Chapter one Eldalote

It was a cold frigid night in the prosperous sea city of Nepsydion, the pitiful glow of the candles through the grimy glass windows of the slums led my way down to the Base.

The air shifted and it lazily started to rain, it got heavier and heavier until I ran into a doorway of the slums and tightened my cloak around me, pulling the big dark hood over my head, tilting my head down so all you could see was my mouth. I stroked the ball of fire that lived inside of my soul and slowly started to heat up from the inside out.

Behind me the door was wrenched open and a woman armed with a wooden spoon looked down at me, her eyes like chips of ice floating in a dark pool sought to find my own beneath my hood.

“What do the likes of you want ‘ere? Eh? Speak it or ye’ll feel me spoon,” her flat bossy tone was harsh and cruel. The voice belonging to a woman who’d seen plenty of horrors in her time. And she had. We all had. That’s why we were here.

“Sorry,” I replied clearly above the noise of the rain and howling wind, “I was off to the Base when they fell on me.”

“Aye, is nae a night tae be dancin’, come in, and mind ye lootin’ thievin’ fingers or I’ll chop ‘em off,” she stepped back and lowered her spoon.

Slum Slang is an entirely different language than that spoken anywhere else, and it varies from place to place. I lived in the southern slums, close to the turf borders of the eastern slums and from turf to turf the dialects changed. I was lucky in some ways, I had a mind for languages. Unlucky in others, being as I’d have to actually spend time among these people just as badly off as myself just to learn. In places like this you learned the value of a copper piece. We had our own exchange rate so to speak. We bartered amongst ourselves and gold and silver coins were such a rarity that you never saw them here. I was still in District E though, so I was relatively more comfortable than I would have been if I was in District West.

The house was tiny, a bare wooden floor, rotten in the corners so you could see the nutrient starved earth below. From the door to the left was a chair and next to the chair was a bow and half a dozen arrows. To the right was a large battered wooden table with a clean white table cloth three children sat around it, though there were only four bowls there. The father was not eating with them tonight. I said nothing and slowly walked into the room, wary at all times.

We were good to each other here, looked after each other because Light only knew, no one else would. But that didn’t mean we were stupid.

“If I get rushed, there’ll be a reckoning,” I said clearly above the rattling of the windows against their frames.

The woman laughed merrily, “Ye’ll nae be gettin’ rushed in fronta the young uns, get low and have some broth, ye’re thinner than my pitiful lot yet,” I took the seat she offered me, getting low down. It was a phrase used that meant duck or sit or lie down, normally to avoid the arrows or swords of one of the guard. Getting rushed implied getting attacked. She splashed two ladles of broth into the empty fourth bowl and I looked to her, “This’ll be yours.”

“Aye, tis, but it’s nae often we get such weather and I’m in a particularly givin’ mood this evenin’,” she replied with a genuine smile and nodded at me.

I spooned some of the watery broth into my mouth revelling in it’s warmth and looked to each of the children from beneath the brim of my hood. In the Slums you only took your coat off if you trusted a person, showed that you were willing to stay a while.

There was a girl, aged about twelve, grimy and quite plain to look at. Her hair was pulled back away from her face into a messy bun at the top of her head, her hands showed she was a washer which explained the table cloth. There was a boy who looked about fifteen who looked strong and able, with a strong jaw and deep, penetrating brown eyes, completely at odds to his little sister and mother who both had blue eyes. The youngest sister had light blues eyes, the mother had dark blue eyes. And then the eldest child who looked about seventeen. Tall and thin, a small heart shaped face with very little colour beneath the dirt and grime. And her eyes… A blue so dark they were almost purple, in the light of the candle they looked like deep pits of blackness, but when the light glanced off them, and eerie purple haze bounced off them. All of them had hair as dark as mine, but they did not have access to hot water like I did, so their hair was greasy and in need of cutting. I slowly stood up and undid my double swords from my back, placing them on either side of my chair legs and then pushed back my hood. They were all watching now as I took off my coat and revealed my attire just as grimy and worn out as their own before they settled. But I knew what had caught their attention, for a split second I looked like money. I suppose I kind of was money, but not anymore. I’d left that path a long time ago, fed up of being paraded around like a toy on display. And now I was in the slums. And to be honest, I’d felt more at home here than I’d ever done back at court…

I quickly finished my broth and stood, motioning to the fire before going to stand by it. It had been many days since I’d had the privilege of heat and food, I’d been travelling from the desert to the west on a return journey. I gently leant my forehead against the cold stone mantel piece, a small clay figure in the shape of a human stood there off to the right. That was the only piece of decoration in the house.

I turned and glanced curiously to the woman who met my eyes unerringly but made no effort to explain why she had a talisman of protection in her house. I casually dragged my fingers across the mantel towards them when I felt a small flicker of power from it. I jumped back in fright before buttoning up my coat once more to leave. It was a dangerous thing to have in a house, there was rumour that an emissary from the citadel to the south was here. There was a High Priest in Nepsydion, and I wanted no part of witches magic so long as he was here.

“Take ye not in fright,” the woman said, “Stay, I’ll not have my name blackened by hear tell of a word sayin’ I let a traveller out in this storm. Ye should ken now, my girl, this storm is no’ a natural one…” The children all agreed and that’s when I felt it; a buzz in the air. The buzz, of magic.

“See here, I want nae a part in this. Don’t say ye has nae heard the wind’s whispers?” They looked at me, puzzled, “Somethin’ comes a blowin’ frae the south…”

“What somethin’?” asked the woman.

“A somethin’ that dresses only in white…” With that the buzz of magic in the air died and a still silence fell across the room.

“How does a gel as you know of the south? Ye cannae be older than our Aryal, here,” said the woman quietly.

I went to the door, grabbed the guarding chair and sat at the head of the table, my back to the door so I was facing the empty fireplace. To my right sat the youngest daughter and the son. To my left sat the woman, and Aryal.

“These are things that mus’nae be roped ta me, y’hear?” I asked solemnly.

“Aye,” said the woman, and soon after a chorus of “Aye”’s followed from the children.

“My name is Eldalote Súrion,” they all gasped in horror, “Don’t ye judge me when ye donnae e’en ken the whole parchment,” I said angrily. They quietened down and the woman opened her mouth to speak, “Aye, lass, I’ve heard your story, it’s nae what I wanted for my own, so I taught them myself and tell ‘em ne’er to let on, eh kids?”

“Aye,” they all replied before the woman went on, “I ken your story, as I say, an’ as such, kenin’ ya a piece of my story allow.” I nodded with her, understanding how difficult it must be for her to allow me to know at least part of her own story – she looked like a woman who’d been through hardships.

“My name is Raphiella Damarkans,” I tried to keep my face straight but failed miserably as I heard her last name. Back before The Breaking, there had been the High Priests in the South, and the High Priestesses to the North. And the most famous of all the High Priestesses was Eowin Damarkans. Her whole lineage both past and future had vast reserves of magic, and apparently it still did. Not much was known after their falling after The Breaking except that they went into recluse, like the rest of the Sisters of the Light.

“I came down to the south with my husband,” Raphiella continued, “And had my first child soon after we entered the slums, Aryal. Three years later I had Thorn. That’s when The Debters came,” I grimaced. The Debters were the crooks who lived topside – in the city. “Aye,” she nodded to my grimace, “Turns out my lovely husband who promised us a better life away from the bitter mountains in the north and instead brought us here to a hell none of us deserved had a slight perchance for gambling. Got hisself 25 gold coins up in debt din’t he?! Well, there was no way we was payin’ that back,” I noted that as soon as she started talking about the Slums she was back in Slum Slang – like me really.

“We e’en moved to District W for a few weeks to try and vade ‘em! But it was all for nothing. Three years of runnin’ and soon Paracella arrived. He brought use back to District E and got us this house, then he left to ‘fix this whole mess,’ an’ ne’er returned. That was nigh on twelve years ago, so I don’t hold out much hope o’ him comin’ back now. But anyway, now we’re equal again, what news of the south hits your ears then?”

“I hear from a decent honest man topside in a bar I frequent when the wind is right, that there’s an emissary from the citadel. That’s why I was headed to The Base tonight, it’s amazin’ what you hear if you dance for long enough…”

The whole family looked worried, and rightly so. The High Priests had made an unwritten law that if they ever came across a witch, they were to kill them.

“But how can ye be sure? It’s been a hundred years or more since the besmirched came this far north,” The besmirched was the term given by the witches for the High Priests.

“Aye, it has, I was only five years old at the time, which is why I fear…”

Thorn and Parascella looked at me in shock, Aryal and Raphiella both expected it though and motioned me to continue.

“You two,” I looked to Raphiella and Aryal, “Both know atleast part of my story, but the young uns don’t, do they have the right to ken?”

“Aye,” said Raphiella.

“Aye, well, I am no mortal being, I am half dark elf, half fire nymph. A rarity. As such, I was paraded around by my father from the age of two, so that all who visited our court would see how powerful the Dark Elf court really was. I mean, afterall, they were the ones with the elemental child amongst them. I tired of being treated as an ornament at the age of thirty and moved away from the court, to Nepsydion, made my acquaintances topside before going underground. I’ve worked as a bounty hunter ever since. But the emissary headed to Nepsydion is not the only emissary that has been released. There is rumour of one going to every great city in the whole of Sihol-Morier, including Deralyion, the Dark Elf city across the desert but before the wastes. I do not like the idea that they would know that I have left…”

“Me either,” replied Raphiella, “I have the young uns to care for now. It’s not just me and Fern anymore…”

“Aye, I just returned from the deserts, a job that needed doing, and the Sand Tribes are unsettled, the deserts was almost non-existant beneath the burning fury of the sandstorms.”

“You think they knew the besmirched were headed their way?”

“If they didn’t when we were entereing, they would have known when we were leaving. We passed a minor tribe, slaughtered and left to rot by an oasis…”

They all gasped.

“It’s time to leave,” Raphiella whispered.

That’s when the booming on the door began.