The Dark-Hunters (140 page)

Marius twisted free, then backhanded Valerius, knocking him to the ground. “You’re worthless, Valerius. I can’t believe you bear grandfather’s name. You do nothing but dishonor him.”

Marius sneered as if repulsed by the boy’s presence. “You’re weak. Cowardly. The world belongs only to those who are strong enough to take it. Yet you would pity those too weak to fight. I can’t believe we came from the same womb.”

The other boys attacked Valerius while Marius returned to Zarek.

“You’re right, slave,” he said, grabbing Zarek by his hair. “You’re not worth cabbage. Dung is all you deserve for your food.”

Marius threw him toward …

Astrid pulled out of the dream, unable to bear what she knew was going to happen.

Used to feeling nothing for other people, she was now overwhelmed by her emotions. She actually shook in fury and pain for him.

How could this have been allowed to happen?

How could Zarek have stood living the life he had been given?

In that moment, she hated her sisters for their part in his childhood.

But then, not even the Fates could control everything. She knew that. Still, it didn’t ease the ache in her heart for a boy who should have been coddled.

A boy who had grown into an angry, bitter man.

Was it any wonder he was so harsh? How could anyone expect him to be otherwise when all he’d ever been shown was contempt?

“I warned you,” M’Adoc said as he rejoined her. “That is why even the Skoti refuse to visit his dreams. All things considered, that is one of his milder memories.”

“I don’t understand how he survived,” she whispered, trying to make sense of it. “Why didn’t he kill himself?”

M’Adoc eyed her carefully. “Only Zarek can answer that.”

He handed her a small vial.

Astrid stared at the dark red liquid that bore a strong resemblance to blood.
Idios.
It was a rare serum that was made by the Oneroi that could enable them or someone else, for a very short period of time, to become one with a dreamer.

It could be used in dreams to guide and direct, to allow one sleeper to experience another person’s life so that he could better understand it.

Only three of the Oneroi possessed it. M’Adoc, M’Ordant, and D’Alerian. They most often used it with humans to dispense understanding and compassion.

One sip and she could become Zarek in his dreams. She would have total understanding of him.

She would be him.

And she would feel all of his emotions …

It was a huge step to take. Deep down she knew that if she took it, she would never be the same.

Then again, she might find there was nothing more to Zarek than rage and hatred. He might very well be the animal the others accused him of being.

One sip and she would know the truth …

Astrid removed the stopper and drank from the vial.

She didn’t know what Zarek was dreaming about now, she only hoped he’d moved forward out of the dream she had just witnessed.

He had.

Zarek was now at the age of fourteen.

At first, Astrid thought her own blindness had returned until she realized that she was “seeing” through Zarek’s eyes. Or eye, rather. The entire left side of her face hurt every time she tried to blink. A scar had fused the lid to his cheek, making the muscles in his face ache.

His right eye, while somewhat operable, had a strange haze over it similar to a cataract and it took her several minutes before his memories became hers and she understood what had happened.

He’d been beaten so badly two years before by a soldier in the marketplace that the lining of the cornea of his right eye had been severely damaged. His left eye had been blinded several years before that by another beating at the hands of his brother Valerius.

Zarek wasn’t capable of seeing much more than shadows and blurs.

Not that he cared. At least this way, he didn’t have to see his own reflection.

Nor was he bothered anymore by people’s scornful looks.

Zarek shuffled across an old, crowded street in the marketplace. His right leg was stiff, barely able to bend from all the times it had been broken and not set.

Because of that, it was somewhat shorter than his left leg. His was a jarring gait that caused him to not move as swiftly as most people. His right arm was much the same way. He had little or no movement in it and his right hand was virtually useless.

In his good left hand, he clutched three quadrans. Coins that were worthless to most Romans, but they were precious to him.

Valerius had been angry at Marius and had slung Marius’s purse out the window. Marius had forced another slave to pick the coins up, but three quadrans had gone uncollected. The only reason he had known about them was because they had hit him in the back.

Zarek should have surrendered the coins, but had he tried, Marius would have beaten him for it. The eldest of his brothers couldn’t stand the sight of him and Zarek had learned long ago to stay as far from Marius as he could.

As for Valerius …

Zarek hated him most of all. Unlike the others, Valerius tried to help him but every time Valerius had attempted to do so, they had been caught and Zarek’s punishment had escalated.

Like the rest of his family, he hated Valerius’s tender heart. Better Valerius should spit on him as did the others. Because in the end, Valerius was forced to hurt him all the more to prove to everyone else that he wasn’t weak.

Zarek, following the scent of baking bread, limped his way to the baker’s stand. The scent was wonderful. Warm. Sweet. The thought of tasting a piece of it made his heart soar and his mouth water.

He heard people curse him as he drew near. Saw their shadows scurry away from him.

He didn’t care. Zarek knew how repulsive he was. He’d been told so since the hour of his birth.

Had he ever been given a choice, he would have left himself, too. But as it was, he was stuck in this lame, scarred body.

He just wished he could go deaf as well as blind. Then he wouldn’t have to hear their ringing insults.

Zarek approached what he thought might be a young man, standing over a basket of bread.

“Get away from here!” the young man snarled.

“Please, master,” Zarek said, making sure to keep his blurry gaze on the ground. “I’ve come to buy a slice of bread.”

“We have nothing for you, wretch.”

Something hard hit him in the head.

Zarek was so accustomed to pain that he didn’t even flinch. He tried to hand his coins to the man, but something hit his arm and knocked the precious coins from his grasp.

Desperate for a piece of bread that was fresh, Zarek fell to his knees to collect the money. His heart pounded. He squinted as best he could, trying to find them.

Please! He had to have his coins! No one would ever give him any more and there was no telling if or when Marius and Valerius would fight again.

He searched frantically through the dirt.

Where was his money?

Where?

He’d only found one of the coins when someone hit him across the back with what felt like a broom.

“Get out of here!” a woman snarled. “You’re driving off our customers.”

Too used to beatings to notice the broom strikes, Zarek searched for his other two coins.

Before he could find them, he was kicked hard in the ribs.

“Are you deaf?” a man asked. “Get out of here, you worthless beggar, or I’ll call the soldiers.”

That was one threat Zarek took seriously. His last encounter with a soldier had cost him his right eye. He didn’t want to lose what little sight he had left.

His heart lurched as he remembered his mother and her scorn.

But more than that, he remembered the way his father had reacted once they had returned him home after the soldiers had finished beating him.

His father’s punishment had made theirs seem merciful.

If he were discovered out in the city again, there was no telling what his father would do. He didn’t have permission to be outside the grounds of their villa. Let alone the fact that he had three stolen coins.

Well, only one now.

Gripping his coin tightly, he ambled away from the baker as fast as his ravaged body would allow.

As he headed through the crowd, he felt something wet on his cheek. He brushed it away only to discover blood there.

Zarek sighed wearily as he felt his head until he found the wound above his brow. It wasn’t too deep. Just enough to hurt.

Resigned to his place in life, he wiped at it.

All he wanted was fresh bread. Just one piece of it. Was that so much to ask?

He looked around, trying to use his blurry eyesight and nose to find another baker.

“Zarek?”

He panicked at the sound of Valerius’s voice.

Zarek tried to run through the crowd, back toward their villa, but didn’t get far before his brother caught him.

Valerius’s strong grip held him immobile.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, shaking Zarek’s bad arm roughly. “Have you any idea what would happen to you if one of the others found you out here?”

Of course he did.

But Zarek was too frightened to answer. His entire body shook from the weight of his terror. All he could do was shield his face from the blows he was sure would start at any moment.

“Zarek,” Valerius said, his voice thick with disgust. “Why can’t you ever do as you’re told? I swear you must enjoy being beaten. Why else would you do the things you do?”

Valerius grabbed him roughly by his damaged shoulder and shoved him toward their villa.

Zarek stumbled and fell.

His last coin rolled from his grasp and tumbled across the street.

“No!” Zarek gasped, crawling after it.

Valerius caught him and hauled him to his feet. “What is wrong with you?”

Zarek watched a blurry child scoop up his coin and run off with it. His stomach clenched from hunger pains; he was completely defeated.

“I just wanted a slice of bread,” he said, his heart broken, his lips quivering.

“You have bread at home.”

No. Valerius and his brothers had bread. Zarek was fed the scraps that not even the other slaves or dogs would eat.

Just once in his life, he wanted to eat something that was fresh and untasted by someone else.

Something that no one had spat into.

“What is this?”

Zarek cringed at the booming voice that always went through him like shattered glass. He shrank back, trying to make himself invisible to the commander who sat on horseback, knowing it was impossible.

The man saw everything.

Valerius looked as panicked as Zarek felt. As always when addressing his father, the youth stuttered. “I—I—I w-was…”

“What is that slave doing here?”

Zarek took a step back as Valerius’s eyes widened and he gulped. It was obvious Valerius was searching for a lie.

“W-w-we were going to the m-m-market,” Valerius said quickly.

“You and the slave?” the commander asked incredulously. “For what? Were you hoping to buy a new whip to beat him with?”

Zarek prayed for Valerius not to lie. It was always worse on him when Valerius lied to protect him.

If only he dared to speak the truth, but he had learned long ago that slaves never spoke to their betters.

And he, more than the others, was never allowed to address his father.

“W-w-well … I…”

His father growled a curse and kicked Valerius in the face. The force of the blow knocked Valerius down where he lay beside Zarek with his nose pouring blood.

“I am sick of the way you coddle him.” His father dismounted his horse and stormed toward Zarek, who fell to his knees and covered his head, waiting for the beating that was to come.

His father kicked him in his still-sore ribs. “Get up, dog.”

Zarek couldn’t breathe from the pain in his side and the terror that consumed him.

His father kicked him again. “Up, damn you.”

Zarek forced himself to stand even though all he wanted to do was run. But he’d learned long ago not to. Running only made the punishment worse.

So he stood there, braced for the blows.

His father grabbed him by the neck, then turned to Valerius, who was now on his feet as well. He grabbed Valerius by his clothes and snarled at him. “You disgust me. Your mother was such a whore that it makes me wonder what coward fathered you. I know you didn’t come from me.”

Zarek saw pain flash in Valerius’s eyes, but he quickly masked it. It was a common lie their father uttered whenever he was angry at Valerius. One had only to look at the two of them to know Valerius was as much his son as Zarek was.

His father slung Valerius away from him and hauled Zarek by his hair toward a stall.

Zarek wanted to place his own hand over his father’s to keep his hold from hurting so badly, but didn’t dare.

His father couldn’t stand for him to touch him.

“You’re a slaver?” his father asked.

An older man stood before them. “Yes, my lord. Can I interest you in a slave today?”

“No. I want to sell you one.”

Zarek gaped as he understood what was happening. The thought of leaving his home terrified him. As bad as things were, he had heard enough stories from other slaves to know that life could get significantly worse for him.

The old slaver looked at Valerius gleefully.

Valerius stepped back, his face pale.

“He’s a handsome boy, my lord. I can get a pretty fee for him.”

“Not him,” the commander snarled. “This one.”

He shoved Zarek toward the slaver who curled his lip in disgust. The man covered his nose. “Is this a jest?”

“No.”

“Father—”

“Hold your tongue, Valerius, or I’ll take him up on his offer for you.”

Valerius passed a sympathetic look to Zarek, but wisely stayed silent.

The slaver shook his head. “This one is worthless. What did you use him for?”

“A whipping boy.”

“He’s too old for that now. My clients want younger, attractive children. This wretch is fit for nothing except begging.”

“Take him and I’ll give you two denarii.”

Zarek gaped at his father’s words. He was paying a slaver to take him? Such a thing was unheard of.