CHAPTER EIGHT
I slept little that night.
There is a tale told in Daillon of a _shegri_ where the challenger wasleft in a room alone, where he was blindfolded and told to await thebeginning of the torment.
Somewhere in those dark hours of waiting, between the unknown and theunexpected, the hours of telling over to himself the horrors of past_shegri_, the torture of anticipation alone became the unbearable. Alittle past noon he collapsed in screams of horror and died raving,unmarred, untouched.
Daybreak came slowly, and with the first streamers of light came Dallisaand the white _chak_, maliciously uninvolved, sniffing his way throughthe shabby poverty of the great hall. They took me to a lower dungeonwhere the slant of the sunlight was less visible. Dallisa said, "The sunhas risen."
I said nothing. Any word may be interpreted as a confession of defeat. Iresolved to give them no excuse. But my skin crawled and I had thatpeculiar prickling sensation where the hair on my forearms wasbristling erect with tension and fear.
Dallisa said to the _chak_, "His gear was not searched. See that he hasswallowed no anesthetic drugs."
Briefly I gave her credit for thoroughness, even while I wondered in asplit second why I had not thought of this. Drugs could blurconsciousness, at least, or suspend reality. The white nonhuman sprangforward and pinioned my arms with one strong, spring-steel forearm. Withhis other hand he forced my jaws open. I felt the furred fingers at theback of my throat, gagged, struggled briefly and doubled up inuncontrollable retching.
Dallisa's poison-berry-eyes regarded me levelly as I struggled upright,fighting off the dizzy sickness of disgust. Something about herimpassive face stopped me cold. I had been, momentarily, raging withfury and humiliation. Now I realized that this had been a calculated,careful gesture to make me lose my temper and thus sap my resistance.
If she could set me to fighting, if she could make me spend my strengthin rage, my own imagination would fight on her side to make me losecontrol before the end. Swimming in the glare of her eyes, I realizedshe had never thought for a moment that I had taken any drug. Acting onKyral's hint that I was a Terran, she was taking advantage of thewell-known Terran revulsion for the nonhuman.
"Blindfold him," Dallisa commanded, then instantly countermanded that:"No, strip him first."
The _chak_ ripped off shirtcloak, shirt, shoes, breeches, and I had myfirst triumph when the wealed clawmarks on my shoulders--worse, ifpossible, than those which disfigured my face--were laid bare. The_chak_ screwed up his muzzle in fastidious horror, and Dallisa lookedshaken. I could almost read her thoughts:
_If he endured this, what hope have I to make him cry mercy?_
Briefly I remembered the months I lay feverish and half dead, waitingfor the wounds Rakhal had inflicted to heal, those months when I hadbelieved that nothing would ever hurt me again, that I had known theworst of all suffering. But I had been younger then.
Dallisa had picked up two small sharp knives. She weighed them,briefly, gesturing to the _chak_. Without resisting, I let myself bemanhandled backward, spreadeagled against the wall.
Dallisa commanded, "Drive the knives through his palms to the wall!"
My hands twitched convulsively, anticipating the slash of steel, and mythroat closed in spasmodic dread. This was breaking the compact, boundas they were not to inflict physical damage. I opened my lips to protestthis breaking of the bond of honor and met her dark blazing stare, andsuddenly the sweat broke out on my forehead. I had placed myself whollyin their hands, and as Kyral had said, they were in no way bound byhonor to respect a pledge to a Terran!
Then, as my hands clenched into fists, I forced myself to relax. Thiswas a bluff, a mental trick to needle me into breaking the pact andpleading for mercy. I set my lips, spread my palms wide against the walland waited impassively.
She said in her lilting voice, "Take care not to sever the tendons, orhis hands would be paralyzed and he may claim we have broken ourcompact."
The points of the steel, razor-sharp, touched my palms, and I felt bloodrun down my hand before the pain. With an effort that turned my facewhite, I did not pull away from the point. The knives drove deeper.
Dallisa gestured to the _chak_. The knives dropped. Two pinpricks, aquarter of an inch deep, stung in my palm. I had outbluffed her. Had I?
If I had expected her to betray disappointment--and I had--I wasdisappointed. Abruptly, as if the game had wearied her already, shegestured, and I could not hold back a gasp as my arms were hauled upover my head, twisted violently around one another and trussed with thincords that bit deep into the flesh. Then the rough upward pull almostjerked my shoulders from their sockets and I heard the giant _chak_grunt with effort as I was hauled upward until my feet barely, ontiptoe, touched the floor.
"Blindfold him," said Dallisa languidly, "so that he cannot watch theascent of the sun or its descent or know what is to come."
A dark softness muffled my eyes. After a little I heard her stepsretreating. My arms, wrenched overhead and numbed with the bite of thecords, were beginning to hurt badly now. But it wasn't too bad. Surelyshe did not mean that this should be all....
Sternly I controlled my imagination, taking a tight rein on my thoughts.There was only one way to meet this--hanging blind and racked in space,my toes barely scrabbling at the floor--and that was to take each thingas it came and not look ahead for an instant. First of all I tried toget my feet under me, and discovered that by arching upwards to myfullest height I could bear my weight on tiptoe and ease, a little, thedislocating ache in my armpits by slackening the overhead rope.
But after a little, a cramping pain began to flare through the arches ofmy feet, and it became impossible to support my weight on tiptoe. Ijarred down with violent strain on my wrists and wrenched shouldersagain, and for a moment the shooting agony was so intense that I nearlyscreamed. I thought I heard a soft breath near me.
After a little it subsided to a sharp ache, then to a dull ache, andthen to the violent cramping pain again, and once more I struggled toget my toes under me. I realized that by allowing my toes barely totouch the floor they had doubled and tripled the pain by the tantalizinghope of, if not momentary relief, at least the alteration of one painfor another.
I haven't the faintest idea, even now, how long I repeated thatagonizing cycle: struggle for a toehold on rough stone, scraping my barefeet raw; arch upward with all my strength to release for a few momentsthe strain on my wrenched shoulders; the momentary illusion of relief asI found my balance and the pressure lightened on my wrists.
Then the slow creeping, first of an ache, then of a pain, then of aviolent agony in the arches of feet and calves. And, delayed to the lastendurable moment, that final terrible anguish when the drop of my fullweight pulled shoulder and wrist and elbow joints with thatbone-shattering jerk.
I started once to estimate how much time had passed, how many hours hadcrawled by, then checked myself, for that was imminent madness. But oncethe process had begun my brain would not abandon and I found myself,with compulsive precision, counting off the seconds and the minutes ineach cycle: stretch upward, release the pressure on the arms; thebeginning of pain in calves and arches and toes; the creeping of pain upribs and loins and shoulders; the sudden jarring drop on the arms again.
My throat was intolerably dry. Under other circumstances I might haveestimated the time by the growth of hunger and thirst, but the roughtreatment I had received made this impossible. There were other,unmentionable, humiliating pains.
After a time, to bolster my flagging courage, I found myself thinking ofall the ways it might have been worse. I had heard of a _shegrin_exposed to the bite of poisonous--not fatal, but painfullypoisonous--insects, and to the worrying of the small gnawing rodentswhich can be trained to bite and tear. Or I might have been branded....
I banished the memory with the powerful exorcism; the man in Daillonwhose anticipation, alone, of a torture which never came, had broken hismind. There was only one way to conque
r this, and that was to act as ifthe present moment was the only one, and never for a moment to forgetthat the strongest of compacts bound them not to harm me, that the endof this was fixed by sunset.
Gradually, however, all such rational thoughts blurred in a semideliriumof thirst and pain, narrowing to a red blaze of agony across my shoulderblades. I eased up on my toes again.
White-hot pain blazed through my feet. The rough stone on which my toessank had been covered with metal and I smelled scorching flesh, jerkingup my feet with a wordless snarl of rage and fury, hanging in agony bymy shoulders alone.
And then I lost consciousness, at least for several moments, for when Ibecame aware again, through the nightmare of pain, my toes were restinglightly and securely on cold stone. The smell of burned flesh remained,and the painful stinging in my toes. Mingled with that smell was a driftof perfume close by.
Dallisa murmured, "I do not wish to break our bargain by damaging yourfeet. It's only a little touch of fire to keep you from too muchsecurity in resting them."
I felt the taste of blood mingle in my mouth with the sour taste ofvomit. I felt delirious, lightheaded. After another eternity I wonderedif I had really heard Dallisa's lilting croon or whether it was anightmare born of feverish pain:
_Plead with me. A word, only a word and I will release you, strong man,scarred man. Perhaps I shall demand only a little space in your arms.Would not such doom be light upon you? Perhaps I shall set you free toseek Rakhal if only to plague Kyral. A word, only a word from you. Aword, only a word from you...._
It died into an endlessly echoing whisper. Swaying, blinded, I wonderedwhy I endured. I drew a dry tongue over lips, salty and bloody, andnightmarishly considered yielding, winning my way somehow aroundDallisa. Or knocking her suddenly senseless and escaping--I, who neednot be bound by Wolf's codes either. I fumbled with a stiff shape ofwords.
And a breath saved me, a soft, released breath of anticipation. It wasanother trick. I swayed, limp and racked. I was not Race Cargill now. Iwas a dead man hanging in chains, swinging, filthy vultures pecking atmy dangling feet. I was....
The sound of boots rang on the stone and Kyral's voice, low and bitter,demanded somewhere behind me, "What have you done with him?"
She did not answer, but I heard her chains clash lightly and imaginedher gesture. Kyral muttered, "Women have no genius at any tortureexcept...." His voice faded out into great distances. Their words cameto me over a sort of windy ringing, like the howling of lost men, dyingin the snowfast passes of the mountains.
"Speak up, you fool, he can't hear you now."
"If you have let him faint, you are clumsy!"
"_You_ talk of clumsiness!" Dallisa's voice, even thinned by thenightmare ringing in my head, held concentrated scorn. "Perhaps I shallrelease him, to find Rakhal when you failed! The Terrans have a price onRakhal's head, too. And at least this man will not confuse himself withhis prey!"
"If you think I would let you bargain with a _Terranan_--"
Dallisa cried passionately, "You trade with the Terrans! How would youstop me, then?"
"I trade with them because I must. But for a matter involving the honorof the Great House--"
"The Great House whose steps you would never have climbed, except forRakhal!" Dallisa sounded as if she were chewing her words in littlepieces and spitting them at Kyral. "Oh, you were clever to take us bothas your consorts! You did not know it was Rakhal's doing, did you? Hatethe Terrans, then!" She spat an obscenity at him. "Enjoy your hate,wallow in hating, and in the end all Shainsa will fall prey to theToymaker, like Miellyn."
"If you speak that name again," said Kyral very low, "I will kill you."
"Like Miellyn, Miellyn, Miellyn," Dallisa repeated deliberately. "Youfool, Rakhal knew nothing of Miellyn!"
"He was seen--"
"With _me_, you fool! With _me_! You cannot yet tell twin from twin?Rakhal came to _me_ to ask news of her!"
Kyral cried out hoarsely, like a man in anguish, "Why didn't you tellme?"
"You don't really have to ask, do you, Kyral?"
"You bitch!" said Kyral. "You filthy bitch!" I heard the sound of ablow. The next moment Kyral ripped the blindfold from my eyes and Iblinked in the blaze of light. My arms were wholly numb now, twistedabove my head, but the jar of his touch sent fresh pain racing throughme. Kyral's face swam out of the blaze of hell. "If that is true, thenthis is a damnable farce, Dallisa. You have lost our chance of learningwhat he knows of Miellyn."
"What _he_ knows?" Dallisa lowered her hand from her face, where abruise was already darkening.
"Miellyn has twice appeared when I was with him. Loose him, Dallisa, andbargain with him. What we know of Rakhal for what he knows of Miellyn."
"If you think I would let you bargain with _Terranan_," she mocked."Weakling, this quarrel is _mine_! You fool, the others in the caravanwill give me news, if you will not! _Where is Cuinn?_"
From a million miles away Kyral laughed. "You've slipped the wrong hawk,Dallisa. The catmen killed him." His skean flicked loose. He climbed toa perch near the rope at my wrists. "Bargain with me, Rascar!"
I coughed, unable to speak, and Kyral insisted, "Will you bargain? Endthis damned woman's farce which makes a mock of _shegri_?"
The slant of sun told me there was light left. I found a shred of voice,not knowing what I was going to say until I had said it, irrevocably."This is between Dallisa and me."
Kyral glared at me in mounting rage. With four strides he was out of theroom, flinging back a harsh, furious "I hope you kill each other!" andthe door slammed.
Dallisa's face swam red, and again as before, I knew the battle whichwas joined between us would be fought to a dreadful end. She touched mychest lightly, but the touch jolted excruciating pain through myshoulders.
"Did you kill Cuinn?"
I wondered, wearily, what this presaged.
"Did you?" In a passion, she cried, "Answer! Did you kill him?" Shestruck me hard, and where the touch had been pain, the blow was a blazeof white agony. I fainted.
"Answer!" She struck me again and the white blaze jolted me back toconsciousness. "Answer me! Answer!" Each cry bought a blow until Igasped finally, "He signaled ... set catmen on us...."
"No!" She stood staring at me and her white face was a death mask inwhich the eyes lived. She screamed wildly and the huge _chak_ camerunning.
"Cut him down! Cut him down! Cut him down!"
A knife slashed the rope and I slumped, falling in a bone-breakinghuddle to the floor. My arms were still twisted over my head. The _chak_cut the ropes apart, pulled my arms roughly back into place, and Igagged with the pain as the blood began flowing painfully through thechafed and swollen hands.
And then I lost consciousness. More or less permanently, this time.