Chapter 4

Yalet

The Empire of Nejim

Mount Thayl

Anoth sneered as Mount Thayl loomed in the distance, nearing ever so slowly. For nine hundred years, the mountain had stood defiant against him, powerless to spurn his advances yet refusing to flinch even after it had been stripped of its vegetation and topmost soil, exposing every curved and craggy crevice. The inselberg knelt in crumbling silence, enduring each intrusive penetration without giving up what Anoth sought above all else. Despite all this, Anoth smiled. He had a good feeling about today’s encounter.

When the palanquin carriers finally set him down outside the encampment at the base of the mountain, he emerged through the curtains to survey the Naltite slaves that swarmed across the brittle rock face several hundred feet away. It was obvious which thralls had been taken during the most recent raids in Zaidna. Their bodies still carried some flesh, unlike the slaves whose bodies were scarred and withered. But regardless of tenure, every one of the slaves held the same familiar hopelessness in their eyes. Davim had trained them adequately.

As Anoth moved through the camp, hunting for the slave master, he heard a grating cacophony of loud laughter. He clenched his fists. There would be no mirth in this place; the slaves who dug for the Orb would do so with reverence, not joy. All would mourn with him until the Orb was finally recovered.

He increased his pace only to discover that the source of the laughter was Davim, the slave master, who continued to laugh obliviously in the midst of the barracks. Zalas, the emperor of Nejim, stood close by, smirking rather than laughing as Davim called lustily at a young, gray-skinned girl, who carried a jug of water atop her shoulder.

Anoth’s scowl deepened. Surely there were plenty of Naltite slaves who needed to be put in their place. Why were these idiots wasting their time on a beshtat? Unlike the Naltite imports, beshtats were native to Yalet and proved to be decent workers, as well as much easier to pacify than the Naltites because of their lack of ormé. While there were still plenty of independent beshtat colonies outside of Nejim, the Anotites had captured more than enough of them to keep things running smoothly. Most male beshtats worked alongside the Naltites to excavate for the Orb, even if they weren’t the most efficient, while their women catered to the carnal needs of male Anotites all throughout the empire.

Davim, who had managed to convince the beshtat girl to walk over to him, grabbed her arm. After a brief struggle, he threw her to the ground. Her water vessel shattered and the parched earth quickly drank up its contents. Seeing their prey humiliated on the ground, Davim chortled once more and kicked the dust about her as Zalas grinned approvingly.

As the girl crawled to retrieve the pieces of the broken jug, Anoth finally made his presence known. “Is this how you seek out the Orb when the hadirs aren’t watching you?”

Davim and Zalas spun around to face him, startled. “Master Anoth!” Davim sputtered, staggering back a few steps. “I was not expecting—the raids—I didn’t think you were back yet.”

“Fools,” Anoth spat. “If you insist on abusing the natives, wait until spring. We’ll need them to shoulder more of the labor when the Naltites start dying come winter.” He kicked at the slave, who abandoned the shards of her vessel and fled.

While this slave had looked weak, most of the beshtats were already acclimated to the extreme temperatures at this altitude of Nejim. Anoth was forced to corral the Naltite slaves into the deep mines at the end of fall to avoid them dying in large numbers during the winter, but the beshtats could largely remain out in the elements year-round, chiseling endlessly at the rock face in search of the Orb.

Anoth’s sneer turned upward. “Unless your merrymaking is because you’ve recovered the Orb?”

Davim’s lip twitched, and he hesitated before saying, “No, not yet, Master Anoth. We would have made more progress if those sneaky engstaxis hadn’t planted an explosive by the barracks last week. The hadirs should just squeeze those bulbous red eyes of theirs from their skulls before sending them here. Engstaxis cause nothing but trouble. If I could just kill—”

“Excuses! You have not broken the engstaxis sufficiently.”

“But the engstaxis are impossible to break,” Davim complained, his beady eyes widening. “I’ve had them flogged and beaten, starved and even stripped of their coverings and made to sit in the sunlight until their skin bleeds. They’d rather remain out in the sun and die than submit. I don’t know where this particular engstaxi managed to gather the materials for his explosive, or how he assembled it without any privacy. I moved all the engstaxis into the same housing so we can keep a better eye on them at all times.”

“You idiot!” Anoth shouted. “You never put engstaxis together. For hundreds of years we have kept all engstaxi slaves separated from each other, and you decide to change that now, without consulting me? You might have them glyphed to blind them to primal matter, but they still have their alchemy! Don’t you know they can extract the minerals from their own excrement? When alone, they aren’t a danger, but as a group they could be gathering other components from the mines and building powder kegs under your pathetic, common-bred nose!”

To Davim’s side, Zalas let loose a snort and placed his hands upon his hips, shaking his head. Davim, on the other hand, fidgeted slightly as he tried to work up a suitable excuse.

“Why are you just standing there?” Anoth flung his hands down at his sides and bore down on Davim’s silence. “The excavation of Mount Thayl must be carried out with delicate precision! Why do you think I don’t just blow the whole damn thing up myself? The Orb must be protected. Verahi must be protected. Any sort of explosion—even the smallest spark on that rock face—would risk everything I’ve worked for. You will rectify this situation immediately!”

Davim, now several shades paler, bowed low. “As you wish, Master Anoth! Surely, the engstaxis won’t cause any more trouble. They will be separated and punished, and should there be more of their black powder stockpiled, my men will sniff it out and deal with the offenders. There can’t be much of it.” Davim then straightened himself and smiled up at Anoth, displaying a row of crowded incisors, before he turned and strode away through the barracks.

“Were your idiot brother-in-law not born under a high house of ormé, I’d have killed him several times over by now,” Anoth growled to Zalas.

Zalas merely shrugged. He did not seem terribly concerned about Davim’s well-being. After all, Davim was married to Zalas’s sister, Roet, for the sole purpose of infusing ormé into the imperial bloodline, which was flourishing in numbers but dwindling in ormé. It was common knowledge, however, that Roet was a whore, and it was already a miracle that she hadn’t borne any children yet, and even unlikelier that she would ever bear Davim’s.

“What are you doing outside of the palace?” Anoth demanded. “There are documents to draft and advisors to coddle.” Anoth noted that Zalas had traded his emperor’s robes for a simple brown caftan. He must have snuck out of the palace to shirk his responsibilities, of which there were many.

Zalas’s expression was civil, but his slanted eyes betrayed his true thoughts. “A man requires fresh air now and then. I might ask the same thing of you, though. Did you come here to check on the Orb or to harass me?”

Anoth refused to be baited. “I arrived home last night to discover that most of the hadirs had left the city and that you were . . . indisposed. I came here to see the progress that’s been made for myself.”

“You must excuse me for being indisposed. My wife is still in childbed as of this morning.”

“Ah, your true motivation for fleeing the palace.” Anoth tapped his fingers together slowly. “Although I’m surprised you wouldn’t want to be there for the birth of your first non-bastard child. That only leaves me wondering where the hadirs have gone.”

“A large nomadic tribe of beshtats was spotted near the border of Nejim. Most of the hadirs went there to take care of them. Easy pickings.” Zalas’s lips morphed into a hard line, and a muscle in his jaw twitched.

“Is there a problem?” Anoth smiled with amusement.

Zalas didn’t return the smile. “Don’t try to feign ignorance. You left me to be sat by Tovam. I deserve more respect than that.”

Anoth folded his arms across his velvet coat. “I saw you with that water slave. If that is how you spend your spare time, I should leave you with a wet nurse as well.”

Zalas dragged an unwilling chuckle from his throat. “Tovam seems to think that you’re the one in need a wet nurse, Anoth. He was asking why you might be running off to Zaidna for weeks at a time without telling him.”

“He is a rather protective servant,” Anoth muttered. He had been careful, but not careful enough about his occasional journeys to the other side of the parting. It was just as well that Tovam was away on the hunt for new slaves. When forced to stay holed up in the capital, he became restless and unpredictable, difficult for even Anoth to control.

“Now that I am apparently to report to Tovam regarding the affairs of the empire, instead of you, I think I deserve an explanation as well. Have I failed in any of my duties? Or are your trips to Zaidna to blame for this change in responsibilities?” Egged on by Anoth’s silence, Zalas continued. “Do you prefer the moist climate in Zaidna? Or perhaps you like the seas. I can’t imagine there are any other redeemable qualities about our ancestral home, especially when the hadirs bring the best women back here for us.”

Anoth scowled and turned to leave, but found Davim directly in his path, a dalanai slave in tow.

“The matter with the engstaxis has been rectified, Master Anoth,” Davim wheezed, taking an abbreviated bow. “The engstaxis have been separated, and their sleeping quarters are being torn apart as we speak.” Behind Davim, the dalanai slave girl didn’t look nearly as winded as he did, although her long legs gave her an advantage over his stout frame. Like most dalanais, she had the willowy body of a dancer, but this one was exceptionally tall, dwarfing Anoth by at least a head. Her scanty garments were practically sheer, and though her breasts were bound by the green wrap she wore, the details of her anatomy were still plain to see, including her quivering tail, which she tried to hide with a hand.

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Davim tugged on the chain attached to the slave’s collar. “In recompense for having displeased you earlier, I present to you my most favored bed slave, Kailei, for your personal use.” He unceremoniously shoved the startled dalanai in front of Anoth for inspection. It was no surprise to Anoth that Davim would have a bed slave or two on site. Davim certainly used bed slaves for his personal pleasure, but he was also known to trade them to other nobles in exchange for goods or to curry favor.

Anoth caught the slave’s wrist and pulled her close. It was not just Davim who flattered him with gifts. Men constantly offered up their slaves, wives, and daughters to Anoth in return for his blessing, whereas women, both mortal and hadir, threw themselves at him with great frequency just for the challenge. Long ago, these offerings of the flesh had been an amusing diversion for Anoth, but not so much anymore. He had other interests now.

“You will find that she is of the finest quality,” Davim continued. “She has good teeth and gums, is in excellent health, and is even a member of Naltite nobility, as is revealed by the crest she has tattooed there on her forehead.” Davim gestured with a dry, bony finger at the small, purple diamond at the center of the girl’s creased brow.

Anoth held out his free hand, grasped the woman’s jaw, and pulled her chin down to get a better look at her face. The dalanai was trembling, and tears had begun to streak her bloodless cheeks. Most Naltite women wept or became physically ill when they saw him, terrified that the Dread God who was supposedly dead was not only alive, but could touch them with hands that could caress or punish at his whim. He grinned at the thought of the betrayal they must have felt knowing that their little prophetesses, the Nassés, had lied to them, whispering legends of his ignominious death by Naltena’s bare hands.

The girl winced as Anoth turned her head this way and that. Despite her blubbering, which had swelled her nose, Anoth had to admit that this slave was quite fine, at least one of the prettiest ones he’d seen in some time. Her hair, which was tied up in a knot at the top of her head, was the color of a fire within a hearth, and her tear-filled eyes shone like emeralds. But the more he looked into the girl’s eyes, the angrier he became that they lacked that particular spark that he desired. The longer he stared at her body, the more her tall, angular figure offended him; the fire of her red hair waned in the shadow of the shining black tresses he coveted.

Anoth finally flicked the slave’s forehead crest, causing her to yelp. “I wonder. Are you a noblewoman or a commoner who married into nobility?”

The dalanai could only answer Anoth with a small whimper.

“No matter. Your family crest is that of a city magistrate, and whether you were born to him or married one of his bastard sons, you are still filth, dung beneath my heel.”

A disappointed frown sagged Davim’s lips as he pulled Kailei back to him to hold her close. She shook uncontrollably, breathing hard, perhaps in shock that she had almost been handed over to the Dread God himself. “I will bring out another slave for you then, Master Anoth, and have this one whipped for offending you. My other slaves may not be noble, but you might find them more to your liking.”

“Any slave you could bring me would prove to be inadequate,” Anoth snapped, forcing the image of black hair from his mind. “You can bring me all the captured lesser nobles you wish. Were I to take a dalanai noble to my bed, only the highest among them would suffice.”

Zalas rubbed at his chin in contemplation, before looking to Anoth curiously. “I find it strange that you know so much about Naltite nobility. How did you know that this girl is from the family of a city magistrate?”

“I organized the noble houses of the Naltites. Why shouldn’t I know about them?” Anoth countered. “It is my business to know the power structures of Zaidna as much as it is to know them in Yalet.”

“But family lines fade through the generations, especially among the lesser nobles. Isn’t that why we didn’t continue foolish traditions like tattooing our foreheads with family crests like the Naltites? Surely your time is not worth learning and remembering the family crests of even lowly city magistrates. One might think you have a peculiar interest in Naltite nobility.” Zalas’s tone remained delicate and jovial, but Anoth was not fooled.

“My interests are none of your concern.” Anoth opened his mouth to chasten Zalas further, but noticed small flashes of white erupt out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look and saw a small troop of engstaxis running toward them from the mountainside. Even from a distance, he could see their translucent white skin blistering in the sunlight. A handful of guards chased after them, presumably preparing to add lashes to their sunburns for their insubordination. It appeared that Davim had not completely rectified the matter after all.

Zalas moved directly into Anoth’s line of sight, blocking his view of the engstaxis with narrowed eyes and a wide smile. “Why does it matter what crest a Naltite whore wears on her forehead? Any Naltite woman would look once upon those—” Zalas gestured at the trio of blue circles tattooed upon Anoth’s forehead. “—and flee in fear and disgust. So why discriminate?”

Anoth remained silent.

“Or perhaps,” Zalas mused, “you discriminate because—”

“Something is happening,” Anoth muttered, sidestepping Zalas to regain sight of the engstaxis. Their spindly legs were quick, and the pudgy guards in the distance were having difficulty grabbing a hold of more than one at a time. There was something odd about the engstaxis’ appearance, which became more evident as they closed within a hundred yards.

Davim stumbled forward to get a better look at the herd of slaves approaching. “What—what do they have strapped on their backs?” He squinted, but then his eyes opened wide in horror. “Black powder. Those are explosives! Don’t let them near the barracks!” He motioned to several of the guards in the encampment, who rushed to intercept the impending assault.

“At least they are running away from the mountain,” Anoth commented grimly. The engstaxis began shrieking and veering to the side, still moving doggedly toward the encampment. This was no pinpoint tactical assault. Those blasted engstaxis intended to kill everyone in the camp, including themselves. Anoth finally stepped forward. He would handle this himself.

By this time, Davim had worked himself up into a full froth of panic. “Kill them! Kill them before they reach the camp! Do whatever you have to do, just make sure they don’t reach the barracks!”

Anoth came to an abrupt halt. One of the intercepting guards was raising his hands, working a pattern. Anoth quickly shifted focus. In an instant, he could see all the blackened specks of primal matter that hung the air, including the quivering, tightly bound pattern that became visible in the guard’s hands. It was fire! “You fool! Not fire! Cease that pattern immediately!”

The guard turned, confused. He staggered, the unreleased ball of flames scorching his palms, causing him to yelp. He pulled his hands toward his body in a desperate attempt to obliterate the pattern, but it was already out of control. The fire leapt from him, breaking free from the condensed pattern into a wide swath of flame.

Most of the engstaxis stopped in their tracks, barely avoiding the wave of fire, but it bathed the foremost slave among them in a flash of orange. As the sack on his back smoldered and the black powder within it started to ignite, the stricken engstaxi looked to Anoth with knowing eyes. Then closing them for the last time, he smiled.

The other engstaxis recovered from their shock and rushed toward their lit compatriot, diving to catch sparks upon their own backs.

Anoth shielded his face with his arm as the other engstaxis began to burn. With an earth-shattering crack, the first engstaxi burst, sending his body parts and the other engstaxis backwards toward the mountain. Almost in sequence, more of them exploded, creating a chain reaction until several of the last engstaxis were propelled by the combined force of the explosions, hurtling back into the mountainside. Even with the first explosion at several dozen yards away, Zalas, Davim, and the slave girl were knocked onto their backs, while several of the pursuing guards were incinerated in the blink of an eye. Anoth remained standing, but the hairs on his face were singed.

Anoth lowered his arm, only to witness the final explosion erupt from within the inselberg with ferocious force, blasting a gaping hole in the rock face. This was exactly what Anoth had been trying to avoid by keeping the engstaxis separated. Even under the strictest supervision, the pale-skinned bastards had managed to stash small quantities of alchemized chemicals and explosives in the mountain’s crevices without detection. One of their flaming bodies had hit the surface of the mountain, exploded, and set off a chain reaction among one or more of the hidden supply caches closest to the surface.

There was a brief silence, but as Davim and Zalas moved to stand, a low rumble, like a death rattle, emerged from the mountain, swallowing up the distant screams of the slaves. Starting slowly, but quickly accelerating, a massive layer of stone began to slough off the western face of the inselberg.

Anoth watched in passive fury as the entire ridge broke into pieces and crumbled the wooden platforms below like houses made from sugar wafers. He was too far from the mountain to be endangered by the landslide, but the cloud of dust that rolled forth in its wake was enough to sting Anoth’s eyes and coat him in a layer of earth. He had been so careful in devising their excavation methods, manually peeling away the stone in layers to ensure the Orb’s preservation; could one stupid mistake ruin centuries of work?

When the mountain was finally still, and the earth beneath his feet had settled, Anoth surveyed the devastation, walking slowly toward the rubble. A vast assortment of arms and legs, either burned or smashed into a pulp of flesh and splintered bone, jutted out of the debris that had filled the large craters the exploding engstaxis had left. The few surviving slaves had already begun to tackle the great pile of crushed rock, and with bare, bleeding hands they threw aside boulders and shards of crumbling sandstone in an attempt to free their friends. They were wasting their time, of course. If those buried were not dead yet, they would suffocate soon enough. Most of the remaining guards staggered about in a stupor, helpless and unwilling to regain control of the slaves.

Out in the desert surrounding the ruined inselberg, something was beginning to creep. Anoth could sense the tumultuous black aura, and knew exactly what it was. It was the gathering of hadirs, attracted by the chaos of the mountain’s fracture. While most of the hadirs had gone with Tovam to the raids, the ones that remained were assembling in the sand and heat, waiting patiently for their opportunity to feed.

Zalas and Davim joined Anoth at his side. “Awful, awful,” Davim whispered repeatedly. Both he and Zalas were pale and stared unblinkingly up at Mount Thayl. Or what was left of it.

“This is what your carelessness has done!” Anoth snarled. Davim shivered, while Zalas sidled away from him, presumably to avoid Anoth’s wrath. “I want every grain of sand in this rubble heap searched for the Orb. I don’t care how high your house of ormé is; if anything has become of my master, you will serve as the hadirs’ dessert!” Anoth did not wait to see Davim’s reaction. Instead, he turned and stormed toward the ruined mountain.

As he reached the newly exposed rock face, all of the remaining slaves looked to him in fear before returning to their frantic digging. All of them except one. Atop a pile of broken stone, he spotted a single, heavily wounded engstaxi, who, instead of digging, was hammering at something with a jagged rock. Upon seeing Anoth looking at him, he glared with ruby-colored eyes, half-ruined by the sun, and hammered all the harder. Anoth’s blood boiled, and he climbed up the rubble in long strides until he reached the broken but defiant creature. Anoth laid a swift blow to his belly with his boot. The engstaxi crumpled, but slowly lifted his rock and brought it back down with as much force as he could muster.

Incensed, Anoth struck blow after brutal blow to the engstaxi’s already frail, shattered body, but the engstaxi continued to strike at the rubble with the rock until he finally succumbed to the assault. As the rock dropped from the engstaxi’s hand, Anoth looked down to see what he had been hammering at so desperately. There, half wedged in the rubble, was a grubby round stone, about the size of Anoth’s fist. Beneath an outer layer of hardened earth, which was cracked by the engstaxi’s attempt to destroy it, Anoth could see a brilliant blue-green flash of labradorite peeking through.

Anoth’s mind was paralyzed by incomprehension. “No,” he muttered, and dug his fingers into the rubble to pry out the stone. He was numbly aware of Zalas and Davim’s approach from behind. They called up to him, but their voices were like whispers compared to the chaos swirling in his head.

At last, the stone came free. “Master Verahi,” he whispered, before greeting the Orb with a reverent kiss. He laughed, turning to look down on the gathering crowd around him. He held up the Orb in triumph for all to see, the exposed labradorite shining like a star in his hand.

Zalas and Davim, along with the unwounded guards, instantly sank to their knees in worship of the stone, while the slaves hung their heads in sorrow. From the ruined camp, up to the remains of Mount Thayl, the bodies of the wounded writhed as the hadirs emerged from where they’d been hidden. Wordlessly, the hadirs descended upon the dying, commencing their ravenous feast.