Steal the Dragon

7

The stone wails of Lord Winterseine’s keep loomed darkly over the party of tired riders.

Moonlight glinted off the ivy gathered at the base of the outside walls, lending an eeriness to the hold’s appearance.

As they crossed the drawbridge, Rialla glanced down into the dark waters of the moat that surrounded the keep. The moat wasn’t as rank as most of its kind; Winterseine had it drained once a year and cleaned of debris so it smelled mainly of algae and rotting plants, rather than less wholesome sewage.

The aged boards of the drawbridge creaked under the weight of the horses. The heavy chains that had been used to lift the bridge in times past had fallen limply into the moat, where they rusted and grew long strings of algae.

The entrance to the keep was adequately defended by the heavy iron portcullis that blocked the entrance. As far as Rialla knew, the ancient drawbridge had not been lifted this century. The keep was small and strategically unimportant, so it had escaped most of the ravages of the Rethian wars. Few robbers were desperate enough to take on the experienced fighters that manned the keep now that the war was over, and Winterseine preferred to avoid the petty bickering and feuding that took up so many landholders’ time and resources.

Rialla was unable to repress a shudder as the heavy ironwork of the portcullis dropped behind them, trapping her inside. For a moment she felt a frantic urge to fight against her bonds. She found herself reaching for Tris’s reassuring presence; knowing he was nearby made it easier to continue.

They rode directly to the keep entrance, where grooms waited to take the weary horses. While Winterseine and the rest of the party stopped in the entrance hall, one of the guardsmen escorted Rialla down the stone stairway that led to the holding cells. After making sure she had bread, water and straw in the small room, he removed the wrist manacles and left her alone.

Moonlight drifted in through a small window near the ceiling; its deep-set iron bars crossed the pale stone floor—a constant reminder of the room’s purpose. The sound of water lapping against rock drifted faintly up from the deep hole underneath the sanitation grate in the far corner of the cell.

Rialla looked around with dawning recognition. She’d been given the same holding cell that she’d had when they brought her here the first time. For confirmation she knelt by the door and ran her fingers over the stone nearby. Her searching fingers found the crude letters scratched in the granite. It was too dark for her to read what was written there, even if some of the scratches hadn’t been too faint to see—but she didn’t need to read the words.

“Isst vah han onafaetha,” she spoke them softly, pronouncing them carefully, as her father had. “Without faith there is nothing.”

Until she’d become a slave, they were the only written words she knew, although she had spoken several languages. Her father had worn a gold disk on a chain; inscribed in the disk were those five words, the motto of her clan.

“This was the cell that they put me in the first time,” she said without looking up, knowing that Tris was behind her. “How did you come in?”

“Through the wall.”

Rialla twisted to look at the solid stone wall. Raising her eyebrows, she looked at Tris.

He shrugged. “Stone is not as easy for me to pass through as wood, but if you know how to ask it is not impossible—just slow.”

She nodded and rose to her feet, uncomfortable with her vulnerable position. “I’m glad you came.”

“Glad I followed you here, or glad I came to your cell tonight?”

She smiled. “Both actually. I needed to talk to you about Tamas’s arm. Can you think of any reason Winterseine would heal it? I don’t remember him ever working magic that… casually.”

It was difficult to see details in the dark little room, but Rialla saw him lift his arm to his face and knew Tris was rubbing his beard.

“If he were trying to pass himself as a servant of Altis, he might do it to reinforce his position,” he said thoughtfully at last.

“In front of a group of guards, a servant and a slave?” questioned Rialla.

“Even so,” answered Tris. “If I wanted to know something about a noble, the first people that I would ask would be his servants. If he has declared himself the Voice of Altis, then the people who must believe in his position most fervently are his servants.”

Rialla felt something inside her relax with Tris’s explanation: facing Winterseine was sufficiently daunting. She would rather not worry about prophets and gods.

“Where did you leave your horse?” she asked, kicking at the straw until it padded a section of floor.

“What horse?” Tris replied.

“You ran?” hazarded Rialla doubtfully, looking at the heavily muscled healer. In her experience, runners weren’t built like blacksmiths.

He smiled. “No. In the forest, there are other ways opened to those who know how to use the doors.”

“Magic?” asked Rialla, hiding a yawn behind her hand.

“Indeed,” he nodded.

The sun was just up when a pair of guards came and escorted her to Isslic of Winterseine’s unoccupied study. They attached her leash to an elaborate bronze ring set in the wall and left her alone.

She sat on the floor and leaned against the wall. As with the holding cell, she’d been in this room before. When a slave was misbehaving, Winterseine had her brought here to his room for sentencing—but first he made the slave wait.

The sounds of advancing footsteps woke Rialla up from her nap—she had stayed up too late talking with Tris. She was thankful that she awoke before Winterseine had come into the room—the wait was supposed to make her nervous, not sleepy. She didn’t want to enrage him pointlessly.

She was on her feet when the door opened to admit Winterseine. Docilely she kept her eyes on the floor and her hands at her side.

“Well,” said Winterseine, his voice almost a purr, “it’s nice to have you back, Dancer. Tell me, why did you run away in the first place? You knew that I would find you.”

Rialla answered meekly, “Yes, Master. I knew that you would find me. I am sorry that I ran—I was frightened.”

“What frightened you, Little One?” Again his voice was soft, like a predator stealing up on its prey.

Rialla felt the first twinge of fear—but it was a slave’s fear and she was here by choice. The thought steadied her. Just as she started to answer his question, Tris attempted to contact her.

Rialla, where are you?

Later, she snapped at him, and closed her mind tightly to his presence.

To Winterseine she said hesitantly, “One of the other slaves there, in the upper rooms of the tavern in Kentar… she was killed that night. I saw them bring her body out.” She paused and framed her words carefully out of truths. “The day before, the man who owned her was asking the barkeeper how much it would cost to buy me.”

It had been idle speculation, a common question rather than serious intent, but the thought of being sold was frightening to a slave. Better the known evil, which one has gotten used to, than the unknown. Slaves are taught to be afraid of the unknown.

“So you ran away, killing one of my people.”

“He startled me,” Rialla said tremulously, remembering the shock of the man’s death. “I pushed him and he hit his head on something on the floor. It was dark and I couldn’t tell what it was.” She had hit him as hard as she could with a mallet that had been left in the stables. She’d set the mallet near the body, and left. But Winterseine would expect her to lie and she had to stay in character. There was a squeak as Winterseine settled himself into the big, leather-covered chair behind his desk. “You killed him with a hammer.”

Rialla shook her head and looked frightened. A slave would never admit such a crime and Winterseine knew it. “No,” she said. “He hit his head.”

“You killed him,” said the voice of the Master implacably. He might know that she wouldn’t admit it, but he still needed her to realize that she couldn’t get away with lying to him. He didn’t wait for her reply again. Instead he asked a different question. “Where were you going?”

Rialla shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Away, anywhere.” That was true enough.

“Laeth said that he picked you up in the South. How did you get there?”

“After a few days, I don’t know how long exactly, a man found me hiding under a bush. He took me and sold me to a merchant who smuggled me out of Darran and sold me to another merchant who worked the countries in the Alliance.” Though selling an escaped slave was illegal, it was commonly done.

“I can’t have slaves escaping, Dancer.” Winterseine’s voice was stern, but there was regret in it as well—a father talking to an errant child. It made Rialla want to retch.

“No, Master,” said Rialla submissively, and the slave master sat back to contemplate her punishment.

The guard led her through a maze of hallways until he came to a place where there were two half-sized doors set into the wall at waist height. Rialla could hear soft sobbing sounds coming from behind one of the doors, and she watched apprehensively as the guard slid the bar off the other one. The door opened to reveal a dark hole even smaller than the door itself. A cobweb covered one corner and the guard brushed it aside.

“In with you,” he said. His manner wasn’t threatening, but Rialla had no doubt that he was willing to enforce his command.

She entered the darkness as slowly as she could, wanting to give any insects the chance to get out of her way. The opening wasn’t quite tall enough for Rialla to crawl on her hands and knees, so she had to squirm forward until her feet slid through. The guard closed the door behind her and threw the bolt. Rialla stretched out her hands and felt the end of the cell; it was little bigger than the coffin the Darranians used to bury their dead.

For a normal human, such confinement would have been frightening. Rialla’s awareness, though, wasn’t limited by the stone around her. She could tell when the guard left to find lunch, she could touch the terror of the slave occupying the other cell, and she could feel Tris’s impatience as he waited for her to tell him what was happening.

Rialla!

Yes, she answered.

Are you all right? Where are you?

She caught his worry and sent back reassurances as she responded. I’m in solitary. It’s not so bad; he had to do something for discipline and he doesn’t like damaging his slaves if he can help it. I thought that it would be worse.

I’ll take your word for it, Tris answered, I feel trapped inside these stone buildings humans like to build; I wouldn’t care to be enclosed in a smaller area. I think I’ll go exploring today and see what I can find out—call me if you need some company.

Where are you going to explore? Rialla asked curiously. His face was known to Winterseine and a fair number of his guards. If someone saw Tris wandering through the castle, his presence might be questioned.

Illusion is a simple enough magic, replied Tris, apparently having little trouble following her thoughts. Not many people notice one more bench or decorative plant. A picture formed in her mind of a plant, similar to those scattered about Westhold, and a battered bench.

What if someone tries to sit on you? questioned Rialla, still feeling uneasy at Tris’s ability to read thoughts that she wasn’t actively projecting.

That’s why I prefer the plant when I can, but the bench has a rotted leg to discourage anyone who might want to rest.

Luck to you, Tris, Rialla said. Be careful.

I will, he assured her, withdrawing to a less intimate level.

The other slave was beginning to get frantic in the enclosed dark space. Out of a latent sense of compassion and a desire to test her empathy further, Rialla decided to see if she could help her fellow penitent.

Patiently she worked through the fear of the other slave, sending peace and reassurance. Gradually rid of her fear, the woman was rocked by another emotion: hatred. Her emotion was strong, and it gave Rialla a clear picture of the focus of her hatred: Winterseine—hardly a surprise.

Unable to bear the contact any longer, Rialla withdrew and struggled to rid herself of the residue of the slave’s fear and hatred. When she was calm, she steadied herself and projected the soothing peace that would allow the other woman to sleep. Gradually the other slave allowed herself to be pacified and fell into a light stupor.

It was late in the afternoon when Winterseine and two guards came to get her out. She crawled out of her hole and stood blank-faced for his inspection. He narrowed his eyes at her thoughtfully before leaving her with the guards.

Rialla watched as Winterseine slid out the bar that held the other slave captive in the coffin-shaped hole. In the relative light of the hold hallway, Rialla could see that the other’s skin was so dark it looked as if it were carved from oiled ebony. Her features were fine-boned and her thick copper-colored hair hung past her waist—another Easterner.

As Rialla looked at the other slave closely, she realized what Winterseine had seen to make him look so thoughtful. Though the other slave’s face was as blank as Rialla’s own, it was lined with exhaustion and her hair was matted with sweat. Slight tremors shook her shoulders as she struggled to maintain the passive stance that Rialla had adopted. Rialla knew that she herself looked as if she’d been sleeping in a cot all afternoon.

“Take them to the baths and have them cleaned. Return the dark one to her classes in the blue room. Take the dancer back to her cell,” ordered Winterseine briskly, and the guards led the slaves away.

In a clean tunic and freshly washed hair, Rialla found herself back in the little cell she’d spent the night in. There was a meal of bread and fruit waiting for her. She left the food where it was, waiting for Tris to come and eat with her.

Daylight came in from the high window, and the bars left their shadows on the walls rather than the floor. Rialla paced for a while before retreating to the accustomed discipline of the exercises that had become second nature to her as both dancer and horse trainer.

If she were going to have to dance very often, she might as well be in shape for it, she decided ruefully. Her bad leg was tight and she babied it through, hoping that she wasn’t doing it more harm than good.

When she was finished, there was sweat running down her back, but she wasn’t overly tired. Into her right hand she poured a little of the cool water from the ewer that had been left with her food. She splashed the water on her face and dried it off with the bottom of her tunic.

Bored, she sat beside the fresh straw and began to braid it as her mother had taught her to fashion horsehair rope. The straw was bulkier and not so strong, and the rope kept breaking before she got very far, but it was something to do.

She was beginning to eye the bread wistfully, when she realized that Tris was very near. She noticed a change in the stone near the top of the cell by the window. It looked at first as if the stone were growing. The granite blocks and the mortar between them bulged out in a lump roughly the size of a man’s body. The lump slid gradually lower until the bottom of it rested on the ground. Slowly Tris pulled free of the rock, his body and features became distinct. The color of the stone gradually left his skin and clothing, and Tris stood brushing dust off his tunic and breeches.

“Better you than me,” commented Rialla.

“What? You mean passing through the stone? It’s not that bad—granite’s kind of scratchy, though. I prefer marble or obsidian, but granite’s more common.”

Rialla laughed at his serious tone.

“So,” she said, “how did your explorations go?”

“Fine,” he replied, rubbing his beard as if it itched. “I didn’t see anything unusual except the number of cats here.”

Rialla nodded and grabbed a piece of fruit. “Most castles have a lot of cats. They keep down the rat population.” She bit into the tart apple and sighed with appreciation. Sianim was too warm to get really good apples.

“No, I mean a lot of cats. Someone here really likes them.” Tris sat with his back against the wall. “How was your day in solitary?”

Rialla gave a rueful shrug. “Not bad, better than tomorrow will be. There was another slave from the East there, but I didn’t get any useful information out of her.”

“What do you mean better than tomorrow?” Tris hadn’t been moving before, but now he was still, like a predator who has scented his prey.

Rialla finished the apple and put the core back on the tray. “Do you want something to eat?”

Tris shook his head without losing his air of intensity. “I’m fine. What about tomorrow?”

She tore off some bread and stood leaning against the wall. When she was through with her piece, she said wryly, “I’m in for it. I was stupid and forgot that I was supposed to look abused after a day in solitary. Now he’s got to find another punishment.” She sighed drolly, trying to soothe him as she felt his anger rise. “I guess I was never meant to be a spy.”

“What will he do?” asked Tris again, grim-voiced.

She shook her head. “I have no idea. Don’t worry, it probably won’t be anything too painful—he doesn’t want to ruin his slave. He has to maintain a fine balance: too little discipline is disastrous, but too much discipline will break the spirit and ruin a dancer.”

Tris looked down at the floor and asked, “Does it bother you to be a slave again?”

Rialla glanced at his hands, which were clenched around his left knee. He was having a harder time with her enslavement than she was. She paused thoughtfully for a moment before she answered, hoping that she could make him understand. “I would have thought it would, but it doesn’t. I guess it makes a difference that it was my decision to come back. I choose to act like a slave, so they can’t make me feel like one. Does that make sense?”

He looked a bit baffled so she added, “A slave has no power to make decisions; I do.” Thinking about tomorrow, she smiled with little humor. “I have to live with the results too.”

The next morning, when the guards came, Rialla was awake and ready for them. She wasn’t taken to Winterseine this time, but to the castle punishment chamber.

The chamber was in a light and sunny area in the corner of the main floor of the castle. Both of the windows were low enough to get a nice view of one of the walled gardens behind the castle. Clear glass was expensive, so the windows were barred and open to the air.

Rialla supposed that the windows were there to remind the prisoners that there was a world outside, and to keep them from succumbing to the hopelessness that made them die too soon under the torturer’s knife. From the despair she read in the few moments before she pulled her shields all the way up, she could have told Winterseine that he was wasting his windows.

The guards attached her tether to a wall and left her alone with the other prisoners, none of which were slaves. She had never been in this room; Rialla had been a tractable slave before she escaped.

The leash was a formality without the arm restraints—she could have taken it off with very little effort—but she was supposed to be a good slave. There were no guards, just the prisoners attached to the wall with heavy manacles.

Heavy canvas curtains blocked off the business end of the chamber. Rialla was just as glad not to have to look at the arcane devices responsible for the human wrecks that moaned pitifully where they hung like so many carcasses at a butcher’s shop.

As she waited, Rialla became more and more agitated. The unpleasant emotions that pervaded the chamber were so strong she couldn’t block them completely. They served to reinforce her apprehension. She got to her feet and paced back and forth to relieve her tension and keep her from tearing her collar off and running to Sianim as fast as she could.

Several men entered the chamber talking and laughing. One of them came up to her and unfastened her lead from the wall. He stank like sweat and other people’s terror, and couldn’t keep his hands to himself.

Rialla didn’t struggle, and eventually he tired of his fun and blindfolded her with a strip of cotton cloth stained with dirt and dried blood. She followed the tug on her leash, stumbling blindly over the uneven floor. She hit her shin against a piece of wood and decided that it must have been a stair, because she was lifted up a short distance and put back on her feet on top of some sort of platform.

He pushed her backwards until her shoulders pressed against a bar of wood that moved slightly when she touched it. She felt the jerk at her neck as he attached her collar tightly to the bar. Her arms were pulled up over her head and tied to another bar that seemed to be both higher and farther away than the first. A thick strap was secured around her waist.

Rialla heard a groaning sound as the bars took her weight and her feet were slowly drawn off the floor. As her back arched against her support, she realized that she was tied to a large wheel. It stopped turning and her legs were pulled back and attached to another bar on the wheel.

When the man was satisfied that she was secure, he groped her one last time and went on to his next job. She couldn’t close her ears to the noises in the chamber nearly as well as she could close her mind to the suffering that spawned them. She found herself wishing that they would punish her and get it over with.

Finally, there was a creak as the mechanism that turned the wheel was unlocked. Slowly she was pulled up and over the top of it. The wheel made an odd noise, but before Rialla was able to figure out what the sound was, her head was immersed in cold water.

The shock made her gasp, and she came out of the water choking and spitting out the fluid she’d swallowed. She was disoriented, and her head hit the water again before she was ready. She was underwater the third time when she realized that the wheel wasn’t being turned at a steady rate that she could gauge. She gagged and spat out the water that she had tried to breathe. The distraction caused her concentration to fail, and the strength of the shield that kept out the emotions flooding the chamber faded.

As soon as her barriers weakened, Rialla got a full dose of the torment of the other victims in the cell. She started to scream and her head was forced underwater again. This time the trip through the water was so slow that she started to black out before her nose broke the surface again. The wheel stopped to let her catch her breath, and she managed to close most of her barriers again as she choked and fought frantically for air.

Tris. She didn’t really expect to be able to touch him without dropping her shields more than she could in this room. She was surprised when she got an answer.

Rialla? She could read the concern in his reply as he caught the edge of her desperation.

The wheel began to move again, and involuntarily she struggled against the ropes that held her. She started to tell him what was going on, but she couldn’t form any coherent messages before she was under the water again.

Rialla! The demand in his tone brought her back to herself, and she struggled to communicate what she needed.

Talk to me … The struggle to keep from breathing the icy water grew more difficult. Please… I need you to give me something to concentrate on … Her face was numbed by the cold, and it was getting hard to tell when she was out of the water.

It wasn’t until her forehead started under again that she realized that she’d held her breath too long. She managed to grab a quick breath before water closed over her mouth.

Rialla? What … He stopped, and she could feel him forcibly restrain himself. Slowly, as if he were reciting out loud, he sent her what she’d requested. Black cherry root, otherwise known as nightshade or belladonna, can be used as a sedative or pain reliever in small enough doses…

She grasped onto his words like a lifeline, using them to calm herself, much as a monk chants himself into a trance. She didn’t care what he said, as long as he kept talking.

He seemed to sense what she needed and kept up a steady flow of information. She found that she could use him to block out the feedback she was getting from the other occupants of the chamber. Once she was calmer and not feeling other people’s emotions, Rialla could tell when she was about to be submerged.

Tris kept talking, but she didn’t really hear the words. Gradually, she was able to sense the water before it touched her. There was something odd about that, but she was in no state to decide what that was. Once she thought that Tris warned her, but that was ridiculous—she could tell that he was somewhere in the upper levels of the hold.

When they finally pulled her off, she was too dizzy to stand up, and the guards carried her back to her cell. She didn’t stop Tris’s steady voice in her mind, drawing strength from his presence. There was a towel and dry clothes waiting for her on the straw. Shaking with cold, she rubbed herself with thick cotton material until only her hair was damp, then put on the dry tunic.

…acids that the flowering coralis uses to digest its prey can also be used to dissolve warts and …

Tris? Rialla interrupted wearily as she stumbled to the pile of straw. Thanks. You can stop now. I’m back in the cell

.

To her surprise he didn’t ask anything, just said, I’m coming.

Rialla drew up her legs and wrapped her arms around them, resting her cheek against her knee. She couldn’t seem to get warm. She didn’t watch this time when Tris came through the wall—once was enough.

“Are you all right? Is this the end of it?” Tris’s voice sounded soft and dangerous, but when he touched her shoulders, warmth flowed from his hands.

Rialla turned her head to give him a tired smile and said hoarsely, “I think so. There’s no reason for anything more. Thanks for the help.”

“Good,” he said, ignoring her thanks.

As she quit shivering, he pulled away and began pacing restlessly. Rialla could feel his agitation, but only distantly through the curtain of her exhaustion. She lowered her head to her knees and closed her eyes. Somehow it wasn’t worth the effort to open them again. She fell asleep and woke up alone early in the morning.

Sweat gathered in the small of Rialla’s back as she worked with fourteen other slaves to perform the combinations called out by the dancemaster. This man was new to her, although he seemed experienced. When the slaves were through with his workout, they would be warmed up and limber, but not overly tired.

Deliberately taking deep, even breaths through her nose, Rialla pulled her good leg behind her, until the heel touched the back of her head, and counted the drumbeats silently, trying to ignore the burning in her bad thigh as it supported her weight.

She switched legs, but couldn’t make her bad leg stretch the few extra inches to touch. The burning increased and she was afraid that she would tear the wound open, so she let it relax a little further, aware that the dancemaster stood near her. When the combination was finished, the master called for a rest and the slaves dropped to the mats.

He examined the narrow red line that marked her leg where the swamp beast had slashed her.

“Bend it.” he said shortly.

At his command, she flexed her leg as far as she could and released it.

He grunted, “Winterseine says that you are already a fine dancer. That being the case, I would keep you off that leg for another month, but he has decided that you are to dance with the advanced group. I want you to take it easy, but if Winterseine is watching you’d better not be favoring it. He doesn’t believe in giving wounds time to heal; says that it makes for easy excuses.”

Startled that the dancemaster would criticize Winterseine to a slave, Rialla merely nodded. She watched him walk to the center of the wooden floor and clap his hands once, and the workout resumed. Minding the dancemaster’s words, she babied her left leg and kept a sharp eye out for Winterseine.

The other girls were wary of her and made no move to greet her on the rest breaks. Rialla sat quietly a little apart from the others, but close enough to listen to the other slaves gossip softly together.

Most of what they said was unimportant; they were too conscious of Rialla to talk about Lord Winterseine or anything else interesting enough to get them into trouble should the Master hear about it. If she continued being unobtrusive, they would forget her, but it was going to take time.

With a sigh, Rialla relaxed and closed her eyes. Carefully she lowered her defenses and reached out lightly. As she did so, she heard one of the slaves giggle. She focused on that one and caught a picture of Terran, altered by the slave’s perception of him—Rialla knew he wasn’t that good-looking.

The slave had seen him recently in intimate circumstances and enjoyed every minute. Rialla withdrew hastily before she received a touch by touch outline of the slave’s experiences at the hands of Winterseine’s son. Just before she pulled back completely, she caught something, an image… of a cat, a blue cat.

It was dark when she was returned in a clean tunic to the holding cell. Although practice was done in a one-piece garment that left most of the body bare, it was too cold to wear all the time, so a clean tunic was also supplied daily. Her hair was freshly washed and braided neatly, brushing the top of her shoulders.

As soon as the guard left, Rialla lay face down on the cool stone floor.

“Tired?” asked Tris in a voice that didn’t carry beyond the room.

She didn’t bother lifting her head, just slid it back and forth against the floor. “I’m too old for this. The other girls are just babies, and they’re in much better shape than I am. Let’s go back to Sianim and I’ll sit in a rocking chair and embroider tablecloths.”

Two hands touched her back and caressed the sore muscles there. She moaned weakly and folded her arms to cushion her face as the stiffness eased with magical swiftness.

“Do you embroider?” Tris asked with interest.

“No,” she replied, “and maybe, just maybe, if you keep that up I won’t have to learn.”

He laughed, started on her lower back and said in conversational tones, “I found out some interesting information today.” He stopped kneading and began thumping her with the sides of hands instead.

“From what I’ve overheard.” he continued, “Lord Winterseine has indeed been traveling to the other side of the Swamp. He keeps a ship at a small harbor near the Southern Sea that he uses to sail to the East. For the past six years he has spent at least four months a year there, except last year, when his son made the journey alone. What was that?”

“Mmpft,” she said obscurely, then managed, “Tri… hiss… sstop… it!”

He quit pounding on her and sat on his heels.

She gave him a narrow-eyed look, twisting her head so she could see over her shoulder, and said with mock affront, “Thanks. Maybe we should have sent you here on your own. All that I’ve managed to learn today is that I’m out of shape.”

“Touchy aren’t you?” he protested with a hint of laughter. “I thought a hold of this size might have some work for a journeyman woodcrafter.” Abruptly his features sharpened, and his beard disappeared; his clothing changed, becoming heavier to keep out sawdust. Tris never paused in his speech, but his accent vanished. “It seems that the old one died last season and his apprentice left for the city. I spent the day repairing cabinets in the kitchens. The cook likes to gossip, especially with a near equal.”

Rialla eyed him with some respect. If she hadn’t seen it herself, she would have sworn that she was talking to a middle-class Darranian craftsman.

“How did you explain your lack of tools?” she asked.

He looked sad. “I was stopped by bandits on my travels. They took everything I owned. Isn’t it miraculous that the old woodcraftsman died without heirs, so his tools were left here?”

He dropped the illusion and continued, “I also accidently hit my thumb with my hammer; even the best craftsman does so occasionally. I swore, using a certain god’s name, and was hushed by a number of horrified people, including the spit boy.”

Rialla stilled. “I thought I was insane when it first occurred to me that there might be a connection. But I can’t imagine another household in Darran that would be worried if a stranger used Altis’s name as a curse.” She looked at Tris. “Don’t look so smug, it doesn’t suit you.”

He laughed and went to work on her legs.

“Tris?” she asked.

“Hmm?” he grunted absently, working on the back of her bad leg.

“Did you say something about there being a lot of cats here?”

“Hmm,” he said again. “Yes, not just in the lower floors, but all over the castle. Why do you ask?”

She shook her head and closed her eyes. “I don’t know… but one of the slaves was thinking about cats today. It was in an odd context…” She shrugged. “It was probably nothing, but it seemed strange.”

The next day was more of the same. When Rialla returned from the long day of workouts, Tris told her what he had learned as he loosened her muscles. He was much better than the masseuse that had a turn at all the slaves before they bathed. Part of that was because, although he never commented on the various bruises acquired from the dancemaster’s staff, he healed them partially, so they were much less painful.

Tris had spent most of the day listening to servants’ gossip. He’d found that, though Lord Winterseine had earned a great deal of money from training slaves, he brought back even more from his trips east. The exotic dark-skinned slaves were in demand, and in Darran they brought in two or three times more gold than other slaves.

For her part, Rialla had learned nothing new. Working slaves might be a good source of information, but dancers in training had limited exposure to the world outside. The dancemaster might have known something, but his emotions were spared for his obsession with dance, and his unemotional thoughts on other matters were his own.

When Tris finished with her massage, Rialla felt like a boneless mass of relaxed muscles resting facedown on the straw. Tris seated himself against one of the walls and snatched an apple, biting into it with obvious enjoyment. At the sound, Rialla sat up and took a hard roll from the basket out of which Tris had gotten his apple.

They ate in companionable silence for a while. Tris finished the apple and threw it down the corner grate.

He slanted Rialla an oddly solemn look and then said, “I haven’t spent much time among the nobility in Darran, much less around slaves. You have an expression that you use when you are impersonating a slave, but it is different from the expression that the slaves in the keep use.”

The bread in Rialla’s mouth was fresh and sweet, but she had to force it down to talk. She bowed her head and knew that the slave’s mask that he’d asked her about was frozen on her face. Finally she said, “Winterseine would tell you that there are two kinds of slaves in Darran. The first is a pleasure slave, a bedmate. Most men prefer to have their longtime bedpartners compliant and smiling, acting as if their duties are pleasurable. Force is fine occasionally, but it takes energy. Pleasure slaves are punished if they do not at least feign enjoyment of their duties.”

She swallowed, feeling Tris’s focused attention. “Dancers, like me, are usually not owned by an individual for his personal use; the term that slave trainers use for them is ‘exotics.’ Dancers are expensive because they take time to train and require a certain amount of ability. They are owned by taverns, clubs and brothels.”

Rialla looked at her half-eaten roll without interest and continued to speak. “Slave trainers believe that a slave that has been turned into a pleasure slave has no spirit, no individuality. A dancer requires a certain amount of independence and arrogance.”

“You said that slave trainers believe that. What about you?”

Rialla shrugged. “A slave has no spirit, no individuality. It doesn’t matter if she is a dancer or a pleasure slave. A slave feels what she is told she feels, and does what she is told to do. Dancers follow the pattern established for them just as the pleasure slaves do. The pattern is no better or worse, just different.”

“I’m sorry,” said Tris softly.

Rialla tossed him a lopsided smile, and took another bite of the bread. “Don’t be. It’s hardly your fault.”

After a couple of days of working out, Rialla found that she wasn’t quite so worn out at night, but Tris continued to act as masseur. Under his ministration, the stiffness was leaving her bad leg, until she could stretch it out almost as far as her good leg. They had been discussing what he found while he kneaded and pulled until she was as limp as a lump of bread dough left to rise, but this night he was quiet.

“What’s wrong?” she asked finally, keeping her face in her arms. She could feel his distress at the edge of her awareness, but didn’t want to pry without permission.

“Nothing,” he said. “This place oppresses me. The cold stone keeps out the sun’s warmth and light.” He paused. “I thought about what you told me last night.”

“Do your people own slaves?”

“No,” he said. “But we knew about it. A slave came to the enclave once, seeking sanctuary. I understand that some of the religious communes offer a hiding place for slaves. Mine did not. The slave was held until the owners could collect her.”

“Was that your decision?” questioned Rialla, trying to get at what bothered him. She could sense his guilt, that he’d violated his sense of right and wrong, but she didn’t know how to help.

“No. I opposed the decision—for the wrong reasons.” Straw rustled as he moved away. “I felt that the commune had come to its decision from fear of discovery rather than out of any reasoned discussion. I was right, but too young to understand that there was never any other motivation for what the enclave did. The elders had offended my belief in them. I was more concerned with that than with the poor girl who rode off in chains.”

That bothered him, she could tell, but it wasn’t the cause of his disquiet.

“You’re doing something about it now,” she said, finally sitting up so she could see him. “Even if slavery continues for another five centuries, you are doing something about it.”

He stood with his back to her, in the faint area of fading light.

“Am I?” he said in an odd tone. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

He swung around and approached her, gesturing for her to take her former prone position. “I’ll loosen that muscle in your back and tell you about what I learned today. Do you know the ideograph that belongs to Altis?”

Rialla rolled facedown again. She could feel his pain, guilt and remorse churning strong enough to make butter; but she didn’t know what to do about it. She wasn’t sure that he knew how easily she read him—it wasn’t deliberate on her part. She didn’t want him to think that she was impinging on his privacy, so she allowed him to change the subject.

“I don’t know anything about Altis, except that he was one of the old gods.”

“Shame on you,” he reprimanded in his best healer voice. “Altis was the lord of the night. It’s in his shadows that the hunted escapes the hunter’s dinner table. He was one of the benevolent gods. Not only did he refrain from tormenting humans when he was bored, as a fair number of them did, but he actually was known to interfere with other gods at their sport.”

“What of the folk that weren’t human—the shapeshifters, the selkies, and the… the silfs.”

“Sylvans,” corrected Tris dryly, as he started to put pressure on the muscle in her lower back. “We were the children of the gods themselves, and better able to defend ourselves. We could call more readily on our parent god. Naslen, the lord of the forest, fathered the sylvans; Torrec, the huntress, bore the shapeshifters; Kirsa, goddess of the waves, bore the selkies. All of them minor powers, but strong enough to keep the others from lightly playing their games with us. Now, where was I…”

“Altis,” said Rialla. in a voice that was more of a moan as he caught just the right place.

“Yes, Altis. His ideograph is that of a stylized cat sitting on its haunches with its body in profile, and its head full face and lowered—”

“With a five-pointed star in the middle of its forehead, and in the center of the star a large emerald,” interrupted Rialla.

“I don’t know about the emerald,” said Tris, “but there is a five-pointed star. Where did you see it?”

“One of the slaves,” said Rialla. “She was thinking about it.”

“One of the slaves you dance with?” asked Tris.

“Yes” replied Rialla, smiling at the floor. “It was easy to pick up since she remembered it with some… er… fervor.”

“The slave was a follower of Altis?”

Rialla laughed despite herself. “No, actually I’m not sure how the cat came into it; she was remembering a glorious night of passion. I can assure you that it had nothing in common with religious devotion.”

Tris snorted. “You obviously haven’t met the same sorts of religious zealots that I have.”

“You did have something in mind when you brought up this cat?” asked Rialla.

“Yes, though it has lost what little import it had. I was asked to evaluate the chances of saving a wooden screen in one of the rooms on the upper floor of the castle. Once past the public rooms, there isn’t a room in the castle that is free of that cat.”

Rialla thought, then said, “To convince the servants? As with Tamas’s broken arm?”

“Then why would they be only on the private floors?”

“I can answer that,” said Rialla. “As a slave trader, Winterseine deals frequently with Southerners, merchants who would sleep in the guest quarters on the first floor. There is a new religion in the South; it was beginning to evolve when I traveled there with my clan. They worship someone they call the All-Mother. I don’t know much more about them, except that they would certainly not do business with a heathen who worshipped dead gods.”

A peaceful silence descended, and Rialla relaxed into the rhythm of Tris’s movements as he loosened her tight legs. “Tell me something about your people, Tris.”

She could feel him hesitate. “It is forbidden for one of us to tell an outsider about… Ah, well now, I suppose that I no longer have to listen to the dictates of the elders.” He thought for a moment.

“Long time past, humans were only a minor part of a world ruled by green magic.” His voice took on a classic story-telling rhythm, though a bit hesitant, as if he were translating as he spoke. “There were the little folk: the butterfly-winged people who played over the winds, and the stone workers who preferred the shadows of evening to the light of day. The forest people, sylvans, dryads, shapeshifters, haunted the woods and fought for territory. They all spoke to the spirits of the trees and the animals.

“The green folk, though, like the gods whose children they are, do not propagate well, and humans began to overrun their part of the world. As they spread into our territories, the dryads welcomed them as they did all things, while the other folk retreated and watched. First came the traders, then the wizards who sought to learn the secrets of our magic, but it was the farmers who spelled the end of the reign of green magic.

“They tore up the land and cut down the forests; the spirits of the trees cried out, crippling those tied too closely with earthmagic. They settled the land, driving the little folk underground and forcing us further and further into the forests of the far north, where green magic ruled the strongest. There was not enough room there for all. The earthmasons retreated below ground. The shapeshifters retreated into themselves. The sylvans hid where no one would think to look: among the humans themselves. Only the dryads remained, the few the rape of the land had left. For them came the slavers, and the dryads disappeared into the East.

“When the human wizards began to vie with one another for power and Nevra Forest became the glass desert, the last of the dragonkind vanished in the winds.”

Tris allowed his voice to darken dramatically. “But sometimes, empath, among the humans is born the legacy of the dryads. Green-eyed or amber-eyed like their distant kin, these can touch the spirits of the trees and the beasts and the deepest souls of mankind.”

Rialla turned and narrowed her clear, green eyes at his gray-green, innocent gaze.

He laughed, unimpressed.

Something that had been nagging at her for a while chose that moment to crystallize.

“Tris?” she asked softly. “In your story you said it was the Wizard’s Wars that destroyed the dragons. Is that true?”

“I don’t know… not having been there myself. The legends say that dragons are creatures of magic rather than just users of it. The wars disturbed the flow of magic and dragons were no more… or so say the legends.”

There was something in his voice that prompted her to ask further, “You don’t seem convinced that the legends are true.”

“Well, you see,” began Tris, starting on her other foot, “I saw a dragon once.”

Later that night, Tris stood alone in the darkness of the forest that stood near Winterseine’s keep. He leaned his forehead against an oak, but could draw no comfort there, for the oak couldn’t change the impulsive action that caused the cold breath of guilt on his conscience.