Chapter 3 No.3

When Si'Wren opened her eyes, she realized that it was night time. She lay on a low wooden sleeping rack, and before her was the cobblestone fire pit, the yellow flames of which warmed and illuminated the slave quarters, a long low bungalow of rough-hewn cypress beams.

Deliriously, she half-raised her aching head and took in her surroundings. She realized, looking unsteadily around in the semi-darkness, that she was alone, and she could hear the distant sounds of celebration emanating from the Master's House.

Her head was swimming and there was a terrible pain in it.

The lilting sing-song sounds of the musicians drifted across the compound and teased at her ears, lulling her somnambulantly to the accompaniment of the rhythmic chi-chi-ching-ching of finger cymbals, and the reedy reeee-eeeee-eeeee-ree-ree-rooo-rooo-roo-ooooooooooooo of the wood pipes.

Shame filled her soul as she remembered the death of Nelatha, and the terrible danger that had befallen her later after dark, when she had narrowly escaped after wandering foolishly out into the wilds all alone when Habrunt had come suddenly and unexpectedly to rescue her from the evil ministrations of the two evil men he had slain.

But for Habrunt she would surely have suffered a terrible fate at their hands.

Now, only now, did Si'Wren fully and truly understand what Habrunt had risked to slay the sons of the noblemen in favor of one so lowly as she. Should Master Rababull ever find out the truth, his vengeance upon both herself and Habrunt would be fearsome and terrible.

At thought of this, Si'Wren's remorse was compounded ten-fold by the bitter memories of the many fond smiles and cheery looks which Master Rababull had so often bestowed upon her from earliest memory.

Habrunt had shown his concern for her safety this night, but the memory of earlier, when she had seen his terrible face and felt of his iron grip in her hair, doing his utmost to convince Master Rababull that he had not the slightest concern for Si'Wren's life, would not leave her now, and tears streaked her cheeks as she shut her eyes in silent anguish.

Downwind from the House, she could smell the wonderful scents of the Master's best ceremonial incense mingled with the pungence of tobacco, the tang of wine, and the huge feast with it's jasmine tea, roasted melons stuffed with baked vegetables and breadstuffs, sweet seed cakes, sugar-spices, candies, and honeyed foods.

Her head was woozy from the beating. Her bruised face seemed numb to the touch, wherever she chanced to touch be it ever so delicately. Raising her fingertips to her puffed lips, she felt a dried crust of blood all around her nose and mouth and down the side of her upper lip, chin, and throat. The inside of her mouth felt scummy. She had an uncontrollable thirst, but found nothing to drink.

Then, a noise and a dark silhouette at the entrance to the bungalow caused her to look up in unconscious renewed terror. She felt her eyes widen, and then she saw Habrunt standing there, his downcast countenance and the gleam of his bulging muscles appearing in the flickering uncertain firelight like an apparition as the curtain was drawn back by his large hand. In his other hand was a fire-hardened clay cup.

She sensed his eyes upon her, and looked up with the same open-faced showing of subservience and unthinking trust with which she had always looked to him before. Then her eyes fell, and she became as a downcast wretch, a hag before her time, weeping uncontrollably on the dirty cot before his compassionately kneeling figure.

Tears of shame fell from her closed eyelids, but she felt surprise as she felt Habrunt's strong hand placed gently upon her shoulder, and with his other hand, he held up the clay cup.

From the odor of it, she dimly perceived that it was simple herbal tea, and not a powerful potion such as she had delivered to the Physician earlier.

He placed it gently to her lips. From the feel of it's even warmth, she sensed that he had warmed it a little, though not enough to be too much for her. She let it's tasteless liquid slip through her feverish lips, and could not discern it, either as warmth nor coolness. It was neither sweet nor sour, and faintly but not unpleasantly bitter.

When she'd had a little, he removed the cup from her lips and set it down on the earthen floor, already forgotten in the dark shadows beneath the cot.

He remained frozen for a moment in the stillness of the deserted bungalow. She thought he must be angry at her, and deservedly so, but she saw no wrath in the quiet look of compassion with which he studied her. His eyes were steady and calm.

"Fear not, little one," said Habrunt, his voice a deep, soft reassurance to her. "No one shall pluck thee from my hand."

At this, her eyes lifted up to his in surprise, and she saw his forefinger raised vertically against his pursed lips, beneath cautiously furrowed masculine eyebrows, the universal gesture for silence and secret comradeliness.

He leaned forward towards her, and bent down, and kissed her gently on the forehead.

Eyelids shutting reflexively, she tingled all over, from her aching head to her tiny feet, at the soft touch of his lips. She quivered all inside at the furriness of his thick beard, and the brush of his long wavy locks where they fell from beneath his leather headband against her numbed face.

He took out a clean cloth and formed it into a cup-shape in one hand, and poured out a little tea onto it, letting it soak in. Then, he carefully began ever so gently wiping away the congealed saliva and dried blood from her face, her lips, her chin, and her throat. After that, he untied a small clay bottle from his belt, refolded the dampened cloth to a clean side, and unstopped the little bottle to tilt it's mouth over the cloth, and applied some of it's contents thereon.

Again, he wiped her entire face and forehead, her throat, up around her ears, and across the back of her neck. His touch was gentle all over her head and neck, as he anointed the semi-conscious girl with a thin, soothing layer of purest olive oil.

He surveyed her face again, noting once more, with the same inner, grim satisfaction as before, that she had suffered no apparent lasting injury despite much swelling and bruises. He felt small solace in this, but as it was yet within his power, he would surely command whatever he might in her behalf.

Suddenly, footsteps could be heard approaching the entrance from outside, and she sensed him rise in the flickering shadows and step to one side of the door. There he stood tall and motionless before her, waiting for the footsteps to carry past. The approaching footsteps were accompanied by an admixture of slurred male and female voices, perhaps four people in all.

Their unseen progress could be followed by the changing aspects of the snatches and sudden outbursts of laughter to which they resorted in their senseless and continuous amusement at everything around them, including themselves.

The golden gleam of Habrunt's bronze sword flashed before Si'Wren's eyes, making her catch her breath in fear.

Some of their words could be indistinctly made out, and Habrunt realized that the men were from the nearby city, talking with pent-up anticipation of having a good time with a couple of lush young girls from the caravan, whom they were taking to a nearby garden gazebo, a flimsy trellis of bamboo, stone, and clinging green vines.

Habrunt scowled. Still more of Rababull's 'party favors', no doubt. Four had already died this night, besides Nelatha, and another savagely beaten. What would be the tally by dawn's light?

As their noisome prittle-prattle faded into the distance, Habrunt felt the danger pass. He turned away from Si'Wren, and stepped out into the night without another word, gone with such stealth that he slipped away as silently as he had come.

She shivered, beginning to tremble feverishly all over.

The music from the House rose to a faster and louder tempo as riotous laughter and the excited shrieks of women was accompanied by the generally raucous bellowing of many foolishly happy male voices. Then the voices died down a bit, and the music picked up a thumping tempo of heavy drum beats. The scent of the incense, exotic and strange, came to Si'Wren again, wafted through the drifting mists in the chill night air.

Chills racked her. The cold of night was at her back, and it's embrace was beginning to seize her with shivers and cramps. But the flickering fire was before her still, accompanied by the emotional warmth of the memory of Habrunt's kiss upon her forehead.

She lifted herself up until she was propped on one elbow, and tried to ignore her chills as she basked in the velvety, mesmerizing warmth and stared long into the glowing fire pit. She had a fever, and was too full of wonder at the behavior of Habrunt to go back to sleep. In the background, the rhythmical chi-chi-ching and reedy reeee-reeeee-reeeee of the music lulled her senses, as her eyes became half-lidded.

Suddenly, as she watched the flickering flames, they began to change shape before her delirious eyes, and became-fiery dancing girls.

Eerily tall, the tireless shapes of the dancing girls pranced and danced and jumped and leaped to the distant music from Master Rababull's House. They shifted and changed positions with each other again and again and yet again, as around and around them jumped up the black shadows of demons, chasing the breathlessly fast fiery dancing girls.

The demons were fast, but the thin, leaping, fiery dancing girls were swifter than lightning, impossibly fast and elusive, so much so that the persistent demons could not catch even one of the fire girls, who kept disappearing miraculously out of their clutches and slipping through their clutching black claws as easily as a collection of brilliant feminine fire wraiths.

The yellow firelight flashed in brilliance from the eerily thin leaping flame figures, and suddenly, Si'Wren became one of them.

As they danced, she danced, and as they leaped, she leaped with them, in an entrancingly intricate pattern of leaps and prances, as the light of the Invisible God shined from within herself to light the way for her tiny dancing feet.

All around her the demons whirled and chased, ever seeking to carry her away from the others, and away from the holy light of the Invisible God, but she, like the fiery dancing girls, could not be caught by them for all of their efforts, for that Perfect Light was like a living fire within Si'Wren.

The smell of the fire's smoke reached her once, and she realized that the demons were tormented by the fiery light of the eerily beautiful dancing girls, for she smelled the smoke of their torment, and as she lay staring unblinkingly at the fire, she danced endlessly into the darkness of the night.

* * *

When she awoke again, it was to the morning sounds of the sleeping and hung-over alike, sighing and snoring all around her in the cypress bungalow, and to renewed thirst, chills, and constant tormented shivering from the pronounced effects of the fever.

There was an aching in her beaten head and face, and a curious, inexplicable emotional void in her soul where once her long-fervent love of her Master Rababull had long flourished eternal.

Soon the bungalow's occupants had all risen. Tired and hung over from all their ravelings of the night before, they ignored her. It was Master Rababull's custom to get the slaves as drunk as they could possibly manage and exclusively on red wine, but not in the House with his honored guests, so that by their hangovers they might not desire the fancies of a freeman with quite the same vigor in times to come. Their lusts were gone from them now, and they all went through their daily preparations for a day's work in the Master's fields in a curious pinch-faced, silent expression of unaccustomed suffering, their heads aching miserably as they shuffled out without so much as a single solitary civil word from the lot of them.

None dared speak to Si'Wren, in spite of her worse suffering than theirs. What she had done was taboo. Selling idols was an important means to gaining much gold. What she had done was tantamount to the symbolic ruination of the very economy and foundation of the entire House of Rababull, and moreover, an overt rejection of the very gods themselves.

The unknown few that might have dared befriend her were no doubt too afraid of the others, and especially of Master Rababull himself. Had they even desired to do so, which she suspected none did, not a one dared show sympathy even by so much as the merest wink of an eye.

Si'Wren felt her heart and soul wrenched by the realization that because of what she stood guilty of she was henceforth to be counted by all others as an utter and complete outcast, a living abomination even amongst her own kind-lowly slaves all.

Many hated her, but dared not show that either, lest Slavemaster Habrunt should learn of it somehow and make his displeasure known to them instead. For that, Si'Wren was doubly-taboo. Besides all of this, she would not have dared to give the slightest verbal reply to any of them anyway.

She spent the day in a lethargic state of abject misery, feeling as if her head would split open from aching, an agony which she would have readily traded places with the slaves for their pains instead, as they went out suffering visibly and openly from being so obviously hung-over.

The old slave-woman, L'acoci, a toothless, gray-haired scarecrow of a crone, too old and decrepit to do much useful work out-of-doors anymore, had been instructed by Habrunt to make use of herself and be a nursemaid to Si'Wren. With a lifetime of experience to draw upon, L'acoci gave Si'Wren a tea poultice to sooth her bruises, and some rich broth skimmed from the vegetable stew to strengthen her.

Throughout the afternoon, Si'Wren continued to suffer from her beating and the fever. L'acoci was kept busy at the simmering stew pot for the sake of the other slaves. They were due to come in from the fields just as dusk dimmed into night, and the old crone did not appear to take especial notice of Si'Wren's physical distress.

But when Si'Wren finally began to moan in pain, at long last L'acoci deigned to hear her cries as the old hag came over to her and took her firmly by the shoulders, whispering urgently to her to be silent and lie still.

She could not. The rejection by Master Rababull, the slaying of Nelatha, the humiliation, and the beating all seemed increasingly overwhelming to her. Such torment and emotional anguish as she had never known filled her being, so real and so indomitable. She could not will it away. She could not face up to it. She could not escape it nor answer it.

Then, suddenly, Habrunt was there, momentarily putting aside his many responsibilities, kneeling beside her with a clay cup of herb tea in his large hand as his other hand gently supported her head.

He spoke to her soft words of comfort, and somehow the unwavering look in his eyes and the warmth of the beverage offered by his very own hand filled her with such a sense of reassurance that it seemed to suffuse her very soul with an awareness that without Habrunt, she should surely have known damnation.

After that, he came daily, sometimes in the morning and again in the late afternoon. That Habrunt grieved for her suffering was no secret, although what he ever thought of anything was purely his own affair. Moreover, he came boldly, openly, letting all see that he was Habrunt the Slavemaster, and the servant of but one man.

If the Master of the House was aware of any of this, yet did Habrunt brave the danger willingly enough, apparently heedless if Master Rababull should experience displeasure.

But Master Rababull, although fully aware of Habrunt's behavior because of the many tattletales he listened to, found it expedient to consider the matter settled, and his Slavemaster too useful to chastise for so light an infringement. Instead, Master Rababull pretended that it was so unimportant as to be beneath either his notice or his dignity. Had he not graciously spared Si'Wren's very life? Was she not then worthy to be restored meekly to a useful, if lower, status in the House, her social ostracism as a total outcast notwithstanding?

Master Rababull's only publicly announced edict, an iron one, was that Si'Wren must never again work in the spice tent. It was an honor she no longer deserved. Habrunt never openly showed the slightest affection to Si'Wren, but ministered to her with stoic mein. Whenever he came, he commanded the ever-present runner boys to wait outside. Then he would enter in and give her tea and broth at his own hand. When Si'Wren tried to whisper secretly to him once, his eyes widened in alarm and he immediately put his hand firmly over her mouth and shook his head and frowned in an urgent but barely perceptible negative.

Then after each visit, he would depart again after speaking scarcely a word, and that only to L'acoci.

In the face of such scandalous activity, none dared bring rebuke against Si'Wren before Master Rababull, lest they incur in turn the thinly veiled wrath of Habrunt in his official capacity as Slavemaster of the House. Habrunt was careful in all of this to make certain, with every opportunity, that all saw his total devotion and unfailing allegiance to Master Rababull.

Thus, mercifully, there were no complaints against Si'Wren, and she did not suffer nearly as much as she might otherwise have done.

* * *

Si'Wren chewed her food, as she pretended not to notice the other slaves filing out of doors to their day's labor in the fields. They in turn shunned her company, for she was the despised idol-breaker, in spite of the well-known fact that it had been Nelatha who had taken the actual blame for this.

For, unlike the one-eyed boy who had bullied his one-eyed victim, Si'Wren had committed no mere worldly crime. No, not she. Si'Wren had done much worse than that.

She had broken faith.

She had shown her belief in the Invisible God, the only forbidden deity in a world of visible and valuable idols. She was forever an outcast, the lowest of the low. She was different, evil, taboo.

Each of the two one-eyed boys was still permitted to speak and converse naturally with others. Not she. No, she was somehow subhuman to them now, and it was only fitting that she should never speak again, but be as some dumb animal instead.

Seeing this, she had abandoned the idea of ever trying, knowing it was useless.

* * *

Harvest time had come.

Slavemaster Habrunt was compelled to attend to his duties first and foremost, and so could not visit Si'Wren as frequently as he had done at the first. He had commanded L'acoci to care for Si'Wren with all diligence. No longer dared he come so often, lest the Master take notice and be moved to great displeasure, and perhaps in the end decree some worse punishment for Si'Wren to be rid of her once and for all.

L'acoci was under instructions to bring Habrunt word again when Si'Wren was feeling better, that he might come and personally escort her to her newly appointed place of labor. L'acoci had informed her that she would be working in the Master's fields; why else, adaged an observant L'acoci, would Si'Wren have been bedded down to recover from her injuries in the bungalow of the field laborers?

Until then, Habrunt had no further, legitimate excuse to come and seek after Si'Wren's welfare. How she longed to see his face again!

L'acoci was treating Si'Wren with borage and red clover blossom tea, together with dandelion, which was quite agreeable and most healing to her. Yesterday morning, L'acoci had smiled at her and announced that today Si'Wren might leave her sickbed at long last. Together with L'acoci, Si'Wren had gone to the stream where the women all gathered to wash clothes, to bathe and wash herself under L'acoci's fiercely protective guardianship, lest any of the other women or their children molest the wretched, defenseless outcast of a girl, so none dared.

Then, after she had first fed the other field slaves in the cypress bungalow their dinner, L'acoci had gone to tell Habrunt that night of the progress Si'Wren had been making in her recovery. L'acoci then returned and, with a twinkle in her eyes, informed Si'Wren of what she had done. Knowledge of this event had filled Si'Wren with such a perplexity as to what would become of her that she could hardly go to sleep that night. All she could think of was Habrunt and what he would say when he came for her in the morning.

Sure enough, as soon as Habrunt had a chance to make his morning rounds to see that the affairs of the Master's Household were all in order for the day and that the slaves were all well and truly at their duties, or that the inevitable one or two dropouts had given him sufficient excuse and been temporarily reassigned one way or another to easier work, he came personally for Si'Wren.

"Well, little one, are you ready?" Habrunt spoke to her in his deep, gentle voice, as he stood in the doorway with a stern look on his formidable features, and secretly gave her a quick wink. He folded his muscular, corded forearms across his hairy chest and presented an exceeding handsome figure with his long wavy locks held back by the plain leather headband, and his unadorned but carefully trimmed beard. He looked rugged and formidable, despite his beaming countenance.

Inwardly pleased at the way he had winked at her with no one else the wiser, Si'Wren bowed low, then rose to her full, diminutive stature and nodded to him in mute obedience.

"What good are words anyway, eh?" he said, in a not-unkindly fashion.

"Come, then, little one."

Habrunt's eyes sparkled as he regarded her, for when she had bowed, her dark hair, which hung nearly to the waist in back, had fallen gloriously across her shoulders in dark shining splendor.

He stepped outside, and held the tent flap considerately for her as he waited for her to follow.

Habrunt's countenance was like lightening, as his eyes which seemed ever to smile upon Si'Wren, somehow managed to appear so fierce unto all others as to strike terror into their hearts, be they of a spiteful mein or no, and all of this with but one and the same expression of his stony features.

When she was ready, he started out at a deliberately slow pace to enable her to keep up easily and follow dutifully close behind him. As they neared the fields, he could tell from glancing back at her once that, weakened from her long illness, she was already badly winded merely from the walk.

He brought her to Geth, the short, stout old Fieldmaster, Geth of balding head, all white of hair and long-fringed beard, with a wrinkled old face that had seen more summers in the fields than the rocks themselves, for all Si'Wren knew.

Across the windswept waves of undulating grain, interspersed with a few weeds and brush, the harvesters worked steadily, too far to clearly discern their bowed and sweaty faces.

Clasping hands, Habrunt greeted Geth with a man's greeting, and accepted the offer of a drink from the water skin. Si'Wren respectfully declined to do likewise.

After an habitual inquiry as to the progress of the harvest, Habrunt said to the old Fieldmaster, "This is Si'Wren, of the spice tent. She had the misfortune to be held accountable for the very stones that come from the ground as well as the herbs she was so skilled at grinding, and found wanting by the Master. She is sworn to a vow of silence, and now she is to become a field worker."

Geth, as aware of events as anybody, nodded his shrewd understanding, frowning with a face like old leather.

"Always use more help during the harvest," he said, characteristically sparse of words. One's very breath, so Si'Wren seemed to gather, was the better to be employed in more productive pursuits.

"Good," said Habrunt. "See thou to it, and to her health as well. Methinks she was attacked by a madman during the last full moon and has been some time in the recovery. Now that she is nearly well again, the good Master would see some recompense at her own hand. She is still of tender years, and as yet infirm from her days of recovery. The House of Rababull would be greatly displeased, if she should be worked too hard, and fall ill again before full repayment has been made to the Master for her foolishness."

Habrunt leaned forward significantly at this point, his menacing manner quite obvious.

"Do you get my meaning, Geth?"

Geth nodded, squinting to show that he was fully aware of Habrunt's true wishes and was of no mind to make bones to dry in the sun about it.

"Aye," said Geth. He turned to Si'Wren with a wry look, appraising her carefully and noting her slack posture. "So she is ready for the harvest, is she? From the look of her, your pretty new field hand has many good years in her yet, but just between the two of us, Slavemaster, quite frankly; she looks tired out already."

At this, Habrunt reached down and clenched his right hand around a fistful of grain stalks, and uprooted the clump up by the roots. Then he looked at old Geth pointedly.

"This little one is not half as tired as you shall become, if you do not plant your words as carefully as your crops. If I say she is ready, she is. Give her tools, water, and provender, and spare your heavy hand when your eye would mark her shortcomings. Put her over by herself, and keep a proper shepherd's watch on her. Any good shepherd boy knows his sheep by name. Behold, I have brought you Si'Wren! If she so much as lifts a finger to her work, tally the ledger for a full day's output and see that the others make it up to you, until she can carry her own. See also that there is peace kept in your fields, lest another mightier than thou shouldst come and replace you, the better to set all in proper order again."

Habrunt stood immobile, a handful of grain still clenched tightly in his fist as he confronted old Geth with a hard look as the other quickly nodded.

Properly abashed, the Fieldmaster bowed low as he intoned, as ceremoniously as to the finest idol, "Thy words are gracious and learned, Slavemaster. All shall be as you have spoken."

Habrunt kept his eyes hard upon Geth for a moment, and finally nodded, apparently satisfied.

"Good!" he said loudly and pointedly to Geth.

Then he raised his fistful of grain and regarded it with equal levity, before turning to Si'Wren. He held out the grain to her. Regarding it dumbly for a moment, Si'Wren saw him nod encouragement to her, and she took the clump of grain together with the clinging dirt and roots from his hand.

"Go with him, little one," he said, in a soft and kindly voice. Then, turning suddenly on Geth, he tilted his head back and declared, "Geth, does she not come to you with grain already to hand? Take it, and be satisfied. Behold, I, Habrunt, Slavemaster of the House of Rababull, have spoken."

This was intended purely and solely for Geth's wise old ears, and had been formally pronounced to show that Habrunt was in dire earnest, and would be greatly displeased if further contradicted.

Then he turned brusquely on his heel and strode off to go and make his rounds.

As Habrunt departed steadily through the gently waving fields, Geth hefted a large, ungainly scythe in one hand, and turned almost timidly to Si'Wren.

"Come," he said.

Si'Wren looked up with fearful eyes at his weathered old countenance.

Geth regarded her queerly, as if he had never seen her before, and then repeated more quietly to her, "Come girl," this time with a more reassuring nod.

He crinkled his face in an unaccustomed smile, and tilted his head as he nodded unpracticed encouragement to her. For as Fieldmaster, he was accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed without question, and greatly unused was he to meting out such pampering as he had been gravely challenged by Habrunt to bestow so freely upon this shy one.

Meekly, she followed him in total silence.

"You must not be afraid," Geth said, leading the way. She followed him over a low hillock to where a clump of trees grew at the edge of a nearby field. Beyond the knoll, a peaceful stream meandered through.

The low mound of the hill blocked from sight a direct view of the other field hands, and their view of the stream was also obstructed, neither could they see the place in the field where Geth had decided that Si'Wren might work alone and unmolested. That place being closer to the compound than the area where the other laborers were gathered, Si'Wren hoped that this would make her safer from attack by any of the countless roaming, rogue men of the land.

"Fear not. Am I not sworn to defend you?" reassured old Geth, with an unaccustomed grimace of a smile. "You will be perfectly safe here."

Si'Wren stood silent, looking up at him as she awaited his instructions.

Geth had not brought her to this particular place by sheer happenstance. If he was to successfully accomplish what Habrunt had so gravely commanded, it would be easier if the other slaves did not have the opportunity to judge for themselves whether Si'Wren had produced a proper day's work in the fields or not. For Geth to permit them to see her harvest so little, regardless of her weakened physical state, would produce much griping in their ranks. This way, what they did not know would not matter to them.

Holding out to Si'Wren the large, heavy scythe, he bade her grasp it. She took hold of it, and could not help it when the heavy blade tilted down and banged on the ground after he let go. Then he stepped behind her and reached around from both sides, took her tiny hands in his gnarled old ones, and showed her the precise motion of how to swing it in a rhythmical motion that seemed to roll as naturally as the tips of the waving grain stalks, over and over again. Geth took her through it very slowly at first, then at a more normal pace with a smooth, repetitious motion that was very easy to follow once she got the proper swing of it.

Although his breath was close upon her from behind, Si'Wren felt no danger from such close contact with Geth, as he made no attempt whatsoever to corrupt his handling of her, but only wanted to show her how to reap. Geth's kindly old soul was visibly harmless, although his heart was evidently as tough as his gnarled fingers, easily hard enough to meet the world head-to-head on it's own terms. But the memory of Habrunt's stern warnings left his behavior so impeccably holy as to rival the sanctity of the dumb idols themselves.

He was an expert reaper, and when he finally thought that she must have caught on properly to the idea, he released her. She wobbled, staggered, and tumbled down in a heap in the tall stalks of grain. Geth stood looking down at her in consternation for a moment, and then without so much as a by-your-leave, he bent down and scooped her up in his arms, and carried her to the shade of a nearby tree where he gently set her down.

She lay gasping for breath with an extremely drawn, exhausted look on her face.

"Well," Geth said, a smile transforming his harsh features, "ye have heard what Slavemaster Habrunt commanded. A full day's work have I just had of you, and I shall tally the ledger so."

Then, in a much lower voice, with a quick look around of his shifty eyes, he said to her further, "Sit. Eat; drink! Stay and rest under the shade of this blessed tree, while I go and get the proper measure due to your account from the unwilling labors of those slackers over yonder. Behold I, Geth, Fieldmaster of the House of Rababull, have also spoken."

So saying, with a crinkle of his eyes at the wry wittiness of his own mock-pomposity, he held out to her a large coarse-woven drawstring pouch of food, which was his own portion and a full man's share at that, and when she had accepted it from him he smiled at her again and departed. She watched him cross the field with long sure strides which soon took him away across the low hillock until he was out of sight, as he went off to supervise the others.

She was so exhausted already! Must she swing this impossibly heavy scythe day-in and day-out for the rest of her life, as reward for her worship of the true Invisible God? The thought was a daunting one.

Careful not to spill any of the provender which Geth had given her, she unfolded and regarded it contemplatively. All must have food, and now he had none. Evidently, he knew where to get more for himself. Was he going to get his food by taking it from someone else, perhaps from the worst 'slackers' among them, and enjoy their additional grumbling at such added insult all the more while they unknowingly made up for her lack of production? If so, she could do nothing about it.

Suddenly, she started as his coarse voice called out unexpectedly across the field to her, "Si'Wren!"

Si'Wren looked up anxiously, as she saw his head and shoulders reappear over the top of the small hill, peering narrowly across the crest at her. Too weak to stand, she dipped her head once quickly to show her compliance, and regarded Geth attentively to see what he wanted.

"Have I not charged the young men that they shall not touch thee? One thing more is needful, and then I shall leave you be for awhile. If you see any wild animal," said Geth, "scream very loudly, and I will come with my field hands and their sharp sickles, and cut it in pieces."

Eyes widening in sudden alarm, Si'Wren nodded quickly, and bowed low in acknowledgment. Suppose they did not come in time? Better to endure the insults of the others than that. And how should she dare to scream, seeing she had taken a vow of silence, lest she dishonor her Invisible God, and die for it too? Oh, would that he had not gone off and left her so all alone like this out in the open!

She made as if to wave him back, but Geth had already turned away again, and shyly she sat watching with deepest regret as the back of the friendly old Fieldmaster's bald white-fringed head slowly disappeared over the crest of the low hill.

Si'Wren sat under the shade tree in the midst of what little fallen grain Geth had harvested in showing her how to reap with the scythe, her eyes round with fear as she thought of all the great and truly savage beasts that were known to stalk this wild land. She stood and looked around fearfully, but all seemed quiet and peaceful enough. Several birds flitted across the field, and a pair of jet black ravens could be seen gliding in the distance.

Moving with slow, unsteady progress, she walked up the gentle slope to the top of the low hill. There, she craned her neck as she shifted her position several steps over, and found a slightly elevated place to stand, peering over the tops of the gently undulating field of grain at the others. Should she even dare to scream, would they arrive in time if a wild beast should suddenly try to savage her?

She turned her head, taking in the land on all sides, and decided that if she remained alert enough, perhaps she would have just enough time to flee and so thereby possibly safeguard her life, should anything try to come and get her.

Thinking better of it again, she found renewed appreciation for her compulsory separation from the others, the better to escape their sullen, silent persecutions. To be amidst them, and not work, would be to invoke their supreme contempt and irritation, and leave her feeling so low as to wish she were already dead, and that on top of her status as the lowest of the low for her reputation as an idol-breaker.

Si'Wren considered all, and felt renewed remorse at what terrible fate had befallen her. As long as she could remember, Si'Wren had always been a hard worker, and a willing one too. Just like Nelatha, whose comforting, characteristic voice she missed so desperately.

But now she was to be in constant fear for her life, alone in the world, and alone among men. All by herself now, she peered expressionlessly across the wild landscape, as the wind blew strands of dark hair across her eyes, and began weeping for fear and loneliness.

Her eyes, blurred by tears, swept the nearby foliage, seeking anything that moved. Was not a swift hunting beast's charge always a surprise to the victim? Who could resist such an advance? Or how could such a one as she manage to resist even so loathsome and demeaning a danger as the attack of a mere pack of scavenger dogs, with their many snapping jaws? What of the giant dire wolves, or the huge roaming bears, and fierce prowling wild cats, and other even more unspeakable monsters such as she might not even dream of? She remembered the trophies of the hunters, and such were the stuff of nightmares, and she found that her harvest field had become a place of terror.

She wiped at her tears, and looked down at the place where the sickle had fallen. She walked down the slope and stood over the ungainly reaper's scythe, fighting back the demons of the unknown. Finally, quelling her terrors somehow, she knitted her brow as she stooped to kneel down beside the scythe. Then, with exceeding care, she touched her finger lightly to the feather's edge of the blade in all of it's wicked keenness. Sniffling and wiping ineffectually at her face with the back of her forearm, she examined the sharp scythe, and considered how pitiful and inept a fighter she must portray to any animal.

Was she not but a girl, scarcely one-forth the size of a good fighting man and as nothing to one of the human giants? Could she make as ready use of whatever came to hand, or of her own muscles if necessary, to settle an argument as brave Habrunt might do? Thinking unhappily on all of this, she felt disconsolate to such a degree as never before in her short life. Turning from the heavy scythe, she decided to go and seek relief in the shade of the trees overhanging the dank and shadowy banks of the wide, peaceful stream.

The gurgling of the water over heavy stones partially blocking a narrows downstream was a pleasant sound to her ears. The backup of water from a beaver dam had created a wide pond in front of her.

As Si'Wren watched, a huge dragonfly, easily as large as both of her outstretched hands together, flitted fast and low over the glassy surface of the water. Out in the middle of the tranquil water was a beaver almost as large as herself, which could be glimpsed moving smoothly across the surface and leaving a thin wake of vee lines from the tip of it's button nose.

She sat down on the grass, legs curled beneath her skirts, and stared unseeingly down at the surface of the pond where scooter bugs jinked across the placid water by rowing with their two long oars of legs. Green plant scum floated in the nearby bulrushes, where pussy willows, cattails, saw grass, and tall hollow reeds could be seen swaying as they rustled gently in the wind.

What she thought to have been a submerged rock came to life suddenly, startling her as a giant catfish half the size of the beaver moved sluggishly to deeper water in a swirl of disturbed sediment.

She did not realize at first that she had visitors. Not, that is, until a long double line of armed men became progressively visible as their leader emerged from a far clump of trees and led them on a forced march that took them steadily and silently through the field beyond the far banks.

As they began passing through the field of waving grain on the opposite side of the pond, she cowered instinctively and ducked down low behind a clump of bushes to watch anxiously as they came into view, marching briskly two-by-two, every one of them in perfect lock-step, moving silently as one with only the distant sound of their tromping sandals to mark their passage.

They carried swords or spears in their right hands, and on their left arms they had great heavy shields, and helmets on their heads. So many fierce-looking beards. She could tell that they were not soldiers of the Emperor of this land, or they would have had standard bearers, and other elaborate devices, including uniform hammer-beaten metal shields, all alike with the Emperor's great seal of the sun god embossed thereon.

Nevertheless, it was a formidable force, at least a hundred and fifty men-at-arms.

She remained in hiding, peering narrowly through the grass at the side of a gray boulder. The rock of the boulder was actually minutely white and black flecked with her eyes so close to it. Totally obscured from view, she watched them march past her position, as silent as the wind, and breathed a pent-up sigh of relief as their steadily marching ranks slowly disappeared from view across the far field, moving in an upstream direction.

When they had gone, she looked anxiously in the direction whence they had come, watching to see if more might be forthcoming. When none was, she finally returned to where the food pouch had been left with the scythe, and realized how hungry she was.

None of those in Geth's charge, nor Geth himself, could have seen the men, for a series of other low hills blocked their direct view of the low-lying stream and what lay beyond. But it was no concern of Si'Wren's. She knew nothing of such matters, and was afraid to draw attention to herself anyways. How could she even tell them, seeing she had sworn an oath of silence?

So she merely tried to put it out of mind, although she continued to deliver many an anxious look both in the direction which the unknown warriors had come, and that in which they had gone.

She opened the burr-lap pouch which Geth had given her and found fresh coarse dark bread, and a musty smelling, whitish, oily goat cheese, with some dark shriveled sun-dried fruits, and an ample provision of hard unshelled nuts. Realizing how famished she was, she ate some the provender, cracking the nuts with a small rock on a large flat boulder, and did not stop until it was all gone. Then she went to the beaver pond for a drink of water.

Everything took more energy than she was normally accustomed, and she had to stop and rest frequently. It had been a long time since she had eaten and exercised properly, and she grew faint too easily for her own liking but could do little for now except take what rest she could.

At the pond, she knelt down by the water's edge and brushed the thin skim-surface of dust and swirled parallel lines of bright green algae apart in order to cup her hands and bring some of the clear underlying liquid to her parched lips.

There she remained, and regarded the distant shore of the pond whence the soldiers had marched past, taking up more water in her cupped hands as needed.

Finally she arose and turned her head to take in her surroundings anew. But suddenly she froze at the totally unexpected sight of tall Sorpiala and her female slave servants, dressed in all their finery and waving irritably at the flies as they all approached along the stony path.

Si'Wren grimaced wryly to herself, although she would never have dared to do so openly where she could be seen, at the perceived justice of their plight under the persecutions of the flies and mosquitoes they openly swatted at. If one ate too many sweets and pastries, as they always did, one's sweat stank, as theirs did. Thus; no matter how frequent the bathing, hence cometh flies. Moreover, one's teeth soon rotted, after which one became fit to eat nothing but that which all babies ate, prechewed gruel, and no mother to do the chewing.

At first as they approached, she could see only the tops of their heads from over a slight ridge of the grassy hill's broad hummock. They were scanning variously about themselves with sharply turned heads and frowning faces.

As they worked their way closer, she was able to see more clearly their shoulders and upper arms, then their torsos and elbows, and finally their wrists, hands, and waists. Eventually, she could also see the uppermost parts of their legs sometimes, as they waded through the tall, coarse grasses of the uneven and unworkable parts of the hill. One stumbled and fell, to arise quickly afterward cursing with the most filthy and vile language, and none of the others so much as noticed the flood of curses or deigned to help their unfortunate companion to her feet.

As Si'Wren watched, slowly, like the dawning of a new day, she also began to remember. Suddenly, it all became clear to her, and suddenly it came over her all at once that she who now approached Si'Wren was none other than dear Sorpiala the once-trusted elder slave-sister, the very one whose privily-entreated words in the ears of Master Rababull were what had brought Nelatha to her death and Si'Wren to such a new and low estate.

Swept by dire apprehensions, Si'Wren sought about fearfully where to conceal herself, and was about to resort to ducking down in the tall grass, when suddenly one of Sorpiala's cohorts cried out oddly like some wild bird as she victoriously pointed out Si'Wren's location. Sorpiala and the others looked also, and immediately altered their course to intercept Si'Wren.

Caught flat-footed, Si'Wren quailed within herself as she stood stock still and waited hopelessly for them to draw near. Si'Wren felt overwhelmed by a dizzy, empty feeling of utter helplessness. She felt her heart pounding rapidly within her as she tried to calm herself, but in spite of this her breathing became even more tortuous and labored.

The women strolled over to her through the tall wild grasses commingled with the waving stalks of grain, chatting animatedly to one-another as they all stared boldly at her. This was their hour of victory, and they reveled openly in it, flattering themselves with a pretense of false-charity towards Si'Wren while beneath the surface, as with the pond earlier, could be seen, symbolically, the lurking, half-seen catfish of their muck-racking innermost thoughts.

"You know, I had heard that Si'Wren's face was all scarred up," said one young woman.

"Curious," said another, "she seems perfectly normal. You know, it must be like her personality. What's really wrong is invisible."

"Aye, like her invisible god!" volunteered a third, gaining a laugh from all sides.

"Now girls," admonished Sorpiala lightly, "if you can't say anything nice, just don't-say anything! Right, Si'Wren?"

Clearly to Si'Wren now, Sorpiala had harbored a secret and unreasonably jealous attitude toward her, since seeing all of the attention which Habrunt had so openly bestowed upon a recently convalescing Si'Wren. Sorpiala never cared a whit for Habrunt, but it vexed her no end that anyone should enjoy themselves so much. But now, behold, here was Si'Wren, defenseless!

Sorpiala stepped boldly in front of Si'Wren and said, "I'm sorry about before, Si'Wren. I must also apologize for the inconsiderate manner of my friends here. They do not mean to be so rude. Surely you of all people must understand. I mean, it's just that nobody has quite gotten over the shock of learning that your personal beliefs were so-different-from everyone else's."

Si'Wren stood silent, surrounded by them all, and unable to reply.

"Well?" said Sorpiala. She stared full-face at Si'Wren. "You could at least nod or something when I speak."

"Yeah, what's the matter?" said another, delivering Si'Wren a rude push from behind. "Are you deliberately trying to be insulting, or have you had all of your senses beaten out of you?"

Several girls giggled at this.

Someone else pushed her again, and she staggered and almost fell down.

Screeches of laughter ensued.

As Si'Wren turned her head to see who had pushed her, she was suddenly flung to the ground by a sharp push from Sorpiala herself.

"Look at me when I speak to you!" said Sorpiala angrily.

Lying helplessly at Sorpiala's feet, Si'Wren put one hand back unseeingly for support as she looked up at her, and felt her fingers touch the toes of the one who had first pushed her from behind.

"Ahh! Sorpiala, this-this idol-breaker has tried to trip me!"

Sorpiala confronted Si'Wren with an indignant, self-righteous stare. It was a hard, cold look of the most imperious hauteur.

"You don't say?!"

Glaring down at Si'Wren, Sorpiala said to the other woman, "It seems that Si'Wren has not gleaned enough trouble yet. Not content to break idols, she seeks to trip us and break our heads as well!"

Si'Wren lay in the grass, shaking her head in mute, pleading denial as she looked beseechingly up at them.

"The guilty are ever speechless, in the face of their accusers," said another, with a self-righteous, knowing air.

"Come, girls!" said Sorpiala. She regarded Si'Wren contemptuously. "It is our proper duty to see that justice is speedily executed! Let us go and report this new outrage at once!"

"Aye," and "At once!" agreed several others almost in unison.

As one, the group of women turned and hiked up the slope, away from edge of the pond where a trembling Si'Wren sat watching helplessly with tears in her eyes.

"You know, she never could talk clearly, even before," said one indistinctly, as their figures disappeared over the rise.

The last thing Si'Wren heard from them was a sudden chorus of more of that awful, catty, girlish laughter. Then they were gone, leaving her in her torment and abject sense of total abandonment, in the very thrall of terror over what to expect next.

Eyes stung by salt tears, she averted her head abruptly from their departing voices, and found herself staring at the peaceful stream through blurred vision. Rising to her feet, she approached the water unsteadily.

She cleared the water again with a sweep of her hand, and dipped up some of it to wash her face.

Kneeling there, she beheld herself in the water's reflection.

There, like a stranger, she beheld the oval face of a timid-looking girl of twelve years framed in long straight dark hair, an orphan who had never known her parents, whose beauty, unperceived to her own as-yet childish understanding, was as the beauty of the fruitful land itself, even as the stars at night, or the radiant moonglow at it's softest.

Staring down into the water's surface, she remembered Nelatha's admonition that Another's likeness could also be seen by reflection in water. That was to say, by inner reflection; only thus might one supposedly 'see' the unseeable One, the Invisible God.

She was already kneeling.

She bowed her head over the water, knowing now that it was but mere water, yet realizing that here was a vision to marvel at. Timorously, as her tears ran down her cheeks to fall and ripple it's surface, she prayed over the mirror-image of the heavenly realm to the Invisible God.

She did not know how long she remained there, praying incessant confused petitions to a long-forgotten Deity in a world hopelessly lost to every kind of evil, before she finally fell asleep by the water's edge.

The next thing she knew, Habrunt was kneeling over her and touching her shoulder. Startled, she gasped as she looked up into his eyes. Eyes that were uncharacteristically fierce and angry now-and fearful for some reason, too.

"You have been accused by Sorpiala and many witnesses," Habrunt declared to her, "of attempting to harm one of their number!" Then he rose to his feet and cast about curiously, before raising his voice and shouting at her, "Si'Wren, can you not stay out of trouble just this once, your first day in the fields?!"

Si'Wren shook her head in mute denial, her look of hopelessness as of one who is utterly doomed to destruction, an enemy to be permanently removed from all civilized human society, as one hated and despised by all.

Habrunt reached down and took hold of her by the upper arm and pulled her bodily to her feet, although he did not jerk so roughly as to hurt her in the slightest.

"Come!" he commanded.

He marched her up the slope, his calloused hands holding tightly onto her as he marched Si'Wren up the grassy slope to the top of the rise. Si'Wren felt so weakened by fear that only his strong grip kept her from stumbling and falling.

The wind partially obscured her vision by casting her dark hair across her face, as she occasionally glimpsed the other field slaves pausing to gawk at the sight of their Slavemaster and his diminutive miscreant making their way to the top of the low hill.

Habrunt faced her and made certain that what must happen next would take place in the sight of all field workers, and declared loudly and formally, "Sorpiala has charged thee before the Master, and behold, thou hast been judged and found wanting. Now you shall learn what happens to those scoffers who dare to offend the House of Rababull!"

Habrunt let go of her suddenly, causing her to fall backwards into the heavy standing grain in such a way that she tumbled harmlessly into the tall stalks which made a gentle whispering sound as they cushioned her fall. Weeping, she lay looking up at him through tear-flooded eyes and the wisps of her own hair, from a bed of bent and broken stalks, entirely obscured from the view of those watching in the nearby fields.

Habrunt was already uncoiling a heavy bull whip, and there was a strange look of ferocity and despair on Habrunt's troubled features.

Shaking her head slowly in hopeless denial, Si'Wren raised her arms defenselessly and remained mute as he took hold of the whip by it's heavy pommel and shook it out behind him on the grassy knoll, snaking the long sinuous coils into a long scythe-like arc as he prepared to deliver the first stroke.

"Ten lashes!" he declared.

He tensed the bulging muscles of his right arm as he raised the braided leather pommel to shoulder height and brought it around once to round it out properly, and then hooked it in at the proper moment with all of his strength in a viciously aimed shot.

CRACK!! The whip banged like a thunderclap, the sonic boom echoing across the fields as a scream was ripped from Si'Wren's throat and a distant flock of surprised birds took suddenly to flight, darkening the sky with their panicked multitudes of beating wings.

Men and women who thought they too, had hated Si'Wren, felt sudden horror at the astonishing impact of the whip's bang upon their eardrums.

He brought back the whip behind him for the next stroke and rotated it around forward again, his bulging muscles gleaming with sweat.

CRACK!! The sound echoed across the land, sending gophers, rabbits, and other animals scurrying for their dens and holes in the ground.

CRACK!! Slave women in the fields began weeping.

Habrunt was visible to all as his tall figure towered above the waving grass on the hilltop.

Several of the men looked away, already feeling sick to their stomachs, while others watched with clenched jaws, remembering the way Master Rababull himself had put out the eye of the boy who had once been a bully, because Master Rababull's word was law.

CRACK!! An eye for an eye.

CRACK!! Back in the Master's compound, Sorpiala went on humming softly and pleasantly to herself as she heard the distant knell of doom, and full of gloating, she pretended to be oblivious to it's meaning in the presence of her totally silent, fearfully listening cohorts.

CRACK!!-CRACK!!-CRACK!!…

On and on, to the tenth and final lash.

Gasping for breath, his face, hair, and naked torso streaming with sweat, Habrunt held his hands low in the tall grass, and made sure that no one saw when he took a small leather pouch from the left side of his belt, swollen with animal blood, pinched it's contents upwards and drew the end of the whip through it several times to coat it. Then he also dipped the heads of a handful of long severed wheat stalks in the blood pouch and shook it over Si'Wren, spattering her skin liberally with the blood.

Then he knelt down in the tall grass so low as to be completely out of view from anyone watching, stooping close beside Si'Wren.

Still in shock, Si'Wren watched as he scooped up a handful of small pebbles and cupped his hand carefully as he poured them into the pouch. Without a word to her, he noosed the pouch and knotted it tightly so that it's contents might not chance to escape.

Then he rose to full stature and he stood over her, his face expressionless as he coiled the bloody whip and held it in a red-stained fist. Without so much as a backward glance at her, he turned on his heel and marched down the slope to the stream, where he cast the pouch far into the middle of the peaceful beaver pond. It hit with a small splash and sank. Because the pond was on the far side of the hill from the others and blocked them from view, none saw what he did.

Then, finished, Habrunt turned and marched off to make his regular rounds.

Up on the top of the hill, Si'Wren lay motionless in the grass, utterly bewildered.

Each time Habrunt had cracked the whip at her she had cringed involuntarily, only to hear as it banged harmlessly above her and spent it's fearsome energy upon the air before falling uselessly across her prostrate and quivering body.

After her first bloodcurdling scream, she had lain silent and only trembled uncontrollably each time at it's evil, snakelike touch, fearing that he had simply missed, and that surely the next delivery, or the next, should not fail to find it's mark. Of a truth, she was covered with the rain of fallen grain stems, cut by the whip as by the sharpest scythe, and her eardrums still rang from the deafening bang of the whip-crack so close to her head, but there was not a single scratch on her.

As soon as Habrunt had gone, Geth himself came scurrying as quickly as his bent frame could carry him up the opposite slope of the hill, with a group of field hands following fearfully behind him.

The fact that Geth the Fieldmaster had not so much as looked back at them with the usual admonishment to return to work only emboldened the other slaves to follow all the faster on his heels, the sooner to see to the poor girl's condition. Most whippings were conducted with punishment in mind, something to return the violator to useful duty. But what they had witnessed from afar was the virtual destruction of a human being, and they expected to find almost a slaughtered corpse, something more akin to the remains of a wild animal attack.

When they finally arrived on Geth's heels at the top of the grassy knoll, they found Si'Wren looking about her with a dazed expression, propped up on one hand in the soft grass with which she was sprinkled, totally unscathed.

"I see blood on her, but-the maid is unharmed!" cried one man in disbelief.

"There's blood in the grass!" cried another.

"It's a miracle!" cried a woman in a quivering voice as she sank to her knees and raised her hands to the sky. "Gods be praised!"

Old Geth surveyed the scene with a sage and skeptical eye, considering all as he shook his tired old head, looking down at the mysteriously unharmed girl. She had suffered so much already. What Slavemaster Habrunt had accomplished was good enough at the fore, but-where would it lead to in the end?

But finally he threw up his hands in the air and bowed low his hoary white-haired old head, as he cried out loudly with the others, "Ahh, what a miracle is done here, for with mine own eyes did I see the cruelly flayed flesh of this poor wretched girl, and her wounds all laid open like gaping mouths and the slitted bellies of so many gutted fish!"

"Aye," cried out a stout middle-aged slave-woman, picking up on the pretense the better to seem a part of the miracle herself, although she could not have cared less if Si'Wren had lived or died. "The red flesh closed up again before my very eyes!"

Si'Wren, watching them all as if they were mad, found no difficulty in holding her peace in the face of such folly. Indeed, although she had always been upright and honest in all her dealings with others as to a fault, she could in all good conscience speak no evil thing this day, for she was sworn not even to speak anything at all for the rest of her life.

"Did you not feel the cruel whip against your flesh?" cried the stout woman to Si'Wren. Si'Wren stared at her wordlessly a moment, then nodded once, abruptly, with an expressionless, emphatic look. It was only the truth, for after every time the whip had banged above her head, it had fallen harmlessly upon her immediately afterwards.

Geth, momentarily unnoticed in all the excitement, studied Si'Wren a moment longer.

"Come!" Geth clapped his hands in stern, proprietary fashion. "Everyone; back to work! Have you all so soon forgotten your duties? To the fields, lest the Master see you so slack, and tempt the gods to work more such miracles on your backsides!"

At this, the foolish gawkers fled from their marveling over Si'Wren and returned anxiously to their work in the fields.

* * *

Slavemaster Habrunt approached his Master Rababull and dropped to one knee as he bowed low, and clapped his right fist across his hairy chest.

"You called, oh Master."

It was in the afternoon, and Master Rababull had heard strange tidings from the slave quarters.

He had sent for his Slavemaster to come to one of the most ominous places, the head of the wide, hand-hewn stone steps leading up the broad entrance of the House proper. It was where Master Rababull frequently met with those in whom he had found reason for some particularly odious displeasure, and the significance of this was not lost on Habrunt, who was at pains to look oblivious.

"Slavemaster," said Master Rababull deliberately, "did I not command you to punish my servant Si'Wren for her reckless abuse of one of Sorpiala's noble slave-cohorts? What is this mad talk I hear about 'miracles'?"

Habrunt kept his head bowed, eyes locked on the stone steps as he replied in a low, and what he hoped would be a genuinely confused tone of voice, "I know not, Master Rababull. I only know that I fulfilled my Master's wish to punish the servant; ten lashes of the whip, which I laid upon her as commanded."

"Interesting," ruminated Master Rababull.

Not looking up, Habrunt found insufficient reason to respond to the informal remark of his Master.

"Look at me!" said Master Rababull, his voice sounding tighter.

Habrunt lifted his head without expression and regarded Master Rababull.

Behind Master Rababull was a blood-encrusted bull whip coiled on the flat top of a waist-high stone pedestal which stood beside the House entrance proper. The blood was the color of rusted steel, and the fearsome braided leather bull whip was never placed on the stone pedestal -nor left there for very long- unless it's owner had found some particular reason and intended to use it in very short order.

Master Rababull regarded his chief underling with a faint sneer and barked, "Swear to me Slavemaster that all you have spoken is truth and that my every command was obeyed to the fullest!"

"I, Habrunt, so swear it!"

Habrunt dared not say more. One must be utterly unshakable, and make no effort to justify one's self upon another's blind graces at such a time. Was he not entrusted with the charge of all the slaves of the House of Rababull? Should he then waste mere empty words with such self-justification as any common thief would not hesitate to do?

Master Rababull said nothing to this, but remained frowning silently for a long time. Suddenly he turned and clapped his hands, cocking his head in an imperious gesture and called, "Bring her in!"

Huge and powerful, Prut promptly emerged from the House, where he had obviously been waiting all of this time just out of sight. His big fist held Si'Wren's thin upper arm in an unshakable grip as he escorted her forward to stand in front of Master Rababull at the top of the front steps.

Others who happened to be going about their duties in the huge courtyard began to stop and stare, but said nothing lest they should suddenly become unwilling victims of Master Rababull's unpredictable wrath and irritation. Danger lurked. Let the slightest offense occur now, and it could mean certain death to the offender regardless of the reason, for here was every sign of a fearsome judgement already in the making.

Si'Wren stood before Master Rababull and Slavemaster Habrunt, eyes downcast as she waited for it all to begin again. The horrible pronouncements, the endless anguish, the shame and torment-this time with the promise of real punishment. In her heart, she was utterly defeated. There was no hope anymore. There was only Master Rababull's relentless, inescapable justice, and this time his word must surely spell her doom.

Master Rababull regarded her, and tossed an open-handed gesture to Prut that he might release Si'Wren's arm.

As one totally insensate to his immediate surroundings, Prut, his empty-looking eyes locked straight ahead, dutifully let go of Si'Wren's arm and remained standing on guard at her side.

Master Rababull walked around her, one slow step at a time, his spotted leopard-skin robes and purple garb trailing graciously behind him as he surveyed her untouched skin critically.

Most of the blood had been cleaned off her by now, and so far as Master

Rababull could determine, no whip had touched the girl's skin, ever.

Not so much as a single lash.

Completing his examination, he paused and stood looking scornfully and distrustfully at Habrunt, who was still kneeling.

"A miracle-in our very midst!" admired Master Rababull mockingly. He looked at Si'Wren as if the better to marvel, and back at Habrunt. "Praise the gods! Six hundred and seventy-eight years have I walked this earth, and many wonders have I seen, but never, ever, have I seen such a thing as this!"

Master Rababull turned his head toward Si'Wren again, but she was too afraid to meet his scornful look, and he surveyed her contemptuously before returning slitted eyes to Habrunt's bowed figure.

"To which of the gods shall I give thanks?" Master Rababull demanded rhetorically. "After all, seeing that my explicit orders were destined to be put at naught, I must hasten and make obeisance, that I might not displease the deities. What totem might I have offended, had my punishment been carried out? What must I do to show myself blameless before men and gods alike, in the face of this colossal supernatural marvel?"

Master Rababull paused, walking slowly from one end of the upper landing to the other, with a dead-silent Habrunt on the one hand on the steps, and Si'Wren with Prut looming beside her, on the other hand at the entrance to the House. Master Rababull's anger was obvious, but still in check, if only barely. Reaching the far end of the landing, he turned to look back at them both and remained ominously silent, during which interval Sorpiala and two of her maidservants peeked out whispering excitedly to one-another and then ducked their heads back before Master Rababull should deign to properly notice them.

For who knew what he might do at a time like this?

More onlookers had gathered in the courtyard to watch, knowing from past experience, that by now, Master Rababull would enjoy their audience more than their intrusion. It was too much of a spectacle for them to miss. This was real entertainment! Perhaps heads would even roll, as had happened with the still comparatively recent punishment of Nelatha. In fact this was even more fun than to throw stones from the stream banks at a drowning animal or person, another popular pastime.

"Slavemaster, what I find here is a signal act of the gods which I, even I, Master of the House of Rababull, dare not contradict. What would my servants -my friends?!- think of it? In fact, should word be passed around, I must ask myself before I cast doubt on the authenticity of such a marvel, whether the Emperor himself might not be displeased to think of such religious insubordination on my part."

Master Rababull paused again, as if regaining his breath before going on. He pretended to be unaware of the presence of Sorpiala, and as he looked out on the gathering crowd, there was a frown locked on his brow. Their word-of-mouth would hound him to his dying day if he made the wrong decision now.

He turned like a strutting peacock, and stared at Habrunt from the side as he went on, but Habrunt dared neither turn his head nor look up in acknowledgment as Master Rababull waxed eloquent.

"But still, in spite of my generosity and many past mercies upon such acts of stupidity and foolishness as I have witnessed in all of my days, I must ask myself the following question…"

Master Rababull stopped to look out across the courtyard of the great House of Rababull, and fairly glared at the trembling slaves who had gathered to watch.

"Come!" he commanded loudly. Hesitantly, a few shifted forward several steps, but not too close. Master Rababull repeated, "Come, and behold the handiwork of the gods! Come and see the foolishness of the mortals, for what man is there who can put at naught what the very gods have decreed?!"

The crowd watched with lurid interest. Many resented Habrunt his position. Perhaps here was a chance at long last to watch Habrunt be on the receiving end for a change, for clearly Master Rababull was vastly displeased.

Master Rababull turned to stand between Habrunt on the one hand, and Si'Wren on the other. Prut was a nonperson, seemed almost as invisible as the mythical Invisible God Himself, and would remain so until called upon to do whatever Master Rababull commanded of him.

"Look at me!!" Master Rababull shouted at Habrunt suddenly, and automatically Habrunt lifted his head and froze.

Master Rababull's eyes were like coals of fire, locked upon Habrunt's like those of an eagle upon it's four-legged prey.

In an unexpectedly mild tone of voice, Master Rababull went on, almost conversationally, "Slavemaster Habrunt, I must ask of you, my most noble and trusted servant; Which is the greater miracle? The cruel lash of the whip, which cuts through a young girl's flesh like a hot knife through lard, and leaves her very skin unharmed?…"

"Or…" Master Rababull turned to Si'Wren, "the dewy eyes of love, which but lightly touch upon the stony heart of a slave, and leave that worthless organ slashed to RIBBONS?!!!"

Habrunt, still kneeling, did not so much as dare to flinch nor venture the slightest response.

Master Rababull walked jerkily, haltingly, a step at a time, like a dusty, strutting cock bird preparing to fight and make love at one and the same time as he walked thusly down the stairs until he could step across behind Slavemaster Habrunt, and continued in this manner on around, climbing the steps again slowly, with agonizing slowness, to his original starting point where he halted and remained standing in front of a kneeling Habrunt at the top of the wide stone steps again.

Habrunt had not dared to move so much as his eyes during this malignant promenade.

Then without warning Master Rababull suddenly turned in a whirl and snatched up the blood-stained bull whip from the pedestal and gripped it by the pommel as he jerked his arm back and snaked it's slithery braids out behind him.

"I propose a test," declared Master Rababull, "to see this miracle for myself. How much more is it my privilege and my delight as one noble-born to witness the repeat of such a miracle with my own eyes? I desire to know, and I have a right to know; was the miracle bestowed upon my loyal Slavemaster, the girl, or the whip?"

Still Habrunt dared not make a reply to this madman.

Master Rababull jerked his whip arm out behind him, turning his head in the direction of Si'Wren as if about to lash out at her, while watching cleverly out of the corner of his eye to see if Habrunt might betray himself.

Habrunt silently, invisibly clenched his right fist as he held it solidly across his chest, impotent to do the slightest thing to stop the Master, with Prut and any number of omnipresent slaves ready to mindlessly oppose him at a moment's notice, and no sword readily to hand.

Master Rababull froze, and lowered his whip hand, laughing with wicked indulgence.

"Not so, Slavemaster! Witness another miracle, the stayed hand of justice. The high price of her sale is needed to pay for the cost of the broken jade goddess. With her unsullied beauty, Si'Wren shall bring much money in the slave market, when I sell her myself to some wretched, stinking, foul-breathed old man with rotten teeth and many diseases, and gold coins for eyes."

At this, Habrunt stifled his rage but still dared not so much as protest.

"Forsaking that, there remains but one way to appease my nagging curiosity," declared Master Rababull with bitter sarcasm, "and may the gods strike me dead this very day if I have ruled unjustly…"

At long last, Master Rababull suddenly lashed out with his whip and brought it snapping around with expert timing, catching an unprepared Habrunt fully across the side of the head.

CRACK!!

Although he did not cry out, Habrunt's head jerked as the whip left a red gash across his head and he fell cowering across the stone steps with his forearms across his face, fearful of being blinded if he should be struck another blow like that one again.

"Aye!" triumphed Master Rababull. "The most memorable sound in the world, is the sound of the lightning bolt to be found at the end-" CRACK!! "-of a whip!!" Master Rababull grunted, gasping from his exertion with the bull whip.

Blood welled from a slash where the whip had struck again, this time across Habrunt's back. The skin gaped in a long thin gash, with the matching white lines on both sides of a thin exposed fat layer just under the skin, and a shallow division into the deeper red of Habrunt's underlying back muscle.

CRACK!!-CRACK!!-CRACK!!…

Explosions echoed across the courtyard as the bystanders watched the physical destruction of the former Slavemaster of the House of Rababull.

Master Rababull proceeded to whip Habrunt mercilessly, again and again, and Habrunt tried in vain to bear up under it as he lay shielding his precious eyes with his arms until he finally collapsed into unconsciousness, lying limp and bloody across the stone steps.

Finally, Master Rababull laid off, gasping for air.

"Interesting," he wheezed, wiping at the spittle in the corner of his mouth. "I see nothing miraculous! Prut, take him away and let that old hag L'acoci see to his wounds. When he is well, let him be sold also, beside his intended bride!"

A wild-haired and sweating Master Rababull turned callously on his heel, and as he staggered into the House past a silently weeping Si'Wren, he interrupted his stride and turned to shake the bloody whip in Si'Wren's face.

With every gesture, Master Rababull flecked Habrunt's blood on Si'Wren as he shouted, "He has paid your debt! Verily is he your betrothed, for he has paid also for your dowry with his blood and his rank, and shall partake of your ignominy as well when you are finally sold at the next auction, for he has entered into your own punishment! But even then he shall not have you! I will see to that!"

In a towering rage, Master Rababull hurled the whip down at Si'Wren's feet. It landed with a flat slapping sound and splattered red the paving stones, still loosely coiled like a serpent poised to strike.

Then without looking as he walked off into the House, Master Rababull said, "Take him away!"

Behind Master Rababull, Prut called briskly for several of his men to come and pick up Habrunt.

Si'Wren, unharmed, waited until Master Rababull had finally departed, and hastened to follow the bearers of Habrunt. She avoided the scornful jeers of the other slaves, who were still too fearful to do anything to her. When she arrived at the bungalow where they had taken him, Si'Wren mourned at the sight of Habrunt lying unconscious on his stomach upon the very same blood-stained litter which she had been given for a sleeping rack during her convalescence.

Habrunt's entire body was in ruins, covered in a maze of criss-crossed wounds and caked with blood both dried and oozing. If he did not die first before the night was out, he would still almost certainly be crippled for life from wounds like that, if only by the very number of them. The underlying muscle, and not the skin only, had been slashed innumerable times by the cruel bite of the bull whip.

"Come!" said old L'acoci, her wizened eyes beckoning to Si'Wren urgently. "We have only a little borage tea, such as this one treated you with before. It can work it's own miracles, but in his case, I fear-"

Ominously, she did not finish her sentence.

Si'Wren was determined to do her utmost to try to help old L'acoci, and set immediately to work as she began to gently bathe Habrunt's wounds with the simple herb tea, which was all she had since being banished from the spice tent. She began dipping it up into successive pads of old rag-weave pasted with lard, and layering it onto Habrunt's ravaged skin and flesh before finally wrapping him up in dandelion leaves and covering it over with a bandage of coarse burr lap.

* * *

Later that same day, a messenger came riding his horse at a full gallop through the front gates and sending stray chickens and goats scattering madly for their lives in all directions as he lurched his snorting horse to a stop directly before the front steps of the House.

He flew from his saddle before the foam-flecked charger had fully stopped and pounded up the steps two and three at a time at a dead run.

Rushing past the two startled guards at the entrance, he ran down the central corridor, filling the House with the strident echoes of his high-pitched voice as he shouted repeatedly, "Master Rababull! Master Rababull!"

Master Rababull was still in his private chambers.

The messenger arrived outside his door and shouted through the closed curtains that he had urgent news that dared not wait.

At this most uncouth of all possible intrusions, Master Rababull's personal valet pulled back the heavy drapes with a long-practiced, decorous slowness, and faced him with a disdainful and dangerously menacing look, whereupon the messenger declared again in a loud voice that he had a message of direst urgency for the Master's ears.

Finally, Master Rababull himself stepped forth in an imperious rage, deeply vexed at being thus disturbed on this of all possible days, for he had lost his Slavemaster and his most favored junior female slave all in one fell swoop, and the messenger promptly threw himself face-down on the floor directly at the Master's feet before shouting out his message.

"Sire, our water has been cut off!" announced the messenger. "The fields and indeed the entire House shall thirst for the merest drop ere the day is out if battle is not joined immediately!"

"What is this?!" asked Master Rababull, truly alarmed at such important news. "Speak quickly, slave! Who has done this thing?"

"It is Kadrug, who lives to the north and proclaims himself the anointed of the gods. He hath magnified himself greatly against the House of Rababull, and has sworn to slay by the edge of the sword whoever seeks to drink of the water without paying him tribute of gold and silver!"

"Impossible!"

As Master Rababull regarded him incredulously, the messenger sucked in more air, and went on breathlessly.

"Of a truth, sire! Kadrug has taken two hundred swordsmen, and they have slain the watchmen of the canal, and clogged the sluice gates with boulders, and diverted our water! He declares he will not let it out again until much money has been paid. The crops will all soon be dead and dried, but Kadrug has sworn this day that the House of Rababull shall henceforth have no more water until there is enough dammed up to utterly wash away all ere it is finally released again!"

"My croplands-dry?!" spluttered Master Rababull. "You mean-I have been cheated of my own water?"

Master Rababull turned to Prut, and hesitated. For all of his great size, the stupid oaf wasn't half the man that Habrunt was-or at least, had been. Now, too late, Habrunt was worthless, crippled for life by Master Rababull's own hand, just when he was needed the most, and now it looked like he had a real battle on his hands!

A fight for water rights. No deadlier contest could there possibly be than this. Kadrug promised first no water at all and then a flash flood, unless paid much gold and silver. And of course, it would not end with that. Unless he won this battle, he was as one already destroyed.

"Send for my sons!" commanded Master Rababull. "While they are coming, see that the war god is brought out and a human sacrifice prepared, and slay and burn two of my bullocks! Have the slaves assembled at the temple where I will make obeisance and pray for victory. Issue spears, swords, shields, whetstones, and bows, for today we march on Kadrug at the sluice gates!"

Prut clapped his right fist across his huge hairy chest and declared in a loud and perpetually hoarse voice to the wall behind Master Rababull, "I hear and obey, oh Master!"

Then Prut turned and ran out swiftly on his long hairy legs. As he departed beyond view, there came the sounds of heavy blows and shoutings as Prut knocked down several unfortunates who happened to be blocking his path.

Master Rababull felt his eyes go stark with fear. At a time like this, when he needed his best men, Habrunt was reduced to a beggar's status. If not for the lying schemes of Sorpiala…

But it was too late to look back now. There remained only Prut to help him. Stupid Prut! Everything about Prut was hairy. Master Rababull sometimes imagined that even the insides of Prut's entrails must be hairy.

Master Rababull turned fiercely on his personal valet as if about to attack the quivering coward.

"Fetch me my armor and weapons! Hurry, you fool!" he shouted urgently.

Then, without waiting for a reply, he turned to a frightened-looking, beautiful House slave girl, one of the pampered indoors concubines, and said to her, "Go and tell the kitchen crew to begin preparing full marching rations for every able-bodied male!"

"But-" she stammered helplessly, "but Master, how can I do this, seeing I am but a concubine?"

Pampered from birth, and taken from the same mold as Sorpiala and her kin, the foolish girl could not help but balk.

Wrathfully, Master Rababull took one step forward and backhanded the surprised woman to the floor with a single blow.

"I said move! My men cannot fight on empty stomachs, you wench!"

Sobbing, the woman held her hand to her bruised cheek as she scurried out of his reach and ran weeping to go and relay his orders to the kitchen staff.

Master Rababull nodded to himself in satisfaction.

With a slap mark like that on the face of a beauty like her, there would be no mockery in the kitchen when she arrived to give the orders. Whoever contradicted her would surely be boiled in oil. It had been done once before by Master Rababull, two hundred and eighty years ago, and he knew the cooks still spoke of it on occasion, when the day's work was done and they could at long last magnify themselves upon the young and impressionable with their idle words.

Moments later, Master Rababull could hear Prut's voice, shouting from the top of the stairs. Then a horn was blown repeatedly, with much force and vigor of the blower's lungs, urgently calling all slaves to a general assembly.

Would that women could fight, fumed Master Rababull, that he might double his fighting force! As well to wish that the stone idols should come to life! But he was pragmatic enough to realize that mere temple idols could not so much as move themselves, let alone that they should wield weapons.

When his personal body slave had arrayed him in his bronze and leather body armor, he turned and marched in haste for the temple. The war god did not have to move anyways, a contemptuous Master Rababull deliberately reminded himself. It only had to make his slaves move-to swing their swords and throw away their own precious lives in the face of any possible enemy, the better to save his own precious hide.

He watched as the temple priests prepared the shoulder litter, putting the solid ebony war god and trophy bones on the platform and brushing off the dust.

The temple was a miniature copy of the Emperor's, barely large enough to permit two or three priests to move about and conduct family ceremonials. The Emperor himself would not trouble himself to lend assistance, Master Rababull knew. To the Emperor, any fight amongst his subjects over what he would consider petty water rights was a mere squabble, too far beneath his dignity to so much as notice.

Indeed, Master Rababull reflected sourly, from the Emperor's point of view, a new landlord might be more successful with the harvest and produce greater taxes. Why waste the lives of the Royal Guard, over such? Master Rababull had seen it before, from the sidelines, as it were. That was how little the Emperor cared for his own, although it was seldom proclaimed in so many words.

The temple was built out of stone pillars on a raised mound of flat-topped, hard-beaten earth, a level berm six steps above the surrounding compound courtyard, with heavy carved cedar timbers for a roof. When it got too damp, they threw down coarse-woven grass mats to keep the mud down.

There weren't too many sources of building stones in the Persian Valley. Just an endless vista of fertile croplands to fight over, which was how he had acquired much of his own property, both human and otherwise.

The skulls surrounding the House war god on the litter were from the heads of past possessors and contenders for the land owned by Master Rababull. All of the skulls had their two front teeth knocked out and a hole punched through the center of the forehead.

When all was ready, Master Rababull was adorned with a ceremonial red and black robe and walked out in front of the litter, carrying his sword in his fist.

There were four priests out in front, the two foremost blowing war pipes, which were also used on New Year's ceremonies, and the two hindmost bearing smoking clay incense pots blackened by soot.

Sounding their pipes, the two priests in the lead started blowing hweee and hwaaa fanatically while the whole procession, with the acrid incense smoking putridly, marched from the assembly area behind the temple and worked their way slowly toward the temple proper.

Hweee-hwaaa, hweee-hwaaa, hweaeaea they sounded in unison, blowing continuously in a deafening discordance as they proceeded. The priests and their attendants were all shaven-headed and splattered with wet pitch black coal dust, scarlet red goat's blood, and white ashes from head to toes.

At the temple, a female baby lay squalling on the flat stone alter, while the baby's mother, a slave-woman, was held back by two temple attendants who held her by the wrists but allowed her to scream wildly for her baby.

Her outbursts were the unintentional focal point of the ceremony, signifying by her very real torments and anguished outcries, the ceremonially-expressed feelings and sentiments of the House of Rababull over the foreign danger to it's property holdings and, specifically in this case, it's water rights.

For where there was no water, there could be no life.

The temple drummers were already there, beating on huge drums that sent out a deep rolling beat that put the slaves into a zombie-like state of mind.

A state of mania, for war…

Too late, Master Rababull thought of having the baby thrown, alive, into a cauldron of boiling water. Such a sacrifice would signify his humility, a generous gift of the fruit of his human possessions. The boiling water would signify that it was his water, and his anger bound up in the water, an impressive liturgy to the war god.

No time now. Have to do it the old way.

The entire procession halted, and as the drumbeats rose in tempo to a heightened furor, shaking the very bones of all present as by the impending battle sounds of the hooves of war horses, Master Rababull stepped momentously around to the fore, facing them all front and center in a grand entrance.

At the raising of both of Master Rababull's arms, the drums increased in a furious tempo, and when the arms dropped the sound of the drums abruptly ceased, although one witless soul kept beating a fraction of a second too long before realizing that he had overlooked the cut-off signal.

Master Rababull made the slightest turn of his head to see who it was, and marked the terrified fool for a thorough whipping later.

In the sudden silence, the terrified slave-woman could be heard weeping and begging desperately for the life of her daughter, as Master Rababull stood with his arms raised again like an eagle before the general assemblage.

Before him were all available members of the House of Rababull, men to the fore, women to the rear, children hindmost, and freeborn family members to the right.

The first row, signifying the first-line defense arm, was comprised of his many sons. It would be Master Rababull's long-awaited opportunity to have a few of the more ambitious of his offspring lead the battle charge and see them finished off before they could come home to glory and threaten his personal authority over all his holdings. Immediately after these, in the second row beginning on the right and trailing off to the left, stood male in-laws beholden unto him enough to show up or risk serious loss of status.

He surveyed their ranks, noting whoever was absent and deserving of punishment for it. There were a few. Punishing in-laws was a necessary thing, best done while the sword was still dripping red from the victory of a battle well-fought.

He made a mental note that a small war-party would have to be detailed to go take care of the drop-outs when he had finished off Kadrug's forces.

Old Maskron, one of his fathers-in-law, was there at the fore as usual. Maskron, a fierce, white-maned old scoundrel, always showed up with his dinged old bronze sword polished and gleaming like gold, and he was always asked to come forward to utter the closing prayers, shaking and waving his sword in the air in wild gesticulations of false bravado.

Maskron was too old to fight, and too proud to stay away, so it was exceeding helpful, in saving face for both of them, to permit him this signal honor.

One distant cousin of the son of his sixth wife, whose name was Puffat and whose mother bore an illegitimate connection to the Emperor himself, stood with one armpit held up by a crutch, his broken and splinted right leg having recently been the source of much grief at the hands of the bonesetter.

The leg was beginning to turn green. If sorcery was of no avail, the young man was doomed either to lose the leg, or die in agony of the gain-green.

He was excused from battle, but there would be no time now to send for the Sorcerer and have a ceremonial procedure. Later, though, they would. Then, Puffat's leg could either be exorcized, or amputated and cauterized.

Master Rababull gave a brief announcement detailing Kadrug's activities to cut off their water, and called upon the entire House, all able-bodied males both bond and free, to fight.

A loud outcry rose up at this as everyone present, women and children too, screamed and howled for the death of Kadrug.

Satisfied, Master Rababull turned to the Chief Priest and commanded that the sacrifice should proceed.

Two priests held the squalling infant from both ends on the stone altar before the war god, one at her tiny feet, one at her little hands.

The infant's mother, insane with terror, shrieked her protests as the priest lifted up the ceremonial sword, much abused from previous impacts with the stone surface, and brought it down on the defenseless child's naked body.

The tiny voice was cut off.

"To war!" shouted Master Rababull.

"TO WAAAAR!!" howled the crowd, drowning out the hopeless sobbing of the baby's mother as she fell brokenly to the dirt when she was finally released.

Drowned out, also, were old Maskron's shouted invocations as he stood in front of them waving his flashing bronze sword.

In the back of the crowd, Si'Wren dropped her head in anguish, for had she not also screamed in the past for the death of their enemies when Master Rababull led the war cry for a neighbor's field? Had not little Si'Wren once prayed to that ugly physical thing to which other babies had been sacrificed in the past, and which the others even now still worshiped so blindly? Would that she might dare to speak and tell them what her heart had learned, reflected from it's own inner pool, upon the graces of the Invisible God.

She, who alone might have spoken truth, stood silently amidst the screaming and drum beating as the shouting went on in a frenzy to kill the enemy. Master Rababull brought on renewed cheers as he mounted his stallion, a half-wild white-spotted gray beauty, and rode to the head of the long riotous formation of shouting men and neighing and stamping horses.

Behind him the drums thundered until the very air seemed to pulsate with the blood-lust, and in the midst of this Master Rababull suddenly raised his sword high in the air and held it up for a long moment as he whirled it around and around, and finally pointed it straight ahead of him in a sudden lunging motion.

"Onward-to the battle!" he cried.

"WHOO-RAH! WHOO-RAH!" chorused the marchers, and at this, the great crowd of men formed a disorganized marching column, many abreast, the men's hoarsened voices bellowing their war cries as they chanted in time to the marching drums and war pipes, over four hundred men-at-arms.

As the ragged formation tromped out the front gates and away down the road in the direction of the sluice gates, which were at the northwesternmost limits of Master Rababull's property holdings, their voices and figures dwindled with distance, and the screams of blood lust from the cripples, women, and children left behind gradually died out.

Si'Wren noticed the boy who had been punished earlier for putting another boy's eye out, by having one of his own put out, and suddenly realized with shock that his other eye had also been put out, and his nose broken. The second eye was so infected that the boy was staggering drunkenly in an extreme delirium. His mouth opened and a hoarse, plaintive croak emitted from the depths of a tortured soul.

Shaken to the core of her very soul, Si'Wren began to approach the boy, when his mother came walking from her left toward the boy. Si'Wren naturally held back, thinking how the mother must yearn upon her savagely punished child. But when the mother sought to walk past the boy without paying any attention to him, she happened to clear her throat involuntarily.

The sound was instantly recognized by the boy, who took a step in her direction and reached out to her with another croaking plea.

Instantly the mother, who was barefoot, stepped back and jerked herself clear just before the boy would have touched her. With a loathsome leer, the mother froze just out of reach, totally silent, watching her own son as he continued to stagger in the same direction he had initially chosen, until his own footsteps had carried him away from her.

Without a word, the mother turned on her heel and continued on her way but did not look back either at her bleating son, nor did she notice Si'Wren watching open-mouthed.

Eventually after they had almost all cleared out, all that could be heard was the broken, muffled sobbing of the woman whose daughter had been sacrificed.

Si'Wren watched as a couple of naive young slave-girls walked past the grieving mother and one of them cursed her for her lack of loyalty to the House of Rababull.

"Fool!" cried the girl. "What is your one daughter's life, to the loss of all our water? She has died for the glory of the House of Rababull! It was only a girl anyway! Why do you cry like that?!!"

The girl and her friends walked on, puffed up with their borrowed sense of self-importance, all worked-up into a feverish blood-frenzy at the spectacle of yet another gory victory for the family name.

Si'Wren looked long upon the girls' departing backs, desiring to tell them the truth, to tell them all that it was they who were the fools, and to scold them for their senselessness. Then she noticed that one of them was an especially vengeful member of Sorpiala's inner clique, and fearfully, Si'Wren turned and faced away from them.

What could she have said to them, anyway?

Deeply disturbed by all that she had seen, and still pondering the madness of it, Si'Wren hesitantly approached the sobbing mother. How could she have been so blind as to embrace such evil before, to copy and mimic such horror?

What a curious thing it was, that it took an Invisible God to open the formerly blind eyes of a seeing person such as herself, to the evil that lay right under all their noses, and still none could see this but Si'Wren.

She knelt down beside the sobbing mother, but was immediately rebuffed by her.

"Get away from me, you filthy idol-breaker!" the woman screamed, wildly slapping Si'Wren off. "Get away!"

Shocked and mute, Si'Wren looked on numbly as the sobbing woman raised herself up and, stricken with grief, stumbled in a hysterical staggering traipse across the yard to fall down at the feet of a half-finished idol in the workshop, wailing desperately to it to bring back her daughter, or give her a son to replace the daughter who was lost.

Si'Wren knew that she had not broken the other idol, that dismembered thing of glistening green jade and jeweled eyes. It was Sorpiala who had cleverly broken the idol earlier, and only blamed it on poor Nelatha. But she also knew that it was beside the point who had broken it; idols -she now knew- deserved to be broken.

Anyways, it did not matter so much anymore. She was as guilty in their eyes as if she had. What mattered the most now, was that it was Sorpiala by whose evil machinations brave Habrunt, former Slavemaster, now lay a beaten and broken-spirited man on that blood-stained sleeping rack in the slave quarters.

Si'Wren turned away. She must go to him, and help wise old L'acoci tend to his wounds.