Jalia on the Road (Jalia - World of Jalon) (4 page)

Jalia drew her sword from across her back. It was far shorter than the one the King held. However, the King was in no doubt who would win if they were to fight. Jalia’s reputation with the sword was well known at court and the King was well aware how limited his own skills were.

“All I want is my money for killing the giant and I will be on my way. I expect that this giant,” she nodded in the direction of the explosions, “Will follow me and leave Bagdor in peace.”

The King was secretly delighted at Jalia’s suggestion. He could give her the money and nobody would know. He would tell the people that his guards drove off the giant.

“I will get the money.” The king walked back to the throne room where the petty cash was kept and returned with two hundred pieces of gold in a bag. He threw it down onto the table. “Now leave Bagdor and take your giant with you.”

Jalia picked up the money bag and walked to the far doors. As she approached them, the servants behind them pulled them open. At least a dozen servants stood just beyond the door, having heard every word the King had said.

Some of the servants scuttled off to their work. King Trep realized wearily that everyone in the city would know the detail of his confrontation with Jalia before dawn broke.

“I told them to wait outside, but to listen well,” Jalia shouted mischievously before running from the room, her laughter echoing against the walls.

The sound of the giant stopped as suddenly as they began. The last bit of building destroyed stood near to the palace gate. People were to say later that the giant disappeared the instant that Jalia was paid.

Yousef was dreaming. It was a repeated dream that started in his childhood and grew longer with the passing years. It was as though his conscience was determined to remind him of his sins. In recent times he woke screaming in pain. But then, he always woke up screaming in pain these days.

The dream began with events that took place just a few days after Yousef’s eighth birthday. He was an only child and used to getting what he wanted.

His father had been sent to Bagdor, to train their King’s Guards in swordsmanship, having been sent as a gesture of friendship by Delbon’s King Dran. Yousef and his mother lived alone in a small house in a secluded part of Delbon awaiting his father’s return. His father had been gone for over a year.

Yousef knew his mother was beautiful. His friends parents would often comment on it when he visited them. His father was highly regarded in the Guard and as a consequence they had a lot of friends. Nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of a man who had the King’s ear.

However, for the last few months, his mother regularly took into their home a mysterious man called Hasan al’Kebar and people were talking about it. Yousef friends made scurrilous comments about his mother.
 
As a consequence, he decided to hide in his mother’s bedroom to prove those accusations as lies.

It didn’t work out the way he anticipated and he witnessed his mother and Hasan making passionate love in his father’s bed. Terrified he might be discovered he kept very quiet.

“I’m pregnant,” Kenda told Hasan. “I don’t understand how this can be since I have been faithfully taking gintel tea.”

“My family’s seed pays little attention to such things when its time has come,” Hasan replied.

“I won’t leave David for you.” Kenda sat up in bed and pulled a cover over her naked and sweaty body. “I don’t know what possessed me to have this affair in the first place. I love my husband more than I love life itself.”

“You had no choice.” Hasan said wearily. He got out of the bed and began to put on his clothes. “I am more than you think and our son nestling in your womb will have a hard life, as I have done before him. Will your husband keep you when he finds out about the child?”

Kenda sounded distraught when she answered him.

“I don’t know. I can only hope. And what do you mean, our son? How can you know the child will be a boy?”

“It always is.” Hasan pulled up his trousers. “My line always produces just one child and it is always a boy. I was born in similar circumstances with a cuckolded husband.”

“I don’t understand, Hasan. Why must you talk in riddles? Don’t you want to know your son as he grows?”

Hasan looked down on the woman he had shared a bed with. His next words would be a version of the words his mother told him the day he reached his majority. He wondered if Kenda would believe him.

“I will likely be dead within the year. The Fairie seek out my line and destroy us when they find us.” Hasan straightened up and looked almost regal as he continued to explain.

“I am the last in the line of the Magician Kings, as my father was before me and our son will be in times to come. I know you don’t believe me, but consider how you betrayed your beloved husband to lay with me, and have become pregnant when it should be impossible. The magic chooses the mother and makes conception happen. It is the only magic my family possesses, as you need a mentor to learn magic and there are no longer any teachers.”

“That’s nonsense,” Kenda stated, but there was doubt in her voice. Whatever attracted her to Hasan had begun to fade and she couldn’t believe she had ever taken this man to her bed.

Hasan unstrapped the dagger from his belt and dropped it in its scruffy leather sheath onto Kenda’s bed.

“When it was clear the Faerie would destroy all the Magician Kings, the families got together and constructed this dagger to protect the heir. It is given to each successive heir on their seventh birthday. It is deliberately made to look cheap and unworthy of theft. While it has had many replacement handles the blade is the original and holds its power. Keep the dagger and give it to Daniel when the time comes. It will shield the magic in him from the Faerie.”

Kenda stood up, bristling with sudden anger. “You plan to leave me pregnant, but dare to think that you can name our child.”

Yousef cowered in the cupboard. He had never heard his mother sound so angry.

Hasan gave a weary laugh. “Tell him what I have told you on his seventeenth birthday, the day he becomes a man. When the time comes he will father a child as I have done and he must pass on the dagger to his son.”

Hasan walked out of the room leaving Kenda speechless.

Yousef’s dream seamlessly shifted to Daniel’s seventh birthday. His mother and father had become farmers within the New Farms area inside the city walls. Such farms were valuable, unlike those on the Delbon Plains, because they were safe from raiders. However, to get any produce at all from the poor soil took backbreaking work.

Yousef was jealous of the attention his father gave Daniel. This despite the fact that Daniel had to work much harder than Yousef did. Daniel was already a better swordsman than Yousef would ever be, even though Yousef had excellent skills with a sword.

The dagger was Daniel’s only present that year and it looked cheap and shoddy compared with the one Yousef wore on his belt. But Yousef remembered the words Hasan has spoken to his mother and was insanely jealous.

Yousef’s dream spun through time and he found himself standing with Daniel over the graves they had just dug for their parents. Daniel was a pretty twelve year old boy, looking very different from his swarthy older brother.

“We will sell the farm and become traders, Daniel,” Yousef said.

Daniel shrugged and a tear fell to the dry earth.

“If that’s what you want. It doesn’t seem to matter much.”

Yousef decided he would never tell Daniel about the boy’s real father. He even considered buying Daniel a dagger and getting him to throw away the one Hasan bequeathed him. The idea of Fairie existing, let alone hunting down the heir of the Magician Kings seemed to be ludicrous. Better to remove all evidence of Daniel’s illicit past.

The part of Yousef that knew he was dreaming noted he had never got around to changing the dagger, something always came up to stop him.

The dream moved in time while Yousef tossed and turned in his bed. The remainder of this dream was horrible and his mind tried to flee from the pain to come.

Yousef was on the Delbon Plain and he and Daniel had just been captured by raiders. It was the worst fear of any trader. They had been tied up and there was no possibility of escape.

Yousef slept fitfully with the ropes biting into his wrists and legs. He awoke to find Daniel untying him. Every single raider was dead. Each man’s head was neatly severed from his body.

Yousef whipped Daniel to get the truth from him. He remembered how good it felt to strike Daniel. It wiped away the fear that had seized him from their moment of capture, erased in part with each new red stripe across Daniel’s back. A part of Yousef felt shame at what he had done and he moaned in his sleep.

When Daniel told him the Fairie had enchanted that dagger, the very dagger Yousef had hated and been jealous of for most of his life, his sense deserted him. He said those fateful commanding words, “Magic Sword, my ass,” as he held the despised thing in his hand.

Yousef felt the pain once again as the dagger flew from his hand and rammed itself up to the hilt in his bottom. It was a fatal wound and blood poured down his legs as he collapsed. Daniel pulled the dagger out of Yousef and flung it away in disgust and horror.

Yousef looked at his brother while lying on the ground in unendurable pain. Daniel tried to staunch the flow of blood with his rolled up shirt, but it was hopeless. Yousef could feel his bowels were sliced and knew death was inevitable.

He remembered Daniel weeping. Then Daniel touched his face and it seemed the world became stark white as if the sun had arisen early. An energy shot through him that was warm, living and vibrant. Then Daniel collapsed on top of him and the pain returned.

Yousef woke to find Daniel lying beside him, surrounded by the bodies of the raiders. Eventually Yousef stirred. Daniel lay unconscious and would remain so for a day. Yousef’s wound no longer poured blood and it seemed to have healed, but the pain it caused when he moved was almost unendurable. He struggled over to their water bags and drank one of them dry.

He recovered the dagger, cleaned it and fastened it back onto Daniel’s belt. He couldn’t explain why he did it, except that he knew it was the right thing to do. Yousef poured water down Daniel’s throat, though Daniel never woke. His own pain was too great for him to move more than a few feet before he needed to rest and gather up his strength and resolve.

Daniel awoke and found his brother watching him. “Yousef. How are you?”

“The bleeding has stopped, but I cannot walk.”

It was at that moment that Yousef awoke from his dream, a scream on his lips.

Yousef sat down carefully on his duck-down pillow and winced as a stab of agony reached from the base of his bottom up to his ribs. It had been months since Daniel had dragged the litter carrying Yousef through the city gates and even now the pain from the wound was intense.

“Is it still hurting as much as before, brother?” Daniel asked solicitously from the other side of the table.

“Need you ask?” Yousef said bitterly.

“Perhaps if you went to see Mother Yanda?”

“None of them are any good, Daniel. The King purged the city of healers years ago and we have no competent ones left. I know more about healing than Yanda does.” Yousef panted from the effort of being angry. It hurt so much.

Daniel waited patiently for his brother to calm down. He understood how frustrating it was for Yousef to be in constant pain and unable to do much more than sit and play checkers in the market. Yousef was a young man and he had been reduced to the status of an old one.

“We need to begin trading,” Daniel said as soon as his brother was calm enough to listen. The ‘we’ was a deliberate attempt to placate Yousef, as it was clear Yousef would never walk the trade roads again. A journey of a few feet left him exhausted; the many months on the road to get to Enbar Entar would certainly kill him.

“You aren’t ready to go on your own, Daniel,” Yousef said, starting his counter argument as he always did by focusing on Daniel’s age. “You are only fifteen and will not be regarded as an adult for two more years.”

“People on the road pay little attention to things like that.” Daniel said, repeating the same argument he had made a hundred times. “No one will question my age provided I have goods to trade, as well you know. I often traded for us and that was when I was much younger. Besides which, I have the dagger and will be able to take care of myself.”

Yousef stared bitterly at the dagger Daniel wore on his belt.

“You could join the King’s Guard and earn enough money to keep us,” Yousef argued. “You won all those fighting competitions as a child and people still remember our father and his days as Captain of the Guard.”

“As you say, I am fifteen years old, Yousef, and the pay for a child in the Guard would not keep you in coffee. I need to go out and trade. Our money will run out in less than a year while the round trip to Enbar Entar may take half that and that is the fastest of the trade routes.”

“It’s late in the season, Daniel. You would have to travel on your own and you know how dangerous it is around Delbon.”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Daniel replied and Yousef had to acknowledge the truth of his brother’s words.