Valbore (Tasks of the Nakairi Book 1) Read online

  He chuckled. "I had gathered that from your question. That being the case, it's unlikely that your ability with magic is the reason the Goddess brought you here. We'll hold off on testing you for magic and lessons if you need them until you're more settled."

  Well, that decreased the pressure on me but I couldn't help but feel like a kid when told he wouldn't get dessert. "Gates?"

  "Before Therys came to be, the Mage-Kings ruled this land. At the height of their power, they built magical gates across their empire to aid in transport and trade. Many of them still exist although the knowledge to use them died with the Mage-Kings a thousand years ago. The Goddess uses them now and then to bring Nakairi from other worlds where her children found a haven. The lightning storms in the summer will sometimes connect with another place for a few moments, but what comes through in those instances rarely survives the transition. Sometimes we can encourage the plants to grow though. My favorite wine comes from a berry we of Drakken gained a few hundred years ago from one of those plants."

  I gathered from this that I was one of these Nakairi. "Nakairi? Why? Why would your Goddess bring me here?"

  Sadness flickered across his face. If I hadn't been watching him so close, I might have missed it. "She is your Goddess too, my lady. When the Goddess has a Task that her children here cannot do, she brings a Nakairu. It means foreigner in the old Atlani. Nakairi is the plural form. The Goddess brings none but others of her children. Which means you are one of her children too."

  He took a deep breath in sudden determination. "The Goddess warned us of Atlan's impending destruction. She found thirteen havens for her children and helped us build gates to flee. Your world is one of those havens as is Eperu. We who came here to this haven call ourselves the Aria Atlani, the children of Atlan. Those Mage-Kings I spoke of were our brethren. The group that came here from Atlan consisted of scholars and warriors with a handful of others. The scholars built their empire here along the eastern shore of the Blue Sea while the warriors made their home on Drakken, a large island in the center of the Blue Sea.

  "A thousand years ago, a civil war here destroyed most of the empire. A few years after the war ended, a plague ripped through the remains. Sarath Plague affects Aria Atlani almost exclusively. It's fatal if not treated and there was no treatment then. The Aria Atlani that avoided it and survived migrated to Direnis on the southern shore. They are part of the Drakken Empire now. It wasn't until about eight hundred years ago that a Nakairu found a cure for the plague."

  He laughed and stood up to rifle in a cabinet in one corner. "To be honest, we Drakkeni had no desire to get involved here. Therys as a nation has had an awful reputation since its founding by Theryn six hundred years ago. People call Therys the 'Bane of the Blue Sea'. Theryn wasn't a very nice man and the country he created followed in his larcenous footsteps."

  He glanced over his shoulder at me with a wry grin. "However, war is even more disruptive than piracy and brigands so we stepped in with reluctance when the people of Therys begged for help. We've been here two years now and have made little progress. I wonder if the best option is to let it all burn. That is my Spymaster's opinion. However, that option leaves the innocent to pay for crimes that are not theirs. As difficult as the task is, we must keep trying. Ah! Here it is."

  He handed me a rolled up map. "That is a map of the Blue Sea region. I made notes on Therys and its neighbors on the back when I first came here. I used trade script to help myself get used to it so you shouldn't have any trouble reading them. Keep it. It may be of use to you. I ordered Asag, one of my secretaries, to engage tutors for you. You will have lessons on geography, etiquette, trade, politics, and history. We'll add whatever else you or I can think of. You never know what knowledge will be of use. If you feel that there is something missing from your education, speak to Asag or me."

  "Why are you helping me so much?"

  He settled back in his chair before answering me. "I told you, the Goddess always brings Nakairi here for a reason. There is always some Task that only they can perform, a Task the Goddess deems necessary." I could hear the capital letter on Task. It was more than a word to him, it held a greater meaning that wasn't clear to me. "She brought you here for a reason. I don't know what your Task is. I can't even imagine, but it is something that no one from this world can do. If she finds it essential then I will do everything in my power to make sure you succeed."

  He glanced down at his folded hands. "When I was a small boy, my friends and I loved to listen to the storyteller's tales of battles, heroes, and Nakairi. I tried to imagine what I would do if I were the Nakairu. It didn't take long for me to conclude the Goddess was right to bring in outsiders for these Tasks." The corner of his mouth curled into a boyish smile. "The experience was humbling, I assure you."

  At that point, a weedy looking man came in with a harried expression and I heard Dragos sigh before murmuring, "Unfortunately, as much as I enjoy speaking with you, I need to get on with my work. That fellow there whines at me if I don't." He stood and I hastened to follow suit. "Asag will contact you sometime today or tomorrow." He gripped my shoulder with a solemn expression. "Meanwhile, remember that you are my ward. Your safety, care, and keeping are my chosen duty. If you need anything, let me know."

  With that parting word, he gathered up the weedy fellow and swept out, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  Dragos: 10th of Harvest, 3837

  Being disturbed by such petty tuhu irritated him. Sara hadn't relaxed and he was sure she didn't trust him yet. She held herself so closed off that his dragon got little from her. Mostly it saw confusion and residual shock, fear, and a desperate desire to hide.

  He still felt sorry for her. She seemed to have a stronger sense of the dragon than most and it could make life here difficult for her. There were few in this court aside from the dragonlords she could trust. She couldn't trust the Lords at all. He contemplated bringing a young woman from Drakken to act as a companion. She needed a friend.

  When he had dealt with the situation that called him out of his talk with Sara, he sent a note to Durra asking him to make sure that Sara got proper shoes. The lack reflected harshly on his hospitality and ability to provide for his household. He thought his orders had been clear. He would meet all of Sara's needs, not just those that were convenient.

  When the business of the day gave him a moment to reflect, her words disturbed him anew. 'Your Goddess' she had said. Had her people forgotten the Goddess, or had they denied her?

  Kaio: 10th of Harvest, 3837

  Kaio listened in on Dragos' meeting with Sara as he had the first time. Rather than following Dragos, he stayed to observe. He had caught his friend's expression when she had said, "Your Goddess," and thought he knew where Dragos' thoughts had led.

  The Ansoren revered a God of their own as was right, but their legends spoke of a people who had denied their God and tried to take his place. Their true name stricken from history, they became synonymous with evil. To this day, the Ansoren considered the color red unlucky. Even in Drakken, those who denied the Goddess had a bad reputation. You don't deny your own mother.

  He watched her as she evaluated the library and listened to her mumbled comments to herself. Without Dragos there to make her wary, she straightened and moved more easily. She impressed him by figured out Dragos' organizing scheme so quickly. He hadn't done so well although he hadn't surveyed the library the way she had either.

  Kaio had to credit her diligence. She had wasted no time in trying to learn more about her new world. She hadn't waited for direction from a tutor either.

  His dragon was restless and it unsettled him. He would keep a watch on her.

  Sara: 10th of Harvest, 3837

  I surveyed the library and found a third of the books were in a language I could read. Whatever else Dragos may be, he was well educated. I found the library itself well organized and it didn't take long to pick out the sections on magic, history, geography, philosophy, and a general section on th
e sciences. I found no math though which rather surprised me. What I presumed to be the literature section due to the pictures and the worn pages was all in the unknown language. His mention of trade script led me to believe these books were in his native tongue.

  It occurred to me that whether magic was part of my purpose here or not, it would be a good idea to learn more about what it could do. How common was it? What were its limits? Could anyone use it or was there a certain ability you were born with? After about 10 minutes, I was positive the magic section of Dragos' library couldn't answer my questions. I needed a beginning level text while these were all advanced level ones. Perhaps the main library had what I wanted.

  I sat down and examined the map. He had called this place Therys and I remember the name Therysal. I found it on the map quickly enough, and then Drakken. I wondered if the map was to scale or representative. What were the distances involved if the map was to scale? Just how big was this Blue Sea? The Blue Sea was roughly circular with Drakken at the center. Was it a huge caldera or a meteor crater? There was another large region, north of Therys labeled 'The Waste'. It was so round the mapmaker might have drawn it with a compass. I flipped the map over to look at Dragos' notes but there was no mention of The Waste. I made a mental note to look into it later. The shape of it wasn't natural.

  I caught myself. Slow down there, Sara. You don't need to learn everything today. This wasn't like those times when I changed schools because I changed foster homes. I didn't have to cram to catch up because the new school taught different subjects or at a different pace… Except I now had an entire world of learning to catch up on.

  Or did I? Dragos said the Goddess brought me here to do something the locals couldn't do, but he said nothing about returning home when I complete the Task. While I had nothing to return to, I still didn't know if this place was any better. Still, the ability to function in any world requires knowledge. Not knowing the rules makes you a target.

  A maid found me a while later to tell me Durra was looking for me. He said I needed shoes and that meant going into town. I cringed inside, this bright blue gown… Given how people had stared at me already, I dreaded going into town wearing this neon sign.

  The trip into town wasn't as bad as I feared. One of Durra's assistants and a quartet of guards accompanied me. None of them spoke a word to me the entire time. We rode on the antelope horses, which Dragos' language dump insisted were keth. Like my original journey to Therysal, I rode behind a guard. It meant people didn't get a good look at anything but my back and since he was a big guy made even bigger by wearing armor, I couldn't see anything ahead. While the guy's back was boring to look at, I wasn't brave enough to stare at the world around me to either side. The ride to the cobbler's shop took about half an hour.

  When we went inside, the cobbler sat me down, got the specifics from Durra's still nameless stand-in, and riffled through his stock muttering that the only shoes he could provide immediately were sandals. His assistant took measurements of my feet, ankles, and calves.

  Most of the sandals he had were too wide but he found a pair close in size and took a few minutes to trim them and reattach the straps. He said his assistant would deliver shoes and boots for the cold season in a day or two.

  After paying the cobbler, they loaded me back on the keth and we returned to the palace. As we passed through the gates of the palace, I realized I hadn't said a single word since Durra told me he was sending me into town for shoes. I didn't know if they were snubbing me or if my opinions didn't matter. I was glad for the impending end of our trip, not because I felt like a sack of flour being carried around, but because my legs still hadn't healed from the ride to Therysal. The raw skin burned.

  Asag was waiting for me and upset over it. He was a sour older man with thin red-blond hair who reminded me of my high school algebra teacher. Mr. Jorgenson had been unmarried and resented having to deal with teenagers every day, his dreams of being a tenured professor in a college or university destroyed by a lack of talent. Sourpuss. Asag was just as bad.

  He gave a long list of subjects the High-Lord had ordered I should learn. He was vocal in his complaints that women did not need to learn most of those subjects.

  If I could get the basics as a framework, I could learn the rest on my own. The trick is, Asag looked like he was about to rebel against the High-Lord's orders. He would blame me for the failure of course. That's how it always seemed to work. So, I had to convince him to let me learn those basics.

  "Sir, I'm sorry it's inconvenient for you but children learn many things as they are growing up by being exposed to them or listening to their elders. Often, it is the knowledge they don't even think about because it wasn't 'taught' to them. I did not have that advantage and the High-Lord wants me to learn as many of those things as I can so I don't embarrass him in public. It isn't necessary I learn the subject to the depth you would, merely the basics anyone would know or find familiar. It's possible some knowledge I have from my world can apply here. The arithmetic for example…" I could tell from his expression I was losing him again.

  He harrumphed. "A woman does not need to know trade!"

  "Yet your women know whether trade uses coins or barter. They know the relative worth of things. They know certain types of cloth are costlier because they're rare. All pertain to trade."

  Asag was silent for a minute, his mouth pursed, and I felt certain I had overstepped. After mulling it over for a moment or two he said, "Perhaps you are right… You are remarkably ignorant." He stood and a dissatisfied gaze swept over me. "Your tutor will be here in the morning. He's a Darthan who teaches many of these subjects to the sons of the Lords. Be quiet, be deferential, and don't offend him! You will respect him!"

  "Yes, sir." I had questions but it didn't seem prudent to push him now. Perhaps my new tutor would be more willing to answer them.

  2: Lessons

  Sara: 11th of Harvest, 3837

  The next morning a maid woke me with a new gown to wear. This one was a deep burgundy. It wasn't one of those colors I had chosen but still muted enough I couldn't object to it. The design was simple enough and comfortable. It may not be what I had ordered, but I still liked it.

  For breakfast, there was a cup of tea and a roll. Nothing more.

  My lessons were in the palace library and the maid was nice enough to guide me there once I finished my roll. The library was about the size of the one in the high school where I graduated. Not huge, but not miniscule either.

  The tutor was a friendly, middle-aged man named Hegall who smelled of alcohol. The alcohol smell gave me pause since my stepfather had drunk a lot, but Hegall was nice, talkative, and looked at me as a person instead of furniture.

  Most of our first lesson comprised him asking questions on an array of topics while he made notes on my answers. Sometimes he would ask follow-up questions but usually, he switched topics after each question. After about an hour and a half of this, he switched to giving me basic information about this world. Dragos and Durra had already covered parts of it. Hegall enlightened me almost accidentally about the differences in treatment I had experienced.

  He pointed to Therys on the map Dragos had given me. "Now, you may know this is Therys and the fellow who founded it was Dogaren. The Dogaren say a woman must be silent and serve men unreservedly. In fact, it is common for Dogar women to have their tongues cut out. The women have their own language of hand movements and keep their heads and faces covered at all times." He stopped to chuckle for a moment. "It is a custom that has backfired for them though. Darthan spies learned the women's language hundreds of years ago so all they need to do to spy on them is to dress as a woman."

  Dogaren. Dragos had mentioned the name last night. "Dragos called them Shib's children. Where do they come from?"

  He swept his hand across the entire top of the map. "The Dogaren plains stretch in the north across the entire Blue Sea region from the northernmost point of Vallen, across Marin and Dartha, and beyond. No one knows for
sure how far north they roam. We know there are other lands beyond. Sometimes they bring goods from there, but getting to them is almost impossible with the Dogaren between here and there. They are nomadic hunters and herdsmen. They produce the finest furs and leathers in the world. However, they don't allow traders, or anyone else, into their territory. Intruders find themselves dragged on a noose behind a keth until their heads come off. Then they use the head as a ball in a game they play on keth-back. Barbarians. They have two semi-permanent trade camps on the northern border of Marin and one on the border of Dartha."

  He sighed heavily. "Unfortunately, they have a nasty habit of raiding without notice. They're not trying to gain land, just looting. The Dogaren steal anything they can move. They seize the women as slaves, slaughter the men, and burn what they can't loot. That's why Dartha spies on them, trying to predict when the raids will occur so they can head them off." Something in his expression told me he had personal experience with Dogaren raiding.

  "Marin sent an army against them once trying to stop their raiding and to add land. Poison, sneak raids and assassination decimated the entire army. There were maybe a dozen survivors. From the reports I've read on the incident, the Dogaren let them go so they could tell their stories, a warning to Marin not to try it again.

  "I could have told them it would be pointless. You can't use standard tactics against a people with no concept of 'Stand and fight'. With the Dogaren, it's all fluid movement. It's like fighting water.

  "Anyway, when Theryn was setting Therys up he didn't agree with how the local Ansoren treated their women. It offended him that the Ansoren women would dare to speak to him and show their faces to men. Therefore, he codified their role in society in a manner he saw fit. Eventually, the laws were removed, but not before that ugly Dogaren mindset was already established."