Sharon Green - Terrillian 04, page 25
Just sitting there made no sense, so I forced myself to my feet and tiptoed across the area to the corridor. Behind me I could hear someone muttering in his sleep and, when chuckling followed the meaningless words, I thought I knew who it was. The slaves of that area never laughed, rarely smiled, and some had begun to express enjoyment only recently, with their new undertaking. Only one of the very few experimenters would actually chuckle, and I shuddered even as I refused to think about him. I had other things to think about first, and if we all got out of the trap that had been waiting for us, there would be plenty of time later.
The first few corridors I crept along were deserted, but the further I went the more I knew I was not cut out for the life of an adventurer. If someone had suddenly come out of one of the doorways to appear in front of me, I undoubtedly would have died of heart failure then and there. It was terrible not being able to send my mind out ahead of me and all around, but that heavy, buzzing broadcast that had knocked me over the first time was still there, so thick and strong that the air nearly vibrated with it. I wasn’t feeling it but I was itching from it, understanding perfectly well why it continued on into deep night: at night peoples’ defenses were at their lowest, and that was the best time to reach through to them. If I ever managed to get out of there, I intended wondering just what it was they were reaching out with and for.
I got through another two corridors of rock walls that scraped my back and tried to make me yell out loud, of high torches that illuminated me clearly no matter how small I fought to make myself, of rock floor that was whisper quiet even though I expected it to begin creaking at any moment, and then I found something I hadn’t known I was looking for. A nicely carved table outside one of the closed, heavy wooden doors in the wall held something other than a vase of flowers or a well-done statuette. It looked like a pile of cloth until I got closer, and then it looked like a rain cape, only not made for the rain.
It was bright red with gold trim around all the edges, and right in the middle of all that red was a neat, square-cornered tear. It looked as though it had caught on something that had ripped it, and had probably been left out by its owner so that a slave might repair it in the morning. I stared at it for a good five seconds before grabbing it up and pulling it on over my head, and that solved one of the problems I’d hoped to have. If I made it out into the city I couldn’t very well wander around naked, and now I didn’t have to. The thing didn’t reach up high enough to cover the bronze metal band around my throat, but one problem at a time.
Making a left turn at the next corridor intersection instead of a right put me no more than twenty-five feet from my second solution. I needed to get out of that palace, and just ahead were two terrace doors in the wall, standing open with the darkness of night behind them. As I hurried toward them I heard a faint clatter coming from the opposite direction, but I wasn’t silly enough to stop and turn around and look. If they were about to recapture me I didn’t want to know it and, if they weren’t I wasn’t about to hang around and give them the chance. With heart pounding and breath rasping and legs wobbling I got myself through those doors, then let the darkness swallow me up.
It took longer than I like to think about before I was able to stop trembling, before the quiet of the dark let me think again instead of simply running. I sat on the grass in the middle of that dark, well away from the torches that lit the outside of the palace, feeling the cool night air dry the sweat of panic from my face. The cape I had taken was keeping me warm, but it was also urging me to lie down comfortably for a few minutes, and I couldn’t afford to do that. I was so tired I would probably fall immediately asleep, and that would be the end of my escape. I had to get through the wall and into the city before I slept, through the city and out of it before I could relax. Stopping to think about it told me which gate I had to use, the only gate that would send me a way I had any hope of recognizing, the main gate we had come in by.
I levered myself to my feet and tottered a moment, then staggered off to find the only gate that would do me.
Each of the gates I passed was brightly lit by torches, and because of that I began to believe I’d never find the one I needed. Hidden in the dark I looked at each of those gates, realized they were too small to be the one I needed, then forced myself to go on. It came to me after a while that I might be moving in the wrong direction, that the gate I was looking for might have been only a short distance from where I began but the other way; I thought about that quite a lot, but didn’t stop moving as I had begun, to the right facing the wall. If I started doubting myself and went back the other way, I could spend the rest of the night going back and forth in front of one section of wall.
When I finally reached the right gate I knew it immediately, but I took a couple of minutes to rest and think about how I would get through it. It was gaping as wide open as it had been when we’d first gotten there, but it also had nearly as many armed women standing around guarding it. After a minute or so I was able to count eight, and then was just able to keep myself from slumping down to the grass in defeat. Eight w’wendaa when I wouldn’t even have been able to face one under the best of circumstances, which that certainly was not. I was beaten, totally defeated, and the best thing I could do was go back to the palace and give myself up.
But that would mean really deserting my beloved, leaving him in a capture that might very well be worse than death. My head came up as I realized that I didn’t even know what that woman was doing to him, but it couldn’t have been anything pleasant. And he was resisting, I knew he was resisting, otherwise she wouldn’t have beaten me as often and as viciously as she had. I couldn’t make his efforts wasted, I had to get out of there and regain my strength, and then come back for him! The thought of me rescuing a man his size was ludicrous, but I had no strength left at all for ridicule. What I did have left I needed-to get myself out that gate.
I moved as near to the opening as I could without stepping into the torchlight, then stood straight and still and clenched my fists. Every one of those women was larger than the dark-haired slave in the shadows, but it wasn’t in a physical way that I meant to attack them. I still couldn’t open my shield and because of that received nothing, but I’d tried once and had found that I could reach around my shield to touch others. I felt incipient hysterics at the thought of having done it all at once, but I couldn’t let that stop me. Maybe I didn’t know how much strength I had working that way, and maybe I didn’t even know if I could split a projection effectively; what I did know was that I had to try, even if I failed.
Sending the projection out around my shield and not going along to guide it brought the sweat to my body and face again, the sweat of fear and the sweat of straining. I strained to split that projection eight ways and send each part in the right direction, and every minute of the time was afraid I was doing something wrong or simply not right enough. I stood sweating and trembling in the cool dark, watching all of the women standing exactly as they had been, and finally decided that I had to try it. If it didn’t work I would be a captive and a slave again, but that’s just what I’d be if I didn’t get moving. I wouldn’t be able to hold that projection much longer, and once the effort stopped it would be a long while before I would find it possible to start again.
Moving more like a wooden toy than a living being, I headed straight for the opening, keeping to a moderate pace. Running would have been stupid even if it had been physically possible, and creeping along would have driven me crazy. I walked through the torchlight and nighttime insect noises up to the opening, my feet making no noise on the thick grass, then held my breath as I passed between two of the women guards. If any of them had spoken or reached out to touch me I would have collapsed, but none of them was capable of doing that just then. Their introspection was so deep that they stood like statues cast in flesh, eyes down or inward, total disinterest turning them deaf and blind to their surroundings. They didn’t know or care that I was passing through the gate, and that was exactly the way it was supposed to be.
Under the right circumstances, a mere fifty feet can stretch for miles; when I’d first ridden across it, it hadn’t seemed so bad, but walking back was a nightmare. The sweat of strain poured over me as though it were raining, but I couldn’t afford to release the projection until I was out of sight. Ten feet and my soles were bruised from the small stones and twigs on the ground, but ignore that and just keep going. Twenty feet and the red cape had grown heavier and more confining, but ignore that and just keep going. Thirty feet and you’re more than halfway to the nearest dark alley, but just keep going.
Forty feet and the nighttime dark has lost its breeze, but-keep going.
Forty-five and it’s only just ahead, a matter of steps. Even if you’re staggering you can make it, just two more strides, justI collapsed against the side of the closed-tight stall no more than a single step inside the narrow alleyway, my forehead and palms against the rough wood and my eyes shut in the darkness. If I’d had to hold that projection even an instant longer I would have died, and that isn’t a figurative analysis. All I wanted to do was fall down to the ground, and the only thing holding me up was the stall, that and the knowledge that if I let myself pass out, all my previous effort would have been wasted. I was safe where I was only until the sun came up, and after that I needed some place else. Since I had no intentions of being conscious when the sun came up, I had to find that someplace else before any of the previous happened. Whatever the hell the previous referred to.
It took three tries before I could push away from the stall side, and that included getting my eyes open again. Deeper into the alley was that way, away from the reflection of torches, at right angles to the stall wall. Stall wall.
I was giggling before I knew it, finding that phrase hilarious, inching my way through the darkness with one hand stretched out to a wall and one clapped over my mouth. I knew I shouldn’t be making any noise, but I couldn’t seem to stop laughing-Until I ran right into a large, hard body. I knew it was a body because I could feel one arm, and it wasn’t simply large-it was giant. Everything funny in the entire universe died when two big hands came to my arms, and if I’d had the strength I would have screamed. I was suddenly convinced it was my master who held me, a giant male Rimilian just like all the rest, one who would carry me back to slavery and an eternity of pain-filled confusion. I mewled in terror and struck out with useless fists, and then I was being shaken hard so that very soft words would get through to me.
“Calm yourself, wenda, and do not struggle,” I heard, no more than a breath behind each sound. “We would not wish the guard wendaa to find you, Terril, now that you have accomplished so excellent an escape.”
Wendaa not w’wendaa, and he called me by name. I had just enough time to realize it was Dallan, before everything disappeared from around me.
Chapter 10
I awoke with a start and the beginnings of panic, but the walls around me were a reddish-brown wood instead of smooth white stone, and I wasn’t alone in the room. Not far from whatever I lay on Dallan sat in comfort amid cushions, a copper-colored goblet in his hands, his sword still belted around him. That more than anything else kept me from jumping up and running, and it wasn’t until my heart had receded from my mouth that I noticed he hadn’t moved.
Working at keeping me off the ceiling, I thought as I lay back again and let my muscles unclench, and a damned good thing he was smart enough to do it. One move out of him and I probably would have been able to answer Garth’s question about whether or not I could fly.
“Wenda, we must make an attempt to cease this,” Dallan’s voice came after a minute, sounding the least bit cautious. “I dislike finding myself at your side each time you awaken from pain-filled, fearful sleep. The practice is becoming upsetting. “
“Perhaps it would be best if I were the first to make the attempt,” I answered in a rusty voice, smiling faintly at his teasing. “Your part seems far easier to arrange.”
“Not quite as easy as all that,” he said, disagreeing, and then he was beside me, smoothing my hair back with one big hand. “So Tammad’s apprehensions were correct after all. Are you able to tell me what was done to you there?”
I opened my eyes and turned my head to the man looking down at me, seeing the worry lines in his face that I’d thought I’d heard. in his voice. On reconsideration I decided that sitting around waiting for someone to regain consciousness wasn’t the most pleasant pastime in the world, and might even be harder than being the one who had gotten hurt.
“You may rest your mind, for I am completely recovered,” I began at once, starting to get into a sitting position as fast as I could to reassure him, but I didn’t make it. My body screamed out the demand as to whether I’d lost my mind, and then refused to let me have the ability to answer. All I managed was a croaking gasp and very little motion, and even that was swallowed up by Dallan’s hand on my shoulder.
“Completely recovered, are you?” he asked, the growl he refused to allow in his voice showing up in his eyes, his hand continuing to hold me down. “When I allow you to move it will only be slowly, and then for no more than a short time. Have you no concept of how badly you were whipped?”
As a matter of fact I didn’t really, but the stiffness a portion of the pain had turned into started giving me an inkling. It wasn’t going to be as easy as it had been those other times Dallan had mentioned, but it was still going to have to be done.
“I have not the time to move so slowly,” I informed him with as much firmness as I could muster while still under that big hand of his. “Last darkness I was able to do what was necessary, and this darkness I shall do the same.”
“Indeed shall you do this darkness what was done during the last,” he agreed, his tone, for some reason, rather dry. “Last darkness was spent by you in sleep, as well as all the day previous and half the darkness before that. It is now somewhere about mid-day, and you have so far had no more than meat broth in you, swallowed at the times you nearly awoke. I shall fetch you a meal, and then you will sleep again. “
He straightened and headed for the door in the wall to the right of where I lay, and I was too upset to protest before he had disappeared through it. It was going on two days since I’d escaped from the palace, but I hadn’t done a damned thing about going back except sleep! I moved around a little where I lay, feeling the remnants of pain and the hobbling of stiffness, the strengthlessness that hadn’t quite left me and the hollowness of near-starvation, and cursed under my breath. Dallan was picturing me taking a long time to recover, but he was in for a surprise. I couldn’t afford to take my time, and had no intentions of doing so.
The room I lay in was rather small, but it was also rather pleasant. The reddish-brown paneling of the walls stopped at the wide window to the left of me, and a golden curtain colored the incoming light. The carpet-fur was also golden, and the pillows Dallan had been sitting among were red, all of it going well with the dark brown fur of my bed. Those furs seemed somewhat well-used, with the smell of salves or ointment to them, and once again I was naked under what covered me-but that terrible bronze collar was also gone. I thought about how I’d been stripped naked at that woman Roodar’s orders and I felt the anger come, building slowly toward true fury. We had a score to settle, Roodar and I, but I would need to wait before I knew how big a score.
If she had hurt Tammad she would live to regret it-that I swore by everything that was right!
I stopped the fury, saving it for the next time I’d need it. That time it had already served its purpose; although there was sweat on my forehead I was sitting up straight and had gotten that way with a lot less pain than I would have had without the strong emotion I’d used as a crutch. Anger can be very useful if you handle it properly, and it was about time I learned how to handle it.
A minute later the door opened, and I was surprised to see Dallan coming back with a tray. My stomach twisted at the thought of food, and I regretted how little I’d be able to eat.
“Have you taken to conjuring?” I asked as he closed the door before starting toward me with the tray. “I had not thought it would be possible for you to prepare provender and return so soon.”
“As the mid-day meal had already been prepared and a servant was nearly here with it, I had only to take the tray,” he answered, setting the thing down on my lap. “And clearly did you fail to expect so speedy a return, else you would not have been caught in so obvious a disobedience.”
I was able to see the annoyance in his eyes before he turned away to begin gathering pillows from the carpet fur, but I didn’t understand what he was talking about.
“What disobedience do you refer to?” I asked, taking a peek at the food he’d put under my nose. There was a thick meat soup of some kind, a slab of bread, a cup of yellow pudding that was probably pure sugar, and a goblet of what seemed to be juice of some sort.
“I refer to the disobedience of having found you sitting,” he said, stuffing pillows behind my back until they were high enough to lean against. “Were you not told to remain unmoving till you had my permission to do otherwise?”
