The Mad Giant (Shioni of Sheba Book 3) Read online

  Shioni of Sheba

  Book 3: The Mad Giant

  By Marc Secchia

  Text and images copyright © 2013 Marc Secchia

  Illustrated by Senait Worku from Addis Ababa

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher and author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  www.marcsecchia.com

  Table of Contents

  Shioni of Sheba

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Giant Racing

  Chapter 2: Surprise Visitors

  Chapter 3: Tracking the Wasabi

  Chapter 4: Troublemaker-in-Chief

  Chapter 5: Castle of Life

  Chapter 6: Desta’s Rebellion

  Chapter 7: General Getu Steps In

  Chapter 8: Pool Problems

  Chapter 9: Flying Elephants

  Chapter 10: The Price of a Goat

  Chapter 11: Shuba’s Cure

  Chapter 12: How do you Measure a Giant?

  Chapter 13: Beauty’s Baby

  Chapter 14: A Giant Accusation

  Chapter 15: Ganging up on Shioni

  Chapter 16: Decoding the Secret Passage

  Chapter 17: Stowaway

  Chapter 18: Into the Caves

  Chapter 19: Garnet Glory

  Chapter 20: Grass and Flowers

  Chapter 21: Up and Under the River

  Chapter 22: To the Rescue

  Chapter 23: The Battle at the Bridge

  Chapter 24: Kalcha’s Apprentices

  Chapter 25: Captain Dabir’s Plot

  Chapter 26: Gigantic

  Chapter 27: How Sheepish They Felt

  Chapter 28: Hope for the King

  Chapter 29: Valley of the Giants

  About the Author

  Chapter 1: Giant Racing

  Shioni tapped Thunder with her heels. “Time for a gallop, o prince of horses!”

  After pricking up his ears to show he was paying attention, Thunder picked up his pace to a trot so gentle she could have turned cartwheels on his back without fear of falling off. Shioni clucked irritably. “Get moving, lazybones!”

  “My o my, aren’t we in a charming mood this afternoon?”

  She answered the curl of his lip with a mischievous grin. “My mood is fine. But you’re so full of mash and oats, you’re starting to waddle like a hippopotamus!”

  He snorted a great gust of air at nothing in particular. “A rotten fig for your gutless jibes!”

  However, as Shioni expected, the tall Arabian stallion would not allow her insult to pass unchallenged. He reared dramatically, pawing the air with his hooves, let out a neigh of ringing magnificence, and shot ahead as though he had smelled a lion on the breeze. Oh, how he loved to run! His gait was silken, his wind seemingly endless, and his spirits high.

  She laughed, throwing back her head until her hair streamed in the wind alongside Thunder’s long mane, and cried, “Now I know how you earned your name, Thunder!”

  Yes, his kind were born and bred to race. A gift from the King’s brother, the ruler of East Sheba, he was the finest horse of his generation–far too fine a beast for a humble slave-girl to ride. For just a moment, Shioni allowed herself to dream that she was a princess who lived in a grand castle, like her best friend Annakiya, and Thunder was hers and hers alone.

  But the silver slave’s necklet locked around her throat would tell a different tale: that she was a slave of Sheba, property of the Princess of Sheba; that she had been bought for the costly price of a silver talent; that should she try to escape, she would be hunted down like an animal and returned to her owner. A stylised Lion of Sheba was stamped on the metal. Twice, growing up, the necklet had been replaced with a bigger size. Before their expedition to the Simien Mountains, the words ‘Property of Sheba’ had been added beside the symbol of the lion, as if her humble position needed any further hammering home.

  She hated being collared; branded as though she were a common sheep!

  Could she be any grumpier, or more jealous of Princess Annakiya? Shioni clucked her tongue crossly. Their positions were as different as the moon and the earth. And yet Annakiya called her a friend, and treated her as such–for the most part. She should feel thankful rather than defiant! Grateful too, her mistress did not beat, mistreat, or scorn her. According to the many stories she had heard amongst the Sheban slaves, her relationship with Annakiya was uncommon indeed.

  If she were allowed to ride at all, a slave should ride a lesser animal–such as Star, her gentle, beloved pony, now galloping among the stars after being attacked by a rabid lion. How could Kalcha’s curse have resulted in Star’s death? It still grieved and puzzled her. Scarred in her memory as though etched by acid, she saw Kalcha preparing a strange power–a ‘gift’ from the witch-leader of the Wasabi–and casting it across the Mesheha River. Star had suddenly stepped between her and the witch. Had Star taken the curse in her stead? Was the rabid lion somehow the result of Kalcha’s foul handiwork? Could a curse truly kill?

  Saddened and feeling chilled, Shioni rubbed her upper arms. The Princess didn’t seem to understand how deeply her slave-girl mourned Star’s death, even now.

  However, she did have privileges the other slaves did not enjoy, one of which was to ride the Arabian, the mad biter, the horse with the reputation of a sullen hyena. Secretly, Shioni thought he was a pernickety windbag and altogether too full of himself. But ever since he had run away and had to be rescued from the Wasabi, Thunder seemed a changed horse. Now she wondered if his attitude displayed bluster and bravado only to mask what truly lay beneath.

  “Hold on, Thunder! What’s this?”

  With a touch of her knees, Shioni guided him around for a second pass along the reed-fringed river. Here, an animal trail meandered down to the water, usually a favourite place for bushbuck and wild goats to drink.

  Leaning dangerously far out of the saddle, she scanned the ground with an eagle’s attention to detail.

  “What did you notice?” asked Azurelle.

  Shioni glanced down at her tunic pocket. A beautiful little face was peering up at her, jade of eye, grass-green of hair, with miniature eyelashes curling extravagantly down towards high, slanted cheekbones. This was Azurelle, or Zi for short, the Fiuri rescued by Shioni and Annakiya from Kalcha’s magical bottle beneath the baobab tree. Zi often bemoaned her lack of powers, stolen from her by Kalcha and somehow warped to strengthen and shape a powerful curse over Castle Asmat, but Shioni thought she was just perfect.

  Zi evidently thought so too. Her four-inch stature concealed an astonishing and oftentimes hilarious store of vanity. Shioni realised she had grown awfully fond of the tiny butterfly-person, despite her fiery, unpredictable moods.

  She liked Castle Asmat too, despite its unpleasant name. Who would name a place after black magic, unless they had good reason to keep people away? But the King of Sheba had chosen Castle Asmat for his mountain fortress, declaring that the days of the Wasabi pillaging the homes and farms of the people of West Sheba, the river people, were over. A mere name would not deter him. The King cared nothing for magic. He cared for security… and the lure of the legendary gold and silver mines, secreted somewhere amidst a tremendous, jagged mountain range–the Simien Mountains, called ‘God’s heap’ by the local people. The volcanic backbone of Abyssinia; Princess Annakiya’s new home and therefore Shioni’s too.

  True, she was only come to the mountains because of her owner. Trotting along behind the Princess like one of those tame performing dogs she had once seen at the Sheban court in royal Takazze. Shioni tugged her ne
cklet in annoyance, and then became further aggravated when the Fiuri’s jade eyes followed the movement of her hand. Were her feelings always so transparent?

  “Hyena spoor,” said Shioni, trying to wipe a telling frown off her brow. “Lots of them–but look here, amongst the others–it’s the large ones. Kalcha’s pets. I wonder what they are doing here so close to the castle?”

  “It’s almost as though the large hyenas are leading the smaller ones, wouldn’t you say, Shioni?”

  “Hmm.” Zi’s words caused icy drumsticks to tap an eerie melody down her spine. “Now that you mention it…”

  “I’m right, as usual.”

  Shioni smiled down at her friend, resisting a temptation to flick her antennae or stroke her gorgeous wings. Being friends with a rare, magical creature, who was for all intents and purposes a butterfly–a crystal butterfly, with blood the colour of liquid gold–did take a certain amount of adjusting to. But Azurelle had proved her worth, both to her and to Sheba at large. The excessive vanity, she suspected, was merely a foil against a world both dangerous and hostile to a creature of her size and nature.

  “I rely on your insight more than you think, Zi,” said Shioni. “Oh, look, here’s a sandal print of Talaku’s.”

  “We should tell General Getu about the hyenas,” worried the Fiuri. “That vile witch is out to cause trouble again.”

  General Getu, the grizzled, veteran leader and foremost of Sheba’s Elite warriors, had to Shioni’s surprise become somewhat of a father figure in her life. So much so, she had once committed the sin of addressing him as abate, which means ‘my father’. Even now, her cheeks coloured at the memory. But he was committed to her. He had demonstrated that numerous times, all the while calling her the biggest troublemaker in his castle.

  Shioni’s gaze took in the heat shimmering off the ridge alongside the river, and the tranquillity of the late afternoon, still hot enough to resemble the inside of an oven. A hint of wood smoke, the kind of smell to make one’s stomach gurgle hungrily, drifted to her nostrils from downriver, the direction Talaku was headed.

  And she smelled trouble now.

  Shioni hardly needed to nudge Thunder to guide him. He was already turning, somehow sensing the direction of her thoughts.

  “Tell me something, Shioni,” he said, splashing fetlock-deep through the shallows, “why is it that when I gallop, you always think of the pony?”

  “I do? I suppose… I’m sorry.”

  “Aren’t I good enough for you?” He crossed the flow, still a muddy reddish colour after the small rains, and continued into the scratchy acacia bushes on the far side for a moment before tossing his mane and adding, “Why do you humans become so attached to your animals? We all die one day. But I sense you are growing daily more fond of me–even though I have the bite of a scorpion and, not to mince words, a somewhat demanding character.”

  “You’re no mad biter, you’re a pussycat!” Shioni leaned forward to pat his neck. “Don’t you see, Thunder? You’re too good for me. And that’s the truth of it.”

  He disagreed stiffly, “Piffle! Pure piffle. I stand by what I said before: I am honoured that you ride me.”

  Zi broke in, “I do adore these one-sided conversations you have with animals, Shioni, but I think we are coming to someplace interesting.”

  So the Fiuri could not understand animal speech? Shioni blinked, unable to conceal her amazement. What kind of power was this that she had discovered since coming to the Simien Mountains? Was it evil? A witch-power? But she couldn’t help it now. Hearing animals–sensing their emotions, or thought-pictures, or even speech–had become an unbreakable habit. A habit she must at all costs hide from her fellow Shebans, or risk being branded a witch herself.

  If she was even Sheban. If she was even… Shioni gulped. Even human?

  Trying to distract herself from a thought that had curdled her innards as thoroughly as if she had poured a slug of lemon juice into a bowlful of milk, Shioni scanned the small campsite as they approached. The smouldering remains of a cooking fire caught her eye. So much for the smell of wood smoke. All around, goat bones had been tossed to the four winds, thrown without care or plan, as though the business of eating had far outweighed any other thought. At least one animal, if not two, had been eaten. Talaku’s sandal prints surrounded the fireplace. Had he been dancing again, Shioni wondered, like the time she stumbled across him early one morning by the river?

  Shioni swung down from Thunder’s back. She had finally swallowed her pride and used a soft saddle and rope bridle on him, because she could not otherwise mount a horse of sixteen and a half hands standing. She put her left foot into one of Talaku’s prints and added her right foot directly in front for good measure, and smiled wryly to herself. Great lumbering elephants! His foot was more than twice the length of hers!

  “The hyena spoor is younger than Talaku’s,” she said to Zi. “You can see from the way his prints have already baked to a crumble around–”

  “Oh, I do believe you, Hakim Shioni.”

  Shioni groaned. “I do not lecture like Hakim Isoke, Zi!” She was about to expound on her dislike of Princess Annakiya’s tutor, when the sound of a twig snapping caught her attention. She whipped out her long dagger with a fluid, unthinking snap of her wrist. “Who’s there?”

  “I could have killed you five times over by now.”

  She started to relax at the familiar, deep rumble of Talaku’s voice, but something in his tone made her raise the dagger again. Talaku–giant Talaku, whose name meant ‘the biggest one’–emerged from a clump of white-tufted reeds alongside the riverbank and planted himself, axe in hand and legs akimbo before them; a mighty tower of a man.

  “Why were you following me?” he demanded. “Were you spying?”

  “Look at his face,” Azurelle breathed from her pocket.

  How bizarre! The whole left side of Talaku’s face was twitching as he regarded them with great suspicion, from beneath lank bangs of dark hair that hung greasily over his nose and mouth. His eyes darted here and there with uncanny speed, as though he expected an army to be hiding in the bushes and reeds, ready to ambush him. The veins of his forehead and neck resembled ropes twisted beneath his skin.

  “You know us,” Shioni said, surprised by the note of calm reason in her own voice. “I am Shioni. You know me–we ate goat together. You remember Azurelle, the Fiuri, and Thunder, the King’s horse.”

  “Pretty Fiuri,” he said. “Pretty butterfly.”

  For once, Zi did not simper at a compliment. “We saw the hyena tracks,” she said. “We thought you might be in danger.”

  Talaku’s laughter boomed out over the river, scaring a conspiracy of ravens into a beak-rattling fury on the one side, and from a reed bed opposite a large flock of wattled ibis burst into ponderous, clattering flight. The large birds flew swiftly downriver, honking ‘aaark, aaark!’ as if complaining bitterly at their noisy neighbours. “And you’re going to protect me, you titchy little Fiuri? HA HA HA! You’re so funny! A-HA HA HA!”

  One second he was doubled over, clutching his belly, almost crying with laughter; and the next second the twitch struck again, as though his cheek had been plucked by an unseen hand. He snapped his great two-handed axe up to the ready. “You didn’t follow me?”

  “No,” said Zi. “Did you have a nice meal?”

  Talaku plucked a leafy twig out of his hair and stared at it as though he were living a waking dream. “I fell asleep in the reeds. Reeds make a nice bed. You don’t know how much I need a nice bed.” A flurry of spasms tweaked his cheek muscles once more. “Did you find out where I slept?” Mute shakes of heads answered him. “It hurts!” he moaned. “The growing… it hurts me in ways you can’t imagine. I don’t fit my shoes any more. The hyenas ate them. They have a taste for sweaty old leather.”

  Shioni found the switches in his behaviour chilling. Frigid fingernails scraped her scalp from beneath, creeping between skin and bone; fingernails that belonged to icy talons, gr
ipping with a mixture of pity, horror and fear. She opened her mouth to reply… and found her tongue quite frozen to its roots.

  But Azurelle said placidly, “Whose goat was it?”

  Straightening his back abruptly, the giant smiled a disturbingly normal smile down at them. “I’ll only answer your questions if you beat me in a race. Do you see the crooked juniper?” He pointed down-valley at a clump of trees, perhaps a mile distant. “First one there!”

  Chapter 2: Surprise Visitors

  Talaku charged off with the grace of a furious rhinoceros.

  Shioni did not wait for his dust to settle, nor did she pause to consider Azurelle’s astonished protests. Seizing the trailing rope halter, she launched herself up onto Thunder’s back, yelling, “Go, go, go!”

  Thunder needed no second invitation. He barely waited for her backside to touch the saddle before he pinned his ears back and hurled himself down the trail as if he were a frog fleeing the snap of a heron’s beak. He was so fast! Wind rushed in her ears like the river gushing past Takazze, the Sheban royal city, after the rains. Shioni’s legs cramped against his flanks as she fought to keep her seat. She muttered at herself to relax, raised a hand to tug a hank of blonde hair out of her mouth, and checked Azurelle was safely tucked into her pocket.

  Ahead of them, Talaku was weaving around a series of huge granite boulders, each the height of a full-grown man, and Thunder too was forced to slow his pace as the trail wriggled between the boulders like a frightened snake. But they soon burst out onto a long meadow of dry, crunchy grass the same tan colour as a desert, a meadow that flowed up against the huge, black basalt cliffs which frowned over the valley the Shebans had conquered and called home. Thunder kicked up his heels and surged forward.

  A trader was leading a train of overburdened donkeys up the river trail; precarious haystacks perched on top of little trotting legs, with long ears and a dark nose poking out of the front. He shouted in astonishment as first the giant and then the horse and its riders whipped past him.