Category: Raya

It had been a long road out of Ith.  It began with a conversation between friends, an offer of a favour owed to their rescuer, and a scattered split-up and reunion through the well-guarded gates.  Then, in the Raderan heartland, they navigated around bandits and animal hazards.  Raya and her friends hiked along trails or across untamed grasslands; they dined on river fish, cedar nuts, and rabbit haunches.  It had begun with the grim knowledge that their plans had failed, their lives had been forfeit, and Ith would endure martial law until a new government formed.  It would end with the familiarity of Olston. Continue reading Raya 60

Before dawn, Raya woke up and began pacing her cell.  Today was the day of the prison transfer.  Today was the day that Saring would try to free her.  When the small ray of morning sunlight finally reached the window, she had given up on trying to read one of the books.  She was too anxious to calmly look across each word and assign it meaning in her mind.  Of course, pacing around the cell was a good way to tire herself out.  She had no idea how long the day would be. Continue reading Raya 59

Raya woke up that morning feeling as stale and sore as she had for weeks.  At least she wasn’t ill anymore.  She passed the time by reading the third book from her bookshelf—the only one she hadn’t finished or ruined by tearing out pages for secret messages. Continue reading Raya 58

Raya’s cough had grown worse over the last few weeks until she had spent the nights tossing and turning, hunching over and clutching her bruising abdomen as her lungs fought against the illness that had infected her.  At last, the guards had sent a healer to her cell—a magician, too.  She awoke the morning after with a groggy mind and a deeply rested body.  Her breath now pulled through her nose pure of the infection and phlegm. Continue reading Raya 57

The man outside the prison who worked toward freeing Raya was named Saring.  His letters were the only thing that kept Raya sane throughout her isolation.  She asked him why he offered his help to her—he said only that his life had been forfeit the day Raya had spared him.  She asked what his plan was to free her—he wrote back that he thought their days in the yard were the best opportunity.  Raya and her friends had only been allowed to walk around the yard once so far.  Today was their second opportunity. Continue reading Raya 56

After Commander Ramas’ visit, Raya spent another week in her cell.  Guards then brought her to a small room on the third floor of the seemingly enormous building in which she was imprisoned.  The room had a small bed, an actual door between her living space and her privy, and a small shelf supporting several books. Continue reading Raya 55

Raya couldn’t see the sun from her cell except for one hour each day through the slot in the hefty bronze-banded door of the cell that contained her.  It was just a small streak on the floor, widening and narrowing rapidly as the hole through which it shone allowed.  On days like today, when rain was pouring out of what she presumed were dark, drowning clouds, there was no sun at all on the floor inside her room. Continue reading Raya 54

It was another sunny day when Raya and her team of guards set out for their meeting.  The abandoned building where the gang would meet them was hidden in one of the shadows from the scattered clumps of clouds in the broad blue sky.  As they walked toward it, Raya glanced past Avri at a small dining patio.  Were any of Rama’s guards there, waiting incognito?  If they were, their disguises made them invisible to her eyes. Continue reading Raya 53

Raya was speaking with a few of the ex-slaves when the messenger came.  It was midday and Raya had been taking a break from her administrative work in the inn to get some sunlight and check on a few of their patrols.  She missed her times of wandering through the fields all day.  Her eyes ached some days—a sign of spending too much time hunched over a candlelit table. Continue reading Raya 52