Betrayed (Hidden Worlds Book 1)

by Bethany Burke

  We reached a destination soon enough: a small chamber where several men sat at desks, writing. One raised his hand to stop us, then, when he saw Jancy, he put his hand down. "I need to see Lord Rohan." Jancy looked at us, then back at the clerk. "We were patrolling the Rumfries Road and we ran across something odd… very very odd."

  The clerk seemed amazed by us, and it took a cuff on the shoulder from Jancy to bring him back to the present. "Is he in, man?"

  "Oh, oh yes. The Lord's in. Alone. Go on in, Captain."

  Grabbing my arm none too gently, Jancy guided me down a corridor. Mixal and Christy followed behind. The rough clank of their chain armor sounded very loud in the enclosed space. He spoke to me, his voice low and matter-of-fact. "I don't know who ye be, or where you’re from, miss. But I'll be reminding ye that better than ye's trifled with Lord Rohan, trifled and come away with nothing but a tanned arse to show for it. It'd be much better for ye if ye were recovering your memory… right quick like."

  I looked up at him and nodded. Truly, it seemed the man meant me no harm; his words, gruff as they were, were offered as almost a favor. But a "tan darse?" I had no idea what that would be. Maybe a small unit of money, given to someone who had hoped for more? Perhaps they had silver darse and gold darse as well. Who cared? I was simply too staggered to think about anything other than what was going to happen to me.

  Yet, in spite of my smothering fear, I noticed that the castle was really quite beautiful inside, more like a manor, than what I would have considered a castle, and very unlike the relics I'd visited in England and France. This one seemed very different in another way, and for a second I couldn't put my finger on just what the difference was, and then I realized: unlike the ancient ones I'd seen, smelling of mold and mice and cold wet stone, this castle was new.

  It was lit by huge glass windows, and everything was very clean and fresh-smelling. Jancy pushed open a wide, carved, double-door, and we walked into a very comfortable chamber, furnished with rich looking rugs on the floor, and bright tapestries on the walls. A dark-haired man sat at a desk, writing something with a pen. He lifted his face; blue eyes shown brilliantly in tanned skin. He rose, and I saw that he was dressed like the others: the linked vest of leather and steel, the baggy trousers, the boots. Around his massive arms he wore wide bands of decorated gold; a gold torque circled his neck. He was very large, taller even than our two captors. Unlike the others, he wore no beard. I guessed that this was the person we were being taken to see: Rohan.

  "Jancy, Mixal." His eyes flickered over us. "What in the world do we have here?"

  "Don't know as I can tell you, Lord. We found `em wandering out on the Rumfries Road. Heads bare, hair cut down to the nubs, all alone, in these outlandish togs. First off, they won't say anything, then they say they're not married."

  "Not married? They're at least twenty." He looked at us straight on. "How old are you?"

  Ignoring the question would anger him; lying seemed pointless. "I'm twenty-four," I said, and Christy chimed in with a soft-voiced, "Twenty-two."

  "And you're not married?" Rohan asked us, his voice flat and skeptical.

  Both of us shook our heads. Again, I was feeling incredibly frustrated in dealing with this culture that was obviously so different from anything I'd ever even read about that I could not keep up a pretense. All women were married, and at a young age, it seemed. Would it have been better to say we were married? I sighed and pressed my lips together. Probably not. We would still have had to name the husband, if my guess was correct, and we would likely have been no more successful at that than we were at creating a father out of the air.

  Jancy shrugged and continued. "Just as I said. First, they're not married, then they're out on the Rumfries because they were," his voice took on a sarcastic tone, "taking a walk."

  Rohan had turned away from us, his big tawny body moving with the grace of the panthers I'd seen in Kenya, but at Jancy's words he turned back abruptly. "A walk?" His eyes flickered over us. "Not much of a place for a stroll, I'd say."

  "So then," Jancy flashed us an exasperated glance, "they tried to claim they was of Trelawn with a father named John MacCleod…"

  Rohan scratched his nose. "MacCleod? What clan?"

  Jancy snorted. "Never even got that far. Nothing they were saying was making any sense. So finally, begging your pardon Lord, but I didn't know what else to do. I just took a look. Lord, they got no marks. Their bottoms be as bare as wee lassies'."

  Rohan looked at the others incredulously. "How can that be? Even if they're younger than they look, they're still well beyond the age of first marking." He paused, then inclined his head sharply towards Mixal. "Let me see."

  Before Christy and I could even draw breath to protest, we found ourselves again upended in the same position Mixal and Jancy had used on the road. I felt the blanket that had been draped over my shoulders to cover the hole in my jumpsuit flipped out of the way, over my head, leaving me in a warm woolen dimness. I could see nothing but the carpeted floor and Mixal's brawny legs. Because the cut fabric of my jumpsuit and panties already fell in a loose, ragged flaps, my bottom was bare in an instant.

  Mixal, who had me, walked a few quick steps, taking me closer to Rohan, I knew, and lifted his arm. Although I could see nothing, I knew that I was now only a short distance from Rohan, and, because of the draped fabric and the fact that my trousers were still more or less intact, all Rohan could see of me was a naked, high bottom.

  Without warning, two hands hooked inside the hole Jancy had made and dragged brutally on the fabric. With a quick rending noise, what had been a hole became a crater. I gasped and tried to struggle away, but the arm around my waist tightened, and I was lifted still higher. My bottom was now completely up, pointed towards the ceiling. I felt a hand skim my skin, even lift one cheek and part me slightly. "See, Lord?" It was Mixal's voice. "Nothing."

  Rohan's breath exhaled in a sound of wordless, puzzled agreement. "What about the other?"

  I was flipped back to my feet just in time to see Christy carried forward over the other barbarian's arm, tucked at his hip, also like no more than a piece of meat. He opened her trousers more widely, just as he had mine, with a quick, brutal rip. From my angle, just off to the side, I could see her round, bare buttocks, and, because of her high, lifted position, everything that lay between, the softly-furred outer lips, the delicate pinkness of her inner lips, plus the puckered anus lying between her spread cheeks. And she was only contributing to it by squirming and struggling. Did she know that every arch of her body, every thrust of her leg caused her plump pink femininity to spradle even more widely? My face flamed as I realized that even though I had not been struggling, Rohan had surely seen almost as much of me; the position allowed for no modesty whatsoever.

  But as I watched Rohan's face, I saw none of the lechery I would expect, only an expression of curious confusion, as if totally exposed young women were offered to him bare bottom up on a regular basis. Perhaps, I thought, my mouth going dry, they were. It was a sobering thought, and I wondered desperately what sort of place we were in.

  Rohan reached out his hand, and, as he had done to me, passed it over the pale skin of Christy's bottom. "There's no way anything could have been removed here… there's no scar, yet…" He lifted one of her buttocks up and slightly out, opening up the crease between bottom and thigh, then reached forward with his other hand and ran a finger along her outer lips. Christy squealed, an incoherent sound of outrage. "Yet neither one of them clean, so they must have husbands." He snorted incredulously. "What mother would allow her child an unclean sex before her marriage?" He looked at his men. "This is crazy."

  Rohan pressed his mouth tight as he jerked his head, indicating that Christy was to be put down. Jancy dropped her rather abruptly, and her blanket covering fell away from her tousled hair. Her red face was streaked with gritty tear tracks and she looked both terrified and furious at the same time. Rohan's blue-eyed gaze flicked back and forth between the tw
o of us. "I'm not supposing you'll be telling me where you come from."

  I pressed my mouth tight and broke from his eyes. "I told the others. We don't remember," I muttered, hating how stupid it sounded even as I mumbled it out. Was anyone truly to believe that we had both been, simultaneously, stricken with some sort of contagious amnesia? The inhabitants of this planet were barbarians, but hardly idiots.

  If only Christy and I could be alone so we could figure out what to do… or say. We had to get back to the stranded ship; to reveal its location would be catastrophic. Yet, as I had reflected earlier, we didn't know enough to give the man any explanations as to who we were or where we'd come from. Our only hope now, it seemed, was to say nothing and hope that these people did not believe in torturing women.

  He sniffed. "You know," he pinned me with his eyes, "it's a verra sure thing you'll be telling me eventually." His voice sounded exasperated, but really not very angry. He paused a moment, as if considering. "Jancy, take them to the Head Matron at the Sem. If they're from anywhere in New Wales, they would have been sent to Sem at sixteen. Someone there will recognize them."

  "But without Fathers' or Husbands' marks upon them…"

  "I know. But maybe someone's found a way to remove the marks. I know that sounds incredible, but let's rule that out first. For all we know they might just be some verra disobedient young ladies running away from their husbands." The glance he fixed me with made me wonder with a churning stomach what in the world happened to disobedient young ladies who ran away from their husbands. "Meanwhile, I'm having ideas of my own." He turned to the other man. "Mixal, I want to know exactly where you found them. Exactly."

  Jancy grabbed our arms and began leading us away, but he stopped and looked back over his shoulder when Rohan spoke again. "Oh, and tell Matron I want them examined by the physician. Thoroughly. Maybe he can tell us something."

  Chapter 4

  Any thoughts of escape we might have had were quashed the moment we walked out of Rohan's chamber. We were joined immediately by two other guards, both burly, who, after just a few curt words from Jancy, came along, armor creaking. As soon as the others joined us, following, Jancy dropped our arms and took the lead with the other two several paces behind us. Combine that with the fact that the castle seemed a maze of corridors, and we both knew that escape was impossible.

  I found myself dwarfed by our guards. Were there no small men on this planet? I found myself wondering incredulously. The sterile statistic from my data base… that average height of men had increased 6% in three hundred years had a staggering impact when viewed up close. The fact that the average height for a male was 6'3" meant that very few were less than six feet, and many topped 6'7". Rohan had been at least that. All in all it was like being surrounded by huge trees. I was tall for a woman, nearly 5'10". This meant that, on Earth, I was accustomed to being almost as tall as most men. Here, however, I felt overpowered by virtually all the men. It was not a comfortable feeling. Christy was at least four inches shorter than I; I suspected that she felt more or less like an ant.

  Christy dropped back slightly to fall into stride next to me. "What can we do?" she whispered. I pressed my mouth tight and waited for a sharp command to silence, but none came. It seemed that as long as we walked along with them cooperatively, they had little care if we talked. The two guards behind us were also whispering, speculating, no doubt, as to who, or what, we were.

  "Nothing," I answered. "There's nothing we can do but try to be as cooperative as possible and then," I lowered my voice even further, "…see if we can't get away." I looked at Christy, wanting to ask her something that had been torturing me since our capture. "Will they wait?" I paused, and went on, "When we don't come back, I mean."

  She dropped her eyes and sighed. "Jen," her voice cracked softly. "I told you. I think they were already gone, but, if they weren't, if they are waiting… They'll wait for a while. But then… probably not. They shouldn't you know. As you said, this planet is a ten. They'll take off. They can't wait forever, and how could they look for us? We're not fitted with locators," she paused while we turned a corner. I thought she was finished speaking, but then, very softly she added something. "The ship… it's not expendable." She looked directly into my eyes. "We are. That would be Unit policy."

  There seemed little to say after that, and we both walked along in silence until we were taken out of the castle. This city was fascinating from a researcher's standpoint, and I wished vaguely I were in a position to appreciate it more. Some of the construction techniques seemed very thirteenth or fourteenth, such as the half-timbered houses and the castle. There were no artificially powered vehicles and the narrow streets could not have accommodated any. Yet other things seemed almost nineteenth or twentieth. Glass was prevalent; every house had large glass windows. Also, the streets were paved with some sort of concrete as opposed to whatever had been commonplace in medieval times: cobblestones, if one were lucky, I surmised, plain dirt if one were not. Also, the city seemed very clean, completely fresh-smelling, totally unlike medieval cities which I knew had virtually no sanitation.

  It seemed odd to consider it, but I found myself wondering if they had some sort of indoor plumbing and underground water and sewer systems. It was almost as if they had packed a thousand years of progress on Earth into two or three hundred years. It was too bad I was hardly in a position to be curious or enjoy the research opportunities. For about the thousandth time in the last three hours, I cursed my decision to leave the landing sight.

  We walked along, Jancy still in the lead, the other two guards following. There were many people in the street, and all stared at us, in our strange clothing, curiously. Most were women and children, but a few men hurried here and there. The women were all dressed alike, in tunic tops that fell to their knees, with leggings of either a matching or a contrasting fabric emerging below. The tunics were slit on either side, almost to the waist. Most were in bright fabrics, but I saw one or two in all black. All of the women's heads were covered by a white fabric cloth except those few dressed in black; their head clothes were black also.

  The children were dressed alike, in tunics and trousers. I could tell them apart because the boys had short hair, while the little girls had long, braided hair. The only difference in the clothing was that the boys' tunics fell barely below their waists, while the girls' tunics dropped to mid-thigh. Unlike Earth, where one rarely saw children out of their home schools, here children seemed to be running and playing noisily everywhere. With a shock, I also realized that many of the women were visibly pregnant. Although I'd certainly seen a pregnant woman before, on Earth it was rare; only some very odd cookies chose to carry their babies themselves. With most fetuses transplanted into fetal units by the thirteenth week, women who actually looked pregnant were a real curiosity.

  We twisted and turned through several short streets, and my already depressed spirit plummeted further. As we'd crossed a main thoroughfare, I'd seen a glimpse of a gate several hundred yards away. Of course, it was not the gate we'd been brought through initially. The reality hit me like a falling stone: no little village here. This was a city. Escaping would only be a part of our task; finding our way back to the gate we'd come through would be perhaps even more daunting.

  Finally, after a few more twists and climbing a narrow staircase that ran between two dwellings, we came out on a larger square. There were shops along the edge, with merchandise displayed on open counters, and a few small stands set up in the square itself. Signs were all in neatly lettered English script. Most identified the establishment with two words, typically what I assumed was a name, followed by the craft or category sold in the shop, such as "Montu—Glasswear" or "Conte—Dentistry."

  Again I was struck by how clean everything seemed and my earlier question about running water was abruptly answered as I saw a child run to a small spout, spin a crank, and take a drink of bubbling water. Jancy strode briskly across the square to a large building fronted with a stone wall.
A small sign identified the building as "New Wales Seminary for Maidens." Christy and I looked at each other with puzzled amazement.

  The only opening in the wall was a large wooden door that was shut. I saw no handle. Jancy reached up and yanked on a chain. Far off, I could hear the jangle of a bell, and after a few moments, during which the men joked among themselves about this being a rare opportunity, comments that made no sense to us whatsoever, a voice came from behind the door. "Who's calling?"

  "Marcus Jancy, Matron. I'm a Captain in the Lord's army. He's sent me with two lost girls we've found. He wants the Head Matron to see them. He's hoping she can identify them."

  I saw a small panel in the door open and a small section of a face, barely more than the eye, peered out. Apparently satisfying herself that Jancy was who he claimed to be, the wooden door opened, and we walked into a large courtyard that fronted the four story building behind it.

  The door shut behind us with a thud and the woman who'd opened it walked around us, gazing openly at Christy and me. "Lost? What in the world…" The woman was very large, husky more than fat, and was dressed in black. But unlike the others we'd seen on the street, her tunic was long, almost to her ankles, and it was more flowing and not split up the sides. Her head was swathed thoroughly in her black kerchief. "What's this?" Without preamble she plucked my blanket up and gave a start of astonishment as she saw my regulation jumpsuit. "Where did these girls come from? Whose are they?"

  "We found them this morning… alone, can you believe it?… out on the Rumfries road. Walking along just as free as can be. They look old enough for husbands, to be sure, but when they wouldn't tell us who they were married to, or their fathers' names, well, we took a look for ourselves. Matron, you'll never believe it. Their bottoms are bare. No marks."