“Jalav is a warrior above all else,” said Mida with scorn. “Her desire would be to attack, yet her obedience is to me. Should she give her word to raise your Sigurri, she will not be forsworn. ”
“Is this so, wench?” asked the male. “Do you stand ready to give me your word?”
“Perhaps,” I allowed, not knowing how my voice had achieved such steadiness. “For this service, however, you have not yet asked my price, male.”
“Your price?” the dark male breathed, the blaze heating in his eyes. “You dare to put a price on service to me?”
“You are naught to me,” I answered with flatness. “For what reason would I do you service without a price?”
“For your life,” growled the male, “for your soul and sanity. All are mine should I wish to take them.”
“Take them, then,” I shrugged, forcing my body to lean at ease in the seat. “Find another to raise your Sigurri to meet the strangers. ”
Mida laughed at the male’s silence, seeing that he realized death held no fear for me. That she would not allow him my capture was also clear, for madness peered from his eyes as he fought to speak.
“So I must meet a wench’s price,” he breathed, the breathiness ragged. “What will you have, wench? Jewels for your fingers and throat? Silks for your body? A beauty greater than any other wench may possess? What small, puny thing will you have?”
“Jalav is a warrior,” I growled, angered by the male’s manner. “It is no city slave-woman thing I desire. I will have the lives of the males and females who accompanied me, that and their health. They are all to be healed and released, clad against the cold, armed against danger, mounted and with their possessions intact. They are to be given adequate provender to allow them to return to their village as they left it, healthy and whole.”
“For what conceivable reason do you ask this?” demanded the male, eyes narrowed with lack of understanding. “Mida has assured me you do not suffer from this mortal disease of concern for those not of your clan.”
“It is not a matter of concern.” I shrugged, using the gesture to hide my discomfort over speaking other than the truth. Truth, in that instance, would have doomed them all. “The females look to me as leader, therefore are their lives mine to consider. The males I wish to have free and whole, for a debt stands between us that only swords will see to. When this matter of the strangers is done, I will lead my warriors against their villages.”
“Ah, it is their blood you wish,” said the male with a breathy chuckle. “Once free they will think themselves safe, then you and yours will swoop down upon them, burning, torturing, raping and killing. I had not expected so worthy a purpose.”
“You will meet my price, then?” I asked, showing naught of the burning hurry I felt within me. Less than a hin of life did Ceralt have, too little to be wasted in talk.
“Perhaps,” chuckled the dark male. “Their terror would be amusing, their capture and torture and use most diverting. Were they pledged to me you would not have them, yet as they are—perhaps. For I, too, have a price.”
The words had been spoken, the words I had feared above all others, yet I sat as I had been, seemingly unconcerned. The thing would require my consent—would the strength be mine to see it through?
“A price for a price?” I murmured, speaking low to keep hidden the tremor in my voice. “For my price you receive a service. What am I to receive from yours?”
“For my price you will have their minds,” he laughed, a deep breathy laugh of black pleasure. “Without my price you will have no more than that which was asked for—their bodies whole just as they were when they left their village. They will believe they have not yet sought my Altar—and will come again in search of it, placing themselves again in my power. Without my price, their lives will yet be mine.”
His laughter spread and pushed upon my ears, insolent, demeaning, arrogant and evil. Mida, too, laughed at my plight, at the way the male had snared me in his trap. Should I insist upon my price, his, too, must be paid.
“Jalav, give over the thought of the male,” Mida urged, amusement sparkling in her golden eyes. “There are other things before you, things of greater moment than the capture of a male. When you are victorious I will give you many males.”
“Yet none who first had the capture of me,” I said, nearly faint with the need to dissemble, the need to appear calm. “What is your price, male?”
“You know my price,” he answered, growing larger in the mists of black, his hot, black eyes boring into me. “I whispered my price when another lay upon you, taking your use as mere mortals do. Do you pay my price or do you fear to meet it, mortal wench? Your survival is no sure thing.”
Again his figure grew in the mists, throbbing as his carving had seemed to throb. I felt the silk and wood of the seat beneath and behind me, felt the smoothness of the wood beneath my hands, and yet it seemed the black mists spread to envelop me, touching and clinging. Sigurr it was who grew before me, dark god feared by all who knew of him, justly feared, justly shunned.
“Speak to me, mortal wench,” he breathed, so close, the smell of his desire made my head spin. “Do you meet my price, or do I, alone, meet yours?”
I sat in the chair, caught in the gaze of the male, my tongue like leather in a sand-filled mouth, terror beyond description consuming my insides. Had my muscles not been locked full tight, surely I would have soiled myself. Had another asked the deed of me, I would have fled to show my refusal, yet no other had demanded the act of me, no other would have considered the asking. For that other, then, one who never would have asked, did I swallow the sand and force movement upon the leather.
“First their wounds,” I croaked, finding it impossible to back any farther. “First heal their wounds and then your price . . .”
“It is done,” breathed the dark voice in exultation, moving forward with the mists. “And now my price.”
The mists surrounded me, smothered me, lifted me from the golden room to another place, one I dared not look closely at. Hands touched my arms, the breech was torn from me, and then was a price paid in full.
17
A sign is fashioned—and a final warning given
I know not how many feyd passed as I lay in delirium, or, in truth, if feyd passed at all. Perhaps no more than hind passed as I lay curled upon furs, my body aflame with agony, my mind near to madness. When sight returned to my eyes there were slave-males about, true slaves with fear in their eyes, apology clear in their movements. They brought wet cloths to bathe my brow, fanned me with feathers half the size of the males themselves, fetched tall pots called flagons filled with daru. This latter I attempted to drink, to soothe the rawness screaming had brought to my throat, yet my insides would not hold it. Spasms threw it back to the floor, beyond the furs, then darkness took me again, a soothing darkness in which my mind did no more than weep.
Sight came again after a time, bringing greater knowledge of the room I lay in. Large it was, nearly the size of Mida’s, draped in many shadows of green, predominantly Hosta green. I stirred upon the furs beneath me, finding little strength, knowing more than a shadow of the pain I had been given. My body ached, both inside and out, yet my mind ached more with the memory of what the thing called Sigurr had done. He had taken his price fully, causing me shame and humiliation and fear as well as pain. He had done things which, had they been done before my capture by males, would have driven me mad. I had been used, and made to serve, and used again and again to heal an unnatural need, one even larger than that felt by males filled with sthuvad drug. I knew not how long a time I had spent in red agony, nor would I ever know. The thing was endless as it went, unforgettable in its aftermath.