The Gantean (Tales of Blood & Light Book 1) Read Online Free

towards the auctioneer. Greedy glares surrounded me. The auctioneer pinched at the scant flesh of my cheeks and spanned my wrist with his dry white hand. “Gantean girl child!” he cried, describing me. “Perhaps thirteen years of age? Dark hair, pale skin. Not the usual barbarian trash, this one’s special! Not a single sunspot on her!”
    “Stop,” a voice said from behind us. A woman in a purple dress that abraded my eyes looked down at me as if I were a piece of mud stuck on her jeweled slipper. “Lady Entila will take this one.”

Two
    E ntilan guards marched me along the waterfront. My legs kept moving, though they felt as loose as water beneath me. Nautien’s words rang in my ears: survive, adapt, to surrender is a wisdom. I shoved down thoughts of Gante and what had happened there. There are moments in life that act as hinges, that turn you from one path onto another, irrevocably. A Shringar clanswoman seeks to follow these changes without resistance. All instincts told me that to fight or struggle or attempt escape would only backfire. Where would I go? I knew nothing of this place.
    Surrounded by Entilan guards, I followed the Lady’s liaison, who rode in a sedan chair carried by four slaves. Our busy party received curious looks from the people on the street.
    “Welcome to Queenstown!” a man jeered at me as we passed. He smirked when my gaze caught his and then hissed, “Damned barbarians.” Others in the bustle around him glared at me with passing looks of scorn or hatred, but even so I couldn’t stop staring.
    Queenstown had too much to see. The harbor moored vessels of every type: narrow boats with sails as sharp as blades; fat trawlers with fishing nets coiled on their sterns; ponderous ships, mastless, with steam spouting into the sky from their stacks; fast cutters; iron-hulled ice-breakers. The promenade bustled, congested with horse and foot traffic. Wealthy people passed in sedan chairs borne by slaves. The tall buildings, most made from wood, a few from stone, oppressed me. Every new and startling thing left me breathless and reeling. How would I find my way in this vast new world?
    The road led away from the water, and we climbed a rise with westward vistas. A stone building sprawled over the cliff’s plateau, girded by thick hedges and iron wrought fencing. Countless glass windows and one tower garnished the mansion. We passed through a gate to follow a side path. Here the woman in the purple dress departed and the guards herded me into the building.
    A man sat before a hearth, dressed in a plain white robe, warming his hands over the embers of the fire. He looked up as we entered.
    “Ah,” he said to the guards. “Only the one today?”
    They hauled me closer to the fire. The warmth appealed, as sweat had chilled me. A guard sliced through the back of my sealskin tunic and pushed it down. My hands flew up to cover myself, trembling, but none of the men even glanced at me. The one in the white robes moved quickly, pulling a round, glittering rock from his sleeve. In one sweeping motion, he passed the stone above my bare left shoulder.
    Pain lanced my arm.
    I bit my cheek to keep from screaming. I did not wish to show my distress to the sayantaq men. Though he had not touched me, it felt as though the southern mage—I presumed he must have been doing magic by the telltale prickle in my hands—twisted a knife in my flesh. I tasted blood as I struggled to move away. The guard behind me pinned my arms.
    My shoulder burned and burned, even after the man with the stone put his magic tool away.
    A woman entered the antechamber. Her graying hair sat in a fat knot on her neck, and her lips pressed together as she regarded me. “Have you a name?”
    “Leila.”
    “That is not a Gantean name.”
    She spoke the truth; my name was not Gantean, and I had never asked why.
    “Here you will be known as Lili,” the woman decided. “A slave shouldn’t have too grand a name. I am Rennet, the