I did catch her staring at me a couple of times, from which I guessed that she might be curious about me as well. She flashed me a cute, gap-toothed smile when I met her eyes. I knew I was rather built after hard work on the farm, and not so bad looking, if the attention I got from the ladies back in Aranor was anything to go by.
“William,” my foster-father used to say to me, “what a young man like you needs to make him strong is good food and honest work. I’ll make sure you get plenty of both, and when the time comes the women won’t be able to resist you.” By the looks my fellow captive gave me, I guessed he was right.
“Going to fetch a high price for you two,” Boris said, interrupting my thoughts. “Ain’t delivered Elemental Sensitives to the mines for a good while now. And two at a time? The gods really have blessed us.”
“You are a lucky asshole, then, aren’t you?” I muttered.
“What was that?”
I looked away, and Boris grunted and went back to picking at his nails with my dagger. The bastard. That dagger was my most prized possession. When I’d been sold to these Trollmen, they had looted everything I’d been carrying. Not much, to be sure, but none of it was as precious to me as that dagger. That had been a gift from Gregory, my foster-father, the man who had raised me for as long as I could remember. It was a very unusual item, not an edged weapon like other knives, but a stiletto with a round, tapering blade, about eight inches long from its base to its needle-thin point and made from a single piece of some dark metal. The crossguard was elaborately curled, more decorative than practical. Strangest of all, the cruelly sharp tip was actually hollow.
“It’s a weapon for a brawler, not a gentleman,” I remembered Gregory saying to me as he handed it over on my 18th birthday, “so it’s just as well you are no gentleman!” I tried more than once to wheedle more information about it from Gregory, but he would just shake his head. “It belongs to you, William. Let that be enough for now.”
All this detail was lost on the squat figure of trollman Boris the slave trader, however. Having lost interest in cleaning his nails with it, he began to use the fine tip to try to dislodge something stuck between his teeth. The wagon jounced again, and he hastily pulled the dagger away from his mouth, glaring at me as if daring me to laugh.
“Two Elemental Sensitives,” he said again, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe his luck. “You two will be the making of me this trip. I’ve heard that some of the Beasts have escaped from the mines recently and been seen roaming the forests around Brightwater. Hell, we should try to get you to locate some of them on the way. If you could find us a couple of Beasts, we could kill them and harvest the Cores. Make even more money!”
“Shaddup!” yelled the driver. “Stop talking to the slaves, you fool. There’ll be no bloody stopping until we reach the mountains. There’s no Beasts outside the mines, you idiot, that’s crazy talk. Everyone knows that Beasts can’t leave the mines. That’s the whole bloody point.”
“It’s just what I heard,” said Boris defensively, then lapsed into surly silence.
The woman had been following the conversation with interest, and had almost seemed about to say something, but thought the better of it. She glanced at me under her eyelashes, and I raised my eyebrows at her. So, she was an Elemental Sensitive as well! I didn’t know how the trollmen could be so certain, but I didn’t doubt that they had some way of being sure.
The folk who operated the slave caravans between the cities and the northern Beast Mines were not really men at all, but a lower breed of troll, smaller and more cunning than their monstrous cousins, and much more human-like in their looks and behavior. They were not given to subterfuge or trickery. If they said this woman was an Elemental Sensitive, like me, I had no doubt that she was. Stupid the trollmen may be, but they knew their business.
Boris and the driver of our wagon seemed to be the leaders of this group, and they were ecstatic with their haul. I was sure it was true that they would fetch a high price for myself and the woman when they transported us to the Beast Mines. We were Elemental Sensitives, which meant that we could detect the presence of certain Elemental Beasts. These creatures contained special orbs with magical ink that could be used to enchant weapons and armor with spells.
Beast Cores were the foundation of the magic that was used in the Kingdom. Cores were highly prized, as were the Sensitives who could be used to locate them. Those who could use the items enchanted from the Cores were known as Mages, the most powerful of which would join the cohort of Arcanists at Astros. Mages, almost unanimously, were selected from noble stock.
Which counted me out. Commoner I might be, but I was something beyond that. For better or worse, I was Sensitive—if there was a Beast Core in the vicinity, I could sense it—but nothing more. I’d never seen a Beast before, and I’d only ever touched a single Core.
It was Gregory, my foster-father, who had taught me that I was an Elemental Sensitive. My ability made me very valuable to the slave traders who roamed the Kingdom, so Gregory had always tried to keep me safe from being captured and sold. Technically, I was a slave and Gregory owned me, but
