24
<The Search for Anvar>
Anvar had been spared the humiliation of the slave market. After several days spent languishing in the squalor and despair of the noisome cellar, he and some fifty other slaves had been chained together in groups of ten and marched, by night, down through the narrow, twisting alleys of the city to the wharves. As dawn was breaking, they were herded into open barges and rowed some miles upriver in the broiling heat to the site of the Khisu’s summer palace.
The area was a hive of activity. The huge new edifice was being built on a series of terraces that had been hewn by hand, at the cost of many slaves, back into the face of the towering red cliffs. The air was thick with dust and rang with shouted commands. The beat of hammers and chisels, the crack of whips and the groans of the tortured slaves echoed in a ceaseless cacophony between the canyon’s walls of red stone that trapped all sound and heat in a simmering caldron of suffering.
Already the massive blocks of white stone that had been ferried down from the upland quarries were being set into place. Teams of exhausted slaves were hauling on the ropes of the great hoists that lifted the blocks, while others swarmed over the stepped banks of wooden scaffolding that lined the half-built walls, or mixed vast quantities of mortar that stood in constant danger of drying out in the baking sun. Whole camps of masons and master carvers and carpenters labored at their crafts, and architects strode around the site carrying rolls of parchment and an air of self-importance. A huge outdoor kitchen had been built on the flat ground near the river to feed the laboring hordes, and sweating cooks worked ceaselessly, seemingly oblivious to the stench and dust, amidst a cloud of swarming flies.
Anvar’s group was off-loaded at one of the flimsy wooden piers that projected out into the sluggish river, and the Slave-master for the site came to look them over, his expression sour. “Is this all?” he demanded of the barge-train captain. “I need three times as many. The palace will never be finished at this rate. Slaves last no time at all in these conditions!”
The captain spat on the dusty ground. “Don’t take it out on me,” he grumbled. “I only bring them—however many. Maybe if you treated them better, they’d last longer.” He glanced disparagingly round the dusty, noisome work site.
“Don’t tell me how to do my job, you dockside layabout! If the Khisu’s accursed palace isn’t finished on time, heads will roll—and I’m not taking the blame!” the Slavemaster retorted. “How I’m expected to work with the rubbish you people have been sending up here—Look at that one!” His finger shot out in the direction of Anvar, whose light skin and hair made him very conspicuous in the group of slaves. “What in the name of the Reaper is that supposed to be?”
The captain shrugged. “How should I know? I only bring them, remember? Zahn doesn’t tell me where he gets his slaves, and I don’t ask questions—it’s not healthy. As long as he keeps sending them, you’d be wise just to use them, and keep your mouth shut. Who cares what color one bloody slave is anyway? Zahn? Not if there’s profit in it! The Khisu? All Xiang cares about is getting his God-blasted palace finished. Just do what you usually do—work the bastard till he drops and bury him out of sight somewhere, or throw him in the river for the lizards: If anybody asks, I never saw him. I’m off now. This place stinks!”
“Some help you are,” the Slavemaster grumbled. “Tell Zahn I need more—and the quality had better improve, or someone just might whisper in the Khisu’s ear that someone has been importing illegal Northerners,”
The captain spat once more. “I don’t tell Zahn anything— and I would watch my mouth if I were you. Knowing him, you’re likely to wind up buried under your own foundations.” He turned on his heel and left.
The slaves were put to work at once. One by one, each man was unshackled and questioned as to whether he had any particular skills, such as masonry or carpentry. If they had, they were lucky, for they were sent to assist the artisans and spared much grueling labor in the brutally hot climate. As the overseer worked his way toward him, Anvar found himself in a dilemma. Should he pretend to be ignorant of their language, in the hope that it might give him a chance to escape, or should he claim the knowledge of carpentry that his grandpa had taught him, and so survive longer in this terrible place? But he was spared the decision. As the overseer approached him, the Slavemaster intervened. “Not that one,” he snapped. “I don’t want him around too long. Put him on the pulley gangs.”
The pulleys—the worst work on the site, as Anvar soon discovered. Twenty slaves at a time hauled on thick ropes that raised the massive stone blocks up the half-finished walls. The more blocks that were raised, the higher the walls became, and the greater the effort required from the struggling, exhausted slaves. The death toll was appalling. Once a block had begun its ascent there could be no stopping, for if momentum was lost the stone would fall, and might crack as it hit the ground, incurring a huge waste of time and labor to hew and transport another from the quarries. And the Khisu wanted his palace finished. So if a slave was unlucky enough to lose his footing or collapse from exhaustion in the line, he would be trampled by those behind him, who would, in their turn, struggle desperately to keep their own bare feet from slipping on the slimy, bloody pulp that had once been a man.
It was a nightmare unending. From dawn to dusk, the work rarely halted. Food was scarce and unsatisfying—a thin mush of cooked grain doled out morning and evening. Water was insufficient for the slaves’ needs in the burning sun, and many collapsed from heatstroke. Brutal overseers with whips stalked the lines, never permitting the pace to slacken. Clouds of biting insects assailed the slaves, and snakes and scorpions came scuttling from beneath the shelter of the blocks as they began to lift, scattering at random toward the bare feet and legs of the helpless slaves. It took many agonizing hours for a man to die from their venom.
By the end of the first day, Anvar’s fair skin was burned and blistered by the fierce sun. His hands and shoulders were bloody and raw from the friction of the coarse ropes, and his bare feet were scored and lacerated from the uneven, gritty ground. His back was striped with whip cuts, his head throbbed from the relentless heat, and his tongue was swollen in his parched mouth. His pain-filled world had shrunk to a single thought: keep moving. Endure.
In the blessed cool of evening, another gang replaced the exhausted survivors at the pulleys, and the work went on by torchlight. Anvar and the other slaves on the day teams were herded into a high-walled stockade. No attempt had been made to provide sanitation, and the place stank like a cesspool and swarmed with flies. A handful of gruel was doled out to each slave as he passed through the gate, and a long stone trough within the compound was filled with muddy river water. Anvar fought for a drink at the trough, where men crowded and jostled like beasts for the unsavory water. Then he staggered away from the mob and lay in the filth where he fell, too exhausted to think, or even register the pain of his abused body. It seemed that he only slept for an instant, before he was awakened with a kick to begin another day of toil and torture.
There was no doubt that if Anvar had been of true Mortal blood, he would never have survived this terrible place for two days together. But somehow, while he slept, his Mage blood worked automatically to heal and restore him enough to face another day of dreadful suffering, though it could only do so much. Anvar had not been trained in the Healing arts, and Miathan had stolen the active element of his powers. Food and rest were needed to restore the energy used in the Healing process, and these were in desperately short supply. So, day by wretched day, his condition began to deteriorate, the Healing becoming less and less effective and only serving to prolong his misery.