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08 - The Door Through Space - Marion Zimmer Bradley · Classic Science Fiction Books

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eight. I slept little that night. There is a
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  Speaker 1: tale told in Dlaon of the Chugri, where a challenger
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  Speaker 1: was left in a room alone, where he was blindfolded
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  Speaker 1: and told to await the beginning of the torment. Somewhere
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  Speaker 1: in those dark hours of waiting between the unknown and
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  Speaker 1: the unexpected, the hours of telling over to himself the
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  Speaker 1: horrors of past chagri, the torture of anticipation alone became unbearable.
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  Speaker 1: A little past noon, he collapsed in screams of horror
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  Speaker 1: and died, raving, unmarred, untouched. Daybreak came slowly, and with
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  Speaker 1: the first streamers of light came Dallisa, with the white chalk,
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  Speaker 1: maliciously uninvolved, sniffing his way through the shabby poverty of
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  Speaker 1: the Great Hall. They took me to a lower dungeon,
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  Speaker 1: where the slant of the sunlight was less visible. Dalisa said,
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  Speaker 1: the sun has risen. I said nothing. Any word may
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  Speaker 1: be interpreted as a confession of defeat. I resolved to
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  Speaker 1: give them no excuse. But my skin crawled, and I
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  Speaker 1: had that peculiar prickling sensation where the hair on my
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  Speaker 1: forearms was bristling, erect with tension and fear, Dalisa said
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  Speaker 1: to the chalk, his gear was not searched. See that
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  Speaker 1: he has swallowed no anesthetic drugs. Briefly, I gave her
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  Speaker 1: credit for thoroughness, even while I wondered in a split
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  Speaker 1: second why I had not thought of this. Drugs could
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  Speaker 1: blur consciousness at least or suspend reality. The white non
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  Speaker 1: human sprang forward and pinioned my arms with one strong,
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  Speaker 1: spring steel forearm. With his other hand, he forced my
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  Speaker 1: jaws open. I felt the furred fingers at the back
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  Speaker 1: of my throat, gagged, struggled briefly, and doubled up in
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  Speaker 1: uncontrollable wretching. Dalisa's poison berry eyes regarded me levily as
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  Speaker 1: I struggled upright, fighting off the dizzy sickness of disgust.
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  Speaker 1: Something about her impassive face stopped me cold. I had
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  Speaker 1: been momentarily raging with fury and humiliation. Now I realized
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  Speaker 1: that this had been a calculated, careful gesture to make
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  Speaker 1: me lose my temper and thus sap my resistance. If
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  Speaker 1: she could set me to fighting, if she could make
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  Speaker 1: me spend my strength and rage, my own imagination would
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  Speaker 1: fight on her side to make me lose control. Before
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  Speaker 1: the end. Swimming in the glare of her eyes, I
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  Speaker 1: realized she had never thought for a moment that I
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  Speaker 1: had taken any drug. Acting on Carrel's hint that I
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  Speaker 1: was a Terran, she was taking advantage of the well
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  Speaker 1: known Terran revulsion for the non human blindfold him. Dalisa commanded,
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  Speaker 1: then instantly countermanded that no strip him first. The chalk
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  Speaker 1: ripped off shirt, cloak, shirt, shoes, breeches, and I had
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  Speaker 1: my first triumph when the wheeled claw marks on my shoulders, worse,
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  Speaker 1: if possible, than those which disfigured my face, were laid bare.
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  Speaker 1: The chalk screwed up his muzzle in fastidious horror, and
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  Speaker 1: Alisa looked shaken. I could almost read her thoughts, if
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  Speaker 1: he endured this, what hope have I to make him
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  Speaker 1: cry mercy? Briefly I remembered the months I lay feverish
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  Speaker 1: and half dead, waiting for the wounds Recall had inflicted
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  Speaker 1: to heal, those months when I had believed that nothing
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  Speaker 1: would ever hurt me again, that I had known the
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  Speaker 1: worst of all suffering. But I had been younger then.
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  Speaker 1: Dalisa had picked up two small, sharp knives. She weighed
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  Speaker 1: them briefly, gesturing to the chalk. Without resisting, I let
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  Speaker 1: myself be man handled backward, spread eaglet against the wall.
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  Speaker 1: Dalisa commanded, drive the knives through his palms to the wall.
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  Speaker 1: My hands twitched convulsively anticipating the slash of steel, and
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  Speaker 1: my throat closed in spasmodic dread. This was breaking the compact,
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  Speaker 1: bound as they were not to inflict physical damage. I
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  Speaker 1: opened my lips to protest this breaking of the bond
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  Speaker 1: of honor and met her dark, blazing stare, and suddenly
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  Speaker 1: the sweat broke out on my forehead. I had placed
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  Speaker 1: myself wholly in her hands, and as Karl had said,
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  Speaker 1: they were in no way bound by honor to respect
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  Speaker 1: a pledge to a terran. Then, as my hands clenched
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  Speaker 1: into fists, I forced myself to relax. This was a bluff,
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  Speaker 1: a mental trick to needle me into breaking the pact
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  Speaker 1: and pleading for mercy. I set my lips, spread my
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  Speaker 1: palms wide against the wall, and waited impassively. She said,
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  Speaker 1: in her lilting voice, take care not to sever the tendons,
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  Speaker 1: or his hands would be paralyzed, and he may claim
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  Speaker 1: we have broken our compact. The points of the steel
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  Speaker 1: razor sharp touched my palms, and I felt blood run
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  Speaker 1: down my head, and before the pain, with an effort
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  Speaker 1: that turned my face white, I did not pull away
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  Speaker 1: from the point the knives drove deeper Dallisa's gestured to
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  Speaker 1: the chalk. The knives dropped two pinpricks a quarter of
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  Speaker 1: an inch deep, stung in my palm. I had outbluffed her,
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  Speaker 1: had I if I had expected her to betray disappointment,
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  Speaker 1: and I had I was disappointed abruptly, as if the
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  Speaker 1: game had wearied her already. She gestured, and I could
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  Speaker 1: not hold back a gasp as my arms were hauled
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  Speaker 1: up over my head, twisted violently around one another, and
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  Speaker 1: trussed with thin cords that bit deep into the flesh.
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  Speaker 1: Then the rough upward pull almost jerked my shoulders from
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  Speaker 1: their sockets, and I heard the giant chalk grunt with
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  Speaker 1: effort as I was hauled upward until my feet, barely
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  Speaker 1: on tiptoe, touched the floor. Blindfold him, said Dalisa, languidly,
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  Speaker 1: so that he cannot watch the ascent of the sun
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  Speaker 1: or its descent, or know what is to come. A
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  Speaker 1: dark softness muffled my eyes. After a little I heard
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  Speaker 1: her steps retreating. My arms, wrenched overhead and numbed with
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  Speaker 1: the bite of the cords, were beginning to hurt badly now,
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  Speaker 1: But it wasn't too bad. Surely she did not mean
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  Speaker 1: that this should be all Sternly, I controlled my imagination,
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  Speaker 1: taking a tight rein on my thoughts. There was only
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  Speaker 1: one way to meet this hanging blind and racked in space,
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  Speaker 1: my toes barely scrambling at the floor, and that was
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  Speaker 1: to take each thing as it came, and not look
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  Speaker 1: ahead for an instant. First of all, I tried to
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  Speaker 1: get my feet under me, and discovered that by arching
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  Speaker 1: upwards to my fullest height, I could bear my weight
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  Speaker 1: on tiptoe and ease a little the dislocating ache in
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  Speaker 1: my armpits by slackening the overhead rope. But after a
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  Speaker 1: little a cramping pain began to flare through the arches
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  Speaker 1: of my feet, and it became impossible to support my
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  Speaker 1: weight on tiptoe. I jarred down with violent strain on
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  Speaker 1: my wrists and wrenched shoulders again, and for a moment
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  Speaker 1: the shooting agony was so intense that I nearly screamed.
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  Speaker 1: I thought I heard a soft breath near me. After
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  Speaker 1: a little it subsided to a sharp ache, then to
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  Speaker 1: a dull ache, and then to the violent cramping again,
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  Speaker 1: and once more I struggled to get my toes under me.
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  Speaker 1: I realized that by allowing my toes barely to touch
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  Speaker 1: the floor, they had doubled and tripled the pain. By
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  Speaker 1: the tantalized hope of, if not momentary relief, at least
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  Speaker 1: the alteration of one pain for another. I haven't the
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  Speaker 1: faintest idea even now. How long I repeated that agonizing cycle,
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  Speaker 1: struggle for a toe hold on rough stone, scraping my
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  Speaker 1: bare feet, raw arch upward with all my strength to
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  Speaker 1: release for a few moments, the strain on my wrenched shoulders,
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  Speaker 1: the momentary illusion of relief as I found my balance
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  Speaker 1: and the pressure lightened on my wrists, Then the slow
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  Speaker 1: creeping first of an ache, then of a pain, then
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  Speaker 1: of a violent agony in the arches of my feet
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  Speaker 1: and calves, and delayed to the last endurable moment, that
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  Speaker 1: final terrible anguish, when the drop of my full weight
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  Speaker 1: pulled shoulder and wrist and elbow joints with that bone
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  Speaker 1: shattering jerk. I start at once to estimate how much
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  Speaker 1: time had passed, how many hours had crawled by then
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  Speaker 1: checked myself, for that was imminent madness. But once the
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  Speaker 1: process had begun, my brain would not abandon, and I
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  Speaker 1: found myself with compulsive precision, counting off the seconds and
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  Speaker 1: the minutes in each cycle. Stretch upward, release the pressure
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  Speaker 1: on the arms, the beginning of pain in the calves
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  Speaker 1: and our and toes, the creeping of pain up the
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  Speaker 1: ribs and loins and shoulders, the sudden jarring drop on
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  Speaker 1: the arms. Again, my throat was intolerably dry. Under other circumstances,
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  Speaker 1: I might have estimated the time by the growing hunger
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  Speaker 1: and thirst, but the rough treatment I had received made
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  Speaker 1: this impossible. There were other unmentionable, humiliating pains. After a
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  Speaker 1: time to bolster my flagging courage, I found myself thinking
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  Speaker 1: of all the ways it might have been worse. I
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  Speaker 1: have heard of a chagrin exposed to the bite of
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  Speaker 1: poisonous not fatal, but painfully poisonous insects, and to the
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  Speaker 1: worrying of the small gnawing rodents which can be trained
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  Speaker 1: to bite and tear. Or I might have been branded.
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  Speaker 1: I banished the memory with the powerful exorcism the man
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  Speaker 1: in de Loonn whose anticipation a loan of a torture
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  Speaker 1: which never came, had broken his mind. There was only
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  Speaker 1: one way to conquer this, and that was to act
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  Speaker 1: as if the present moment was the only one, and
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  Speaker 1: never for a moment to forget that the strongest of
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  Speaker 1: compacts bound them not to harm me, that the end
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  Speaker 1: of this was fixed by sunset. Gradually, however, all all
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  Speaker 1: such rational thoughts blurred in the semi delirium of thirst
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  Speaker 1: and pain, narrowing to a red blaze of agony across
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  Speaker 1: my shoulder blades. I eased up on my toes again.
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  Speaker 1: White hot pain blazed through my feet. The rough stone
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  Speaker 1: on which my toes sank had been covered with metal,
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  Speaker 1: and I smelled scorching flesh, jerking up my feet with
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  Speaker 1: a wordless snarl of rage and fury, hanging in agony
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  Speaker 1: by my shoulders alone. And then I lost consciousness, at
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  Speaker 1: least for several moments. For when I became aware again
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  Speaker 1: through the nightmare of pain, my toes were resting lightly
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  Speaker 1: and securely on cold stone. The smell of burned flesh remained,
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  Speaker 1: and the painful stinging in my toes mingled with that
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  Speaker 1: smell was a drift of perfume close by. Dallisa murmured,
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  Speaker 1: I do not wish to break our bargain by damaging
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  Speaker 1: your feet. It's only a little touch of fire to
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  Speaker 1: keep you from too much security in resting them. I
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  Speaker 1: felt the taste of blood mingle in my mouth with
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  Speaker 1: a sour taste of vomit. I felt delirious, light headed,
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  Speaker 1: after another eternity. I wondered if I had really heard
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  Speaker 1: De Lisa's lilting croon, or whether it was a nightmare
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  Speaker 1: born of feverish pain. Plead with me a word, only
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  Speaker 1: a word, and I will release you, strong man, scarred man.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps I shall demand only a little space in your arms.
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  Speaker 1: Would not such doom be light upon you? Perhaps I
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  Speaker 1: shall set you free to seek Rakal, if only to
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  Speaker 1: plague Carral. A word only a word from you, A
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  Speaker 1: word only a word from you. It died into an
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  Speaker 1: endlessly echoing whisper. Swaying blindly, I wondered why I endured.
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  Speaker 1: I drew a dry tongue over lips, salty and bloody,
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  Speaker 1: and nightmarishly considered yielding, winning my way somehow around Alissa,
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  Speaker 1: or knocking her suddenly senseless, and escaping I who need
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  Speaker 1: not be bound by Wolf's codes. Either I fumbled with
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  Speaker 1: a stiff shape of words, and a breath saved me,
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  Speaker 1: a soft, released breath of anticipation. It was another trick.
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  Speaker 1: I swayed limp and ract I was not race cargole.
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  Speaker 1: Now I was a dead man, hanging in chains, swinging
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  Speaker 1: filthy vultures pecking at my dangling feet. The sounds of
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  Speaker 1: boots rang on the stone. In Carral's voice, low and bitter, demanded,
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  Speaker 1: somewhere behind me, what have you done with him? She
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  Speaker 1: did not answer, but I heard her chains clash lightly,
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  Speaker 1: and imagined her gesture. Kiral muttered, women have no genius
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  Speaker 1: at any torture. Except his voice faded out into great distances.
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  Speaker 1: Their words came to me over a sort of windy ringing,
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  Speaker 1: like the howling of lost men dying in the snowfast
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  Speaker 1: passes of the mountains. Speak up, you fool. He can't
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  Speaker 1: hear you now. If you have let him faint, you
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  Speaker 1: are clumsy. You talk of clumsiness. Dalesa's voice, even thinned
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  Speaker 1: by the nightmare, ringing in my head held concentrated scorn.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps I shall release him to find recall when you failed.
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  Speaker 1: The Terrans have a price on Recall's head too, And
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  Speaker 1: at least this man will not confuse himself with his prey.
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  Speaker 1: If you think I would let you bargain with a Tarannin,
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  Speaker 1: Dalesa cried passionately, You trade with the Terrans. How would
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  Speaker 1: you stop me? Then? I trade with him because I must,
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  Speaker 1: but for a matter involving the honor of the great House,
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  Speaker 1: the great house whose steps you would never have climbed
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  Speaker 1: except for Recall. Dalesa sounded as if she were chewing
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  Speaker 1: her words in little pieces and spitting them at carral Oh,
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  Speaker 1: you were clever to take us both as your consorts.
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  Speaker 1: You did not know what was Recalls doing. Did you
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  Speaker 1: hate the Terreens? Then she spat an obscenity at him.
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  Speaker 1: Enjoy your hate, wallow in hating, and in the end
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  Speaker 1: all Shane thu will fall prey to the toy maker,
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  Speaker 1: like Miellyn. If you speak that name again, said Kiral
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  Speaker 1: very low, I will kill you like Miellyn. Miellyn Miellyn,
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  Speaker 1: Dallisa repeated deliberately, You fool, Recall knew nothing of Miellyn.
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  Speaker 1: He was seen with me, You fool with me. You
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  Speaker 1: cannot tell twin from twin. Racol came to me to
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  Speaker 1: ask news of her. Kiral cried out hoarsely, like a
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  Speaker 1: man in anguish. Why didn't you tell me? You don't
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  Speaker 1: really have to ask, do you krawl? You bitch, said Karral,
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  Speaker 1: You filthy bitch. I heard the sound of a blow.
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  Speaker 1: The next moment, Kiral ripped the blindfold from my eyes,
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  Speaker 1: and I blinked in the blaze of light. My arms
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  Speaker 1: were wholly numb, now twisted above my head, but the
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  Speaker 1: jar of his touch sent fresh pain racing through me.
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  Speaker 1: Carral's face swam out of the blaze of hell. If
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  Speaker 1: that is true, then this is a damnable farce. Elysa,
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  Speaker 1: you have lost our chance of learning what he knows
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  Speaker 1: of Miellyn. What he knows? De Lisa lowered her hand
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  Speaker 1: from her face, where a bruise was already dark. Milyn
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  Speaker 1: has twice appeared when I was with him. Loose him,
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  Speaker 1: De Lisa, and bargain with him what we know of
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  Speaker 1: Recall for what he knows of Milyn. If you think
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  Speaker 1: I would let you bargain with Tarannin, she mocked, weakling,
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  Speaker 1: this quarrel is mine, you fool. The others in the
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  Speaker 1: caravan will give me news if you will not. Where
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  Speaker 1: is Quinn? From a million miles away, Carrol laughed, you've
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  Speaker 1: slipped the wrong hawk De Lisa. The CapMan killed him,
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  Speaker 1: his skin flicked loose. He climbed to a perch near
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  Speaker 1: the rope at my wrists. Bargain with me, Rascar. I coughed,
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  Speaker 1: unable to speak, and Carroll insisted, will you bargain? End
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  Speaker 1: this damned woman's farce, which makes a mock of Shagri.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: The slant of sun told me there was light left.
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  Speaker 1: I found a shred of voice, not knowing what I
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  Speaker 1: was going to say until I had said it irrevocably.
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  Speaker 1: This is between Dalsa and me. Kirall glared at me
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: in mounting rage. With four strides. He was out of
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  Speaker 1: the room, flinging back a harsh furious I hope you
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  Speaker 1: kill each other, and the door slammed. Dalesa's face swam
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  Speaker 1: red and again, as before, I knew the battle which
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  Speaker 1: was joined between us would be fought to a dreadful end.
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  Speaker 1: She touched my chest lightly, but the touch jolted excruciating
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  Speaker 1: pain through my shoulders. Did you kill Quinn? I wondered
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  Speaker 1: wearily what this presaged? Did you in a passion. She cried, Answer,
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  Speaker 1: did you kill him? She struck me hard, and where
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  Speaker 1: the touch had been pained, the blow was a blaze
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  Speaker 1: of white agony. I fainted. Answer. She struck me again,
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  Speaker 1: and the white blaze jolted me back to consciousness. Answer me, Answer,
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  Speaker 1: Each cry brought a blow until I gasped. Finally, he signaled,
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  Speaker 1: set catman on us. No. She stood staring at me,
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  Speaker 1: and her white face was a death mask in which
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: the eyes lived. She screamed wildly, and the huge chalk
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  Speaker 1: came running. Cut him down, Cut him down, cut him down.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: A knife slashed the rope, and I slumped, falling in
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  Speaker 1: a bone breaking huddle to the floor. My arms were
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  Speaker 1: still twisted over my head. The chalk cut the ropes apart,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: pulled my arms roughly back into place, and I gagged
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: with the pain as the blood began flowing painfully through
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  Speaker 1: the chafed and swollen hands. And then I lost consciousness,
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  Speaker 1: more or less permanently this time. End of chapter eight