The Return: Shadow Souls

poor means of living, his cart, and his hopeless, impudent, slothful slave, and how all this had resulted in the death of his brother. To Elena’s ears, at first, he seemed to be blaming Lady Ulma for the entire incident because she had fallen under her load.

“You all know the kind of slave I mean — she wouldn’t bother to wave away a fly walking across her eye,” he shrieked, appealing to the crowd, which responded with fresh insults and a renewed pelting upon Elena, since Lady Ulma wasn’t there to punish.

At last, Young Drohzne finished recounting how this bold-faced hussy (Elena) who, wearing trousers like a man, had caught up his brother’s own ne’er-do-well slave (Ulma) and had carried away this valuable property bodily away (all by myself? Elena wondered ironically) and had taken her to the home of a highly suspicious healer (Dr. Meggar), who now refused to give her, the original slave, back.

“I knew when I heard this that I would never see my brother or his slave again,” he cried, in the shrieking wail that he had somehow been able to maintain throughout the entire narrative.

“If the slave was so lazy, you should have been glad,” a joker in the crowd called out.

“Nevertheless,” said a very fat man whose voice reminded Elena irresistibly of Alfred Hitchcock’s: the lugubrious delivery and the same pauses before important words, which served to make the mood more grim and entire business even more serious than anyone had heretofore thought. This was a man with power, Elena realized. The ribaldry, the pelting, even the hawking and spitting had fallen silent. The large man was undoubtedly the local equivalent of a “godfather” to these painfully poor residents of the slums. His word would be that which determined Elena’s fate.

“And since then,” he was saying slowly, crunching with every few words some irregularly shaped, golden- colored sweetmeat from a bowl reserved for himself, “the young vampire Damien has made reparation — and most generously, too — for all the property damage.” Here there was a long pause as he stared at Young Drohzne. “Therefore, his slave, Aliana, who started all this mischief will not be seized and put up for public auction, but will make her humble obeisance and surrender, here, and of her own will, receive the punishment she knows is her due.”

Elena found herself dazed. She didn’t know whether it was from all the smoke that had floated down to her level before curling away, but the words “put up for public auction” had sent a shock through her that almost led her to black out. She had had no idea that that could happen — and the pictures it brought to mind were extremely unpleasant. She also noticed her new alias, and Damon’s. It was actually quite fortunate, she thought since it would be nice if Shinichi and Misao never heard about this little adventure.

“Bring the slave to us,” the fat man concluded, and sat back down on a great pile of cushions.

Elena was lifted off her feet and roughly marched upward until she could see the man’s gilded sandals, and remarkably clean feet, as she kept her eyes down in the manner of an obedient slave.

“Have you heard these proceedings?” The Godfather-type was still munching on his delicacies and a waft of breeze brought a heavenly smell to Elena’s nose, and suddenly all the saliva she could ask for flooded to her dry lips.

“Yes, sir,” she said, not knowing what title to give him.

“You address me as Your Excellence. And do you have anything to add in your defense?” the man asked, to Elena’s astonishment. Her automatic response of: “Why ask me, since it’s all been fixed up beforehand?” was stilled on her lips. This man was somehow—more—than any of the others she had met in the Dark Dimension — in fact, in her entire life. He listened to people. He would listen to me if I told him all about Stefan, Elena thought suddenly. But then, she thought, regaining her normal level-headedness, what could he do about it? Nothing, unless he could do some good and turn a profit out of it — or gain some power, or take down an enemy.

Still, he might make for an ally when she returned to level this place and freed the slaves.

“No, Your Excellence. Nothing to add,” she said.

“And you are willing to prostrate yourself and beg my forgiveness and that of Master Drohzne?”

This was Elena’s first scripted line. “Yes,” she said, and she managed to get through her prefabricated apology clearly and with just the hint of a gulp at the end. Up close she could see flecks of gold on the large man’s face, in his lap, in his beard.

“Very well. A penalty of ten ash rod strokes is laid upon this slave as an example to other mischief-makers. The punishment will be delivered by my nephew Clewd.”

21

Pandemonium. Elena whipped her head up, confused as to whether she was supposed to be the repentant slave any longer. The community leaders were all babbling at one another, pointing fingers, throwing up their hands. Damon had physically restrained the Godfather, who seemed to regard his part in the ceremony as concluded.

The crowd was hooting and cheering. It looked as if there would be another fight; this time between Damon and the Godfather’s men, especially the one called Clewd.

Elena’s head was whirling. She could catch only disjointed phrases.

“—only six strokes and promised me that I could administer—” Damon was shouting.

“—really think that these little flunkies tell the truth?” someone else — probably Clewd — was shouting back.

But isn’t that exactly what the Godfather was, too? Just a bigger, more frightening, and, undoubtedly, more efficient flunky who reported to someone higher up, and didn’t cloud his mind with dope-smoke? Elena thought; and then ducked her head hastily as the fat man glanced toward her.

She could hear Damon again, this time clearly above the hubbub. He was standing by the Godfather. “I had believed that even here there was some honor once a bargain was struck.” His voice made it obvious that he no longer thought negotiations were possible and that he was about to go on the attack. Elena tensed, horrified. She had never heard such open menace in his speaking voice.

“Wait.” It was in the Godfather’s lackadaisical tones, but it caused an instant of silence in the babble. The fat man, having removed Damon’s hand from his arm, turned his head back toward Elena.

“I will waive, for my part, the participation of my nephew Clewd. Diarmund, or whoever you were, you are free to punish your own slave with your own tools.”

Suddenly, surprisingly, the old man was brushing bits of gold out of his beard and speaking directly to Elena. His eyes were ancient, tired, and surprisingly discerning. “Clewd is a master at whipping, you know. He has his own little invention. He calls it the cat’s whiskers and one blow can flay the skin from neck to hip. Most men die from ten lashes. But I’m afraid he’ll be disappointed today.” Then exposing surprisingly white and even teeth, the Godfather smiled. He extended to her the bowl of golden sweetmeats he’d been eating. “You might as well taste one before your Discipline. Go on.”

Afraid to try one, afraid not to, Elena took one of the irregular pieces and popped it in her mouth. Her teeth crunched pleasantly. A walnut half! That’s what the mysterious sweets were. A delicious half walnut dipped in some kind of sweet lemon syrup, with bits of hot pepper or something like that clinging to it, all gilded with that edible gold stuff. Ambrosia!

The Godfather was saying to Damon, “Do your own ‘discipline,’ boy. But don’t neglect to teach the girl how to cover her thoughts. She has too much wit to be wasted here in a slum-brothel. But then why do I not think she wishes to become a famous courtesan at all?”

Before Damon could answer or Elena look up from her genuflection, he was gone, carried by palanquin bearers to the only horse-drawn carriage Elena had seen in the slums.

By now the arguing, gesticulating civic leaders, egged on by Young Drohzne, had come to a sullen agreement. “Ten lashes, and she need not strip, and you may give them,” they said. “But our final word is ten. The man who negotiated with you has no more power to argue.”

Almost casually, one lifted by a tuft of hair a bodiless head. Absurdly, it was crowned with dusty leaves in anticipation of the banquet after the ceremony.

Damon’s eyes flared with true rage that set objects around him vibrating. Elena could feel his Power like a panther rearing back against a leash. She felt as if she were speaking against a hurricane which cast every word back into her throat.