"Trusted?" I asked.
" Shaba is an agent of Priest-Kings," said Samos.
"I did not know that," I said.
"Surely you suspected others, too, served, at least upon occasion, in the cause of Priest-Kings."
"I had supposed that," I said. But I had never pressed Samos on the matter. It seemed to be better that I not know of many agents of Priest-Kings. Our work was, in general, unknown to one another. This was an elementary security precaution. If one of us were captured and tortured, he could not, if broken, reveal what he did not know. Most agents, I did know, were primarily engaged in the work of surveillance and intelligence. The house of Samos was a headquarters to which most of these agents, directly or indirectly, reported. From it the activities of many agents were directed and coordinated. It was a clearing house, too, for information, which, processed, was forwarded to the Sardar.
"Why do you tell me this?" I asked.
"Come with me," said Samos, getting up.
He led the way from the room. I followed him. We passed guards outside the door to the great hall. Samos did not speak to me. For several minutes I followed him. lie strode through various halls, and then began to descend ramps and staircases. At various points, and before various portals, signs and countersigns were exchanged. The thick walls became damp. We continued to descend, through various levels, sometimes treading catwalks over cages. The fair occupants of these cages looked up at us, frightened. In one long corridor we passed two girls, naked, on their hands and knees, with brushes and water, scrubbing the stones of the corridor floor. A guard, with a whip, stood over them. They fell to their bellies as we passed, and then, when we had passed, rose to their hands and knees, to resume their work. The pens were generally quiet now, for it was time for sleeping. We passed barred alcoves, and tiers of kennels, and rooms for processing, training and disciplining slaves. The chamber of irons was empty, but coals glowed softly in the brazier, from. which two handles protruded. An iron is always ready in a slaver's house. One does not know when a new girl may be brought in. In another room I saw, on the walls, arranged by size, collars, chains, wrist and ankle rings. An inventory of such things is kept in a slaver's house. Each collar, each link of chain, is accounted for. We passed, too, rooms in which tunics, slave silks, cosmetics and jewelries were kept. Normally in the pens girls are kept naked, but such things are used in their training. There were also facilities for cooking and the storage of food; and medical facilities as well. As we passed one cell a girl reached forth, "Masters," she whimpered. Then we were beyond her. We also passed pens of male slaves. These, usually criminals and debtors, or prisoners taken in war, then enslaved, are commonly sold cheaply and used for heavy labor.
We continued to descend through various levels. The smell and the dampness, never pleasant in the lower levels of the pens, now became obtrusive. Here and there lamps and torches burned. These mitigated to some extent the dampness, We passed a guards' room, in which there were several slaver's men, off duty. I glanced within, for I heard from within the clash of slave bells and the bright sound of zills, or finger cymbals. In a bit of yellow slave silk, backed into a corner, belied and barefoot, a collared girl danced, swaying slowly before the five men who loomed about her, scarcely a yard away. Then her back touched the stone wall, startling her, and they seized her, and threw her to a blanket for their pleasure. I saw her gasping, and, half fighting, half kissing at them, squirming in their arms. Then her arms and legs were held, widely separated, each of her limbs, her small wrists and belled ankles, held in the two hands of a captor. The leader was first to have her. She put her head back, helpless, crying out with pleasure, subdued.
We were soon on the lowest level of the pens, in an area of maximum security. There were trickles of water at the walls here and, in places, water between the stones of the floor. An urt slipped between two rocks in the wall.
Samos stopped before a heavy iron door; a narrow steel panel slipped back. Samos uttered the sign for the evening, and was answered by the countersign. The door opened. There were two guards behind it.
We stopped before the eighth cell on the left. Samos signaled to the two guards. They came forward. There were some ropes and hooks, and heavy pieces of meat, to one side.
"Do not speak within," said Samos to me. He handed me a hood, with holes cut in it for the eyes.
"Is this house, or its men, known to the prisoner?" I asked.
"No," said Samos.
I donned the hood, and Samos, too, donned such a hood. The two guards donned such hoods as well. They then slid back the observation panel in the solid iron door and, after looking through, unlocked the door, and swung it open. It opened inward. I waited with Samos. The two guards then, reaching upward, with some chains, attached above the door, lowered a heavy, wooden walkway to the surface of the water. The room, within, to the level of the door, contained water. It was murky and dark. I was aware of a rustling in the water. The walkway then, floating, but steadied by its four chains, rested on the water. On its sides the walkway had metal ridges, some six inches in height, above the water. I heard tiny scratchings at the metal, small movements against the metal, as though by numerous tiny bodies, each perhaps no more than a few ounces in weight.
Samos stood near the door and lifted a torch. The two guards went out on the walkway. It was some twenty feet in length. The flooded cell was circular, and perhaps some forty-five feet in diameter. In the center of the cell was a wooden, metal-sheathed pole, some four inches in diameter. This pole rose, straight, some four feet out of the water. About this pole, encircling it, and supported by it, was a narrow, circular, wooden, metal-sheathed platform. It was some ten inches on all sides, from the circumference of the pole to the edge of the platform. The platform itself was lifted about seven or eight inches out of the water.
One of the guards, carrying a long, wooden pole, thrust it down, into the water. The water, judging by the pole, must have been about eight feet deep. The other guard, then, thrusting a heavy piece of meat on one of the hooks, to which a rope was attached, held the meat away from the platform and half submerged in the water. Almost instantly there was a frenzy in the water near the meat, a thrashing and turbulence in the murky liquid. I felt water splashed on my legs, even standing back as I was. Then the guard lifted the roped hook from the water. The meat was gone. Tiny tharlarion, similar to those in the swamp forest south of Ar, dropped, snapping, from the bared hook. Such tiny, swift tharlarion, in their thousands, can take the meat from a kailiauk in an Ehn.
The girl on the platform, naked, kneeling, a metal collar hammered about her neck, the metal pole between her leg., grasping it with both arms, threw back her head and screamed piteously.
The two guards then withdrew. Samos, hooded, walked out on the floating walkway, steadied by its chains. I, similarly hooded, followed him. He lifted the torch.
The platform's front edge was about a yard from the tiny, wooden, metal-sheathed, circular platform, mounted on the wooden, metal-sheathed pole, that tiny platform on which the girl knelt, that narrow, tiny platform which held her but inches from the tharlarion-filled water.
She looked up at us, piteously, blinking against the light of the torch.
She clutched the pole helplessly. She could not have been bound to it more closely if she had been fastened in close chains.
The small eyes of numerous tharlarion, perhaps some two or three hundred of them, ranging from four to ten inches in length, watching her, nostrils and eyes at the water level, reflected the light of the torch.
She clutched the pole even more closely.
She looked up at us, tears in her eyes. "Please, please, please, please, please," she said.
She had spoken in English.
She, like Samos Earth girl, Linda, had blue eyes and blond hair. She was slightly more slender than Linda, She had good ankles. They would take an ankle ring nicely. I noted that she had not yet been branded.
"Please," she whimpered.
Samos indicated that we should leave. I turned about, and preceded him from the walkway. The guards, behind us, raised the walkway, secured it in place, and swung shut the door. They slid shut the observation panel. They locked the door.