“Please—” The girl’s voice was faint, but she looked straight into Paks’s eyes. “Don’t let them—”
Paks looked away, scanning the crowd, then the priests, then the guards, and finally looking back at the girl. “No,” she said steadily. “I can’t.”
“So,” said the tall priest. “You begin to enjoy our entertainment then? You would like to see more, is that it?” Someone in the crowd tittered.
“No,” said Paks again. “I take no pleasure in giving pain, or seeing pain given.” The girl’s mouth opened again, but Paks spoke first. “I cannot forswear my gods, child. I will pray for you—that Gird and the High Lord protect you, comfort you, and strengthen you, that the Lady of Peace bring you peace in the end—but the Master of these slaves is evil, and I will not praise him.”
“Then she will suffer, and it is your doing,” said the tall priest.
“No. If you harm her, she will suffer because of you. I am not a torturer: you are.”
“But you could stop it, and you refuse to help her.”
“Could I?” Paks managed a smile that seemed to crack her face. “Could I stop it? Have I any reason to trust your word? As long as I am trussed here, you can do as you like—and you like to do evil. Besides, your Master is a paltry fellow; I cannot call him great. Liart the strong, indeed! Liart the coward is more like it!”
“Girdish slut!” The tall priest snatched up the barbed whip again, and laid two strokes on her before the other grabbed his arm.
“She is stronger than you thought, brother—she taunts you into just such haste. See—if she faints, she rests.”
“She will not faint.” The tall priest swiped his hand down the bleeding welts and rubbed it over Paks’s face, then licked his hand. “And if she does we will add every hour to the length of her bargain. Your blood tastes sweet, paladin. Before long we will try your flesh as well.” He turned back to the girl, and his voice calmed.
“There are several ways to cripple without killing, paladin. Some are more . . . artistic . . . than others. Consider this—” He used tongs to pull from the brazier a fist-sized cobble. “A hot stone. Applied to the inside of a joint—say the knee—and bound there, it will burn deeply, and the scars contract, pulling the limb awry. It works best at knee, crotch, elbow, and armpit, choosing the size of stone to conform, of course—” The guards had forced the girl onto her face, and pulled up her skirts. Now the priest set the hot stone against the back of her knee, and the guards quickly forced her leg back against it, and bound it tight with heavy thongs. Her screams echoed off the stone walls. The guards let her go, cutting the thongs that bound her arms, and she thrashed on the floor, shrieking and clawing at her leg.
Paks fought down nausea. She could do nothing; she closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on Gird, trying to pray. But she heard the crowd shouting, jeering now at the struggling girl. Something tugged at her, sending a wave of pain through her. She opened her eyes to see the girl clutching at her ankle, trying to drag herself upward on Paks’s body. “Please!” she begged. “Please—stop them!”
“I can’t—” muttered Paks. “But Gird—”
“No! You—!” the girl screamed, clawing now. “You won’t help—curse you—!” She threw herself upward, shaking Paks back and forth in her bonds. Then she collapsed, still screaming. Paks shook her head; tears burned her eyes. Her heart seemed to falter in her chest. The priests waited until the girl’s screams died to sobbing, then the guards pinned her again, cut the thongs, and pulled her leg straight. She gave a final shriek as they knocked the stone loose; it left two charred wounds in her leg as it rolled to the floor; smoking bits of her flesh clung to it.
“Well, paladin—did Gird protect her?” The taller priest nudged the sobbing girl with his foot. Paks did not answer. She fought the black despair Liart sent, forcing herself to think of the king riding eastward, his squires around him. She would not have spent someone else’s pain for that, but even so she did not repent the bargain. After a long pause, he asked, “Do you think he will protect you? Will you fight well, paladin of Gird, with your leg twisted like this? Or imagine your arm—your sword arm—drawn up with scars.” He touched the hollow of her elbow, and her armpit; Paks shivered. “I see you do understand. We need not be in haste to show you, then.” He turned to the guards. “Tie that one, and leave her; we will want her later.”
“No,” said Paks.
“No? You dare give orders here? Or are you agreeing that our Master has dominion?”
“I am not. I am telling you not to hurt her more—she has done you no harm.”
“What of that? It amuses us—and teaches you to know your helplessness. You can save her only by accepting our Master as yours.”
Paks prayed, trying to convey what healing she could across that space, as she had with Garris. But she had known Garris, touched him with healing before. This girl was a stranger. She felt a comforting touch on her own head, as if a firm but gentle hand cradled it for a moment, but nothing that let her suspect she had healed the girl. She could not see the girl’s face, where she lay, but the sobs quieted, and the heaving back was still.
For some time after that, she was left hanging before the crowd; she noticed that it ebbed and flowed, and individuals came and left, to return after an interval. From time to time the priests came to her again, repetitions of the torments already begun. Once they tried to rouse the servant girl, and found her dead; they dragged her body aside. Paks could not be sure of the passage of time. Pain and thirst confused her. Whenever she fell into a doze, they roused her, until she longed for rest more than anything. Then the crowd thickened again.
The guards lit new lamps, and set pungent incense burning in a row of censors. The smoke swirled back and forth. Paks watched it, half-tranced by its intricate patterns that seemed to make pictures in the haze. She had managed not to listen to the priests’ words, even reciting to herself the ten fingers of the Code of Gird. But now as they approached her again, her concentration wavered. Her belly knotted; her tongue seemed too large for her mouth. Two guards cut the thongs that held her wrists, and shoved. She fell forward, slamming into the floor with stunning force. She was just aware when they cut the ankle thongs and her feet thudded down.
The relief in her shoulders lasted only a few moments. Guards yanked her up by the arms and dragged her to the rough stone altar that centered the platform. They bound her again by wrist and ankles, with the rough-hewn stone rasping her lacerated back. The taller priest laid a single flat stone on her belly. He stood back, and the second priest laid another similar stone on her chest. Paks waited; the stones were uncomfortable, but not painful, except where they lay on the burns. She was too relieved to have her head supported at last, and the weight off her arms. Then returning blood seemed to dip her hands in fire for a few minutes. The priests called the crowd forward.
“We will show you a torment that lasts long only with strong sacrifices, such as this one,” said the first. “We will add weight to those stones, a heavy link of chain at a time, until she can scarcely draw breath. Then time alone becomes the tormentor; in the end her breath will fail. And you will help. As you have given to the Master, so in your name will the links be added.”
And each person who came by dropped a coin or so into a pot, naming the number; the guards fed a heavy chain from its coil onto the stones, link by link, one or two or three at a time, as the worshipper gave. One heavy man in a silk robe gave a large silver, and twelve links at once dropped onto Paks’s chest.