Slaves of the Mastery
William Nicholson
Praise for SLAVES OF THE MASTERY
‘Sophisticated, tightly drawn and gripping . . . there’s now another children’s author whose next installment I’ll never get my hands on soon enough’
Daily Telegraph
‘Glorious, cinematic and completely enthralling’
Independent
‘Rich in characters . . . a gripping adventure’
Sunday Times
‘It’s brilliant, I loved it’
T2, Daily Telegraph
‘A journey that will leave you breathless . . . a page-turning read, too’
Bookseller
‘This will undoubtedly be devoured by fans’
Financial Times
Praise for THE WIND SINGER and FIRESONG
‘Truly extraordinary’
Daily Telegraph
‘An original and striking read’
Melvin Burgess
‘A potent mix of thundering adventure and purposeful fantasy’
Guardian
‘A triumph’
The Times
‘An accessible, rebellious and past-paced adventure’
The Sunday Times
Books by William Nicholson
The Wind on Fire Trilogy
The Wind Singer
Slaves of the Mastery
Firesong
The Noble Warriors Trilogy
Seeker
Jango
Noman
For older readers
Rich and Mad
First published in Great Britain 2001
This edition published 2011
by Egmont UK Limited
239 Kensington High Street
London W8 6SA
Text copyright © 2001 William Nicholson
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
ISBN 978 1 4052 3970 7
eISBN 978 1 7803 1211 8
www.egmont.co.uk
www.williamnicholson.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Typeset by Avon Dataset Ltd, Bidford on Avon, Warwickshire
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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Contents
Cover
Praise
Books by William Nicholson
Title page
Copyright
Prologue: Sirene
1 Sunset over Aramanth
2 Terror at dawn
3 The wind is rising
First Interval: The butterfly
4 The Delight of a Million Eyes
5 Looking, listening, learning
6 The Hammer of Gang
7 Into the Mastery
Second Interval: The hermit
8 Kestrel learns to dance
9 The shadow of the monkey wagon
10 A visitor in the night
11 Preparations for marriage
12 Reward and punishment
13 The Lost Testament
14 Ortiz falls in love
15 The secret of the Mastery
16 Master! Father!
Third Interval: The tomb
17 A city in song
18 Mumpo fights the manaxa
19 Kestrel dances the tantaraza
20 The wedding goes wrong
21 The mind duel
22 The anger of slaves
23 Sisi turns her cheek
24 Departure
FIRESONG
About the Author
Prologue: Sirene
On a clear day the island can be seen from the mainland, the long ridge of its tree-ringed hill breaking the horizon to the south. Fishing fleets sometimes pass its rocky shores, and the fishermen stare at the stark outline of the great ruin that tops the hill, but they don’t stop. The island has nothing for them. Little grows on its bare sides, only tufts of dusty grass, and the circle of ancient olive trees round the roofless hall. Also there are stories about the island, of wizards who can summon storms, of talking animals, of men who fly. Such matters are best left alone.
The island is called Sirene. Long ago a band of travellers settled here, and built the high stone walls on the top of the hill, and planted the olive trees for shade. The building has no floor, other than the grass and rock that was there before. It has no roof. Its tall windows have no glass, its wide doorways no doors. But it’s not a ruin: this is how the people who built it meant it to be. No timbers to rot, no tiles to slip and fall. No glass to break, and no doors to close. Just a long light space swept by sun and wind and rain, a house that is not a house, a place to meet and sing and then to leave again.
Now after many years the sound of footsteps is heard again on Sirene. A woman is following the long rising path from the shore. No boat lies moored in the cove, and yet she is here. She wears a plain faded woollen robe, and is barefoot. Her grey hair is cut short. Her face is weathered, lined, brown. How old is she? Impossible to say. She has the face of a grandmother, but the clear eyes and agile body of a young woman. She barely pauses for breath as she makes her way up the hillside.
There is a freshwater spring where the hill levels off, and here she stops and drinks. Then she goes on, and passes between the twisted trunks of the olive trees, touching their jagged bark lightly with one hand. She steps through the doorless doorway into the roofless hall, and stands there, gazing, remembering. She remembers how this hall was once full of people, and how they sang together, and how she was filled by the song and wanted it never to end. But there is a time for singing and a time for waiting. Now it is all to begin again.
She walks slowly down the centre of the hall, looking out through the high windows on either side at the ocean beyond. A lizard, unaccustomed to human intruders, rattles away into a crack in the stonework. A cloud sails across the sun, and its shadow slides over her.
She is the first. The others will join her, soon now. The time of cruelty has come.
1
Sunset over Aramanth
Marius Semeon Ortiz crested the brow of the low hill at a gallop, and drew his panting horse to a halt. There below him lay the broad coastal plain, and the ocean: and not so far away, no more than an hour’s march, his goal, his prize, his gateway to glory, the city of Aramanth. Ortiz stood up in the saddle, and holding himself steady, breathing rapid breaths, fixed his keen young eyes on the distant city. The walls were long gone, as his scouts had reported. There were no signs of any defences. Aramanth lay before him in the fading evening light as fat and as helpless as a mother hen.
His line captains clattered up beside him, and they too smiled to see the end of their long journey. The food wagons were almost empty, and for the last three days the men had been marching on short rations. Now Aramanth would feed them. The wagons would sit low on their axles when the lines turned for home.
Ortiz twisted round in the saddle, and saw with silent approval the orderly approach of the raiding force. Close on a thousand men, three hundred and twenty of them mounted chasseurs, were making their way up the rising land. Behind them rolled the
horse-drawn wagons which carried the tents, the cages, the rations for the men and the provisions for the horses: sixty wagons, and twice that number of teams to haul them, for horses could not be asked to bear great weights for long without resting. Young as he was, Ortiz was a commander who left nothing to risk. No lame horse would slow his lines on the long march.
He raised one hand. The silent signal flashed from squad to squad, and men and horses shuddered gratefully to a stop. Today was their nineteenth day on the march. They were tired, far from home, and uncertain of success. It was his will alone that had sustained them: his certainty that this, the longest raid in the history of the Mastery so far, would yield its greatest prize. For years now travellers had told tales of the prosperous and peaceful city on the plains. It was young Ortiz who had sent out scouts to confirm the reports. Aramanth was rich, and it was undefended. ‘How rich?’ he had asked. The scouts had made their best guess. ‘Ten thousand. At the very least.’ Ten thousand! No commander had ever delivered so much, nor half so much, to the Mastery. Just twenty-one years of age, and he now held within his grasp such glory, such honour, that the greatest prize of all would surely follow. One day soon the Master would make his choice of successor, his adopted son; and Marius Semeon Ortiz dared to dream that it would be he who knelt and said, ‘Master! Father!’
But first the wealth of Aramanth must be harvested, and brought safely home. He turned back to look once again at the distant city, where dusk was gathering and the lights were beginning to be lit. Let them sleep in peace for one more night, he thought to himself. At first light I will give the command, and my men will do their duty. Aramanth will burn, and ten thousand men, women and children will become slaves of the Mastery.
Kestrel Hath stood with the rest of her family towards the back of the crowd of guests. Her young sister Pinto, seven years old and jumpy as a sparrow, twisted and fidgeted beside her. The betrothal ceremony was taking place in the centre of the city’s arena, where the old wind singer stood. The base of the structure had been dressed with candles for the occasion. The light breeze kept blowing the candles out, and the bride’s mother, Mrs Greeth, who hated anything to be out of place, kept creeping forward to relight them. The wind caused the wind singer to hum and coo, in its sweet everlasting way. Kestrel was not interested in betrothals, and so she listened instead to the voice of the wind singer, and as always, she was soothed.
Pia Greeth, the bride, was fifteen years old, the same age as Kestrel herself. Pia looked lovely by candlelight. The boy she was marrying, Tanner Amos, seemed overwhelmed by the ceremony. Why is Pia marrying him, Kestrel thought? How can she know she’ll love him for ever? He looked so uncertain; so timid, and so young. But he too was just fifteen, the age when young people became marriageable; and this was the start of the marriage season.
Kestrel frowned and shook her head, and turned her eyes away from the young couple by the wind singer. At once she met the eyes of Pia’s older brother Farlo, and realised he had been staring at her. This irritated her. He had taken to following her around in the last few weeks, and looking at her in a hopeless yearning way, as if he wanted to speak to her, but was waiting for her to speak first. Why must she speak to him? She had nothing particular to say. Why must everybody suddenly start pairing up? She had liked Farlo well enough until he had begun gazing at her in that goggly fashion.
So she looked away again, and there was her twin brother Bowman gazing into the distance. She felt into his mind, and realised his attention too was not on the ceremony. He was sensing something else: something that troubled him.
What is it, Bo?
I don’t know.
Now the young couple were saying the vow of betrothal.
‘Today begins my walk with you.’ The boy spoke in a shy hesitant voice. The vow came from the old days, when the Manth people had been a nomadic tribe, forever travelling over the barren land. Many of the guests moved their lips with the familiar words, unaware that they were doing so.
‘Where you go, I go. Where you stay, I stay.’
Now Bowman was moving quietly away. Kestrel saw Pinto follow him with her eyes, desperate to go too. She saw her speak low to their mother, who nodded, knowing her youngest child simply couldn’t stand still and stay silent for long. Then Pinto too slipped away.
‘When you sleep, I will sleep. When you rise, I will rise.’
Kestrel did not follow Bowman. More and more these days, he chose to be alone. She didn’t understand it, and it hurt her, but it was what he wanted, and she loved him too much to complain.
She listened to the ending of the vows.
‘I will pass my days within the sound of your voice, and my nights within the reach of your hand, and none shall come between us. This I vow.’
The boy then held out his hand, and the girl took it. Kestrel saw her mother feel for her father’s hand and squeeze it, and knew she was remembering the time of her own betrothal. A sudden sadness came over Kestrel, a new and unfamiliar feeling. She dug the nail of one forefinger into the palm of her hand until it hurt, to stop the tears that were rising in her throat. Why should I be sad, she asked herself? Because ma and pa love each other? Because I never want to be married? But it wasn’t that. It was something else.
Now the guests were crowding round to congratulate the young couple. Mrs Greeth was blowing out the candles and putting them away in a box, to be used again later. Kestrel’s mother and father were making their way up the nine stone tiers of the arena, hurrying a little, because there was a city meeting that evening, and the ceremony had gone on longer than expected. Bowman and Pinto were gone.
That was when Kestrel found the right name for the feeling of sadness that had come over her. It wasn’t loneliness. While her twin brother lived, she could never be lonely. It was a glimpse of something more terrible: a premonition of loss. One day she would lose him, and she didn’t know how she could go on living after that.
We go together.
The words, an echo from the past, meant to her that when the time came to die, as one day it must, they would die together. But this new feeling told her otherwise. One would die, and one would live on.
Let me be the one who dies first.
At once she was ashamed of herself. The one who died first would be the lucky one. Why should she wish the misery of survival on her beloved brother? She was stronger than him. She must bear it.
This was the feeling that made her want to cry: not loneliness, not yet, but the certainty that the day was coming when she would be alone.
Mumpo Inch sat on the tumble of stones that had once been part of the city walls, and gazed out towards the dark ocean. If he looked long enough he could make out the crests of the bigger waves, rolling in under the moonless sky. He let out a long sad sigh. Another day gone, and he had still not spoken the words he had so carefully prepared and memorised. It was now eleven weeks and two days since he had passed his fifteenth birthday, and four weeks and four days since Kestrel Hath had done the same. Mumpo adored Kestrel more than life itself, and had done for five long years. He couldn’t bear to think she might marry anyone but him. And yet, if he were to ask her, he knew she would say no. He was sure of it. They were too young. He felt it himself. Neither of them was ready to be married. But what if someone else asked her first? And what if she said yes?
He heard sounds behind him, and turning, saw Pinto hopping over the stones. Pinto was small for her age, skinny and lithe and sharp as a blade of grass. Because she was so much younger, Mumpo always felt easy with her. She never criticised him, or smiled at the things he said, as others did. She only ever got cross when he called her Pinpin, which had been her baby name. She was not a baby any more, she would tell him fiercely, staring at him with those bright hurt eyes that seemed always to be about to cry, but never did.
‘I knew you’d be here.’ She dropped to her knees behind him, and twined her arms round his neck.
‘I come here to be alone,’ said Mumpo.
‘Y
ou can be alone with me.’
It was perfectly true: she was no intrusion. He reached one arm behind him and pinched her bony leg.
‘What have you done with Kess?’
‘Oh, I’ve killed her,’ said Pinto, wriggling happily. ‘I got fed up with you always asking me about her, so I killed her.’
‘Where did you leave her body?’
‘At the Greeths’ betrothal.’
Mumpo rose to his feet, dropping the girl to the ground with a gentle shake. He was tall and well-built, like his father, but unlike his father in his prime, he had no air of authority about him. He was too easy-going to impose his will on anyone; too simple, some said. As for Pinto, she thought he was the dearest person in the entire wide world.
‘There’s something I have to ask Kess,’ he said, more to convince himself than to inform the girl.
‘I shouldn’t bother,’ said Pinto. ‘She’ll say no.’
Mumpo blushed a deep red.
‘You don’t know what I’m talking about.’
‘Yes, I do. You want her to marry you. Well, she won’t. I asked her, and she said no.’
‘You never did!’
As it happens, Pinto had not asked her big sister this vast and frightening question. She had wanted to many times, but she had not dared. However, she was quite sure that if she were to ask it, the answer would be as she declared.
‘You’re an evil interfering rat-girl. I shall never talk to you again.’
He was angry and ashamed. Pinto repented at once.
‘I didn’t ask her, Mumpo. I just made that up.’
‘Do you swear?’
‘I swear. But she will say no.’
‘How do you know that?’
Pinto wanted to say, I know because you belong to me. Instead she said,
