her first stride touched the ground. Twisted and off-balance, Larin toppled, but the elf’s rough chuckle circled her as she fell, and he caught her from behind. Impossible!

“Why even try?” he crooned in his sibilant language, wrapping the lead around her neck and cinching it tight.

Scrabbling to find her footing, Larin pleaded, “K’iana cye’utc–!”

“Shh,” scolded the elf, tugging the lead tighter and cradling her gasping frame to his chest. Larin fought to stay upright, spots dancing before her eyes as they continued down the empty street.

When they turned the corner, her vision drifted onto a black dragon curled across most of an open square. Upon seeing them, it hulked upwards, shaking out its great wings and pressing the back of a scaly claw to the cobblestones. They hustled between its talons and rode the wicked cage up to its shoulder, where the elf shoved her out onto the dragon’s bare back.

Gasping for air and temples throbbing, she stumbled to her knees, and the elf settled himself at the base of the dragon’s neck. A thunderous jolt spawned a whirlwind of arduous wing-beats, garbage and dust swirling through the city streets below. Without the slightest signal from its rider, the dragon mounted into the sky, the wind somehow lessening despite their growing speed.

Too lost in horror to marvel at her first dragon flight, Larin scrambled to understand how the elf had caught her. Even expecting an escape attempt, he couldn’t have known the exact moment she would run, and she could see no way he could have moved that fast, unless–

“You do catch on quick,” drawled his voice, silent yet unmistakable. His taunt purred within her, inescapable words shattering the privacy of her mind like a tune she couldn’t stop hearing.

“You’re a... a reader?” she spluttered aloud, unsure how else to answer him.

Amused laughter rang through the pocket of still air over the dragon’s back. “Usually, the pretty ones aren’t as smart as you,” lauded the elf, sounding genuinely pleased.

Thank you, she thought back at him, refusing to speculate beyond the meek submission. Though a few wise merfolk had taken a shine to her back in Kanata, Larin hadn’t learned much from them about mind reading. It was only clear at short range, she remembered, but it took a skilled mage or gifted speaker to safely deflect the intrusion. To plan an escape, she’d need distance – provided this elf couldn’t riffle through her mind for details.

Larin began to count off the calendar years, reducing her thoughts to something meaningless until she could get some room to think. He’d have to sleep sometime, and as long as she could return to the port city, she could still stow away. To that end, she pushed herself up to spot the port marring the coast behind them. They bore through the mountains, following a road that zagged back to the city, and just past town the crags crumbled into a vast expanse of cold sand dunes. With the port nearly impossible to overshoot, Larin settled back to pluck shards of stone from her bleeding feet.

Amused by the girl’s overt tallies and distorted thoughts of escape, the elf flew on. Minutes stretched into silent hours as the port fell away and the sun arced overhead, sinking to the horizon. Still Larin counted, until the elf brought his dragon into a sharp bank, using a mental tug to send the beast circling downward. Beyond the scaled wings, Larin caught glimpses of a sandy racetrack cut into the mountainside, and a sprawling complex of stables along one edge of it. Across the road sat a small stone keep, a reddish glow seeping out its window slits to greet the encroaching twilight.

A thud signaled their landing, and the elf tugged at her lead, stepping onto the dragon’s raised foreclaw. Anxious to keep him mollified, Larin stumbled to the edge of the shoulder and jumped into the elf’s waiting arms, diverting her revulsion into more focused counting. With a sharp scoff, he scooped her up like a Kanatan bride and hopped to the road once it was close, striding through the waning light to the keep’s massive entrance.

While the great stone door swung open, Larin absorbed details of the keep’s layout, loud numbers still at the forefront of her mind. A faint scent like rain and lightning wafted off the elf as he carried her across the threshold, and Larin battled panic at the distinctive whiff of magic. Behind them, the heavy door settled back into place of its own accord, sealing them inside.

Elaborate tapestries muffled the walls, depicting a string of daemonic battles embroidered in gold and silver. Far from gentling the stone, the graphic hangings steeped the hall in an eerie stillness that rang with the imagined clang of cold steel. Unmoved, Larin’s new master made for a doorway near the crowning of a strange elf warrior, whose white horsetail and coal-black skin were all but coated in blood. Boots stomping across the worn skins thrown over the floor, the elf carried her down the next hall, following the bloody king as he rode a terrible beast to war. They moved past a slaughter of town and village, until the people bowed to the warrior king and daemons hoisted him high on a throne of skulls.

They reached the kitchens, and a frigid burst of wind startled Larin out of the massacre around her. Halfway out a back door to throw scraps to the wyverns penned there, a towheaded slave looked up at them, but she paled in moments and averted her eyes. Then the doorway ended, and the tapestries closed over them once more.

Down an adjoining hall, the warrior king chose an elf from his supplicants and brought him to kneel at his throne. When the knight rose, the king kissed his forehead, leaving behind a twisting red knot that radiated blackness across the knight’s skin. The dark elf rode into battle for his king, and at the end of the hallway, the victorious knight returned to present the throne with the severed heads of its enemies. At the door beside this bloody triumph, Larin’s new master set her back on her torn feet.

The elf rapped at the door and nudged her forward when it opened, following close behind. “Don’t bleed on the carpet,” he advised, and Larin shuffled up to a wide desk stacked with ancient tomes and scrolls. Behind the desk sat a stringy dark-haired man, who leveled his piercing gaze at her. “Another blonde virgin for your collection, my Lord Baron,” intoned the elf. “Third off the block at Port Donnel, like you said.”

As the baron rose to circle his desk, Larin scanned the parchment and scraps of vellum littering its surface. Though the mers had taught her to read in several languages, she couldn’t make out any of the writing until the graceful curves of the mer script caught her eye. The second falters, third prevails, she read, then back into his grasp she sails and on into his realm she wails, when golem’s work is long since done–

A soft knock at the door seized Larin’s attention, and the baron waved it open to reveal a woman with her head bowed. Through the pale hair falling over the girl’s face, Larin glimpsed a pair of thin gouges running from her temple to her jaw, shining black and bloodless against the fetid brown of the surrounding flesh. Terror lanced through Larin, and she watched the slave draw a rattling breath, stammering in a voice like trampled thresh, “M’lord Baron, they’ve arrived, sir.”

Despite the strange language, Larin understood the baron’s bark of insidious glee, and after waving the slave away he grabbed Larin’s chin, forcing her to look up from the girl clutching her face as she fled. “The masters are here to review our latest batch,” he informed the elf over Larin’s shoulder, appraising her features with hawkish gold eyes. “I can feel something in this one, Haisrir. It’s her, I know it.”

“Let us hope so, my Lord Baron,” obliged the elf from his post by the door.

Caressing Larin’s jaw with two long fingers, the baron murmured, “You will make the fifth, you know. The time has come to remake the world.”

When it became apparent he awaited a response, she hazarded, “...Winafaw’e natuu ratik’i nayelo?” It was an innocent enough question, and though she didn’t expect him to understand, she hoped the submissive tone conveyed her meaning well enough.

“She sounds Kanatan,” observed the baron, recognizing her dialect. “We’ll present her to the masters first.” He pushed her toward the door and she stumbled forward, twining nervous fingers around the lead until the end of it wound up in her palms.

Larin launched into action before her thoughts could betray her. A loud crunch met her ears and she bolted, heel throbbing from where it’d slammed into the side of the elf’s knee. Shrieking, he snatched at her elbow, but she wrenched away with a sickening pop and raced back up the hall.

(continued...)