The Enchanted Castle (Shioni of Sheba Book 1)
Read The Enchanted Castle (Shioni of Sheba Book 1) Online
Authors: Marc Secchia
Text
and images copyright © 2013 Marc Secchia, 2
nd
Edition September 2013
Illustrated
by Senait Worku from Addis Ababa
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher and author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Chapter 1: A Strange Encounter
Chapter 6: Mama Nomuula Speaks
Chapter 8: A Night-Time Stroll
Chapter 9: Buildings and Births
Chapter 11: The Captain’s Coffee
Chapter 12: A Different Lesson
Chapter 14: A Rip-Roaring Adventure
Chapter 15: What Kind of a Friend are You?
Chapter 16: Reading the Scrolls
Chapter 18: A Trunkful of Advice
Chapter 19: Snaky, Snaky on the Wall
Chapter 20: Disobeying The King
Chapter 21: Finding the Wasabi
Chapter 22: Kalcha Reveals Her Plans
Chapter 23: Trouble on the Horizon
Chapter 25: The Curse on the Castle
Chapter 26: The Power is in the Eyes
Chapter 27: The General Tells a Story
Arogit
–Old woman, female village elder
Asmat
–Black or evil magic
Asmati
–Small, trouble-making creatures, bring bad luck
Ferengi
–Stranger or alien in the land, a white-skinned person, sometimes derogatory
Firfir
–A mix of injera and sauce cooked together
Gashe
–An honorific meaning ‘Lord’
Hakim
–Title of a wise or learned person, means ‘doctor’
Hiwot
–Life
Injera
–A slightly fermented large pancake made from
tef
(Ethiopian grain) used to scoop up spicy vegetable or meat sauces with the fingers
Jebena
–Traditional long-necked clay vessel with a handle, used for brewing coffee
Kebero
–Very large cowhide drum used in religious worship
Kolo
–Dried, slightly spiced grain for snacking on, often combined with peanuts
Shuruba
–Ethiopian style of braiding the hair close to the scalp in pretty designs
Shemagele
–Old man, male village elder
1: A Strange Encounter
“
I
f you don’t learn
to get your nose out of a scroll,” Shioni teased her best friend, Princess Annakiya, “you’ll ride smack into a tree one day.”
“What?”
“Then the scroll will snap shut with your nose still stuck inside.”
Annakiya
chuckled. “You’re the one who taught me to ride with just my knees.”
Resting the heavy scroll on her lap, the Princess squinted into the distance
. She mopped her forehead. Though it was only the third hour, the sky was white-blue and heat shimmered off the forested hills. “Why are they keeping us here? This dry season heat is killing me.” Even the warriors were pacing about like leopards, chafing at the delay. She added, “You’re such a good rider, Shioni. I envy you.”
She envied her slave
-girl? Touching the silver band encircling her neck, Shioni sighed in her heart. It was a simple piece of metal, but it said so much. The necklet was stamped with the symbol of the Lion of Sheba, and letters that proclaimed, ‘Property of Sheba’. The King had bought her for his only daughter’s fifth birthday, for one talent of pure silver. A sum that drew gasps of jealousy like flies to rotting meat, she had discovered. Yes, every last slave in the King’s household knew her story, and they didn’t let her forget it for a second. Calls of, ‘Ferengi! Ferengi!’ had followed her all her life. It meant ‘stranger’–someone other, different, someone to be teased and taunted.
Shioni had never met
anyone like herself. Annakiya’s owl-like and
very
severe tutor, Hakim Isoke, said that was because she came from down the great Nile River and across the Middle Sea, from another land where everyone had yellow hair like her. Isoke had also pointed out that a slave-girl’s proper place was at her mistress’ feet, not riding a horse or shooting a recurve bow like one of the warriors.
“I’m sorry
, that was a foolish thing to say,” Annakiya said softly, looking so wretched that Shioni smiled at her even though she didn’t feel like smiling. The Princess folded down her bright orange umbrella. “Come on. Father says this trip is ‘for my education’. In that case, I had better take an interest.”
After a moment, Shioni touched her bare heels to her wiry mountain-pony’s flanks and
shadowed the Princess past the powerful elephants dragging the tall carts of supplies; past Mama Nomuula, the hugely fat and lovely head cook, whose hugs were like being enveloped in one of her famous soft honeyed sweets; past the armoured cavalry and the ranks of muscular warriors guarding hundreds of male slaves, chained ankle to ankle in sweating, silent rows; past the gaudy litters of the nobles and bejewelled women of the King’s household, with their accompanying slaves holding aloft gaily-coloured umbrellas against the fierce sun, or fanning them with large ostrich-feather fans, towards the head of the great column of Shebans.
Annakiya had explained that
her father, the King of West Sheba, planned to repair a fortress in the foothills of the dark, jag-toothed Simiens, a volcanic mountain range which dwarfed the land west of the Takazze River. The Wasabi, murderous mountain warriors, regularly swooped down from the heights to plunder the river peoples’ villages and farms. ‘Asmat Castle,’ Shioni mouthed the name. Black magic castle? She wouldn’t have chosen it for her fortress, not with a name like that!
“
–a bunch of pretty chickens sitting here while you
clever
warriors argue!” Captain Dabir was waving his arms, red-faced as usual. “Where’s the tracker?”
“Sick in one of the wagons
, sir.”
“
Looks like hyena spoor to me, sir.”
“Then where’s the carcass?
You idiot! We’ve buckets of blood on the trail and I am surrounded by fools–”
Annakiya rolled her eyes as the warriors argued back and forth
. “You go take a look, Shioni.”
A puff of rust-coloured
clay dust sprang up as her toes struck the ground. Shioni quickly scouted the scene, trying to shut out the argument behind her. She knelt to measure a lion’s spoor with outspread fingers and shook her head in disbelief. What a monster! And… hyenas? Hyenas attacking a fully-grown lion? The Captain was right, with this amount of blood you’d expect a carcass… where had the lion gone?
After casting about for a few minutes, Shioni noticed a few
tawny hairs on a boulder. Nearby, a civet cat had crossed the lion’s trail and bolted upon smelling the larger cat. Then, a couple of paces on, she spotted several drops of blood smeared on a patch of sharp-bladed grass. She tracked the lion’s path steadily into a narrow defile. It ended in a low overhang. She knelt to look beneath the slab of rock, and caught an unmistakable whiff of dank air. It was a cave–the lion’s lair.
Shioni narrowed her eyes, trying to penetrate the darkness. The cave was deep. The smell told her that. But how deep was the lion? She had no desire to stumble across a wounded lion.
As she knelt in the cave entrance, a clear picture popped into her mind: pain radiating from a place near the centre of a chest. The lion’s chest? As quickly as that picture appeared a second replaced it: now she was inside a dimly-lit cavern, laying low, licking numerous wounds with a rasping tongue, before collapsing on a sandy floor. A sense of doom accompanied these pictures, a feeling so powerful that every hair on the back of her neck stood to attention. Shioni recoiled.
What?
She put the back of her hand to her forehead. A touch too much sun? She chided herself under her breath. She was neither one to feel premonitions, nor the kind of girl to take a silly turn when she was doing serious work!
But
then, without being bidden, another burst of pictures entered her mind: a huge lion snarling at several hyenas across a short space, a dark-robed hunter loosing an arrow, and again a pain that pierced the chest so sharply that her hand instinctively flew to her breastbone. She caught her breath. The sense that the picture had come to her mind from somewhere
else
was overwhelming. It was the only thing she was certain about.
From the lion?
No, that was ridiculous. Surely an overactive imagination…
“Girl!
Ferengi!” Captain Dabir’s angry shout broke her concentration. “Where’s that blasted slave-girl?”
No doubt he wanted to
advance. According to a scout she had spoken to, at the column’s snail-like pace they still had a full day’s travel up to Ginab Village, and from there a further three hours’ climb to the castle. She cast the cave a dark glance. Silly pictures in broad daylight? Madness.
Shioni
trotted back, and knelt before his scuffed boots. “Sir.”
“What have you found?”
She was used to people talking down to her. But Captain Dabir twisted his words more than most. She swallowed. “Around the first hour this morning, a large male lion was attacked here by about five or six hyenas, sir.”
Hoots of laughter from the warriors
made a flock of watching ravens take off with raucous croaks and a clatter of wings.
“Go on
, slave,” sneered the Captain. “Did you imagine a dragon too?”
“The lion may have been wounded already, sir,” she
replied. “The right foreleg spoor is lighter than the others. The hyenas attacked there and there, next to the split acacia tree. They were large beasts, bigger than a red wolf. The lion was rolled over–”
“Are you sure they
weren’t giant apes?”
“Apes walk on their knuckles, sir
. Their spoor is different. These were very large hyenas, hunting in a pack.”
She could almost feel the heat emanating from the Captain
at her bland response. Finally he growled, “And where is the lion now?”
Shioni
turned to point with her chin. “About a hundred yards back, Captain, behind that clump of boulders, is a gully leading to a cave. The lion has gone there to lick its wounds.”
“Let’s kill it!” shouted one of the warriors, waving his spear
. His cry was quickly joined by several others. The Captain waved them on. “Go.”
Shioni could not
stop herself. “No! It’s wounded…”
Captain
Dabir’s shadow loomed over her, clenching its fists. “What? What did you say?”
Shioni was wishing the dust would swallow her
up, or that she rather could have swallowed her rash tongue. “I, er… sir–”
“Speak up!”
She cleared her throat. “There’s no honour in killing a wounded animal, sir.”
“Honour?
” he exploded. “Who by Erta’s sulphurous pits do you think you are to lecture me about honour? You are a slave! A filthy, impudent–”
“Stand down, Captain!” ordered Princess
Annakiya. Shioni had always thought her a bit of a mouse, but she felt absurdly grateful for her intervention now. “There is no honour, as she said.”
A hostile silence lengthened.
“What else?” a gruff voice broke in. “We need to move on before our pretty nobles faint in the heat.”
This
voice belonged to General Getu. Shioni knew him by sight. A grizzled veteran, his left arm was missing below the elbow, and the whole left side of his face had once been terribly burned. But he never spoke about what had happened. Even Mama Nomuula, who loved to tell a tall tale as much as monkeys love to make mischief, knew no more than the usual rumour that Getu had fought off a lion–or a dragon. Everyone said General Getu was like a tough, gnarled old root, and the harshest of the warriors. No-one crossed him.
“
I also found the tracks of two horses,
gashe
,” Shioni said, using the customary word of respect for an elder leader. ‘My Lord’ suited him well. “Iron-shoed, the mountain breed. They made for those peaks. Whoever it was, they were here either during or just after the attack, my Lord.”
“Thank you for your report, girl.”
Getu eyed the distant peaks rather ferociously, as though he intended to storm them with his warriors, taking no prisoners. He sniffed the parched, thirsty air like a wolf, taking in the rich clay-dust, the pungent, fiery tang of pepper trees, and a hint of sweet anise. “Danger on the wind,” he murmured, so softly that only Shioni could have heard him. “Vague, far away…”
“
My Lord, shall we proceed?”
Shioni risked a glance at Ca
ptain Dabir, surprised at his interruption. His mouth was set in a thin line. If his eyes could have spit fire, she would have been burned up. She knew at once he meant to have his revenge.
“Captain Dabir,” ordered
the General, suddenly brusque and in charge. “Leave the lion. Warn our scouts to look out for lions and hostile riders, and gather their reports. Take fifty men ahead to the village. Check the food supply arrangements are in place. Talk to their hunters. If a mouse moves in this valley I want to know it. Clear?”
“
My Lord!”
After the Captain had
departed, shouting at his warriors to form up behind him, General Getu rounded on Princess Annakiya. “Teach your slave her place, your Highness, or I will teach her for you. And don’t you presume to command my men when you are hardly more than a child yourself! Now, go back to the women, where you belong!”
The General wheeled his horse about, bellowing, “
Move out!”
“Beastly
, cruel man!” sniffed Annakiya.
“
Who, the General?”
“You silly
mongoose, no!” Annakiya laughed at Shioni’s gasp of horror. “Mama likes to say: ‘The General may be as tough as the skin of an elephant’s knee, but his heart is true.’ I meant the Captain, of course! He reminds me of nothing more than an overgrown, flea-bitten, selfish rat!”
If a rat, a very dangerous one, Shioni told herself
. She should be on her guard.