“I shall likely do little more than wound you,” she said, unsheathing her sword as her eyes looked down at me. “Should I take your life, my Chama would surely be annoyed.”
I looked down at the sword that had been put into my hand, very aware of how awkwardly wide it was to hold. It wasn’t as heavy or as long as the sword of a l’lenda, but somehow it frightened me more than the larger weapon ever could. This was a weapon meant for a woman, and already my fingers were beginning to ache.
“I—cannot use a sword,” I got out, raising my eyes again to the expressionless Roodar. “I have never been taught to use one.”
“You are unable to use a sword, and yet you dared to challenge me?” Roodar growled with anger and insult, looking totally outraged but still giving me the impression she’d known all along. “You insult a warrior and sully the hilt of a fine weapon with your touch, and dare to attempt to lay claim to one who has taken that warrior’s interest? You are nothing, girl, far less, even, than the stone all about us, and as you cannot face me you will face, instead, an adequate punishment for presumption.”
The big woman resheathed her sword as she stepped back again, then made a gesture with one hand. Three of the guard w’wendaa came toward me immediately, two of them grinning, the third to take her sword back with a faint but very odd expression in her eyes. Once she had the sword she turned away again, but the other two didn’t. They already had the ties of my imad open before I realized what was happening, and as I tried to struggle I wondered how they’d known what Roodar wanted them to do. I couldn’t seem to think of a way, not even one, and then it came to me that my caldin had been pushed down over my hips to the floor, and I was being roughly pulled away from the puddle of it.
“One may easily see why these men have made you slave to them,” Roodar’s voice came, a mocking drawl heavy enough to draw my attention back to her. “You wear the form of a born slave, girl, and truly wear it well. Few of us here have seen such a thing before.”
The mockery in her voice and eyes brought chuckling and laughter to the other women standing around, and it finally came through to me that I’d been stripped naked in front of them! I could feel the heat of humiliation rising all through me at the impact of that realization, at the weight of all those laughing eyes on ..me, and my hands came up in an effort to shield myself even as I began backing away.
“Ah, no, slave, you may not retreat,” Roodar said at once, bringing to my arms the hands of the two women who had taken my clothing. “You stand before us in the chains of men, a slave pretending to womanhood, and for that you must be punished. For that you will be punished.”
She raised her own hands then, and suddenly I could see the whip she was holding. It seemed smaller and lighter than other whips I could remember, something made to hurt rather than maim or kill, but my mouth instantly went dry with fear and all I wanted to do was run. I tried to run, but the hands of the two women were still on my arms, keeping me from escaping from that terrible instrument of punishment.
“You will well recall your folly in challenging me, slave,” Roodar said with horrible cold amusement, shaking out the coils of the whip as I trembled between the hands of the women. “This is but the first time of many.”
Roodar stepped to one side with a nod, and then I was being thrown forward and down, to the stone at the feet of Tammad. My heart pounded and raced with the fear, increasing the pain of hitting the floor, especially in my right arm and shoulder. The stone of the floor was smoother to walk on than fall against, and I whimpered as it scraped my flesh, still desperate to run. I had to get out of there, had to get away—but how could I, when I’d be leaving someone behind? I began to look up at him, to tell him to run with me—and then I felt the first of the whip.
I screamed at the pain, screamed at the burning trail left across my back, but screaming didn’t stop it from happening again. The whip cracked and my body burned, and I was forced back and forth across the floor, writhing with pain and trying vainly to escape it. It hurt so terribly that I couldn’t bear it, but then it stopped as abruptly as it had started. I had been given a certain amount of pain, a measured punishment, and it had stopped because someone else wanted it stopped. Somehow doing it that way seemed worse than beating me bloody and unconscious, and I lay face down on the roughly smooth floor, hurting all over, my face hidden in my arms, crying hysterically.
“Nicely done, Roodar,” the voice of the woman on the platform came, filled with satisfaction. “In time this slave will shudder in fear at the least thought of you, which is as it should be. Even now her thoughts are mere whimperings, faint and strengthless with pain and terror. She is truly nothing, and in time will become even less. Perhaps you had best take away your new possession now, for he struggles to throw off the drug and minds which hold him.”
“My thanks for having been granted him, Chama,” Roodar said with satisfaction of her own, no longer paying me the least attention. “I will take him to my quarters and begin with him at once. He clearly wished to interfere with my punishment of this slave, and for that he, too, will be punished. ”
I raised my head from my arms to see the man who was no longer mine, straining slowly and strengthlessly against whatever bound him, pulling weakly against the hands on his arms which effortlessly held him back. His head was moving, as though he were trying to shake it, but he couldn’t manage the shake and then Roodar was in front of him. Her gesture made the ones holding him turn him and head him toward the heavy double doors at the back of the room, and I lay naked on the floor, crying and in pain, watching him walk out of my life.
“Remove that other as well,” the woman on the platform said, her voice already sounding distracted. “I have wasted enough time with foolishness, for there is work and planning left to do. And take that slave to what awaits her.”
There was movement among the women left in the room, and rough, hard hands came to my arms. I was pulled to my feet despite the added pain of movement, and Cinnan and I were taken in opposite directions.
Moving through the corridors was a blur in my memory, but every now and then I remembered that I was naked and tried to cover myself with my hands. The women forcing me along refused to allow that, though, and then I forgot about covering myself and just whimpered with the pain I still felt. I’d been punished for something and was going to be punished again, and it might not have been so bad if I could have remembered why that was being done to me. I wasn’t bleeding, only covered with ugly red welts, but I couldn’t remember why.
We walked a long way through the corridors and the blur, but finally there was an area at the end of one corridor that seemed to open out directly from it. I was pulled to a stop just inside the area, someone was gestured over, and then big hands were at my throat, then my wrists, and lastly at my ankles. I hadn’t found it possible to follow things too well until then, but when a cold metal band was brought to my throat, I made a greater effort.
“Now you are marked as you should be,” one of the women who had brought me there said, the words accompanying a solid click. “You now wear the collar of a slave, and have only to be told what your slavery will consist of.”
I reached for the stiff, cold metal that had been closed around my throat, but my arms were taken again and I was forced farther into the area that widened out from the corridor. The area was all of white stone, unwindowed and undecorated, and on the floor to the back of it were neat lines of thin, uncomfortable-looking pallets. Closer to where we stopped was something I hadn’t noticed sooner, about a dozen men in brown hip-wraps and bronze collars, men large enough to stand tall as l’lendaa, men who knelt humbly with their heads down. Not one set of broad shoulders was stiff with resentment, and I looked down at them without understanding why.