The Silent Tempest by Michael G. Manning

Author:Michael G. Manning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: magic, dark, sorcery, wizard, mage, rune

Chapter 21

The days passed in a painful parade of training and misery. Things weren’t completely dark for Tyrion’s children, though. They had one another. They had meals together and a growing sense of comradery. They had Kate, a reminder of home and now something of a surrogate mother, but most of all, they had a common enemy.

His lessons were hard. He gave them new tasks and then pushed them until they failed. Sometimes the failures were bad enough to be a punishment in and of themselves, such as when he drove them until their shields collapsed, and they experienced first-hand the shock of feedback. Other times the punishment came at an unexpected time, when he determined that someone had performed too poorly.

In between lessons they watched him. He could feel their eyes on him whenever he was outside of his room. Fearful glances and occasionally hate-filled stares had become the norm. As he had predicted, their fear was blossoming into a bumper crop of anger and antipathy, except for Gabriel Evans anyway.

Gabriel had taken his new authority seriously, and even though Tyrion made a point of putting him under the red whip at least once, the boy had remained serious, perhaps even loyal to him. He excelled at the exercises they were put to, and he exhibited a strong focus, but he still worried Tyrion.

“He wants to please you,” said Layla as they talked one evening.

Tyrion nodded, “That’s what worries me.”

“He is strong, and the first matches are against younglings from the pens,” reminded Layla. “Most of them are weak, he will probably win.”

“Probably isn’t good enough,” said Tyrion. “I want to be sure that all of them make it.”

“Why are you so obsessed with making sure all of them win?” she asked.

“They are my children,” he told her.

The warden shrugged, “You have many, one, more or less, won’t make much of a difference.”

“If you had children, you might understand better.”

“I have given birth twice already,” she answered.

Tyrion gave her a look of surprise. “I never knew that. How long did they let you keep them?”

“An hour,” she replied. “Once they’ve had their first-milk, they are taken to be nursed by the nameless.”

“Are they still alive?”

Layla looked down, poking at the ground with her finger, “I don’t know. Once they enter the pens, only the trainers know where they go, or whether they even survive to adulthood.”

“I’m sorry,” said Tyrion.

“Don’t be,” said the warden. “I disliked their fathers.”

He knew that the pregnancies had been deliberate. The She’Har slave collars prevented anything like normal intercourse, to prevent their stock from breeding unsupervised. If Layla had gotten pregnant twice, it meant she had been chosen for breeding. From what Tyrion had heard, the process was unimaginative; the mother to be was simply ordered to lean over a rail and the chosen sire, frequently a warden or occasionally one of the She’Har males, would then provide his contribution.

“Were they wardens?”

“She’Har,” she replied.

Tyrion left the conversation alone after that, unsure how to continue.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.