It appeared I was to be excellently guarded. About the open forum some twenty of Kortis’ bronze soldiers were lingering, and the dark slave-men building fires and raising awnings for them against the chill, in the angles of the ruined walls. Three silver captains of Kortis’ band were dicing near the statue in a shelter already prepared, and well heated by a brazier. It seemed no golden-masks-commanders or kin were left to Kortis Phoenix since his men fell on their swords in the pavilion on the fortress rock. Maybe he had special cause to hate me for that.
The sun’s brilliance was already darkening, seeping away into a twilight afternoon, taking my perceptions with it. Blue clouds bulged in the western sky. The wind passed like a comb along the streets of the city.
Perhaps I could die in the night, if it obliged me by growing cold enough.
The rats in my cell would be sorry I had not been returned to them. I could feel their teeth gnawing, even so, in the slashes on my chest and belly and the great chasm in my face, the rat teeth of pain.
Kotta, the blind woman, had called me handsome.
It would take a blind woman to think me handsome now.
4
I woke suddenly, hanging in my bonds like a carcass, and felt the strangeness that was in the night, or in me.
It was cold, but not bitter, the sky above the open Temple roof more white than black with all its stars and the low hunter’s bow of the moon. The shades and lights lay straight across the paved floor in stripes, with only the few dull gems of the dying fires to break them. Not a sound in the world, even the wind sleeping. The soldiers were sleeping, too, or mesmerized at their watch-posts, if any had been set.
My face tingled, and itched like new beard pushing through. I worked my jaw, and felt the dried cake of blood crack, but there was no pain, no stiffening in the raw flesh.
And I thought at last of the snake bite, the tattooing needles, the warrior wounds that healed clean and left no scar.
No time for more. There was a soft, insistent surging of vague movement all around me, deceptively fluid and gentle-then the clatter of the brazier going over, the red coals spilled, and from the shelter of the three silver captains, one silver masked man staggering out with another on his back, like some play of drunks or children. But the silvermask fell heavily, and the man astride lifted his arm and plunged it down with the almost noiseless thunk a blade makes penetrating human fiber. Presently he excavated the knife, wiped it on the corpse, and stood. As all around Prince Erran’s men were standing up from the dead guard Kortis Phoenix had left me. They had stolen in, soft as snow, and done their work like a kiss.
I saw I was to become another man’s property. Like any valuable buck ram, I had been captured, bought, sold, and finally thieved.
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137
Erran drank wine, green wine in a golden cup. He said, “I do not pretend I am not a man, you see. I eat, I drink, I urinate, I defecate, I sleep, and on some day shall die. If my ancestors were gods, the strain has failed and I am not a god. Kortis and Nemarl and two score thousand may pretend otherwise, but I am not one of them. Which is why I have subtracted you from their guardianship. Why waste you on godly vengeance when you might be put to use?”
He had taken off his leopard’s face to drink, for the city masks had no aperture at the mouth. He was a young man with blond clever looks and little amused eyes.
“Well, you may answer, my Vazkor. Tell me. Would you not be better pleased to live than to die? You shall be a kindly treated slave, don’t fear it. Your blood is half good at least. My rival princes would chop off your limbs; I would rather put them to work. Instead of castrating you, I will send you the comeliest of my bronze and satin mask women, and you shall get me fine, strong slave-sons on them. You shall have a pleasant and not overarduous existence in my service.”
I was no longer bound. Watching him, I put my hand to my face, and felt again the whole healed skin.
“Yes,” he said, “there is always that. I am hoping you will pass on that gift with your seed, as the Black Wolf of Ezlann did with his when he fashioned you. I have been wondering. If Kortis’ dog had lopped off a hand, or dug out an eye for his sport, what then? Should you have regrown the member as you have regrown flesh without scar?” He came and looked more nearly at me. “Yes, it is remarkable. Just a coloration, pale now as if your lady had petulantly slapped you there. It will be gone by sunrise, I would judge. The wounds on your body, of course, have vanished completely.”
He was close enough; I could have strangled him. He seemed to become aware of this, and walked away, grinning at me. He poured green wine into a second cup, not gold like the first, but polished wood, good enough for a slave.
“Will you drink?”
“Not with you.”
“Ah, but we have had all that. My hounds never bite me more than once. I was considering you might break horses for me, but I can always send you to tend the hot pipes in the cellar.”
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He upended the wooden cup, and let the green wine spill on the flags of his palace floor. Certain city customs he adhered to; drink poured for an underling was no longer fit for a prince.
“You have regained foolishness with health,” he said, not angry, merely bored by my reluctance to serve him.
He pressed an iron knob in the wall. The knob was shaped like a dragon’s head, another marvel. This building was less carious than Kortis’ stronghold; the sack and the war fires had spared it. He had more people, too; the mansions that towered away down the sloping streets behind had had an appearance of habitation, lights and dim murmurings, talk and music and the distant clamor of a smithy rising up on the pre-morning air, together with various smokes.
“There is another small reason why I have brought you here,” Erran said, “beyond your usefulness^ beyond the mild pleasure of outwitting Kortis and the rest who obey the ancient codes like fools. This other reason I shall show you.”
On this cue, the tapestries folded aside. A man held wide the carved door, and Demizdor came into the room.
I had not expected her presence here. I had no reason to.
She had had space to steel herself for this confrontation. She walked to Erran, bowed to him, and stood, slim and proud and immobile, the immemorial stance of Demizdor, the pose in which I had so often seen her. She did not hide her face in the deer-mask-etiquette did not permit it, presumably, before a gold lord-but she kept that face like white enamel. She wore a dress with tight sleeves and a nipped-in waist, dyed Erran’s dark ocher, which was an ugly, barren shade on her.
I surprised myself then. I found that no longer did I feel anything unique or disturbing for this woman. My liking had healed like the scarless wounds. She had been too much trouble for too little recompense, and she had spit venom on my name one time too many. Yet it was not quite that. My lovesickness was dead enough that I could even pity her, for, without the love, I saw to the roots of her now, where the maggots were biting at her heart.
Erran was scrutinizing me with interest.
“This lady,” he said, “sought me yesterday. Her beauty is unrivaled in Eshkorek, and her person currently unengaged.
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She has promised she will remain with me if I will spare your life.”
I had already fathomed enough of him to know it was not the acquisition of Demizdor that had tempted him to my rescue, but a desire for power over his fellows. A fledgling of my father’s ilk, maybe, he wanted me for his pawn. And now he did not parade Demizdor as an acquisition, but to see how much of a hold he might gain on her by owning me, how much of a hold on me by possessing her.
“That was generous of the lady,” I said. “No doubt she has mentioned how I raped and degraded her among the tents of the shlevakin.”
“No doubt she has. Do you think she asked me to spare your life in order to bring you ease? She wishes you to live that you may endure slavery. She desires that you grovel in the bowels of Eshkorek twenty years or more. When your spirit is smashed she will draw her breath in peace. So she asserts.” His voice and his smile indicated that he, too, assessed her motives differently.