Warrior of the Altaii Page 11

  When my fingers seemed frozen into hooks and my toes felt at the edge of tearing from my feet, I heard the grating again, the noise of the floor sliding back into place. Slowly I moved back down the wall, crack by crack, as carefully as I’d climbed. How far had I climbed to escape what crawled below? How far back down had I come?

  Suddenly I felt a difference in the stones. They were damp, slimy with a growth that crushed beneath my hands and feet and gave a sickly smell. I was below the level of the floor. Desperately I climbed, but in my desperation, quietly still. For the things were still beneath me. I climbed, and as I felt the cap that marked the end of my chain, the floor slid out in truth. It caught me in the ribs, knocking me free from the wall. My fingers scrabbled at the stone, bare now, as I hung over the pit. With what seemed the last of my strength I managed to throw one leg over the edge of the floor and heave myself up as the two halves slid shut at my fingertips.

  I lay awake for a long time, wondering if the floor would split again, wondering what lay beneath it, but at last, against my will, sleep came. This time it was the grating that woke me. I made the leap to the wall without a thought.

  After a few minutes something strange struck me. There was no widening darker space in the center of the room. I moved back down, slowly. The floor wasn’t moving. Only the sound of its moving was there.

  That sound went on, and so long as it continued I had to remain awake. If I slept the moving floor might not be enough to wake me. I sat and watched the darkness and listened to the grinding sound of stone sliding over stone.

  When it stopped it left an emptiness behind, as if it had become as much a part of the cell as the stone and the dark. I lay down to sleep, but lightly, warily, as an animal sleeps. Like an animal I didn’t dare be surprised in my sleep.

  Four times more the sound of grating rock came without the floor moving. Three times it came and the floor opened. On the last of these times I nearly died.

  The constant alarms, the vital clinging to the wall were taking their toll. Each time I slept, I slept deeper. At last the grating noise failed to wake me. The sliding of the floor failed to wake me.

  The floor disappeared from beneath me, and only the fall woke me. In desperation I grabbed for the chain. The links slid through my hands, ripping and tearing at the flesh of my palms, but I slowed, and I stopped, and immediately I began to climb again, back up the chain that was wet with my blood.

  The sounds from the pit below were still there, louder now, closer. My exertions opened the wounds on my back, and the blood dropped into the darkness. The hissings grew more agitated, the slitherings more rapid. Something jerked at the chain that hung in a loop below me, brushing against my leg.

  I kicked, and my foot connected with something that mashed under my bare toes, something that gave a hissing scream, released a smell like the sour smell of the slime that grew on the stones beneath the floor. It fell away without me seeing it, and I was glad. I would face anything that runs or flies, on the Plain or in the far mountains, but that which was below made me feel unclean merely by being close.

  How long I clung to the chain at the cap on the wall I could not say. It seemed like days. I couldn’t go higher because I couldn’t trust my bloody fingers to hold in the chinks between the stones. I had to remain on the chain. Again and again something reached from the pit to tug and pull at that chain, to try and pull me down. I swung violently to snatch the chain away. I shouted at the things below, screamed defiance. And I hung there, through endless time, endless darkness, while drops of my blood fell to whet the tastes of the beasts in the pit.

  When the floor at last returned I swung onto it weakly, and lay exhausted, covered with a cold sweat. If they’d come for me then, I’d have forgotten about survival. I’d have fought, naked and chained as I was. Better to die a clean death on a blade than to fall to whatever lay in the pit.

  In those first days in the cell I quickly got used to the fact that I wouldn’t be fed. Elana’s gibes about keeping me well fed had been warning enough on that. In truth, I could survive for some time without it. Food’s often scarce enough when the lances campaign. Water, however, was a different matter.

  As the days passed my lips cracked. My tongue swelled, and if Ivo had come in I couldn’t have managed enough wetness to spit on him. Then my sweat no longer tasted salty, and I knew I would soon begin to die.

  I was lying against the wall when I heard steps outside. Lying took less energy even than sitting, and I’d none to spare.

  I watched the door swing open with as much interest as I could muster. It was Nesir. The dim light through the door behind him hurt my eyes, but I could see that much. And I could see the large clay pot in his hands. He set the pot on the floor, tossed a small packet down beside it and left. He didn’t say a word.

  Hastily I opened the packet. It was salt, and the pot held water, pure and sweet. The water was enough for several days, and the salt would help keep me alive to drink it. And then it came to me. I hadn’t heard the bolts on the door. He hadn’t fastened the door to the cell.

  I didn’t rush, but neither did I move slowly. I ate some of the salt and drank some water. More salt and more water. I drank until I was ready to burst, then I poured some of it over me, to wash away sweat and grime, to lessen sweating and the body’s loss of moisture. And I drank more of it. When I set the pot down it couldn’t have held more than a few mouthfuls.

  Nesir had been waiting for the clink of the clay pot on the stones. Immediately he swung the door open and ran in. On the run he kicked the pot against the wall, dodging back out of my reach. I couldn’t see his face, but he made his first sound when the lack of a splash told him the water was already gone, a snarl of disappointment. He jerked out of the cell, slamming the door behind him. This time the bolts rammed shut loudly. I lay in the darkness and laughed until tears ran down my face.

  After that visit the game with the floor began again. Only, this time, something new was added. Sometimes the floor would move, but it wouldn’t open. And always when this happened there was the thought in the back of my head that it really was opening, that this time I just couldn’t see the gap widening in the center of the room. Added to the rest it made an interesting test of the will. How long could I let the floor move before I went to the wall, opening or no?

  On the next visit with the water, the salt was in the water. I didn’t discover it until I’d taken a huge swallow, and the time until the third visit was an agony of burning thirst. The water was good again at the third visit, but after that the floor began to split without warning. There was no grating sound, no grind of stone against stone. Merely a silent slide into emptiness. After that I seldom slept.

  The days continued. The darkness continued. The pit below continued. I couldn’t tell time by changing light, or by meals. I told it by the visits with water. Twenty-three visits with water. I kept the numbers in my head, even when I slept. Twenty-three visits with water, and all the while the pit below clamored for me.

  At the twenty-fourth visit they took me from the cell.

  XIII

  THE NEW PET

  The guards who pulled me out of the cell stopped in astonishment when they got into the light enough to see me. No doubt I looked like an escapee from the Lands of the Dead. I felt like one about to enter them.

  “We can’t take him like this,” one of them protested.

  “It’s orders,” said Nesir.

  The guards were doubtful, but they wouldn’t disobey orders. They half carried me to the garden I’d left so long ago.

  Once again the women waited in their white dresses, sitting around a fountain. Once again Elana was the center of them all. This time, though, the laughter and talk faded as I was pushed, stumbling, into their midst and fell heavily to the tiles. There was total silence until Elana spoke.

  “I didn’t expect—I didn’t believe—” She grabbed my matted beard and twisted my head up. “Has what I want been crushed out of you, barbarian? Has it?
” She peered at me intently, then released me and held out her hands. Instantly a cloth was there to wipe them where they’d touched me. “No,” she said, “it’s not gone, is it, barbarian? You should be beaten, groveling, but the defiance is still alive. The fire still burns in your eyes.”

  “As you said, Elana,” I croaked, “Altaii don’t make slaves.”

  “You misunderstand, barbarian.” She laughed. “You’re doing well. I don’t want to break your spirit, I just want to know you’ll obey me. And you will.”

  “Never,” I managed.

  She laughed again. “Of course you will. Here.” She held out a piece of meat in her fingers. “You’ll eat to survive. You’ve proven that. And you need food. You’re starving. But the only food you’ll get is what you take nicely from my hand, or the hand of one of my ladies, as a pet should.” She waggled the meat and smiled. “Take it, my wild one.”

  She was right. I would survive, and even like this the meat would taste sweet with the spice of future revenge. I took the meat from her fingers.

  She laughed, and the others laughed with her, at that. Then all of the rest of them wanted to feed the new pet too. I played the part, crawling to each in turn for a piece of meat or a double handful of water or wine. I kept my head down, though. If they’d seen my eyes while I fed like that they’d have known I was nowhere near tamed.

  “Might I feed your new pet also, sister?”

  The women around Elana all gasped at the newcomer, and even she seemed uncomfortable at first. It didn’t last very long, though. “Certainly, sister. He isn’t trained, yet, but I have taught him this one trick.”

  Eilinn left her entourage to walk to the fountain. She was dressed as Elana was, but in blue, and her women wore every color in the garden. She held out a hand without looking, and one of Elana’s women put a piece of meat on it.

  “Come, barbarian pet, get the meat. Do your trick for me.”

  Rage seemed to bubble up in me, like the bubbles in a pool of boiling mud. I could keep it down with Elana. I could control it with her women. Why should it burn so with her sister? I gripped the tiles of the courtyard until my knuckles were white. And somehow, by the thickness of a fingernail, I managed to crawl to Eilinn and take the meat.

  “He seems tame enough,” she said coolly, “but it’s not enough, you know, sister. He has to die. They’ve all said it. The Most High. Sayene. Ya’shen. Betine. They all say he has to die.”

  “And I say this is enough. Look at him, sister. Does he look like he can stand in the way of anything?”

  “Perhaps not, but—”

  “I mean to have him, Eilinn. I want him, and I mean to have him. I say enslaving him is sufficient.”

  “As you wish, sister.” Eilinn’s voice was as frosty as her sister’s was hot. “If there is any failure, though, it rests on your head.”

  “Don’t threaten me, sister,” Elana spat. “I know the real reason you want him dead. He spoke of putting chains on you. That’s the reason, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t come here for this,” Eilinn said coldly, “and I won’t stay for it. Just remember what I said. Failure is on your head.”

  Elana’s face twisted with anger as her sister walked away. Her ladies sat very still, fearful of attracting the fury she meant for Eilinn. It took her a long time to calm, a time I spent still kneeling on the tiles, and when she did a sourness was left behind.

  “There’s no fun here anymore,” she complained. “He’s too dirty, and his beard looks like a rat’s nest. Take him away and have him bathed. I’ve got to—”

  Whatever it was she had to do, she hurried off without finishing the sentence. I was left with the guards.

  It was still necessary for them to half carry me. One small meal hadn’t done a great deal in restoring my strength. They didn’t appear to relish the task. Elana had been right about the dirt.

  The bath they took me to was a different one from the first I’d seen in the palace. Where the other had been supposed to be a pond in a garden, this was a river. Two of the walls showed rushes on the banks, and the other two pictured the view up and down the river.

  The girls were different, too. They were not nearly as pretty, plain, in fact, for bath girls, a trade where beauty is common. They were also silent, almost cheerless. There was no banter here, not even a smile.

  In my filth they wouldn’t let me into the pool until I’d been cleaned off. They scrubbed me down three times from head to toe before they were satisfied, and they had all the animation they’d have had if they were scrubbing a horse.

  The baths are usually a cheerful place, but these girls remained drab and lifeless. Even in the pool, where more games than a few are played, they had no spirit. I suffered them to wash me and cut my hair and beard, and it was a suffering in truth. I began to feel worse than when I came in. Even a massage didn’t help.

  The guards waited, then led me away, not to a cell, but to an alcove off a corridor in what seemed to be a main part of the palace. There was a sleeping pad there, but there were still no clothes of any kind. As they chained my ankle my curiosity won out.

  “Those girls—” I began.

  They laughed as if it was a great joke. Finally one of them spoke. “The queen has decided you’ll see no woman who’s not plain, except for her. You won’t even be allowed to talk to a woman, except for the queen. Soon you won’t even be able to think of another woman.”

  “And it won’t matter that you told me about it?”

  They froze, doubled over the way they were, but they weren’t laughing anymore. “We’ll have to kill him,” one said.

  “And how will you explain it?” I asked calmly, but I kept a wary eye on his hand, creeping toward his sword. “They’ll never believe I attacked you. I can hardly stand. Kill me, and you’ll die screaming in the dungeons.”

  “And we’ll die anyway if she finds out we’ve ruined her plans,” he said, but his hand stopped moving toward his sword.

  “I certainly won’t tell. She might change to another plan, one I don’t know about, one that might work.” They began to relax. “That is, I won’t tell if you answer a few questions.”

  They went taut again. Then the one who’d spoken before shifted. “What kind of questions?”

  “Not much. For instance, where am I, exactly, and what am I doing here?”

  He began slowly, but warmed to the task as he went on. “You’re not far from the queen’s chambers. Elana’s chambers, that is. The first turn to the right ahead leads straight to her door.”

  “And why I’m here?”

  “Isn’t it plain enough? Once you put a little meat back on your frame, you’ll be spending a lot of time in those chambers, entertaining the queen.” He snickered nervously.

  “You don’t sound very respectful,” I said. “I thought she was supposed to be a goddess.”

  “To the rabble in the streets she’s a goddess. They give their coins to buy prayers to her, and to the other one. Me, I live here in the palace, same as the rest of the Palace Guard. She’s human enough to us. She’s no goddess, except maybe to the officers.” He snickered again.

  “Have you gone mad?” the other guard hissed. “You could get the both of us impaled on the walls for saying that.”

  The second guard’s nervousness infected the first. They looked around as if expecting to see someone standing there to accuse them. In a moment they were going to run.

  “One more question,” I said. “How do I get to the palace wall from here?”

  “Palace wall? You’re talking about escape? You’re mad. If it’s discovered that I’ve been talking to you like this—”

  “It won’t be, as long as I get an answer. The outer wall of the palace.”

  His companion was already half a dozen steps down the hall. He licked his lips and took a step. “Two crossings after the one that leads to the queen’s chambers. Go to the left. At the first stairs you come to, go down three flights, then keep on the way you were headed. Yo
u’ll reach a door to the outside. It leads to a walk on the palace wall. You’ll never make it, you know. The guards at the queen’s door will see you when you try to cross the hall. And between here and the wall there are other guards, and servants and slaves who’ll raise an alarm as soon as they see you.”

  “Do you really care about my making it, or even trying? And Lantan, if anything makes me think you’ve talked about my plan, the way you did about Elana’s—” I smiled at him, unpleasantly.

  He took a step down the hall, and then another. “I won’t talk,” he said, “but you’ll still never escape.” And he turned and ran after the other guard.

  The pad was more comfortable than anything I’d lain on since I came to the palace, and once the guards were gone I slept, a sleep untroubled by moving floors or hissing from below. I slept, and when I woke I was being watched.

  The girl was pretty, but her garb and the black iron bracelets on her wrists proclaimed her a laborer. Her hair was cropped raggedly close, for cleanliness at her labors, and her nails were broken off short. But there was spirit in her brown eyes yet, and intelligence. She hadn’t broken.

  “What are you looking at, girl?” I growled.

  “You, of course,” she said calmly.

  I suppressed a smile. “And why am I worth looking at?”

  “Because you’re the queen’s new barbarian slave. She’s supposed to be much taken with you.” She frowned. “I don’t see why.”

  “You have a mouth on you, girl.”

  “Even a kitchen girl must have a mouth.” With a swing of her tunic and a laugh she disappeared down the hall, in the direction away from the queen’s chamber. I wondered what had brought her. It seemed a long time before the guards returned. From where I was chained I could see the walls of my alcove, the far wall of the hall, part of a pillar and half of a plant. In the dungeon I’d had to fight for my life every second. Here the boredom was likely to kill me.