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Chapter 26: The Meridian Tower
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“That most mysterious of powers, granted to so very few, its origin shrouded in an impenetrable veil, its might the sun that scours kingdoms.” ~ From “The Making and The Mysteries” by Hendrin, Date Unknown (B.P.).
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Arwen
Time is a funny thing. There are moments when it seems to flash by, come and departed in a blur, your heart, mind, and soul occupied completely all the while, and others when it drags on, crawling, every second an eon, every minute an eternity. Hunger, in Arwen’s experience, is the primary proponent of the latter.
Her stomach had ceased grumbling days ago, though if the papers had said it had been weeks, she’d have believed them without much thought. Now it simply ached, a deep gnawing, a pit, a weight, a void that consumed her mind and thoughts as much as it consumed her body itself, if not more.
Every thought, for days, had been of food. Of the well-to-do men and women carrying on in the bustling streets of Gillataria, sparing not a glance for the pleading, crying, croaking, and eventually silent, rotting children, left laying languidly in the low places, the alleys, the gutters, the unsightly slums of the great, prosperous capital city state. Then she’d given up. She had accepted her fate, to die, to starve, abandoned, forgotten. The money had run out. The tax collectors had come, and her parents had begged for time, for mercy. Gillat hadn’t mercy to give, only the ax, or the Tower. And she, too weak to fight, had been left to die. Perhaps that was a mercy, she thought, for the King’s courtesans hadn’t a peaceful death in sight.
She lifted a hand to her mouth, a pathetic excuse for a hand, bones in stark relief draped under loose, tan, sun-beaten skin. She licked at the mud, her eyes staring listlessly at nothing. Once she’d choked, gagged, spit, squeezed her eyes hard shut as she ate it, but now she was numb. Numb and thankful, for rain was rare indeed in the middle months, and mud a fine treat to be sure. She’d begun shaping it into a patty before eating it, then stopped, failing to see the point, and losing interest in the diversion. She was tired of pretending. Tired, and weary.
Arwen looked at her bloated feet, her protruding gut, her stick thin arms, legs, wrists, the tattered, muddy, shredded rags that were once the fine clothes of a tailor’s daughter. The style had changed, the whim of the king’s fashion sense deciding their fate, and so her parents had lost everything. Imprisoned and sent to the Tower to entertain their friends, their neighbors, the king, and the naïve, or perhaps uncaring, damnable tourists until they inevitably died gruesome, “honorable” deaths. A week ago, she would’ve laughed at the incredulity of it all. But today she stared. Only stared, her mind too numb to contemplate the fate of her parents, as she scraped more mud from the dirty alleyway floor at her feet. Life here was cheaper than dirt, especially to her, who’d taken to surviving, or rather, prolonging her life on the stuff. Arwen licked at the mud in her hand, her lips cracked, her mouth a tub of cotton.
Jared had turned her out, set Minde and Surr to beating her, breaking her, reminding her of how useless she was. Two orphans, like her, friends, she’d been stupid enough to believe; Minde with her beautiful red hair and striking green eyes, the doll she carried everywhere and even let Arwen play with, Surr with his brooding, angry stare, his hunched shoulders, but gentle words, the scraps of food he stole for her at great risk to himself. Friends.
Too frail-looking, too sickly for the men to take interest in her, “The first I ever saw!” Jared had said. The memories of it passed behind her eyes like a slow-moving river. Scornful, disgusted faces, scrunched noses, eyes brimming with contempt as she sat, powdered, and dressed like princess, but billowing dresses couldn’t hide her sickly pale-yellow skin and scrawny limbs, thinner than the iron bars of her cage.
Too worthless to be a slave, and so granted the freedom to die. Minde and Surr, their little fists beating her, breaking her bones, feet stamping her, their wails and shrieks louder than hers.
She didn’t hate them. She didn’t even care.
Arwen’s thighs pressed against her bloated stomach; her feet scrunched up below her knobby knees. She lowered her hand again to the muddy dirt. A beetle, small and black, back rounded, full, strong. Long, powerful back legs undulating as it crept forwards, beady head moving side to side, mandibles, horns, she wasn’t sure, clicking open and closed. She watched it, her mouth hanging slightly open, as it crawled through the mud. Her hand hung lazily, forgotten before it. Her eyes, unblinking and half-glazed, followed the beetle as it encountered her hand, freezing, then proceeding to crawl up her finger.
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She blinked, raised her hand slowly to her face, lifted the beetle to her open mouth.
It spread its wings and flew off, leaving her staring at her empty hand. She closed her mouth, let it fall to the ground.
The sun shifted slightly, peaking in on her, its piercing bright gaze heating her face. The warmth felt nice, and a memory of her mother’s hand on her cheek, her smile like sweet honey pulsed in her mind’s eye.
A shadow passed over her, the warmth vanishing.
She’d have kept looking at the dirt, waiting for the shadow to move along, but it didn’t. Seconds, minutes passed, but the shadow stood fast, unmoving. Reluctantly and with tremendous effort she craned her neck, lifting her eyes to the source of the shadow.
A man, tall and dark clothed in a high collared, floor-length black cloak loomed over her, peered at her. His eyes were a piercing grey, so bright that they seemed to glow, his face hard and cold, his hair raven black.
She stared at him, their eyes locked. She didn’t have the energy, the care to speak; she hadn’t had that in… how long now? She just wished that he’d leave, get out of her sunlight, go away.
He stooped into a squat, his eyes now level with hers. They bore into her, cool and icy. He removed an arm from the cloak, producing a handful of dried meat strips, and extended it towards her. His hand was pale, noble, the fingers bejeweled with a silver signet ring.
Arwen’s eyes dropped from his and lingered on the meat strips. Surely, she was hallucinating. She blinked. They were still there, a deep, tawny red, almost brown, bits of salt and seasoning powdering their surface, cut into bite-sized pieces. The hand didn’t retract, didn’t close into a fist to punch her, didn’t blur out of being like a mirage. Slowly, ever so slowly, as if she might frighten the hand away if she moved too quickly, she reached for a piece of the dried meat. Her stomach tightened, twisted, writhed.
Her fingers closed over the strips, and she yanked her hand backwards to her chest. A few pieces that she’d missed in her hurried swipe fell into the mud below. She bared her teeth, suddenly alive with energy, pushed herself backwards, flattening her back against the wall, looked up at the man, daring him to challenge her. He stared back at her, his face the picture of passivity, and eased his hand back inside the folds of his cloak.
Unable to wait any longer, she began shoving pieces into her mouth, one at a time, coughing and choking all the while. She chewed for a moment or two, then impatiently tried to swallow just to fail, the hard, tough meat refusing to go down, resisting her. After several seconds of unsuccessfully trying to swallow without chewing, she took her time, the muscles in her jaws quickly tiring from the effort. She persevered, the hot, fiery pain in her mouth far from enough to overcome the incessant, hollow gnawing of her stomach.
She continued to eat as the man began to speak.
“With this I give you my blessing, child. Climb the tower, find my kindred, and repay your debt.” His voice was deep and full; he spoke slowly, articulating each word, lending them a sense of power and profundity. He sounded nothing like anyone Arwen had ever heard before, and she stopped mid swallow to blink up at him.
His hand shot out with impossible speed, a single finger touching her forehead, and the world darkened like a blown-out candle.
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Arwen dodged, the protruding knuckles of the oncoming fist flying past just inches from her cheek. She loaded her right foot, exploded against it, sank a right hook into the boy’s jaw. His head snapped to the side, blood and spittle flying from his open lips, and he staggered sideways into the alley wall. Something struck her back, a kick, and she stumbled forwards, barely catching herself. She dodged the grasping hands of the third boy to her right, a lanky teenager with a mop of greasy brown hair and a sneering, snarling, acne-scarred face. Failing to grab her, he drew a short knife, a chef’s knife he probably stole from the street market, and brandished it at her.
The one she’d punched stood, spat on the dirt and cobblestone at their feet, joined his friends. The three of them stalked towards her in a triangle formation, the one with the knife in front. She had no illusions about what would happen to her if she didn’t escape or fight. No one searched for missing dead girls, nor did they care. The rats would be the only ones to take notice of her corpse.
She doubled over, pretending to cough, then snatched a fist sized rock from the ground at her feet, stood, uttered a hissing, snarling growl, and hurled it at acne-face’s head, charging forwards as she threw. The rock struck his cheekbone just under his right eye, and he howled with pain, instantly raising both hands to his face. Before the others could react, she was shoulder slamming him. Her scrawny, recently starving frame hardly weighed one hundred pounds, but he was unprepared for the impact. She shoved him hard, grabbed his wrist, and wrenched the knife free. She twisted, the knife in her left hand, and plunged it into the side of his neck.
She removed the knife, plunged it in again. Warm blood spurted out from the wound, pulsing and spraying her hand, her neck, her face. She screamed, kept stabbing. Again and again, until he collapsed. She fell with him, knife still working, up and down now, into the front of his neck, stabbing holes into his throat. Her face was a gruesome tapestry of white and red, her voice hoarse from the screaming, her hands trembling with the excitement of violence. She pushed herself off of the body, untangling herself, scurrying backwards and raising her hands before her defensively.
The other two stared, stricken, unmoving, their eyes fixed on her, their adolescent faces horrified. They weren’t seasoned thugs, hardened criminals of the big city, purveyors of the dark underground. They were kids, starving, homeless, broken, abandoned, not unlike Arwen herself. She screamed at them, a wordless, hysterical sound. Blood glinted on the knife, dripped from her chin, stained her rags. They turned and ran, their friend forgotten on the alley floor. Several minutes later, she dropped to her knees and frisked his pockets. For her murder, she was rewarded with a single slice of blood-soaked, moldy bread. She stared at it, held reverently in her hands, and cried. She crawled to the wall, leaned against it, hugged her knees, and rocked slowly forwards and back, a rhythm known only to the sorrowful, the starving, and the mad. Tears mingled with the fresh, fluid blood on her face, trickling into her lap as she nibbled on the bread, weeping, breathing shakily all the while. She raised her eyes to the colossal construction of crystal and stone that dominated the skyline, stood imposing like a tyrant over the city, gazing with superior disdain at all its subjects. The Tower. She needed to climb the Tower.