Demroth took the blade, bowed his head low to Brodan and the other gods, then slipped back east where the shadows met the sands. With the sapphire embellished dagger, as promised, Demroth sliced open the veil of shadows, spilling magic into the world of man.
But to Brodan’s despair, Demroth kept this magic for himself. The Elvan lamented in dire warnings, and the Orc’kothi turned away, for they knew what man and their gods did not – magic came with a price.
From the veil came greed, envy and anger that seeped into the hearts of man. It split Carnath in two, giving birth to Orynthis, and the Eldin River ran red. The Elvan built a great wall to hold back the spreading sickness, and the Orc’kothi retreated to their mountain steppes.
Brodan and Retgar begged their brother god Demroth to repair the shadow’s veil and save their people. Demroth looked upon the chaos and smiled, then he used Brodan’s gift for one last betrayal.
Demroth raised his blade and struck Valda’s heart, shattering the necklace and stealing her gifted eternity for himself. All the world went dark for five hundred years when Brodan’s forge died alongside his heart.
-Retgar’s Saga, Chapter 3
Verses 22 - 38
14
The Sovereign
A swirl of dust danced between sunbeams split apart by three-story buildings lining either side of the narrow alleyway. A cough echoed along the cracked, white plastered walls from an old man resting stooped in a shadowed doorway, his body curled protectively away from the growing heat of what was to be another day much too warm in the city of Ka’veshi for this early in the year. The lands of Orynthis, they said, would soon be a barren wasteland scorched by the sun, if the blight spreading over Carnath didn’t reach them first.
Two children darted from another shadowed doorway with laughter and a length of rope between them, the only toy needed for most games in the neglected streets of the Ha’tamshi, the Washerwoman’s district. A woman called after them, yelling about chores before play and an order that needed running to a home in the Um’matshi Upper Cleft, a district of opulence that would take the children all day to reach on foot. The two children groaned but headed back inside at a shuffling pace. The old man coughed again. The dancing dust disappeared between the buildings.
From three stories up, Naomi perched on the raised ledge of a flat roofed building that matched all those around it in size, shape and state of disrepair. Her own ‘house’, a lean-to of precariously balanced wood poles and various fabric scraps that was somehow more sturdy than it looked, billowed in the rising wind behind her as she peered down at the alley below. She did not envy those two children who would soon be lugging heavy baskets full of laundry upon their heads as they slowly made their way up the stone cut steps to Upper Cleft.
Years ago, that would’ve been her making the climb for a few half-tics in earnings that could only be traded for overpriced goods at the local guildhouse. Soon enough, and much too soon at that, those two children would find themselves bearing the weight of their family’s debts to their guildhouse, adding to the ledger with their own shortcomings as their pitiful earnings for a hard day’s work could be stretched no further than a handful of lentil, stale bread, soup bones and the soap required for the next day’s washing.
Naomi glanced back to her self-built rooftop tent, a small sovereign territory sequestered within a city of slaves. The tent may leak when it rained, and the wind may threaten to blow it over the roof’s edge with her still in it as she slept, but it was one of the few things in Ka’veshi that did not belong to a guild. That, and herself.
The two boys left their boarding house, also guild owned and rented, each with a carefully balanced mound of hemp-bound laundry precariously teetering on top of flat, specially woven head-baskets. It had been during one such trek in her early stolen youth when Naomi had decided she would become a cha’narshi. Unguilded. Alone. Free, but at a higher cost, some would say, than even the Merchant’s Guild would deem fair.
She belonged to no one, but no one belonged to her. She answered to no guild, but no guild would be there for her if she ran into trouble with another guild or the city guard. A boy without a guild would be scooped up from the street and conscripted into the Sultanate Guard for a lifetime of service with a sword and bending of the knee. As a girl, Naomi would soon be walking a dangerous path when her flower blossomed and her chest stopped being as flat as those head-baskets.
Naomi looked down at the bright yellow and purple scraps of fabrics wrapped tightly around her chest. Despite her efforts, she knew she couldn’t hold off the cruelty of nature much longer. When she had been just twelve years of age, she had begun to notice the innocent curiosity from boys and the not so innocent stares from men. Now at sixteen and bearing no guild mark upon her cheek, men had more than once tried to grab her off the street to put their own mark upon her, or sell her to the Guild of Roses.
Naomi spat to the side and watched the boys disappear into the congested city streets. She would never join the Guild of Roses and become a pleasure slave, even if those women who rose to the higher ranks in the guild did command a great price and held powerful sway within the city. Some girls, she knew, sought the Roses out to escape life as a washerwoman or harvester. Plush and perfumed as they may be, Roses
