Land of the Burning Sands

by Rachel Neumeier

He could learn nothing from his guards about any legal proceedings against Tehre—or any legal proceedings she might have initiated herself—or anything having to do with his own eventual disposition. The door was heavy and always shut; the guards slid plates through a gap below the door twice a day. Gereint could hear them outside his cell. But they hardly spoke to one another; they never answered him when he called to them through the door. Anything might be happening. Tehre’s family might be ruined; he would not know. His own auction might be underway and he would not know.

  At first, Gereint expected to be brought before a judge and questioned about Fellesteden’s death, about his own presence in Tehre’s house, about his unmarked face and his reason for coming to Breidechboden. That might still happen. But it had not happened yet. He no longer knew whether to expect it. More than likely, some judge had already heard the evidence and made some decision without finding any need to question Gereint. He wondered what it might have been.

  And at first he waited every day for men to come with the hot iron and restore his geas brand. He could imagine the iron vividly: He knew exactly the path it would trace across his face, the fiery agony of the branding. The angry scar it would leave, impossible to obscure, setting him aside once more from the world of free men.

  This dread intensified over the first days and then ebbed as no iron appeared. In some ways, that surprised him more than the silence and the waiting.

  On the afternoon of the sixth day, he heard the guards in the hall early—far too early for supper. So he was not surprised when he heard the bolts draw back and the door was hauled effortfully open.

  He got to his feet and stood facing the door, thinking of the hot iron. He knew he would fight if they brought that in—though fighting could win him nothing, he would fight anyway—he knew exactly how it would be to be pinned down and held still while the iron came down against his face. Swallowing hard, he stared at the open door.

  But no iron appeared, no pot of glowing coals. The guards brought only chains.

  If he was chained, he would not be able to fight, whatever they did to him. He submitted to the chains anyway, seeing no immediate threat and, after all, no choice.

  They brought him out of the cell and into a hall that, dim as it was, seemed bright after the more profound darkness of the cell. They brought him up a flight of stairs and along a hall, to a lantern-lit room with a basin of cold water and a bar of coarse soap. So his bond had been sold, Gereint surmised. Someone wealthy and important had bought him, and the director of the prison did not want to offend this person by handing over a filthy prisoner. The only question that concerned Gereint was—was that person Tehre Amnachudran? He set his teeth against the desire to ask; the guards probably did not know and certainly would not answer.

  The guards took the chains off and waited while Gereint washed. They offered neither abuse nor even comment; they were utterly indifferent and did not even speak to each other. Gereint put on the new clothing they gave him. It was plain, but not as rough or cheap as he had expected. Gereint took the quality of the clothing as another sign, if he had needed one, that whoever had bought Gereint’s bond was important or wealthy. Or most likely both. There were no boots, of course, but the guards gave him sandals. Gereint put them on and waited to see where the guards would bring him next.

  The guards put the chains back on and led him again into the hallway, then up another flight of stairs to a better part of the prison. Here there were, at last, windows set in the walls. The golden light of late afternoon slanted through the windows and lay in long bars across the floors. Gereint’s eyes watered in the brilliance. He blinked, bowing his head, and went without protest or question where the guards took him.

  They took him to a richly appointed room that hardly seemed to belong in the same building as the windowless cell. Here there was at last a man wearing the heavy gold chain of a judge, and a clerk with a large book open before him and a quill in his hand, and a third man who was less easy to place. This was a small man. Small all through: not much taller than a child. But he was not young. It was hard to guess his age: He might have been fifty or sixty, or seventy, or older still. His hair was white as frost, worn long, caught back at the nape of his neck in a style almost aggressively nonmilitary. He had ice-gray eyes and fine, straight bones, elegant hands and an inscrutable smile.

  It was easier to guess the small man’s rank than his age, for he was well and expensively dressed; the workmanship of his sapphire rings was very fine. This was not merely a gentleman, Gereint thought, nor merely some petty lord. He was more than likely a court noble. He wondered if he’d ever known this man before… before, but certainly he was memorable, and Gereint could not remember ever having met a man like this one.

  He looked at Gereint as a man might look at a horse he had purchased; as a captain might look at a man who had been transferred into his company; as an appointed judge might look at a prisoner. With that kind of deliberate detachment. Gereint met his eyes for just an instant and then, allowing sense to beat down pride, bowed his head. He watched the lord covertly through lowered lashes. So this man had purchased his bond—and where, then, was Tehre? The depth of his anger and sense of betrayal at her absence shook him. He discovered only at that moment how deeply he had depended on Tehre Amnachudran to keep her promise and buy his bond. He made himself stand quietly, with a slave’s practiced passivity, showing nothing of the rage that shook him.

  “Well, my lord?” said the judge. Expectantly, as though this was the end of a discussion and not the beginning.

  “I think he may do,” said the lord, cool and judicious. “I will take him, certainly, and we shall see.” He turned his head toward the clerk, who offered him a small wooden box.

  “I imagine my lord does not require instruction in the use of the geas chains,” said the judge, in the tone of a man making a small jest.

  “I believe not,” agreed the small lord. His voice was smooth and light. It was impossible to read anything of his disposition from that voice. He took the box from the clerk, opened it, and spilled a pair of fine silver chains into his palm. Then he looked at Gereint and beckoned. The crook of one finger: Come here, as to a dog.

  Gereint moved stiffly forward and stood still, his face blank, his shoulders aching from the awkward posture enforced by the manacles, and waited while the lord fixed the first chain in place and then the second. The geas, coiled patiently at the back of his mind, shifted with the first chain, then woke and sank sharp fangs into his will with the second. Gereint let his breath out. The rage that had shaken him a moment earlier died; fear leaped up in its place and immediately burned away, leaving nothing. He felt as though his heart had turned to ash. He looked into his new master’s face as the lord straightened, but without much interest.

  For a moment, the lord merely stared back at him. Then he said, “Gereint Enseichen. Kneel.”

  No hesitation was possible, but Gereint did not try to hesitate. Dropping to his knees, he bowed his head and said in his most passive slave’s tone, “Master.”

  “So that’s done, then, my lord,” said the judge, satisfied. “Do you wish my staff to brand him for you?”

  Fear was not entirely dead after all. Gereint tensed, but he did not look up. He knew at once he should have expected this: Of course they would wait until he was geas bound and could be ordered not to fight. So much easier for everyone. Except, of course, the man who must submit to the brand and could not even struggle against it…

  “That will not be necessary,” said the white-haired lord.

  “As you wish, my lord. You are, of course, aware that by law a geas-bound man must be branded—”

  “I am aware,” repeated the lord, his smooth tone unreadable. “I will see to it myself. If you would be so good as to have your men remove the manacles. Thank you so much, honored Mereirnchan. You have been most helpful. Gereint”—as the chains fell away—“get up and come with me.”

  Gereint got obediently to his feet
and walked behind his new master. Out of the room, out of the prison, to a very fine carriage, with two liveried servants waiting and four beautifully matched white horses to draw it. One of the servants placed a step in the street for the lord, who needed it to reach the high sill of the carriage door; Gereint ducked his head low as he followed.

  The lord was already seated, looking perfectly relaxed, on the forward-facing seat. He gestured to Gereint to take the seat opposite.

  Gereint might have said something—anything. He knew he should test his new master’s patience, the limits of his temper. But he could not, at this moment, find the courage or resolve to do it. He said nothing.

  The prison was hardly in the best part of the city. But they quickly left the area of narrow streets and shabby tenements, passed through neighborhoods where the roads were wider and lined with more substantial marble-faced apartments and small shops, and came to a district of private houses with small walled gardens—Seven Son Hill, Gereint realized, but they were on the city side of the hill now and not the lee side where the Amnachudran house lay.

  They followed the curve of the road and the houses grew larger still, the gardens larger and more elaborate. The river, contained here between banks of white limestone and bridged with elaborate bridges of stone and iron, ran beside the road. The river should have been beautiful, but now the water was low, surprisingly low, lower than Gereint remembered ever seeing it. The water, unpleasantly thick and greenish, moved sluggishly between stone banks gritty with silt. In some places it seemed one might not need a bridge to cross the river, if one had not minded wading in the green water.

  Public buildings with columns of porphyry or green-streaked white marble and statues of marble and gilded bronze appeared on the other side of the street, which widened until it resembled a parade ground more than a thoroughfare. They had come to the Hill of Iron and now took the main road that spiraled around it toward the king’s palace. Porticoes and fountains, ornate columns and high-buttressed towers… They were approaching the palace itself. Gereint had guessed correctly: His new master was plainly a court noble.

  The carriage drew up at last, and one of the servants leaped down from the driver’s bench and hurried to place the step and open the door. The white-haired lord motioned for Gereint to get out first. Gereint obeyed, glancing around as he emerged from the carriage. They had come to a wide courtyard bordered on two sides by gardens; behind them the graceful street wound back down the hill into the city. Before them, a colonnade of flying buttresses three times Gereint’s height shaded great doors of gilded bronze that stood open in a wall of white marble and fluted columns.

  The lord did not seem to notice this magnificence. He beckoned to Gereint and walked briskly toward the gilded doors.

  From him, a gesture had the force of a spoken command. Gereint followed.

  Once through the doors, there was a high-arched hallway with mosaics on the walls and priceless Linularinan rugs on the marble floor. Statues of gold and marble stood on plinths, and a pair of golden fishes leapt in a marble fountain, water cascading down their jeweled scales and splashing in the pool below.

  They came to an antechamber paneled with carved and polished cedar, hung with sapphire curtains, and lit by round porcelain lamps. Men-at-arms in blue and white livery saluted the lord and stood aside, noticing Gereint only with flickering covert glances.

  The antechamber opened into a graceful receiving hall graced with an intricate mosaic floor and a single huge painting. The painting was of a battle—immediately recognizable; Terechtekun’s victory over General Lord Perestechen Enkiustich of Meridanium, at the White Cliffs. It must be Ferichtelun’s famous painting; undoubtedly it was the original, but Gereint’s new master did not slow, so Gereint could not pause to look at it.

  The receiving hall gave onto a long hall with a polished marble floor and wide glass windows. The lord proceeded, without pausing, to the end of the hall and went through a carved door; Gereint, following as though leashed, found that they had come to a library or a study or an office, or perhaps all three. By contrast with the rest of the apartment, this room was almost plain. The rugs on the floor were of high quality, but they were simply blue, without pattern or decoration. The furniture was similarly good but plain, with a minimum of carving. The windows were paned with expensive glass and curtained with heavy sapphire draperies.

  Between the windows, paintings on the walls showed different views of Breidechboden. The city was pictured in every season, but the perspective was always from high above, as though the artist had stood in the highest tower of the city in order to paint them. Gereint could see that the same skilled artist was responsible for all the paintings, but Gereint did not recognize either the paintings or the hand. Underneath the paintings, the walls were lined with shelves of books and scrolls. Three tables stood in the room, each stacked with papers and more books.

  Here the lord turned at last and stood, his hand resting lightly on the surface of one of the tables, regarding Gereint with impenetrable calm. He asked, “Do you know who I am?”

  Gereint stared back at the lord, completely unable to guess what his new master might be thinking. “Forgive me, master; no. I have been gone from Breidechboden for a long time.”

  “‘My lord’ will do. I know you have. Your bond has never been held by men of Breidechboden. Most recently, you belonged to Perech Fellesteden for eight years. For most of that time, Lord Fellesteden maintained his primary household in Melentser.” The lord’s smooth voice, like his calm face, gave nothing away: neither offense nor amusement nor satisfaction. He added without emphasis, “I am Beguchren Teshrichten.”

  Gereint blinked. He said after a moment, “The cold mage. The king’s mage. I should have recognized—” He stopped.

  The fine mouth crooked in wry humor. “You would be surprised how few men recognize me, despite the river of gossip that floods through this city. Men expect the Arobern’s own mage to be taller, I suppose. But, yes. I am the king’s mage. The last of his mages, now.”

  “What—?” Gereint began, then remembered he had no right to ask, collected himself, and stopped, reaching after the hard-won impassivity he’d learned, years ago, to wear as a mask.

  But the white-haired mage did not seem offended. He was smiling, a small uninterpretable smile. “What do I want with you? Either nothing or a great deal. Let us find out which. Kneel, please, and look at me, Gereint.”

  Gereint obeyed immediately, of course; he did not have time to wonder about the command until he was already down. But when he looked up, he found his gaze unexpectedly caught and held by the compelling ice-pale eyes of the mage. Beguchren Teshrichten stepped forward, rested one hand on Gereint’s face, and sent his mind probing suddenly past the slave’s blankness that Gereint showed him, through the surprise and anger and fear beneath, slicing into memory and laying bare the privacy of mind that was the only privacy a slave could own.

  At first, Gereint was too shocked to resist this intrusion. Images rose through his mind, memories that he had not called up for years, the past washing across his awareness like a tide: Memories he had learned to put away when he had become a slave, recalled now by an inquisitive awareness that was not his own. His mother’s face came before his eye; his sister’s. His cousin Gescheichan’s, first as a smiling narrow-faced boy and then, for a flashing moment, as a man, his expression closed and hostile.

  Gereint remembered the thin, bony hands of his first tutor, setting before him a massive leather-bound volume of poetry… It had been one of Teirenchoden’s epics, the words marching across the fine vellum in a fine, strong hand, the pages illuminated with gold leaf and delicate washes of color from the illustrator’s brush. He had loved the dusty smell of it, the heavy feel of the pages… History and poetry had opened up before him in that volume, though he had not been able to read it, not then. Nor had he known how desperately important such books would be in maintaining his sanity, later in his life. He had been seven… He stirred,
trying clumsily to close his mind’s eye to that memory, fighting the intrusion that opened his mind to that foreign, knife-edged awareness.

  The mage’s mind shifted, eased away, turned, sliced inward once more. Gereint remembered running through the rain on a summer night, running to reach the shelter of an open door. Lightning had flared around him; thunder had rolled down deserted streets, no one else being fool enough to brave the storm. He had been young and strong and innocent of any knowledge that life might hold storms worse than those loosed from a dark summer sky. There had been a girl waiting in the doorway, laughing at him because he had run through the rain to come to her. He had reached out to seize her hands and lightning blazed behind him, lit the whole city with dazzling light, and he met her beautiful eyes and laughed with joy.

  That memory tried to shift and turn, tried to become another memory. “No!” Gereint said, but he could not tell whether he cried the word aloud or only in the silence of his mind. He fought the intrusion determinedly, blindly. But the mage’s mind was too powerful to fight; it cut into his with a relentless skill he could not resist; he could not stop the probing curiosity. But he found a way to let his memories become fluid instead. When the mage tried to reach after them, he let the past flow away like water, impossible to grasp or hold.

  Then the mage lifted his hand and Gereint found himself, dizzyingly, back in the study, kneeling on the thick blue rug. The frost-haired mage was gazing down at him with sympathy, but without apology. Gereint panted as though he’d been running or fighting. He supposed he had been, in a way. He did not know what to say, what to do. He was shaking. His expression was probably far too easy to read. He dropped his eyes, though it was a wrenching effort to look away from the mage, as it would have been hard to look away from an unpredictable coiled serpent or crouching wolf.

  The king’s mage said, his tone perfectly matter-of-fact, “As it happens, I have need of a gifted maker, a maker with certain predispositions and skills. I am prepared to be generous to such a man, if he offers me loyal service.”