Kala Fort, Chah Salar, the jagirdar of Mulayam amou'Hadiqa
Farmana-e-Gurkaniyan, the Land of Ten Rivers , ruled by Skandar Auliya, Breaker of Dragons, Light of the Faith, He Who Grips the World, etc. etc.
99 Anno Skandari (After Skandar's coronation)
The door creaked open. She stared into the light with wild hunted eyes. If it was Durza, she would try to bite him.
A slavegirl, maybe twelve years old, dipped into the cell. Her eyes, brown and lovely, stared at the ground. Delicately she placed a tray of food on the carpeted floor.
"Thank you," Arya said, instinctively. The slavegirl stared at her in shock. Quickly she wheeled around and fled the room.
Arya attacked the food. It was the standard fare of the east. Once upon a time the spices would have been like pieces of lava on her tongue. Now, however, she devoured the curried goatflesh and the buttery paneer, eating like a starved beast. How much richer it tasted than the codfish they treated like a delicacy in the north. In the white peaks of Ghor, she had wept like a girl, remembering the snowbound hills of her childhood, but she had no real longing for the food of her homeland.
But chewing made her gums howl in pain. She'd been beaten before. She'd brawled with men who tried to rape her and taken lashes from elephant-hide whips, but Durza's fists and kicks were like the blows of a morningstar. She had woken screaming in the jagir's hospice when his physicians clamped bronze vices around her shattered teeth and tore them out of her mouth. They had given her poppy wine and ganja for the agony but she had smoked and drank all of it and still pain gnawed doglike at her face and gums.
In the gloom Arya sat shaking. If she ever saw Cymric again, she would give him a hideous death.
She awoke to four men standing above her. Three were thugs, brawlers from the villages with big hands and little eyes. The other was a coalblack Surdan, his face soft and wrinkled. "Peace be upon you, Enemy of God," he croaked.
"And on you, old man," she replied warily.
"I am here to take you away," the old Surdan said. His eyes were blue at the edges. "To the jagir's hall. You are to be questioned."
"I'm your prisoner, old man." Arya stared at him wildly. "But tell your jagir that I have nothing for him. I'll die before I tell him anything."
The Surdan pursed his lips. "Listen to me," he said, his voice sharp. "You're an enemy of the emperor, and you're an enemy of God, but no real worshipper of His likes the sight of blood. For your sake and ours, answer the jagir honestly. It would curdle our souls to see you tortured."
"Oh, it would curdle your souls, would it?" Did this Surdan really expect her to believe that he cared about her? "Tell me, old man, did it curdle your souls when they whipped the northmen like beasts? Did it curdle your souls when they broke into our villages and put fire in our homes and made our daughters into prostitutes? Your Almighty Khuda is a demon," she hissed. "He's a rapist, a slaver, and a murderer, and his teachings are a pack of lies."
The guards growled like dogs. "Lord Omoro." The ugliest one, a man with the build of a village wrestler, ambled forward, his fists clenched. "May I strike her?"
The old Surdan looked at her and sighed heavily. "You shouldn't have blasphemed, Enemy of God," he said. "Go ahead, Lohar."
"You cowards," Arya snarled. She could feel Cymric's knife at her throat again. "You bloody cowards, you bloody pigeating filth—"a gnarled fist crashed into her mouth and she reeled away half-insane, but she could still feel his fingers on her shoulder and she looked at Lohar and spat blood in his face.
The soldier recoiled from her, disbelieving. "Did you see that? Did you bloody see that?" He turned to his fellows, incredulous. "This woman, she spat on me. You bitch," he breathed. His eyes were horrific. "You bloody whore pagan bitch!"
"That's enough, for God's sake!" Omoro's voice became a whipcrack. "Do you intend on killing her? This woman is meant for the Emperor Skandar! No one blasphemes here, not in the fort of Mulayam amou'Hadiqa, but I'll be damned if I give the Emperor Skandar the corpse of a woman he wants alive. And you, woman, you will see the jagir. Wrap her in chains and put a gag in her mouth."
"I'll kill you," she rasped. She could barely see. "By Dummanios, Mananann, and Morrigan, I swear I'll kill all of you. Cymric. Cymric, son of Aelle, I'll kill him and I'll kill you too."
Omoro gave her one last withering look, his eyes pale. "You shouldn't have blasphemed," he said again. Then they crammed a wet rag between the ruins of her gums and she was silent.
The jagir Mulayam looked at his friend, incredulous. "You're telling me that this woman isn't even fully human?"
Ponniyar the dwarf snorted. "She's about as human as I am. Pass the pipe."
"Yes, but the dwarfs are civilized. I mean, you're ugly little heathens," Mulayam said, handing Ponniyar the hookah. "But we wouldn't have guns without you, would we?"
Ponniyar gave him a hairy grin. "No, you bloody wouldn't. You humans are some the worst inventors imaginable. You'd still be speaking in grunts and shitting in caves if it weren't for the dwarfs." He took a deep burbling drag, spewing a fog of purple smoke. "And if it weren't for us, that woman's ancestors would have devoured yours. I know all the stories. In the Dawn Ages, when even the dwarfs were young, the world was full of monsters. There were dragons on every mountaintop, dragons that could speak, dragons big enough to blot out the sun. There were cursed men, men with the heads of birds, men with great curling horns, and men who let demons possess them, but none of them, no, not one of them was even half as vile as the race of elves."
"But the elves are all dead, just like all of those other monstrosities are dead. You told me this story on your last trip, back when we went on a lion hunt in the Ghazali plains. The elves broke your forts and sacrificed your kings to some demon, and in revenge you dwarfs hunted them out of existence."
"That we did," Ponniyar said, with great satisfaction, as if he had been there for that prehistoric slaughter. "We were the first ones in this land but the elves came howling out of the north with their chariots and their witchcraft and they fell upon us without warning. But in the Dawn Ages our gods walked the earth like mortal men, and with them on our side we were unstoppable."
Mulayam smiled slightly. "The prophet Murtagha once said that there are no gods but Almighty Khuda, and all others are nothing more than idols or stories."
Ponniyar snorted at that. "If your prophet Murtagha tried preaching that to the dwarfs, they would have laughed in his face. Your Almighty Khuda is a good god, I'll admit that much, and he's good to his worshippers. But ours took to the earth and fought at our side when we needed them the most. The elves had their black magic and their demoncraft and their chieftains fought us on dragonback, but we were led by the gods Bhagirath and Jamadagni, and with their axes they destroyed the race of elves twenty-six times over until they fled weeping and howling into the frozen north. But by then," he continued. "There were people in the north, humans. Not paleskins, those came later. I don't know what these humans called themselves but the elves threw them down, made them their slaves, and bred with them. Some of them found this disgusting. They abandoned the others and left the north and disappeared from history. The others stayed. You wouldn't be able to tell that this woman is an elf, but I've heard her name before, and I know where she comes from."
"What a bizarre story." The jagir stroked his beard. "Are many of the northmen descended from elves?"
"Yes," Ponniyar said, a savage look in his eyes. "That's why we loved Skandar from the start. That's why we gave him and Durza shelter during their Great Betrayal. Dwarfs never forget, Mulayam. Every time Skandar's made war upon the northmen, I've marched with him. I was there when they came against Gil'ead in a great howling horde, back when your great-grandfather was a little boy. I was even there for the last battles of the Great Betrayal, when Skandar and his generals entered the city of Osilon and burnt it out of memory. That was a beautiful thing to see, Mulayam. I love your country, the open sky, watching the animals roam, but I would give it up in a second if I could again follow in the footsteps of my gods. Before you die, Mulayam, I hope you get to go on a holy war."
The jagir gripped his friend by the shoulder. "Maybe I'll follow you, the next time those pagan apes go on the rampage?"
Ponniyar grinned fiercely at him. "That would make me prouder than words can say."