The Naming

[Issa Kazuma 0]

I was very bored at the time, so I decided to write a random story. Reply!

Chapter 1: Escape

For almost as long as she could remember, Maerad had been imprisoned behind walls. She was a slave in Gilman's Cot, and hers was the barest of existences: an endless cycle of drudgery and exhaustion and dull fear.

Gilman's Cot was a small mountain hamlit beyond the borders of the wide lands of the Inner Kindoms of Annar. It nestled at the nape of a bleak valley on the eastern side of the mountains of Annova, where the range split breifly and ran out, like two claws, from near the northern end. Its virtue, as far as the Thane Gilman was concerned, was its isolation; here he could be tyrant of his domain, with nothing to check him.

It was a well-defended fortress, though no one came to attack. At the cot's back was the stone cliff of the Outwall, the precipice cutting sheer some thousand feet from the Landrost, the highest peak in that part of the range. Around the cot were walls of roughly dressed stone, rising to a height of thirty feet from a base twenty feet wide. They tapered to four feet at the top, enough room for two men to walk abreast. At the front were stout wooden gates, which eight men or a wagon could enter with ease. The gates were barred at night and most days, except for hunts and when the hillmen came in their big wagons to trade goods, salted meat, cheeses, and dried apples for swords and arrows and buckets and nails.

About a hundred and fifty souls lived there: the Thane Gilman and his wife, who had been beaten to a shadow after bearing him twelve children, of which fiv still lived, and his henchmen and their woman and ol' chaps. The rest were slaves like Maerad, captured in raids in Gilman's youth, or bargained for at the gate, or simply born there. They lived in dormitories, long huts under the shadows of the walls.

The buildings were ancient, older even then Gilman guessed, the walls raised in forgotten times by grim northern men to keep out wolves, and worse. Under Gilman, the walls were mostly used to keep people in. The small enclosed meadows were tilled and harvested by slave labor, his tables and cloths and cheeses and sour drinks were all made by slaves, and Gilman wanted none run away. His many guards served to reinforce his tyranny, and, not inconsequentially, gratified his own opinion of his authority. Like many who ruled far vaster territories, Gilman was not above the petiness of vanity.

If anyone did escape, there was nowhere to run to; their most likely fate was to be hunted down by untamed beasts in the forest that stretched below the mountains. And even to this isolated cot came rumors of stirrings in the outside world: whispers of unnamed shadows that haunted the forest deeps, or the forgotten evils that now woke and walked in the day-lit world.

Maerad was still too young to have given up hope of escape, although as she approached adulthood and began better to understand her own limitations, she understood it to be a childish dream. Freedom was a fantasy she gnawed obsessively in her few moments of leisure, like an old bone with just a trace of meat, and like all illusions, it left her hugrier than before, only more keenly aware of how her soul starved within her, its wings wasting with the despair of disuse.

The Springturn began like every other day of Maerad's life, with the iron clang of the dawn bell wrenching her from sleep. It dumped her on the rim of consciousness, sore and heavy and blind, and her dreams sank into the darkness of her mind, as if they had never been.

Yawning, she staggered out of the slaves' quaters to the courtyard well, her skin wincing at the icy air. She hunched her cloak around her shoulders and, scarcely glancing at the dim shapes of the buildings around her, pumped some water and splashed it over her head. Gasping, she shook the water off her heavy hair, and her breath plumed in white swirls out of her nostrils and through her chattering teeth. Her limbs still felt like lead, her face was numb as a brick, but at least she was awake.

She was drying herself with her cloak when she heard a heavy step behind her. Maerad turned, quick as a wild dog, her hackles bristling --- but it was only Lothar, the huge, doltish man in charge of the buttery.

"Late night?" asked Lothar, sniggering.

Maerad turned contemptuously back at the well.

"You could her the lords until roostercrow," he said. "And who took you last night?"

"Shut your muddy mouth, pea-brain," she said curtly. "Or I'll put the evil eye on you." She turned to face him, glaring, and began to raise her arms. Lothar went pale and crossed his hands before his eyes. "Ward! Ward!" he cried. "I meant no harm, Maerad."

"Then keep your mouth from evil gossip," she hissed. "Get! Go!"

Lothar scuttled off, and Maerad permitted herself a grim smile before she savored a precious minute to herself. The cot was only just stirring; it was before roostercrow, and there were still a few moments before the summons bell. Most of the slaves huddled greedily into their little patches of sleep-warmth, reluctant to leave until the very last second.

Maerad leaned back and breathed in hard, gazing up at the distant stars, tiny points of frosty fire high over the mountains. She searchesd as she always did for the dawn star, Ilion, burning brightly over the eastern horizon, and sniffed a new freshness in the early air. "It's the beginning of spring," she thought. Despite her tiredness, her spirits lifted. Then she looked down at her callused hands and sighed. "But not for me; I'm already withering. What will become of me?"

That's all for now, please reply and I'll write some more! Just tell me how you like it!

[tredeal 0]

I like your description. methinks you need a hero! continue please!

[ZuZu 10]

is this 'The Naming' by Alison Croggon?

[Hedawn Omni 1]

Hmm this sounds like the polt to my second novel '' The tortured sprite " HUH

[Sahaqiel 1232]

So, blatant plagiarism?

That's illegal, you know.

You can't really tell, but this makes me very angry.

Sahaqiel

[Chef Nonsense 0]

Plagiarism is illegal you know.

Edit:Dang Sahaqiel. <_<

Beating me to the punch

Edited 27 May 2009 by Chef Nonsense (see edit history)

[Sahaqiel 1232]

Oh damn.

Chef Nonsense, you posted less than a second after I did.

I clicked the "Click here if you do not wish to wait" or something thing and your post was after mine.

Sahaqiel

Edited 27 May 2009 by Sahaqiel (see edit history)

[Chef Nonsense 0]

Yes.

But I closed the topic for you did.

So therefore I win.

[Sahaqiel 1232]

No you didn't.

But fo srs, that timing was pretty epic.

Sahaqiel