Si'Wren of the Patriarchs

The young girl sang softly to herself as she filled another container. Topping it off, she carefully stoppered the neck of the dainty clay vase and laid it to one side with the others.

An orphan prize of the conquests of the House of Rababull, she was small for her age, with long ebony hair nearly down to her waist in back, and perpetually of a rather plain appearance as a child, which safely hid her flowering beauty, unbeknownst to herself, from the lustful eyes of others.

She liked to hum and sing while she worked, although not too loudly, and was a painstaking, diligent servant. She had just finished filling nine of the little clay jars. They contained a medicinal salve comprised of rare aromatic resins and spices which were intended to be sold by an agent of Rababull, her master, in the market place at great profit.

Rababull kept many slaves, wives, and concubines, and had many sons and daughters. He was a strong, wealthy gentleman of noble birth, a titled land owner who wore much crude jewelry, together with the softest of furs and robes, and was always dressed in the finest weaves of red and purple.

He had long distinguished gray hair upon his head. His beard was elaborately curled every morning on a carefully heated rod of iron which was always cleaned and tested first with the judicious application of a wet thumb by his personal man servant, who kept it meticulously polished and free of rust with a dash of virgin olive oil and a cursory, daily polishing.

Rababull had hard, no-nonsense eyes and speech, and he always drove a hard bargain, whether it be something of as little consequence as the selling-off of an old slave or animal too advanced in years to be of proper use to him anymore, or the buying and selling of great tracts of land. He also saw to the scourging of slaves and the torture and questioning of thieves and miscreants, not infrequently even unto pain of death itself. Life could be cheap, depending on who you were, or who your father was.

Master Rababull was more than six hundred and fifty years old, although by the standards of the moderns, more than four thousand years in his future, he would have been described as an exceeding fit fifty-five. His life experience, like his age, was vast.

He was not afflicted by an old man's failings of the mind. He was missing no teeth, neither smitten by cavities. He was sound of stature. He was still keen of ear, and ate and drank as freely as any rash youth. He suffered no impairment of bone, limb, or mind, and had suffered no ailment since the day of his birth.

His eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated, and he craved a good physical match or a hard bet as much as any man 500 years his junior.

It was morning, and Nelatha labored steadily beside Si'Wren. Nelatha had been originally sold into slavery at birth for the unfortunate offense of having been a firstborn female, and her first owner had been fond of tatoos and ritual scars, of which Nelatha had received many all over her body.

Nelatha was accustomed to making no little ado of her mere five years seniority over Si'Wren, though not in an unkindly way. Nelatha's limbs were tireless and unfailing, for she was a large woman of short stature and powerful girth. The plenteous flesh of her upper arms rippled to an odd meter as she worked, grinding successful handfuls of spices and herbs in the stone pestle and mortise, to be portioned out into equal shares for each lot of balm.

The balm was made with fresh olive oil, pressed and drained out of a great wooden casement and ram located in the back yard of the compound. The ram was comprised of a flat, wheel-like lid, with many heavy stones laid on over the top of the lid by two powerful male slaves, crushing it down onto the open-topped barrel of olives. As the slaves piled on the stones, the progressively increasing weight of the ram steadily crushed out the fresh, strong-smelling olive oil which was drained through a bung hole at the casque's base.

This was a most pleasant time for Si'Wren, who, not having had any tatoos, not so much as one, applied anywhere on her body like Nelatha, and neither desiring any, yet greatly admired and envied Nelatha for her expert ability and wealth of worldly experience. Si'Wren always looked on with beaming countenance as the piles of freshly sorted and washed olives were slowly crushed down under the weight of so many heavy stones. She would watch the pooling olive oil in the collection bucket, diligent to pluck forth the bugs from the fresh pressing. Then the oil would be covered to settle out any remaining bits of dust, twigs, and dead insects.

Finally, the oil would be sieved through several layers of coarsely woven cheese cloth, to be stored in tall slender vases with narrow bottom ends into which the finest pollen grains and motes would eventually settle out during storage. She knew of no other method to obtain the olive oil, but this way worked quite well, and Si'Wren was faithful to obey all, and question nothing that she learned.

Pharmacopoeia was a noble trade to work in, and well-praised by all for a multitude of reasons, of which several might be mentioned.

Firstly, because of the wonderful, aromatic scents which lingered in the spice tent and were so soothing to mind and soul.

Secondly, because of constant skin contact with the salves, balms, and countless varieties of resins and floral concoctions used to make incense, which were prepared by her and Nelatha on an almost daily basis, which had a most beneficent effect, giving perpetual advantage to good health by virtue of being so frequently in direct contact with the ingredients.

There were but few drawbacks to the natural enjoyment of her work. The purgative herbs, for example, could be powerful and curiously disturbing to the bowels in their effects, and their dry powders sometimes drifted in the air in the confines of the spice tent, having a drastic effect upon her breathing passages and causing her to gasp, wheeze, and sneeze in a most extraordinary fashion sometimes.

But that was only because of their natural purging qualities, and she was soon over it with no harmful aftereffects. One of the herbs was poisonous to consume whole, whereas the oil of the seeds, pressed out in it's own little separate bucket and ram and imbibed in small quantities, acted as a safe and effective purgative to the bowels.

Yet by and large, Pharmacopoeia was interesting and rewarding work, and was pleasant enough to do. Work in the spice tent forbade the intrusion of flies or bugs, and except for the sun-drying process, there must be no direct exposure to the natural elements, lest the product become spoiled.

A well-trained Pharmacopoeist was worth much money, and merited the perpetual good favors of the Master for all of his or her days. Praise for the worker would assure eventual success and praise for the work.

Compared to this, the backs of those working the harvest fields, the threshing floor, and other more common or menial tasks such as brick-making, invited the whip, because that could not impair the work nor harm the product, and would only increase the yield of bricks or harvest of grain.

Si'Wren was knowledgeable and proficient in almost every aspect and phase of the work of Pharmacopoeia. She was well tutored in how to recognize and gather fresh herbs on foraging expeditions with Nelatha in the wilds, under the protective guardianship of an armed male slave.

Whatever other herbs were not found locally could be purchased readily enough in the market place for a fair price. Even in this, Si'Wren was becoming skillful in identifying, grading, and haggling over the prices of herbs according to their several worth, and she had already gained much knowledge and experience in this.

But sometimes when at market, she still required the presence of one with a heavy beard and a deep voice, to help her strike a good bargain, for many of the traders were so proud and vain of their ability to make a profusion of crude marks on the tally slate, as 'proof' of their ability to 'read and write' as well as to cheat and connive, as to be unwilling to bargain in any manner except 'man to man', and could on occasion be outright fiendish in their unwillingness to permit a mere slave girl to get anything like a fair deal out of them.

Si'Wren did not mind. If her Master wanted something, he would see to it that she was afforded whatever means was required to get it, and send her out with some broken-nosed, one-eyed brawler of a slave with cauliflower ears, a total illiterate who was willing enough to trade 'look for look' in the market place, in order to back her up in the demeaning cut-throat little realm of the traders.

Perhaps Si'Wren's most notable challenge of all, however, was her resolute refusal of becoming involved in any form of Sorcery, and a natural fear and reluctance of serving it's horrible totems and mystic signs employed publicly with such pomp and ceremony. Besides this, as a female she was ineligible to rise to a very high rank in the priesthood anyways.

Few women rose to such positions of power. After all, it was a man's world. Where superior strength was needed, of what use was beauty? Woe to the man who became physically useless, in such a world.

And so, through no fault of her own, Si'Wren had already missed out on the basic qualifying factor in life of being born male, a crucial qualification if one was to become a true Master of Pharmacopoeia. But she had always shunned, in heart and deed, the vile pursuits of being a Sorcerer, and secretly regarded it as no great loss in her young life.

Neither did Habrunt, the sage Slavemaster, take part in any Sorceries himself, ceremonial or other, and from what she saw, Si'Wren indirectly perceived a like sentiment in Habrunt to her own. She had never seen him so much as partake of such dark activities, even when she saw him off by himself at such and such a time as he felt mostly unobserved by others.

Habrunt was an exceeding strong man, and his true age was a mystery to all. He had a naturally weathered face, with deep, dark, friendly eyes, which held a slight but perpetual squint, as if he were ever vigilant against the many evils of an uncertain life. Si'Wren basically entrusted herself body and soul to Habrunt's unassuming tutelage in the many curiosities of the world, as if nothing could be more natural.

Habrunt was a formidable man. His tireless, muscular physique was battle-scarred, but although she knew him to be a fearless man, she had never seen him actually fight anyone. He had no tatoos. His dark hair, like his beard, was slightly wavy, and like his face, very pleasing to behold in the eyes of young Si'Wren, and he kept his hair cropped to a proper shoulder length, but no longer than that, as befitted his low station in life, for he was but a slave himself. Habrunt was greater in stature and strength than Master Rababull, but unlike that other, he was no idle boaster and displayed no jewelry upon his nearly naked person.

Although only a slave, Slavemaster Habrunt ranked second in importance in the House of Rababull after only the Master himself. The cast of Habrunt's eyes was of a dutiful mein, but his normally pleasant, preoccupied expression as he looked after his many responsibilities, could become hard and unyielding at a moment's notice, even piercing by aspect, such as when he was wont to evaluate a slave even unto his very soul with a mere look. For this, and other, less notable reasons, all of the slaves under Habrunt's fair-minded authority held him in regard of great fear and respect, and because the mark of Habrunt was so universally the mark of excellence throughout the House and it's surrounds, he received much praise from Master Rababull for all that he did.

Such widely-held acclaim for Slavemaster Habrunt, the chief agent of Master Rababull, was in no small part maintained by his sage words of advice, characteristically brief, unerring, and straight to the point, and by the certain knowledge in every servant's mind that if one failed at the fore to heed mere words from Slavemaster Habrunt, one must harken at the last to the whip of Master Rababull.

For Master Rababull always kept a large, blood-encrusted bull whip ready to hand for his most grievous personal judgements, when the real punishments must be meted out.

The two girls, Nelatha and Si'Wren, being naturally shy and industrious, counted themselves privileged to work together in the shelter of the spice tent. The tent of animal skins was located well off to one side in the large front courtyard of the House of Rababull, which was surrounded on all sides by a high stone wall.

The Master's holdings consisted of but a very small portion of the Emperor's kingdom, yet they were large tracts of land nevertheless. They were located on a broad fertile valley plain covered by dense scattered forest and jungle. Across this plain, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flowed and converged together into one. This dry land, this lush fertile plain, would one day be known to all mankind as a large body of salt water, named the Persian Gulf.

The wide tent was open at both ends and shielded by thin gauze veils to keep out flying insects, and preserve the salves and other herbal preparations. Infestation by insects could cause the finest ointment to give forth a stinking savor, and invoke the certain displeasure of the Master. The tent was also equipped with extra flaps so that it could be closed up at night or during the day when it became too misty.

L'acoci, an old slave woman of the House, spoke once of seeing the colors of a virgin's garments, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet, as a banded scimitar slash in the heavens, a colored arch, a wound in a darkened noonday sky misty enough that it wetted her upturned face and garments, and obscured her vision most strangely.

None had ever heard of such foolishness, and all, even Si'Wren, had laughed her to scorn. Colors in the sky? L'acoci was deluded. No one had ever heard of such a preposterous thing, and the very suggestion was flatly impossible.

A heavy dew came out of the ground every night and often in the day, and caused all life to flourish. But as Si'Wren well knew from unfortunate firsthand experience, such enshrouding mists could cause rare herbs and spices, if they were left exposed, to quickly turn stale, causing Master Rababull much displeasure.

To guard against such calamity, the tent was equipped to afford proper shelter from the clammy, clinging mists, which could arise on a moment's notice and transform the torches in men's hands into pale blobs of moon glow, like spirits at large upon the land.

Within the sheltering confines of the tent, Si'Wren counted herself a cherished and defended slave, safe within the walls of her Master's House, where strange men could not ogle or frighten her. For savage, rogue men walking in the lusts of their wicked hearts went out at all times of day or night, seeking human prey, upon whom they might work their unspeakable evils, men who loudly proclaimed their honor before others, and yet were so wicked in their ways that no woman or child dared venture alone beyond the protection of some trusted strong man or tribe.

Sometimes a local sorcerer was rumored to have kidnaped an unsuspecting victim for occult and sacrificial purposes. Such men were oft upon the land by night, when swords slept in their owners' grasps, and brave men retired upon their racks behind the stoutest walls and doors they could manage. There was no law except the law of the pack. The only real law was right of might and sword and the dictates of powerful warlords and landowners, even unto the changeable whim of the Emperor himself. Against such, mere empty words were but as the ring of brass or a sounding cymbal, dumb bells all, and the clink of the condemned slave's heavy chains. Too often, the ring of a sword was the only proper answer.

The world was a place of much beauty, but even greater evil.

Si'Wren prayed oft in her bed at night, that she might one day be given in marriage to some strong and decent man. Was it not supposed to be one man and one wife, as had once been that great and mythical Patriarch Adam and his helpmeet, Eve? Eve first bore Cain, then Abel, and then after the sons of Cain were already abroad upon the land even unto the sixth generation, Eve bore Seth. Adam and Eve were, then, one husband and one wife in the beginning. Yet now, after fewer generations than the fingers on one's hands, men stole, bought, and murdered for as many wives and female slaves as cunning, sword, and gold could get.

A good husband, if Si'Wren should one day become so blessed as to find, could be both protector and benefactor to her. She was young, and still had her whole life ahead of her. A wise woman must overlook her man's faults, and stand beside him, even help lift him up when he might otherwise perish, and Si'Wren believed in the promise of the proverb that a faithful woman who served well might hope to find such a man, together with riches, happiness, and a houseful of many offspring.

Abruptly, as she worked, there came the crack of whips and the sound of curses, and Si'Wren looked up in momentary astonishment as a team of two big oxen straining against their yokes plodded slowly past the open end flap of her tent accompanied by several dirty-looking boys and driven by two brawny slaves who presently followed the beasts into view. Truly, Si'Wren observed meekly, a woman's place was under a man's protection, for what woman could match such men in the daily toil of such backbreaking labors as this?

The oxen were dragging a stone boat. A stone boat was no boat at all, but actually a great, wheelless, wooden sled or sledge used to transport big building stones from the rock quarry, or round stones from the harvest fields where they were unearthed by the plow, to be dragged as deadweight upon a platform made with two wooden skids, and transported across the dry land to the construction site for use in the making of more stone walls and buildings.

The young slave boys walked alongside the grating and squealing runners of the stone boat with goat skin bags, ready to provide grease or water to make sludge or mud under the runners, when the sled ground to a halt sometimes and must have something extra added to unstick it. The boys also carried straw brooms for the same purpose, as well as staffs to load and unload the sledge.

One of the young boys had suffered a massively crippled hand from the carelessness of his overseers when he was ordered to apply the grease and water and insert the end of a broom more closely beneath the runners. Such boys must reach in and work the water and grease and dirt together with their brooms and fingertips, because sometimes what was poured on would merely run off as quickly again without sinking in.

The older or more experienced boys could also employ the ends of their staffs for this purpose, but when a boy was especially young or new to the job and had never seen a stone boat before, it sometimes pleased the others who had the charge of such a green and inexperienced youth, to order him into the worst labors possible, and few other boys would give the temporary loan of their sticks and staffs, lest one of them suffer a similar ghastly fate. Si'Wren had once heard an agonizing episode of high-pitched screams that began so suddenly as to jolt her right down to the very pit of her stomach. The pitiful childish screams had gradually subsided into long dismaying moans that had continued long into the night, and thus had she known that something of the sort had happened, and she spent the night praying desperately on her bed for the sufferings of the hapless young victim.

The stones comprising this particular load, broken by the stone masons into crude blocks of two and three times the weight of a man, were for the Master's garden wall, which Si'Wren must pass by every day on her way to and from the spice tent. As the two sweating drivers were helped along by the boys, many looked on disinterestedly and more than a few openly laughed and mocked at the slowness of their progress.

One onlooker shouted gleeful insults, bringing on the inevitable vile curses from the aggravated drivers.

The men kept the oxen at their yokes with cursings and whippings, as they dragged the stone boat screeching over the exposed surfaces of rocks and stones in the ground and the wooden runners scraped over them with ear-splitting squealings. Si'Wren watched also as the team made their way slowly past the spice tent and beyond, to where the stone masons labored to build the new garden wall.

Si'Wren bowed her head a little, and shut her eyes gently as she softly sang a prayer for the physical safety of the young boys. She often sang prayers during her work, swaying gently to the rhythm of her own soft sweetly-uttered syllables. It was not merely a prayer she sang always, but sometimes rather, a long-favored tribal song, a song of old which kept alive the promise about the Garden of Heaven to which all good souls must surely one day go.

The day was warm and pleasant. It was the kind of day to lull one into a drifting somnambulance, inviting weary slaves to seize upon the unwatched moment now and then to pause, and wander freely with their eyes across the inner mind and the far skies, in spite of the ever-present risk of sudden discovery and displeasure by the Master.

Nelatha's sudden intake of air accompanied by a frightened gasp of startlement caused Si'Wren to cease abruptly from her labors and look up quickly.

Immediately Si'Wren shrank back in an involuntary motion as she beheld the terrifying sight of a hairy, muscled giant of a man, easily twice the height of any normal individual. The giant had six great fingers, like stout wooden pegs, on each hairy, enormous hand. Because of his size he appeared to be walking with exaggerated slowness, although the long strides with which he covered the ground took him across the level courtyard and up the front steps of the House of Rababull in a surprisingly short time.

His size was truly staggering to behold, and Si'Wren counted it her good fortune that he was already moving away from the tent entrance in such a way that she was not so much as glimpsed by him.

Such men, if they be men, could be unpredictably violent, and who could withstand such a one when he should happen to suddenly lose his temper? Although they were too big to ride horses, they could run on their long legs almost as swiftly as any horse, especially in a short sprint when attacking in a burst of speed. When they did ride, they were fond of more fitting steeds, such as elephants.

"Was he not terrible to behold?" Nelatha barely breathed, her voice a terrified series of gasped utterances.

"Aye, he is possessed!" Si'Wren agreed readily.

Indeed, he looked every bit of that.

Demon-possessed men had abnormal strength. How much the more so, such a one as this human tree?

With trembling fingers, Si'Wren carefully finished filling another tiny bottle and stoppered it carefully, checking to ensure that it could not possibly leak if accidentally tipped over or upended within some traveler's pouch.

"There," she said softly, still shivering in fear. "Ten bottles."

"So soon?" asked Nelatha, looking over her shoulder and double-checking

Si'Wren's finger-count swiftly.

Si'Wren nodded. "I do good, aye?"

Nelatha, sensing how frightened Si'Wren still was, smiled her approval, and leaned over to hug Si'Wren in a reassuring embrace.

"You keep up a good pace," Nelatha agreed with evident satisfaction. "I am proud of you, Si'Wren."

They were charged to labor without ceasing, but sometimes both girls would alike find themselves the free time to rest and watch others, for which neither girl was apt to criticize the other too unfairly.

Outsiders could not easily see into the tent, thereby to voice any complaint of idleness, for the veil screened the girls while they worked, keeping them safely out of view while they labored happily within it's shadowy confines.

Even so, the two girls did try to be faithful and willing servants who would scarce conscience the deliberate wasting of their Master's valuable time and resources, and whose household they rightly considered themselves to be a part of. To be sure, they counted themselves but inferior members of the House, and yet, if not heirs, nevertheless exceeding fortunate to be the property of so great a one as Master Rababull.

This, then, was their fate and fortune, and it was good in their sight.

Master Rababull had never deliberately mistreated either of them, although he was known to deal harshly enough with rightly deserving wrongdoers or habitual slackers if they pushed their luck too far.

He had more than enough of those to preoccupy his attentions. According to the elder slaves, times were never so evil as now. Si'Wren wondered at this, being too young to say for herself. But she was inclined to agree with them.

The giant came out again, and made equally short work of his brief walk across the wide courtyard to the foundry. To the tune of many hammers, a group of talented artificers was busy at their labors there as they worked diligently to create numberless idols of stone, brass, silver, pearl, ivory, gold, wood, bone, and sparkling, mystically colored gemstones and jewels.

These skilled men worked together like tireless oxen under the unflinching eyes of the sweating, dirt-streaked Foundryman, the traditional Task Master of their Trade, and could readily produce any sort of cleverly carved and molded artifact, and an endless variety of molten and engraved idols and gods of all sizes, shapes, and descriptions. These were always sold or traded off at a handsome profit for Master Rababull, although some were given as gifts instead. The handiwork of the clever craftsmen went mostly, as did the wares of Si'Wren and Nelatha, to the market place in the nearby city of Emperor Euphrates, ruler over all the land.

Across the yard, the giant stood talking in a voice so deep that it was like the continuous lowing of a great talking ox. His huge, ugly face was like a terrible stone mask, and all men of ordinary stature were utterly dwarfed by him, and so afraid of him that they stood frozen in stark fear if he so much as but glanced in their direction momentarily.

"The gods of the giants are exceeding mighty!" breathed Si'Wren, keeping her voice low so as not to be overheard. To this Nelatha made no reply, but watched only, and kept her silence.

Because of the six-fingered giants, one could speak of another race. But the way of ordinary men, throughout the known world, was; one kind, one race, one speech, easily recognized and understood by all. This was the way it had always been and it would scarce have occurred to any to so much as question it.

Only two kinds of men might speak and not be understood; drunkards, and the possessed, and though foul be the reproaches and slurred speech of a drunkard, so much the worse be the abuses one risked in knowingly dealing with some possessed madman!

Giants, Si'Wren was told, were all possessed.

The two frightened girls stayed hidden, watching motionlessly in the spice tent as the giant stood like a temple god himself and conversed at great length with the Foundryman. They could not hear clearly what was said, but the giant gesticulated with his huge hands so much that it was interesting to watch and try to figure out.

He wanted an idol made. This much was plain to see. Verily, for that, he had come to the right place.

Si'Wren knew no Polynesians, Asians, Eurasians, or Mongolians. She knew no Amerinds northern or southern, no Hispanics, Negroids, or Pygmies. She knew no Caucasians, rain forest people, or Eskimos. She knew no people other than her own kind, for there was but one race of Man the world over.

Yet these unknown future races -with their diverse tongues yet to be born out of history- were hidden in the bloodline of Si'Wren's one world-wide race, one day to emerge, and then would come proud evil speeches of 'the purity of the race' with exclusive regard to individual strains, and a need to 'ethnic cleansing' and racial 'purges' of the 'mixed breeds'.

The human race, of which Si'Wren was but a single leaf, one lone, timid female, had spread abroad by a plethora of land bridges. There were many shallow seas and easily crossed land bridges in this, the world of Si'Wren, land which was but slightly above the level of the seas, with broad exposed continental shelves, vast coastal plains, and virgin, fertile land. Much territory was given over to swamp, tropical jungle, and dense forest.

Thus there was but one people in the world, medium-color, and more or less medium-dark of hair. To suggest that from the loins of a single man and his wife would one day spring forth all future races in their manifold colors and countless differences would have been a source of great astonishment to Si'Wren, could she but have known. One might as well harken unto the daffy old woman, L'acoci, and her crazy talk of colors in the sky, as to speak of many differing colors among the skins of men.

There was no other kind of human, except for the giants, and even these spoke the same language as the rest of the human race, in spite of their great difference in size. Even those with six fingers were not so different as all that. Yet in spite of the fact that there was only one race among men -which included the giants- there was hatred in almost every heart, wickedness such as to compound every evil, and deliberate mimicry of the savage wild beasts which roamed this wild primitive world so overflowing with such indescribable natural beauty.

Si'Wren reached for the water skin, and fumbled as her fingers plucked for it, and accidentally dropped it in the dirt. She reached down and picked it up, ignoring the rough coating of caked-on mud which clung to the bag as she raised it to her lips. The water ran freely out of the bag's horn spout, it's mud coating wrinkling across the contracting, silken wet goat skin, giving rise to many miniature ridges.

When she had drunk her full, she heedlessly hung the depleted goat skin back on the stub of a knot-end on the tent pole upright, a small axe-hewn sapling. The half-dried mud clung to the goat skin in a curious pattern of broken and layered ridges that were partly crushed together wherever their broken edges collided and overran one-another as a result of the escape of water beneath the muddy leather, which Si'Wren had taken to quench her thirst.

The water skin forgotten, she rubbed her hands lightly to brush the coating of mud off her palms and turned to her work, while unheeded behind her, some of the water skin's encrusted mud crumbled and dropped to the ground behind her bare feet in little broken clods that contained the tiny seeds of plants, and the remains of a few dead insects.

Even as there was but one race of man, which included the giants and the six-fingered ones, there was also but one breed, likewise, of the dog.

Hardly a noble creature to look upon, the common camp dog was a different breed altogether from the huge and fearsome dire wolves that stood as tall as a man at the shoulder and roamed the farthest and deepest wilds in savage packs.

The dogs of men more resembled the small wild plains dogs.

Yet, like the wolves, which ran in packs, this hardy domesticated breed retained a strong pack instinct. It was used as a guard dog and camp scavenger, but could, like any wolf, become dangerous if starved too long or unduly provoked, as by the tauntings of foolish children.

Covertly watching the giant visitor, Si'Wren found it a relief not to be seen by him, unlike the unhappy Foundryman, who, normally considered by all to be no runt in his own right and anything but a coward, looked now equally as puny and scared as any small boy. He looked so scared that Si'Wren could not help but feel sorry for him. The giant was so tall that the Foundryman must needs tilt his head back and look almost straight up at the hairy visitor. What an ugly head, to behold against the majesty of the skies.

"Their gods may indeed be strong," said Nelatha, "but the fight is not always to the strong, nor the race to the swift, and I have heard speakings in my time, of an Invisible God."

Si'Wren was so distracted by observing the giant that she forgot herself and suddenly had to look at Nelatha and say foolishly, "Huh? Forgive me Nelatha, what did you say?"

Nelatha sighed patiently.

"I said, the gods of the Giants may seem exceeding fierce and large, and like themselves, false-hearted, but there is an Invisible God that I have heard of, who is strongest of all."

"Indeed?"

"Aye, and He is a loving, forgiving god. But," Nelatha said, her voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper, "the idol makers despise this Invisible God, because they cannot make any money selling idols of Him."

Nelatha giggled, and Si'Wren smiled also.

It must be a joke, of course.

Si'Wren and Nelatha both loved to privily mock the moneymakers. The wheelers and dealers must provide their own fare, and were much obsessed with money-making schemes in the market place. They were shrewd cheats, long accustomed to swapping not only goods, but lies and lives, and often resorted to savage ambushes and bloodlettings after dark. There was ample reason to be fearful of the night. Hence, they deserved not only to be feared, but mocked on occasion.

Nelatha giggled because the artificers who made the idols always acted so godly and superior, and were so full of the greed of dogs but could never seem to suspect the similarity of themselves to such lowly creatures. It seemed to the two girls like Heaven's well-deserved gift of madness to such evil ones.

At least, that was Si'Wren's unspoken opinion. However, it would never do for a mere slave girl to be so blunt as to speak with such open foolishness. Si'Wren always guarded her thoughts. For as the wise men, who ever sat in the city gates, were fond of repeating so often and so well-deservedly, 'What is foolishly uttered in private, will surely be regretted openly in public'.

Wise counsel dictated that one such as Si'Wren must not criticize others more important than herself (which was virtually everybody), even if she saw cutthroats setting up their gods of greed under every green tree, with which to furnish themselves an imagined, perpetual divine approval of their moral filth and wickedness.

For the idol-makers, greediness begat holiness, and their chief deity was the god of gain. But Si'Wren could not help wondering whether such be gods at all. Hence, her sudden and immediate interest in Nelatha's words.

"How could a god be invisible?" asked Si'Wren. "How could one make proper obeisance to him? Which way would you bow?"

"Well," Nelatha thought a minute, pausing in her work. Then she said, "Little one, when you close your eyes in prayer to the Master's family god, and then bow, tell me this; do you see him at the precise moment of bowing?"

"No, I do not," said Si'Wren. "How interesting! I have never thought of that before. One can bow in any direction, then?"

"I think so," said Nelatha, showing with her slowness of speech, that she was becoming very, very preoccupied about what had up until now been mere conversation to Si'Wren.

Si'Wren, noticing this sudden onset of seriousness on Nelatha's part, sought how to retreat from the imagined danger of causing any possible offense to Nelatha.

"There are many gods," said Si'Wren quickly. "I am sure yours is just as good as anyone else's, in spite of the unfortunate fact that you cannot see him."

"Not so," said Nelatha flatly. "The Invisible God is the only true god. It is not so difficult if one cannot see him. Consider, Si'Wren, such a time as when you are suddenly frightened while lying in your bed after dark, when it is not possible to go to the House temple which the Master has built, therein to pray. Then, surely you must make prayers to the Master's god without seeing him."

"Aye," agreed Si'Wren, wondering at this, for, of a curiosity, she perceived strange new truths in Nelatha's words.

"Well, then," Nelatha said simply, "that's all there is to it."

"Pray tell; 'that is all there is to what?'" inquired an imperious and sultry female contralto, coming from almost directly behind their unguarded backs.

Both girls started like birds and together as one bent swiftly and automatically to their tasks as if bowing to one of the many idols of the House of Rababull with an instinctive zeal born of grievous prior experience. One must never be caught openly slacking, and the voice was that of Sorpiala, standing just at the opening of the tent flap.

Sorpiala, so slender and tall for her sex, with long glossy dark hair, and such lovely almond-shaped eyes, was a beautiful young slave woman greatly favored by Master Rababull. Like the Master, Sorpiala was not always so agreeable with the sometimes carelessly chosen words of others, unlike amiable Nelatha.

What made Si'Wren even more afraid, was that some of the others had been heard to remark of late on how beautiful Si'Wren was becoming. In fact, some said Si'Wren was even more beautiful now than cruel, proud Sorpiala.

It gave Si'Wren a scary feeling. In fact, sometimes a positively dreadful feeling. From the warnings Si'Wren had been privately given by others in the House, it was evident to all that Master Rababull had been making eyes at Si'Wren in the months since young Si'Wren had begun to physically blossom, and as was increasingly clear to all, had begun at long last upon the path of becoming transformed from a human reed into something a little more shapely, after the manner of all womankind.

Si'Wren somehow found herself becoming progressively more aware of such dire warnings by the older female slaves in the House, who seemed to feel that it would be Si'Wren's very life if Sorpiala should perceive Si'Wren as a threat to her domain.

But, being so young and innocent, and not able to fully comprehend the meaning of such dark speakings, Si'Wren could only shrug inwardly, knowing not how or what she might do to avoid such an unintended confrontation of fates. Lives should intertwine and complement, not strangle, one-another. And it seemed to her that sometimes now Si'Wren felt Master Rababull's eyes lingering inordinately long upon her, and could only feign not to notice, for she was utterly at a loss to know how to behave, even without the unconventional idea of some unguessable danger stemming out of Sorpiala's secretly harbored and uncontrolled upwellings of jealousy.

It was well-enough known to all, that syrupy sweet Sorpiala could without warning become subtle and vicious at the slightest perceived insult. For Sorpiala's lips were quick to smile, although her almond-shaped eyes had always betrayed an hardness, and Sorpiala could be unrelentingly vindictive about her jealousies, which were countless. Sorpiala had been the Master's favorite for as long as Si'Wren could remember. Cross up Sorpiala, and you could end up strapped to the nearest alter with a stone knife hovering in a pair of hairy fists over your chest.

There was no way of knowing how long Sorpiala had stood behind the two of them in deathly silence, listening at their backs while Nelatha and Si'Wren spoke foolishly, uttering what could all too easily become their own death warrants on a moment's notice, for appearing to so willfully and heedlessly forsake their proper duties.

Deep in her heart, Si'Wren had always held as deep a love, reverence, and respect for Sorpiala as if she were an elder sister, although they were unrelated by blood. An orphan, Si'Wren had no known siblings. As for the other slaves in the House, many were known to be the children of Master Rababull, for he was a man who had many wives, and the slave-offspring which he had sired might at least claim many half-brothers or half-sisters among their kin. Not being freeborn, this was anyhow counted an honor among those slaves who could boast of it, for it gave them many incidental advantages they might not otherwise enjoy in their low estate.

But Si'Wren had none to call blood kin. Not a soul.

Si'Wren had also been afraid of Sorpiala more recently, purely aside from the warnings of others, because of the queerest look Si'Wren thought she saw in Sorpiala's eyes now and again. It was an alarming expression, like a deep, searing mask of thinly-veiled hatred, the way that a surface layer of whitest ash masked the red glow of a fire living in a long-burning bed of coals while betraying no visible flame or spark on the surface.

Such confused goings-on both frightened and perplexed Si'Wren, and she was naturally at a loss how to respond, and so did nothing. What could she have done anyway?

Si'Wren had been given special warning by old L'acoci, and now also began to understand, dimly, that to a slave girl, any degree of beauty could be a terrible curse, if it brought the wrong kind of attention from the wrong kind of person. To a slave, especially a young girl such as Si'Wren, were not all others superior to herself? She was virtually at the mercy of whoever chose to molest her, for she did not even know how to run away or where to go.

Now, fearful in the presence of Sorpiala's ominous silence, Si'Wren kept her eyes downcast on her little jars, pretending with an agonized trembling and the barest amount of fumbling over everything she touched, to be utterly oblivious of anything out of the ordinary.

Unexpectedly, Sorpiala stepped forward to face Si'Wren and smiled tenderly from one side.

"Si'Wren, what is this? Did I not just have the good fortune to hear you talking about the Invisible God?" Sorpiala asked in the sweetest tone of voice. "How curious," Sorpiala went on, "that I have never before noticed your belief in him, dear. Is He not wonderful?"

Si'Wren lifted up her eyes to Sorpiala in a shy smile. Of course she could trust Sorpiala! Who could dare to think otherwise?

"Aye, Sorpiala," said Si'Wren, looking up and nodding readily and continuing to smile beamingly. "We were just talking about him. I have never before heard of a god so unusual that one could not even see him."

But abruptly, as Si'Wren turned from smiling at Sorpiala in order to include Nelatha in the conversation, she was struck dumb with shock by the stark, thinly veiled terror in Nelatha's trapped-looking eyes. After betraying that one warning look to Si'Wren, Nelatha bent over her work and pretended not to be aware of anything around her, especially anything in the direction of Sorpiala.

Si'Wren looked back at Sorpiala again quickly, blinking rapidly in confusion.

"Fear not," soothed Sorpiala, reaching to stroke Si'Wren's cheek gently with her fingertips. "I have heard of the Invisible God. Does he not watch over all the world and even ourselves at this very moment?"

"Aye," Si'Wren nodded doubtfully, casting her round eyes from Sorpiala's curiously reassuring countenance, to Nelatha, who, looking sick at heart, seemed ready to die of fear on the very spot.

Si'Wren suddenly wished that Nelatha would stop worrying. Could Nelatha not see how loving and faithful Sorpiala was, both to them and to this Invisible God?

"Don't work too hard, Nelatha," Sorpiala said, and then let out a funny little laugh. "Remember; the Invisible God is always watching every move, and hears every word. Bye-bye, girls."

"Bye, Sorpiala," said Si'Wren, smiling fondly.

But Nelatha did not return the farewell, and when Sorpiala was gone, Si'Wren stood motionless for a long time, as motionless as any dumb graven idol, as she struggled with some nameless, faceless inner turmoil in her effort to take proper stock of the situation.

Why was Nelatha so troubled, and so unwilling to so much as speak of it?

* * *

In the following days, Sorpiala seemed to harbor a special look of affection which she secretly displayed for Si'Wren's eyes only, whenever they chanced to meet. It gave Si'Wren the most deep-down, sisterly feeling for Sorpiala, and made her feel inexpressibly contented with life.

But with each passing day, Nelatha became if possible even more fearful, and finally, she would no longer so much as speak scarcely a word to Si'Wren or even acknowledge her presence with so much as a nod, causing Si'Wren much anguish when they worked together in the spice tent at their labors and causing her to long desperately for their former good times together.

Whenever Master Rababull would chance to pass by, he would nod and beam and smile at her, filling Si'Wren's day with consternation and no little dismay that she should feel so dumb about everything. Any simple slave girl might quite sensibly have experienced a right and proper bliss, even a contentment, at such attentions, but all Si'Wren felt was a terrible sense of foreboding.

Si'Wren occasionally saw Sorpiala standing in the shadows, frowning, but only once did Si'Wren chance to deliberately spy on Sorpiala, as she stood across the courtyard in the shadow of the House and stared down at an overripe fruit that had turned partly rotten. The fruit had already begun to dry up, and Si'Wren could see the shrunken, wrinkled, flattened side on which it had lain in the dirt, and the flies that scattered when Sorpiala shooed them away with a distracted frown.

It was uncharacteristic for Sorpiala to touch such filth with her hands, and Si'Wren could only wonder at what could have motivated one such as she to do such a thing. It fretted Si'Wren to see her elder sister in bondage grieving so over a mere rotting fruit. Were there not an hundred fresh ones, ripe for the taking, to replace the rotten one that seemed to concern Sorpiala so?

Si'Wren was fairly mystified at this.

Suddenly three of Sorpiala's female consorts approached, catching her off-guard with the offending fruit still held openly in her palm. Sorpiala seemed to give a sudden start at the appearance of the others, as if not expecting them and for some reason seemed uncharacteristically at a loss how to face them, although Si'Wren could not say why. There were many such slave girls under Sorpiala's personal power, who were virtually as answerable to Sorpiala as they were to Master Rababull himself.

Si'Wren watched in blank astonishment, secure behind her tent skirts, as the other three women made carefully orchestrated faces of sham sorrow over the fruit to Sorpiala's face, and then when they departed, delivered with equal skill and dispatch the most despicably reviling, hateful looks to Sorpiala behind her back.

Sorpiala's slave attendants were like flounders, fish that could not swim with a proper motion, that dwelt in the mire at the bottom of the sea, and looked strangely at one with the peculiar oddness of two eyes both wrongfully on one side only, but no eye on the other side. So that, wherever the flounder looked, it looked while concealing it's other side, all the while appearing to be as falsely over-sincere as only a flounder could seem.

The following morning, Si'Wren found herself working in the spice tent beside a disturbingly quiet Nelatha. It was early enough that the morning mists still drifted thickly over the glistening outer walls and swirled wetly through the compound and softening and obscuring all form and substance.

Softly, Si'Wren sang a prayer to herself for a day filled with blessings from Heaven for all who lived in Master Rababull's House, respectfully beseeching various and sundry gods as she followed a tribal melody with the words of her prayer. Forgotten were her fears, for there remained only, from time to time, that distressing silence of Nelatha, which Si'Wren had been so vainly at odds to dispel with her cheerfulness.

She had never been so happy, working in the spice tent. Only now, she was aware of the fact that she did pray to unseen gods. Gods whose graven idols were not in her immediate, visible presence, just as Nelatha had scornfully pointed out earlier when still on speaking terms with her. This led Si'Wren to consider more seriously the strange Invisible God of whom Nelatha had initially spoken.

Nelatha still adamantly refused to speak of the Invisible God, in spite of the fact that Sorpiala clearly meant no harm, and stubbornly refused now to so much as say one word about this or practically anything else.

But Si'Wren could not stop herself from wondering about this strange Invisible God. For the whole idea was still very unclear to her. She was still so young, and the world so vast.

She supposed that the elders of every village must know all about this Invisible God, and imagined that they must surely understand why His image could not be somehow made visible by the contrivance of wooden or golden idols made with hands. Yet, she was fearful of going to any of them and asking.

The least of the elders of any of the villages round about, and those also that sat in the gates of the Emperor's city, was each and every one of them, from the highest to the very lowest in rank, a great civil dignitary. That was how Si'Wren had always viewed them.

Such great men should not be trifled with, especially by a mere girl, and might severely chastise Si'Wren for her boldness, and perhaps as well for her blatant ignorance of such matters. What if, in their anger, any of them was to complain to her Master Rababull and shame him openly for the stupidity of the foolish girl slave called Si'Wren? The more that even one of them should happen to laugh and make mention of it to him, the more Master Rababull would punish her, it seemed to Si'Wren. No, it was not worth such a risk, merely to ask such a curious and doubtful question.

"Nelatha, I have longed that I might speak with you once more about this curious Invisible God," Si'Wren finally said, eyes meekly downcast to her work. "Why has He given us eyes, and then made Himself invisible, that none might ever look upon His face? Is it because He is ashamed?"

Nelatha worked on, as if she had not heard.

"Why would God be ashamed?" Si'Wren whispered, as if to herself now.

Finally, Nelatha looked up with an expression of open impatience and exasperation.

"Only man is ashamed," Nelatha said with quiet assurance, at long last overcoming her reluctance of speaking of the Invisible One again. "Not God. Foolish Si'Wren, you must try your best to live a sinless life. Do good, and shun evil! Does not the wisdom of our folk lore teach us that Adam, and Eve his wife, saw God openly and spoke to Him freely and often, before they were both cast out of the Garden of Heaven for one sin? No wonder He never shows His face! And does this not also teach us that there is but one God?"

"It is curious," Si'Wren agreed, "that Adam and Eve should have been created by only one god, when all men say there be many gods. Of a truth, I have never considered it before. How can this be?"

"There is but one God," said Nelatha, "and in this life, no one may see God and live. For all are sinful. Sin, before God, burns like charcoal in a fire. But you will see Him on high some day, if you go to Paradise after you die."

"You mean; if I have lived a good life?" Si'Wren said.

"Aye," nodded Nelatha, "that too. More, it will be to your good and everlasting fortune if you have had good inside your heart, which like Him is unseen, and not just in your outward behavior. Then you will surely rejoice to see Him in all of His eternal glory. Aye, you shall stand before the living God for all eternity, and live, and not die."

"Ho so!" breathed Si'Wren with mounting satisfaction, as she kept her voice cautiously low. "One day I will see Him, then. But, why can we not worship images of Him now? Will He not be pleased?"

Nelatha looked around this time, checking wearily over her shoulder before answering, "Sister, if I make an image from dust, so..."

Nelatha took up the water skin and hunkered down into a squatting position, then took up a clump of loose dirt in her fist, and carefully dispensed a little water into her partly opened hand. She put the water skin aside, and worked the moistened handful of dirt with utmost care, making it into a rounded, flattened lump of dark mud. Then with her fingertip she poked three times, and made it into a crude face having two round eyes and a round mouth.

"Behold," Nelatha said gravely, as she held forth in her hand the small, round, flattened visage of an idol made out of mud, "a child's plaything. Pretend that you are a child, Si'Wren, and that this is the doll face you made of Habrunt. As long as Habrunt is not here, you may talk freely to this as much as you like. But when the real Habrunt comes, why talk to dumb clay? Now, unlike Habrunt, who comes and goes, if the Invisible God knows all and sees all, and is so all-knowing that nothing escapes His knowledge, why should you speak to a mere fruitless idol about getting a man, or of many babies, a house, health, and wealth? Why speak to that which sees and hears not, of avoiding meeting savage men or beasts without a strong swordsman to shield and protect you? Why ask that which is itself made of the barren earth, of gaining good crops without needless sweat, thistle, thorn, or pestilence?"

Nelatha waited, watching closely. But Si'Wren only regarded the idol in

Nelatha's palm in open perplexity.

"I... I do not know," Si'Wren stammered uncertainly. She stared at the clump of mud, which had already sagged and cracked a little in Nelatha's upturned palm. Si'Wren somehow felt the wrongness of it, although she could not say why.

"Well?" Nelatha demanded of Si'Wren. "Is there yet no understanding in your stony heart?"

But Si'Wren could only stare at her blankly.

Nelatha propped her fists on her ample hips and frowned crossly at

Si'Wren.

"Speak, foolish one."

"Forgive me, Nelatha. I do not understand this," Si'Wren pleaded, with an apologetic expression. "Why did you not pray directly to the Invisible God?..."

Si'Wren's voice trailed away.

Then understanding struck like a thunderbolt, as Si'Wren suddenly perceived the futility of all graven images in the presence of a real God, even an invisible one.

"Ooh!" she said. "Now I see!"

"Aye! Ohh!" Nelatha mocked Si'Wren imitatively, as her eyes and mouth becoming like wide round circles, to match Si'Wren's expression, which in turn exactly resembled the little round-eyed mud face.

"Si'Wren, if the Invisible God is all-seeing, why should you speak to the dirt which was formerly between your toes, when you can pray directly to He who made the whole world instead? Why bow to idols, which neither see nor hear? The real wonder is why you who are made of dust, are as dense as a rock. Who needs a stone idol, with you around? Stupid, ignorant, half-witted slave that you are sometimes, I can only marvel at how fittingly you were born to such low estate, for your thick-headedness. But that can be cured, and without the use of the rod, or such herbs as these. I may speak of mysteries, Si'Wren, but at least I do not speak falsely. I only faithfully repeat that which the old woman L'acoci taught me in secret, and it must not be repeated, on your life!"

"I swear, Nelatha," Si'Wren eagerly reassured her, "I shall not breathe a word to anyone!"

"Enough for now, then," Nelatha said, in satisfaction. "We will talk again later."

With that, both girls returned to their labors, but now Si'Wren had a new wonder to marvel over. Why, ever again, should she worship a graven image?

The next day was just a little chilly throughout the early hours, and Si'Wren wore a coarsely woven dried grass shawl that was no longer green, but a faded, mottled gray.

Early in the morning swirl of drifting mists, the two girls worked together in silence, safely observing the many inhabitants of the House of Rababull perform their morning routines from an unobserved vantage point. It was as if they, too, were invisible behind the gauzy insect veils stretched across the open tent flap at one end, and it gave Si'Wren much to think about.

Others could be watched or glimpsed briefly as they led the horses from the stables, to brush them, and check their hooves and remove the stinking clots from them with blunt points, and so on, while another group could be observed at length as they filed out to spend the day laboring in the Master's vineyards and grain fields.

They also watched the familiar faces of the womenfolk of the House of Rababull, lifelong slaves every one. Each had her bundle of soiled clothing, and many bore their babies suspended from forehead slings draped down across their backs, and as the women walked past in the direction of the back of the compound, many were accompanied by a number of tiny, naked toddlers. The womenfolk, some of whom were accompanied as well by elder daughters, were taking their bundles of wash out through the two tall narrow rear gates of the walled compound, to the nearby stream where they would pound and slap the soiled garments on the rocks whilst wailing together as one the old, long-familiar tribal ditties.

Si'Wren's memories of such were too vague and distant, to recall her own mother and father. For she was an orphan from earliest memory, a slave taken or sold out of her own mother's arms too long ago to have any recollection of it.

But she was not entirely alone. Did not the House of Master Rababull claim and feed and protect her just like any family member, albeit one of the very lowest possible rank?

As a mere slave, was she not more privileged than the richest of beggars who dwelt in their so-called glorious 'freedom' amongst the flies and dogs and dung of beasts without number, and who called out incessantly as they begged by the wayside in the filth and scum, and despaired of their very lives? They who had freedom and family had it worse than Si'Wren, as they waited and begged and cowered, not knowing whether it be for a shred of food or the bruising end of a staff in the dirty gutters and tilting hovels of the Emperor's numberless narrow city streets and alleyways.

Still, Si'Wren could not help thinking that the washer women had it best of all. To sing, and slap wet rags, and raise babies, and cook. Was this not bliss?

As she remained thus lost in her contemplations over her work, Nelatha turned slowly to face Si'Wren and made as if to speak. Sensing Nelatha's hesitation, Si'Wren paused in her work also, waiting and watching respectfully.

At this, Nelatha reached up and took the water skin bag from it's hook. She tilted down the spout, made from the leg-end of a dumb brute beast, and carefully poured some clear water into an unglazed, shallow clay bowl.

Then Nelatha said, not to Si'Wren, but to Si'Wren's reflection in the shimmering watery surface, "Look, Si'Wren! Open your eyes, and behold Wisdom! Do you not see my reflection in the water, more perfect a likeness than that of any polished shield in the Master's armory? Behold how the clear water is almost totally invisible, and yet can you not see my perfect likeness in it, just like a waking vision? The Invisible God is so, and sees us in like fashion. We do see Him indirectly, Si'Wren, just as we see each other in the water's reflection. For does not all Creation reflect His glory?"

Si'Wren nodded, blinking and smiling timidly as she leaned close beside her beloved slave sister and replied eagerly to Nelatha's watery reflection in the clay bowl, "Aye, Nelatha, it is good to pray to the water, yes?"

"No!" Nelatha slapped Si'Wren's hands away irritatedly, mystifying a crestfallen Si'Wren, whose weeping brown eyes immediately betrayed her shock and confusion.

"Stop looking at me like that. I have no sympathy for fools. Or do you expect me to admire you for your skillfulness with tears? You bow to the ground before Him, yes! But remember; He is in Heaven! Si'Wren, the Invisible One created all things, but He looks down from on high, and sees all things, and has set before us a life of good mixed with bad to see which we might choose, day after day, all of our lives. He sees our hearts, and searches them always, for there he finds the treasure of our souls, and desires to know what we hide there, or whether it be good or whether it be evil."

"Oh, forgive me, Nelatha!" breathed Si'Wren. "It is so difficult to understand this Invisible God. Do even evil things, like scorpions and vipers, show His glory?"

"Don't be silly!" Nelatha said. "Of course not. Well, perhaps they do show His awful terribleness somehow. Of that, I know little. Ugh! How could you even think of such a question?"

Nelatha reached down, and drew with her fingertip in the dirt, a brawny, disembodied male arm extending from a cloud, and holding a thunderbolt.

"Observe," declared Nelatha with hushed emphasis, "the hand of God, from a puff of cloud, and does not fog wet the skin?"

Si'Wren stared, her eyes fastened upon the scene before her.

Nelatha regarded Si'Wren. "What think you?"

Si'Wren stepped back and bowed, and said, "I am overwhelmed, and must think greatly upon what you have said and shown me."

"Aye!" Nelatha whispered. "But tell no one, on your life!"

Nelatha raised her eyebrows significantly, and finally turned away with a satisfied nod, to return to her perpetual labor of grinding herb into powder with pestle and mortar.

* * *

Late the next afternoon, a stranger called from without the compound gate, and the guard answered, and it was breathlessly announced by a runner boy that a caravan was waiting to enter. There was a concerted rush by whoever could free themselves from their duties to go and see, and as the gates were thrown open they beheld the sight of a long line of human porters, with oxen, and riders upon camels and burros, all standing idle.

Master Rababull appeared quickly, and more than a few watched fearfully to see if he would lash out at anybody for recklessly opening the gates too soon to the strangers, or contrariwise, for not opening them quickly enough to show his proper hospitality to important visitors. But when his fierce countenance broke out into a toothy welcoming grin, it was sufficient reassurance to all that the good times had come again, and a celebration would no doubt soon be in the making.

The camels were all heavily laden with trade goods, and teams of stout oxen stood patiently in front of great two-wheeled carts, accompanied by attendants almost without number.

Under heavy guard entered also a troupe of exotic, half-veiled, half-naked courtesans accoutered in their virgin colors and finery (hence their perpetual jesting and self-mockery, for they be no virgins), seated each upon her own soft-looking little burro. Many fierce guards accompanied the line of travelers, wielding shining swords and broad hide-covered shields.

With the gates swung wide, the caravan began it's long drawn-out entry into the great inner walled compound of the House of Rababull, accompanied by the loudly proclaimed boastings and pronouncements of the noble Camel Master's crier, and thereby setting up such a din as to put all the House astir. It seemed that everyone had stopped to watch, and all work fell idle as more and more paused and came to gawk.

Master Rababull had girded himself in his finest robes and was by now in a thoroughly good humor as he marched hither and yon across the front courtyard, puffed up with unabashed conceit as his servants voiced loud and shamelessly their praise and admiration for both the Master and his important visitors.

In a seemingly endless procession, the caravan paraded with stately dignity through the front gates in a grand display of riches and home-spun glory. As the long line of great beasts continued to enter the great courtyard in sedate single file, they halted one-by-one and stood waiting patiently for their handlers to unload them.

Strapped securely upon their backs were bulging, tightly bound oilskins and pungent, coarse burr-lap wrapped bundles of herbs, spices, and rare woods with which to make the finest idols, furniture, and fixtures, as well as priceless swatches of the most extraordinary block-printed cloth, and gourds of rare, hard-to-obtain dyes -especially scarlet and purple- and a cornucopia's horn of other riches.

Before he finally left in a few days for other lands, the Trade Master would leave behind his entire treasure trove, having exchanged all for the finest works of Master Rababull's clever craftsmen. The beasts would be heavily laden with countless intricately graven idols adorned with gold, silver, copper, ivory, ebony, black- and red-striped woods, and other rare woods, and gem stones with which to make crudely faceted jewels for their eyes. The precious stones and metals with which the idols were adorned were dug out of Rababull's secret underground gem mines, the precise location of which, under heavy guard within his own lands, was a closely guarded secret known only to Rababull himself and the captives who slaved in the mines.

Now, Master Rababull and Slavemaster Habrunt were everywhere, weaving a web of commands to the servants as everything was seen to.

First, the Camel Master and his entourage must be courteously escorted to the bath house by servants, who would bathe and minister to their every whim, and other servants would follow along with baskets of culinary delights and wine from tall, slender clay vases.

When they were finished with their bath, Master Rababull would hold a huge feast, as was his general custom. He would be sure to invite numerous friends, many of them business associates from in and around the Emperor's city, each with his many fat wives and even more numerous, wickedly spoiled offspring.

Si'Wren watched as one of the caravan travelers shyly approached the Camel Master. The other turned and, before the petitioner had been afforded adequate time to voice his request, nodded his immediate approval as if being reminded of something that he had already been informed of by the meekly beseeching one at an earlier time, no doubt a petition granted during the long journey on the overland trade route.

The Camel Master clapped a reassuring hand on the timid underling's bare right shoulder, whereupon both walked across to Master Rababull and bowed low, to which he courteously bowed also. Woe to any, to whom Master Rababull should ever bow and later become offended by. They would then find that there was a price for such courtesy which was beyond their ability to repay, should their lack of good manners touch upon his ireful eyes.

But for today, it seemed that Master Rababull could see no wrong. His smile easily set the men to working with greater dedication and zeal than any whip. It was known that the whip ever shadowed the smile of Master Rababull. The larger the smile, the longer the shadow cast by the ever-present whip at his side.

While the Camel Master stood near him, looking on and nodding his encouragement, the supplicant began talking animatedly and fearfully to Master Rababull and gesticulating into his own opened mouth, with many repeated dips of the head in impromptu gestures of respect, and making praying motions with his hands beseechingly to Rababull, as he displayed the most genuine and grievous expressions of personal torment.

The man had a toothache.

Rababull showed impatience at first, but then seemed to think better of the man's plight, and peered somewhat distractedly into the unfortunate's mouth. After he had indulged the other with various expressions, by turns, of critical appraisal, agreement, and sympathy, he gave the nod and granted off-handed approval to the man's immediate treatment, as he turned to Habrunt and gave instructions.

Habrunt bowed low when he had heard all, and turned to one of several runner boys who were standing by and sent him out the front gates at a jog. The boy had no doubt been sent to go and call upon Rababull's favorite Physician from the city.

Rababull would probably pay outright for cost of this man's treatment as a gesture of personal favor to the Camel Master, whose successful arrival from across vast and dangerous lands heralded the advent of huge new profits to be made in the market places of the nearby city, and Rababull could well afford to be magnanimous with such riches now seen to be quite safely and literally in his hands.

It was Rababull who had paid for this trading expedition in the first place. Si'Wren remembered it's original departure two years ago as an event of momentous significance and great portent. One never knew whether any of the caravan's members, or the Master's money, might be seen again.

Si'Wren continued working, but paused often to watch as the unloading of the camel train continued, with teams of men laboring tirelessly to transfer the goods into the heavily fortified and well-guarded store rooms behind the stables, on the far side of the courtyard.

Suddenly one of Rababull's slaves came running from the back gate of the compound, which opened out onto the path to the nearby grain fields. The new arrival ran over and abruptly seized another slave by the shoulders and began arguing rather vehemently as he shook the smaller, terrified man in furious anger.

Habrunt stepped over and thrust himself bodily straight into the midst of the exchange, immediately taking charge.

"Aye!" exclaimed Nelatha, shaking her head fearfully. "What a time to come looking for trouble!"

"You said it!" Si'Wren agreed readily, with a frown. "But those two have always been close friends! I wonder what it's all about?"

An argument like that at a time like this was not a good idea, because the only possible winner would be the Master. Rababull could easily become angry at both for acting like spoiled children in front of the newcomers, causing him to be disgraced in front of them, as well as spoiling his own good humor.

But Master Rababull had not even noticed yet, so there was still a chance of settling the matter before it got too far out of hand. He was too busy taking care of the caravan's needs, and a wise Habrunt was determined that it stay that way.

But the argument, surprisingly, heated up again, with the one slave persisting in his accusations and waving his arms even more wildly -if it were possible- than before. Obviously not caring who heard him, he kept imitating the motion of hitting himself in the eye, and then shaking his fist at the other slave.

Then Habrunt, with a visible sense of renewed urgency in his entire manner and physical posture, sent another runner boy scurrying across the yard. The boy quickly returned with Prut, one of Rababull's biggest and most trusted slaves.

Nelatha and Si'Wren, still keeping up a pretense of labor as they watched unseen within the veil of their tent, exchanged dire, fearful looks.

Prut was a powerful man, and whenever he was called in to help take charge of a situation, it usually meant grief to whoever Prut was put after. Prut could lift two times his own weight over his own head, maybe even more, and although not a giant, he was certainly big enough by ordinary standards.

A stone-faced Prut listened to Habrunt's instructions, and then turned and tromped over to a large group of boys who had gathered to help unload the caravan, and as soon as he had relayed Habrunt's instructions, the boys all fanned out searching in all possible hiding places and out-of-the-way corners.

Habrunt, meanwhile, had gone off to the fields, perhaps to go looking for himself. Whatever it was, it was no small matter. He soon came back carrying the agonized, writhing figure of a small boy in his arms, followed by a small crowd of openly angry women and other children.

One-half of the boy's face was covered with blood, emanating from one of his squinting eyes.

This time the interruption did not go unnoticed, and while the distracted workmen finished unloading the caravan, with many a turn of the head, the team of boys that Prut had organized had worked their way through the courtyard and outlying structures as they called anxiously to and fro to one-another, and rapidly expanded the territory of their searches. Others ran out both the front and rear gates and could be heard out in the fields, shouting to one another as they went about poking and beating at the bushes with long sticks.

Finally the hue and cry went up from a number of them, and a concerted chase ensued. Presently, they returned through the rear gates with two of the biggest boys half-walking and half-dragging a lone struggling boy, holding the unwilling youngster firmly by the upper arms and hair to keep him from getting away again.

Habrunt came over and stood listening to them all arguing, and finally raised his finger and pointed at Prut with a terse word to stand guard while he turned and marched with an ominously slow, deliberate reluctance across the courtyard towards Master Rababull. A sense of dread fell upon the entire assembly, and gradually all fell silent, watching as Habrunt resolutely approached Master Rababull.

Up until now, Rababull had been deliberately ignoring the whole fiasco. But when Habrunt finally stepped up to him and bowed low, he turned to listen, still grandly smiling, and after a few barely whispered words from the bowed face of Habrunt, Master Rababull quickly turned, and his smile froze into an expressionless, unreadable, and somehow all-the-more terrifying mask.

Master Rababull was, after all, many hundreds of years old, the better part of a thousand, in fact, and no man's fool. He knew men, and he knew how to deal in kind for kind, and had survived the most evil schemes that men could throw at him by managing to anticipate them sufficiently in advance whilst devising even more evil ones in return.

Together, Master and Slavemaster returned to the silent crowd that had gathered around the two boys, and all of the women, except one old grandmother, fell away like chaff before the wind. The one woman, whose name was Breeka, stood her ground, though old and stooped, and her face was as a gargoyle's, very terrible and unmoving, as if naturally grown from some dark and twisted tree bole.

If Master Rababull's years exceeded six hundred, and his wit be steeped in the tap root of the ungood, this old crone was the very epitome of evil and practically a great-grandmother to him by comparison, with the crime of the hour engendering within her shrunken breast a fearless, savage desire for revenge.

Si'Wren felt cold, numbing fear. Something big was up. Something evil. She knew everyone there. Only the very newest additions to the House of Rababull did she not know by name as well as by face. She watched with dire feelings and the gravest of misgivings as Rababull examined the injured boy who lay moaning and writhing in the arms of his weeping mother.

Then he turned and questioned the two slaves who had argued, each of them the father of one of the two boys around whom the entire matter was centered.

The boy who had previously hidden himself was a known trouble-maker. He was a bully of the worst sort, always picking on others smaller than himself. Si'Wren had never known what to think of him, except to steer clear at every opportunity, for she knew that all too soon, he would be a man and whereas now was only a pest, would then be dangerous to her and the other women. The unruly boy had been disciplined before many times, invariably as much for his actual excesses as for his spiteful and miserable attitude.

Rababull finally took the little trouble-maker by the arm and frog-marched him over to the injured boy. He said something to Habrunt, who responded by holding up the injured boy's head so all could see the ruined eye socket.

Si'Wren felt an agonized pang of sympathetic grief for the injured child. She knew him well, and he had always been so harmless and gentle. Now, the boy's left eye was gone and only a emptily staring, bloody cavity remained where his innocent soul had once looked out on the world. Only his good right eye remained, and that one, coupled with his occasional shrieks, betrayed his continuing agony.

Again, Nelatha and Si'Wren exchanged knowing, fearful looks. Rababull suddenly ordered several men to seize and hold the little bully's father immobile before him as all looked on to see what would happen next.

As Rababull questioned the father of the offending boy, the man, scared witless, jerked his head back anxiously, and replied loudly and emphatically in the negative.

Then he looked at his own boy and nodded his head as he gabbled out his protest of the suggested judgement through lips black-stained from his secret addiction to some foul intoxicating substance, and Si'Wren could easily read the gesture.

Not me-him!...

The father was clearly expressing his opinion that whatever punishment was merited, although it had been charged directly to him as penalty for his own boy's misbehavior, he clearly preferred the boy to suffer for his own wrongdoing.

The boy's voice rose to a hopeless wail as Rababull himself stepped forward without a word and seized the youth, and made a brief motion over the youngster's face with his hands. The boy let out a series of guttural screams, and then, his work done as a Judge, Master Rababull turned and walked back to his unloading without another glance, but he left behind a screaming boy who had been a bully once too often, with his crime to be paid for this time in blood. Both boys now had but one eye.

An eye for an eye.

The suddenly animated crowd turned away with a shared look of satisfaction at the outcome. Did not every free man do that which was right in his own eyes, and his neighbor also, whether it be good or whether it be evil, and the slaves too when they could get away with it?

Even the fathers, both of them, approved. Better a disciplined boy with one good eye remaining, than a criminal offspring with two evil ones. Perhaps the little rascal would not be so much trouble to them in future. If not, there were cases where the other eye had eventually been put out also, rendering the blinded evildoer a more or less harmless beggar for the rest of his miserable life.

Si'Wren thought on this with all of her might. The ignominy of it. The injustice. But what was justice? What, but that which Master Rababull saw fit to declare so?

She had not been alive too long, especially compared to the hundreds of years of her Master, but the boy who had been in the wrong was obviously too young by far to merit such grievous punishment. For one of so tender years, there were always other ways. The good boy could have been set free for the sake of his lost eye, for instance, and the bad boy who had put his eye out could have been taken to the front gate, the better to watch with his two good eyes, the other go free. To Si'Wren's mind, that would have been a perfectly fair and reasonable punishment.

Except that Master Rababull would have lost a valuable slave in the process. The old idol gods whom Si'Wren had known all her life would no doubt have strongly approved of Master Rababull's harsh decision. Would the Invisible God have approved also?

What a question. Si'Wren thought on this, but in the end, she could only reflect that she could not bring herself to agree with Master Rababull's harsh decision. Perhaps in time, she might gain a better idea. It was certainly a question to nag at one's conscience.

Soon enough, as Nelatha had expected, Habrunt sent a runner boy over to the spice tent as Si'Wren and Nelatha watched silently. The runner boy stood before Nelatha and breathlessly announced that he needed fresh salve for the injured eyes of both boys.

Si'Wren could still hear the tormented screams of the boy who had been punished. He was in agony now not only for his eye, but for the unlove and lack of sympathy from those around him. The other boy, his smaller victim, was moaning constantly from his unrelenting agony.

Nelatha turned to Si'Wren and repeated the request, and Si'Wren hastened to fetch what the boy requested, a salve made from a specially combined mixture of herbs which could help ensure that neither boy died from infection and also alleviate much of the suffering they must endure.

While he waited for Si'Wren to give him the salve, the runner boy, whose name was Gafa, spoke glibly to Si'Wren and Nelatha of the boys' fathers requesting that the Physician might see their sons, and of Rababull hesitating at first, but finally relenting.

Human life was cheap, and Rababull's reluctance stemmed from the fact that he already owned both men and their families, which left them nothing further to offer him. Whatever they might promise, was it not already his?

Did they not already owe him their daily labors for the rest of their lives anyway, before any of this happened? If both boys eventually died of their infections, could not Master Rababull's human property breed more children for less than the cost of the Physician's fee?

But, to further his own glory and honor among men, Rababull had finally approved this thing, that others might call him gracious. Anyway, the Physician was already coming for the man with a toothache who had arrived with the caravan, so Rababull could readily afford to kill several birds with one stone.

Si'Wren already had some salve in a jar that had been prepared only a few days ago. She brought this out, gave it a fresh stirring up, and measured some out into a little clay bottle, which she gave to Gafa.

"See that you do not drop it," she instructed little Gafa, using her most good-natured tone of voice to remove any sting from her admonition. "You are fast, Gafa, but enough boys have been punished today and I do not want to see you punished too."

"I promise I will not, Si'Wren," he smiled timidly and nodded. He bowed low in peremptory fashion and hurried off in a rush.

Si'Wren watched him in chagrin, knowing that he could easily stumble, but also that he was invariably expected by those in charge of his duties to do all things as if he could run like the wind.

Several days old was better than fresh, because the herbs would have had time to suffuse, whereas, if she had immediately prepared something from the raw materials, it would not have had time to steep and cure properly. In Si'Wren's world, that which was fresh and new was not necessarily that which was best.

Si'Wren heard a gentle swish of the tent veil behind her, and turning, smiled as she watched Sorpiala enter in all her finery. Sorpiala was holding something close to her breast, an object as long as her forearm, folded up in a swatch of natural burlap. The undyed cloth was the color of cow's milk. It was apparently a rather heavy burden from the way she moved, as she approached Si'Wren and Nelatha and sought to unfold the cover to show it to them both. Within was an exquisitely carved jade goddess with sapphire eyes, still enshrouded in several layers of semi-translucent, gauzy veils.

She started to hand it to Si'Wren, then hesitated, and seemed to make a sudden decision as she turned sharply at the last and held it out in a most abrupt fashion to Nelatha instead, saying, "My arms grow weary; hold this for a moment will you, Nelatha?"

What happened next was over almost in the blink of an eye, but frozen forever in the mind of Si'Wren.

The goddess seemed to be almost in Nelatha's outstretched hands, when somehow Sorpiala's retracted hands seemed to catch at the gauze and jerk it back, and as it fell, Nelatha was left clutching only the loose edges of the silken folds.

With a dull clunk the goddess thumped heavily on the hard dirt surface of the tent floor and broke clean in half. Si'Wren thought she had seen it already coming apart into two halves in mid-air, but that was absurd. Why would Sorpiala bring a broken idol to show them? Anyway, Si'Wren had not seen it clearly and could not truly be sure.

"Oh, forgive me, Sorpiala!" Nelatha wailed as she stared, eyes wide in abject terror, at Sorpiala.

"What? Oh, it was only a mistake," said Sorpiala, already trying to console Nelatha.

She turned and smiled brief reassurance at Si'Wren also, to show that offense had been neither perceived nor taken.

Si'Wren blinked, and, remembering her manners, bowed low, uttering quickly, "I am most grieved, Sorpiala," in a formal utterance of deepest consolation which gesture alone seemed appropriate to such an unhappy event.

"No, it is nothing," Sorpiala said, bending down and picking up the two broken halves herself to gather up in the folds of the gauze and burlap again. "Do not worry."

She turned as if about to go, and then paused and looked directly at

Si'Wren.

"Si'Wren, you know, I am not so sure that a goddess which can be dropped and broken is anything worth believing in. Do you suppose some time, you could tell me about your Invisible God?"

Si'Wren, caught off guard, smiled hurriedly.

"Why, certainly, Sorpiala," she said. She nodded her head and bowed in a gesture of respect. "I would be most honored."

"Very well, then, since you seem to know all about it..." Sorpiala said mysteriously, and bowed in perfunctory fashion. Then before Si'Wren could say a word, Sorpiala turned and stepped out still clutching broken goddess wrapped in burlap.

Si'Wren turned away and looked at Nelatha, who was bent over her work again, grinding and grinding with anxious energy. Nelatha's eyes looked terrified and miserable.

"Do not worry, Nelatha," said Si'Wren. "Did she not say it was an accident?" But Nelatha did not say so much as a word to Si'Wren.

After staring at Nelatha a moment longer, Si'Wren finally turned away, feeling glum, and began to busy herself grinding a new batch of herbs with the stone mortar and pestle.

Preparations for the caravan feast had already begun. Many of the Master's fattest livestock were being shepherded into the compound by their handlers to be slaughtered. Big iron cauldrons had been put on to boil, for scalding the hides to scrape off the hair. Knives were sharpened for killing, bleeding, and skinning the animals. By tonight, all things would be ready for the big feast. But Si'Wren refused to eat any of the meat, for it was a strange and barbaric new custom.

Si'Wren watched Master Rababull as he marched to and fro in the wide courtyard, ordering men about and personally seeing to every detail. The magnificent curls of his long locks swayed rhythmically across his powerful back and shoulders, while his coarse dangling beard stood out more stiffly.

Master Rababull was older by far than what might have been Si'Wren's personal preference, but he was nevertheless a powerful and wealthy man. She secretly hoped that another, younger man might choose her one day soon. Many men already had their eyes on her; this she could not help but notice. She had dreams of a large family with many children and in-laws, but not, hopefully, as just the umpteenth wife of some fat old curser.

Master Rababull, Si'Wren knew, already had many wives, and she was wise enough in spite of her youth to realize that it would be no fun spending the remainder of one's life in direct competition with an army of female rivals for so much as the merest bit of time now and then with one's own husband.

Si'Wren watched Master Rababull turn to make his way across the wide courtyard yet again in long hurried strides. Always so serious, even about the business of his many pleasures, such as now with the anticipated celebration.

As Si'Wren watched incuriously, Master Rababull stopped abruptly mid-way across the courtyard as he was interrupted respectfully but unexpectedly by yet another slave, who approached rapidly and bowed low, clearly needing advice or authority in the furtherance of something.

After the incident with the two boys who had each lost an eye, Master Rababull was not in the best of moods. Clearly impatient, he stood frowning distractedly as he heard the man out.

Si'Wren looked beyond, musing that Master Rababull had been headed towards the huge, sprawling, open-air mansion which was the actual House of Rababull, with it's many rooms and beautiful central garden with a stone fountain that was surrounded on all sides by a wide border of smooth paving stones.

There, cushions were being laid out so that all of the guests would be well taken care of when they arrived. He must be sure there was enough of everything for everybody, and that included floor cushions. None must have any visible stains or dirt marks on them. Otherwise, some guest might be insulted.

When it came to fixed seating, invariably the master of the house himself must unerringly decide in advance who should sit closest to himself, and who sat on whose right hand, even unto those who must sit progressively farther and farther from his own seat of honor. It was a daunting task to so order the hierarchy of the ranks of gluttony, that none should be insulted by a lower seat than they properly deserved. Greater men than Rababull had literally lost their heads in sudden revenge at the sword hands of their former guests for not paying greater attention to the exacting particulars of such a seemingly insignificant detail as the proper seating of all guests according to favor, rank, or privilege. The absence of one important guest, or unanticipated arrival of another, was always sure to throw everything into a bewildering chaos of renewed choices over who must come before who.

To avoid this, Master Rababull chose to let almost the entire house be used to party in, while he refused to call any seat his own but wandered about seeing to everyone else's comforts or pleasures, so that there should be no one spot that could be called better than any other. An offended brother was more difficult to win back than many cities, but Master Rababull was already so old and he was no doubt well schooled in such matters.

Rababull finished his impromptu consultation, and the anxious slave, having obtained his Master's decision, stepped back with a low bow and hurried off.

Then as Rababull turned to continue across the courtyard toward the House, Si'Wren watched as graceful Sorpiala hailed Master Rababull in her musical voice and pulled him aside with what he obviously regarded as yet another unwanted distraction. And as Si'Wren looked on unseen from the spice tent, Sorpiala unwrapped the broken goddess and revealed it to Master Rababull, talking in a low but animated voice.

Wise Sorpiala, who could always be so proper at even the worst of times. There she was, soothing a time-conscious Master Rababull's undoubtedly offended wrath over the expensive, broken goddess. Such a large piece of jade was surely worth a king's ransom. Si'Wren found it somewhat amazing the way Sorpiala could resort to her unrivaled feminine charms to soothe the Master's outrage so confidently. Sorpiala was clearly greatest in favor with Master Rababull over all other women in his Household.

Si'Wren looked down at her little clay vase as she carefully filled it, momentarily distracted. For herself, she would never behave like that. A proper woman must be modest in all ways possible.

Then Si'Wren paused and looked up again to further observe Sorpiala and the Master, and started in shock as she suddenly realized that Master Rababull was glaring fiercely in her direction, as if he could see through the screening veil of the tent with the eyes of a wrathful god.

Oh no! What could be wrong?! Please, Si'Wren begged her own heart, oh please let Sorpiala's charms soothe Rababull's off-endedness. Let no punishment befall her for the sake of the broken goddess.

Suddenly Rababull broke away from Sorpiala and began marching straight for the spice tent like an avenging destroyer.

Si'Wren looked over at Nelatha, whose head was bent industriously over her work. Nelatha did not even realize yet that Master Rababull was almost upon them both. Si'Wren had just enough time to see Sorpiala scurrying away on swift, dainty little footsteps, leaving the broken goddess in two pieces on the ground as she made fast her escape-with a smirk on her face.

Si'Wren's voice froze in her throat as she felt terror. Master Rababull's face looked so terrible and angry! She was too scared to warn Nelatha, too confused to think of what to say!

Master Rababull did not bother to come around to the back of the tent where it was most expedient to enter. He simply stepped up to the front of it, seized the flaps in both fists, and jerked savagely, ripping them apart.

Nelatha let out a terrified little 'Eeeek!' as he stepped in and loomed hugely over her, his trunk-like legs sending mortar, pestle, and all crashing noisily in a dust heap. Master Rababull reached down and dug his clawed fingers into Nelatha's long tangled locks like talons of steel and with a single lifting motion of one bulging arm he twisted his rippling torso and heaved upwards as he jerked Nelatha bodily to stand before him. Then with his other arm he reached out and seized Si'Wren's hair and yanked her painfully before him also.

Standing over them with eyes glaring like lightning and a voice like thunder, Rababull looked fiercely from one terrified girl to the other as he shouted, "I was told a tale of a wicked slave who threw down one of my goddesses, and broke her to pieces, Nelatha!"

But Nelatha, utterly speechless, could only shrink back helplessly from that terrible stare.

Obtaining no response from Nelatha, Master Rababull turned his awful look onto a quailing Si'Wren and snarled down at her, "And another was heard to speak praises of the Forbidden One, the Invisible God!"

He held both paralyzed girls in his iron grip for a long, moment of dreadful silence. Around her, Si'Wren realized that all the compound had heard Master Rababull's furious voice and involuntarily stopped what they were doing to watch. Then Master Rababull turned himself around with both girls still helplessly in tow and dragged them physically from the tent by their hair.

"Habrunt!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. "Habrunt!"

Habrunt came running with two boys trailing close behind him as they struggled to keep up on their skinny little legs. As he approached he slowed to a stop and immediately knelt down on one knee and clasped his fist rigidly across his chest to signify his immediate readiness to obey Master Rababull, come what may. That he had already taken in the plight of Si'Wren seemed inevitable, but he betrayed no sign of it.

The two runner boys finally caught up and, terrified by the mask of rage on Master Rababull's features, immediately threw themselves face-first flat in the dirt and lay trembling as they fearfully hid their eyes.

"I come at thy bidding, oh master," Habrunt intoned in his deepest and most servile do-or-die manner.

Master Rababull stared at Habrunt deliberately for a long moment, before speaking.

"Slavemaster, I have found corruption, in the spice tent, of all places," said Rababull. His allusion to the spice tent was especially ironic, as spices were commonly used to cure infections in the living, and to embalm the dead to delay the onset of corruption and rottenness as long as possible. Of course, only those who could pay were so embalmed. Most could not afford it.

Speaking as to the earth, Habrunt declared emphatically, "Speak, Lord, and it shall be my will!"

"My prize green goddess has been broken. For this crime, let Nelatha be slain," said Rababull.

Nelatha's eyes closed as she keened silently in helpless terror.

"And let this little one-" Master Rababull's voice faltered, so strong and so deep were his feelings for her. "Let this foolish one who spoke so rashly against her Master's gods, never speak again, only-let her live."

With that, he hurled both girls to fall prostrate before his kneeling, perplexed Slavemaster.

"Master," Habrunt protested, "perhaps, with sufficient time for reproof and correction-"

"You will carry out my commands immediately or you will be next!" said

Master Rababull harshly.

"I hear and obey, Master," intoned Habrunt, clasping his right fist hard across his chest again as he bowed low in formal acknowledgment.

Screeching hysterically, Nelatha helplessly protested her innocence, as

Si'Wren remained trembling, too shaken to speak.

Habrunt straightened himself up to full stature, and looked stoically upon the two prostrate girls, his stiffened legs like the trunks of oaks. Nelatha clutched desperately at his ankles as she continued to beg for mercy, but his wooden face seemed not to hear her pleadings.

Speaking as if to no one in particular, in a voice as that of one already dead, he thrust out his right arm empty-handed, and commanded loudly, "Fetch me a sword!"

Both boys, too scared to think, ran at once into the House. Their squeaky voices could be heard begging desperately for a sword, any sword. Si'Wren heard the laughter of some guest, an early arrival, as he commented upon the humor of sacrificing a human being instead of a mere animal to commemorate the beginning of the feast. Moments later, both boys reappeared flying down the front steps and came running at breakneck speed across the courtyard in returning to a motionlessly waiting Habrunt, his right arm still stiffly out-held, open-handed.

While all of this was happening, an increasing number of onlookers had stopped to watch, with the late-comers asking others in hushed voices what was going on. Upon hearing, each cast by turns horrified looks of revulsion, disgust, and loathing for Si'Wren and Nelatha, together with shock, disbelief, and horror at the two pieces of the broken jade statue, still lying where they had been cast aside by an enraged Master Rababull. There was no danger of the valuable pieces of jade being stolen; to touch the broken jade now would mean certain death. No one was bold enough to say anything directly to Habrunt or the two hapless girls.

Some of those watching displayed a certain sickening delight at the sight of a motionlessly waiting Habrunt and the two prostrate girls kneeling with faces downcast in the dust at his feet.

As the two runner boys dashed across the courtyard to return with the swords to Habrunt, more people came out of the House to stand at the head of the front steps to see what had occasioned their unusual mission.

"Master, here are two swords," one of his runner boys gasped, nearly out of breath as they both bowed low and held the shining blades out to Habrunt. But he stood a moment, staring down at the dirt before him, as if he had not heard.

"One will do," Habrunt said finally, as he looked up, and reached for one of the shining blades.

With the sword in his fist he stood looking down at Nelatha and she suddenly paused in her terrified protests, looking up at him with tear-streaked cheeks as she searched his face with glazed eyes, mutely imploring him to do or say something to save her.

But Habrunt's countenance was terrible to look upon, so stone-faced and determined was he now.

"Pray, Nelatha," he said only, too afraid of Master Rababull to risk more open defiance of either his Master or any temple god.

Nelatha nodded again, jerkily, and bowed her head.

Then, as Nelatha prayed in a series of hysterically rising whispers,

Habrunt slowly raised the sword high into the air in front of a numbed

Si'Wren, held it trembling in his great fist, and then brought it down

in a mercifully swift flashing arc.

Nelatha's prayers were suddenly cut short, and a collection of gasps was heard from the watching crowd. Habrunt held out the sword behind him without looking, and the visibly shaking runner boy took it back, dripping with Nelatha's blood.

Habrunt's eyes, shot through with grief and an inconsolable look of self-condemnation and awfulness of purpose, looked upon Nelatha's slain body momentarily. He was no longer Habrunt the kind Slavemaster, to whom one might look when trouble raised it's ugly head, but had become an unwilling angel of death instead.

Habrunt finally turned to Si'Wren, who knelt still before him, utterly speechless and motionless. Looking dazed, she gazed long upon the bloody corpse of once-cheerful Nelatha, divided in half at the neck, like the broken jade goddess.

Master Rababull, who was still watching, had said let her never speak again, but live. What could that possibly mean? thought Si'Wren.

Habrunt reached down and almost lovingly slid his trembling, work-roughened fingers into the hair at the nape of her neck with his left hand. As Habrunt tilted Si'Wren's head back her face was lifted up and her tear-streaked cheeks were revealed beneath eyes looking ever-trustingly up into his, in absolute surrender to his will, signifying that she had not the slightest thought of resisting her fate.

But Habrunt could not do what was commanded of him, and hesitated.

There were any number of alternatives, all contrary to Master

Rababull's wishes and hence instantly fatal, but he had a sword.

He could do much with a sword...

Suddenly a third runner boy suddenly came hurrying past them both and bowed in perfunctory manner as he quickly announced a breathlessly gasped utterance to Rababull.

"Master, the great Physician is here!"

As Si'Wren lifted up her eyes slowly, her soul quailed at the sight of Habrunt's upraised fist, yet still she stared submissively into his tormented eyes, showing that never would she strive against nor resist he to whom she looked up as to a light in the spiritual darkness for all of her life however brief. If Habrunt could but know it, Si'Wren trusted him even more than she ever did Master Rababull or any living human being.

Then, Habrunt lowered his right fist slowly, as well as his head, although his left fist remained clenched tightly immobile in Si'Wren's crush of locks.

"Master, may I speak?" said Habrunt to the ground, as he maintained his steady grip upon the unresisting girl whose eyes his own had no strength to meet.

"Speak!" commanded Rababull impatiently. He was barely able to contain himself in his rage and impatience to get it over with.

Habrunt hesitated further, and dared not look up at his Master as he spoke.

"Most gracious and noble Master, was not this one greatly in thy favor before?" pled Habrunt.

He was taking a terrible risk, to speak so boldly of Master Rababull's former personal fondness for Si'Wren. Master Rababull had but to say the word, and the remains of Habrunt could end up in the dirt beside Nelatha.

"What is it?" said Master Rababull, somewhat irritably now, rather than in a full rage. It seemed Habrunt had struck his mark with the unerring accuracy of a master archer, as usual.

"Master, I am but a coarse and brutal man, and thou alone art high and noble and altogether good. Invisible Gods deserve invisible praise, from invisible voices. If it be your pleasure, let this little one show with what purity of purpose she might have served her foolish Invisible God, by swearing a vow never to speak instead. The more she speaks, the more her Invisible God may be viewed as false."

There was a moment of silence, as Master Rababull thought on this.

"Well spoken, Slavemaster," Master Rababull finally said, his voice almost back to normal, almost relieved, in fact. "Let her never speak-forever! If she speak but once, let all bear witness to the falsehood of her Invisible God by the falseness of her broken vow, and her life be forfeit! Let her so swear!"

Habrunt had not bargained for this! But what could he do? What was determined now was not as vile as what had been declared before, hence, was not enough justification to turn his sword in furious rebellion against the House of Rababull.

Grief-stricken, he lowered his eyes to Si'Wren, and said resolutely, "Little one, do you swear by your God never to say one word for the rest of your days, so long as you shall live and breathe and have life in you, and to suffer death to yourself and dishonor to your Invisible God if you should ever fail to do so?"

Si'Wren realized that here was the chance, not only to redeem herself but her newfound Invisible God as well.

"I swear it," Si'Wren said.

"She has so sworn, Master," Habrunt immediately declared to Master

Rababull.

"Let it be so," rasped Master Rababull. "A fitting conclusion to the matter."

At that moment, Master Rababull's attention was diverted as he was approached by the Camel Master. His face remained stern and obnoxious to look upon, which unintended visage of evil, coupled with the sight of several slaves carrying away the remains of Nelatha, and the sight of all the spilled blood in the dust, made the all-observant Camel Master extraordinarily nervous, although he tried rather desperately not to show it and failed miserably.

The Camel Master spoke briefly to Master Rababull about something, and when he had politely heard out the man, Master Rababull turned to Habrunt.

"Go to now, Slavemaster, and take this silent one with you," said Master Rababull. "The good Physician must not be kept waiting, for he will have need of her herbal skills."

As Habrunt listened to the footsteps of Master Rababull and the obsequiously over-attentive Camel Master receding across the dusty courtyard, he let out a sigh, sickened by what he had done, and by his own feelings on the matter.

Harsh, unforgiving punishment must ever hang over Si'Wren's head now, all because of a broken piece of green rock! Would that Si'Wren was but stone herself, that she might suffer nothing further. How she trembled so.

He took Si'Wren gently by the hand, indicating that she should rise to her feet.

"I am sorry, little one," he rumbled in a low voice when she had risen to stand upright beside him, speaking so quietly to her that the other slaves still watching could not discern his words. "Return with me now to the spice tent and bring what you need, quickly! If any should tempt you to speak, hold your silence, on your life!"

Si'Wren nodded mutely, waiting for him to lead the way.

Habrunt regarded her a moment, his face unreadable. Then he composed himself, and in a quiet, firm voice, said, "Come."

He scattered the onlookers, the gleeful and the merely curious alike, with a wrathful look, and walked Si'Wren to the wrecked spice tent to help shield her from their otherwise ruinous persecutions. At what had once been the spice tent Si'Wren trembled at the sight of the damage. Not only was the tent ruined. Priceless herbs and salves had been scattered and spilled. The powders of many different sun-dried and painstakingly ground-up plants had been intermingled in the dirt, and the bugs were already starting to get into things.

Such was the measure of her Master Rababull's outrage, that he cared so little for the damage to the spice tent, his own property, in the course of executing his punishments. The thought of this, and of the severed body of Nelatha, made Si'Wren afraid to even think of ever facing her master again, and the fear that possessed her now stifled any desire to speak, on top of the fact that she had already sworn an oath not to talk anyways.

"Take what you need," Habrunt said, his face grim. "Hurry!"

His words brought her out of her momentary confusion, and Si'Wren worked quickly to sort out only that which was needful. Perhaps she could come back and clean up the rest of the mess later.

When she was ready, she turned and dipped her head in a little nod as a signal to Habrunt.

Without a word, he turned and led the way. He took her across the big open compound near to the place where the long caravan of heavily laden beasts stood chewing their cuds along one high stone wall, just inside the front gates of the sprawling compound.

He proceeded with Si'Wren still in tow, her small hand engulfed in his huge one as he approached to where a large number of onlookers was gathered idly around some unseen activity, and as he approached the outskirts of the crowd he barked commandingly, "Step aside!" and "Make way there!"

So speaking, Habrunt shouldered through their midst. When he reached the center of the crowd, he stood with Si'Wren before the old Physician, who was already busy at his work with the man with a toothache from the caravan.

Onlookers were conversing with one another in hushed voices from a respectful distance, still too fearful to speak directly to Habrunt or his young prisoner. When a slave met such a fate as Nelatha's, it was dangerous to risk even the slightest unintentional aggravation. Better to let well enough alone. None dared say so much as a single word to grim-looking Habrunt or the timid one he escorted.

Nelatha was dead. Habrunt, supremely miserable, hid his grief and pretended to ignore them all. When he looked once into Si'Wren's eyes, he found only continued fear and bewilderment. Well, he had at least done her this little kindness, and spared her the dread of her original sentence. Perhaps she did not, even now, realize what had been pronounced upon her head, before he interceded so recklessly.

That he had actually succeeded in sparing Si'Wren life and limb from punishment was beyond his wildest expectations, but now she must forever remain in constant danger of forgetting herself and speaking out of turn for the rest of her life. Had he really helped her, or only prolonged her suffering, before the final, inescapable, damning judgement? Why could he not have thought of a better alternative for Si'Wren?

"Your pardon, great Physician," he said, boldly stepping forward.

"Aye, what is it?" the white-bearded old Healer asked with a wry and good-natured impatience, scarcely bothering to look up from his work.

Many bystanders and well-wishers were already there, looking curiously on at his work as they stood idly by in whispering attendance at every hand.

"She has brought you the herbs you requested," said Habrunt.

"Good!" the Physician said, studying his patient critically. "Not a moment too soon."

The Physician took advantage of Habrunt's momentary distraction to set his mind afresh upon his work, for he was in a crucial part of the operation, and the patient would never be so ready as he was at that very moment.

Already in position, he reached in carefully, and clenched down, and seemed to set himself, and with a nod to those helping him to hold tightly onto the patient, he pulled hard with a pair of crude iron pliers or tongs, and yanked out a stinking, rotten, bloody molar from the jaw of the patient, whose gopher hole of a mouth emitted an agonized outcry. There ensued a veritable chorus of gasps and utterances from the crowd.

"There!" the Physician patted the shoulder of the sufferer, as expressions of relief could be heard from the onlookers on all sides. "Now, if I may have the herbs I was promised?"

The Physician turned to look directly at Habrunt.

Habrunt looked down at Si'Wren, and said, "Attend, little one!" in a mild pretense at impatience.

Taking her cue, Si'Wren raised her eyebrows quickly and nodded as she stepped forward and bowed wordlessly, holding out to the old doctor the proffered items which she had brought.

"Ah yes," said the Physician, nodding as he sniffed and tasted the various samples with evident satisfaction. "Whoever prepared these has done well!"

He turned and said to the dental patient, "You must rinse with this tea of borage leaf, or the grass that the cattle eat if you run out too soon. Perhaps also, a little dandelion. Blend it with a pinch of this barberry herb," he held out in his weathered palm a small leather pouch noosed at the neck with a cord of dried gut which Si'Wren had furnished him, "and flush the socket faithfully for seven days. It will stop the pain and bleeding almost immediately, and you will suffer little or no infection."

Besides the herbs he was dispensing, the verbal prescription which the sage Physician had just uttered was known to stop bleeding, and the anesthetic effect of mere words was already well-known to mothers the world over in the eternal pooh-poohing of their childrens' many little wounds of life.

The man from the caravan tried to grin and nod and bow his agonized thanks all at the same time while moving respectfully backwards to go and do as instructed. The other members of the caravan gathered close around him to escort him carefully away. One held up a wine flask, making obvious his intention to get his comrade drunk, which would afford obvious immediate relief but no doubt add to his later miseries when he should awaken with a biting hangover the next day.

Seizing the opportunity, Habrunt leaned conspiratorially close, and when the Physician inclined his ear Habrunt whispered so low that none could hear what was said.

As he listened, the Physician's expression became, by turns, first shocked, then angry, and finally-resigned and infinitely saddened.

He turned his head once, to look critically at the two one-eyed boys waiting on the sidelines. If he felt anything, it no longer showed on his wise old face as he studied their identical physical maladies. Finally, he nodded, turning away from a still-whispering Habrunt and cutting off the other in mid-sentence.

He was an iron-willed, dutiful man who knew how to do what must be done when called upon to make decisions. It was not his business to judge the Master of this House if he, too, did what he saw fit. But he sighed, a heavy, tired gesture, as if all the evils of the world were a weight upon his shoulders alone.

Out of a vague sense of fairness, he decided to examine the smaller boy first, the gentle one who had been innocently victimized, while saving the bully, on Habrunt's judicious advice, until second.

The Physician called for the two boys with their missing single eyes to be brought to him. Then, while Si'Wren watched with passionate sympathy, the Physician prepared to go to work on them.

"Eh-" the Physician hesitated, nodding indistinctly in the direction of the two injured boys, "-which one did you say first?"

Habrunt made an end of niceties and reached forth an arm, simultaneously barring the one while favoring the other with one and the same gesture.

"Ah!" the Physician nodded.

The guilty boy tearfully begged to be helped first or at least at the same time, but was firmly commanded by his own father to wait his proper turn.

Waiting patiently until after the interruption was settled, the Physician beckoned gently to the innocent, smiling in a fatherly fashion.

"Come, child," he beckoned with a kindly nod of his wise old head.

The little boy hesitated, and Habrunt nodded encouragingly.

"Trust him," Habrunt advised the boy in a quiet but stern tone of voice. "He is a great Physician, who has been paid much money and come a long ways to treat you. You must obey his commands without question."

Still somewhat fearfully, but more obediently now, the boy stepped forward and, at a slight gesture from the Physician, stood motionless before him.

"Face this way," he smiled, crinkling his eyes. Then he said, "Now that way." He regarded the boy with just a suggestion of teasing admonition, and said, "Hold still now."

"That's it," the physician smiled and nodded his approval again encouragingly, as he inspected carefully. "Aye, I see."

The boy fairly trembled all over, and Si'Wren watched with the others, mourning the suffering of both boys and temporarily forgetting her own miseries.

The Physician had turned to rummaging in his kit bag, and now he pulled out a beautiful unglazed clay jar with dark-colored berry stains all over the rim and sides. The jar was stoppered with a cracked and discolored wooden cork.

It seemed only right and proper to the old Physician that the noble-born Master Rababull, no doubt put on the spot at times by the mischief of those beneath him, should be the proper court of final recourse, and in the Physician's view of things, what must be done must be done. Too bad about the gentle boy's suffering, but right was right, and the bully had received his just recompense.

"No, that's not it," he said, frowning as he sniffed at the contents.

Although the Physician might secretly have wished for a fairer and less vindictive world, he could but observe that well had the gods fated Rababull to be Master.

Could even one of his servants have inflicted such drastic punishment, and have done it so impartially and without undue hesitation, as he had just done? The Physician sagely reflected that another could not have done it at all. Perhaps instead, the other fellow would have become too emotionally involved and done too much.

Or a man of more timid nature might have betrayed cowardice and chosen to talk it off haughtily and do nothing at all, thereby engendering a smoldering spirit of outrage and rebellion in his own subjects. If the master could not settle the matter to the adequate satisfaction of all, who could?

But there was more to it than that. What Master Rababull had done was to make all fear him, and justly so. It was no doubt a telling reason as to why the man was still alive after so many hundreds of years in such a deceitful and vicious world.

Anyway, why question what was obviously the will of the gods? Even most fools knew better than to do that.

He rummaged around some more in the bag.

"Ah!"

He pulled out a soft leather pouch as large as his gnarled hand, and measured some powder out into his palm. He looked up at the boy, seeming to estimate his diminutive size and stature visually, and then poured out a good deal more, peering down and studying the exactness of the amount with a frown as he openly took the time to gage it's weight against that of the young boy.

"A little wine is needful," he said, raising his hoary, bewhiskered old head and looking around vaguely at no one in particular.

At the sight of the Physician waiting patiently with the powder already measured out into his sweaty palm and ready to be administered, Habrunt turned to one of his boys and clapped his hands sharply with a terse nod.

"Do not keep the great Physician waiting!" he admonished sternly. "Get white wine if you can, or red if you must."

"Aye, Master Habrunt!"

The boy raced off at a dead run, presently to return staggering under the weight of one of the flasks meant for the party-goers.

The Physician took a small cup from his purse, dropped in the powder, and Habrunt assisted directly by taking over from the boy and pouring in the clear, fragrant fruit of the vine. Si'Wren watched as the powder was commingled to the stained brim with the crystal clear liquid, for the boy had brought white wine.

Then, in front of the trembling boy, the Physician solemnly uttered a few gravely-spoken nonsense syllables, and passed his free hand before him as he gazed deep into his one good eye, and put the cup into his grasp.

"Drink!" he smiled encouragingly, crinkling his eyes again in the most engaging and kindly manner, although it screwed up his whole face into a mass of hairy wrinkles. "Drink every drop, and praise the gods. It is all you have to do."

The boy took it, held it up, and then began to drink. It was -in Si'Wren's knowledgeable estimation- possessed of an almost intolerably bitter taste, but the fine white wine would no doubt commute the bitterness with it's rare ethers. The boy gasped for air, and declared bluntly, "It burns in my stomach!"

"Finish it," Habrunt urged firmly.

"Hut!" said the Physician, stopping the boy before he could obey.

The Physician took the cup from the boy, swirled it's contents expertly to stir up the remaining powder from the bottom, and reached it up to the child's lips as he soothingly breathed the words, "Drink quickly now!"

The boy gulped down the rest.

"Now-sit," the Physician said, taking the cup from the boy's hands.

Obediently, the child tried to sit down, and would have fallen clear over backwards had his mother not anxiously enveloped him in her arms and ample bosom as she crouched quickly behind him.

In a shy, soft voice, the boy exclaimed breathlessly, "It's bitter!"

"Aye, it is, isn't it?" the Physician nodded. Then, staring deep into the boy's one good eye, the Physician said, "Look, deep, into my eyes..."

The boy seemed to fall into a swoon.

Without another word, the Physician took over from the boy's mother, and laid the unconscious boy out flat on the ground and began immediately to treat his ruined eye socket.

Habrunt quietly oversaw everything that the Physician was doing for as long as he could, the better to assist if needed, but as Slavemaster, he had many duties, and presently he was called away by a runner boy with yet another message from Master Rababull. Habrunt was a man of many responsibilities.

Before going, he turned to Si'Wren and leaned close to whisper into her ear, "Fear not, only keep silence lest any watching should find occasion to bring an accusation against you. If any should do so, true or not, remain silent and abide until I return, when I shall make judgement upon them."

Then he turned and marched away without so much as a backward glance.

Si'Wren watched him go for a moment, and then feigned utter unconcern for her Slavemaster as she resorted to watching the Physician again. None must realize how desperately she looked to Habrunt or cared for him now. For he had not only saved her life but had won her trust, and somewhere in all this was bound up her heart and soul as well. This she was anxious that none should learn of and mock.

At long last, finishing with his ministrations to the first boy's missing eye, the weary old Physician turned finally to the bad boy who had lost his own eye as punishment.

Eventually the Physician was done, and both boys were given over to the care of their mothers, and Si'Wren, having no mother or father, bowed low to the Physician after being dismissed by him, and decided to return to the ruined spice tent.

By this time the sun had just dropped below the horizon, and it was fast turning to dusk. The first of the party-goers had already arrived, and the celebration was already beginning.

Arriving at the spice tent, she stared at the unbelievable destruction and felt tears stream down her cheeks. Master Rababull had been virtually a god to her! She had worshiped the very ground he had walked on.

Fog drifted through the courtyard, transforming the torches in their fixed stanchions on the nearby walls, into glowing orbs like spirits, or like the moon above. Aye, the spirit of the moon was upon the land tonight, the spirit of madness. Gloomily, Si'Wren reflected that the celebrants were to be spared the sight of the slain young woman's body. Of course! That would spoil their fun. Such must never be even dreamed of. Si'Wren wiped ineffectually at her tears, smearing her wet cheeks. What should she do?

She stared at the wreckage of the spice tent, and wondered helplessly if she was expected to spend the entire night if necessary cleaning it up. No one had said anything about what was to be expected of her now. Should she abandon her work, or what?

Close by, she suddenly heard extremes of laughter. Abruptly she turned from the wrecked tent and walked toward the rear gate. When she arrived, she found it guarded by two brawny slaves standing beneath the torches of the closed and barred gate. They ignored her contemptuously, no doubt having already been informed of her evil belief in the Invisible God, and of her complicity in the destruction of the priceless green jade goddess.

She turned and walked back through the grounds toward the front, turning aside into the shadows whenever possible to avoid meeting others. The smells of cooking food came to her, and she realized that she had already missed her supper as hunger gnawed at her insides.

At the front gate, as she had anticipated, the guards were admitting the celebrants, under Slavemaster Habrunt's watchful eye. Habrunt seemed too busy to notice her. Did he, too, secretly despise her now? Si'Wren held back, until the guards were preoccupied with the arrival of yet another dignitary and his extended family, and when the attention of all seemed temporarily diverted, she walked forward quickly and slipped out of the front gates and into the wide path.

She turned sharply, and walked away from the direction of the nearby city, into the gathering darkness of the wilds. Cold fog enveloped her, and in what seemed like no time at all the torch light behind her was swallowed up in the swirling mists.

She walked on, oblivious of her surroundings, looking neither to the rear nor to the right or left. What did it matter if some foul beast should leap out and seize her in it's jaws? It would be a blessed fate, compared to what she must face if she should return to the House of Rababull now.

She heard something behind her, and looking around anxiously, thought she saw a large shadow, as that of a man, following her, too far back to make it out for sure. Si'Wren's heart began pounding fearfully as she stared, eyes widening in fear.

Abruptly she turned, and began to walk quickly, looking for some place to turn off the road and hide. When she glanced back again, the figure was gone. Slowing, she stopped and stared behind her again, to see if it had been her imagination. Then her ears pricked, as she thought she heard the distant scrape of a sandal on the path.

She turned and began walking swiftly away from the House of Rababull, deeper and deeper into the night. Whenever she looked back, she saw and heard nothing. Was someone there?

"Hello?" she called out, looking back again.

But there was no answer.

Still staring behind her as she began to walk away, Si'Wren suddenly blundered straight into a tree, and screamed as two of the tree's branches seized hold of her.

She struggled helplessly as she was held in a vise-like grip by a laughing young man, whose alcohol-laden breath caused her to choke and gag.

Another man, as brawny as the first, towered above her.

"I've caught me a night spirit!" laughed the man, holding onto her tenaciously.

"Make her give you a wish before you let her go," jested the second.

"She'll give us more than that, and no one the wiser," said the first in an evil, crafty tone of voice.

Si'Wren jerked instinctively to free herself from her attacker, and found her diminutive physical power to be as nothing compared to his godlike strength.

He spun her around, and she bit him in the hand.

"Ouch! You filthy whore!"

He slapped her, a stunning backhand to the cheek, and she felt her head jerked backward by the blow. The young man's foul spittle-laden breath assailed her, together with the stink of his alcoholic excesses.

"Help me!" Si'Wren shouted, knowing she was too far from the front gates to be heard now.

Her captor laughed, enjoying her fear.

Then she screamed out in hopelessness and despair, "Habrunt!!!"

"She calls her Slavemaster," said the one, gripping her tightly. "He favors her. You're going to die for sure, pretty one, after we've had our way with you."

"Oh God, please help me!!" Si'Wren screamed like a lost soul, sensing her doom upon her as supreme fear overcame her and she crumpled, sagging nervelessly in the man's irresistible grasp.

"Shut up!" he gritted tightly, striking her a series of stunning blows across the face delivered alternately with the open palm and the bony back of his hand.

"Aye, she must die alright," said the second. "Her very identity must be hid, lest Rababull's Slavemaster should find out. Hurry and let us be done quickly with her, before someone else comes along!"

"Wise words-spoken too late to do you any good!" suddenly declared a deep voice.

Si'Wren whirled her head around, and watched disbelieving as out of the shadows of the mists stepped the shadowy and indistinct figure of a powerfully built man with a golden bronze sword gleaming in his hand.

"Habrunt!" Si'Wren shrieked desperately as, reeling from the blows, she struggled anew and stared.

"We've got swords!" the first young man declared nervously and self-importantly, "and our fathers are high-born. You're a slave! You better run along home, before we decide to report you to your master."

Habrunt said nothing.

"The girl is not half as willing as the others," the second one said offensively.

"Aye, she's worthless, like you," the first one laughed contemptuously. "Here, see for yourself!" Still gripping Si'Wren by the upper arms, he suddenly flung her forward in the direction of Habrunt, so violently that she stumbled and fell to her knees before him.

"We didn't want her anyways," the second chipped in, emboldened by

Habrunt's continued silence. "She's far too ugly."

Habrunt stepped forward until he had come just past Si'Wren's kneeling figure, with her head still downcast in shame, and then he halted again, standing protectively between Si'Wren and her two tormentors now.

"What is she to you, anyways?" said the first young man. He was already growing nervous because of Habrunt's refusal to reply. "Here," the young man said, dipping into his money satchel, "I'll pay you for her; twenty, no, thirty pieces of silver! You can keep her in the bargain. What's the matter with you? My money's as good as anyone else's! Go on, take it!"

Habrunt took another menacing step forward, as he slowly raised his gleaming sword.

"Take it!" the young man repeated, in a high voice. He waved his sword in the air in a series of menacing arcs, which Habrunt seemed not to notice. "Keep the girl and take all of it! What do you want of us?!"

"Aye! Leave us out of it! You'll be sorry for this! Our fathers-"

Habrunt's sword abruptly flashed in the night in a swift series of arcs, to the accompaniment of a succession of metallic clangs followed by several meaty whacks and the cut-off screams of the two young men.

There was no more sound for a moment, except for the sliding of a sword blade on the clothing of they who had been destroyed. Then she heard the sound of footsteps, as Habrunt turned back to her. In his right hand was the money pouch that had been offered to him, and in his other was his sword. He switched hands, and hurled the money pouch into the night. Far off the trail, Si'Wren heard the distant clink of the money when it landed. Their swords quickly followed, and Si'Wren heard the swish of grass as they landed unseen in the darkness.

She remained kneeling in despair, waiting for Habrunt to pronounce judgement upon her. Now what was to become of her, for her broken vow of silence?

Then she felt his hands touch her shoulders, so gently that the fear with which she was shaken was transformed into surprise and numbed disbelief.

"Little one," said Habrunt, his voice heavy but full of compassion.

"Are you alright?"

"Oh Habrunt," Si'Wren lamented, her voice a whimper. "I have betrayed my vow of silence to the Invisible God! I am worthless, and now I shall be punished by the Master!"

But Habrunt knelt down beside her, and shook his head slowly.

"Not so," he said. "Come."

He helped her rise to her feet, and began leading her back towards the

House compound.

"But I did!" she persisted, leaning on him for support as she walked, for she seemed to be hurt worse than she had first supposed. "In the very confession of my sin, I betray my vow of silence, my sworn oath given before the Invisible God, to you and Master Rababull!"

"Then stop talking," Habrunt said mildly, still leading her confidently through the night, as the moon cast it's glow through the swirling mists.

"How can you say that?" Si'Wren said. Then she blurted out, "Have you no sense of right and wrong?"

"I am as good a keeper of the law as any," said Habrunt.

"Aye, and you slew those two evil men, who would have taken me upon their lusts, and cast me aside afterward as lifelessly as you have done unto them instead."

"Because they struck you without cause," Habrunt replied. "And also, lest they betray the truth of your broken vow of silence."

To Si'Wren, Habrunt's second remark seemed an astonishing thing to say.

"Then-" she hesitated in confusion, "you shall be as guilty as I! You must not do this thing."

"It is already done. If not for my foolishness, you had not taken such a vow in the first place."

"But-I did vow."

"Aye. Tell me this, little one; who shall speak of it when we return, seeing how you have taken this vow of silence?"

"I-" This time, Si'Wren could not think of what to say, so perplexing and marvelous were his words.

"Aye," Habrunt assented. "I am as guilty as you. But am I not Slavemaster of the House of Rababull? My word is final. Not even Master Rababull can overturn my decision, for behold, I have covered the sins of yourself, that by my own guilt you may be counted innocent before all. Who then shall gainsay me in this? The Invisible God? Aye, and may He ever be the right and true judge of all, more so than even the high and mighty noble Master Rababull. Methinks the Invisible One shall but praise me in the justice of what has transpired tonight."

Si'Wren listened mystified to all of this, and when she had heard all, she found that Habrunt's strange words eased her conscience, having such an effect upon her that she found herself wishing to be loosed from Master Rababull and bound to Habrunt instead. But to imagine such was rank foolishness, for Habrunt and all that he had or ever would have; did they not already belong to Master Rababull? One might as well wish for the moon.

Still reeling from the blows she had received, Si'Wren planted a misstep in his path as she staggered into Habrunt, and would have fallen if he had not caught her.

Without the slightest sign of visible effort, Habrunt dipped down and scooped her up into his arms, cradling her tenderly as he looked down into her beaten face.

His anger was gone now, and he was thinking about what must be said when he returned with her to the compound. Since he was not a talkative man in the first place, it would not seem out of character if he said nothing at all and let others do all the talking amongst themselves. That way, they could freely invent their own explanations to their hearts' content and might even think of a better answer than he could.

The two young men would be missed, but those who went a wandering so drunkenly into the wilds of the land as if to a fool's paradise would be said by many to deserve the sorry fate they had so evidently brought upon themselves. Even knowing the truth, Habrunt could readily agree to this.

He had checked them out when they had left earlier of their own accord, taking two of the traveling harlots from the caravan with them as playthings. Habrunt had thought poorly of the midnight excursion even then, before he had the slightest inkling that it was to eventually involve Si'Wren. However, the two young men were freeborn and of age, and it would have been rank insubordination for Habrunt to have uttered the slightest contradiction to their plans.

It was when Si'Wren had slipped out, that he had commanded a nearby guard to take over, so he could follow her.

An expert tracker, Habrunt had been alert enough to notice the trail signs and discovered the two hapless slave girls which the two young men had taken with them, a short distance from the gates. There in the dark, by the colorless light of a full moon obscured by heavy night mists, Habrunt had located the remains of the two unfortunate harlots from the caravan.

He almost wished he hadn't, because of what he found.

The women had evidently been abused and mistreated most evilly, as by devils, and then murdered and discarded like playthings to be tossed into the bushes by the wayside. For Habrunt, the manner of their deaths was even now something to live on in his nightmares.

Since their money and the valuable swords they had brought were unlikely to be found and would be noticed to be missing, the deaths of the two young men could easily be credited to bandits. Habrunt held his own sword awkwardly as he cradled Si'Wren in his arms.

It was his own absence, and the badly beaten physical condition of Si'Wren, which must somehow endure the gainsayings of others, and which concerned him the most now. Let them talk on, and wonder, and dream but once of a fitting explanation according to their own dim lights, and by their own mouths would they deceive themselves.

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.