C H A P T E R
12
On hands and knees, Eldrin scrubbed the tiled floor of the villa’s sacred teppuh, his back a fire of throbbing welts and bruises that made any movement difficult. They came courtesy of the majordomo’s bundled rattan, a double measure of strokes today-one for the error he had supposedly made in his copy work, one for protesting he’d made no error. And he hadn’t. He was sure of it.
Nor would Ghoyel show him the mistake-which testified as convincingly as anything of the fact the hard-faced man was merely using it as an excuse to ply his rattan. He was still angry about the bowing incident, no doubt. Or perhaps he thought new slaves needed frequent beatings just to get it into their heads that they were indeed slaves.
At least he hadn’t found out about Eldrin’s audience with the Vaissana. He’d have killed him if he had, even if it was an accident. Well, almost an accident.
Four days had passed since Eldrin had come to the villa, and he’d had beatings on two of them. He’d not met his new master that first day after all, but he was taken to the majordomo, Ghoyel, who informed him he had become the property of the Vaissana Sisnayama, a high official in the Qarkeshan Sorvaissani’s administration. Ghoyel would be the Vaissana’s hand upon him, and he was to obey all commands swiftly and precisely or suffer the consequences. He must also observe the rules of the house and of the teppuh, under whose strictures the house resided. The majordomo proceeded to read a list of regulations, far too many to remember on a single hearing and most so esoteric he would be hard-pressed to remember which to do when, even if he drilled the list daily.
Infractions, Ghoyel informed him fiercely, would be punished by the rattan or worse.
He’d given Eldrin a list to copy and, when the work was deemed satisfactory, brought him to the dusty office that became his prison and set him to work on the stacks of lists, inventories, and bills of sale that awaited. As the majordomo turned to go, Eldrin had ventured to ask when he might speak with the Vaissana-and received a sharp smack across his bony shoulders for the impertinence.
“Slaves do not speak to the Vaissana,” Ghoyel had informed him. “Slaves have no reason to speak to the Vaissana. They have nothing to say that could possibly be of interest to the Vaissana. And for a slave to speak to him, to even look at him-especially one with blood so tainted it turns the skin white-would be a grievous affront to the Vaissana’s purity and would, of course, require the severest of punishments.”
He jerked up his long, narrow chin and left Eldrin to his copying.
He’d worked until twilight, then was brought to the kitchen by the fat old man who’d first cleaned him-a sour-tempered, mahogany-skinned Esurhite named Whazel. Among the lower servants he was apparently the only one who spoke any Thilosian at all, but his accent was so thick, and his syntax so bad-to say nothing of his foul mood-Eldrin’s attempts at communicating were useless.
The others avoided him with suspicious frowns. He deemed it another reaction to his “tainted” blood and decided he didn’t mind. Hopefully he would not be here long. Fat Whazel showed him his bed-a dusty straw pallet in one of the storage rooms.
The next morning he had made his acquaintance with the sacred teppuh and the goddess Ekonissima, whom the household of the Vaissana Sisnayama served and worshiped. Taken at first light to the pond before the domed, circular teppuh, Eldrin was subjected to a ritual cleansing in its holy water, then taken back to the kitchen for breakfast. A second day of scribing followed, during which he began to encounter documents inscribed not in the scrawling Thilosian but in the mysterious jagged characters of the Tahg. He worked all day, until his hand was cramping, his fingers ached, and his calluses were tender to the touch. His back ached, his eyes burned, and his head throbbed. Throughout the day he had thought of nothing more than eating his ration of fish and flatbread and falling onto his pallet.
Instead, Whazel had brought him to the teppuh again, where this time he was ordered to enter the shrine to cleanse the statue with water, replace the oil in the flaming pan, and clean away the day’s offerings of flowers and food. Finally he was to prostrate himself in front of the goddess before bowing himself out of her presence.
It was the drop that burst the dam. He had refused to bow.
And received his first beating. He was also denied his dinner, but by then he was too miserable to care.
Another day of inventories followed, and that evening he was again charged with rinsing the statue and replacing the offerings. This time, Whazel and the others watching him sidelong, he joined them on the floor without protest, in too much pain to risk another beating and hating himself for his weakness.
On the fourth day-today-even holding the pen had become torture. And since he had no idea what he was copying, he had to make himself take extra care to be sure he replicated each dot and stroke precisely as he saw it. Fat Whazel, for all his cynical exterior, had taken pity on him. “You carry flag down,” he’d growled in his innovative Thilosian.
And when Eldrin gaped uncomprehending, the Esurhite waved an agegnarled hand in the general direction of the main villa, down the hill from the servants’ section. “I no take flag.”
Flag, Eldrin knew by now, was the word Whazel used for whatever documents he referred to.
“I pain much today. You take. Go down.”
And so Eldrin had his introduction to the main house, trying desperately to remember all the rules Ghoyel had read at him the first day: wash your feet before entering, turn only to the right, never retrace your steps, never meet anyone’s eyes, take care not to look at your own reflection in the floor….
He managed to make his delivery to the Vaissana’s assistant secretary, but on the way out, unable to retrace his steps and bound to turn only to the right, he had ended up in a part of the villa he did not think he should be in. When he saw the Vaissana himself stride into a room ahead of him, he knew it. He couldn’t go backward, however, so he had to pass the doorway, slowing and glancing in as he did.
Seeing the man was alone, he seized the opportunity and stepped into the room. The Vaissana would never let Ghoyel beat him once he understood who Eldrin really was.
For a moment, though, standing inside the door, he had not known what to do. Then the Vaissana looked up, his brows arching in surprise. Ah, my new scribe. I understand you are working out well. Good. We have been in sore need of a scribe ever since … well, no matter. What are you here for?”
“Might I have leave to speak, sir?”
The Vaissana had frowned ever so slightly, then waved a swarthy hand of permission, and so, standing awkwardly before the man’s great desk, Eldrin spilled out his tale. His audience had listened with obvious distraction, puttering with the documents littering his desk and not looking up the whole time Eldrin spoke. When Eldrin at last fell silent, it was with sinking heart, for the Vaissana behaved as if he weren’t even there.
He was on the verge of tiptoeing out of the room when the man looked up. A Kalladorne prince, you say?”
“Aye, sir.”
`And your sister is Queen of Thilos?”
“My aunt, sir.”
Ah. Your aunt. And I suppose you think this startling revelation will now move me to free you?” The swarthy face regarded him expressionlessly yet with a light of mockery in the dark eyes. “Just like that, you think, after I paid good money for you?”
“My aunt will reimburse you. I would reimburse you once I return to Kiriath.”
“Naturally.” The man returned his attention to the papers in his hand. “My secretary has a remarkable eye, it seems, the way he picks the gold from the dross.”
“Sir?”
“Oh, come, boy. All slaves have been kidnapped in one way or another. And many claim to carry royal blood, though I fail to see why you would make such a claim, scrawny as you are. You’re obviously no good for the Games, and your antecedents carry little weight here. In point of fact, yours are not as impressive as those of some of your fellows. Old Whazel, for ex
ample, is of the line of Dorsaddi chieftains. Now that’s a pedigree to be proud of. But he still has to scrub the floor and empty the latrines.”
He flicked his fingers. “You may go.”
Eldrin was disbelieving at first, then angry. But when he returned to his office, he had found Ghoyel awaiting him, rattan in hand.
He thought at first the majordomo had learned he’d seen the Vaissana and gulped with sudden fear. But it was only a mistake in the copying. And then the protest. And then the double portion of strokes and the sentence of spending the rest of the day scrubbing down the tile, in addition to tending the goddess, with Whazel there to supervise.
Now bitterness cloyed the back of his throat, and he found himself repeatedly blinking away tears that had nothing to do with his throbbing back.
He was not unfamiliar with the scrubbing of floors-he’d done his share at the Watch. This was different. He had chosen to be at the Watch. Submission there had been to Eidon and to Eldrin’s own goal of becoming a Guardian. Submission here was … merely submission. And there could be no goals of anything, it seemed. Not for him.
Not for a slave. And he was, indeed, a slave.
The cold, stark reality of that fact was hitting him hard now, as it had not in the slaver hold, nor on the beach, nor even while he was being auctioned off like a horse.
His throat tightened. Was this it, then? The finish of his life, lived out here in this foreign land, scrubbing floors, forced to make obeisance to dumb stone figures?
“It pass. Many days enough.” He looked over his shoulder at Fat Whazel sitting on the low wall of the Holy Pool, watching him. “Better if not fight. Better if eschu’acha.”
Eschu’acha? That must be the Tahg. He’d finally figured out that the reason Whazel was so hard to understand was because if the man didn’t know a word, he just threw in the Tahg equivalent.
Scowling, Eldrin turned back to his work, scrubbing more vigorously.
“No think that, first. But days enough pass. Forget.”
Eldrin snorted.
“Is not bad life, hechami.”
In the trees above them, the crows burst into raucous calls, fighting over something. Eldrin grimaced as the movement of dipping his brush into the bucket pulled at his welts. Water splatted the tile in a gleaming arc.
“You think run, eh?” Fat Whazel said. “I see you think.” He laughed. “I try run. Long past. I say you, too. No good think.”
The crows silenced. The sound of the brush’s bristles rasped into prominence, a rhythmic sawing that allowed them to hear the voice of the cook berating one of her staff in the complex below them.
“Five times, I run. Make try. No do.”
Eldrin dipped his brush into the bucket again, glancing over his shoulder. “They caught you?”
Whazel regarded him soberly. The look of amusement with which he generally favored Eldrin was gone, replaced by something dark and grim. All time. Each. Yes. I gabuchai … uh … I beat. Forty beat sometime. Look scar.”
He turned and loosened his belt, pushing the tunic back from his shoulders to reveal mahogany-toned rolls of fat, crisscrossed by ancient white scars. “I strong. Like ayya. I Dorsaddi.” He shrugged the robe back up.
“Last of the Dorsaddi chieftains,” the Vaissana had said.
“I serve Sheleft’Ai. I know escape come, eh? Like you. Last time they be sure no ul Kanut akkad.”
Eldrin stared at him, feeling he was being told something important, having no idea what it was. Ui Kanut akkad?
Whazel frowned, seeing Eldrin’s confusion, then slapped a hand to his chest. “I Whazel ul Kanut. No ul Kanut akkad. Akkad, uh … carryname.” He held the hand out palm down, hip high beside him. “No carryname. Ever.”
He held Eldrin’s gaze with his dark eyes, willing him to understand. And suddenly, with a chill that drove deep into his middle, he did. “No heirs, you mean,” he whispered. “You can sire no children.” They had made a eunuch of him.
“Tyi,” Whazel said, nodding. “No children. You make trouble hechami, they do you same. No hechami akkad.”
Feeling as if he were about to vomit, Eldrin looked away, fixing his gaze upon the brush in his hands.
“I serve Sheleft’Ai,” Whazel said quietly, “but he no stop them. No care me, no help me…. Why care I him? They want me serve Ekonissima-I serve. She help. You see. She give shemofena. Shaarisa. You see.”
He fell silent. After a moment Eldrin glanced over his shoulder at the lifesized statue of the robed, extremely well-endowed goddess standing at the head of the teppuh. Attended by a pair of leaping porpoises, she straddled a flaming, dish-shaped altar, her legs wrapped in seaweed. Sea snakes crept around her arms, her generous mammae, and into her hair to rear proudly from her head. The marble of which she’d been wrought was painted in vibrant hues of green and blue and flesh tones, but it was her glass eyes that most unnerved him, for they looked almost alive and seemed to watch him, no matter where he went in the shrine.
He shuddered and went back to his scrubbing. `All she gives me is the crawls,” he muttered in Kiriathan.
“What you say?”
“Nothing.”
When he had finished with the floor it was late afternoon and time to prepare the altar for evening. He poured oil into the flat pan between Ekon- issima’s ankles, careful not to disturb the pale yellow-green flame that leapt from its surface. Next he swept the crumbs and pieces of bread and fruitremnants of the morning’s food offering-from the tiered shelves at her feet. Putting these into his bag, he began to collect the dead and wilted flowers. A number had fallen to the floor, disturbed by the animals that had come to feed on the foodstuffs.
As he bent to pick them up, his wrist suddenly throbbed, writhing beneath his skin like something alive. Startled, he straightened and examined it. The feyna scar gleamed across his wrist, an ovoid paleness that just might be a little darker than he remembered, though it had been a long time since he had looked at it. It still felt as if something crawled beneath his skin, but the only thing that moved was his pulse, throbbing visibly just below the thumb joint.
He opened and closed the hand, then shrugged and bent to continue collecting the wilted buds. Again his wrist throbbed, but he ignored it, picking up a pale, curled blossom—
It writhed in his fingers as a white energy surged down his arm to blast the thing from his grasp. As it hit the floor he saw it was no wilted flower bud but a pale beetlelike creature, multi-legged and multi-sectioned, already scurrying for cover behind the idol.
With what must have been an oath in the Tahg, Whazel exploded beside him, slamming his sandaled foot upon the escaping insect and grinding it dead. As he bent to examine his handiwork, Eldrin fought to stay standing, his whole arm throbbing with an intensity that made him dizzy and breathless.
Muttering in the Tahg, Whazel hurried out of the shrine, returning with a stick. Snatching the bag from Eldrin’s hands, he stabbed the carcass and lifted it into the sack. Then stabbed the other flowers on the floor to bring each into the sack. None appeared to be more than flowers, but as soon as he’d collected them all, he seized Eldrin’s elbow and steered him out of the shrine.
Casting the bag aside, he turned to Eldrin, frowning. “You ward staffid. How do?”
Eldrin blinked at him. The initial pain was fading, leaving in its wake the familiar throbbing and now a hot nausea in his gut, high up under his heart. He had no idea what the man was talking about.
Whazel shook him slightly, then grabbed his hand, unfolded the fingers, frowning at it. He rubbed a thumb over the ovoid scar, lifted his face to Eldrin’s and said again, “How you ward staffid? Tell now.”
Eldrin shook his head, baffled. “I … I don’t know, Whazel. I didn’t even know …”
Whazel’s eyes had dropped to Eldrin’s chest, and his frown deepened. He burst into a stream of agitated Tahg, seemed to realize Eldrin couldn’t understand him, and backed up, gesturing at his chest. “What this eluka, eh? Burn tunic, bur
n staffid?”
Eldrin glanced down in surprise. A charred hole gaped in his tunic, acornsized, positioned just over his heart where the …
He pulled the Terstan talisman out from under the tunic. It was unchanged, still looking like a common river pebble. Clearly it had not burned his tunic.
“What is this staffid you talk about?” he asked, letting the stone drop with a light thump against his chest.
Whazel stared at it. “Shadowspawn,” he said absently. “Staffid take other faces. Bite. Make sick.” His tone shifted into a vibrating intensity. “How you get eluka?” he asked, eyes never leaving the stone.
Eldrin glanced down again, puzzled. The talisman remained completely unremarkable. His nausea, however, was mounting. And his arm still ached and crawled. A friend gave it to me.”
“It have many power.”
Before he knew it, Whazel had plucked the thing up to peer at it more closely. He murmured in the Tahg, his tone growing puzzled. “Eluka inside. Can’t see … too bright. You know what is?”
“Too bright? What are you talking about? It’s just a-“
Ayii!” Whazel jumped back, dropping the stone, his brown eyes so wide the whites showed. “Kai sheleft,” he murmured, staring at it, shaking his head, muttering on in his strange language. Finally he looked up at Eldrin. “This eluka Dorsaddi.”
Taking a guess, Eldrin shook his head. “No. It’s a Terstan eluka. I got it in Kiriath.”
“Dorsaddi,” Whazel insisted, supporting his claim with another run of incomprehensible muttering. It seemed all he could do to make himself stop and find the Thilosian words he needed. “Inside. Sheleft. Ah … er. …” He stirred his hand as if that might call up the word. “Sheleft-shield. Gold shield in eluka. Sheleft. Dorsaddi sheleft. You must give it me.”
He reached for the stone again, but this time his fingers hadn’t even touched it when a current of energy leapt out of it, making them both flinch.
Whazel looked amazed. He stared at the stone as a starving man might regard a ripe apple. He licked his lips, eyes climbing to meet Eldrin’s. “Please. Give it me. I Dorsaddi. Mine.”
Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) Page 15