The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

by The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  The pair of footsteps retreated; there was silence for a drawn breath.

  Then bare feet were rushing quickly toward his bunk.

  Small Sarg pushed back the blanket. The big slave was just snatching up his apron. The woman picked up the sword and thrust it at Sarg.

  “All right,” said the big slave, “we’re running.”

  “Take your sword,” the woman said. “And good luck to you, boy.”

  They ran—the redheaded kitchen boy dropped down before Small Sarg’s bunk and took off around the kitchen table after them. Sarg vaulted now, and landed (running), his feet continuing the dash that had brought him into the castle. The slaves crowded out the wooden door through which Small Sarg had entered. Small Sarg ran out through the arch by which the guards had most probably left.

  Three guards stood in the anteroom, conferring. One looked around and said, “Hey, what are—”

  A second one who turned and just happened to be a little nearer took Small Sarg’s sword in his belly; it tore loose out his side, so that the guard, surprised, fell in the pile of his splatting innards. Sarg struck another’s bare thigh—cutting deep—and then the arm of still another (his blade grated bone). The other ran, trailing a bass howl: “They’ve come! They’re coming in here, now! Help! They’re breaking in—” breaking to tenor in some other corridor.

  Small Sarg ran, and a woman, starting into the hallway from the right, saw him and darted back. But there was a stairwell to his left; he ran up it. He ran, up the cleanly hewn stone, thinking of a tower with spiral steps, that went on and on and on, opening on some high, moonlit parapet. After one turn, the stairs stopped. Light glimmered from dozens of lamps, some on ornate stands, some hanging from intricate chains.

  A thick, patterned carpet cushioned the one muddy foot he had put across the sill. Sarg crouched, his sword out from his hip, and brought his other foot away from the cool stone behind.

  The man at the great table looked up, frowned—a slave, but his collar was covered by a wide neckpiece of heavy white cloth sewn about with chunks of tourmaline and jade. He was very thin, very lined, and bald. (In how many castles had Sarg seen slaves who wore their collars covered so? Six, now? All seven?) “What are you doing here, boy…?” The slave pushed his chair back, the metal balls on the forelegs furrowing the rug.

  Small Sarg said: “You’re free…”

  Another slave in a similar collar-cover turned on the ladder where she was placing piles of parchment on a high shelf stuffed with manuscripts. She took a step down the ladder, halted. Another youth (same covered collar), with double pointers against a great globe in the corner, looked perfectly terrified—and was probably the younger brother of the kitchen boy, from his bright hair. (See only the collars, Small Sarg thought. But with jeweled and damasked neckpieces, it was hard, very hard.) The bald slave at the table, with the look of a tired man, said: “You don’t belong here, you know. And you are in great danger.” The slave, a wrinkled forty, had the fallen pectorals of the quickly aging.

  “You’re free!” Small Sarg croaked.

  “And you are a very naive and presumptuous little barbarian. How many times have I had this conversation—four? Five? At least six? You are here to free us of the iron collars.” The man dug a forefinger beneath the silk and stones to drag up, on his bony neck, the iron band beneath. “Just so you’ll see it’s there. Did you know that our collars are much heavier than yours?” He released the iron; the same brown forefinger hooked up the jeweled neckpiece—almost a bib—which sagged and wrinkled up, once pulled from its carefully arranged position. “These add far more weight to the neck than the circle of iron they cover.” (Small Sarg thought: Though I stand here, still as stone, I am running, running.)

  “We make this castle function, boy—at a level of efficiency that, believe me, is felt in the labor pens as much as in the audience chambers where our lord and owner entertains fellow nobles. You think you are rampaging through the castle, effecting your own eleemosynary manumissions. What you are doing is killing free men and making the lives of slaves more miserable than, of necessity, they already are. If slavery is a disease and a rash on the flesh of Nevèrÿon” (I am running, like an eagle caught up in the wind, like a snake sliding down a gravel slope…) “your own actions turn an ugly eruption into a fatal infection. You free the labor pens into a world where, at least in the cities and the larger towns, a wage-earning populace, many of them, is worse off than here. And an urban merchant class can only absorb a fraction of the skills of the middle level slaves you turn loose from the middens and smithies. The Child Empress herself has many times declared that she is opposed to the institution of indenture, and the natural drift of our nation is away from slave labor anyway—so that all your efforts do is cause restrictions to become tighter in those areas where the institution would naturally die out of its own accord in a decade or so. Have you considered: your efforts may even be prolonging the institution you would abolish.” (Running, Small Sarg thought, rushing, fleeing, dashing…) “But the simple truth is that the particular skills we—the ones who must cover our collars in jewels—master to run such a complex house as an aristocrat’s castle are just not needed by the growing urban class. Come around here, boy, and look for yourself!” The bald slave pushed his chair back even further and gestured for Small Sarg to approach. “Yes. Come, see.”

  Small Sarg stepped, slowly and carefully, across the carpet. (I am running, he thought; flesh tingled at the backs of his knees, the small of his back. Every muscle, in its attenuated motion, was geared to some coherent end that, in the pursuit of it, had become almost invisible within its own glare and nimbus.) Sarg walked around the table’s edge.

  From a series of holes in the downward lip hung a number of heavy cords, each with a metal loop at the end. (Small Sarg thought: In one castle they had simple handles of wood tied to them; in another the handles were cast from bright metal set with red and green gems, more ornate than the jeweled collars of the slaves who worked them.) “From this room,” explained the slave, “we can control the entire castle—really, it represents far more control, even, than that of the Suzeraine who owns all you see, including us. If I pulled this cord here, a bell would ring in the linen room and summon the slave working there; if I pulled it twice, that slave would come with linen for his lordship’s chamber, which we would then inspect before sending it on to be spread. Three rings, and the slave would come bearing sheets for our own use—and they are every bit as elegant, believe me, as the ones for his lordship. One tug on this cord here and wine and food would be brought for his lordship…at least if the kitchen staff is still functioning. Three rings, and a feast can be brought for us, here in these very rooms, that would rival any indulged by his lordship. A bright lad like you, I’m sure, could learn the strings to pull very easily. Here, watch out for your blade and come stand beside me. That’s right. Now give that cord there a quick, firm tug and just see what happens. No, don’t be afraid. Just reach out and pull it. Once, mind you—not twice or three times. That means something else entirely. Go ahead…”

  Sarg moved his hand out slowly, looking at his muddy, bloody fingers. (Small Sarg thought: Though it may be a different cord in each castle, it is always a single tug! My hand, with each airy inch, feels like it is running, running to hook the ring…)

  “…with only a little training,” went on the bald slave, smiling, “a smart and ambitious boy like you could easily become one of us. From here, you would wield more power within these walls than the Suzeraine himself. And such power as that is not to be—”

  Then Small Sarg whirled (no, he had never released his sword)—to shove his steel into the loose belly. The man half-stood, with open mouth, then fell back, gargling. Blood spurted, hit the table, ran down the cords. “You fool!” the bald man managed, trying now to grasp one handle.

  Small Sarg, with his dirty hand, knocked the ba
ld man’s clean one away. The chair overturned and the bald man curled and uncurled on the darkening carpet. There was blood on his collar piece now.

  “You think I am such a fool that I don’t know you can call guards in here as easily as food-bearers and house-cleaners?” Small Sarg looked at the woman on the ladder, the boy at the globe. “I do not like to kill slaves. But I do not like people who plot to kill me—especially such a foolish plot. Now: are the rest of you such fools that you cannot understand what it means when I say, ‘You’re free’?”

  Parchments slipped from the shelf, unrolling on the floor, as the woman scurried down the ladder. The boy fled across the room, leaving a slowly turning sphere. Then both were into the arched stairwell from which Small Sarg had come. Sarg hopped over the fallen slave and ran into the doorway through which (in two other castles) guards, at the (single) tug of a cord, had come swarming a short hall, more steps, another chamber. Long and short swords hung on the wooden wall. Leather shields with colored fringes leaned against the stone one. A helmet lay on the floor in the corner near a stack of greaves. But there were no guards. (Till now, in the second castle only, there had been no guards.) I am free, thought Small Sarg, once again I am free, running, running through stone arches, down tapestried stairs, across dripping halls, up narrow corridors, a-dash through time and possibility. (Somewhere in the castle people were screaming.) Now I am free to free my master!

  * * *

  —

  Somewhere, doors clashed. Other doors, nearer, clashed. Then the chamber doors swung back in firelight. The Suzeraine strode through, tugging them to behind him, “Very well—” (Clash!)—“we can get on with our little session.” He reached up to adjust his collar and two slaves in jeweled collar pieces by the door (they were oiled, pale, strong men with little wires sewn around the backs of their ears; besides the collar pieces they wore only leather clouts) stepped forward to take his cloak. “Has he been given any food or drink?”

  The torturer snored on the bench, knees wide, one hand hanging, calloused knuckles the color of stone, one on his knee, the fingers smeared red here and there brown; his head lolled on the wall.

  “I asked: Has he had anything to—Bah!” This to the slave folding his cloak by the door. “That man is fine for stripping the flesh from the backs of your disobedient brothers. But for anything more subtle…well, we’ll let him sleep.” The Suzeraine, who now wore only a leather kilt and very thick-soled sandals (the floor of this chamber sometimes became very messy), walked to the slant board from which hung chains and ropes and against which leaned pokers and pincers. On a table beside the plank were several basins—in one lay a rag which had already turned the water pink. Within the furnace, which took up most of one wall (a ragged canvas curtain hung beside it), a log broke; on the opposite wall the shadow of the grate momentarily darkened and flickered. “How are you feeling?” the Suzeraine asked perfunctorily. “A little better? That’s good. Perhaps you enjoy the return of even that bit of good feeling enough to answer my questions accurately and properly. I can’t really impress upon you enough how concerned my master is for the answers. He is a very hard task man, you know—that is, if you know him at all. Krodar wants—but then, we need not sully such an august name with the fetid vapors of this place. The stink of the iron that binds you to that board…I remember a poor, guilty soul lying on the plank as you lie now, demanding of me: ‘Don’t you even wash the bits of flesh from the last victim off the chains and manacles before you bind up the new one?’ ” The Suzeraine chuckled: “ ‘Why should I?’ was my answer. True, it makes the place reek. But that stench is a very good reminder—don’t you feel it?—of the mortality that is, after all, our only real playing piece in this game of time, of pain.” The Suzeraine looked up from the bloody basin: a heavy arm, a blocky bleep, corded with high veins, banded at the joint with thin ligament; a jaw in which a muscle quivered under a snarl of patchy beard, here gray, there black, at another place ripped from reddened skin, at still another cut by an old scar, a massive thigh down which sweat trickled, upsetting a dozen other droplets caught in that thigh’s coarse hairs, till here a link, there a cord, and elsewhere a rope, dammed it. Sweat crawled under, or overflowed, the dams. “Tell me, Gorgik, have you ever been employed by a certain southern lord, a Lord Aldamir, whose hold is in the Garth Peninsula, only a stone’s throw from the Vygernangx Monastery, to act as a messenger between his Lordship and certain weavers, jewelers, potters, and iron mongers in port Kolhari?”

  “I have…have never…” The chest tried to rise under a metal band that would have cramped the breath of a smaller man than Gorgik “…never set foot within the precinct of Garth. Never, I tell you…I have told you…”

  “And yet—” The Suzeraine, pulling the wet rag from its bowl where it dripped a cherry smear on the table, turned to the furnace. He wound the rag about one hand, picked up one of the irons sticking from the furnace rack, drew it out to examine its tip: an ashen rose. “—for reasons you still have not explained to my satisfaction, you wear, on a chain around your neck—” The rose, already dimmer, lowered over Gorgik’s chest; the chest hair had been singed in places, adding to the room’s stink. “—that.” The rose clicked the metal disk that lay on Gorgik’s sternum. “These navigational scales, the map etched there, the grid of stars that turns over it and the designs etched around it all speak of its origin in—”

  The chest suddenly heaved; Gorgik gave up some sound that tore in the cartilages of his throat.

  “Is that getting warm?” The Suzeraine lifted the poker tip. An off-center scorch-mark marred the astrolabe’s verdigris. “I was saying: the workmanship is clearly from the south. If you haven’t spent time there, why else would you be wearing it?” Then the Suzeraine pressed the poker tip to Gorgik’s thigh. Gorgik screamed. The Suzeraine, after a second or two, removed the poker from the blistering mark (amidst the cluster of marks, bubbled, yellow, some crusted over by now). “Let me repeat something to you, Gorgik, about the rules of the game we’re playing: the game of time and pain. I said this to you before we began. I say it to you again, but the context of several hours’ experience may reweight its meaning for you—and before I repeat it, let me tell you that I shall, as I told you before, eventually repeat it yet again: When the pains are small, in this game, then we make the time very, very long. Little pains, spaced out over the seconds, the minutes—no more than a minute between each—for days on end. Days and days. You have no idea how much I enjoy the prospect. The timing, the ingenuity, the silent comparisons between your responses and the responses of the many, many others I have had the pleasure to work with—that is all my satisfaction. Remember this: on the simplest and most basic level, the infliction of these little torments gives me far more pleasure than would your revealing the information that is their occasion. So if you want to get back at me, to thwart me in some way, to cut short my real pleasure in all of this, perhaps you had best—”

  “I told you! I’ve answered your questions! I’ve answered them and answered them truthfully! I have never set foot in the Garth! The astrolabe was a gift to me when I was practically a child. I cannot even recall the circumstances under which I received it. Some noble man or woman presented it to me on a whim at some castle or other that I stayed at.” (The Suzeraine replaced the poker on the furnace rack and turned to a case, hanging on the stone wall, of small polished knives.) “Jam a man who has stayed in many castles, many hovels; I have slept under bridges in the cities, in fine inns and old alleys. I have rested for the night in fields and forests. And I do not mark my history the way you do, cataloguing the gifts and graces I have been lucky enough to—” Gorgik drew a sharp breath.

  “The flesh between the fingers—terribly sensitive.” The Suzeraine lifted the tiny knife, where a blood drop crawled along the cutting edge. “As is the skin between the toes, on even the most calloused feet. I’ve known men—not to mention women—who remained staunch
under hot pokers and burning pincers who, as soon as I started to make the few smallest cuts in the flesh between the fingers and toes (really, no more than a dozen or so), became astonishingly cooperative. I’m quite serious.” He put down the blade on the table edge, picked up the towel from the basin and squeezed; reddened water rilled between his fingers into the bowl. The Suzeraine swabbed at the narrow tongue of blood that moved down the plank below Gorgik’s massive (twitching a little now) hand. “The thing wrong with having you slanted like this, head up and feet down, is that even the most conscientious of us finds himself concentrating more on your face, chest, and stomach than, say, on your feet, ankles and knees. Some exquisite feelings may be produced in the knee: a tiny nail, a small mallet…First I shall make a few more cuts. Then I shall wake our friend snoring against the wall. (You scream and he still sleeps! Isn’t it amazing? But then, he’s had so much of this!) We shall reverse the direction of the slant—head down, feet up—so that we can spread our efforts out more evenly over the arena of your flesh.” In another basin, of yellow liquid, another cloth was submerged. The Suzeraine pulled the cloth out and spread it, dripping. “A little vinegar…”

  Gorgik’s head twisted in the clamp across his forehead that had already rubbed to blood at both temples as the Suzeraine laid the cloth across his face.

  “A little salt. (Myself, I’ve always felt that four or five small pains, each of which alone would be no more than a nuisance, when applied all together can be far more effective than a single great one.)” The Suzeraine took up the sponge from the coarse crystals heaped in a third basin (crystals clung, glittering, to the brain-shape) and pressed it against Gorgik’s scorched and fresh-blistered thigh. “Now the knife again…”