Dream of a Vast Blue Cavern

Chapter 17: In the Heart of Chraun: Glace

 The heat around him dissolved, and Glace raised his head and stared into the Flame's eyes defiantly. She smiled at him knowingly. “This sort of behavior will only earn punishment.”

 Glace waited for the blows to fall, but they never came. Instead, the Cook screamed in agony and began to writhe, her neat prostration abandoned in a helpless flailing roll. The Flame continued to smile at Glace. “Shall your punishment continue, Semija? Only you can decide that.”

 He stared back at her, testing that weakness. Could he make her angry enough to kill him? The thought of dying here in this cavern, purposeless, brought Stasia's face to mind. Stasia, his purpose in life, her cool, smooth lips, warmer than expected. To die now was to abandon her, abandon any possibility of discovering her fate. If there was any chance she still lived here, he could bide his time, figure out a way to rescue her. His need for her went beyond duty—it always had, he could see that now. He would not fail her by taking the easy path of death.

 Glace dropped his gaze and let his forehead press against the hot stone floor. He felt his betrayal of Iskalon and his own humanity as he did so. The girl's cries faded into muffled whimpers and he heard her rearranging herself into prostration. He heard a multitude of shuffling and scraping sounds behind him. If he stood and turned, he would see the rest of the captives following his lead.

 He cringed when the gentle pat fell against his matted hair. “Good Semija,” the Flame woman whispered. “You are a fast learner. Some of your kind took many lessons to reach this point. You will be a very good Semija. Perhaps, someday, you will even be chosen to serve the General, or the King.”

 The Semija quarters sprawled in the cooler outskirts of Chraun, far from the baths and the Lava River. Glace was led to his new home by a troop of stout humans who had been born, or as the Flames put it, bred, in Chraun. They looked similar to the Flames, tall, full-boned, and dark skinned, just as Iskalon humans resembled Icers in their supple, pale grace. They wore the same sparse hides as all the other Semija, but a black brand ringing both upper arms marked them as a special class—crew masters, the Flames called them. Glace thought of them stubbornly as slave masters.

 Glace's cave could hardly be called quarters. A dark, long, low-ceilinged room, it was crammed elbow to elbow with at least one hundred other slaves, a mix of Chraun humans and Iskalon captives like himself. There were no furs, no bunks, no possessions. The floor was rough rock, with just enough room for each of them to lie supine. Glace began to take his fur vest off to make a pillow, but one of the Chraun slaves stopped him. “If called to duty, you must be ready,” the man said. He did not meet Glace's eyes.

 Glace considered ignoring the man's words, but he decided to leave his clothes on. He already felt naked enough. Instead of lying down, he sat with his back against the wall as if on watch. He had sometimes dozed lightly thus in front of Stasia's quarters. But here, jagged rock pushed into his sore muscles. The heat made him sweat even when he wasn’t moving. The long burning, steady flames of the firestone torches never ceased. There was no gentle dimming of Palace icelights to lull him to sleep.

 Even without the blazing lights, Glace thought sleep would have been impossible. Stasia drifted into his thoughts, but he tried to banish her. Wakeful slave-masters lined the corridors outside, ready to alert the Flames of the slightest transgression. Even if he got past them and somehow found her, he would be killed long before he got her out of Chraun. No, he had to be patient, bide his time, learn the weaknesses of this place, and hope that she still lived.

 I will find her, said the desperate part of him that needed her, loved her, thirsted for the taste of her. I will find her and save her.

 He thought about Musche instead. Had the slink survived the rout and escaped further into the Outer Tunnels? He hoped the beast had not tried to follow the captured warriors into Chraun. If he had, he would be dead now, his hide being tanned to decorate a Semija. Glace shuddered again, thinking that the fur loincloth was most likely from a slink. It felt filthy against his thighs.