Warrior of the Altaii Page 10

  “You know what it is, don’t you?” Elana asked casually. The huddled woman only sobbed louder, but the queen nodded. “Yes, you know. The passions grow. Fires heat the blood. And until those passions are slaked, they grow. And the longer they grow, the more it takes to slake them. By tomorrow, you’ll do anything. By the next day—”

  “Please,” Leah moaned. “Please.”

  “You don’t want to wait?” Elana asked as if surprised. “Well, there is a way. If you’re sure you don’t want to wait until tomorrow.”

  “Anything,” Leah said. “Anything.”

  “If you don’t want to come to my bed, perhaps you’d rather lie in the arms of a man. There’s one here for you.” The evil smile returned. “A slave.”

  “A, a slave?” Leah said thickly. “No. No, not a slave.”

  “Perhaps tomorrow—”

  “You win.” The young noblewoman sounded beaten, lifeless. “I’ll do what you want.”

  Swiftly the two men dragged her to where I lay. Her flesh shrank from contact with mine, but the potion’s effect was taking hold. Her will no longer held sway over her body. When it was over, she lay on my chest, and her sweat mingled with mine.

  “Very good, Leah,” Elana said softly.

  Leah started to rise, but the men took her again, holding her head down as before. She swung between them, dwarfed, and moaned, but whether from pain or fright I couldn’t say.

  “Take her,” said the queen. “Put her in the special dungeon.”

  Heedless of her cries the two men carried their writhing burden away.

  Her screams faded with distance, but they never seemed to decrease in intensity, as if she found new energy in the vain hope that her pleas would be answered. At last they were gone, but still they seemed to linger in the air. Elana felt it, too. She hugged herself and rubbed at her arms as if cold.

  “Do you think me cruel? You’re right. Your new mistress is a hard woman with those she rules, and cruel, too, when she needs to be. But she can be kind. Sometimes. For those who earn it.” She looked down at me, studying. “I’ll remove the gag. If you become abusive I’ll have it replaced, and I’ll have you beaten.”

  She unfastened the strap and took it away. I worked my mouth to get enough moisture to speak. It had gone dry from biting leather.

  “Is this why I’ve been taken captive?” I asked finally. “To make love to the women of Lanta?”

  She chuckled deep in her throat. “No, not all the women, my barbarian. You see, my wild one, you’re going to be my slave, my personal slave.” She frowned. “The others say—Well, never mind what the others say. You’re going to be my slave for a long, long time.”

  So there were others who didn’t go along with her plan for keeping me alive as a slave. Her sister? The Most High? I was glad to know that there was disunity in the enemy camp, however slight, and glad, too, that she intended keeping me alive, for a long time.

  “When I was a child, before I took the throne, I saw an Altaii warrior, riding through the streets. I’d never seen anything like him. A leopard in human form. A human eagle. I wanted him. I demanded he be given to me. And I was told that gold might buy an Altaii sword, but never an Altaii. There was no such thing as an Altaii slave. They escaped, or they died, but they never remained slaves. I vowed to have one, then, and I remembered that vow, as I remembered him. Then I saw you.” She drew a breath. “As soon as I saw you I knew that you were the one. In some fashion your destiny and mine were linked so strongly that I could feel it, with no help from a Sister of Wisdom. That could mean only one thing. You’re the one. You were born to be the Altaii slave I’ve dreamed of.”

  “Then why try to kill me? The tongueless assassin wasn’t there to capture me.”

  “It wasn’t I who sent him,” she said. “He was Eilinn’s idea. You made her very angry, you know, with your talk of making her a slave.” She laughed again, a throaty laugh. “She worked herself into a frenzy over the way Altaii slave girls are supposed to be treated. It made her furious. She’s never had a love, man or woman, and for you to speak of her so, in public especially—” She paused and looked at me pointedly. “For some reason you make me talk. It won’t matter, though. Slaves always keep secrets, at least, if they’re given no chance to tell them, and you won’t be.”

  “How do you intend to keep me alive, when your sister wants me dead? Someone will tell her I’m in the palace, surely.”

  “My sister doesn’t know everything that happens in the palace, nor do, ah, certain others. There are enough people who owe their loyalty to me personally to keep your presence a secret. By the time she learns you’re a captive, you’ll be properly tamed. That will satisfy her. That should satisfy everyone.”

  She was growing pensive again, thinking, I was sure, about the need for me to die. If she thought about it long enough, she might change her mind, decide the others were right after all.

  “Elana, why do you want to destroy us? We pose no threat to you. The caravans we take in our best years aren’t a pinprick on Lanta’s trade.”

  “Slaves aren’t supposed to call their mistresses by name. Perhaps in private, though. So many questions. You Altaii stand in the way of empire. There, does that answer your question?”

  “And the Morassa?”

  “We need horsemen in numbers to counter your horsemen,” she answered indifferently.

  “I mean after,” I said, and could’ve bitten my tongue.

  Her indolence fell away. She looked at me, really looked at me, and drew a wondering breath. “You know,” she said softly. “You know. But how much? And how? Almost you frighten me, my barbarian. It will not do for you to frighten me. I might begin to wonder if the others are right about you.”

  I kept a steady face and cursed my own stupidity. If she did change her mind, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. Her face was as serious as my own.

  “It’s time, I think,” she said.

  I tensed for the knife, but instead she unfastened the heavy brocade robes and let them fall. Beneath them she was naked. Her breasts were firm, upstanding globes. Below them a waist my hands could nearly span swelled into beautifully rounded hips. It was the body of the goddess her people believed her to be.

  “You find me beautiful,” she said. “That’s good. Now, my wild one.”

  And she descended on me.

  XII

  PRIDE, OR HONOR

  I’ve not seen many dungeons, but the one I sat in was better than most I had. The stone walls were no softer, the iron on my ankle was no more comfortable, and the ropes that bound my wrists were no looser, but it was warm and dry, and the straw on the floor was reasonably clean. There was even a pot for slops, which made it a palace among dungeons.

  There was a companion of sorts in the cell with me. He appeared to be a Lantan nobleman, or at least the rags he wore had once been a nobleman’s garments, and he had the manners of one. He answered all of my questions with mutters about barbarian dogs and the indignity of being forced to share his cell with animals. He didn’t speak of the indignity of being chained and having his hands tied behind him.

  From his appearance I wondered if we’d be fed. His arms were no more than sticks, and I could count his ribs easily through the holes in his tunic. I had no reason to believe I’d be starved, but then I had no real reason to believe I wouldn’t. I didn’t know what to expect.

  I’d been dragged from the bench straight to the cell, and I’d fallen asleep almost immediately. My fellow prisoner had no conversation to keep me awake. He was the only human I’d seen since entering the cell, and I’d heard no sound save his mutters. No sooner did the thought enter my head than I heard footsteps. Approaching footsteps.

  The bolts on the door were drawn back. It swung open. “Well, barbarian, how do you like it here in my dungeon? This is the section reserved for those who anger Elana. Queen Elana, that is, but you’ll never tell. You should be honored. Many high nobles have been where you are now. Like thi
s one.” He kicked, and the ragged nobleman doubled over, gagging.

  He was heavyset, this jailer, and his clothes were a mass of filth and grease. With his many chins and his constant laughter, he seemed a jolly sort. Until, that is, you saw his eyes. Red-rimmed, they were, and vicious, like those of a wild pig in a corner. He was a man who liked his work.

  On the floor in front of each of us he set a plate. I looked at him in astonishment. The food was of the best. Barro’s tongue. Small roasted birds in a rich sauce. Whole osere, and I’ll wager the man who dug them never got more than a smell.

  Beside the plates he put large cups of wine. It was no fare for prisoners, certainly not what they’d been feeding my ragged cell-mate on. He rolled over to face the wall. His chins quivering, the jailer stood and watched. And I understood.

  The food was there, rich food, food to tempt anyone, there for us to eat as we would. But our hands would remain tied behind our backs.

  “Eat,” I told the other prisoner. He didn’t move. I dropped to my knees, put my face to the plate and ate.

  The imprisoned nobleman glared at me in disgust. The jailer laughed aloud. When he left, carefully locking the door behind him, he was still laughing. Let him laugh. Let the noble fool glare. I continued to eat. When my chance to escape came, I’d not be too weak from hunger to take it.

  He who lay, huddled and starving, across from me confused honor with pride. Pride said, Don’t eat like this. Don’t let them make you get down on your knees and eat like an animal. Don’t give in so much as the width of the narrowest thread in your cloak. Honor said, Eat. Survive. Maintain your strength. Escape. And flavor every bite you take with the thought of the revenge you’ll take. I ate.

  The days passed, but how many I couldn’t tell. The light was always the same, dim and unceasing. Food came, but the time that passed between its comings was never the same. Sometimes I ate twice in the space of what I thought was a day. Once not at all for two days. Or so I thought. It was meant to soften the will, to sow doubt. But I survived. The other kept his face turned to the wall.

  One day the jailer set the plates on the floor, and getting no response to his gibes he kicked the other man hard enough to lift him off the floor. Still he got no response. With a curse, he rolled him over and stared him in the face. Then he dragged him away, sweating all the while, though not from exertion, I think.

  After that I passed my days alone, except for the visits of the jailer. I wondered briefly if the other prisoner had died, but he had made his choice. I had made mine.

  I tried to tell the passage of time by the growth of my beard. It was all I had that wasn’t controlled by the jailer. My beard was full when the door finally opened to admit someone other than the jailer. I could understand how some men could have felt a kind of joy at seeing a different face. To me it meant only that one part was over, and new means of breaking me were about to be tried.

  The guards who entered, with the jailer hovering in the background, removed my leg iron and led me away, still bound. I didn’t speak, and this seemed to puzzle them. Doubtless they had taken many others from those cells, and doubtless all of them had been eager to speak, to hear a human voice. I didn’t care to speak. I wanted only to reach our destination, to discover if it offered possibilities for escape.

  They took me to a garden. I hadn’t thought the dungeon had affected me, but going from the hard, gray drabness to bright flowers and fountains was like a blow.

  A number of women in plain white robes sat on the benches among the flowers. Among them, the center of them, was Elana. Her robes were white, also, but richly embroidered, far from plain. The women gathered around me, laughing gaily, chattering like songbirds. Despite their beauty my eyes were drawn to the walls. Guards, in groups of four, three groups to each wall except for the innermost one, and it stretched into the sky like a mountain. There was no escape from there.

  “Are you softened properly, my barbarian?” Elana asked. The women all laughed as if at something witty. “At any rate, you’re scruffy enough. I might allow you to keep that beard, trimmed a little, of course. It’s quite handsome.” There was a coy tone to her voice, and the women laughed again.

  “I hear that you ate well from the very first. Such submissiveness surprises me, barbarian. Some of the finest nobles of Lanta have held out to the point of death in those cells. Or beyond. I was certain you’d fight. Still, we must see if you have softened enough.”

  The guards hustled me to a pair of stone pillars facing a fountain. Cutting the ropes that bound my hands, they jerked my wrists up and fastened them to the posts. After being tied so long my arms became bars of fire and pain at the movement. I could no more control them than if they were sticks of wood.

  The straps on my wrists were tight, but they didn’t hold me rigid. I could move my body or bend an arm. My feet weren’t bound at all. Obviously it was desired that I move. Beneath the lash, it was expected, I’d forget who I was and act as a slave. Around me Elana and her women found seats to watch.

  The heavyset jailer came into my sight, wearing a clean tunic and carrying a red bag under his arm. He dropped to his knees to make obeisance to the queen, behind me, but she must have dismissed him immediately, for he rose as soon as his knees touched the stones. As he opened the bag and removed its contents the disappointment at her brusque treatment disappeared behind a smile of porcine satisfaction. In his hands he held a whip. It was an instrument to break the will of a man, two paces and more in length, tightly braided black leather. It was a weapon.

  He came to me, looping the whip around my neck. “I could break you easily, below, with the rack and the pincers and the hot irons, but they want it done the hard way. Now, I’m told to use this”—he shifted the whip slightly—“and even then I’m told to remove the metal barbs. You’re not supposed to be damaged badly.” He sneered. “But I’ll break you, just the same.”

  I looked at him no more, but he shifted uncomfortably, then jerked back as though I had snarled at him. He scowled as he remembered that I was bound, and he was the man with the whip.

  “I’ll have no need of metal tips,” he spat. “I’ll take the flesh from your bones.”

  “Get on with it, Nesir,” called the queen. “You’ll not frighten him into submission with your whispers.”

  Nesir smiled his vicious smile and prepared for work. I’d seen his eyes. There’d been no smile there. There’d been shame at his fear of a bound man, and anger at the laughter of the women, and desire for revenge. We would see which of us wanted his revenge the more.

  No sooner were my feet set than the first lash fell, a searing streak of fire across my shoulders. The breath caught in my throat, but no sound passed my lips, and I didn’t move. The second blow fell, and I concentrated on remaining absolutely still, absolutely silent. My hands weren’t clenched into fists. They hung loose in their bonds. As each blow struck I stood steady, hands open, feet unmoving. My breath was regular and controlled, and I looked straight ahead. My body was mine to command. It would not react if I willed it not to. I made no sound. I moved no muscle.

  Then the whip stopped. The fires making burning lines across my back were undiminished. I could feel blood dripping down to fall and spot the stones.

  Elana came to stand in front of me. “You’re a very dangerous man, barbarian,” she said softly. “A man who can stand like that under the whip, who doesn’t cry out, such a man must be dangerous.” She ran a hand over my chest and shoulders. “It seems I’ve made an error. While I thought I was softening you, all I was doing was keeping you well fed. Have I made another error? Should I be keeping you alive when they tell me you must—”

  She broke off, searching in my eyes for answers. I could only wait. She bit at the corner of her lips, then slowly wet them with the tip of her tongue. “Nesir!”

  “Yes, my queen?” he answered fawningly.

  “Remain here for instructions on how he’s to be handled from here on.” She smiled and patted me on the ch
eek. “Guards, take him to the old cell.”

  They freed my hands only to bind them behind my back again, and pulled me from the garden. The cell to which they took me could have been the one I’d been in before. Except, Elana had called it the old cell. What was different? The stone walls gave no clue.

  They chained me to the wall by one ankle, as before, but this time they unbound my wrists. Extinguishing the light, they left, the door grating shut behind them with a sound of finality.

  On my hands and knees, in the dark, I set out to explore what I could of my prison. I couldn’t reach the door, or the walls at the ends of the cell. In the straw on the floor I could reach I found nothing. No scraps of bones from a previous prisoner’s meal. No bits of rag. Nothing. It was as if the cell had been cleaned out after the previous occupant. The straw wasn’t only clean. It smelled new. It seemed the cell had been readied only recently.

  The chain I followed back to its beginning at the wall. The end seemed to grow out of a metal cap in some manner I couldn’t make out in the dark. Even if I’d had the bone I’d searched for there was no way to scrape at the mortar to free that.

  After a time I lay down to sleep. There was nothing else to do, except sit and stare at the darkness, and I’d already done that. So I went to sleep.

  It was the motion that woke me, the feeling that the floor was sliding underneath me. I woke to find it was sliding underneath me, with a grating sound, as of rocks being ground. Across the center of the room a bar seemed darker than the rest of the darkness, and the bar was growing wider. Abruptly I realized what was happening. I leaped for the wall and caught hold with fingertips and toenails in the cracks as the floor disappeared from beneath me.

  The grating noise went, but in its place, from the deep darkness below, came hissings and slitherings and sounds of slimy motion. I clung to the wall and wondered how deep the darkness was. How high could whatever made those noises leap? I thought of how far my chain would be hanging down and crept higher on the wall, carefully, finger by finger, toe by toe. And all the while those sounds continued.