He was faster than the guards, but they were many and he was one. Wherever he ran they were waiting, and at last they funneled him back until he leaned upon the unkempt Shrine of the Broken Tree. He could see that up and down Shrine Street the guards were coming. There was no avenue of escape. And so he leaned on the low wall around the shrine, and looked down on the stump, and saw that the jagged upsticking point was just as the farmer’s wife had left it in the vision. The dream was true, then. It was good to know that something was true. But what, name of heaven, did it mean?
17
Cages
How the other animals kept Orem Scanthips alive until he was recognized.
THE STEER PIT AND THE ZOO
Citizens of Inwit whose papers are in order go to Faces Hall to plead before the Judges. Priests are tried at the Temple. Licenses are fined and levied at the Guild Hall. But the passless go to the Gaols, for they have no right to be in Inwit. Their very existence is a crime.
They carried Orem with other offenders in a cart up Queen’s Road and into the vast canyon between the walls of the Castle. The horses strained to draw the cart up the steep slope, and the walls shut out the noise, so that all the prisoners could hear in their misery was the cracking of whips and the straining of animals. At High Gate the prisoners were addressed by an officer.
He told them their rights: None.
He told them their choices: Loss of an ear on the first offense, slavery or castration on the second, interesting and exemplary death on the third.
And to underscore the point, they were led past the Steer Pit on their way to the Gaols. The authorities made sure that whenever new prisoners arrived some poor criminal who chose a eunuch’s freedom was hanging there in manacles, his hips braced in the clamp, naked and waiting for the binding wire and cutter’s shears. The men of justice in King’s Town preferred their prisoners to choose slavery, so they made castration look as ghastly as possible. Because of that, the machinery of justice paid for itself in sales of slaves to the black traders who carried their captives west across the sea.
Once he had been given a good look at the Steer Pit, they put Orem in one of the cages. The cages had no floors, no furniture, only crossed bars below and above and on four sides. There was no shelter from the wind, and no possibility of finding a comfortable position. The cells were too short to stand in, and yet sitting meant buttocks pressed against the cold round iron of the cage. Your feet could not be tucked under you because the bars hurt them, and if you lay down, what could you do with your head? Orem tried every position while the nearby prisoners silently watched him. At last he propped himself in a corner, which of all positions was least uncomfortable for a time.
There were two tiers of cages above him, and nothing below but the ground, yet even that was too far to reach if he put his arm through the cage and reached down. He was hanging in the air and helpless and miserable.
“How long do they keep you here?” Orem asked the man in the cage next to him. The man only kept looking at him, saying nothing. “I said, how long do they—” but then he caught a glimmer in the man’s eye that stopped him. It was not that the man had not heard, only that speech was not interesting to him. He got up and came toward the corner where Orem leaned. There was no hint of what he meant to do, but Orem was sure he would rather see it from the other side of the cage. The man, clay-faced and silent, pulled aside his wrap and began to piss toward Orem. It struck the floor bars and spattered. Orem retreated to the farthest corner, and for a moment thought himself safe, until he felt the hot-and-cold of his other neighbor’s piss against his back, running down into his wrap. He spun to escape, tripped on the bars, and fell. His foot slipped into the gap and his hip wrenched as his body weight forced him to fall over, the leg still tangled in the bars. He was in pain, and still they pissed on him from both sides, and the man above him spat and spat. In his fury Orem wanted to shout at them, to curse them; now more than ever he wished for some power to destroy an enemy instead of the passive, useless power of a Sink.
At last the pissing stopped. The spitter above him walked away and sat down in a corner. Only the wind remained, freezing and drying the urine on his skin and in his hair; the wind and the stench. Orem was soon too uncomfortable to be angry. The piss was like the cold, to be shrugged at and borne. He could do nothing about it now. He carefully extricated his leg from the cage and rubbed his hip where it ached. Favoring that foot, he found another corner and sat in it, warily eyeing the other men. They no longer watched him.
In a few minutes the guards came for the man above Orem. They wheeled the light wooden stairway along the cages and stopped it in front of Orem. The man above did not get up from his corner. Just waited. The guards came and stood at the door. They did not come in, they did not speak. Just waited. The man inside, the guards outside, and Orem could not be sure they were even watching each other. They waited a long time. Then the breeze blew more briskly for a moment. It chilled Orem. Apparently it also whispered something to the prisoner above, for now he got up and made his precarious way to the door of the cell and watched impassively as the guards pulled the door away and slid it off to the side. They manacled his arms just above the elbow and drew the chain tight behind his back, so that his arms were straining at the socket. The man gave no sign of pain, just followed docilely.
The afternoon sun brought a sort of warmth, and Orem shivered at it, relished it. He hoped whatever trial he got would come before nightfall, before the bad cold came.
The sky was reddening with sunset and clouds when another man was brought to the cell above him. Orem watched impassively as his neighbors also began to piss on him. Most of it also fell on Orem, and could not be dodged, and with the evening breeze rising, it was even colder. But this time Orem did not cower. He did not move from his place. He only closed his eyes and tightly shut his lips, and waited until it was over. The man shouted and shouted and tried to run from place to place. There was no shelter. But because he shouted they kept attacking him. Spittle when the piss ran dry, and the man in the third tier began making as if to defecate through the cage. Finally Orem could bear it no longer. The new man’s shouting and cursing did nothing but keep the rain of filth going far longer, and Orem was annoyed. He walked under where the man stood screaming at his tormentors. The man didn’t see him—he was watching the silent, expressionless men who spat as often as they could work up the spittle. Orem reached his hands through the bars and fiercely pushed the heels of the man’s feet. With a scream of terror the man fell straight down, only barely stopping himself before his crotch bridged the bars. Orem caught and held his feet.
“Let go of me!” he cried.
But Orem silently gripped the feet and waited. With the man held still, concentrating only on holding his crotch above the waiting bar while Orem pulled him downward, the spitters found their target enough to satisfy them. With the new man weeping in frustration, they finally quit, and then Orem let go of his legs. With difficulty the man raised himself and extricated his legs from the cage floor. Then he staggered off to a corner and whimpered quietly.
The Gaols seemed nearly full; indeed, it was as if they did not remove one prisoner until another was nearly there to take his place, as if the Gaols required the fulness of misery.
Orem could not sleep; dared not sleep, in such cold. His hands and feet became numb. He got up and walked around the perimeter of his cage, holding the bars so he wouldn’t fall again in the darkness, refusing to nurse his sore hip lest that leg become too cold. Toward morning the moon arose, giving little light, just enough to mock the cold. And soon after moonrise the clouds from the west came across the sky. The new man above had stopped whimpering. Orem wondered if he slept or was dead or had simply discovered the uselessness of crying. Orem circled the cage again and again. Once a man’s hand covered his on the bar. For a moment Orem feared some sharp and sudden pain, but the hand quickly lifted and Orem realized that his neighbor also was pacing.
At dawn the snow began. It stu
ng Orem when it touched him, falling thick and fast on him. He only walked faster, around and around the cage, until in the scant light he saw that the other men were scooping up the snow from the bars with their fingers and eating it. Of course; he had gone all day without water, and who knew how long these other men had been here without food or drink? Orem also scooped the snow and sucked his finger. The water was cold on his tongue, but so clear of flavor once the first bit of pisstaste was gone that it pierced his throat to the base of his skull.
Walk on, walk on, stay as warm as you can. In the snow the guards came and took the man next to Orem, and the man behind him. Always the guards stood at the door until the prisoner stopped circling and came to them. The snow fell thicker. The man next to him stopped and shat into his hands, then rubbed the warm dung on his belly and shivered in relief.
They soon brought two new prisoners to take the old ones’ places. And this time Orem joined in with the others in pissing on them and spitting. Both were brighter than the new man above. Once the shock was over, they did as Orem had done—endured. Then they quickly fell into the pattern of the Gaols, eating the slight snow that stayed for a few moments on the floor bars, circling to stay warm, sitting for a few moments when walking was impossible. When one man sat too long and began to doze, the others silently began to spit at his face, to wake him. Not a word. No voices. We have no voices here, but still we are men: we try to keep each other alive.
The man above him, however, lay still and lay still and lay still and at last the snow built up on his cold body. When it was plain that he was dead, Orem reached up through the cage roof and scooped the snow from part of the man’s body and filled his mouth. It froze his teeth, but melted into a full swallow of water. When he had drunk his fill, Orem held out a handful of snow to the man in the next cage, who silently took it and filled his mouth and walked on. To each of his neighbors Orem gave a handful of the snow from the corpse above, and when they were done they took the handfuls and passed them on. The snow built up under the cages. A foot by noon, and by midafternoon clear up to the bottom of the cage. Now there was no more need to scrape snow from the dead man—there was plenty within reach of all on the bottom row. Orem saw that his skin was bluing. How long before fingers were frozen and lost? How long before the poisoning set in? How long before he simply grew too weary? Since yesterday morning he had gone without sleep, and now it was near dark again.
They came and took away the corpse at nightfall, and in the night the guards also took the last of the men who had pissed on Orem when he first came. Around the cage, around the cage, around the cage, stay warm, stay warm, and Orem sang and chanted to himself, even prayed, however futile that might be for one who had forsaken God, prayed and wondered if the vision of the Hart had been only a prophecy of his death.
In the darkness the snow stopped, the clouds slid out of the sky, and the real cold came. Now I will die, thought Orem.
For a while he stopped, sat in a corner, and trembled violently as the cold wind slapped him again and again with ever colder hands. It was only the spittle striking his face and shoulders that kept him from the gathering dream of sleep. He shivered one last, vast quake and then bounded forward, caught the bars of the cage roof and clung with all his strength, regardless of the numbness of his hands. I will live, he decided as he pulled himself up and slowly lowered himself. May the guards’ children die by fire in front of them. Grimly he swung his feet up and caught them in the bars of the roof. May the guards’ wives be raped by a hundred lepers. With small moans of pain he forced himself to rise, sink, rise, sink.
When dawn at last came, Orem was still staggering around and around his cage. There were many who lay still in their cages. Black lumps in the sunlight, casting inert shadows on the snow under the rows. A spiderweb with bundles safely stored in place for later devouring. Perhaps half still struggled in the web.
As if deliberately to torture him they took two new men before they finally came for Orem. How he hated them for going inside before him. But he said nothing, deliberately showed no sign of his anger, just circled, just hung from the roof and pulled himself up and let himself down with hands as stiff as paws.
Yet when they came, Orem did not run for the cage door, did not hurry. The very change in the routine of survival was too hard; it took effort, it took thought to quit moving in the set pattern. Then at last he went to the door and waited. The manacles were cold iron, but felt warm enough on his arms as they clamped them in place. They caught a little skin in the hinge, but Orem was too numb to feel the pain as the flesh tore away and some blood trickled down his arm and froze.
THE COAL HOUSE
The trial was held in the Coal House. The walls were grey and grimy from the black dust, and in the suffocating air the guards’ faces streaked grey with their sweat. The heat of the place was almost more than Orem could bear, and the relief of it made his legs shake so that the guards had to hold him up. The dark morning room was lit only by small high windows and a few torches on the walls. It didn’t matter; it was only the floor that Orem watched as it wheeled and spun.
The guards let him fall in the middle of the room. Orem lay gratefully on the unbarred floor and listened as a magistrate’s voice intoned, “Crime?”
“Passless and unclaimed.”
“Sex and age?”
“Male and younghorned.”
“Prisoner, what do you have to say?”
It took Orem a moment to realize that speech was expected of him, and a moment more to remember how it was done. Don’t cut me, he wanted to say. I killed the Wizard’s women and deserve anything you do to me, he almost said.
“I’m a farmboy from the north, and I lost my pass,” he said at last.
A guard pulled him up to his knees and turned his head to show his cheek to the magistrates. “Months healed if it’s a day,” said the guard.
“How did you stay out of the way of the guards all this time?” asked a magistrate.
Orem looked at them for the first time, now that the guard was holding him up enough to see. There were three magistrates on a high dais with a wire screen between them and him. They wore masks, terrible white and green masks like putrefaction, and looked at him as relentlessly as God, for the masks did not blink. “I was careful,” Orem said.
“We caught him out in the open, shirt torn and near naked in the snow,” said the guard. “Careful ones don’t do that.”
“Bring him nearer,” said one of the magistrates. Since none of the heads moved, there was no way of knowing which one had spoken. As the guard pulled him staggering forward, another magisterial voice said, “The Hole, no doubt, and a false pass. Who gave you your pass, boy? Or do you want your testicles crushed and served to you in a pudding?”
It was not that Orem was courageous then—courage was beyond him after two nights in the open cage. He did not tell all he knew of the passage through the Hole because at that moment one of the magistrates let out a small cry and said, “Look at his face.”
One of them motioned to the guards, who pulled Orem through a small door in the cage and brought him directly before the magistrates’ table. They let him lean on the desk as the masked faces looked steadily at him. Orem was now close enough to see the whites of the eyes inside the masks, to see the lips and teeth and tongues of the speakers.
“How did you come by that scar across your throat?” asked a magistrate.
He had forgotten the mark the dream left on him. How could he answer? Only the truth would come to mind, only the truth would bend to fit: “I’m a farmer’s son. I cut it as a child on the edge of a plow.”
They fell silent, regarding him. Then the middle one nodded, and the others also nodded. “The Queen’s dream, all right,” said one.
“And come to us from the cages,” said another.
“What’s your name, boy?”
Orem thought for a moment, remembered. “Orem.”
“Orem what?”
He couldn’t remember.
Hadn’t he been called Scanthips? Or Banningside? Or ap Avonap? Which?
“He’s in no case to make answers.”
“Made one that’s good enough.”
“Well, what now? She said no harm to him, and look.”
“How much will he remember?”
“Too much.”
“How could we have known? This one was arrested before she ever told us.”
The middle one made a decision of sorts. “Don’t call off the search. Keep it going, and take him somewhere to sleep. Only when he’s in better shape than this. Then we stop the search.”
“Fool. She knows now.”
“And damned little good to her until we restore him. Blankets and broth and a fire in his room. Hurry up about it! And bring in the next one, quick, quick!”
Orem found himself borne off again, but this time in more courteous hands, and when they came to a small hot room with a fire in it, they unshackled his arms and laid him on a feather cushion in a corner and covered him. He slept before they left the room, and barely woke for the broth they brought him, and again for the pisspot. Finally he awoke of his own accord and crawled from the blanket because he was sweating and the blanket stuck to him prickly with wool. Where the shackle had torn his skin he felt the stinging of the wound; his joints all ached, and he shuddered several times, then vomited the broth onto the bricks of the hearth.
He felt better then, and crawled off to a corner and leaned his head against the walls and watched the fire through half-closed eyes. The scene with the magistrates stayed with him as clearly as a dream not fully wakened from. She had set the guards to looking for him. She could see even now. She had seen his face in a dream. She could only be Queen Beauty, and now Orem understood that he would have to pay a price for having challenged her attack on Palicrovol only a few nights ago. Yet after what he had already been through, he did not bother to be afraid. What could she do to him now to hurt him further? He still had not fully returned to his body; the sensations of it still were not wholly his own again. Let her torture, let her kill, it was all one to him, all one.