From then on, each morning, rain or shine, Macurdy went to the woods with his ax. The overseer or his assistant arrived at two or three o’clock, until, after a few days, he was told to leave on his own when he’d made his day’s quota. They’d inspect his work at a time convenient to them. Each afternoon, often while doing another task or project, Hauser drilled him on Yuultal. And also much of the evening, except when Arbel had some test for him, Hauser acting as interpreter.
Two weeks passed before Hauser had a chance to visit Talbott again. He was back sooner than expected, and Macurdy knew why, for Hauser looked distressed.
He asked anyway. “What’s the matter?”
“He’s not there. The gate guard says he was taken away two weeks ago.”
Put down like a wind-broken horse, Macurdy guessed. “It was his back,” he said. “I think he was expecting it. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to grieve us.”
“I suppose so.”
“You meant a lot to him,” Macurdy added. “He was proud of you, of what you’ve done.”
He dropped the subject then, to let Hauser deal with his grief himself.
* * *
Each Six-Day evening a slave girl was brought to the house to spend the night with Arbel. It wasn’t always the same one, but she was always good-looking. And whether her demeanor was demure or playful or bold, she never seemed unhappy to find herself there. According to Hauser, Arbel had told him that working with the spirit as he did, a lissome slave girl in his bed once a week kept his body properly grounded in the physical world—a necessity for a healthy shaman. On the other hand, twice a week would be to submit to the physical world; he’d limited himself even as a young man.
“How about you?” Macurdy asked. “Do you ever get any?”
Hauser smiled ruefully. “Four times a year—at each equinox and each solstice. As a reward; work keeps me physically grounded.” Again Hauser smiled. “Sometimes I find myself counting the weeks.”
Macurdy tried to picture Reverend Fleming, a widower, having a slave girl brought to the parsonage once a week. It was hard to imagine. Folks would be horrified.
Occasionally Macurdy was afflicted with unease at being here while Varia was—wherever she was. But he needed to learn, learn the language well, and enough about the country and the people to travel around without ending up a slave somewhere else, or dead.
Busy as he was, and as tired at bedtime, it was relatively easy not to dwell on the problems. His thoughts of Varia were mainly sweet fantasies.
Spring became summer, then late summer. Meanwhile Macurdy discovered a non-magical talent he hadn’t known he had. He already knew he had an excellent memory and learned quickly, but now discovered an unexpected skill at duplicating sounds. With such intensive instruction, not only was he rapidly learning the local language; he was already pronouncing the words nearly as well as Hauser, and Hauser spoke them almost like a local. Now Arbel began to examine Macurdy more deeply, asking most of his questions directly, guiding as much on the responses of the big slave’s aura as on his verbal answers.
Arbel’s “instruction” lay only partly in teaching. Even more, it involved questions, the answering of which exposed and peeled off layers of opinions, beliefs, attitudes . . . like peeling an onion, freeing what lay beneath. And gradually, as Arbel worked on him, Macurdy became aware of changes in himself. He’d always tended to be confident. Now he felt stronger, bolder, more self-assured. And his natural charisma was more apparent. Even as a slave, his intrinsic dominance showed, expressed as competence, a comfortable readiness to act, a dominance more over situations than over people.
Gradually he became aware that others were treating him differently. Thus in dealing with Macurdy, even the overseer’s assistant was—not actually courteous, but his brusqueness had lost its truculence and threat. Then one morning, Macurdy glanced at Hauser pulling on his breeches, and saw around him a sheath of warm light, mostly blue, but with elusive patterns of other colors. It glowed around him from the hips upward, flaring more widely around his head. Hauser’s aura, he realized.