The King of Talbos (The Eastern Slave Series Book 6) Read online

  "You go and do as Fashel tells you," Calles said sternly. Calles's daughter, whose lips were squeezed together in an angry fold, turned and stamped away.

  "Why do you think that I hate you?" Ajalia asked Chad. Chad, who had been sitting in the chair Ajalia had put him into, and staring angrily at the floor, glanced at her. He scoffed.

  "I know you think I'm stupid," Chad said sourly. "You and Card both think I'm stupid."

  "You have looked very stupid," Ajalia said truthfully, "in the past. You don't look stupid now."

  "But that's awful to say to me," Chad said.

  "It's been true," Ajalia said. "Do you know that I hired you in the first place because you looked helpless, and honest?" Chad's sneer grew to epic proportions.

  "That's lovely," Chad told Calles. His mouth was angry, but his eyes were sad. "I was stupid-looking first, and now I'm helpless."

  "And honest, she says," Calles added peaceably. Chad glared at her. Ajalia saw that Chad had hoped for an ally in Calles.

  "Well, this is just great," Chad said. "First my parents don't respect me, and now you don't either. Plus, apparently I work for a murderer!" he added dramatically. Ajalia laughed, and Chad narrowed his eyes. "Well, you do kill people," he said viciously.

  "Yes," Ajalia said, "I often do kill people."

  "Well, killing people is bad," Chad said. He folded his arms, and looked superior and calm.

  "Is it always bad, no matter what?" Ajalia asked.

  "Yes," Chad said sternly. "Killing people is wrong. Also," he said, "I don't think cutting off the witches' power kills them."

  "Would you cut off Esther like that?" Ajalia asked. Chad's whole mouth pushed out at once.

  "No!" he said. He spoke vehemently.

  "Why not?" Ajalia asked. She looked over at Calles, to see if the seamstress was distressed at the interruption Chad was making to their talk, but Calles looked as if she was enjoying the exchange thoroughly. Ajalia thought that Calles looked on Chad rather as though she had adopted him as a little brother. Chad, who had become far less useless and helpless ever since he had learned magic, seemed, to Ajalia, to have reached the point at which his moral understanding was stretched to the limit. She thought that his mind was not incapable of reason, but that he had been little exposed to rational thought in his past life. Chad had begun to get used to efficiency and sense in his daily life since he had worked for Ajalia, and alongside Card, but the reality of death, and the depth of actual order being spread throughout the city, seemed to have given Chad quite a shock. The gangs of boys, led often by Ajalia's house boys, or by boys from her cleaning crews, who had been taking the men of the city and thrusting them through the doors of the temples, had not turned wild. Leed and Daniel had set the tone for the house boys, who had imparted a measure of calm to the cleaning crew boys, and those city boys who joined in the efforts, having heard of the feats of magic being done daily by the boys who lived with Ajalia, did their best to imitate the manners and ways of the boys that Ajalia had trained.

  It was a charming sight to see a group of grown men, walking calmly along the street, herded behind by an energetic cluster of young boys, all of whom watched them soberly, if with eagerly-jostling limbs. The hiding priests, and the men who had corrupted the witches' ways for their own use, were usually immediately apparent, because they shouted and tried to run when the boys appeared near them. The hunting boys, whatever the men did, remained quiet and steady, and told each other to act more like that boy Leed. She had seen city boys in the streets practicing Leed's mannerisms, and pretending to fly. She knew the boys had all been talking to each other about the magic lessons Leed had given within the dragon temple. With the blockaded temple entrances, the bands of boys hunting witches, and the gangs of young men and boys rounding up men to be tested by the blue magic, Ajalia thought that the entire city would be free of corrupt witchcraft soon.

  "Cutting through the witches' necks with magic is not the same as killing them," Chad said finally, "but I don't want Esther to change."

  "So you think the witches change," Ajalia said, "when you cut off their powers, and slice through their necks with magic."

  "No," Chad said impatiently. "I mean, yes, they change, but it isn't real."

  "What isn't real?" Ajalia asked.

  "The magic isn't real," Chad said, blushing. "I mean, it isn't real death."

  "How do you know that?" Ajalia asked him. Chad looked flushed, but stubborn.

  "Because death is real," Chad said. "Real death, when you die."

  "Do you know how the priests die?" Ajalia asked Chad.

  "No," he said grudgingly. "How do they die?"

  "Their souls are flammable," Ajalia said. "When they go through the blue wall, their insides are so brittle, and so dried up, and so cut away from the actual life in the earth and the sky, that their souls just burn in a white flash. Have you seen them die?" she asked. Chad nodded.

  "But the blue wall kills them," Chad argued. "So they do actually die."

  "Their souls burn up," Ajalia said.

  "But they die!" Chad said angrily. "Why won't you admit that they die?"

  "What do you think would happen," Ajalia asked Chad, "if there were powerful witches still in hiding?" Chad looked at Ajalia as though he suspected a trap. His lips moved slowly in thought, and then he spoke hesitantly.

  "They would try to kill you, and they would kill Delmar," Chad said.

  "The witches would try to take my soul," Ajalia said. "They would try to take Delmar's soul."

  "They would try to kill you," Chad said angrily.

  "I would not actually die," Ajalia said. "I would get quieter than I am now, and I would stop speaking so frankly about things. My real self would be gone, eaten away by some witch."

  "But everyone would be able to see that," Chad said impatiently. Ajalia looked at Chad, and felt as though she could talk all day to him and not get through.

  "Well," she said. "Right now I am talking to Calles. I guess if you'd rather stay home, and let the boys finish up with the witches, you could do that."

  "I'm not going to stay at home," Chad said, disgruntled. "I just don't think killing the witches' ability to harm others is quite the same thing as killing the priests."

  "It's not," Ajalia said. "The priests die." Chad blinked.

  "But that is what I have been saying!" he exclaimed. He looked around at Calles. "Can you believe this?" he demanded. "Now she is acting as though she agrees with me!"

  "I want you to pretend for a moment that Beryl is still alive," Ajalia said. "You know that she was the witch-caller, when she was alive?"

  "Of course I know that," Chad said grumpily. "Anyone knew that."

  "But no one knew that she was a witch," Ajalia said.

  "Well, of course they didn't know," Chad said with exaggerated patience. "She was the witch-caller. She had to do magic, to catch other witches."

  "Yes, and she killed people," Ajalia said.

  "No, she didn't," Chad said. Ajalia saw that he was trying very hard not to roll his eyes.

  "Do you know," Ajalia said, "I have heard that many witches hope to be able to reanimate a body that is emptied of its soul." Chad stared at her with wary eyes.

  "So?" he said. Calles had looked around at Ajalia, and her lips had dropped open a little.

  "So the witches," Calles said slowly, "if they were left unchecked, could put someone's soul into a priest's body."

  "I think it could be done," Ajalia said. "This is why the priests have all been taken to the poison tree, to be destroyed." Chad's face had grown thoughtful and sober.

  "I'd better get back to work," Chad said, and he offered to rise.

  "Wait," Ajalia said. Chad looked at her.

  "What?" he asked. "You win the argument. I was wrong. The witches have to die, or be cut off, or whatever is happening to them."

  "I think that people will start to notice the witches around them," Ajalia told Chad. "They will see their wives, or their sisters, or their
daughters being quieter than usual. They will wonder what is wrong." Chad listened intently, and Ajalia saw that he was no longer thinking of whether or not he was a good person. "I want you," Ajalia said, "to go to the house of a witch, and invite her and her family to go to a temple. Ask her to pass through the door of the temple. See what she says, and what her family says."

  "You want to establish a precedent," Calles said, her eyes sharp. "You want people to do this to their own families."

  "I want to eradicate witchcraft," Ajalia said. "Esther passed through a blue wall of magic, and she lived." Ajalia did not mention Vinna, who had also lived. She had not yet thought of what to do about such a woman as Vinna, if such a witch somehow escaped the trawling purges of the boys.

  "But Esther wasn't evil," Chad said quickly. "Well, she isn't evil now," he said, looking at Ajalia.

  "No, I don't think she is," Ajalia said. "And Chad," she said. Chad looked at her. "You are not a bad person. And it can be a valuable thing, to be seen as honest and simple. I think that you know this. I think you have pretended to be a little more simple than you are, in order to finagle your way into Esther's affections."

  "I'm sure I don't know what you mean by that," Chad said, but he got hurriedly to his feet. "Well, sorry for the interruption," he added, and hurried away.

  "Chad is a nice boy," Calles said, watching him retreat quickly through the hall of the dragon temple.

  "He is a nice young man," Ajalia said. She did not like the way other people treated Chad, as though he were a little boy. Ajalia saw Chad as a man who was only just beginning to become himself, and she was impatient with the minimization she saw women treat him with. Calles looked sideways at her.

  "I think he is quite young," Calles suggested.

  "He is running deeper and deeper now that he is beginning to respect himself," Ajalia said. "Now, what about these sleeves?"

  When Ajalia had been speaking to Leed, before this, when she had asked him what he meant when he said that the boys grounded each other before they cut through the witches, Leed had sighed, and propped his fists on his hips.

  "Well, I had a near miss, the first time," Leed said. He had told her already that what he had read in the slim leather book had given him the idea for the blade of light, and cutting through the witches' power cord and neck. "I was experimenting," Leed said, "and I'd taken another kid out with me. The witch noticed me, just as I was forming up my blade of light, and she almost got the boy next to me. I cut her off just in time, but it made me think of how to be more careful."

  "Careful how?" Ajalia asked. Leed had smiled, and then he had explained to her a method of camouflage that he had worked out. One boy would draw up the lights from the earth, and cover the other boy from head to foot. The boy who was covered, or grounded, as Leed called it, would take care of the witch, and the witch would not notice the attacking energy until it was too late.

  "The boys, to a witch, seem like a piece of the street," Leed said with satisfaction. "Some of these boys are very clumsy, but they have all learned about the story magic in the temples, and once one of my men," (for Ajalia had found, to her infinite delight, that Leed referred to her house boys as his men) "hooks them up to the lights, they can form the story magic to make an image of the falcon's dagger. Then they take up that dagger, and use it to cut through the witch's black cord. She goes very limp and quiet after that," Leed said, "and the boys cut through the soul in her neck. The witches all have very thick souls," he added, "almost as though they were made of paste, or dried-up glue."

  "I felt that as well," Ajalia said, "when I have fought witches."

  Leed regarded her somberly.

  "I saw what you did," he said. "I saw you fight with that big black dragon."

  "I keep forgetting to ask you," Ajalia said, sighing with relief that Leed had brought this up. She continually thought of the black worms when he was out of the way, and had not been able to ask him before about this. "I am glad that you said that. What are the ancient dragons? Why did Delmar want to kill them? And do other lands have their own evil dragons in the earth?" Ajalia realized, after she had said this, that Leed might not know much about magic, or demons that nestled in the earth beneath faraway places. She was growing quite used to Leed being infallible, and she often forgot that he was not quite eleven years old, and had likely not gained ascendancy over the whole earth yet.

  "We are taught that these two black dragons have ruled over the whole earth for all ages," Leed said. "It has been said, farther back than the founding of Slavithe, that they would be destroyed someday, and that the whole world would find peace."

  "Do you believe that?" Ajalia asked. "Do you believe that there aren't any more black dragons about?"

  "I don't think there are more," Leed said simply. "I think those two were the only ones." Ajalia regarded the boy cautiously. She did not like to expose her thoughts too much to the boy. Leed seemed to know what she was thinking, because he smiled. "You can ask me why I think that," he told her. "My illusions of your omnipotence will not be shattered forever if you ask me questions." Ajalia smiled at him.

  "How do you know they are the only ones?" she asked. "And how did you see me fighting with the black worm?" Ajalia was still struggling to think of the great black shapes as dragons; proper dragons, she thought, were beautiful and fierce, and were not anything like the awful, heavy, clumsy worm shapes that she had blown up with magic.

  "The ancestors came from many lands to build Slavithe, and then Talbos," Leed told her. "Some of them even came from across many seas. When Slavithe was formed from the dregs of so many lands, the peoples who formed its population brought with them stories. All of the people from all of the different places believed in different things, but these two dragons were the same. Every people had traditions that said that there are two black dragons, that they wrap over the whole earth, and that one day in the future, a bright storm would wipe away the two dragons, and the fear and dread caused by evil would pass away from the earth. It was said that the earth would rest."

  "And do you believe this?" Ajalia asked. Leed shrugged.

  "It has been two days since you killed the last dragon," he said, "and you have laid traps for all of the priests. The witches are being hunted, and for the first time since the days of Jerome, there will be peace in Slavithe." This conversation between Ajalia and Leed happened on the second day, in the evening after the last meal. Ajalia had spent the day putting blue barricades of magic over the entrances to the temples; she had told Leed what she had done, and the following morning she would find piles of priestly bodies in the doors of the temples

  "I think it is possible, since so many peoples spoke of two black dragons, and spoke of them being destroyed, that the other parts of what they say are true as well," Leed said. He looked at Ajalia. "You asked me how I saw you," Leed said. "I paid attention to what I read in that book you lent me, and I read much of the other one, before I gave it to Delmar. I have not told anyone of what I read, but I have learned to feel the magic when it moves in the earth. I am sure that there are no more dragons," Leed said.

  DELMAR'S RELUCTANCE

  "How could you have done that in the time that you had?" Ajalia asked. "I left you the two books, and I went up to my room, and less than two hours later, the last of the dragons was dead. How could you have read that second book in time to have learned how to watch what I did?"

  Leed shrugged, and grinned at her.

  "I skimmed," he said. "And tracking magic was on the second page." Ajalia grimaced at Leed, who laughed at her. "Anyway," he said, "I'm glad I saw it, because I was able to send out for those rocks right away. What are you planning to do with the clear black stones?" he asked her.

  "I plan to make a lot of money from them," Ajalia said. "Why?"

  "Can I be part of that?" Leed asked anxiously. For a moment, he looked again like the doubtful child who had looked up at Ajalia with wide eyes when he had asked her to get him a knife.

  "Do you want mo
ney?" Ajalia asked Leed. Leed nodded seriously.

  "I know I am very good at teaching magic," Leed said, frowning, "but magic is no good for getting money." Ajalia laughed, and Leed glared at her. "I am not an adorable child!" he said sharply. "I am a useful person."

  "I was laughing because of how wealthy you will be," Ajalia told Leed. "You will make more money than you will have any idea what to do with." Leed glared at her suspiciously.

  "How?" he asked.

  "Do you know that the people of Saroyan pay for their ships to be enchanted, and for the water to be worked over with magic?" Ajalia asked.

  "No," Leed said, "I did not know that." Ajalia could see the boy's mind working over these facts.

  "I heard that they do this to get fish into their nets," Ajalia said, "and to gain good fortune for their vessels. Have you thought that you would be able to sell your ability to do magic?" Leed was staring at Ajalia avidly now, though his eyes were a little guarded.

  "How would I go about doing that?" Leed asked.

  "Did you take the glowing lights out of the old Thief Lord's house?" Ajalia asked. Leed grinned.

  "I did," he said, sounding quite pleased with himself.

  "And are you going to make Philas the king of Saroyan?" she asked.

  "Well, of course I'm going to do that," Leed said, as though it was obvious. "What does that have to do with making money?" Ajalia blinked. She was not sure what to say to this.

  "How have you gotten money before?" Ajalia asked. Leed frowned at her.

  "I've never had any money," he told her. "The only money I've had has come from you." Leed scuffed his foot against the floor, and looked suddenly like a child. "Everyone always takes my money," Leed said softly.

  "Philas is very selfish," Ajalia said. Leed looked up at her.

  "So?" he asked.

  "Watch Philas," Ajalia said. "Learn how to be selfish with money."

  "But people just take money from me," Leed complained, "and I always seem to give it to them, when they need it. I hate it."