The Great Bazaar and Other Stories (7 page)

He was cut off, as
the
dal'Sharum
struck him across the face with the butt of his spear.
Blood and teeth exploded from the merchant's mouth as he fell to the dust. He
tried to rise, but the warrior that had struck him leapt around behind him,
putting his spear under Amit's chin and his knee into his back, pulling hard to
choke Amit's head upwards to look at the
dama
and boy.

"Is this the
one?" the lead
dama
asked the boy.

"Yes,"
Jamere said. "He said he would kill my mother, if I did not obey."

"What?!"
Amit gasped. "I've never seen you before in my...!" Again the warrior
pulled back on the spear, and his words were cut off with a gurgle.

"Do you
recognize this?" the
dama
asked, holding up the spear Abban had
dropped in the street, tied with the bright orange cloth he had used to signal
Jamere. "Do you think us stupid? It's no secret you wear a womanly orange
kerchief on your vestigial weapon, cripple."

"Dama,
see here," a warrior cried, leading a camel from Amit's pen. "It's
been whipped recently, and wears leather pads on its feet."

Amit's eyes
bulged, though it was hard to tell if it was from incredulity or the
continually choking spear at his throat. "That's not my...!" was all
he managed to cough.

"Tell us who
your accomplice was," the
dama
demanded. The warrior at Amit's back
eased the choking spear so he could answer.

Gone was all the
smug superiority from Amit's voice, the security in his position in this world
and the next. Abban listened carefully, savoring the pathetic desperation in
his rival's voice as he protested his innocence and begged for his life.

"Tear the
black from him," the
dama
ordered, and Amit screamed as the
warriors took hold of his robes, ripping at them until the crippled man was
lying naked in the street. The
dal'Sharum
took his arms and pulled back
on his hair to ensure he made eye contact with the
dama
, who knelt
before him.

"You are
khaffit
now, Amit of no lineage worth mentioning," the
dama
said. "For the short, painful remainder of your life, know this, for when
your spirit leaves this world, it will forever sit outside the gates of
Heaven."

"Nooo!"
Amit screamed. "It is a lie!"

The
dama
looked up at the warriors. "Confiscate everything of value in his
pavilion," he said, "and bring it to the temple. Use his women, if
you like, and then have them sold. Put any sons to the spear." Amit
howled, thrashing against the men who held his arms until one of the warriors
clubbed him in the back of the head with his spear, dropping him senseless to
the ground.

The
dama
looked down at Amit in disgust. "Haul this filth to the Chamber of Eternal
Sorrow," he told the
dal'Sharum,
"that the Damaji might take
their time in flaying the skin from his misbegotten bones."

Abban let the tent
flap fall and retreated into his pavilion, pouring himself a cup of couzi.

A few moments
later, the tent flap rose and fell again.

"The Par'chin
nearly broke Dama Kavere's knee," Jamere said. "He wants more than couzi
to account for it."

Abban nodded,
expecting as much. "You were supposed to volunteer to stall Kavere when I
stumbled, not the Par'chin," Abban reminded.

Jamere shrugged.
"He beat me to it," he said, "and would hear no protest."

"Well don't
let it happen again," Abban snapped. "The Par'chin is valuable to me,
and I would be most displeased to lose him."

"Do you think
he'll find Anoch Sun?" Jamere asked.

Abban laughed.
"Don't be stupid, boy," he said. "Those maps have been copied
and re-copied for three thousand years, and even if they still manage to point
him the right way, the lost city, if it even exists, is buried deep beneath the
sands. The Par'chin is a good-hearted fool, but a fool nonetheless."

"He'll be
angry, when he returns," Jamere observed.

Abban shrugged.
"At first, perhaps," he began.

"But then
you'll wave some other ancient scroll in his face, and he'll forget all about
it," Jamere guessed, stealing a swig out of Abban's couzi bottle, not
bothering with a cup.

Abban smiled,
giving the boy the various bribes he would need when he returned to Sharik
Hora. He watched Jamere go with a mix of pride and profound regret.

The boy could
really have been something, if he wasn't set to waste his life as a
dama.

There
were a great many
deleted scenes from
The Warded Man.
Some were cut for length (I had
written an extremely long book by debut novel standards), or for pacing, or
because they went off on tangents and reduced overall tension.

However, many of
those deleted scenes are nice little stories in their own right, and it's
wonderful that Subterranean Press has given me the opportunity to share a
couple of them, along with my commentary, in this great collection. What's best
about the selections presented is that they are self-contained story arcs, and
can be enjoyed by new readers and fans of the series alike.

INTRODUCTION

This scene is
how it
all started. I was taking a fantasy writing class in 1999, and we were given a
homework assignment to "write the first scene of an original fantasy
novel." I wrote a little story about a young boy named Arlen who was never
allowed to go farther from home than he could get by midday, because he needed
to get back home before the demons came out at night.

To be honest, I
knocked the story out in one night, and after I got my grade (an A, natch), I
threw it in a drawer for years. At the time, I was working on a different book,
but Arlen was never far from my thoughts, and every once in a while I would jot
down a few notes on his world. The entire
Warded Man
series grew out of
this 1600 word story.

WHY IT WAS CUT

This opening was
one
of the biggest points of contention between me and my editor. She felt quite
strongly that prologues in general were obsolete, and that this one was also
told in a very different voice than the rest of the book and didn't fit. She
also thought it didn't add anything that couldn't be shown elsewhere. I
couldn't have disagreed more, believing that it set the mood and scene
perfectly, and was a view into young Arlen's personality that was essential.

We had some...
lively debates on the subject. I have a great deal of respect for my editor,
and I tried very hard to see her side of things. It took me a while to separate
my personal attachment to the scene to the point where I could consider things
impartially. When I finally managed to do so, I realized that she was right,
and cut the scene. I think the book as a whole works better without it, though
on a personal level, it is still very near and dear to my heart. It makes me
really happy to see it in print at last.

SCENE

When Arlen was
a boy,
he would play outside until the last moment of dusk before answering his
mother's calls. There was nothing worse than being locked inside each night,
and he was determined not to let a minute of daylight be wasted indoors.

He would rise
while darkness still reigned, stepping over the threshold of his family
farmhouse before even the cock could crow, just as the first beams of sunlight
topped the hills, brightening the reddened sky and sending the shadows
scurrying away for another day. His mother wanted him to count to a hundred
after that, but he never listened.

Adventure awaited,
but Arlen knew his chores came first. Snatching the cloth-lined wicker basket
from where it lay by the door, he would run to the chicken coop, ignoring the
squawks of protest as he gathered the eggs, handling them as deftly as the
colored balls of a Jongleur.

With a dash back
to the house, he left the eggs for his mother to find and was outside again in
a moment. Before his father could pull on his overalls, before his mother had
changed from her nightdress, Arlen was on a stool beneath the first of the
cows. He left the milk and rushed to the rest of his chores while his father
ate breakfast. The wellhouse, the curing shed, the smokehouse, the silo, each
was paid a hurried visit, as if he were but a breeze passing through the farm.

There was
something comforting about the morning ritual. It reaffirmed his bond with the
land, a bond severed each night as his mother locked the doors and his father
checked the wards on the windows.

He let the animals
out of the barn, guiding the pigs to their day-pen and the sheep to the pasture
with cracks of a switch. He fed the swine and the horse, paying the sheep
little mind. Even without the dogs to mind them, they would not venture past
the wardposts, for the grass beyond was scorched and ruined.

There were other
chores, less frequent, less comforting. Once in a while it happened that some
animal or another was not where it was supposed to be by dusk, and was lost. He
would find it the next morning, torn to shreds, and bury it behind the
outhouse.

Arlen had done it
all a thousand times, and he went about his duties with such practiced
efficiency that by midmorning, he was usually done. By then, his father was
well out into the fields checking the wardposts, and so he went back to the
house for the familiar breakfast: oats, eggs, and bacon kept warm by his
mother. He'd wolf it all down without a pause for air. A gulp of milk to help
him swallow, and he was bouncing from his seat.

His mother caught
him. She always did. There was always something for him to do in the house, the
chores he hated most. But there was no denying his mother, and complaining
would not fill the firebox, or sweep the floor, or put fresh charcoal sticks in
the warding kit. "Yarn doesn't make itself," she would tell him.

By midday, he was
free. Before his father returned from the fields with new chores for him, Arlen
would snatch some bread and cheese and dash off to eat his lunch. Like his
breakfast, he hardly tasted it. Food was sustenance, nothing more.

How far can I
get today?
he would ask himself as he ate his lunch. With nearly eight
hours until dusk, he could head off in any direction he wanted for four. The
sun's place in the sky would tell him when to turn back.

It was a dangerous
game, one the other children of Tibbet's Brook dared not play. It was one of a
thousand ways Arlen differed from them. All of the others were content to live
in the Brook, never caring what lay over the next hill. It was a safe way to
live. His father called it a smart way, but Arlen thought differently. The
people of Tibbet's Brook were too content to take someone else's word for what
lay up the road or through the woods or past the river to the south... if there
even
was
a river. Arlen preferred to see for himself.