The Sorcery Within

XXXIII

THE WOMAN KNELT AT THE EDGEof the oasis. She was naked except for a leather loincloth. Like most Zyraii, her skin was slightly copperish, but Gast could tell she was not a native. Zyraii women never went naked in public. She was dipping waterskins into the pool to fill them. Alemar stared at her breasts as they swayed back and forth over the water.

"Been a long time since you've seen that much woman?" The healer smiled.

Alemar did not react. He remained in the shade of the palms that surrounded the pool, rigidly holding the baskets which they had come to fill.

Then Gast felt it, tickling the edges of his senses. It was unmistakable. No Hab-no-ken could have ignored it. At once, the older man was in a nostalgic reverie, recalling his own apprenticeship and that potent, irresistible moment when the power manifested.

"Who is she?" Alemar asked, not bothering to take his eyes away.

"A slave."

"She is…is…"

"Yes."

They regarded the girl for a few moments. She was about Alemar's age, healthy, youthfully lean, and blessed with long, luxuriant hair. She filled the waterskins listlessly. When she turned toward them, her glance was vacant.

"What do I do?" Alemar asked plaintively.

"You will heal," Gast stated. "Come. Let's go back to the tent. You'll have to prepare for this."

The slave finished her task and lifted as many of the skins as she could carry, taking them back toward the tent of the patriarch of the oasis. Gast led Alemar in another direction.

"Now?"

"Yes," the Hab-no-ken's apprentice replied. "Is there a problem with that?"

"No, no," the patriarch answered. He glanced over at Ilyrra. His slave was churning butter. "I would be honored to do all I can. You are welcome to her." It was good luck to favor a Hab-no-ken, as any Zyraii knew. Yet he was puzzled. The last time he had noticed, the healer and his student had been engrossed in their work, boiling their concoction. This sudden interest in his slave girl had taken him by surprise. The young man did not seem, even now, particularly urgent with lust.

The patriarch shrugged. He pointed to the screened grove, his own retreat for times such as this. "Wait there. I will send her to you."

The slave girl appeared out of the fronds surrounding the tiny clearing. She stopped at the edge of the blanket on which Alemar waited, perfunctorily removed her loincloth, and sat down near him. The mottled sunlight created patterns on her shoulders; a faint breeze toyed with the ends of her hair. If not for the perpetual aloofness reflected in her face, she would have been beautiful.

"How may I serve my lord?"

"What is your name?" Alemar asked.

"Ilyrra," she said, expressionless.

"Lay here, on your stomach," he said, pointing to the center of the blanket and reaching for the small ceramic jar at his side.

She obeyed. He dipped his fingers in the jar and began rubbing the cream it contained onto her peeling shoulders and back. She seemed surprised, the first active emotion she had shown.

"You'd waste that on a slave?"

"Why not? There's plenty of it." At the moment, this was particularly true. Alemar and Gast had spent the past three days making it, taking advantage of the local plants. They had been obtaining more water for the process when they had encountered Ilyrra at the pool.

"Your master should be more careful of you. Too much exposure to the sun will ruin your skin," he added.

She shrugged.

"Talk to me," he said.

"If it would please you."

"Yes. It would."

"You are one of the strange priests they talk about – the Hab-no-ken."

"An apprentice, only. I've only been studying with my master for eight months." He finished applying the salve and sat back. She rolled on her side, facing him.

"Is that why you're not…" She gestured at her own body.

"None of the Hab-no-ken are required to refrain from sex, as far as I know."

"You asked for me. I…my master thought…"

"Don't bother about that right now. Tell me about yourself. Talk to me about your past."

She frowned. "No."

"Where do you come from?" Alemar insisted. "It's important that you tell me."

She hesitated. "Shol."

That would explain why she knew the language. Cadra, founder of Zyraii, had come from those plains north of the Sea of Azu. The dialects were still very similar.

"You were not a slave there," Alemar said firmly. "True?"

She was staring at his chest. There the green of his robes had become greener still. He reached inside his collar and removed the amulet. He wouldn't need it. The sorcery welling up inside him needed no focus. A power was awakening that he had never suspected existed within him. The amulet was simply acknowledging the presence of the magic.

She stared at the brilliance of the amulet as he put it down, but he turned her eyes to his own. "Speak," he commanded. "Don't stop. Tell me of your life, from Shol until you came to this place."

She quailed but could not turn away from him. Gradually, almost without her conscious volition, her mouth began to form words.

"My uncle was a tax collector for the khan…" she began.

Ilyrra heard the commotion and hurried to the balcony. Down in the inner courtyard, four large men in the uniform of the khan's guard were dragging her uncle across the flagstones. There was blood on his face.

She heard a crash in the servants' quarters downstairs: porcelain shattering on the floor.

A hand appeared on her shoulder. She jumped. But it was only her older cousin Hameela.

"What is happening?" Ilyrra asked. "Why are they doing this?"

Hameela, as usual, was handling the crisis with far greater composure than Ilyrra. She pulled them both into a storeroom. "The khan must have discovered how much money Father has been keeping for his own purse. We are ruined. We must flee for our lives."

They heard heavy boots on the stairs.

"They are coming into the women's quarters!" Ilyrra cried, disbelieving.

"We are too late," Hameela said. Her eyes darted around the chamber. "Here," she said, shoving Ilyrra bodily toward a trunk in the corner. She opened the lid, removed the top layer of the silks it contained, and urged her cousin inside. The fit was tight, but Ilyrra managed it. Hameela replaced the silks and closed the lid.

Ilyrra heard Hameela move away from the trunk. Then came the sound of men's voices. There was a scuffle and rude laughter. Ilyrra put a knot of silk in her mouth and bit down on it. She could tell – from the tearing of cloth, from the heavy grunts, from the vibrations of the floor beneath her – what was being done to Hameela. The noises never seemed to stop. At no time, however, did she hear her cousin give them the benefit of a single whimper. Finally, when Ilyrra could hardly bear it anymore, it was over.

But the silence was worse. Long before the footsteps had faded, before the wailing of the other women of the house had stilled, Ilyrra wanted to leave her hiding place and run. Where she would go she did not know. She was a daughter of respectable birth; she had never seen much beyond the confines of the women's quarters of her father's and her uncle's houses. But at least she would be away fromthem. It took all her small store of discipline to force herself to stay where she was.

It became quiet. Now and then, she detected a muffled thud in some far chamber, nothing more. Her own heartbeat began to overwhelm her ears. At last, tentatively, she began to push on the trunk lid.

When she had lifted it a few inches, it was suddenly yanked out of her grip. A huge, heavily scarred guardsman smiled down at her.

"No!"she screamed.

She opened her eyes, barely recognizing the foliage above her. A pair of hands gently held her head. She struggled to free herself.

"Not yet," Alemar murmured. "You must see this through."

"No! I don't want to!" she wept, but her will was not the equal of his spell. The memory continued.

He was hairy. He stank. Her strength was nothing against his. He threw her to the floor, his claws made ribbons of her delicate gown. When she tried to bite him, he lost patience, stunned her with a backhand across her cheek, and rolled her on her belly to enter her from behind.

She squeezed her legs together, thwarting his penetration. This only increased his anger. He held her pinned with one hand around both her wrists and grabbed a jug of olive oil from a shelf. He spilled the oil between her legs and mounted her once again. The slickness, along with the violence of his effort, prevented her from keeping him out.

She felt it pierce her, deep and bruising. She nearly fainted. He ignored her pain, thrusting stronger and stronger with each stroke. She could feel the heat of the blood as it trickled out of her. She put her face down and cried until her tongue lay in the storeroom dust and her hair was matted from her tears.

The patriarch heard an almost inhuman scream from the grove and jumped to his feet. "What was that?" he demanded.

Gast pulled gently at the patriarch's sleeve, beckoning him back to the mat where they were sharing tea outside the latter's tent. "Sometimes healing is a painful process."

"What is happening in there?" the patriarch insisted.

Gast smiled warmly. "A Hab-no-ken is being born. Be at peace, Abisha. Not many are privileged to witness this."

She had, mercifully, fainted at last. She woke as he withdrew, but lay limp, unable to rise. The man rolled her over on her back.

Two more guards were standing beyond the one who had just violated her. He stepped away to let them have their turn.

Illyrra managed to get to her feet. She opened her eyes, saw the glowing amulet next to the blanket, the shrubbery to every side, her own perspiring body. She tried to fight off the arms surrounding her. Despite the clothing on his body and the care with which he held her, she could not distinguish between the man with her now and the rapists of her past. She twisted away, tearing a sleeve of his green robe. He stopped her, made her turn, and she looked in his eyes.

The spell comforted her, reasserted its firm, loving, unstoppable nature. Finally, of her own accord, she lay back on the blanket and let him continue.

The guards took her to the slave pens of Nijara, where she was auctioned to repay the khan for her uncle's embezzlement. Her jailors raped her as well. She was sold to an Azuraji merchant, who amused himself with her for a few weeks, then brought her with him on a caravan to Surudain, intending to sell her in that city.

Because of her beauty, her master had high hopes for a good bid. But Ilyrra had perished in her uncle's house, along with her virginity, her honor, her faith in the world. She would speak only if ordered to; she would lie passively when men had her; she had to be coerced into eating. Even on the block, the bidders could see she had no spirit, and would not give the merchant his minimum price. In disgust, rather than sell her below what he asked, he removed her from the auction. On the road home, when the Alyr demanded their tribute, Ilyrra became the merchant's contribution.

The patriarch's sons had won the lottery to decide who would own Ilyrra, and brought her to live at the oasis. Here the people treated her gently. As long as she did her share, she was left alone. It didn't help. She was ruined. She could not go back to what she was before.

One of the patriarch's grandsons, near her age, became infatuated with her. He began to hint that he might take her as a concubine, give her children. His attentions were not unpleasant, but she could only think of the day when, at last, her body would fail her, and she could be at peace. Spurned by her lack of response, the boy gave up on her. She didn't care. So it had been until the moment the Hab-no-ken's apprentice had called her to the grove.

Ilyrra felt as if she were waking after a long sleep, though when she opened her eyes, she could tell from the deep shade of the clearing that it was only sunset. The young healer was beside her, asleep. She sat up.

She wasn't quite sure what had been done to her, though she remembered every bit of it. She knew that she had fought the process. She had been through a part of her life with a vividness easily as powerful as the actual occurrence. Yet now she could look at those same events at a distance, as if they were part of another person's life. She could see the crippling effect of her own withdrawal. She knew now that it was not just events and evil men who had ruined her, but her own refusal to recover, to strive for a better life. For the first time, her misery was where it belonged – in the past. Unless she let it, the past couldn't touch her anymore.

She got to her feet, drained but also aware of a new, quiet strength inside herself. The old healer met her as she came out of the grove. He looked at her carefully and burst into a broad smile.

To her astonishment, so did she.

It was so quiet he could hear a drill beetle gnawing at the dead cork of one of the nearby palms. It was only after Alemar had stirred that he realized Gast was seated next to him. They were in their tent.

"Good morning," the Hab-no-ken said.

Alemar was exhausted, but he had never felt more peaceful. "Is it always like this?"

"What you did was ambitious for a beginner. Soon you will be able to judge your own limits."

"And Ilyrra?"

"See for yourself."

They went outside. Alemar kept a hand on Gast's shoulder to steady himself.

They spotted Ilyrra in the grainfield to the east of the oasis. She was taking bread and tea to the grandson of the patriarch. Her straight posture and the vigor of her step told Alemar all he needed to know.

"I am proud of you," Gast said.

Alemar smiled, and they began walking back the way they had come.