Gates to Glory: Epic Fantasy Adventure Tale (Ashurran #1)

1.04. Emrys of Uallakh

Emrys of Uallakh had a very inquiring mind in his youth. Even as a child he strived to learn any science possible, especially history and geography. Barely having turned five-and-twenty he already became one of the most famous Lankmarian scholars. He had traveled through great many lands of Irshawan, charting its maps, learning morals and manners of its inhabitants. The most appealing of all for him was the mysterious Arrian, the homeland of wild and passionate female warriors. He dreamt of visiting it in person and learning the truth behind the legend.

He started out with a caravan of merchants and reached the land where the Leopards were dwelling in their tents. He presented subhadra Argamaida with lavish gifts and asked for permission to spend a few months with them. The permission was granted.

Emrys was completely enthralled with the Arriany rough life, for he was a naïve and romantic man. Most of all he was enthralled with the subhadra herself, and she looked upon him favorably. Not even a month had passed before they shared a bed. Argamaida chose him to sire her first child, because she liked his elaborate speech, his stately manner like a prince's, his glib tongue, his quick mind and those dark-blue eyes of his.

Their love for each other was great, but one single moment had ended it, and that's how it happened.

Emrys wanted to see the great subhadra on a battlefield. Never before he had seen the Arriany fight. When they marched into battle, he was left behind in the camp, guarded. When they moved their tents and cattle into a new pasture, he traveled by a wagon in the rear, not on a horseback in the vanguard with Argamaida, and saw no skirmish along the way, when there was any.

One day the tribe of Wolves suddenly attacked the Leopards. They managed to crush the sentries that were guarding the camp, and soon a violent battle was raged so close to the tents that even girls above ten snatched their weapons and rushed to their mothers' aid.

Not able to quench his curiosity, Emrys climbed a hill and watched the battle. He saw the subhadra scud across the battlefield in her chariot, killing the enemies left and right, hewing off their arms and heads. She was like a goddess of war, and the sight of her was terrible: she was splashed all over with blood, her eyes fierce as lightning, her laugh wild and rough as a roar of a leopard attacking its prey. With her own hand she smote down the commander of the Wolves, cut her still beating heart out and crushed it under her heavy boot.

Emrys was struck with fear, for his soul was that of a scholar, not of a warrior. His love transformed into disgust, and he could no more answer his lover's passion. He decided to leave Arrian for good and asked permission to visit his parents, promising falsely to return.

"On your own free will you have come into my land and my tent," the subhadra said. "You belong to me now. I will release you, when I see fit, not earlier."

"Nothing else could be expected from savages," Emrys said bitterly. "You can force me to stay, but you can't force me to love you."

"So what?" the warrior grinned. "To lay with a man without love is no less pleasurable."

After saying that she dragged him onto the bed, inflamed his passion with a spell and forced him to bed her.

From that moment on Emrys was reduced to a common bed-warmer. He was being brought into her tent when she so wished, drugged with aphrodisiacs or bespelled, and he could do nothing except pleasure her in every way possible.

The life of a slave became unbearable for Emrys, and he decided to escape. He stashed away some food, stole a horse and rode into the steppe towards distant Lankmar. He had been riding from dawn till noon when he found himself near the Leopards camp again. Sentries seized him and brought him before Argamaida.

"Didn't you know, great scholar, that an Arriany horse can't be stolen," the subhadra sneered. "Unless its mistress rides it, it will go back to wherever it came from."

The cruel warrior ordered to whip Emrys for his attempted escape, and he was not able to get up for two days. Yet he didn't give up trying to run away. Next time he hid in a merchant wagon, promising the merchants lavish reward for his delivery into civilized lands. Again his attempt failed. The Arriany were greatly skilled in tracking down their prey, and they had no trouble catching him.

Argamaida became furious and ordered to give her defiant bed-warmer to herders, who were the lowest among male slaves. For three days the brutes clad in stinking animal skins had their way with him, taking him from the front and from behind, as if he was a woman. It seemed to Emrys he was being tortured by demons or wild beasts, so inhuman and insatiable was their horrible lust.

When he was brought again before Argamaida, he was quiet, pliant and didn't dare to raise his gaze. Argamaida thought he was broken at last. She smiled, satisfied, made him seat by her side and fed him roasted quail with her fingers.

Yet after a month Emrys tried to run away for the third time. He went into the steppe on foot, having nothing on him except a short knife that he was able to steal. He walked for the whole day. At sundown he climbed a hill and saw his pursuers not very far behind. Emrys cared not to be captured alive by the Arriany again. He cut both his wrists open. His blood gushed out from the wounds and stained the green grass.

As his pursuers came near him he was ready to breathe his last. But some of them were skilled in treating wounds with magic. They stopped the bleeding, closed his wounds, brought him into the camp and threw him to the subhadra's feet.

Her charioteer Nathauri said, "Kill the deceitful slave. He won't stop trying to run away. Have we nothing else to do than to catch him and bring him back?"

Argamaida was silent for the long time, and Emrys felt more dead than alive waiting for his punishment. At last she ordered to cut off his hamstrings, taking away his ability to walk. Also she put a spell on him to be unable to hold cold steel, preventing him from cutting his veins open or any other means of committing suicide which were left to him.

Emrys decided to starve himself to death, for he saw no reason to go on living. He sat near his tent, weak and blear-eyed, looking across the camp and waiting for the death to come. Suddenly he saw Ashurran playing amongst the children. She was three years old and already handy with a little wooden sword. Emrys felt that he wouldn't welcome death until he had seen his daughter grew up and took a real sword in her hand.

He resigned himself to his fate and asked only one thing of the subhadra — the permission to teach Ashurran. Argamaida agreed, being glad that he didn't crave death anymore, for she loved him above any other man, in her own cruel and possessive way. Thus she made him Ashurran's teacher and gave him authority over all her slaves, cattle and household.

Emrys wakened up Ashurran's adventurous nature, trained her inquisitive mind, and sowed the thirst for knowledge in her, while he was telling her legends and tales which he knew plenty. In secret he taught her to speak Lankmarin, the tongue of Lankmar, and his regret was not being able to teach her to read and write, for he had no ink and paper. Ashurran was the apple of his eye. He never got tired of watching her grow and learn, until she turned fourteen.

Emrys saw that his daughter, his flesh and blood, had been taking more and more after the cruel warrior, her mother. Even at her tender age she had already learned how to kill, and her sword was bathed in human blood neither once nor twice but many times over. And Emrys died from the broken heart, not able to watch Ashurran turning into her mother.

On his deathbed he cursed her, "May you not bear a child with a mortal man, my only offspring, and my bloodline will die with you." Many times before he prayed, cursed and called to the gods, and there was no answer, yet this single curse came true.

He was buried on a green hill which he loved to climb on a clear day, trying to see Lankmar's gardens and forests in the distant skyline. Over his fresh grave Ashurran felt strange sorrow, not known to her before, as if a part of herself had gone into the ground with him. Her eyes filled with tears, but she wiped them off hastily, for it was unbecoming the subhadra's daughter and heiress to shed her tears over a slave.

Yet Ashurran had never forgotten neither him nor his lessons. She knew not the word 'father' but revered him as one. Among every legend he told her she loved and remembered best the tale of the Three Gates and the MountAlbourze.