Transformation (48 page)
Authors: Carol Berg
Catrin and Hoffyd protested furiously as I sat beside the fire and cut off my hair. “Let him take his own messages,” said Catrin, eyeing Aleksander who was sitting under a tree twenty paces away, his head buried in his arms. “Your work is far more important.”
“He can’t go. He could transform at any moment, and be killed or lost. He’s right about the Khelid. Our war is with the demons, but there are other evils in the world and they are just as much our responsibility.”
“Then Hoffyd or I will go. We can’t risk losing you.”
I exchanged my shirt for the slave tunic I still carried, and pulled off my boots and my breeches. Though the night was the warmest of the season, I felt cold and exposed. “Neither of you has any experience of cities or the Derzhi. Neither of you could recognize a member of the Magician’s Guild. If you’re seen, you could be taken. I’ll be in and out in a few hours.”
“Then, at least wear something to cover—”
“I have to go as a slave. I am recognizably Ezzarian. If anyone decides to check, they’ll find the marks and the rings. If I’m disguised ... I’m done for.”
“I don’t know why you’ve not had me get those despicable things off you,” said Hoffyd quietly, trying to keep from staring at the steel bands about my wrists and ankles.
I had wondered about it myself. Aleksander could not prevent me, and I wasn’t sure he would try. But on that night, as the first stars popped out of the deep turquoise of the sky, I finally understood my hesitation. Something extraordinary had come about between Aleksander and me. Something beyond oaths, beyond duty, beyond necessity and desperation. If the Prince unlocked my chains, I would not walk away. But until Aleksander believed it, I had no name for him but master, and no name for myself but slave. “I’ll take them off when he tells me,” I said, then I set off running for Avenkhar. The gates would be closed at the beginning of sixth watch. I had three hours.
Chapter 31
It had been less than four weeks since our escape from Capharna. Not long enough for me to forget the unending fear of a slave’s life. From the moment I slipped into the throng of drovers, wagons, slaves, and laborers of a fur trader’s caravan just outside the gates of Avenkhar, I felt the walls of Balthar’s coffin closing in on me again.
Eyes down. Weariness in your step. A hand on the mule’s harness to make them think you belong. The drover can’t see you in the darkness and confusion. Stay to the left of the beast to hide the mark on your face.
The voice in my head was calm and focused. The hand that held the mule’s harness was steady. But my gut was in such a knot, the Weaver herself could not have untied it.
Through the gates. I ignored the sounds of painful lashing behind me in the caravan. No slave would look. Rather I waited until we turned into a narrow lane in the warehouse district near the Vodyna River, the broad sluggish water-course that gave Avenkhar its prosperity, then slipped away into a dark alley that stunk of tanneries and fish markets and slaughterhouses. I tried not to consider the ankle-deep filth in which I waded with bare feet, but rather concentrate on Aleksander’s instructions on how to find the town house of the First Lord of Marag, where lived his daughter, the Lady Lydia.
The house was on the southwestern edge of the city, where the airs were sweet off the mountains and the river still flowed clean before it flushed out the bowels of the city. I hurried head down through busy streets of prosperous shops and taverns. No one paid any attention to me in the crowds. It was only after I got into the wider streets of elegant houses with stone porticoes and carriage yards that I was stopped and questioned.
“Delivering a sword to Demyon the swordsmith for my lord, your worship,” I said to the mounted watchman who had slammed the shaft of his spear across my throat to bring me to a halt.
“And who is your lord, slave?”
“My Lord Rodya of the Fontezhi, sir, who has come from Capharna to stop with his cousin Lord Polyet.” Aleksander had come up with the names to use. “Lord Polyet told my master that Demyon was the finest sword smith in the Empire, and that my lord could get his sword balanced properly and have a new guard put on it that would—”
“All right. Enough of your blathering. Get back to your master. We don’t like slaves loose in the streets.”
“Of course, your worship.”
He gave me a boot in the back as he rode past. I commanded my heart to slow down, and in a quarter of an hour I stood at the kitchen door of the House of Marag.
“I was told to ask for Hazzire,” I said to the rosy-cheeked serving girl.
“Hazzire?”
“It’s most urgent that I speak with him.”
“Most urgent?” She sounded like the echoes in Galadon’s grotto.
“Most urgent,” I said, trying to hold patience. “I must deliver this message and be back to my master before he takes offense at my delay. Please try to understand.”
“Oh. I suppose it’s all right, then.” She scratched her head. “I’ll bring him. Don’t want such as you in the house.” She sniffed and glanced at my feet before closing the door in my face. No hope that she would be quick.
I sat in the doorway and began to review the twenty-six steps a Searcher used to verify demon possession and the history, reasoning, and tests for each.
Antipathy for water ... Blood in the bodily fluids ... Craving for salt ... Enlargement of the pupils ...
I was on the twenty-first when a slender man with a dark, curling beard opened the door and almost stepped on me.
Antipathy for water ... Blood in the bodily fluids ... Craving for salt ... Enlargement of the pupils ...
I was on the twenty-first when a slender man with a dark, curling beard opened the door and almost stepped on me.
“Oh!” He stepped back and allowed me to get up and bow. “I am Hazzire. Who asks for me?”
“I bring an urgent message from one known as ‘the lady’s foreign friend.’ I was told you would accept it.”
The man’s dark, intelligent eyes drilled into me. “Indeed. I can see such a message to its destination.”
I gave him the letter. “The one who sends me cannot stress enough the importance and the secret nature of this message, sir.”
“You need have no concern. Is there anything I may do for you? I was instructed that if ever such a messenger came ...”
“Thank you, but no. My only need is a safe exit from the city before the gates are closed for the night.”
“Alas, I cannot help you there,” he said. “It is well-known that the House of Marag owns no slaves. For me to provide safe passage for you would attract more attention than you want, I think.”
I had expected as much. “Then, I’ll be on my way.”
“So the letter is all?”
“Tell the recipient ‘he ages well.’”
He smiled kindly. “I will deliver the report. May the hand of Athos defend you, good messenger.”
I bowed and hurried away, back the way I’d come, staying in the shadows while not appearing to hide, holding the path to the gates in my head. I had a close call when a brawl spilled out of a backstreet tavern just as I passed. Five large hairy fellows, stinking of sour ale, burst through a broken door and fell on top of me and two other passersby. There were too many flailing fists and flying knife blades for my comfort, and a crowd of onlookers was gathering like ants to spilled wine. I hoped the brawlers were too drunk to notice that the hand that disarmed three of them and broke quite a number of their fingers belonged to a slave. I poked fingers in two bloodshot eyes, squeezed out from under the noisy pile, and ducked into an alley.
I thought I’d got out of it very well as I retraced my steps through the warehouse district and slipped around behind the stables into the shadows of the gate towers. But then I had to wait. No one was going out of the gates, only in. Six guards arrived to take the next watch. They would close the gates at the change of the guard.
A large party of Chastouain came crowding through the arched gateway at the last minute. Chastouain were wandering tribal herdsmen who bought and sold the desert beasts—from whom they claimed direct descent—to caravan owners. Everywhere they went, Chastouain dragged their wives (three or four apiece) and children, their grandparents and cousins, their tents and wagons, and of course, their herds. They considered solid roofs as profane, and thus pitched their tents in city marketplaces when they came for a fair or a sale.
The confusion of their arrival looked to be the best chance I was going to get. I darted from my hiding place right into the middle of the milling crowd of bleating chastou, whip-toting herdsmen, and uncountable women and children carrying heavy baskets of their household belongings on their backs. Chastouain considered it unworthy to burden their beasts with their possessions—after all, they were relatives. They only sold the animals to other men who were perhaps not relatives and would do as they wished with the beasts. I pushed against the flow, doing my best to avoid being noticed, trampled, or carried back into the city by the sheer force of their movement.
I was under the massive granite arch of the gates, ready to take an easy breath, when my good fortune came to an end. A loop of rope was dropped over my head and yanked tight enough to pull me backward through the crowd. I fought to keep my balance and loosen the rope, even while bumping into cursing, hard-faced women and spitting chastou, and bruising my shoulder on the corner of a cart. But I soon lost my footing and was dragged, choking, between the feet of the chastou herd and the wheels of the Chastouain wagons. I threw my arms over my head and drew up into a ball.
The noose only came loose when I bumped to a stop on the edge of the crowd in the yellow, hissing light of a torch. “I do believe I’ve found me a runaway,” said a weedy voice from above my head. “Watched him sneaking through the alleys for an hour, waiting for his chance. There’s new rewards out for runaway slaves.”
I gasped for breath. There was no time to weigh the consequences of resistance. I could not be taken. Absolutely could not. As the first boot landed in my side, knocking the newly regained breath out again, I whispered a spell of breaking for the rope about my neck. A second boot landed in the small of my back. I wiped a handful of sticky muck on the right side of my face to cover the royal mark. By the time the boot intended to roll me onto my back landed in my ribs, the rope snapped apart, stinging my neck. I leaped to my feet, taking the boot with me and upending its owner.
There were three guardsmen still standing, and a grinning, unshaven man, who was not a soldier, looking on. All were heavily armed. Two I could take easily. Three most likely. The fourth would be harder, and if the fifth got up again ... I swung my foot and disarmed the unshaven man, who was crouched low and waving a knife at me. From the sound of it I broke his hand. I was glad, for he was the one who had caught me with the rope.
It was wrong to be thinking. I needed to move, to use my instincts that were so much faster than thought. So I did. While dodging swords and daggers, and inflicting what damage I could with hands and feet, I tried to call up spells. The only ones that came without thought were the simplest ones I had recited for Catrin, but I managed to set one man to vomiting and had another convinced that a snake was sharing his breeches. If three more soldiers had not come running to aid their fellows or if I’d been able to get my hands on one of the weapons that kept flying inconveniently out of reach, things would have turned out differently. But inevitably I ended up facedown in the muck with chains fastened to my wrist and ankle bands, and the angry feet and fists of twelve guardsmen convincing me that a demon was far more pleasant than a soldier who has just been made to look a fool in front of his comrades.
There was always a jail built next to the city gates. Smugglers, thieves who preyed on travelers, escaping felons, or wealthy foreigners who appeared to be ripe to supply hefty bribes could be locked away until the proper authorities could be summoned. Runaway slaves were so rare that the guardsmen weren’t sure of what to do with me, but they knew it wasn’t to be anything pleasant. So they hooked chains to my wristbands and hung me from the roof beams of their little stone hut, so that my toes just barely touched the floor, and they spent the rest of the night venting their displeasure at my audacity in fighting them. I tried to retreat into sleep, but the calling of the hours by the gate watch seemed to remind them that I was there. They took great glee in speculating as to which of my feet was to be cut off when the magistrate came in the morning, and they made sure to set the dark-stained wooden block and the broad ax where I could see them—as well as I could see anything through the blood and mud caking my battered face.
Once, early on in the evening when the guards were all out, I curled up my feet and tried to kick a hole in the roof, but the old oak boards were thick and hard. After the soldiers had come back and reminded me of their unhappiness with the broken bones I’d left them, I was incapable of such an effort again. I needed to be gone from there. I could not melt chains, not without expending so much power that I would have nothing left with which to fight my way out of the city. Melydda was an extension of the laws of nature, not a replacement for them. I could change the way a fire burned, grow it or quench it, but I could not easily make fire where there was none, especially not for something like iron, which has no nature to burn. And any noticeable sorcery would bring out the Magician’s Guild, and then I would be truly done for. Even losing a foot would be better than losing my mind in Balthar’s coffin. It was an endless night.
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