by Carol Berg
“Now this is a sorry sight.” The Guardian strolled into my range of vision. He bent down to get a closer look, shaking his head. “The impudent lad is feeling a bit pinched, it seems. Well, we’ll relieve him of his burdens soon enough. And you” - he approached my cell and peered through the bars - “you who dared violate the Source - ”
“Have you told your people of the garden?” I said. “Do they know what marvels lie so close to this deadness you’ve left them? Do they know of the light? Or are you the only one who sees the jeweled cave, a wonder such as I’ve not seen in three worlds?”
“You know nothing of our life or our laws. You are an impostor, and your mouth is filled with lies.”
“I see. So you do keep it all to yourself. You protect your pleasures well, just like you keep the good food and fine linens. And there are so many pleasures… Tell me, Maintainer, does this Guardian come down here to watch the floggings? Does he smile and lick his lips when you torture Singlars in the name of safety? Does he go to watch when Singlars are thrown over the Edge?”
“Silence, impostor!” He did those things. I could see it in his face. And behind him the two maintainers were nodding their heads as if such pastimes made perfect sense.
“You can’t bear to give up your sovereignty, for you enjoy the nasty bits so very much. The king might not agree with what you’ve made of this place, or he might not let you watch any more. Have you told your people what the Source says concerning the Bounded King?”
All I wanted to do was to keep them from killing Paulo, but my mouth wouldn’t stop. “Did you tell them that he was just out of boyhood, that his hair was shot with fire, or that his hands bore scars of bitterness that would never fade?” I held up my palms, burned on the day I became a Lord of Zhev’Na. “Look on these, Guardian, and tell me I’m not your king!”
He snarled and averted his face. “I see no king. Only an insolent boy. It doesn’t matter, anyway. I’ll neither kill you nor send you away. Those things the Source has forbidden me. But I was not told to feed you, and if you’re locked up here for trespassing our laws then that’s your affair, not mine.”
“So you’ll never allow them their rightful king?”
“We don’t need a king. I care for the Bounded. The Singlars listen to me, and they are better off for it.”
He snatched a whip from the maintainer’s clawed hand, and the air whistled and cracked, as he laid another bloody stripe across Paulo’s arm and shoulder. “If you are a king, then show us your strength, traveler. The Source has told me that our king will shape the destiny of all bounded worlds. If he cannot fight a weak Guardian like me, then that seems very unlikely.”
He tossed the whip back to the tall maintainer and pointed to Paulo. “Have your way with this one; just make sure he’s dead at the end of it. Leave our ‘king’ where he is. Then, seal this dungeon so that no one will ever come here again.”
“What of the other prisoners, Guardian?” asked one of the brutes.
“They can be his subjects.”
His laughter echoed long after he was gone, until it was drowned out by the sounds of Paulo’s beating. I tried to make them stop, to command them, to bribe them. I babbled about the garden and the jeweled cave, about the other worlds and the Breach, which they called the Unbounded, and of what I believed about the miracle of their existence. They would pause and listen carefully, then shake their heads and go back to their fun.
Once, Paulo stirred as if he might get up, and I threw a screaming fit to distract the maintainers’ attention, but my friend made it no farther than his knees before the short one spotted his movement and kicked him sprawling again.
“Sorry.” That was the only word he spoke in that awful time. Gods… sorry. As if he were responsible…
Before very long, Paulo was too far gone to give them sport, and they began to discuss how they would finish him. They laughed and stretched him out on his back, tracing a shallow, bloody circle on his heaving chest with their knife blades. They would cut a little deeper each time, they said, until they could take the heart out of him.
“Paulo!” I begged. “Get up, Paulo. Fight them!” He tried, but could not. His face was unrecognizable, his hands pulp, his breathing ragged.
I willed him to wake up. To find strength. Paulo, don’t die.
Their gross, callow ugliness set me tearing at my bonds again. I saw in them the same things I’d seen - and felt - in Zhev’Na: the enjoyment of pain, of fear, of horror and death. I’d seen it in both worlds and in myself, and I loathed it with a fury that burst from me like a firestorm. This was Zhev’Na all over again, but I was powerless…
“No!” A mad fury exploded through me. This was Paulo, who had made me care about him when I cared about no one in the universe. He and my mother had saved my soul. My mother might lie dead from whatever wickedness had followed us to Windham - I could do nothing for her right now - but if I could summon one scrap of strength or power to prevent it, Paulo would not suffer the same fate.
And then the monstrous thing lurking in my depths broke free. Again my chest swelled and my blood surged, and again my head split until I could see myself collapsed in a limp heap at the extent of my chains. Paulo! Get up and fight. You will not die here. I won’t let you.
Ready to summon power, I took a deep breath… and almost fainted from the pain of it. Ribs broken… three, four at least. Don’t do that again. Suddenly my hands were screaming at me… worse than the ribs and the lacerated back, worse than my aching gut and my throbbing face, so swollen I could barely see the knife hanging in the air above me… ready to cut out my heart.
One, two, roll. Hook your leg around the tall one’s ankles. Yes, that’s it. Pull him down. As Radele is always reminding you, you had the finest masters in Zhev’Na. These are stupid, arrogant beasts who know nothing of true combat. Get his neck between your thighs and hold it if you want to live. Do it. Your heart is still inside you and still beating. Everything else will heal. Pain is nothing to one who has come of age in Zhev’Na. You were never handsome anyway… freckles all over… ears too wide. The girl in Avonar is blind. She’s the only one who never saw how awkward you are.
Now take the short one when he comes in for the kill… twist! Control the knife and turn it back on him… for the Lady and the Prince and the young master… your friend. Concentrate. Squeeze harder. The tall one thinks to get away, thinks to play dead so you’ll let up, for he knows your ribs are trying to come through your skin… through your lungs, so you can’t get a decent breath. Harder. The Zhid taught you how to kill.
Force the knife back on the one who would take your heart. Your heart belongs to those who looked past the squalor of your childhood and called you friend, who showed you your true worth, and who honor you with their love across three worlds.
I felt the maintainer’s neck crack between my legs, and with the last of my strength I forced the other one’s knife into his own belly and jerked upward until I felt the satisfying rip.
One more squeeze with the legs to make sure… one more twist of the knife to make sure… I shoved the corpse off my chest and struggled to get air into my lungs.
For a long while I lay on the stone floor of the dungeon, fighting to stay alive. Breathe, don’t think. Rest. What I wouldn’t give for my father’s healing touch! Don’t sleep. It’s death if you sleep… maybe death if you don’t. Sit up. That will ease the breathing… ah, demonfire, how can it hurt so much?
Carefully, I eased myself up until I was leaning on the flogging post. I couldn’t use my hands. They’d crushed them early on with wooden clubs until I fainted from it, until I begged them to cut them off as it wouldn’t be half so bad. But then they stomped on them instead, saying as how the impostor was plotting to destroy the Source, and they would see him stopped. Breathing was a little easier, as long as I kept it shallow.
Ought to stop all this blood. It’s going to leave me dry as an ale barrel at midsummer. But I couldn’t see where all of it was com
ing from. Everything was blurry.
Stay awake. Sleep just won’t do it. Not yet. Got to stay awake and get enough strength back to unlock the cell door.
But I couldn’t figure out why I had to unlock my cell. I was already out. I’d come out to fight… to save Paulo…
My sluggish mind riffled through thoughts and images as if they were pages in a crumbling book. Holy gods, what had I done?
The pain was real, the agony of each breath, the screaming fire in my hands, the dangerous dull throb in my gut. But this pain could not be mine.
I squeezed my eyes shut, afraid to see. But the darkness was too tempting. If I kept my eyes closed, I would sink into sleep just to escape the pain, and then I - whoever I was - would die. So I opened them again and saw what I was terrified to see. My legs were long, perhaps two handspans longer than they should be. And my arms were long, like a scarecrow’s I - he - had always said. But he’d never seen the strong back and shoulders that held them together. And the shirt that hung in tatters on my bleeding chest was not the blue silk the Guardian had provided me, but the rough brown kersey my friend had worn since the dwarf had acquired it for him.
If I could have shrunk from myself in horror, I would have done so. In my zeal to save Paulo’s life, I had violated every oath I had sworn since leaving Zhev’Na. I had taken possession of my friend’s body and had no idea what I had done with his soul.
CHAPTER 15
Stay awake. Breathe. Only the necessities of staying alive held horror and revulsion at bay.
How was I to get him back? When I was in Zhev’Na and had done this thing - taking another’s body for my own use, for my pleasure - I hadn’t cared what became of the soul I had displaced. The bodies died when I left them. I didn’t know why or how, only that they did, and it didn’t matter for they were Zhid or Drudges or slaves who existed to serve my need - my power. But this… I had to find Paulo, put him back, and put myself back where I belonged.
Holding one arm tight around my ribs, I eased to my feet. One step. Two. Slowly, using the flogging post, a bloodstained headsman’s block, and the implement racks to hold myself up, I staggered across to the wall where the maintainers had hung the keys to the young master’s cell - my cell - on a peg. Cold, shivering, I had never hurt so much in all my life. After every step I had to stop and rest, trying not to heave out my insides.
Forgive me, Paulo. I’ve got to keep you alive… get you back right… and I don’t know how. So I’ve got to use you while I can, make your body work even though it may make it worse for you.
It took an agonizing time for me to get the key, insert it in the cell door, and make it turn. Only two of his fingers were of any use at all, and they shook ferociously, refusing to cooperate until I was ready to scream.
“Cripes! You’ve got to do what I tell you!” I yelled, and almost turned around to see where Paulo was. But it was me, using his voice… even his words… as I’d used his very thoughts while I was wrestling with the maintainers. As I fumbled with the key, I considered what had run through my head in that time. Not just my own thoughts, not by any measure. Paulo had been there, too, with ideas and feelings I had no way to know. That I had no right to know.
I’m sorry. So sorry. Don’t be dead.
An hour it seemed until the cell door swung open, and I saw my own body lying insensible on the floor. So many bizarre things had happened to me in my life, but unshackling my own wrists and ankles, and dragging myself out of my prison cell, were truly among the strangest. At least I was breathing.
Once I had my body out of the cell, I sank to the floor beside it, waiting for the waves of pain and dizziness to recede so I could think what to do next. If Paulo was still somewhere inside this body, then maybe all I had to do was get out. I had to hurry. The Guardian could come at any time, eager to see if his will had been done. But first…
Gods and demons, my head was in a muddle, and everything hurt. The light began slipping away from me, as if the torches were falling down a deep well. I reached down the well, trying to catch them. My life depended on it… Paulo’s life… but I lost my grasp on the light, and lost my footing, and tumbled into the depths after it…
“Cripes, are you going to sleep all day? I thought I was the one busted up, but you’ve got a head like a rotten melon. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Can’t you be quiet? My head hurts.” Why was I talking to myself, when all I wanted to do was stay asleep?
“Let somebody crack a rib or three for you. Or put a boot in your gut. Make you forget your head.”
I was still leaning against the flogging post, holding myself together with my bloody, smashed hands. I looked more than half dead. But how was I able to see it? And why was the filthy stone floor pressing so brutally against my face at the same time?
I sat up quickly, ignoring the aches that were so trivial next to those I’d experienced earlier.
Paulo was leaning against the flogging post. Somewhere in the mess of his face was a particular crooked grin I’d not seen since we’d left Windham. “Got to stop traipsing after you. Man could get himself killed.”
“It’s you,” I said, gaping like a fool. “And I’m - Oh, blast it all, I must’ve been dreaming. I don’t want to go to sleep ever again.” My head felt like a mountain had fallen on it. But at least it was my own head, and my own arms and legs attached to it.
“Wasn’t no dream.” His smile had vanished, but the anger that should have displaced it didn’t follow.
Not a dream… He should be furious with me… revolted. He should feel violated, but he just sat there looking at me, waiting for an explanation. I wanted to be sick. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how I - I didn’t mean to do it. I swear.”
“Didn’t mean to? And here I thought you’d done magic just to keep my hide in one piece. Ragged, but one piece all the same.” A laugh burst out of him, though it sounded more like a hoarse whoop.
“Well, of course, I meant to help. But not that way… taking you. Never that. I didn’t know I could. Not any more. Only when I was a Lord. When I had power and did it on purpose, the person always died after. I don’t know how this happened. I just wanted to help.” It sounded so childish, such a pitiful excuse for an act so reprehensible.
“You saved my life. I was a dead man. I wanted to be dead.”
“It’s an evil thing. I could have killed you.” I still wasn’t sure why I hadn’t.
“I won’t argue that it wasn’t a touch fearful. It’s not something I’d want to do over again… or even to talk about. Not yet. And one more thing” - he jerked his head at the dead maintainers - “I don’t ever want you that riled at me.”
“No time to figure it out right now. We’ve got to get you someplace I can take care of you.”
I didn’t know how long I’d been insensible, and Paulo wouldn’t be able to move fast. How well I knew that. I got to my feet and across the floor, ignoring the way the walls seemed to dip and swirl as I squatted beside him.
“I’m as ready as I’m gonna be for a while.” He was shivering so badly he almost couldn’t get the words out. His breath came in short, tight gasps.
“Don’t try to talk.”
“Don’t forget the others.”
“Others?”
Paulo waved toward the cells lining the block. “Other prisoners.”
Earth and sky… “All right. Hold on. I’ll be right back.”
I grabbed a torch and the keys I’d dropped, and then ran the length of the room, unlocking every cell door and throwing it open. Most cells were empty. In one I glimpsed a dead man. He had been dead a long time, but I think he’d been foul even before that. He had scales.
In another cell I found the disfigured girl from our first day, sitting in the middle of the floor watching the door. I waved my hand impatiently. “Come on, you’re free.” She didn’t move.
I stepped into the cell and offered her my hand, but she refused to take it. “I must stay here for punishing. We took J
oca down from his fastness. They’d tied him to its wall.” She gripped her knees, and tears rolled down her cheeks. “He was so broken. Bleeding terrible. The Guardian’s servants grabbed me, but good Singlars carried Joca to safety. I wish no more hurting for him. Ah, Joca… ”
She looked half starved, but no one could call her weak. Not by half. It took me an eternity to persuade her that allowing the Guardian to punish her would not save her friend, that Joca would surely come for her and risk more punishment himself.
“You’re doing the right thing,” I said, when I finally got her moving. “Take care of each other. Just be careful. Don’t let anyone see you.”
“I would never want Joca’s hurting. All I want is goodness for him… and being with him.”
“Things will change,” I said. “I’ll see to it before I go. You and your friend can be together as you should be.”
She knelt and took my hand, bowing her head over it. “You are all kindness, mighty king.”
I shoved her toward the stairs and closed my eyes for a moment so everything would stop spinning. I was in too much of a hurry to explain that I had no intention of being her king.
The last cell in the row appeared to be empty. But just as I turned to go, a slight movement caught the corner of my eye. A rat, most likely, assuming they had vermin here. But the infernal place was as dark as pitch, and I’d left my torch behind when I’d taken the Singlar girl to the stairs, so I stepped through the doorway and squinted to get a better look. “Come out,” I said, just in case it wasn’t a rat. “You’re free.”
A chip of stone smacked into my bruised head. Ten more followed it, stinging all the wrong places.
“Stop that!” I yelled. “Are you crazy? I’ve come to set you free.”
I fumbled around in the dark, fending off a flurry of ineffective blows, and dragged the prisoner out into the torchlight. No sooner had I shoved the fellow up against the wall, than I dropped my hands and stepped back, confounded.