Chapter 1

  I walk quickly through the crowded streets of Ossetia, head bowed and back hunched. This posture is ingrained in me, as I know that I might be beaten or whipped if I accidentally look at a freeman or lord too long. Meeting the eyes of either one could result in a harsh beating or worse. About one person for every two I see walking around on the streets are a bondman or bondswoman. This, as I well know, is a common sight in the Bonded City, Ostain. In the entirety of the Tovenan Kingdom human bondage is the norm. All the cities in all of the various kingdoms and queendoms possess bondsmen in one way or another, despite whether they call them other names such as serfs or slaves.

  Eventually I reach a shop for meat and queued into the long line. After a few minutes, maybe ten or twenty, a blessed relief from master’s city palace, I reach the front of the line.

  “Five pounds of cow neck and two of oxtail please” I say.

  “Alright I’ll have it in a moment” replies the meatman, proceeding to tell his assistant of the order. After a minute or so he places the meat on the counter.

  “Here you go Ken, no charge for Lord Amulius.” Says the meatman while handing me a few greasy paper-wrapped packages of meat.

  “Of course, sir” I reply.

  This was not an odd sight, for master is the most powerful lord in all the city. A lord’s power is not what it was three hundred years ago, no matter what the stories might say. People say that lords were just ordinary men with land and money extreme amounts of wealth and land. I did not know whether this is true or simply a legend. Either way it doesn’t matter. What matters is that a lord’s power is now derived not from wealth or ability to govern, but from their magical ability. Since master is so powerful, it is common for goods and services to come free of charge or at least with a large discount.

  I walk at a brisk pace back to the palace, a long two miles from the meatman’s shop. If I am late, then a prominenz might take away my supper or give me a bad work shift. I notice that the sun is dipping very low in the sky, so I pick up the pace practically jogging to get back in time. Harsh beatings go around the kitchen staff if master’s meal arrives more than a minute or two past six, and then the kitchen staff would beat me in turn. When I arrive, the guards let me pass with barely a glance at my brow, where master’s brand sits. It takes merely a couple minutes from there to arrive at the kitchen, whereupon one of the cooks seizes his various packages, leaking with red juices, and places them down on oil-laden pans. I hear heard loud sizzling as oil pops and snaps in all directions, as if it is angry at the meat.

  I begin to salivate listenting to the sound as I remember the one time I was allowed to eat a piece of cow meat. It was full of so much flavor that it was nearly unbearable. I stare longingly at the beef in the pan, as if it were a long lost loved one that I need to hold tightly in my arms lest it disappear. Master’s bondsmen, besides the prominenzen, get only some thin soup with vegetables and a hunk of bread twice a day. The prominenzen on the other hand, because they manage all the other bondsmen, get better food, extra food, and their own beds to boot.

  Turning around, I walk out of the kitchen and into one of the servants’ corridors. The corridors are themselves almost an entirely different world from the main areas of the palace, a maze of narrow paths and stairs near impossible to navigate for the unfamiliar. Soon, I arrive at one of the bondsmen living quarters; an area located in one of the remote corners of the place. I walk over to the desk where one of the on-duty prominenz sits. He ignores me for a minute as he pretends to concentrate on the piece of paper in his hand. If there is one fact in life, it’s that all prominenzen think they are better than the rest of the bondsmen. They rather don’t think of themselves as bondsmen at all, since they manage most of them. Taking a closer look at this one, I see that he has shoulder-length dark brown hair, and olive colored skin; an uncommon trait around here. He must descend from one of the southern kingdoms. He turns to look me in the eyes

  “You’re late, bondman, skip tonight’s meal. You are also done working for the night. Tomorrow report for the day shift in the mines.” he says. I’m not late, but there’s no point trying to convince him. He’s taking away one of my few meals and giving me the worst shift for the simple fact that he can.

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  I glare at him, and, through clenched teeth, reply, “fine.”

  “What was that?” he says, placing hand to ear. “Speak up!”

  “Yes sir!” I voice with a bit of vigor.

  “Dismissed,” he replies.

  I turn on my heel and walk to the bunks. Everyone else is gathered around the red brick furnace in the middle of the room, one not nearly big enough to warm the whole sleeping quarters in winter. They sit on and around the furnace slurping up their soup and chatting quietly. I amble towards that area and climb onto one of the bunks nearest the fire. Usually, if someone displeases a prominenz and isn’t fed that night, then the other bondsmen let him sleep in a warmer bunk. The bunks are layered three beds high and elevated slightly on one side. I lie down, head on the slightly elevated part and feet lower. Throughout the night I will need to squirm regularly to keep from slowly sliding off the bed. The best way to know if someone dies in the night is if he is on the floor come morning.

  I wake with a start as I feel a sharp pain in my ribs. One of the other bondsmen just elbowed me. “Get up or you will miss breakfast” he grumbles as I grace him with a brief glare. Sighing, I queue up with about thirty others in front of the soup line. One of the kitchen-duty bondsmen hands me a bowl of questionable contents and smell; there is a brown wedge in it that is probably bread. Wolfing it down as fast as I can, I gather with some others in front of the prominenz handling the mine today. I notice he’s the same one as last night so I look for someone to ask about his name. Turning to my right I see Gallus next to me. He’s about the same age as me, somewhere between nine and twelve, although he’s a bit shorter, has reddish hair, and a less prominent nose.

  “Gall,” I say, “do you know his name?” I tilt my head in the prominenz’s direction.

  “His name is Rufus. He gave you mining duty too?” he answers.

  “Yep,” I mutter back.

  We follow behind Rufus as he walks out of our quarters into the dawn’s light of the courtyard separating the wall from the palace complex. One of the guards pulls open the metal gate as we approach it and pass through, beginning the hike to the mine.

  Two hours later a large dip in the land indicates that we are near the mine. The mine goes down hundreds of feet, full of dozens of holes just large enough for a fully-grown man to squeeze through. Although it is rare, a tunnel can collapse and trap whoever is digging inside. We pause as we reach the edge of the mine and wait for Rufus’ signal to begin working. We all know the routine and so Rufus simply waves us forward and we each take a pickaxe, a hammer, a chisel, and an oil lamp from the nearby shed.

  Gall and I often work in connecting tunnels, so we walk over to one of the entrance tunnels together. As we enter, we begin to crawl on our elbows and knees while pushing out tools out ahead of us. It’s much cooler down here than up above and goosebumps break out over my skin. About thirty feet down the tunnel splits into two. I say a brief farewell to Gall over my shoulder, who’s right behind me in the tunnel. I go down the one on the left and he takes the one on the right. I can see that just a little farther ahead this tunnel splits again into two, and so I take the left one again when I reach the juncture. Two junctures later I finally reach a dead end, take up my hammer and chisel, and begin to loosen the the wall of dirt and stone as the two tools clink together over and over again. Once it is loose enough, I use my pick to remove a portion of it and shove it behind me, barely a shovel-full. I’m rather young and small, and therefore possess no requirement for a man-sized tunnel. As a result, I rarely need to bring dirt all the way out of the tunnels, instead just I simply narrow the pre-existing ones by distributing the dirt and stone among them.

  The first time I was sent here, I was told to look for bits of a silver-black metal, and nobody bothered to give me the order again when I was sent to the mine. The only confirmation that I’m still to look for this metal, is that the prominenzen still give the same to each new bondman. As of yet, not a single person has found any since I got here. To send so many of us here to search for something nobody has found seems silly to me.

  Ten hours later, I crawl out of my hole covered in grime from hair to foot. Gall crawls out a minute later looking no better and we head over to where the rest of the bondsmen gather. Rufus walks out of the shed, his own little sanctuary away from the sun and dirt, and waves for us to put our tools back in the shed. Once we do so, we follow him up out of the pit and begin our long plod back to the palace, the setting sun at our backs.

  When I reach our quarters, I quickly walk to the soup area along with all the others from the mines. After I get my bowl, I walk over to an unoccupied space, sit down, and devour my meal. I hate the stuff, but days at the mine make me so ravenous that I look forward to it throughout the day. If a bondman is sent to the mine too often, combined with the little food he receives he could get so weak that he’d collapse and a prominenz would put him down so that the rest of us may proceed with our tasks.

  My meal finished, I return my bowl to the rack, crawl into an empty spot on a bunk, and fall into a dreamless slumber.