“Come now, slave, you want to be nice and clean for the slavemaster, don’t you?”
They used a brush or a mop or some such contrivance to swab me down, then sluiced me off with another pail of water. Naked and shivering, I almost jumped a handspan off the ground when someone began to poke and prod my back and limbs. A helpless, horrid feeling. He moved around in front of me, a short, tidy Zhid whose eyes made my skin shrivel when he looked at my face. Pulling a length of cord from several that hung from a ring on his belt, the tidy man wrapped it snugly about my neck. I jerked backward, trying to calm myself with the thought that it had been awfully stupid to go to the trouble of washing me if I were going to be throttled. Indeed he removed it right away, paying no heed to my jumpiness.
“Give this to Dujene,” he said, scoring the cord with a small knife and handing it to one of my guards. “You seem to be a fine specimen.”
I presumed the last was to me, but I wasn’t used to making pleasant conversation with a hostile stranger who had free access to all of my vital parts.
“What is your name? And don’t be stupid. We’ll know if you lie.”
“V’Saro of Sen Ystar.”
“Age?”
“Forty-three.”
“Profession?”
“Swordmaster.”
“Indeed? And your true talent?”
“Minor Horsemaster. No time for anything else.” Stupid to think I had to apologize for my lack of talent to a cursed Zhid.
His pale eyes and his thick hands continued to inspect and examine me. “Too bad your true talents are insufficient to make you a warrior. Your physical construction demands it. But a practice slave will be about the best you can do. Some live quite a long time, months, on occasion. You’ll have to rely on your physical prowess alone, but-”
“Dujene is ready,” said one of the guards.
“Tell him this one’s for the practice pens. If he’s a decent fighter, he might be useful.”
I was led into a dim, smoky room that greeted me with a blast of heat. My stomach knotted as they half pushed, half pulled me onto my knees on the dirt floor. The stench of fear permeated the place. That scream had originated here.
“Spread him.” My hands were detached from each other and pulled forward and apart, forcing my upper body onto a slanted, and very cold, stone slab. Once my hands were fixed in place, someone removed the loose iron ring to which my neck-chain had been attached. Good riddance, I thought.
I couldn’t lift my head far enough to see much beyond the cold granite in front of my nose. A blurry dark-clothed figure hovered about my head. I didn’t like the blaze that roared behind him. Not one bit.
Someone spread a cold ointment on my neck while whispering words of enchantment. I inhaled deeply, trying to ease the dread that constricted every aching muscle. I smelled hot metal. They had talked of collars.
“This should do him,” said a dry voice. “We’ll see what sort of stomach such a sturdy fellow has.” Hands lifted my head and slipped a strip of hot metal between me and the stone. And, of course, in the position I was, I couldn’t pull back, not far enough to do any good when they wrapped it about my neck and it scalded the ointment away.
I didn’t scream. It was bearable; surely it was bearable. Go deep… do not feel… let it pass…
As the Zhid spoke enchantments that curdled my blood, the hot metal shifted and flowed and settled into position, smooth and close-fitting. Then they threw cold water over me. Sick and trembling, I thought I had come through the worst.
“Anyone important about who wants the pleasure of the seal?”
“You’ll have to set them yourself. Master hasn’t been seen all day, and he has no guests. I’ve got to get the next one ready. We’ve a hundred more.”
“Ah, I can do them faster anyway.” The guard went away, leaving only the man in black.
“Well, slave, one more thing to do. The joining. Back here…” He ran his finger along the narrow slot where the ends of the collar lay along my spine. “As Slavemaster Gernald would tell you if he were considerate enough to make himself available, we’ve discovered a substance far more effective than dolemar in controlling Dar’Nethi power. Mordemar it’s called. Not only prevents any use of true talent, you won’t be able to acquire power for it neither. No more of it. Ever again. Your collar will be with you until you die, and so you will spend the rest of your days half a man. Enjoy it.”
Liquid dripped on the strip of skin exposed between the ends of the collar. Hot, though nothing compared to the searing collar itself. But as the liquid seal filled the gap, completing the ring about my neck, it gnawed its way into my being as surely as acid devours flesh. And then I screamed.
Suffocation… paralysis… blindness… What words can convey the loss? A soul excised, the mind uprooted and ripped apart, the world reduced to two dimensions instead of three. What would be the universe without a color like red or blue or green? What would life be if there were, all of an instant, only men, or only women, or if there were to be no children ever again?
As the seal cooled and hardened, my screams faded to weeping. I had lost the Way. I could not savor the moment because I could not see the colors of the fire, only the blaze of it. I could not see the marvelous intricacies of the granite on which my tears fell, only a cold slab. No longer could I feel the air on my bare skin and sense all the places that air had been, the faces it had touched. I could feel only the cold and the heat and the pain. Death and cruelty could no longer be fit into any larger meaning, for the ability to take them into myself and see beyond had been stripped from me. No more. Ever again. Better… far better if they had taken my mind, if I had been made nameless and cruel, so long as I did not understand what I had lost.
I could not have said when they removed the common shackles from my wrists, replaced them with wide, close-fitting bands of the same dark metal, and sealed them as well. When one is in uttermost despair, no pain or indignity can make it worse. After removing the hobbles, they gave me a gray tunic to cover myself, hooked a tether chain to my collar, and led me back to the slave pen. They had removed the dead and the crippled, and put down clean straw. Everyone remaining had close-cropped hair, gray tunics, and collars, and like each one of them, I huddled into myself against the bitter night.
CHAPTER 32
Morning. The sun was scarcely risen, and the pen was already stifling. Those of us in the cage could not even look at each other-not from any enchantment, but because by seeing we would acknowledge the reality of what had been done to us. It was an unspeakable violation, an unimaginable horror to be so maimed.
Step back. Observe. Learn everything there is to learn. You are not alone…
Stupid. Of course I was alone. The collar separated me from all of life, from my race, from everyone I knew and everything I had ever been.
You are not alone. There are others. Watch and learn… Thoughts and calculations running rampant in my head, as if I had heart or mind to care. Madness nibbling at my edges. Listen… outside the cage… why are we left so long untended?