Two more dead men were cut from the chain before we arrived at the top of a low rise and could look down upon the army of the Lords. Those of us who remained living and able to comprehend what our eyes rested on gazed with awe upon the magnitude of our enemies, a dark mass sprawled across the desert all the way to the horizon. For twenty years I had fought upon the walls of Avonar and complained with my fellows about the endless waves of the Zhid. But never had I considered my words to be the literal truth.
We were marched straight through the crowded encampment, the mass of tents and campfires and faces forming a blurred chain of light and dark, strung together with hatred. You could feel it from every side, colder than the night wind that billowed the canvas tents and swirled ashes and sand into our burning, crusted eyes. They gathered along the track as we passed, silent except for the low hiss that we who had fought the Zhid for so long knew as the sign of their contempt.
“Don’t listen. Don’t let it inside you,” I whispered, first to myself, and then to the youth chained beside me. Even under his sun-reddened skin he was pale, and his cracked and blistered lips quivered. It took a person years of seasoning to slough off the hiss of the Zhid. “Put one foot in front of the other.”
The end of our bitter road loomed before us, a fence of black iron rods, the upright bars spaced no more than two finger-widths apart-no, not a fence, but a cage, for the bars extended up and over the top. No doubt the cross-pieces that glinted in the torchlight were the same silvery metal as our chains. Dolemar it was called, the sorcerer’s binding, for it prevented any use of magical power. Some said that if a man was bound by dolemar for too long he would go mad, just from the excess of power that built up in him, impossible to spend. A Dar’Nethi could no more stop taking in the experiences of life and building his power than he could stop taking in air, so perhaps it was true. Such was our Way.
As we approached the fence, a gate swung open. Each prisoner was detached from the column, then herded into the brightly lit enclosure that was just too low to allow a tall man to stand up straight. The cage would not be pleasant in the heat of desert daylight, but I supposed that “pleasant” would have to be banished from my vocabulary, or redefined to mean such sensations as sinking onto the straw-covered ground and letting burning, grit-filled eyelids shut out the horror.
Our respite did not last long. Torchlight and voices dragged me back to the cold night from wherever a moment’s dreams had taken me.
“Are they ready inside, then? We push to make the deadline, only to have them not even ready. Burns me, it does.” That was one of our guards, a squat Zhid with a narrow head.
“Shut up, and get this lot sorted. We’ve got to get ‘em collared before the slavemaster comes.”
“He’ll be shiv’d when he sees the poor take. Only a few likelies for the practice pens. A few for house duty. The rest’ll be for the mines and the farms.”
“Just get them inside and secured. Makes me twitchy just having them caged and not collared.”
Using elbows and my bound hands, I forced my aching bones to sit up and lean against the bars, and immediately wished I hadn’t. The bars were cold, and my back was so raw from sunburn and lashing that it felt like being speared with icicles. My expletive woke the youth who had been chained beside me for eight days and had seen fit to curl up to sleep on my legs.
“What’s happening?” said the boy, who must have been somewhere near sixteen, though I was sure he’d aged a lifetime in the past days.
“No idea. They’ve uses for us. If we’re not dead and have half a mind left, then there’s hope.”
The boy shivered and shook his head. I wasn’t sure I believed it either.
“Wake, pigs,” screamed a guard. “If you want to feed your worthless faces or wet your foul tongues, then you need to line up by the door in the far wall. One at a time.”
In the early days of our march I had witnessed struggles to get free, desperate attempts to muster power enough to break the bindings, to sharpen a stick for a weapon, to lure a stone into a hand. Once, on the first night, I had believed that someone was trying to speak in my mind with images of such beauty and hope that I lay awake, awaiting the rescuers that I was sure would fall upon our captors. Two days in the desert had ended all such futile endeavors and empty visions. Then came pleas for help, for Healers, for water, and prayers begging courage and strength. Two more days had silenced us all.
As we dragged ourselves to the back wall of the cage where a steel door opened into a dark, low building, the only sounds were the clank of chains and the soft weeping of those who could not rise. We tried to help them, but at the door any who couldn’t walk on their own were shoved back into the cage. My youthful comrade was among those left behind. He huddled in the corner. Shivering. Terrified.
I called back to him. “It is a wonder, is it not?” It was the tag end of an old Dar’Nethi joke. We who tried to see wonder in everything-sometimes even we were confounded by the paths of life.
Slowly a grin suffused the boy’s face, banishing fear and revealing a luminous spirit. “All of it,” he croaked, through his cracked and bleeding lips. “I’ll see you beyond the Verges.”
Several of the others left behind took up the refrain. “A wonder… beyond the Verges…” I saw handclasps and a few kisses and even heard laughter gracing the grim night.
Ah, holy Vasrin, I thought. From what marvelous matter have you shaped us?
The steel door gaped in front of me, and I was pulled through in my turn. While one guard checked the bonds on my wrists and hooked a short chain to my neck ring, a second man hobbled my ankles with a length of rope. The state of my feet would have prevented me running far, but I had contemplated a few of my favorite leg-holds when I glimpsed only two guards. Too bad.
As they led me stumbling through the dark passage toward a faint yellow light and the sound of splashing water, from somewhere deep in the dark place came a cry that chilled whatever mote of resilience still lurked in my soul. What, in the name of all that lives, could cause a man to make that sound?
Turn inward for protection… stay deep… let it pass. Nauseated, horrified, I didn’t even understand my own thoughts.
The passage made a sharp bend. Torches burned beyond an open doorway. As I was still squinting from the brightness, my guard led me to a wooden bench facing a bare stone wall. “Sit here and don’t move.”
Sitting still was not so simple a matter, as someone standing behind me took a knife to my head and began hacking off my hair in great chunks. But I did my best. When an unfriendly someone has a knife that close to eyes and ears and such appendages, it’s best to behave.
“Ready for the next one!” The call came from beyond another door.
“This one’s proper nasty,” said the guard, dragging me off the bench by the neck-chain. My hobbled ankles almost had me on my face in the piles of hair on the floor. “Going to dance for us, Dar’Nethi?”
A retort bubbled to my lips. No. Turn inward… stay deep… whatever you would say would only be an excuse for something you’d rather not experience. Save the wit for someone who’ll appreciate it.
The next bare room, small and square, had damp walls and a stone floor that sloped into a drain trench. The guards hitched my hands to an iron hook above my head. Then, they ripped off what was left of my clothes and a fair portion of skin where blood had dried and stuck them to me. Though I half expected it, I could not keep silent when a pail of icy water was thrown over me from behind. “Vasrin’s hand!”