The shackled serpent, p.1
The Shackled Serpent, page 1
THE SHACKLED SERPENT
Copyright © 2023 by K.M. Lister
All rights reserved. No reproduction of this work, in part or in whole, is permitted without written consent from the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from this work (other than for review purposes), please contact the author at kmlister.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Cover design and interior illustration by Rena Violet (CoversByViolet.com)
Edited by Stevi Mager-Lightfoot (smleditorial.com)
Proofreading by Samantha Pico (MissEloquentEdits.com) and Susan Doumont
Character art by Tasha P.
ISBN: 979-8-9881560-1-7 (paperback), 979-8-9881560-2-4 (hardcover), 979-8-9881560-0-0 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023907770
To anyone who has a heart full of stories.
Dream them. Write them. Share them.
They deserve to be heard.
And to me,
YOU DID IT!
PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
Characters:
Maeve Wyndell: Mayv Win-dell
Arden Wyndell: Ar-din Win-dell
Livinia Wyndell: Liv-in-yuh Win-dell
Ottilie Ashbrook: Aw-tuh-lee Ash-brook
Drustan Bennett: Droo-stin Ben-it
Jerik Flint: Jair-ick Flint
Andrina Verral: An-dree-nuh Vair-ull
Kayd Glynvyre: Kayd Glen-vy-er
Madam Prea: Ma-dum Pray-uh
Osmar Glynvyre: Os-mar Glen-vy-er
Sir Halton: Sir Hal-tin
Niam Myradove: Nee-um Me-ruh-dov
Alta Myradove: All-tuh Me-ruh-dov
Aila Glynvyre: Ay-luh Glen-vy-er
Amsden Verral: Ams-din Vair-ull
Locations:
Galfei Thalor: Gal-FAY THUH-lore
Terakeld: Tair-UH-keld
Phandolus: Fan-DOL-us
Fiermoor: FEAR-more
Amphitea: AM-fih-TEE-uh
Nythfaedell: Nith-FAY-dell
Rutherglen: ROO-thur-glen
Ardorein: AR-dor-RAIN
Lokaep: Lo-cape
Orolen: Or-UH-lin
Holmfirth: Holm-firth
Crullfeld: Cruel-feld
Derlow Grove: Der-low Grove
Other:
Spiicrete: Spy-CREET
Nukorynn: Noo-KOR-rin
Amithydia: Am-ih-THAY-dee-uh
Ryllikaar: Ray-lih-KARR
Hathil: Hawth-EEL
1
Deafening. That’s the best way to describe the silence that wholly surrounds me—in my family’s dusty dwelling, in the barren alleyways of Terakeld, even in my heart. The hush is suffocating, ever present.
I shouldn’t exaggerate. Mother used to say it was impolite.
“Maeve Wyndell,” she’d say, “nothing good comes from exaggerating. You must speak the truth. Only the truth.”
The truth is, I can hear the tedious drip from the faucet we haven’t fixed since winter. I can hear Father’s deep breathing as he stares at the floor and refuses to utter a word. I can hear my heartbeat pick up as I ruminate over what’s to come in just mere hours: the trials.
My hands begin to tremble against the top of the tottering table in the corner of our home. Dread fills me deep to the core. I see the trials for what they are: a way for the kingdoms to remind us—the humans of Galfei Thalor—that we are inferior to those who reign above us. Those who think otherwise are simply too ignorant to see it.
The callouses littering my palms snag on the wood of the table as I wring my fingers together. My teeth dig into my lower lip, and sweat beads along my brow.
The story of how the trials began is taught to us in school, drilled into young, impressionable minds for generations. Our teachers and Elders say the four kingdoms came together to bring prosperity to our lands after the Last War. They say they saved us from the dangerous lives our kind used to live. To show our thanks, we are to serve one of Galfei Thalor’s four kingdoms for ten rotations. Thus came the trials, introduced to determine who we belong to.
Our time spent as servants is supposed to bring us honor. We are meant to believe that it is our sole purpose in life and that nothing will bring us more fulfillment. I don’t buy it. Nine rotations ago, those rose-colored lenses that blinded me from the truth shattered into nothing. Nine rotations ago, Mother was killed, and it was the kingdoms’ fault.
The heel of my boot taps insistently against the chipped floor of our home. Another sound interrupting the silence. The dread that sits deep in my stomach turns into a pulsing sorrow before twining together with a brewing white-hot rage. Mother is dead. The kingdoms tore our family apart. And soon, I will be shipped off to bow before those whose hands are stained with her blood. How my brother, Arden, left for his trials five rotations ago with eagerness in his eyes is beyond me.
I glance up at the only family I have left in Terakeld. My father is sitting in his old rocking chair before the small cracked hearth we use to keep warm in the winter. Worn animal hides surround the structure, each fur strewn across the floor. Our hearth was once what breathed life into our home. Now, it only conjures up memories of happier days filled with laughter and love. Mother humming as she cooked supper. Arden and I playing tag in our single room home. Father reading to us as we settled in for the night. All of it echoes against the bare walls and musty furniture. A life lived long ago.
The back of my hand swipes across my forehead, the skin now glistening with sweat. It’s the first day of the summer season, and the heat is already leaking through the cracks in our walls. Like our empty hearth, there are no flames in the shell of the man who sits before it now. I hate what he’s become: a shadow of the loving father he used to be. That father I long for is dead.
After Mother died, he simply stopped—stopped eating, stopped walking, stopped providing for Arden and me. My brother—only sixteen at the time—took evening shifts in the fields after school, so we wouldn’t starve. Perhaps that is why he was ready for his servitude once he came of age. He wouldn’t have to carry the burden of this family any longer.
“Father?” My eyes focus back on his sunken, sweat-slicked face.
He says nothing. He doesn’t move a muscle. My jaw clenches, and my teeth grind together as I hold in a scream. For once, I can admit I want him to acknowledge me. I want him to say something. I want him . . . No, I need him. I have needed my father since the day we burned my mother’s body behind our home, and yet, he abandoned us, shutting us out and becoming nothing more than an empty vessel.
My wooden chair scrapes against the cracked floor as I abruptly stand up. He doesn’t even flinch. My stomach knots, and tears well in my eyes before I force them back. What I need now is to get out of here, to clear my head before my life changes forever.
“Father, the trials are today.”
Nothing but silence.
My eyes sweep over his motionless body, then move across the open room that is our home. The dull floors blend into the chipped wooden walls. The singular window—near the door and stained with grime—casts a sliver of midmorning light into our already-dim dwelling. My cot sits directly below the window, and Father’s is perpendicular against the wall. After Arden left for his trials, we burned his cot during that first winter to keep warm. Before it turned to ash, his cot was along the back wall near the basin. Now, there’s nothing but dust settling in the empty spot he once occupied.
“I am going to tend to some things before meeting the others in The Square this evening. We leave for our trials just before dusk. I would like for you to be there to see me off.” I look at him once more. A part of me hopes he’ll turn his head, look into my eyes for the first time in nine rotations, and say something, anything. My name, possibly. It’s been so long since he uttered it out loud.
I miss the sound of his voice, but I am only met with more silence.
My eyes drop to my dirty boots, and I release the hopeful breath I was foolishly holding. The huff of air—soft and barely audible on any other day—pierces the silence around me, twining with the faint sound of the dripping faucet.
Suffocating. Ever present.
Without a word, I dig my nails into the skin of my palms and walk out of the only home I have ever known.
2
Heavy breaths leave my lungs with every crunch of gravel beneath my feet. I weave my way through the dirty streets of the Central District, where I live, toward Terakeld’s Towne Square.
Looking around, I take it all in. The small cabins that line the narrow pathways with little to no room in between. Some stacked atop one another with rickety ladders leading to crooked windows used as doors. The soot-covered trees and shrubs with wilted leaves and broken branches, yearning for water that rarely comes. The dirty puddles that barely cover the bottom of each well on every street corner. Rotted buckets sit nearby, waiting to be filled once again.
Home. My heart seizes. It isn’t much. It isn’t great. But it’s mine.
Heavy boots stomp against the ground behind me. Stepping to the side and turning toward the noise, I spot them—an impenetrable unit dressed in copper armor. Guards. Guards who patrol the streets of Terakeld and stand tall atop the buildings with batons in their hands and swords at their sides.<
“Move,” the commander at the front of the pack barks at me, as if I wasn’t already to the side. His golden eyes brand me to my spot, and the thin gills on the side of his bronze neck quiver in disgust. He leads a unit of merfolk stationed here to make sure we comply.
My mouth clenches tight, and my eyes drift to the side. The less eye contact, the better. In the distance, I see a wave of gold flash behind a building. An elven unit marching to the east.
Home. Held hostage by the kingdoms and their guards under the guise of safety.
I swallow against the lump in my throat. Don’t cry, Maeve. Don’t cry. They don’t deserve your tears.
The merfolk unit’s loud march grows quieter and quieter the longer I stand, frozen, with my back against the side of a gray shack, and my head tilted to the sky. Perhaps if I stare at the sun long enough, my eyes will burn away.
I harshly press the heels of my palms against my eyes to stop the tears threatening to escape. “Get a hold of yourself,” I mumble, wiping away the tracks of moisture left behind with shaking hands.
When my eyes open again, the world seems brighter. A type of bright that stings my irises. It’s a welcome feeling—a distraction that pulls my thoughts away from the painful ache in my chest.
Moments pass as I gather myself once more and push away from the wall. Inhaling a deep breath, my lungs fill to the brink with warm Terakeld air. I let it out and take a step forward.
Towne Square is the core of Terakeld, the place where our land comes to life. Normally, people from all four districts mill about their everyday lives—some go to the jobs they acquired after their servitude, while others waste away in the tavern.
Today is different.
“Open your eyes, people!” screams a man with red splotches littering his face and an angry vein pulsing across his forehead as he struggles against the grips of our Elders. “Don’t let them continue doing this!”
I slow my steps as I approach the crowd beginning to gather around him. Many sneer at the man, yell profanities, and spit on the soil where that group of merfolk guards accompanying the Elders force him onto his knees.
“Traitor!” one woman hisses loudly enough for all to hear.
Others—quiet and somber—try to smooth their wrinkled brows and lift their downturned lips. Grave expressions masked by indifference.
The guards force the man’s left hand above his head, and the Elders stand, stone-faced, nearby. An ear-splitting click thunders against my skull as his wrist is shackled to the scarred, wooden post protruding out of the ground, his bare back facing outward.
He struggles to get free. “You’ll see! You’ll all see!”
The defiance in his eyes and the sweat gleaming against his alabaster skin makes bile rise into the back of my throat. My body freezes, and my vision begins to blur, morphing the present and past together into a muddy haze.
The man’s rugged physique transforms into soft curves. The image of ash-brown waves that match my own flashes before my eyes, flinging to the sides as a woman thrashes against the chains bolted to the post.
I try to stop that painful memory from rushing in. I try to stop the stale scent of copper that has stung my nostrils since that day, nine rotations ago, from suffocating me. I try to stop it, but it’s no use. The memory successfully crawls its way out of a deep, dark corner of my mind, and everything shifts.
Everything shifts . . .
Everything . . .
It had been a dreary winter day. Four days before the new rotation, to be exact. Onlookers bundled in coats and scarves filled every inch of Towne Square. Parted mouths hung open as eyes widened in horror at the sight in front of them. Father and Arden stood off to the side next to me. Red-skinned tiefling guards surrounded us, their barbed tails flicking against the ground in anticipation.
And in the heart of The Square stood a stone fountain and statue of a regal elf, a ghost-like changeling, a horned tiefling, and a merman in aquatic form sprouting from the water, looming over my half-naked mother. Goose bumps covered her bare, olive skin, and her chest rapidly rose and fell—a white cloud of fog falling from her shivering lips—as she pulled at her bonds.
“Thank you all for gathering here today.” The Chief of Elders’s voice ricocheted around the open area. “These are unprecedented times. Lies are spreading across our community. A small group of traitors led by this woman—Livinia Wyndell—are weaving a web of deceit and destruction.
“She claims the kingdoms are oppressing us, making us work in unfair conditions. We all know this is false. She is nothing more than an angry woman who is sick—in body, mind, and soul.”
A wall of heads crowded around us had nodded in agreement. They looked down on Mother and murmured under their breaths. They were people Mother grew up with, people who were welcomed into our home for supper. And they had turned their backs on her before my eyes, when she never turned her back on them.
I wanted to run to Mother. I wanted to scream at the Elders and guards and anyone who would listen that she was only sick because of her servitude assignment. The tiefling mines damaged her lungs. She had the right to be angry. She had the right to speak out, so no other would meet the same fate she had. Even when her illness made standing too difficult for her, she still stood up for what was right. But what was right led her here.
Father’s fingers had painfully dug into my shoulder, forcing me to stand still, as if he knew what I yearned to do, what my body screamed at me to do.
“Let this be a lesson to any who stand by this woman. Speak lies about our kingdoms and face the consequences,” the Chief of Elders said, the leather whip creaking under his firm grip as he turned toward my mother. “Look upon the kingdoms’ fountain, Livinia. Look at your Gods as you receive your punishment and ask the kingdoms for forgiveness.”
Mother’s head had lifted upward toward the fountain stationed behind the whipping post. Her eyes hardened, and a snarl ripped through her gritted teeth. Then she turned to me. Her gray-green eyes—the same eyes that look back at me when I stare into the mirror—pierced my soul.
“Know the truth, Maeve. Embrace the truth. Speak the truth.” It had been a whisper, meant only for me. Tears welled into the corners of my eyes.
In her last act of defiance, Mother dropped her gaze to the ground, refusing to look at the fountain.
The crack of the whip had screamed across the cold Terakeld air. The sound made me flinch, grating against my bones and cementing itself into my soul. Father’s grip had tightened with each lash. Strike after strike after strike, the Chief of Elders sent the whip into Mother’s flesh. Blood pooled around her limp body, but she didn’t make a sound except for the long, drawn-out breaths she released in the seconds before the whip, once again, split open her skin and muscles.
More lashings, and those breaths became weak.
More lashings, and those breaths stopped completely.
I rapidly blink my eyes and shake my head to banish the horrid memory, and the sight of blood coating Mother’s broken and open back disappears. The man’s smooth, pale flesh replaces it in an instant.
Mother died chained to that very post, and Father, Arden, and I were forced to watch.
We changed that day. Arden turned cold. Only I was allowed to see his rare moments of vulnerability. Gone was the glee that coated his every word. Father not only changed from the suffocating grief that came with losing a lover and life partner, but in his silence, I could see the guilt eating him alive. He stood by while his wife did the right thing. He stood by while she died.
And me? I’ve clung to my mother’s last words. The little girl who believed in our kingdoms and all the good they’ve done for us died the day her mother did.
That day, something changed in Terakeld, too. No longer were we a community. Instead, Terakeld split in two: those who believe in Mother and her movement—like this man, whose second wrist is being forced into the rusted shackle—and those who don’t. They call themselves kingdom loyalists. They look down on anyone who sympathizes with the movement. They spit on the few brave souls who actually speak out.
“Please!” The man’s voice is hoarse now. His head swivels around, looking for anyone to help. “Gallus! Ester! Aileen!”
