Kovrack was stretching and drinking his cavet as usual. “Reassigned. I don’t know where, and you shall not.”
“On whose orders?” A stupid question. I knew whose orders. Why? We were working well. They were afraid of me. They would do anything I commanded.
Parven answered. You know very well why-because of who you are and what you will become. Your time in the camps is done.
When I returned to my house in Zhev’Na, Sefaro and the other slaves were gone, replaced by new ones with no names. I was not told where they had been taken. I assumed they were dead, and if not, then my asking would make it so. A new swordmaster met me in the fencing yard, and a new teacher of hand combat, and a new riding master. All of them had strange eyes and no smiles, and they taunted and ridiculed my incomplete skills until I hated them.
I was not to be comfortable. There were hard lessons to be learned. I tried to remember what I had been before I came to Zhev’Na, but I could not, except that I had been afraid all the time. I was no longer afraid. Fear had been stripped away along with my softness and weakness until I was as hard and bare and exposed as the red cliffs of the desert. Never again would I shed a tear into a pillow. I didn’t even remember how.
CHAPTER 31
V’Saro
My feet were the worst, blistered and cracked and raw. Every step was its own battle. First the stomach clenched in apprehension, and the spirit steeled itself for the violence to come. Next, the waves of blistering heat that poured off the oven of the desert sniped at the skin like the initial forays of the enemy. And last came the assault itself, as raw flesh met salt-crusted sand and wind-scoured rock, heated to broiling by the fireball of the sun.
I longed for my boots. Who would expect that a man’s life could be reduced to the consideration of a single step and an unbridled lust for a ten-year-old pair of scuffed boots? They had been fine boots, coaxed into such softness and perfect shape that my foot settled into them like an egg in a nest. I had given B’Dallo’s pimpled son B’Isander three fencing lessons in exchange for them. It was a fine bargain for B’Dallo, as my fee was usually higher, but good bootmakers had become rarer than good swordmasters in the last years of the war.
The last years of the war… We’d thought it was over when Prince D’Natheil returned to Avonar after his victory at the Exiles’ Gate. Our troops-never truly an army, only sorcerers of every profession converted to soldiers-dispersed. We came out of hiding and believed we could take up where our families had left off hundreds of years ago. Fools like me said that those of us born in Sen Ystar could go back and rebuild a life in our long-abandoned village, lay down a path of beauty for our children to walk-or perhaps meet a fair Dar’Nethi woman with whom to lay down a path of beautiful children. But we learned our mistake, and so some hollow-eyed devil of a Zhid was wearing my magnificent boots, while I… I had to take another step.
We in Sen Ystar had heard nothing of renewed attacks by the Zhid and had gone about our business that day with hope and joy. Fen’Lyro, the miller, had called a Builder to reconstruct his wheel, and we had all been drawn to watch by the beauty of the Builder’s voice. He sang the spokes and shanks into place, completing the perfection of the wheel with a burst of melody that drew sighs from several village girls who knew the Builder had no wife. Girls did not swoon over swordmasters.
My art would die away with peace. Though I rejoiced with everyone else at the happy results of Prince D’Natheil’s journey, I’d not yet come to terms with that. I had thought of taking a mentor for smithing, but what I loved about swords was not the metal. I had no knack for smithing anyway. I couldn’t sharpen a nail without three files, nor once done, persuade it to stay that way. It was not even the art of swordsmanship I cared for-the grace and strength so smoothly joined-but more the logical puzzle of it. Move, countermove, thrust, parry. What were the myriad possibilities, and what was the remedy for each, all perceived and analyzed in a heartbeat. No formless metal could provide the challenge that did an opponent’s mind and body.
So what good had my art done me when the Seeking of the Zhid crept through the streets of Sen Ystar? The icy fingers of the Zhid took one of us and then another as we so blithely celebrated the beauty of Fen’Lyro’s mill wheel. The food and wine were probably still there, abandoned on the long tables set out on the snow-dusted grass…
No, best not to think of food or wine. In a single day we captives were given one fist-sized lump of bread, gray and unhealthy-looking, and two cups of water, doled out two mouthfuls at a time. And how many of those days had there been? Six… seven… eight…
Few villagers were left by the time we were herded through the portal into the Wastes and chained to the dolorous column of captives. It was, perhaps, not a good day to be a proficient warrior. Surely the life of the dead in L’Tiere would be better than the endless desert, and with every painful step I envied those who had found their way beyond the Verges… so many that I knew. One of the last to fall was B’Isander, who had learned well from my three fencing lessons so many years ago.
But no Dar’Nethi grieves for long. He takes in what is told by time and makes it part of him, and then goes on… another step along the Way, no matter how bitter. Aarrgh… The sand cuts like glass.
At least I had my mind still, no small matter when dealing with the Zhid. Luca the Singer, M’Aritze the Word Winder, and Bas’Tel the Smith-they were made Zhid- and they, and others who met the same fate, helped to round up the rest of us to be taken into the Wastes. No one knew for certain how the Zhid chose those who were to become like them, and those who would be only slaves. Some said it was the level of power one had attained. Perhaps that was true, for I was a slave, whereas the Builder had become Zhid and cut Fen’Lyro’s throat, for whom he had spent all day singing a wheel.
“On your feet, slave,” snarled a voice in my ear, and the inevitable lash followed, temporarily removing any thought of my feet. I wasn’t even aware I had fallen. I managed to get up before my neck-chain played out its length, no easy matter when one’s wrists are bound so tightly. I had seen two or three who had been dragged along so far by the slow-moving column that they were not recognizable as men by the time they were cut loose. I had always considered myself exceptionally strong and enduring, but after the fall I began to wonder if I, too, would be left for the vultures like so many of our number. We had started out a hundred and fifty, mostly men, a few sturdy women of middle years, but had lost at least eighteen. The women did better, a sobering thought for one who believed himself possessed of few “woman’s frailties.”
Another few hours and I could no longer summon a rational thought. On the horizon loomed a fortress, tall and severe and so very dark, even in the harsh desert glare.
The mere sight of it engulfed my spirit in such sorrow and desolation that I groaned aloud. I didn’t notice the lash this time, for the unnamable pain inside was far, far worse.
Before too long the sun had settled onto the western horizon, and the column started to slow and the prisoners to draw close to each other to capture the heat before all of it was sucked into the frigid night. Our captors usually allowed us to do so, but not this time. “Spread out. Full speed. We’re due in the pens by midnight. No rests and no slowing.”
It was probably as well. I didn’t know whether or not I could survive another freezing night in the open, only to face another blistering sunrise.