Chapter One: Setting the Stage
She looked out the window, grimacing when she saw the steep sides of the tower. The stone was completely, utterly smooth - no doubt polished using magic. Below, rocky outcrops with edges as sharp as knives gleamed dully in the moonlight, the white bones of the foolhardy - or the half-mad - peeking out from between the crags.
Simply put, escape meant certain death.
Anna huffed as she sat down on the rough wood bench that was both a chair and a bed in her prison. She had to get out of this place. She stared morosely at her surroundings: a dark room of cold, blank stone, and a roof that leaked. Of course, she should not have expected better treatment – she was a prisoner, after all – but a ground-floor cell would have been preferable to a chilly tower chamber.
But no, Sheik Obed al-Kharim insisted she have a room in the towers. "It is the only way to be polite to a guest of your magnitude," the Sheik had told her with a sinister smile as she was hauled away.
Why was she being kept alive? That was one of the questions that niggled at the back of her mind between plotting escape plans. Usually, when the Umbarians managed to get their grubby paws on someone like her – Khemetians, as her people were called – said person was slaughtered on the spot. If said Khemetian happened to be female, well…those were the stories that were better left untold and unheard.
She wondered if the reason was because of her staff – her father's staff, she corrected herself. She remembered the gleam of greed in the Sheik's eye when she was dragged over to him and forced to hand over the staff of ivory.
She snorted. The fool. No one save her father would ever be able to unlock the power of the staff. Gods only knew how many times she had tried to use it, and gotten nothing except burnt hands for her efforts.
Her father had come from the north - and from farther away from that, as Anna later found out when her mother told her. It certainly explained why her eyes were blue. In all other aspects, she was her mother's child: a slim, lithe build; golden honey-colored skin; hair as black as the sky on a moonless desert night; and eyes that had an exotic, almost cat-like quality to them that was common of the women of Khemet. The only things that gave away her strange heritage were the color of her eyes and her affinity for water and water sorcery.
"Your father's mark upon you," Nephthys had told Anna on her tenth birthday. For some odd reason, she made it sound as if it were both a blessing and a curse.
She sighed. Indeed, her "father's mark," as her mother had termed it, was both a blessing and a curse. But it was a part of her, a part of the blood that flowed in her veins, and there was nothing she could do about it. While her gifts had certainly been useful, there were times when she wished that she never had them at all.
She shook her head sharply. No, that was in the past, she told herself. It was all in the past. She was mistress of her gifts now, and she would never lose control the way she had when-
A sharp rapping on her prison door drew her out of her thoughts, and sent her crashing back to reality. She sat up straighter, and scowled as an Umbarian guard stepped beneath the archway, leering at her maliciously.
"The Archmage will speak with you now," the guard said. He moved aside to allow two more guards to enter.
She glared at the guard who had spoken to her, as the other two bound her hands behind her back. The light crackle that emanated from her bonds told her that the ropes were enchanted, most likely to prevent her from casting any spells. "And what does the Archmage need me for?"
"It depends on his whim," the guard replied in a nonchalant manner that belied his words. "He may ask you about that staff you had with you. Or he may ask for another type of favor that you, being Khemetian, may not be so willing to give. Or he may ask for both." Here the guard laughed, as if he had just told a very clever joke.
She snarled as she was led past him. "Your Archmage will be dead before he can so much as lay a finger on me."
A gloved hand went up, slapping her across the face. Her head snapped to the side from the strength of the blow, and she tasted the sweet-salty flavor of blood on the tip of her tongue. Her lip had split and was bleeding. She turned her head slowly to glare ferociously at the guard.
"Bring her to the Archmage," the guard said, avoiding the steely lance of her gaze.
She suffered herself to be hauled towards the stairs, her mind thinking of how she could affect her escape.
He eyed the arcane symbols carved into the shaft of the staff; unable to decipher them, but certain that they contained untold power.
And if he could unlock the meaning of those words, he, Omar Casim, Archmage of Umbar, would be the most powerful sorcerer the world had ever known.
He raised the staff to the torchlight, letting the color of the flames tint the ivory in red and orange. The crystal set into the tip of the staff blazed a brilliant blue, taking in the light of the torches and casting it out again in rays of azure light.
Yes, it was indeed what he sought for, what he had waited a lifetime to acquire: the staff of a Wizard of the North, the greatest magic-users to ever roam the land.
Many stories had spoken of them: the Five Wizards of the North [1], who wielded magic now confined only to the realm of myth and legend. Each Wizard, so the legends said, owned a staff that was the symbol of what they were – a staff that was also the seat of their power.
And now he held one of those fabled staffs in his hand. If he could only learn how to unlock its secrets, then he would have power beyond his wildest imaginings. He would no longer have to serve an idiot of a sheik; he would be the one being served. He would rule Umbar – no, the rest of the South. And after he had conquered the South, the North Kingdom [2] would no longer be-
Knocking on the door interrupted his thoughts. "What?" he snapped irritably.
"My Lord, we have the girl," replied the person on the other side. The voice was gruff – one of the many prison guards who worked deep in the labyrinthine dungeons beneath the palace.
He stood still, and then smiled when he remembered why he had sent for the girl in the first place. "Ah, yes. Send her in."
The door creaked open, and a pair of guards marched a girl into the room. They pushed her down into a chair, and while she yielded to them with minimal resistance, there was something in the way that she set her lips and glared at them with her eyes that declared to the world that she would not stand for such an indignity to her person.
He gazed at her critically, and raised an eyebrow. This scrawny child was the one who had attempted to assassinate the sheik? He thought it would be someone older, not this girl who was barely into womanhood. And judging from her features, she was a Khemetian. Why would Khemet send an inexperienced spy to slay the ruler of Umbar?
Her blue eyes – a very rare trait amongst her people – looked up at him with the tempered ferocity of a caged leopardess. "What do you want of me?" she asked, her voice soft yet haughty. "You sent for me, and they said you wished to speak with me."
He grabbed her by the chin, forcing her to look at him squarely in the eye. "You will keep your silence, unless you wish me to cut out your tongue." He squeezed her face tightly, spitefully, just to hurt her, before he let her go. "At any rate, you will keep your tongue if you will tell me all you know about this." Here he showed her the ivory staff.
The girl took one look at the staff, and shook her head. "I do not know the secrets of the staff."
He turned to her, frowning in displeasure. Khemetians were not normally this stubborn, especially after they had been shown the "hospitalities" of the dungeons. He strode over to her, towering above her. "You will tell me the secrets of this staff, whelp, before I decide that you are better off fed to the wyverns [3]."
The girl returned his gaze, and he was slightly unnerved by the shocking blue clarity of her irises. "I know nothing about that staff. The only one who could have known anything about it has been dead for fifteen years."
He narrowed his eyes. The whelp was lying. The person was not dead at all. He slapped her across the face for her troubles. "You will not lie to me again, whelp. A third time, and I will really feed you to the wyverns."
The girl turned to look at him again, and spat at him. Blood mixed with saliva dribbled down the front of his robes. "Then I'd much rather be food for the wyverns. Even if I knew how to use that staff, I would never tell you how."
His eyes narrowed, and he clenched his jaw. "Very well then," he muttered coldly. "Since you are no longer of any use to me I may as well be done with you." He turned to the door. "Guards!"
The door swung open, and the guards who had brought the girl entered. "My Lord?"
"Take her," he nodded in the direction of the whelp, "and feed the wyverns."
The guards strode into the room, and hauled the girl to her feet. As she was led past, she turned her head to glare at him. In that glare he saw a promise: the promise that she would come back and give him a slow, painful death.
Her words did not go unheard by him: "Someday," she muttered, "someday…"
The door closed again, silencing the rest of her words.
The words unnerved him. There was something in the way she said them – perhaps the echo, or the tone of her voice – that made it seem as if she was laying a curse on him. A curse of eventual punishment and vengeance, that her hands would someday be stained with his blood, or that beneath her grip his breath would slip away and never, ever come back.
He shook his head, dismissing the thought. It was preposterous. Once she had been delivered to the "care" of the wyverns that would be the end of her. Let the gods take her and be done with it, he thought.
He gazed at the staff once more, noting how the engravings seemed more pronounced in the firelight. He traced the curlicues and arabesques with his fingertips, and smirked. There were other ways of unlocking the secrets and the magic of the staff…
Anna scanned the surrounding area, looking for a possible escape route that would lead her to freedom. As of the moment, however, there was no escape route. All the passages were guarded, and she knew that trying to run away now would only get her killed.
That meant she would just have to try her luck with the wyverns.
The rank stench of rotting meat and wyvern dung assaulted her nostrils, almost making her gag. She was now standing in front of an iron gate that led to a bowl-shaped area with steep sides, topped by a fine wire mesh to prevent the wyverns from escaping. Beyond that she could see the wyverns of the Umbarians milling around restlessly, waiting for their next meal. In the faint light of the crescent moon she could just make out the edges of well-gnawed bones both human and animal.
She tasted fear at the back of her throat. It was obvious to her now that these people had tried to get out, but had failed miserably. In the faint, watery light she caught sight of the gleam of gold and other metals – weapons that had proven to be of no avail against the sweeping wings, powerful tails and sharp talons and fangs of the wyverns. And in such a tightly enclosed area, it truly was impossible to escape, even if one was armed to the teeth. There would simply be no room to stand ground and attack properly, since the creatures would be everywhere all at once. If she wished to escape, she would have to find some room in which to attack.
But first, she had to find a way to cut her bonds.
Just then, she felt a tingling that began in the soles of her feet, and climbed all the way to the base of her skull. Her lips curved into a grin. A saltwater spring below the enclosure? What luck! In her mind, she quickly began to form a plan that – she hoped – would work.
The gate clattered open then, and she was shoved in the space beyond. The moment the barrier clanged shut, the wyverns attacked.
Uadjit's [4] vengeance light on the mage who made these accursed ropes, she swore in her mind, ducking as a wyvern swooped down on her. She hissed in pain when one of the wing-edges caught the skin of her forearm, cutting a long gash into the flesh. The Umbarians were cruel masters; they often edged the wings of their wyverns in a thin layer of iron. Once the iron had cooled, it was as sharp as a razor blade, and thus made the wyvern an even deadlier weapon: the iron-edged wings could easily sever a man's head from his shoulders if he happened to be too close while the creature was flapping around. The process was a very painful one for the wyverns. Perhaps that was why they were so hostile.
She hopped backwards to avoid the snapping jaws of another, and she choked when she inhaled the creature's breath. While these wyverns did not possess venom, their diet, which consisted of decaying and rotten meat, was foul enough that one bite would cause the wound to become infected. If not treated immediately, one could die from such a wound. She knew all too well – many of Khemet's finest warriors had died from bites inflicted by the Umbar wyverns.
I wish I had something sharp, she thought as she ran between the legs of a wyvern that had loomed over her, confusing it. Taking advantage of that pause, she looked around, searching for an object sharp enough to cut her bonds. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something glint in the sparse moonlight: the edge of a small dagger, held in the bony grip of an unfortunate soul who had not been able to fend off the monsters that had eaten him.
Renenet [5] be praised, she thought in relief, offering a prayer to the Goddess of Fortune. She rolled along the ground to retrieve the dagger and avoid the sweep of a third wyvern's tail, resulting in her getting covered in mud and dung. Flipping the dagger over in her palm, she used it to sever the ropes that bound her wrist. The blade was still sharp and cut the bonds easily, but it came away with more than just hemp.
Thus freed from her impediments, she stood up, and raised bloodied hands to the sky. In a voice that was almost not her own, she cried out the words to the spell that caused the water of the underground spring to rise to the surface.
The ground beneath her feet began to tremble, first only slightly, but grew more and more violent. The wyverns screeched and took to the air, their wings stirring up the bones that were scattered on the ground. Despite all of this, she stood firm, knowing what was to come.
In a few moments, a rumbling sound climbed from the depths of the earth, growing louder and louder as the quakes grew stronger. The wyverns went wild, beating against the mesh over the top of their enclosure. The rumbling reached its peak, and the walls of the enclosure suddenly sank into the now-marshy ground. She had caused the waters of the underground spring to come to the surface, destroying the foundations of the enclosure and causing it to sink into the moist ground.
She had very little time to think of her accomplishment, for she was still too close to danger. Dropping the dagger she had recovered, she slogged over the mud-like earth, hoping that the wyverns would be too busy enjoying their freedom to notice her.
She had hoped for too much. The moment she had cleared the ruins of the enclosure and was in the open, one of the wyverns caught sight of her, and dove after her with a cry of hunger.
She cursed when she saw the wyvern following her. She could have dealt with it using magic, but she had neither the time nor strength to do so. Her only hope was to somehow find a place where she could hide safely. But all around her there was nothing but open, dry, dusty plain, without a single patch of greenery for her to hide in. It was as if Saa [6] had forsaken this land.
The wind whistled an awful sound, mingling with the sound of her scream as the wyvern's claws dug into her shoulders, lifting her into the air. In desperation, she scratched at the legs of the creature until her fingertips bled, but it didn't work. The scales of the legs were simply too tough to be affected by her scratching.
She looked down at the landscape passing below, and she saw that they were passing over a pond, but the water was too far away for her to use.
Realizing that she had no other choice, she decided that she had to do something. She closed her eyes, trying to calm herself. There was only one way she could save herself now. It was forbidden magic – blood magic – but she had no other choice.
Wincing against the pain, she placed her hand against her wounded shoulder, and murmured another spell, one that would draw the blood out of her body through the wound, and form it into a weapon in her hand.
Her heart lurched, and her veins ran cold as the spell drew out the blood from her wound and into her hand. As she watched, the sanguine fluid solidified, forming a dagger that glimmered like a pale ruby in the moonlight. She became lightheaded, and she struggled to maintain a clear line of thought, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. If she wanted to free herself, she had to act now. With a cry, she raised her blood-dagger, and stabbed it into the wyvern's knee joint.
The reaction was instantaneous. The wyvern let out a yowl of pain, and dropped her into the lake. The moment she plunged into the water, she lost consciousness.
"Where is it going?"
"East, towards the lake," he muttered, never taking his eye out of the spyglass that he was using to track the progress of the wyvern that had been flying over the lake across from his house. It was a black wyvern – a species that was kept only by the people of Umbar. But what was an Umbar wyvern doing, flying over Rûmenyan [7] territory? Did they wish to engage in a war against them? Was this the first act of hostility against his nation?
His eyes narrowed. Rûmenyen could not fight a war, not now, not with the kingdom in such turmoil. If the Corsairs did decide to launch a war against them at this point in time, then they would surely lose – unless the West Kingdom [8] decided to take action, but he was highly doubtful that it would.
He snapped to attention again when he noticed that a figure – human – was dangling from the wyvern's claws. As he watched, the figure lifted what looked like a dagger, and stabbed it into the joint of the wyvern's knees. The creature yowled in pain, letting go of its erstwhile passenger who dropped like a stone into the waters of the pond that was just outside his home.
There was a whisper of soft cloth and leather behind him as his companion got up, joining him at the window. "What was that, Magtìr?"
Magtìr Teididh lowered the spyglass, placing it back on the stand just below the windowsill. "Wei," he said, "get some healing supplies together: honey, knitbone [9], yarrow – anything you can find. Bring bandages too: there should be some on the shelf next to the door."
Wei Ting Kuoh looked at him in a puzzled manner. "Why?"
He did not allow her to continue, because he was out the door before she could continue. He knew that he had to explain, but he did not have the time, not right now. If he wanted to reach the person in the pond in time to save him or her, he had to move quickly.
The wind was chilly, and he had forgotten to wear a cloak, but it was not important. He jogged to the pond, wading into the shallows before diving into the cold water. He swam underwater for a while, and surfaced quickly, looking around. He found what he was looking for nearby: a floating object that resembled a log, but that he knew wasn't a log at all.
He swam closer, and drew the floating body close for inspection. It was a girl, with long raven hair and golden-tan skin – obviously from the South, and from her dress, one of the many tribes that lived in and around the Great Desert [10].
He swam towards shore, towing the girl along behind him. When he glanced at the shore, he saw Wei waiting there, a small satchel in her hands.
Wei opened her mouth to ask what was going on, but fell silent immediately when she saw the girl.
"Move," he muttered, waiting till Wei stepped back before laying the girl down on the grass. His frown deepened when he saw the wounds in the girl's shoulders where the wyvern's claws had dug into her flesh. There was also certain paleness to her face and coldness to her skin that indicated something else. His eyes narrowed again. Blood magic?
"She is a Khemetian," Wei murmured then, while he looked through the healing implements.
He took in the features of the girl for a moment, and nodded in agreement to Wei's assessment. "So she is." He uncorked one of the bottles in the satchel that Wei had brought, and sniffed the contents. Honey and knitbone. He nodded in satisfaction. It was good enough.
"How bad is the wound?" Wei inquired.
He did not stop in his motions, steadily wrapping the bandages around the girl's injured shoulder. "It is rather deep, but we got to her in time. She will heal quickly."
"Then she will awaken while I am still here?"
"Yes," he replied. He glanced up at his companion as he knotted the ends of the bandages together. "She should be well by the end of this week. Come." He wiped his hands on his wet trousers before picking the girl up. She was light – far too light for someone of her height. He frowned at this. Perhaps it was a side effect of the blood magic that she had performed – whatever it might have been.
Wei led the way back to his cottage, holding the door open for him.
He paused a moment on the threshold, looking back at the world outside. After ensuring that all was safe, he entered the cottage, and Wei closed the door behind him.
[2]= This refers to the Reunited Kingdoms under the House of Telcontar – what would be, in Tolkien's canon, the area that is officially recognized as Middle-Earth.
[3]= In mythology, wyverns are creatures that are said to be like dragons, but do not have the forelimbs that regular dragons do, having only hind legs, and are also more serpent-like than their dragon kin. They are said to be a cross between dragons and serpents.
I have speculated before that the fell beasts that were the mounts of the Nazgûl during the War of the Ring were wyverns, and I play that angle to the fullest in this story. While some speculate that it was Sauron himself who created the fell beasts (and thus the species of wyverns itself), I myself choose to believe that Sauron did not create the wyverns as a species, but instead took wyverns from places in the South and East, and corrupted them in Barad-dur into the "fell beasts" mentioned in the Trilogy. The fact that Tolkien has written next to nothing about the flora and fauna of the South and the East makes my idea a very tantalizing possibility.
[4]= This is the name of the Egyptian cobra goddess. Though in actual Egyptian mythology Uadjit is the protector of the Pharaoh and the rest of the Royal Household, in my story she is the Goddess of Vengeance, her role being similar to that of the Furies in Greek mythology.
[5]= She is the ancient Egyptian goddess of fortune.
[6]= This is the name of an ancient Egyptian god of nature.
[7]= This is a reference to the kingdom of Rûmenyen, which lies beyond the eastern wastes near Mordor, in what was once Hildorien.
[8]= This is another reference to the Reunited Kingdoms under the House of Telcontar.
[9]= This is another name for comfrey, which is an herb that aids in the quick healing of wounds.
[10]= This is the desert area that takes up a large part of the Near and Far South.