Sky Lord by Rowan Erlking (popular e readers TXT) 📖

Her name was Tia. And she had been taken to the prison weeks ago for an unspeakable crime.

All the guards who handled her wore long hard collars and gloves, and were equipped with deadly weapons—but she mostly sat in solitary confinement. She was not a local of the land, obviously having come from a distant island some said where demons still practiced rites to the Sky Lord and worshipped him. Her skin was dark, a deep island tan kissed from the sun. Her hair was a mild brown, though, and not black like the island natives, and her eyes were blue as sky itself. Some said she was a demon. Others, a monster. But the only truth known about her was that she used to work for the lord of the underworld, the crime lord of the city Calcumum, and she was found standing over the body of a dead police officer, breathing heavily as if she had been in a long race, clenching her teeth, blood dripping out of her mouth. The man below had his throat bitten out.

No one talked to her in the prison. On the rare occasion when she was let out for exercise, she remained in chains, surrounded by guards. The other inmates moved away to the farthest edge of the yard when they saw her, afraid that even her glance could kill.

Once a bird flew into the prison yard when she was there. A pigeon. Tia cooed at it, and the bird flew towards her looking for food. But the moment the guards saw her do this they chased the bird away, yelling and screaming. As soon as the bird had flown off for good, never returning, they turned, shook their heads at Tia and said, “Oh, no you don’t.”

She glared at them with clenched teeth.

There was a rumor throughout the prison that the underworld lord wanted Tia back and was planning a jailbreak to get her out. What she was to him, no one knew. She was not fabulously beautiful, though she was exotic. She did not seem strong or capable of any skilled fighting like the famed demon hunters, though some guessed that she could possibly be a witch though it was very unlikely she was a wizard. Some people said she merely passed messages for him or stole things for him. Either way, rumor had it, the lord of the underworld picked up Tia when she was just a child, ragged and begging in the streets for food, not even ten years old.

The only reason there were such rumors going around at all was that she was still alive. It wasn’t just the law in the city of Calcumum that those that kill are immediately executed. It was the law for the entire nation of Brein Amon. The death penalty was what kept killers in line. It was swift and fierce justice. The people feared it, and even the lord of the underworld did not dare murder unless it was untraceable. So the other prisoners wondered why Tia had left alive? That was the question. That was the fear. She was a of the slave race even. No one would hesitate to stone a slave to death in Calcumum. Besides, they also wondered why did the lord of the underworld want this girl back when it would obviously implicate him in that murder?

That was what the girl herself was thinking, leaning her head against her knees in her freezing cell that autumn day, pulling her legs to her chest and shrugging her arms to her sides to keep warm. The police transporter would come soon to transfer her to the higher fortress prison in the capitol city of Danslik, over 300 leagues from there. They hadn’t told her what would happen after that.

Her mind went over and over it. 

Why did they let her live? It would have been more merciful to kill her then, rather than having her languish in the prison, shivering with cold and wondering why she did it.

Why had she killed that policeman? Why didn’t she run away?

Tia closed her eyes and tried to re-live it in the back of her mind. What made her do that evil thing? Why did she bite out his neck?

Then she remembered.

She had been a dog, more wolfish than tame, and she was roaming the streets on business from her lord. He told her not to assume an animal shape, but no suitable human came by. In the end this dog came along, and he seemed right for the task. No one would notice her as a dog.

But that one policeman did notice her just as her time was nearly up. She would be human again, and he would see her. But why did she kill him?

The image of those last moments flashed in her mind. She lifted her dead eyes to the bare wall across from her. He had struck her, deciding to torment a stray, and he would not leave her alone. She had been a dog, and she bit out his throat with a dog’s fury. But then she was human again, tasting his blood with the realization of what she had done. So she let them take her. She believed they would kill her for her crime, and her cursed life would be over.

However, here she was in prison, and of course the guards would not let her near any other people. What did they think of her? What did they know of her? Did they know what she was? Did they know of her curse?

Tia closed her eyes and hugged her knees tighter. Her earliest memories were dim, but she recalled living in a happy place, a warm place once. What drove her from there? Why did she leave that heaven?

That memory was faint. She only remembered running away and ending up on the streets of Calcumum. How she survived, she didn’t know. Perhaps she lived on pure light. There were times she felt like that. But she did remember when the lord of the underworld found her. She was begging on the street, petting a cat that had just eaten a mouse. Then she became that cat and chased mice for her supper. The lord saw her scampering about and called to her, “Tia. Tia.” And she ran to him. How he knew who she was, she did not know. But he took her home as a cat, and she remained with him as a girl.

He always told her never to turn into animals. So she obeyed, thought it was tempting to touch a bird when she wanted to fly away. That’s what she tried to do in the prison yard. Tia wondered if those guards had thought she was going to eat the bird. She smirked. As a human, she had human appetites. But as an animal, she felt and desired as an animal. Hers was a gift, the Underlord used to say, patting her on the head. She had smiled and listened to him since he fed her and never beat her.

Looking up at once, Tia recalled it. That was why she ran away from home. Someone beat her. A mean fat woman with lots of rings on her hands. Tia had not cleaned something well enough. Was it her mother that beat her? Closing her eyes and trying to focus on the woman’s face, Tia shook her head. No. Her mother had black hair. This woman had brown hair. This woman was also fair skinned.

She blinked. She had been a slave. Tia recalled it now. A pale man bought her when she was three years old, taking her from her warm island—the home of her dreams. She was then taken north to serve a lady in some city, but not Calcumum. It was here that she learned about her curse, or her gift as the Underlord said.

She had been feeding one of the pigs, and she patted it. When she touched it, a feeling surged in her, and she wondered, rubbing the back of the pig as it ate. The feeling grew and suddenly she knew what it was like to be a pig. And touching it, she felt as if she could almost be a pig—in fact, be this pig. Desiring to try it, she had put both of her hands on the pig. The pig itself fainted under the strain, but she was no longer Tia the slave but a large sow standing outside the fence.

Absolutely happy, Tia the pig ran around the farmyard, digging around for truffles, digging in the garden for carrots—fresh ones—for potatoes, for anything she could get her snout into. She ran through the mistress’s house, squealing for joy, and she saw the mistress run at her with a broom, shouting, “Tia! Tia! The pig’s got out you wretched girl! You did not close the gate!”

But as a pig she scampered into the barn, trying to hide from the mistress’s broom. And there she started to feel that she was coming back into herself.

That was where the mistress found her, dirty and wretched and lying on the straw. Her mistress beat her severely that night. Tia did not have dinner or breakfast, and she had to do her chores, smarting painfully—being hit every time the mistress saw her.

But that was only the first. Another day she became a chicken, and with feathers flying everywhere, she gave the mistress quite a chase. It became Tia’s new game to change into what animal she liked, putting the animals to sleep each time as if sucking out their life for that moment and replacing them. They never died, but the farm animals feared her a great deal once she set her fingers on them, skirting away from her thereafter. Of course, she also had been beaten so much for her defiance and disappearances when an animal would run amok and the mistress had to chase it.

But soon all the animals were afraid of her, and even the cow would not let her milk it. And when she tried, the cow kicked over the bucket each time. So, at ten years of age, the mistress beat her and hurt her for the animals’ fear of her. But on that last day, Tia looked at her mistress and thought, I have not yet tried this one.

So, after a hard beating, Tia gripped her mistress’s arm as if to beg for mercy. Yes, she remembered it now. But she did not beg. Instead, Tia became her mistress, and her mistress stared in horror as she saw her own figure grow from her slave, strong, fat and with her same dress and rings. Then Tia saw her mistress collapse to the floor.

Looking around, she thought she could play mistress now. But in her head she heard the thoughts of the woman. She felt the woman’s pride and her conceit. She also knew the woman’s fears. The woman was terrified of Tia. That was why she beat her so often. The woman knew from what people Tia had come from, the Sky Children, and Tia never forgot it.

But her childish heart also fled when she became that woman. Her desire to play mistress and beat the woman that had abused her changed to a desire to flee for her life. The woman had dreamed of coming to Calcumum since she was a girl, so Tia decided to go there herself. According to the woman, it was city of opportunity—paved with gold and silver, and even the rats on the street were fat and happy.

She arrived in Calcumum as a little girl once more barefoot and sore and very hungry, the duration of her gift only lasting a few hours. Tia looked for those fat rats and saw nothing more than