by Clayton, Jo;
“No way. Not out of the slave pens.” He smiled wearily at her. She could see a faint beading of sweat on his forehead, something she’d seldom seen before. “Don’t you think I’d have you out of there if I could?”
“Would you?”
He flattened his palms against the transparency. “I have to, Aleytys. You’ve hooked me hard. Look. I can’t get you out of here. Once you’re sold, that’s different.”
She moved impatiently. “You got in. Can’t you bribe someone or something?”
“With what?” He shrugged. “The guards don’t take bribes. They’d be skinned alive. And that’s no figure of speech, Leyta.”
She shuddered. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“You’ll be put on the block and sold.”
“Couldn’t you.…”
“No way.” He looked over his shoulder again. “My time almost up. I can’t steal you out, Leyta. And I can’t buy you out. Not at the price you’ll bring. No. After you’re sold, then I can get you away. No owner will have the kind of security they have here. I’ll come for you.”
“No.”
“What?”
“Not right away, anyway. Miks.”
“What is it?” She could hear a chill anger in his voice, an anticipation that she was going to ask something of him he wouldn’t want to do.
“Morality. Right. I know it’s not fair. But, damn it, I don’t have a choice. I hope you’re right, Miks, about that thing in me that lays claim on you. I’m going to use you, if I can.” She twisted her hands together. “Oh god, if I can. I have to. Miks, go after Maissa. If you love me, if you want me, by all we’ve shared, Miks, get Sharl from her.”
He jerked away and took two steps down the corridor, then wheeled and came back his face twisted with a pain that radiated through his body like a cancer. Gasping for breath he banged his head against the transparency. “Stop it!” His voice rose in a tortured shriek.
Her mouth pinched together in a grim line, she waited.
He closed his eyes. She saw the muscles loosen in his face and neck. “All right, Aleytys, you win. I’ll go after her and get your son away from her.”
She felt the stiffening go out of her spine. Slumping, stumbling, nearly falling, she put out her hands and pressed them against the transparency near his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Miks.” She sighed. “I suppose you won’t want me around after this.”
“Aleytys,” he said slowly. “I’m a selfish man.”
“Am I less selfish, Miks? Using you? But I have to get Sharl away from that horror. I do care for you, but you’re a man, Miks. Sharl.… You know Maissa. I wish I didn’t have to do this.”
He stroked his hand outside the transparency at the level of her face as if he caressed her. “I could promise you anything, you know. Just to get the compulsion turned off.”
She smiled tiredly. “That’s a chance I take.”
“I’ve a feeling it’s not much of a chance. That if I went my own way, the pain would start again.”
“I don’t know.”
He snorted self-mocking laughter. “Miks Stavver. Knight Errant. Ridiculous. I swear to you Aleytys, I will find your son.” He frowned. “If I come for you, would you live with me?”
“Yes.”
“Before getting involved in that, I’d better leave the baby somewhere safe. Who’s his father and where do I find him?”
“Vajd is his name. You’ll find him on Jaydugar in a vadi … a mountain valley called the Kard. Ask for the dream-singer. The blind one.”
A dark-faced guard tapped Stavver on the shoulder and jerked his head toward the exit.
“I know that damn world,” he said hastily. “I’ll find you, Lee.”
“Miks, I.…”
He waved a hand and strode nervously away down the corridor, leaving the stolid guard far behind before they passed out of sight. Aleytys stayed pressed against that hard transparency that pinned her in the cell until even the sound of his footsteps were gone. Then she sat down in the middle of the floor, wrapped her arms around her legs and stared dispiritedly at the black wall across the corridor.
The next days moved in and out of a dream. Something in the food … something in the air … she didn’t know … didn’t care … didn’t care about anything … something sapped her will and kept her in a drowsy listlessness that let time slip past unnoticed.
Image … white enamel room accented in stainless steel … pain … jumbled words … hurry … before she comes out of the fog … takes enough????? … the word was meaningless sound … to stun a???? … no referent … the psi damper … silver disc … get it in … a cold touch on her back … blackness … feeling of oppression … women working on her limp uncaring body … oils for the skin … oils for the hair … callouses gently patiently abraded away … massage … pummelling her about … all the while a dullness like a cap over her brain that was terrifying when she came enough out of the fog to feel it there … underlying terror … dulled by the drug.…
She woke, mind clear and alert. She jumped to her feet and paced impatiently about the cell, anger burning in her and a cold fear under all of it. She found it hard to think, images tended to fragment. Bits of memory came flooding back.
When she looked down at herself, she found many rather startling changes. Her hands were soft and supple, the nails buffed to a subtle sheen. She pulled at her hair. It glowed with life and health, more silken and beautiful than it had ever been. The red-gold color shone like fire. Her body felt pampered and soft, the muscles acquired by hard living gone somehow. She touched her face. “Merchandise. Polished to a high gloss.” She laughed suddenly, grimly. “Someone’s going to get a surprise.”
Outside her cell an odd little being harrumphed loudly. She came to the open wall.
He sat in a floating dish, filled with a reddish fluid. Huge golden eyes surrounded by busily waving cilia. A parrot’s beak. A bulbous pear-shaped body. Four limber tentacles branching from each side of the purple body, a double handspan under the beak. “I am I!kuk.” His beak clacked as he spoke, his voice was shrill and harsh with little inflection to the words.
Aleytys nodded, thinking that if he let her out she could tip the dish over and run like hell.
The golden eyes flickered. He waved a tentacle. A guard with a short black rod in his hand stepped into her field of vision.
“The rod he holds is a neuro-stimulator. It will cause pain so intense you will find it impossible to believe you could live through it. This kind of punishment has the value of not marking you or ruining permanently your value as merchandise.”
“I see.”
The cilia went into a convulsion, marking I!kuk’s appreciation of her good sense. “When the force field goes off, step into the corridor and walk ahead of the guards. Don’t try escaping. There is no escape from the pens. All you gain from trying will be pain. Much pain. There’s another thing. I’ve had an inhibitor planted in your back to damp out your psi abilities. Pity. But you’re too dangerous with them in conscious control. Warning. Don’t attempt to use your talents. The inhibitor is not as sensitive as we would like. It not only prevents use of your mind talents but it can interfere with normal thought if it kicks on too strongly.”
“You think of everything.” She fought back her helplessness calling on pride to keep her from crumbling in front of him. Somehow it was important that she handle herself with what dignity she could muster.
“Of course.” The odd creature accepted the irony as a compliment, even preened himself a little. With a faint hum, the dish floated back out of sight. His voice came to her around the edge of the cell. “The field is off. Step into the corridor.”
She put out her hand. The transparent hardness was gone.
When the procession moved out of the labyrinthine tunnels into the sunlight, Aleytys blinked and stared up at the ruby-red sun. It reminded her forcibly of home and red Horli. She swallowed a sharp pang of homesickness.
I!kuk herded her to the ce
nter of the open-air market and made her climb onto a cube-shaped block made of what appeared to be glossy black stone, then he thumbed the forcefield on, shutting her into an impenetrable transparent box.
She stared out over the heads of the incredibly varied throng of creatures parading slowly past the line of living merchandise, reminding her strongly of the horsetraders that came to vadi Raqsidan during the spring meetings. She remembered her father … a frisson of cold hatred clutched at her stomach when she thought of him … the Azdar, seeing him feeling the legs of a colt and forcing open his mouth to look at his teeth. Although they couldn’t touch her … eyes stared at her … beings circled her, staring … measuring … commenting in a dozen languages on her physical attributes … listened to the recorded sales talk that went on automatically when anyone stopped to look at her … bringing angry blood surging into her face … sometimes she felt as if she couldn’t breathe … sometimes she felt like shrinking in on herself … sometimes like breaking through the field and killing them all … the rage in her so great it threatened to blow her apart.…
I!kuk drifted past, turned back and floated, bobbing gently up and down in front of her block. Some kind of favored client beside him, dwarfing him. Over two meters tall … thin narrow body with long, long arms … more than one elbow joint … they hung strangely … long, thin legs that also looked to have more than one joint in them … thin austere face … eyes huge, black … multifaceted … more like an insect’s than … short stubby antennas ending in reddish knobs … brilliant crimson tunic of some velvety material.…
A red curtain slid around the forcefield, cutting off view of the market.
Aleytys sank onto her knees, pride no longer supporting her when the others could no longer see her. “Sold,” she muttered. She rested her head on her knees. “Like a piece of meat.”
She heard a sound and jumped to her feet. The back side of the box opened out. I!kuk and the goggle-eyed being watched as she walked down the slanting ramp, feeling uncertain and strange.
“Introduce me, I!kuk.” The being’s voice was deep and musical.
The cilia fluttered wildly around the amber eyes, underlining I!kuk’s disapproval, but he backed his dish off and said, “Aleytys, I present the kipu Anesh of Irsud.”
Turn the page to continue reading from the Diadem Saga
CHAPTER I
Sweeping in a widening gyre through the dark confusion that swirled in stained snow flurries, her awareness fluttered toward a pinpoint light, cold striking into two arms, two legs stretched out from a torso shivering naked against naked metal. Aleytys opened her eyes.
A narrow face with round insectoid eyes the size of teacups hung dizzily over her, reflecting her body back like a double dozen octagonal black mirrors. “Kipu.” Aleytys pulled at the grip on her arms, a growing irritation heating her blood. “What.…” She tugged again, more sharply. “Let me go.”
The kipu smiled, shook her head, short stubby antennas twitching slightly. With an angry snort Aleytys jerked against the wiry strength of the guards’ six-fingered hands. Struggling futilely to free herself, acid tears of frustration oozing from her swollen eyes, she fought a panting grunting battle against a strength that made nonsense of her own muscles. She humped her body in one last convulsive thrust to freedom, then fell back on the metal table snarling at the faintly smiling face that coolly waited for her to exhaust herself. The nayid came back and stood looming over her.
“An exercise in futility.” The rich deep voice was insufferably complacent.
Panting helplessly, raging like a netted tars, Aleytys scowled at the delicate mask-like face of the kipu, wanting to shatter that mask. On the cool metal her hands curled into claws, fingernails clattering harshly against the steel. “Bug!” she shrilled, then spat full in the nayid’s face.
The kipu stepped back without a word and stretched out a hand. Hastily a white-clad female nayid hovering behind her thrust a square of cloth into the imperious fingers. The kipu wiped her face and dropped the cloth without watching where it fell in an unconscious arrogance that struck a chill through the heat in Aleytys’ blood.
Aleytys shook her head, tossing her red hair, cooled to wariness. Her breathing slowed and she was abruptly conscious of a fuzziness clogging her mind. She shook her head again trying to shake the fog out.
The nayid’s antennas twitched as a faint flush briefly tinged her parchment cheeks. She stared briefly at Aleytys, then shifted her gaze, refusing to look at her captive. Speaking to another nayid, one out of Aleytys’ arc of vision, she said brusquely, “The psi-damper?”
“Functioning, rab’ Kipu.” The cool monotone seemed to sooth the kipu’s ragged emotions. Her face smoothed out, the faint supercilious smile curled her thin lips, her hands came together and brushed lightly palm against palm in a soft papery whisper.
“Good.” The word oozed satisfaction, sending a tiny shock of remembered response shivering down Aleytys’ body. Antennas swaying in a gentle rhythm that underscored the renewed arrogance in her stance, the kipu spoke softly to Aleytys. “According to the ardu-epesh I!kuk, your intelligence measures superior.” The deep voice turned coldly precise. “I suggest you apply that intelligence to your present situation. I suggest you stop these futile gestures, ardana.”
Aleytys stiffened. “I’m not a slave. Don’t call me a slave.”
“Ardana,” the kipu repeated calmly. “Ardana.”
Aleytys stared at her. After a moment her body relaxed. The kipu nodded slightly and the guards let the captive move by herself for the first time.
“Show her to me.” The hoarse bass voice thrummed from behind gauzy curtains behind the kipu. Aleytys pushed herself up and swung her legs over the edge of the metal table. For a fleeting moment her brain tilted dizzily. She sucked in a deep breath and watched curiously.
The curtains fell from a centerpoint on the ceiling, pinned there by a gilt bee-like insect with wings and legs spread against the center of a floral mosaic coiling overhead in a mass of elaborate convolutions. As the kipu swept the lacy blue-green gauze back from the elaborate bed, Aleytys gaped at the wizened and bedizened old nayid who radiated a vivid force that somehow dominated the whole room. Even the arrogant kipu was diminished by the lumpy decrepit figure lying among a ridiculous froth of lace and frills. The old queen poked a bony elbow into the heap of pillows and grunted herself a trifle higher, her eyes fixed avidly on Aleytys. Her free hand like a claw, she beckoned the kipu closer, the two-score bangled bracelets crowding up her skinny arm clattering like an Oshanti whore’s come-on beads.
“That?” The voice boomed in Aleytys’ ears. “Why?” She moved restlessly, the sagging flesh on her neck trembling with the palsy of extreme age. “It’s female?”
“Mammalian.” The kipu pulled her six-fingered hand—long flexible digits with the fragile beauty of a lizard’s fore-paws—in a fluid gesture across her flat spare thorax, the corners of her mouth tightening a fraction in disgust; her antennas twitched in a few sharp jerks. Before she spoke her long delicate face smoothed into immobility. “The ardu-epesh I!kuk guaranteed her genetic potency—so much that to control her I!kuk implanted a psi-damper to nullify her talents. Forget what she looks like. The egg will take the gifts and leave the rest.”
“Umph!” The round black eyes the size of teacups moved over Aleytys’ naked body in cold insulting appraisal.
Aleytys tightened the grip of her hands on the curved edge of the table, remembering eyes coldly measuring and assessing her as she stood in a forcecube on cold stone block in the slave market of I!Kwasset. She shifted uneasily on the cold surface, wondering what the kipu was talking about with a sick foreboding that she wouldn’t like what was coming. Irritably, she jerked her shoulders. The psi-damper planted below her left shoulder blade itched furiously as she fought against the mind trap. She closed her eyes, shutting out the shifting groups of nayids, and concentrated on the inside of her head.
“Where are you?” She hurled the wo
rds into the darkness thick and musty at the back of her mind. “I know you’re there.” The psi-damper was a torment of small irritations, a fuzziness that sent her mind on veering orbits so that it was hard to hold onto the logical progression of thought. Concentration was a physical effort that left her shaking. “Dammit, you weren’t so shy before.”
A pain-filled yowl jerked her head up. The bed was lost in a sea of white tunics circling in panic around a lanky nayid with a cold dignified face and gray bars running through the short black hair coiling tight to her narrow skull. A few quiet words brought order, sending the superfluous females to their posts.
As the crowd thinned, Aleytys saw the old queen collapsed on the pillows, bubbles forming at the corners of her mouth and slipping in a trickle of drool across her slack jaw. Thin wrinkled double eyelids folded up. As Aleytys watched, she shrivelled visibly. The blazing personality that had dominated the busy room moments before was eroding into a kind of terminal decrepitude. The doctor bent over her, then glanced up impatiently at the nayid next to her.
With her soft spotless tunic flowing into agitated folds, the attendant bustled around the bed, jerked the curtains free, and swirled them shut, leaving the dying ancient in privacy.
The kipu snapped her fingers. Three spindle-shanked horse-faced amazons in loose-fitting red tunics popped from behind the bed and advanced on Aleytys. She slid off the table and backed cautiously away.
Stepping quickly to her side the kipu closed long slender fingers on her shoulder. “Return to the table, Ardana,” she said coldly.
The fingers were dry and slightly rough. Aleytys could feel the hard articulation of her finger bones through the skin. She jerked away, tossing her hair out of her face. The wariness abruptly burnt out of her in a wild flare of rebellion. Like a tars on the prowl she shot rapid glances around the room, animal-intent on an impossible escape.
The white nayids clustering around the bed ignored her as if she didn’t exist, but she kept a cautious distance from the red ones, retreating from the circling red tunics as the nayid guards stared at her out of their round black eyes, right hands wrapped around black rods thrust through the wide black belts hugging their crimson tunics to their thin elongated bodies. Past the irregular circle she saw an archway partially masked by a blue-green tapestry. Run, her muddled brain drove at her. Run.