Juba's Tale
Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 12:38 pm
He awoke, and the cell was at once so silent and still he dared not move for breaking its peace. His body lay heavy and sore, the bed hard and unyielding below the thin wool mattress, the air cold and undaunted above the thin bedspread he was wrapped in. He raised his hand to his face and, as he had done every morning since he could remember, ran his fingers over the strange whirl of scars on his skin: following ridges in the skin down to a series of concentric circles on his left cheek; tracing the series of dots up the right to the cross-hatched pattern which lay across his right eye and temple. Such a mystery he had woken with every day of his life.
He levered himself up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. The flagstones were biting on the soles of his feet but he sat there for a moment, feeling sleep fade away as numbness crept up his calves. He sighed gently and spat into the chamberpot by the chest at the foot of the bed – the only two articles in the cell other than the bed. The sudden noise in the silence seemed wrong, as if he had broken some secret agreement, and yet once the deal was unmade and sound returned to the world, he could go on again, and so he rose, naked, and stretched his long limbs, reaching to the ceiling with his outstretched fingers.
The first time he had been whipped had found him in such a pose, though then his hands and feet were bound to a great cartwheel, and his head covered with a thick canvas sack which smelt of sweat and the last man who had been punished in it.
How old had he been then, he wondered; perhaps eight or nine? A tall, gangly boy already growing strong from the hard work in the quarry. He’d been a popular child in the slave pens – people seemed to think his scars brought him good luck, and thus those around him too. A strange, magic message in a language known only to She who cut him.
She had named him Juba, and carved the pattern on his face as a squirming newborn and rubbed coal dust into the wounds, and died herself shortly afterwards. The Father no one knew. She had arrived already obviously pregnant. She lived in silence, away from the other workers who left her be and the guards who saw how unfit she was for work. She helped the cook, who forced himself on her regularly and gave her scraps from his kitchen in return until she was too big for his fun. All this she took in silence and solitude, until the day she brought Juba into the world, when she sobbed and jabbered away, quickly and aggressively, in her own language to the girls who gathered to attend her. She bore him, she cut him, and then she died in silence; almost, it was felt by those around, in relief.
The boy was adopted communally, though he became the property of the House which owned them all. The slavemaster was furious at the birth and the death, declaring he had at the same time lost a worker and gained a useless mouth to feed, which he would not provide for until the boy could work. So Juba was raised by the salves in the pen She had been put in, who each took a mouthful out of their own mouths to keep him alive. At about the age of three, though down there in the darkness no one could ever be sure of the passage of time, he was deemed old enough to drag a tin urn of water down the tunnels to succour the workers in the hottest, deepest part of the mine. He was always greeted with a muted, suspicious respect and thanks by those desperate men – he seemed to know who was in greatest need of water, and always found them out first, and never missed those who were cutting their way down smaller tunnels, following seams of metals and minerals. By the age of six he was thought strong enough to be transferred to the quarrying – where old spent mines were dug out into caverns, taking any material thought useful away, which would eventually become just another part of Skullport. An avenue built on the painful death of thousands.
What he had been whipped for, the first time, he had forgotten. Perhaps he had looked at a guard the wrong way, or spoken out of turn, or thought to have been not working hard enough. The slightest infraction could bring the harshest of penalties. They were practically worthless – men and women unskilled, uneducated, fit for nothing but the most menial and laborious work. Prisoners of war, or common people snatched by raiders or pirates, or who strayed too close from the surface… there were a hundred thousand ways to end up down at the bottom, and a hundred thousand stories of misfortune about how they had ended up down there, and on good days it seemed that the whole population of Faerun passed beneath those lichen matted gates of skull to labour in the shadows; that the land of the free, who walked in the sunshine, must be exhausted now; an empty world of silent cities and still forests. And yet every day more arrived to fill the ranks of the fallen.
There was no crime committed when a slave was beaten to death, or murdered for the amusement of its guards, so long as the House was recompensed for the damage to its property.
That had been a long time ago. He stretched and let out a deep sigh of satisfaction. His thick, muscular body was now a crazy hatching of scars. Whereas his face clearly had some meaning of sorts, some logic and language lying undiscovered in the ridges and precise series of cuts, his body spoke only the language of captivity. Whip marks covered him – from the regular strokes of a punishing across his back, arse cheeks and thighs to the frequent but irregular beating by a bored overseer. His wrists and ankles were scarred from days kept in manacles. Some were deep depressions in the flesh, others raised bumps and ridges, appearing almost milky pale against his jet black skin. He felt the slowly healing wounds across his neck and chest, where the Howler had torn him. Killed him. He shuddered at the memory, trying to forget it. So much had happened in the last few days, it was hard to make sense of it all.
He reached into the chest and brought out the neatly folded uniform he had been given. He pulled it on – a simple, roughspun tunic and trousers, and left the cell. Stepping into the corridor he carefully shut the door behind him. The Temple was cold and silent as the grave. At the far end of the corridor, which led from the accommodation wing to the main body of the site, he spied an acolyte silently turn the corner and vanish. How many others were there here? All the cell doors were shut tight, and in the brief, hazy tour he had been given by Lord Abaddon he had not seen anyone. But he felt that there were others here. Even though their passage left no sign, the cool calm interior of the Temple seemed to be slowly but purposefully at work. As a river wears down stone, naturally and unnoticed, he felt that some great work was being embarked on, and that perhaps it would only betray itself when completed; when the rockface fell into the unforgiving, inexorable waters below.
He padded barefoot down the corridor, trying not to make a sound. He had been given strict instructions not to attempt to leave, but that otherwise he had freedom to go where he pleased. Lord Abaddon’s private quarters were out of bounds, naturally, and a door at the far end of a corridor near the Library, which he had been ordered not to go through. Turning the corner, he looked for the other man he had seen, but the acolyte was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had gone through to the Library, Juba thought, and so he would not disturb him. He went to find something to eat.
An everlasting nightmare of pain and confusion. He had seen such vast creatures, apparitions of shadow and fire, fight and tear at each other. Souls cast into pits; tortured, ecstatic faces. A place of unbearable heat and heart-stopping cold, of drowning and thirst. He had been more lonely than he had ever imagined, and yet strived for solitude denied him by the millions of screaming voices around him. Figures of mist, or smoke, or shadow, or of just absence of anything, moved amongst the turbulent masses. Snatching or succouring, silencing or provoking excruciating cries of agony or rapture. He fled from it all, down endless tunnels deep into the darkness, pursued by howling and laughing. Deeper and deeper, to a great cavern cut out of obsidian, where a vast skull was being slowly crushed by a great bone claw before him. And as he watched, despairing at the vastness of it all and the insignificance of himself, the skull overpowered the fist, and worried it in its jaw, and then again the fist in turn overpowered it. Again and again this impossible ballet played out in front of him. As big as the night sky. As big as the whole world.
Suddenly, beneath the eternal battle, he saw a woman sat cross-legged. As he noticed her she looked up. He called out to her, “Mother!” and she saw him and wept. He ran to her, but did not get any closer.
How long had he been here? Forever? What had happened before? He turned over and over in the darkness, floating up towards the battle above him. The woman reached out to him as he flew upwards. The skull opened its mouth wide to devour him and the fist reached out to grasp him.
He tasted something wet. Like rust. Warm blood. He opened his eyes to see a stern looking grey beard looking down at him.
“I am your Father now? Do you understand?”
His heart beat and his lungs breathed for the first time in six days. Feeling returned. Blood flowed from his wounds and nerves screamed their chilling songs of pain once again.
Juba nodded. The grey beard smiled darkly.
He levered himself up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. The flagstones were biting on the soles of his feet but he sat there for a moment, feeling sleep fade away as numbness crept up his calves. He sighed gently and spat into the chamberpot by the chest at the foot of the bed – the only two articles in the cell other than the bed. The sudden noise in the silence seemed wrong, as if he had broken some secret agreement, and yet once the deal was unmade and sound returned to the world, he could go on again, and so he rose, naked, and stretched his long limbs, reaching to the ceiling with his outstretched fingers.
The first time he had been whipped had found him in such a pose, though then his hands and feet were bound to a great cartwheel, and his head covered with a thick canvas sack which smelt of sweat and the last man who had been punished in it.
How old had he been then, he wondered; perhaps eight or nine? A tall, gangly boy already growing strong from the hard work in the quarry. He’d been a popular child in the slave pens – people seemed to think his scars brought him good luck, and thus those around him too. A strange, magic message in a language known only to She who cut him.
She had named him Juba, and carved the pattern on his face as a squirming newborn and rubbed coal dust into the wounds, and died herself shortly afterwards. The Father no one knew. She had arrived already obviously pregnant. She lived in silence, away from the other workers who left her be and the guards who saw how unfit she was for work. She helped the cook, who forced himself on her regularly and gave her scraps from his kitchen in return until she was too big for his fun. All this she took in silence and solitude, until the day she brought Juba into the world, when she sobbed and jabbered away, quickly and aggressively, in her own language to the girls who gathered to attend her. She bore him, she cut him, and then she died in silence; almost, it was felt by those around, in relief.
The boy was adopted communally, though he became the property of the House which owned them all. The slavemaster was furious at the birth and the death, declaring he had at the same time lost a worker and gained a useless mouth to feed, which he would not provide for until the boy could work. So Juba was raised by the salves in the pen She had been put in, who each took a mouthful out of their own mouths to keep him alive. At about the age of three, though down there in the darkness no one could ever be sure of the passage of time, he was deemed old enough to drag a tin urn of water down the tunnels to succour the workers in the hottest, deepest part of the mine. He was always greeted with a muted, suspicious respect and thanks by those desperate men – he seemed to know who was in greatest need of water, and always found them out first, and never missed those who were cutting their way down smaller tunnels, following seams of metals and minerals. By the age of six he was thought strong enough to be transferred to the quarrying – where old spent mines were dug out into caverns, taking any material thought useful away, which would eventually become just another part of Skullport. An avenue built on the painful death of thousands.
What he had been whipped for, the first time, he had forgotten. Perhaps he had looked at a guard the wrong way, or spoken out of turn, or thought to have been not working hard enough. The slightest infraction could bring the harshest of penalties. They were practically worthless – men and women unskilled, uneducated, fit for nothing but the most menial and laborious work. Prisoners of war, or common people snatched by raiders or pirates, or who strayed too close from the surface… there were a hundred thousand ways to end up down at the bottom, and a hundred thousand stories of misfortune about how they had ended up down there, and on good days it seemed that the whole population of Faerun passed beneath those lichen matted gates of skull to labour in the shadows; that the land of the free, who walked in the sunshine, must be exhausted now; an empty world of silent cities and still forests. And yet every day more arrived to fill the ranks of the fallen.
There was no crime committed when a slave was beaten to death, or murdered for the amusement of its guards, so long as the House was recompensed for the damage to its property.
That had been a long time ago. He stretched and let out a deep sigh of satisfaction. His thick, muscular body was now a crazy hatching of scars. Whereas his face clearly had some meaning of sorts, some logic and language lying undiscovered in the ridges and precise series of cuts, his body spoke only the language of captivity. Whip marks covered him – from the regular strokes of a punishing across his back, arse cheeks and thighs to the frequent but irregular beating by a bored overseer. His wrists and ankles were scarred from days kept in manacles. Some were deep depressions in the flesh, others raised bumps and ridges, appearing almost milky pale against his jet black skin. He felt the slowly healing wounds across his neck and chest, where the Howler had torn him. Killed him. He shuddered at the memory, trying to forget it. So much had happened in the last few days, it was hard to make sense of it all.
He reached into the chest and brought out the neatly folded uniform he had been given. He pulled it on – a simple, roughspun tunic and trousers, and left the cell. Stepping into the corridor he carefully shut the door behind him. The Temple was cold and silent as the grave. At the far end of the corridor, which led from the accommodation wing to the main body of the site, he spied an acolyte silently turn the corner and vanish. How many others were there here? All the cell doors were shut tight, and in the brief, hazy tour he had been given by Lord Abaddon he had not seen anyone. But he felt that there were others here. Even though their passage left no sign, the cool calm interior of the Temple seemed to be slowly but purposefully at work. As a river wears down stone, naturally and unnoticed, he felt that some great work was being embarked on, and that perhaps it would only betray itself when completed; when the rockface fell into the unforgiving, inexorable waters below.
He padded barefoot down the corridor, trying not to make a sound. He had been given strict instructions not to attempt to leave, but that otherwise he had freedom to go where he pleased. Lord Abaddon’s private quarters were out of bounds, naturally, and a door at the far end of a corridor near the Library, which he had been ordered not to go through. Turning the corner, he looked for the other man he had seen, but the acolyte was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had gone through to the Library, Juba thought, and so he would not disturb him. He went to find something to eat.
An everlasting nightmare of pain and confusion. He had seen such vast creatures, apparitions of shadow and fire, fight and tear at each other. Souls cast into pits; tortured, ecstatic faces. A place of unbearable heat and heart-stopping cold, of drowning and thirst. He had been more lonely than he had ever imagined, and yet strived for solitude denied him by the millions of screaming voices around him. Figures of mist, or smoke, or shadow, or of just absence of anything, moved amongst the turbulent masses. Snatching or succouring, silencing or provoking excruciating cries of agony or rapture. He fled from it all, down endless tunnels deep into the darkness, pursued by howling and laughing. Deeper and deeper, to a great cavern cut out of obsidian, where a vast skull was being slowly crushed by a great bone claw before him. And as he watched, despairing at the vastness of it all and the insignificance of himself, the skull overpowered the fist, and worried it in its jaw, and then again the fist in turn overpowered it. Again and again this impossible ballet played out in front of him. As big as the night sky. As big as the whole world.
Suddenly, beneath the eternal battle, he saw a woman sat cross-legged. As he noticed her she looked up. He called out to her, “Mother!” and she saw him and wept. He ran to her, but did not get any closer.
How long had he been here? Forever? What had happened before? He turned over and over in the darkness, floating up towards the battle above him. The woman reached out to him as he flew upwards. The skull opened its mouth wide to devour him and the fist reached out to grasp him.
He tasted something wet. Like rust. Warm blood. He opened his eyes to see a stern looking grey beard looking down at him.
“I am your Father now? Do you understand?”
His heart beat and his lungs breathed for the first time in six days. Feeling returned. Blood flowed from his wounds and nerves screamed their chilling songs of pain once again.
Juba nodded. The grey beard smiled darkly.
