“I don’t know if I was marked in any way,” Shyla said. “There’s nothing visible on my body.”
She was afraid, very afraid.
“Let me run my hands over your body,” Seleni said, coming to stand beside her.
While Shyla sat very still, she set her hands on both sides of the girl’s head, at a couple centimetres’ distance from the flesh, and began to move them around it, very careful to not actually touch the girl. Shyla could feel a slight tingle of electricity from the hands; it was a nice, energizing feeling. Then Seleni did her neck, and moved down to her shoulders. Above her left shoulder the tingling turned into a stinging; Shyla shuddered, and had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.
Seleni let her hands fall to her lap, and the stinging feeling went away. The Wise Woman sighed.
“Yes, he marked you, Shyla, for certain. And if you’re marked, then Jaqui is, too, count on it, even if she’s not nominally a slave. Probably with a tiny resonator in the shoulder, just like the one Shyla has.”
She sat down on the bench, her face thoughtful.
“Does that mean that he can find us, no matter where we go?” Shyla asked, fighting back tears.
She did not want to go back to Gorsh’s, to be whipped, and/or sent to a creepy old man who liked virgins.
“That odd boy prisoner you talked with, was the one who told you to find a Wise Woman, or a Shaman?” Seleni asked her.
Shyla nodded.
“He said that a Wise Woman or a Shaman would be in touch with Nature Spirits, and Nature Spirits could help us.”
“Did he tell you anything else? Give you any other instructions?”
“Only that the other thing that we should do would be to find these three off-worlders who could, and would, help us if we got to them; their names are Kati, Llon, and Lank. He made me memorize the names, but he didn’t know where we’d find them. They’re supposed to be coming to Wayward, and may already be here, somewhere.”
“You didn’t tell me about them!” Jaqui protested.
“Yeah, Murra said to keep quiet about them until we got to a Wise Woman or a Shaman. It was for your safety, I think.”
“Look girls, I’m going to have to consult those Nature Spirits that your Murra spoke of. You two are exhausted; I want you to go lie down on my bed. Sleep if you can. Gorsh’s men are going to be flitting or flying here, looking for you, before the day is out, and we want to be ready for them.”
“Are they going to take us back?” Shyla asked in such a timid, tired voice that Jaqui wanted to swat her.
Seleni gave Jaqui a look which forbade the swat; then she winked.
“It’s going to be all right, Shyla, we’ll get out of that place yet,” Jaqui said, instead of sniping.
That wink; it had been a promise of sorts, she was sure of it! The Wise Woman Seleni was going to help them!
*****
“They’re coming with their flyer,” Seleni said when she woke the girls sleeping on her bed. “I can feel their approach. It’ll be only minutes ‘til they land their machine in my yard. I need to be hiding with Spirits by then. I never show myself to creatures like those men are.”
Shyla and Jaqui climbed onto their feet. The sun was shining into the house from the opposite direction from where it had been shining when they arrived at Seleni’s cottage. It was late afternoon, or early evening perhaps. The two had slept for hours.
Seleni handed each of them a wrap, and a mug of the restorative tea.
“Get those down into your stomachs while I do what I must do,” she said, looking from one young woman to the other.
“The River Valley Spirit and I created a jini for you to take with you. Which one of you spends more time in the cellars of that so-called Citadel?”
“I do,” Shyla replied.
“Although I think that we both will be tossed in there this time, after the Overseer whips us, of course,” added Jaqui.
“It’s possible that the jini can forestall the whipping, although I can’t promise that with certainty. The things that I do always have an amount of unpredictability to them, since I deal with living things. But the jini is connected to the River Valley Spirit, and, therefore, to the Planetary Spirits of this whole world. Through it we’re giving the positive energies of this planet access to that tainted cellar, and maybe the healing of the blot that’s down there can begin. Tell the boy, Murra, about the jini; I have the feeling that he can communicate with it. That means that I’ll be able to communicate with him, too, since I’m in touch with the River Valley Spirit.
“Oh, yes, I think that we can do something to help not just you two, but all the others who are caught under Gorsh’s thumb, and of those with whom he makes common cause!”
“Too bad that we never got the word out to those friends of Murra and the Lizards: Kati, Llon, and Lank,” Shyla said, between bites.
“I’ll get the Nature Spirits on that,” Seleni promised. “Now, stand still, Shyla. I’m going to let the jini tangle itself into your hair; it’ll be invisible there, even to the Mage and the Cellar Blot.”
She pulled out something sheer and insubstantial from her tunic pocket; it shimmered in the sunlight, and seemed to have the ability to expand and contract at will. Shyla steeled herself to feel a tangle on her head, but nothing like that happened.
“Oh!” Jaqui who was watching exclaimed, as the shimmer slid from the Wise Woman’s hands onto, and into Shyla’s hair.
“Hey, that jini suits you, Shyla,” Jaqui exclaimed seconds later. “It gives your hair a really nice shine!”
“I can’t feel it at all,” Shyla said. “Is it really there?”
“It definitely is,” Seleni replied, smiling broadly. “But it’s better if you just forget about it; that shouldn’t be hard since you can’t feel it.
“Now we’re ready to take on the Slaver and his minions, girls. I kind of suspect that this is the result the ones in the cellar were hoping for when they sent you looking for a Wise Woman or a Shaman. They must have guessed that Gorsh would never let you just run away, but if you were able to take back help from the Planetary Spirits, an end to the evil would become a possibility.”
“And now you and the Planetary Spirits know that there are others on this world who have come here, wanting to put an end to Gorsh’s doings,” Jaqui said, nodding her head. “And you and the Spirits can get together with them.”
“Just so. You’ve a quick mind, girl. Definitely wasted in a Slaver’s bed.
“But now I must disappear. If you two would be good enough to go down the path to the riverbank. There’s an open area beside the water, large enough for a flyer to land. I don’t want those Slaver’s creatures near my cottage; they’re afraid of me, and might be destructive in their fear.”
“We’ll go down there, for sure,” Jaqui agreed right away. She was glowing with the Wise Woman’s praise of her intellect.
Shyla was just as keen to head down to the water, if for different reason. She could not bear the thought that Gorsh’s men might damage the little cottage, or the lovely garden around it.
*****
The Overseer couldn’t quite understand Gorsh’s lenient attitude towards the girls who had attempted to run away. Of course one of them, the one who had dyed her blazing red hair dark brown for the attempt, was the one he liked to have in his bed when he wanted a woman (other than his wife, and he had not spent too many nights with Milla in the last some years), so perhaps he didn’t want to despoil her by whipping her. The other one had been earmarked for Councillor Koruse, but had missed the shipment going to Strone that morning. Maybe she could be on the next shipment. But, surely Koruse was not a man to mind a few welts on her back, so long as no-one messed with those parts that he had a hankering for!
The Overseer had had the chains and the whips ready before the flyer had arrived at the Citadel Square with the recaptured girls. He had been rather pleased actually with the escape attempt, since that sort of a thing usually meant that he got to
perform a punishment detail, and after a good whipping, or two, he generally found that he actually enjoyed sex with his tired and unhappy wife. Most of the time all she could provide him with was relief, but after he had whipped somebody, especially a woman, he found that he had the desire and the stamina of a stallion. He rather thought that his wife did not relish the sessions as much as he did, especially since he had refused her the benefit of birth control clips, and sessions like that seemed to result in pregnancies. But he liked having yard apes around; after all, he didn’t have to birth them, suckle them, or change their diapers. No sir, he had much more important things to do, looking after Gorsh’s holdings.
But apparently Gorsh was going to pass on the corporal punishment, for whatever reason.
“What I think I’m going to do to punish the two of you, is send you into the cellars, into the room beyond Mosse’s lab, where the comatose bodies are. I understand that you find Mosse’s attentions objectionable, Shyla. Maybe having to put up with a little more of pawing from him will make you willing to go to Koruse’s, when the time for the next shipment comes around. And maybe you, Jaqui, will appreciate me a little more, after you have to peel Mosse’s arms from around your waist a few times. When it comes to you, I don’t even mind if he humps you, though not using the equipment in his quarters; you’re no frail flower of a virgin to be handed intact to an anxious Councillor, the way Shyla is.”
Jaqui shuddered. Mosse was gross, even without the equipment of which she had heard whispers. Then she remembered the jini in Shyla’s hair. Perhaps it could help keep Mosse’s hands off her! In any case, she and Shyla were going into the place where Seleni had wanted them to take the jini, and they were going there without first being whipped! She stole a glance at the Overseer’s disappointed face. The scuttlebutt was that he enjoyed whipping women; that until Gorsh had recently acquired a female doctor who had equipped the Overseer’s wife with birth control clips on the sly, the wife had always borne a baby nine months after a woman had been whipped! Well, he was going to miss out on his dubious pleasure this time! Probably thanks to the jini!
Jaqui schooled her face into an expression of unwilling submission while she sent a little message of thanks to the jini and Seleni. She gave Shyla’s hand a reassuring touch, while the other girl kept her eyes on the ground.
Gorsh noted the gesture, and it occurred to him to wonder whether the girls were lovers—was that why they had run away together? Mosse would like it if they were; he would consider it a grand perversion, created especially for his amusement. Gorsh himself did not care one way or the other—so long as Mosse restrained himself from damaging what, right now, was most valuable about Shyla. The Mage better not even fantasize about penetrating her.
*****
To Shyla’s surprise Gorsh sent only Tere to see her and Jaqui down into the cellars.
Tere shrugged when, on the stairs down, she commented on this.
“Where would you go except the room behind the lab?” he asked. “The dungeons, even further down? I don’t think so. And there really is no place else, outside of empty rooms that are cold and clammy, and filled with murk.”
“And now we know that he can keep tabs on us, no matter where we are,” Jaqui added.
“Actually, not down in the cellars,” Tere said. “I was asking about that, after somebody told me about his method of tracking us chattels. He told me that the cellars are the one place where Gorsh can’t trace the markers—the murk prevents it somehow.”
“How handy,” Jaqui muttered, “that the one place where he can’t keep tabs on us is the one place where he doesn’t need to.”
“All I can say is that I’m sorry that you girls didn’t manage to scram,” added Tere. “It would have been nice to know that somebody made it out of this trap alive.”
“I guess Gorsh was pretty confident about being able to pick us up again,” Shyla said. “He took his time about coming after us.”
“Yeah, we were getting hopeful that we’d gotten away,” added Jaqui with a sidelong glance at the other girl.
“I think that it was the idea. He wanted you two to start thinking that you had gotten out safely. Then—boom—down comes a flyer, right on top of you, and picks you up! Demoralizing, or what?”
It would have been, Jaqui thought, if that had been how it had happened. But they had chanced upon the Wise Woman’s cottage, and by the time the flyer had picked them up they were well forewarned. Had some deity been looking after them? Had their talk about searching out a Wise Woman or a Shaman somehow triggered something to lead them to the nearest such a person? Or was the presence of the jini just making her think silly thoughts?
The three of them fell silent when they approached Mosse’s laboratory. As usual, the door into it was unlocked—Gorsh did not like his underlings to lock doors. He wanted to be able to breach their privacy at will, and he did, or he sent his minions to do so.
They slipped into the lab through the door which they only partially opened, hoping to sneak through, or at least as far as possible, without alerting the Mage, if he was busy at his unlikeable doings. To their surprise, he seemed to be nowhere in sight; Shyla and Tere stared at one another as they registered the room as empty. Where was Mosse? In his quarters, torturing the latest girl that Gorsh had let him take down there? Or was he somewhere else, like the back room towards which the three of them were headed? Surely he had not gone there; he was not supposed to disturb the patients. They were too valuable to Gorsh for Mosse to be allowed to interfere with them. Would he have some business down in the dungeons into which Gorsh reputedly threw those who caused him the most trouble, or else were of no use to him at all?
Shyla breathed a sigh of relief when she got the door to the back room open, and saw that Murra was sitting in his usual spot, next to the comatose bodies. All seemed to be well there; Mosse was not in the room.
Tere turned to her:
“Well, I guess I better go back up; I wasn’t given permission to stay, but only to escort you down. I have to obey the Boss, just like everyone else.”
Then he was gone, the ancient lock which kept them in but did not prevent outside entry, clanging shut behind him. Shyla and Jaqui were left in the back room with Murra and the three bodies lying motionless on their beds.
Jaqui made sure that the door was as well shut as it could be, before turning to Shyla.
“I guess we can allow the jini to leave your hair, now—if it’s willing, of course,” she said.
Murra’s face broke into a wide smile. The jini rose from Shyla’s head, leaving her hair slightly duller than it had been. As the girls watched, it’s shimmering but transparent form flew over to Murra and wrapped itself around his wrist, settling there almost as invisibly as it had been among Shyla’s locks. Jaqui, looking on was quite certain that the jini and the boy were communicating.
After a few moments, Murra turned to the girls.
“Thank you,” he said. “You two have done well. There’s hope for us all, now.”
“Is this how you were planning for things to go?” Jaqui asked. “Did you know that we’d not get away; that we’d have to come back?”
“It wasn’t a plan, really,” Murra answered, speaking slowly. “We were hoping that you would find help, and if you couldn’t get away, at least you would get word out that there were those stuck inside here, who wanted to get rid of all the awfulness that’s been going on. We didn’t know that it was possible for you to bring a being like this one, with you.”
“It’s a jini,” Shyla explained. “That’s what Wise Woman Seleni called it.”
“You said ‘we’,” Jaqui pointed out. “Do you mean the Lizard man? And the Lizard woman, too?”
“Both of them,” Murra agreed. “And the Federation Agent as well. There are three astral forms hanging about this room, and the jini can communicate with all of them—and me, too.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lank watched Llon walk through the glass doors, out onto the
patio, and into the garden beyond. He had asked Sammas if anyone would mind if he strolled there for a few minutes, while the rest of The Spacebird’s crew finished their meals and listened to the minstrel who had come into the sitting room as soon as the host had left with Captain Katerina. The minstrel’s tunes were simple songs, and did not engage much of Lank’s musical attention; he could easily enough listen, and contemplate Llon’s actions at the same time.
Llon must have decided to see if he could relate to the Nature Spirits of Wayward, Lank assumed. The Lordz garden was probably a good place in which to call such Spirits; it was a riot of trees, flowering bushes, and herbaceous blooms. There may even have been a vegetable garden, or a bit of an orchard, somewhere, tucked out of immediate sight. There were stone seats scattered here and there, along the gravelled walks; Llon would easily find a pleasant spot for his meditations.
Lank turned his attention back to the room, where Ciela was practising her Waywardian accent while conversing with a rather handsome young manservant who was paying a lot of attention to her, apparently—maybe a little too much, to her supposed cousin’s way of thinking. Well, if they were pretending to be related, he had an excuse to keep tabs on her flirting, if that was what she was doing. Ciela may have been bright, but she was also from one of the back-of-beyond islands of Tarangay, and probably naive about the dangers that the big universe might pose to a lively young woman. It would not be amiss to keep an eye on her.
Chrysalia had settled into a very relaxed pose in the comfortable chair in which she was seated, chatting amiably with Sammas who apparently had decided that it was his job to keep the conversation in the sitting room going while his master was closeted with Captain Katerina. Only, and Lank saw this merely because he happened to get his node to clarify his vision in order to find the wine glass he had laid somewhere before he had gone to look out the window, her extra nails were flipping in and out, just a tiny bit, in spite of her easy stance. Was she anxious about something? Lank got his node to increase his hearing, and settled into a chair to eavesdrop, completely forgetting the wine glass.
Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers Page 30
