The Third Scroll Read Online Free PDF Page A

to tie mine. “You have pretty hair,” she said, “like black silk. And eyes to match. Be careful of Kumra.” She grabbed a blanket from her cot and pulled four long pieces of wool yarn from it. “We should make you a charm belt.”
    I glanced at hers, made of simple yarn and decorated with small wood carvings, nothing like Kumra’s gold and crystal.
    “I do not know this custom.”
    Her fingers flew as she braided the belt. “Fire, earth, water, air,” she named each strand. “They offer protection from bad luck. Better if you have charms. Better even if the charm is made by the soothsayer, but for that you would have to pay.”
    She pulled a reddish pebble from the folds of her dress, kissed it on one side, spit on the other, wrapped a piece of yarn around it, then tied it to the belt.
    “Here.” She held up the finished piece and helped me fit it around my waist. “I drew the pebble from the creek. It might be lucky for you. The creek gave you the beetles that helped you heal your wound.”
    I nodded, although I did not completely follow her logic. But she seemed happy to have protected me so neatly, and I did not want to ruin even that little joy in her day.
    She stood with sudden determination when she was finished. “I need to go and prepare.” She walked to the small door that connected our room to the rest of the house and, without another word, disappeared through it.
    I vowed never to follow that path. For myself, for Onra, and for my mother’s memory, I swore to the spirits to escape from this unbearable place and find my way back to my own people.
    But first, I would find out how my mother had died in this terrible land and recite the Last Blessing over her grave.
    * * *
    The Kadar battle feast seemed the same and yet completely different from our Shahala celebrations. People joked, sang, ate like any people coming together. Except for the slaves who served the warriors and their concubines.
    They came in a steady stream from outside, bringing heaping trays of food from the kitchen. Each tray stopped at a stone table at the head of the Great Hall. Giant swords carved from stone made up the table’s legs, their tips resting on the ground. The swords’ handles supported the table top, a large stone shield.
    Carved symbols covered both the swords and the shield, angular and resembling slim arrowheads that pointed in every direction. But their pattern seemed orderly in a way—maybe some kind of writing.
    Onto this stone table the servants placed a small portion of food from each tray before serving the rest to Tahar and his people. I sat in another room with the rest of the maidens, about fifty of us, watching the feast through veiled windows.
    Darkness enveloped our room, while a multitude of oil lamps and torches lit the Great Hall; thus we could see them, but nobody could see us. Nobody even glanced in our direction, even though they must have known we were there.
    A stalwart man sat almost directly across the room from me, his large upper body covered in formfitting, hardened leather. The wide panes of his weatherworn face glowed with color from the wine. Only men sat on the short-legged wooden benches around the low table, warriors to the last. Behind them, reclining on pillows, chatted their concubines.
    Tahar had the most, all beautiful women save the youngest, whose wide cheeks had a strong resemblance to his.
    “Is she his daughter?” I whispered to the girl next to me, a willowy redhead with a tiny mole under her right eye.
    She drew her eyebrows together in a disapproving grimace. “It is not to be spoken of.”
    “She should have been sent away a long time ago,” the girl on my other side, younger and rounder than the first, whispered. “Sent to another Lord as a gift. Daughters of concubines do not stay in their father’s Pleasure Hall beyond childhood, lest their father’s eyes fall upon them in lust and their House be cursed forever.”
    “Kumra has no sons, just one