Transformation (13 page)
Authors: Carol Berg
“Certainly not. What kind of ignorant fool are you? His Highness awaits. I am required to clean up your droppings so that you may answer your summons.” The boy was most unhappy at his orders. His naturally sour disposition was likely not helped by the fact that I was more than a head taller than he. If he didn’t grow a bit more and get his braid soon, he would be relegated to life as an underling, working for someone like Fendular. I would be wise to stay clear of him.
I bowed and blotted my fingers on a scrap of paper, then raced through the Chamberlain’s luxurious workrooms and across a mournful courtyard of frozen fountains and leafless trees toward the Prince’s wing of the Summer Palace. I was halfway through the journey when I realized what was hurrying my steps. I was excited.
I stopped at the colonnade that would lead me into the living quarters of the palace, letting the bitter air on my scarred body and the ice under my bare feet force me to remember who I was and what I was and where I was. Nothing had changed. Nothing. After so long I could not allow myself to destroy the peace I had made with fate. Excitement meant hope. And there was no place for hope in my existence.
Assuming that “discreetly” meant that I was to enter through the private door, I found my way to the candle room, wondering if I was going to have to explain to the guard what I was doing at the door to the Prince’s bedchamber. But young Aldicar must have let the guard know to expect me, for the soldier jerked his head to the inner door the moment I appeared. I glimpsed an unclothed woman huddled on the floor beside the bed, weeping quietly, just before an iron hand gripped my arm and dragged me through the softly lit bedchamber to the outer apartment.
“Where is it?” Aleksander bellowed, shoving me into the middle of his outer chamber. He was wearing only a white silk loincloth. His long red hair was loose and flying wildly around his head. “Find the damned thing.”
I dropped to my knees. “As you command, Your Highness, but please tell me what am I to find?”
“The foul, enchanted ... whatever. How am I to know?”
I could have asked him the same question, but I didn’t think it wise.
“Find it or I’ll have your eyes for breakfast, sorcerer. I’ll not be the laughingstock of the Twenty Hegeds.”
I searched in all my experiences for the appropriate words for masters who were on the verge of violence, yet had not explained what they were upset about. Nothing I knew seemed to fit the case. Resigned to trouble, I tried again. “To know what to look for, I must know what kind of enchantment has been wrought, my lord. Or if you’ve been given something that is suspect, I—”
I was raised to my toes by a hand about my throat. “If one word ... one hint ... one breath of this gets out, you will die such deaths as no slave has ever suffered.”
“No word,” I squeezed out past his steel grip. “I swear it.”
He shoved me away and turned his back. “I cannot ... since the other ... since I could sleep.... The first night I had to sleep. Didn’t try. The next we were interrupted by the messenger and I sent her away. I thought it was just taking longer than usual because I was distracted. But two nights more ... I had to pretend I found the lady unsatisfactory ... and so tonight I sent for Chione, a slave who always pleases me. I thought, to be sure ...”
All became instantly clear. I knew better than to relax or yield to the laughter that came unbidden. The danger was very real. To the Derzhi, failure at such matters was unthinkable, no less a defeat than one on the battlefield.
“Has the Khelid brought you more gifts, my lord?” It was highly unlikely to be an artifact, as before. It was, in fact, highly unlikely to be an enchantment. The matter in question was notoriously unpredictable, and thus rarely an effective target for spellmaking. But that was an answer Aleksander wasn’t going to like.
“No. Korelyi’s gone off to Parnifour to visit his kinsman. And you’ve not convinced me he’s the one doing it anyway. Look for it, as you did before.”
“Of course.” And so I did. As I expected, I found nothing save the wretched slave girl, quivering in terror that she had displeased the Prince.
I had to tell him something. There were so many reasons such a thing could happen, even to a quite virile, apparently healthy young man, but if I wanted to retain all my own body parts, I needed a good answer. “There is no enchanted artifact here in your apartments, but this kind of thing is often passed by food. Have you eaten anything unusual of late?”
“Nothing. But I’ll burn the kitchens. I’ll kill them all—”
I raised my hands and shook my head vigorously. “That won’t be necessary. There is only one way that I know to take care of it. You must refrain from taking in any more of the poison. Perhaps ... the ephrail. Derzhi warriors cleanse themselves by the ephrail once a year, do they not, my lord?”
“What of it?”
“Perhaps it is time for you to do so. It would purge any poison from your body—as it is designed to do.” And it would keep women out of his bed for a week and allow him to catch up on his sleep. It seemed my best chance at hitting the mark of whatever ailed him.
“Ephrail,” he said thoughtfully. “It has been quite a while. And it would rid me of this?”
“I cannot say what enchantment is tormenting you this time, but if someone has tainted your food, then there is no surer way to make them give it up. Such a spell cannot affect you if you separate yourself from the source.”
“I’ll consider it.” He cocked his head to one side. “Before he left the city, the Khelid emissary Korelyi offered me a sleeping potion. He had heard that I was not sleeping well. I refused it and said I was sleeping like a bear in winter. He spent that entire evening’s conversation talking of it, trying to find out what remedy I had used. Said he once trained as a physician himself and still collected remedies when he traveled to new places. At the end of it all, he asked who was my adviser on such matters. I thought that a curious question ... especially as you had predicted it.”
“And what did you tell him?” I could not fail to ask, as the sudden pounding in my chest required easing.
“I said I had taken no one’s advice since I left the nursery.”
Some nine days later, at the ceremony marking the end of the Dar Heged, I watched as a slightly leaner, clear-eyed Prince Aleksander raised a tall young woman with pale gold hair from her obeisance and allowed his hand to wander from her elbow to her breast. From his look and her unblushing smile, I had no further anxiety about my remedy, only the usual discomfort I got after satisfying the unseemly wishes of a Derzhi. But Aleksander would have what he desired, so I had to take meager satisfaction that at least no slave girl would suffer because he could not do as he pleased.
Though the Khelid was away, echoes of demon music lingered in my ears like the odor of distant death on a summer wind.
Chapter 9
Involvement in such matters as Aleksander’s bedchamber difficulties does nothing to help a celibate Ezzarian suppress unwilling and uncomfortable fantasies. Though I maintained sufficient self-discipline in the daytime, and I still managed to keep more serious dreams at bay when sleeping, unwanted visions did creep into my nights. It was in the midst of such a dream that Durgan roused me late one night just after the end of the Dar Heged. “Ezzarian, up with you.”
“Does the Prince do no business during the daylight?” I snapped, before my tongue was awake enough to keep better counsel. Guilt battled with a ferocious desire to follow my interrupted dreamland liaison to its consummation.
“It is not the Prince who summons you, but myself.”
I sat up—always somewhat awkward when one’s wrists are attached to a wall with short lengths of chain—and forced my uneasy urges aside so I could pay attention. “What is it, Master Durgan?”
“We have ten new slaves brought in from tax levies, and one of them is headed for trouble. I thought perhaps it would make things easier for all if you were to have a word with him.”
I was fully awake by this time, ready to spit at the burly man crouching beside me. There were slaves who spied on other slaves, who reported infractions or intemperate speech. There were slaves who lashed or branded others, or wielded the power of food and drink, thinking to raise their own pitiful status above the rest of us. Had I not considered us all half-mad from bondage, I would have throttled any of them cheerfully. I knew the limits of my existence, and I stayed within them. But if Durgan had mistaken my compliance for a willingness to be his surrogate, to buy his favor by becoming his ally, then I needed to set him straight. “Ah, no, Master Durgan. I’m not one you can trust to do such bidding. I’d not be good at it.”
“Faugh! It’s not what you’re thinking. This one will be dead within a day if you can’t make him come to his senses. Come on.” He unlocked my wrists and led me to the trapdoor of the underground cell. He shoved a small lantern into my hand, then unlocked the door and dropped his ladder down. His voice fell to a whisper. “If you think it worthy to save a life, even a life in bondage, then go down. Knock twice when you’re ready to come out.”
My curiosity was certainly roused. If Durgan wanted to confine me in his dungeon, it was hardly necessary to trick me into it. He could throw me down there any time. But his creeping about in the night seemed to say that he didn’t want his assistants or other slaves to know of these dealings. So I descended the ladder and held up the lantern.
He was no more than sixteen, huddled in the corner, shivering with cold and exhaustion. His skin was bronze, his shorn hair black, as were his wide-set, slightly angled eyes, grown huge with terror and pain and anger. His unscarred back was marked with a few streaks of blood, and the crossed circle burned into his shoulder was still swollen and angry.
“Tienoch havedd,”
I said softly. Greetings of my heart. It was a very personal greeting. Inappropriate for a stranger. But the boy could be no stranger. He could be no one but myself, sixteen years in the past. He was Ezzarian.
I said softly. Greetings of my heart. It was a very personal greeting. Inappropriate for a stranger. But the boy could be no stranger. He could be no one but myself, sixteen years in the past. He was Ezzarian.
All the work I had done to forget my own first days of horror was unraveled in a moment’s glance. A Luthen mirror, reflecting evil back upon itself, could be no more destructive than was the sight of that young man to my inner defenses. In an instant I lived again the degradation of being paraded unclothed before strangers, the humiliation as they touched and probed and joked of things they had no right, the torment of the Rites of Balthar, the pain as they destroyed faith, hope, ideals, honor. And well I remembered my determination that I would die rather than exist in such a way.
“Would that I could ease your pain,” I said. Such futile, useless words. “Would that I could give back what has been taken from you or, at the least, share all I’ve learned that might help you take another breath.”
An untouched cup of water and a fist-sized chunk of bread lay beside him. He had probably neither eaten nor drunk for some days.
I sat down in the straw facing him. “You need to drink. It’s no use waiting for water you believe is clean. You won’t get it.”
“Gaened da,”
he whispered, his anger and disgust made childish by his chattering teeth.
he whispered, his anger and disgust made childish by his chattering teeth.
“I know I am unclean. I have been from the first day I was taken. As have you.”
He shook his head in denial.
“It’s not your fault. Never think it. I know what our people say about those of us taken captive, but there is nothing ... nothing ... you could have done to deserve what’s happened to you.”
“M ... must have done.”
“You don’t believe me now, but you’ll come to see it, if you give yourself the time.”
I wanted to pour all of it into him, to make him see, but I knew that was not yet possible. All I could do was get him past the moment.
I closed my eyes and pressed a clenched fist to my breast.
“Lys na Seyonne,”
I said, giving him an Ezzarian’s ultimate gift of trust and kinship. “I beg you listen to what I say. You have only one choice left to you. Live or die. There is no going back, no bargaining with fate. I wish I could tell you otherwise. Live or die. It comes down to that. And what does Verdonne teach us of such a choice?”
“Lys na Seyonne,”
I said, giving him an Ezzarian’s ultimate gift of trust and kinship. “I beg you listen to what I say. You have only one choice left to you. Live or die. There is no going back, no bargaining with fate. I wish I could tell you otherwise. Live or die. It comes down to that. And what does Verdonne teach us of such a choice?”
I waited for him to say it. It would not take long. The passion for life is so strong in a youth of sixteen ... even when faced with horror and ruin.
“Live.” He closed his eyes and tears ran freely down his bruised face.
I was cheating. He still believed in gods that might have an interest in what he did. Perhaps by the time he learned the truth, living—even living in bondage—would become a habit he was unwilling to break. I gave him some time, then I placed the cup of water in his hand.
“Only a sip now,” I said, easing the cup away before he drained it all at once. “It will carry you through a whole day if you let it. Do you have any injuries save the lashing and the burns?” The branding was bad enough, but the smiths were never careful when closing the steel rings about ankles and wrists.
He shook his head. “They said I would be kept down here until I died. Why did they send you?” Suspicion croaked out with his question.
He was already learning what he would need. I laughed a bit. “Durgan’s let me come because you are valuable alive and worthless dead, and it makes his employers most unhappy to have valuable slaves turn into worthless ones. If you refuse food and drink, they’ll force it down you. If you run, they’ll beat you or brand you on the face—much worse than this on mine—and they’ll cut off one of your feet. A crippled slave can still work. They won’t kill you, no matter how you provoke them. They’ll only do that when they’ve damaged you beyond use ... and that’s a very long way. Durgan, unlike many slave masters, doesn’t like all that mess.” I was frightening him worse than ever, but it was necessary. “Durgan also understands something of Ezzarians, but you mustn’t presume on it.”
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