The Warrior Returns - Anteros 04 (24 page)

I turned away, shaken—the hunger in my belly frothing into sickness.

I heard the slap of bare feet on stone and turned back as several men led by a shambling brute pushed into our cell. Zalia looked up at them but continued eating. Her thick body seemed relaxed, easy. But I could feel tension suddenly thicken the air.

I'm here for your answer," the shambler growled.

Zalia raised an eyebrow in pretended surprise. "And what," she said, "was the question?"

"You know," the shambler rumbled. He jabbed a thick, crooked digit at me. "Whatcha want for her?"

"Oh,
that
question!" Zalia widened her eyes as if in sudden recollection. Then she shrugged. "I thought we settled that before," she said. "Rali's not for sale. I didn't refuse you the first time to get a better price. There is no price, my friend. Understand that and you'll sleep easier."

She indicated the cell door. "Good-bye. It was nice to chat with you." She smiled blandly and resumed eating.

Shambler came forward, flexing his muscles and extending his metal hand.

Before he could reach her, Zalia exploded up from her bench, flung the bowl into his face, then grabbed him by the neck with her metal hand. She pulled his head down and a thick knee snapped upward, colliding with his chin. She let go and he crashed to the floor.

The others were coming for her, and she spun to face them.

Anger swept away the last of the haze and I leaped from my bench and grabbed one of the men. My iron hand seemed like it had the strength of a giant and I gripped him by the throat, squeezing until he gurgled and slamming my other fist into his gut.

I heard Zalia dispose of the other man, and my opponent suddenly went limp. Overcome by my anger, I kept squeezing, and then enormously strong arms were pulling me away and I let him drop.

I swung around, tears of hatred streaming down my face, and I tried to grapple with Zalia. She embraced me, pulling me so tight I could do nothing but pound on her strong back.

"Easy,
Rali
," she said. "Easy, dear."

The anger drained away and I went limp. She lifted me up and placed me back on the bench.

"Wait here, Rali dear," she said. "I'll be back."

She dragged the men into the hallway one by one and returned. As she sat beside me, I saw the men recover and then slink off.

Zalia stroked me, saying,
"That
was a surprise, dear. I've never seen you so aggressive."

"Aggressive?" I said. "Those sons of poxed whores don't know what aggressive is!"

Zalia sighed. "I wish it were a sign that you were getting better," she said.

Then she got up and went to her own side of the room, squatting down on fat haunches to clean up the spilled gruel. When she was done, she settled on her own bench and closed her eyes. She wasn't asleep, but I didn't disturb her.

An hour or so passed. I tried to think, but the process that had once been automatic seemed clumsy—like rusty gears trying to jerk into life. I kept at it, and the more I tried, the easier it got. I couldn't make sense of my predicament, but I had a vague feeling that large, unwieldy puzzle shapes were beginning to fit into place. I became tired, so I stopped. For the first time I noticed that the light had dimmed and only a few firebeads glowed along the corridor. All was silent except for the snores of the other slaves.

Hunger burned in my belly, and I looked over at Zalia just as she roused herself. She scraped the food pail until she had a good-sized lump and stuck the lump next to a hole in the cell wall. She squatted there for a long time, as motionless as if she were stone herself.

Finally, whiskers wriggled in the hole. Then a sharp nose poked out. The nose twitched, sensed no danger, and a moment later a large fat rat emerged and nibbled at the bait

Zalia's metal hand blurred forward, snatched up the rat and snapped its neck.

I remembered doing something similar long ago. It was someplace cold: a storm raged outside, and I was catching rats so my friends and I could eat.

The memory faded.

Zalia, meanwhile, had pulled a loose rock from the wall, revealing a fairly large hiding place. There were several small bundles inside. She took them out, unwrapped them one by one, arid set them up. Soon a little fire was burning beneath a pot, and she'd skinned and cut up the rat.

When it was done cooking, she served it to me in a bowl, and I was so ravenous I devoured every drop, scraped the bowl, and sucked the marrow from the bones. As soon as I was done I felt remarkably full and strength flooded through my veins.

"What happened to my hand?" I said. "Does Novari have that, too?"

Zalia grimaced, weary. "I've answered that question before, dear," she said. 'Tell me again," I insisted. "I don't remember." "You never do," she said. "Just tell me."

"They cut off everyone's hand," she said. I nodded. "I saw the others."

"And they give us these instead," she said, raising her own iron hand. "Yes. Go on."

"The flesh and bone they take from us are given to Novari's wizards. They use them to cast spells to power the metal ones. The slave hands."

I thought about that. And came to a clumsy conclusion. "So Novari doesn't have my hand," I said.

"No, she doesn't, Rali," Zalia answered. "Otherwise your hand wouldn't work. And you'd be no use at all in the mines."

Something else occurred to me. "Why did it hurt," I asked, "when I tried to make magic?"

Zalia shook her head. As if she'd been through this many times. But her voice was patient.

"The hand controls all of us," she said. "If you try to escape, the hand will sense it. It will hurt you in order to make you stop. And it will kill you if you don't. The same with magic,

Rali. If you try to cast a spell, that hand will become your worst enemy."

"All right," I said. "I understand now."

"I wish you really did," she said. "I tell you the same thing every night. You say you understand. But by the next day you've forgotten. And the next thing I know you're hurting yourself trying to cast a spell."

"Don't worry, Zalia," I said. "I'll remember this time."

I suddenly felt sleepy. I yawned, stretching out on my bench.

"Sure you will, dear," Zalia soothed. But I could tell she believed otherwise.

"Honestly," I insisted. "I'll remember."

"Oh, Rali," Zalia said, "I wish it were true. I wish you'd rise up tomorrow and tell me that you remembered all you witnessed today. But I know that won't happen. Not for a long time, if at all."

Through my dimness it struck me that her voice was cultured and musical. It seemed odd and out of place coming from such a hulking body.

Then the thought vanished and I mumbled, "You'll see..." and closed my eyes.

I slept. I didn't dream, although I woke up once to relieve myself in the slop pail. I heard Zalia breathing heavily, but I didn't disturb her. I went back to sleep.

Much later a gong rang and I sat up. I swiveled, turning my single eye on Zalia, who was yawning awake. I spoke, my voice hard, "I think you'd better tell me who you are."

Zalia blinked, jolted from half sleep. "I'm
Zalia"
she said. "Don't you even remember that?"

I said, "I remember yesterday, at least. You acted like a friend then. But I don't know that for a fact, do I? Because everything is a blank from the moment I was condemned to this place to yesterday in the shops."

Zalia lit up—delighted. At least she was acting delighted. But at that moment I trusted no one.

'Thank the gods!" she said. "You're returning to normal."

She started to get up, but I raised my metal hand to stop her. "Sit back down," I said.

She did as I commanded, but her eyes seemed to be sparkling with interest instead of resentment.

"Listen," I said. "You're strong. I can see that. But there isn't much I don't know about killing, so your strength won't do you any good. Do as I say, and if it turns out I'm being rude, I'll apologize profusely."

"Fine, Rali," she said. "I'll do as you say. And gladly."

"Good," I said. "You can begin by accounting for yourself."

"I don't think we have time for a full accounting," she said. "They'll come to make up the work parties in an hour."

'Tell me how I came to be in your company," I said. "That's a good enough start. If you're still alive in an hour, you'll know I believe just enough to let you live until tonight. And then you can tell me the rest."

Zalia shrugged. "Maybe I just felt sorry for you," she said. "You were wandering around bumping into walls like you were drugged. Trie guards shoved you from one task to the next. You nearly fell into a furnace once. Then some of the other slaves got some ideas about you. Perhaps I took pity on you and took you under my wing."

She glared at me. "If that's the case," she said. "I'm now being poorly paid for my sympathy."

"Is it the case?" I demanded.

Zalia trembled with anger. "Maybe it wasn't," she snarled. "Maybe I had designs on you myself. Maybe I wanted to make you my own slave, make you labor for me in the day and pleasure me at night. And the fight you took part in yesterday was because I was protecting a possession."

"That's
not
the worst possibility for your motives," I said.

Zalia's eyes widened in surprise. The surprise turned into a cynical sneer. "Oh, I suppose you think I might be a spy?" she said. "That I might be working for Novari and plotting to win your trust so I can betray you?"

"That's one possibility," I said. "You could also be Novari herself, for all I know."

"That's stupid," she said. She swept a beefy arm about, indicating our surroundings. "Can you imagine Novari submitting herself to these conditions?"

"I've seen harm come to people," I said, "for ignoring stupid possibilities."

"Well, that can't be proven one way or the other," she said. "You'd need sorcery to do it. And that hand will kill you if you attempt it."

"We'll have to rely on your powers of persuasion, then," I said. "And I'll only ask you one more time: What did you intend with me?"

'To get you well, if I could," she said. "So we could both escape." She gave me a long fixed stare, as if daring me to brand her a liar.

I stared back, just as long and just as hard.

Then I said, "That's good enough for now. You can tell me the rest tonight."

'To the devil with you," she growled. "Believe what you want. I don't care. Get out! Find your own place. I'll have nothing further to do with you!"

"We'll talk tonight," I said again. "And then we'll see what happens next."

the day that
followed was one of the strangest in my life. It was like awakening from a nightmare and finding yourself actually living that nightmare. All sensation was familiar and alien at the same time.

To begin with, I was seeing through only one eye, which distorted reality until I became used to the loss and learned to compensate for the absence of my other eye. While I'd been in shock, I'd somehow formed a habit of letting my head flop to one side when I wanted to look at something. I kept having to jerk it up again, which made the guards nervous at first, then made them laugh at my silly antics. Their mockery was spur enough to correct that habit.

The strangeness was compounded further by the artificial hand. It was an unfeeling object hanging from the end of my left arm. The hand acted like mortal flesh, reaching for things when I willed it, gripping them and releasing them at my command. But for a time the actions lagged behind thought, as if the thoughts were fingers trailing through water. When the hand finally moved, there was a slight hesitation at first, then it would shoot forward as if my commands had just caught up with it. Sometimes I had to actually will the device to slow down so I wouldn't knock something over.

The hand was also much stronger than its mortal cousin, and I had to be careful not to crush things by mistake when I gripped them. It was also impervious to heat, and we were expected to make use of this function by plunging it into molten vats or picking up white-hot metal bars. Each time I was confronted with such tasks I had to force myself to overcome instinct. I knew it wouldn't hurt, but knowing and doing can be two different things. The guards made me suffer until I learned to overcome those natural fears.

Oddest of all was that everything I was now experiencing I'd experienced before, but I had no memory of it. Yet there was a shadowy familiarity about my surroundings, as if I'd once been a ghost in this place.

Which is what I'd been.

When the guards came to take us to our labors, those ghosdy impressions guided me and I automatically followed Zalia out into the corridor. We lined up with about thirty other slaves from our warren, which is what they called each grouping of cells. When I joined the line, I knew without thinking that Zalia would fall in behind me. Somehow I'd become accustomed to that position. I felt more comfortable with her there, although I couldn't say why I felt that way.