incoherent, impotent threats. Finally his mind slipped onto another plane, a
darker plane where there was no pain-no feeling at all.
* * *
Slowly the world came back into focus, so slowly that Jubal had to fight to
distinguish dream from reality. He was in a room. . .no, in a hovel. There was a
guttered candle struggling to give off light, crowded in turn by the sun
streaming in through a doorway without a door.
He lay on the dirt floor, his clothes damp and clammy from his own sweat. His
legs were wound from thigh to calf with bandages… lumpy bandages, as if his
legs had no form save for what the rags gave them.
Alten Stulwig, Sanctuary’s favored healer, squatted over him, keeping the sun’s
rays from his face. “You’re awake. Good,” the man grunted. “Maybe now I can
finish my treatment and go home. You’re only the second black I’ve worked on,
you know. The other died. It’s hard to judge skin tone in these cases.”
“Saliman?” Jubal croaked.
“Outside relieving himself. You underestimate him, you know. Warrior or not, he
kept me from following my better judgment. Threatened to carve out my stomach if
I didn’t wait until you regained consciousness.”
“Saliman?” Jubal laughed weakly. “You’ve been bluffed, healer. He’s never drawn
blood. Not all those who work for me are cut-throats.”
“I believed him,” the healer retorted stiffly. “And I still do.”
“As well you should,” Saliman added from the doorway. In one hand he carried a
corroded pan, its handle missing; he carried it carefully, as if it, or its
contents, were fragile. In his other hand he held Jubal’s dagger.