The demon—whose physical appearance was exceedingly hairy and less than intelligent—flickered into invisibility and departed, and I was left alone with the uneasy beasts, all of them large and all of them with a great many teeth. Seven of them took the point, standing around me growling, legs stiff, tails dropped, showing their teeth, and—from the amount of drooling—contemplating the succulent tenderness of my throat and liver. I willed my heart quiet and my breathing smooth, and held still in the corner, allowing the beasts to posture and sniff and nose about me as they would. Fortunately they were more unsettled at my intrusion than truly vicious. A quarter of an hour seemed to convince them I was no threat, and they settled into large hairy lumps to sleep. A few of the less intimidating beasts I encouraged to come closer, and I curled up among them. For the first time since I had stepped into the abyss, I slept warm and had no dreams at all.
Life with Vallyne’s dogs was not so bad. Though it puzzled me that I was left unquestioned and alone for so many days; there were no beatings, no torture, and I could sleep as much as I pleased. The tiled courtyard was barren, but clean and slightly warmer than the pits. Though the light never changed from the stormy gray of everlasting winter, at least it was not darkness.
I enjoyed having company—though I quickly came to realize that the dogs were no more real than the frost butterfly. Less so, actually, for the butterfly had physical substance and could be shattered at a careless touch, whereas the dogs were but illusion. A sword through its belly could not kill one of them, but a sorcerer’s word could dissolve it into nothing. The truth of the matter struck me when I patted a hairy, knee-high beast with drooping eyes and realized it had no heartbeat. I investigated further and discovered that although some of the dogs were warm, others were quite cold. Some had tails and some did not. A few had no teeth. They appeared very much like the cast-offs in a potter’s studio, each with a flaw that kept it from being quite finished. I wondered why anyone bothered to feed them. But they were very good illusions, and I came to think of them as real. When they piled around me to sleep and I rubbed their bellies and furry necks, I blessed them for their uncomplicated companionship. I couldn’t betray them. They couldn’t despise me. Somehow that seemed a comfort.
The food was far better than that in the pits of the mad Gastai. I closed my eyes and let my imagination tell me what I ate, since the taste was often unrelated to the food’s appearance. Occasionally I got bread, cooked meat, or cheese that looked like scraps left from someone’s table. None of it had much taste, and what taste it had was something off. Not spoilt, just wrong. Vaguely sweet when it should be tart. Musty where it should be fresh. The texture hard or smooth where it should be juicy or crumbling. The variety was pleasant, though I learned to avoid anything that resembled cheese if there was enough else. I would have said someone had taken out all the cream and left only the mold. But I wasn’t about to complain. Though their edible creations had never seen pig, fowl, vine, or tree, the rai-kirah were able to create something near enough that it could nourish a human body. I did not starve.
My injuries began to heal, and after a number of days spent huddled untidily in the corner, not daring to look about or think, starting at every sound, I decided I had better start moving or I would never remember how. On the first day I stood up and walked about a little. No one objected. On the next, I walked a bit more and began to stretch out my stiff and twisted muscles. Again, no one seemed to notice. On the third day, I began to train. In the beginning I spent long hours doing the slowest, easiest exercises of the kyanar, trying to build some semblance of strength and balance. Then I went on to more difficult movements, and I started running with the dogs in their aimless chasing around the perimeters of the courtyard. After a week of collapsing quickly with lungs and legs on fire, I began to make good progress.
The movement, sleep, and freedom from constant pain allowed me to regain some clarity of mind. I began to mark the days—counting the periods I slept as night—and scratching my tally on the tile work in a corner. Though my hands still trembled constantly, I could think again, and, if I worked at it, recall brief snippets of my life: my earliest school days, bits of Warden’s training, Ezzarian ritual, isolated events from my years in slavery, unending demon battles.
Unfortunately I found that, no matter how hard I worked at it, I could not remember the most important things: my personal history—family, friends, how I had come to be a slave or been set free of it—how I had come to Kir’Vagonoth, what it was I had risked my life and reason to discover, the nature of the fears my dreaming had aroused. My memory was like a manuscript carefully written, then blotted with pools of ink—certain text in absolute clarity, the word right next to it totally obscured.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to discover what was hidden. Every door I tried to open seemed to have something terrible and painful behind it. For the moment I preferred to work at physical exercise until I could not lift a toe, and then to practice chants and recitations that took my mind away from past, present, and future, until I collapsed with the dogs and slept. There would be time enough later to remember. Or if I was going to die or be eternally captive, then what did it matter?
I had no thought of escape. I allowed myself to believe it was because the walls were high and smooth, with only one gate of thick black bars, and that the lock was sealed with an enchantment I had no power to break. The roof was a latticework of the same black bars, and even if I’d had some confidence that I could bend them, they were more than twice a man’s height above my head. And my melydda was dead—damaged, injured, fled, I didn’t know what—my words of enchantment as useful as a deaf man’s ears or a blind man’s eyes. The moment’s stirring power I had felt at my interrogation had clearly been nothing but a dream. But no reasoning could mask the truth. If I tried to escape, the demons would send me back to the pits. The terror of that bound me as no chains could ever do.
Never in all that time did I lay eyes on Vallyne or Merryt or Denas, nor on the one named Vyx, the strange demon who had drawn me to Kir’Vagonoth with terrifying dreams. Only the green-clad servant came to the courtyard, to bring food and sweep up our leavings—happily the illusory hounds were not exceptionally foul—and make sure that the rivulet of water that trickled through a stone trough had not been blocked or clogged. Ofttimes he just sat on a bench in one corner of the yard and watched us. He never spoke to me or gave me any indication that I was not just another of the burdensome beasts. But on occasion he wore a solid body instead of his flickering demon form, and when he did so, he strutted proudly. I didn’t think it was for the dogs he preened. It set me laughing to see him adjusting his drooping breeches or running his thick fingers through his shaggy brown hair or over his full, drooping lips as if to make sure they were put on straight.
I made no attempt to speak to the servant. I had no wish to invite consequences, severe or otherwise. But on one day when the dogs kept getting in his way as he was sweeping, I whistled to them and started them running with me while he did his work. When he was done, he nodded to me very slightly, and I smiled and bowed in return.
Soon after this he watched me dipping water from the trough to wash myself, then running and shivering until I was dry. On his next visit he left a clean drying cloth beside my mound of food. I made no attempt to bridge the distance between us, even when he seemed on the verge of speaking to me, but whenever he wore his body, I bowed to him—not in mockery or excess, only enough to show respect.
A few days after he brought the drying cloth, he came in wearing his body, walking stiff and slow, half bent over as if he couldn’t straighten up. He tried to lay down the heavy trays of food for the dogs, but he grunted painfully and held still for a moment. Being familiar with every variety of injury, I surmised that he had strained some muscle in his back and did not know enough anatomy to reshape himself and relieve his discomfort. But when I stepped close and held out my hands to help him with his load, I saw bloody streaks on his thin tunic of green silk. I took the trays and set them aside, then led him to the trough. With gestures I told him to remove his shirt. Indeed he had been beaten, with a cane, I guessed, and I remembered what Merryt had said about the demons locking each other inside a solid body and treating it cruelly. I took his shirt and wet it, then dabbed the cold water on the fresh stripes. I knew how to clean a wound without making it worse, and how to press on one place hard enough that he would not feel what I did to the others. When I had done all I could, I gave him his shirt and motioned him on his way. Either my efforts were exceptional or demon-created bodies did not feel injury so harshly as our human ones, for the servant bowed to me and proceeded with his work as if nothing were wrong.
I should have known better. On the next day I had a different guard—an ugly demon woman, very harsh. She carried a stick and beat the whimpering dogs if they came near her. She glowered at me and waggled her stick in my direction, her stormy blue-gray light pulsing with her movements. Not tempted to test her ancient form or her flimsy-looking weapon, I curtailed my activities. I did not cower or grovel, only stayed quiet in the corner, watching. When she left, I went back to work.
After several weeks of training, I began to regain my strength. The long hours running improved my wind, and dodging the carousing dogs honed my agility. I drew on every technique I could dredge from memory to harden muscle, sharpen senses, and eradicate my lingering terrors. But my hands still shook, and though on several occasions, at the end of a good day, I experienced the first faint stir-rings of melydda, every waking found my soul cold and dead.
After one particularly vigorous day’s work, while I was cleaning myself at the trough, wishing I had the old woman’s stick to use for sword practice, someone rattled the gate locks and burst into the courtyard. It was a short, plump young woman—quite solid and human looking—the bodice of her yellow gown half torn away. Her round face was flushed, her long brown curls disheveled, and her breath ragged. When she noticed me, her small eyes widened in surprise. “Oh!”
Shouts rang from the halls beyond the courtyard, and heavy footsteps pounded on tile floors.
“Oh, please, sir, can you help me? This cruel lord says he will have me or throw me to the mad demons. A hundred years I’ve been imprisoned in this castle.”
It was very curious. Her words were empty. Despite their meaning, there was nothing of true fear in her voice. Fear and I were old acquaintances by then, and it set me wondering . . . and wary. Careful to utter no word, I motioned to the barren walls and shrugged my shoulders. With gestures I suggested that she might wriggle under the heap of dogs. If she had been the most desperate of fugitives, I would have had nothing different to offer.
“But he would find me there.” She stepped closer, laying her folded hands upon my breast. Very cold hands. Her quivering closeness did not leave me unaffected, however. And little of sympathy or protectiveness could have been found in the sudden onslaught of unfamiliar sensation. I had to force myself to hear her pleading instead of only the rush of blood in my ears. “I’ve heard there was a sorcerer—a human man with a soul—kept in this yard. Oh, kind sir, will you not aid me with your magics?” Her pleading was very pitiful, but whoever she was, she had not learned to match her eyes with her voice.
I stepped back to a safer distance, shook my head, and held out empty hands.
The shouts grew louder. “Where are you, vixen? You’ll suffer for this. My knife, my whip, and my hand will teach you who is master.”
They almost had me, for the man’s voice was a very good imitation of Denas’s roar. But not quite good enough. When the angry shouts drove her into my arms again, I spread my arms wide and gave her no harbor.
“Wicked villain!” She struck me on the face, which caused the dogs to run closer, growling. But no sooner did they sniff about the woman than they began to whine and wag their tails.
I took their cue and changed my widespread stance into a very deep bow, quickly smothering the disbelieving smile that insisted on displaying itself on my face. It was well I did so. When I raised my head, the short, plump refugee had become a woman of my own height, majestic in her bearing, the torn yellow dress revealing a full, perfect breast and sculpted shoulder of such vibrant loveliness as set my skin on fire. Vallyne stood before me, tapping her foot in irritation. “All right, so tell me, when did you guess?”
Wits. Where were my wits? I motioned to my mouth and raised my eyebrows, even as I devoured her with my eyes.
“Yes, yes, you may speak. You
will
speak. Are you so cruel a man who will not rescue a distressed woman?”
I thought it best not to inform her that her playacting skills were no better than her cheese. The dogs were a much better illusion. “I’m in no position to rescue anyone at present,” I said.
“And you’re not like to be if you don’t do something interesting soon. Days and days you’ve been here and not one attempt to escape, not one flicker of sorcery, not one secret word to the kindly guard, not one soulful moaning moment to touch my heart. Only sleeping and mumbling and this unending running and dancing about with these pestiferous beasts. And yet you are clearly not dead in the mind as is usual for those who come from the pits. Are you made of stone?”
A number of things became clear just then, one of which was that I was most certainly not made of stone, nor was I dead, which had been my frequent supposition. And she had evidently been watching me enough to know my habits . . . or had it been a spy? “Though I am not at my best, my lady, I did make friends with the guardsman as you likely know. A fine, gentle fellow who upheld your interests quite clearly. I thought things were progressing quite well until he was removed. And your dogs, though somewhat limited as to their capacities, have been my boon companions. If I’d had any idea that more was wanted, I would have given it consideration.”