1894 words (7 minute read)

Sluggin’ It to the Planetary Palace

The guards helped me onto a chariot for one. It was chained on three sides, connecting it with eleven others. We were arranged in three columns, four rows, and headed at the front by an oversized sand slug. This slug was thick and tall—at least thirty years old—and hard around the edges where its natural armour had formed. That meant it could move fast. I’d never seen a slug take more than three chariots at a time, and those ones were aged specifically for events like the festival.

The chariots were gold and decorated with gems. Mine was encrusted with emeralds, gleaming deep green in the remnants of the sun that was fading behind us. As I secured my footing, slipping my worvil-skin boots into the riding slots, I heard a clink was one of the guards locked a wall of chains closed behind me.

“Don’t think my title won’t be restored in an hour,” I said, meeting his gaze.

He continued to the chariot beside me—this one gold and garnet—where a Grey woman was standing completely still. She had hair on her head, long and stringy black, and her clay-colored robes bore no hood. She was hunched over the front of the chariot, clearly lacking experience, and her broad shoulders made her look a bit like a rolling desert beast. She was sorely out of place in a Lumen chariot. They all were. All but me. Clink, clink.

“When this is sorted out, you’ll be sent to the water camps!” I shouted toward the guard, now three chariots away. This is ridiculous, Jiyorga, I seethed through gritted teeth.

Once we were all in place the two guards boarded their own chariots, led by smaller, but well-armored slugs. The guards rose static-charged whips in unison and struck downward at the same time, sending a flash of light from the point of their whip to the creatures in front of them. The slugs began to move. Both men rose their whips again, waited for a change in the electric winds, and pointed them at the oversized slug in front of the twelve. Again the static left the straps and flung toward the invertebrate puller, this time narrowly avoiding the front row of Grey. And the slug began to pull.

I’d travelled plenty in my mother’s chariots with our family’s slugs, but they weren’t this well-grown by a long shot. It was too much of a gamble to keep a slug to the end of its life. Some highborn Lumen would pay a wealth of gems for anything over twenty years. The older they got, the tougher and better at pulling they were. But it was a risky purchase because they could die at any time. So most sold them around the twenty-year mark, as soon as they could verify the armour was coming in solid. Watching this one pull twelve chariots at a time was sort of breathtaking.

I’d never really bothered thinking about what happened to the twelve after the Drawing. As a Lumen it had always meant stuffing myself full of food and celebrating under the sky fire with my brother. It meant staying up all night with friends and family and topping the whole festival off with the Grand Procession.

This was far from a celebration. The setting sun was still hot on my back in the open desert, and I kept thinking of Westalyn’s gift, locked away in that storage crate. I had to get back in time for the feast, or my mother would banish me from the next one.

Waves of sand wooshed over us at a steady rate as the slugs burrowed and dug forward. A great, golden wall enclosed all twelve chariots, completely blocking our sight. The Grey all stood awkwardly and winced as specks of sand flung toward them.

“Stand up straight!” I shouted to the one next to me. Her shoulders twitched at the sound of my voice, but she kept her head down. I sighed. “You’re only getting sand in your face because you’re sticking your head into it. Make sure your feet are locked in the sleeves and straighten your body. Trust me!”

I watched her fumble the position of her legs—they were much heavier than mine. She slowly unbent her knees and pushed herself upward, revealing her face. It was plain and, well, grey, without a drop of paint to cover it. Her face was round, and her wide eyes and lips were still tightly closed.

“It’s okay now!” I called out. My voice wasn’t carrying very far against the whirring of chariots on sand and the occasional shocks of static on the other side of the wall.

She opened her mouth first, and promptly coughed out an old mouthful of sand. Then she took a short breath, followed by many deeper gulps of air. Her eyes blinked open. They were deep, black pools. Grey lacked colored pigment of any sort, of course—unblessed by the Wizard of Light and all that. But I found myself drawn into them. They didn’t glow with their own light, but they didn’t suck it in either, like my family always said. They actually reflected whatever was in front of them. I was looking at my own reflection. The thick, black brows above her eyes furrowed then, and I realized I’d just been staring at a Grey woman’s face.

“Sorry,” I muttered. Then I had to struggle not to burst out laughing. I wondered if, in the history of our people, a Lumen had ever apologized to a Grey.

Wave after wave of sand continued to blast over us. Palunia was a sand planet, with desert covering all of its surface, save for a few islands of stone. My family lived on Centrisle, of course, but there were islands at the corners too. Centrisle was the largest, and the home of all planetary celebrations. It was also the only one with sub-islands. The shipyard was a rough ride to the east, propped up on a platform built of metals that were now extremely rare. To the north, where we seemed to be heading, were three noteworthy landmarks: the outer-dungeons, where the vilest offenders went to drown in sand; the Planetary Palace, where the contessa lived as the last royal descendant of the original Lumen people; and the Amber Tower that stretched to the stars, once filled with the holy fragrance that kept us alive, still slowly draining after thousands of years.

The sky was turning its usual evening-green, which meant the  sun would be just a sliver of light on the horizon behind us. Two bright stars shone emerald and yellow through the blackness of coming night. This time last festival Jona and I were setting the plates and goblets for the feast. I scowled as my insides seemed to twist. It was bad enough that I was missing the celebration, but that stupid phrase had really upset my mother, and a lot of other people too. I could only pray to the Wizard of Life that we weren’t heading to the outer-dungeons. I imagined the crew dropping me off to drown in sand, then going to celebrate.

The feast at the Ju Demma palace would start when Jiyorga arrived. Naturally he’d built his own palace a century ago, but no one spent the feast alone. He’d arrive, and my family would cheer, and our allied families would cheer. We’d invited the Chi Sohas to join us this year, so Westalyn would be there too, waiting for me. Something in my chest twinged.

After the feast there’d be the repeating of the Travelling Chant, wishing luck and prosperity to the Twelve, asking the great wizards to allow them safe passage and all that. To be honest, I never memorized it properly. Jona and I would make mouth movements and compete for whose could be the most convincing. The loser was inevitably the first to laugh.  

Then there’d be the revealing of the new Lumen fashion standards, and it would be encouraged to burn any old robes left in the palace. Mother would, of course, have hidden those of mine she felt I should be wearing. It occurred to me then that this might be my last feast living in the main palace. Once I got Westalyn’s word, construction would start on a new expansion for us and our children.

I was still imagining what I’d be missing out on when my chariot jerked in place and stopped. We’d come to the edge of a sand crest. The wall fell to dust in front of us, revealing a crater beyond. I was just realizing where we were when static cracked and the slug lurched ahead again, dragging us forward and swiftly downward.

A few of the Grey let out odd cries, and I nearly joined them. But I sucked in a deep breath, ready to let the fall happen. The woman next to me kept her footing, surprisingly. Our row was last to pass over the crest, and when we did the twisted, pointed turrets of the palace towers came into sight. We plunged downward.

Focus on the palace. It was thin and tall, dug deeply into a crater in the sand. Do not scream. Its blackstone outer-walls captured projections of distant galaxies, which tonight were midnight blue and fuschia. Unlike the other structures on our planet, this one was made of a smooth kind of stone that seemed to have no beginning and no end. I always thought that if I could touch it, it would feel like the surface of a gem.

We hit solid ground, but all eyes were now on the breathtaking structure in front of us. A bit like the Chi Soha palace, the iconic towers were separated. These ones were not attached to a central body, but were interconnected together, all spiralling up to the height of the crest. Looking up at it was like looking at the stars and neighbouring planets—the palace seemed immeasurably tall from the bottom, which was covered in the closest thing we had to ancient gardens remaining on Palunia, filled with plants and flowers.

As the slug came to a stop near the palace gate, my attention was drawn to the two front-most towers. Balls of emerald-green light were dancing behind their solid surfaces. They wobbled a few minutes before erupting into perfectly parallel lines, zooming up the towers. They followed the spirals round and round before exploding out the tops and igniting the sky with viridian light.

Of course, I realized. This was where the sky fire came from. That meant the festivities were starting. I wasn’t getting back for the feast at this rate. The sky was now completely green overhead, fading slowly into the night sky. Watching the lights from a distance was a must-have experience for anyone during the Cup festival. Watching from here was breathtaking. From the feast we would have seen the lights exploding upward on the horizon. Here though, it overtook the entire sky.

Next Chapter: The Contessa