Men In Chains

by Virginia Reede

  Delinda thought she understood, as it was a common problem with breeding houses, even in the city. Here, with the ever-present influence of the Eye of the Goddess, she imagined successful breeding was even more uncommon. She took pity on Ostyn and finished the story for him. “He was unable to fulfill the service she was paying for and she got angry and hurt him, is that what happened?”

  “Yes,” said Ostyn, obviously relieved at her understanding. “And she had done it before, with other men there. The owner had not wanted to serve her, but was afraid of angering the Ra-drine, so…” He shrugged.

  “So she picks whatever male she can do without if he is too damaged to perform for a week or so, and takes the money,” Delinda finished disgustedly.

  There was some noise in the street and Delinda peeked around the corner to see that women were starting to leave in small groups. “Come on, Ostyn, the slave auction is about to start and it looks like these women are going there. Let’s go the other way.”

  “You are not going?” he asked, surprised.

  “I had intended to,” she replied. “But if Bloduewedd or her women are going to be there, it might not be the best time to bring more attention to myself by bidding on too many men. I have already given her too much to think about for one day.” She strode off in the opposite direction, intending to take the long way to the public stables. She was annoyed that her intention to bring two or three more men back to the estate would have to be delayed until next week’s auction. She was impatient to execute her plan and did not like hindrances, especially those she had caused herself.

  “Delinda?” asked a voice. It was Korin, coming toward her. “I had thought you would have left by now.” She stopped, peering at Delinda’s face. “By the look of you, you might have been happier if you had. Is something wrong?”

  “I’m really not sure,” Delinda said. “But I fear I made a blunder with the Ra-drine at the inn and I am not sure what I can do about it, if anything.”

  Korin’s pleasant face creased with concern. “Why do you not come to my house for a moment? It is near the stables and will not delay you long. We can have some more tea and you can tell me what happened, and be refreshed for your long ride home.”

  Gratefully, Delinda fell into step with Korin and they walked in companionable silence to a small, pleasant house set back from a quiet lane off the main street. Lamps were already lit and they came through a side door to find Letta in the kitchen, with water boiling for tea and a light meal on the table.

  “Letta, we have a guest,” said Korin, then, noticing Delinda’s wince, she corrected, “guests.” Letta swiftly added another place at the table and then, glancing at Ostyn, added a fourth. The three women seated themselves at the table while Ostyn hung back near the door. When all three faces turned toward him, he gulped and shyly joined them.

  Delinda smiled at him encouragingly. She had sat at the kitchen table with him at home, but she knew this was a new and uncomfortable experience for him. She noted with amusement that he had not even seen her smile, as he was glancing sideways at Letta, who was also beaming encouragement.

  As they ate, Delinda described the encounter with Bloduewedd at the inn. All three of her listeners were rapt and when she finished the narrative, Korin sighed appreciatively. “Well, I cannot see that you actually did anything wrong,” she said comfortably. “But I perceive that for some reason, which you have not yet shared,” she glanced at Delinda, but only briefly, “you were hoping to conceal your power from her, at least for a while.”

  When Delinda did not comment, she went on. “You probably never had any chance of deceiving her on that point, you know. She and your mother knew one another well and Morenna always had you with her when you were a babe. Since your mother is dead, Bloduewedd would assume she passed her rahnta to you unless she died untimely before she had the chance.”

  “She almost did not,” replied Delinda. “Pass it on, I mean. I had to convince her and it was not easy. Especially since I could not bring myself to promise her I would not come back here.” Delinda smiled fondly. “But in the end, she could not deny me anything. She spoiled me terribly, you know.”

  “I doubt that,” said Korin. “Indulged you a little, perhaps, which is not the same thing. Morenna was far too sensible and you are far too nice a woman to have been spoiled much.”

  “Thank you,” said Delinda, more for the compliment to her mother than herself. Changing the subject, she said, “I wonder if you would be willing to tell me what you know about the Eye of the Goddess.”

  Korin considered. “Letta,” she said to the girl, who had risen and started to clean up, swiftly assisted by Ostyn, who could not yet bring himself to be waited on. “Perhaps you could take Ostyn to the front room and show him your beautiful tapestry designs. Would you like that, Ostyn?”

  “Oh, yes Miss,” said Ostyn.

  Letta looked torn between hearing more of the conversation and enjoying Ostyn’s discomfort at her attention, but she left the kitchen as instructed.

  Once they were alone, Korin turned to Delinda. “I am surprised your mother did not tell you about the Eye before she passed her powers to you.”

  “She did,” said Delinda. “What she knew. But the Eye was young when she left, and Bloduewedd had deceived her as to its true purpose, so she only knew what she had been able to learn herself.” She sighed, remembering her mother’s ill treatment. “And that was twenty years ago. I know I am not yet as strong as my mother, but I feel the Eye all of the time here, which is not at all as she described it. Am I mistaken that it has grown in power since we left?”

  “You are not mistaken,” replied Korin. “The Eye is more potent and has a much longer reach every year. That is what has drawn so many women to the sector and, especially, so many slaves.” Korin continued, “As you know, the rahnta can only be passed from a mother to a daughter, and then only if the daughter was conceived after the mother had received the power herself. If a woman gives birth only to males, or dies before the power can be passed…well, the number of women who can carry rahnta decreases with every generation.” She sighed. “My older sister did not have the aptitude, so I received the power from my mother. Unfortunately, my sister had a number of fine daughters, and I had only one, who died before she was old enough to receive it.

  “Without the rahnta, it is nearly impossible for one woman to control a large number of slaves. In a sector like this, where the society is based on farming, the women with rahnta naturally came to own the largest farms, as they did not have to pay employees to work the fields. But every generation, another of the bigger estates fell into ruin because, for one reason or another, the heir had no rahnta and could not run her enterprise profitably without it.”

  Delinda nodded—she knew all this from her schooling. It was the same with all of the sectors that relied heavily on manual labor for their primary industries.

  “And the dwindling of the great estates was not the only consequence of the diminishing generations of women of power. The greatest healers and teachers had always been possessors of power, as were the poets, artists, philosophers and stateswomen. Society declined as a whole. Fewer women possessed the rahnta, and those who did saw their prestige and wealth increased. An elitism that would have horrified their great-grandmothers emerged.

  “Then, about the time when your grandmother died and your mother became Ra-drine, a young and unusually powerful woman named Bloduewedd made a remarkable discovery—the rahnta could be shared with many un-empowered women, to a much lesser degree, and only if there was some kind of center or magnifying entity that could be used to focus that power.”

  “So, she created the Eye of the Goddess?” asked Delinda, who had heard only the vaguest of details on this point from her mother.

  “Not immediately,” said Korin. “Even though her strength was remarkable, she did not have the potency to do it on her own. She needed help.”

  “So she came to my mother,” said Delinda in a whisper.
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br />   “Yes,” replied Korin. “She came to Morenna with a plan to save the sector and to benefit womankind in the process. And your mother, being the kind and trusting soul that she was, took her in. And that,” she continued, “was when the trouble started.”

  Chapter Four

  Jeryl rapidly regained his feet and spun around to face the bars of his cell. Alun was already leaving via the door through which he had come. The other men who had helped restrain him had already retreated to their own spaces.

  “Why did you stop me?” he howled in frustration. “You are all captives, even if you are not in cages. We could have escaped together!” The men in the cells opposite Jeryl just turned their backs and ignored him.

  “Answer me!” he shouted. “Tell me why? Why you stopped me and why you will not try to escape?” He rattled the bars in fury.

  “To where?” came a voice from Jeryl’s right. The solid wall of his cell blocked his view.

  “What?” he asked, nonplussed.

  “Escape to where?” came the voice again, sounding much too reasonable to Jeryl. “To answer your questions, they stopped you because they did not want Alun to get into trouble with the mistress, and they did not try to escape because there is nowhere to escape to.”

  “There must be somewhere to go,” grumbled Jeryl. “Somewhere away from these foul women.”

  “Well, I would agree with you that the women in this sector are, on average, fouler than most,” said the voice with a chuckle. “It seems to draw them. But from what I understand, there is no sector where men are not slaves.”

  This stopped Jeryl. “All men?” he asked, incredulous.

  “Yes, all men,” replied the unknown informant. “Although I am told the treatment is better in other sectors, especially in the cities. I would not know from personal experience, having been born here.”

  Jeryl slumped onto the bench. He felt panic rise and fought it back. “There must be a place where a man could hide, and live wild. Hunting and foraging for food would be better than bondage.” He heard a heavy sigh from the next cell.

  “Yes, there are some who would agree with you. I was one of them, once.” The voice came closer, and a hand was extended from between the bars of the next cell. “My name is Duwall, friend. What is yours? Are you an outlander?”

  “I am not from this place, if that is what you mean.” He rose and walked to the edge of the cell, sticking one arm through to grasp the hand that was offered. “I am Jeryl, and my ship, the Sheeling, was wrecked on these shores last night. I was looking for water and shelter when I came upon a group of women and asked for help.”

  Duwall guffawed. “I’ll wager that did not go too well. Who were the women?”

  “I do not know all of their names, but the first one I ran into was a nasty piece of work called Grenda, and her boss is a positively frightening woman named Bloddawith or something of the sort.”

  “Her name is Bloduewedd,” replied Duwall, and the laughter was gone from his tone. “And frightening is exactly the right word for her. Ah, Jeryl, you really did fall out of one calamity and into another.”

  “I’m beginning to understand that.”

  “You said ‘my ship’. Are you a master of ships then?” Duwall asked.

  “I am,” said Jeryl. “And I know about building them. If I could just get out of here…” He stopped. He had sailed for months to reach this place. To make a boat large enough to return home would take tools and materials. And time—years of time, if working alone. Still, it would appear Jeryl had an abundance of time on his hands.

  “Friend, even if you could escape to hide somewhere far from a town, this land is not so vast that any place will be safe for long,” Duwall said. “I have heard of men escaping capture for a few days or even weeks, but eventually they are always caught and returned. Grenda and her group of hags are very, very good at tracking down runaway slaves. I know from personal experience.” There was an edge to his tone that let Jeryl know he and Duwall were in agreement in their opinion of Grenda.

  Jeryl realized the men in the stalls were listening to the conversation, but none of them had made a sound since he had arrived. “Tell me, Duwall,” he said as he stared at them. “Why is it that you are willing to talk to me and the rest of these men are silent?”

  This drew a chuckle. “Because they are better behaved than I am and have more to lose. I have already been given up as a lost cause in the matter of discipline. Alun has seen me come and go so many times that he just shakes his head and leads me in. I have been owned by more women than any slave in the sector, and I’ve not yet seen my twenty-second year. At least I do not think so—birth records are not kept for males.”

  “If you are so notorious,” asked Jeryl, “why do the women keep buying you?”

  Duwall laughed again. “Ah, outlander, you cannot see me through the walls. I do not wish to be immodest, but it is said that I am wonderfully fair to look at.” This comment actually elicited a few grins and rolling of eyes from the men Jeryl could see. “And I am a challenge. Each new woman thinks she has the rahnta to keep me in line.”

  Jeryl did not know the word. “The what?” he asked.

  “The rahnta—the power,” said Duwall. “A special kind of power some women here wield. For some reason, I seem to be mostly immune to it.”

  “What does this rahnta do?” asked Jeryl. “Or what do they do with it?”

  Duwall paused as if considering. “It’s not the same for all of them. Most women do not have it at all, and some only have a little bit. They mostly use it to control their slaves.”

  “So rahnta is used to control others?” asked Jeryl.

  “Not always,” replied Duwall. “Sometimes it’s used to heal people or just make them feel better. Or to enhance physical pleasure. I’ve never felt it much myself, having some sort of natural resistance, but I’m told it’s a wondrous feeling to be touched by the rahnta in that way.”

  “The angel,” murmured Jeryl.

  “What’s that?” asked Duwall.

  “The angel,” said Jeryl more loudly. “There was a woman who helped me when I fell in the street. I was half blind with exhaustion and delirious from thirst, and at first I thought she was an angel. Then she touched me, and…” He trailed off, remembering the strange sensation of light and heat.

  “When was this?” asked Duwall.

  “Not more than an hour ago, in the street on the way here. Grenda was pulling me behind her horse on a rope, and I fell and could not get up. Then this woman came and helped me up, and—”

  Duwall interrupted. “In front of Grenda? What did she say?”

  “Grenda?” Jeryl tried to remember. “She thanked the woman, I think. Although she did not really sound too happy about it.”

  “What did she look like, this woman?” asked Duwall.

  “She was tall, but a lot of them are here, seemingly.” He pictured the woman. “Her hair was red, dark red like blood, and wild and curly. She was probably in her twenties, and pretty. Beautiful. She had the most amazing golden eyes.” Jeryl remembered how she had spoken to Grenda. “I come from a noble family in my own lands, and I would swear she carried herself like royalty.”

  “Royalty?” asked Duwall, obviously unfamiliar with the word.

  “Like someone important, who was used to people obeying them. Like Bloduewedd, only less arrogant. And less scary.”

  “Hmmm,” Duwall pondered. “I’m sure I have seen all the noblewomen in this village, but the woman you are describing does not seem familiar to me.” He shrugged. “Of course, there are women coming to the sector all the time, to be near the Eye. But if a woman already had rahnta of her own, she would have no need. The golden eyes are common enough here. The family that held power before Bloduewedd all had those eyes, and half the slaves born in the sector are probably related to them—they were a prolific lot. I have the golden eyes myself—one of my better features, ‘tis said.”

  His tone brightened. “Well, if she’s new, may
be she will not know my reputation, and she will buy me at next week’s auction. I would much rather catch some rich woman’s eye for a chamber slave than end up in another field.”

  What’s a chamber slave? Jeryl wanted to ask, but there was a commotion outside and all the men who could do so climbed atop their benches to look through the small, high windows. Jeryl, having no window, asked “What’s going on?” Surprisingly, one of the men spoke.

  “The auction is about to start,” he said, and turned to watch.

  * * * * *

  Even though most of the other customers had left the inn to bid on or just watch the auction, Bloduewedd still sat at her place at the long table. Grenda would have rather watched the show, but she knew her Ra-drine well. Bloduewedd may have laughed in front of the others, but inside she was seething at the stuck-up red-haired woman’s display.

  She could tell this was going to be a long night when Bloduewedd switched from wine to coar-fruit brandy. The potent liquor always brought out the Ra-drine’s worst side. Grenda, usually able to duck most of Bloduewedd’s abuse, would have liked to suggest they return home but she knew better than to interfere if her mistress was going on a drinking binge.

  Grenda sighed. Because Bloduewedd didn’t usually look drunk—no slurred speech or staggering or the like—most of her women didn’t know how much the liquor affected her. Grenda didn’t mind when she got vicious with others, but once Bloduewedd hit a certain point, one target was as good as another. Grenda had to be careful to protect her own head, as well as trying to steer Bloduewedd away from other women of power in the village. It would not do for the Reliants to see their Rahntadrine in that condition—they might start wondering if she was fit for her position.

  Luckily, most of the customers that stayed behind were deep enough in their own cups not to notice how much the Ra-drine was drinking and Bloduewedd had done no worse than argue with the innkeeper about the best way to choose fruit to make pies. Bloduewedd had never made a pie in her life. Grenda was keeping a close eye on the discussion—this was a good inn and she would hate to have to break in a new innkeeper—when Bloduewedd cut off the argument and rose to her feet.