“Drink the wine,” my master repeated in a hurried whisper, reaching down quickly to touch my cheek with a big, gentle hand. “When we are awakened with the new light, I will rouse you with the pleasure of use.”
And then he was gone, following after the others as they all hastened after the woman who had called them. After and after and after, slaves after the master, the master a slave and the slave a master. I shook my head to dislodge the cadenced nonsense, not wanting to get caught up in it, and spilled a drop or two of the wine I was holding. The bowl it lay in was a dull pink with the suggestion of red beneath, for all the world like skinless flesh covering blood. Inside the skinless flesh was the wine I was supposed to drink, the wine I wanted to drink, but also the wine that would surely make me violently ill if I tried to swallow it. I could feel the sweat breaking out on my body and could see my hands trembling, and all I wanted to do was lie down and die. I knelt in place for another minute, struggling to control myself enough to take even a single sip, but it was just no good. I needed someone to help me take that sip, someone to help hold the bowl and coax me into it, but no one was there. The meal had been served too late, and the slaves had been called too soon, and no one had noticed that I hadn’t had my wine.
I found myself on my feet without knowing how I’d gotten there, but that was more a blessing than a problem. My body hurt just about everywhere and I was getting very dizzy, so I didn’t have the time to struggle to stand up. The stone floor was smooth enough, but it still hurt the bottoms of my feet as I made my way to the tub of dirty water. Bending over let the wine pour out into the water, and the muddiness of it matched very well with the murkiness. Or the other way around. A single rinse and the bowl was good enough to be put to one side; I put it aside, then went to find my master’s pallet. I was allowed to sleep on the very, edge of it, and that’s what I needed to do. I hurt even more when I lowered myself to my left side, and then it was all gone behind sleep.
My eyes were open and my heart was thudding, and for a minute I didn’t know where I was. I lay on my left side on something stiff and hard and uncomfortable, and the dimness around me held the soft sounds of many people deeply asleep. My first thought was, Where the hell am I? but if it had been said aloud rather than thought, the last words would never have gotten out. I knew where I was and also what had happened, and was finally able to appreciate the sheer luck that had broken me free.
I continued to lie unmoving on my side, but that was only physically. Inside my head my thoughts were racing, fighting with each other for priority. How long it had been I still didn’t know, but Tammad, Cinnan, and I had been taken by the Chama of Vediaster, and I, at least, had been made a slave. I had a feeling the same thing had been done to the men, but not entirely in the same way.
My first urge was to go and find Tammad, which set me to sitting up slowly, quietly and carefully. My-master-was asleep on the rest of the pallet, and the last thing I wanted to do was wake him. It was very quiet in that slave area, the only light coming in from the corridor that led to it, the air heavy and close and too full of the scent of too many bodies. I was able to sit and maintain the sitting position, but I had to bite my lip against the pain I felt. I hurt just about all over, my energy levels felt almost entirely drained, and my insides ached with the hollowness of getting not enough to eat for too long a time. On top of that I didn’t dare open my shield, not when I didn’t have the strength to fight back, so how was I supposed to find someone? I’d been taken before by not realizing I was under attack; this time all they’d have to do was breathe on me, and over I would go.
I put my face into my hands and rubbed at my forehead, knowing what I had to do but hating it. The only intelligent thing was to get myself out of that palace, steal food and find a place to sleep for half of forever, then come back when I felt less like the results of a seetarr stampede. But that meant I would have to leave Tammad behind, still in the clutches of that-that-woman, and I knew if it were his choice he would never abandon me the same way.
I also now knew why I’d felt so strong a need for learning how to use a sword, a need that was no longer with me. The time the knowledge would have helped was already behind me, and the man who was mine now Jay in the possession of another. Not for the first time I wished I had Tammad’s giant strength and matchless determination, and then I wished I had it there beside me, in him with his arms opened wide. I needed him very badly right then, probably even more than he needed me, but I didn’t have him and all he had as a hope of freedom was a useless, stubborn, ignorant wenda. One woman against how many hundreds, and I didn’t even dare open my shield? If I managed to find him it would be more miracle than rescue, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me. I’d worry about consequences when they were about to drop on my head—and only after I’d had a decent amount of sleep.
Just sitting there made no sense, so I forced myself to my feet and tiptoed across the area to the corridor. Behind me I could hear someone muttering in his sleep and, when chuckling followed the meaningless words, I thought I knew who it was. The slaves of that area never laughed, rarely smiled, and some had begun to express enjoyment only recently, with their new undertaking. Only one of the very few experimenters would actually chuckle, and I shuddered even as I refused to think about him. I had other things to think about first, and if we all got out of the trap that had been waiting for us, there would be plenty of time later.
The first few corridors I crept along were deserted, but the further I went the more I knew I was not cut out for the life of an adventurer. If someone had suddenly come out of one of the doorways to appear in front of me, I undoubtedly would have died of heart failure then and there. It was terrible not being able to send my mind out ahead of me and all around, but that heavy, buzzing broadcast that had knocked me over the first time was still there, so thick and strong that the air nearly vibrated with it. I wasn’t feeling it but I was itching from it, understanding perfectly well why it continued on into deep night: at night peoples’ defenses were at their lowest, and that was the best time to reach through to them. If I ever managed to get out of there, I intended wondering just what it was they were reaching out with and for.
I got through another two corridors of rock walls that scraped my back and tried to make me yell out loud, of high torches that illuminated me clearly no matter how small I fought to make myself, of rock floor that was whisper quiet even though I expected it to begin creaking at any moment, and then I found something I hadn’t known I was looking for. A nicely carved table outside one of the closed, heavy wooden doors in the wall held something other than a vase of flowers or a well-done statuette. It looked like a pile of cloth until I got closer, and then it looked like a rain cape, only not made for the rain. It was bright red with gold trim around all the edges, and right in the middle of all that red was a neat, square-cornered tear. It looked as though it had caught on something that had ripped it, and had probably been left out by its owner so that a slave might repair it in the morning. I stared at it for a good five seconds before grabbing it up and pulling it on over my head, and that solved one of the problems I’d hoped to have. If I made it out into the city I couldn’t very well wander around naked, and now I didn’t have to. The thing didn’t reach up high enough to cover the bronze metal band around my throat, but one problem at a time.
Making a left turn at the next corridor intersection instead of a right put me no more than twenty-five feet from my second solution. I needed to get out of that palace, and just ahead were two terrace doors in the wall, standing open with the darkness of night behind them. As I hurried toward them I heard a faint clatter coming from the opposite direction, but I wasn’t silly enough to stop and turn around and look. If they were about to recapture me I didn’t want to know it and, if they weren’t I wasn’t about to hang around and give them the chance. With heart pounding and breath rasping and legs wobbling I got myself through those doors, then let the darkness swallow me up.