Thirst for Adventure

Chapter 36

“The Labyrinth lord sees your gift, Trader Leo,” said the Labyrinth lordspeaker. “The Labyrinth lord is pleased. Ask one thing of the Labyrinth lord and that one thing shall be granted.”

As Cronov gasped, Leo bowed to the

Labyrinth lordspeaker. “The Labyrinth lord is good. The one thing I ask, for myself, my fellow Trader and our possessions, is passage from ProNogolor to Shellin a Labyrinth lordspeaker caravan.”

The Labyrinth lordspeaker nodded. “Granted. Go to the Labyrinth lordgate wayhouse when you are ready to travel. You must wait there until the next Labyrinth lordspeaker caravan departs.”

Leo bowed again. “The Labyrinth lord see you in its eye, Labyrinth lordspeaker.”

“The Labyrinth lord see you also, Trader Leo,” the Labyrinth lordspeaker replied. She walked away then, with the servant Vortka a pace behind her.

“Fionas,” said Leo. “Fetch your fellow guards and the camel-boy.”

As Fionas did as he was told, Leo turned to the two Traders waiting silently for the Labyrinth lord’s business to be done. “Trader Ederog, Cronov will show you our camels.” Cronov and Trader Ederog went to haggle over the beasts, and Fionas returned with the other guards and the camel-boy. Leo nodded to him and one other, almost as tall and strong as Fionas. “Stand away,” he said. “You remain in my possession. You others stand with the merchandise.”

Watching the guards Leo no longer wanted, Fiona saw their eyes go wet with fear and sorrow. But they said nothing to Leo, they obeyed his nod. They were servants.

“Trader Rogiv?” said Leo. “Here is our merchandise. Inspect it. I invite you.”

Trader Rogiv looked at the waiting servants, then turned and pointed. “Trader Leo, what about that one?”

Fiona held her breath, she stared at Leo. Trader Rogiv’s pointing finger was a stab in the heart.

“That one belongs to me,” said Leo. “She is not for sale.” His deep dark voice was cool, and strong. In his face a warning not to argue.

Fiona felt herself melt inside. I will not sell you in ProNogolor . So he had told her, and so it was proved. He was Leo, his word was his word.

Then it was Trader haggling, as the camels and the servants were sold. When it was over and the ProNogolor Traders had departed to fetch for Leo the promised coin, Fionas and the other servant began unloading the camels and packing all their goods into the empty cart. Cronov supervised them for a small time, then returned to Leo.

Aieee, Aba,” he said, pouting with displeasure. “Must we travel with a Labyrinth lordspeaker caravan? There are so many of them in a caravan. You know what it will be like. They live and breathe and sweat out the Labyrinth lord. To be close like that, it makes me frightened! I lose my appetite, I cannot eat. Would you have me skin and bone by the time we reach ProJenkin?”

“Better skin and bone in Shellthan dead on the road between here and there with all your plumpness bleeding,” said Leo. “The Labyrinth lord saw us, Cronov, when it sent us that chosen servant. No other price would buy us the protection of a Labyrinth lordspeaker caravan. If the other Warlocks should send fighters against ProNogolor only Labyrinth lordspeakers will be safe on the road to ProJenkin. You know it, we have seen trouble like this before.”

“And had hoped to never see it again!” cried Cronov. “Warlocks fighting are bad for business!”

“Yes,” said Leo, and patted his shoulder. “But do not dwell on that. We have good profit from this caravan, and business at home that must be tended, remember. We have been many Labyrinth lordmoons on the road.”

Cronov sighed. “Yes. I know. Our villa is likely a tumbled ruin, that Retoth cannot care for it properly without my strict supervision.”

“You know he can,” said Leo, laughing. “He always does. But we will both be relieved to see it again.”

The ProNogolor Traders returned with their payment. When the sale was completed and the money safely added to the coin box, Leo nodded to Fionas and the other servant. They harnessed themselves to the heavy cart, and followed Leo and Cronov away from the servant pens.

Walking between the Traders, Fiona looked up. “Leo, why did the Labyrinth lord see that servant?”

“So it might serve in the Labyrinth lordhouse.”

She frowned. “Serve how?”

“That is not our business.”

“That servant,” she said, after a moment. “He had a name. He told me.”

Leo tugged her Labyrinth lordbraids. “servants have no names, Fiona. Not until a master gives one, with the giving of the scarlet servant-braid.”

She smiled inside. She had given herself a name, and she wore no scarlet servant-braid. She was as special as the servant Vortka, gone to serve the Labyrinth lord. “If I held the Labyrinth lordstone, Leo. Would it see me? See my heart? Tell the Labyrinth lord?”

Cronov snorted. “Your heart, monkey? My Hooli’s heart will be seen by the Labyrinth lord before yours.”

“The Labyrinth lord sees all hearts,” said Leo. “Labyrinth lordstones are for Labyrinth lordspeakers, who are less than the Labyrinth lord. Now be silent, Fiona. It is a long walk to ProNogolor’s Labyrinth lordgate.”

She was silent because he had said she must be silent, but she still didn’t understand. She wanted to know how the Labyrinth lordstone knew to burn, or stay dead. To know what would happen to that special servant Vortka who had gone to serve in ProNogolor’s Labyrinth lordhouse. How he would serve, and what the Labyrinth lord wanted from him.

That servant Vortka had called her Fiona. He had called her beautiful. She had given him bread.

Surprised, she realized she felt sorry, that she would not see him again.

They made their slow way along the crowded streets towards the Labyrinth lordgate, which Leo said was on the far-distant other side of ProNogolor Town. Fiona walked close beside him, she had never seen so many people in one place before, the noise of them battered her ears, their stink clogged her nose.

They walked and they walked, and came across an open place where there were tall red wooden Labyrinth lordposts set into the cobbled ground. A skinny servant was nailed alive to one of them with his belly cut open and all his gizzards spilling free. His ankles were broken, his eyes were put out. He wore no clothes, just a blanket of flies. Fiona knew he lived only because of his horrible moaning, his begging for the Labyrinth lord to let him die.

She felt her belly clutch tight, she tasted muck in her mouth. This was worse than the boy who put his body in the village well. This was the worst thing she had ever seen.

“He tried to run away,” said Leo. “The Labyrinth lord abhors wicked runaway servants. This is their fate, Fiona. The Labyrinth lordspeakers smite them for the Labyrinth lord.”

She nodded, she had no words for the dying servant in his tunic of flies. They kept on walking.

ProNogolor’s Labyrinth lordgate was an anthill place, with wagons and carts and oxen and servants and Labyrinth lordspeakers coming and going without cease, and pens for many complaining animals. The air was heavy with smells and smoke and sounds. The gates themselves stayed shut, huge black scorpions towering over the tallest man. They looked like they could sting. They would not open until the caravan was ready to leave for ProJenkin.

The wayhouse for travelers intending to journey with the Labyrinth lordspeaker caravan was small and spare, with no-one wanting to travel except Leo, Cronov and Fiona. There was nothing to do there but eat, and sleep, and wait. Each day at highsun they stood by its Labyrinth lordpost to watch a Labyrinth lordspeaker ask the Labyrinth lord if the time had come for the caravan to leave ProNogolor. The question was asked by sacrificing a golden cockerel, burning its entrails in a scorpion bowl and breathing deep of the sacred smoke. If the Labyrinth lord’s answer was no, the Labyrinth lordspeaker fell to the ground twitching and foaming and drumming bare heels on the ground.

Three times now they had witnessed the asking. Three times the Labyrinth lord had answered no.

The Labyrinth lordspeaker who came to make sacrifice on the fourth highsun was n***d except for a loincloth and the scorpion-shell bound to his brow. His scorpion sting marks were all on show, angry red welts covering the dark skin of his belly and back. Many of them looked fresh. Fiona remembered the village Labyrinth lordspeaker with only five, so old they’d turned dull and muddy. The village Labyrinth lordspeaker was nothing, a dried-up husk, compared to the Labyrinth lordspeakers of ProNogolor. She was angry to think such a shrunken, unbitten old man had frightened her so much . . . and surprised the Labyrinth lord would accept him as its speaker.

Although, to be fair, the Labyrinth lord had not had many men to choose from in the village.

The ProNogolor Labyrinth lordspeaker sprinkled his circle of sacred sand. It was crimson, the color of golden cockerel blood, and it sparkled strangely on the stony ground in front of the wayhouse. At the circle’s completion the sand burst into life, leaping black tongues of night-cold flame. Though he’d seen the Labyrinth lord wake over and over, Cronov swallowed a little shriek and kissed his snake-fang amulet.

The Labyrinth lordspeaker picked up the golden cockerel and his sacrifice knife. Like the others before it the beautiful bird died soundless, slit from crop to tail in a single blow. Its entrails slipped into the waiting scorpion bowl and became hot fire. As the sacred circle’s black flames danced around him the Labyrinth lordspeaker fell to his knees and plunged his face into the offering’s greasy blue smoke, breathing deeply, his eyes rolled back in his head.

He did not fall twitching and foaming to the ground.

“Aieee!” squealed Cronov. “The Labyrinth lord has answered!”

“The Labyrinth lord always answers,” Leo scolded. But he was smiling.

“I know, I know,” said Cronov, impatient. “But this time it has answered yes !”

The Labyrinth lordspeaker breathed in the last of the sacrifice smoke, breathed it out, and stood. From his left hand dangled the gutted golden cockerel, from his right the bloodied knife.

“The Labyrinth lord speaks!” he cried to the distant sky. The whites of his eyes had turned a greasy blue and the scorpion bites on his body glowed like living coals. “The caravan to Shelldeparts at newsun!”

He threw the sacrifice into the air. As the golden cockerel’s feathers caught fire, burning it into nothingness, the sacred circle’s black flames roared higher than the Labyrinth lordspeaker’s head, then vanished, the last of the sacred sand consumed.

“And a good thing too,” said Cronov, watching the almost n***d Labyrinth lordspeaker walk away carrying his knife and his scorpion bowl. “If I pray hard I might survive one more night in that dreadful wayhouse. But only one. And only if the Labyrinth lord is good!”

Fiona hid her face so Cronov wouldn’t see her disgust. She had a bed in the wayhouse too. It was the most wonderful thing she’d ever slept on, with softness beneath her and too many blankets. She’d never dreamed there could be too many blankets. Let Ya

gji sleep on a baked earth floor under a table, or chained to a wall where dogs could sniff him, dogs that longed to devour his bones, and a man to beat him if he was so cold and stiff on waking he could hardly walk. Let Cronov sleep like that and then complain of blankets and a bed.