by Carol Berg
The week of idleness was almost unbearable. The demands in my head to live and to learn became so insistent that every voice made me start. I paced my cell, unable to rest and unable to eat. I forced down the graybread and water and commanded myself to sleep, for I dared not lose my edge. Yet when I dropped off, strange dreams plagued me, of rooms and faces I didn’t know, of horrors that made me wake up screaming, of words that made me weep though I couldn’t capture them on waking. The surgeon examined my wound and said it was healing as expected, but I had best get some sleep or all his work would go for nothing.
I slapped the back of my hand against my mouth. “Speak,” he said.
“Can you give me something to make me sleep? So I won’t dream?” My own voice sounded harsh and alien to me. I had gone weeks without speech.
Gorag, the Zhid surgeon, poked around in his leather case and came up with a blue vial. “Perhaps this will help.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I shouldn’t give it to you, but I have a wager with Cinnegar that you’ll make it past half a year. I don’t like to lose.” He poured the contents down my throat and called the handler. I slept for two days straight and had no dreams at all. When he examined my shoulder and pronounced it fit, I asked permission to speak again. He shook his head. “Better not. Just stay alive two more months.”
I managed it. I fought and trained like a madman, as indeed I began to believe I was. Gorag’s blue vial had only caused a temporary suspension of my strange malady. I considered asking him for more of it, but I couldn’t afford to be drowsy either. The only way to sleep was to work myself to exhaustion. So even after a full day of training with a Zhid warrior, I would run in place or do some other exercise until I dropped to the straw like a dead man.
On the day I had been in the stable six months, I killed my seventh Zhid. Nincas was a murderously cruel villain, who tortured his servants and slaves to death for the pleasure of it. I enjoyed killing him. We battled for half a day in a series of timed bouts. A bull of a man, he was not about to yield to a slave as long as there were any onlookers, and Gorag had gathered at least a hundred of them to witness the winning of his bet. I could think of nothing but death that day, and when at last I pulled my sword from his belly, I stabbed it in again and again and again, until my arms were covered in blood and I could no longer lift my weapon. I fell to my knees on the hot desert floor and began to laugh, but there was no joy in it. I could not remember joy. . . .
“V’Saro!” Hands slapped my cheeks. “V’Saro, wake up!” Straw poked at my cheek. I couldn’t remember being taken to my cell. I was achy and dull and smelled like death. “Here, have a drink.” My waterskin was thrust into my hands. I drained it and then promptly heaved the water up again. “Come, V’Saro. You’ve made me a rich man, and for that I will do you a favor. A risky matter. No one is supposed to talk to you until you’ve been interrogated.”
Gorag. He had helped me sleep. I slapped the back of my hand to my mouth.
“Yes, yes, speak.”
“Go drown yourself in your cursed water.”
“You’re raving. No one has ever seen such a match as you fought today. The slavemaster comes. He’s heard of your feat . . . and also of how you finished it.” The wiry little surgeon gestured in disgust at the dark blood that covered my arms and crusted my stiff tunic. “If you want to live, then you’d best gather your wits.”
My existence had no relation to life. I could not feel life any more—thanks to the collar. But I had to keep breathing. There was purpose to my existence. I was not alone. “How much could you win if I make it a year?”
“Not enough to make me a Lord of Zhev’Na, but perhaps enough that I could get out of this blasted camp.”
He stuffed a lump of graybread in my hands. “Eat, and clean yourself. They talk of sending you to Zhev’Na, where the elite of our commanders are trained. But they’ll not send you if they think you’re mad. They won’t allow a madman to live with such strength and skill as yours. Do you understand?”
I grunted.
Gorag slipped out of the cell and locked it quietly, then scurried away in the dark. After a while, I banged on the bars, and the smirking guard came.
“Speak,” he said, to my gesture. “Unless you are going to tell me about some whining slave who needs a nursemaid.”
“I want to wash.”
“Do you now?”
“I have an early match tomorrow with the protégé of Gensei Senat. I’ll sleep better if I’m clean, and it will save you trouble in the morning. Perhaps you’ll want to bet on my victory.”
He shrugged his shoulders and let me out. Likely a small share of Gorag’s winnings prompted his generosity. He sat on the half-wall and watched while I stripped and washed in the slimy sink. I rinsed the blood from my tunic, wrung it out, and hung it on the bars of my cell to dry, and then I pulled straw over me to keep out the chill.
That night I dreamed of a house in a great city, a graceful house whose owner clearly valued the refinements of art and music and literature. A silver flute lay on a music stand, awaiting its player, and books and manuscripts touching every aspect of history and nature and philosophy were poised to enlighten an intelligent eye. The library opened onto a small garden, its soft, sweet air touched with the scent of roses. I wandered through the softly lit passageways looking for someone, though I did not know who. No one was there. Only emptiness. Only sorrow.
The slavemaster woke me to the broiling stench of the slave pen and laid me under compulsions for questioning. It took him an hour to conclude that I was not mad; then he touched my collar to teach me my place and sent me to Zhev’Na.
CHAPTER 33
Seri
For unending days and weeks I ate and slept and stitched, refusing every intrusion of thought or sense until I could scarcely distinguish myself from my companions. Every so often my nagging conscience reminded me that I had purpose to my life, that people were depending on me. But impossibility and drudgery quickly stifled such uncomfortable ideas. I went for days on end without registering a single memorable word or incident or giving the least passing remembrance to my son or my friends or the perilous state of the world. My cherished hope that Karon yet existed somewhere in this world withered and died. He never would have abandoned me in this place.
The morning one of the sewing women was found dead on her pallet was the nadir. Gam had died in her sleep, and only when Kargetha asked where was our eighth did anyone think to mention it. Her body was dragged off by a slave to be stripped and burned. No sign of her remained when we returned to the dormitory that night. She had been a gregarious person as the sewing women went, and not unkind, but she was forgotten as quickly as the breakfast gruel. When I asked the others how long she had sewn in Zhev’Na, they only shrugged and went back to work.
My blood stirred. No one should finish her life in such a fashion. I had come close to it myself, in my days in Dunfarrie, when I believed I had lost everything, and habit was the only reason I could find to get up every morning. That time a mute, desperate stranger had collapsed at my feet, forcing me to re-engage with the world. Gam’s desolate passing pricked me awake before I had to make that long journey all over again. If I was going to die, then it might as well be to some purpose. And so, the next time Kargetha told Zoe to send someone to the Gray House, rather than staying quiet and sullen as the others did, I spoke up.
“I think Zoe should go.” The sewing women gaped at me in shock. I shifted on my feet and used my sleeve to wipe the sweat tickling my brow. “She always sends the rest of us, and never goes herself. ‘Tisn’t right. Dia got kicked last week, and Lun got beat bad when she dropped her basket in the Lords’ house, even though she was run into by a Worship. But Zoe never gets in trouble because she never goes nowhere.”
“What is your name?” asked Kargetha, staring. Incredulous.
“Eda, your Worship.” I cast my eyes down.
“Ah, yes. Eda. The one who talks too much. I think perhaps you have talked too m
uch once again. From now on you will make all deliveries from this group and fetch all the thread, leather, and cloth from the warehouses. Do you hear me?”
“But your Worship—”
“One more word and I will compel you to silence for a year.” The finger pointing at my ear tag was thin and knotted like an oak twig.
I dipped my knee and covered my face with my hands, so she couldn’t see my relief . . . and satisfaction.
Glowering and mumbling, I made three or four trips a day—hot, dusty journeys, carrying heavy loads, subject to the abusive whims of Zhid warriors and administrators. On the fourth day I was sent to the kitchens of the Gray House.
I dropped my scratchy load of storage bags in the wooden bin where the kitchen Drudge directed me. After rolling each bag individually and stacking them as I was told, I wandered across the hot kitchen. The Drudge woman was stirring a kettle of thin, yellowish soup that smelled of cabbage, while another woman was tossing chunks of onion into it.
I sniffed at their kettle. “Are you making this for the young Lord?” I asked. “I never thought one so high-placed would eat the same as us.”
The toothless woman stirring the pot glanced at me as if I had asked if she lived on the moon. “The young Lord gets only what is fit for Worships, not Drudge’s food. And he ben’t here to eat nothing.”
“I heard he come back here two days ago,” I said. No one was ever amazed at ignorance.
“Someone told you wrong, girl. He’s gone off with the Worships long ago.” The second woman blotted her oily face with her apron and began to knead a pile of sticky, gray dough.
I picked up a scrap of onion from the floor and nibbled at it. “Where do they go? When folks left my work camp, none of ’em ever came back. Nobody ever told me where folks go when they disappear.”
“Are you an idiot, child? Have you not heard of the war camps in the desert? All Worships go there, and so this young Lord has done. Drudges go wherever they’re sent as what our masters think best. No use to task your thick head on it.”
“I am so ignorant. I never thought a Lord, one so favored and so young, would go to the desert camps. I thought that was for the lesser of the Worships. But I guess the young one was not so favored if he had to leave this fine house and go there. Did he do something to offend the mighty Lords?”
“Such is Lords’ business, not servants. Why ever would you care?”
“I’m just new here, and . . . I shouldn’t say it”—I dropped my voice low—“I am so afraid of the Lords and those who wear their mark. We heard such fearful tales in my work camp. I thought that if the young Lord who wore their jewels was not to be here ever again, then I wouldn’t be so afraid to come to the Gray House when I was told.”
“It’s proper to be afraid of those higher,” said the woman stirring the pot. “I don’t know if the young Lord will come back from the camps, but he may. No one can predict the ways of the Worships.”
A Zhid supervisor entered and shooed me back to the sewing rooms.
To discover a way to follow Gerick to the desert camps was a daunting prospect. I had heard mention of at least twenty different headquarters—which might be only a small part of the truth or much more than the truth—and I had no idea to which one he’d gone. The only source of information that came to mind was the slave Sefaro, the chamberlain of the Gray House.
Unfortunately, trips to the Gray House were a rarity. Most of my errands were to the guard barracks, delivering tunics and leggings and other apparel for the common Zhid warriors who lived in the fortress. Other ventures took me to the tanners and leatherworkers, to the spinners to get thread, or to the weavers for heavy rolls of cloth. On rare occasion Kargetha would send bundles of rags or gray tunics to the grim and wretched slave pens beyond the barracks and the forge. A few times I was sent into the Lords’ house. No matter how bright the sun blazed, within those dark walls the light was always like the hour before dawn, when only the barest hint of color had begun to emerge from black and gray. The air felt too thick to breathe.
After weeks of frustration, I was at last sent to the Gray House with instructions to seek out Sefaro. I found him alone in his storeroom, sitting at the plain wooden table and working at his ledger. He seemed preoccupied, giving me only a cursory nod, rather than his usual smile. “Her Worship Kargetha understands there be needs in the Gray House.” I gave him Kargetha’s token that permitted him to speak.
Sefaro sighed and fingered the small wooden disk. “The banners. We need the banners to be made.”
“The young Lord’s banners?” A flush of waking life rippled across my skin.
“He returns in a sevenday, and we’re to have the new banners hung for his arrival. I’ll show you the device which must be placed on them.” The chamberlain’s hand trembled as he pulled out paper and pen and began to sketch.
“Are you not well, Sefaro?” I said, my soaring spirits restrained only by concern for the kind slave.
He shook his head and continued his drawing, gripping his pen as if it were a dagger.
I had come prepared to scatter my questions like seeds in a garden, carefully harvesting the things I needed to know. But Sefaro’s disturbance hinted that this was not a day for subtleties. So, I took a step of faith. “Of all those I’ve observed in this place, Sefaro, you’re the only one who’s seemed immune to its terrors. What’s changed?”
His hand slowed, and, after a moment, he looked up from his drawing. “Who are you, Eda?” His voice was very quiet. “Each time I’ve met you, I’ve wondered at it, only to call myself a fool in the next breath. What Drudge would ever think to tell me of an injured child? And now . . .”
I sat down in the wooden chair opposite him, and spoke in a whisper. “Who I am is no matter. But I know of the Way, and I grieve to see those who so embrace life held captive in this fortress of death.”
His crinkled eyes grew wide. “Heaven’s fire . . . what Drudge knows of the Way?”
“Just say I have more curiosity than is usual in Ce Uroth. Is there something about the young Lord’s return that troubles you? Does he use you cruelly?”
“He is not cruel. At least, before this sojourn in the desert, he was not. Thoughtless, sometimes. He is very young, though he tries to be otherwise. But three of his teachers—all high-ranking Zhid—have been slain this day. And I’ve been told to complete my inventory and my accounts before he returns. It’s unsettling. Most likely nothing.” His gray complexion told his belief more truly.
“Do you think they plan to kill you, too?”
“Death has no fear for me. If you know so much of Dar’Nethi, then you know that L’Tiere holds no fear for those of us forced to live without the Way. No, it is for my people I fear. For Avonar. For the Bridge and the worlds.”
“Why?”
“Because of this.” He turned his sketch where I could see it. Two rampant lions supporting an arch, a device very like the shield of D’Arnath. But the arch was missing its center span, and in the gap was a four-headed beast engulfed in flame. In one clawed hand the beast held a sword, and in the other it crushed the two stars that had once been suspended over D’Arnath’s Bridge.
“This is a fearsome device.”
“If something isn’t done, the young Lord will carry it on his shield. He wears the jewels of the Lords, and all they teach him is evil. Though I cannot fathom how it is possible, I’ve heard he is to be D’Arnath’s Heir.”
“That’s true.”
“Hand of Vasrin.” Sefaro’s shoulders slumped as if I had dropped the sky on them. “He must be turned from this path.” The chamberlain glanced up abruptly. Sharply curious. “Is that why you’re here, Eda? Can you turn him?”
“I don’t know. If I were closer to him . . . perhaps . . .”
“I can arrange it, if you wish.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I am to make a list of all the house slaves and Drudges that serve here, and a list of possible replacements for each one, inc
luding myself. I could put your name on the list as a kitchen servant or a scrub. We have no need for sewing women in the Gray House, but such transfers aren’t out of the ordinary. I could put several of the sewing women on the list. Someone will just think it’s a mistake, but it wouldn’t be worth remedy. No one would believe for a moment that a Drudge would have any reason for preferring one station to another.”
“If you could do such a thing, it might mean more than you know.”
“I must not know anything.” A sweet smile illuminated his face. “Would that I could. But I will bury this gift of your trust like a squirrel buries an acorn in autumn and take my pleasure contemplating it through whatever is to come.” He gave me his sketch and the rolls of black and gray silk. “Ten of them. In the sizes I’ve written here. To be ready in a week.”
“Be easy, Sefaro,” I said. “May the Light shine on your Way.”
He smiled and returned the wooden token into my hand.
A week later, when I was sent to the Gray House to deliver the banners and take up my new assignment, a different slave sat on the chamberlain’s stool, and I had no token with which to allow him to speak.
CHAPTER 34
Gerick
It was sometime after my return from the desert that I first ran across the Leiran boy. I had been out riding with my new riding master, a nasty Zhid warrior named Fengara. She made Murn look as kind as the old housekeeper at Comigor. On that particular day, she had slaves set fires with some of the dry thorn bushes that passed for vegetation in Ce Uroth, and I had to make my horse carry me between them.
Zigget was the worst-tempered horse I had ever ridden, and at the first sight of the flaming barriers he went wild, rearing and kicking until I thought my arms might get pulled from their sockets before I had him through the first pair. He repaid my efforts by throwing me on the ground after every pass, snorting and threatening to trample me. Fengara was no help. She ridiculed me for my lack of riding skill and my inability to control the horse with my power. But nothing worked, no matter what I tried, words or whips or sorcery.