There was more to this than met the eye.
On impulse she said, “Master, this slave may have internal damage. Someone has kicked him. May I keep him with me to observe for a time?”
The slaver raised a thick eyebrow. He seemed to ponder. “Why not? Why not? He’ll likely come to less trouble. Yes, girl, take him with you.” He smoothed his thick-woven Hmelu- wool tunic down over an expanse of hairy belly. The Salarvyani were always cold away from their hothouse southern lands.
Tlayesha finished, bowed, and urged the slave out of the tent before Chnesuru could think of anything else. There were times when he conveniently forgot that she no longer had to cater to men’s needs for money.
The more she thought the stranger the affair became. A Salarvyani might weep bitter tears over the loss of a copper Qirgal but never over the hurts of an idiot field-slave. Was the boy a “special,” then, to be sold to some customer with tastes odder than most? She did not think so. The slaver’s- mood seemed more that of a man who has safely managed to skirt a deadly peril.
Tlayesha could not resist a further chance to interrogate the boy. As soon as the evening meal was done and her sleeping mat was spread beside one of the ponderous wooden wheels of the sick-cart, she sat him down and began to question him as gently as she could.
His responses were as she expected: trembiing, infantile sounds, and meaningless gestures. She speedily verified the existence of some affinity between the boy and the Zu’ur victim, nevertheless. As far as she could recall, he had not been bought from the same person as that unfortunate girl. Or had he? Chnesuru had acquired both of them on the last morning before they broke camp outside of Bey Sii. But from whom? She wracked her brain to remember and came up with nothing.
Then there was some enigmatic business about gold and Mtiru the cook. The slave took Tlayesha’s arm in his quivering fingers and clutched at her one gold bangle while waving at old Miiru, whose sleeping mat was nearby.
Did he mean Miiru specifically, some other man, or just people in general? Perhaps he was trying to tell her how he had been bought with gold?
One thing puzzled her: unlike others with the shaking sickness, this victim appeared almost normal until he tried to communicate. In repose he hardly trembled, his face and body were still, and his long-fingered, sensitive- appearing hands lay quiescent in his lap. But when he had to respond to her queries his eyes twitched, his jaw convulsed, ridges of strain stood out upon his neck, his tongue refused to obey, and he made childish gagging noises.
Tlayesha sighed and gave up for the night. Later, when she awoke in the pre-dawn chill, she found the boy sitting much as she had left him, staring down at her. He saw her looking at him and smiled back, as easily and normally as though there were nothing wrong with him at all.
What would it be like, she wondered sleepily, to lie with him? Would it help to have a woman? The sleep- demons came and took her again.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chnesuru made up for the delay by marching throughout the next day. They halted at Tsuru the following night, quite exhausted, with the massif of Thenu Thendraya Peak a ponderous boulder hanging in the northwestern sky. The Sakbe road branched here: one route led directly north through craggy foothills and ever-narrowing canyons to the ancient and demon-haunted City of Sarkus the major pilgrimage centre for those who served the Lord of Worms. Another, broader thoroughfare continued on in a northwesterly direction amidst stands of black- leaved Tiu — trees to the swampy basin surrounding Purdimal. Still further branches then took travellers west to Mrelu, or northwest again to Khirgar and the Milumanayani frontier where the armies of the Imperium and of Yan Kor faced one another over an uneasy truce.
The sick boy soon became Tlayesha’s apprentice. He followed her on her rounds, carried her bucket of water, and squatted patiently nearby while she diagnosed and prescribed and treated her charges. The slaves teased her, as was to be expected, calling the boy her Renyu, or her belly-warmer, or her long-lost child. She did not really care: to be truthful, she was unsure in her own mind as to her feelings for the slave. Qoyqunel was prevailed upon to give the boy a coarse kilt, just as though he were one of Chnesuru’s trustee slaves, and Tlayesha saw to it that he received all of his food instead of having half of it stolen by others. He was useful, she told herself, and she took pleasure in his silent companionship.
She was certain, too, that the boy had more intelligence than was normally left to sufferers of the shaking sickness. He examined her instruments and medicines with what appeared to be reverent interest, and it was as though he understood something of the healing arts himself, for he quickly learned to hand her the correct tool or jar of ointment from her bag.
Once she let him watch while she ministered to the Zu’ur- victim, taking great pains not to let Chnesuru or Old White-Side see him there. His reaction surprised her: rather than curiosity or sexual desire, his eyes filled with tears. He wrestled with his tongue to speak, but then his seizures took him again, and he crouched and beat his fists upon the stones.
She did not try that experiment again.
It was clear that some connection existed between the girl and this slaveboy, something deeper than the accident of being bought together from the same previous owner. Had they been lovers perhaps, before the girl was given the deadly drug? They could not be relatives! the youth was a Livyani, while the Zu’ur- victim’s high cheekbones and slender build hinted at Chakan or possibly Mu’ugalavyani origins-Western, anyway.
Presently the caravan began to see the swampy patches that heralded the Huqundali, “the Great Morass,” the many Tsan of treacherous marshes just to the west of Thenu Thendraya Peak. A natural basin caught the run- off from the western slopes of the mountain range that formed the northern border of Tsolyanu, and the water lay upon the land here like curdled milk in a saucer. The Sakbe road was now carried for short distances upon stone arches, long bridges really, allowing the water free passage to the west and south where it overflowed and fed the crops of the central plains of the Empire. As one travelled up from the southeast, however, it was as if the world suffered from some daily-increasing blight. The fields became poor and shabby and gave way to clumps of Tiu- trees; these in turn were replaced by reedy thickets and underbrush; and finally by stretches of algae-blotched, squelching swamps over which Hu — bats hovered on rattling wings to seize the fen-worms wriggling just beneath the surface.
There were also patches of the poisonous purple vegetation called the “Food of the Ssu.” Tlayesha did not recall seeing so much of the stuff when she had passed this way the previous year. Now whole areas, mostly the inaccessible islets in the midst of the swamps, were covered with pulpy vines and clusters of leaves like slashed liver, fleshy blooms of reddish-violet hue, and sticky pods, veined and ichorous, resembling nothing so much as a naked human lung. In the Time of the Gods, it was said, the world was covered with the “Food of the Ssu.” The Ssu, hideous monsters that they were, ate it, cultivated it, and dwelt with their cousins, the Hliiss, alone upon Tekumel. Then the Gods came and tried in vain to destroy the Ssu and their habitat. None succeeded until Lord Vimuhla, the Master of Flame, blew His fiery breath upon the world and made it a fit place for humankind to dwell, together with certain nonhuman species. Now there was an Imperial decree ordering the eradication of these plants, but who was going to enforce it in such a dismal place? Once Tlayesha had thought to pick some of the ugly flowers for examination, and her fingers still smarted from the remembered pain of the bums! No useful medicines were to be had there!
The landscape became more and more a gloomy land of dark waters and hidden, secretive undergrowth. The Sakbe road was reduced to only one level, and this was frequently replaced by a wooden causeway carried on black-tarred pilings and balks of timber. The Gods knew how the old Emperors had constructed this highway! During its repair a generation ago so many workers had died that the Imperium had decreed the building of a new route along Thenu Thendraya’s mighty flank where the cliffs plunged down from the heights into the bogs to the west. But “the Sentinel of Hrugga” had shaken himself and thrown down their bridges and tunnels, and at last the priesthoods had persuaded the Emperor to desist.
Twelve days after leaving Tsuru the slaver’s caravan sighted the first of the villages of the Hehecharu, the “First Dwellers” of the Great Morass. Rickety hovels of grey sticks and reeds rose from the swamp upon stilts and
