“Yes, you're here. With us. Drink some water,” Star said. “But not too much. It's all we've got.”
Star held the jug for Flame and she lapped at it, like a cat. Her lips were so dry and cracked they were close to bleeding.
Bird had been investigating the sack the Hound had dropped on the floor. “They brought us some bread,” she said. “And a bottle of something.” She opened the stopper, sniffed, and made a face. “Whew! That's awful!”
Mouse sniffed it in turn. “That smells like Mama's medicine bottle, the one she kept hidden in the cabinet and I wasn't allowed to touch.”
Star took the bottle and put it to her own nose. “Ha!” she exclaimed. “You babies don't know anything! This is just spirits, and not the best, either, not half so good as my father used to make. But strong as anything, I'll bet. Here, Flame, take a mouthful of this. It'll make you feel better.”
Mouse wanted to ask if Star's father had made his medicines-spirits—back in an out-of-the-way patch of woods the way Rofan did, back home. But she held her tongue, knowing that the other girl was her superior in knowledge of the world outside her little village of Blagden. Star was holding Flame's head up so she could sip the powerful brew. Flame coughed and spluttered, but managed to swallow the dose. A touch of color came back into her face and she seemed strengthened by the medicine.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Cricket asked.
“I'll try.” Flame took a deep breath. The other girls settled down to listen. Even Lisper stopped sobbing and moved a little closer. “There was a machine, a dreadful machine, and the gray-robed man—there are three of them and I heard somebody call them the Kolder—the Kolder put me in it… .”
II
The machine occupied an entire room of its own. Like the man's robes, the machine was gray, dull and lifeless, a series of huge connecting boxes lining the room, and the room itself was covered—floors, walls, ceilings—with still more gray. The material gave a little underfoot and was so smooth it looked like it had been poured onto the original surfaces, allowed to pool, and then had dried in place. It gave voices an odd, muffled sound, and made footsteps completely silent. An enormous map occupied one wall. Flame thought it looked as if someone had gone high, high in the air, to see the plains and mountains and ocean, and had then modeled what he'd seen on the map. She recognized the jagged coastline, the Great Mountains, the shape of Estcarp, the Alizon Ridge and Tor Marsh with the Gap between, recognized the unfamiliar shapes of Alizon to the north and Karsten to the south. The Barrier Mountains still showed on the map, so Flame knew it couldn't have been a very recent one. But she guessed there had been an effort to bring it up to date. The map was hooked up to the machine some way, for it was set with tiny light-globes—yellow in Estcarp, red in Alizon. A few spots of green still glittered in Karsten, but most of the light-globes there were dark, as were the ones along the Sulcar peninsula and the island of Gorm.
A table stood directly in front of this map. One of the three Kolder sat at it. Somehow, to Flame's horrified realization, he had been made a part of the machine. He had a metal cap on his head and wires came out of it, connecting him to everything in the whole room. He didn't ever move, except for his long fingers touching a panel of buttons and levers and other things Flame didn't have a name for. The Kolder never once even opened his eyes but Flame knew he was aware of her presence.
The third Kolder had been standing by the one that was wired to the machine. He came and helped the first one fasten the struggling child onto a table in the center of the room. She kicked and tried to bite them, but they were too strong for her. They put straps all over her so she couldn't move and attached a lot of wires to her, sticking them on her arms and legs with cold stuff that burned where it touched. Last, they put a cap on her head similar to the one the Kolder at the table wore except that this one had a clamp that fit over her temples. When they had finished she felt they had made her almost as much a part of the machine as the Kolder was.
Then the other two went over to separate parts of the room and stood waiting beside panels of more dials and buttons. The machine-Kolder ran his fingertips over his control panel. Lights began to flash about the room. Dials lighted up. One Kolder twisted a dial. The other pushed a series of buttons in an intricate pattern.
Flame had no words for what happened next, except that she knew at one point she was screaming. The entire room closed in on her until she could scarcely breathe. And it made her terribly, dreadfully sick.
She turned her head to one side. “My head hurts,” she said plaintively.
Bird got the bowl in place just in time before Flame threw up. Mouse swallowed hard, willing her own rebellious stomach to remain quiet. When Flame was finished, she lay down again. Oddly, she looked a little better. Star gave her another restorative sip of the spirits.
Lisper cuddled up to Flame, putting her arms around the other girl. “I'll hold you, and keep you thafe,” Lisper said. “Go to thleep now.”
III
Later, after Flame woke up, the children shared out the bread and ate it, though Flame could hardly touch her portion. There was hardly any water left, and they gave it all to Flame. Her mouth was still dry and cracked. She gulped the flat-tasting stuff gratefully. Daylight faded, and a sour-faced woman-servant in a grimy smock brought them more water and a dented pewter cup. She glared at them as she thumped the jug down on the chair seat that served as makeshift table, hard enough to make the chair teeter and fall. Bird grabbed the jug before it hit the floor. The cup clattered away into a corner.
“Ordered to bring you this,” she said. “Better make it last. Won't be more till tomorrow. If it was up to me, you'd go thirsty. What you deserve.” She spat on the floor. “Haglets.” Then she slammed her way out of the chamber.
For a moment the children stared at the closed door, shocked. They had never experienced such open hatred, not even during their journey north when the Hounds had them prisoner. But then, the Hounds were bound to their own form of military discipline and castle servants were not.
“I never saw such a disagreeable woman,” Cricket said clearly. Her face looked more pinched than it usually did. “It would be a real pleasure to turn her into a bug and squash her. Only I don't know how.” Then she splashed a little water onto the glob of spittle, took a handful of straw, and wiped the floor clean.
The children took turns with the cup. Then, their thirst slaked, they lay down to sleep, all six huddled together for mutual comfort, arms around each other.
The next morning, another servant brought them more bread and another jug of water, taking the empty one away with him. He said nothing at all to them, and didn't even glance their way.
“Please,” Cricket said, “do you know anything about why we are here? And what they plan to do with us?”
The man turned. By his coloring and the cast of his features, he was no Alizonder; what his origins were, however, no one but he would ever know. He shook his head and pointed at his mouth. “Uuunh, gahh, hhaah,” he said.
“They've cut out his tongue,” Flame said.
Fresh shock reverberated around the room, almost tangible in its intensity.
The man shuffled out and locked the door behind him. The children stared at one another.
Bird shuddered. “I'd rather they killed me and had done with it.”
“Don't thay that!” Lisper's cheeks were pale, but she set her chin resolutely. “I don't want to be killed. And my tongue doethn't work very good, but I don't want it cut out, either. I want to go home.”
“So do we all,” Flame said. “But there doesn't seem to be much chance of that just now. Well, let's have breakfast. I think I could eat a little this morning.”
Mouse shook her head. “I couldn't.”
“You'd better.” Star was already busy tearing the loaf into six more or less equal pieces. “If you get sick now you're done for.” She looked at the bread and the corners of her mouth turned down. “I wish we had some of that awful
cheese we hated so oh the road. Well, at least the bread's good. And fresh, for a change.”
Mouse nibbled at a crust, and discovered she could eat after all. The children limited themselves to half a cup of water each, remembering the warning the maid servant had given them the night before. Maybe she had just been mean, trying to frighten them, but they couldn't afford to take the chance that she wasn't telling the truth. If the water had to last until the next day, they could not afford to be greedy.
“We'll just have to make a game out of it,” Bird said. “Pretend we're on rations, and make it last as long as we can.”
Lisper smiled wanly. “I like gameth. But not thith one, very much.”
There was another noise at the door. It opened and two of the Hounds from yesterday entered. The one who had taken Flame strode into the room, while the other stood by the door.
“Well, which one is it to be today?” the Hound said. He stood looking at them, a disdainful expression on his face, his fists on his hips. “What, no volunteers?” He laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “All right, then, I'll pick one myself. And, I pick you!” He turned and lunged at Mouse so abruptly she jumped and shrieked in spite of herself.
“No! No—”
“Oh, yes, yes. My masters would be very angry if I came back without a Haglet for them. And we don't want that to happen, now do we?”
Mouse's temper flared. “I wouldn't care if they got so mad at you they cut your neck in two!”
“Oh-ho, spirited this morning, aren't we. Well, never mind. Come along. Mustn't keep them waiting.” With that, he grasped Mouse's arm in a grip hard enough to bruise, and dragged her kicking and struggling from the room and out onto the tiny landing just outside. The other Hound closed, locked, and barred the door behind them. “Vicious little beast,” Mouse's captor muttered, sucking a bitten finger. “You take her, Willig.”
The other man shrugged and grinned at his companion's discomfiture. “You don't know how to manage ‘em,” he said. “Keep company with a widow who's got a houseful of brats and any one of ‘em is ten times worse than all these Haglets put together, and you learn.” Nonchalantly, he picked Mouse up around her middle and tucked her under his arm where all her kicks and Sailings had no effect whatsoever. “Nothing to it. If you know how.”
“Good. Then you've got the duty of carrying them to and fro from now on,” the other Hound said. “Let's get moving.”
Mouse could hardly breathe, the way Willig held her. She quit struggling, lest she knock her head against the wall of the narrow stairwell. She hoped he would put her down so she could catch her breath when they reached the floor below, but he didn't. She caught a glimpse of someone, another man, she thought, out of the corner of her eye. He was coming toward them, and he looked familiar, somehow.
The two men stopped abruptly, and both bowed. “My lord Baron,” they said.
“Is this the Haglet you have chosen for today?” When he moved within Mouse's range of vision she saw that it was the man who had been sitting in the velvet chair when the children had been brought into the brightly painted room. The man who had sent the Hounds after them. Baron Mallandor. “Scrawny, ugly things, all of them. I've decided to watch this session. Come along, Rhyden, Willig. Don't dawdle.”
He led the way down the second, slightly more commodious stairway, and through a maze of corridors and rooms. All too soon they arrived at a door different from the others. Mouse recognized it at once, from Flame's description. It was of metal—or something like metal—and was the dull gray of the strange race called Kolder. It returned no reflection. Mouse loathed the looks of it on sight, the instinctive way she had reacted to the Kolder. Her heart began to thud heavily and her stomach lurched with apprehension.
“You knock,” said the Hound called Rhyden.
“I can't,” the other man said, more than a little satisfaction in his voice. “I have the Haglet. You have the pleasure.”
Rhyden cursed under his breath. Then, taking a deep breath, he stepped forward, braced himself, and pounded on the door. It seemed to Mouse that he hated touching it. The peculiar material seemed to absorb sound much as it did light. Rhyden had to pound twice more before it finally opened.
“Baron.” The Kolder inclined his head slightly. “You do us honor.”
Mallandor strode through the door, Rhyden and Willig close behind. “I want to see what is happening in here. My man told 1 me what you're doing nearly killed the first Haglet, with nothing to show for it. You must be more careful with them. It won't be easy, getting any more. They're bound to have tightened their guard in the south.”
“Like every inquiry into unknown matters, we learn as we go,” the Kolder said. His voice was as flat and as gray as the 1 room he stood in. There was no echo; the material coating the room really did absorb all extra sound. “The young one lives?”
“Yes,” Willig said. “Here's the next one you asked for.”
“Put her here.”
Though Mouse knew it would do no good, she couldn't help fighting as Flame had. Willig placed her, none too gently, on the table in the center of the room. The two Kolder already had-the straps ready. She barely got a glimpse of the map, the table, the seated Kolder Flame had described before they were settling the cap on her head and tightening the clamps against her temples. Then they fastened gray-coated wires to her arms and legs with the sticky, cold-hot paste.
But what happened next she did not expect at all. The Kolder opened her dress and one of the Kolder touched her abdomen. He held another wire. She screamed and tried to twist away.
“Placing this here may help the transmission,” the Kolder said. He smeared some more of the sticky paste over the wire to hold it in place. “If this doesn't work, we'll put it over the heart on the next one. Then, we'll start putting the wires under the skin.”
“Is that really necessary?” Willig asked. He seemed repelled by what was happening, in spite of himself.
The Kolder turned an expressionless face on the Hound. “Your master commands.”
“And I'm beginning to think it is just a waste of time,” the Baron said. “An excuse to torment Hags so young they can't retaliate. You said you knew what to do with the first one, that it would work with her and you wouldn't even need the others.”
“Leave us alone,” the other gray-clad Kolder said. Their voices were identical, full of the clicks and whistles of their own tongue. “It is a new thing that we are doing. If we are to subdue the ones that break but do not bend, we must experiment.”
“I'm the one they'll blame. It was my picked men who brought them here. I'm the one they'll come after.”
Willig frowned and shook his head. “But why use children?”
“Because they are children,” the first Kolder replied. “They have not yet been taught the ways that keep them from accepting our power. When we learn how to make these little ones our own, then we will know how to put their elders under our domination.” He nodded to his companion, and the two of them moved to their respective control panels.
Despite the deadening of all noise in the room, Mouse heard the skittering of fingertips over buttons and the faint click of a relay closing somewhere behind her. Then another sound filled her ears, first so high she could barely hear it and then so low she felt it in her teeth. Her mouth went dry and her tongue stuck to the roof. She clamped her jaws tightly together and the pain in her teeth subsided a little. The room spun and she had to close her eyes before she spun away with it and was lost forever. Once she managed to open her mouth to scream and discovered she could make no noise at all. The machine had stolen all the sound in the world and left her none. And it had put it all into this room and was beating at her with the waves of sound, beating and pounding over her, drowning her in it, pummelling her until she was certain her head was going to burst. Her teeth began aching with renewed savagery and she clenched her jaw again. Her belly swelled with the relentless pressure filling her body. It was going to split, the skin was goin
g to peel back like a grape and everything inside her was going to burst out and be whirled away and lost like the rest of the world… .
Gradually, she became aware of something else. Somewhere, woven through the waves of painful sound battering her to near insensibility, a voice came echoing into her, reverberating and vibrating throughout her body. She heard not only with her ears, but with her teeth, her bones, her blood.
Bend, bend, the voice crooned. Give over. It's easy. Give over and all this unpleasantness will stop and you will be at peace, all pain forgotten. Peace.
No, no! Mouse cried inwardly.
Yes, yes. You don't want to hurt, do you? Then let go. Surrender. It's so easy. So peaceful.
The voice was smooth, tempting, and despite her best efforts, Mouse felt her hold on herself begin to loosen.
The pounding in her head and body subsided for a few moments, and she could hear, faintly, in the background, the voices of the men. They seemed to be discussing her reactions with no more emotion in their voices than if she had been a slab of meat on a butcher's block. All but the one who had carried her—she no longer remembered his name, or her own for that matter—the one who had objected and who now seemed kindness personified. Like the one who had been so good to them on the road. The voices made her realize that the machine hadn't really stolen all the sound in the world to use as a weapon and hurl it at her. It only seemed that way. No wonder the room itself had sounded so dead, so flat. It was all here. She was in a bubble of sound and the men outside weren't even aware of what was happening inside, where she was.
The Kolder began manipulating their control panels again, and Mouse closed her eyes. The incredible pounding welled up to swallow her, and the seductive voice started its litany again.
Give in, bend. You will have peace. There will be no more pain… .
The wires burned, the clamps against her temples burned, her brain felt on the verge of boiling inside her skull. She kept her eyes shut tightly, for fear they would burst. The sound diminished again. She couldn't even sob, she was so empty.