Captivity

by Ann Herendeen

  While Dominic and I had visited, the unusual and unhidden mental activity had penetrated Reynaldo’s consciousness and awakened him. The bandit had followed our conversation while he arose, came down the stairs to the storeroom and unlocked the door. Once inside the lightless room, unsure of what he was confronting, Reynaldo decided not to match crypta with ‘Graven. He hauled me up and backhanded me across the face, breaking the skin over my cheekbone and knocking me to the floor.

  Jana started up wide awake, her fists clenched in readiness. Val screamed, clutching at me where I lay dazed.

  Dominic experienced the blow through my senses, the pain almost nothing to him, inured as he is to minor acts of violence from years of active military service, but the shock of it far worse, like a caged tiger being poked with a stick. I felt the surge of Dominic’s fighting reflex as he absorbed my reactions in his own body, his frustration at being unable to strike back physically.

  “I told you not to use your gift,” Reynaldo said, bending over me, feeling about in the darkness. He did not understand how Dominic and I could communicate so easily, unless Dominic was here in the storeroom with me.

  Reynaldo reached to pull me up and hit me again, but Dominic got to him first. The bandit shrieked like a whole pack of furies, clutching his head and falling to his knees. Dominic was thinking pain to him, stimulating the areas of the brain that receive pain messages, sending the same information that the nerves would have transmitted if Reynaldo’s head were being squeezed in a vise or his eyes put out with skewers. Dominic could not actually inflict physical damage, but Reynaldo suffered the same agony. It is the brain that tells us we are in pain, by interpreting messages it gets from the nerves. Dominic simply sent the messages directly, bypassing the body’s pathways, from his mind to Reynaldo’s.

  It is something most telepaths can do at close range. Reynaldo himself had done it earlier, crudely but effectively, to Michaela and the disobedient bandit on the trail, making them feel as if they had been punched in the stomach. Over such a span of miles, it is rarely possible without the aid of a strong telepathic bond, like the one I share with Dominic. I could only suppose Dominic managed it because of Reynaldo’s intrusion on our intimacy. My husband and I were already in communion; it was an easy step for Dominic to the mind of the man who had laid hands on me.

  After a long minute or two of screaming Reynaldo collapsed on his back, his limbs twitching, eyes rolling up in his head. Dominic sensed the man was losing consciousness, had no intention of easing his suffering, and slackened the torture minimally. Sentient again, Reynaldo began begging for mercy, his voice bleating out in jagged sobs while his heels drummed on the floor and his fingers raked the dirt. He stared wildly with a crazed animal terror, looking from me to Jana to Val, unable to tell where the pain was coming from. The sounds brought many of the others, men and women, a few brave children, to crowd the doorway, where they stood in a frozen lump, afraid to enter where they might also be attacked by the little woman who sat crumpled on the ground, her arms around her young daughter and son.

  Now you have a taste of what awaits you, Dominic thought to Reynaldo. Anything you do to my wife or my children will be done to you tenfold. Do you understand?

  Reynaldo was unable to speak, could barely form words in his agonized brain.

  Dominic prodded him with a jab of crypta until the man whined like a beaten dog. Tell me you understand, Dominic said, his voice calm and steady. I could imagine his face, the mouth a narrow straight line, the silver eyelids turning clear as glass now that prey had been sighted.

  Reynaldo answered Dominic in speech, his mind too fragile to attempt telepathic communication. “I understand, Margrave,” he said, his voice a strangled croak. The man still did not realize that it was not I who was responsible for his torment. “Make him go away,” he said to me. “I won’t touch you again.”

  I shook my head. “I have no power over my lord husband,” I said aloud, to let all the gawkers know what had happened. “It is Margrave Aranyi who chastises you: telepath, swordsman, Commander General of the ‘Graven Coalition.” I sat up straighter, tried to compose my face and my voice. “I am his wife and these are his true-born children. You will have only yourselves to blame when Margrave Aranyi’s retribution falls on you for the offense you have committed.”

  I felt Dominic in the background applauding my efforts. To Reynaldo he said, ‘Gravina Aranyi speaks truly. Now get out and keep your mind to yourself, unless you would like more of my attentions. He waited until Reynaldo picked himself up and locked the door, shooing his people out of the doorway.

  When we were alone again, our minds shielded, Dominic spoke honestly. By all the gods, Amalie, how have you managed? Lady Ladakh’s message mentioned something about his eyes, but that part was all so garbled I couldn’t credit it. And because everybody was distraught I thought– I hoped– they had imagined… His thoughts subsided from speech into a worried, wordless gloom.

  I did not try to answer Dominic’s question directly. He said his mother was ‘Gravina, I said, hoping Dominic might know something of Reynaldo’s background, information that might be of use. But surely no family would allow their daughter to be stolen like that and left to bear a bandit’s child?

  There was a moment of delay as Dominic absorbed this piece of news. I sensed something like demoralization, an emotion so toxic it must be hidden, even from me. I don’t know, he said at last. But you must try to be strong until I can reach you. His consciousness wavered slightly as I received it, unlike his usual firm control. Know that I love you. I will get you out of there. Never doubt it. Only you must hold on until then.

  I know it, I said. I will. I stumbled back to the straw pallet and lay down as before, settling the children on either side.

  Without any conscious decision, my husband and I permitted ourselves an interlude of affection. I lay in Dominic’s mental embrace while he sent his thoughts of love to me. Just as Dominic had made Reynaldo suffer torment, he gave me feelings of pleasure. My mind received the same messages as if Dominic kissed me, on my lips and on my neck, as if his arms encircled me, as if his hands massaged my back and stroked my hair. He had come to me like this before our marriage, while I was cloistered in the seminary of La Sapienza, had made love to me across the miles that separated us then, and had roused me to pleasure as if we had lain in the same bed.

  Weak as I was, I could not respond to Dominic’s telepathic caresses in kind. Like a virgin bride on her wedding night, I lay supine, urging my husband on with words alone. Hold me, I said. Kiss me again. It was the only scrap of comfort I had enjoyed in so long, I wanted to make it last as long as possible.

  Dominic was as reluctant to leave me as I was to let him go. Beloved, he said, his deep voice as electrifying in thought as in speech. My lady wife. He knew I needed solace and encouragement, not passionate lovemaking, and concentrated on simulating the sensation of his long arms wrapped tightly around me.

  After a short interval, Dominic loosened the embrace. We could not stay long in communion: not with the added strain of maintaining the protective shield against Reynaldo’s eavesdropping; not while Dominic must marshal his troops and make preparations for the long journey back north. He used his mental projection to touch my bruised cheek. I will heal your wound myself, he said. I will break that criminal’s body in a thousand places.

  “Yes, my love,” I said, thinking and speaking simultaneously, trying to ignore the thought that my skin would have plenty of time to heal on its own before Dominic could rescue us.

  Jana’s voice broke in. “Papa!” She had seen Reynaldo writhing, had heard the words I had spoken aloud. “I love you, Papa,” she cried, looking into my eyes.

  Tell Jana I love her. Tell her she is my own little soldier, he said, a long-standing joke between them. And you must be my master sergeant, he added, finding a suitable rank for me in this highly irregular Aranyi troop. I felt his last thought to me, the soft kiss he laid on my lips.

&nbs
p; I gave Jana part of her father’s message. “Papa says he loves you, too,” I said, and left it at that. She had been strong enough, I felt, and did not need any more martial inspiration.

  Val lay beside me in the straw, still sniveling from the latest upset, his pudgy arms grasping me where Dominic’s imagined touch had so recently rested. I scooped him into my lap to rock him. “Papa loves his brave boy too,” I said, cooing in the third-person baby talk Val hates. “Yes he does.”

  “Papa says Val was a surprise,” Jana said, what sounded like a fragment of a long-ago conversation. “Papa doesn’t like surprises.”

  Dominic’s visit had left me in a warm glow of contentment, too brief to spoil it with jealousy. “Your papa loves both his children,” I said, “however surprising they may be.”

  Val touched my face with sticky fingers. “I desire to return home,” he said in formal speech, enunciating precisely, his habitual defense against the infantile prattle. His inner and outer eyelids drooped and he was asleep before I had to answer. I sank back into the dirty straw, covered us up again in my cloak and waited for morning.

  CHAPTER 5

  The sound of animals bleating as they were led out to pasture woke me before it seemed I had fully shut my eyes, the same noise I can hear at Aranyi at the start of each day, on those rare mornings when I am not deep in the last, best sleep of the long Eclipsian night. For one aching moment I was convinced the past day and night had all been an elaborately-detailed nightmare, brought on by anger and jealousy, and from sleeping in the wrong position.

  Dominic will say I told you so, I thought, my lips curving in a fond smile. He always warns me not to lie on my back, not unless he is there beside me to kiss away the screams trapped in my sleep-paralyzed throat, to caress my body, rigid with fear, into relaxation. I rarely have to ask; Dominic usually knows, from our communion, when I have a bad dream and am in need of comfort. I reached a lazy hand for him.

  It was unlike him, I thought, to pass up a chance for some morning lovemaking. Dominic, amorous on awakening like most men, would gladly have made a habit of what I had been careful to preserve as a rare privilege. Niall, I thought, amused at my slowness. He’s with Niall, of course. Niall, while displaying a typical adolescent morning languor, never declines Dominic’s romantic overtures. I sent my mind toward my husband and his companion, attempting a quiet insinuation of communion to confirm my theory.

  My searching hand, arm pinned down beneath a drowsy child’s warm body, encountered scratchy straw. My mind explored a void, flailing about, finding neither Dominic nor Niall in the vicinity. I had to force myself to open my eyes and accept the grim reality. Only the faint daylight from the grate that looked into the hall convinced me I had slept since Dominic’s visit. I was as tired as if I had been up all night.

  Isis and Astarte help me. I had missed the first eclipse of the day. On Crescent Day, the day of two eclipses, the first one comes as soon as the sun is above the horizon. If it was light enough to see interior daylight through the window grate, it was over. I was like a Terran cube with a low battery, and no way to recharge.

  Human voices, rougher and louder than any Aranyi people would use at such an early hour, replaced the animals’ cries, intruding on my despairing thoughts. The bandits, having seen to the needs of their animals, were arguing over their human possessions. After last night’s demonstration of ‘Graven power there was no rush of volunteers to bring us food and water. Reynaldo claimed that it was beneath him to perform menial chores, that someone else should go down to the storeroom. The other men shook their heads, muttered excuses. Women went about the business of finding food for their own men and children, and ignored the debate as much as possible.

  I rose and used the pot, then helped Val, who had wet into the straw during the night. He was the only one of us who didn’t mind using the pot, which was like his training potty at home. Jana, who had risen and relieved herself while I had been tantalizing myself with wishful thinking, stayed as far away from her brother as the close room would allow. She watched in silence while I guided Val’s sticky legs back into his stained breeches, now stiff and dry with their overnight airing, and buttoned his fly.

  There was the slap of bare feet coming down the stairs. Someone brave enough to face a tired woman and two children opened the lock. Michaela entered just far enough to peer into the darkness. “Stand up,” she said. “Keep the children with you, and stand in front of the door where I can see you.”

  I did as she asked. If the woman was afraid of me, perhaps we could get food and water, a new candle, and the chamber pot emptied, with less trouble than Reynaldo would give us. Maybe I could get a diaper for Val.

  Michaela edged carefully into the room. As her eyes adjusted to the twilight, she looked me over, then flashed her predatory smile with the missing teeth. “Not so fine this morning,” she said, “my lady.” Her thoughts, with their vivid images, reached my mind unsolicited, and I saw myself as I appeared to her uncharitable appraisal, the bruise and broken skin on my cheek, the deep circles under my eyes, my skin pale and sweaty from hunger and fatigue, my hair already growing greasy on top, frizzy and unkempt below, straggling out of its clasp.

  The woman decided she had little to fear. She set down a skin of water and held a bowl of food at Val’s level. “Here you are.” She clucked at the children as if calling chickens. “I made a nice hot breakfast for you, you little buggers.” There were nut-meal cakes—I could smell the rancid oil they had been fried in—but the meal they were made from seemed fresher than last night’s fermented glue. A precious strip of mutton with a glistening layer of fat had been placed over the cakes.

  Val’s life so far had taught him to associate women with warmth and kindness. He saw Michaela as a friend, a household woman bringing food, and smiled engagingly. “Did you make oatmeal?” he asked. “I eat oatmeal every day, with cloudberries.” He was too young to know that cloudberries grow only in season, which was coming to an end soon, or to remember the time before berry season. When there was no reply, Val thought of something interesting to enliven the conversation. “I pooped in my pants yesterday. But today I went in the pot.” He pointed with pride.

  The woman stared at Val in surprise while Jana hushed him. Despite my notable lack of success so far, I continued my policy of feigned politeness, not having an alternative strategy. “Thank you,” I said, moving to take the dish. “That is most welcome.”

  “Welcome,” Val repeated. “Thank you.” He recited the lessons he was being taught at home. “You’re welcome.”

  Michaela held the bowl close, guarding it with her free arm, and backed away from me. “This is for the little ones,” she said. “Not for you.”

  I shook my head, uncomprehending, still reaching for the food, but the woman jumped back to the doorway. “We figured out how to tame you, ‘Gravina bitch. Take your dagger, keep you in the dark. Give you water but no food. See how long you can keep up your nasty sibyl’s tricks then.”

  Literally, the word sibyl means a seer, the highest level of seminary-trained telepath, a woman who, by virtue of superior education and training uses her second sight at a level beyond that of other gifted people. To Michaela and the others the word had a simpler connotation: witch. I felt faint with fear, beginning to see where such thinking might lead. As in the old days, before seminary training and marriage, my gift of crypta was proving to be more of a curse.

  Michaela turned from me in triumph, almost as if she could read my thoughts, and clucked at the children again. “Come on. Eat up while it’s hot.”

  Jana held Val back from the food. “We don’t want any,” she said. Her voice was higher than usual, more childish. She was hungry and scared, with a pinched look about her mouth. Val was beginning to whine.

  The woman started out the door. “More for us then,” she said. “You’ll be begging soon enough, but you’ll have to wait till supper.”

  “Stay, please,” I said. To Jana and Val I said, “You must ea
t and not worry about me.”

  Michaela turned slowly, grinning as she held the dish toward the children. Jana stood irresolute, caught between temptation and what she felt was right.

  I nodded permission. “Papa would want you to keep your strength up.”

  With Dominic’s blessing bestowed, Jana snatched the dish from Michaela’s hand and began cramming nut cakes into her mouth, chewing and swallowing rapidly and efficiently. She picked up a piece of mutton, a queasy expression on her face. Jana loathes mutton fat, but she was famished and had taken to heart my words about preserving her strength. Finally, gulping several times as she fought her revulsion, she made a heroic effort and choked down some of the meat, looking all the time as if she was going to be sick.

  “Let Val have a share,” I said.

  Jana offered a piece of congealed fat to Val, who looked at it in horror, cried and ran back to me.

  “Jana,” I said. “Give Val a nut cake.”

  Jana stiffened at my tone of voice. She found the smallest, greasiest cake and held it at arm’s length between thumb and index finger. “Here you are, brat,” she said, calling Val by the same word Reynaldo had used. “Eat your breakfast, brat.”

  Val shook his head and clutched at me. “I want oatmeal!” he screamed. “I want oatmeal and berries.”

  Michaela watched the scene through narrowed eyes. “Listen to the spoiled little lord,” she said. “If he were mine, I’d give him something to cry about.”

  Stupidly I responded to this remark. “I’m sure you would,” I said. “And how many of yours survived your mothering?”

  The question enraged the woman. She advanced on me and Val, her arm raised. I stepped in front of Val to protect him and pointed to my bruised face. “See that?” I said. “I can do that to you from across the room.” To myself I thought, I could if I had slept and eaten, or had seen the eclipse. For now I could only bluff.