Violya

Chapter 4 Ammad

4

AMMAD

Ammad was aware of screaming. High-pitched, pained, halted occasionally by wracking sobs. Even through his fug, it hurt his ears.

Sounds like Mama. A little voice cut through the swirling dust to pierce his consciousness. Mama.

Peeling an eyelid open, the Crown Prince of Drome glimpsed a flash of turmeric yellow material, a hint of sheeny, honey-coloured skin, a streak of lustrous, dark-brown hair. He struggled to keep his eyelid open, but it was too heavy and closed again. He focused on his nose. Smelling required no exertion. He simply let his body continue to breathe in and out. Mama’s scent of aniseed and nutmeg tickled his nostrils.

I want my mama.

The screaming subsided, to be replaced by rapid conversation. One voice, two, three, perhaps four? They floated over him, through him, under him. Ammad couldn’t feel his body. He was breathing, that was enough. He embraced a sensation like endless falling. To fight it was pointless, to welcome it was pure bliss. He knew he was dosed up on poppy, he’d embraced the feeling numerous times before now. But this was a euphoria bigger than any he’d experienced. If only everyone would just be quiet, then he could enjoy it.

He pushed out a sound from a mouth that he hoped was still there – he couldn’t feel it – and a short groan emerged.

His conscious mind grasped at something, a memory. Pain. Blood. But it was chased away as his eyes were rudely drawn open. A face peered at him.

Mama, he tried to say, but it came out as ‘urgghh’.

Jakira leaned in and, Ammad guessed, kissed his forehead. But his skin was numb to the touch.

“Oh, flesh of my flesh, oh my son, my son.”

His mother’s soothing voice felt like water seeking out and settling into any worrisome cracks. He tried to smile, wasn’t sure if his lips had moved.

“Medi, bring in a brazier and make a fire, right there. Send for the healer to take these dirty bandages off and burn them. Bring fresh wrappings, more poppy.”

Ammad’s heart leapt. More poppy!

His eyes registered movement as his mother’s head slave dashed from the room. His room. He was in his bedroom, at his mother’s craterside villa in Parchad. Of course, where else would I be? I’ve been on a poppy binge and they’ve found me in some seedy den in a stupor. But something niggled in his mind, an image of mountains.

“Tell me, Whaled, what happened to my son?” Jakira’s voice was firm. She was finished with her screaming and sobbing. Ammad’s shrewd, composed, formidable Mama was back.

Ammad saw Whaled step forward, his head down. What is the Minister of War doing in my bedroom? Slightly awkward and inappropriate. The hairy beast of a man was filthy, covered in blood, dried and crusty. Sadly, he didn’t seem injured. Someone else’s blood…

“The Crown Prince fought valiantly with Melokai Ramya of Peqkya. He killed her. It was a proud moment. Never forget that, Jakira,” Whaled said.

I killed the Peqkian Melokai? A memory flitted onto the edge of Ammad’s consciousness. He attempted to grab at it, but it evaporated faster than a drop of water on scorching sand.

His mother waved her hand impatiently for Whaled to continue.

“A red-haired warrior challenged him. She was furious at the Melokai’s death. Fast. Faster than I’ve ever seen before. She…” Whaled indicated Ammad and Jakira nodded.

She what? Ammad tried to ask. He puffed instead.

Whaled continued, “I pulled him away before she could finish him and we ran through the city, to the camp we’d set up and straight to the healers’ tent. The blood was staunched, the wounds cauterised and poppy administered. Then we took horses, supplies and rode as fast as we could away from Riaow, to the border. I left all my army in the city...” His voice choked and he shook his head. The hairy man’s eyes glistened. Ammad waited for the blubbering fool to start sobbing and screaming, but he took a deep breath to steady himself.

“We travelled over the mountains and to the camp we had left in the wastelands. Swapped horses for camels and crossed the border into Drome. It’s been a hard ride, but six weeks later, here we are. Your son survived, the little bastard. I can’t say the same for my men. I left them in Peqkya.”

Whaled dipped his head and covered his face with his furry-backed hands. He screwed his palms into his eyes.

Jakira walked to the hairy man, leaving Ammad’s side. Without his mother’s support Ammad’s eyelids drooped. He forced them open and witnessed his mother tenderly kissing the Minister of War. She stroked Whaled’s cheek and looked lovingly into his eyes.

That isn’t right.

With a monumental effort, Ammad grunted to draw Jakira’s attention, to get her away from that hairy beast of a man.

She turned back to Ammad just as Medi entered with the brazier and two healers. Jakira exchanged hasty words with the healers, too fast for Ammad to comprehend. They nodded. Ammad watched as the broad-shouldered slave positioned the brazier by the window. He expertly lit it and stoked it.

The healers fussed around Ammad. He couldn’t feel their touch but could see their shadows shifting in his periphery. A healer handed bloody, sand-yellowed bandages to Medi over his chest.

The head slave threw them on the fire.

Jakira moved to the door and ordered another slave to fetch Riv.

My Peqkian Aunty, Riv. Ammad attempted to smile.

A few moments later, Riv entered with another Peqkian woman. Ammad couldn’t recall her name. He knew, though, that she had bad teeth, and the fact that he remembered this made him chuckle. It left his mouth as a pathetic groan.

His odd noise disturbed Riv and she wailed. She waved her hands at Ammad, rambling in Dromedari about “how they never should have done it” and “such a mistake” and “what were they thinking”.

Jakira walked to her and planted a slap smartly across the woman’s fat cheeks.

“What’s done is done. This is not over, Rivya. I will destroy that vile little country of yours for what they have done to the flesh of my flesh.”

Riv curbed her tears, looked at her feet and nodded to his mother.

Jakira stared intently at something Ammad couldn’t quite see. She dropped to her knees, the top of her head level with his gaze.

“What of this child?” Jakira said.

“That is the son of one of the peons who assisted us,” Riv said. “He wanted the boy to be taken out of Peqkya, and I agreed. We should’ve just dumped him somewhere on the road, but Toya here has become quite attached to the little brat.”

A few words passed between the two Peqkian women in the Shella language.

“His name is Artaz,” Riv said to Jakira.

“Hello, Artaz, you are a curious little boy,” Jakira said.

“Mistress,” a healer said from over Ammad’s head.

Jakira turned and a look of such horror came over her face that Ammad felt ashamed, although he had no idea why. Riv and Toya gasped. Whaled grimaced.

Jakira’s eyes narrowed. “Get out. All of you, get out!”

Ammad heard the shuffling as the room cleared. A pinprick of pain jolted through him, through his arms. No, not through my arms, through my chest.

“We’ve administered poppy,” a healer said.

“Artaz,” Toya yelled as the boy dashed towards the fire.

Ammad could see him now. A small Peqkian boy with black skin and reddish hair. The same red hair as… Ammad clutched at the memory, at the knowledge but it slipped from his grasp.

From the doorway, Toya repeated the boy’s name and said something in Shella, no doubt beckoning for the child to return to her.

“No,” Jakira said. She watched the boy intently. In fluent Shella she continued, “He can stay. Close the door.”

Artaz hovered open-mouthed by the brazier, completely mesmerised by the fire within. The reflection flickered in his pupils.

“We are done, mistress,” an unseen healer said. “The bandages will require changing in the morning.”

Jakira dismissed them with a flick of her hand. Ammad heard the door latch quietly close. He couldn’t understand why his mother showed so much interest in that child and not him, her son. He tried to grunt, but nothing came out. He could feel himself sinking into a poppy-induced daze. Usually he would welcome it, but not now. Ammad wanted answers.

He fought the ecstasy and forced his eyelids to remain open. Jakira knelt next to Artaz and put one arm around his little shoulders. She put her other hand up and into the fire.

Ammad attempted to shout, “Mama, no! You’ll hurt yourself!” But the words curdled in his throat.

She didn’t flinch and her flesh showed no sign of burning. She smiled to the boy.

He reached out and thrust his little hand into the flames. A big grin spread across his face. As with Ammad’s mother, the boy’s flesh didn’t burn, he seemed completely unperturbed by the flames that licked up his wrist.

Jakira gasped. “Well, aren’t you the surprise. I think I’ll keep you.”

A poppy-addled delusion, that’s all.

The fug crept forward and fogged Ammad’s eyes. He succumbed to the weightlessness and allowed it to envelop him completely.

Ammad choked and desperately tried to claw at his throat but he was buried deep in the desert sand. Each movement sifted sand into his face and although he clenched his mouth shut, the fine grains filled his nostrils, poured into his ears and pushed into the corners of his eyes. A worm. He was a worm.

It was at this point in the nightmare that Ammad always woke, and he immediately recognised the desperate thirst. The first sign the poppy was wearing off. It was also always at this point he wished he was from the poor Eqmadeh desert nomad clan and had a huge, misshapen hump on his back from which he could draw water.

But then, as always, he’d remember he was terribly vain. And the Crown Prince. And he would rather have the small, smooth hump on his back that drained of water far too quickly, than the ugly, misshapen monstrosities that could hold thirty days’ worth. He was the Crown Prince, after all. There would be a servant nearby to fetch him a drink.

He opened his eyes. Daylight streamed through a window and he squinted with a grimace. What den allows daylight in? I must remember not to frequent this disgraceful place again.

After the thirst always came the inevitable cramping, debilitating headache. The light would bring it on quicker.

“f**k,” Ammad grumbled.

His eyes slowly adjusted and he scanned the room searching out some minion to fetch him a glass of sugared lime juice. He wasn’t in a poppy den. He was in his old bedroom at his mother’s craterside villa in Parchad.

In flashes, the night before returned to him. His mother screaming. Whaled close to tears. A Peqkian boy.

Peqkya.

Ammad thought hard. How did I get here? He had no recollection.

His body juddered as a memory hit him, smacked him across the cheeks as viciously as one of his guard Qabull’s famed punches.

I was in Peqkya fighting the hisspits and invading that stinky little country. And now I’m home. And Qabull is dead.

Then the memory of the invasion, the battle in Riaow, the fight with Melokai Ramya ran through his mind as if sped up.

He had thrust his sword through Melokai Ramya’s chest. So what was he doing back in Drome? Why was he not revelling in his victory in the mountain country?

Then he recalled the tall, red-haired warrior.

His face itched, just under his chin, like it always did when the poppy wore off. He moved his hand to scratch it. Found that he couldn’t. The itch intensified.

Ammad tilted his head and looked down at his body.

He screamed.

Screamed and screamed.

The hisspit b***h had hacked off his arms.