by Dora Machado
A clatter of steps sounded outside. Finally, after all those days, a key turned in the lock and the door opened. Wordlessly, Julean and his guards flooded the cell. She was trussed, gagged, hooded and dragged down the steps to yet another room. She recognized the place when the hood came off. The black granite room. The Mating Hall. Word was that Guild wisers came here when ordered to procreate. She was already well on her way. Why had they brought her here?
The chamber was as warm as she remembered. The damage the beam had done in the ceiling had been repaired. Julean's guards forced her into an oversize stone chair, a strange contraption sporting an angular back and a wide seat with a hole in the middle. Fighting them only gained Sariah a cuff to the face. None too gently, they strapped her hands above her head and then roped her knees and calves to the chair's massive legs. Julean checked the bindings before he and his men marched out of the chamber. The two strange sisters stood to one side, holding hands, watching her with oddly rounded eyes.
“I'm afraid it's not very comfortable,” the white sister said.
“A birthing chair is practical rather than comfortable,” the dark sister said.
A birthing chair? Why was she strapped to a birthing chair? Her baby was hardly half-grown in her womb and she was nowhere near her term. Sweat trickled down Sariah's back. What were they going to do?
Grimly swept into the room like a queen entering her castle. “What a sight,” she said, a little breathlessly. “The dream of a goddess. The gift of a lifetime. Hello, Sariah, welcome to the Mating Hall.” With a twist and a tug, she ripped the gag out of Sariah's mouth.
Sariah moistened her parched lips. “Why have you brought me here?”
“Patience, child,” Grimly said. “All will come to pass, as it must, in time. I thought perhaps you'd want to talk before we proceed. You might want to convince me that you're sorry. You could recant the bulk of your wisings. I could be fair, and you could be useful.”
“Useful?” Sariah said. “How?”
“You could trust me,” Grimly said. “You would, if only you knew how well I love you.”
“Like a carter loves his mule?”
Grimly's stare fell on her with a cudgel's force. “Has it ever occurred to you that there's more at stake than just your puny little life? Have you ever considered that my investment in you must be saved? No. You have it easy. You go about making judgments from half-tales and half-truths. You take it upon yourself to criticize, without having the responsibility of rule. You speak of problems but you offer no solutions. You've seized the easy lot in life.”
“Then why am I the one persecuted and about to be executed?”
“Do you think yourself infallible?”
“Infallible?” Sariah had to laugh. “More like constantly fallible, as my being here shows.”
The mistress sighed. “Why won't you heed me?”
“Why would I?”
“To preserve your life. To protect your baby's life.”
Now the bargaining started. Only Sariah wasn't willing to trade, not when she knew that the mistress's scale was always weighted to favor the Guild. Sariah didn't need a bargain. She needed a way to escape the keep, reach the Bastions and wise the prism's tale.
“Oh, don't tell me,” the Prime Hand said. “You think your baby's better off dead than in the Guild's hands? Is that it?”
The words “baby” and “dead” were excruciating in the same sentence, but she didn't give the mistress the satisfaction of wincing. Life as a pawn in the Prime Hand's games was an insult to Meliahs and a betrayal to the stones. Death was a horrid fate for her child, but Guild-raising, a life at the keep, that was worse than death.
“I told the Council,” the mistress said. “Execution would be a reward to the likes of you. A death by stoning, gruesome as it is, would be a vindication to you and yours. To be rid of you would be a great relief to them. But then, there's Arron and his little revolt to consider, and those silly people out there, and some of the others who have been disquieted by your adventures.”
Others? Did she mean other stonewisers?
“But death doesn't always mean defeat,” the mistress said. “Meliahs knows what can come out of your execution. You're better off defused, like your bursting stone.”
How had the mistress defused her bursting stone? She must have found a weakness in her wising. What was it? Sariah knew she had imprinted the stone correctly. She'd had plenty of anger. She'd had purpose as well. Where had she failed to lock her wising?
Her eyes widened with the realization. The weakness had not been in her wising. It had been in herself. She disliked killing with stones, and that hesitation must have translated into her wising as a small speck of doubt. Grimly must have grabbed on to that tiny break in her wiser's will and used it to defuse the stone. Sariah had built her own undoing into her most powerful weapon, and in doing so, she had sabotaged herself.
“So the pupil realizes, belatedly, that the mistress still has much to teach?” Grimly's smile held no warmth. “I've spent a lifetime serving the Guild. And in penance, Sariah, so will you.”
The mistress turned to the sisters. “Belana, Telana, do you like the treat I've brought you?”
The sisters looked down on Sariah as if she were their newest toy.
“She's pretty,” Telana said.
Belana touched Sariah reverently. “And soft.”
“But not harmless,” Grimly said. “She must be curbed at once.”
Belana admired Sariah's belly. “It's quite grown.”
“I told you she's already breeding,” the mistress said. “How far along?”
Belana's cold hands slid beneath Sariah's robe. It angered Sariah that anybody, let alone this creepy wench, would dare touch her and her baby without leave. It struck her like a mace to the teeth that, tied as she was, she could do nothing about it.
“I think she's about five months, maybe a little more.” Belana sniffed along Sariah's pubis. “A boy, I think. Aye. Male spirit scent.”
How could the wretch know that?
A boy. How happy Kael would be to have a son. Would she ever have the opportunity to tell him?
“She's of the best blood.” Grimly unrolled a long parchment on a nearby desk. Sariah craned her neck, but she couldn't spot anything helpful beyond a myriad of lines and letters.
Belana traced the lines. “Oooooooooh.”
“We couldn't have done better ourselves,” Telana said.
“You see now how important this is?”
Telana scratched her head. “But how will we do it without—”
The mistress's eyes narrowed to slits. “Do you doubt me?”
“No, no, but—”
“Then put your trust in me and forget about the rest. How long will it take?”
How long would what take?
“Hard to say,” Telana said.
“Very hard,” Belana added. “A month, maybe?”
“That's too long.”
“We'll do our best,” Telana said.
“But not too much, too soon,” Belana said.
“We've seen what can happen.”
“It's terrible what can happen.”
“I don't want any mistakes,” the mistress said. “It's important. Do you understand?”
It annoyed Sariah that both women nodded exactly at the same time. The way they talked irritated her as well. Their high-pitched nasal voices reminded Sariah of little girls pretending to be adults. They talked in tandem; by Meliahs, they moved in tandem. It was very strange to watch them holding hands all the time, as if they drew confidence from each other's touch.
“Let me know when she's curbed and safe,” the Prime Hand said.
“Do you wish her hands cut?” Telana asked.
Sariah had to swallow the strangled cry in her throat. Her hands. Cut?
“Perhaps later.” The mistress's casual glance was a promise. “I might want to capitalize on her unique gifts.” Grimly's lips were cold on Sariah's forehead. “B
e nice, Sariah. Nice pays off down here. It saves hands. And lives.”
As soon as the door closed behind the Prime Hand, the two sisters turned to Sariah, grinning like cats on the prowl.
“She's gone,” Telana whispered.
“That's good,” Belana said.
“Say something.” Belana sniffed Sariah's mouth. “She smells like sweet cream and warm cakes. Please, say something.”
“Don't harm my baby.”
The words came out so calm and clear that Sariah didn't realize she had said them until the sisters grabbed each other's hands reflexively.
“We swear, we don't want to.”
“Harm your baby.”
“We're sorry, little sister.”
“We do as we must.”
They spoke in relay, one after the other as if they knew what the other was thinking.
“Can you release me from my bonds?” Sariah asked.
Faces similarly stricken, both sisters shook their heads.
“We're sorry.”
“It's not possible.”
“We must do as we're told.”
“We are what we are.”
Telana turned her attention to a small side table in the corner. An extensive collection of instruments blanketed the table— knives, scalpels, scrapers, picks. Telana selected a pair of massive scissors and crouched between Sariah's knees.
Sariah's heart skipped wildly. “Wait. What are you doing? Stop.”
Belana petted Sariah's hair and held her hand, just as Telana's creaking scissors emerged over her belly, ripping her robe into halves. Now. Sariah clutched Belana's pale hand. Now, or she would never get out of this rot pit alive. She struck. Stone wrath.
“What's that?” Telana's scissors froze in midair.
“Oooooooh.” Belana's mouth was stuck uttering the modulated sound. With her eyes wide open and her pale lips puckered, she looked like a thick-lipped fish.
Why wasn't it working? Why wasn't the stone wrath searing Belana through and through?
“That's nice,” Belana finally said. “Thank you.”
“How do you do that?” Telana asked.
Sariah couldn't help but stare from one sister to the other. What had just happened? Could one sister experience what the other was feeling? She had issued her most vicious jolt of stone wrath and Belana hadn't dropped to the ground writhing like a starving maggot. On the contrary, she seemed… pleased by it?
Telana's black eyes hardened on Sariah. “I don't think she meant it nicely.”
Sariah stared. “Who are you?”
“We are what we are,” Telana said. “You, on the other hand, are trouble.”
She removed the halves of Sariah's robe, exposing her body to the sisters’ scrutiny. Her round belly emerged from concealment, framed by her full breasts and her pubis's tight curls. Sariah flushed with embarrassment, but the other women admired her, unabashed.
“Long legs,” Telana said.
“Lovely flesh.” Belana cupped her breasts.
“Get your hands off me.”
Belana pouted. “Do you mean it, little sister? You don't want me to touch you?”
“I'm not your little sister.” It was simply impossible to reconcile the sisters’ apologies with their deeds.
To Sariah's surprise, Belana began to cry, a revolting vision of black ink spilling from her tear ducts. Sariah saw what she hadn't seen before. A milky film floated over the pale sister's pupils, matching the rest of her whiteness. Belana was blind.
“But I must touch you,” Belana was saying. “Please. Let's be friends. Why won't you be my friend?”
It was Telana's fierce clutch on the scissors that convinced Sariah. She didn't want her baby ripped out from the womb by the avenging sister.
“Don't cry,” Sariah said. “You're making your sister sad.”
“You'll be my friend?”
Sariah buckled under Telana's black eyes. “I can try, but friends don't tie friends up and cut off their clothes.”
“I'm sorry.” Belana wiped black tears from her face.
“It must be,” Telana said.
“But before and after, we can be friends.”
“Before and after what?” Sariah asked.
Belana's eyes widened.
Thirty-six
THE SISTERS WORKED with ruthless efficiency. Sariah watched as clumps of her long brown hair joined her ripped robe on the floor. She was keenly aware of the dangerous blades the sisters wielded, of her complete vulnerability, of blind Belana shaving her head by touch only, and of Telana, shearing her pubis as if she was but a woolly lamb.
“Shiny like a silver spark,” Belana said.
“Smooth like a kitten's belly,” Telana said.
Sariah ground her teeth. The Guild's tidiness rules applied doubly at the mating hall and the sisters were joyful enforcers. They examined every inch of Sariah's body.
“What do you make of this?” Telana tugged on her banishment bracelet. “I can't get it off.”
Sariah managed to suppress her gasps, but she flinched with every twist of Telana's savage pliers.
“You better stop.” Belana fingered the bracelet. “It somehow hurts her. I'm not sure it's worth the trouble anyway. It takes more than it gives. It's not a source for her.”
An exasperated Telana dumped the pliers on the table. “That's good, because it can't be unclasped.” She seized Sariah's hands. “What about this?”
Belana ran the tips of her fingers over Sariah's palms. “Ooooooh.” She admired the scars. “Powerful protection.”
But not powerful enough to protect Sariah from the sisters’ graters. They scraped the center of her palms, in the middle of the triangle within the oval scars. Sariah tried to resist, to fist her bloody hands and strike with stone wrath, but she discovered that the human hand was not very strong when bound palm-up at the wrist and that the sisters liked it when she tried to strike them with her stone wrath. They actually enjoyed it.
“You can do it again if you want,” Belana said.
“Soon you won't be able to do it anymore.” Telana inserted a small wised stone in the center of Sariah's whittled flesh.
A white flash jolted Sariah's body. Every nerve in her hand awoke to an excruciating burning and found a twin in her mind. Her fingers cramped. It was worse when Telana did the same to her other palm. A slow and gradual blankness descended on her wiser's core, as if her links had been severed.
A wave of panic crashed on Sariah. Without a sense of her wiser's core, her body didn't know how to function. She couldn't think. She couldn't breathe. If not for Belana's perfumed mouth covering hers and blowing hot air into her deflated lungs, she would have suffocated on the spot.
It must have taken her a while, but by the time Sariah learned how to breathe on her own again, Telana was strapping a strange contraption to her hands, a snug copper and leather encasing that pressed on the stones buried in her palms.
“A wiser's muzzle.” Telana locked it with a tiny key and applied a blue flame to the keyhole, welding it shut. “It will keep you from trouble, which means we can preserve your hands for the moment.”
Sariah didn't know such a contraption existed. The muzzle extended from the bend of her fingers’ lower knuckles to the wrist. She was having trouble thinking. It was as if her palms were gone from her senses and her wiser's mind had been trapped behind solid walls, as if the ground had been kicked from under her feet and she was freefalling.
“She's properly curbed,” Telana said. “Do we put her with the others?”
“I wish we could keep her with us,” Belana said.
“She's the one who's created all the mess. We wouldn't want her talking to the others.”
“What if we curb her voice?”
“That should keep her out of mischief.”
The conversation didn't make any sense. How could they possibly curb her voice?
The sisters’ palms pressed against Sariah's throat. A stone was lodged in between her skin an
d theirs. A quiet murmur. A rush of heat. A feeling of faintness. Sariah opened her mouth to protest. No sound made it through. Astounded, she tried again. Nothing. She wanted to scream, yet she couldn't even whimper. What had they done to her?
The sisters released her bonds and slipped a strange garment over Sariah's head. It was a short, thin, low-backed white cloth that fit her loosely. Translucent and without seams, it offered little warmth and no privacy. Then, the sisters supported her through a heavy pair of iron doors and into a small chamber fitted with black hangings.
Telana rang a bell.
Belana kissed her. “We'll see you soon.”
Then they abandoned her, weak, hurting and alone, in the black veiled room.
The woman who came through the curtains was similar to Sariah in many ways. She was about the same age, devoid of hair, large with child and as shockingly dressed as she was. She also wore a pair of hand muzzles. The difference was that she could move on her own and that she was smiling.
“I'm Lexia.” She helped Sariah to her feet. “I'm going to take you downstairs. You're too far along to be new, but I've never seen you before. Have you just arrived?”
Sariah opened her mouth and found her voice gone. Vexed, she nodded and pointed to her throat.
“You are new. The little vixens took your voice, didn't they? They don't want you speaking to us. Well, at least they didn't take your tongue. Ask Pru, life's tough without a tongue.”
They had taken somebody's tongue? Sariah leaned on Lexia and made it out into the strangest of places. A narrow corridor towered above a lower level divided by thick walls into separate spaces. Sariah was shocked when she looked down directly below her. Thirty or forty women were looking up at her, all dressed in the loose-fitting garment, pregnant and hairless like she was.
“The holding pen,” Lexia said. “We wait here.”
Wait for what? Sariah wasn't thinking very clearly but she managed to point at her belly and then at the women.
“Aye, they're all pregnant or waiting to be bred. What else would you expect at the Mating Hall?”
The Mating Hall. Reality exceeded its foul reputation. The windowless, stark chamber was lined sparsely with cots and tables bolted to the floor. Fires for light and warmth hung high above. The women were mostly quiet, following her slow progress down the steep staircase.
