by Allan Cole
“I wish you really did,” she said. “I tell you the same thing every night. You say you understand. But by the next day you’ve forgotten. And the next thing I know you’re hurting yourself trying to cast a spell.”
“Don’t worry, Zalia,” I said. “I’ll remember this time.”
I suddenly felt sleepy. I yawned, stretching out on my bench.
“Sure you will, dear,” Zalia soothed. But I could tell she believed otherwise.
“Honestly,” I insisted. “I’ll remember.”
“Oh, Rali,” Zalia said, “I wish it were true. I wish you’d rise up tomorrow and tell me that you remembered all you witnessed today. But I know that won’t happen. Not for a long time, if at all.”
Through my dimness it struck me that her voice was cultured and musical. It seemed odd and out of place coming from such a hulking body.
Then the thought vanished and I mumbled, “You’ll see...” and closed my eyes.
I slept. I didn’t dream, although I woke up once to relieve myself in the slop pail. I heard Zalia breathing heavily but I didn’t disturb her. I went back to sleep.
Much later a gong rang and I sat up. I swiveled, turning my single eye on Zalia who was yawning awake.
I spoke, my voice hard, “I think you’d better tell me who you are.”
Zalia blinked, jolted from half-sleep.
“I’m Zalia,” she said. “Don’t you even remember that?”
I said, “I remember yesterday, at least. You acted like a friend then. But I don’t know that for a fact, do I? Because everything is a blank from the moment I was condemned to this place to yesterday in the shops.”
Zalia’s face brightened - delighted. At least she was acting delighted.
But at that moment, in the first cold, hard realization of what had been done to me - I trusted no one.
No one.
I sat on my bed thinking, that if she said the wrong thing I would need to kill her. But, how to dispose of the body… And then… how to get out this place.
“Thank the gods,” Zalia said, “you’re returning to normal.”
She started to get up but I raised my metal hand to stop her.
“Sit back down,” I said.
She did as I commanded, but her eyes seemed to be sparkling with interest instead of resentment.
“Listen,” I said. “You’re strong. I can see that. I saw that. But there isn’t much I don’t know about killing, so your strength won’t do you any good. Do as I say and if it turns out I’m being rude, I’ll apologize.”
“Fine, Rali,” she said. “I’ll do as you say. And gladly.”
“Good,” I said. “You can begin by accounting for yourself.”
“I don’t think we have time for a full accounting,” she said. “They’ll come to make up the work parties in an hour.”
“Tell me how I came to be in your company,” I said. “That’s a good enough start. If you’re still alive when they come for us, you’ll know I believe just enough to let you live until tonight.
“And then you can tell me the rest.”
Zalia shrugged. “Maybe I just felt sorry for you,” she said. “You were wandering around bumping into walls. Drugged and crazy. The guards shoved you from one task to the next. You nearly fell into a furnace once. Then some of the other slaves got some ideas. You know the kind of ideas I mean… Perhaps I took pity on you and took you under my wing.”
She glared at me. “If that’s the case,” she said, “I’m now being poorly paid for my sympathy.”
“Is it the case?” I demanded.
Zalia trembled with anger. “Maybe not,” she snarled. “Maybe I had designs on you myself. Maybe I wanted to make you my own slave. Make you labor for me in the day and pleasure me at night. And the fight you took part in yesterday was because I was protecting a possession.”
“That’s not the worst possibility for your motives,” I said.
Zalia’s eyed widened in surprise. The surprise turned into a cynical sneer. “Oh, I suppose you think I might be a spy?” she said. “That I might be working for Novari and I’ve been plotting to win your trust so I can betray you?”
“That’s one possibility,” I said. “You could also be Novari herself, for all I know.”
“That’s stupid,” she said. She swept a beefy arm about, indicating our surroundings. “Can you imagine Novari submitting herself to these conditions?”
“I’ve seen harm come to people,” I said, “for ignoring stupid possibilities.”
“Well, that can’t be proven one way or the other,” she said. “You’d need sorcery to do it. And that hand will kill you if you attempt it.”
“We’ll have to rely on your powers of persuasion, then,” I said. “And I’ll only ask you one more time - what did you intend with me?”
“To get you well, if I could,” she said. “So we could both escape.”
She gave me a long fixed stare, as if daring me to brand her a liar.
I stared back, just as long and just as hard.
Then I said, “That’s good enough for now. You can tell me the rest tonight.”
“To the devil with you,” she growled. “Believe what you want. I don’t care.
“Get out! Find your own place. I’ll have nothing further to do with you!”
“We’ll talk tonight,” I said again. “And then we’ll see what happens next.”
The day that followed was one of the strangest in my life. It was like awakening from a nightmare and finding yourself actually living that nightmare. All sensation was familiar and alien at the same time.
To begin with I was seeing through only one eye, which distorted reality until I became used to the loss and learned to compensate for the absence of my other eye.
While I’d been in shock I’d somehow formed a habit of letting my head flop to one side when I wanted to look at something. I kept having to jerk my head up again, which made the guards nervous at first, then made them laugh at my silly antics. Their mockery was spur enough to correct that habit.
The strangeness was compounded further by the artificial hand. It was an unfeeling object hanging from the end of my left arm. The hand acted like mortal flesh, reaching for things when I willed it. Gripping them and releasing them at my command.
But for a time the actions lagged behind thought, as if the thoughts were fingers trailing through water. When the hand finally moved there was a slight hesitation at first, then it would shoot forward as if my commands had just caught up with it. Sometimes I had to actually will the device to slow down so I wouldn’t knock something over.
The hand was also much stronger than its mortal cousin and I had to be careful not to crush things by mistake when I gripped them. It was also impervious to heat and we were expected to make use of this function by plunging it into molten vats or picking up white hot metal bars.
Each time I was confronted with such tasks I had to force myself to overcome instinct. I knew it wouldn’t hurt but knowing and doing can be two different things. The guards made me suffer until I learned to overcome those natural fears.
Oddest of all was that everything I was now experiencing I’d experienced before but had no memory of the events.
Yet there was a shadowy familiarity about my surroundings as if I’d once been a ghost in this place.
Which is what I’d been.
When the guards came to take us to our labors those ghostly impressions guided me and I automatically followed Zalia out into the corridor. We lined up with about thirty other slaves from our warren, which is what they called each grouping of cells.
As I joined the line I knew without thinking that Zalia would fall in behind me. Somehow I’d become accustomed to that position. I felt more comfortable with her there, although I couldn’t say why I felt that way.
When I realized that it unnerved me. And I wondered how long I’d been in the mines and what else had happened to me. What had been done to me. Beyond the mutilation of my eye and hand.
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Then the full realization of the violations that had been committed against me struck and my heart went crazy, slapping against my ribs like a trip hammer and I suddenly found it hard to breathe.
I nearly blacked out and then I felt Zalia’s thick arms surround me and squeeze - pushing in, letting out, pushing in, letting out - until I could breathe normally and my heart steadied... and the panic passed.
At that moment the guards barked and cracked their whips and we all shambled into motion and marched out of our warren.
Instead of returning to the shop I’d awakened in the day before we were marched a short distance to a huge elevator cage and were herded inside. We descended for perhaps ten minutes and then the cage groaned to a halt.
The cage door rattled up and we were prodded out into an underground yard where empty ore carts were lined up on tracks. Sledge hammers, long iron bars and other miners’ tools hung from the sides. We were split up into groups, with each group assigned an ore cart.
Zalia helped me put on a leather band that held a reflector with a single fire bead mounted in the middle so the light was cast in a narrow beam. All the other slave miners were similarly equipped.
Then we were hitched to the carts and long whips snaked out to bite us and we were forced into motion, dragging the heavy carts along the rough rails.
I labored for nearly an hour, legs and shoulders aching from the load, my chest pinched so hard by the harness that every breath came as a gasp. When a halt was finally ordered I thought I’d reached the end of my strength.
But that was only where my day began.
First we had to fill the cart with gold ore.
Next we had to drag it back to the yard and unload it for the crusher.
And then the process started all over again.
Just filling the cart took an enormous effort. We had to crack away hunks of rock from the face of the tunnel using sledges and the long pointed bars. The hunks had to be broken up into smaller pieces with sledges. And the rubble had to be heaped into the cart.
Each task required all your strength - and more.
Zalia pushed one of the bars into my hands, took up a sledge and led me to the rock face. The gold vein was plain even in the dim light of the torches and firebeads. It was a broad glittering band about shoulder high. Zalia showed me a crevice to slip the tip of the bar into and told me to hold it steady.
I did as she said, only dimly aware of what was going to happen next. I turned my head and saw her draw back with the sledge, handling its weight in her iron fist as if it were a twig.
Then I saw the sledge slam forward, aimed right at me and blurring from the speed of her blow. I had no time to react, much less jerk aside. Instead of hitting me it slammed into the iron bar. The bar bit deep into the crevice and a big chunk of rock broke off and crashed to the floor.
Zalia grinned. “You should see your face,” she said with much satisfaction. “Now you know I could’ve killed you anytime I wanted.”
I licked dry lips. “Doesn’t prove anything,” I said.
Zalia laughed. “No. But it’ll make you think. That’s good enough for the moment.”
“Now,” she commanded. “Hold it steady.”
And she drew back to strike again.
“Don’t flinch,” she said. “Or there could be a most regretful accident.”
She swung.
And I didn’t flinch.
When the day ended we stumbled back to the yard where we were made to stand in deep troughs while other slaves hosed us down with water so cold it seemed like it came from icefields.
The shower wasn’t for our benefit. It was to wash off the golden grime that covered us all. Our skins and faces sparkled with the stuff at day’s end. Eyes and teeth gleamed eerily through the sparkle. The troughs carried the glittering grime away to shallow pools where other slaves panned it so there was no wastage.
When I finally reached our cell I was so weary that I nearly looked at it as a cheery home. I sighed with relief when I sank onto my stone bench, falling back blissfully - as if the stone were soft as a down bed.
I immediately plunged into a deep sleep. I awoke much later to the smell of cooking meat and found Zalia preparing my evening meal.
Although I still didn’t trust her, I took the bowl without hesitation and ate every scrap, sucking the bones dry of all nourishment.
While I ate I studied Zalia, who was lying on her bench, eyes closed, arms folded across her big bosom. I knew she wasn’t asleep.
I thought, if she believes she’s softening me up she’s got a great deal more to learn about Rali Antero.
When I was done, I said, “You want to tell me your particulars now?”
She spoke, eyes still closed, “I’ve been here for seven months. One month longer than you. You’ve been in my care for three of those months.”
I was stunned. A chasm of lost time opened before me.
“So long?” I said.
Zalia sat up. “Yes, Rali,” she said, the hostility gone from her voice.
“You’ve been here for six months. Six months in which you were as helpless as a dimwitted child. I would have helped you sooner but I had to learn enough about this place so I could manage it. There were rules to be bent. Favors to be done.
She waved at the cell around us. “Why, I paid a week’s worth of rations to get us this… this… palace.”
“That was good of you,” I said, dry.
Zalia sniffed. “If you think I’m lying,” she said, “others will bear me out. Ask anyone you like.”
“You can be sure I will,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “You’ll see.” She wiped her eyes with a meaty paw.
“How did you come to be here?” I asked.
“I was captured,” she said. “I was on a mission for my queen. Novari and her toy, King Magon, had been giving us much difficulty. But during my mission I was caught in a storm... I alone survived.”
She wiped an eye as the recollection made tears well. At least that was the impression she wanted to convey.
“Then Magon’s soldiers came on me and I was captured.”
“You saw Novari?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“What did she ask you?”
“She wanted to know the nature of my mission,” Zalia said, “And many details about my queen.”
“How did you answer?” I asked.
Zalia curled a lip. “As you can see,” she replied, “whatever I may have said won me no favors from Novari.”
I ignored the sarcasm, pointedly staring at her, waiting for her answer.
She finally sighed and said, “I told her nothing. Novari tried to force me with magic but my queen had placed a guardian spell on me that blocked it.
“I was able to maintain my pose as an innocent who’d strayed into Magon’s waters. In this kingdom that sort of innocence gets you a life sentence mining the king’s gold.
“The only bright spot is that no one lives very long in the Mines of Koronos.”
I thought for a moment, searching for a means to test her. Then I said, “Tell me a lie.”
Her heavy brows furrowed in puzzlement. “A lie? Whatever do you mean?”
“Novari can’t lie,” I said. “If you’re Novari in disguise-”
Zalia broke in - “That, again!”
“Yes, that again,” I replied. “Foolish or not, it is a way I can test you.
“Now, tell me something we both know is a lie.”
“I can prove more by telling you a truth,” she said.
“Such as?”
Zalia leaned forward and said, “I was told when I met you I should mention... the ship of silver.”
That nearly bowled me off my bench. No one other than a goddess and Daciar knew that term would have any meaning to me.
“Who told you to say that?” I demanded.
“In my kingdom,” she said, “we worship the Goddess Maranonia. Before I set out on my mission I consult
ed her oracle.”
She hesitated, then said, “There are some things I was forbidden to say. But I can tell you that Maranonia appeared to me. That she gave me instructions. And she predicted I would meet you. When I did, she said, I was to use the phrase ‘ship of silver’ to introduce myself. So that we could work together.”
“For what purpose?” I asked.
