As she waited, Rialla became more and more agitated. The unpleasant emotions that pervaded the chamber were so strong she couldn’t block them completely. They served to reinforce her apprehension. She got to her feet and paced back and forth to relieve her tension and keep her from tearing her collar off and running to Sianim as fast as she could.
Several men entered the chamber talking and laughing. One of them came up to her and unfastened her lead from the wall. He stank like sweat and other people’s terror, and couldn’t keep his hands to himself.
Rialla didn’t struggle, and eventually he tired of his fun and blindfolded her with a strip of cotton cloth stained with dirt and dried blood. She followed the tug on her leash, stumbling blindly over the uneven floor. She hit her shin against a piece of wood and decided that it must have been a stair, because she was lifted up a short distance and put back on her feet on top of some sort of platform.
He pushed her backwards until her shoulders pressed against a bar of wood that moved slightly when she touched it. She felt the jerk at her neck as he attached her collar tightly to the bar. Her arms were pulled up over her head and tied to another bar that seemed to be both higher and farther away than the first. A thick strap was secured around her waist.
Rialla heard a groaning sound as the bars took her weight and her feet were slowly drawn off the floor. As her back arched against her support, she realized that she was tied to a large wheel. It stopped turning and her legs were pulled back and attached to another bar on the wheel.
When the man was satisfied that she was secure, he groped her one last time and went on to his next job. She couldn’t close her ears to the noises in the chamber nearly as well as she could close her mind to the suffering that spawned them. She found herself wishing that they would punish her and get it over with.
Finally, there was a creak as the mechanism that turned the wheel was unlocked. Slowly she was pulled up and over the top of it. The wheel made an odd noise, but before Rialla was able to figure out what the sound was, her head was immersed in cold water.
The shock made her gasp, and she came out of the water choking and spitting out the fluid she’d swallowed. She was disoriented, and her head hit the water again before she was ready. She was underwater the third time when she realized that the wheel wasn’t being turned at a steady rate that she could gauge. She gagged and spat out the water that she had tried to breathe. The distraction caused her concentration to fail, and the strength of the shield that kept out the emotions flooding the chamber faded.
As soon as her barriers weakened, Rialla got a full dose of the torment of the other victims in the cell. She started to scream and her head was forced underwater again. This time the trip through the water was so slow that she started to black out before her nose broke the surface again. The wheel stopped to let her catch her breath, and she managed to close most of her barriers again as she choked and fought frantically for air.
Tris. She didn’t really expect to be able to touch him without dropping her shields more than she could in this room. She was surprised when she got an answer.
Rialla? She could read the concern in his reply as he caught the edge of her desperation.
The wheel began to move again, and involuntarily she struggled against the ropes that held her. She started to tell him what was going on, but she couldn’t form any coherent messages before she was under the water again.
Rialla! The demand in his tone brought her back to herself, and she struggled to communicate what she needed.
Talk to me … The struggle to keep from breathing the icy water grew more difficult. Please… I need you to give me something to concentrate on … Her face was numbed by the cold, and it was getting hard to tell when she was out of the water.
It wasn’t until her forehead started under again that she realized that she’d held her breath too long. She managed to grab a quick breath before water closed over her mouth.
Rialla? What … He stopped, and she could feel him forcibly restrain himself. Slowly, as if he were reciting out loud, he sent her what she’d requested. Black cherry root, otherwise known as nightshade or belladonna, can be used as a sedative or pain reliever in small enough doses…
She grasped onto his words like a lifeline, using them to calm herself, much as a monk chants himself into a trance. She didn’t care what he said, as long as he kept talking.
He seemed to sense what she needed and kept up a steady flow of information. She found that she could use him to block out the feedback she was getting from the other occupants of the chamber. Once she was calmer and not feeling other people’s emotions, Rialla could tell when she was about to be submerged.
Tris kept talking, but she didn’t really hear the words. Gradually, she was able to sense the water before it touched her. There was something odd about that, but she was in no state to decide what that was. Once she thought that Tris warned her, but that was ridiculous—she could tell that he was somewhere in the upper levels of the hold.
When they finally pulled her off, she was too dizzy to stand up, and the guards carried her back to her cell. She didn’t stop Tris’s steady voice in her mind, drawing strength from his presence. There was a towel and dry clothes waiting for her on the straw. Shaking with cold, she rubbed herself with thick cotton material until only her hair was damp, then put on the dry tunic.
…acids that the flowering coralis uses to digest its prey can also be used to dissolve warts and …
Tris? Rialla interrupted wearily as she stumbled to the pile of straw. Thanks. You can stop now. I’m back in the cell
.
To her surprise he didn’t ask anything, just said, I’m coming.
Rialla drew up her legs and wrapped her arms around them, resting her cheek against her knee. She couldn’t seem to get warm. She didn’t watch this time when Tris came through the wall—once was enough.
“Are you all right? Is this the end of it?” Tris’s voice sounded soft and dangerous, but when he touched her shoulders, warmth flowed from his hands.
Rialla turned her head to give him a tired smile and said hoarsely, “I think so. There’s no reason for anything more. Thanks for the help.”
“Good,” he said, ignoring her thanks.
As she quit shivering, he pulled away and began pacing restlessly. Rialla could feel his agitation, but only distantly through the curtain of her exhaustion. She lowered her head to her knees and closed her eyes. Somehow it wasn’t worth the effort to open them again. She fell asleep and woke up alone early in the morning.
Sweat gathered in the small of Rialla’s back as she worked with fourteen other slaves to perform the combinations called out by the dancemaster. This man was new to her, although he seemed experienced. When the slaves were through with his workout, they would be warmed up and limber, but not overly tired.
Deliberately taking deep, even breaths through her nose, Rialla pulled her good leg behind her, until the heel touched the back of her head, and counted the drumbeats silently, trying to ignore the burning in her bad thigh as it supported her weight.
She switched legs, but couldn’t make her bad leg stretch the few extra inches to touch. The burning increased and she was afraid that she would tear the wound open, so she let it relax a little further, aware that the dancemaster stood near her. When the combination was finished, the master called for a rest and the slaves dropped to the mats.
He examined the narrow red line that marked her leg where the swamp beast had slashed her.
“Bend it.” he said shortly.