Chapter 1 #2
“The desert ends,” he said in an ominous voice.
That note in his voice was what made me pause. He seemed to have snapped out of his numb stupor, yanked out by genuine fear.
“What do you mean it ends?” I peered out into the darkness.
“There, see?” He stretched his arm between the bars of the cage, pointing straight ahead.
I saw little, just dark night and the shimmer of the sand and stars.
The dunes were smaller here, much shorter than before.
Up ahead, they flattened completely, melting into the desert floor.
The day storms had arranged the sand into ripples, like waves frozen in time.
The starlight merged with the shimmer of the sand, making the desert appear like a river with its surface rippling in a breeze.
And then I saw it… The shimmer stopped, cut off in an uneven, jagged line beyond which lay nothing but darkness with no sand and no stars. The dark abyss stretched all the way to the distant horizon, eventually merging with the sky.
I tried to remember what I’d overheard from the talks of the traders about Ashgate.
“The lawless place…”
“The city at the end of the world…”
This was it then. The end of the world.
And what lay beyond? Nothing.
Yet the traders didn’t stop. They kept leading our camels to the edge of the desert, to that ragged line that separated the shimmering sand and the dark abyss beyond.
No… I held my breath as we moved closer and closer.
Stop!
My heart pounded high in my throat. Horror gripped my chest. We were going to fall.
With another step, the camel in front of us dropped down and out of sight. The people in the cages attached to it screamed. Then all went silent again.
Our camel stepped over the edge next.
“Nooo!” I screamed, too, gripping the bars of the cage so hard, my fingers ached.
The camel stepped down, but we didn’t fall. We turned to the left. The cage tilted forward, following the position of the camel as the animal kept walking in the same steady, swaying gait.
“What’s happening?” I stared straight ahead but saw nothing.
“It’s a cliff,” Erik’s voice reached me. “With a path down along its side. See?”
I glanced down but saw only darkness again.
“No,” I whimpered. “I don’t see shit.”
“It’s a rocky path,” Erik explained, “just wide enough for the camel with the cages. There's a drop straight down on our side here. The face of the cliff is on the other side of the camel. We’re moving down the path.”
I peered carefully through the darkness. It rose as a black monolith on our left—the face of the cliff as Erik had said, rising straight up into the sky and blocking the stars.
The rhythmic swishing sound grew stronger as we descended. The air felt different from the air in the desert too. It was moist here, rich with a briny scent.
“What’s down there? To our right?” I asked, gesturing at the vast dark expanse under the star-studded sky.
“That’s…an ocean,” Erik said.
“An ocean? In Alveari?”
This world was filled with sand, dry winds, and scorching heat broken only by the cool stillness of the night.
But there it was… An ocean.
The rhythmic powerful hum came from the swells rolling onto each other, then onto the black sand below. As the sky lightened with the approaching sunrise, I could see the silver foaming crests of the swells rolling ashore.
“And there is the city,” Erik announced grimly, gesturing at the cliff face.
The black rock glimmered in the pale light of the sunrise.
However, its surface was far from smooth.
The vast expanse of the cliff face was pocked with dark gaping caves.
Shadows moved in and out of them—the shadow fae, I assumed, unable to see the details without my glasses.
A few lights flickered here and there, not nearly as plentiful or brilliant as in Teneris, but they were the signs of life.
People lived here. Hundreds…no, thousands of them, it seemed. The dark wall of the cliff face stretched out into the distance as far as I could see, with a myriad of cave openings and flickering lights along it.
As the morning sun rose, I made out balconies, canopies, and ladders that stretched like a web along the wall of the cliff.
“That’s where they live,” I guessed. “In the caves inside this cliff. Is that the city, you think?”
“There are so many caves,” Erik drawled quietly, staring at the view as it emerged, illuminated by the rising sun.
“Ashgate isn’t a hill city like Teneris then.”
“No,” Erik echoed my words. “It’s a wall city.”
A vertical wall at least a hundred stories high that stretched for as long as the eye could see. It was filled with thousands of caves. How deep did these caves go? How many fae lived here?
It wasn’t just a city. It could be a kingdom on its own. A lawless kingdom. With no rules and no ruler.
As we kept moving down the path carved into the side of the cliff, I could finally make out the line where the wall merged with the black sand below.
A beach stretched between the rock and the silver lace of the surf for as long as the wall city itself.
The beach was so wide, it could easily accommodate a regular city block or two between the rock wall and the water’s edge.
Piles of rocks and rubble littered the beach.
Only when our camel had finally descended all the way and stepped off the path onto the sand did I realize that all those piles were actually dwellings.
Apparently, the caves weren’t enough to accommodate all the shadow fae in Ashgate.
Its inhabitants spilled onto the beach, building shelters from driftwood, rocks, and rags.
Unlike in Teneris, life didn’t seem to be slowing down with sunrise here.
The coal-black silhouettes of the shadow fae moved in and out of the shacks on the beach, strolled along the makeshift streets, and gathered in the small plazas in between.
When they spotted our caravan, they moved alongside the camels.
Before long, a crowd had gathered, following us.
I couldn’t see their faces clearly, but the flash of their white, sharp fangs bared in sneers promised nothing good.
“Are these humans?” The shouts came from the crowd.
“Real Joy Vessels?”
Someone stuck a hand through the bars of our cage. “Are you really as sweet as they say?”
The hand squeezed my hip. Another hand grabbed Erik’s ankle.
“Good enough to eat!” Someone yanked my arm out of the cage and bit my elbow.
I cried out from pain and disgust that made my stomach roil.
“Stand back!” Piara cracked a whip.
Her lash struck the onlookers. They whined, growled, and hissed, but thankfully fell back, keeping away from our cage.
“Pay first, then do whatever the fuck you want with them,” Piara snapped at the crowd.
Pay first.
They really intended to sell us then? To someone from this mob that tried to eat us?
My fear grew into terror, chilling my limbs.
For the first time since having been put into this cage, I felt truly trapped.
I’d always had escape on my mind, but there was no way to escape this now.
Even if I figured out how to leave the cage, what then?
Where could I go without a shadow tunnel?
How far could I run along this endless beach before I collapsed from exhaustion or got caught by one of these people who literally tried to eat me?
The camels stopped in front of a giant awning. Stretched over high poles, the patchwork of burlap and fabrics created a huge tent with shacks for walls on all sides.
A male shadow fae exited the tent. He wore a long orange skirt and leather sandals.
His two long braids tied into a thick knot on the back of his head.
Holding a long scroll under one arm and drawing a black cloak over his head to shield his face from the light of the rising sun, he gave our caravan a quick assessing glance.
“Joy Vessels?” he asked Piara, pausing his probing gaze on the humans inside each cage.
My skin crawled with unease when his orange eyes focused on me.
“Not in the best shape, I see,” he complained to Piara.
The woman snarled like a dog at him, baring her long fangs.
One of her buddies, another trader, Haral, came closer.
“They’re fine,” he said airily. “There’s nothing wrong with them, nothing that a bath and a meal wouldn’t fix.”
“And who’s going to pay for their baths and meals?” the fae with the scroll muttered begrudgingly.
“Whoever buys them,” Piara snapped.
“It’s an added bonus,” Haral drawled lazily. “Humans enjoy eating and bathing. Whoever buys them gets all their pleasure from that.”
A bath and a meal sounded fantastic. At this point, I’d sell my soul simply for a glass of clean, cool water and a bed where I could fully stretch my legs. Just getting out of this cage would already be a welcome change.
I perked up a little. Getting another master and trading a cage for someone’s sarai wouldn’t be much of a change. I’d still be a captive. But at this point, even a bigger cage would be an improvement.
“It’s not like you get Joy Vessels here every day, Xavix.” Haral smirked, casually tossing his arm around the other male’s shoulders. “Even if we roll them in manure and sprinkle them with sand, they’ll still fetch a great price.”
Xavix shrugged Haral’s arm, then unwound his scroll.
“Fine. Let’s get it sorted out. The auction is about to start. What are their names?”
Piara spat on the black sand under her feet.
“Fuck if I know. No need for names. Just use numbers.” She swung the door of our cage open and grabbed me by the scruff of my sweater.
As much as I wished to get out of this damned cage, her dragging me out, then dropping me onto the sand as if I were a bag of dirt, enraged me.
“Get your fucking hands off me,” I cursed.
She pulled my hair, trying to get me up that way. The pain spurred my anger. She’d been treating me horribly ever since I’d kicked her in the knee back at the camp.
“Let me go!” I slammed a fist in her shin.
The blow likely hurt me more than her. But I couldn’t get a better aim with her yanking me around like a rag doll.
“Dirty, smelly, and unruly…” Xavix tsked, displeased. “It’ll cost you more for me to sell them.”
Piara let go of my hair, tossing me back onto the sand, then moved onto Xavix menacingly.
“You’re not hiking up your fee, asshole. We know what we’ve got. These are the only Joy Vessels in Ashgate. You will have no trouble selling them, then my boys and I will pay you the fee we’ve agreed on, and not a single coin more.”
Haral smoothly inserted himself between the angry Piara and the fairly intimidated Xavix.
“Hey, there is no need for arguments,” he said brightly while ever so subtly turning Xavix to face the camels instead of Piara. “We will all get enough money for these sweeties, regardless if they’re clean or dirty. Now let’s count them all, shall we?”
He maneuvered Xavix over to our open cage.
I climbed to my feet but kept close to the camel, keeping away from the outstretched hands of the onlookers who tried to grab my arms, hair, or clothes.
Erik climbed out of the cage. He stretched his back and shoulders, then shook his legs out, trying to get his blood flow going to his limbs again.
“Should I record this one as number one?” Xavix asked, pulling a sharpened stylus from the knot of his braids on the back of his head, then pointing the stylus at Erik.
Erik didn’t spare him a glance, scratching the leilatha ribbon around his neck.
“I need to take a piss,” he grunted to himself, then lifted his tunic, turned around, and peed right there in the plain view of everyone.
I envied his stellar ability not to care in these circumstances.
Erik had always been a bit distant, sarcastic, and even aloof.
We hadn’t interacted often back in the sarai in Teneris.
I knew little about him, only that he was recently divorced, with no kids, and came from somewhere in Europe.
Sweden or Switzerland. Or Austria maybe?
I couldn’t remember. It didn’t really matter since we were all very much the same here—a handful of humans in the world of fae.
In the Alveari Kingdom, we all spoke the same language too.
Over the course of our journey in the cage, Erik’s aloofness had turned into numbness. His indifference spread to encompass everything, even the matter of his life or death. He simply stopped caring. And I wished so badly that I could be like him at this moment.
Xavix frowned with disgust at Erik’s back. “Well, we should have a different number one. Someone a little more appealing maybe? To get the bids going.”
Piara smirked, then grabbed my arm.
“This one is going to be the number one. Sell her first.”