Dragon Connection
(The Stone Crown Series Book One)
Chapter 1
Wind & Bread
I’m going to remember this day for the rest of my life, I thought to myself.
This was the day that I could no longer remember the gentle caress of the Soussa winds when I closed my eyes. Instead, as I blinked back the tears, all I could feel was the oppressive heat of the tunnel that I was trapped in, and the bite of the unyielding rocks.
And Dagan’s latest gift to me.
My lip curled in disgust and hatred at the thick mark of the brand on my upper right forearm. The three others before it had faded from an ugly red to a darker brown. They had stopped hurting. Sorta. Four branding marks for four failed attempts at escape from my prison beneath the world. There was space for just one more at the very top of my arm – but that would also be my last, wasn’t it?
Dagan Mar was the ‘Chief’ as he liked to call himself – which was just a fancy term for slave master. All of the others here called him much more colorful names behind his back. I didn’t even think that Tozut, which was Daza for horse-dung, was a good enough term for him. He wasn’t a tall man, but he was wiry and strong. Fair-skinned like the rest of those Middle Kingdomers, and he seemed to like inflicting punishments on all of us tribespeople brought here to the mines of Masaka.
And what for? I bit my bottom lip to stop myself from screaming in rage. Sometimes the overseers and the Chief waved papers and said things like ‘Bonds’ or ‘Crimes’ – although I never committed any crime or signed any bit of Torvald paper!
I had been twelve when I had been brought here. Old enough to remember my mother, Yala, her rough sense of humor that hid a gentle heart. I wish I could hear you make jokes about the old men of the tribe again, I thought with a sudden hunger. She was the Imanu, or wise-woman, of the Souda tribe – which meant the Daza of the Western Winds. I was old enough to come here remembering the plains. The smell of the grasses. The caress of the Soussa winds. Bright-colored bolts of cloth rippling in an endless sky.
But all of those memories were starting to fade, weren’t they? I tried not to cry as I sat in the dark. The colors weren’t as bright in my mind as they used to be, and the scents of the grassland flowers not so strong.
And now I couldn’t even remember the Soussa winds anymore. I wondered how long it would take me to forget everything else that came before this place, as well.
“Narissea!” my name went down the line, passed from one Daza mouth to the next. Each of us were spread out along the narrow tunnel that was barely taller than we could crouch, and each of us were working at the holes we had painstakingly driven into the hard rocks.
“Nari?” My name changed, becoming smaller as it came out of the lips of my neighbor. That was broad-shouldered Oleer of the Metchoda tribe – the Daza of the Open Places. He was a few years older than me, and had been taken when he had been older, perhaps fifteen? We didn’t get much time to talk given the back-breaking work, but he sometimes told me stories of the plains.
“They call them the Empty Plains, but they were never empty, were they,” he would chuckle. “I’ve seen horses, deer, gazelle, wild lion, condors. I even saw a flight of dragons heading westwards, once!” He had been trying to cheer me up, I think. I told him he was making it up. Dragons were rare.
“Nari – the overseer wants you,” Oleer was saying, and in the flickering light of the stub of our tallow candles I could see his grimace.
“What does that fat old toad want?” I muttered back. I was in a foul mood today. Hardly surprising, given that my hands were raw from trying to hack and prod at the rock in front of me with my iron bar and my arm was still oozing and sore.
“It’s only the overseer,” Oleer offered gently. For all his size, he had a soft voice. “At least it’s not Dagan.”
“Tozut,” the next Daza slave up from Oleer spat just at hearing our ‘chief’s’ name. That would be Rebec, smaller than me. She had a scar running from her temple to her jaw from when West Tunnel Two had collapsed. She was one of the Daza who had been here the longest and was well into her twenties.
“Ore Count!” This time, I could hear the guttural bark of the overseer from somewhere beyond me in the dark. I’d never bothered to learn his name, if he had ever shared it with any of us. “Ore Count for Narissea!”
“Oh great,” I muttered, as Oleer shared a sympathetic look. “What’s that, third time today?”
They were picking on me of course, their next favorite past time after branding me.
“It’s because you tried to escape this moon just gone,” Rebec called down the line. “You get a brand and an Ore count, and we all get half rations!” She was like that. She didn’t mean to be nasty but being down here for so long must have done something to her heart.
I can’t let myself end up like her, I promised myself. I have to remember the Soussa wind on my face. If I could just hold on to one memory – just one – then I might be alright. I might be able to keep my heart beating in my chest.
“Narissea! Get out and get up here!” The overseer bellowed down our small tunnel, and his words echoed and repeated. “Get out. Get out. Get out.”
“I’m coming!” I shouted, then, quieter, “Tell him I’m coming, will you?” I told Oleer, who passed on my message as I gave one last crack with my iron bar, slid it out of the hole, and shoved my arm in its place. My carry-basket beside me was woefully light – the seam we were working on was tough as it was, and with all of these Ore Counts I’d already had this shift I’d barely managed to make any headway.
But there, at the end, was a chunk of rock that was loose in my hand. Aha! It wouldn’t be much, but it would help avoid any further troubles. I yanked my arm backwards—
For it not to move at all.
“Oh, come on!” I hissed. I was stuck, my arm pinned down in the hole, wedged between the teeth of the protruding rocks. I pulled again, but my arm only gave a little, and I hissed as my skin scraped.
“Nari! What are you doing?” Oleer turned back to face me, and then saw the predicament I was in. “Oh, wait,” he shuffled forward to my spot, reaching out to grab ahold of my branded arm.
“No! I don’t want to break my arm, thank you very much!” I snarled in pain and saw Oleer’s face look as though I had just slapped it. I was going to have to apologize to him for that, I berated myself.
“Narissea! Are you disobeying me!” the words of the overseer barked and echoed down the tunnel towards me. “Disobey. Disobey. Disobey.” I heard a snicker from Rebec, which only made me feel worse.
“I can do it, just everyone give me a moment,” I said, wedging my cloth-bound foot against the wall and pulling. “Argh!” It felt like my shoulder was going to pop out of its socket, but I was rewarded with a shlooop as my arm scraped backwards, before getting caught again.
Only this time it was my fist that was causing the blockage, hanging onto that big bit of ore.