Gates of Transformation

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CHAPTER ONE
(Selaya)
The world reduced itself to a fine point and nothing else; darkness crushing and suffocating like the maw of some ravening beast. Intent on swallowing sanity whole, its teeth were made of silence; the absence of the background noise of every day life. It made of the world a void in which imaginations ran wild; a blank canvas in the belly of the mountain on which to paint nightmares.
“Stop touching me!” Jhan’s cry shattered the silence only momentarily, as she scrambled within the tight confines of her prison. Trying to avoid the fearful presence of her cell mate, she wrapped her arms about her knees and huddled into a ball of misery.
“I was only touching your ankle.” Sael sounded contrite, but then added irritably, “What else am I to do when you stay so silent?”
“Is that supposed to make sense?” Jhan demanded. “I’m not going to suddenly disappear! Our prison is only five feet square and neither of us could find a door!”
Sael didn’t reply at once. Jhan could hear his measured breaths before he finally admitted, “I was making sure that you were still alive.”
Sael was being too matter -of -fact for such an appalling admission. It made Jhan confused and sickened. She found it hard to steady herself long enough to simply ask, “Why?”
“You were very ill, almost dead from the cold,” Sael reminded her. “I felt compelled to know if you were being silent out of spite or because the gods had taken you to them.”
Jhan had purposely avoided thinking about her physical state, knowing that it would only cause her more misery. Sael’s words were like barbs, pulling her down within herself, making her confront the possibility that she might die long before their captors had any hand in it. What she found though was puzzling, and she hardly dared believe it. She felt rested and strong, her heart pumping with an unaccustomed vigor. She felt as if she had never attempted the impossible, climbing over a mountain in winter.
“I can’t bear your silence,” Sael complained softly. Jhan heard him moving about, searching for a door to their prison for the fourth time in as many hours.
Jhan couldn’t bear it either, but she had nothing to say to Sael, even to tell him that she didn’t think she was about to die. It was her distrust, she knew, and her fear of being trapped with him in a place that made escape impossible. It was also her own experiences that kept her tongue frozen. Knowing what the future could hold for them, Jhan feared that, if she talked too much, she would only start screaming. That wouldn’t do either of them any good.
“The others might be in different cells,” Sael suggested thoughtfully. “Perhaps bandits were living deeper in the cave where we camped, taking us unaware while we slept. If Obahn is lucky, they will ransom him to our people.” His voice didn’t change as he added, “I don’t have any such hope for us.”
Sael came to rest near Jhan again and she couldn’t help tensing. “It’s very warm in here,” Sael continued, “That’s good for you, but I feel like I’m being roasted.” Jhan heard Sael open his coat, cloth rustling as he undid the buttons. He seemed to be groping for words, desperate to break the silence, saying, “I wish there were food and drink as well. You will need your strength. “ He paused and then reconsidered, “It doesn’t matter. You won’t last long among them anyway, I think.” Among the bandits he meant, but he was unwilling to elaborate. He didn’t need to.
The silence stretched and then Sael uttered a mortified exclamation as he realized, “I’ve broken my Lord’s command of silence!” He stopped speaking, as if to take it up again, but then growled angrily in the next moment, “I suppose it’s too late now to try and be something other than a disgrace!”
Jhan hid her face against her knees, as if even the darkness wasn’t enough to hide her anguish. Sael’s disgust with himself was another weight on her mind that she didn’t want. Her thin grasp on sanity was quickly slipping and she didn’t know how much longer she could endure their close confinement. Sael’s brief insinuation was the least of Jhan’s fears. She knew that rape could be just an appetizer in a banquet of humiliation and pain. Whether Sael knew that he could, just as easily, be a part of that banquet, Jhan didn’t know, but expecting death, there wasn’t any telling what the man might do to make his last moments enjoyable.
Cloth rustled again. Was Sael removing something else in the warmth? His scarf? His gloves? When his hand tentatively touched Jhan’s ankle again, she expected only the worst. He must have sensed her imminent, violent reaction. Sael threw himself on top of her, jamming both of his hands against her shoulders while he drove a knee into her diaphragm. Pinned, Jhan choked for the air that had been driven out of her lungs.
“You doubt my honor?” that became clear to Jhan after it was repeated for the third time, Sael’s furious anger blowing heat into the ear he was shouting in. “I am sworn to Obahn! Before that it was to Hagen! I have been chaste for three years, Ikhil! I wouldn’t break that oath for a coward; an emasculated man who welcomed his own mutilation! Even I own more pride than to sink so low!”
Red lights jumped behind Jhan’s eyes, the first thing she had seen since their captivity. She knew that it was a sign that she was suffocating. When Sael moved his knee at last, she could only gasp in air and attempt to get oxygen to her starved lungs, fighting back the last thing on her mind. Sael counted on that, not allowing her to go free for long. He turned her expertly and drove his knees into the backs of hers, strong hands pinning her down at the curve of her slim neck. One move, she felt, and her spine would snap under that pressure.
“When I was fifteen,” Sael said fiercely in her ear, “some warriors pretended to be friendly with me. A lonely boy, starved for affection, and only beginning to know that I was Ekhal, I welcomed their attention. We drank, laughed, sang songs, and then, one by one, they put me on the floor in front of their oath- brothers and raped me all night. I nearly died of it. The Ekhal saved me, took me away, and spent weeks ministering to the fever and infection those warriors gifted me. When I was finally well, I stayed with them, but it was a long while before I let anyone touch me again. You don’t trust. I don’t trust either. We understand one another and know that neither of us will ever, truly trust again. Still, there must be tolerance and cooperation if we are to-”
“To escape?” Jhan finally gasped out, mocking him through her tears.
“There is always the possibility,” Sael assured her.
Jhan leaned her head against the warm stone beneath her. She lay limply, waiting for her breath to slow, and then said more normally, “I’m sorry... about what happened to you, but it doesn’t make any difference. You know it doesn’t. I can’t help the way I feel. I can’t stop being afraid of you.”
Sael was off of her in one motion, standing, maybe, and whitely furious. “How can you say that? Will you kill me in one of your panics? Will you do the work for our enemies?”
Jhan heard something odd above Sael’s ranting. It startled her out of her fear, hurt, and anger; their argument forgotten in an instant. “Wait!”
“For what?” Sael demanded. “If you refuse to work with me against our common enemy, how will we ever hope to-”
“Wait!” Jhan shouted back again, rolled, and sat up. Her joints and her stomach protested the sudden movement, but she ignored them as her ears picked up the sound again. “Don’t you hear it?”
“I’ve heard enough!” Sael misunderstood. “You are being infuriatingly self centered; honorless in the way you are disregarding simple sense and endangering-”
“Shut -up!” Jhan screamed at him. In the silence, her voice came back to them as an echo.
Sael gasped. “An opening! There has to be one!”
“In the ceiling?” Jhan felt the smooth rock above her head. They had both avoided it, not wanting to know that their cell was so very small and so much like a tomb. Almost at once, Jhan’s hands encountered the edge of an opening. She stood slowly, one arm reaching up and up and not finding anything to block its way. “Here, I think, but surely it has a door?” Her voice was full of pessimism. “What’s a prison without a locked door?”
“Still,” Sael muttered, pushing Jhan out of the way to search for handholds, “I would like to know where the door is. I would like to know that there is a way out.”
Jhan crouched, moving back as Sael scrambled up into the opening. Bits of rock fell down, skittering on the floor as she waited with held breath. After a minute stretched into two, she began to hope, despite herself.
“Sael?” Jhan ventured to call out at last, unable to take the suspense any longer.
“It goes a long way,” Sael called back, his voice echoing down to her. “Wait until I return.”
Jhan heard Sael begin to climb once more. Without a warm presence and a voice to concentrate on, Jhan felt the darkness close in around her, ready to fill her mind with her darkest nightmares. Shuddering, she grabbed for handholds, found them, and then pulled herself up into the opening until her feet found places to rest. She scraped her hands and cut a knee in the process, but after that, the way was easy. Like a natural ladder, she was able to scale the rock wall upwards after Sael.
“I’m coming too!” Jhan warned.
“Like a woman!” Sael swore under his breath, but it traveled down to Jhan and she heard it clearly.
“Because I am one!” Jhan called back, “but you wouldn’t have stayed either.” She ducked her head down as small pebbles pelted her. “That isn’t going to stop me!”
“Your pardon, my Lady,” Sael mocked as he began to climb again, “It was an accident.”
Sael climbed slowly, so slowly that Jhan almost said something in complaint, until she recalled that he had a wounded arm. Its bandaged stiffness was probably hampering him. When cloth, stinking of dried blood, struck her face, Jhan yanked it away and let it fall with a curse.
“Your pardon again, my Lady!”
“I don’t know what you hope to accomplish by-”
“I think you hope to alert our captors, Jhan Dor, with all of your shouting,” Sael replied tightly, “and that is why I tried to leave you behind.”
Jhan gritted her teeth, face going hot. “The door we find is going to be locked, Sael. I think I can shout all I want to. It won’t matter!”
“Then why come?” Sael exploded, “Why not let me pursue my foolishness in peace?”
Jhan swallowed, but it wasn’t hard for her to admit it. “I can’t stand being alone with my memories, not in the darkness, even for a little while. I think you know what I’m talking about.”
“I am not so weak!” Sael retorted, but there was an edge to his voice that told Jhan that she had touched a painful nerve.
“My only defense is to keep busy, keep moving, and fill the time with distractions,” Jhan told him candidly, “I can’t do that sitting in the heart of a mountain. You DO know what I mean. That’s why you’re even bothering with this, why you want me to keep talking to you. You see your memories against the darkness and the silence as clearly as I do.”
Sael didn’t reply, too stubborn, but his silence was another kind of admission. “Let us climb,” he said at last, gruff and short.
It was a long while before Sael spoke again. He grunted and Jhan heard him moving in a different manner than his steady climbing tread. “A passage.”
The darkness was still complete and Jhan doubted that they had found anything other that just another room in their prison. When she caught up with Sael, hands encountering his boots, she heard him breathing hard from the climb. His touch was light on her clothing, pulling on that rather than her arm as he guided her out of the hole and onto a flat, rock floor. The air was hot and smelled faintly of sulfur.
“Now what?” Jhan wondered helplessly.
“Find a wall and follow it,” Sael suggested. “We might find the door.”
Jhan heard Sael stand. She scrambled to her feet, snatching at his coat and twisting a hand hard into the back of it. “Don’t leave me behind!”
“Don’t you possess any shame?” Sael hissed in disgust.
“I’m terrified,” Jhan admitted as they began moving uncertainly forward. “Why deny it?”
“For your own honor’s sake-”
“Sael-,” Jhan began to shout angrily and then bit down on it, turning it into a whisper with effort. “I’m not one of your people.”
“You are denying honor?” Sael’s tone was incredulous.
“No,” Jhan replied evenly, “I’m denying that being afraid has anything to do with it.”
There was a silence from Sael that stretched and made Jhan anxious. The darkness was all too willing to jump into the void, their voices the barrier holding it at bay. It fueled Jhan’s fear. She almost decided to break the silence herself, apologize, shout some more, anything to bring form to the darkness around her, but Sael stopped and Jhan, surprised, bumped gently into his back.
“A wall,” Sael announced and Jhan released his coat to touch its warm smoothness. It was a relief to fill the nothingness with solidity; an anchor for their sanity. Sael’s footsteps continued and Jhan followed without complaint, just as eager as he was to search out the limits of their rock world.
“I don’t know how you can say such things,” Sael continued at last, as if nothing were more important than for him to understand.
“All right,” Jhan sighed, hiding her relief behind a tone of exasperation, “Tell me why I’m so shameless, honorless; whatever you think I am.”
“Your fear, your womanish crying-" Sael began.
Jhan cut him off. “Enough insults! Just explain it to me.”
“A man-”
“I’m not a man.”
Sael tried again. “ANYONE, man, woman, even Ikhil, should strive to be as honorable as possible.”
“Why?”
“How can you ask?” Sael exploded.
“Because, I don’t understand YOU now.”
Sael explained in carefully measured words, as if Jhan were an idiot. “Honor is what brings us closer to the gods. It separates us from the beasts.”
“Okay.” Jhan accepted that. “Now, why does being afraid make me honorless?”
“Because it is shameful! Shame dishonors you!”
“Stop shouting and make sense!” Jhan seethed. “That isn’t an explanation at all.”
“Cowering in fear, when there are deeds to do, battles to be fought, escapes to be made,” Sael stressed the last, “is unacceptable. Surely you can see that?”
“I came with you, didn’t I?” Jhan pointed out.
“Only because you feared staying behind more.”
“True.” Jhan chewed on her lower lip and then released it with a shrug, seeing the humor in it even in their dire situation. “Still, if there weren’t people like me, then how would you prove your bravery, thereby enhancing your honor? There has to be damsels in distress for white knights to rescue and protect.”
“What is a knight?” Sael asked, puzzled.
“A brave warrior,” Jhan explained, “An honorable man.”
“The weak are not worthy of protection,” Sael shot back.
“Then whom do you protect?”
“A person shouldn’t need to be protected,” Sael clarified arrogantly.
“Then I think you’re confusing honor with pride,” Jhan replied bleakly. “Honor is about how you treat other people, Sael, not about how well you can cut someone to pieces with a sword and pretend that it doesn’t make you sick. I may be frightened to the point of being paralyzed by it, but I’ll always treat you and everyone else better than you’ve ever treated me. That makes me infinitely more honorable than you.”
Sael was startled. “What have you to complain about me?”
“The bruises on the back of my neck, my arms, my legs, and, yes, I do seem to remember someone telling me how disgusting it was that I ‘let’ someone mutilate me,” Jhan reminded him coldly.
Sael chewed over her words as they continued to inch along and then he made a slight concession, “I was angry. I didn’t realize that I had said that. I think you can hardly blame me for the rest. You might have killed me.”
“So, you admit that I’m not weak?” Jhan caught him neatly, almost smiling in satisfaction. “You admit that I could hurt you?”
Sael wasn’t about to do that, but the truth was there, hanging in the darkness between them. “You’re confusing me.”
“Of course I am, because you’re the one not making any sense,” Jhan persisted. “If I’m strong enough to kill you, brave enough to let someone mutilate me to get what I want, and stupid enough to argue with you while we stumble in the dark with our lives in danger, then you can’t really claim that I’m honorless. By your standards, I’m full of honor!”
“A light,” Sael suddenly hissed.
“Just when I was winning.”
“It wasn’t a game,” Sael snarled back. “Be silent.”
Jhan hadn’t believed him, thinking that Sael was just trying to distract her from her barrage of uncomfortable truths, but, when she peered around his shoulder, she saw a very dim light as well. Swallowing in a suddenly dry throat, she forgot about everything except the fear of the unknown.
The light grew stronger, revealing that they weren’t in a room. They were walking along a narrow corridor of black stone that curved slowly to the left. With the end hidden from them, it was a tense filled few moments until they rounded the turn and found themselves on the threshold of a great hall.
Sael pushed Jhan back. “Bandits!”
But Jhan was muttering in confusion, “There wasn’t a door. What kind of prison doesn’t have a door to lock in the prisoners?”
Sael ignored her. “I saw only three of them. The hall is very large. If we keep to the shadows, we might be able to slip past them.”
Jhan leaned around Sael to look for herself, despite his attempt to stop her. She saw three very odd looking people on the far end of the hall. Guards? Jhan doubted it. They were young, without weapons, and unconcerned about the many openings Jhan saw leading out of the hall on all sides.
“A prison, without a door or a guard, isn’t a prison,” Jhan said, answering her own question. “So, if we aren’t prisoners, what are we?”
“You are speaking madness!” Sael swore under his breath and used his weight to shove her back.
Jhan stumbled a little, scowling. “You should listen to me, Sael, I’ve had a lot of experience being a prisoner. Besides, what’s your plan anyhow? I don’t see light coming from any of those openings. Are we going to wander in the dark and try to find our way out of this mountain by feel?”
“This is why fear is shameful to us.” Sael’s voice was cold and accusing. “Your fear makes you too much of a coward to even try to escape!”
Jhan turned her hands into fists. “Really? I think it helps me see sense where someone without it might get us both killed forcing us to try the impossible!”
Sael grabbed Jhan’s arm as if to do just that, but then released her as he whirled in surprise. A bright light suddenly filled their passageway and a cool voice announced, “We are ready for you now.”
Sael drew a very tense breath. “I don’t even have my sword,” he whispered, and Jhan knew then that he was afraid too. It made him seem so very young, everything up until then false bravado, but he squared his shoulders and he was the first to walk out of the passageway. It was Jhan who followed hesitantly behind.
The hall had smooth walls lit by flickering torches. That uncertain light gave everything a shadowy, red appearance. It accented the strangeness of the scene up ahead. Like the living room of someone’s home, there was an oval table made out of stone, chairs about it, and a white, fur rug sprawled out to carpet the stone floor. Plates, cups, silverware, and platters of food were set out as if the three standing near were presiding over a banquet.
“Please, be seated and partake of what you will.” The young woman graciously motioned to the table. She was tall, wearing a red robe that clung to her spare frame like sheerest silk. Her feet were bare, white, and unconcerned with the rough floor as she walked around the table to greet them. Bald, Jhan noticed first, without even eyebrows or eyelashes. Her crystal eyes reminded her of Ixien, and her emotionless stare reinforced that impression.
The other two stood quietly, but were obviously tense and expectant. One looked perfectly normal; a blond haired man with lively brown eyes, an overlarge nose, and a lanky body so like the woman’s, that Jhan surmised that they were brother and sister. He wore a tan leather shirt and a darker tan pair of pants tucked into boots strapped with leather thongs.
The last person was startling. Broad and crouching, Jhan had at first thought that he was wearing a reddish- brown fur, but then realized that the fur was a part of the man. It hung in a wild mane about his head and covered his arms and legs in a shaggy pelt. Like a lion, Jhan thought, shivering at the sharp, almond shaped eyes, the wide nostrils, and the long feline shape of his head. Aside from a woolen vest and some patchwork leggings, the man’s thick pelt of fur was his only clothing.
Sael was too proud to let an enemy see his fear. His voice was steady and firm as he demanded, “What do you want from us?”
“Nothing, at the moment,” the woman assured him. “We apologize for your unexpected journey, but we’ve long ago discovered that few wish to come here willingly.”
“Where are the others?”
“There aren’t any others,” the woman replied. “We only required the two of you.”
That sounded ominous and Jhan felt her fear begin to rise up like a wave, threatening to overwhelm her. Sael was reacting in the opposite manner, standing straighter, fists clenching and unclenching as if he were preparing to attack.
The woman flicked eyes over them both critically and then she stepped back and away from the table. “We don’t mean you any harm. Our hospitality is sincere.”
The normal looking man stepped forward now, pulling out a stone chair. He was all congeniality. “Come, sit! You must be starving. We’ll explain things to you while you refresh yourselves.” He waved a good natured, dismissive hand at the woman. “Don’t mind my dour sister, or our strange appearance, we’re really quite harmless.”
When Jhan and Sael didn’t make any move to comply, the lion-man said mournfully, “Little one afraid of Minyah.” His voice was deep, almost as animal like as his appearance. He came towards Jhan, half of his steps on all fours. He moved smoothly despite that, closing the distance between them quickly. Jhan saw that his hands and feet were almost paws, tipped with sharp looking claws.
That was too much for Jhan. She touched her face and retreated, remembering the damage that another warped beast had dealt her. Sael jerked his head around to glare at her, as if he thought she might be trying to abandon him. When he saw her terror, he stepped between her and the lion-man instinctively.
“Minyah,” the woman admonished, putting a stop to the confrontation. “Give them peace until they understand more.”
Minyah obeyed with a sorrowful shake of his mane, turning to go back to his place. He sounded like a small, repentant child as he said, “Sorry.”
“Yes, well, that is Minyah, of course,” the young man introduced with a nod. His casualness gave the proceedings a surreal quality. “I am Togo,“ he motioned to the woman, “and that is Tagara. We welcome you to our home.”
“We were kidnapped, Demon,” Sael reminded him through gritted teeth, “That is not a thing that merits ‘welcoming’.”
Togo’s innocent expression was disarming. “Demon? What is that? I’m afraid that I’m not very knowledgeable about your people; none of us are. We only know what we find out from our infrequent visitors.”
Jhan had flinched at Sael’s superstitious use of the word ‘demon’, but looking about at the bare rock and then at the feast on the table, it was hard to explain how they could have fresh vegetables and baked pastries in such an inhospitable place. “I don’t understand any of this,” she said numbly. “What is it that you want from us?”
“As I’ve already said,” Tagara reiterated, “nothing, for now.”
They stood staring at one another so long that Jhan could feel the tension in the air building. Sael was prepared to stand forever, not willing to concede to anything their captors wished. Jhan was of another mind. It seemed incredible to her, but, for once, her fear was taking a back seat to her starved body. The food was calling out to her. Jhan couldn’t ignore it any longer.
Togo’s face was innocent. Tagara’s face was bland, but un-threatening. Minyah was giving them a look a puppy might wear when it wanted to be petted. What did it matter? Jhan gave an inner shrug and sat down at the table, pulling a tray of meat towards her with a wary eye on her three captors.
“What are you doing?” Sael was incredulous.
“Eating,” Jhan replied around a mouthful of meat, astonished by her own daring. “I don’t think they went to all of this trouble to poison us.” She glanced back at Sael’s angry face as she took a long drink from a mug of clear water. “They don’t want to explain anything until we do this much, so we might as well, Sael. Come on, you’ll be able to fight them better on a full stomach.”
Sael slowly came to the table, but he didn’t sit down. His skin was very pale and his eyes never left the three people watching him in return. "I don’t know how you can sit there and ignore-”
“I’m not ignoring anything,” Jhan sighed. “I just can’t do anything about it and neither can you. Eat something. You’re beginning to look as thin as I am.”
Sael was unwilling to lower his scarf in front of strangers, but his hunger and thirst were telling on him as well. He compromised by opening the bottom of his scarf and tucking food under it into his mouth. His motions were nervous and snatching, his guard never wavering for an instant.
“This is bold,” Sael growled accusingly. “I’m starting to believe that your fear is an act.”
Jhan shook her head as she stuffed a pastry into her mouth, half chewed, and then swallowed the sugary confection appreciatively. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m still terrified. I’ve just never felt this hungry before,” she admitted, and then thoughtfully. “I feel different. I feel stronger, as if this food were actually doing me some good.”
“What are you saying? Sael wondered impatiently, not wanting to discuss such things in their situation, but curious despite himself.
Jhan haltingly tried to explain, not really understanding it herself. “I can eat and eat and never gain an ounce. It’s like throwing twigs on a roaring forest fire. This food is sticking though. I can feel it making me stronger as soon as I eat it.”
Jhan reached for a third pastry and then a roasted animal leg in a thick stew. Sael scowled disapprovingly, wanting the meal over so that he could confront their enemies again and receive some answers. “You are eating as much as a whole band of warriors!”
“Like a pig, we would say where I come from.” Jhan surprised herself with a burp. “Excuse me,” she mumbled around another bite of food, “I don’t know what’s wrong. I’ve never been able to eat this much before and keep it down.”
“You were dying,” Togo broke in at last. He stepped forward and sat down at the table opposite them, folding his hands together on the table top nervously. “Your body was eating of itself to your destruction and your heart was failing. Selaya healed you.”
“Healed me?” Jhan felt herself go pale. She pushed the food away from her as her stomach churned. Her fear was coming back full force. “You have someone with Power here?” The agony of days spent being tortured, and then healed to be tortured again by Dagara’s pet healer, came back to Jhan in a rush.
Sael sensed something in Jhan, perhaps her violent inner upheaval, as she tried to stand. He put a hand on her shoulder and bore down to keep her in her seat. His eyes never left Togo's. “I think it’s time you explained to us what is going on and what you want from us. I won’t be able to hold Jhan Dor if he becomes more frightened.”
It was a threat, and one Togo took seriously. “We don’t wish you to be afraid. I will speak, I think.” He looked back at his companions and they both nodded. “Yes, well, I suppose I should tell you about us and how we came to look as we do.”
“Who is Selaya?” Sael asked, not caring about that at all. “She is your Lady? She orders you?”
Togo was flustered, something in his mind, rehearsed perhaps, becoming confused. “Selaya is our mother,” he explained after a moment of regrouping his thoughts. “She has great abilities.”
“Why did she have us taken?” Sael demanded.
“To help her.”
Sael scowled and glanced down at Jhan, his hand still hard on her shoulder. “What does a Lady, with great abilities, need with an Ekhal and a little Ikhil? We aren’t warriors.”
“It isn’t a battle we need you to fight,” Tagara told them.
“Good,” Sael retorted bitterly, “because your Lady neglected to heal my arm.” He pulled back the sleeve of his coat and revealed his bruised and purpling forearm with its neat row of stitches.
“It wasn’t life threatening,” Togo explained apologetically, “Selaya needs her strength for other things. She creates the heat in this place and makes food for us to eat. There wouldn’t be any air without her help.”
Jhan dropped a roll she had been clenching in one hand. It was mangled dough. “She created all of this with Power?”
Togo nodded, but misunderstood. “She has internal power to operate. This is within her parameters of function.”
“That means nothing to me!” Sael exclaimed with a shake of his head. “What language are you speaking?”
Jhan was shaken out of her horror by words she had never thought to hear again. It seemed out of the realm of possibility, but Jhan found herself asking the questions almost breathlessly. “Parameters? Function? Internal power? Is this Selaya a machine, Togo?”
“What is ‘machine’?” Togo wondered.
Jhan rephrased the question. “Is Selaya made of metal?”
“I’ve never seen her,” Togo admitted and motioned to the wall behind them. It was perfectly smooth, but for a very small, round hole two feet from the floor. “She is trapped within the rock and has been for many lives of men.”
Jhan was standing up, going very pale. Sael let her, too confused to remember that she could be dangerous. “What is this ‘machine’?” Sael demanded. “Is it a type of demon?”
Jhan’s hands were shaking. She clasped them together, eyes on the mysterious hole. “Can Selaya speak to us?”
“No,” Togo replied regretfully. “She gave those parts of herself to us. Now she is only capable of speaking to us through our inner mainframes.”
Jhan went cold, eyes going wide. “You aren’t... alive?”
“We live,” Togo corrected her, “We are more biochemical than Selaya, being made from ‘others’.”
“Others?” Jhan repeated, dazed.
Togo took a breath, but then let it out and looked at Sael. “If you will allow me to explain about ourselves, it will help you to understand Selaya’s need for you.”
Sael gave a short nod. “Do so, but give me an explanation that makes sense!”
“I will try,” Togo promised and then began carefully, ”Selaya came from elsewhere. She is able to manipulate the God’s creation at a cellular level, to recreate it as she would have it, and to move through it by making spaces nonexistent. A radiation burst from a dying star damaged her and threw her from her course. She appeared within this rock and has been unable to escape. Men, mining for special rock, discovered her and promised to release her if she would do all that they asked.”
Togo motioned to the large room and the darkened doorways in every direction as he continued bitterly, “She mined this entire mountain for them, but, when she was done, they left, leaving her in darkness and solitude. In desperation, she sent her sensors out and was able to lure others down into the mountain. They served her for what she could create for them, but they also refused to release her. In anger, she committed ‘the Crime’, spinning her sensors into their flesh, using her ability to recreate until she made us, her children; a mixture of Selaya and bio- matter. We serve her and are her at the same time.”
“Why didn’t YOU release her?” Jhan wondered distantly as she tried to come to terms with Togo’s startling revelations.
Togo looked pained. “Selaya thought that she should serve a sentence for her taking of sentient life and she had made us mere children. Only now are we old enough to serve her properly and, only now, has she decided that her sentence is over.” “That still doesn’t answer-” Jhan began to repeat, but Tagara was the one to answer, Togo overcome by shame.
“We did not wish our Mother to leave us.” Tagara explained. “We ignored her pleas.”
“Until we grew old enough to find this life confining and stagnant,” Togo interjected, regaining his composure with difficulty. “We all grew to wish for freedom and, in doing so, understood what we had done to our mother in our selfishness.”
“This rock is a vein through the mountain, different from all else,” Tagara explained as she pointed to a gray discoloration in the stone wall. “Selaya is unable to work it. It is too hard and it’s properties bind her. The miners carved the hole to speak with her and they built a door to quell her suspicions of their true intent, but it took them years of chipping away at the stone.”
“A door?” Jhan was very confused now, her head beginning to ache. “Do I have to ask why you just don’t use the door?”
“They never meant for it to work,” Tagara replied angrily, “It isn’t completed.”
“What is our part in this?” Sael broke in impatiently. “Your words mean nothing to me! I only understand that you are all demons and that your Selaya is your demon-mistress!”
Togo opened his mouth and then closed it, not sure how to reply to that. Jhan sat down again and rubbed at her face wearily. “Sael, calm down a moment,” she told him, “It doesn’t do any good shouting insults. Let them tell us the rest of it.”
“Nothing we have can chip this stone,” Tagara told them. “The miners took all of their tools and their skills with them. If we spent years in the attempt, we might be able to finish the door, but we don’t want to use our lives in this manner. Instead, we intend to use a concerted effort to break the door free all at once.”
Jhan held up her very small hands in exasperation. “With these?”
“Especially with those,” Tagara replied. “In the opening there is a lever, a releasing mechanism for the door. The properties of the stone make it impossible for my brothers and I to come in contact with it. We are too much a part of Selaya. If you operate the mechanism, it will cause the great door to pivot open, hopefully breaking through the rest of the unfinished stone.”
“Sounds too simple.” Jhan grumbled, wishing with all of her heart that none of this was happening. “I can’t believe that you haven’t already tried it.”
They exchanged looks. Togo replied haltingly, “Since we are a part of Selaya, not bound by the rock, she can send us short distances. We were able to observe travelers going through the mountains and to choose from them easily. Very few had the dimensions needed to do the task.”
“And those that did?” Jhan persisted.
“The miners didn’t wish Selaya to be released,” Tagara replied coldly when Togo faltered, “but they did look to a time when Selaya might die and thought to plunder her corpse. They made the mechanism for themselves; creating a special key that would reach through the narrow opening.”
“And they took that with them,” Jhan guessed sourly.
“Yes,” Tagara continued. “They also created traps within the opening. They are deadly.”
Jhan’s face went tight and pale. She stood, striding purposefully over to the opening. Leaning down with a hand on the rock, she felt the metal buttons of her cloak cling. “Magnetic,” she muttered absently. “Machines definitely don’t like that!”
The opening WAS very small. Looking at it critically, Jhan almost doubted that she could get her small arm into it. Black stains covered the opening and the floor beneath it, turning the food in her stomach. “So, who did you murder attempting this? Children?”
“Women, mostly,” Togo replied and his voice shook, “Some young men. Selaya can be cruel.”
“You brought them!” Jhan exclaimed as she turned back to them accusingly.
“We are a part of her,” Togo reminded Jhan.
“And you think that I’m just going to stick my arm in there, do you?” Jhan seethed and strode away from the hole. “Well, I’m not! I’m leaving!”
“To where?” Togo asked quietly. “We are at the heart of the mountain. Selaya will not let you go.”
“We are leaving,” Sael repeated for Jhan. “We will not release your demon mistress. Better to die more honorably trying to escape!”
“Wait!” Togo called anxiously. “She can give you anything you desire!”
“My heart’s desire is dead!” Sael retorted angrily, “I require nothing else!”
It was Jhan who paused and turned, face full of pain and a hope she couldn’t kill. “What are you saying?”
“She moves through matter. She recreates matter. She controls many things.” Togo was like a fisherman pulling his line, sinking his hook deep within Jhan. “She could make you a man again. Is that what you desire? She could kill the cruel people who did that to you. She could give you almost anything you wish.”
Jhan’s face twisted into a snarl. “Did she tell you that or did you peek under my clothes while you were kidnapping me?”
“Selaya healed you,” Togo reminded her. “She knows everything about your body.”
“But nothing about my mind, I see,” Jhan replied, ignoring Sael’s tug on her cloak. “I don’t want to be a man, Togo! What I want is to go home. Can she do that?”
Togo’s eyes unfocused for just an instant and then he nodded. “She can do almost anything,” he repeated. Which wasn’t a promise, Jhan noticed, and it certainly wasn’t enough to risk her life on. She turned and found Sael already gone.
Anxiously, Jhan chose the nearest corridor and plunged into darkness. Her eyes blinking reflexively, as if that could bring sight back to them, and her hand felt anxiously along the rough wall. Holding her other hand before her to warn her of obstacles, she shouted, “Sael!”
There was a tense pause and then, “Here,” Sael said directly in front of Jhan.
Jhan’s hand touched Sael briefly before she snatched it back. He continued, matter -of -factly, “It is good that you followed. Promises from demons, the stories say, are as insubstantial as mist.” “Selaya isn’t a demon,” Jhan replied tensely, “but I suppose that doesn’t matter. Machines don’t have good reputations in stories either.”
They were silent, considering their situation, both knowing that it was hopeless. Sael spoke it aloud, as if it needed to be said and faced. “We have little hope of finding our way out. Without light, or supplies, we won’t last long.”
“I’m sorry,” Jhan replied, as if that needed saying too, “I won’t put my hand in that hole.”
“I didn’t ask.” Sael was offended.
Jhan heard Sael moving about, cloth rustling, and then he groped for her hand. Jhan flinched, drawing back, but not before Sael had placed the end of his scarf into it. “What’s-,” Jhan began, but Sael spoke over her, impatient.
“If you will not touch me,” Sael said, “then hold onto my scarf. It will keep us together without wasting breath and energy on talking.”
Jhan fingered the long length of silk and then wrapped a bit around her hand to feel more secure. “I’m sorry,” she found herself saying again, “I can’t help being afraid of you.”
Sael’s reply was surprising and calm, as if they had all the time in the world to discuss it, “Perhaps, if we keshun and get it from between us...”
“What?” Jhan almost released the scarf in shock.
“It IS an inconvenient place,” Sael agreed, purposefully misunderstanding, “but this fear you have will never be put to rest otherwise. We can be quick about it, and one sided, so that my oath to Obahn is not disturbed.”
"That is- I can’t believe what you’re suggesting!”
“You fear my needs overpowering you and hurting you,” Sael replied, as if he were talking about relieving an itch. “Satisfy the need you think I have in your own way and it will not be something to be feared any longer. It is reasonable.”
“No, it isn’t!” Jhan exploded, incredulous.
“How can we hope to escape if you fear me so much?”
“It isn’t just about keshuning!” Jhan choked on a sob, shuddered, and tried to speak through rising panic. “I thought, after what had happened to you, that you would understand!”
“I overcame my attack long ago because I am a man,” Sael replied stiffly. “You can do as much, despite what you are.”
“I can’t!”
“Then stay here with your fear!” Sael pulled the scarf out of Jhan’s hand and she heard him begin to walk away.
“This is ridiculous!” Jhan screamed after him and tried to follow, hands outstretched before her. “Only a MAN would even consider having sex in the middle of an escape!”
Jhan bumped full force into Sael’s chest and his words were full of relish as he struck his point home. “You are the one thinking of it, not I, Ikhil. I think you are the one being ridiculous."
Jhan felt her face go hot with anger, knowing that Sael was right. She wished that it helped, but it didn’t. The thing inside of her that feared him was a reflex born of torture. Nothing could erase it and there wasn’t any way to explain that to Sael.
Jhan found the end of Sael’s scarf determinedly. He took that as a concession and allowed it. “Now,” he said grimly, “perhaps we can get back to the business of escaping.”
They walked with only the sound of their footsteps in their ears and the feel of the rock wall and the scarf between them. Enfolded in the darkness, it was as if they were walking in deepest space; a void without an end. After an hour of it, despair sapped at their heels and Jhan felt it snatching at hers, slowing her down. It sang a song of defeat, urging her to stop, sit down, and just give up. It made the scarf slide through her fingers, a useless lifeline that was only holding back the inevitable moment of failure.
“Stop it!” Sael halted, shouting, and his voice echoed wildly all about them. He tugged on the scarf, almost pulling it from Jhan’s fingers. “I feel you falling back from me! There are demons behind us and a maze of darkness before us, yet you still indulge yourself in hating me!”
Jhan had flinched, trembling at his outburst. “I don’t hate you,” she blurted out, surprised at his conclusion. “I’m just-” afraid, she was going to repeat to him yet again, but he took that moment to attack her, barreling into her and sending them both to the hard stone floor. His fist cracked into Jhan’s face. It dazed her and she tasted blood from a bitten tongue. When another fist went into her side, she reacted without thought, falling back on the long hours of Vek’s training.
Jhan’s knees came up, feet sliding under the space Sael foolishly gave her between his body and hers. Like springs, she used them like a wedge to shove him off, rolling as he expelled all of his air and fell onto his back. She found him by that noise and wrapped her hand around his larynx. He wasn’t a warrior , but he was enough of a healer to know what would happen if she squeezed. Sael lay still, panting.
“What now?” Jhan snarled furiously.
Sael leaned up close to Jhan to emphasize his words. “Now, you rape me.”
Jhan felt the shock of his words throughout her body. “I’m not a rapist!”
“And neither am I!” Sael shouted back. “Yet you fear that from me when you can so easily kill me! We can’t afford it! If you will not trust me, then we might as well kill one or the other of us and go on alone!”
Jhan ached from his blows, her face and side throbbing. She wanted to hate him then, but she knew that he could have hit harder and broken bone. Besides, his demonstration was having the desired effect. A small part of her fear was retreating, seeing some reason in what Sael was trying to say. He hadn’t let her beat him, she knew, she had overpowered him fairly.
Jhan released Sael and sat back on her heels. He sat up with a groan. “Have I hurt you?” Jhan asked worriedly.
“As much as I have you,” Sael replied tightly. “It will mend.”
Jhan rubbed her hands over her face and then rubbed her eyes wearily. She felt more of the fear slip away painlessly. She felt about, found Sael’s hand, and took his rough, calloused fingers in hers. She stood, tugging on him to signal that he should get up as well. When they were both on their feet, Jhan released him in favor of the scarf, but Sael understood.
They walked without saying anything else and Jhan felt better for a small while, until the darkness seeped back into her soul and the weight of the mountain began pressing down on her spirit. The tunnel didn’t turn or end, just sliced though the rock in an endless hallway without hint of light or even a drift of air to let them know if they were going in the right direction.
“We’re going to die,” Jhan said aloud as another, interminable hour dragged by. She had counted five hours, keeping the time by silently reciting the seconds in a rhythmic drone.
Sael stopped walking and Jhan bumped into his back. “We will rest,” he announced and sat down as if she had said nothing.
“We ARE going to die, aren’t we?” Jhan prodded.
“How will it help for me to admit to such a thing?”
“I like to face facts.”
“You like to talk too much,” Seal retorted glumly and she heard him settling against the stone as if trying to get comfortable.
Jhan gingerly sat as well, cross legged. “I can’t keep things bottled up inside of me,” Jhan told him, “There isn’t enough room.”
There was a silence and then Sael caught the joke about her size and chuckled wearily. “You are maddening!”
“You aren’t telling me anything new,” Jhan said, and then more intensely, “Tell me something new, Sael. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Sael growled, “Men don’t share such confidences,” but he relented in the next moment, knowing how little it mattered in that place. “I’m thinking that this tunnel doesn’t go where we want it to. I feel that we are traveling downwards. I know that there isn’t any hope. I’m also thinking of my people and their customs. They never admit defeat. I’m thinking, in that, I will hold true. I will walk until I can’t walk any longer and then, maybe, I will crawl. What are you thinking, Jhan Dor?”
Sael’s voice had challenge in it, but Jhan wasn’t a man to take it up. “I’m just tired,” she replied offhandedly, “and hating that I’m going to die this way.”
“Hmm, well, I am not ready to speak about dying yet.” Sael yawned. “Try and sleep. I don’t think we need to keep watch. Those demons, strangely, didn’t seem willing to force us to do their biding.”
Jhan put her chin on her upraised knees as she heard Sael settle down, perhaps pillowing his head on an arm to cushion it against the rock. She didn’t want to deal with more recriminations, so she held silent, pretending to sleep as well until she heard his breathing even out and fall into a gentle rhythm.
“I’m just as stubborn as you are,” Jhan muttered to break the silence, “but maybe in a way you might not like. I’m not ready to die yet either, and, now that I realize how hopeless this really is, I think that I’m willing to risk death to avoid certain death.”
Mind made up, Jhan lay down on the hard rock floor, curling up in a tight ball with her hood for a pillow. It was harder than she thought, to let go and sleep, even in such a void. She kept listening beyond Sael’s breathing and gentle movements; waiting to hear something. What that was, she didn’t know. When sleep finally claimed her, her nervousness transferred into her dreams, sending her into fragments of memory that contorted and twisted in a flickering landscape of unreality.

CHAPTER TWO
(Tenebrous Dreams)
Someone was holding her, Jhan realized, as she slowly came out of sleep. A voice was speaking raggedly as a calloused hand brushed at the unseen tears on her face. “I will not let them have you, Jhan Dor! Awake! Please, awake from this horror! On my life, I swear I will not let them have you!”
“Sael?” Jhan’s mind collected together as if something had blown it into scattered fragments. She was cold, full of sweat drying on her skin, and sore in every muscle. Even her jaws ached from clenching her teeth.
“At last!” Sael sounded as if he were close to fainting with relief. His grip tightened on Jhan and she felt herself shifted into the man’s lap so that she was sitting up against him.
“What- What are you doing!” Jhan tried to push away, but she was too limp, too confused to do anything but struggle awkwardly.
Sael refused to relinquish his grip on Jhan. His voice was ragged and anxious as he told her, “You spoke in your sleep. You described such-such horror! I tried to wake you, but you were a prisoner of your dream, shaking and seeming to have a fit. The demons- the demons must be able to attack you somehow, while you sleep. They must be trying to force you to go back and help them.”
Jhan stopped struggling, the blood draining from her face. “What did I say?”
Jhan could hear Sael swallow audibly and then he stammered, “Sh-shamefull things. Cruel. Inhuman. Only- only things demons could conjure in a man’s mind.”
Jhan groped for memory, but found nothing but an unsettling collage of images that were already slipping away. “Tell me.”
Jhan could feel Sael shaking his head. “If you don’t remember, best not to ever know!”
“But I do remember,” Jhan persisted, chilled to the bone. “I just don’t know which part I dreamed about.”
“You are wrong!” Sael exclaimed. “This- this could not have happened!”
“I won’t know until you tell me.”
It came out in a rush of words, as if Sael couldn’t hold them in any longer, and his voice was heavy with revulsion. “You screamed out against- against someone who was cutting your leg open from knee to ankle; cracking bones, splitting them, tying them together! You wept about someone torturing you in a cell, doing unspeakable things; a bloated monster beyond imagining! You spoke of men who- who, but that surely couldn’t have happened!” Sael was shouting now, denying it with all of his strength into Jhan’s face. “Anyone would have died-died a hundred times over!” Sael began shaking like a leaf. “I don’t wish such dreams! Gods keep them away from me. Keep them away!”
It was like being cradled in a storm, Jhan thought, as Sael tried to deal with what he had heard Jhan say. She let him go on, words tumbling meaningless over her grim calmness. When he quieted at last, she sighed and leaned back against him, her fear of him gone completely for the moment.
“I will go back and I will kill those demons for doing such a thing,” Sael finally said, tight and fierce. “I swear that I won’t let them have you again!”
“Sael, they didn’t do anything to me,” Jhan told him, “Those things really did happen to me, and worse; much worse.”
“No!” Sael protested and his voice caught on a sob.
“Yes,” Jhan insisted firmly, “Yes, they did Sael. I live with those memories, but they like to get into my dreams to torment me some times. There’s nothing you or I can do about it. “
“Forgive me!” Sael begged, “The things that I said earlier- I was mocking you-disgusted by your fear. I- How could I have known?”
“You couldn’t have and I’m not blaming you.” Jhan finally found the strength and the will to sit up, pushing firmly away from Sael. She ached in a pulsing beat that made her catch her breath. “I can be very infuriating, I know, but at least now you can see why it’s so difficult for me to see past it. It’s like a whirlpool of pain, trying to suck me in. It makes it hard to think about anything else.”
Jhan heard Sael stand up, as if he were eager to get moving and leave the nightmares behind them, but he couldn’t help asking questions; an attempt to have Jhan deny that such horrible men could live in the world. “The one you spoke of, the large man who tended your cell. Did he truly do such- such-”
“Yes,” Jhan whispered, and then dully, “They all had orders not to rape me, but they were most inventive about skirting the letter of that order; that man better than most. He slept with me at night, you see, after everyone else had done with me.”
“I would kill a man like that!” Sael exclaimed shakily.
“I did,” Jhan shuddered, remembering it and not wanting to. “He was drunk one night, sloppy, and unaware until the guard came to get me the next morning. They let me kill him. It was the happiest day I remember in all that time.”
“Stop!” Sael groaned. “I can’t hear any more!”
“Neither can I,” Jhan agreed.
Jhan stood as well. Both of them were breathing hard as they tried to deal with their emotions and then Sael asked, tentatively, “How did you survive it?”
Jhan’s shrug was more of a flinch. “The man who commanded my torture had Power, a lot of it. He also had a healer with Power. Together, they kept me alive.”
“Why?” That one word encompassed a lot and Sael knew it, giving Jhan time to think of an answer that would at least explain some of it.
“Simple revenge, at first,” Jhan replied at last, “but then he thought to make me into a weapon against his enemies. He and his soldiers were men who enjoyed doing what they did to me. In the end, I think they forgot the reason for it. They didn’t need one.”
“I would have gone mad, even died!” Sael choked.
Jhan nodded, forgetting that he couldn’t see it and then replied truthfully, “I did go mad and I did die. It didn’t make any difference. He was that strong.”
Jhan paused, gathering her resolve, and then continued in what she hoped was a reasonable voice. “I think you know now what I see in the darkness and why I can’t endure it any longer.”
“What are you saying?”
Jhan chewed on her lip, released it, and then plowed on. “I said that I wouldn’t stick my hand in that hole, but that was simple fear. Now that I’ve had time to think, time to begin to see that there are worse things to be afraid of-”
“You can’t mean that?” Sael tossed aside compassion for her in an instant of outrage. “Would you do the biding of our enemies?”
“No, but they won’t let us go otherwise. I don’t see any way around it.”
Sael’s breathing came harsh and quick. “You don’t have any guarantee that they’ll let us go afterward.”
“I suppose not.” Jhan wished that she could see his face. It was hard to reason with the dark, “but this course we are taking now, you‘ve already said it’s hopeless.”
“It may be hopeless, but I’ll keep my honor,” Sael retorted, clearly angry now.
“Honor again,” Jhan sighed. “We’ll, I think we can turn that on its head. I’ll be the one and risk my life to save both of us, okay?”
“And where would my honor be if I allowed that?”
“Sael!” Jhan’s voice echoed its exasperation down the passageway. “I can’t take this darkness any longer and I don’t want to die in it at the bottom of a mountain. I’m going back to our captors and I’m going to take a chance that I’ll succeed.”
“I don’t see that it’s much of a chance. You might die,” Sael seethed.
“At least it’ll be in the light and not here, drowning in darkness until we starve or die of thirst.” Jhan shrugged dejectedly to herself. “If I fail, they won’t be able to use you. Maybe they’ll let you go.”
“Why should I let you do this?” Sael demanded.
“Let me?” Jhan was caustic. “You’ve already admitted that I can kill you, Sael. I’ll do as I please, I think.” “Finally, a bit of bravery,” Sael replied bitterly, “but in the wrong cause.”
Jhan held her breath, letting the silence and the darkness gather close about them both and long enough to make them both uncomfortable. When she finally let out that breath, she said very simply, “Could you endure to have one of my dreams?”
Sael wasn’t a liar, but Jhan could tell that he struggled with it. “No,” he admitted quietly.
“Would you do anything not to have them?” Jhan persisted.
Again Sael struggled, knowing where her questioning was leading and not wanting to concede to her. “I- I begged the gods. You were just waking up. You must have heard...”
“I did,” Jhan acknowledged tersely, “and if I thought my God could do something about it, I would be crying to Him too. That’s to the point. Nobody can help me except myself. I’ll do anything not to have those dreams, Sael, but as long as we walk in the dark, without any distractions and only our own company, they’ll keep coming back. I’m also opposed to dying and I don’t see any other escape. Take either explanation that will convince you or go on by yourself. I’m not going to follow you.”
Jhan turned, not really as brave as her words. She made certain her footsteps sounded loudly on the stone as she took three steps away from Sael back the way they had come. That was all he allowed her before he closed the distance between them and snatched at her cloak. He found her hand and slapped the end of his scarf into it.
“I won’t be told what to do by an Ikhil,” Sael swore. “If you want to kill yourself, I will go to watch. If your death releases me, all the better.”
His words were rough, but Jhan could hear his angry concern for her. She might have smiled, but she was too aware that she was about to gamble in a very dangerous game and that the odds might not be any better than walking the passageway until they died.
“Well, it’s a long way back,” Jhan sighed, “Do you want to lead?”
There was a flash of light before Sael could reply and a stomach wrenching disorientation. Jhan blinked and lifted her hands to her smarting eyes. When she lowered them again, she gasped. They were back in the torchlit hall, standing before their three captors.
It was Togo who stepped forward with hands raised in a placating fashion. “Don’t be frightened. Selaya brought you here.”
Sael had fallen to one knee, as pale as milk. “What can we do against such demons?”
Jhan was hugging herself, mentally checking to make sure that she was all in one piece, while her eyes flicked wildly about the hall. It was as if they’d never left. The food was still on the table, steaming hot, as if someone had just served it. Tagara was still standing in her red dress, face as remote as ever. Minyah was crouching on the floor, every muscle tight and face anxious.
Jhan walked over to the table and poured cool water from a glass pitcher into a silver goblet. Sipping it agitatedly, her hand shook on the stem. She counted the sips she took, taking her time until her heart stopped its mad pounding. “Seems to me,” she said at last, “that if Selaya can mine an entire mountain, change living beings into part machine, and transport bodies from one place to another, she must be able to get free of that rock herself. What kind of game are you playing?”
Togo was quick to correct her. “Selaya’s memory and interface are shielded from the stone. It is her metal body that can’t be moved and the stone around her that can’t be worked. We haven’t lied. She is trapped, and will remain so unless you help her.”
Jhan lowered her glass and turned to them. “So simple a thing to bring down something so powerful; a magnet.” She shrugged her shoulders in defeat, but it turned into more of a flinch. “I’m going to try and free her.”
“We know,” Togo said guiltily, “I followed you. Since I am connected to Selaya, she knew when you had made your decision.”
Jhan felt anger wash through her. She flicked a look at Sael and saw him getting to his feet, just as outraged as she was that their confidences had been overheard.
“So, you expected us to give up?” Jhan bit out accusingly.
“For YOU to give up!” Sael corrected, furious, “You’ve fallen into their trap and dragged me in after you!”
“There isn’t any way out of this mountain without the help of Selaya,” Tagara told them coldly. “It was only a matter of time until you realized it as well.”
“Inevitable,” Jhan agreed and rubbed at her tired eyes. She lowered her hands after a moment and straightened. “Let’s get this over with.”
Jhan walked over to the hole in the wall. She was still shaking, sweat beading on her skin. She was too aware of everyone going silent and still behind her, not even Sael taking the moment to argue one last time. She almost wished he would, giving her some argument that would make enough sense to dissuade her.
The hole was low. Jhan bit her lip as she was forced to kneel on the black stains on the floor. Trying to peer into the hole, she saw something flicker, a firefly type light that wasn’t steady enough to let her see her way.
“You will need to stand by your companion,” Tagara told Sael, “That is why we brought you.”
“What’s going to happen?” Sael demanded.
“The door might break under the stresses.”
“Might?” Sael echoed suspiciously.
“You must assist your companion,” Tagara insisted. “We knew one so small might not have the strength we needed. There are possibilities..."
Jhan didn’t expect Sael to obey Tagara. He was angry, his pride and honor sullied by Jhan’s refusal to die escaping. Tagara’s evasions and demands were probably the last straw, she thought. So, it was to Jhan’s surprise, when footsteps approached and Sael put a hand on her shoulder.
“Get it over with, as you said,” Sael growled to hide his nervousness.
Jhan nodded jerkily, swallowed, and then reached into the opening. Her arm just fit. Searching with her fingers, she found three levers to her right. “Which one?” she called out.
“We don’t know,” Tagara replied.
“Don’t know?” Jhan choked on a sob and swallowed hard again. Sweat began running down the sides of her face. “I suppose one opens the door and the other two set off the traps,” she surmised shakily. “Do you know which levers the other ‘victims’ tried?”
“No.” Tagara’s voice was maddeningly calm.
Jhan leaned her forehead against the stone. It was warm, like a live thing, but it didn’t comfort her. “For future reference,” she shouted angrily, “I’m pulling the second lever!” and she did just that before her nerve failed her.
It was wrong and Jhan knew it in the next instant. She screamed as the stone ground and clamped onto her arm, moving it inexorably into the rock like a beast trying to swallow her whole. “Sael!”
Sael didn’t try and pull Jhan back. Instead, he raised a knife. Jhan’s widened, panicked eyes, had a split-second of time to recognize it as having come from the table and to realize that Sael was taking hold of her arm with the intention of using that knife to cut it off!
“No!” Jhan shrieked and twisted her trapped hand to try and free herself. Her extra joints allowed her hand to move at an impossible angle. Her fingers touched another lever farther back than the first three. She grabbed it desperately and hung on.
“Pull me back!” Jhan shouted at Sael. “I have another lever!”
He would have to drop the knife, Sael knew, and the chance to save her would be gone. He saw the knowledge in her eyes and Jhan nodded fiercely, confirming her decision. Sael respected it. He dropped the knife, wrapped both arms about her slim waist, and pulled backwards with all of his might.
Jhan felt skin leave her arm and bones smash together, but her arm moved backwards one inch, two, and then the last inch to pull the lever. There was an audible click even above Jhan’s screaming in pain. The rock paused, grinding to a halt, and then it began rolling backwards and dropping sideways at the same time.
Freed so unexpectedly, Sael’s strength yanked Jhan from the hole. They both fell backwards, rolling , as blood from Jhan’s mangled arm splattered all about them. They huddled where they stopped, Jhan cradling her arm and moaning over the pain, even as she looked up to see what her sacrifice had accomplished.
The stone broke under the relentless pivot of the door mechanism. Stones, as large as Jhan’s head, fell down and shattered right where she and Sael had been crouching near the hole. Slowly, with a shudder of rock, the door swung open.
It was hard to describe the scene. Jhan was confused at first, panting in pain as she sat up, eyes trying to adjust to the glitter of lights and the bizarre twisting and fluted turnings of an alien machine. When the machine cracked open like an egg and a fluid spilled out onto the floor, she scrambled backwards into Sael who was muttering brokenly in some sort of prayer of protection.
A metal dragon, Jhan thought in frightened awe, as a thing pulled itself out of the machine and stepping onto the safe, non- magnetic rock. Careful, so very careful not to get near it, as if it yet feared getting as trapped as the rest of its body, the thing stepped through the door and into the hall.
Not a dragon, Jhan corrected herself, but something imitating a creature she had never seen before. It was silver metallic, smooth and unjointed, as if molded from a single piece of material. It stood nearly fifteen feet tall and was easily five feet wide. It had something of a face, but with a snout and spines like a reptile. It’s arms were long, resting on the ground with long fingers hooked with claws. Its rear legs were bipedal but chunky and turned backwards like a birds legs. It so reminded Jhan of a reptile that she expected to see a tail, but it was a machine and didn’t need one to balance.
“Mother!” Togo exclaimed and began to step forward.
It was like seeing the center of a star and then a void; deepest darkness. It sucked Selaya into it and then she was gone. They all stood gaping, not understanding, and then Tagara, Minyah, and Togo rushed into the space Selaya had vacated, exclaiming and crying.
“So much for gratitude,” Jhan began to say and then felt the agony of her arm stop as suddenly as Selaya’s disappearance. She looked down and found her sweaters ripped, but her skin unmarked and her bones not crushed. “Well, that’s something.”
“I am in your debt.” Sael’s voice was shaky, but filled with resolve. “You have saved my life. Ask anything of me you will, Jhan Dor.”
“You’re either very brave or just hard headed,” Jhan sighed, feeling none too steady herself. “How you can even think of your honor and customs at a time like this...”, but then she understood. At least she had some idea of what Selaya had been. Sael had none. By falling back on solid custom and denying the ‘demon’ he’d just seen hatch into the world, he was retaining his sanity.
“Ask,” Sael insisted.
Jhan turned her face away from the crying Children of Selaya and regarded Sael with a pinched expression. “All right, I’ll join your madness for a moment. Since we’re still stuck at the bottom of a mountain and still likely to die, I’d rather do that dying as a woman. For repayment, I ask that you consider me a woman from now on. Forget all about that ‘he’ and ‘Ikhil’ talk! Forget all about that manly honor and shameful, shameless business! I am a woman!”
Sael was too far in shock to protest. He simply inclined his head, his eyes dazed. Those eyes went topsy turvy as Jhan’s stomach tried to empty itself into her lap. She seemed to do a complete flip and then land sprawling into a bank of snow.
Jhan sat up with a cry, arms flailing and snow flying in all directions. When she saw Obahn standing uncomfortably close with his sword drawn, she froze, choking back another scream. She was lucky that the man was a trained warrior. He was holding himself still, waiting until he understood what was going on.
Images splattered across Jhan’s vision as she tried to orient herself. Baku and imala huddled in a group, munching grain from their feed bags and ears alert to the newcomers. The hide tent, erected in the shelter of the evergreens. Zerain stock still in the opening of the tent, scarf hiding any astonished expression she might have had while smoke from her braziers was doing a dance about her head. It was almost impossible to grasp the enormity of having been transported from the heart of a mountain to the bottom of it in the blink of an eye, yet it was clear that they weren’t on the mountain any longer. The camp was well past the tree line.
Sael was the first to recover. He walked forward resolutely and kneeled at his lord’s feet. His bare face was hollow and his eyes were dark and strained, as if he wasn’t sure whether Obahn would greet him or take off his head. Obahn’s hand was tight on his sword, not giving him the smallest clue.
Ixien stepped from the tent, edging around Zerain. His face registered some astonishment. “We thought that you were dead,” he said simply.
“Or fled together,” Obahn added, his voice heavy with insinuation.
Sael’s face went angry and red, but he said nothing. Jhan remembered that he was supposed to be under a command of silence. It was up to her to explain things. Wearily, Jhan gathered together her thoughts as she slowly stood up. It was hard to speak through her numbed shock, but she managed to choke out their story briefly. She left out many things. Obahn didn’t need to know them, she felt, and she wasn’t in any shape to relate a longer story coherently. She could see that Obahn suspected, but he was still too unnerved to pursue it further by questioning her.
When Jhan ended, her words coming to a stammering halt, she could see that Obahn’s anger with Sael was visibly mollified by her account, yet he didn’t give the Ekhal leave to stand and his sword remained out and ready. His attention shifted to the Children of Selaya instead, as bewildered as to what they were as Sael had been. When he spoke, his words were slow and cautious; a man speaking to the preternatural. “Do you have any special powers, like your mother?”
“I can effect the flow of the air,” Togo told him with a self-deprecating shrug. He was shivering in the cold, looking very human and defenseless as he motioned to Minyah and Tagara, “Minyah can shape stone. Tagara is able to make heat and light. We are harmless,” he assured Obahn, misunderstanding the reason for his question, “All of our other powers came from Selaya. Now that she is gone...”
Obahn was disappointed, having expected such creatures to posses more spectacular powers. It was clear from his tone that he was loosing some of his trepidation and replacing it with irritation, “Heat and light I can always use. Your other abilities are useless to me. Do you intend to go our way?”
“Our mother has left us and we are unable to live by ourselves,” Togo explained, and then anxiously, “If you would allow us to follow you, until we find a new home-”
“That has a price,” Obahn growled, cutting his plea off unsympathetically, “I need warriors. If you follow me, you must swear to obey me in all things and to fight by my side. If you refuse to swear, you must find your own way.”
“We don’t have any other options,” Togo admitted, but he was uncomfortable with what Obahn wanted. “We must swear to you if we are to live.”
They were being forced to enter Obahn’s service, none of them looking pleased about it. It was too apparent that they weren’t warriors and Obahn must have been desperate to want them. It stirred up the embers of Jhan’s depression and killed the small elation she had felt at escaping certain death. She remembered her own unwilling bondage, asking bleakly, “Where’s Ahlen?”
“Sleeping,” Zerain replied in a small voice as she edged behind her husband’s protective sword.
“He has been sunk in grief, thinking that you were dead,” Obahn told Jhan absently, his eyes and thoughts never leaving the Children of Selaya. His brows were drawn together, as if he still hadn’t made up his mind to accept them, despite their promise.
Waiting tensely, Togo was wrapping his arms about himself, shivering and hunkering down to keep his heart warm. Minyah was comfortable in his fur, eyes roving their surroundings; everything new and exciting for him. Tagara was as straight and stately as ever, seemingly unruffled by her sudden expulsion from the only home she’d ever known. Bare footed still, and in her silk dress, she was unaffected by the cold. In fact, the snow was melting under her feet in a steaming puddle.
Obahn stared at the sight, amazed. Tagara was unconsciously proving that her power was far greater than her brothers and, perhaps, something to be reckoned with. It was obvious that Obahn was considering whether he could control her, and that power, with only a simple oath between them. He didn’t arrive at an easy answer, but stirred at last saying, “I accept your oaths. Enter my tent.”
The Children of Selaya were caught off guard by his abrupt decision. They blinked, glanced at each other, and then smiled in relief as they began going into the tent. Tagara was the last to enter. She caught her breath in shock and alarm when Ixien took hold of her arm purposefully. He neither flinched nor drew away from her heat.
“I am of the Fire People,” Ixien told her calmly, “Heat doesn’t harm us.”
Tagara looked Ixien up and down, noting how different he was from the others. “I have never had anyone touch me before,” she told him and her voice trembled, “not even my brothers could manage it.”
Ixien withdrew his hand, but his face was, for once, filled with some energy of emotion Jhan couldn’t identify. It was almost a look of someone who had been searching for something and then had found it unexpectedly. Surprise, maybe, or more closely, awe. He followed Tagara into the tent, beginning to speak with her softly. Zerain hesitated and then gathered her courage to go in after them, not about to show fear in front of her husband.
Jhan wanted to follow them. She was shivering badly. The cold had wrapped about her with a vengeance and, though not nearly as severe as on the mountain top, it had sharp teeth. Still, not even that bite could force her to pass Obahn and Sael. They stood between her and shelter; an angry barrier.
Obahn stared down at Sael, eyes narrowed as he appeared to measure every last inch of the young man. Sael was as rigid as a stone under that regard, everything about him demanding a return to his place at Obahn’s side. Finally, Obahn relented, sheathing his sword as if he regretted not being able to use it for violence. He spoke brusquely, “Your arm is unbound and dirty, Ekhal. Clean your wound before it festers. I don’t have any use for a sick Bhakali."
Sael rose slowly and went into the tent, as if he had expected to be killed and couldn’t quiet believe that nothing had happened. Knowing Obahn, Jhan was finding it hard to believe herself.
Obahn turned his glare on Jhan next. “Again and again you astound me, Ikhil.”
“I astound myself,” Jhan replied dryly.
“Once again, there are debts between us,” Obahn continued angrily, "You saved the life of my Bhakali."
Jhan shrugged and felt twinges of strained muscles. It made her frown and look more sure of herself than she felt. “I’ve already asked for my repayment,” she told him, “I asked that I be treated as a woman from now on.” Jhan rushed on furiously as Obahn’s face twisted into the beginnings of disgust, “I don’t care about your customs or your honor, or I do, at least as far as this is concerned. I won’t explain my reasons, nobody ever listens to them anyway. It’s just my decision, whether you like it or not.”
Jhan wasn’t making any sense, even to herself, but Obahn gave another of his expressive grunts, silencing her. “I won’t argue such lunacy now,” he replied dismissively, “Too much has weighted my mind that I must sort out and decide upon.”
“I don’t want an argument,” Jhan told him defiantly, crossing her arms hard across her breast. “I want what Sael owes me.”
Jhan could see that Obahn was grinding his teeth, but then his face smoothed out as he said evenly, “As a woman you would belong to Ahlen; unmarried and defiled. Under our laws, straying from his protection would mean that any man could have you and do as they pleased.” He glared at her in challenge. “Is this the life that you want?”
Jhan’s hands had balled into fists, but she didn’t hesitate, “I am a woman. It isn’t a choice. As for belonging to Ahlen, I don’t. If any man thinks he can ‘have me’ because of it, just let him try!”
“I can’t allow you to be a woman if you refuse to act or speak like one!” Obahn retorted, but he was more amused than angry now. Jhan could see why. In his mind, she had just defeated herself.
“You can’t-” Jhan began in protest, but Obahn cut her off.
“I can do anything,” Obahn snapped threateningly, “I am a Hyjar.” He calmed himself with an effort as he continued, “Submit to man’s rule or be a man. There isn’t a middle way.”
Obahn left Jhan out in the snow, going into the tent to deal with his other problems. Jhan glared at the tent flap that fell closed behind him, her body burning from Obahn’s easy condescension and effortless manipulation. He had taken away the concession Jhan had won from Sael. Back to square one, Jhan thought, as if the journey over the mountain had never occurred; her sacrifices amounting to nothing.
Ahlen ducked through the tent flap, distracting Jhan from her angry regard as his eyes searched her face wildly. He looked pinched and haunted, as if he couldn’t believe that she was really there. “I thought-”
Jhan shook herself, trying to regain some self-possession, saying, “You thought that I was dead. I’ve already heard.”
“I would never have forgiven myself!” Ahlen exclaimed in anguish.
“Good,” Jhan replied tightly, “If I had died, I would have like that a great deal!”
Ahlen swallowed, tried to speak, stopped, and then took a deep breath to stammer, “I don’t know if you were in any condition to remember, but I promised you, once we reached the lowlands, that you would be free to choose whether to follow me or not. I won’t break that promise.”
“Where would I go?” Jhan spat back, bending her fingers like claws and longing to rend him with them. “Should I just walk away? Starve to death? Freeze to death? Try to climb back over the mountains? Just shut- up, Ahlen, and let me at least have the comfort that comes from not having any choice in the inevitable!”
Jhan brushed angrily past Ahlen, leaving him dumbstruck by her outburst. She stamped into the tent, face furious, and then stood abruptly still as welcome warmth enveloped her and the smell of cooking food filled her nostrils. Jhan would never have believed that she would have come to miss that reeking patchwork of hide, but, after such a long time in darkness and danger, it was comforting to settle into a nest of furs by a brazier and see Zerain going competently about her duties once more.
Jhan’s eyes adjusted slowly to the dimness of the tent. She could just make out Tagara, seated among furs and blankets with her two brothers, rivaling the braziers with her warmth. Ixien sat beside her, still speaking with her eagerly and avidly fixated on the nimbus of yellow light that seem to hover over her skin.
Sael hadn’t put on his scarf again, but he had already turned a shoulder to them and fallen into exhausted sleep in a corner. Jhan’s own eyes were just as heavy, but she wanted to eat first.
Zerain spooned a thick soup into bowls and handed them around, clearly still anxious about the Children of Selaya. They, for their part, tasted the food with interest and then nodded in satisfaction to each other as they began to eat. That seemed to relax Zerain, but her hand was still shaking slightly when she handed Jhan a bowl.
Ahlen came in at last, but his face was closed. He moved away to the darker side of the tent after taking his share of the food from Zerain. Jhan was glad. She didn’t want to face him just then. Her despair was too keen and he was only the salt rubbing in her wounds.
Obahn was staring thoughtfully at Sael while he sat, leaning against a saddle, and chewing over a piece of jerky. Jhan finished her third bowl of food before he finally stirred. From under some blankets, he took out Sael’s ornate scabbard and sword. Jhan wondered why he had kept it if he had though that Sael was dead or gone. Obahn’s flat expression didn’t give any clue as to the answer, as he rose and quietly went to place it by Sael’s sleeping body. He backed away just as quietly and called Zerain to him as he sought his own blankets.
Zerain gave Jhan an angry tilt of her head. “Now I don’t have time to clean! Did your demons starve you?”
“They aren’t demons-” Jhan began and then didn’t bother. Zerain was already turning her back and walking away. Jhan scraped the pot for the last of the food, ate it, and then cleaned the bowls and pot herself with water from a flask and a few clean rags. As she finished, her stomach seemed as empty as if she had never eaten.
Was something wrong? Jhan had never been able to eat so much before and not had it come out in several uncomfortable places. Selaya had healed her, but how? Dagara Ku Ni had been a sadistic artist, refining Jhan with a compulsive exactitude. She knew the delicate balances that he had created to keep her bones from collapsing while retaining an inhuman flexibility and strength. She knew, with painful familiarity, the consuming engine he had made out of her body to keep it light. If Selaya had turned that engine off and had healed her shrunken, inadequate heart, what were the consequences going to be?
Jhan sighed, not wanting to face the answer. Instead, she determined to control this new part of her that seemed insatiable. It was such an odd turn of events that, instead of striving to eat enough and remain healthy, she was now going to be reduced to starving herself. She wanted to laugh. That astonished her until she felt tears starting at her eyes. Jhan realized then that it was hysteria and not humor.
Minyah and Togo went to asleep, curled up together like puppies. Tagara and Ixien were still talking, but in such low tones that Jhan couldn’t hear any words. That pleased her. She didn’t want any disturbances as she made up her bed as far away from everyone as she could, trying to shut out everything long enough to fall asleep.

The indigo sky swirled like ink stirred into water. Jhan marveled at it, standing on a brown field of frozen grass before a lake that reflected the sky in its mind startling shade of bluish purple. The lake was as flat as cold glass and the silence was as deep as the bottom of the mountain.
“A good place to rest,” Jhan approved appreciatively.
“I’m glad. I made it just for you.”
That disembodied voice came from all about Jhan, startling her and making her angry. “Who are you?” she demanded, hands clenching. “Why can’t I be alone even in my dreams?”
“Ah, come now! You don’t really want to be alone.”
Jhan turned in a circle, eyes searching. The brown grass stretched in a lazy, rolling tundra devoid of even a tree or a bush. “At least show yourself.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
The voice sighed. “Your mind is too small to grasp what I am. When you’ve reached your destination, I can accommodate your senses and your curiosity."
Jhan crossed her arms over her breast and glared at the indigo sky. She let the silence hang. It was her dream, she thought. If she concentrated hard enough, she might be able to make it what she wanted. When the silence continued, she began to relax, thinking that she had succeeded.
“You are obstinate,” the voice chuckled, “That is good.”
“What do you want?” Jhan growled, conceding defeat grudgingly.
“To see how you are doing.”
"Why?"
"Why?" the voice echoed reflectively.
“Why?” Jhan persisted.
“Now is not the time for such revelations.”
“Then go away!” Jhan shouted. It was an impotent sound, falling flat in the vastness.
“What life have you lived that you don’t even have questions for me? Don’t you even want to know about this place?”
“I do have questions!” Jhan retorted, “You’re not answering them!”
“Oh, those!” the voice was dismissive, haughty. “Anyone can ask the mundane.”
Jhan hunched down into her crossed arms and stared at her feet. They were bare. She realized, with a start, that she was naked. That was unsettling, more unsettling than the bodiless voice.
“Here, this will ease you.”
Suddenly, Jhan was wrapped in a robe of golden light. She staggered, her arms flying out as sleeves, as soft and as warm as a summer day, slid across her dream skin. She clenched her teeth and tried to regain her composure.
“This is the mind,” the voice explained, “Your mind, my mind, millions of minds all thinking and dreaming worlds upon worlds. If you have the power, you can walk them and make them real. I've made this place for you, a haven within your mind. You had the power to begin it, but you made it dark, a cave to hide in. I made it a place of beauty, a place to heal. Your place, now and always.”
Jhan was too cynical. “What do you want?”
“For you to survive. For you to reach me. That is all you need to know.”
“That’s not much.” Jhan was awed by the golden robe despite herself. She smoothed her hands along its folds and shivered at the luxurious feel of it. “There must be more. Are you going to try and use me too? You’ll have to stand in line.”
“There is more,” the voice admitted, “but all that is required of you now is that you survive. This place will help you. It is much safer than wandering outside of your mind as you have been doing thus far. That leaves you open to attack. Bring who you will here and you will both be protected by the Power within you.”
“Wandering out of my mind?” Jhan snorted, “Do you mean going crazy? I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.”
The voice chuckled, highly amused. “You don’t even know your own Power!”
“I don’t want to!” Jhan shot back.
The voice didn’t reply to that bit of childishness. It was gone, leaving Jhan alone in her indigo world once more. It was peaceful, and she did feel a great calm settle over her, as she slowly unclenched and let her hands fall to her sides. She forgot about the annoying voice and dismissed everything it had said. It was only a dream, she reasoned. It was better to think of nothing and to just drift slowly from one end of the lake to the other, enjoying the utter silence.

It felt wonderful to wake up and feel rested. Strangely at peace, Jhan crawled out of her blankets and left everyone sleeping to go outside. The weather had warmed enough to melt the snow, Winter still uncertain of its grip. Dapples of sunlight cut through the branches of the evergreen trees and sparkled in the pools of water like diamonds. Jhan stretched out her hands to that light and found a small smile.
“You seem oddly happy this morning,” Sael remarked. He came to join Jhan in the sunlight. He was wearing his scarf again, the charms jingling and glittering as he moved. At his side, he was wearing his sword, fingering the hilt thoughtfully.
“Why shouldn’t I be? We escaped a mountain prison and I was saved from dying in the mountain pass,” Jhan said. Her smile turned brittle; her peace broken.
“But, once again, you are a captive; Ahlen’s prisoner,” Sael found the need to point out grimly.
Jhan sneered at him, saying acidly, “Didn’t you hear? Ahlen set me free! He said that I could go where I wished.”
Sael’s brows came down over his dark eyes. “He is a fool,” was a simple enough thing to say, but it said a lot more without words. It told Jhan that Sael understood the hopelessness of her situation as clearly as she did.
“Yes, he is,” Jhan agreed and tipped her face up to the light, her eyes closed and willing Sael to silence.
Sael let her have it, but only for a few minutes before remarking idly, “You look well. There is color to your face. It doesn’t look so much like white death anymore. Perhaps, you should travel mountain passes more often.”
Jhan opened her eyes and gave him a look, “A joke? I didn’t think your people were capable of it.”
“You don’t know my people at all, my Lady, if you are comparing them to me.”
Jhan scowled, noting the honorific. “Are you making a joke of me now?”
“I am repaying my debt,” Sael reminded her, bristling as if she were questioning his honor.
“Obahn didn’t think much of it,” Jhan told him angrily. “He said that, if I wanted to be a woman, I would have to become Ahlen’s property.”
Sael became thoughtful and then said in agreement, “A woman always belongs to someone. To her family first and then to her husband.” He shrugged, continuing as if perplexed, “You are unable to bear children. I fail to see why my Lord would insist on such a condition.”
“Maybe to remove temptation,” Jhan muttered accusingly, hugging herself as if the sun suddenly wasn’t enough to warm her.
“If Obahn wanted you, Lady, he would take you,” Sael warned her. “I think it is what you were, the part of you that you don’t wish me to speak of any longer, that holds him back.”
“Turns a lot of men cold,” Jhan agreed sourly, “but it doesn’t stop some people.”
“I think,” Sael mused, “that it’s more likely that Obahn wanted to shame you, or anger you, enough to forget about your wishes. He needs warriors, as he said before, not women.”
“He can call me anything he likes, Sael,” Jhan replied darkly, “but I’ll never change. I can’t be a warrior.” That was final and it put an end to their conversation as Jhan had meant it to.
In thoughtful silence, they went back into the tent. Tagara, Minyah, and Togo sat in a close huddle, eating the last of the grain that Zerain had overcooked, with obvious distaste. Ahlen was yawning by a brazier under a blanket and spooning his bowl of grain about, hoping such motions might make it more edible. Obahn was lacing his boots and humming under his breath. Zerain was moving slowly, doing her duties as if she were sleepwalking. It was obvious to Jhan that Obahn had kept Zerain up late last night with his needs.
Jhan took her own bowl of grain and took a cautious bite. “I’ve made worse,” she commented around her gritty mouthful.
Zerain turned her head towards Jhan with an angry jerk, though she didn’t bother expressing her anger in words. Instead, she spoke quietly to Obahn. Obahn nodded seriously to whatever she was saying and then grunted as he confronted Togo.
“We are low on supplies,” Obahn announced. “It took us longer than I expected to go through the mountains. Can any of you hunt?”
Minyah laughed and his animal face split into a feral grin. Even though he had normal looking teeth, it was still bestial enough to make Jhan shiver. “Hunt! Yes, Minyah hunt!” he exclaimed happily.
Togo handed his empty bowl to Zerain as he stood. He made a shooing motion with one hand to Minyah. “Go get food then, brother,” he told Minyah, “but be careful! Don’t bring anything back too large!”
Minyah grinned wider and gave Togo an overlarge hug. “I be careful,” he promised and then bounded out of the tent like a puppy let loose to play.
Togo sighed. “He may be awhile. He has the mind of a child. He distracts easily and this land is strange to him.”
“He won’t get lost?” Obahn wondered, clearly more concerned about the game that might be lost than Minyah.
“No,” Togo assured him. “He has an animal’s senses. He will be able to track us.”
“He is proving to be useful,” Obahn replied, pleased.
Togo enjoyed the approval. He grinned. Jhan flinched and felt her face go pale. Togo’s teeth were sharp, as if he had taken the teeth Minyah should have had. Until then, he had seemed completely normal.
They finished eating and reluctantly went outside. Jhan put up her hood and pulled it down around her ears, burying her hands under her armpits to keep warm, while she waited for Sael and Ahlen to saddle the beasts and for Zerain to bring down the tent and pack it. Togo stood close to Jhan. She found herself, in her idleness, staring at him openly.
Togo glanced at Jhan, noticed her curious attention, and asked with a lopsided smile, “Do you have a question?”
Jhan tried to form her ignorance, fear, and distrust of him into a simple sentence. At last, all that she could think of to say was, “I don’t understand what you are.”
Togo had been expecting that question and his answer was ready, sounding as if he had related it many times. “We call ourselves brothers and sister, but we aren’t, actually. We don’t remember what we were before, but Selaya had explained to us that we were combined with several species...”
Togo suddenly bent and picked up a small brown worm and the dead leaf it clung to. He turned the leaf so that Jhan could see it and then placed it on his hand. "Separate," he continued, “until Selaya took us and brought us together. “ Togo squeezed his hand and mangled worm and leaf together. He let it drop to the ground and then wiped his hand against his pant leg. “She threw her probes into the mix,” he finished, “and we were born anew; her children.”
Jhan had made a face at the casual death, but she understood a little better now, though not as completely as she would have wished. “So, you are made up of bits and pieces of the miners who Selaya took revenge on,” Jhan summed up, hardly believing it. Repugnance colored her voice as she added, “and maybe a pet of theirs too.”
Togo touched the points of his own teeth pensively. “It would appear so, yes.”
Jhan could see that, though Togo might have told this tale often to the travelers he had kidnapped to help Selaya, it still seemed to disturb him that he was made up of murdered individuals. In his brief sorrow and discomfort, he looked very innocent and gentle. The world, Jhan felt, would eat him whole and grind him up without much trouble.
“We know, “Togo continued at last, “that we won’t find anyone like us, but we will be content with that as long as we find a good place to live with kind people to help us learn-”
Jhan felt nausea grip her and she put a hand to her stomach as a spasm passed through her. It was an emotional rather than physical upheaval, Jhan knew; the sure knowledge of just how much sympathy such creatures as the Children of Selaya could expect. Allowing Togo to continue in his ignorance was worse than cruel and Jhan told him bitterly, “I’ve found that, around here, they don’t like people who are different. They shun them, or at the worst, try to kill them. I think, looking as you do, that you’ll have less success than I did trying to find a place to live.”
Togo looked hurt and uncertain, replying sadly, “We don’t have any choice but to try.”
“I didn’t have a choice either,” Jhan empathized.
Ahlen brought up the baku. Jhan took the reins of hers and mounted. From her vantage, she could see Sael leading the imala to Obahn and then looking pointedly at Tagara and Togo. Obahn gave an expressive grunt that vented his annoyance.
Jhan looked down at Togo, knowing what the problem was. “How are you going to keep up?” she wondered.
“That isn’t a worry,” Togo replied with a confident tone. “We are not bound by your limitations.”
Jhan started and her baku honked in alarm, flapping ears wildly. Togo was suddenly not there! Instead, Jhan was faced by a whirlwind in his place. It lifted easily into the air, bobbing like a mini tornado as it whipped at the branches of the evergreens and sent dead leaves skyward.
Tagara noted her brother’s action and nodded. She took a step, as if she were climbing an invisible stairway, and then burst into a bright, yellowish light. It sparked and pulsed as it rose a few feet from Togo, singing anything close enough to touch it.
“How are you doing that?” Jhan almost shrieked in astonishment.
The Children of Selaya were silent, unable to answer her in that state. They simply bobbed patiently, waiting for direction and for everyone to calm down.
Ahlen was mouthing a feverish prayer, eyes sunken and shocked. He gripped the reins of his baku as if he were keeping from fleeing by sheer force of will alone. Sael was fingering his charms and Zerain was huddled on her imala, about to faint. Ixien was standing off to one side, face clearly amazed and crystal eyes looking at Tagara as if he had seen a revelation.
Obahn alone was unruffled. He sat his imala with a straight back and flung back his head with a short bark of laughter. “Who will dare come against us now?”
They all considered them demons, Jhan thought, and therefore this bit of magic was easy for them to comprehend. Jhan was finding herself going cold and terror stricken, not understanding and unwilling to believe. Dagara’s Power had been to twist, warp, cloud the mind, and once to move Jhan from his fortress to Pekarin. He had held the Power of a star in his body. Jhan possessed the same measure of that Power within her. She tried to tell herself that those abilities were just as incomprehensible as what Togo and Tagara were doing now, but her mind wouldn’t make the leap. To change shape, in the blink of an eye, to such drastically different forms... Jhan needed it explained to her. Her mind had to have the logic of it or, she felt, she would start questioning her small grip on sanity.
Seeing that everyone’s distress wasn’t going to abate while they were near, Togo and Tagara bobbed further down the trail, burning and whipping the trees as they passed. They left behind silence, but for the stamping, nervousness of the beasts. Obahn was the first to break that silence.
“Are you cowards?” Obahn shouted to shake them all out of their shock. “They have oathed themselves to me! They will not harm you!”
Reluctantly, they began going down the trail as if Obahn’s words were a whip. His gold eyes swept over them, daring them to falter and face his temper. When he noticed Sael, standing with the reins of his imala in his hand and not making any attempt to get into his saddle, Obahn spurred his imala over to him, jaw clenching and eyes burning angrily.
“Too afraid to move, Ekhal?” Obahn taunted.
Sael looked pointedly at Obahn, jerking on his imala’s bit to keep the beast from nibbling irritably on his braid. Sael touched the place on his scarf where his mouth must have been. He tapped it expressively.
Obahn sighed and rubbed a thumb along the scars on one of his cheeks. “You will never carry these, Sael Ruon, while you insist on being Ekhal. They are the scars of a warrior. You have proved yourself to me, first by bringing me these powerful beings to join our company, and then by surviving great peril with bravery. Renounce the Ekhal, and be a true Bhakali to me. You have the heart if you stop denying it.”
Sael touched his lips once more. Obahn made an impatient sign, a flick of fingers. Sael’s spoke then and his reply was measured and final. “A man is born Ekhal, my Lord. You want me to take wives, build a lodge, and be a sworn warrior to you, but my wives wouldn’t have any children. They would be forced to leave me and my lodge would be empty. You would have a sworn warrior with as little standing among our people as a village stray. I’ve told you this before, and yet you still refuse to understand. I want what you are offering, the gods know it, but it is something that will never be.”
Obahn’s face nearly turned purple with his rage. Finally, he exploded, so loudly his imala jumped, “I command you to renounce the Ekhal!”
Sael mounted his imala and shrugged as if indifferent. His eyes though were pained. “Command it, my Lord, and I will have to obey, but command Zerain to be a man while you are giving such orders, and to father children as well! She will have just as much success following your command as I will!”
Obahn said nothing in return at first. With a tight rein, he moved his imala down the trail with Sael at his side. Jhan lagged behind them, Zerain and Ahlen only a little ahead of Obahn and Sael. Ixien was walking, moving steadily and lightly after Tagara with his eyes pointed skyward.
“I knew your father,” Obahn replied at last, his voice as tight and as controlled as his hand on his imala, “I keep trying to see him in you. He saved my life more times than I can remember. I had hoped to make a man out of his son, since you are the only one he managed to father before his death.”
Sael had stiffened at the mention of his father, a man he had said that he never wished to know. His voice was calm, though, and matter- of- fact. “Why bother? You know the end of my journey. You’ve never disguised your hate for me. Are you trying to distract me from my vow to Hagen?” He gave Obahn a keen look. “No, that goes along too well with what your plans are. Perhaps you are thinking that the Sun God will be offended by me and deny my request? Is that why you are trying to change me, my Lord?”
Obahn half drew his sword, acutely furious now. His hand trembled on the hilt and then he slammed it back into the scabbard. “My will is your law and you will not question me again!”
“My first oath was to Hagen,” Sael reminded him quietly.
“You cannot have oaths with the dead!” Obahn shouted, shaking a fist at Sael.
“As if trying to call them back from the dead were better madness!” Sael shot back. “I will keep my oath to Hagen and I will keep it to you, my Lord, but don’t test which one is the stronger.”
“The Sun God will not hear a plea from an Ekhal!” Obahn exploded. “Don’t you understand? You are a perversion against Their creation.”
“So you say,” Sael replied stiffly. “The Ekhal see it differently."
“You don’t believe as they believe! I see that, Sael Ruon. Your doubts are in your eyes!”
“Hagen is my lord, even in death,” Sael said, yet he WAS sounding doubtful. He went on, doggedly persistent, “The Sun God will honor that bond between us. I don’t seek him as an Ekhal, though I know you think that.”
Obahn shook his head. “If you will not change, then I will not allow you to speak! I command you to be silent when we reach the temple. I will ask for Hagen’s appearance myself.”
Sael gave a bitter laugh. “I don’t think my honor, or my oath to you, will mean much to me then.”
“You will see how I deal with oath breakers, Ekhal!”
“With death?” Sael laughed again, but Obahn was spurring his imala ahead and didn’t hear it.
“You like making him angry,” Jhan remarked.
“I am a man,” Sael replied coolly.
“I wasn’t doubting it,” Jhan told him, “but even I know better than to mouth off to that one, Sael, and I’ve never been good at being quiet when I have something to say.”
“Not even now,” Sael snapped back and rode ahead after Obahn as if, despite everything, they were bound together with something that not even hate or harsh words could sunder.
“I hardly know what to do,” Ahlen suddenly said as he fell back even with Jhan. It was obvious that he was terrified, his eyes wide and his skin pale and glittering with sweat. “I am alone,” he continued, almost choking on the words, “a simple man lost among demons, barbarians, perverts, and strange creatures. Maybe it would be better if I left and tried to reach the Sun God by myself.”
Jhan scowled. “Are you including me in the ‘pervert’ category or the ‘strange creature’ one? I don’t think I appreciate either.”
Ahlen was contrite at once, but he didn’t lose his fearful expression. “Forgive me. I’m-I’m just afraid. We could go together, even take Ixien if we must.”
Jhan nodded to where Ixien was still walking ahead, staring up at Tagara. “He’s found the love of his life. I don’t think he would want to go anywhere with you. I don’t either, for that matter. Obahn and Sael might have strange reasons for seeking out your Sun God, and maybe Ixien too, but I think I have more of a chance of seeing my home again with them.”
Ahlen considered her for a long moment. “Are you afraid? Of the demons? Of what our companions might do? You always look so calm. As if- I don’t know, as if nothing matters or that nothing can touch you. “
Jhan stared, her mouth open a little in amazement. Finally, she shut her mouth and then sighed with a shake of her head. “I didn’t know that I looked calm. I’m always terrified, Ahlen. I just do what I have to do, despite things.”
“I’ve tried to be a man,” Ahlen admitted with downcast eyes, “but I’ve failed at that.”
“What do you want from me?” Jhan demanded suddenly, cutting through Ahlen’s self indulgence. “I don’t owe you anything except hatred and contempt!”
Ahlen nodded dismally, agreeing, but his eyes were pleading with Jhan too. “I deserve that, and more, yet I think that I am going to have to follow you from now on. I don’t know what else to do. I can’t go on pretending that I’m not afraid and that I know what I’m doing among these people.”
“I’m powerless!” Jhan replied in disbelief. “Why would you want to follow me? I’m not even allowed to decide when I can get off of my baku and take a leak.”
Ahlen flinched at her crude words, saying nothing in return. He hunched inward on himself and pulled his baku in behind hers, as if he wanted to hide in its shadow. Disgusted, Jhan turned forward, not wanting to waste any more energy being angry at him. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to listen.

CHAPTER THREE
(In and Out of the Dream)
The land dipped downwards sharply and then bottomed out into a peat bog. The trees became thin and bare of branches, only a few tangled patches of thorny growth dotting the bleak landscape of drifting fog and half frozen earth. The scent of the peat was strong and the beasts hooves slipped and sank, their footing uncertain. The baku lowered their heads and watched their path carefully, but the imala weren’t so trail wise. They shied and shivered at every misstep.
They passed a wagon alongside the trail. Beside the remnants of a smoldering campfire, two men were working on the hoof of a heavy baku. A third man was holding the beasts head. He alerted his companions to possible danger and they watched, frozen and wide eyed, at the strange company that passed them by.
Jhan turned in her saddle to stare back at them. It had been so long since she had seen anyone but her companions, that it had been easy to forget that there were other people outside of the narrow world her life had become. Her anguish must have been plain on her face when she turned back around. Sael was watching the men with a casual hand on his sword hilt, not really expecting trouble. When he saw Jhan’s face, he stiffened and pulled his imala back to ride beside her.
“What is it?” he asked.
The tears spilled over Jhan’s cold cheeks. She wiped at them with her gloved hands, trying to regain her composure. Obahn was looking back now as well, frowning.
“Leave her in peace, Ekhal.” Obahn stressed the word ‘her’. “She isn’t your woman, she is Ahlen Kantori's. Beware, or he may take offense and challenge you.” He sounded mocking, but to the point.
Everyone looked at Ahlen, even Jhan, but he was swallowing and all amazement. “Mine?”
“She wishes to be a woman,” Obahn explained, his body and tone deceptively nonchalant as he gave this concession to Jhan unexpectedly. “That means she must belong to some man. Since you claimed her first, she must then belong to you, until you are challenged for her.”
“Challenged?” Ahlen echoed dumbly. “Jhan doesn’t belong to me. I-I let her free.”
“Is that so?” Obahn grew more serious, turning his gaze back to Jhan. The light caught his eyes and they turned a feral yellow color. “Well, Jhan Dor, if you still choose to be a woman, then you are now free for any man’s taking. I have warned you about that consequence of your decision. If you would like to oath to me, I could make you my concubine. My protection would be yours.”
Jhan was still weeping, but her face was stiff and her eyes dark, luminous, blue wells of anger. “I’ve learned that you don’t offer anything without a price, Lord Obahn.”
“Your fighting skill would be at my disposal, of course.”
“Of course,” Jhan repeated bitterly. “And if I don’t?”
Obahn acted as if he had all the time in the world, all of them riding in a silence punctuated only by a lone bird cry. “If you refuse,” he replied at last, “I’ll give you over to those men back there and tell them that you are a lone woman, a whore without a man, and free for their amusement. I have told you, and I will say it again, I don’t have any need of another woman in this company. I need a warrior.”
“I will take her.” Sael spoke up suddenly.
“What?” Ahlen was astonished.
Sael ignored him, repeating firmly to Obahn, “I will take her. You have agreed to her demand to be a woman and not an Ikhil. She will be my wife. That supersedes your offer to take her as a concubine.”
Obahn’s nostrils thinned and then flared, but his face was as flat as his voice, as if he weren’t sure how to react just yet. “I thought that you had made it clear that you couldn’t have any woman, Sael Ruon, or is it that THIS is the only kind of woman you can keshun with?”
Sael’s eyes were distracted, not settling on anything as his jaw tensed. He seemed mortified by his own decision, but determined to carry it out all the same. “You were right,” he admitted, his voice betraying his dislike for saying those words. ”I must not be Ekhal when I stand before the Sun God. I will make myself worthy. I will manage to-” he went shaky for only a second and then firmed his voice. “She will be my wife. I will manage it.”
Obahn let out an exasperated breath. “I may call her anything I wish, and so may you, but I think the Sun God will know the truth of it, Sael Ruon.”
Sael said nothing to that. Instead, he was looking at Jhan, his eyes going hard. “You don’t have any say in the matter,” he told her. ” You are now my wife, unless Obahn or Ahlen wish to challenge it.”
“I’m already married,” Jhan bit out. She wiped at the tears on her face, sniffling and taking a shuddering breath.
“Not now,” Sael contradicted her. “Not here.”
“She doesn’t want you!” Obahn retorted to Sael and then tried one last time to reason with Jhan. “Give over this foolishness, Jhan Dor, and none of this will be necessary.”
“None of it IS necessary!” Jhan shouted furiously and slammed her heels into her baku. It was startled into a gallop, it’s uneven stride remarkably fast on the treacherous bog. Jhan knew that she couldn’t escape them. She could already hear hoof beats in pursuit. They would force her to do whatever madness they wished and she would be the victim she had always been.
The baku struggled into a patch of peat mixed with a hoof tangling collection of the rotting and petrifying remains of the ancient forest that must have once stood there. Jhan knew that she was in trouble instantly, attempting with her small hands to pull up the beast’s head and bring it to a halt. Her motions only threw it off balance. It slid in the peat, stumbled, then went down thrashing wildly. Jhan frantically shoved herself out of the saddle. Her body fell clear as they both hit the peat, but her right leg was too slow.
It was like lightning striking her brain. The pain flared and bolted through her, the heavy, adulterated peat hardly cushioning her at all as the full weight of the baku landed on fragile bones and joints. They bent and snapped like dry twigs, driving through flesh in a red mash of agony. When the beast rolled up and away, Jhan was a writhing, pitiful heap on the ground, panting and sobbing in a half faint as hands took hold of her and voices called and exclaimed in her ears.
“It’s no use!” that was Sael, sad and final. “An injury like that will never heal.”
“Scherial’s sake, Sael, don’t tell Obahn! He’ll leave her behind!” That frantic voice was Ahlen's. He was begging, weeping. Maybe it was even his hands holding Jhan’s arm so tight it was a new flash of pain intertwining with all the rest.
Someone wrapped the mangled thing that had been her leg and Jhan heard Obahn growl something abrupt and unintelligible. Sael’s reply was clearer. “Bound and kept straight, perhaps, my Lord. She is my wife. I will tend her and not slow us down,” and then, arguing, “It is my right. My oath to you does not concern a woman of my hearth. That is outside the matters of men. If you wish to challenge me for her, and you win, she will be yours to take or leave-”
There was a silence and then, ”Good, he’s leaving it up to you,” Ahlen’s voice again. “What would you have done if he HAD challenged you?”
“Died,” Sael replied coolly. “I’m not his equal with a sword.”
“You chanced that for Jhan?” Ahlen was incredulous with amazement.
Sael growled distractedly as he worked over Jhan’s leg, “He wouldn’t have challenged me, Ahlen. She is nothing now, broken as she is, and he won’t ask for her as a wife. He would have to keshun with her to keep her.”
“And you...”
“Let’s not speak of it,” Sael replied uncomfortably. “Help me get her off of the ground.”
“I should have told him that she was my wife,” Ahlen swore guiltily, “None of this would have happened!”
“You were a fool to deny the clear claim he gave you,” Sael agreed harshly, “but Obahn expected you to or he wouldn’t have begun the conversation.”
Jhan felt herself lifted and the voices jangled and clashed, becoming one with a swooping rush of hideous agony. She knew she shrieked and struggled. The blow she felt was hard and sure and obviously meant to take her out of her pain quickly. When merciful oblivion fell, she felt only thankful.

Jhan was lying on her back, looking at a soft indigo sky. It was warm and bright and the grass wasn’t cold. Jhan lazily draped an arm over her eyes, not wanting even the pleasant sight of the purple clouds to disturb her rest.
“Who are you?”
Jhan sat up slowly, languidly, not alarmed or anything other than mildly curious about the strange voice. She had a feeling that nothing could hurt her in that place. Someone had told her that, but she couldn’t remember who.
There was a woman seated cross legged before Jhan. Dressed in a black robe open to her navel, she had an oval, broad nosed face with a complexion the color of an almond skin. Her hair, a soft, woolly mass that hung well past her knees, sparkled with crystal pins and very small charms. Her warm, brown eyes were lined with Kohl and her finely arched brows were drawn in confusion and slight indignation. A silver nose ring twinkled in one nostril and a half moon necklace, studded with jewels, hung between large, pendulous breasts.
“Jhan,” Jhan replied after a long, contemplative moment. Lying flat and putting her arm over her eyes once more, she sighed, “I can’t even die in peace.”
“Die?” the woman had a high, bell like voice. She sounded younger than she appeared. “Have you brought me here to watch you die?”
“I’ve never wanted an audience before.” Jhan began to lose some of her languidness, replacing it with annoyance and an unwelcome curiosity that she tried hard to ignore. “I shouldn’t bother asking who you are. You ARE just a delusion.”
“Delusion?”
“Or an echo?” Jhan retorted and turned sideways with her back to the woman.
“You are the one who brought me here,” the woman told Jhan indignantly, “and now you’re ignoring me and pretending to dream. What am I to make of that?”
“I didn’t bring you here,” Jhan couldn’t help replying. She worried her lip. There wasn’t any pain as she bit hard. It confirmed to her that she was dreaming all of this, yet the woman persisted in demanding her attention. She was refusing to be a passive part of the dream, as much as Jhan wanted her to be.
“Why am I here?” the woman demanded. “What do you wish of me?”
“I fell under a baku and shattered my leg... at least it felt like it shattered,” Jhan told her, impatient to end this. “I just want to be alone and in a nice, painless place. The last thing I want is for someone to bother me.”
“I was walking minds when you took hold of me and brought me here,” the woman persisted, puzzled and angry at the same time. “Only a master could have accomplish that, yet you plead ignorance.”
“I don’t understand!” Jhan was exasperated at herself for making herself go through this madness. She sat up, propped on her elbows, and stared at the place where her right leg should have been. There was only a pulsing, ominous, red glow there instead. “I don’t understand any of this,” she said more quietly, disturbed.
“I can see that you don’t,” the woman agreed in amazement. She began the conversation anew. “I am Khirena Om Logi, daughter of King Lorian Shu Logi of Idolass. I am an apprentice of the Terenian art of walking minds. I am in my third year. In two more, I shall, hopefully, be a master.”
“Why?” Jhan interrupted numbly.
Khirena raised an eyebrow, perplexed. “Why?”
“I’ve seen enough of the outside of people to know that I never want to see the inside,” Jhan told her.
Khirena touched the half moon pendant between her brown breasts. “I want to become a priestess of Hunellan. They do great works among the people with their abilities. Walking minds allows you to help those who are in distress, to mingle minds in worship for the uplifting of the spirit-”
“To control people?”
Khirena’s eyebrow arched even more. “That is against our beliefs.”
“Do you have Power then?” Jhan asked, growing curious despite herself.
“No. Few do,” Khirena replied, “but any mind can learn to walk. It is just a matter of discipline."
Jhan rubbed at her forehead. Her skin felt tingly and cool. “This world is turning out to be stranger than I ever imagined. All of this must work in some sort of scientific manner, but it’s beginning to be easier just to call it ‘magic’ and stop trying to make myself crazy figuring it out.”
“Magic?” Khirena sniffed. “Are you one of the superstitious barbarians then to believe in such things?”
“No, just a poor person overwhelmed at the moment.” Jhan shook her head sharply, scowling. “This is stupid. You’re just a dream, after all. I wish I wasn’t wasting my last moments with this nonsense."
“Last moments?” Khirena leaned towards her in concern. “You are dying then?”
Jhan shrugged, face going tight. “I don’t know. I can’t imagining surviving with a wound like that. I was filthy from head to toe. Probably infection by now... gangrene. I doubt they tried to cut my leg off to save me. Too primitive to know enough to even wash their hands...” Jhan was shivering, wondering what horror she might wake up to.
Khirena’s reply was startling. “I can save you.”
Jhan looked at her then and wondered how she could have dreamed up such a person. She wasn’t like anyone Jhan had ever seen before. How could she have ever dreamed up that proud tilt of the nose? Where in her life had she ever seen such eyes, narrowed as if Khirena had spent a lifetime squinting at the sun, and glowing a cinnamon that was particularly unusual?
“I always try to give up,” Jhan admitted quietly. “It’s so much easier. Unfortunately, there is this deep core inside of me somewhere that never goes along with it. You must be the manifestation of that part of me.”
“I wouldn’t call that unfortunate.”
“Live my life and you will,” Jhan snapped.
“Do you wish me to save you?” Khirena retorted. “If not, then send me back whence I came.”
Jhan made an unintelligible growl and sat up completely, giving in to the insanity of it with a shrug of resignation. “All right. Save me. I might as well play out this illusion. Maybe then I can get out of it and go back to resting in peace.”
Without any preparation, Khirena reached out a hand and touched Jhan lightly on the arm. Her touch was cool. Jhan felt a sudden, too personal, connection with the woman. It made her draw back in confusion.
“You have Power,” Khirena announced with a nod, as if something had been confirmed for her. “It is locked tight away from the physical world, but inside of your mind it can work safely within its bonds. Though I don’t have the Power to heal, I may be able to help you use yours to do it. Failing that, I can direct your mind, with my ability, to speed your healing enough to save your life. You must have sensed my ability. That is probably why you brought me into your mind.”
“Wait!” Jhan held both hands to her forehead now, trying to think clearly. “You made sense just then! You’re saying that my Power is bringing you inside of my mind?”
“Yes,” Khirena replied impatiently, as if it were obvious. She motioned about them. “This place is a construct of your mind, an illusion, but I am very real,” and then, curiously, ”Am I the first person that you have contacted this way?”
Jhan shook her head, dazed, “No- No you’re not. I thought- I was convinced that I was dreaming.”
“It is a dream, of sorts,” Khirena replied. “It takes skill, learned skill, to walk within the mind and be ‘aware’. Without that skill, the mind forgets or wanders.”
“I did forget, but now it’s coming back to me.” Jhan clasped her knees tightly, grimacing and feeling as if her heart was breaking. If this was real- If Kile had really been there to speak with her... Jhan slammed her mind shut on that thought. She still couldn’t bear it. She drew a shuddering breath.
“Okay, help me,” Jhan said as she braced herself for whatever was about to happen, “Just get it over with so that I can leave this place.”
“This place is within you,” Khirena told her intently. “You can change it into anything you wish, make it into anyplace within memory, but the only way to leave it is to die.”
“A prison within a prison,” Jhan whispered bleakly.
“No,” Khirena corrected, astonished at Jhan’s ignorance, “the only place where a person can truly be free.”
Khirena took Jhan’s hand and spread it out, exposing her palm. “You will have to relax and let me take control,” she explained, expecting resistance to that.
“I know how to do that,” Jhan replied, trying not to think of all the times Dagara, Gyven, and Evian Perazii had violated her that way, for good and ill. “Just do it.”
“You are trusting,” Khirena wasn’t pleased. “I could mean to hurt you instead.”
Jhan laughed bitterly. “I’m dying! If you think I have another choice...” Khirena didn’t reply, but her face went grim as her palm came against Jhan’s, spread fingered and firm. Something touched Jhan like an erotic embrace, though Khirena never moved closer. It was a hint of what Dagara Ku Ni had felt like when he had stripped Jhan’s mind and made it a puppet for his whims. Jhan flinched and would have drawn back again, but she found that she was frozen into immobility. Staring at her hand, she saw a golden nimbus of energy shoot from Khirena to her through their touch.
The light seemed to burn, traveling along Jhan’s nerves and then centering behind her eyes. The Power twitched and surged against its bonds, waiting for a mistake that would release it. Khirena was amazed at its strength and wisely left it alone, concentrating instead on bringing Jhan’s own body to bear on the shattered leg.
“It won’t work,” Jhan protested.
“It will,” Khirena assured her. “The mind is capable of far more than you imagine.” She released Jhan’s hand and stood, tall and proud. “Your leg will heal. Release me now and allow me to return to my own body.”
“I’m not holding you,” Jhan insisted wearily, mentally drained. “I didn’t bring you here.” Doubt about the reality of all that Khirena had said and done suddenly returned.
“Such a fool to have such Power,” Khirena mused, and then, between one blink and the next, she was gone.
Jhan lay flat on the brown grass and stared up at the indigo sky. Calm settled about her. She wasn’t afraid of dying now, though she couldn’t say why. Khirena’s odd appearance wasn’t proof of anything, but Jhan wasn’t about to discard everything she had said. Some of it made sense. Maybe the Power was flexing within her and causing things to happen she had only thought dream or madness. Maybe there was a chance that it could heal her if she only concentrated hard enough. It was a chance, and a chance that the small, desperate part of her that didn’t want to die, grasped at with both hands.

There was the howling sound of a storm, a never ceasing rising and falling drone that was almost lulling. It made it hard for Jhan to wake up and open her eyes. She felt a pulsing throb that prickled pain; a warning against moving her right leg. She was sleeping on a sagging bed, covered in blankets and furs, yet hardly warm for all of that. Someone moved beside her, mumbled something reassuring, and pressed a cool, wet rag against Jhan’s parched lips. She sucked at it greedily. When it was replaced by the rough edge of a cup, she drank something warm and acidic. Tea, she decided, before pulling the cover of sleep over her again.

“Jhan?”
Jhan opened her eyes to indigo skies once more. Someone was touching her face, flesh as solid and as warm as her own. It traced her cheek and then smoothed back her tumbled hair from her eyes. Jhan turned her head and saw Kile sitting beside her, face creased in longing and concern.
“Oh, my love!” Jhan sobbed and reached up to pull him into her arms. He came eagerly and they clung to each other like lost children, both of them weeping. Jhan pulled at his shirt, opening it and sliding inside to press herself against his skin. She clasped her arms about his great body. “I don’t care if this is real or not! I want to stay here with you forever!”
Kile tilted her chin up and kissed her lips, drew them into his mouth, and tasted her like a fine wine. His blue eyes were wet with tears and his square jawed face was clenched with emotion. His big hands moved over her, touching her tenderly, as if he needed to reassure himself of every inch of her.
“Jaross is beginning to doubt again,” Kile told Jhan breathlessly. “When we both saw you, he said it was a moment of shared madness. He wants to return to Pekarin. The mountains are very harsh and full of snow. He’s right that we will certainly lose our lives if we try and cross the higher peaks. I don’t care. I’ll go alone. This has to be real. Has to.”
Kile sat up and pulled Jhan across his lap so that she straddled him. He began tugging at the buttons of her cloak with one hand while his other pushed the hood back. His eyes never left hers, intense and full of his need for her, but the more clothing he took off the more there seemed to be. Finally, he took a harsh breath in confusion.
Jhan touched her clothing and felt how insubstantial they were. Her mind was creating the clothes and she knew why. Kelmus wasn’t dead within her yet and Kile’s strength and urgency, pressing hard between her legs, was frightening her. A dream could turn into a nightmare all too easily.
“My love,” Jhan sobbed in apology and burrowed against his chest to hide from his disappointment.
Kile recovered himself at once, held her lightly, and simply caressed her gently, saying, “I’m sorry. You’re frightened. I know better than to go so quickly. It’s just that it’s been so long. There might not be another chance. I might die in the mountains! Please let me be with you, Little Lady. If I never see you again, at least let my heart die happy.”
Jhan listened to that beating heart and found reassurance in it. Dream or not, madness or sanity, this was the man she trusted and loved above all else. She couldn’t feel the same need that was consuming him, but she could long to hold him, to have him as close as she possibly could. To let go of her fear and to allow him what he needed could satisfy both of their desires. She told herself that she had the power to make this a happy dream.
Jhan’s clothes were gone in an instant. Kile was all amazement, big hands cupping her small breasts and head lowering to taste them. Jhan shivered, cradling his head while her fingers tangled in his golden curls. He was so very strong and so very large next to her, like a great redwood tree next to a tender sapling, yet he was so gentle, moving carefully. His tongue traced a line to her naval, and then farther below that, to do an intricate dance while his lips teased that counterfeit part of her; tingling flesh that was so like a woman’s and, yet, not.
Jhan lay on her back and watched the purple clouds float over head while she marveled at the soft sensations that made her sigh in delight. Her skin didn’t feel like skin. Kile’s touch was more warmth and tingling pressure than the calloused caresses she was used to. He didn’t stir up the overwhelming sensations in her, instead, everything had a soft edge to it, a faint hint of unreality intertwined with a sense that it was very real and very present. There was nothing to make Jhan afraid. In this place, nothing could hurt her.
Kile was a simple man, a warrior with a forthright, abrupt personality that never dallied on fantasy or conjecture. His needs, sexual and emotional, sprang from the same bedrock. He was making love to her, not simply satisfying his strong urges. To him they were one in the same, neither to be denied.
Jhan sat up and pulled at the buckle of Kile’s pants, smiling and feeling unfettered by all of her troubles and emotional distress. She wanted to give, wanted to experience again something other than misery. Kile was right. There might never be another chance, waking or sleeping, mad or sane.
Kile was surprised and then eager. Jhan had never been one to initiate anything sexual. He kissed her deeply and then leaned back to let her do what she wanted. A lion, Jhan thought, as she made him toss back his head with a groan of pleasure, the indigo sun making his gold curls flash and sparkle oddly colored. She used her tongue, her lips, her hands, undressing him and throwing his clothes to the four winds until he was as naked as she was.
Kile was painfully aroused, a tower of a man straining to hold himself in check, to wait, not to frighten, and to make the moment last as long as possible. Jhan climbed onto him, pushing him back into the grass. He smiled into her eyes and then groaned and closed them as Jhan carefully brought them together.
Jhan waited, breathless, but there wasn’t the usual pain, the usual, dangerous feeling of doing something her body wasn’t meant to. This was like sinking into a steaming tub of water, a relaxing, throbbing pleasure that sang through her. They weren’t joined simply physically either. Kile was inside of her mentally as well, a meshing of emotions. Kile’s mind was extremely male, and Jhan felt the startling realization by him, and a strong sense of relief, that Jhan’s mind was totally female.
Kile rolled, and his needs became overwhelming, urgent. Jhan knew this part of him all too well, and had often been frightened by it, but now, through their intertwined minds, she was experiencing it as if it were a part of her too. It was animal, a mounting, rutting, instinctive thing, that caused Kile, and now Jhan, to forget everything, but the need to thrust as deep as possible and to end the pressure building up in Kile’s body. When his orgasm exploded through them both, Jhan cried out as the sky whirled and shot with flashing lights.
They lay together afterward, Jhan cradled in the curve of Kile’s arm. “This is a beautiful place,” Kile sighed. “A dream I hope I never forget.”
Jhan turned and pressed against him, her hand playing idly along his leg and then deliciously in a place that made him groan for respite. She relented, but moved to lay on his chest, looking into his face, suddenly serious. “I remember... Kile, do you still consider me a man?”
Kile’s face went closed like a clam shutting. His golden brows drew down. “Why can’t you ever be quiet?” he demanded. “It was perfect.”
“Except for that,” Jhan persisted. “We shouldn’t keep secrets, Kile, and this place is as good as any to air them. If it is our last moment together, real or otherwise, we should know each other’s heart, fully.”
“You are a man,” Kile admitted slowly, fearing Jhan’s temper. “That’s something that can’t be denied. Your mind though, I felt it, I know that- This is all confusing to me. I don’t even have words to describe it, but I know that you are a woman inside, just as you’ve always said. Experiencing that, and the-the physical closeness, It would be easy to forget the truth. It seems madness to persist in it, but despite everything, you were still born a Prince of Karana.”
“You’re ashamed of being with me.”
“No!” Kile was taking Jhan into his arms again, cradling her close. “No, never that! I came to grips with being with you long ago, but there’s still a gut feeling inside me that knows I’m not a thekling. It tells me that what I’m doing is wrong and it doesn’t know what I’m doing with you.” Kile’s eyes were intense as he weighted each word with emotion, “My heart knows why I’m with you, Jhan. I’m not a man of words, just actions. Surely you can see that I love you and that I only want you no matter what you are and no matter what my guts try to tell me?”
“No matter what I am?” Jhan stiffened, bitter.
“Jhan,” Kile searched for words to calm her, but then said in defeat, “I think you’re the one that can’t accept what you are.”
“I can’t. It isn’t what I really am, Kile!” Jhan exclaimed, a clenched fist striking her breast.
“But it IS what you are,” Kile insisted tenderly and kissed her scowling forehead. “You’re a woman in almost every way that I can see, but you’re also Jhanian Kevelt, a man. You will never be able to escape that fact. I’ve accepted it. You must learn to stop being so angry with it and accept it too. Remember that I fell in love with you long before you were changed.”
“Typical,” Jhan sighed and let herself relax against him again.
“Typical?” Kile repeated.
“That I should waste our last moments arguing with you.”
“I knew about your temper too when I fell in love with you,” Kile chuckled. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
They lay there while the indigo sun began to set and they watched it glitter across the lake. When Jhan felt herself fading, Kile’s arms beginning to seem as insubstantial as mist, she heard him call out to her, angry, grief stricken, and determined. “I will find you, Jhan! I will! I swear it!”

“Is the pain bad?”
Jhan realized that she was staring up at the rafters of some house and that tears were slowly trailing down the sides of her face. She blinked, narrowed her eyes to focus, and slowly turned her head. Her neck felt stiff, her skin crusted with salt and dirt. Her mouth felt like a bad tasting, parched desert. She tried to swallow and then coughed dryly. The sharp movement jarred her leg and she felt an acute slice of pain travel all the way from her ankle to her groin. She gasped, choked, and then settled back with her eyes closed, trying to breathe deeply until the pain stopped.
“Foolish question.” The voice belonged to Sael. He sounded tired, strained, and impatient. “Don’t go back to sleep,” he continued warningly. “My Lord Obahn’s patience has worn out with the storm.”
Jhan opened her eyes and turned her head again. Sael was sitting beside her in the bed with the blankets pulled over them both. Jhan digested this information slowly, mind working as if it were a rusty machine. Skin was touching hers. Bare skin. Sael’s leg, she realized, and it was an effort not to draw away and jar her leg again.
Sael’s face was free of its scarf and his black hair was loose over his shoulders. He was naked, pale torso crisscrossed with scars and a bruise or two. A silver necklace glittered about his neck, simple, yet fine, and a silver bracelet, with a carving of a diving bird, adorned one wrist. His cool, broad fingered hand, touched Jhan’s forehead. “The fever has broken. That’s something.”
Sael slid from the bed, a rude affair of covered evergreen boughs, and ducked under the hide that hung from the rafters. The hide was shielding the bed from the rest of the room, giving Jhan welcome privacy as she tried to collect her strength and come fully awake.
“She’s awake?” It was Ahlen’s anxious voice, “Thank Scherial... and you as well, Sael. You are a remarkable healer.”
“Give her quiet,” Sael commanded, as if stopping Ahlen from approaching the bed. “She seems disoriented.”
Sael returned through the hide with a bowl of hot meat, in a thick sauce, and a cup of an herbal tea. He balanced awkwardly as he climbed onto the low bed, sat down, and pulled the blankets over him. He was wearing a twisted loincloth, Jhan had seen, but it still wasn’t enough to calm her rising trepidation.
Sael’s eyes were nervous, as if he didn’t dare meet Jhan’s eyes. “For warmth,” he explained as if reading her thoughts, and then, in tight, disjointed sentences, “We took shelter in this old shack when a storm came rushing down the mountains. We’ve been here three days. There are so many holes and the fireplace is broken. You needed more warmth than the braziers and even the demon Tagara could give this place. Body warmth is best.”
“My leg...” Jhan whispered through her cracked lips.
Sael frowned and gave a small shrug. “At first, I thought there was little hope. After I cleaned it off, I saw that it wasn’t shattered as I had thought. In fact,” he paused as if he could hardly believe his own words, “I was able to pull the bones back together easily despite the fact that you have more of them than a normal man- woman,’ he corrected himself hurriedly. “I strapped your ankle and cut splints. A month, maybe, will see it right.”
Sael gestured with the cup and the bowl. “You need to eat and to drink. There are herbs in the drink that will ease the pain.”
Jhan felt too weak to sit up. Sael put the cup and bowl aside and lifted her up against his chest. He felt wiry and hard, his ribs as sharp as a washboard. Reaching around, he put the cup to Jhan’s lips. She drank, as helpless as a baby, and ate when he spoon fed her. Her leg flashed and pulsed pain the entire time and Jhan caught herself breathing hard, every breath punctuated by a small, pitiful gasp.
Sael put the empty cup and bowl aside and gently lay Jhan down again. His hair brushed her face as he arranged a pillow of knotted clothing under her head. His hair was silky, but smelled of too many campfires and the wild air. He stretched out under the blankets beside her, propped up on one elbow.
“You must be getting better,” Sael observed. “You’re glaring.” He lay on his back and idly twisted a curl of his hair around one finger. It seemed such a feminine gesture. His black eyes, staring pensively at the ceiling, were vulnerable.
“Did you make me your wife while I slept?” Jhan whispered harshly, “or did you find that I wasn’t as much like a man as you had hoped?”
Sael’s finger paused in mid twist and then he released his hair and rolled onto his elbow again, looking fierce and speaking hardly above a whisper. “Would you rather be keshuning in the dirt with those travelers we passed on the trail? I thought that, next to that, being a wife to an Ekhal would not seem so terrible a thing.”
“Am I your wife?” Jhan seethed, just as quiet.
Sael’s eyes hooded uncomfortably. “No, and I wouldn’t shout that too loudly. No one but you and I know it.”
“Obahn knows it,” Jhan contradicted him. “He knows you.”
“He’ll guess. He’ll suspect. Unless he wants to challenge me openly, he won’t say anything,” Sael muttered. “He’d rather have a Bhakali with a wife, any kind of wife, when he approaches Tsarianna, the Sun God, instead of an Ekhal oathed to him.”
“Do you really know what he wants?” Jhan demanded.
“Do you?” Sael shot back.
Jhan lost the strength to argue further. She sank into the evergreen boughs and let the pine scent ease her tension. She felt his skin touching hers again. She almost jerked away and then sighed irritably. “I suppose I can stop being afraid of you now.”
Sael didn’t say anything and Jhan felt alarmed again as she looked at him. Sael was chewing on his bottom lip. He worried it for a long moment and then said candidly, “I wasn’t inability that kept me from keshuning with you.”
“What are you saying?”
Sael was staring hard at his bracelet, turning it around and around his wrist. “You smell awful. There isn’t enough water to bathe. Everyone in this place stinks.”
Jhan blinked. “Are you saying that I stink too badly to be desirable?”
Sael’s shoulder twitched, a nervous shrug. “You don’t smell like a woman.”
“I don’t understand.”
Sael picked through his words, searching for the right explanation. “I’ve always been attracted to men, not only because of their appearance, but because of some scent, some part of them, that can’t be seen, that calls to me and tells me that I ‘want’ them. No woman has ever had that for me. In you, I can sense it. There is something left of the man you use to be. It attracts me. It has been very hard not to give in to that desire. You are my wife. It is my right-”
Jhan felt herself go cold and wary. “Why didn’t you?”
Sael was confused. He stopped his agitated motions and pulled the blanket up tight around him as he sat up and leaned close. “I thought, being Ikhil, that you were neither man nor woman, but my senses tell me the truth about you. I may call you my Lady all you wish, but the fact is that Jhan Dor never was one. Calling you my wife is a sham and a breaking of my oath. I may only keshun with one man, Obahn. That is the Ekhal oath. This will only be an act for us. I refuse to dishonor myself to save your life.”
Jhan let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. “Good, I wouldn’t want you too either. Now, get out of bed. I don’t need you here any more.”
“I am your husband until Obahn finds out otherwise,” Sael told her. “I must sleep in your bed as Zerain sleeps in Obahn's."
Jhan bit back any more protests, knowing that they would be useless. “Then at least go to the other end of the bed. I don’t want you touching me.”
Sael gave her an angry glare. “You’ve been asleep for days. I have been cleaning your messes and forcing water and broth between your teeth. We both reek of sickness. You owe me more than your distrust."
“I thought that you didn’t want thanks from me,” Jhan growled back, but then marginally relented. “I’m sorry. I can’t be glad, only bitter. Even finding myself alive doesn’t cheer me much. I do owe you my thanks, Sael, and a debt, I suppose, for saving me from Obahn’s schemes, but don’t expect me to be something I’m not. Keep remembering the dream you over heard when we sat under that mountain. It’s always with me. This journey is just a continuation of it.”
Sael had gone pale at the mention of that nightmare and he nodded stiffly, turning away. “Obahn will ride at dawn. I hope that you will be strong enough to ride with us. I can only help you so much, even though you are my wife. If there is a choice, my oath is clear. My place is at Obahn’s side.”
“You didn’t need to tell me that,” Jhan replied. “I didn’t expect anything else.”

The morning was bright and clear. The cracked windows of the house let in the light and Jhan blinked against it as Sael took down the hide curtain, wrapping it into a bundle before dropping it by Zerain. He helped Jhan dress, keeping his touches as light and as non-evasive as he could, and brought her the meat in dried herbs that Zerain had cooked.
Jhan sat up, feeling dizzy, as she balanced her meal in her lap. She winced at the dragging throb of her leg, bound awkward and stiff before her. The leg of her pants had been cut short of it, but the wrappings of cloth kept it from getting cold. Sael had worked on three pairs of socks, not bothering to attempt putting her boot onto her swollen foot. It looked weather proof, but the straight sticks that Sael had used as splints weren’t proof against pain.
Sael dressed himself, wrapping his scarf about his face, and left Jhan to go outside and saddle the beasts. Ahlen was coming in from having taken care of the baku. He sat near Jhan to eat his own breakfast, but didn’t speak, his eyes down cast as if in guilt.
Obahn was pulling on his boots, balancing easily from one foot to the other. He was staring straight at Jhan, eyes critical and appraising of her condition. Jhan knew that she was pale and bruised around the eyes. She felt drained and as fragile as a dried leaf. Still, she met Obahn’s eyes steadily. He approved of it and nodded to her before stamping out of the old house.
Minyah was stretched out by the brazier, a contended smile on his face as his fur was idly scratched by his brother Togo. Jhan studied them both from under her eyelashes as she ate. She was still disturbed by Togo and Tagara’s transformations and she couldn’t help the shiver that went through her. Minyah was looking as alien as Ixien, but Togo was looking even more normal than usual. His clothes had acquired a film of dirt and his white- blonde hair was tangled and uncombed. He still smiled easily though, and his brown eyes looked at everyone as if he couldn’t get enough of their humanity.
Tagara and Ixien were conspicuously absent. Since the sun was out, Jhan surmised that they were already outside, Ixien drinking in the light. Jhan had never trusted Ixien and it seemed that Tagara had gravitated towards him immediately. Jhan wondered what Ixien could hope to gain from her. Jhan knew that he never did anything unless it was a part of his quest to reach the Sun God. He had discarded Jhan and Ahlen when he had found the more powerful Obahn. Was he now going to cast Obahn aside for the, obviously, more powerful Children of Selaya?
Zerain, in her long veil, was a solid presence at their center, doing her duties with her usual quiet competence. Ahlen’s eyes were on her as he slowly ate one mouthful after another of his breakfast.
Jhan knew that tenseness of a man’s body too well. It brought her out of her thoughts and she spoke cruelly under her breath to drive Ahlen away, “Seen under her scarf yet?”
Ahlen’s head whipped about and his face turned a stark red. “No,” he said just as softly.
“She must take it off sometime,” Jhan surmised. “Maybe, when she and Obahn, you know, keshun together.”
Jhan had hit a nerve. Ahlen’s jaw clenched. “That isn’t my business.”
“They make it everyone’s business when they just do it where anyone can-”
“How is your leg?” Ahlen bit out abruptly, raising his voice as if he were making idle conversation.
Jhan simmered. Ahlen wasn’t going to allow her to make him angry. His guilt was stronger than his desire for Obahn’s wife. “I don’t know why you always ask me how I am. It’s stupid. I’m obviously not all right."
“Has Sael taken good care of you?”
Jhan was puzzled by this new topic. She searched Ahlen’s face, but saw nothing but concern for her. “Why?”
“He wouldn’t let anyone near you,” Ahlen explained tersely. “He said that you were his wife and that it was against custom for anyone but himself to concern themselves with you. When I protested, he asked if I was challenging him for you.”
“I’m not his wife,” Jhan replied without thinking. She put her empty bowl aside and considered getting up.
“He says that you are,” Ahlen’s voice was heavy with innuendo and Jhan had a hard time not shouting back another denial. “I would have challenged him, if I thought that I could have won,” Ahlen told her miserably, but then conceded, “Maybe its better this way, Jhan. Sael will keep you safer than I could have and, since he is a thekling and you are... what you are, it isn’t a bad match.”
“Look at me,” Jhan demanded in a chill voice. Ahlen did, wide eyed and innocent. “What do you see? What do you see that you can so easily dismiss everything that I am? Why can’t you see how I’m hurting? Don’t you realize how degrading and humiliating this is for me? What would you think if I told you that you had to marry Sael? How would you feel if Sael was allowed to do whatever he pleased to you? Would you nod and thank me when I told you that it was a good match?”
Ahlen blinked, startled. “No,” he replied slowly and then, earnestly, “Is it the same? You want to be a woman, but women don’t choose Jhan. You confuse me, or maybe you’re the one who’s confused about your place? Sael seems kind to you and caring, as far as I have witnessed. I thought, as I said before, that you are both not whole men. What other arrangement could you hope for that would be better?”
“The one with my first husband,” Jhan replied, her heart aching.
“You may never be able to return home.” Ahlen was blunt in his innocence. “I don’t think that you’ll ever get back over the mountains without dying.”
Jhan reached down with one hand and closed it about Ahlen’s wind pipe, her muscles tensing like a vice. His eyes rolled up at her and his face turned red as his air was suddenly cut off. Jhan let him struggle, knowing that he was too panicked to strike out at her or to realize that she was too weak to hold him for long.
“I told you once,” Jhan seethed, face trembling and dark with her fury, “that if I ever thought that I would not be able to return to my husband, that I would kill you, Ahlen Kantori. Are you trying to convince me that my worst fear is true, or are you just so glad that Sael is going to be ignoring you now for me, that you’re babbling nonsense?”
Jhan released Ahlen and he gasped, rubbing at his neck in sick fear and relief. “Nonsense,” he managed to croak as he scrambled away and bolted through the door of the house.
“He’s just a boy,” Zerain said disapprovingly as she began packing. “He doesn’t know how hard life can be yet.”
“I don’t understand,” Togo piped up. He stood, facing Jhan in puzzlement, Minyah stretching like a great dog beside him. “Why did you hurt your companion?”
“I didn’t hurt him... much,” Jhan replied angrily. “Ahlen just doesn’t know when to leave me alone, that’s all. Besides, he’s not my companion, he’s my kidnapper. I didn’t come on this journey willingly.”
Togo became instantly concerned, his voice heavy with disbelief and dawning trepidation. “Was Ahlen the one who emasculated you? I thought him a boy, almost as naive as myself. I never thought-”
“No, he didn’t do it,” Jhan interrupted coolly, not wanting to talk about it, but Togo was too curious to let the matter drop.
“I am relieved, but, who did do it?” Togo persisted. “Was it someone else in this company? Why was it done? Why did Ahlen kidnap you? Where is he taking you? Why are you with these others and why are they all going to this sun deity? Was it Sael who emasculated you? If so, why, and why mate with you when you are obviously not able to breed- None of it makes any sense!”
“Now you’re sounding like Ixien,” Jhan retorted with a sharp shake of her head and a sharper edge to her voice. “I’m tired of explaining. Go out and ask Ahlen. He likes to talk. Maybe you can trade your stupidity back and forth and leave me alone!”
Togo flinched, realizing at last that his questions had been hurting Jhan. He began to apologize, but then fell silent at the hollow eyed look she gave him. As if deciding to take her advice, he quietly left the house, taking a puzzled Minyah with him.
Jhan glared at the rickety, closed door for some time and then tried once again to gather the courage to try and stand. Zerain for her part, glanced at the empty room and then took off her veil.
She was handsome, Jhan thought, but not beautiful. Her face was too high boned and arrogant for that. Her black eyes were sharp under level brows and her nose was so long and narrow that she appeared to be looking down it. Her hair was pulled tight from a widow’s peak and bound with a red scarf. Gold glittered in her ears, highlighted by her olive skin and her long, slender neck.
“We are of one lodge now,” Zerain explained at Jhan’s look. “Sael is oathed to Obahn and you are now his ‘wife’. “ Her tone was mocking, her concession empty formality. She didn’t need to say that she knew that their marriage was a sham or that she felt disgusted by it.
Zerain cleaned her face and redid her hair, pulling it back and braiding it even tighter. That done, she replaced her scarf and pinned it in place. Returned to blankness, she lost the bit of humanity her features had given her. Jhan forgot everything she had been about to say amidst a sudden revelation about herself. Zerain’s veil made it easy to dismiss her, to ignore her, and to think of her as only an extension of Obahn; their cook and general housekeeper. Jhan wondered if her strangeness, her mutilation, and her diminutive stature had the same effect on Ahlen and everyone else. Were all of these things her veil, her cover over her humanity? Did it make everyone blind to her, making it easy to treat her badly?
“No,” Jhan said aloud, scowling in anguish. “I won’t think that! It isn’t my fault!”
“What?” Zerain gave her that red wall and Jhan imagined the face behind it, arrogant and judgmental.
“Why do you hate me?” Jhan burst out.
“Hate you?” Zerain sniffed. “I don’t bother with thinking about you that much.”
“You do!” Jhan shot back, hands clenched. “You try and treat me as badly as they do!”
Zerain gave a small shrug. “You fight against your place. It makes the journey disruptive and harder than it must be for my Lord. With demons along, and an Ekhal to contend with, I dislike you for adding to Obahn’s burdens."
”What do you consider my place?” Jhan wondered angrily.
“You are Ikhil,” Zerain sounded as if it were obvious. “Even more than an Ekhal, you are for men’s pleasure and nothing more. You can’t have a lodge or a wife. You can’t have children. You can’t be a warrior, though you have managed to train to be one against custom. You are less than nothing. A woman’s place is by her husband, holding his lodge and ruling for him there. We raise his children and we give him what pleasure he needs. Since you can’t do any of those things, but one, you must do that one thing and stop battling against it. Be Sael’s wife, if it please him and Obahn! Lay on your back and do what an Ikhil can to please. Stop fighting your place!”
“So that Obahn will stop looking at me, is what you really mean, isn’t it?” Jhan cut to the heart of the matter. “You and Ahlen are too much alike.”
“If you are done?” Sael came to the bed, startling them both with his sudden appearance. He took hold of Jhan’s elbow, berating her angrily, “Save your strength for the ride.” and then at Zerain. “You have duties, Obahn’s wife!”
Zerain took up a bag and left the house with a tilted veil that conveyed her insolence perfectly. Sael’s face, wrapped in red scarves and glinting with charms and pins, seemed distant and impatient.
“Don’t make an enemy out of Zerain,” Sael warned.
“Too late, I already have,” Jhan replied bitterly. “I don’t get to make any decisions, remember? Even about that.”
Sael gritted his teeth as he held up a flask, deciding to ignore her. “Put this inside of your cloak to keep it from freezing. It’s herbs and berries in a strong drink. One will help you heal and the other will dull the pain. Use it sparingly. I couldn’t find much in this weather.”
Jhan slipped the cord over her neck and placed the leather flask against her skin. It was cold and she shivered. Her mumbled ‘thank you’ was sullen and bordering on disingenuous.
Sael went hard and his words were harsh; a warning. “I have helped you because you saved my life and because I am a fool sometimes. It must end here. I must remember why I am on this journey. I will allow you to shelter in my protection as my wife, but you must play the part in all seriousness or it will not work. You must stay quiet and modest. You must not speak with other men. I won’t ask you to cover your face, but you must understand that you are mine and that what you do reflects on my honor. Obahn will expect me to punish you if you don’t do all of these things. If I fail to keep you in order, he can command that I send you back to our people.”
“Alone,” Jhan guessed caustically.
“Of course.”
“And if he finds out that we haven’t really been consummated?"
“He knows, I told you,” Sael’s tone became sharp, impatient.
“He ignores it,” Jhan persisted.
“Yes.”
Jhan glared. “Then why would he care whether I was a dutiful wife or not? It’s interesting how everyone deludes themselves to make things easier for themselves. Ahlen did it, Zerain, and now you. I hate to disappoint all of you, but I intend to be , not just a bump in the road, but a boulder; A boulder that may grow so large, that you’ll never be able to ignore me!”
“You won’t be ignored,” Sael agreed, “just left behind.”
“Have you seen Zerain’s face?” Jhan wondered suddenly.
Sael scowled, bewildered. “What has that-”
“Have you?”
“No.”
“She just showed it to me,” Jhan told him.
“Why would she-”
“To make a point,” Jhan cut him off again. “She wanted to show me that she was everything that I wasn’t. She was threatening me with her womanhood. A challenge. Your challenging me now too, trying to threaten me with your manhood. Both of you want me to lay down, spread my legs, and shut up, but for different reasons. Well, neither of you are going to succeed. Say all you want. Threaten all you want. I’m not going to let you take my humanity away. I’m going to confront you with it and make you realize that you’re actually hurting someone by your decisions!”
“I told you,” Sael threatened once more, “if you make trouble, Obahn will leave you behind.”
Sael’s face was as red as his scarf. Jhan was hollow eyed, but determined as she replied, “Then let him. I may be powerless and very weak, but I’m still a person. It’s all I have left!”
“I hope it will comfort you when you are left in the wilderness!”
Jhan glared, defiant. “Maybe that would be better than having you for a ‘husband’.”
Jhan had gone too far and she discovered it instantly. Sael uttered a furious, unintelligible growl as he jerked Jhan to her feet without any regard to her injury. When Jhan screamed out in pain and collapsed, Sael kept her from hitting the floor. His grip didn’t loosen and he wasn’t contrite as he hauled her away from the bed and out of the house.
Sael mostly carried Jhan to keep her leg off of the ground, but the pain was still unbearable and her head swam, darkness pricking at the corners of her eyes. She choked on her screams of pain, but bit back any cry of protest, knowing that, in Sael’s mood, it would go unheard.
“Sael!” Ahlen came forward to help, angry and accusing. “What are you doing? Stop treating Jhan that way! Have you gone mad?”
Sael freed one arm long enough to shove Ahlen violently away, face growing whitely furious as he measured out each word. “I asked it before and I will ask it once again. Are you challenging me for my wife, Ahlen Kantori?”
Ahlen backed away fearfully, but his eyes were on Jhan as he touched the bruise on his throat. “Why let him do this?” he demanded of her. “You can so easily stop it.”
Obahn, on his imala, was alert for the answer as well. Jhan ignored them, not having any choice but to go along as Sael forced her to her baku and put her in the saddle. He pressed her knee with his hand, his dark eyes demanding that she be reasonable. Jhan ignored him and set her chin away from all of them
Jhan couldn’t tell them that she was too much of a coward to fight. She would when she knew nothing would happen in return, as with Ahlen, but to defy Sael or Obahn meant something else. They were warriors used to shedding blood for any reason. If she tried to stop them, she might win, momentarily, but then, she knew, she would have to kill them both or they would kill her. It was something Ahlen was still too naive to understand. Zerain knew and she nodded, once, in approval, as if Jhan had decided to do as Zerain wanted, and to cease making her husband’s journey difficult.
Obahn grunted his disappointment, shrugging in disgust as he began riding down the trail. Togo turned into his air born form and floated ahead of him. Minyah loped on all fours behind. Tagara and Ixien were both seated on the pack baku. It flapped ears in annoyance at the double weight, but the two were deep in talk as if nothing existed in the world but them.
Jhan urged her baku forward. Ahlen rode on one side while Sael rode on the other. Zerain stayed with them for only a moment and then trotted up ahead to be by her husband. Jhan was glad. It was hard enough to deal with one veiled person, let alone two.
It wasn’t long before Jhan found it necessary to drink from the flask. The liquid was biting, minty to a nauseating degree, and had an under hint of berry. She made a face, coughing as she capped the flask and put it back under her clothes. Jhan counted the minutes until the shooting pain of her leg receded to an aching throb that was only slightly more bearable. The world receded along with the pain, fading into a white haze as if a mist had settled over the land. The reins fell from Jhan’s suddenly slack hand and the baku obediently stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Ahlen’s voice echoed and almost didn’t make any sense to Jhan. “Something’s wrong with Jhan! If you’ve hurt her, you despicable pervert, I WILL challenge you!”
“Bravery at last, but not necessary," Sael replied irritably. “It’s a drug to dull the pain.” He took the reins of Jhan’s baku and made a tisk noise to get the beast moving again. “She took too much. She didn’t give me a chance to explain the proper dose.”
“Stop talking as if I weren’t here!” Jhan grumbled, but her words didn’t come out right and they ignored her, talking heatedly across her. Their words pulsed and echoed like her pain and she couldn’t follow the thread of their meaning. At last, she gave up and simply tried to stay in the saddle.

CHAPTER FOUR
(Breath of the Dead)
They rode through the bog, frozen and half frozen water mixed with the muddy peat. The beasts’s hooves made tiresome smacking noises with every step and the tree branches hung low and bare, obstacles to constantly duck and avoid. The drug wore off, and Jhan rationed herself to only occasional sips when the pain became too much to bear another moment. That was more than she liked, but she didn’t think that she could have kept on riding otherwise.
The weather stayed barely above freezing, a bright sun mocking them with promised warmth that never came. Sael wrapped a blanket around Jhan when he saw her shivering and helped her put on her gloves when her fingers wouldn’t curl about the pommel of the saddle any longer. His help was automatic and impatient. Jhan could see his tense regard of the trees all around them and his silent wish to be doing anything but taking care of her. Ahlen was the direct opposite, longing to help, but constrained by Sael’s sharp warnings.
There were tumbled stones half hidden among the trees and sunken deep in the bog. Jhan’s eyes passed them by for a time, thinking that they were just rocky outcroppings. When they passed closer to one, she saw then that it was the broken wall of some fortress, the bare bones of the rest hidden in winter frosted vines. When they came on a great, stone floor, still above the muck and shielded from the cold wind by one stubborn wall, Obahn decided to make camp.
There wasn’t enough level foundation for the tent. Jhan huddled miserably in the open, a chill breeze fingering through all of her clothes, until Zerain lit the braziers and stretched out the furs and blankets. Then Jhan settled close to the fire, with Sael’s help, and tried to keep from moaning until the stabbing pains of her leg receded.
Ixien curled up and went to sleep. Tagara paced, a glowing, red nimbus all about her. She seemed lost in thought. Again, Jhan wondered what she and Ixien had talked about. She couldn’t imagine the Caefu falling in love or even becoming infatuated by Tagara. He was too cold a being and seemed far removed from such Human traits.
Tagara didn’t act as innocent as Togo and Minyah, but was she smart enough not to be used by Ixien? Jhan almost considered warning her, but then held her tongue. She didn’t know anything, only suspected, and she didn’t really know Tagara. Perhaps she and Ixien were two of a kind, remote, cold, and maybe not above commiserating on a plan that didn’t include the rest of them. If they were planning on leaving on their own, Jhan wasn’t about to dissuade them. She wished all of them would go, in fact, leaving her with only Ahlen again; a man so dependent and naive that she didn’t have much fear of him anymore.
Some animal squealed and Jhan saw Minyah come loping into camp with a fat creature dripping blood in his claws. Zerain took it, without comment or surprise, and began carving it up expertly. Minyah sat back on his haunches and licked his fingers clean like a fastidious cat. It nauseated Jhan, and she turned away, only to come face to face with Togo. He was sitting almost touching her, hands outstretched to the flames of the brazier.
“Don’t be afraid of him,” Togo told her gently. “He’s really just a child. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“And you?”
Togo smiled deprecatingly. “I suppose, as abilities go, I have the least of them. Making air move from place to place isn’t much to threaten someone with.”
“How do you- I mean,” Jhan tried to gather her thoughts and frame a question around the inexplicable. “How do you do it?”
Togo tapped his breast. “There is a part of a machine inside of each of us that allows us to form matter and molecules as we wish in respect to our own ability. If you are capable of understanding higher level physics I can attempt to explain-”
“Wait,” Jhan held up a hand and then clenched both of her hands together. “You’re saying that you are able to create wind by using machinery inside of you? Do you change into air when you float?”
“No,” Togo replied. “I form the air around me to lift me up. Tagara can do the same with fire, but Minyah can only travel as you do. Still, he doesn’t do too badly on four feet.”
Jhan felt an easing of tension inside of her. She gave a short, nervous laugh. “I couldn’t explain it, you see. I was beginning to believe in magic.”
“Magic?” Togo was intrigued. “Is that what you call the power you have inside of you? Selaya sensed it in you, but couldn’t explain what it was to us.”
Jhan was confused again. She didn’t want to be. “I want to be logical about this,” Jhan struggled. “I don’t really know what the Power is all about. I’ve been told you have to be born with it, but I wasn’t. The person who mutilated me gave me the ability unintentionally. Most have just bits of it, abilities like yours that deal mainly with one thing. I have an ability that is so limitless that it’s too destructive to even use. That’s why it’s locked up inside of me.”
“Superstition,” Zerain snorted over the meat she was just beginning to grill. “Such things cannot be.”
“I thought so too,” Jhan replied quietly, not wanting the others to hear. Sael and Obahn were dealing with the imala and Ahlen was feeding the baku. “I’ve had to rethink a lot of things, though. My list of what’s possible keeps growing by leaps and bounds. What the Power is, a mental trick to tap into power outside of myself, or something powerful within me, I can’t say. I don’t think I’m ready to call it magic just yet.”
Togo smiled pensively. “It’s good to speak with others after so long isolated in the mountains. Selaya didn’t speak often and my brother and sister could only trade back and forth the same knowledge until it grew stale.” He glanced towards Obahn and Sael. “I see that there are different ways to learn, if we are to be accepted, and skills to learn if we are to survive, but it is good to be free.”
“A custom you should know,” Zerain warned, “is the one of not speaking to and sitting near another man’s wife. I wear a veil for protection, but Sael’s wife is open to shame.”
Togo didn’t understand, as innocent as Ahlen, but he quietly moved himself away. Jhan glared at Zerain. “That wasn’t necessary! You don’t mind speaking to or having men around you and I don’t see Obahn taking offense.”
“No one would dare challenge Obahn for me and he knows it well,” Zerain replied stiffly. “You are another matter. Sael isn’t strong enough, or careful enough, of your honor. If you are shamed, Obahn is shamed as well, since your husband is oathed to him.”
“I don’t care about your customs,” Jhan seethed. “I’ll talk to anyone I want to.”
“And have Sael kill them?” Zerain replied pointedly.
Ahlen had sat down a few feet away, taking out his flute from deep inside a bag. He caressed it gently and smoothed fingers over the holes. He hadn’t played since his private concert for Jhan. Out of guilt? Jhan thought so, but Ahlen seemed to need the comfort enough to forgo it for now. He began to play, low and sweet. Everyone looked around, startled, as he wove a beautiful, haunting tune that floated among the ruins and sounded wholly unearthly in its perfection.
Jhan forgot her anger, and her throbbing leg to listen, remembering a warm house, and a warmer bed, and loving arms around her. Togo had tears in his eyes and Tagara was staring with longing. Minyah was smiling happily, head cocked sideways like an attentive hound. Ixien stood with wide eyes, pale body poised as if he wanted to run into the bog. He looked as unearthly as the music, the moonlight flitting over his glass-like hair. Obahn was crouched with a bundle in his hands, in the process of unloading and checking supplies. He had his eyes half closed, but they glinting yellow in the firelight, and he seemed to be humming to the music under his breath.
“Such a beautiful boy,” Zerain murmured.
Jhan broke from the music, wiping at the tears in her eyes, to see Zerain standing with one hand raised to her veiled face in awe. “Be careful of your honor, Zerain,” Jhan warned mockingly, half choking on her own emotion. Zerain flinched, but turned away, saying nothing.
Sael kneeled by Jhan and began unlacing the bindings around her leg. He alone was unmoved by the music. When he met Jhan’s eyes, he shrugged. “I’ve never been able to hear music as everyone else does. It’s just noise to me, irritating mostly.”
“Tin ear,” Jhan surmised absently.
Sael grunted appreciatively. “Tin ear. I will remember that.”
“My husband-,” Jhan stumbled and choked, trying again. “My husband wasn’t one for music either."
Sael’s eyes turned hard. “I am your husband.”
Jhan lowered her voice, but nobody was listening, too wrapped up in the music. “Keep repeating it all you like, it won’t make it true.”
“Denying it will only reward you with death,’ Sael replied, harsh and unsympathetic. “If that is what you truly wish, I will tell Obahn at once and he can deal with you as he sees fit.”
“Go ahead.”
Sael’s eyes were level on Jhan’s as their wills clashed. When Jhan refused to be intimidated, Sael was the one to back down, shifting his attention to her bared leg to cover his discomfiture. Jhan found herself staring at it as well. The leg was swollen and the skin there was mottled with ugly, dark colors. Touching it gingerly, Sael checked to make certain the bones were still together. Satisfied, he began bandaging it with expert fingers.
“I respect your defense of your honor,” Sael grudgingly said at last, “yet, the battles you choose to fight make little sense to me.”
“Give an inch and you loose a mile,” Jhan replied.
“Such odd sayings,” Sael remarked as he twitched the blankets and furs back over Jhan’s leg. “They sound wise, but you are certainly not. You have only to endure a veil of words to be under my protection, and yet you won’t even bend so far.”
“Would you?”
Sael didn’t even pause to consider. “No, of course not, but then, I wouldn’t have begun such madness in the first place. If someone had made me an Ikhil, I would have killed myself. I wouldn’t have pretended that my life was worth something afterwards or forgotten the man I had been enough to think that I should be a woman.”
“Then you find me... what? Disgusting?”
“No,” Sael replied and he struggled with that. “I’m not sure what I think. You are brave and you saved my life. There is a warrior in you, despite your words, and I owe you this attempt to save your life. I won’t go further, though. I’ve done enough, I think, and you must agree. Now, it is all up to you. I won’t tell Obahn, but you mustn't shame me either. If you don’t wish to accept this arrangement, you must go to Obahn and tell him so.”
“And if I don’t, but I still refuse to do as you say?”
Sael gritted his teeth, looking very disturbed, and then he said evenly, “I know that you have the ability to kill me, but I will be forced to be the man, to be your husband, and to punish you and put you in your place. It isn’t something I relish, but my honor before my Lord, however I feel about Obahn, will force me to it.”
Jhan trembled, but she kept her gaze steady. “Is that what your people think is right; beating up women who don’t do as you say?”
“Everyone has a place, even Ekhal,” Sael replied. “Survival of our people depends on everyone staying in those places. The different, the rebellious, are not tolerated."
“Like you?” Jhan stung him as painful as any wasp. She saw him flinch, as Zerain had flinched, caught out of his thoughts.
“I received my punishment for breaking the laws,” Sael agreed, “My Lord Hagen was taken from me."
“That’s not what I meant-” Jhan began, but she had touched a raw nerve, and Sael had already made it clear that his patience was long gone. In a white fury, Sael struck Jhan, open hand cracking audibly on the side of her face.
Jhan cried out from surprise as much as pain as she was flung sideways by the blow. Her leg was jarred violently against the rough stone of the foundation and her head spun as the pain erupted and whipped through her senses, leaving her moaning and close to unconsciousness. As Sael stood over her, tense and ready to avoid her response, Jhan could only curl up around her pain and try to shield herself with her arms from any more blows.
The music stopped. “Why did you do that!’ Togo was demanding dazedly at the same time that Ahlen began shouting, “What are you doing!”
“My wife forgets her place,” Sael announced loudly, tone warning against anyone interfering as his hand touched his sword hilt.
“I won’t stand by anymore and let you do this to her!” Ahlen’s voice cracked, spoiling his righteous indignation. “I promised Jhan that I wouldn’t let anyone hurt her! I’m going to- I’m not a warrior, but I do challenge-”
“Silence,” Obahn barked as he took hold of Ahlen’s arm in an iron grip. “Sael will only kill you. Jhan Dor is his now and it is well past time for you to call a challenge.”
“I don’t care! I-” Ahlen stopped, panting, his anger, fear, and helplessness clear on his face. He knew that there was nothing he could do. Groaning his frustration, he turned away, back stiff, but shoulders slumped as he hugged his chest as if to comfort himself. Then, without warning, he uttered a strangled cry of rage, whipped back around, and simply charged Sael.
Sael sidestepped him as easily as if it had been a dance step and punched Ahlen full on the chin. Ahlen dropped to the ground like a sack of grain, head lolling and unconscious.
“It seems there is a man in you after all Sael,” Obahn observed with obvious pleasure as he looked down at Ahlen’s unconscious body. “I began to doubt the truthfulness of your marriage when you allowed Jhan to shame you with these other men.”
“I am new to it, that’s all,” Sael replied stiffly, rubbing the knuckles he had skinned on Ahlen’s chin.
“I have found,” Obahn continued, staring pointedly at Jhan, “that keshuning quiets rebellious spirits."
It was an open challenge, Obahn testing Sael. Sael couldn’t ignore it. His honor wouldn’t allow it. He nodded, took up a thick blanket, and hooked a hand around Jhan’s waist. Hauling her up, he carried her as if she were a rag doll.
Going to a shadow covered corner of the foundation, hidden by a tumble of stone from the half fallen walls, Sael threw the blanket onto the cold, filthy, stone floor. Putting Jhan down on top of it, he threw himself on top of her with one hand closing about her injured leg.
“What about your oath?” Jhan managed to hiss through her pain. The world was spinning, a red haze clouding her sight and a roaring beginning in her ears that told her she was about to faint.
Sael leaned down so that his body was pressed hard between Jhan’s legs and his mouth was very close to her ear. “If you speak, I will squeeze my hand. If you persist, I will twist until your leg breaks again.”
With his free hand, Sael pulled her cloak and sweaters aside, laying her breasts bare. He stared at them, milk pale shadows in the moonlight, but stare was all he did as his hand began pulling at her pants next. That hand was warm and fumbling crudely, callouses smarting against Jhan’s sensitive skin like sandpaper. He managed to pull her pants down to her knees without releasing her broken leg; his surety of safety.
“What did you feel like after you were raped by those warriors?”
Sael froze at Jhan’s angry, sobbing question, and then his lips, so close to her ear, bit her viciously in retaliation. Jhan shrieked, short and sharp, before Sael’s free hand slapped over her mouth. Jhan panted against his broad fingers, moaning loud enough for anyone to hear.
“Good,” Sael approved softly.
Sael lay quietly, warm breath against her neck, for some moments. His anger seemed to have passed and Jhan saw, staring up at him in frozen fear, that he was listening to the voices of their companions. Obahn’s rose and fell, punctuated by laughter.
“Sounds as if he gave her a good ride,” Obahn chuckled.
“Are they-?” Ahlen’s voice was almost a squeak.
“What else, Kantori? Are you such a boy?”
Sael was strangely satisfied. He began to rise off of Jhan, as if he were intending to leave her. That motion brought his face very close to her just as he took a deep breath. That breath was followed by another, deeper breath, as if Sael had captured a peculiar scent and was trying to identify it.
Sael’s hand left Jhan’s mouth, but she didn’t say anything, becoming frightened as that hand smoothed along her ear and then grabbed a mound of her hair. Sael brought it close to his flaring nostrils, as if it were intoxicating him somehow. He made some decision then, all in an instant, as he thrust himself back onto her, pushing his weight against her pelvis.
Sael was hard and painful against Jhan. Everything within her shuddered and retreated, absolutely certain that at any moment Sael was going to forget oaths and honor and that she didn’t want to be ‘present’ when it happened. The man was pulling at his clothes. The moonlight shown on Sael’s bare hips and the strong curve of his lower back, as his hot belly pressed against Jhan’s cold skin.
She braced herself, biting her lip and sobbing, as she considered whether another broken leg would be worth it to stop him, but, when Sael began grinding himself against her pelvis, he acted uncertain, as if he weren’t sure he wanted to violate her. He groaned, wild, confused; a long, pent up, lust demanding a consummation he was stubbornly denying it.
It was disgusting, animal, the way Sael was grinding against her. Jhan remembered her dream of Kile. His love. His tenderness. His passion. He was light and love. This was darkness and degradation. Pain and humiliation. When Sael began to kiss Jhan’s bites and then to push his full weight onto her, Jhan knew that he had lost his indecision. She sobbed and braced herself, shutting her eyes tight.
The sudden, tingling pleasure was totally unexpected. “No!” Jhan whispered, horrified, but she groaned at the same time, unable to stop herself from grabbing onto Sael, meeting his movements, as the pleasure surmounted the pain and began to sing through her entire body. It demanded release, consummation of some kind, as it rose to a fevered pitch, almost more than Jhan could bear.
Jhan took hold of Sael’s bare hips, shocking even herself with her need for him to do more. She found herself groaning, ready to plead with him, curse him, overpower him if she had to before the tingling tightening of muscle and nerves killed her. When Sael thrust himself up and away from her, she tried to pull him back, desperate.
Sael retreated, shoving her roughly. “Where is your fear?” Sael panted, but it was obvious that he was the one who was afraid.
Jhan lay back sobbing, arms outstretched and gripping the stone. Slowly, agonizingly, the tingling receded and the shuddering, overwhelming pleasure died an aching death that left Jhan exhausted and feeling dried up and ready to blow away.
Jhan didn’t know how she was able to speak through the throbbing of her blood behind her eyes, but she couldn’t go on another second with Sael thinking that she had willingly... She swallowed and spoke in a brittle voice. “The man who tortured me, made me what I am, liked to see how far he could take me in pain and humiliation. There are pleasures a body wants that you can’t deny it even if it kills you. He made me feel that kind of pleasure. It is beyond my control even when I hate- despise-even when I'm being raped!” Jhan collapsed in tears, her hands coming up to hide her face.
Sael was silent for some time and then he uttered one, explosive curse under his breath and said haltingly, “There is something about you; a scent that I can’t describe. That scent made me lose control. I only wanted to pretend, to make Obahn think that we were keshuning. I needed you to moan and to cry out to make him believe.” Sael looked down at himself and then pulled at the blanket to clean himself on it in disgust. “I reacted like a green boy. I’ve never done such a thing before. I don’t know if this has saved my honor or imperiled it more.”
Sael pulled up his pants and belted them before continuing, his hands shaking, “I didn’t want to use you that way, but you didn’t leave me any choice. Obahn challenged me to be a man.”
“And are you?” Jhan lashed back vehemently.
“Yes, but now he will think he has proof of it.”
Sael stood, looked down at her with a sigh of regret, and then left her there.
Jhan heard Obahn laugh. “Did you quiet her tempers?”
“I did,” Sael grumbled and then, “Tend to her Zerain.”
Jhan didn’t move as she listened to Zerain’s footsteps approach. The woman had a glowing ember to see by and a bowl of food. She paused when she saw Jhan stretched out flat on the ground with her clothes mostly off of her.
“Will you need cloth and water to clean with?” Zerain asked in a voice devoid of compassion.
“Go away,” Jhan breathed and kept her face averted as her tears made warm trails over her freezing cheeks.
“As you will,” Zerain replied stiffly, “but you had best cover up or Sael will have a dead wife come morning.” She started to leave, paused, and then thought better of whatever parting shot she had been about to impart as she walked away again.
Jhan slowly sat up and jerkily pulled her clothes back on. She didn’t know what she would have done if Zerain had said one word more. Her hands were tense for violence. She forced herself to eat the food Zerain had left behind and to pull the blanket up around herself, trying not to think about Sael’s musky scent that was so strongly on it. Common sense begged her to return to the warm brazier, but Jhan couldn’t find the will. She wiped at the tears on her face and leaned her back against the freezing stone wall.
Jhan wanted to hate Sael, but he hadn’t done anything but make her feel humiliated and a puppet for desires she couldn’t control. He hadn’t intended anything other than a lewd play to fool Obahn. Jhan had been the one to turn it into something else. She felt her face burn and she ducked it into the circle of her arms, leaning her forehead against her raised knee. She sat that way for a long hour, trying to gather back the remnants of her self possession with little success.
It was much easier, in the end, to simply lie down on the cold stone and play a macabre game with death. She did everything she could to keep warm and then closed her eyes to wait and see who would be the winner when morning light came. She needed that test; a decision freely made to reassure herself that, in the end, the final decision was still hers.

Jhan awoke, warm and languid. It was still dark. She was on her back, staring up through bare tree limbs at a full moon and wisps of smoke that were making white trails in the air. She sat up, moaning a little at the pain of her leg. She gripped it with her hands, rubbed at the knee, and bent over it until the pain receded to a dull throb. Only then did she look up and see that Tagara was standing very close, eyes on some distant point and seeming deep in thought.
“I could burn him for you,” Tagara suggested without changing her expression as she looked down at Jhan.
“Sael?”
“All of them, if you wish.” Tagara clarified. “They seem little better than animals.”
“Except for Ixien,” Jhan replied.
“Yes, he is different.”
“Not to me.” Jhan pulled the blanket about her even though Tagara’s warmth made it unnecessary. “Or do you think a lack of passion makes someone’s cruelty better somehow?”
“He has not been cruel to me.”
Jhan saw the tense line furrow Tagara’s brow. She knew then that Tagara was feeling lost in this strange land and that Ixien had become a lifeline for her. Jhan decided that she wouldn’t be the one to take that away from her.
“Why did you keep me warm?” Jhan wondered, changing the subject. “How did you know-”
“That one, Sael, he was very cruel to you.” Tagara crouched all in one smooth motion and gave Jhan a disturbing view of her clear eyes. “He treated you better under the mountain. Here, he used you as if you were nothing and then left you to die in the cold.”
“He didn’t leave me,” Jhan found herself defending him, not sure why. “He must have thought that I would have better sense than to stay here and freeze.”
Tagara made a disgusted sound. “They filled their bellies, talked, and then slept without even looking around for you. Only I came to see and to protect you when I found you cold and hardly breathing. You were the one to free Selaya. You are owed more than this.”
“Sael thought that Zerain was taking care of me,” Jhan persisted, suddenly afraid for him. “He’s been protecting me from Obahn, Tagara.”
Tagara was struggling with a great emotion and it was a long moment before Jhan realized that it was fear. Her stiff features trembled. “Are all men in this land like that?”
“Like what?”
“Beasts who seek to chain you to their will?” Tagara demanded.
“I seem to run into more than my share,” Jhan told her bitterly, “but I would like to believe that they are the exception. Customs dictate almost everything in this land, Tagara. The good men have a tough time stepping outside of them. Sael wants to be kind. He wants to help me. So does Ahlen,” she admitted reluctantly, “but they have harsh punishments for not thinking as everyone else does; death being one of them all too often.”
“Ixien isn’t like them,” Tagara stated again with a gleam in her eye.
Jhan fell silent on that point, not wanting to continue. Her pelvis ached and her face felt as if a bruise was on the cheek that Sael had slapped. Abused and humiliated, she wasn’t ready to keep on defending mankind in general to Tagara.
“I thought-” Sael’s worried voice came from the darkness. Tagara straightened and her usually bland expression turned furious as she glowed white hot and turned. Sael exclaimed and Jhan reached out automatically to grab Tagara’s leg in an attempt to stop her from hurting the Ekhal.
Jhan knew her mistake instantly. Her hand felt as if she had reached into an electric arc. Tagara’s heat whipped into Jhan’s flesh, sizzling through her and racing straight to her heart. Death was within a heartbeat. Like an overblown circuit, Jhan’s mind was blasted open, neurons misfiring wildly. Her Power surged against the seams of a failing mental door, parted it a crack, and then carved an agonizing path through Jhan’s veins back towards Tagara.
“No!” Jhan acted without thought, instinct taking over to escape the pain and the imminent destruction she knew was coming. She threw herself backwards into the one solid wall, feeling her head smack the stone sickeningly. Lights shot and mingled with the flaring agony of her mind as darkness took her down into its embrace.

Jhan moaned as consciousness came on her, not as a gentle, slow waking, but as a quick realization that every point in her body was throbbing with pain.
“Back from the dead?”
Jhan opened her eyes. She was lying by a brazier, morning sunlight giving everything a golden glow. Beside her, Sael was rolling a blanket and tying it neatly with leather cords.
“I don’t FEEL like I’m alive,” Jhan’s voice sounded weak in her own ears.
“Dead or alive, I was about to strap you onto your baku.”
“Not even a proper burial?” Jhan wondered caustically.
Sael tucked the blanket roll under his arm, blacks eyes finally looking into Jhan's. Ignoring her bitter humor, he said, “I thank you, once again, for my life. I don’t know why it happened, but I do know that Tagara meant to burn me.”
Memory was a jumble of confusing images for Jhan. She frowned, her head pounding fiercely, as she tried to put it all into some sort of order. “Tagara was taking care of me,” she recalled slowly. “She was angry at you, at all of you, I think, but mostly at you. She thought that I deserved better.”
“I was on watch when I saw her light,” Sael told Jhan, suddenly guilty. “I was trying to be the man with Obahn, I admit, and I didn’t look to see if Zerain had brought you back into camp as I had commanded. When I realized that you might still be where I had left you, and confronted by that demon woman, I hurried to help you. Tagara must have thought-”
Jhan scowled, understanding. “She must have thought that you had come back to force me to my wifely duty again,” she finished for him bitterly. “After your first performance, I would have thought so too.”
Sael lashed back, brutally honest, “I could have had you, then and there, and I didn’t! It wasn’t for lack of desire or ability, that you know well now. I chose not to take my rightful pleasure with you and you should be more grateful to me for it. I have been without for three years, ‘my wife’. It was not an easy thing to accomplish.”
“You must think that matters to me,” Jhan replied as she shakily managed to sit up. Looking about, she finally noticed that everything and everyone was gone, but for the brazier, her blankets, Sael’s imala, and her baku. “Where?” she asked, startled.
“They have already left,” Sael replied impatiently. “Obahn commanded me to stay and deal with you. Since he didn’t specify what should be done, I took the liberty to interpret his meaning as a command to help you recover enough to travel. CAN you travel?”
Jhan looked down at the hand that had grabbed Tagara. It was red, but not burned as she had thought. She turned that hand into a fist and then opened and closed it gingerly, not understanding why it wasn’t charred to the bone.
Sael was looking as well. “Tagara was flung away from you,” he told her. “She screamed and was in pain for some time. She told us that some force had leapt from you and had tried to kill her. She was hysterical until Ixien took her aside and spoke with her. She told us that there was a force within you that rivaled any power that Selaya had possessed.”
Jhan looked within herself, testing her barriers. They were firm and cool to her mental touch. The Power throbbed behind them, but wasn’t in any danger of suddenly escaping. “Tagara generates her heat by electricity, I think. It shook me when I touched her.”
Sael’s face was uncomprehending. Jhan struggled to explain and calm his fear. “Don’t worry about it. It’s something that I can’t ever use consciously. It’s locked up inside of me where even I can’t touch it. Tagara... How can I explain? She gave me such a shock, such a blow to the head, you might say, that it let that lock slip for an instant. It was instant long enough to protect me from getting burned by her, I guess, but not long enough to hurt anyone.”
Sael was still confused. He straightened and stared down at her, clearly agitated. “Again, I find that you are not the weakling you pretend. I want to call you a coward for not using the abilities you so obviously have, but then how would I explain why you risked yourself to save me?” He paused and then asked tentatively, “Why did you save me?”
“You are a crude, barbaric member of a society I never want to get to know,” Jhan told him furiously, “but under all of the degrading things you’ve put me through, even I can see that you’re trying your best, in the only narrow way you can, to help me.”
“Was that an insult or a compliment?” Sael wondered with a scowl.
“A statement of sad truth,” Jhan replied. “Now get me up and on my baku before I faint again.” She glared at him, adding, “or if I’m too far gone, at least give me a good burial.”
“You are a remarkable healer,” Sael replied thoughtfully. “Your broken leg looks set well and the swelling has already gone down. Your head should have been split by that wall, but I found only a small knot on your scalp.” He paused and then went on in a lower voice, “I also found dark bruises where I had pushed against you. It isn’t proper for a husband to harm a wife that way. I ask your forgiveness.”
Jhan saw that Sael was sincere. She didn’t know what to say, hard words poised on her tongue. Finally, she calmed herself enough to be coherent. “Slapping, dragging, and verbal abuse is okay, but hurting me while you’re trying to fake a rape isn’t?”
“Being with one’s wife isn’t rape,” Sael replied stiffly,” but yes, that sort of violence is not lawful among my people. A woman’s ability to bear children might be harmed by such acts.”
Jhan was outraged, but not surprised. “I see. So, it isn’t concern for the violence, but the fact that you might not get any babies because of it. Does that really make some sort of sick sense to you or your people?”
Sael glared and then his jaw tensed as if he were fighting with himself. At last, he reached down and pulled Jhan to her feet. As she leaned unsteadily and unwillingly against him he replied, “Not to me, if you must know. None of my people’s customs has ever made sense to me. That has always been my problem, you see.”
Sael’s grip was firm as he began to help Jhan towards the baku. “I think I do see,” Jhan admitted, feeling her anger seep out of her despite herself. It shouldn’t have. Sael had hurt her enough to fuel it. It was his uncomfortable admission, when he hadn’t needed to say anything, that had won him respite from her condemnation.
Mounting her baku made Jhan’s head spin. She took a sip of the medicine still hanging about her neck, and leaned over the warmth of the beast as she waited for blessed relief from the pain. Sael finished packing and then mounted his imala, taking Jhan’s reins and leading her baku at a quick and less than gentle walk.
“Did you think you were going to die?” Jhan asked suddenly.
Sael looked back at her, puzzled. “When?”
Jhan felt the medicine taking affect. It was loosening her tongue and she wasn’t sure herself why she wanted to know the answer to her question. She found herself clarifying it without consideration. “When Tagara was going to burn you. Did you think you were going to die?”
“I thanked you for saving my life,” Sael reminded Jhan as he turned his shoulder to her once again.
“I thought that you WANTED to die.”
Sael chuckled darkly. “In my own way, yes, and in my own time. It will be my choice, not the choice of some demon from under a mountain.”
“Last night, I wanted to choose as well,” Jhan told him. She curled her hands in the baku’s fur and rested her chin against its strong neck. She rolled with its motion and only the saddle kept her from falling off.
“When you touched Tagara,” Sael was asking, misunderstanding, “you were trying to kill yourself?”
“No,” Jhan replied. “I meant... before she showed up. You told me once that I had a choice. It was a final choice, but still a choice. After using me like you did, after treating me as if I weren’t a human being, I felt that I had to be sure.”
“Sure of what?” Sael sounded concerned.
“Of my choice,” Jhan persisted, irritable at his lack of understanding. “I decided to stay in the cold. I didn’t care about the consequences. Being in control of that final decision was more important to me then. I guess that I went a little out of my mind. When Tagara came and saved me, she told me that she wanted to burn all of you. I was forced to argue, to verbally defend you. I was too good at it. In the end, I convinced myself that you were just a product of your cruel society. I created an excuse for your abuse. I still feel pretty sick about it.”
“In my youth,” Sael said, as if he were very old, “I tried to understand the customs of my people and to follow them. I dreamed of being a warrior and redeeming my mother’s dishonor. I wanted to go into battle and do great deeds.” Sael shrugged bitterly, hands twisting in the reins of his baku, “When I was told that those customs caused my mother to be raped...,”
Sael paused, gathering strength to explain, and then continued tightly, “You see, women are not allowed out alone at night, but my mother had a sick friend. She went only to deliver medicine. The warrior who raped her followed custom. By being alone at night, my mother had, to him, obviously been offering herself up for any man. When she proved pregnant with me, he followed another custom that allowed him to reject her as a whore of the street. Dishonored, she was cast from her family; another custom. She followed yet another when she suicided after rearing me to manhood.”
“Because of custom, I was born, Jhan Dor, but it has never done me much good otherwise. I would cast it away, if I could, but I was raised by Ekhal. All we have is our honor. Without families, or the hope of ever having a lodge, it gives our lives meaning and foundation. It’s in my blood and bones. That I bent it as I have to accommodate you... You must understand the long nights I have spent trying to justify it.”
“Sael...,” Jhan shook her head, not knowing where to begin. “I just want to finish this journey, alive, I hope, and then return to my real husband. Keep your honor and your help, if it hurts you so much. Just leave me alone, in fact, and let me concentrate on enduring. You, Ahlen, Ixien... all of you keep tearing at me and then putting me back together when you feel guilty about it. Obahn, well, I don’t know what he wants, but I have withstood a great deal worse. He can try keshuning with me, if he thinks he’ll survive it, and, if he wants to get angry enough to leave me behind, I’ll deal with that too.” Jhan continued, stressing her next words vehemently. “If you don’t understand me, I think you can live with it, just stop trying to sort out your life by trying to see yourself in me.”
Sael’s eyes were sharp and burning. “Why did you say that?”
“Isn’t it true?” Jhan persisted doggedly. “I’m a man, in your way of thinking, who wants to be a woman. The exact opposite of what you want... or is it? I was told that I was refusing to accept myself for what I was. Maybe you are too.” Jhan’s voice caught and then she went on in exasperation, "You keep looking for approval from Obahn. I don’t think that you took me as your wife just to save my life. I think that you’re making some sort of last ditch effort to be a man.”
“For Hagen,” Sael surprisingly agreed in a quiet voice. “Obahn spoke the truth when he said that the Sun God might take offense at me and not show himself. It weighed on my mind, his words, and I thought to make myself more worthy. I have not truly been Ekhal for three years. If I showed the Sun God a wife, and my determination to join Hagen as a warrior brother, I thought that he might forgive my life of before.”
“It wasn’t just an act last night, was it?” Jhan wondered, sickened by sudden comprehension. “You were trying to make me your wife, weren’t you? What stopped you?”
“I told you... my oath to Obahn and to Hagen.”
Jhan shook her head. It made her dizzy, the drug numbing her sense of balance. It took her a moment to gather back the thread of her thoughts. “Hagen is dead and Obahn gave you his permission to have me.” Jhan sat up a little with an effort to see Sael’s face more clearly. The man was pale, eyes intent on her and wide in alarm as if she had trapped him. “I think, when it came down to it, that I was MORE of a woman than you had bargained for.”
Sael closed his eyes and turned his face away. “I am a man.”
“Certainly,” Jhan agreed with a sigh, “but an Ekhal man. When you finally realized what you had to do... well, that part of me isn’t at all like-”
“Stop!” Sael shouted and his imala jumped. He reined it in tightly, jaw clenching. “I don’t partake in such a foul practice! That you speak of this... “
“You’re not going to fall back on your custom of ‘men don’t speak of themselves.’ are you?” Jhan tisked mockingly. “I’ve never met a woman who blathered on about themselves half as much as you do.”
“What point is there to any of this?” Sael exploded.
Jhan wondered at it herself and then found it strangely clear to her. “I suppose I just long for a little honesty. If you’re going to abuse me, at least don’t bother making up these pat lies as if it will make me feel better. The truth; you WERE going to rape me and, no, you didn’t stop because of some concern for me. I think I realized it after you left me there with my clothes pulled half off of me for Zerain to gawk at. I really wanted to believe you, but life has taught me differently.”
Jhan twisted a hand into the baku’s black fur and tried to hold her concentration for a few seconds more. “You didn’t stay to save me just now, for my sake, either. You still need me to be your wife.”
Sael sighed gustily and shrugged. It wasn’t indifference, but acknowledgment. “When I left you in the cold last night, how did you find the strength to try and kill yourself?”
It was Jhan’s turn to be confused and put off guard. She frowned, considering the question until Sael repeated it and pulled his imala back to ride even with her. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” Jhan replied at last. “I was being crazy, desperate to take back some control. I chose to not call out, crawl back into camp, or even tell Zerain I needed her help. It felt good to know that, as small as that power was, it was mine to wield."
“You would have died.”
“If Tagara hadn’t found me?” Jhan thought it over. “No, it wasn’t that cold and I did have a blanket. I think I knew that when I decided to do it, but it didn’t matter. I could pretend enough to make it seem real. I asked you how you had felt when those men had raped you. Do you know why?”
“To shame me?” Sael growled.
“To make you realize how I was feeling,” Jhan corrected him. “I don’t know why, but people here seem totally incapable of sympathizing or empathizing with anyone, least of all me. I have a place. I shouldn’t think. I shouldn’t speak. I shouldn’t ever imagine of being or doing anything other than what I’m told. That all seems perfectly sane and agreeable to all of you. Can’t you remember how you felt? Was it small, helpless, humiliated? Did you want to kill them or kill yourself?”
“I wanted to kill them,” Sael picked that out carefully.
“You would,” Jhan replied, “but dig deeper. Didn’t you feel as if you didn’t exist anymore? Didn’t you feel as if your weren’t human? Didn’t any part of you convince yourself that it would be better just to turn your mind off and leave them with an empty shell, never to return?”
Sael didn’t want to reply, but it came from his lips, short and sharp as if against his will. “Yes.”
“I thought that it would be better to die,” Jhan continued unrelentingly. “I found out, long ago, that I was wrong. Life can be terrible beyond imagining, but its never bad enough to want to end it. No, I didn’t want to die last night, but I was willing to use it to remember what it’s like to be alive. You, all of you, keep making me forget.”
“I don’t-”
“Listen,” Jhan cut him off.
“To what?” Sael’s hand had gone to his sword hilt, alert, until he saw that she wasn’t talking about danger.
“Just listen,” Jhan prompted him. “Most people don’t bother. Look around too. Use your eyes for more than staking out a spot to pee in. The world is really amazing and beautiful. It’s full of good people and indescribable good feelings. If you even experience a few moments of it, it’s worth living for. I learned that and you, Sael Ruon, can’t even imagine what horrors I’ve been through.”
Jhan stretched out on her baku’s neck again, half closing her eyes in exhaustion as Sael replied angrily, “You don’t understand honor or duty.”
“Or love?” Jhan cut in. “You are doing this, attempting to kill yourself, to join the man you loved, aren’t you?”
“He was my Lord,” Sael corrected stubbornly.
“And you loved him,” Jhan persisted. “It’s pretty transparent. I don’t think you’re going to fool this ‘Sun God’ with this act of yours any more than you’re fooling me... or Obahn, for that matter. I don’t think you really want to die, anyway.”
“You are so wise,” Sael retorted, “Tell me why?”
“What’s stopping you from killing yourself now?” Jhan pointed out. “Why travel so far to get a god’s permission?”
Sael didn’t reply. Jhan pursued him, cruel. “You keep asking about my courage to kill myself or to endure what was done to me. None of that takes courage,” Jhan told him bleakly. “It takes courage to live. Enduring what you do to me is not a choice at all. If you were to ask me, I think you are simply not a coward enough to kill yourself for Hagen.”
“It’s out of my hands,” Sael replied at last, bleak. “What I want doesn’t matter anymore. I oathed myself to Obahn and I swore to give myself over to death when we reached the temple. I must endure it and, as you said, there isn’t any choice in it at all.”
“For honor,” Jhan retorted.
“Yes.”
“You will use me to do something you don’t want to do any longer?”
“I will do what I must to make myself worthy,” Sael replied. “All of your words are wasted breath. You must be my wife. I must be a warrior. The Sun God must believe that I want to join Hagen as only his sworn brother, not as an Ekhal.”
“And if there isn’t a Sun God?” Jhan lashed out. “What if your temple has only pandering priests without an ounce of power to give you what you want?”
Sael hadn’t even considered that. It was obvious. Still, he squared his shoulders and moved his imala ahead of her baku. “That will be for Obahn to say. He hates me enough. I don’t think I will leave the temple alive either way. You will be free of me then. Keep your patience and only do your duty for my protection, Jhan. It can’t be such an impossible thing for you to bear after all else you’ve told me about?”
“I only want something to be left of me when I am set free,” Jhan replied bleakly and closed her eyes. “My love is still alive. I would do anything to reach him.”
“And if he were dead?” Sael wondered. Jhan bit her lip and it was her turn to say nothing. Sael grunted, not needing an answer. “It’s easy for you to talk and talk, but reality, when you are faced with it, makes it different? Maybe, when the time comes, I will know the answer to what I should do. That answer may be that I can’t live without Hagen.”

They caught up with the others just as the sun began to weaken, the weather turning colder. They saw Ahlen first, lagging well behind the others and turned in the saddle of his baku to stare back down the trail. Sitting up wearily, Jhan could see a great, purpling bruise on Ahlen’s chin
Jhan remembered that Ahlen had tried to save her from Sael. She didn’t know how she should feel about that. On the one hand, she was grateful, on the other, it was his actions that had caused all of her grief to begin with. The scale was still too heavily weighed against him for her to even acknowledge his sacrifice. Instead, she pressed her lips into a thin line and said nothing when they came even with him.
Ahlen seemed not to notice Jhan’s snub, instead he was staring at Jhan’s neck with a look torn between anger and embarrassment. “Are you all right?”
Jhan raised a hand to her neck and felt the bites Sael had put there; a mark for anyone to see that would lead them to believe that Sael had done something other than be afraid of her last night. She kept her silence, the answer too obvious to bother with speaking it aloud.
Ahlen made a decision and pulled his baku sideways to block their path. “Do you wish to challenge me again?” Sael demanded angrily. “This time I will use my sword instead of my fist, Ahlen Kantori.”
Jhan could see that Ahlen was afraid of Sael, but he still continued to block their way, eyes intent on Jhan. When he spoke, his words were foolish and childish from start to finish. “There is a village to the West of here,” he told her in a rush. “A traveler told us that it was a good, decent place; kind to travelers. I will give you what I have- that I won’t need for my offering to the priests. You can be free of this, free of me, free of Sael, now.”
Jhan didn’t even feel of flicker of hope. Sael didn’t allow it. He reached out and gripped her arm possessively as he confronted Ahlen in a deadly tone. “What will she do in this town, Ahlen Kantori? A woman. Alone. They will take all that she has and use her as they like. You are naive to think otherwise.”
“I will go with her,” Ahlen offered indignantly. “I will make sure that she settles with someone who will take care of her.”
“Until they discover that she was once a man?”
“How will they know that?” Ahlen exploded. “Can you tell?”
“Yes, I can,” Sael replied, meeting Ahlen’s innuendo with his own.
“In bed, perhaps, since you have known both, pervert,” Ahlen shot back, voice going rough and embarrassed, “but not to look at.”
Sael considered Jhan, but Jhan had gone cold and distant. “It is hard to tell what she is, she is so filthy with mud and stench, but I think you are right that the eye is easily fooled. Still, who would want her? Why would anyone want to take care of her and defend her?”
Jhan knew the answer to that and she didn’t need to hear them argue it out. She jerked her baku so that it shouldered aside Ahlen’s smaller beast, and rode ahead, giving them both her stiff back. It was only a moment before she was passing Togo and Minyah, on foot strangely, and covered in mud up to their knees. Togo gave her a weary, toothy smile as she passed him with a curious look. Minyah was only a step ahead of his brother, shaggy body moving on all fours like some grotesque werewolf.
Tagara was bobbing along in the sky, flames bright yellow like the sun. Ixien was riding the pack baku. He gave Jhan a cold stare as she approached. “Once again, you manage to avoid your demise,” he said. “It was not wise to try and harm, Tagara. She is angry with you.”
“I didn’t try to harm her,” Jhan replied, loud enough, she hoped, for the ball of fire to hear. “Her power sent such a jolt to my mind that I couldn’t control what happened afterward. Tell her that I’m sorry. She tried to help me and that’s not the way I wanted to repay her kindness.”
“You purposefully knocked yourself unconscious. I saw it,” Ixien continued, crystal eyes making Jhan feel like a curious bug he was studying. “What would have happened if you had not?’
Jhan hoped that she was returning Ixien’s cold look, but inside she was shaking at the memory of how close she had come to killing all of them. “The Power in me can destroy the world if it’s used,” she replied. “Don’t try, like Ahlen did, to include me in whatever plan you have because of it.”
“I have my own abilities,” Ixien told her without blinking. “It will suffice for what I have planned.”
“Which is?”
Ixien simply stared until Jhan grew uncomfortable. At least when he treated her as less than human it was understandable, Jhan thought, since he wasn’t human either, but his coldness reminded her too sharply of Dagara Ku Ni. She was forced to ride further ahead to escape him and the memories he stirred up in her.
Zerain and Obahn were riding side by side. They were silent. Jhan rarely ever heard them speak to each other unless it was to ask for or receive orders. In their silence, they heard the hooves of her baku and turned, though Jhan had tried to settle into the wide space between them and Ixien to be alone.
“You don’t look well, Ikhil,” Obahn noted. The scars on his face stood out sharply and Jhan realized that he was unpleasantly surprised at her return.
“Did you expect Sael to kill me?” Jhan wondered.
Obahn tilted his head as if she were challenging him and he only waited for more confirmation of it. It was a clear warning. “I expected you to be dead after touching a fire demon, smashing your head against stone, and shattering your leg. I expected you to die of the cold, at the hands of the Okarins, under that mountain, or at least from the weakness you seem always plagued with. What are you made of, wife of Sael Ruon, that you are able to drag that pathetic body after me as if you were a plague to torment me?”
It might have been the dulling effect of the drug, but Jhan’s tongue was quicker than her sense of danger or common sense, rising even above her fear of Obahn. “Do I torment you? I thought that I was helping by making Sael respectable.”
“That’s in his own mind,” Obahn replied, voice dangerous. “For my own part, you have failed to fulfill any of my expectations or wishes. If you were a real woman... but you are not, and you have become a burden I do not need.”
“Why did you allow Sael to marry me then?”
Obahn raised an eyebrow in contempt. “You don’t know our laws or customs. They are complicated. Ekhal and Ikhil,” he shook his head and his rough mane of hair rippled like a lion’s mane. “What does it matter who you marry? Who you keshun with? Let Sael pretend that you are a woman and that he can have children from you, if it will keep him quiet. He is never returning to our people to be challenged for it. I certainly don’t intend to challenge him. I need his blade. I need his sacrifice if I am to see my son again. He can play this game all the way to the Sun God, if those two things remain mine.”
Obahn showed Jhan his sharp teeth, his beast grin both threatening and sure of his own power over her. “You can play the game too, as long as you keep your strength, but I am Hyjar of my people and of my lodge. Sael is my Bhakali. What’s his, is mine as well, to use as I please and when I please. Once again, I warn you about this choice of being a woman.”
“Do you think that frightens me?” Jhan replied, knowing that Obahn intended just that. “If you want to stick your-,” she used the foul word she had heard Kile’s brothers burn her with, what seemed like, ages ago. It burned her tongue to say it now, and her face went cold and pale, “-into the place where I used to be a man, go ahead, Lord Obahn! I don’t know of many men who would find that exciting, but obviously you have some particular perversion that I wasn’t aware of-”
Obahn’s imala was reined sharply and Jhan’s baku came up close enough for Obahn to reach over and twist both fists into Jhan’s clothes. He lifted her from the saddle and slammed her down over his lap, straddling him as he brought her face to face with himself, his scars white against the red fury of his skin.
“Who are you to say such things to me?” Obahn’s voice was surprisingly low, a base growl in the back of his throat. “You are a piece of fluff, a wisp of air and darkness, a bag of sticks and thin blood. Your face mocks beauty. Your form mocks womanhood. You crawl from manhood and spread your legs for an Ekhal. What are you to say anything to me? You should be dead, by your own hand, rather than living as a gelded prince protesting men’s use of you. I will do as I please with you, until you give over this shame and take back your manhood.”
Jhan was trembling, but trying not to. Tears trickled down her cheeks, despite herself, and her lips trembled as she replied, sharp and tight, ”I can’t ever have that back, Lord Obahn, even if I wanted it. The man who cut me, cooked those parts of me in front of my eyes and then ate them for his dinner!”
It was her weapon, Jhan knew, the pure truth. She thrust those words straight into Obahn’s gut and she saw his golden eyes go wide and glassy, mouth falling slack as the red of his white fury gave way to a sallow, greenish pallor. She knew then that he would never be able to look at her again without the mental image she had just given him overshadowing her. If he had ever desired her, or had meant more than false threats with his innuendoes, that was dead and blown away now.
With one, violent thrust, Obahn sent Jhan flying off of his lap and tumbling to the ground. She managed to hit the ground without smashing her broken leg, both hands cradling it as it sent a shock of pain up to her groin. She looked up, panting through that pain, and saw Obahn wiping at his mouth as if he had almost vomited. Jhan didn’t expect sympathy and she wasn’t disappointed.
“You are honorless,” Obahn grated. “You should be dead! Coward! You are a coward to live as you are! I would not want such a-a creature to fight by my side. Stay a woman and worship at men’s alters for what you have lost,” he meant it in the crudest fashion. ”Be a wife to an Ekhal, and stay away from me from this moment on, or I will slay you in my disgust!”
Obahn rode forward at a gallop. Zerain looked down at Jhan, cold and haughty, and then she chuckled as she rode after her husband. Sael dismounted and kneeled by Jhan, angry and jaw working. Ahlen sat his baku anxiously, not understanding what had happened and afraid to interfere. Ixien rode by uncaring. The Children of Selaya stopped and stared in confusion.
“Obahn must not have found you as desirable as I do,” Sael muttered as he checked Jhan’s injured leg with rough motions.
“Did you think he was going to do it right there in the saddle with me?” Jhan panted and then groaned as Sael tightened a binding.
“He might have,” Sael replied. “My people are not ashamed of showing virility."
“It’s all you seem to think about, besides your honor.”
Sael blinked, amazed, as if Jhan had shown some unexpected innocence. “We are men alone and on a long journey,” he told her as he finished with her leg and straightened, looking down at her with a frown. “There is only one available woman and she is married to my lord Obahn. It is natural that there should be... tensions, even attempts to have someone like you to ease our needs. Are you so ignorant of how strong those needs can be?”
Jhan glared back at him and then at Ahlen, but Ahlen was pale and ashamed, not meeting her eyes. “Do you want to try and have me too, Ahlen Kantori?” Jhan taunted him. “Are you all nothing but animals, that you can’t even stick to your oaths?”
Sael flinched, but her words only made him angry. “You’ve told me that you don’t feel such desires. We are not so blessed by the gods.”
“No, we are not,” Ahlen agreed quietly and his eyes were on the trail up ahead, perhaps looking for sight of a red veil.
“Enough!” Jhan exclaimed, “Spare me! At least I’m not the one you’re interested in Ahlen. “
“No,” Ahlen agreed again with a long, quiet exhalation of breath.
“And I don’t think I have to worry about Obahn now either.”
Jhan’s baku had been standing patiently, flicking long ears in interest. Sael took up the reins and led it over to Jhan. “Why is my Lord not interested any longer?” he wondered. “He is a man of strong desires. They are not so easily extinguished.”
Jhan grinned and Sael frowned at the unpleasant sight, knowing that it was only an outward sign of Jhan’s inner hysteria. “I gave him something else to think about.” Her grin grew wider, her eyes reminding him of the secret they shared. “If you like, I can tell it to you. It might help you keep your oath.”
Sael met her haunted eyes and swallowed, bending and helping her up. “I don’t think I need such help any longer. Your darkness is like Tagara’s fire, my wife, too all consuming to taste more than once.”
Jhan moaned, feeling dizzy and hearing a rush in her ears, as Sael put in her in the saddle of her baku. She wished that she were back on the ground so that she could refuse to move. She should have been happy, all of the men around her had turned their backs on her. She was safe, for the moment, from that kind of assault, yet Jhan could only think of the long ride ahead and the myriad chances there would be for other cruelties.
The pain of her leg, and the numbing effect of the drug, were conspiring to make Jhan too bold. If she weren’t careful, she thought, she would make even Sael angry enough to kill her, but, even then, she couldn’t help one last parting shot at the Ekhal’s straight, assured back.
“That’s all right. You weren’t very good any way.”
Ahlen, riding beside her, gasped, but Sael didn’t even turn around. “Have you had so many men that you would know?”
Jhan almost laughed, but she was afraid she would cry instead and stifled it.

CHAPTER FIVE
(Under a Red Veil)
Over the next four days, the land climbed steadily out of the bog, the trees becoming dormant sticks of wood that marched, row on row, up and down a hilly terrain, bare of even one green leaf to block out a gray sky and a milky sun. The lack of color was depressing, and everyone rode in a sullen silence that stretched on far too long.
For Jhan it was a haven, that silence. Everyone seemed lost in their own thoughts, ignoring her. Even when the trees stood too close together to pitch the tent, and they were forced to huddle about smoking campfires for warmth, Jhan was still mercifully ignored, just another warm body in a press of blankets and furs.
Ahlen was lost in constant contemplation of Zerain. Zerain, for her part, seemed oblivious of that regard. Togo was silent out of apprehension, perhaps wondering if all the land outside of his mountain home was so bleak. Minyah kept close, as if caught up in his brother’s mood. Tagara and Ixien kept their own close council, but they were the ones everyone huddled about when the chill of night fell. Obahn turned inward on himself, and his eyes were always on the distances. Sael was the only one who seemed impatient, often pacing about the camp in agitation.
This was bearable, Jhan thought. In the silence she could rest, both mentally and physically. Obahn kept away from her, Ahlen didn’t plague her with his guilt, and Sael had given up his pretense of being her husband for the time being. The others were satellites in distant orbits, easily ignored. Even Jhan’s dreams were giving her peace, her indigo world empty, healing, and welcoming every night. If only it would go on, Jhan wished with all of her might, but she knew that she had never been that lucky.

Jhan wanted to wash. The dirt, salt of sweat, and her own stench was becoming more than she could bear. When they made camp by a frozen stream, she waited until everyone had settled after dinner, to take one of Zerain’s small iron pots to the water. Crouching, she slammed the pot at the ice until it broke through. The noise she made was loud, so she wasn’t surprised when Ahlen crouched beside her.
In the darkness of a waning moon, it was hard to make out any expression on Ahlen’s face. His mood flowed from him though, communicating itself to Jhan through his tense posture and the unevenness of his breathing. When he dipped a hand through the hole Jhan had made in the ice, and brought out water to splash onto his face, Jhan started. She heard him splutter and swear.
“Something wrong?” Jhan’s tone was mocking, “Did you see an outline of Zerain’s face again?”
Ahlen groaned, soft and deep, as if Jhan had tortured him with her words. “Sael was right, you don’t know anything about- about- You don’t feel anything, do you? Not the urges or the heat; the all consuming ‘need’. Of course not, your voice is so light. You were never a man. You can’t have been. I might as well be speaking to a woman, so deep is your ignorance of what I am feeling.”
It stung, his words, and Jhan didn’t know why. After a moment of intense anger, she realized why. He was taunting her, almost making her defend Jhanian Kevelt’s manhood, his certain virility, and his unquestionable place in the heaving testosterone world Ahlen was so easily dismissing her from. Jhan made a conscious effort to be still, to keep silent, and to only mentally shrug away any emotional response. It almost made her feel powerful to do it, almost.
“I don’t think YOU knew anything about it until you met Zerain, am I right?” Jhan finally replied after careful consideration.
Ahlen gave his usual honest response, but it was steeped in anguish. “No, I didn’t.”
Jhan chewed on her bottom lip as she slowly filled her pot with water. Her gloved hands were protected, but the space between her sweaters and the leather chilled as it brushed the ice. She put the pot beside her and sat down, her healing leg beginning to ache. She rubbed at the knee, wanting Ahlen to grow weary of her silence and go away. Instead, it seemed to invite him to be more open with her, the darkness making her as receptive and un-judgmental as a confessional.
“She-Zerain, I don’t understand her,” Ahlen confessed. “She goes on about honor and her duty to Obahn, but.... You ARE more like a woman. You have been-,” Ahlen stumbled, not sure how his words would be received, “You are a man’s wife, and have been before. What does she want, Jhan? Why does she flaunt herself to me. She smiles under that veil, I feel it, and she looks at me until I burn for her!”
“We are not friends,” Jhan reminded him, her voice sharp.
That caught Ahlen off guard, but not enough to desist. “This feeling I have for her,” he continued, as if Jhan had said nothing, “sometimes I think I’m going to die if I don’t do something about it! How do I stop her from taunting me?”
“Will you go away and leave me alone after I answer that?” Jhan demanded.
Ahlen replied without hesitation, “Yes.”
“Well, that’s worth a little advice then.” Jhan considered the problem for only a moment and then she told him matter- of- factly. “Zerain thinks she can flirt with you because Obahn would kill you if you actually tried anything with her. Some women like the power of being safe, yet being able to make men want them at the same time. Take her up on her offer, but don’t let Obahn catch you. You’ll frighten her, then she’ll leave you alone.”
“That seems reasonable,” Ahlen agreed and stood up, as if determined to carry out Jhan’s suggestion at once. “Thank you, Jhan,” he said it absently as he walked back into the darkness.
Jhan sighed as silence settled once more, but then started and uttered a crude curse as a voice cut through it almost at once, “Are you a sage now, my wife?”
Sael crouched down in the exact place Ahlen had vacated.
“Can’t I be alone for just a little while?” Jhan demanded caustically. “Is it so hard for all of you to live your lives without spending each day of it trying to make me miserable?”
“I overheard you giving Ahlen bad advice,” Sael told her, ignoring her plea. “Did you do it out of ignorance or are you trying to get him killed by Obahn?”
“No, I wasn’t trying to get him killed,” Jhan replied irritably, “but I don’t think it would bother me too much if he did.”
“Are you becoming so hard?” Sael picked up something, a rock perhaps, and threw it at the frozen water. It skittered and bounced across to the other side. “You could easily kill him yourself.”
“I could easily kill you too,” Jhan pointed out, “but I don’t. I know you’ll never understand that, but I don’t consider it the same as not caring whether Ahlen manages to do it himself.”
Sael reached out and ran a finger along Jhan’s cheek. She jerked back from it, angry and alarmed. “What were you doing out here, my wife?” he wondered, changing the subject abruptly. “Were you going to wash?”
“In this frozen water?” Jhan’s voice was tight and distrustful. “I was going to take some back and heat it up on the fire to at least clean my face. What’s that to you? Are you intending to jump me again?”
“Jump you?” Sael spoke the words carefully, intrigued by the turn of phrase. “Your speech is always so colorful,” he murmured ruefully.
“You didn’t answer the question!” Jhan shot back at him.
“I am weary of all of this,” Sael said in way of reply and she heard him straighten, his shadow staring off into the darkness. “Three years is too long for any man. When even a mud covered Ikhil, stinking like a three day old dead imala, moves me... it is too long. This journey to the Sun God is seeming more and more like madness. Obahn forbids me too much. I’m beginning to fear that he will change his mind entirely and never allow me to enter the temple.”
Jhan understood then. “So, you came out here to be alone too, and to, what? Were you going to kill yourself now?”
Sael didn’t reply, but his stiff form was reply enough. Jhan gathered up her metal pot, but she didn’t stand. Her leg was beginning to ache too much to accomplish it easily and she felt a strange sympathy for Sael. A part of her argued that he had tried to violate her and to degrade her as surely as any of her enemies, but a smaller part knew his utter despair too well to simply turn away. She knew his mistake and she found that she couldn’t leave him in silence.
“You aren’t sure, are you?” Jhan asked him. “If you were, you wouldn’t have come to sit by me. You would have gone somewhere else. Wait until you are sure, Sael. Be absolutely sure. It’s a final step. It can wait a year if you’ve already waited this long.”
Jhan held her breath, but Sael still didn’t reply. The cold began to creep up from the ground and she shivered. Finally, she thought she had waited long enough. “Help me up, at least, and get me back to the fire before you decide to kill yourself. I don’t think I can hop back that far.”
There was a sharp, strained laugh from Sael. He leaned down and picked Jhan up as easily as if she were a child. “As you will, my wife. Let us carry on this charade a little longer, and let them think I have ravished you, in all your filth, by the river side. It will be better than challenging Ahlen for talking with you in the dark.”
“You would do that?” Jhan wondered bitterly, “Even when no one saw it?”
Jhan tried to push at Sael, make him drop her, anything to avoid his touch, but he had a firm grip and he ignored her. “My honor is in my own keeping,” Sael replied tightly, “It doesn’t require witnesses for me to be shamed.”
“Then why not do it?” Jhan wondered, “is it because you know I want him dead?”
“No,” Sael replied, “Ahlen is a child. I’m allowed to ignore the rudeness of children who don’t know any better than to be foolish.”
Sael carried Jhan back into camp and placed her by the fire. Before he left her there, he paused to give her a sudden, devouring kiss while his calloused hand lewdly squeezed one of her breasts to the point of pain.
Everyone was staring. Jhan’s fury made her white hot. She swung and hit Sael, open handed; forgetting fear and consequences. The sound cracked in the silence. Sael’s returning blow was instant, but lighter than hers. His hand was cupped as it caught Jhan in the face. Jhan gasped at the shock of it all the same and cradled her stinging cheek.
Sael strode away, satisfied, to crouch by the fire. Obahn stared at him with raised eyebrows, as if Sael had become a stranger to him, and then looked at Jhan with deep disgust.. “Even though you are Ekhal,” Obahn said aside to Sael, “I can’t understand how you can keshun with that creature!”
Sael grunted, eyes downcast, as he pretended to fiddle with a strap on a bridle. “She has her charms where a man can’t see,” he assured Obahn with a twitch of his lips, perhaps enjoying making his lord uncomfortable.
Jhan still had the iron pot clenched in one hand. She was tempted to throw it at Sael with all of her strength, but she knew where that would lead. Instead, she forced her shaking hand to put it on the fire to warm. Staring sullenly into it, she felt tears gathering in her eyes as she gingerly nursed her aching cheek.
Obahn was several long minutes coming to a decision and then he spoke his mind to Sael as if it were being dragged out of him unwillingly. “I ask that you rid yourself of that ‘thing’, Sael Ruon. I can’t stand the sight of It any longer. I give you leave to keshun with Zerain.”
Sael went pale, the offer startling and obviously frightening to him. Jhan almost smiled. She couldn’t have planned a better revenge. When Sael spoke slowly and carefully, Jhan fully expected him to reveal his lies. Instead, Sael wove new ones. “You have named Jhan Dor a woman, my Lord. By law I have taken her as my wife. She satisfies me in ways that Zerain couldn’t hope to match. If you wish her yourself, to understand what I am speaking of-”
“Silence!” Obahn exploded, face going dark and gold eyes glittering in the firelight. “Keshun with that stinking, filthy-? Keep your wife, my Bhakali! Keep It away from my sight!”
“My Lord,” Sael nodded stiffly, but Jhan saw his relief from under her eyelashes.
Jhan came to a sudden decision. Feeling in danger once more, she fished the pot off of the fire with a stick and emptied the water onto the ground. Her filth and stink was a defense, she knew, and one she wasn’t going to give up just yet.
Jhan felt Obahn watching her again and she wondered if Sael’s words had intrigued him rather than repelled him. Was he wondering what ‘charms’ she could possess that would make even an Ekhal want her? Yes, it was much better to be utterly repellent, she thought, than to give any of them the slightest encouragement by even cleaning her face.
“You struck one another,” Togo whispered behind the concealment of Jhan’s back. Jhan didn’t look around, knowing that he was afraid of Sael. “Why this violence? I thought that you were mates, or at the very least, companions.”
“Forced companions,” Jhan replied just as quietly. She bent her head so that the shadow of her hood hid her face. “I don’t feel like explaining.”
“Tagara was right,” Togo lamented.
“About all of them being cruel?”
“Yes,” Togo admitted. “She said that we should leave. She didn’t think that we should learn such a terrible way of living.”
“I agree.”
“I want to understand.”
“I do too, Togo,” Jhan sighed. “I wasn’t raised with their customs and values either. I’m just as much in the dark as you are.”
“The way they treat you... and the way Obahn keeps Zerain,” Togo groped for a way to express his confusion. “Is this the way of men and women?”
“Don’t you know?” Jhan asked him and felt angry again. “You ARE a man, or are you? Are you too much of a machine to feel this lust they keep justifying themselves with?”
“No, I am not. I do feel it as well. It is very painful,” Togo grew even quieter and Jhan struggled to hear him, “but it is confusing too. I thought these others would teach me how to satisfy it, to procreate. Instead, they seem just as confused as I am. You are not a woman, but you wish to be treated like one. Someone emasculated you to look like one. Sael doesn’t wish to mate with women, yet he does with you. Zerain is a woman and she is handed from man to man as if she were non-sentient.”
“Non-sentient?” Jhan mused over the words. “That hardly describes being treated like dirt, but she hasn’t been handed to anyone yet.”
“Yet, she was with Ahlen not some time ago and now Obahn seeks to hand her to Sael. If I ask, would they give her to me?”
Jhan caught her breath, going hot and then cold. “Say that again, Togo. Did you say that Ahlen was ‘with’ Zerain?”
“In the trees,” Togo replied, puzzled, “You sound strange. Is this wrong? I saw them when I went out to pass waste. They were procreating. Will Obahn grow angry?”
Jhan made a face at his graphic words, but her eyes were scanning the figures around her anxiously. Tagara and Ixien were apart from everyone, as usual. Minyah had curled up in front of the fire. Zerain was sitting half in and half out of the darkness like a statue, eyes intent on Obahn as if she was only waiting for his next order and his offer to Sael hadn’t bothered her in the least. Ahlen wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
“I wouldn’t tell that to anyone else, Togo,” Jhan replied at last, “That isn’t acceptable behavior and, yes, Obahn would be very angry.”
Togo was even more perplexed. “Why is this different? Why is Ahlen not allowed to have the woman if others are?”
“Zerain belongs to Obahn,” Jhan explained, “only he can say who she ‘procreates’ with.”
“I didn’t think that mating and engendering offspring could be so complicated,” Togo muttered. “How am I ever going to learn to do it?”
Jhan closed her lips tightly together and inched away. The last person Togo needed to ask about that was an emasculated, barren, and mentally scarred individual who feared all men.
Jhan winced, realizing that she had just denigrated herself. How long could a person stand to be verbally cut to pieces, again and again, before they began to believe it? Jhan pushed it all from her mind with an effort, and sat, watching for Ahlen’s return.

Jhan had a dream that night. She held her son in her arms, wisp of black hair and eyes as blue as her own. He was a marvel of milky skin and newborn scent and she held him close and soothed his crying....

Jhan started awake, arms empty and cold. There was a pain in her stomach, a gnawing sense of loss that almost made it impossible to move. Her dream might as well have been a nightmare. The only son her body would ever have was being reared by Thaos Kevelt in Karana, safely away from what remained of his father. She remembered that decision so long ago, given as a matter of course and without anyone asking her. She couldn’t blame them. How could anyone explain to a one year old that his father had been changed into a woman who didn’t even remember him? Jhan hadn’t been in any shape to rear a child in any case, and, she supposed, she never would. It hadn’t only been her body that Dagara Ku Ni had destroyed, but any part of her that could have nurtured and thought of anything other than simply convincing herself to live another day.
Jhan sat up and bleakly looked around, trying to orient herself and dissipate the last of the dream, and the heavy depression it had caused, from her mind. Her companions weren’t very much help in accomplishing that.
Ahlen must have come back into camp after Jhan had fallen asleep. She saw him pacing nervously, eyes haunted. Sael was tending the beasts, face set in annoyance for some unknown reason. Zerain was up and finishing with breakfast, Obahn sitting nearby with his legs stretched out towards the fire.
Obahn was watching Jhan with an unreadable expression. Rather than bear it and try and figure out what it meant, Jhan pried herself out of her blankets and hopped towards the trees to relieve herself. She passed Togo, Tagara, and Minyah as they huddled in deep conversation.
Ixien was watching the Children of Selaya a few yards away. Jhan was forced to pass him as well. She could see that his usually bland face was tight and his clear eyes were almost malevolent as he breathed, “They will not take her from me.”
“Are you so in love?” Jhan mocked.
“I need her,” Ixien replied, sharply honest, “as much as I need you.”
That stopped Jhan and she felt the small hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she retorted. “I assure you, Obahn doesn’t want me staying. You can’t rely on his interest in me to keep you in his company. Tagara has a better chance of that now.”
“I will not explain,” Ixien replied, not even deigning to look at her. His piercing regard never left the Children of Selaya for an instant.
“STILL you haven’t learned!”
Sael was suddenly there, grabbing Jhan roughly by the arm. It was a demeaning gesture, another, obvious attempt to crush what was left of Jhan’s spirit and make her obedient to Sael’s will. All at once, like Obahn’s stare, Jhan felt that she couldn’t bear it any more.
With an effortless movement, Jhan had Sael’s thumb trapped in her small hand. She smiled in relish, a maddened glitter to her blue eyes, as she twisted at the same time that she put her weight on her good foot and stomped on Sael’s instep. He staggered, panted, and went down on one knee as he bit off a cry.
Sael’s black eyes were furious over his red scarf as he swung with his free hand to knock Jhan down. She felt it connect with her side and also felt that he had pulled the force of it considerably, knowing how easily he could break her bones. His hesitation was her strength. It gave wings to her madness. Her foot left his instep and kicked into his stomach.
Sael sat down as the air was knocked from his lungs, but he wasn’t finished. He grabbed her ankle and jerked her off of her feet as he gasped for air. Jhan landed hard. She wasn’t able to roll before Sael had thrown himself on top of her.
“Why do you tempt me to hurt you?” Sael gasped in her ear, forcing himself, despite his fury, to keep his voice low so that no one else could hear.
“Because, you’ve proven to me that you WON’T hurt me!” Jhan bit back and jammed her knee up from behind him. Sael felt it coming and threw himself forward to escape a crushed groin. He rolled back immediately and put his elbow into her Adam’s apple.
“It seems your torturer forgot to remove this man’s part of you,” Sael taunted her through gritted teeth. “Move and I will show you what will happen if I break it.”
Jhan stared into his eyes and then she smiled again as she bent her body at an impossible angle, lightning quick. Her boot connected with his shoulder, sending him away from her. She tangled her hand in his scarf and ripped it off to further humiliate him. She was surprised to see that, beneath the scarf, Sael was smiling as well.
Sael’s arm came around in a backhanded blow. Jhan ducked it, felt the rush through her curls, and then was unprepared when he spun around and caught her with the same arm around the waist. They both crashed to the ground, Sael on top again, still smiling down at her.
Sael caught a handful of Jhan’s hair and brought it up to his nose. Taking a deep breath, as if he would inhale it, he suddenly ducked past it and locked his lips on Jhan's. When he sought to work a hot tongue into her mouth, she bit it and tasted blood. She felt his body convulse, but he didn’t show any outward sign of her assault. Instead, he leaned in closer, a strong arm braced on the ground on each side of her, his long black coat hiding his lean body pressed hard against her.
It was like a revelation, things becoming crystal clear and chilling at the same time. Jhan felt nausea grip her. What were they doing? Jhan knew. They were challenging each other. Daring each other to do something terrible to the other. Trying to feel alive and in power. Trying to dance with death and see if it was ready for them yet. Her hands were ready to break Sael’s neck. She knew he was capable of the same. They were, both of them, locked in a moment where anything could happen.
It was Obahn, finally, who shattered that moment, dragging Sael up by his collar and shoving him towards the beasts with an almost horror stricken look in his eyes. “Go! Stop this- whatever this is that you are doing!”
Jhan lay, panting, as Obahn stared down at her. She knew there was blood on her mouth. “I have never seen such a thing- at least not where a woman has lived to tell of it later,” Obahn said and rubbed a hand over his face. “This is not as it should be. This is not man and woman, but some shameful perversion. If you do this within my sight again, I will kill the both of you!”
Sael was looking back over his shoulder. He spat aside and Jhan saw him wipe away blood from his own mouth. His eyes had calmed and he seemed ashamed now, downcast and feeling the dregs of their mingled, dark emotions. He purposely wrapped his scarf about his face again, needing to hide behind it, as he went to saddle the animals.
Obahn strode away. Jhan sat up, swallowing blood and bile and hiding her face in her hands. Tagara crouched by her, hot as a fire and face as smooth as the silk of her gown. “Go with us,” was all she said.
Jhan laughed, bitter and wild. She looked up from her hands and saw the hairless skin above Tagara’s eye crinkle in puzzlement. “Just like that?” Jhan wondered hoarsely.
“Yes,” Tagara replied, and then with a tight threat in her voice, “None of them can stop me.”
Jhan grew quiet and serious. “Where are you going to go?”
“Tsarianna’s Temple,” Tagara replied. “Ixien has told me that the Sun God may be able to take the fire away from me and heal my brother’s afflictions. Once we are ‘normal’, we will be able to make a life for ourselves.”
“And you believed all of that?” Jhan shook her head, feeling that ache again in her belly. She rubbed it absently, knowing it was despair and tightly coiled anger. “I think many people are going to be disappointed.”
“What is your answer?” Tagara interjected impatiently.
“No, of course.” Jhan looked beyond her and saw Ixien, as always, close by and watching them. “I won’t go anywhere with that Caefu. At least I know what the others want from me.”
“To harm you?” Tagara was incredulous. “To try and put their seed in you even though you are one of them? It is all madness and cruelty!”
“Is that what you thought Sael was trying to do?” Jhan felt that madness reach her eyes again and Tagara saw it too, straightening and looking down with her puzzled frown. “It was the last thing on either of our minds, Tagara. We were, both of us, trying to break out of our fates; trying to stop the inevitable course of our lives. You can’t understand...”
“I will leave so that it will be a lesson I never learn,” Tagara told her. “The people we took from the mountains, the many who tried to save Selaya, were never like these others. I cannot believe that the world is like them.”
“It isn’t,” Jhan agreed wearily, “but it’s not an easy place either. I’ve told Togo already, they don’t accept those who are different. My own life was miserable enough even before Ahlen kidnapped me.”
Sael brought Jhan’s baku to her and a bowl of meat for breakfast. He was expecting her to eat in the saddle. Obahn was already mounted, impatiently waiting to leave.
“I’m not going with you,” Jhan repeated firmly to Tagara and her misery deepened as Tagara turned and walked away, leaves and debris burning under her bare feet.
Sael was looking away as he handed Jhan the reins of her baku and the bowl. His face was unknowable under the scarf, but his jaw was a solid clenching of muscle. When Jhan didn’t get up, something in his eyes flickered. Still without looking at her, he asked tightly, “Did I harm you, my wife?”
Jhan stared up at him, scowling. “I don’t think Obahn is going to let you go on with this much longer. I think you’ll have to find another way to make yourself respectable.”
Sael’s eyes half lidded and then he did look down at her. “You are driving me mad! It is you, with your woman’s body and your man’s scent, who challenges my honor and my oaths.”
Sael bent down suddenly and began pulling the bindings from Jhan’s leg. The cold was harsh on her bare skin. They both looked down at it and saw the unswollen skin and the healing, mottled bruises of every color.
“You healing powers are incredible,” Sael breathed in amazement, but then he recovered his composure. He wrapped her leg in the binding cloths, without the braces, and pulled up her socks. “Put on your boot,” he said. “Your leg may still ache, but it is healed and you don’t need my care any longer. We will stay parted as much as we can from this moment. I am resolved to keep my honor and my sanity.”
“And your life?” Jhan taunted.
“You may keep yours as well,” Sael returned sharply. Instead of helping Jhan get into the saddle of the baku, he strode resolutely away to join the men.

A week slipped by unnoticed. Ixien and the Children of Selaya didn’t make any move to leave the company, but they all grew as silent as Ixien and they kept to themselves. Obahn watched them suspiciously and he never went one night without either being on watch or having Sael awake and alert for any trouble from them.
Jhan didn’t blame Obahn. She was just as nervous as he was and found herself watching them as well. Togo, when he caught her eye, always gave her a sharp toothed, friendly smile, but Tagara was cool and Minyah seemed troubled. Ixien had become their leader and what his plans were, Jhan couldn’t begin to guess.
They all rode in small knots during the day, separated by choice and affiliation. Zerain always rode with Obahn at the head of the company. Ixien, and his group of imminent defectors, always followed several yards behind. Ahlen rode behind them, eyes always on Zerain and full of anguish. Jhan kept far behind him, not wanting him to feel free to share any more confidences with her. Sael lagged behind at the rear looking troubled, as if he were still fighting with himself whether to continue with Obahn or not.
“It’s getting colder,” Jhan muttered to herself as she patted the warm side of her weary baku. Frost hung on the bare skeletons of the trees and everyone’s breath smoked. Frozen leaves and sparse, frozen grass crunched under hooves. The sun continued to hide behind a sky heavy with the threat of snow.
Jhan slipped a gloved hand under her cloak and felt her warm heart even through the leather. It still continued to amaze her. Her body gained strength and built fat reserves on the meager meat rations Minyah managed to hunt. She felt warm under her clothes, vibrant and alive. She felt, strangely, ready for anything and any weather. If her body suffered in any way from Selaya’s meddling, Jhan hadn’t discovered it yet.
The darkness at the center of Jhan’s being uncoiled, angry. Bitterness twisted Jhan’s face as she turned it away from anyone who could see. She remembered the long, difficult year as Kile’s wife; his gentle and so careful hands. For such a large man, he had always forced himself to move as if in slow motion, thinking every movement through, holding the reins tight in passion and in everything else so that he wouldn’t hurt his fragile love. When he had nursed her back to health, through her infections and fevers, she had, more than once, seen the fear of her death in his eyes.
Jhan clenched her hand against her heart. How far would this new health take her? What were its limits? She was gaining weight. That weight was turning into wiry muscle. Her wraith like fragility was slowly being encased in solid, sturdy flesh. The clothes that had hung on her were now beginning to hang more closely to her form. It was as if, once again, her spirit was being given another new body to inhabit.
Yet, Jhan wasn’t happy about these changes. She told herself that she should be. If she made it back to Kile, as impossible as that seemed now, she would be able to give a new dimension to their relationship, one as more than a cared for invalid. Despite that argument, she grew even more bitter. Through most of that day, she turned it over and over in her mind, trying to think why.
Jhan finally recalled Ahlen’s offer to set her free. What had she replied? She couldn’t remember the exact words, but she remembered how she had felt. It was better to be a captive than to be trapped in the same situation with her ‘freedom’. Jhan supposed it was the same with her body. She had known all of the limitations of her old self. Those limitations had interwoven with her personality. They had also made it easier to bear what was happening to her.
Being helpless had never required anything on Jhan’s part. There had always been a certain lack of stress in not being allowed to make any decisions and in not feeling like she could have done anything about the way she had been treated. This new strength whispered to her options she had never considered before. It tempted her to fight back when Sael pushed her or expected subservience to him. It whispered hot hatred full of violence when Obahn ordered her about and spoke in a tone that was full of disgust.
Like Ahlen’s offer of freedom though, Jhan new that the siren song of her strength was false. If she lifted her hand or her voice, she knew she would either be dead or left in the Winter wind without help or hope. Nothing had really changed, except that her heart pumped blood more strongly about her body so that she felt less like a walking corpse, and her body had gained weight until she was slightly over a hundred pounds and not likely to blow away in a stiff breeze. It was a great change to Jhan, but in reality, it counted for nothing against the armed strength of the men around her.
“Who cares about being healthy when you’re walking to your execution?” Jhan muttered aloud to herself.
“I have felt the same.”
Jhan flinched and saw that Sael was riding close behind her. His words were enigmatic until she saw how the material of his scarf was hugging his sunken cheeks and how thin the fingers on the reins of his imala were. When Jhan searched her memory, she couldn’t remember the last time she had seen him eat.
“Dining on despair instead of food, Sael?”
Sael scowled and slowly began putting on his gloves in a pointed manner. It told Jhan, as clearly as words, that she was intruding.
Jhan shrugged. “I think you fall back on that custom of, ‘a man’s business is his own’, only when it suits your mood.”
“Now it suits my mood, my wife.”
“Stop calling me that,” Jhan growled back. “Even Ahlen can’t believe that any more.”
“You give him too much credit,” Sael replied diffidently, “ but it doesn’t matter. You ARE my wife, whether we consummate it or not. A man would have to challenge my claim, and win, to take you from me.”
“Forget about all of that for now,” Jhan grumbled. “Tell me something useful. Tell me where we are and what might be up ahead.”
“It’s never interested you before.” Sael gave her a critical look. “If you are planning on running away now-”
“Would you stop me?” Jhan demanded. “I thought you were trying to help me!”
“I was, at first,” Sael replied honestly. “Ekhal help one another. It’s how we survive. I gave you more help than even honor demanded of me. It is this mistake of nature inside of me, this despicable softness that I can never rid myself of, that you owe your life to.”
“You’ve already told me that,” Jhan retorted wearily. “Are you still convinced that showing up at the Temple of the Sun God, with me on your arm, is going to improve your chances of seeing Hagen again?”
“Obahn doesn’t think so,” Sael admitted pensively.
“He never did,” Jhan told him. “He just wanted you to be quiet and to keep following him obediently.”
Sael’s face went red and his eyes were unpleasant as he glared up ahead to the distant figure of Obahn. “I shall keep you, in hope that a god, maybe, doesn’t truly know all.”
“Blasphemy?”
“No, only grasping at the slimmest of hopes,” Sael admitted softly. “I shall stand with Obahn and you will be in the shadows with Zerain, clearly my wife for any eye to see. That is how I plan it. I will be a warrior when I stand beside Tsarianna. He must find me worthy.”
Sael’s eyes were firm and commanding as he continued, “I will keep you in ignorance of our surroundings. I don’t want you to kill yourself trying to make your way in this rough land. You can call that what you may. It can as easily be concern for you as reluctance to have my plans spoiled.”
“All in the point of view,” Jhan agreed sourly and kicked her baku into a trot to get away from Sael’s oppression.

“I have conceived, my Husband.”
Zerain’s announcement caught Obahn in the middle of a yawn and a stretch. She was kneeling at his feet, her veiled face looking up at him. Her words had carried easily throughout the camp and everyone had an expression that mirrored Obahn’s; startled confusion.
Obahn’s confusion gave way to pleasure. He reached out and touched Zerain’s forehead as if in blessing. “It is inconvenient, but I will honor you above all other wives if it is a boy.”
Obahn began to turn away, this small display seemingly all that he was willing to show. Zerain caught at his leg, stopping him and earning herself a fierce scowl. He gathered patience, visibly, and turned to her again.
“Husband,” Zerain began in her most subservient tone of voice. “I fear for the child’s life, your son’s life, if I continue on this journey. Allow me to return to our people-”
Impossible!” Obahn cut her off sharply, his hand chopping in the air to enforce his negative response. “Who would I send to guard you?”
“Then allow me to stay and wait for your return at the next village we happen on.”
Again that sharp, cutting motion. “You ask the impossible! Again, who would I choose to stay and be your guard?”
Zerain seemed to reach deep down for courage. “Then it is Penatha, my Husband.”
Obahn looked so angry that Jhan recoiled. She stood, pushing aside her blankets, and quickly walked to the edge of the camp. Sael was already there along with Ahlen, feeding the beasts. Sael had an unreadable look in his eyes, but Ahlen was standing stiff and white faced, feed bag forgotten in his clenched hands.
“How can you ask that?” Obahn was demanding in a voice that cracked over the camp like thunder. “You are my only wife on this journey!”
“I don’t need to ask.” Zerain was clearly afraid, but she wasn’t going to back down. “It is my right.”
“If you refuse to be in my bed then I haven’t any use for you, woman!” Obahn seethed. “Is that what you want? Are you trying to force me to leave you behind?”
“That is my wish,” Zerain admitted. “If I can’t protect your unborn son in a safe haven, then I must protect him in all other ways open to me.”
Obahn turned his hands into fists and his lips drew back from his sharp teeth. Jhan found herself taking another step away and she bumped into Ahlen. He gripped her arm hard. “How can she know, so soon?” He whispered in a voice that trembled as if he were going to faint.
“I don’t know,” Jhan replied tightly. “I don’t know anything about it. Maybe she can.” Jhan frowned and looked back at Ahlen, at his wild eyes and the sweat trickling down his face even in the bone chilling cold air. “So soon? After you had her, you mean?”
Ahlen’s hand tightened till Jhan hissed at the pain. Sael was suddenly there, prying that cruel grip loose and pushing Ahlen forceable back. He hadn’t heard their exchange, and he was angry at Ahlen.
“If my wife is in your way, Kantori, only speak to me and I will punish her,” Sael told him and then glared at Ahlen’s obvious distress. “Are you ill? Has my Lord’s good fortune upset you in some fashion?”
“We aren’t so open about such things,” Ahlen forced out through tight lips. “It is shocking, that’s all. Women’s business,” he concluded lamely.
Sael was contemptuous. “A man proves his virility to everyone in any fashion he can. Only the inadequate keep it in silence and in the darkness. A woman heavy with a man’s child is shown to everyone. It is a matter for bragging.”
Ahlen went even whiter and walked away. Sael was frowning as he picked up the dropped feed bag and began tying it onto the nose of a baku. “I didn’t know that he was so prudish,” Sael remarked absently, “or is he only more of a boy than I had thought?”
Jhan rubbed at her bruised arm, saying grimly, “Oh, he’s not a boy at all, Sael, not now. That kind of trouble’s just begun for him.”
“Manhood isn’t trouble, unless one is married to you, my wife.”
“Or oathed to a dead man,” Jhan retorted without thinking.
Sael stopped abruptly, but didn’t turn around. “Go away,” he warned.
Jhan felt a chill that didn’t have anything to do with the cold air. Trapped between a suddenly furious Sael and a still erupting Obahn, Jhan didn’t have any choice but to seek refuge near the Children of Selaya and Ixien. They were watching Obahn curiously, all of them ignorant as to what the argument was about.
“You will not manipulate me, woman!” Obahn was shouting. “You forget your place, and your honor, to want to seek safety away from your lord!”
Zerain stayed resolutely on her knees and Jhan longed to see her expression under that veil. She imagined it calculating and not at all daunted. Jhan could understand her plan. Staying behind, maybe bearing Ahlen’s child, would give her the privacy she would need to make certain that it resembled herself enough to pass for Obahn's. Jhan could imagine the savagery that would ensue if Obahn ever found out that he had been cuckolded.
“I don’t do this for myself,” Zerain countered. “It is my first child and, perhaps, your longed for son. The healers say a woman may miscarry if stressed too much or keshun too roughly. You are strong and your desire is powerful. It is only wise-”
Obahn ran calloused hands over his face with an angry groan. “Be free of your duty to me, Zerain, but you will still journey with me. I won’t trust any other sword to protect you.” He lowered his hands and glared at her, “Know, too, that I will take another wife in your place as soon as I may.”
Zerain stiffened. It was plain that she wanted to argue, to beg, to keep Obahn from walking away. He pulled roughly out of her grip and strode away, ending the conversation and any further pleas. She stayed on her knees there for a long moment, and then her back straightened as she bore up under her disappointment. Slowly, she stood and began to make breakfast.
Jhan looked about her, letting out a held breath as the tension in the air melted away. Her eyes lit on Tagara first. The woman was standing with pain in her eyes, her hand on her stomach and her gaze on Zerain. Ixien went to her and took her hand in his, looking up into her face, not with concern, but with a calculation to rival and surpass Zerain's.
Tagara’s eyes went liquid as she met Ixien’s gaze and she smiled as she said, “She carries life, Ixien. It is a powerful thing. A wondrous thing. I wish to share it.”
Jhan found pity for the woman. She was fire in human form. No one but an emotionless Caefu could touch her. She was dreaming the impossible and Ixien woke her to reality bluntly.
“I crave your fire,” Ixien told Tagara, releasing her hands and stepping away. “I need your power. Don’t expect other things from me.”
Tagara turned away. She was still smiling, but it was frozen on her face, forgotten. In another moment she was a ball of fire, rising up through the trees and hovering there, as if she couldn’t face humanity any longer.
Togo was angry, glaring at Ixien. “You are cruel,” he seethed.
“The truth is what it is,” Ixien replied and walked away to stand under Tagara, staring up at her as if he were frozen in fascination.
Minyah growled and flexed muscles as if he was about to spring on the Caefu and rip him to shreds. Togo twisted a hand into his fur. “Quiet, Minyah,” Togo soothed. “Violence won’t heal our sister’s spirit and she cares for the Caefu.”
“Not any longer, I think,” Jhan murmured. “Tagara’s found out that she didn’t know as much as she thought about men and the world.”
“She said that they were all cruel,” Togo replied as if Jhan had wanted an answer. “I think that she is right about that.”
“No,” Jhan countered, “she isn’t. It’s just that these specimens are the bottom of the barrel. She thought that she could pick one of them out and make her life normal, instantly. She lied to herself that Ixien was so much better than the rest only because he was enough like her to put hands on her.”
“We have been alone, shut out from life for so long,” Togo told her softly. “She thought that it was a gift from Selaya that she found someone so quickly who could touch her and endure her heat.”
“Life is never that tidy and quick,” Jhan replied bitterly, “at least it hasn’t been for me.”
Ahlen was still off trying to regain his composure. Jhan went to the baku, forced to begin strapping on their harness herself. Sael came up beside her. She flicked eyes at him briefly, but his anger was gone. He moved to adjust a strap that didn’t need adjusting and said, ”Obahn hasn’t fathered any children in some years.”
Jhan grunted, “So, what are you thinking?”
Sael shrugged. “It is strange, that is all.”
“As Ahlen would say, “Jhan said with heavy innuendo, “Scherial is kind.”
Sael didn’t pick up on it, mind slipping onto another track entirely. “We call her Sekhal, in my land. The Giver of Life and the Bearer of Life.” He touched a quartered circle charm on his scarf. “This is her symbol. Women burn fruits and flowers to her to conceive and men give blood sacrifice to her to make them strong and virile. She is all aspects of life. A man is Lekhal. A woman is Jekhal. Ekhal. Ikhil. All aspects of Sekhal, the Earth Goddess.”
Jhan shook her head. “I don’t think I could get used to a woman as God. It must be the way I was brought up. I’ve always considered it a masculine sort of role; a father figure, I suppose.”
Sael snorted, “Male gods are leaders and warriors, not creators of life.”
“Religion always makes a pointless argument,” Jhan sighed, “and I really am not in the mood, Sael. Are you going anywhere with all of this?”
“Going?”
“Are you attempting to make some point?” Jhan clarified impatiently.
“I might have, but you have made me forget it,” Sael grumbled, “You do that often.”
Ahlen chose that moment to appear and relieve Jhan of putting the heavy baggage on the baku. “There is breakfast ready,” he told her absently, fingers tense on the straps of the baku, “Eat while I finish.”
Sael’s eyes traveled over him and Ahlen flushed. “What is wrong with you that you can’t understand that she is not your woman any longer?” Sael demanded. “Must I kill you?”
Ahlen slowly looked from Sael to Jhan and it was obvious what he was thinking. He was experienced enough now to know the lie. “You are a thekling,” he said simply, and there was a tinge of disgust and a daring challenge that Jhan had never heard from him before.
Sael put a hand on his sword hilt, but he had narrowed his eyes, as if Ahlen hadn’t given him enough reason yet to draw it. “That is true,” he replied tensely.
“What is she to you then?” Ahlen wondered.
“My wife,” Sael replied and he pulled his sword out an inch.
“In what way?” Ahlen persisted, his eyes locked on Saels'. “I have seen her without her clothes. How can she interest someone like you, who desires... desires only men.“ His disgust was deepening and so was his challenge.
“You don’t understand, boy,” Sael replied, “and you are not a lodge brother to ask such questions of me.”
“I am a man!” Ahlen bristled.
“Are you?” Sael wondered acidly and his eyes became as hard as the steel of his sword. “How did that happen? You haven’t had a chance to prove it, have you?”
Ahlen’s face closed like a trap and he turned it away from Sael, suddenly frightened. Jhan sighed and went to get her breakfast, glad to leave their tense knot of male posturing behind. She settled by the fire as Zerain quietly handed her pieces of meat. Jhan silently chewed on them, longing for the coarse, bland cereal she had thought that she would never miss.
Jhan caught herself watching Zerain, looking idly for any signs of her pregnancy. It was foolish she knew, but it was the same curiosity that made people slow down and stare at an accident, even thought they were afraid to see the tragedy. Was It Ahlen’s child or Obahn’s? Jhan wondered. Why had Zerain taken such a chance? Had she been so afraid of not conceiving by Obahn that she had gambled on getting away with a deception?
Jhan never considered love being the reason for Zerain’s infidelity, or even simpler lust. Zerain was as cool and indifferent to Ahlen as she had ever been. No, she had planned it. It was nothing but a strategy to her. Jhan recalled Sael’s words. He had said that Zerain would be made a princess if she conceived Obahn a son. What better time than now to put her plans into motion? Jhan had heard the talk. They would soon be passing close to small towns where they could get supplies. It would have been simple for Zerain to stay behind; to have her prince in safety.
And if that child should have gray eyes instead of gold? Jhan felt a shiver of premonition. Forced now to continue the journey, Zerain’s deception would be apparent immediately when she birthed the child. Would Obahn kill it? Kill Zerain?
Jhan ached for that unborn baby and she felt a stirring of hate for Zerain, even though all of her thoughts were mere supposition at that point. Jhan wondered if she would survive the journey long enough to see Zerain give birth. What would she do if it did look like Ahlen? Jhan had allowed them to treat her as cruelly as they pleased, out of fear and acceptance of the inevitable. When she thought of doing nothing while Obahn ran his sword through a baby, she felt a trembling over take her and a sick chill go over her skin.
“Ikhil,” Zerain whispered harshly, her blank wall of veil tipped as if she were staring down her nose at Jhan. “Do you tremble because you see, at last, what a real woman is?”
Jhan realized that she had been staring at Zerain while gripped by her inner thoughts, and that Zerain had completely misunderstood. Jhan looked away and stood up, wiping her greasy hands against her filthy pants. “No,” Jhan replied just as quietly, “I see the darkness.”

CHAPTER SIX
(Breaking Ice)
“Tagara is gone,” Togo announced later in the day. They had stopped for a rest, the weather turning bitterly cold and the sky heavy with the threat of snow. Togo looked distressed, eyes scanning the treetops as if he hoped that he was wrong.
“Gone where?’ Obahn growled around a mouthful of stringy meat.
“She was distraught,” Togo replied. “She spoke of returning to our mountain home, but Minyah and I refused. I didn’t believe that she would go back alone.”
Obahn stood from the rock he had been sitting on and tossed the rest of the meat aside with a curse. He turned commandingly to Sael. “She was good for keeping watch, since she rarely slept. We will both have to stand watch more vigilantly from now on.”
“As my Lord wills,” Sael replied, but his dutiful response was heavy with another meaning. Jhan tensed, crouched to take a drink of water from a skin. She lowered it from her lips and watched them nervously.
Obahn understood what Sael was saying well enough. He glared and then spat aside. “You’re hopes are misplaced, Ekhal. Even if my needs were to make me mad I would sooner keshun with your Ikhil wife than to-”
“There is nothing shameful in it,” Sael replied quickly, eyes level on Obahn's. “Warriors take Ekhal into battle often when women would be disruptive. You know this.”
Obahn’s face darkened and he spat again. “It is you, Sael Ruon, I despise. It is you I will not have touching me!”
Sael looked down. His face was blank, but Jhan was sure there was a smile under his scarf. “Then I offer Jhan in my place, to fulfill my oath.”
Jhan stood with a gasp, letting the water skin fall from her fingers. The water poured out onto the ground and quickly began turning to frozen slush. Obahn heard the noise and stared at her. It was only for a moment, and then he was glaring at Sael again. His eyes had been dismissive and full of revulsion. Jhan knew, relieved, that she wasn’t in any danger of Obahn taking up Sael’s offer.
“We are not far from a city I know,” Obahn said, “I will find me another woman and this matter will not be spoken of again.”
“My Lord.” Sael gave a dip of his chin and walked away.
“Your cloak is torn.” A warm finger poked into that opening and Jhan jerked away, spinning to confront Ixien. The Caefu was staring at the rip dispassionately. “You should acquire a coat from one of the others or you will become sick from the cold.”
“And you care? Why?” Jhan demanded, breathless with her confusion and anger.
The sun was sparkling in Ixien’s alien eyes, making them as clear as crystal goblets. “I needed Tagara, but she has left,” Ixien replied.
“That’s an answer?”
“Yes.” Ixien cocked his elfin face a little and stared about them, saying as if to himself, “It will grow very cold soon. We will have to stop and shelter for the rest of the Winter.”
That alarmed Jhan. “Ahlen needs to reach the Sun God’s Temple before next year. He won’t wait.”
“If he goes on, he will die,” Ixien sounded certain, “Trails will be lost in the snow and the way will become impassable, even on foot. You seem healthier, but I doubt that you have become strong enough to survive the wilderness in Winter.”
“It doesn’t bother you,” Jhan pointed out, “Are you going on?”
“My people draw their strength from the fire of the Earth, but the sun is a substitute when we are away from it.” Ixien stared up at its milky light. “It dims and there will be long stretches of days where it will not shine at all. I must have a haven before then.”
Jhan felt frustration well up and all but overwhelm her. She wondered if this was all empty speculation on Ixien’s part or if he was echoing what he might have heard from the others. As they ended their rest and began down the trail again, Jhan tried to ask Sael. He turned a shoulder to her and said nothing, lost in his own problems and uncaring of hers. Ahlen was even less approachable, his eyes hot and haunted. In the end, Jhan chose to ignore Ixien’s words, believing instead that the passions that drove her companions wouldn’t be conquered by the obstacle of weather.
The land gentled, flattening out and opening up, until they were passing only lone clumps of trees in an otherwise frozen landscape of brown, stubble grass and patches of light snow and frost. The lake they happened on was a surprising barrier. It’s blue-white color was an unbroken sheet that stretched in all directions.
Obahn didn’t hesitate. He dismounted and led his balking imala onto the ice, slipping and sliding until he had the trick of it. His imala honked and twitched nervously, but its hooves were sure as it followed after him. Zerain was his shadow, following closely behind.
Minyah was frightened until his brother gave up his airborne form and materialized next to him. Togo had been doing that often, sometimes walking for miles to keep his brother company. He patted Minyah on the shoulder now, with a good- natured smile, as he stepped onto the ice along with him, murmuring encouragement.
Minyah went down on all fours uncertainly. His feet and hands slid. Minyah was delighted all at once, causing himself to slide intentionally. “Fun!” he shouted happily, just as Togo, thrown off balance, slipped and fell over him.
“Idiot! No!” Togo exclaimed, but his words were punctuated by laughter as Minyah leapt and slid, pulling Togo to the opposite side of the lake on his behind.
Jhan found a wan smile at their childish antics. It felt stiff and unused and she couldn’t remember the last time she had smiled for pleasure. Sael was staring at her, his one hand on the nose of his nervous imala and his other hand tight on the reins.
“You are not so unpleasant to look at when you smile,” Sael remarked softly.
Jhan’s smile fell and she glared at him, leaving it all unsaid. He had the sense to be uncomfortable, and to let his eyes drop, as he led his imala across the ice.
“We should tie the baku together,” Jhan suggested as she turned to Ahlen. “These beasts are used to it. It keeps them calm.”
Ahlen nodded and waited patiently while Jhan attached the leads to all three animals. Ixien perched on the last in line, the baggage baku. He was staring at the frozen water as if it were burning acid. Jhan almost told him to get down, but then shrugged to herself. The baku might slip and crush the little Caefu, but she found it very hard to care.
Ahlen led the beasts onto the ice, making small sounds under his breath to distract them and keep them quiet. Jhan let them pass her, checking one last time that none of the leads were tangled. Satisfied, she began walking, slid, caught herself and then slid again as she tried to keep up with the sure footed baku.
Sael’s imala had balked at the center of the lake. He was tugging on the reins and cursing ineffectually as Ahlen attempted to lead the baku wide and around the distressed beast.
It was a faint sound. Jhan hardly noticed it as she watched her feet and tried to keep her balance. She almost dismissed it as tree branches rubbing together, or even the creak of harness, as Sael tried to bring his imala to order. It was too late when she realized that it was none of those things.
The ice cracked under Jhan’s feet with a sound like a rifle shot, the weight of baku and imala too much for it. She threw herself forward, the pack baku honking in surprise and alarm, as the ice tipped out from underneath their feet; water splashing up like deadly fingers trying to drag them in.
Jhan scrambled wildly, a mirror image of the pack baku as it also flailed to save its life. The lead between the animals held and their forward, panicked momentum, pulled the pack baku out of the hole and across the ice, also dragging Sael and Ahlen, who were holding stubbornly to their reins, along with them.
Jhan was left to save her own life. With the ice holding under her light weight, she was able to ignore the vicious throb of her healing leg to sprint out of danger, slipping and sliding alarmingly, but still managing to head towards the shore quickly. She began to relax. She knew that she was going to be safe. A matter of a few yards separated her from the others and solid ground.
It hit her as if she had run into a wall; a dire feeling of something being forgotten. Her mind crawled over the problem, as if time had ceased, her eyes searching the people waiting for her anxiously on the shore while she fought for balance on the slick ice. With a sinking, nauseating sensation in the pit of her stomach, Jhan realized at last what was wrong. Ixien wasn’t on the shore. He had been riding the pack baku. The beast was there, head down and sides heaving. It’s back was still full of their gear, but Ixien was conspicuously absent.
What made her do it, Jhan couldn’t begin to guess. She stopped, turned, and saw the Caefu slipping under the icy water. He was screaming like a little child, eyes wide and mouth hanging open as his hands desperately scrambled for the edge of the fissure. There wasn’t any consideration, not any pause to remember the horrible, unfeeling acts this creature had perpetrated on Jhan. She simply reacted automatically, not even certain what to do, but knowing that she was going to do something.
Jhan ran back towards the fissure, ignoring the shocked shouts of everyone on shore. When she passed the first thin cracks in the ice, and saw Ixien’s small hands disappearing under the water, she threw herself belly down with a painful smack!, and slid the rest of the way to the edge of the fissure. Her gloved hands reached into the cold water and searched on briefly before finding and grabbing hold of Ixien’s arms. She pulled up with all of her might and the Caefu broke the water.
At once, Ixien was attempting to climb up on Jhan, choking on ice water and clawing skin from her neck. His skin was dead cold and his face was blue with it, his power over the elements washed away with the water. It was then that Jhan realized why he had always been so afraid to get wet. Like the harsh wind of the mountains, his power was simply overwhelmed, snuffed out like a candle.
Jhan straddled the ice, legs sprawled out. She desperately fought with Ixien, clutching the edge of the fissure to keep herself from falling in. He was unable to get out of the water and she was unable to pull him out, both of them balanced precariously. At any moment that balance was going to tip, Jhan knew, and she didn’t have any doubt that it would be into the water.
“Fool!”
A weight lay over Jhan’s legs. She glanced back only briefly and saw Sael sprawled crosswise over her legs, hands and toes trying to find rough spots on the ice to brace them both. His scarf lay loosely about his neck and his bare face was pale and furious.
Ixien locked little hands about Jhan’s neck and he pressed his face against her, simply clinging now while she reached down and tugged at him. It should have been easy. It wasn’t. Ixien felt as heavy as an elephant and Jhan simply wasn’t strong enough to move his weight even buoyed by water.
Jhan gasped as Ixien’s claws dug into her, as vicious as a startled cat. She didn’t think that she could push him off now if she had wanted to and Obahn’s voice, carrying to her from the shore, made her determined not to try.
“Let him go!” Obahn roared. “You will all die if you don’t!”
“Let go of him, my wife, “ Sael grated under his breath, hands biting cruelly tight into Jhan’s legs, “Quickly, before Obahn orders me to leave the both of you to die!”
“Can’t!” Jhan bit out and then let out a scream as Ixien tried to scramble up her back again. His flailing legs splashed water over her, choking her as it filled her nose and mouth with cold so intense it burned.
“I command you, Sael Ruon!” Obahn roared. “Leave them to their madness. Find yourself another wife!”
“I must obey!” Sael groaned to Jhan, “He has my oath. It is stronger even than husband and wife. Forgive me.”
“No!” Jhan shrieked, choking and twisting her head about as Ixien’s arms began to cut off her oxygen.
Sael was gone and Jhan felt herself sliding into the water. Her head went under even as her fingernails tore to keep her grip on the ice, desperation making her unwilling to give up even now. When her ankles were grabbed and she was jerked backwards onto the ice again, she could hardly believe it. Gasping for air, Ixien’s cheek pressed against her own, Jhan heard Minyah’s voice rumble from behind her, “I not let you die!”
Minyah was using his claws, digging them into the ice as he slowly backed up. Togo in turn, had hold of him around the waist, using his uncertain footing as a weight to help propel them. Ahlen had a hold of Togo, face stricken with fear as he completed the chain towards shore. Struggling, slipping, sliding, and cursing, Ixien was freed from the grip of the water and they all half walked, half crawled off of the ice.
They all lay in a heap then, panting and hearts racing, as Zerain lit a fire. Obahn swore and paced angrily, Sael mute and bleak beside him, as blankets were unpacked and wet clothes were taken off and thrown into sodden piles.
Ixien crawled to the fire and his skin steamed as he began to regain his heat. He was clearly shaken, eyes wide open as if in shock, and lip caught between fine, sharp teeth. He said nothing, not even thanks, as Jhan edged away from him.
Jhan shuddered, as much from the cold as the stabbing pain of her abused leg. Togo was holding up a blanket, waiting expectantly for her to drop her clothes as he, Ahlen, and even Sael had already done.
Self consciously, Jhan glanced around her at the moving, naked bodies. In the cold, those bodies were shivering, manhood shriveled, hands snatching and working furiously to dry and clothe exposed skin. Sael was lean, too lean, chest wide and arms rounded at the shoulder from long hours using a sword. Ahlen was lanky, an overgrown puppy obviously intending to grow even more. Togo, Jhan blinked at him, still dazed. His body was as normal as any man’s, though perhaps, even in the cold, more endowed than usual. He was unconcerned with his nakedness, weight on one hip and tall body poised in concern for her.
To protest would only bring all eyes to her, Jhan knew. At that moment, everyone was busy with their own needs, ignoring anything and everyone. Togo seemed to grow anxious, his hands tightening on the blanket. “You must be quicker than this, or you will become ill,” he warned.
What was one more humiliation? Jhan thought darkly, as she stood, shivering and teeth chattering, and stripped off her clothes. She dried with the towel and then dropped it, wet now and freezing, as she was forced to stand, naked, while clothes were found for her. She crossed her arms over her chest, bowed over her heart, and tried to keep turned away from the others.
It happened so quickly, Jhan was unprepared. Obahn was suddenly towering over her as if he had sprung from the ground in front of her. He was all heaving muscle and reeking body, teeth gritted as he twisted one hand into the back of her hair and tore her arms away from her breasts with the other. Hard, calloused, fingers; tough and possessed of that incredible strength that men always had, forced Jhan about as if he wanted to look at all sides of her.
Obahn’s gold eyes went to the spot, as every man’s did. Jhan saw that familiar, puzzled, muddled expression and that tinge of green flush over Obahn’s skin. He was imagining all sorts of things, Jhan knew, trying to fathom what was beneath her light dusting of hair and the concealment of skin.
Fight back? Jhan was too shocked and frightened, still stunned with all that had just happened and adrenalin ebbing to the point where she felt weak enough to faint. When Obahn’s hand dived between her legs and felt there, searching as his fist tightened in her hair, Jhan couldn’t do more than freeze like a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf.
Obahn’s hand didn’t grope long before he felt what he had been searching for. His face twisted into disgust. “Sael had told me,” he grated, as if he were about to vomit, “but I couldn’t believe it. Ahlen named you Prince, and still something in me denied it. It is there. The cuts, the scars; small, but there, and that awful opening where there shouldn’t be one, where a woman’s is not! How can you have such bravery when all of the things that makes a man has been cut from you? Where does it spring from? What are you that my Bhakali, an Ekhal, risks his life for you?” His fingers pulled and pinched, “What is there between your legs that makes even such as he want you?”
Jhan felt tears, but her horror was too great to release them. Her face shivered along with her body as she met his gold eyes with her blue ones, her words coming out surprisingly calm, “You have it in your hand, Lord Obahn,” she dared and couldn’t believe that she WAS daring, “Why don’t you tell me, since even you seem unable to keep from touching it?”
Jhan almost thought that Obahn’s hand was going to be crude and delve deeper, wanting to humiliate her in revenge for her words. His fingers flexed threateningly, but then only gripped her there, tight and warm; eyes never leaving hers as he purposely tried to demean her in front of everyone.
”You want to make me ill, don’t you,” Obahn growled, “You want to make me leave you alone. Isn’t that why you told me your sad tale back on the trail?”
Obahn slowly looked Jhan’s trembling body over, watching it betray, not just that she was freezing, but how truly afraid she was. Her helplessness seemed to tantalize him and he gently licked his lips, ignoring all the stillness and the people standing around them staring.
“You are so beautiful, despite your wear and your dirt,” Obahn told her, sounding almost regretful, “You have been shaped to be a plaything, that’s clear, but even though you have been given over to man’s use, you still carry yourself honorably. You fear me, but you try to act brave and defy me. Even now, like this, you still face me eye to eye like a prince.”
Jhan took a long, slow breath to steady herself, but her voice was still thin and choked as she demanded, “What do you want me to say? If you’re going to do it, then go ahead, and let me get warm again.”
“Do it?” Obahn grinned and it seemed a mad, tense expression on his face. “Keshun with you? Is that what you mean?”
Obahn’s hands left Jhan at last, but then both of them returned just as quickly. He grabbed her breasts, stroked them, and pulled roughly on the nipples to heighten her humiliation. Slowly, he let them drop, one by one. He stepped back and touched the front of his pants as if he had been aroused, shifting his clothes there.
“You have the skill to stop me,” Obahn said at last, clearly puzzled, “You obviously have the courage to use it. Why allow this?”
“That’s easy,” Jhan’s said, utterly degraded and eyes sunken hollows of misery, “Sael would have killed me if I had.”
Obahn watched impassively as Togo wrapped Jhan in a dry blanket, face unreadable as he continued to pick through clothes to find her enough of them to dress in. Finally, Obahn grunted, curious, “I wouldn’t have killed you myself? Do you imagine your skill the equal of mine?”
Jhan felt a shaky smile on her face, a shadow of madness in the way she bared her teeth as if she were snarling. “It is,” Jhan replied with a flat tone that left Obahn without any room for doubt, “but you would have occupied me long enough for Sael to run his sword through me. Being groped is nothing compared to other things I’ve suffered. It certainly isn’t worth dying over.”
“It sounds like cowardice, yet I saw your bravely when you tried to save the Caefu.” Obahn was angrily bewildered. “Explain this contradiction.”
Jhan was still shocked by her own actions and she didn’t have an easy answer for him. “I didn’t think,” she surmised, ” I just reacted. If I had thought-” she let it drop, shaking her head.
Obahn said nothing to that, watching as Jhan dressed in a mixture of Ahlen’s clothes and Sael’s, all patched, worn, and dirty. “I see,” Obahn said at last and Jhan shot a look at him as she pulled a second sweater over her head. It had a rip along the collar and she fingered it ruefully before pulling on a too large coat of Ahlen's.
“See what?” Jhan felt forced to ask.
“If you had thought,” Obahn reasoned, “you would have been too afraid to save him, as you are too afraid to fight me. It’s death that keeps you timid and acting the woman. You fear it more than living mutilated and used. That is the dishonorable part of you. It answers my questions; completes the puzzle you have been for me.”
Jhan shrugged, not caring what Obahn thought any more. He took that as assent, sneering at her. She crouched by the fire and put her soggy boots by it to dry, not sure how much time Obahn was going to give them to recover. “So,” she said, almost not loud enough for anyone but herself to hear.
Obahn heard and frowned warningly. “So?” he repeated, as if he suspected that she was cursing him.
“Are you or aren’t you going to?”
She sounded so bold, Jhan thought, when she was secretly dying of fear, knowing that none of them was going to help her. They had even began dressing again, trying to share enough clothing and finding that there wasn’t enough to keep them all warm. They were discussing it among them, as if she and Obahn had gone into another room, or maybe, as men, they had sensed something in Obahn that Jhan had missed. An unspoken understanding that Obahn wasn’t going to do anything.
“I don’t keshun with men,” Obahn grunted and turned away, throwing over his shoulder, “or cowards pretending to be women.”
They all crouched by the fire, getting warm, everyone silent and shivering. Togo, Minyah, and Ahlen were the closest to Jhan. She should have thanked them. Without their help she would have died with Ixien. Instead, Jhan stared sullenly into the flames of the fire, lips locked on bitterness and the screams of anguish she longed to utter. It still felt as If Obahn’s hand was on her, too hot and degrading to be forgotten.
Jhan knew that she was being watched. She looked up, only briefly, and saw Sael staring at her, his face set in disgust and disappointment. Of course, Jhan thought, she had dishonored herself. She hadn’t fought back.
Jhan’s eyes darted under her eyelashes and she saw Ahlen staring at her as well, face set in anger and a little confusion. Now that he was a man, had Obahn’s roughness moved him? She could imagine his confusion at reacting to someone like her and under those circumstances.
Again, Jhan’s eyes shifted. Obahn was staring at them all impatiently, his assault already forgotten. It hadn’t been sexual at all, Jhan knew, but only a crude satisfying of his own curiosity; a need to put her back in the low place he had placed her in before her bravery in saving Ixien. His pawing, calloused hands, had only been instruments to crush her, to mold her back into the helpless creature he knew her to be. For what purpose, Jhan couldn’t guess, but it seemed Obahn was done trying to make her into a warrior.
“Do you think the little one will recover?” Togo asked to no one in particular. He was staring at Ixien as he hugged his meager sweater to his lanky body, chilled hands trying to spread his pile of wet clothes out next to him.
Jhan looked at Ixien, expecting to see his usual indifferent self. Instead, she was amazed to see him shaking, skin as white as snow and eyes wide and shocked. His body heat was having trouble overcoming the wet of his skin and he had literally thrust his arms into the flames of the fire.
Jhan found herself standing, gathering up a dry blanket and crushing it against her as she took a deep breath and rounded the fire to reach Ixien. She dropped the blanket onto him, not wanting to touch him, and he began furiously wiping the water from his skin. His hot hands made the fibers of the blanket smolder as if it were going to catch on fire.
Ixien’s clear eyes lifted to Jhan's. “Why?” he asked simply.
Jhan swallowed as if she were going to be sick. She stuck her hands into the pockets of her warm coat and shifted from one foot to the other, longing for her boots and for all of this to be over with. “I’m a human being,” Jhan replied, but she couldn’t help sounding angry, “They haven’t been able to make me forget that yet.”
“You swore that, when the time came, you would relish watching me die,” Ixien reminded her.
“That’s not what I said,” Jhan retorted and then pressed her lips together tightly. She took a blind look about the camp to gather her thoughts and to take a tight rein on her emotions. “I wanted you to feel helpless.”
“I would not have saved you, if you had been in the same situation.”
Jhan looked down at him again and her blue eyes narrowed at his childlike, elfin face. “I know,” she replied. It didn’t make any difference. The very thing inside of her, that had kept her from being able to kill everyone of her tormentors in cold blood, had been Ixien’s savior. It wasn’t in her to stand and watch anyone die, even for revenge.
Jhan walked back around the fire and crouched to warm herself again, trembling and wrapping her arms around herself. Togo lifted the blanket she had discarded and began to put it about her shoulders. He froze when he saw the blood.
“Savior of Selaya,” Togo began, but stopped when Jhan gave him a hard, angry look.
“Please don’t give me any more titles to carry around,” Jhan snapped acidly. “I have enough I’m trying to get rid of.”
Unperturbed, Togo timidly tugged at the collar of Jhan’s sweater and coat and saw the deep scratches along her back and neck. “The Caefu has sharp claws,“ he observed sympathetically, “Will they fester, do you think?”
“I did get some of the dirt off of me in the water,” Jhan replied absently, “They’re probably clean enough.”
Togo blinked as if she were being foolish, shaking his head and contradicting her worriedly, “You are covered all over in filth! Even the water wasn’t enough to-”
“I don’t care,” Jhan snapped, cutting him off. “I just don’t, Togo. I have to much to deal with right now. Please, I-I don’t want anything- anyone bothering me.”
“Obahn has upset you,“ It was a whisper from Togo and he looked disturbed. “I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know enough custom to understand what is acceptable, but your expression when he touched you that way... It was wrong, wasn’t it? Very wrong.”
“Yes,” Jhan replied in a whisper. She turned her face away and bit her lip viciously to keep herself from crying at his gentleness.
Sael and Ahlen had risen from the fire, haggling over a pair of gloves as if they didn’t dislike each other. Sael insisted Ahlen take them, since he had lined pockets in his coat. Ahlen agreed with a nod and began putting them on.
“Such concern,” Zerain mocked as she began to bank and put out the fire. “One would think that you were both Ekhal.”
“If you didn’t know better,” Ahlen was too quick to reply.
“Do I?” Zerain wondered archly and her hips swayed insolently as she walked away.
Ahlen was red in the face, his gloved hands clenching. Sael was looking from Ahlen to Zerain and then he stiffened, understanding at last. His tone was low and tight, his eyes searching for Obahn, to make certain he was too far to hear. “Be careful!” he warned Ahlen, “My Lord’s honor is in my keeping. Don’t let me hear what I aught not or I will have to tell Obahn of it.”
Ahlen’s red face turned to white and his eyes became alarmed. He opened his mouth, stammered nothing, and then closed his mouth and nodded fearfully. Sael nodded too, once and strongly to make his point, before he left to check on the beasts.
They moved about in disarray. The beasts were nervous and balking. Clothing, dry and wet, had to be packed once more. Everyone seemed to not know where to go or what to do. A bellow from Obahn brought everything back into order. He shouted commands and soon had them all lined up and ready to travel.
Ixien was a huddled ball of misery on the pack baku, but he was steaming as his body began to reheat itself. Ahlen was far down the line away from Obahn and Zerain. Obahn was striding about, checking to make certain nothing had been left behind. Zerain awaited him patiently on her imala, at the head of the line.
Sael was on his imala coming close to Jhan, mouth tensing as he prepared to say something to her. Jhan turned to escape it, knowing what he wanted to ask. On foot and hand tangled in her baku’s reins, she tripped and fell straight into Obahn’s broad chest. He grabbed her by an arm and glared down at her.
Jhan knew that she couldn’t stand one more assault. She hung in his grip, blue eyes turning into wells of tears; waiting for pain, mental or physical. Obahn leaned, slightly, and whispered in her ear. “You have forgotten your boots.” He held them in his free hand.
Jhan felt them pressed into her hand and then he was releasing her, almost gently, and taking a step back. Jhan took a shuddering breath, on the verge of fainting. She had reached the pinnacle of fear and despair and there hadn’t been a climax. It was almost more than her nerves could bear. Obahn was enjoying it too, his body relaxed and languid and his lips almost smiling. A cat playing with a mouse, Jhan thought, as she turned blindly towards her baku and scrambled up onto its back, needing that height, that small feeling of being out of reach and safe.
What did he want? Jhan couldn’t begin to guess. He was planning something and he was beginning to prepare her for it, obviously testing her and making certain of his facts about her.
Obahn’s mind was too complicated for Jhan to fathom. He was playing a chess game and he was ten moves ahead of her, planning strategies within strategies to some unknown end. Jhan didn’t flatter herself. She knew that, in that game, she was only a pawn; a piece to be discarded for any convenience.
“We will be wintering in Bairkun,” Obahn announced as he mounted his imala. “I had hoped to reach it before noon, but, after this fiasco, we will reach it late afternoon. When we do reach it, I don’t intend to continue with certain baggage. Ahlen Kantori and the Caefu must find their own way and means. They have proven themselves useless.”
Ahlen didn’t bristle at the insult. He looked suddenly lost, the child he really was. He opened his mouth as if to protest, or maybe even to plead, but Obahn’s face was set in such a way that he shut it and looked down. Ixien was quiet and turned inward, not indicating whether he had even heard his fate pronounced.
“Why me?” Jhan muttered as they began down the trail once more.
“As well ask why Togo and Minyah,” Sael replied beside her, ”but you at least have a claim as my wife.”
“That isn’t the reason and you know it,” Jhan said with a shake of her head, not really wanting to think about it at all.
“No, I do not,” Sael replied. “Our customs are strong. You are my wife and, therefore, my business. Obahn wouldn’t ask that you be cast out. He would have to challenge me or claim that you endangered his life and our oath with your presence.”
Jhan’s face twisted bitterly. “I guess that you showed him that I don’t endanger your oath. You left me to die when he called you.”
“When he commanded, yes,” Sael sighed, “but surely you understand that? I must be by his side. I must follow his commands. That is part and parcel of an oath.”
“I don’t understand anything,” Jhan retorted sharply, “but it doesn’t matter whether I do or not. You’ve shown to me how far I can trust you.”
“I haven’t shown you anything,” Sael growled back, “You don’t know me at all and you certainly don’t know what I will or will not do.”
“I didn’t think that a pawn could be in two games at the same time, but you and Obahn are managing to do it.”
“Pawn. What is a pawn?” Sael wondered. “Is it the same as minion?”
“Minion?” Jhan repeated the word and then scowled. “Yes, but most of the time a minion chooses a lord for good or ill. A pawn never can. That’s what it means. A piece in a game to be moved about against its will, without any understanding of why.”
“Shall I weep?” Sael mocked and Jhan shot him a furious look. “Obahn was right about you. You do fear death too much to fight back. You’re making yourself into this ‘pawn’.”
Jhan’s eyes never left his. “If Obahn had put his hand on you, just as he did to me, would you have let him?”
Sael stiffened and his jaw worked, but then he nodded reluctantly. “Yes. I am Ekhal. We are oathed. He may do anything he likes to me.”
“Are you afraid of it?”
Sael didn’t dignify it with an answer, but his eyes slid away from hers. “I am a man.”
“So you keep saying,” Jhan told him, “and I am a woman, as I keep saying. Even after all of this time, my mind still doesn’t remember that I have this ability to save myself. Next to Obahn, I’m so very small. He seems invincible. Strong. A man. My bones melt when he looks at me. When he threatens me, all I want to do is faint or find somewhere to hide.”
“Your face never shows that,” Sael observed. “You always look like steel.”
“Would he leave me alone if it didn’t? Would you?”
“No,” Sael replied, angry now. “What do you hope for with this?”
“I don’t know,” Jhan sounded defeated even to herself. “Maybe I’m trying to warn you.”
Sael snorted, but he wasn’t amused. “You are not making any sense.”
“I suppose not, but none of you are either.” Jhan shrugged, looking away. “I’m warning you that I have limits. You’ve seen it. Whenever I forget myself, loose my sanity even for an instant, the training that was given to me through torture, until it’s a deadly reflex, becomes beyond my control. Obahn wants to push me, why I don’t know. If he keeps on... I don’t think I have to say it.”
“No, I understand.” Sael’s voice went low and dangerous. “I will be watching you. You spoke the truth to Obahn, whether you knew it or not. Raise your hand against him, and I will kill you.”
Jhan swallowed and nodded, understanding that much very well as Sael fell back to guard the rear of the column. She was glad that he left her, not wanting to talk any more. It was better to ride in silence and recover from the ordeal on the lake.
There were unanswered questions there too. Jhan still couldn’t believe that she had risked her life for Ixien. That she hadn’t even stopped to consider all the wrongs he had dealt her seemed incredible. She would have like to think that she had plumbed some depth within her that none of her tormented life had yet erased, but it was more likely, she acknowledged ruefully, that she had simply not thought, just as she had said to Obahn. Reflexes had saved the day, not moral mettle.

They rode into Bairkun about the time Obahn had predicted. The sun was slanting towards late afternoon and a heavy snow had begun to fall, the sky threatening a storm.
The city was a surprisingly civilized place in the wilderness. A broad, cobblestone road, with gutters and sidewalks of slate, snaked through tidy rows of shops. Side roads led to residential areas in a neat, orderly grid, intersections wide and obviously designed to accommodate a large crowd of travelers and citizens alike.
People walked casually down the sidewalks, staring with interest at the dirty, bedraggled company, but not overly surprised. The men wore breeches that ended at the knee, hose from there that went into ankle boots, and jackets embroidered and shinning like velvet. High collars were the fashion for both sexes; lacy delicate confections. In the men they were stiff and short. In the women they were tight at the neck and covering shoulder and bosom. Their dresses were billowy, as tight as their lace collars down to their waist and then streaming out in flowing trains behind them. Every point of them was covered, from their lace covered hands to their feet and ankles covered in hose and high top shoes. Some even wore lace pinned in their hair to trail over and cover their faces.
“Here.” Obahn suddenly swung off of his imala. “Wait for me.”
Obahn walked purposely to Jhan. His eyes traveled over her and she tensed, not certain what to expect. When he suddenly reached out and clasped his hands around her waist, she almost cried out.
“Be still!” Obahn barked.
Obahn’s hands traveled up Jhan’s waist until they were forced to part to reach a point under her arms. He was pulling her forward and down to do this and Jhan began to shake, still not understanding what he wanted.
At last, Obahn released Jhan and she straightened in the saddle, head down and mouth a silent line of tension. Obahn was ignoring her now. He was staring down at his hands as if to keep something in his mind, and then he was striding into a shop. Jhan didn’t look to see what sort of shop it was. She was too unnerved.
Baku snorted. A hand touched Jhan’s knee. She looked down with a start and saw Ahlen looking up. “I need the animals,” he said. “I’ll have to sell yours to be able to afford a place for the Winter.”
Jhan began to dismount, but Sael stopped her with a hand on her arm. She sat quietly while the Ekhal handed a few coins over to Ahlen. Ahlen looked at them, seemed satisfied, and then looked up at Jhan again.
“I would take you with me if I could,” Ahlen told her. He sounded afraid, voice tight and anxious, maybe thinking that Sael might react violently because he was addressing her.
“We are not friends,” Jhan stressed for the last time. “Being with you is hardly better than being with these others.”
Ahlen’s distress grew, a line creasing the middle of his eyes as if he were in pain. “Do you truly think that?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Jhan grated, keeping her eyes on her hands as they twisted on the reins of her baku.
Ahlen shook his head and turned away. She heard him mutter, “It isn’t true,” as he took the reins of Ixien’s baku along with his own and led them over to the open door of a stable.
Obahn returned from his errand, silent about what it had been about. He seemed oddly cheerful, face as fierce as ever, but relaxed. He led the way down the street and Jhan didn’t bother looking up to see where they were going. She felt strange. It didn’t seem right to be separated from Ahlen. He at least had given her torment some meaning. Now, there was nothing. She didn’t know what was expected of her or what would happen next.
Jhan smelled the bath house before they reached it. It was a narrow building shoved up between a bakery and a butcher shop, steam seeping into the cold air from a bad seal under its doorway. The steam smelled of bath salts and something floral.
“Soft,” Sael was growling, “Everything is so soft here! It disgusts me. With a handful of men I could-”
Obahn had dismounted. He tied his imala to a post. “Come,” he commanded, “We must make ourselves presentable before we reach our destination.”
“Here?” Sael was startled into protest as Obahn opened the door of the bath house. “It is- What must go on there? Men and women bathing together? Soft scents and putrid-”
“I’ve been among foreigners before, Sael,” Obahn told him reassuringly, “Nothing goes on here but washing, and you can order the bath as you like. Come,” he ordered again, more firmly, “Being filthy is shameful as well.”
Sael glared about them, undecided, but his lord had commanded and he didn’t have any choice but to dismount. He helped Jhan down from her baku as if she were the wife he pretended, eyes never leaving off from scanning their surroundings. What was he looking for? Whether he expected ridicule from passersby, danger that might take them unaware when they were most vulnerable, or simple discomfort at strangeness, Jhan couldn’t tell.
Togo and Minyah were just as nervous, but for other reasons. They had seen how easily Ahlen and Ixien had been cast off. They weren’t sure of their own fates. The town was completely foreign to them and the idea of a bath house must have been even more alien.
They all followed Obahn inside, sighing as the warmth of the place enveloped them and welcomed them in. A man in a white robe waited by the door, eyes going over them with an anxious twitch. He was bald and gaunt looking, his long fingers raised to stroke a black beard as thin as his body.
“So many,” the man had an unusually high voice, “and women as well! I can’t accommodate all. We close half of the place down after the caravans stop coming through. Only laborers seek our service and we put them in the common room.”
“That will do,” Obahn replied as he slapped money into the man’s hand. “We are husband and wife. Nudity among such is not a taboo thing.” He motioned to Togo and Minyah. “They will bathe after us with whatever is left.”
The man nodded, pleased, as he poured the money into a hidden pocket. Bowing, he turned and led the way down a narrow hallway. He stopped at an open doorway and motioned them all inside. His dark eyes rested on Minyah and Togo. They rested longest on Minyah, the man puzzling over exactly what Minyah was.
“Sit there.” Obahn motioned to a bench. Togo sat and Minyah settled at his feet like a dog. Obahn addressed the proprietor, “I have clothing coming from the tailor shop. See that I receive it at once. It would be a waste to clean only to put on rags again.”
That was wise and the tall man sniffed, as if agreeing that they WERE dressed like beggars. “Shall I burn these old things?” he sounded hopeful.
“No, bundle them up and send them to a cleaner,” Obahn commanded. “I don’t waste anything, even rags.”
They left Minyah and Togo in the small ante room and entered a spacious brick room with a large metal vat of steaming water. Benches lined it and hot coals had been laid in a wide bed underneath it to keep the water warm. A pipe led from the vat to a metal boiler as well and another pipe snaked out from under it, probably to take away the dirty water. Towels were stacked in another corner, along with brushes, and a straight razor in wooden holder before a very small mirror. It was obviously set up for men.
Sael gave everything a withering look, testing the water with a finger and smelling the soft mounds of soap in wooden bowls beside the vat. He soon nodded, approving of the spartan accommodations, and began to undress. He lay aside his sword and his knives as if he were taking off his arms, but he didn’t put them far from his reach.
Obahn and Zerain were undressing as well. Zerain’s scarf came off and her face was closed and cold, eyes properly downcast as she began unlacing her heavy skirts and jacket. Obahn was looking at her. He smiled and put a hand to her flat belly, as if he could already feel the child there. Zerain didn’t, not even for a second, look guilty. She was proud and unafraid, too certain of her plan. When she turned to get into the water, Jhan saw that she had a line of tattoos swirling over one shoulder like a delicate dance of butterflies.
Obahn was scarred in every place imaginable. Hair ran up from his groin to grow like a pelt on his broad chest. His legs were thick, like tree trunks, and his arms were almost too large for his body. Jhan noted a great scar near his last rib. It was thick and jagged. Only a strong and determined man could have survived a wound like that. It made Jhan suddenly very afraid of him and she found herself taking a step backward, hands wrapping around herself as if someone had threatened to tear her clothes off of her.
“Don’t,” Obahn warned. That one word was filled with threat and his utter assurance of his control over her.
“My wife,” Sael cut in just as quickly and just as heavy with threat. “I am oathed to Obahn. We are part of his lodge. There is nothing to fear, not any dishonor in this.”
“What part of you haven’t I seen,” Obahn wondered irritably, “or touched? Do you hide a secret still?”
Jhan chewed on her lip, knowing he was right, but still reluctant and afraid. She slowly peeled off her clothes as if she were taking off her skin. Crusted with dirt and smelling terrible, they were stiff. She fumbled , unable to concentrate on her fingers as they tried to unfasten buttons and hooks. She was taking too long.
Obahn had waited enough. He strode to Jhan, grabbed her by her clothes, and simply flexed his muscles. The cloth ripped and, just as Jhan had feared, Obahn was throwing her to the floor, pulling them off with violent motions. His calloused hands scraped Jhan’s skin and bruised her when they lifted her, naked at last, and threw her into the vat.
Water cascaded onto the floor and Zerain shielded her face with a disdainful scowl as Jhan reemerged, spluttering and gasping for breath. Obahn and Sael climbed in after her. Their hands took hold of Jhan and she felt soap rubbed into her hair and onto her skin as if the men were grooming a dumb beast. A brush attacked her and Jhan felt as if her skin was going to be scraped off along with the dirt. They spoke over her, Sael arguing and Obahn barking orders.
Jhan’s head was repeatedly thrust under water. It kept her off balance, full of panic, and unable to react. She felt her lungs constrict, several times going nearly long enough with out air for her to faint. Her heart throbbed, the pounding in her ears drowning out their words and curses. She clawed at their hands, gasped pleas for them to stop, as she tried to get in air at the same time.
Finally, Jhan was thrown back out of the vat. She slid on the floor, bruising her knees and slapping her hands painfully as she tried to keep her head from being bashed on the stone. She sat up, legs straight out, and put her hands to her face as she wept into them. She could hear them still talking, about small things, as they bathed themselves and relaxed in the hot water.
Jhan calmed herself. She shuddered with the effort, but she knew, as she had always known, that crying never helped anything and, as always, she simply had to go on. She refused to look at them as she slowly climbed to her bare feet. She padded over to the towels and grabbed several. She dried her body and her long hair by the heat of the boiler.
Her body kept constricting in spasms. Jhan held herself still each time until they passed. It was her emotions welling up, trying to seep, like the steam under the door, out of her mind’s control. She held them in check, cruelly tight. Dagara Ku Ni had relished seeing them, proof that his torture had been bearing fruit. They had egged him on to greater efforts. In his school of pain, Jhan had learned never to show them to him.
Wasn’t this the same? Didn’t her pain and anguish only make them crueler? Jhan had learned her lessons well and they were coming back to her now. She looked at her face in the crude mirror. It was as white as moonlight, big eyes, blue wells of sadness etched with madness. Her hair, in a cascading fall of disordered curls, gave strength to that impression. Oh so beautiful, even in its bleakness. Jhan concentrated, frown smoothing out and eyes going blank. She felt numbness creep over her and she was ready when Obahn spoke behind her.
“Why did you fight this time? You see what has been revealed under all of that filth?”
It had been Jhan’s protection, a thin veil that she had hid behind. When she turned to Obahn, she made her numbness a replacement for that protection. Her cold, dead eyes made him frown, as if he suspected she might have gone quietly mad. He waited, but, when she continued to say nothing, he placed a package into her arms. Their clothes had been delivered while she had been absorbed within herself.
“Dress in this. Zerain will help you.” Obahn turned away to pull on his own clothes.
Zerain was already dressed in black; a heavy skirt much like her old one, an equally heavy coat that hid her form. Her red scarf, tied in her braid, and her long veil, were the only color. Her posture was stiff and displeased. It grew even more so when she saw the dress that Jhan unwrapped.
Jhan stared at the dress flowing from the package into her hands. She almost let her numbness slip until she reminded herself that this wasn’t a gift. It had a purpose. She held it tightly, fisting her hands into the soft material, and then resigned herself and began dressing.
It was flowing gray silk with a hundred hooks and buttons. Zerain patiently fastened them, pearl colored buttons marching in a long line down from her breast to her waist as the dress encased Jhan as tight as a glove. A collar of gossamer, white lace encased her just as tightly from her breast to her chin. The bottom of the dress was more, shimmering gray silk, but a molded belt of gray-blue ruffles went about her lower hips, accenting them and making them seem unusually large for the small waist that rose up from them. White hose were pulled up to Jhan’s knees and attached there with pink, silk ribbons. Her small feet went into high topped, white leather shoes with pointed heels.
A last accent, a senseless ornament that Zerain pulled about Jhan’s throat as if she would strangle her with it; A blue gray bow that tied at the back of her neck , trailing ribbons down through her fall of black curls. Those curls were left free, dry now, and springing over Jhan’s shoulders and down to her waist.
They stared at her as Jhan pulled on lace gloves. She met those eyes with her dead, blue ones, not caring, but imagining that she looked like an overdressed doll. Sael was horrified.
“She is my wife!” Sael exploded. “You cannot mean for her to be seen in such- in such shameful-”
“Silence,” Obahn replied softly, not even glancing at him. His eyes were avidly on Jhan. “This is modesty here. This is fashion. I have paid a high price to dress the Ikhil so.”
“Not Zerain,” Sael dared through gritted teeth.
“No, Zerain is with my child,” Obahn replied. “She isn’t of interest to any man now.”
“An neither should my wife!”
“Your wife?” Obahn growled, looking at him at last. “She is no more your wife than mine, Ekhal, and now is the time to end such lies. I need her. This man we must beg room and board from, won’t be turned by my title alone. I need to make certain of him. I need to interest him. He was always a man for pleasures and for pretty faces.”
“She will kill him,” Sael retorted, stung and coloring all the way to his ears. He didn’t bother denying Obahn’s assertions.
Obahn shook his head. “I think your Ikhil’s spirit has been taken away. I think our host will be able to do anything he wishes without much trouble. He may even take her as wife. I would have taken her myself if she had really been a ‘she’.”
“He will have to challenge me,” Sael warned.
“I deny your claim,” Obahn snapped back, jaw working and face scars standing out lividly. “She is not your wife.”
Sael had put on his sword. He was gripping the hilt of it now. “She is,” he insisted, but he was going pale, knowing that he was daring death.
Obahn faced him, picking up his own sword from the floor and gripping the hilt. “Prove it. Now!” he challenged, “Take her on the floor, against the wall, standing, with her back to you like an imala; any way that you are able! If you can, I will forget this plan and think of another. As it is, this man doesn’t owe me any favors. I don’t relish being milked for all of our money for room and board when these people know we will die in the snow without it. I would rather be a guest at a Lord’s house. She is our coin to that end. She will give him reason to want us there.”
Sael stared at Jhan. She knew that he could do just as Obahn asked, despite being Ekhal. He had admitted it to her already. His clothes were overlarge. Obahn had only bothered measuring Jhan. The rest were approximations. Sael fiddled with his pants, eyes never leaving Jhan, but he was only pulling them up, his hands tightening his belt rather than loosening it. He nodded to Obahn reluctantly.
“I understand what you want. I won’t challenge it, yet.”
Obahn was relieved, nodding too and turning to finish dressing. Sael stepped close to Jhan. She twisted her arms into a knot, gripping herself around the chest as if she would squeeze herself in two. He leaned close, his breath hot on her ear. “I hope that you are as much a woman as you claim,” he said, “and that you can lead this man Obahn speaks of in circles, wanting you but never having you. It is something the simplest woman can do. Fail me, and I will have to take you any way I can, in front of Obahn for a witness, so that I may keep you.”
Jhan let his words slide over her, like stones dropping into a well. She felt a spasm over take her again. She quivered, gasped, and let her eyes go blank and wide as she tried not to imagine how it would feel, to have Sael plunge into her and do that to her. It was simply too terrible to know that she would enjoy every second of it while she lost her mind forever.
They moved about her, Togo and Minyah bathing, rueful at having only dirty water, and Sael, Zerain, and Obahn finishing sorting out the rest of the clothing to separate among them. No one took advantage of the razor or the mirror. Obahn and his people were too sure in their vanity and none of them grew beards.
Jhan lowered herself onto a bench, as stiff and as porcelain colored as the doll she appeared to be. Togo sat next to her, toweling himself dry and appearing amazed by her clothing. “Is there some purpose to this costume?” he wondered, “It is beautiful, but constricting. Surely your circulation and your digestive functions are being hampered?”
Minyah reached out a tentative hand and stroked the gray silk, “So soft, but little one’s skin is softer. Bad to cover it all. Like bandages on wound.”
Sael began to be angry, to demand that they not speak to Jhan, but then he bit his lip. “Give her peace,” he said instead. “Her place has been taken from her.”
Togo blinked. “Place?”
“She isn’t my wife any longer,” Sael explained, “She doesn’t have anyone to defend her.”
“Then Jhan is free?”
Sael did get angry then. “Are you intending to claim her?”
Togo was very slow to grasp what Sael was asking. He shook his head, stating with flat simplicity, “No, I was merely glad that Jhan was free of your cruelty and able to go away from you now.”
“She isn’t free to go any where,” Sael replied as if Togo were worse than naive. “Obahn intends to give her to another man in exchange for our room and board during the Winter.”
Togo was disturbed. “And Jhan doesn’t have any say in it at all?”
“Of course not.” Sael turned away, but not before he revealed a flicker of doubt and pain.
They gathered their things and left the bath house, shivering as they stepped out onto the cold street. Jhan began to move towards her baku, but Obahn stopped her with a sharp, “No!” and a furious, ”You’ll ruin the dress. Walk!”
They all walked, taking the winding, cobblestone road through the town as snow drifted down in gentle flakes and the world turned gray. Jhan walked at the front with Obahn, as if she were sleepwalking, mind receding further and further into herself with every step. It seemed like the beginning of some nightmare, everything too soft and indistinct, and the city too normal and quaint after so long traveling endless rough lands.
They passed the last shop of the city and the road forked, one arm traveling up a slight rise to a very large house, and the other snaking out and into the countryside where it abruptly turned into hard packed earth. Obahn took the road up to the house.
It was very large, at least twenty rooms and three stories. Glass windows winked in the weak light and balconies curved like cupped hands under each one. A great courtyard greeted them. It was centered by an old tree, bare of leaves and towering over everything like a withered giant.
There was an archway, delicate with stone gingerbread over the lintel. The guards who stood before it were a sharp contrast, uniforms black and quartered by a blue blaze. Faces scowled under metal helmets as they threatened the newcomers with long pikes.
“I am Hyjar Obahn Om Sukhelan,” the words rolled off Obahn’s tongue, sounding completely barbaric in that civilized place. “Inform your lord that I have arrived.”
One man stepped forward. He had a gold badge on one sleeve and an air of importance. It was the only thing that marked him from the others. His face was as hidden under a helmet as theirs was. “We were not told to expect guests.” His eyes traveled over each of them, looking for a threat, but seeing only a sight that was both perplexing and strange.
“He doesn’t expect us,” Obahn admitted, but his hand was caressing his sword hilt, not used to being questioned. He said nothing more, not demeaning himself further by speaking with a mere guard.
The man waited, expecting more. When it wasn’t forthcoming, he looked back at his men and growled under his breath, as if he wasn’t certain he could trust them to do anything right if he left them. Finally, he made up his mind. He bowed respectfully to Obahn. “I shall return soon, your Highness.”
As the man left through the archway, Obahn turned with burly arms crossed over his chest, eyes scanning the courtyard. Sael watched the guards nervously, hand on his sword. They watched him in return, just as nervous.
Jhan let her eyes travel up the length of the wall. It was red brick and it reminded her of a prison. It could so easily be one for her, if she wasn’t careful. Given over to yet another man, her journey might end, but maybe not her torment.
Obahn reached out and flicked something off of Jhan’s shoulder, scowling at the wet spots the snow was making on her dress. Jhan flinched, thinking he meant to hit her, but he only grinned savagely and turned back to the archway.
A man came through it. He was tall and very portly. He might have been muscular when he was younger, but he had gone soft now, his body only retaining the shape of a long lost youth. His hair was black, a thatch cut short to tame it, but unsuccessfully. His eyes were rather large and a deep brown, crinkled in wrinkles at the lids. He wore a high collar of white lace, but his clothes were black leather and his boots were scuffed and abused from much riding.
“The Lord of Bairkun,” the guard who had gone to fetch him announced importantly, “Elmanan Velorka.”
The man made an impatient motion of one hand and smiled modestly. “Please, I’m only a trader, Captain Elorian. They only call me lord because my house is the largest in the city.” He had a deep base voice. It rumbled out of his chest good naturedly as he held out a hand to Obahn. “Prince Obahn! It has been years since I took traders your way! I’m pleased that you remembered me and thought to visit as you passed through Bairkun.”
Obahn took the offered hand in a swordsmen’s grip, clutching the man’s wrist only briefly before letting it drop. He could have stood and spoke niceties all day long, hedging around the question, but he was Obahn and a prince, so he not so much as asked as commanded.
“I and my company need lodgings for the Winter,” Obahn gave a meaningful look at Elmanan’s home. “I will require three rooms, or at the very least, two rooms and a stable space for these two not of my lodge,” he was speaking offhandedly of Togo and Minyah. “This is possible?”
Elmanan was prepared. He wasn’t a fool and he had known all along why Obahn had come to his home. His eyes faked a small bit of concern, going soft and sympathetic. “Prince Obahn, I would be honored to house you and your companions, but I have so many relatives staying that there is simply not enough room. Winter is a time for dances and occasions. We save them for the cold days to liven the bitter months. I doubt if you could find a spare room in all Bairkun.”
“Ah, I understand,” Obahn growled, angry, but keeping it tightly reigned. “It will be hard on my pregnant wife to attempt going through the snows, but it is the little Lady Jhan I worry over the most. She is born of delicate stock.”
“Lady?” Elmanan sounded doubtful, perhaps expecting one of Obahn’s heavily veiled women; a barbaric woman to go along with the barbaric company he saw before him. His brown eyes flicked up and around at them, falling briefly on Togo, Minyah, resting on Sael’s scarf until he assured himself that Sael was a man, and then falling on Zerain. “Ah, she doesn’t appear so delicate. I think she will manage.”
Obahn was furious. His jaw gritted as he was forced to turn. He spotted Jhan standing almost behind her baku. He snaked a hand out and pulled her forward. At the last moment, he turned the motion from violent into solicitous, slipping an arm about her waist and bringing her in front of Elmanan.
Elmanan’s attitude changed instantly. He was stunned. His mouth opened slackly as he stared down from his height at Jhan. He blinked his eyes and they were as wide and as blank as an astonished cow. He trembled, leaned forward as if he were going to fall over, and then recovered with an effort. He straightened and licked his lips, forcing his eyes away.
“F-Forgive my stare, Lady Jhan,” Elmanan stammered, “I did not mean any disrespect.”
“She is but lately a free woman, “ Obahn explained, keeping his tone nonchalant, “I thought to leave her in safe hands, since she isn’t one of my people. Can you think of anyone who might care for her in all honor, as she deserves, Lord Elmanan?”
“I-I,” Elmanan stopped, swallowed, and then nodded briskly, “I think that I do, but you may have to stay here until I bespeak him and lay it before him. I’m certain there are some of my relations who could share quarters and give you the room you need.”
“But the weather,” Obahn demurred, “If we can’t stay for the Winter-”
“Who am I to refuse a prince?” Elmanan interjected hurriedly, “and my relations are far from high enough to argue with my decisions. Please, be welcome as my guest, you and your companions, Lord Obahn.”
Obahn gave an arrogant nod and Elmanan led the way under the arch and into his home, glancing back furtively, now and again, at Jhan. Jhan ignored him, keeping her eyes on the floor, until he called a woman over to him. “Tandhi, take Lady Jhan to a room and give her all that she needs. You will be her maid while she is in this house.”
Tandhi was a thin, mousy looking woman with big, green eyes and an easy smile. She was dressed in a rougher version of the fashion of the city; her white collar not lace and her tight bodice and skirts made of a deep brown material that had the texture of wool. Her blonde hair was tied modestly at the neck and she, like Jhan, wore a constricting gold bow about her throat. She had an amazed look on her face as she looked at Jhan and she seemed embarrassed, eyes downcast and mouth tight and closed as she murmured an assent.
Sael appeared ready to protest, but Obahn said one curt word in their language, and Sael bit down on whatever he had been about to say. He met Jhan’s eyes briefly, as if he were trying to tell her something, but Jhan was too numbed to understand it as he walked away, following dutifully behind Obahn.
Jhan followed the servant down long hallways, blind to the costly carpets and the warm heat emanating from grates in the floor. The walls were paneled wood, stained dark and wainscotted with delicate beading, and the ceiling was plaster and as smooth as an eggshell. It was obvious that Elmanan was very rich.
Tandhi opened a door and proceeded Jhan into a small room. She was nervous, repositioning a chair with an embroidered cushion and almost flying to smooth a wrinkle on a rich, green coverlet on a wide bed. There wasn’t any fireplace. As in the hallway, heat rose up from metal grates.
Tandhi opened a heavy curtain. Milky light streamed in and made a dull illumination on the hardwood floor and an intricately woven rug. When she turned back to Jhan, hands twisted in her dress and eyes still downcast, she seemed ready for censure.
“It isn’t much for someone in your station, Lady Jhan, but I’m certain Lord Elmanan will rectify it as soon as he can.” Tandhi opened a smaller door and motioned inside. “There’s a private bath and a necessary. A bell pull by the bed will summon me if you need help. “
Jhan stared at nothing. A long minute passed in which she wasn’t even aware of Tandhi squirming. Even the dust motes in the air seemed frozen, everything pausing while Jhan listened, hearing only her own breathing in the complete silence of the room.
Tandhi coughed delicately. “Is there anything you require now, Lady Jhan? I am at your service. If you wish me to wait, I will go and stand so as not to disturb you.”
Jhan didn’t even wonder how Tandhi would accomplish that in such a small room. She stirred herself, realizing at last that something was required of her. Someone was ASKING her to make a decision. “I’m fine,” she murmured, and then more strongly, “You can go. Thank you.”
Tandhi did a small curtsy and then went out of the room. The door closed solidly behind her. Jhan went to it and stared at the heavy wood as if she had never seen a door before. The bolt of the lock was metal. Jhan reached up a quivering hand and shot it home. She was seized with a spasm of emotion as she heard the deep, ‘chunk’, of the lock going into place.
Turning, Jhan gave the small room a wild look. She went to the curtains, unsteady on her unfamiliar heels, and threw the heavy curtains closed on the outside world. Turning again, she went to the center of the room and simply stood, silent again and motionless.
She was alone. The feeling was indescribable. For so long she had been constantly on the move, constantly fearful, constantly in the company of so many others; others who had wanted to tear her apart with their needs and their demands. To be truly alone and motionless, nothing expected and the trail ended for now, was too much like a pleasant dream she would soon wake up from.
The bed beckoned with its softness. It begged her to lie down. The chair was turned invitingly as well. Everything spoke of comfort and repose, a putting down of the burden of her life for just an evening, an evening where the bolt of the door would hold the world at bay. Jhan gave in to it all at once, the hard steel her body had become, weakening, her knees shaking as she bent to pull off her shoes.
Jhan poured herself out on the bed, sinking into downy softness and velvet coverlets. It wrapped her in warmth and she snuggled down into it as if it were Kile’s longed for arms, or the almost forgotten embrace of her lost mother. She closed her eyes, the silence so complete that it was almost a sound itself, and she let herself forget and buy into the dream. She accepted it and tried to pretend that it would go on forever.

CHAPTER SEVEN
(Playing Dolls)
A light tapping on the door roused Jhan. She tensed, eyes opening and darting about as she tried to remember where she was. The thick scents of animals, campfires, and unwashed bodies were conspicuously absent. The ground was far too soft and she was unusually warm and rested.
The tapping sound came again, tentative, but persistent. Jhan sat up on the bed, eyes dazed as she slowly pieced the world back together. Of course, it came back to her in a painful sting, she was in Lord Elmanan’s house and Obahn intended to use her like a whore.
Jhan stood up, swaying at the unaccustomed weight of her dress. It was rumpled and creased, binding her body like a boa constrictor. Jhan pulled off the bow at her neck and unbuttoned the lace collar down to her breast as she slowly walked across the warm floor to the door. Her hand rose to the bolt. She paused to pull off the tight gloves, dropping them absently; knowing that it was all to prolong the moment when she would have to let the real world back in.
Again the knock came, a little more anxious and a little more bold. Jhan took a deep breath to steady herself and then threw back the bolt. Opening the door cautiously, she saw Tandhi on the other side with many bundles balanced in her arms. She was peeking over the top of them, green eyes nervous.
“Is my Lady ready to begin her day?” Tandhi asked cautiously.
The answer was no, but Jhan knew better. She nodded stiffly and stepped aside to let Tandhi enter. The woman went to a small side table and put down her bundles with an almost concealed sigh of relief. Turning, she curtsied to Jhan, eyes downcast.
“It is almost noon, Lady Jhan,” Tandhi informed her, not in censure, but matter- of -factly, just in case Jhan was interested.
Jhan puzzled over her words and then realized that Tandhi meant that it was afternoon of the day after Jhan’s arrival. Jhan had slept through the evening and the next morning. She digested this while Tandhi waited patiently. It was hard to tell what the serving girl thought, but it was apparent that she didn’t give Jhan much credit for intelligence. She went to close the door and then came to Jhan, speaking to her as if she were a child.
“Did you try to undress yourself?” Tandhi reached up and began undoing Jhan’s buttons. “You have only to ring the bell, Lady Jhan, over there by your bed, and I will come to help you in anything you need.”
“I don’t have anything else to wear,” Jhan finally gathered her thoughts enough to say.
“It is all taken care of, Lady Jhan.” Tandhi was pleased with herself. “I saw myself that you had come without any of your baggage. Lost on the trail perhaps?” she didn’t wait for a reply. “I bespoke the head chambermaid and she gathered all that you would need while you slept. She even sent to a shop for dresses, sparing no expense mind you, and had them restitched by the seamstress. I told her that you had a perfect figure, one that women in Bairkun would give all to have.”
Tandhi was expecting a smile, a blush, perhaps even praise. Jhan continued to stare blankly at her, hardly following the shy patter of her words. She was thinking instead of Obahn, Sael, Lord Elmanan, and even of Ahlen. She wanted to brace herself for what might happen next, though she couldn’t say why. Being prepared, she thought dully, might even make it worse for her. Ignorance might truly be bliss, at least for a small amount of time.
There was a tap on the door. Tandhi went to it and peeked outside. She opened the door wider and took things from someone standing outside. Respectfully, she carried three magnificent dresses over one arm and lay them gently on the bed. Returning to the door, she received a tray of food and drink. The unseen servant said nothing and Jhan didn’t even see who it was. Tandhi closed the door and returned to her.
Peeling the last of the dress, Jhan stepped out of its gray folds in her stocking feet as if she had been taken out of cruel bondage. She sighed softly and rubbed at the marks on her skin some of the tighter bindings had made while she had slept. Tandhi was appalled.
That shocked, open mouthed expression was enough to rouse Jhan from her frozen stupor. Her hands rose as if to cover herself, but she didn’t know what part of her was evincing such a look. Had Tandhi guessed so quickly what she was? Jhan’s body, tight muscles, lean frame, as lean as any greyhound, and her gentle curves at breast and hip gave nothing away she knew. Was it something less perceptible? An unusual curve to her arms or chest, that flare at the top of her back that was more a boy’s than a woman’s?
Maybe she had it wrong, Jhan reconsidered. Tandhi’s horror might be more about all of Jhan’s bruises and scrapes, the vicious line of scratches Ixien had left across her neck and back, still livid and raw, or her leg, an aching patchwork of ugly bruises from the top of her knee to the instep of her foot.
Tandhi’s next words made it all clear in an instant. “My Lady! You don’t have anything- Where are your underthings?” Her face turned pink, as if Jhan had strutted nude in front of the entire town.
Jhan didn’t reply. She had spent a long time in men’s clothing, but before that she had always insisted on dresses. Pekarins were modest, but few people there wore much beside a few petticoats and a strip of cloth about their hips. Obahn hadn’t even thought that necessary.
Tandhi went to her bundles, hands shaking and perfectly mortified, as she unwrapped them. Brushes, combs, jeweled hair pins, and mounds of ribbons and lace spilled out as she searched. A last bundle contained linen bloomers, silk chemises, hose, corsets of lace and bone, and delicate panties of bows and embroidery. She turned with these in her arms as if she would attack Jhan in her hurry to get them on her.
Jhan sidestepped her and purposefully walked towards the bathroom. “l can’t,” she said quietly. “I have to... Let me alone for just a moment.”
“Oh, my Lady! Of course!” Tandhi exclaimed as if she thought Jhan might be ill. “Refresh yourself! Once you are clean and dressed properly, you’ll feel better.” She rushed to put items in the bathroom and then she retreated back into the main room, but didn’t leave.
Jhan went in and locked the door. By the light of a candle, she relieved herself and then went to the wash basin. She felt a miniscule uplifting of her mood when she saw that there was indoor plumbing and, when she turned on a spigot, hot water. Washing herself, she felt cleaner, as if Obahn and Sael’s ministrations from the day before had only left her filthier.
There was a mirror. Jhan touched it. Mirrors were hideously expensive and few people had them. This one was large and especially reflective. A fine work of a mirror-maker’s art, it had been given a golden frame.
Jhan picked up a hairbrush, stared at her pinched reflection, and then put the brush back down. Her eyes were dark and very angry. Her mouth was set as if she had tasted something sour. It made her appearance unpleasant and threatening. Meeting her own eyes, Jhan felt almost hypnotized, as if she were staring at a stranger; a dark id on the other side of the glass. She memorized every line and then made that reflection her own, freezing it and carrying it with her as she went back into the main room.
Tandhi was eager to encase Jhan in clothing once more. Jhan said nothing. She didn’t protest at the layers of underthings, the tightening of bows and buttons, the lacing of corsets, and the constricting dress of light blue silk that went over it all. Even her feet were put to the torture of fashion; delicate bead work stockings, that itched and tied with satin lace down the backs, and high heeled shoes that made her unsteady. A great bow was wrapped about her lace covered throat, peeking delicately from behind her fall of hair. That hair was attacked by a brush, Tandhi apologizing over and over again in a senseless drone as she hurt Jhan repeatedly trying to work out the knots.
Jhan allowed it all, cold and silent, face stubbornly frozen on her new expression. It intimidated Tandhi and Jhan thought the girl would cry, thinking she was displeasing Jhan terribly. When she finished at last, Tandhi dipped like a little bird and kissed the laced fingers of Jhan’s hand, meeting her eyes as if pleading for forgiveness.
Jhan looked away, walking to the tray of food and eating and drinking in a quick manner that made Tandhi even more anxious. The girl had a napkin in both hands and was trying her best to keep the food from spotting Jhan’s clothing. Jhan ignored her, eating everything on the tray in a mechanical fashion. Tasting nothing, she was only seeking to fill the growling emptiness of her stomach.
Satisfied at last, Jhan turned away from the tray and looked at Tandhi coldly. Tandhi dipped in a nervous curtsy again. “Lady Jhan, Lord Elmanan asks that he receive you in the dinning hall for the afternoon meal.” When Jhan glanced back at the tray, the woman didn’t seem to see the problem. “If you will come, I will take you there.”
Jhan kept her silence. She wasn’t fooled into thinking that she really had a choice. She followed Tandhi from the room and the woman led her up stairs and through long corridors. They passed men and women. All stopped, staring in stunned amazement at Jhan.
Tandhi was proud, carrying herself straight and importantly in front of Jhan. “You are truly beautiful,” she said softly back to Jhan. “You are the one the men sing of when they imagine perfection. I am honored to serve you.”
Perfection? Jhan passed several women who were easily more beautiful than she was. They had rounded, feminine forms and soft bosoms. Their faces were smooth and devoid of care. Jhan glanced at them from under her eyelashes, not understanding how her small, slight form, anemic, milk white skin, and overlarge, owl like eyes could make anyone look twice.
“Why do you think that I’m beautiful?” Jhan finally wondered, not satisfying some vain, prurient interest, but needing to know what she must ruin before meeting with Elmanan.
Tandhi laughed as if Jhan were joking with her. “Why, you have the perfect body for ornamentation. The bows and lace lay flat and show to best advantage. There isn’t any ugly bulges of the hip or largeness of breast to distract from the perfect flow of your gown. Even your legs stay neatly hidden, not curving outwards and disrupting the ruffles and folds of the silk.”
“So,” Jhan groped for words, feeling a sullen heat overtake her, “I look good in clothes. Is that what’s important to men in Bairkun? Don’t they care what’s underneath?”
“Underneath?” Tandhi turned to Jhan sharply and Jhan almost ran into her. Tandhi was turning red in embarrassment. She looked up and down the hallway. It was empty for the moment. “Lady Jhan,” Tandhi asked in shock, “what is it like where you are from? Men in Bairkun don’t look under a Lady’s clothing! That is for birthing wives and the lower classes like myself.”
“Birthing wives?” Jhan ‘s cold demeanor cracked into confusion. “What are you saying? Ladies here don’t have sex?”
Tandhi put hands to her mouth, twitching as if she longed to cover up Jhan’s mouth with them and silence her. Once again, she glanced furtively up and down the hall. “Such words, Lady Jhan! Of course ladies don’t do such things. They are above such crudeness!”
“Then what does Elmanan want from me?” Jhan demanded in exasperation.
“He wants you for your beauty of course.” Tandhi was again treating Jhan as if she were simple, speaking distinctly and slowly. “He had such a fine wife, but she died of an illness last year. He has been speaking with Prince Obahn about you. “ Tandhi smiled as if she were revealing a secret that would please Jhan. “I think he wishes to make you his new wife.”
Jhan shook her head, running her hands through her hair as if she would pull it out by the roots. “Elmanan doesn’t want me for sex?”
Again Tandhi reddened, gasping a little with wide eyes. “Please, Lady Jhan, if he heard that you were speaking like that... It isn’t proper! Of course he wouldn’t want such a thing from you. He has three birthing women for that and he has been dallying with two maids, that I know of, lately. What would it be if you became pregnant? Your figure would be ruined and you would be ugly, swollen like a melon. What man would want you like that? How would they be respected by anyone in Bairkun? A wife is for beauty, to stand and be perfect beside her husband.”
“So, I’m supposed to be a doll, not a bed mate," Jhan guessed. The coldness gripped her again and clutched at her heart, though the fear was becoming less. “I don’t know which is worse.”
Tandhi was completely confused. Instead of continuing further with the uncomfortable conversation she decided, instead, to complete her duty and to forget that any of it had occurred. She led the way down the hall again with a stiff back, turning right, and then left again to usher Jhan through an archway and into a large dinning hall.
There, as everywhere else, the room was perfect. Tapestries hung on the walls, depicting scenes of flowering gardens. The floor was highly polished wood, the long table at the room’s center the only thing vying it for shine. The table top was like a dark pool of water, a pewter table service purposely muted so as not to distract from it. The chairs were straight backed, embroidered on the seats with the same garden scenes that adorned the walls.
Obahn and Elmanan sat next to each other at the table, eating a light meal and talking animatedly. Sael stood behind Obahn, his eyes narrowing at Jhan’s finery as she entered the room.
Tandhi directed Jhan to sit on a chair away from the table. It was a position someone might sit in who was being called on to entertain, but no one so much as looked at Jhan as she settled there, the great weight of her clothing pooling about her. Tandhi backed away to stand by the door, leaving Jhan puzzled and suspicious.
The luncheon dragged on. Obahn was discussing trade with Elmanan and Jhan idly realized that Elmanan had made his fortune trading. They spoke of settling a price for linen and maybe relenting on Obahn’s reluctance to trade his people’s fine blooded imala. Elmanan looked pleased, smiling often. Obahn had his habitually hard look and Jhan could tell that the conversation meant nothing to him, he was simply trying to placate Elmanan.
After awhile, the only thing keeping Jhan from folding in on herself, was her tightly laced corset. Every part of her began to ache and to cry out for release. She wanted to shout at them, demand to know what they wanted from her, but she kept her lips tightly pressed together, unwilling to draw attention to herself.
Sael was dressed like one of the people of Bairkun. Jhan noticed that Obahn was dressed the same. It was almost laughable to see their proud, barbaric bodies bound in lace and hose, but Jhan had run out of laughter long ago. It wasn’t much consolation to know that they were suffering some of what she was suffering.
At last, Obahn and Elmanan rose from the table. Elmanan patted his mouth with a fine napkin and held out an arm for Obahn to clasp in agreement on a deal. He excused himself briefly, spoke with a servant that had been hiding in the shadows, and then returned to lead Obahn out of the room. Sael paused beside Jhan’s chair.
“You look ridiculous. What was the purpose of this?”
Jhan looked up at him coldly. “You might as well ask why the chairs are embroidered when people only sit on them! I’m decoration. I’m something pretty to look at, like an arrangement of flowers on the table.”
“Sael!” Obahn snarled, and Sael hurried to catch up to Obahn and Elmanan.
The servant approached as Tandhi came to Jhan with an almost possessive air. Jhan was her doll; a living doll to dress and pose and place where her lord could see and appreciate her. “Your business?’ Tandhi asked with a heavy tone of snobbery.
The servant was young, tow headed and pale skinned. His blue eyes were nervous as he held out a small, beautifully wrapped gift to Jhan. “From Lord Elmanan,” he told her. “He welcomes you to his household and assures you that this will be only one gift of many.”
Jhan clutched the gift in one hand and almost let it drop in disinterest. Tandhi was frantic, grabbing hold of it and quickly opening it for her. Her gasp was full of joy and astonishment. “Lord Elmanan has declared his intention to marry you!”
Jhan looked down as Tandhi showed her what she held. It was a ring, encrusted and worked so intricately that, if Jhan had put it on, it would have painfully enclosed most of her ring finger.
Jhan stood, snatched the ring from Tandhi, and tossed it through the air. The boy servant’s eyes went wide and he nearly shrieked as he lunged for, and caught it, juggling it briefly as it bounced against his skin.
“Tell Lord Elmanan that I’m not interested,” Jhan said simply and left the dinning room. Tandhi was too shocked to follow.
Jhan moved quickly, hands pulling up and supporting the dragging weight of her dress as she lost herself in the myriad hallways of the house. She wasn’t sure what she intending, believing that someone was going to stop her at some point; never hoping for more than a pitiful defiance that would quickly be ground under a heel.
People stared. Everyone had one or two servants. None of the women were alone. Jhan’s behavior was so unusual though, that none of them could make up their mind to stop her. Their servants gasped shock and Jhan heard mutters. She had to do something before one of them thought it through enough to have her pursued.
Heavy boots sounded up ahead. Metal grated against metal and men’s voices alerted Jhan to guards. She distinctly heard Captain Elorian’s grumbling tone. In a moment, they would come into her hallway from an intersection and that would be the end of it.
Jhan put her hand on a doorknob to her right, twisted, and found it unlocked. She let herself into a darkened room and closed the door behind her. She leaned against it, breathing shallowly until she heard the footsteps approach and pass her. She almost turned and went back into the hallway, until the window caught her eye. It was almost at ground level, the back of the large house winding down a hill and out into a rolling countryside covered in snow.
Jhan slowly looked about her. The dim room was sparse, but as pleasant as her own. It smelled of masculine cologne and riding leather. A wardrobe opened to her small hands and she saw a wealth of clothing, boots, and coats.
There was a decision to be made that Jhan had thought that she would never have cause to make. That decision was dangerous. Her spirit, stripped bare and crushed by cruel hands, quailed at even considering it, yet it required such tremendous bravery that Jhan hardly knew where to begin to look for it within herself.
Only desperation and fear; the kind of fear a deer felt when it fled from hunters, had made Jhan leave Tandhi and all that she had represented behind. The constricting, suffocating life that would have been hers as Lord Elmanan’s wife had been too horrible to contemplate. Bravery hadn’t played any part in Jhan’s flight from it. This that she contemplated now, required more than simple horror or even greater fear than she felt now. This was the course of action that required Jhan to chance her life, throw herself from a cliff of unknown possibilities and hope that there was something below to save her.
Jhan clutched her hands to her face, took a deep breath, and dared. She stripped off her hated clothes, bundled them tightly so that they wouldn’t give her away, and took men’s clothing from the very back of the wardrobe; hoping that they might not be missed.
Jhan dressed rapidly, tightening a belt to hold up too large pants and tucking in the long tail of a linen shirt. The extra long arms of that shirt she rolled and hid within the brown velvet coat she put on over it. It had a thick warm lining, but she gathered up several woolen sweaters and scarves to be on the safe side and bundled them with her women’s clothes. Her hose and shoes she had to leave on. There was nothing even close to her shoe size. Her coat was long. Jhan hoped it would hide anything that would pick her out as not a townsmen of Bairkun.
As Jhan tied up her hair and tucked it into a brown cap with a jaunty red bird feather tucked into its side, she felt her hands begin to tremble and her stomach begin to tighten with the nausea caused by the battle with her fear. She forced herself, and it took all of her will, to go to the window and place her hands on the sill. There she froze, fear and her attempt at bravery becoming equal in its strength.
What if’s streamed through Jhan’s mind, beating her like whips, imagining countless scenarios where she ended up being the very thing she was trying to run away from, but punished, horribly punished by Obahn, or Sael, or- who knew what they would do to a woman fleeing her place, breaking out of her cocoon of heavy cloth and embroidery?
Jhan lifted open the window. The free, cold air slapped into her face, made goose bumps rise on her skin, and almost displaced her hat. She gripped her bundle of clothing, practical and ridiculous, and tried not wonder where she would go. If she did that, she knew her nerve would fail her entirely. It had been that fear, coupled with the fear of being punished or worse, that had kept her a prisoner as surely as any chain.
“I have to go,” Jhan muttered to herself. “I won’t stay and spend my life as some man’s pretty toy. That would be as cruel as anything Obahn, or any of them have ever done. To be treated as less than human, that’s the real torture, the real torment. I’ll brave anything, chance anything to escape that. I didn’t have the opportunity before, but, here it is. I can’t let it slip through my fingers.”
Jhan swung her legs through the window. Being at the back of the house, it didn’t have a balcony. Jhan looked down at the twelve feet separating her from the snowy ground, took a deep, shuddering breath, and then dropped.

Go to Back to Book Four

On to Book Six

Gates Of Transformation:

Book Six:The Path

by Kracken