So saying, the doctor left, ducking under the lintel of the door. Amochis stood for a moment in the center of the room, glaring at Dwyrin, who had not moved or spoken during the examination. Finally Amochis shook his head as if to clear the cloud of anger that was gathering around him and stomped out, muttering. Dwyrin caught a fragment about money. The door swung shut with a heavy clang and then the scrape of the bar being shoved home. Some time passed and the slat of light from the high window drifted across.the far wall, creeping up until at last it disappeared and darkness filled the chamber. In all that time Dwyrin had lain still, listening to the constant murmur of people outside of the window. With a sick feeling in his stomach, he realized that there must be thousands of slaves outside, and hundreds of overseers.
He had heard of this place, at the school and before, when he was taken on the Imperial ship from his distant homeland to Egypt. He had come, by dreadful circumstance, to the island of Delos. The human stockyard of both the Eastern and Western empires. A tiny, almost barren island off the shore of Achaea, consisting entirely of the single largest slave market in the world. Ten thousand slaves bought and sold per day, part of his mind gibbered, and you only the latest of them. The slavers would never believe that he was part of the Emperor’s levy. If they did believe the sailor, that he was a magician, he would either be killed out of hand as too dangerous to sell or auctioned to the powerful as a freak or an ornament. Tears forced themselves out the corners of his eyelids. If only he could summon the meditations or the entrance of Hermes, he could take these shackles off. But nothing came, the preternatural lightness in his head kept coming between his groping thought and the remembered shape of the power. Night deepened and at last he fell asleep, famished and exhausted.
When the light in the window brightened again, Dwyrin woke, groggy and with a splitting headache. The lightness in his mind was gone, however, and he fumbled to bring the meditations into focus. Hunger kept intruding on his thoughts and distracting him. At last, by digging a fingernail into his palm, he managed to focus enough to bring the first entrance into focus. It wavered, though, and his concentration kept slipping away, into realms of roasted lamb, or fresh grapes plucked from the vines in the village, or tart olives fresh from the brine. He struggled through this, finally managing to reach the clarity of vision that had allowed him to see the chain link on the ship. Slowly, with many stops and starts, he began examining each link in the chains that held him to the table. His neck throbbed with pain at the strain of keeping his head up so that he could see the heavy iron bands. None of them evinced the discoloration that the one on the ship had. He collapsed back onto the hard marble, gasping with effort.
Ra had crept up to almost the window itself when the door rattled and opened again. To Dwyrin a cold blast of… something… came through it. His skin flushed with goosebumps and he turned his head, almost afraid to see what had stepped so lightly through the doorway. In his partially restored over-sight he watched in fear as the timbre of the light flexed and dimmed. Strange flows of power licked around the room, crawling on the walls like indistinct spiders. A man entered the chamber, with Amochis in tow. He was gray, and of middling height. He was plainly dressed, in a small dark-colored felt cap, a long cape and shirt, with a dark-brown tunic below. His face was a narrow triangle with heavily lidded eyes. Dwyrin flinched away from the crumbly chalklike skin, the pale eyes, almost the color of lead. Sickly white currents of power glided under and over his skin and garments like caressing snakes. He. had no smell.
“This is the slave I spoke of, master,” Amochis said in a quiet voice. Over the dead man’s shoulder, Dwyrin could see that the sailor was almost paralyzed by fear. The acrid smell of his sweat filled the room.
“Pretty, very pretty,” the dead man whispered with a voice like dry bones tumbling into the bottom of a well. “I see promise in him, buried like a hot coal. You were right to bring him to my attention, Master Amochis.” Feather-light fingers drifted over Dwyrin’s face, almost touching him, but never quite making contact. The dead man leaned over the Hibernian, his face close to Dwyrin’s chest. Dwyrin shuddered at the intimacy as the dead man began sniffing him. Up close, Dwyrin could see the tiny line of stitches that ran from the man’s neck up his throat and around the back of his skull. A scream began to bubble in his throat and he scraped himself as far away from the breathless exhalation of the dead man as he could.
The dead man smiled, the muscles of his cheek twitching like earthworms to compose his face. A narrow hand was laid on Dwyrin’s shoulder like a grave cloth settling on the newly dead.
“No, no, my young friend, do not be afraid. I shall not harm you. Lie. still and think of pleasant things. I will take you away from this place, to somewhere you will be greatly appreciated.”
The smile came again, and this time the muscles were quicker to respond to the ancient will that swam in the deep-black pools of its eyes. Dwyrin froze like a rabbit in the face of a wolf. The dark pools became deeper and deeper, like a lake draining into whirlpool. Frantically he tried to summon the Meditation of Serapis to hold his mind inviolate against the pull of that darkness. He failed, and consciousness left him again.
Dwyrin woke again in almost darkness, though now no chains lay upon him. Another ship creaked around him, and the groaning sound of ropes rubbing against the sides of the ship filled the air. A sheet covered him; by its feel against his skin it was cotton. He shuddered at the thought of being naked, either physically or mentally, in the presence of the creature that had leaned over him in the slave cell. The air around him seemed oppressive and his skin crawled with a sense of imminent danger. Very cautiously he opened his eyes and looked around. This time the chamber was not belowdecks in the hold, but it was small, low-ceilinged, and occupied only by the cot upon which he lay, a bucket, and a curved door. The wall the cot was built out from was curved as well, and Dwyrin realized that he must be in a small room wedged into the corner of a ship hull. A dim blue light shone from the edges of the door, giving him what light there was to see.
Carefully he checked his limbs, finding no shackles or chains. His clothes were gone, and he seemed unharmed.* At his neck, however, there was a thin cord of metal. Delicately he tested its strength and its feel in his hands suggested that it was unbreakable by regular means. He slowed his breathing and attempted the First Entrance. After a moment he stopped. The power, the passage that had always been there before was simply gone. Despite his best effort, despite running through the entire litany of the meditations, nothing unfolded in his mind to lead him into the overworld of forms. He fingered the cord around his neck again, puzzling at its sudden warmth.
The creak of the door and a flood of blue-white light into the room interrupted further ruminations. Squinting and raising a hand to shield his eyes, Dwyrin quailed to see that the figure outlined in that harsh glare could only be the dead man.
“Come, my young friend, dinner is set upon the table.” The half-hidden mockery present in that dust-dry voice did nothing to assuage Dwyrin’s fears. Still, there was nothing else to be done at the moment. Wearily, for his body seemed very weak, he levered himself off of the bed and crouched down to crawl out of the tiny space. Beyond, a cabin held a table bolted to the floor, a profusion of carpets and bric-a-brac, two chairs, and a number of plates and bowls. The smell of dinner slithered across the Hibernian like a snake, the prospect of food twisting his stomach but the subtle smell of carrion clogged his throat. Dwyrin took the smaller of the two seats gingerly, clinging to the side of the table as the ship rolled a little.