by Regina Watts
“Very good, very good…looking forward to it.” With a sly, crooked sort of smile toward me, the wadjita took up the brazier and disappeared through the curtain separating her storefront from the living and working quarters in the back.
What a strange feeling! The women casually pawning off my services as though I were but an object left me somewhat staggered—it was certainly a clear introduction to my new, hopefully temporary way of life, but even then, reality did not fully set in until I met Valeria.
One hour passed; then another. Slowly, stall by stall, the burden of the spoils was lifted from my shoulders. I was grateful that, though more than a few merchants studied Strife with avarice lighting their features, my saviors permitted me to keep the blade for now. Odile, I sensed, understood as a consequence of her study of Weltyr that the sword was the physical manifestation of my oath to serve my god, and that to have it stripped from me would be a source of great dishonor.
I was soon to find, however, that not all were so respectful. After my burden was entirely lifted and I was free to look around, Odile split the spoils between herself and Indra. The latter suggested we eat before heading to the palace. Soon, while we sat on a bench at the edge of a somewhat quieter quarter of what seemed to be homes, I managed to ask the purpose of the visit to the palace.
“All new slaves require vetting and the assignment of some value before they can be traded on the market,” explained Indra through bites of the small but meaty lizard that had been skewered through and roasted above a wisp flame grill. “The Materna, Valeria, will have to give us permission before we can even begin to think about trading you off.”
“It’s really very odd,” I confessed, “to be treated as mere chattel.”
“But that’s what you are,” reminded Odile. “At least, what you are now. Try not to be too prideful…if you find yourself here, it must be your Weltyr’s will to see you take a lesson in humility. After all—on the surface, human women are traded from family to bridegroom for the price of a steed and some copper. Consider yourself blessed that you’ll be worth gold.”
I wished to protest, but Indra went on with a charming pout. “I do wish we could keep him, Odile.”
“Then we’ll have to feed him! What a hassle. Better that he be auctioned off to some rich woman who can add him to a busy household and see to his maintenance. You might have to accept, though, warrior-priest,”—the shrewd, white-eyed durrow glanced at me—“that not every mistress will be as accepting of your cultural traditions, nor your need to hold onto that blade of yours. Your purchaser might demand you give it up. Even the auction house might.”
With a grim glance down at Strife in its sheath, I asked, “Is there no way that Strife and I may both be brought into a home? Surely women of the Nightlands wealthy enough to purchase a slave would have cause to seek protection.”
“It’s true our city is a dangerous one, as many cities are…but one of the greatest dangers of all comes from our own unruly slaves. More than one mistress has had her throat cut in her sleep owing only to the bitterness of her captive. But…” Humming, arms folded, Odile studied my face.
“You are a man of honor,” she admitted. “If you were not, you would have fought us last dark or this bloom—or tried to dispatch us while we slept, as I just described. While I have no way to influence with any certainty who will choose to purchase you, I can at least advocate for your noble qualities and advise that you would make a better watchman than, say, a footman or laborer.”
“Thank you,” I told her, truly meaning it, a hint of relief blossoming in my heart. “You both have been extraordinarily kind to me since coming upon me in the den of spirit-thieves. I am grateful to Weltyr that you were guided to find me, rather than a more cruel and unrelenting member of your kind.”
“And there are a great many of those,” warned Odile. “Perhaps you would count me among them if you were not quite so well-disposed yourself…or so handsome.”
Though I chuckled at that somewhat, Odile didn’t. She simply resumed stripping glossy white meat from the bones of the lizard she consumed.
Yes—I understood very well that courtesy begot courtesy, and that a slave of the Nightlands did not often win his freedom by struggling against his shackles.
“Is it possible,” I dared ask, attempting not to sound as interested or scheming as I truly was, “for a slave to buy or otherwise earn his liberty here in the Nightlands?”
“Slaves are not permitted to keep their own coins, and those that do are liable to have a hand cut off for thieving from their mistress. That said…yes, certain mistresses have been known to release slaves of whom they are fond. Usually lovers who choose to remain with those mistresses. However, this is a rare occurrence. Perhaps one out of every five hundred slaves that pass through El’ryh are gifted with a mistress kind enough to consider such a boon. Even then, warrior-priest, you would not be equal to us in the eyes of Roserpine or the laws of the Nightlands. If you were ever caught without proof of your freedom it would be possible for you to find yourself re-enslaved.”
“Are freedmen permitted to return to the surface, if they choose?”
“Yes, if they choose. But most, after so many years in the dark, choose to remain. As I said…if your mistress frees you out of affection, it would be a most ignoble crime of the spirit to reject that gesture and abandon her.”
Perhaps she had a point. Weltyr may have understood that my initial vow, made under duress, was not an oath to which my soul was truly bound…but who knew how even one full year of slavery could change a man’s heart? Especially if his mistress were particularly alluring, dangerously lovable. I would have to find a way to escape this city and my bonds as soon as I possibly could—every day I waited put me at greater risk of spending the rest of my days there, not a servant of Weltyr but a servant to any woman holding my deed.
“All right,” announced Odile, standing, dusting off her hands, tossing the skewer into the nearby bin, “let’s go to the Palace and hear what your appraisal is.” Then, chuckling, she looked me over once and added, “Good think you don’t seem shy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The women, looking at each other and exchanging a high laugh, didn’t answer.
VALERIA, MATERNA OF ROSERPINE
THE PALACE OF Roserpine was, I discovered, that great central column that formed the heart of the cavernous city. It was the hub of all the traffic and by far the most visited landmark in all of El’ryh, with eight grand entrances around its vast circumference and scores of guards stationed at each of these broad doors.
At our chosen entrance, Odile and Indra barely paused once they explained they were there to have me appraised—I gathered Odile had brought more than a few slaves through the Palace in her lifetime, which was surely at least twice my own. It was so difficult to tell with elves: even ancient ones seemed fair as human maidens.
Even with Odile’s casual word, however, I was stopped by a gilded lance. Neither of the armored guards flanking the entrance so much as looked at me while the one to the right told my chaperones, “Unregistered slaves must surrender all weapons at the door. Owners may pick them up later.”
Falling back on the heel of my boot with one hand now braced upon Strife’s pommel, I looked between my impromptu mistresses. Odile, looking displeased, argued, “His greatest skill is that of combat! How can he demonstrate such a thing without his sword?”
“If his combat is worth any price at all, he’ll be able to demonstrate his prowess in it unarmed should he be asked to. Pick it up once you’ve a price for him and you three are back outside the Palace.”
Turning her gaze back upon me with a sigh, Odile put her hands on her hips. “You’ll make this easy on us, won’t you, warrior-priest? We’ll get your sword back later, no problem. By Roserpine’s infinite eyes do I swear it.”
“Keep it in the scabbard,” I told them grudgingly, unstrapping the sign of my oath and passing it over. Fancying that the sigil
on my neck itched with the separation, I lay a reflexive hand upon it until spritely Indra sidled against me and ran her fingers through my hair.
“It’s seldom we meet with such obedience in a new slave! I really think we should keep him, Odile—we haven’t had to beat him yet, not once!”
“My mother taught me to beware slaves who are too obedient from the start,” answered the speaking guard to our right, lifting her lance away and permitting my entry while her colleague accepted Strife. “Always said they were up to something.”
I could not help but avert my eyes, if only to look toward Odile as she led us both into the shockingly bright marble halls of Roserpine’s palace.
Despite the irritating and hopefully temporary loss of strife, my gaze was almost immediately soothed. What a sea of loveliness awaited my shocked eyes when we passed the gates! Everywhere I looked there loitered the most exquisite women: chatting, laughing, brusquely passing back and forth on business. I could barely spare a second to admire the marble walls or the gold-inlaid crimson rugs that spewed like tongues down the lengths of the corridors. Every pillar was carved with artfully envisioned legends, every ceiling decorated in rich frescoes that put those artworks of their aboveground cousins to shame; yet everywhere I looked, I found myself blind to such splendid decorations. I saw only those beauties whose mothers’ mothers and their great-grandmothers once had these very works commissioned. So moved was I by this abundance of gentle features and feminine bodies that it surely showed on my face, for Indra and Odile laughed at me as they had when first we entered El’ryh’s marketplace and I realized the nature of this feminine species.
“Look at him, Odile!”
“Already forgotten about his sword, by the sight of him.” With a chuckle and a knowing glance toward my hips, Odile crooked a finger and said, “Well, warrior-priest, come along and be obedient. Soon enough we’ll find you a mistress who doesn’t mind your gawking.”
On, then, my temporary owners led me through the halls of the Palace of Roserpine. In truth, these passageways and staircases and many, many doors were arranged in routes so convoluted that, had I not been distracted by the abundance of gorgeous elves around every turn, I still would have found it outrageously difficult to keep track of our path. It was a good thing I was not to stay there, I thought to myself at the time. Had I been confined to the heart of the Palace, where at last we once more found ourselves barred by a pair of armed and armored durrow, escaping the tower would be such a grand order that escaping the city itself might thereafter seem almost a simple thing.
Other durrow with other recently captured men—most, I noted, in manacles, with one or two hooded in the fashion of hunting hawks—waited in line ahead of us for their turn at appraisal. Roughly every five to ten minutes, such a pair (or, more often, group, for it seemed durrow often worked in duo as did Indra and Odile) emerged from the smaller set of doors to the left of the vast hall, and the next in line would be permitted in through the main entry. After meeting the fiery glance of a young man perhaps five years my junior—who, seeing my unmanacled hands, let his lip curl in disgust as though I were a traitor of the whole human race owing to my cooperation—I had my attention snagged by Odile.
“You have been very decent for us so far, warrior-priest, so I don’t think I need to ask you to pay total respect to the Materna…but whatever manners you have shown us, you must be ten times as obedient and respectful to her.”
“Important, is she?”
“There’s no more important woman in the world,” insisted bright-eyed Indra, whose growing anticipation of our audience with this Materna had, up until that moment, been attributed in my mind to my imagination. But it seemed I was not misreading her: her gentle eyes seemed to glow with the starlight of excitement, her hand earnestly clasping my arm. “The Materna is the very manifestation of Roserpine on Urde—she is our guide, our great mother.”
“And she’s the one who approves slaves for sale and sets starting prices for auction,” said Odile in a tone far less awestruck, “so if you behave well and show her there’s little training you require, we can fetch a pretty penny for you just as soon as you hit the auction house.”
Though I thought to myself that it was a damn good thing for their wallets that I was putting on a show of such obedience, on seeing the next group exit a few minutes later I wondered if that luck didn’t go both ways. Not all mistresses were kind: I watched a dwarf get a bolt from an electrical wand right in the back, and, grimacing, had to stop myself from crying out in protest against his treatment. Had Strife still been upon my hip I might well stepped up to defend him—but then the guards turned to us and said, “You can go in now,” and Odile gripped me by the arm to lead me in.
The audience chambers of the Materna were yet more extraordinary than the halls through which I’d been guided, yet somehow I saw even less of these black and white marble walls or the enchanted ceiling that, to my later surprise, I would find depicted the passage of the stars from my home aboveground. Somehow, upon stepping through the doors and making our long way up the purple carpet to the Throne of Roserpine, my stubborn mind saw nothing but the Materna of the Nightlands: Valeria.
There is something to the haughty beauty of an arrogant woman—a woman who not only knows she is beautiful but thrives on knowing that beauty and on demonstrating its superiority over other, lesser forms of loveliness—that has, I must admit, always appealed to me. There is a difference between this and confidence: Branwen’s air of wild self-possession, for instance, was different from the tranquil beauty of a certain kind-hearted nun at the Temple of Weltyr. Such a meek woman humbly accepted the burden of her charm but regarded it, always, as a generous gift (or sometimes curse) from God and therefore had a way of also bringing out the beauty in others around her.
But never had I seen a woman for whom beauty was utterly alienating. Valeria was truly that, and seemed in her heart to be as alien as the tentacled spirit-thieves. Even without pupils, her violet eyes seemed unfocused into space somewhere off to the right of her, as though she were listening to the voices of spirits that were not there. I swore these luminescent orbs glowed like the great jewel upon her finger, a thick indigo gem surrounded by small stones black as Oppenhir’s void. It rested at the edge of a jaw that, though delicate as the rest of her features, seemed firm and finely cut as the marble around her: two other slim fingers fit to her cheek to emphasize the delicate glory of her bone structure, the slight bored pout of her luscious lips. Through streams of bright white hair poked the tips of two elegant elf ears while, crawling betwixt her sumptuous breasts and embracing her waist, a glittering snake made as though to hide itself within those ivory locks.
I was so stunned by the sight of her that, though the durrow who had brought me were quick to kneel, my own genuflection was delayed. Odile’s tough little fist in the back of my knee brought me quite literally back to earth, though I could not bow my head as they had—and when the Materna deigned to turn her focus toward me, I was glad I had not looked away, for I was permitted to see the moment when her bored eyes widened in the shock of a woman waking up.
“Presenting Odile Darkstar and Indra of the Nocturna Clan,” announced the vizier, a tall and slender durrow whose hard features and short hair gave her a distinctly male air. While checking a looking glass that, owing to its magical properties, automatically updated its information based on whatever had been observed by the guards at the base of the tower, the vizier waved a free hand and explained, “Here for registration and appraisal.”
Her sharp eyes having fought back her strange expression of surprise, the Materna leaned forward in her seat. “The slave is unbound,” she observed, looking me over.
Odile kept her head lowered, her right fist over her heart. “Yes, Your Worship. He has proven the picture of obedience from the time we came upon him amid the bodies of the spirit-thieves.”
The vizier’s head lifted sharply from her looking glass, now seeing me for the first time. As t
he Materna studied me all the more closely, her right-hand woman asked, “Say again?”
“Yes, sister,” enthused Indra, daring to steal a blushing glance of the Materna before directly addressing the vizier. “This paladin of Weltyr single-handedly emptied the spirit-thief den that has plagued our southern-bound travelers for nigh on a decade.”
“Well,” I began, meaning only to admit that my companions had been equally important in the defeat of the unholy spirit-thieves. Odile elbowed me sharply and, realizing how much such a claim must have increased my price, I fell silent for the sake of my mistresses.
“I dreamt of that den just last dark,” marveled the Materna, who leaned forward in her seat with that begemmed hand poised against her neck. “Perhaps someday I’ll learn to take Roserpine’s dreams for sooth.”
“How could one man kill all the spirt-thieves of that den?” Looking almost appalled—perhaps sure I was lying—the vizier lowered her looking glass and studied me closely she could stand to. “One of their number is mighty enough to annihilate most any human.”
“And he was on the cusp of death when we found him,” answered Odile unhesitatingly, looking not at the vizier she answered but at the Materna. “Oppenhir hung but a hair’s breadth above his head before we arrived and gave him a few sips of elixir.”
Now the Materna did speak up, her keen eyes never leaving me. “And what was a paladin of Weltyr doing down here in the darkness, in a pit of spirit-thieves?”
I realized now that I was being addressed directly. After a quick glance at Odile, I explained myself. “I was awarded with a mission on behalf of my god, who tasked me in the retrieval of a valuable relic. A holy scepter.”
“And did you retrieve this relic?”
Head lowered, jaw tensed with frustration, I was nonetheless forced to admit, “The precious object slipped through my grasp when my traveling companions betrayed me. They permitted me to find and cull the spirit-thieves so they might claim the scepter with ease, then sell it off to the highest bidder as though it were little more than a dusty artifact or overpriced art object.”
