I awoke to the sound of weeping. The insistent, nerve-wracking sobs of a grown man in a pain. I opened my eyes and sought out the sound; it was dark, but I could make out the form of a man on a cot across the room. He appeared to be sleeping, weeping even as he snored. Strange.
I tried to sit up but a sharp pain in my head stopped me—that and a firm, familiar hand. Galore sat in a chair by my bedside, his face illuminated by the glow of a bedside candle.
“Slowly. You took quite a beating out there.”
I settled my head back on the thin pillow, for once happy to follow instructions. “How long was I asleep? What happened?”
“A few hours, no more. You dropped like a rag doll after the shaman shook you off his back. Luckily for you, so did he.” He hesitated, his eyes bright with sudden focus. “Something happened there, yes? When you threw yourself at the shaman. I felt…something. A shattering, like glass upon a wooden floor. What did you do?” His eyes were very intent. “What did you see?”
“I…” How could I possibly explain? I didn’t even know what had happened, really, or if I’d really done anything beyond act like a suicidal fool. Even if I had, I couldn’t really put it into words. Lines of power? Ropes of magic only I could see? Priest or no, he would think me mad. “I just…it was going badly. I had to do something.”
“You did something, of that I have no doubt.” He eyed me strangely, but after a few tense moments the suspicion drifted from his eyes. “We will speak of it later, then. When you are better rested.”
I swallowed back a sigh of relief. Then another thought occurred, every bit as worrying as the one before. “Is everyone else…did anyone….are they all okay?”
The priest leaned back in his chair. “As well as can be expected, considering the beating they took. Sleeping, now. Jeer somehow contrived to come through without so much as a scratch, and Rove was never in any real danger, off in the distance as he was. Saintly had a broken rib and a nasty cut to the head. Tore had some burns. He’ll scar. Spanner….” A sudden, unexpected grin appeared on his face. “Did you see him? Who would have thought it? He stood as firmly as a true Acolyte. Rarely have I seen an uninitiated take to the blessing so well.”
His grin faded, replaced with the familiar hard line. “In any case, he is well. They are all well, now. Turkus saw to their healing. Tonight they’ll sleep the sleep of the dead, and they’ll be eating double for their next few meals, but by tomorrow morning they’ll be up and ready to move. In a day or two they’ll be fully recovered.”
“Shouldn’t I be exhausted too?”
He shrugged again. “No more so than any other fool would after a sound thrashing. Turkus refused to heal you. Another oddity to hang around your neck. I called upon him, I said the right prayers, made the proper challenges, invoked the correct rituals…”
“And?”
“And the God of Battle laughed. And did nothing.
“Laughed?”
“Like a tavern drunkard at a bawdy tale.”
“What…what does that mean?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea. That you’re funny, I suppose. Something about you surely amuses him. In any case, it turned out you didn’t really need it. I worried when I couldn’t rouse you, but it seems I worried over nothing. Perhaps that is why he laughed.”
I nodded, but even as I did I could still recall that lingering chuckle echoing in my head after Turkus refused to bless me with the others, back before the battle. Turkus knew something about me, something that I did not. And it seemed to amuse him greatly.
I suppose the thought should have made me afraid, or humbled, or curious. It did not. Instead it made me angry.
Across the room the sleeping man’s whimpering took on a fevered pitch. Galore rose and went to stand over his cot.
“Who’s that? One of the villagers? What’s wrong with him?”
“Squaddy. One of the two we saved. The others had already been…ah…harvested.” He peered down at the man. “Though we were in time to spare him the kiss of the knife, he did not come through unscathed. He is not a well man.”
I could only imagine, and the near constant sobbing left little doubt. Even the memory of the little I had seen was enough to make me sick to my stomach. “Is the other one any better?”
“Yes and no. He’s up and talking, laughing, joking…but there is a darkness in him just the same. A man cannot go through such a thing and come out the same on the other side.”
“Well, at least we managed to save a couple of them, anyway.” I pulled back the blanket covering me. “Can I get up now?”
Galore turned back to me and shrugged. “Can you?”
I leaned forward and found, very quickly, that I could not. Just a little movement set my head spinning.
“More rest it is, then. Just as well. We have a little time, then. I wanted to speak with you away from the others.
That was a rather ominous turn to the conversation. “Why?
“So we could discuss your…situation.”
“I thought you said I was fine.”
“Physically? You are. Yet I do not think you are well.” He tapped the side of his head. “Up here, I mean. And I worry about what is to come in your future if you are not very, very careful.”
I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about, but it surely didn’t sound like anything good. “My head feels fine. Really, I’ll be OK, Galore.”
“Will you? I wonder." His eyes regained that burning intensity I recalled from earlier. "Would you like to speak of your life before you joined our little squad?”
I said nothing but couldn’t help a reflexive scowl. I trusted Galore—honestly, he seemed a good, if violent, man—but if he knew something…I had never responded well to any sort of threat. Even from friends.
"Good. At least you are wise enough to spare us both the unpleasantness that lying to me would bring. You know I am a priest, yes? What you do not know is that I am a High Priest of the Broken Blade. Of the hundreds of priests within our sect, there are only six members higher ranked, and of those only two are my better at the manipulation of the powers our god grants us. I tell you this not to brag or bluster, but only to make it very clear: I know power, Telth. And when I sit beside the faded remnants of a Master’s Mark, I know it. You were a slave.”
The last was not a question. “I can explain…”
“Spare me. I care little for your life story, though I am sure it is quite a tale. I know what I need to know. Once, you were a slave.
I bowed my head. “Yes.”
“Now are you are not.”
I nodded again.
“Do you wish to be again?”
“Of course not.”
“I thought not. Here is what you must do, then. When we come back to the fort, when the captain interviews you, asking what happened, what you saw, what you did, how you did it…you will lie.”
“Lie?” To the captain of our own? Hadn’t he just lauded me for my honesty a moment before?
Galore continued, “Exactly so. The truth will serve only to incriminate you. You had a knife; you stabbed the shaman from behind. You hit him in the head with a rock. Anything, it won’t really matter. Just avoid the truth. The strangeness.”
“But…why?”
“Because I would not see you Marked once more, boy. If you mention any sort of magical oddity, the captain will have no choice but to call on the wizardborn to investigate. And trust me, a wizardborn would taste the memory of that Mark you wear on your arm just as surely as I, and that could lead to a great many questions—questions, I think, you do not wish to answer.
"And there is another possibility. You have power, Telth. I cannot say what manner of power, but it is there. Perhaps you are merely Gifted—some rare sort of Gift I have never heard of before. And that would be that, I think. They would let you be. But it also may be that you are a wizardborn who slipped through the cracks and went undiscovered in childhood. I think a Wizardborn would sense this, too. And they would claim you without hesitation. They would make you one of their own. And though the wizardborn are honored, and envied, and even revered by some for their power and prestige, still they are all of them imperial property. The empire’s, body and mind.
Did that sound so bad? “I thought all soldiers served at the mercy of the Emp…”
“They do not merely serve. They are slaves, boy. They are all slaves. Any wizardborn. They bare a Master’s Mark like any other slave, and for the same purpose. And if they find you and what you can do, I have very little doubt—one way or another, you’ll find yourself owned property once more.”
Air hissed out of me. Galore was right, absolutely right. It was one thing to be a soldier, one thing to take orders from other men who had served as you serve, once. It was something else entirely to be property, to be commanded about like chattel. Never again.
Chains of silk are still chains.
Galore read my expression like an open book. His wooden chair creaked as he stood. “Say no more. I see that I have guessed right. You stabbed the shaman, I think. With a very sharp knife. The wound was deep but difficult to see.” He nodded to himself. “I will make sure Jeer and the others remember it this way. For now, rest. And know that your secrets are safe with me.”
He stopped at the door and turned. “As I hope that mine are safe with you.” The door settled closed behind him.