The Valley of the Slaves

By Andreea Albu

I don't know to tell you if there are times that passed or times that will come. I only know that there are times when people live and where evil is more palpable than ever. It lives among us, with us, and sometimes it can be touched.

An omnipotent king who rules his kingdom helped by powerful spells and a beautiful and savage girl determined to give people freedom again. The connection between them brings to the surface old fears and current weaknesses and, finally, it shows how important it is not to bow your head in the face of fate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: a.p.white
• Release date: Oct 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393372356

Book preview

Chapter 1

There are three categories of people living in the Valley of the Slaves.

First is the Governor and his acolytes, the only class with rights. Just rights better said. They chose the Governor from among the RR’s people and, the slaves, when they arrived, found him here. Eternally in his chair, with the whip that pulls meat of the bones in one hand, the ledger of the slave’s duties on the other hand - never rights! - and the insatiable grin always on the figure. His acolytes don’t have the same number all the time. Preferences, periods, say how many new slaves are robbed by wars or put into debt pledge and reach the Valley.

Yet, looked closer, the acolytes reveal their true nature: they are also slaves. They have nothing of theirs. Not even the whip they handle with carelessness and indifference.

Then there comes a handful of free men, who are soon to become part of the mass of slaves. The local people, who have been here before the Governor arrived. They have been symbolically allowed to keep their old lands or assigned new ones according to luck. Now they are allowed to work them. Apparently, they are free. In fact, lease agreements are so harsh and carefully concocted that, after one year of work, free people often find themselves hungry and indebted for their work and time in front of the ruling class.

Then comes the great mass of slaves. Mainly young people, because the elderly, the sick, and the children were killed, and the bones allowed to whiten on the ancestral land. Only those with strong labor hands and without too many personal opinions have been gathered and brought here. Any sign of rebellion was suppressed quickly, head shortened, and left to rot where it fell with little remorse.

And yet, the truth is that all those who live their days and eat their bread or polenta, as the case may be, in the Valley of the Slaves are slaves. From the highest in rank to the most afflicted soul, all are dispossessed of any earthly wealth they may have. Everything, absolutely everything, from the tools to the air they breathe belongs to RR. And, besides this material deprivation, the other dispossesses, the important ones, come in stairs. Here people have no joy, no desires, no hopes. They have only endless work, cruel exploitation without beginning or end.

Bread, beating, and labor. It’s all they get, and all the Governor expects of them.

Even the Governor, the local hierarchy, is consumed by doubts and eaten by the desire for pure power, a taste he will never feel. Perhaps now he is master over these half-wild souls, but in reality, he is one of many who could have been sent from the center, and in no case the smartest. He knows he can be changed anytime!

His real sin and longing, which he would acutely miss if he would be removed - or when he will be! -, is the taste of young woman meat. He loves women, loves the taste and smell of their skin, the light in their eyes, and the way it breaks down when they accept him as their master. He loves other men’s women despite being forbidden, or perhaps just because of that.

Until now, this fear of him was like a worm that slowly and surely roared his thoughts but lately has become an abominable tapeworm. Time is short, and his desires are many, dark, and insignificant for the one who is to come.

When he comes, RR will tear his castle card, unconscious and careless.

Priests don’t exist yet in the Valley of the Slaves, because they consider no one here worthy of salvation.

Saturday is the day when no protest sounds escapes from the lips of the slaves. It’s the day when no matter how absurd the requirement of a guardian is, the slaves will fulfill it without mutiny. And that’s because Saturday is the day of the week when the killing of a slave is legal.

So great is the Governor’s grudge for the slaves and so much the desire for their beautiful women that he set up a legal day for murder. When he wants and has no reason, the reasons are easily found. Slaves are anyway too many ...

Today is Saturday.

It’s the middle of February, it’s still too early to pick flowers and leaves, but it’s the ideal time for roots and peel.

Nina, though clothed in the slaves’ brown robes, has her abundant hair braided with colored threads around her head. Her hands and face are stained with paints, and she is a living target in the middle of the deserted field. And even if she wasn’t, Helmuth has a special radar for her alone and could recognize her in the middle of any crowd. A year older than her, he became a loyal shadow two years ago when he was given as payment to the Governor for his father’s debts.

A potter son, an apprentice in his turn, Helmuth is accustomed since his infancy with the soil, its texture, smell, and color. Yet, nothing in the material's purity had prepared him for the shock he suffered when he arrived in the Valley of the Slaves.

Although the color of the earth is overwhelming here - from the faces of diseased and emaciated people to the clothes and the color of muddy tents, everything is brown! -, nothing here reminds the young man of the color of his dear clay. The air smells of desperation; too many tears cried in vain and dried on cheeks hollowed by worries. Everything here is black, a bottomless black abyss, although it seems brown.

That’s why, when he saw NiNa, her multicolored braids, and bright eyes, Helmuth felt something he didn’t think he would ever feel. He felt hope. And from then on, he followed his sunshine with conscientiousness whenever he had the opportunity. It helps the fact that here too, he is a potter’s aid, and he is the one sent after materials required for plant pigments. So, from time to time, Helmuth gets the green light to leave the Valley on one of the crossing gates and roam the fields in Nina’s company.

Today is one of those days.

The morning polenta was enough? asks Helmuth.

He would want to protect the girl from all the pains in the world, and the spirit still pugnacious doesn’t leave room for gallantry.

NiNa smiles, and on her cheeks with vivid colors, the freckles sit differently, almost funny.

It was enough. Don’t worry, my dear Helmuth! she responds and bends to push away some stones in the path of a root. You forget that I always have herbal remedies at hand, and some of them are edible.

The young man is silent, though he would still want to protest. He knows they always cut her portion as a punishment for helping the slaves with plant concoctions. And even when, by a miracle, NiNa gets her whole meal, she shares it with the ones more afflicted than her. And as they are enough of these in the Valley, the girl often remains hungry.

At first, Helmuth did not understand why the Governor chose to punish NiNa for healing his slaves. Shouldn’t he be happy? The more and healthier they are, the more working hands he has. But as he became accustomed to the Valley of the Slaves and began to observe things, he began to understand them. NiNa heals people, and they cease to see her as a mere slave. She awakens feelings in their souls, feelings that have no place in the Valley. It gives them hope, and hope is power, and power is just the other edge of fear. The Governor is afraid of NiNa. He would gladly short her of the head, but he can’t.

First, no one knows how to fit the plants like her and to get those majestic colors even from dry stone. The colors are so vivid and vibrant that they got famous! Weekly on the main gate of access leave caravans loaded with bundles of multicolored fabrics.

And if she would not be indispensable to the dye house, there’s another thorn in the Governor’s rib. For him, hatred is a good sister with desire. He hates and wants the girl with ardor and therefore can’t decide what to do.

It’s a fragile balance in the Valley of the Slaves, and Helmuth feels things change from day to day. He sees how struggle, restraint, and desire battle in the Governor’s eyes whenever he sees the girl. His eyes pulse like bumps filled with pus, and soon that pus will look for a way out, and the Governor will decide. Soon...

Crocus heuffelianus! says NiNa, and Helmuth returns to reality and runs the distance that separates them.

What?

Crocus, she replies as if she would talk with a small child. Soon, the crocus will appear. Look! she’s pointing him to a bud ripping from the ground, still frozen in some places and soaked in moisture. I do not know how it can gather so much force and confidence to sprout every spring in these frosts. They are so small! I envy them, you know? she says while removing some stones around the bud to give it a better start.

Why do you envy them? Helmuth asks looking at her dirty hands, but still beautiful and frail.

For the recklessness, I think. Though I probably wouldn’t have to complain so much. From crocus, I extract the most beautiful yellow, and yellow is one of my favorite colors.

Helmuth laughs.

What color isn’t? Look, even your feet are stained with pigments, and still, you love all the colors.

NiNa sits down on the ground and lifts the dress over her knees. She laughs too, Helmuth is right. Hands to the elbows and legs to the knees are stained with multicolored stains from her dear pigments. The knees and palms are almost black from the position she stands when preparing them. The neck and the forehead are a testimony of her rashly and without patience temper, with long strips of color from place to place, where she wiped reckless and careless. Her cheeks are painted and embellished by bright pigments that blend in with her freckles and make her look like a fairy. Helmuth looks at her with awe.

You’re right, I love them all, she says.

Although he is only 18 years old and NiNa 17, Helmuth is already a man. He knows he wants the girl for the rest of his life and would be miserable every day until the end if she wouldn’t be his half. No one is like her; no one sings to his soul as she does.

However, things are complicated.

Helmuth is not a slave. Not fully. He’s here for three years of work to pay his father’s debts. Two had already passed, only one left, and then he could get out on one of the Valley access gates as a free man.

But NiNa? NiNa is a slave. Altogether, for life, without escape or hope.

And slaves have other rules of living. They are not allowed to marry or to breed. Why would the Governor need children’s cries, mouths to feed that do not bring any benefit? Caravans full of new slaves regularly come to change those who fall of disease or despair. The slave’s life is intense, overwhelmingly heavy, and awfully short. Being a slave is equal to being nothing in the Governor’s eyes. Or, for the overwhelming majority of slaves, this is true. NiNa is special...

Helmuth wishes that when he will escape this cesspool as a free man, he will walk out with Nina, hand in hand, two free men. A slave sometimes costs less than a well-made clay bowl. But not NiNa! Helmuth instinctively knows the Governor would prefer to see her dead rather than to give her to him. Although she is his hope, his dream has no hope.

A loud sound, a bugle of animal horn, like a bellow of pain, scatters the air. The young people shake because they know what it means. They sit quietly and count. Three horn sounds. That means three slaves are about to die today. Three people.

Filthy and greedy bastard! NiNa hisses through her teeth. How much blood he wants! Someday his turn will come, and I’ll dance on his deathbed!

Chapter 2

The slaves’ settlement is on a side valley from the new and brilliant stronghold they build. They work in the fortress from first light until late in the night. They leave here sweat, blood, and sometimes even life. The lucky ones go in the evening toward the Valley of the Slaves, where their worked bones are entitled to a few hours of tortured rest. 

After so many hours of brutal work, not even their rest can be sweet! The muscles sting, the wrists are stiff, the bellies too empty to be able to offer relief. And the truth is that at how little hours of rest they spend here, you couldn’t say it’s a home.

The Valley of the Slaves is a large and long enough hollow to cover all the tents and to remain a free place around them. A pit always greedy to grab new soul to torture, it stretches and expands periodically, with each tribe conquered by RR.

The first man who came here, instinctively, placed his tent cloth at the farthest point of the valley toward the stronghold. No one remembers him because here the years are long as centuries and his death was a few years ago. But his chosen place has remained. He seemed to know that between the strong walls of the stronghold, he would live his last days on this earth and try, unconscious, to be as far as possible from the damned place.

Afterward, the unlucky that have been brought in the Valley have made concentric tents around his one. Now, from that first tent, there is only a recess in which, in the cold winter nights, women make a fire and boil water that they divide for drinking. No one knows who uses this torture that warms the guts and makes you live a new sunrise here where too often death is seen with yearning.

On Saturday nights, they are all gathered in this central point. 

The Governor stepped out of his den, blood-thirsty, and now stands on the improvised stage he brought with a carriage of oxen. He knows that his scene wouldn’t last not even for one night in these frosts, so he drives it after him whenever he needs it.

On the stage, a throne.

The throne was custom made for his size when he came to the Valley of the Slaves. But from then on, whole layers of fat clothed his massive body, and now, standing in the throne, he looks like a spigot in the wine demijohn. He has fatty, greasy eyes and a boar chin that joins with the chest and the stomach, giving the impression of bigger, longer, swollen.

The Governor slams his whip.

You breed and you are again too many! he thunders, though the slaves know it’s not true, and all his talk is just a circus, a cheap theater. Bread is not enough! The barrels of wine are dry! he continues with lies because the slaves have not felt the taste or smell of wine since they come here. Is winter and vegetables are few, he says the first truth. Domini in servos vitae necisque potestas! *, he triumphantly concludes and stands up to give more force to his words. (* Power of life and death of the master over slaves - Gaius, Institutiones, I, 52"

Then he reads from the register the name of the unlucky ones.

The crowd murmurs, wailing, weeping. Although the slaves are all so destroyed that they long for death and see it as salvation, when they are placed before it, the human in them wakes up and begins to fight for life. Probably the instinct, perhaps the last bit of hope forgotten through the soul’s twists, makes them beg and pray for life. In vain!

They bring three forward. Got rid of the danger this time, those left in the rows, are quiet and just look with wide-open eyes and heart pumping in the throat. They escaped! They still have days to live.

Silence is not complete. After the three, as expected, three young and tender women cry and pray for forgiveness for uncommitted crimes. They fall to their knees and make heart-breaking sounds, all in vain. What has been decided, it remains decided, and the ritual of payment for imagined sins goes further. 

"Quidquid dominus indebite...