Not counting Aladar and Honat (neither of whom resembled the fighting type), there were six men. Not bad odds, when you consider I had Del beside me. Her neck was in iron, but not her hands.
“Do you wonder why I want you?” Aladar stroked his beard again. Gems glittered on his fingers, reflecting in his eyes. “I’m a very rich man who intends to become richer. I own gold mines and slaves, and I deal in both regularly. Both are equally important to me. How else does one find labor to work those mines?” He smiled. “With those arms and shoulders, friend sword-dancer, you could do the work of three men.”
I felt my mouth go dry. The thought of going back into slavery scared me so much I felt the blade of panic cut through my concentration. But something else made me more frightened.
“She’s not a slave,” I told him clearly. “She’s a free Northern woman.”
Aladar’s brows rose up to his bronze-colored turban with its winking garnet eye. “Then why is she collared, and why do you come to me as a slave trader?”
I wet my lips. “Too long a story. But you’re making a mistake if you think you can take her for yourself, because she isn’t a slave.”
“She is now.” He smiled. “So are you.”
I pulled Del’s knife out of my belt and tossed it to her. Then I invited Aladar’s men to take us both.
“Both?” Aladar inquired. “Look at the woman again, sword-dancer … she drank the wine meant for you.”
I looked. Del wavered on her feet. The knife fell out of useless hands. “Tiger—”
She was unconscious before she hit the ground. I caught her in one arm, easing her down. Then I spun around, letting Singlestroke tickle the throat of the nearest man.
“Surely you can’t take all six,” Aladar remarked.
“Call in a few more,” I suggested. “Might as well make it a real challenge.”
Aladar tapped one fingernail, long and buffed, against a tooth. “I have always desired to see your sword-dance.”
“Pick up a sword yourself,” I invited. “Dance with me, Aladar.”
“Oh, I’m afraid not.” He sounded sincerely regretful. “I have other matters to attend to, and I dislike the sight of my own blood.” He signaled dismissal to Honat. “It will be a sorry thing to see the Sandtiger’s teeth and claws pulled, but I can’t tolerate a slave who spends valuable time thinking of rebellion. But you mustn’t worry. I’ll be watching from my secret closet, which is where I watch all of Honat’s transactions.”
He was gone. So was Honat. And I was alone with an unconscious Del and six armed, fanatically loyal men.
“Come on.” I said it with a bravado I didn’t entirely feel. “Dance with the Sandtiger.”
At first, they did. One by one. It was a contest of quickness and strength, skill and strategy, and each of Aladar’s men fought fairly. Then, as two of them went down beneath Singlestroke, they realized I was killing them. Not just testing them. Killing them. And it made them angry. I heard Aladar’s outraged shout from somewhere deep in the walls, and then the remaining four were on me.
I moved immediately against the wall so no one could come at my back. It left me open on three sides, but Singlestroke and I are very fast; I slashed through the fence of steel that came at me again and again. I nicked a couple of arms and moved on, reaching for others. The problem was, they weren’t out to kill me. All they wanted was to wear me down.
It’s very frustrating when you want to kill a few enemies, and all they want to do is capture you.
My shoulder ached. Still I kept Singlestroke flying, slashing out to catch blades, arms, and ribs, but the four men concentrated on me en masse, which made it hard to focus on one enemy when I had three others to worry about. I wanted to swear at them all, but you don’t waste your breath on such things when your life (or your freedom) is at stake.
The wall scraped against my back. I felt a tapestry behind me, flapping against my waist. Then the tapestry was whipped aside and an arm came out of the wall to encircle my throat.
Aladar. Aladar in his infernal secret closet.
One-handed, I kept Singlestroke in the fray. With the other hand I reached for the remaining knife tucked in my belt. Aladar’s arm was locked tight around my throat; his men fell back. Why should they fight when he’d do it for them?
A red mist rose up before my eyes, distorting my vision. I saw four pairs of watching eyes and, beyond them, Del’s slack body on the rugs. I jerked the knife free and tried to stab it behind my back, but one of Aladar’s men woke up to the threat to his master and sliced me across the knuckles with his sword.
The knife clattered to the floor. So did Singlestroke. I reached behind me, trying to hook both hands around Aladar’s head. All I got was an armful of turban, which came off and tumbled to the floor in tangled strips of rich cloth.
Unfortunately, Aladar’s arm did not fall with it.
One of his men got bored. Maybe he saw his master wasn’t making as much progress as he hoped. Whatever the reason, he doubled up a big fist and slammed it beneath my ribs, which effectively expelled what little breath I had left.
After that it didn’t take long for Aladar to choke me down, and as I faded into darkness I heard him cursing.
“Double-weight!” he gasped. “I don’t want any chance of him getting loose on the way to the mine.”
And that, as they say, was that.
Twenty-One
Double-weight meant chains around my neck, waist, wrists, ankles. It meant iron so heavy it dragged with every step, but the steps didn’t last long because the guards threw me into a wagon and headed it toward the mountains.
I lay sprawled in the wagon (or as sprawled as you can get while wearing iron). It rattled against the floorboards as the wagon trundled across the ruts in the road. I was bruised, cut, battered and aching, and my throat hurt like hoolies.
But mostly I was scared.
People have called me a brave man. A fearless man. The man who will face anything and everything without flinching or blinking an eye. (None of it is true, of course, but you can’t muck around with a legend when that legend is what gets you work.) So I’d gone on about my business without much bothering to acknowledge that yes, even the Sandtiger can be frightened, and now—as I faced slavery once again—I realized I’d been a bit seduced by my own reputation. I knew I wasn’t any braver than any other man. You sort of come face to face with your own shortcomings when the thing you dread most becomes your immediate future.
I had been stripped of everything but suede dhoti and sandtiger claws. That meant no burnous, no belt, no sandals, no harness. Certainly no Singlestroke, but that didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was being allowed to keep the claws.
Unless, of course, it was some bizarre form of retribution on Aladar’s part. How better to get under the Sandtiger’s hide than by announcing his identity to the slaves he would work with day in and day out?
Possibly. Aladar struck me as the type of man to enjoy inflicting psychological torture as well as physical hardship. He might be intending to use me as a form of control, saying, in effect: The Sandtiger is a strong, brave, independent man. See how he is caught? See how he is humbled? See how he does what he is told?
Hoolies.
I dragged myself up, hearing the cacophony of iron links and cuffs, and knelt on the floor of the wagon. I was escorted by a full contingent of palace guards: twenty men. A compliment, in a way; twenty men for one, and a man who was so heavily chained he could hardly breathe, let alone move.
Of course, it was also practical. Aladar probably knew I had every intention of getting free. He probably knew I intended to make my way back to the palace to find and free Del. Undoubtedly he knew I wanted to open him up from guts to gullet with any weapon I could find.
I’d do it, too. Once I got free.
I planned my escape all the way to the mine. It took my mind off the journey. It took my mind off imagining what it would be like to be a chula again.
Onl
y when I got to the mine, I realized Aladar didn’t really have anything to worry about. I’d be lucky if I survived.
The guards took me into the tunnels. They led me deep into the guts of the mountain: twisting, turning, ascending, descending, turning, turning, turning … until I lost all track of direction and knew myself truly lost.
The tunnels were filled with men; a gut stuffed to bursting on the helplessness and futility of men who were no longer men, but effluvia. Chula. Arms and legs. Each man wore iron as I did, but the waist chain was about ten feet long and locked to yet another chain. This one ran along the wall, bolted into bedrock at every other man. The men were stationed some fifteen feet apart. It left each of them with a limited area in which to work. In which to live. I could tell, from the stench of the tunnel, that no one was ever unlocked from the wall. Not even to relieve himself.
In the harsh, stark torchlight, I saw the dead man. He lay on the rock floor: a limp, sprawled body devoid of life. He stank, as dead men do. And I was his replacement.
The body was unlocked. I heard the iron dropping away, ringing against bedrock. Then a guard prodded me in one kidney, and I took a single step forward.
Then backward. Rigidly. Spasmodically. I could not make myself take up the dead man’s place.
In the end, the guards did it for me. I felt the tug of iron at neck, wrists, waist, ankles as they locked me to the wall and made certain the links were strong. I heard the metallic clangor. I heard the voice of one guard; bored, he droned the information. No inflection. No nuances. Just—noise.
I was to hammer at the wall with mallet and chisel, breaking away chunks of the reef to free the ore, which was hauled out of the mine in wooden wagons. Any man discovered trying to chisel himself free of the chains or the bolts free of the wall would be taken outside, flogged, and left to hang on the post for three days. Without food and water.
If I worked well, the guard droned on, I’d be fed twice a day: morning and night. I was to sleep on the tunnel floor at my station. Water was brought around three times a day, no more, no less. I was expected to work from dawn until dusk, with breaks at morning and evening meals.
This, he said, was my life. For the rest of my life. He dropped the mallet and chisel at my feet and walked away with the other guards, taking the light with him.
I stood facing the wall. Everything was black, black and livid purple; torch brackets were infrequently set into the walls and only half of them were lighted. My eyes would adjust, I knew, because the body makes shift where it can … but I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what I was doing.
I felt the sweat break out on my skin. My flesh rose up on my bones as shudder after shudder wracked me. My belly tied itself into knots until I thought my bowels would burst. Iron rattled. I couldn’t stop it from rattling. I couldn’t stop myself from shaking.
The stink of the tunnel engulfed me: Urine. Defecation. Fear. Helplessness. Death. The knowledge of futility.
I closed my eyes and set my forehead against the ribs of the wall, digging fingers into the stone. I was in darkness of mind, of body, of spirit. All I could see was madness. It filled up all my senses until I was small again, so small, so small.
Even among the Salset I hadn’t felt so helpless, so frightened, so small.
I forced myself to look at the others. They squatted, all hunched against the wall, staring at me blankly; chained I was, as they were chained, and equally hopeless. I looked at their broken, callused hands; their overdeveloped shoulders; their empty, staring eyes, and realized they had been here months. Maybe years.
Not one of them seemed to have the slightest trace of sanity left. And I realized, staring at them even as they stared at me, that I looked into my own face.
The sun went down and sucked more light out of the tunnel, leaving me in the mosaic of patchwork darkness: madder-violet, gentian-blue, raisin-black. And a splash of brilliant fuchsia whenever I closed my eyes. The evening meal had been served before my arrival; now the men slept. I heard their snores, their groans, their cries, their yips. Heard the continuous rattle of iron.
Heard the wheeze of my own breath as it rasped in and out of a throat constricted by a symphony of fear.
My appetite, after disappearing, eventually returned. It increased with the heavy work of breaking free the reef and ore and loading it into carts pulled by slaves chained to them, but the food ration didn’t. I went to sleep hungry and empty and woke up an hour or two later with cramping belly, cramping muscles. When morning came I was dulled from a sleep that didn’t refresh me. The water was tepid and foul and often caused dysentery, but I drank it because there was nothing else. I slept in the dirt of the tunnel floor, accustomed to restricted movements and the necessity of relieving myself in my own corner, like a wounded animal. I knew myself degraded, humiliated, sickened; I knew myself a chula. And the knowledge swept away the years I’d spent as a free sword-dancer.
The nightmares came again. This time there was no Sula to make them go away. This time I lived in the lowest level of hoolies. Dwelling on vanished days of transitory freedom was to dwell on madness, and so I didn’t think of them at all.
The circle was drawn in the sand. The swords lay in the center. A two-handed Southron sword, with gold hilt and blued-steel blade. A two-handed Northern sword: silver-hilted, rune-bladed, singing its siren song of ice and death.
A woman, standing near the circle. Waiting. White hair shining. Blue eyes calm. Gilded limbs relaxed. Waiting.
A man: sunbronzed, dark-haired, green-eyed. Tall. Powerfully built. Except that even as he stood there, waiting to start the dance, his body changed. Lost weight. Substance. Strength. It melted off him until he was a skeleton with a bit of brown hide stretched over the bones.
He put out a hand toward the woman. The woman who sang his deathsong.
* * *
Day became night, night became day.
—daynightdaynightdaynight—
—until there was no day or night or even daynight—just a man in a mine and the mine in the mind of the man—
He squatted. Spine against wall. Hardened rump barely brushing the floor. Forearms across knees. Hands dangling. Forehead against forearms.
Until a foot rattled his iron, and eventually he looked up.
The tanzeer was richly dressed in cloth-of-gold and crimson embroidery. He was a clean man, well-groomed; he was a man who took pride in appearances. In his right hand he carried a slim ivory wand, an ornamental baton, carved and knurled. A nacreous pearly-white.
A brief gesture with the wand. The guard hooked a foot into iron chain and rattled it, until the chained man looked up.
A second brief gesture with the wand. A torch was brought closer. Sulfurous yellow light spilled out of the flame to illuminate the face of the man looking at the tanzeer; the tanzeer saw a beast, not a man. A filthy, befouled, stinking beast, clad in a ragged suede dhoti. Worn down to nothing but skin and ropy sinew, stretched over a frame that might once have claimed a powerful, impressive grace. The face was mostly hidden in dusty hair and tangled, matted beard. But out of the face peered a pair of green eyes, squinting against the blinding torchlight.
“Stand him up,” the tanzeer ordered, and the guard jerked his head in such a way as the man knew well.
Rising, the chained man was tall, much taller than the tanzeer. But he didn’t stand in the attitude of a tall man comfortable with his height. He stood with shoulders hunched, as if it was difficult to bear their weight.
The tanzeer frowned. “It is the sword-dancer, isn’t it?” he asked the guard, who shrugged and said as far as he knew, it was the same man who had been brought in three months before.
The tanzeer hooked the tip of his wand under the clotted cord around the chained man’s neck. He rattled the clots and saw that yes, indeed, the clots—beneath their dirt—were really claws.
Satisified, he let the cord drop back against the man’s throat and nodded. “Take him off the wall. Double-weight him and put him in t
he wagon It’s time I hosted him in the palace once again.”
Before the woman, unguarded, the tanzeer showed off the man he had brought from the mine. He told the woman what had happened to the man in the mine; he watched her face, her eyes, her posture. He saw what he had always seen: dignity, strength, quiet pride and absolute insularity. In three months, he had not broken her.
But he had broken the man, and he thought it might be enough to break the woman.
He turned from her and faced the man who stank of his own excrescence. “To your knees,” and pointed to the floor with his ivory baton.
Slowly the man got down on knees that had been bruised so often they were permanently discolored. Blue-black, against faded copper skin mottled with dirt and chisel cuts; pocked with bits of ore and reef trapped beneath the top layer of his skin. The chains rang against one another and the tessellated floor, spilling around his knees like the entrails of an iron serpent.
The tanzeer looked at the woman. “He will do whatever he is told. Whatever he is told.”
The woman looked straight back at the tanzeer. Her disbelief was blatant.
The tanzeer gestured with his wand. “Down,” he said. “Face down.”
The kneeling man, once young, moved as an old man moves. Bent forward. Placed palms flat against the patterned stone. Sinews stood up beneath encrusted flesh.
He prostrated himself on the floor.
The tanzeer extended one slippered foot. “Kiss it. Kiss it—chula.”
And at last, the woman broke. With an inarticulate cry of rage she sprang at the tanzeer like a female sandtiger, one hand clawing for his face. The other one came down on his ornamental knife and jerked it free—
—jerking it as the man on the floor tore himself from the stone and twisted loops of iron chain around the tanzeer’s throat.
Lips drew back from his teeth. But instead of growling he spoke one word. A husky, broken word: “Keys.”
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