The Arkanist

The Garden of Bones

         The Garden of Bones it was called, but in the Hhadiri they say, Hirin av Diera. When he had watched along the vine-laden balconies, there was the execution of a knight. He was charged with treachery as well, for they claimed he told the O'eaeeneese of Dreados’ plans. He had denied, but there are none so powerful as to overrule the great Sun King. Here, Arstain watched his head cleaved off as the knight kneeled before the beies and here he would watch again, but from a different angle.  

         The courtyard pulsed with chants of death, the floor reverberating. It was a like a drum, being beat with mallets of thunderous voices. The chorus rumbled and rumbled, the entire courtyard shaking. Visir heaved up his heavy skull, the sun screaming as he squinted his eyes. So much dark had ailed him greatly. Through the sliver-thin slits and black rims he saw the sandstone rise gradually from the flat floor to a palled dais with a sandstone block, smeared with splatters of deep red. It had been used recently.

         The Dreadeen though did not use the beies much, but when they did it was entertainment. They usually saved it for special or exalted deaths, not simple commoners. The exalted officials would be celebrated during their deaths, with almost the entire city watching from the balconies or the ground. Common peasants and folk were either sent down into the dungeons to rot or whipped until death and thrown out into the desert to be eaten by animals. It was foul, but it was their way, and they always dealt death in sacrifice to Alleh.

         Visir and Arstain were shacked on the pillars behind the dais, crumbled and broken at the tops, where once great wrought-iron braziers sat. Age had taken root into the stone and laid waste like time does to so many things, crippling and maiming them. Time: the thing that never sleeps. It chases us like an inexorable hand, waiting until we slow and it can snatch us and take us to the ruin of all.

         Time, how very little Visir found himself with. Soon, he though, I’ll join my mother. What a reunion it would be, to see her shining face again, to never look into those pitiful stone eyes of her shrine. Though how could he look at her knowing that he’d failed. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He shouldn’t.

         The courtyard was completely full, bulging with people. They stood packed like squirming fish, trying to catch a good glimpse at the show that was Visir. The high dais rose in the center of the Garden of Bones, for all to see. The peasants and poor folk gathered tightly around on all sides, so close that they could feel each other’s heart beats thump. They were crudely dressed in haggard linens with tattered seas and patched arms and frayed lacings. Some wore nothing but a hood of cloth, for that was what the peasants were forced to wear, to show their lowness in society. All the poor had to wear a white or red cloth around their head. It distinguished them from the nobles and wealthy.

         It was in the sandstone balconies above the square courtyard that the nobles and rich watched, shielded from the gruesome sun by slanting roofs of aged red shingles. Long sweeping tendrils of vines crawled through the bars of the railings, ripe and gleaming with grapes, for they were sarej grapes, sand grapes, specific to Hhad and only grew with sandy soil and intense sunlight. The nobles were garbed in intricate and elegantly flowing dresses and coats and layers, for the more one wore, their wealth showed. Though it also came at a cost, for there were many cases of death due to overheating.

         Looking on from the balcony before the dais, was the Sun King, Hhass Arredion, shimmering in gilded beads that trickled down his glistening ruby ruffles of silk and satin. His ears sagged with the weight of massive golden medallions wrought like the sun and his eyes sparkled with stars of diamonds. Running down his ebony arms, bands of gold and silver rested in heaps at his wrists and his diamond crown glowed with the inner strands of gold. He sat in a grand throne, the spine fitter with crimson velvet and the silvery wood arms beaded with balls of a dull gold. His face sharp, he raised his hand and stood from his throne, silencing all.