Lynn Flewelling - Shadows Return

“I’m sorry. I spoke without thinking.”

Khenir sighed and went back to work. “You’re new to all this. Sometimes I forget what that’s like. I’ve been here a very long time, you see.”

“I’m sorry,” Alec said again, feeling miserable. Khenir’s reaction was answer enough.

“Drink your water.”

Neither spoke as Khenir finished with the bandaging and gathered up the soiled linen strips and empty cups.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Alec ventured, as Khenir stood and fastened the lace-trimmed veil across his face. “Do you have to go?”

The man leaned down and stroked his hair. Without thinking, Alec closed his eyes and leaned into the touch; it felt like years since anyone had touched him with anything like kindness.

Khenir smiled sadly and trailed his fingers down Alec’s cheek. “I’ll be back as soon as it’s allowed, I promise. Just do as you’re told. It will be better for you if you do, and perhaps Ilban will give you more freedom in the house.”

He went out and took the candle with him. Alec groped in the dark for the pitcher. The tincture had left him thirsty.

More freedom, eh? Alec pulled the quilts up to his chin. A little moonlight found its way through the grate, and he could see the white puff of his breath on the air.

He knew he shouldn’t get his hopes up too much, but Khenir had unwittingly given him a great deal of useful information. There were at least two others like him here, and if he could lull “Ilban” into giving him the run of the house, as Khenir and the nurse evidently had, then sooner or later he could find a way to escape. Given the very real possibility of having his balls cut off, sooner would be better. So, he reasoned, he’d play the good slave and take the tinctures, and use every opportunity he had to learn the layout of the house. But he’d have to be very careful. Yhakobin had made it clear that he knew too much of Alec’s past to be fooled easily.

Burrowing down into the deeper warmth of the quilts, he kissed his palm and pressed it to his heart. Keep well, talí, and don’t think I’ve forgotten you. I’ll get out of here and I’ll find you, no matter what it takes.

As he drifted off to sleep, hoping for dreams of Seregil, it occurred to him to wonder what had happened to the other slaves Khenir had alluded to, the ones their master preferred.

“HABA?”

Cool fingers and Adzriel’s scent brought Seregil close to the surface of waking again. He dreamed of her face, sometimes smiling and kind as she almost always had been, during the years she’d raised him. But in other dreams he was a child again, standing before the judges at Sarikali with blood on his tunic, and she was weeping.

And always that pet name-Haba, “little black squirrel”-whispered close to his ear. Adzriel had called him that first, and then only the ones who loved him-his friends, Kheeta, his sisters…

Another, too.

Haba, come back to us.

Haba, wake up.

Wake…

“Are you awake at last? Open your eyes and show me.” A woman’s voice, speaking in Aurënfaie.

Seregil let out a soft groan as someone lightly slapped his cheek. “Mydri, don’t. Sick.”

“Wake up, now. You must drink something.”

Consciousness returned slowly. At first he was aware only of a tremendous heaviness, then that scent, and of how hard it was to open his eyes. Something cool and moist passed across his eyelids, then his brow and cheeks. Someone was washing his face.

“Adzriel?” It came out a faint, cracked whisper. His mouth was so dry, and his tongue felt thick. “Where-?”

He didn’t recall reaching Bôkthersa. Something had happened…

“Open your eyes, young son.”

Young son? It was said in the formal style, rather than familial. His gummy lids parted at last and he found himself in a curtained bed in a dimly lit room. A candle burned somewhere beyond the bed curtains and someone sat beside the bed, a dark shape, with no visible face. A scrap of memory stirred-a dark, faceless shape lurching at him, a horrid, rotting stench…

A dra’gorgos!

But there was nothing but the scent of wax here, and the faintest whiff of Adzriel’s perfume still lingering in the air. Too weak to reach out or even turn his head, he blinked up at the woman, needing to hear a friendly voice.

“Ah, that’s better.” A woman, certainly, but not any of his sisters.

“Where-?” he asked, his voice a raw whisper.

“Hush, now, and stay still. You’ve been terribly ill.” As she leaned forward and brought a horn spoon to his lips, his saw that she was very old. A long white braid hung over one shoulder, and what he could see of her face above an embroidered veil was lined with age.

Cool sweet water trickled over his parched tongue and he swallowed eagerly, though it hurt like fire. He opened his mouth for more.

The faded blue eyes above the veil crinkled at the corners, revealing her hidden smile. “There now, a little more. Slowly though. We didn’t think you’d live, young son.”

“Who didn’t?” he rasped between sips.

She just shook her head a bit as she gave him more water.

“My sister,” he tried again, thinking she might be a bit deaf. “I thought-”

“Adzriel, is it? You called on her more than once. That’s your sister?”

“Is she here?” He hadn’t dreamed her scent. He could still smell it.

“No, and be thankful for that,” she replied, shaking her head.

“What? Please, tell me where I am,” Seregil begged.

“In the house of our master, of course.” Age-knotted fingers stole to a silvery circlet at her withered throat. Then Seregil noticed the faded round brand on her forearm.

“You’re a slave?”

“Of course. As are you.” She reached out and tapped something around his neck.

“What is that?” he demanded, though he already had a pretty good idea.

“Your collar, young son. You’re a slave now, no different than the rest of us. Seeing the size of that dragon mark on your hand, I’m surprised you ended up here. Maybe the luck of it ran out, eh?” She rose slowly and stepped away from the bed. “Rest now. I’ll bring you something to eat in a little while.”

“No, wait. Please!” He heard the soft sound of a door closing.

Frustrated and confused, he stared helplessly up at the dark canopy over the bed. He had to gather his wits, and soon!

But it was so hard. He felt sluggish, drugged. The struggle to think made him short of breath, as if he were climbing a mountain rather than lying flat on his back.

He’d been deathly ill, she’d said, and he certainly felt like it. His body hurt all over, and there were spots of a stronger, throbbing pain on the underside of his right forearm, and on the back of his left calf where it rested against the sheets.

Sheets? His wandering mind veered of its own volition. He flexed the fingers of one hand and felt smooth linen and the give of a soft mattress. What slave was given this sort of bed? Had the veiled woman been lying? Had he misunderstood?

But no, he remembered that much from the ship-rough, grasping hands, then pain and the smell of his own flesh being seared, cutting through the fog of illness.

“Fucking hell! Fucking, rotting balls of hell!” he whispered helplessly.

He was tucked in tightly under heavy quilts. It took all the strength he could muster to slowly work his right arm free. There, black against the pale underside of his forearm, was a small, scabbed brand in the shape of the letter S. He reached up and touched the metal collar around his neck. It was about a finger’s width in thickness, the metal rounded and very smooth.