Fantasyland 02 The Golden Dynasty (2 page)

“Yes,” I lied swiftly in order to move
things on. Then I asked, “Where are we?”

Her body started and her face went slack.
She stared at me a moment and then her hand in mine squeezed and
she pulled me closer to her.

When I was near, she took my other hand and
got closer to me, declaring, “You were sheltered.”

“Sheltered?” I asked and she nodded.

“My father travelled, my mother died when I
was a child, so he took me with him. He shared with me many
things…” she got even closer and her voice dropped to a whisper,
“including tales of Korwahk.” Then she looked around and squeezed
my hands.

“Korwahk?” I prompted and her eyes came back
to me.

“Where we are now.”

Korwahk.

It could not be said I was a geography whiz
but I was thinking I had no freaking clue where Korwahk was. Or
Hawkvale, Bellebryn, Middleland or the Green Sea.

What I knew was, none of them were home.

I already had a feeling I was screwed,
seeing I was in sacrificial virgin attire and in a corral. But now
I was thinking I was
way
screwed.

My attention focused back on her when she
went on to say in a dire tone, “The Wife Hunt.”

Uh-oh.

“The what?” I asked, my voice breathy.

She dropped a hand, kept the other one and
slid an arm around my waist so we were even closer before she
asked, “What’s your name, my lovely?”

“Circe,” I answered.

She gave me her small, weird smile and
whispered, “Circe… that’s pretty.”

“What’s yours?” I asked.

“Narinda. I’m named after my great aunt who,
they said, looked like me. Though, I wouldn’t know because I never
met her.”

“That’s pretty too,” I told her and her arm
at my waist gave a squeeze.

Then she continued in a gentle voice, “So,
the tales of the Korwahk Horde were kept from you.”

“You could put it like that,” I replied and
she nodded with understanding.

“Many girls, my father told me, were
sheltered from this information. It’s understandable. I spent my
life mostly on ships with men. I was loved,” again with the small,
weird smile, “but not sheltered.”

I knew what that was like.

“So you know where we are, why we’re in this
pen?” I asked.

“Indeed,” she whispered but before I could
ask more, a strange, expectant vibe stole through the crowd, most
of the girls in the enclosure came alert and then suddenly there
were drums. The steady, deep, thumping beat of very loud drums.

Oh crap. I did not get a good feeling about
that.

“The parade,” Narinda breathed.

Oh crap!

“What parade?” I asked but her eyes weren’t
on me though she kept her hands on me. She was looking outside the
corral so I shook her hand. “What parade, Narinda?”

Her eyes came to me and she said urgently,
“We’ll walk together and we’ll talk. Stay close to me. We’ll try to
hide you. You do not want the Dax to see your hair.”

“What?” I whispered but the girls were
moving, pushing in toward a swing of the stakes that was being
opened by a guard.

Narinda moved me with the girls, keeping me
close, her hands on me, her eyes scanning.

“
We will not be able to hide you from the
warriors. They will see you. The Dax, though, I hear does not leave
his podium and gives scant attention to the parade. It is said he
is prepared each Hunt to claim his bride, should he see something
he likes, but he has never seen something he likes. We should try
to keep it that way.”

We moved through the opening and out being
jostled by some of the girls who clearly could not wait to start
the parade.

Very weird.

“They don’t seem scared,” I whispered to
Narinda as she kept us moving ever forward, a line of onlookers
forming at both our sides.

“
They are Korwahk,” Narinda explained.
“Some, daughters of The Horde, others from the villages and
settlements of Korwahk. They feel this is a great honor, to be
chosen for the Hunt. They grow up wanting nothing more than to be
chosen, paraded, hunted, claimed and taken as wife by a Korwahk
warrior.”

There were a lot of words I didn’t like in
that statement but I didn’t dwell. We were walking through tents
and moving toward an area that was much better lit. I didn’t have
time to dwell.

“And you and me?”

“Scouts sent out to faraway lands. I don’t
know this Seattle where they found you. I did not know they
travelled beyond the Green Sea. I have heard they scouted in
Hawkvale but rarely. King Ludlum is not a big fan of this and will,
if a scout is captured, deal with them harshly so they usually find
women like you and me who are travelling. I was with my father on a
ship on the Marhac Sea. We’d anchored at a Korwahk port. Father
left me with two guards who were overwhelmed and I was taken.”

“Kidnapped?” I hissed in shock, her eyes
came to me, she didn’t smile her small, weird smile; she just
looked in my eyes, kept us steadily moving forward and nodded.

Oh crap. This had not been pleasant. Even in
the torchlight dancing, which did not exactly illuminate the space
like a football field, I could see this had not been pleasant.

“I’m sorry, Narinda,” I whispered on a
squeeze of her waist, “so sorry.”

“
It has happened, it is past. I must look
forward. Father taught me that. What has been has been but what
will be is what
you
make of
it.”

Well, that was a positive way to look at
it.

Still.

“I just hope the warrior who chooses me is
kind,” she said softly, her eyes were now peering at the sidelines
from under her brows.

I did too.

“And I hope we can keep the Dax from seeing
you,” she continued.

“Why do you keep saying that?” I asked.

“You are fair,” she replied. “You are the
only fair woman in the parade. You stand out.”

Oh no.

“And you have great beauty,” she went
on.

That was nice. Or it would have been nice at
any other time in my life.

Not this one, obviously.

“Does he like blondes?” I asked and she
shrugged.

“I do not know. What I do know is that they
do not have any females who are fair in the Southlands, Korwahk or
anywhere. You will stand out.”

She wasn’t wrong, glancing at the girls, I
definitely stood out.

“Who is the Dax, anyway?” I asked, moving my
gaze to the sidelines then back to the girls around us, some
preening, smiling at the onlookers, nearly skipping with
excitement. The few, like us, dragging their heels and moving
forward warily.

“King Lahn,” she answered and I looked at
her. “They do not use our language. In Korwahk, ‘king’ is ‘dax’,”
she explained then shivered before going on. “He is a savage. Tales
of his exploits have spread wide. Very cruel. Heartless.”

I didn’t have a good feeling about that
either considering we were walking through a village of tents and
torchlight, people wearing hides and wisps of material. I figured
they were all relatively primitive. “Savage”, “cruel” and
“heartless” upped that ante by quite a bit and were not a words I
liked.

She looked forward and suddenly her manner
became urgent, her hand slid from mine up to my forearm where she
grasped it and pulled me closer even as we kept walking.

“
We are about to enter the avenue of
warriors, so you must listen,” she said swiftly, sounding just as
urgent as she was acting and a thrill raced up my spine and it
was
not
a good one.
“The Wife Hunt is what its name says it is. The warriors of Korwahk
are strong and fierce. They are respected. To be a warrior, you
must train from a little boy and endure many trials. Only the most
powerful men will be allowed into the Korwahk Horde. To give your
life to this training and then go out on raids and make war with
the Dax, you are promised riches, booty from pillaging and war and
also participation in the Wife Hunt which offers you the
opportunity to claim a great beauty as your bride.”

Okay, it was safe to say that things were
not getting better.

Narinda continued. “As you can see, we are
being paraded through the Daxshee, or the Dax’s village, his camp
where he lives with his warriors. We will be paraded in front of
his warriors. They will look us over, decide who to take as wife.
Once the parade is finished, they will mount their horses while we
are taken outside the Daxshee. There, we will be set free. And
there, they will hunt us.”

Oh.

My.

Fucking.

God!

“
What?
” I cried and she shook my forearm.

“Circe, quiet! Listen,” she hissed. “This is
important.”

I was trembling and I was listening. Hard.
So hard my ears hurt.

Narinda carried on. “They will hunt us and
they will claim us.” Her fingers gripped my forearm and she pressed
closer. “They will claim us like any husband claims his wife on
their wedding night.”

Oh shit. Oh God. Oh shit.
OhGodohshitohGod.

She kept at it. “They will bring us back to
the village, naked and claimed.”

OhshitohGodohshit.

“And then the wedding rite will be held
before the Dax.”

I didn’t want to know. I really didn’t

But I asked, “What’s that?”

“Settle, my lovely,” she said softly,
hearing and reading my tone even over the loud beat of the drums.
“It is whatever the warrior wants it to be. Mostly, they just
present the Dax with their bride. Then there is dancing, drinking,
eating and revelry.”

“Do we…” I swallowed, “do we get to put
clothes on for this, uh… revelry?”

She nodded. “After presentation to their
king, we will be clothed in clothing our warrior provides us.”

That was good.

But I wasn’t going to get to that part.

Not me. No way. I was going to run. I was
going to hide. I was going to fight. I was going to do whatever I
could do to get away, find out what in
the fuck
I was doing in this crazy, freaking place and get
my ass home.

“I see you are frightened,” Narinda called
my attention to her and my eyes snapped to hers.

“
Well…
yeah,
” I bit out.

“Do not, Circe, listen to me now, do not do
anything foolish,” she said quickly, her eyes again scanning the
crowd, the lit space getting closer, I could see the urgency on her
face.

“And foolish would be?”

“Do not fight the claiming. Don’t. It is
their tradition. They don’t see anything wrong with it and look at
the Korwahk women. Circe, look at them. They can’t wait.”

I looked at the Korwahk women. It was true.
It was insane but it was true.

They obviously couldn’t wait.

Then Narinda went on to advise, “Take your
warrior and endure the claiming and hope,
hope
, my lovely, with all your heart, that you get a
warrior who is soft under all that hardness.”

I was trembling head-to-toe and I wanted to
bolt. I wanted to run.

But it was too late.

We were entering the avenue of the
warriors.

I knew this because the onlookers had
disappeared. The only thing left were two lines on either side of
us, shoulder to shoulder, of men wearing nothing but hide pants,
their glistening, brown-skinned bodies painted. Some had painted
white streaks in addition to black, not many, a few. More had red.
About the same amount had a deep blue. Some had a combination of
all of these colors. But there were some only painted in black even
though those painted solely in black was nowhere near the
majority.

And it was scary.
They
were scary. This was because they were
huge.
Not big, not tall,
huge.
They were all lean and muscled,
not a little bit,
a lot.
Some had
scars. Some had seriously nasty scars. All of them had black hair,
all of it long and pulled back from their painted faces. All of
them were wearing what looked like a long looped chain that was
wound around their waists. All had massive swords in scabbards at
slants on their backs and all had two knives in sheathes at either
side of their waists.

They looked like warriors and they looked
like savages.

The place was lit with tons of torches and
some big fires. The drums were still beating, louder now, the sound
pummeling my skin. I walked in front of the warriors and I became
glad the Korwahk women wanted these men. I was glad because they
also knew I would draw attention because I was blonde and
they
wanted that attention. Warrior
eyes came to me but the minute they did, a Korwahk woman moved to
get in front of me, catch their eyes. They leaned in to show their
faces, leaned back to show their bodies, pressed their arms
together to push out their breasts.

Thank
God.

“Circe, close to me, duck your head without
looking like you’re doing it. We approach the Dax,” Narinda warned
under her breath but over the drums and I moved even closer to her
and tried to duck my head without looking like I was ducking my
head.

And come to the Dax we did. The drums were
so loud they were all I could hear. Each beat felt like it was
hammered against my body. And the Korwahk women around us became
frenzied. They flooded the area to our left side and did everything
to put themselves on display.

I leaned forward and peered through the
undulating bodies trying to see but all I caught were scraps.
Nevertheless, those scraps were not good.

A vast, wide dais, some ten steps up. On it
what looked like a huge throne made almost entirely out of
colossal, black, curling horns that shot up and rounded in an array
at the back, the same for the armrests and seat. The feet, though,
looked like elephant feet.