Guardians Of The Keep

CHAPTER 31

V’Saro

My feet were the worst, blistered and cracked and raw. Every step was its own battle. First the stomach clenched in apprehension, and the spirit steeled itself for the violence to come. Next, the waves of blistering heat that poured off the oven of the desert sniped at the skin like the initial forays of the enemy. And last came the assault itself, as raw flesh met salt-crusted sand and wind-scoured rock, heated to broiling by the fireball of the sun.

I longed for my boots. Who would expect that a man’s life could be reduced to the consideration of a single step and an unbridled lust for a ten-year-old pair of scuffed boots? They had been fine boots, coaxed into such softness and perfect shape that my foot settled into them like an egg in a nest. I had given B’Dallo’s pimpled son B’Isander three fencing lessons in exchange for them. It was a fine bargain for B’Dallo, as my fee was usually higher, but good bootmakers had become rarer than good swordmasters in the last years of the war.

The last years of the war… We’d thought it was over when Prince D’Natheil returned to Avonar after his victory at the Exiles’ Gate. Our troops-never truly an army, only sorcerers of every profession converted to soldiers-dispersed. We came out of hiding and believed we could take up where our families had left off hundreds of years ago. Fools like me said that those of us born in Sen Ystar could go back and rebuild a life in our long-abandoned village, lay down a path of beauty for our children to walk-or perhaps meet a fair Dar’Nethi woman with whom to lay down a path of beautiful children. But we learned our mistake, and so some hollow-eyed devil of a Zhid was wearing my magnificent boots, while I… I had to take another step.

We in Sen Ystar had heard nothing of renewed attacks by the Zhid and had gone about our business that day with hope and joy. Fen’Lyro, the miller, had called a Builder to reconstruct his wheel, and we had all been drawn to watch by the beauty of the Builder’s voice. He sang the spokes and shanks into place, completing the perfection of the wheel with a burst of melody that drew sighs from several village girls who knew the Builder had no wife. Girls did not swoon over swordmasters.

My art would die away with peace. Though I rejoiced with everyone else at the happy results of Prince D’Natheil’s journey, I’d not yet come to terms with that. I had thought of taking a mentor for smithing, but what I loved about swords was not the metal. I had no knack for smithing anyway. I couldn’t sharpen a nail without three files, nor once done, persuade it to stay that way. It was not even the art of swordsmanship I cared for-the grace and strength so smoothly joined-but more the logical puzzle of it. Move, countermove, thrust, parry. What were the myriad possibilities, and what was the remedy for each, all perceived and analyzed in a heartbeat. No formless metal could provide the challenge that did an opponent’s mind and body.

So what good had my art done me when the Seeking of the Zhid crept through the streets of Sen Ystar? The icy fingers of the Zhid took one of us and then another as we so blithely celebrated the beauty of Fen’Lyro’s mill wheel. The food and wine were probably still there, abandoned on the long tables set out on the snow-dusted grass…

No, best not to think of food or wine. In a single day we captives were given one fist-sized lump of bread, gray and unhealthy-looking, and two cups of water, doled out two mouthfuls at a time. And how many of those days had there been? Six… seven… eight…

Few villagers were left by the time we were herded through the portal into the Wastes and chained to the dolorous column of captives. It was, perhaps, not a good day to be a proficient warrior. Surely the life of the dead in L’Tiere would be better than the endless desert, and with every painful step I envied those who had found their way beyond the Verges… so many that I knew. One of the last to fall was B’Isander, who had learned well from my three fencing lessons so many years ago.

But no Dar’Nethi grieves for long. He takes in what is told by time and makes it part of him, and then goes on… another step along the Way, no matter how bitter. Aarrgh… The sand cuts like glass.

At least I had my mind still, no small matter when dealing with the Zhid. Luca the Singer, M’Aritze the Word Winder, and Bas’Tel the Smith-they were made Zhid- and they, and others who met the same fate, helped to round up the rest of us to be taken into the Wastes. No one knew for certain how the Zhid chose those who were to become like them, and those who would be only slaves. Some said it was the level of power one had attained. Perhaps that was true, for I was a slave, whereas the Builder had become Zhid and cut Fen’Lyro’s throat, for whom he had spent all day singing a wheel.

“On your feet, slave,” snarled a voice in my ear, and the inevitable lash followed, temporarily removing any thought of my feet. I wasn’t even aware I had fallen. I managed to get up before my neck-chain played out its length, no easy matter when one’s wrists are bound so tightly. I had seen two or three who had been dragged along so far by the slow-moving column that they were not recognizable as men by the time they were cut loose. I had always considered myself exceptionally strong and enduring, but after the fall I began to wonder if I, too, would be left for the vultures like so many of our number. We had started out a hundred and fifty, mostly men, a few sturdy women of middle years, but had lost at least eighteen. The women did better, a sobering thought for one who believed himself possessed of few “woman’s frailties.”

Another few hours and I could no longer summon a rational thought. On the horizon loomed a fortress, tall and severe and so very dark, even in the harsh desert glare.

The mere sight of it engulfed my spirit in such sorrow and desolation that I groaned aloud. I didn’t notice the lash this time, for the unnamable pain inside was far, far worse.

Before too long the sun had settled onto the western horizon, and the column started to slow and the prisoners to draw close to each other to capture the heat before all of it was sucked into the frigid night. Our captors usually allowed us to do so, but not this time. “Spread out. Full speed. We’re due in the pens by midnight. No rests and no slowing.”

It was probably as well. I didn’t know whether or not I could survive another freezing night in the open, only to face another blistering sunrise.

Two more dead men were cut from the chain before we arrived at the top of a low rise and could look down upon the army of the Lords. Those of us who remained living and able to comprehend what our eyes rested on gazed with awe upon the magnitude of our enemies, a dark mass sprawled across the desert all the way to the horizon. For twenty years I had fought upon the walls of Avonar and complained with my fellows about the endless waves of the Zhid. But never had I considered my words to be the literal truth.

We were marched straight through the crowded encampment, the mass of tents and campfires and faces forming a blurred chain of light and dark, strung together with hatred. You could feel it from every side, colder than the night wind that billowed the canvas tents and swirled ashes and sand into our burning, crusted eyes. They gathered along the track as we passed, silent except for the low hiss that we who had fought the Zhid for so long knew as the sign of their contempt.

“Don’t listen. Don’t let it inside you,” I whispered, first to myself, and then to the youth chained beside me. Even under his sun-reddened skin he was pale, and his cracked and blistered lips quivered. It took a person years of seasoning to slough off the hiss of the Zhid. “Put one foot in front of the other.”

The end of our bitter road loomed before us, a fence of black iron rods, the upright bars spaced no more than two finger-widths apart-no, not a fence, but a cage, for the bars extended up and over the top. No doubt the cross-pieces that glinted in the torchlight were the same silvery metal as our chains. Dolemar it was called, the sorcerer’s binding, for it prevented any use of magical power. Some said that if a man was bound by dolemar for too long he would go mad, just from the excess of power that built up in him, impossible to spend. A Dar’Nethi could no more stop taking in the experiences of life and building his power than he could stop taking in air, so perhaps it was true. Such was our Way.

As we approached the fence, a gate swung open. Each prisoner was detached from the column, then herded into the brightly lit enclosure that was just too low to allow a tall man to stand up straight. The cage would not be pleasant in the heat of desert daylight, but I supposed that “pleasant” would have to be banished from my vocabulary, or redefined to mean such sensations as sinking onto the straw-covered ground and letting burning, grit-filled eyelids shut out the horror.

Our respite did not last long. Torchlight and voices dragged me back to the cold night from wherever a moment’s dreams had taken me.

“Are they ready inside, then? We push to make the deadline, only to have them not even ready. Burns me, it does.” That was one of our guards, a squat Zhid with a narrow head.

“Shut up, and get this lot sorted. We’ve got to get ‘em collared before the slavemaster comes.”

“He’ll be shiv’d when he sees the poor take. Only a few likelies for the practice pens. A few for house duty. The rest’ll be for the mines and the farms.”

“Just get them inside and secured. Makes me twitchy just having them caged and not collared.”

Using elbows and my bound hands, I forced my aching bones to sit up and lean against the bars, and immediately wished I hadn’t. The bars were cold, and my back was so raw from sunburn and lashing that it felt like being speared with icicles. My expletive woke the youth who had been chained beside me for eight days and had seen fit to curl up to sleep on my legs.

“What’s happening?” said the boy, who must have been somewhere near sixteen, though I was sure he’d aged a lifetime in the past days.

“No idea. They’ve uses for us. If we’re not dead and have half a mind left, then there’s hope.”

The boy shivered and shook his head. I wasn’t sure I believed it either.

“Wake, pigs,” screamed a guard. “If you want to feed your worthless faces or wet your foul tongues, then you need to line up by the door in the far wall. One at a time.”

In the early days of our march I had witnessed struggles to get free, desperate attempts to muster power enough to break the bindings, to sharpen a stick for a weapon, to lure a stone into a hand. Once, on the first night, I had believed that someone was trying to speak in my mind with images of such beauty and hope that I lay awake, awaiting the rescuers that I was sure would fall upon our captors. Two days in the desert had ended all such futile endeavors and empty visions. Then came pleas for help, for Healers, for water, and prayers begging courage and strength. Two more days had silenced us all.

As we dragged ourselves to the back wall of the cage where a steel door opened into a dark, low building, the only sounds were the clank of chains and the soft weeping of those who could not rise. We tried to help them, but at the door any who couldn’t walk on their own were shoved back into the cage. My youthful comrade was among those left behind. He huddled in the corner. Shivering. Terrified.

I called back to him. “It is a wonder, is it not?” It was the tag end of an old Dar’Nethi joke. We who tried to see wonder in everything-sometimes even we were confounded by the paths of life.

Slowly a grin suffused the boy’s face, banishing fear and revealing a luminous spirit. “All of it,” he croaked, through his cracked and bleeding lips. “I’ll see you beyond the Verges.”

Several of the others left behind took up the refrain. “A wonder… beyond the Verges…” I saw handclasps and a few kisses and even heard laughter gracing the grim night.

Ah, holy Vasrin, I thought. From what marvelous matter have you shaped us?

The steel door gaped in front of me, and I was pulled through in my turn. While one guard checked the bonds on my wrists and hooked a short chain to my neck ring, a second man hobbled my ankles with a length of rope. The state of my feet would have prevented me running far, but I had contemplated a few of my favorite leg-holds when I glimpsed only two guards. Too bad.

As they led me stumbling through the dark passage toward a faint yellow light and the sound of splashing water, from somewhere deep in the dark place came a cry that chilled whatever mote of resilience still lurked in my soul. What, in the name of all that lives, could cause a man to make that sound?

Turn inward for protection… stay deep… let it pass. Nauseated, horrified, I didn’t even understand my own thoughts.

The passage made a sharp bend. Torches burned beyond an open doorway. As I was still squinting from the brightness, my guard led me to a wooden bench facing a bare stone wall. “Sit here and don’t move.”

Sitting still was not so simple a matter, as someone standing behind me took a knife to my head and began hacking off my hair in great chunks. But I did my best. When an unfriendly someone has a knife that close to eyes and ears and such appendages, it’s best to behave.

“Ready for the next one!” The call came from beyond another door.

“This one’s proper nasty,” said the guard, dragging me off the bench by the neck-chain. My hobbled ankles almost had me on my face in the piles of hair on the floor. “Going to dance for us, Dar’Nethi?”

A retort bubbled to my lips. No. Turn inward… stay deep… whatever you would say would only be an excuse for something you’d rather not experience. Save the wit for someone who’ll appreciate it.

The next bare room, small and square, had damp walls and a stone floor that sloped into a drain trench. The guards hitched my hands to an iron hook above my head. Then, they ripped off what was left of my clothes and a fair portion of skin where blood had dried and stuck them to me. Though I half expected it, I could not keep silent when a pail of icy water was thrown over me from behind. “Vasrin’s hand!”

“Come now, slave, you want to be nice and clean for the slavemaster, don’t you?”

They used a brush or a mop or some such contrivance to swab me down, then sluiced me off with another pail of water. Naked and shivering, I almost jumped a handspan off the ground when someone began to poke and prod my back and limbs. A helpless, horrid feeling. He moved around in front of me, a short, tidy Zhid whose eyes made my skin shrivel when he looked at my face. Pulling a length of cord from several that hung from a ring on his belt, the tidy man wrapped it snugly about my neck. I jerked backward, trying to calm myself with the thought that it had been awfully stupid to go to the trouble of washing me if I were going to be throttled. Indeed he removed it right away, paying no heed to my jumpiness.

“Give this to Dujene,” he said, scoring the cord with a small knife and handing it to one of my guards. “You seem to be a fine specimen.”

I presumed the last was to me, but I wasn’t used to making pleasant conversation with a hostile stranger who had free access to all of my vital parts.

“What is your name? And don’t be stupid. We’ll know if you lie.”

“V’Saro of Sen Ystar.”

“Age?”

“Forty-three.”

“Profession?”

“Swordmaster.”

“Indeed? And your true talent?”

“Minor Horsemaster. No time for anything else.” Stupid to think I had to apologize for my lack of talent to a cursed Zhid.

His pale eyes and his thick hands continued to inspect and examine me. “Too bad your true talents are insufficient to make you a warrior. Your physical construction demands it. But a practice slave will be about the best you can do. Some live quite a long time, months, on occasion. You’ll have to rely on your physical prowess alone, but-”

“Dujene is ready,” said one of the guards.

“Tell him this one’s for the practice pens. If he’s a decent fighter, he might be useful.”

I was led into a dim, smoky room that greeted me with a blast of heat. My stomach knotted as they half pushed, half pulled me onto my knees on the dirt floor. The stench of fear permeated the place. That scream had originated here.

“Spread him.” My hands were detached from each other and pulled forward and apart, forcing my upper body onto a slanted, and very cold, stone slab. Once my hands were fixed in place, someone removed the loose iron ring to which my neck-chain had been attached. Good riddance, I thought.

I couldn’t lift my head far enough to see much beyond the cold granite in front of my nose. A blurry dark-clothed figure hovered about my head. I didn’t like the blaze that roared behind him. Not one bit.

Someone spread a cold ointment on my neck while whispering words of enchantment. I inhaled deeply, trying to ease the dread that constricted every aching muscle. I smelled hot metal. They had talked of collars.

“This should do him,” said a dry voice. “We’ll see what sort of stomach such a sturdy fellow has.” Hands lifted my head and slipped a strip of hot metal between me and the stone. And, of course, in the position I was, I couldn’t pull back, not far enough to do any good when they wrapped it about my neck and it scalded the ointment away.

I didn’t scream. It was bearable; surely it was bearable. Go deep… do not feel… let it pass…

As the Zhid spoke enchantments that curdled my blood, the hot metal shifted and flowed and settled into position, smooth and close-fitting. Then they threw cold water over me. Sick and trembling, I thought I had come through the worst.

“Anyone important about who wants the pleasure of the seal?”

“You’ll have to set them yourself. Master hasn’t been seen all day, and he has no guests. I’ve got to get the next one ready. We’ve a hundred more.”

“Ah, I can do them faster anyway.” The guard went away, leaving only the man in black.

“Well, slave, one more thing to do. The joining. Back here…” He ran his finger along the narrow slot where the ends of the collar lay along my spine. “As Slavemaster Gernald would tell you if he were considerate enough to make himself available, we’ve discovered a substance far more effective than dolemar in controlling Dar’Nethi power. Mordemar it’s called. Not only prevents any use of true talent, you won’t be able to acquire power for it neither. No more of it. Ever again. Your collar will be with you until you die, and so you will spend the rest of your days half a man. Enjoy it.”

Liquid dripped on the strip of skin exposed between the ends of the collar. Hot, though nothing compared to the searing collar itself. But as the liquid seal filled the gap, completing the ring about my neck, it gnawed its way into my being as surely as acid devours flesh. And then I screamed.

Suffocation… paralysis… blindness… What words can convey the loss? A soul excised, the mind uprooted and ripped apart, the world reduced to two dimensions instead of three. What would be the universe without a color like red or blue or green? What would life be if there were, all of an instant, only men, or only women, or if there were to be no children ever again?

As the seal cooled and hardened, my screams faded to weeping. I had lost the Way. I could not savor the moment because I could not see the colors of the fire, only the blaze of it. I could not see the marvelous intricacies of the granite on which my tears fell, only a cold slab. No longer could I feel the air on my bare skin and sense all the places that air had been, the faces it had touched. I could feel only the cold and the heat and the pain. Death and cruelty could no longer be fit into any larger meaning, for the ability to take them into myself and see beyond had been stripped from me. No more. Ever again. Better… far better if they had taken my mind, if I had been made nameless and cruel, so long as I did not understand what I had lost.

I could not have said when they removed the common shackles from my wrists, replaced them with wide, close-fitting bands of the same dark metal, and sealed them as well. When one is in uttermost despair, no pain or indignity can make it worse. After removing the hobbles, they gave me a gray tunic to cover myself, hooked a tether chain to my collar, and led me back to the slave pen. They had removed the dead and the crippled, and put down clean straw. Everyone remaining had close-cropped hair, gray tunics, and collars, and like each one of them, I huddled into myself against the bitter night.