ETERNAL SULAYID

  1.

  The island-kingdom of Sulayid had stood since time immemorial, as unchanging as the endless blue oceans which surrounded it, stretching out to meet the sky at the distant horizon.

  The island itself was a fortress, ringed all around by sheer sandstone cliffs worn smooth as pale bone by the waves that crashed against them in futile, hopeless assault. But then again, stone and water live a different life than man, and perhaps, by the ocean’s estimation, it was winning, slowly eating away at the cliffside. But they had never come close to victory while Sulayid stood, and it had stood for thousands of years, far back into forgotten history.

  Only in one narrow stretch did the island dip down to meet the water in a gentle shore of fine white sand, and it was here that the men of Sulayid had built their homes, carved into the sandstone cliffs themselves. The buildings had stacked upon one another over the countless years, baked clay and mud stucco homes, square and squat on narrow streets, the thin veins of the city, leaning together like exhausted strangers packed into a tight crowd, holding one another up. Grand, granite spiraling towers thrust up above them like jagged ribs, collapsing and falling in on themselves, peaked with minarets and golden spires gleaming in the sun, and the higher up the city streets went the more ostentatious and decadent the buildings became. And above them all, carved from marble and nearly half as big again as the entire city, the Palace of Stars rose like a barbaric crown, its towering columns visible from anywhere below. There the Patriarch lived, and the nobles held their forums, and made their laws and designs upon Sulayid.

  Nearly as impressive as the palace were the docks, stretching out into the water, where on either side great walls of sharp black stone rose like jagged daggers, forming a bay. These were called the Teeth of Minos, for it was said that a past Patriarch of that name had raised this stone from the ocean’s floor itself with the Art, for the city’s defense. Between the sheer cliffs and the bay Sulayid had its independence guaranteed, for it was a kingdom of learned men and great wizards, and if any fleet dared to come against them they would use their magic to summon wind and storm and turn the bay into any invader’s doom. It had been so long since any had tried that all records of such had been lost.

  Traders came, though, to the docks, stone-built and lined with collapsed towers, with room for berthing well over a hundred ships, and all along the shore were grand warehouses for use of the great fishing fleet that fed the city and the cargo that came from overseas. And along the docks waved hundreds of flags, collected by the harbormasters of Sulayid from the kingdoms they did trade with. Many represented kingdoms which had disappeared, their flags turned to faded, sun-bleached ghosts, and others were nothing more than wispy tatters, dead skin, that the wind would soon tear from their poles and dash into the water, forgotten forever. Ancient Sulayid had seen countless flags disappear this way, had watched the glory of empires crumble; it was said that the men of Sulayid had themselves been the subject of some now-forgotten empire. And if it seemed, over the long march of time, as if the flags became a bit less grand, a bit more clumsily-made, well, that was just the way the world was. It faded, it all faded, kingdoms grew tired and fell, all except Sulayid, Eternal Sulayid, Sulayid-that-ever-will-be.

  2.

  The men of Sulayid traded for many things. They shipped out olives, and olive oil, and delicate jewelry of gold and silver and rubies, for the island was rich with these, and in fact beneath the ground was a great honeycombed warren of mining tunnels. They mined and extracted, too, a substance they called starblood, for it was said to come from the ancient remains of a divine star that visited the earth. This went straight to the Palace of the Stars, for the Patriarch and his wise men there.

  From the traders, they purchased many things—clothing, and wine, and even at times new ships for their fleet, for they had run out of lumber long ago, and most ships they owned were held together at least in part by spells of mending and binding. But what they were interested in most were slaves. These they purchased from every land, and most of their own were born into slavery, for very few on Sulayid could ever be said to be free. Most were the property of this or that mage-lord, and bound to their service for life.

  The educated and the skilled craftsmen were the most valuable and the most protected of the slaves, and in fact a mage-lord could pay dearly for killing or otherwise crippling such a slave such that they could no longer continue their work. Below these stood the soldier-slaves and the sailor-slaves, who put down rebellions and operated the fishing fleets that fed the city. Such slaves had the possibility of purchasing their freedom, though many did not see the point - the moment they did so, they lost the protection of their lord, and the meals and housing he gave them, and there was no room for freemen to make an honest living on the island. Below the soldiers and sailors stood the slaves that tended to the olive groves, house slaves, and others, and below these, the lowest of the low, were those slaves which worked in the mines. These poor souls might be killed out of hand, on a whim, and they were often worked to their deaths in the close and cloying dark of the mining tunnels beneath the city.

  It was from the union between a mining slave and a house slave that Timur was born. He never knew his parents; his father had been sent to the hardest and most dangerous work in the mines and died alone in the dark there, for the indiscretion of his love, and Timur never even knew his name. His mother, a house slave named Aika, died in giving birth to him. Considered property, even as a babe, he was part of the estate of the mage-lord Cerros. Cerros was a fat man with a sickly, greenish tinge to his skin that came from long years of imbibing dark tinctures from foreign lands, potions that promised immortality and visions. He shaved his head completely bald and dressed himself in the finest patterned silks and tattooed his skull with arcane sigils; a man of wicked cleverness with tiny eyes set into dark, sagging circles, pinpricks of brightness in filthy pits. And he was angered at Timur’s birth.

  It was not that Cerros cared that his slave Aika had gotten herself pregnant. In fact, he had been aiming for such. But among the slave-holders of Sulayid, the law was that the caste of a slave was passed down from the father for boys, and from the mother for women. He had been hoping to make Aika pregnant by an educated slave he owned, named Sulla, and secure himself valuable new property. Instead, she had gone off to dally with a mining slave, and the best he could have hoped for was that she would have a daughter, so he might have a new house-slave. “And instead, the useless cow has gone and borne a son!” he snarled, the day Timur was born. By law, Timur was consigned to be a mining slave, of little worth and consequence, and that was that.

  Cerros considered merely having the babe killed, but he was a clever man, and cared little for law or tradition when it got in the way of power or coin. He had the documents forged to show that Timur was actually the son of Sulla, and threatened the slaves who knew the truth with beatings unless they were silent on the matter. And so the mage-lord had put another house-slave, a timid and obsequious woman named Linella, in charge of nursing the babe, and had instructed Sulla that he should teach the boy both letters and numbers as soon as he was of age.

  Timur had a charmed childhood, for a slave, though it might not have been so. His adoptive Linella was pale and waifish, drifting through life like a dreaming ghost; she had not been born into slavery, and she could still remember her snow-lost mountain village, the betrothed who had died trying to protect her, the dead dreams of her future with him. She saw in Timur a chance for sanity, and so she loved him like she would have loved the children she would have raised with the husband she would never have now.

  Sulla, for his part, was not a passionate man, and he had no true love for the child; rail-thin, amber-skinned and thoughtful, with an unkempt shock of hair the color of steel, he had been born a slave to learn numbers, and they were his refuge from the injustice around him, his shield against cruel masters. But most of all they were what his mind was meant for, and he rarely thought of anything else. But he knew that if the boy did not learn that Cerros would not care to keep him, and he would be sold or perhaps even killed. Luckily, the boy, even young, took to the lessons handily, and so Sulla had the boy counting and reading small words before he could even walk. And from this he got the name Timur the Clever.

  He was a happy babe, and a hellion from the moment he could walk about under his own power, who would grab all within his reach with a shrieking laugh. He was adored by the house-slaves, for he was the only child of the estates, and even cold-hearted Cerros, who so rarely thought of anything other than his own power, would chuckle at the toddler’s antics. He grew quickly into a boisterous young boy, lanky, with olive skin and red-brown hair that seemed to take in the glow of the sun and become even more red as it did so, an overlarge nose, one crooked ear and a quick and knowing grin. Linella was indulgent to him, finding ways to sneak him candies and extra food, singing him to sleep, and he was quick-witted enough that Sulla rarely had to teach him the same lesson twice, and so very rarely needed to discipline him.

  And it was a good thing, too, for he was taken aside on his sixth birthday by Cerros himself to be tested in his reading and writing, and passed to the mage-lord’s satisfaction, even receiving a small glass bowl with two colorful fighting-fish as pets as a reward for his performance. And Sulla himself was congratulated, too, and rewarded with a new abacus for a job well done. And yet Sulla was no fool. He knew what Cerros was, but he worried that the boy Timur did not.

  And so he took the boy aside. He had never had it in him to pretend to be the boy’s true father; it would have been cruel on his part to do so, he thought, as he would never be able to have true affection for the boy as a father should. Linella, though, had been glad to let the boy believe that she was his true mother. But on this day, his sixth birthday, Sulla took the boy aside after he had been tested by Cerros, took him to a shaded corner of the gardens in the mage-lord’s estate, where colorful love-birds sang to each other in the laden boughs of a plum-tree, and he told the boy the truth. Told him that his mother’s true name had been Aika, and his father had never been known, would never be known, for Cerros had ordered him worked to death for the crime of loving his mother. “You must not think that the master is your friend, child,” he told the boy. “He owned your parents, and now he owns you.”

  Sulla had not meant to frighten the boy, though perhaps a little fear was warranted. He had wanted only for Timur to know the dangers of Cerros and his place as a slave. A slave who thought his master was a friend would eventually do something dangerous, take liberties that he should not, and he might lose an eye or a hand or a tongue for it, or even his life. But Sulla had no way with children, even this child he knew very well, and Timur’s eyes grew wide at his rough tongue, and the boy wept bitter tears into his fish-bowl to hear what Sulla told him, wept to hear him say that Linella was not his mother, until he went running to her for comfort.

  Sulla watched the boy go, regretting what he had said. Timur might have a head for numbers, but he was still a child, and perhaps he could not understand such things. Perhaps he shouldn’t be made to understand such things, to live in a kind illusion while he still could.

  It didn’t matter either way. Soon, Timur learned what it meant to be a slave.

  3.

  It was perhaps inevitable.

  Though Sulayid was a slave-kingdom, its children were given time to play before their duties began. Trapped on the island and with no hope of escape, they roamed free yet imprisoned when not learning their labors. Timur had a group of friends with which he would spend his days running through the olive groves once he was done learning his numbers. There was nimble Torna of the flaming red hair, and only the faint whisper of memory of a snowy and quiet home, and quiet Thibault, whose mother spoke to him of the glorious golden empire that would surely exact a terrible retribution on Sulayid for the taking of its citizens, and mysterious Yanna, born into slavery, but who carried herself with such a fierce sense of pride that Timur could never imagine her bowing to a master.

  There was but one restriction placed on them: It was forbidden for them to play with the children of the mage-lords. Timur, though, had been lulled into thinking that the rules were soft, or perhaps did not apply to him, as many skilled slaves were tempted to think.

  And so it was that one day, when they came across a young girl in fine flowing silks, her dark hair bedecked with silver and sapphires, they hid back. But when that young girl waved them over, Torna, Thibault and Yanna all had the wisdom to stay away, while foolish Timur hesitated for only a moment before approaching her. Yanna very nearly pulled him away bodily, but in the end he pushed her away. “On your head be it, Timur!” she cried, before scampering away with the others.

  The young girl was named Pandora, and she smiled at Timur as he approached her. She was indeed the daughter of a noble, and she too had been taught the rule of never interacting with slaves. Yet like all nobles, she thought the rules did not completely apply to her, and unlike Timur, she thought correctly. She was delighted that he had actually come to her, for she had tried luring many slave-children before and all had denied her. “Timur is a curious name,” she said, when he told her. “What land is it from?”

  Timur, for his part, was enchanted by Pandora. He was young yet, but not so young that he did not think she was a very pretty girl, with wide eyes of blue ringed with green, like the colors of the ocean. He could not tell her what land his name was from, for he did not know it, had no idea of his bloodline, but when he told her this he saw Pandora’s face fall. And, clever that he was, he quickly puzzled out that perhaps the reason Pandora wanted so badly to speak to slave-children was to know of the other lands they had been taken from, and so he quickly thought up a lie. “Actually,” he said, drawing close to her with a conspiratorial whisper, “I do know. But my mother always told me to keep my silence about my homeland, for she does not want the world knowing the secrets of our people.”

  Pandora’s eyes shone, entranced, and she pleaded with him to know, promising to keep them close, and even offering some of the jewelry in her hair. Timur declined, and told her that for every secret he told, he must pray for forgiveness. He could only tell her one secret at a time, but if she agreed to meet him many times, she might eventually hear all of them.

  She agreed, and so Timur made up a story on the spot, a story about a snake his people kept locked in a room, eternally hungry. It would grow and grow, he told her, devouring everything in its path, until it grew too large for the room and must eat itself. Pandora was fascinated by this, and when he was done she leapt up and kissed his cheeks in thanks, and Timur knew only that he wanted to tell her stories for as long as he could.

  And so the two would meet again, and again, for weeks and then months, and each time Timur would tell her a ‘secret’ story of his people that he had invented, and her laughter and smiles in the shadows of the olive grove would make his heart flutter. But he was clever, and pretty eyes and a smile and a kiss on the cheek can only keep a clever boy interested for so long, and eventually he began asking Pandora questions as well. He had learned letters along with his numbers, and already he could read as well as anyone, and yet there were certain books he was not allowed to read; not even to touch, not even to look at. “They are books of the Art,” Pandora told him. “Only those of noble blood can read them.”

  “And what makes the blood noble?” he asked her.

  “Why, knowing the Art,” she laughed.

  Timur thought on this for a time. “Could you teach me the Art?”

  “Of course not. It is not allowed to teach the Art to slaves. And besides, I do not know it myself, yet.” And then she begged him to tell her another story, and he did, but the entire time Timur’s thoughts were elsewhere.

  Pandora saw this in him, and though she was naive enough to believe his stories, she had a certain cleverness herself. She knew he thought of the Art, and to tell the truth, she thought of the Art much these days, herself, as it was coming to the time in her life when she would learn. And the truth was that though Timur had first been enchanted by her, she had become a bit charmed by him, as well, and into her head sprang the exciting notion of learning the Art together with him, in secret. And so she vowed to herself that she would pilfer a book of the Art from her mother’s library to share with him.

  And that was how it was that the next time Timur went to their secret spot in the olive grove to meet Pandora, he instead found her mother and two guards, who beat him, bound him, and then dragged him back to the holding cells beneath her estates.

  Pandora’s mother was called Kalliope, and she was a cruel woman. She had the beauty of her daughter, the meekness and softness of face, but that softness hid a bloodthirsty soul. She had caught her daughter in the act of stealing, and it had taken little more than cold threats to have the truth out of her. The truth was, she might have chosen mercy, for a dalliance between a slave and master was not unheard of. And yet the law allowed her brutality and cruelty, and that was what she demanded.

  She kept Timur in a dirty room of stone that the sun did not reach, and at first, she had him beaten by some of her house-slaves, until she learned that he was educated. Knowing that the law concerning such slaves was more strict, she kept him isolated instead, and in total ignorance of his circumstances, starving him until his stomach was a hard knot of pain and he could not sleep. She only wanted to know whether her daughter had taught him the Art, and satisfied that she had not, then only seemed to want to see him suffer.

  So Timur was kept there in total darkness, not knowing how much time was passing, until finally after what felt like weeks his door was opened and standing there, escorted by a house-slave bearing a torch, was Cerros. “Come along, Timur,” he said simply.

  Timur almost wept with joy to see his master, and struggled to his feet, not noticing the simple disinterest that the mage-lord had in his suffering as he stumbled forth. Timur’s mind was filled with fantasies. His master did not treat him this way, and surely Cerros had come for revenge on Kalliope for her cruelty. He babbled thanks, but his master just regarded him silently with his small eyes, sallow and corpulent.

  But Cerros said nothing to him, offered him no words of comfort as they were led out of the dungeon, following the dirty torchlight of the house-slaves. Eventually they came out to sunlight once again, and Timur felt his heart lift almost to ecstasy after having been in the dark for so long, although his eyes were pained by the light, and he was blinded for some time. But when his sight came back to him, dread seized his heart.

  For before him stretched out a sandpit, beneath the blazing midday sun, with a wooden post standing in the midst of it, worn smooth. And there, across the pit stood Pandora, weeping, and her mother Kalliope, wearing a cruel smile.

  Timur may have been naive about the nature of his master, but he was not utterly guileless. Cerros had such a pit as well. It was where slaves were taken to be punished for disobedience or incompetence. “Master,” he said, his voice small, “Am I to be beaten?”

  “For a slave to have a dalliance with the child of a master is no small matter,” Cerros said idly. For a moment, he did nothing but watch as the child quaked in fear. “But no.” Timur sighed in relief before his master went on. “The penalty calls for a very hard beating, and I should not like to have you damaged. Linella has offered to take the beating in your place, and good fortune that Kalliope accepted.”

  Timur barely had time to grasp this before Linella—the woman who had raised him, sung him to sleep, snuck him sweets—was marched into the sandpit by two towering slave-soldiers, thick with muscle. She looked so delicate, so small beside them. They carried cudgels that were brutally large, carved from branches nearly as thick as her arm, and she did not say a word, did not look at Timur as they bound her to the post and stripped her. Timur tried to run to her, then, but he was held by the house-slaves. He wept and beg for it not to be done, begged that he should receive the punishment and not her, and then the first heavy, awful blow landed home and he screamed so loud he thought it might tear his throat open.

  There was no mercy. Linella, a mere house-slave, was of little consequence. At first, she bravely stayed silent, but soon her screams joined Timur’s, and Pandora’s wails as she begged her mother to order it to stop, and still there was the sound of hard wood hitting flesh, and the crack of bone, and blood soaking into the sand, and it went on and on and on.

  When it was done, Linella was unbound, her body slumping to the ground, and Timur, released, ran to her, but the beating had been terrible, and he could scarcely believe that this red, swollen, blood-drenched flesh before him was his mother. He knelt beside her, and did not know what to do, only reached out to touch her hair, her long pale hair, the only part of her that he still recognized, and presently, he realized something. “She is not breathing,” he said numbly.

  He only dimly heard what was said to this. He heard Cerros telling Kalliope that she had made the beating too harsh, and he would be contacting a magistrate for justice regarding the loss of his property. He heard Pandora weeping and begging for his forgiveness. These words flickered at the edge of the darkness that had consumed his thoughts. He remained, kneeling, and with no more tears in him, staring at the remains of his mother until he was dragged away.

  4.

  Things changed, on return to Cerros’ estates.

  With Cerros himself, things were the same as always. Timur’s master considered the matter over and done with; his slave had disobeyed, the disobedience had been punished, and there was nothing more to say on the matter. “Regain your strength quickly, and get back to your lessons with Sulla,” was all he told the starving boy.

  But the other house-slaves, among whom Linella had been well-liked, treated him now with scorn. They had been upset enough to know that she would be beaten on his account; to know that her beating had gone on to her death gained their ire, and they would not speak to him or treat him favorably as they used to. There were no more sweets snuck to him, no more extra food brought to him, no one to hold him and whisper words of love to him, no one who would come and sing him to sleep.

  Sulla tried, but there was little of comfort and gentleness in him. He did not know what words to give the boy, and so he thought that perhaps getting back to his lessons might take Timur’s mind off what had happened. But the child simply sat, limply holding his chalk, staring at the blank slate before him, when told to practice his equations, and after a few tries of this, Sulla left him alone, but not without a word of warning. “You must continue on sometime, Timur,” he told the boy, “These lessons are all that saves you.”

  And in the silence after Sulla left him, Timur understood for the first time that he was these letters. He was the numbers. Without them, he would have died, he truly would have been killed. No one but Linella had loved him for anything but his use to them, and she was gone now.

  That night, Timur ran away.

  It was not difficult. No slave truly escaped Sulayid, so guards rarely watched them—unless a beating was imminent. And so Timur simply waited until the household was all fast asleep, and then slipped out into the night, where the cold pale moon painted the narrow streets in shadow and silver.

  Every scrap of the island was the property of some noble or other, and so the most a slave might do is run from one estate to the next, where they would eventually be found. Or he might go to the lowest streets of the city, where the small and tightly-packed buildings held garrisons of mining-slaves for their labor, but a mining-slave would turn in an escaped slave as quick as he learned of them, for he might be killed outright if he tried to hide them. But escape was not what was on Timur’s mind, and he knew the one place he could go where he might never be found.

  And so that night he went to the olive groves, a secret place where the land dipped into empty darkness. An old entrance to the vast tunnels of mines that descended deep into the island’s belly. Many of these tunnels were abandoned, and this entrance had ceased being a convenient one for bringing ore to the surface. It led to tunnels that had lain still and quiet, their dust undisturbed for centuries at the least, perhaps more.

  The only thing Timur took to this place was a torch, and he had no true plan in his thoughts. His heart was too torn with grief for one. He knew only that he wanted to go deep, deep into the dark where he might never be seen again, where searchers would not find him, and if he starved and died there, that was the way it would be.

  Down into the dark and ancient stone he went, deep until the sun-rich land above was nothing but a whisper, deep where so many slaves had died pulling wealth from rock. In those depths, the stone grew warm, and the walls seemed almost to breathe and pulse, as if the land could remember these wounds carved into it so long ago. Timur began to sweat, but still he pushed on. He stumbled blindly down turns he did not care to remember until at last he came to a cavern, its walls too far for the torch to reach. But in the ceiling there were gleaming stones embedded, and they caught the torchlight and shone like stars in the night sky. Here in this place he collapsed and wept, wept until the torch beside him went out, wept until the embers had died and he was left alone in this enormous blackness. And still he wept, for ages it seemed that he wept.

  And then, once there were no more tears in him, once he had grown silent, once he was alone in that sweltering, stifling dark, a voice spoke to him.

  It was a small voice, no more than a whisper, weak and thin, so very small that if it were not for the silence pressing in on him, Timur might have missed it. “Why do you weep, child?” the voice in the dark asked.

  Timur was numb with his grief, or else he might have felt fear. But right now he did not care who the voice belonged to, or the impossibility of it being here. “My foolishness got my mother killed,” he said. And then, “I killed her.”

  “How did this come to be?” asked the voice.

  “I am a slave,” Timure answered. And then he found it all pouring out of him, to this stranger in the dark. Not just how he had lost Linella, but what Sulla had told him about his true parents, killed before he had ever known them, about how he was nothing but the numbers and letters to Cerros, and his life might be so easily snuffed out if he should lose them.

  The voice was quiet after Timur had finished, and the silence stretched until he began to wonder if he had imagined it. Then, the voice murmured, “It is a poor thing to be a slave. I can free you.”

  “How?” Timur asked.

  “I can teach you a scrap of the Art. None who know it can remain a slave. All you must do is ask.”

  Timur felt his heart leap at this. This was the thought he himself had, when Pandora had first told him what the forbidden books held. He had come here to this darkness, thinking that he would not care if he died, but he found that the idea of freedom sparked life in him anew. “I ask,” he said fervently, “I wish it, I wish to know the Art.”

  “Do you promise to keep it a secret? To tell nobody that I am here?”

  A strange certainty settled over Timur, as if he already knew the words before they were spoken. “I do.”

  “To teach you,” the voice said, “I will need your blood.”

  Fear gripped Timur then. He scrambled back, and for the first time wondered what this voice could be, and whether it meant him harm. But the voice did not threaten. It only instructed. And before he knew how, a sharp rock was in his hand. “Come further, further forward,” the voice whispered to him, and for a moment it was so gentle that it reminded him of poor Linella. “Just a bit more. There, be careful! Not a step further. Now open your hand, and hold it out in front of you.”

  The flare of pain was sharp in the darkness as he cut open his hand, and sharper still for the mute darkness all around him, but Timur did as the voice asked. His blood dripped down, but he could not hear it strike the stone. It was as if the darkness swallowed it, drinking it deep. He stood there, silent and bleeding and so very small, an ant in the enormity of these winding tunnels.

  And then, after some time, a light began to shine.

  It was a silvery light, cold, that seemed to float to him out of nowhere and everywhere at once, a pale flame growing, swelling, pulsing. He turned his head, but the flame was there too, no matter which way he looked. He was afraid, at first. But as it drew near, he understood that this silver flame was the Art, and what was more, it was his Art. It was rich and deep, as large as the world and yet small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. It moved behind his eyes, settling in there, something vast folding in on itself and making itself small, and as it touched his mind, grief fled, a heavy poison lifted from it. It was as if the silver flame touched his very thoughts, and wherever it did his thoughts burned brighter, clearer, and he could feel a pair of gentle, wise hands ordering his thoughts, arranging them anew. He was filled with life, and with joy for life, and the ecstasy of living.

  Eventually, Timur became aware that he was laying on the floor of the cave, breathing in the dust and the earth. But he rose knowing that the silver flame was a part of him now, and he brought it forth, in a ball that floated before and shone brighter than any torch, bright enough to illuminate the entire vast cavern, and he laughed with simple joy of power.

  But then he saw what lay in the center of the chamber. A pit. A sheer drop, bottomless and vast. It did not move, yet the longer Timur looked, the larger it seemed—pulling him toward it. It was this enormous darkness that he had held his hand out over and bled into, and if he had taken just another step he would have fallen into it. And some part of him thought that he would have simply fallen eternally, down into forever darkness.

  “The Art is yours now, the beginnings of what it is to know it,” the voice said to him from that pit. “May it serve you well.”

  Despite the voice’s gift, despite its kind words, Timur was afraid, frightened of what it was that might dwell in that pit, what it was that so instructed him. “What is your name?” he asked.

  “It is a secret,” the voice replied. “Remember your promise, Timur.”

  And then, no matter how he whispered to it, it would say no more.

  5.

  And so Timur made his way out of the mines with that silver flame to guide him. It did more than merely light his way. He had come down into the dark in a stupor of anguish, uncaring, not noticing which way he went. But the silver flame touched his memory of that, and where it did he found that clarity came to him, and he could remember the path back.

  Still, by the time he had made it back to Cerros’ estates, it was past noon on the next day, and his disappearance had been noticed. The search for him was not urgent, not yet, but still the house-slaves cried out and pointed to him as he approached, and went scurrying to fetch their master. Cerros arrived presently, looking most displeased, and the house slaves crowded behind him watching, for they were eager to see that Timur should be punished, thinking him responsible for what had happened to Linella.

  Cerros had been vexed, but not very surprised by Timur’s disappearance. He had trained many slaves in his day, and he knew that the skilled slaves, in particular, had a penchant for rebellion, at least until they learned their place. “You make disobedience a habit,” he told Timur as the child approached, “I had hoped you learned your lesson with Linella. I wanted to spare you a hard beating, but there are ways to have you beaten that will not damage you. For your ingratitude, I have had your fish taken away and fed to my cats. I-”

  And then he stopped, for the child was holding a silver flame in the palm of his hand. A clear demonstration of the Art.

  If he could have, he would have killed the boy right there. But one who knew the Art could not be considered a slave any longer. And Cerros could feel the silent eyes of the house-slaves, shocked, watching. If he were to strike down the boy—now a free man, and a noble in his own right, by virtue of the Art—then even the words of slaves could be turned against him. And yet wrath seized his heart, for he had spent years in the training of this boy, invested in him, and now all hope of profit had slipped away.

  “Come with me,” he said, and dragged the boy off to his study.

  Cerros’ study was a room of great mystery, for even the house slaves were not allowed in there with their cleaning. Timur himself had often been curious, and even tried the door once, but found it locked. He thought, walking in, that he now knew why. This room was steeped in the Art, and he could sense it now, sharp and clear, resonating with the silver flame within him. Glass balls of varying colors netted in rope hung from the ceiling, and inside each silvery starblood danced as if alive, twisting into shapes that seemed almost human before they melted away again. The walls were lined with bookcases filled with massive and musty leather-bound tomes, and he had no doubt each of these was a book forbidden to a slave. A desk of smooth, polished black stone sat in the center, piled high with melted wax from generations of candles that had melted into one another. Cerros took a seat behind this and then, looking at the boy over a ragged wall of wax, asked, “Who taught you this?”

  But Timur, remembering his promise, would not say.

  Cerros was wroth, but he was no fool, and he knew now the danger he was in. For while a slave who learned the Art became a noble, the nobles who had let it happen might be punished. He could think of three ways the boy might have learned. First, it might have been his readings with Sulla. While books of the Art were forbidden to slaves, it was not unheard of for some scrap of the Art to exist, hidden in metaphor within other books, and for a clever slave to puzzle out something from that given enough time. It would have been extraordinary for Timur to have done this so young, but there it was. Second, he might have learnt it from Kalliope’s brat. Kalliope herself had only said that he had been there meeting her daughter, but something might have transpired between them. Third, and worst of all, was that the boy might have snuck into his study somehow and read his books.

  “This is very serious,” he told the boy. “I can think of only two possibilities. First, that Sulla might have given you a book that you learned it from. In this case, Sulla will have to be punished very dearly.” This was true, and Cerros was loathe to have his skilled man of numbers damaged, especially given that he was losing his replacement. “However, perhaps it was that girl who taught you. What was her name? Pandora?”

  Timur knew only his panic at the thought that he might cause Sulla to be beaten, too, beaten to death as Linella was. Pandora, he thought, would not be punished too badly. She was the daughter of a mage-lord. “It was her!” he cried quickly, feeling only a little guilty.

  Cerros, satisfied, only nodded grimly. This was for the best, for him. Now, Kalliope might be punished, and he could find restitution from her for the loss of his property. Still, he wished that he might strike out at the boy for his impertinence, but Timur was a noble now, and it would carry with it harsh penalties. And Cerros was patient. He knew time presented opportunities for revenge.

  And so it was that that very day, Timur was taken from Cerros’ estates. Such a slave who had learned the Art was treated much as an orphaned son or daughter of a mage-lord might be, and treated as a charge of the Palace, which would see to his education. One of the secretaries to the Patriarch came to fetch him, a noblewoman of aged and firm countenance and long, silver hair, who was dressed in the snow-white silks that were the uniform of the palace, accompanied by house-slaves dressed nearly as fine as nobles themselves. Of all he knew there, only Sulla seemed truly sad to see him go now, and only Sulla bid him goodbye.

  “You have learned all that I could teach you and more, young Timur,” the old learned slave told him, in truth still feeling a bit nervous—blame might still fall on him for Timur’s learning of the Art. He wished he could say more to the boy, but what else might be said? He knew nothing of the world Timur would now be a part of. “Go now, and by the grace of the Art, might you learn more.” And Timur, despite the fact that the man had never truly acted the father to him, wept and vowed never to forget him. And then he was taken away, to begin his new life in the Palace.

  It was not until later that he learned what happened to Pandora. If her mother had accepted responsibility for what happened, she might have been harshly fined, and perhaps seen jail time. And so Kalliope had cast all the blame upon her daughter, and disowned her. And as she was yet without the protection of knowing the Art, Pandora, who had once wore fine silks and jewels in her hair, was made into a slave herself.

  6.

  The Palace of the Stars was a place of quiet tranquility, of cool, empty halls cast in the shadow of still marble columns, of floors tiled in polished mosaics of colored stone, illustrations of ocean-birds and waves, or of the calm blue sky. Timur’s quarters were kept far away from the forums where the noblemen would meet, not far from a garden so large that it looked almost to be a natural forest. He was given apartments of his own, with large windows that looked out into the garden, and bookcases that held all the books he had ever read and still had room to spare, and a down-stuffed bed. He had lived well, compared to other slaves, but never had he seen such splendor. This seemed to him a paradise.

  The woman who had brought him there was called Minas, and she was to be his tutor in the Art. She had been—still was—a noblewoman, but she had given up her estates to her daughter and pledged her service to the Patriarch in her old age. She did not seem to care in the slightest that Timur had once been a slave, and in fact seemed to pretend that this simply wasn’t so. When first he arrived, she asked him with a pointed look whether he had any favored slaves, that she might attempt to purchase them from their owners. Timur, though young, understood that she was asking him whether she might bring his friends to him.

  He gave their names, but of all his friends only Yanna had been available for purchase. He inquired after Pandora, as well, once he had learned what had happened to her, but in this he was denied; they were not to be in contact with one another. For a time, Timur would go out of the Palace, out into the city, searching for her, but eventually he stopped, for he grew accustomed to the serene contemplation of the Palace.

  The years passed, and Timur grew from boy into a young man. The rest of his face caught up to his overlarge nose, so that now it simply seemed sharp instead of protruding, and his dark hair he kept in a long braid, and turned a rich, deep red from his time spent in the sun of the Palace gardens. He was tall and slim, and Palace life bestowed upon him a refined elegance, offset charmingly by his one crooked ear. His quick, knowing grin remained, but it was slower to come now. In quiet moments, the silence of the Palace filled his mind, and his thoughts became somber and purposeful.

  He grew in his skill with the Art, too, and with his mastery of the silver flame that lay within him, behind his eyes. The Art manifested in everyone differently, Minas told him, but his silver fire was a very strange incarnation of it indeed. For Minas, it felt as if every new thing she tried with the Art must be thought of anew. When she lit a fire using the Art, it was different from when she manipulated the ocean into waves, and different still from when she spoke to the weather to summon storms, or mended a boat with charms. But for Timur, all of it was done with the silver flame dancing from his palms, filling him with light and life, burning behind his eyes and whispering in his thoughts. Even so, despite this difference between them, she was able to teach him much, and she knew very much indeed—she was accounted one of the most powerful callers of storms in Sulayid. And from ancient books across many lands, brought to Sulayid from empires and kingdoms now long fallen, Timur learned ever more, and the Art brought him great joy.

  Such was his progress that at times, even the Patriarch himself would pay a visit. He was named Zeno, and he was old, older than it was possible for any normal man to be, for he had found the secret of long life with the Art. And even taking that into account, he was old. No living soul on the island had ever met a man who had known a man who had known another who had seen the Patriarch as a youth. He was gnarled, dark leather stretched over bone, tight and gaunt, hairless except for the long wisps of a snow-white beard that fell from the bottom of his chin almost to his knees, and great bushy white eyebrows. Despite this, his eyes were sharp, and it was said he was a master of the Art far beyond the skill of anyone else. And even he, when he saw Timur’s progress, clapped the boy’s shoulder, giving him a knowing look, and told him in a whisper-thin voice that he would go far.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Not all was well, though. Minas took in other students, from time to time. No other slaves were freed in the same manner as Timur came - it was a very rare occurrence that such happened—and there were no orphans that came to live in the Palace either, for orphans in Sulayid, free of war, were rare as well. But on occasion nobles would send their children to the Palace for royal tutelage, and though by law Timur was their equal, they knew of his past, and had nothing but scorn for him. And Timur himself did not help matters, for though he received an allowance from the Palace, he refused to keep slaves himself, or rather, he refused to treat them properly, as Sulayid saw it.

  He started with Yanna, in trying to free her, and yet he found that the laws were prohibitive. He could technically free her, yes, but if ever she was found on another noble’s estate, they could recapture her as their property, and so ironically, being free, she would be more restricted than as a slave. He tried to teach her the Art, so that she might be made truly free and damn the consequences, but she did not have the ability in her. Yanna was clever, but eminently practical, and it took the touch of a poet’s soul to speak with the Art, or so it was thought.

  So by law, she remained his slave. Yet he told her that he would never consider her or address her as such. He told her she was free in all but name, that she would work for wages, and not in chains. He told the same to all slaves he purchased, though paying them as he did,he could afford far fewer than others. And this was the greatest scandal of all, for in Sulayid, a noble who did not own slaves was barely noble at all. Only Minas did not seem to care one way or another.

  But, despite all this, he began to gather fame as well. Power in Sulayid was not measured alone by wealth or the number of slaves one owned, but with skill in the Art as well, and Timur had much of the latter. Once he had learned all there was to know from Minas, he came up with new crafts of his own that awed some of the nobility, and earned him allies there, while others seethed with jealousy. As ever, power purchased the right to be strange. He learned to enchant a ship such that it may always know its way back to port, though its compass be lost, and charmed the nets of fishermen such that their haul was twice as much as it might be without it. Silver flame danced from his hands, and even the worst of poxes and plagues were cured, and he could divine fine metals and gems far beneath the earth, and with his guidance the mines became vastly more efficient, with many of the less profitable tunnels abandoned. It was whispered that the only one who might outstrip Timur when he came into his full power was Zeno himself, who had, ages ago, performed similar miracles; but now had withdrawn to the study of the stars.

  7.

  So it was that when time came for Timur to leave the Palace and pass out of his tutelage and carekeeping that, despite his eccentricities and the distaste many of the nobles had for him, he was seen as a great prospect, and had earned much wealth through his crafts of the Art.

  He purchased for himself his own estates, much smaller than they might otherwise be, and all his coin went to purchasing slaves and then ‘freeing’ them, in his way, keeping them on as servants but paying them for their service. He might have been the wealthiest mage-lord of his time, with his skill. Instead, he bought freedom, coin by coin, and in the eyes of Sulayid, threw his fortune to the wind. The nobles mocked him, but Timur would have it no other way.

  And over the years, as they had grown together, Yanna and Timur had grown close, and then came to know love for one another, and were now in the years of life where ardor is the strongest. They dreamt of a life together, and whispered to each other of plans for marriage, as if hope alone might defy the laws of Sulayid. A dalliance between slave and master might be tolerated, or even a child, but open marriage between the two was an impossibility. Still, they could live with each other, and know happiness. There was but one thing that Yanna wished for.

  She had been born into slavery, and all her family—father, mother and two younger brothers—were still with her former master, an elderly mage-lord named Torro. He was not an unkind man, and in fact was quite free in letting Yanna visit them. But she wished for her family to join her in freedom with Timur, and Torro was unwilling to sell. Yanna’s father was a skilled silversmith, and her two brothers a stonemason and a sculptor; her mother, a fine house-slave that did much to care for Torro in his old age. But Timur met with the man, and while he could not get them right away, Torro gladly agreed that he should sell them to Timur alone once he died. And so, while they were unhappy circumstances, they resigned themselves to the idea that it should be settled soon enough.

  Or so they thought. For when the time of Torro’s death came, and Timur tried to make good on his promise, Torro’s daughter, Yves, of a grandmother’s age herself, claimed his slaves as inheritance. It came to a legal dispute settled by one of the Patriarch’s magistrates, but it was settled that Yves had the precedent and the legal right to them. She did her part to assure Timur —she did not actually want these slaves for herself, but she would be putting them up for auction. All Timur had to do was attend and make the highest bid.

  Timur attended the auction, held in the gardens of Torro’s estates, but all he could think of was how little coin he had to work with. An auctioned slave would cost much more than what he had agreed to pay Torro.

  Beneath the boughs of trees heavy with pink blossoms, with the trills and sweet music of lovebirds in the air, dozens of mage-lords gathered for the auction. Many of them had nothing but sneers and scorn for Timur, but others for whom the Art was more important were glad to be talking to him. He did what he could to ask for their help; some of them would be glad to do him favors, to see him get the slaves he wanted, if it meant a little tutelage in the crafts he knew.

  Finally the time came to begin, and the first slave was brought out, stripped bare so that the attending mage-lords might see that their purchase was undamaged and in good health. Yanna had not attended this auction, not wanting to shame her family by seeing them this way. Timur himself thought it was a wretched way to treat folk, and knew how fortunate he had been as a slave to never have to go through such, to have his shame exposed before the prying eyes and prodding fingers of the mage-lords, treating him as livestock. He hated attending auctions like this, though he had done it on occasion to free what slaves he could.

  Finally, the time came when Yanna’s mother was up for auction, stepping onto the small wooden stage that had been erected before the intrigued crowd, and Timur made his bid, small, hoping that he could save some money for the others.

  But it was not to be, for Cerros was there that day.

  Timur’s former master had watched his erstwhile slave over the years, quiet and waiting, a spider in the shadows. He had kept his wrath contained, the day that Timur had contrived a way to escape his grasp, but he still forever thought of the man as his slave. It did not matter that Timur far outstripped him in matters of the Art; he had once been under Cerros’ power, and as far as Cerros was concerned, that meant he should always be so. And so, jealous and hateful, but patient, Cerros had watched, and his wicked, sly eyes had seen Timur’s treatment of his slaves, and in particular Yanna, had seen the blushing glances the young mage-lord had for his slave, and she for him. He had watched, and thought, and in his awful cleverness he had guessed correctly that Timur would be at that auction that day, and had guessed too what he would be there for.

  And so on every member of Yanna’s family—her mother, her father, her two brothers—Cerros outbid his former slave. Timur, at the last, dedicated all his gold to the purchase of Yanna’s mother, but even then Cerros could pay more, easily. For while Timur had gone uncaring for his wealth, and wishing only to treat his slaves as human, Cerros had exploited them shrewdly, and grown greatly in wealth and influence over the years. As much as Timur outshone Cerros in the Art, Cerros outshone him with gold and property. Timur could only watch in despair as Yanna’s family was rounded up by the slave-soldiers of his former master.

  Swallowing his pride, he approached Cerros, prepared to plead and beg, prepared to give up every secret of the Art he knew. In the darkest reaches of his heart, he was even prepared to sell his other slaves, though he had ‘freed’ them. He was willing to treat them as property if it meant saving Yanna’s kin. But as he made his entreaty, Cerros merely smiled, his wormlike lips twisting upward into the fleshy folds of his face, and Timur knew then his former master had been waiting for this day. Cerros told him that the only price he would accept would be if Timur would swear off the Art, and sign all his property and himself back as slave in Cerros’ service.

  It was an impossibility, what he was asking for. The laws of Sulayid would never have allowed such scandal. And even if it could be done, Timur would never have accepted. It would have defeated the very purpose, as Yanna would have become Cerros’ property as well. He could do nothing but watch, his heart sick, as Cerros left with his new slaves, a cold-blooded, wide grin on his froglike face. He could do nothing but return home and tell Yanna of what had transpired, do nothing but hold her as she wept in despair.

  But this was only the beginning of Cerros’ cruelty.

  Soon there came tale on the street of the wails that arose from his estates, the shrieks and cries that could be heard at almost all hours. Cerros was treating his new slaves most terribly, it was said, and other mage-lords scoffed at his decadent foolishness, in purchasing three craftsman-slaves and treating them in such a way, duly impressed nonetheless by this display of easy wealth. Yanna was certainly not allowed to speak to her family, and soon she could not even bring herself to go into the streets. For it seemed whenever her path passed close by Cerros’ estate, the screams would at their loudest; and whenever either she or Timur were out for too long, Cerros would find them, and he would be dragging his new slaves, dressed in the barest of rags, by chain and iron collar around their throat. They were mottled with bruises, broken, dead-eyed and limping, and if they even glanced at Yanna or Timur Cerros would order them beaten right there in the street.

  It was agony for Yanna and Timur both, made more so by the fact that nothing could be done. Timur made his appeals, invoking the laws that governed the treatment of slaves—laws that, in theory, protected the skilled. But Cerros knew better, and he struck carefully, ensuring pain, never ruin. Even so, a lesser mage-lord might have found himself under penalty. But this was Cerros, wealthy and powerful, and so the magistrates could only tell Timur that the manner in which a master disciplined their slaves was up to them. And Yanna’s mother, as a simple house-slave, had no such protection. Whispers abounded of the depraved treatment she received at the hands of Cerros; whispers, Timur was sure, that Cerros himself had planted. He tried his best to shield Yanna from these. But the light slowly began to leave her eyes, and he knew that she had heard.

  He considered simply killing the man, so desperate was he. With his skill in the Art, he was quite certain that he could force his way into Cerros’ estates and slay him. But even if he managed to do this unknown, he would be the first suspect. For many were the nobles and mage-lords who knew why Cerros was treating his slaves this way. They laughed at Timur, finally getting his comeuppance for his eccentric ways, for scorning wealth. And Timur knew that if he were imprisoned for slaying Cerros, Yanna would go up for auction herself.

  So it was that, one moonless night, Timur stole away into the shadow, quiet and unseen. Back into the well of darkness in the land that he had fled to all those years ago as a grieving and lost child. Back to the cavern, and the endless dark pit that lay within. Back to the voice in the dark, his way lit by silver flame.

  He had never returned in all the years since he had first spoken with it. He had learned, along with his lessons on the Art, of the existence of dark powers and demons. Always Timur had feared that in his ignorance he had made some form of pact with one of these. But even more so than that was the feeling deep within his bones that this was a private place, a place of pain, a place of his pain and where it had been relieved, to be kept secret. Like a journal, full of dark confessions, whose author knew it should be thrown away, but cannot bear to do so.

  “Hello, Timur,” the voice said, rising from the dark, greeting him like an old friend. “I knew you would return.”

  To his surprise, Timur could sense no demon here. For a moment he hesitated. He had returned much as he had when he was a child, unknowing of his purpose. But as soon as the voice spoke, he knew what he wanted to do. Words of anger and hatred poured out of him like blood from a broken wound. The more he spoke of it, the hotter his rancor grew. Cerros was no man, he was a despicable, festering sore on the face of the world. That such a putrid vileness should be was too much to bear. “I wish he were dead,” Timur snarled, his voice echoing off the cavern walls, down into the pit. “I wish he were dead, and that he might suffer terribly before he was gone!”

  His cry echoed down into the pit, his wish fading into that interminable darkness, that seemingly endless abyss, swallowed up by the very stone itself. “I can do this for you,” the voice in the dark answered him. “I can see Cerros dead, in such a way that you are not blamed. It would be a waste for you to lose yourself to this.”

  This was the hope that Timur had held in his heart. That the voice, having delivered him from his torment once before, might do so again. But he knew there would be a price. And somehow, he knew that it would be a terrible one to pay. “And what do you ask for in return?”

  “The life of a slave,” the voice answered. “Bring to me a slave, and cast them into the pit.”

  Timur said not a word. He turned and fled.

  8.

  But he could not stop thinking about it.

  Cerros redoubled his cruelty, emboldened by the fact that Timur had made appeals to the magistrates to no avail. It was as if he was mad with it. The screams echoed from his estates, day and night. He found time to constantly parade by Timur’s estate, displaying his ownership, slack-jawed, eyes hazed, sweating in his silks, his waddling flesh nearly the color of death. He taunted them further; approaching them to say that he would relent, that he would sell Yanna’s family, if for an exorbitant sum, only to renege on the deal the moment it was about to be made. He seeded whispers that he had finally killed Yanna’s mother, or her father, or one of her brothers, only for the rumor to turn out to be untrue. It was whispered that he was obsessed with tormenting Timur to the exclusion of all else; his fortunes had begun to wane, and he had ignored the Patriarch’s forums to devote himself to it. A man possessed.

  Yanna could not stand it. She lay abed, with the curtains closed, in darkness, weeping, until there was no more weeping to be done. And then when there were no more tears in her, she simply stared at the ceiling, eating nothing, wasting away. Where once her skin had glowed golden with the touch of the sun, it became sickly and pale, and she grew gaunt, her eyes dull. She would have long ago killed Cerros herself, no matter the consequences, but she knew it was hopeless. A mage-lord such as he would have wrapped her up easily with the Art, and she was watched for besides. And if she tried, she might be made to serve Cerros, rather than be given death, and all the man’s depraved lunacy would be for her to bear, too, all the more because Timur loved her so; and whatever he did to her family, that too she would have to witness.

  Timur could only watch as the woman he loved, the girl he had known from childhood so fierce and unbowed even in servitude, withered and was broken. And he could not keep one conclusion from his thoughts. If only you had used your slaves as Cerros did. Or even not so cruelly, just used them as they were meant to, rather than playing at freeing them. You would have the money to have purchased her family. These thoughts shamed him, but he could not keep the anger from his heart either, and the idea lodged itself deep in his mind. I bought their freedom with Yanna’s misery. And it was not even really freedom in the end, was it. And always in the back of his mind the offer the voice had made him, what he might purchase with one black sin.

  So he did it.

  In secret, in shame, he descended into the depths of the city, where the minor nobles might own only one slave to their name, where the small mage-lords, clumsy in their craft, were unfamiliar with the heights of power Timur had traveled in, son of the Palace, and did not know his face. And there, after some searching, he found a slave that suited his purposes—a former house-slave, old and decrepit now, half-blind and half-witted, whose master was nearly as aged and daft as he, and as close to poverty as a mage-lord might get. The coin Timur offered him, meager in his circles, was a fortune to this noble. “Oh, take good care of him,” the old master said, “He is not so much use anymore, but he served me well these many years. He can still make a good soup, and he likes gardening. If you give him a plot, he will raise fine vegetables for you.”

  Timur shuddered, and nearly ended the deal right there. He had chosen this aged one so that only a few years off the end of his life might be lost, and he did not want to hear about his kindly master’s wishes for a gentle twilight of his life. But he steeled his heart, and nodded.

  He did not return home. He hid with the old slave in the alleys and shadows of Sulayid, waiting for night, closing his eyes as the man asked where his master was in a fumbling soft voice. And then when night came, and none saw, he took the man into the countryside, ignoring his confused questions, the strain the walk took on the old man, ordering him ever forward.

  When the first black maw of the mines came into view, the old man whimpered, his thin fingers clutching at Timur’s sleeve. He tried to run. Timur did not let him. Cold and numb as stone, Timur seized him by the wrist and dragged him into the dark, gagging the slave with the Art when he could no longer stand to hear the sound of his weeping echoing off the halls, down into the deep, down, down, the man stumbling behind him as he tried to dig his feet in, bleeding now as Timur hauled him up, bleeding and old and weeping and afraid, his eyes begging for mercy, somehow sure of his doom, until finally Timur reached the great cavern and with a scream of anguish shoved the old slave into the pit.

  He realized, as the man plummeted silently, that he had deprived him even of final words, or a final scream, stifled as he was by the Art. He had not even looked the man in the eyes. And then Timur doubled over and retched, sobbing.

  “It is done,” the voice whispered to him, quiet and certain and satisfied, as if it had known that this was, and would be, and would ever be.

  “What is your name,” Timur asked again, when he could speak.

  “It is a secret, Timur.” The voice sounded as if it was genuinely sympathetic. “You chose well. He did not have much time left.”

  “Do not speak to me of such things,” Timur snapped, full of wrath.

  “Keep your promise,” the voice said, ignoring him. “Tell no one.”

  And then it would say no more.

  9.

  It was the greatest scandal Sulayid had known for centuries.

  The slaves of Cerros rose up against their master in wrath, in a manner no one living could recall happening, seized by some strange madness, and though Cerros had the Art with him, numbers had won the day. When the magistrates and slave-soldiers arrived, they found nothing left of him but blood and ruin, his estate a shattered carcass.

  Timur escaped blame, if not suspicion. He had enemies among the mage-lords, and some were willing to lie, and say they had seen him going into Cerros’ home the night it was said to have happened. He did not care about this, though. There was something else that held his attention. Rebellious slaves were punished with the bloody spectacle public execution. They did not get trials, and there was no attempt to distinguish which of the slaves were guilty or innocent. All of Cerros’ slaves that still lived, that had not died in rising up against him, were sentenced to death by beating. That included all of Yanna’s family.

  That included Sulla, Timur’s old teacher.

  Yanna did not go. She could not. It would be the last time she might see her family, but she could not bear to watch them die. She remained in her room on the day of their execution, and Timur merely held her, her frail and diminished form, as she wailed and wept into his chest, breath hot, trembling and frantic, until there was no more in her. Until there was only silence. Timur, too, could not bear to see Sulla, not knowing that he was the one responsible for his death. He had asked for this from the voice, and it had delivered. And the dark truth was, part of him was glad. Glad to know that Cerros had come to such a horrific end, despite the cost. Despite Sulla. Despite Yanna’s grief. Despite everything. Cerros had deserved it. Cerros had deserved all of it, and Timur only hoped that the man had still been breathing when they began to pull him apart.

  It was worth it.

  So he thought.

  Until he found Yanna in her bed, stiff and cold, with her wrists opened, and a note full of grief and woe.

  10.

  The years passed.

  Something had died in Timur the day Yanna took her life. He did not bury it. He simply let it wither, watching as it crumbled into dust inside him, piece by piece. The glimmer in his eyes was gone. His quick and knowing smile was gone. Now, he looked lost, and when he did not, rage passed like a great and terrible storm across his features. Once, he had been gentle and understanding, but there was no understanding to be reached with this world. He only had his anger to hold onto, the only thing left to him that made sense.

  He never loved again. Who was there for him to love? He was handsome to be sure, and well-known in the Art. Some of the noblewomen, despite his eccentricities, looked upon him with interest, considering him a potential suitor. But he had nothing but loathing for them, and he could not bring himself to love a slave again. Not after what had happened, not knowing how vulnerable they were, how that vulnerability would become part of him.

  So he shut himself off to companionship and walled off his heart. There were none in Sulayid he might open himself to. He lived apart and alone, and the long years tied a knot of hatred and bitterness in his heart, even as they breathed whispers of silver into his red-brown hair, even as they slowly refined him from a fresh-faced mage-lord curious in his power to a man of regal bearing, dark dignity and terrible wrath.

  For in those years of loneliness, it was the Art that he dedicated himself to; the Art, and power. After Yanna’s death, he no longer made a pretense of freeing slaves. Those he had already freed, he let them keep their freedom, and the new slaves he bought he treated well, but slaves they were still, and from them he built his wealth, for he decided he would never again be at someone else’s mercy and the Art alone was not enough protection.

  And he grew quickly in his holdings and influence. For now that he was acting at least somewhat of a proper mage-lord, his eccentricities could be forgiven as a youthful indulgence, forgotten quickly, as he was greater in the Art than any save the Patriarch. Even the whispers that he had something to do with Cerros’ death were quickly tossed aside. The other mage-lords thought that he had recognized his foolishness, though they learned quickly never to attempt to tease or make light of his past pretenses at freedom, lest they have his cold rage come down upon them. None wished for that, for Timur came to have much influence in the Patriarch’s forums. Slowly, he cast a web of design out across Sulayid, through favor and disfavor, and where he touched, he did two things: gathered power to himself, and did what he could to make life better for the slaves.

  He accomplished what might have been thought scandalous to the point of impropriety not so long ago. At his work, protections that were offered to the skilled craft-slaves extended to house-slaves; he worked to ban executions that used excessive cruelty, mandating that if a slave were to be killed it was to be done swiftly. If a master was proven to have used unjustified force against a slave or crippled them needlessly, they would face a ten year ban on the purchase of new property, rather than a fine, and if it were a craft-slave, they might even be sentenced to death depending on the severity of the crime.

  But Timur could find no pride or passion in these endeavors. Not any longer. Loneliness and isolation and hate and hurt wormed their way deep into his heart. Sometimes he wondered that he could attain such power to pass these laws at all, for his mind felt as if it were weighed down, forever, beneath a heavy, hot blanket of hurt. He filled the emptiness within him with the silver flame, and its soothing whispers gave him some relief, some clarity. At least, for a time. Only two ideas stood out constant in his mind, like rocks towering above a black sea. First, that slaves should be freed, and second, that all the nobles should share Cerros’ fate. He hated them so, hated them for what they had made, for this bitter world, and in his mind the two goals were one and the same, either way. The slaves would never be freed until the nobles were dead.

  He thought long about how this might be done, through plot of poison or craft of the Art, but poison was impossible to give to so many at once; and as for the Art, there was one problem that Timur could not overcome:

  The Patriarch was simply greater than he at its crafting, and ever would be.

  Patriarch Zeno was a man of incredible power, and perhaps had they been both the same age, Timur might have been a match for him. But they were not. Zeno had centuries on him—or perhaps even more. Zeno was age and power itself. And he had long since given himself over to the study of the Art, and the stars, where Timur still busied himself with law and coin. Years through history forgotten, Zeno had delved into the mysteries of the Art, and now was resplendent in its workings and unmatched in its craft. Even Timur paled before Zeno’s ability and skill, and it was a bitter, uncomfortable thing, knowing for the first time that here was someone he would never surpass.

  He thought, once, that he might make himself an ally of the Patriarch. But no, it could never be so. Zeno did not pay attention to the working of law, or barely did so; he was almost always absent from his high seat of honor at the Patriarch’s forums, though they may be named for him. But he had, once, deigned to attend, when Timur had brought forth a proposal for the better treatment of mining slaves. Hard-fought had that been, but he had gotten the necessary voices to support it, and was certain it would pass. Except for Zeno, who had with a word dismissed the proposed law, and not even bothered with attending the rest of the forum. Afterwards, Timur found himself summoned for an audience with the Patriarch.

  It was grand, cavernous, vast, and Timur could not help but feel that he had been here before, that this place felt almost like home to him. A great throne wrought of silver in twining strands and dripping with sapphires sat empty, and great glass balls filled with white flame hung from a ceiling painted a deep abyssal blue, like the night sky. Zeno greeted him instead on a couch rich with tasseled cushions. The Patriarch seemed not to have aged a single day since Timur had first met him as a child. Perhaps past a certain point, you looked as old as it was possible to. He patted the couch, and bid Timur sit next to him, and told him in his whispery voice, “I wanted to tell you, I think it is good what you have done. With the laws, I mean.”

  “Really,” Timur said dryly, “I often hear from my opposition that you would never approve of such changes. Or from you, today.”

  “Nonsense. The mining slaves, well, they must remain productive. Particularly in the extraction of starblood, my boy. Nothing ever comes for free. Power has a price. You’ve learned that, haven’t you? Well, perhaps not.” He regarded Timur silently for a moment, eyes dark and unreadable. “But the rest, well…those other fools, they do not speak for me. Laws must change, now and again…something that lives always must change. The clutter must be brushed away, yes? Or else the city would choke on it. Sulayid would be stagnant.” Zeno gave a grin that flashed gold teeth and said, “I changed some laws when I was your age too. Did you know when I was a boy, it was legal to hold those who knew the Art as slaves?”

  Timur was stunned. He had not known this, nobody knew this. The Art made the noble, made the mage-lord. A slave who knew the Art was a contradiction. “Who could possibly own them?” he asked, wondering again just how old Zeno was.

  “Who indeed,” the Patriarch replied slyly. “Well. No matter. They’re gone now.” Timur waited for a moment as the old man considered him, plucking at his snow-white robes, eyes inscrutable. “You are quite skilled with the Art, as well, are you not?”

  “Not so much as you,” Timur replied.

  Zeno scoffed. “Spare me the fawning. That is for the others. It demeans you.” But even so, the Patriarch waved a hand, and in a moment the white flame-globes and deep blue of the ceiling was cast in a magnificent glamor of the night sky, rich and deep. The throne room fell away, and to Timur, it seemed that he and the Patriarch floated in the midst of that infinite emptiness, vast and huge and terrifying, with only the distant winking of silver stars for company. And Timur knew that such an illusion, which Zeno had waved with but the idle wave of a hand, was far beyond him, and knew then just how much the Patriarch outstripped his ability.

  “Beautiful,” Zeno whispered, looking upward at the glory of the night sky, his eyes dim, faded in remembrance. “Do you know what the stars are, lad?”

  “I have heard they are great gems, clear crystals, filled with starblood.” It was the tale every child was told in Sulayid.

  “Gems,” Zeno replied. His voice was small, so small, in that endless dark. The both of them were so very, very small. “Gems. It was what I was told as well. But I have known for the longest time now that this is not all they are. Mere substance, material, matter, no. They are made of light, and time, and the Art itself. And they live, boy. Points of perfection, scattered throughout the firmament…complete and absolute, ideal thought and life. Eternal for all of time and through all of time. Like a circle of ink, soaking through many pages. Folding constantly into new shapes, but always unchanging.” The patriarch’s hands were shaking as he turned back to Timur. “Glorious,” he whispered, “I have long wished to shed my flesh, and become as they are. Do you…do you understand? Do you grasp it?”

  Timur did not. He knew of the Patriarch’s obsession with the stars and the night sky, everyone did. But Zeno notoriously kept his secrets to himself, and many thought he was lost in the madness that comes to those who work with the Art for too long, that sacred madness that gleams truth beyond what mortal men are meant for. “How do you come by this knowledge?” he asked in a whisper. He felt, in that moment, as if he were in the presence of something holy. Zeno was beyond him, so far beyond that he touched the face of heaven, and what he had found there filled the old man with some thought that he could not contain and yet could not express.

  “They…they used to…” Zeno’s voice faltered, just for a moment, a crack in something ancient and unshakable. Then, sharpness returned to his eyes. His mouth snapped shut, as if sealing away something Timur was never meant to hear. With another wave of his hand, the glamor was gone, the throne room returned. Whatever he was about to say, he did not finish. “I have been unraveling their secrets for some time. It is a lonely task, but no others have the skill with the Art to see. I wonder if you might. Have your servants confer with those in the Palace library. I have some books I should like you to consider.”

  And with that, Timur found himself dismissed.

  11.

  The books that Zeno had for him were great and ancient tomes, with vellum dry and brittle as dead skin, so delicate that Timur worried they might collapse into dust. Many pages were written in tongues no longer spoken, by hands that had long since turned to dust. Traders from dead kingdoms had brought them to Sulayid in ages long past, for them to be buried in musty archives and forgotten until Zeno had pulled them out, and they were dense with star-charts and diagrams of the night sky, and other strange sigils and runework that burned themselves into Timur’s thoughts and blazed with the silver fire there. Those words that Timur could understand dripped with profound secrets of the Art, of the night sky, dark and cold, of the revelation of power that lay within it.

  It was intoxicating, and were he a different man, Timur might have been lost to it entirely. He might have become as Zeno was, caring only for what these books contained, only for the Art that might be found among the stars. But the hardening of his heart distracted him from his mind’s longing, and his thoughts were always distracted by the idea of revenge.

  This time, the voice in the dark did not wait for him to return.

  One night, the gloom of his study, lit only by the fickle orange flame of a dwindling candle, Timur was bent over one of the star-tomes when it spoke.

  “Timur,” it said, from somewhere in the dark where the candle’s light did not reach, “Why have you not come to me? You have a desire, a wish. I know it.”

  Timur straightened calmly, coldly, despite the fear he felt in his heart. Some part of him felt as if he knew this would happen.

  It was true that he had considered going back to the voice in the dark. Considered asking it for its help one last time. Casting his wish down into that black pit, a wish for the death of all the nobles, all the mage-lords, a wish for ruin.

  He had held back in memory of Yanna. Beautiful Yanna, whose death stemmed from his last wish to the voice, whose absence had burned a hole in his heart, a hole that had gathered stagnant poison. To go back to that voice would have been a betrayal of her memory, his shame redounded back upon him.

  But the poison and those long, lonely years, holding hatred in for all around him, had done their work. It had fouled him, and even as he knew he was becoming foul, he had not the strength and eventually not the care to stop it. Every day, the memory of Yanna in his life had faded a little more, and every day that hate ate away at him little more. And the thought of returning to the voice became more and more appealing. So this came not as a shock, no. It was inevitable. The only surprise was how it had come to him. And even that, he could not truly be surprised by.

  He called forth the silver flame, which only barely offered him a scrap of clarity now, to light his study, but found only his bookshelves staring back at him in the quiet dark. “How do you speak to me now?”

  “You have made a home for me,” the voice whispered simply. “I have seen what you have seen, Timur, and I know what you know.”

  “Then you know what I wish for.”

  “Yes. Speak it aloud.”

  “I wish for the death of the Patriarch and all the mage-lords and nobles who serve him.” It felt flat, and small, saying this. Timur felt flat and small, dull and numb.

  “It can be done,” the voice told him. “You will help me this time. You will have your revenge, but it will take work on your part.”

  “And what sacrifice will you need this time?” He was tired. So tired. It was a fatigue that had settled deep in his bones. He could not remember the last time it had not been with him. Perhaps, he thought, it had always been there.

  And in his heart, he knew the answer before the voice even spoke. “This time,” it said, “I will need the blood of a noble-born.”

  And already Timur knew who it must be. He had known even before he had asked the question. He had known the moment the voice had spoken. And there would be only one noble-born he could sacrifice in this way that would not arouse suspicion against him.

  The voice did not need to wait to hear his answer. “Cast her into the pit,” it whispered. “It’s almost over, Timur.”

  12.

  Buying Pandora was not difficult.

  Timur had found her owner, back in his youth. When first he had grown and left the Palace, became his own man. He might not have been able to purchase her while he was a steward of the Patriarch and his largesse, but once raised to mage-lord, he had hoped to give her some of the freedom he had given all his slaves, in those days. Only he had found that the ban on his purchase of her still held. A slave-made-noble and a noble-made-slave were not to mix, especially when each had been responsible for the other’s condition. And part of him had always wondered if perhaps that was best. Her master was not unkind, and her role in the death of his mother had always been a sore wound. And then, as those days of his childhood faded into the fog of history, she had simply passed from his mind.

  Until now. She was still with the same master. And the law was no barrier to him, not any longer. He had power, now. He could bend the law to his will.

  Time had done its work with Pandora. She had been kept as an educated slave—there was only so far a noble could fall—but still a life of obeisance had erased the impishness that she held in his memory. Her hair was gray, and thinner now, in a tight bun, the age of her beauty passed now into a firm and weary maturity, the dignity of one who suffers but has long since made amends with that.

  “Oh, Timur!” she cried, when first she saw him in his estate’s gardens, in the light of the moon. Timur had hired slaves to purchase her with some modicum of secrecy. Her disappearance would be noticed, eventually, and an educated slave gone missing would be investigated, but it would not matter by then. She embraced him, fondly, and it felt so strange to him. They had known each other for only a little while, so very long ago. “I thought you hated me,” she said, as she let him go, “I always wished to apologize to you…for what happened…”

  Apologize to him? Timur considered this with some wonder. It was his words, his lie, that had seen Pandora made into a slave. Yet she did not seem to wish for any apology on his part. “I did not hate you,” he told her. A sweet, clinging ache settled into his skull.

  “For what reason did you purchase me?” She smiled at him still with true fondness, and he thought to himself that she must have desired this reunion for countless years. Looked forward to it and wished for it.

  His next words sickened him. “I only wished to see you once more,” he said, and her smile deepened and it was a knife in his heart. These words, this granting of her wish, it was all just a glamor to keep her unaware until what must happen, a mask, and he felt numb, distant from himself as it slipped on.

  He asked for her to walk with him to a hill outside of the city, and they strolled together beneath the moon. She spoke of how her life had gone, of how difficult it had been adjusting to the life of a slave. She spoke of the children she had born. How she was a grandmother, now. She spoke, too, hesitantly, of how she had heard of what had happened with him and Yanna, long, long years ago. “Sulayid has not been kind to you,” she murmured, her hand ghosting over his arm in a whisper of comfort. “And yet I can see, still you find the strength to smile.”

  His smile for her was false. He had not worn a true one in years. It didn’t matter. She believed it.

  And eventually, the time came. As they stood atop a hill, beneath the moon, looking down at all the winking torch-lit windows of the city stretching out below them, Timur gagged her with the Art, and bound her feet to march at his beck and call.

  He turned away from the hurt, the sense of betrayal, the fear he saw in her eyes.

  He marched her down into the dark of the mines in the utmost silence, his thoughts burning acid.

  No wind stirred. No distant voices carried on the air. No sound but the slow, steady steps of her bound feet.

  He brought her to the cave, to the edge of the dark pit. He refused to look at her face. He did not know what he would find there. He hoped there would be hatred there. He feared there would be only tears.

  “I do this,” he said to her, staring at the ground, “That the others might be free. Please, understand. This is so all slaves might know freedom.” The words felt hollow to him. His anger could not make them live. They were dead, empty things, fallen leaves, just as meaningless, just as easily crushed.

  For a moment, he considered removing her gag. He remembered the last man he had thrown in the pit, how he had cast down the old slave without even a chance to scream. But in the end, he did not. He did not want to hear her last words. If she begged, he thought he might lose his resolve.

  And so she plummeted, disappearing into the dark, silently, without a word. This time, oddly enough, Timur felt no guilt at all.

  “It is done.”

  There was nothing more to say. It was all as it must be.

  13.

  It was simple, now.

  The Patriarch, and all who served him, would be killed by giving him exactly what he wanted.

  The voice in the dark traveled with Timur now, and told him what must be done. Whispered to him what the patterns and sigils meant within the star-tomes he read. And so it was that he returned to Zeno with the news that he had divined within the ancient texts a way to summon a star.

  The Patriarch was ecstatic when he was told. He demanded that he be shown how it could be so, that Timur show him how it was that he had discovered such in the texts. It was difficult for Timur to bluff his way through Zeno’s probing questions; to go over the tomes with him, and give answers that hinted at the purpose, enough to convince the Patriarch to perform the ritual, but not so much that it would allow him to understand it entirely. But the voice, as if whispering in his ear, directed him what to say when he stumbled.

  “I think I begin to understand,” Zeno said at last, as they pored over the texts in the throne room. There was no way that he could, Timur knew. He barely understood it himself. But this Art spelled the Patriarch’s doom, or so the voice said. Zeno must be simply pretending to understand, and for once, he seemed very small. Yet he smiled serenely, mysteriously, as he patted Timur on the shoulder with his frail, dry hands. “You will go far, I think, boy. Farther than me.”

  And so the work was begun.

  The Palace gardens were cleared, the fine forests cut down, the fountains demolished, for the ritual called for the scribing of an enormous circle of sigils, all in quicksilver starblood. The work of the mining slaves was redoubled, and many died, worked to exhaustion and collapse, for the extraction of starblood from the ore it was trapped in was the most grueling and dangerous, with many perishing from the heat or the fumes of its manufacture. But it was all necessary, for the ritual called for a river of it.

  Great panes of wood, enough to construct multiple ships, were laid across the palace grounds, carved in an enormous circle, and the house-slaves worked to the bone keeping it at a fine polish, until the seams between the panels were all but invisible. And then they were directed in the carving of channels, fine and complex, into the wood for the starblood to lie in, at the direction of the mage-lords, and often they were blamed for any mistake they made or the mage-lords made, and beaten for the delay it caused. But it was all necessary, for the work would have taken years were the mage-lords to do it on their own, without slaves.

  And Timur was there to direct it all, listening as the voice spoke to him from within, where only he could hear it. He ensured the sigils were correct, that the Art being woven over them was straight and true. He knew what the ritual would do. But it was all necessary.

  Until, finally, on the broken backs of slaves, the night of the ritual’s culmination arrived. A great circle was laid out in the Palace gardens, and the rivulets of starblood filled the channels of it, sparkling silver that breathed life into them, a circle of circles, of innumerate sigils, as many as there were stars in the sky. And in the Palace gardens, all the mage-lords were gathered, with the Patriarch standing in the midst of the great circle, staring up at the sky in glorious rapture as they wove their craft in a trance, calling forth to the endless darkness above, calling something home. Minas was there, Timur’s old teacher, and her eyes shone with pride as she began her craft with the rest. The Patriarch wore a knowing, blissful smile as he worked his magnificent Art upon the heavens.

  And once they were all entranced and mindless, their eyes full of stars, Timur broke from the circle and fled the Palace.

  He knew what was coming. He told no one else to come with him, no slaves to flee with him. But it was all necessary. For they might warn the mage-lords.

  And so it was that Timur stood by the docks in the dark of night. And the gentle rhythmic lull of waves lapping at the docked boats was interrupted when fire screamed down from the heavens, carving a scar across the sky, and Sulayid groaned and trembled as it crashed down and shattered the Palace with a roar that seemed to come from the very earth itself.

  14.

  That night, it was as if half of Sulayid was engulfed in a sea of flame. All that would burn did, leaving behind the blackened shells of mud-stucco houses collapsing, skeletons embracing each other before they fell, proud granite towers brought low and shattered, the ribs of the city broken, beautiful gardens in noble’s estates nothing but ash and char. Of the Palace, there was nothing left but a smoking crater in the ground, red exposed rock like torn flesh a rent in the earth where it once stood.

  Slaves, not knowing they were free, burnt to death screaming trying to save their master’s possessions; or they died trying to save themselves or their family. Those that did not die immediately, dashed to smithereens by the shockwave that rippled across the island when the meteor impacted. Timur himself had been thrown to the stone of the docks and knocked unconscious when it fell, and he woke up to the scene of horror with blood crusted on his face.

  But he rallied them then, these now-freed slaves, and at his direction they saved what they could. His Art extinguished the fires and healed the wounded, saving many, and they called out to him in praise, seeing in him a savior, delivering them from perdition.

  And when all was said and done, when the fires were extinguished, when who could be saved had been saved and all that was left to do was mourn for the ones who were gone, Timur gathered the slaves to him, those that were left. It might have been half of all who had once dwelt in Sulayid, or less. He gathered them before him, down by the docks, where the black gravestones of the city’s buildings stretched out behind them, and the sky seemed empty where the Palace had once filled it.

  Timur spoke to them, then, of their freedom. Their masters had all perished in a foolish craft of the Art, and there were none now who ruled them. The freed slaves looked upon each other, uncertain. They knew then that the other mage-lords were dead, and while many of them were overjoyed, many others were fearful. Who would feed them, then, and house them?

  It was a matter of terrible immediacy. In the flames, much of the food stores had been ruined, and certainly there was not enough left on the island for all to be fed for long. And so some of the slaves threw themselves at Timur’s mercy, pledging themselves to him, telling him that they belonged to him, that they would work at his direction for the promise of his protection. For did he not have a reputation as a kindly master?

  Timur felt revulsion rise up in him at this, and an awful dread. That these folk, free folk, might beg this of him, as base and desperately as a slave had ever begged for mercy from a master. He wanted to deny them. But the voice in the dark whispered in his ear.

  “Is it not better, perhaps, to accept their offer?” it said, as Timur had known it would. “At least for now.”

  “No,” he muttered to himself, but his voice was weak.

  “They will die without it, and there is much to rebuild. Someone will have to direct their labors.”

  “No,” Timur said once more, but he already knew how it must end. He knew it could not have been any other way.

  “Some will die already, certainly, of starvation, but you can save more, soon. If you just accept their pledge and act as their master. It does not have to be forever.”

  There was wisdom, hateful wisdom in those words. “It does not have to be forever,” he repeated numbly, the words tasting like ash on his tongue, hollow, as he looked out over the sea of needy, adoring faces.

  “Yes,” the voice agreed, sounding very pleased. And then, “I will tell you my name now, Timur. If you would like to hear it.”

  “Yes,” the mage-lord said, and then the voice told him its name. And when he heard it, Timur laughed, laughed until his slaves before him wondered if he was mad, laughed until he wept, and his laughter and weeping carried into the winds that blew over the shattered and blackened stone of the city, the winds that would ever blow across the fabled slave-kingdom of Eternal Sulayid.