The Third Scroll (chp 1-3)

Nearly a hundred starved-looking men and women huddled on the dock, chained together in heavy iron, some holding listless children in their arms. They avoided looking at each other, as if ashamed of having given up hope. 

I did not belong among them. I wanted to insist that someone had made a mistake, that I had only come to the ship to heal the sick. I looked up at the man who dragged me-the lead trader. I opened my mouth, but no words came. 

A tall stone wall blocked the view of the city. Kaharta Reh, I heard the traders say. Poles as thick as my waist made up the gate, held together by massive strips of metal. The gate stood as tall as our ship's mast and wide enough to let four ox carts in side by side.  

We waded into the port crowd. Merchants offered their wares, mothers shouted at their children to keep up, people argued over deals. The people were loud beyond bearing, offensively so, the city the least welcoming place I could imagine. Sheharree, our Shahala port, had neither walls nor gate; indeed, such things would have been considered highly rude and inhospitable by my people.  

As we passed into Kaharta Reh, once again I had the ominous feeling of being swallowed. I could too easily see the monstrous gates swing close and trap me forever. 

We went to the auction house first, where the men led the other slaves into a holding pen. The leader still had my arm in his grip, and he looked at me for the first time. I trembled, thinking he would now chain me to the rest. 

"I am a healer, daughter of Tika Shahala. I came on board to heal the sick. Someone must have forgotten," I said, although even I no longer believed it. 

"I paid fifteen blue crystals for you." The words slithered out of his mouth with only the slightest movement of his lips. 

Twelve crystals, I wanted to tell him. "I can earn more and pay you back," I said instead. I would have said anything to escape, too young to know that my fate had been decided beyond bargaining. 

He dragged me on without a word, and I stumbled after him down narrow streets, passing people who hurried by on their daily business, paying little mind to us. In the biting cold, I looked at their strange clothes with envy.  

The men wore tight leather leggings with bulky fur tunics on top, the women the kind of one-piece robe the Shahala men wore over their thudrag. A thudrag was very much like a woman's thudi, but not tied at the ankle. I saw neither thudrag nor thudi peeking from the women's heavy wool robes. Under all that billowing material, they walked around naked! 

An evil land of backward people, I thought, where men wore women's clothes and women wore men's, where the sun shone without warmth, where a person could be bought and sold like a basket in the market. 

My teeth chattered by the time we stopped in front of a hammered iron door, bolted into the stone wall of an enormous building. The trader shouted for entry. We waited until a bent old man opened the door, holding it with gnarled fingers that were blackened at the tips. No eyelashes shaded his small eyes, his gaze sharp like the knar eagle's, his mouth thin as a blade.  

My heart banged against my ribs, wanting to run away in panic and leave the rest of my doomed body behind. 

The man shuffled back and closed the door in our faces. He did not want me. I nearly sank to the ground with relief. 

But the light feeling of having escaped a fate too horrible to contemplate did not last long, for I realized what would happen next. I would be taken back to the market to be sold on the block with the others. Panic plowed into me, and I sank to the cold stones of the street.  

Then the door reopened, and the most beautiful woman appeared, in a sky-colored gown, tight on top but widening below the waist like the graceful bell of the lulsa flower. Rich embroidery decorated the cloth so thickly that I could hardly make out the underlying material. A golden veil streamed from two brooches of precious gems on the sides of her head.