The Dragon Revenant (6 page)

Unfortunately, there was that bill of sale, and the profoundly uncomfortable fact that the slave couldn’t even remember his own name. Taliaesyn, his previous owners had called him, but he readily admitted that the name meant nothing to him. He could remember nothing at all, not his family, not his home city—indeed, no more than a few scraps about his life beyond the day he’d been sold. Since his previous owners had been giving him opium to keep him docile, Brindemo made sure that he had plenty of nourishing food and all the sleep he wanted. Unfortunately, this decent treatment had no effect; Taliaesyn could remember no more than he had before.

“You exasperate me, Taliaesyn of Pyrdon,” Brindemo remarked, in Deverrian, one evening. “But then, no doubt you exasperate yourself.”

“Of course.” The slave gave him one of his oddly charming smiles. “What man wouldn’t want to know the truth about himself?”

“Hah! There are many men who hide the truth about themselves deep in their hearts, where they will never have to face it. Perhaps you are one of those. Have you done somewhat so horrible that you wipe the mind clean to forget?”

“Mayhap. Do I look like that sort of man to you?”

“You don’t, though I think for all your charm you are a dangerous man. I would never give you a sword nor a dagger neither.”

Taliaesyn looked sharply away, his eyes gone cloudy, as if his thoughts had taken a strange turn.

“A dagger,” Brindemo whispered. “The word means somewhat?”

“Somewhat.” He spoke slowly, almost reluctantly. “I can’t find the memory. It just twitched at my mind, like.” Brindemo sighed with deep drama.

“Twenty-five zotars! Easily I could sell you for twenty-five golden zotars if only we could find the truth. Do you know how much a zotar is worth?”

“I don’t, at that.”

“It would buy ten pigs, and five of them fertile sows, even. So twenty-five zotars … ai!”

“My heart bleeds for you.”

“Ah, the sarcasm, and how can I blame you? It is a good sign. Your mind is coming back to life. But, I tell you, I have a guest coming tonight. He has spent many years in Deverry as a wine merchant. He might recognize you, or know somewhat to jog your mind. I cannot stand this. Twenty-five zotars, and here you sit, unsalable. It aches the heart, as you say in your country.”

While they waited for Arriano to arrive, Brindemo taught the slave the proper method of pouring wine and passing a tray of cups around to guests. Taliaesyn took the lesson with a grave interest that had a certain charm, rather like an intelligent child who has decided to please his parents by doing something they want even though it strikes him as ridiculous. Yet Brindemo was always aware that he was docile only because his memory had gone. Taliaesyn moved like a knife-fighter (the professional athletes of the arena were Brindemo’s only cognate for that particular gliding walk, the stance that was both relaxed and on guard at the same time), so much so that seeing him fussing over the silver tray was unsettling, as if a lion were wearing a collar and padding after its mistress like a pet cat. I never should have bought him, he thought miserably; I should have told Baruma no. Yet his misery only deepened, because he knew full well that he was in no position to deny the man known as Baruma anything.

Arriano came promptly when the temple bells were chiming out the sunset watch. Brindemo met him at the door himself, then ushered him into the main hall, a long room with a blue-and-white tiled floor and dark-green walls. At one end was a low dais, strewn with many-colored cushions arranged around a brass table. After they settled themselves on the cushions, Taliaesyn passed the wine cups around, then perched respectfully on the edge of the dais. Arriano, a wizened little man who hid his baldness under a white linen skullcap, looked him over with a small, not unfriendly, smile.

“So, Taliaesyn,” he said. “Our Brindemo here says you come from Pyrdon.”

“So I’ve been told, master.”

One of Arriano’s bushy eyebrows shot up.

“Talk to me in Deverrian. Oh, what … ah, I know. Describe this room.”

As Taliaesyn, somewhat puzzled, obligingly gave him a catalogue of the furniture and colors in the room, Arriano listened with his head cocked to one side. Then he cut the list short with a wave of his hand.

“Pyrdon? Hah! You come from Eldidd, lad. I’d wager good coin on it—the Eldidd seacoast, at that.” He turned to Brindemo and spoke in Bardekian. “They have a very distincrive way of speaking there. As you might have expected, Baruma was lying like a scorpion.”

“May the feet of the gods crush him!” Brindemo felt sweat run down his back. “I don’t suppose you recognize this supposed slave?”

“Not as to give you his real name, no. From the way he moves and all, I’d say he was a member of their aristocracy.”

“What? I was thinking of him as a knife-fighter or boxer or some other performer like that.”

“You forget, my dear old friend, that in Deverry, the aristocrats are all warriors. They start training for it when they’re little children.”

Brindemo groaned, a long rattle that gave him no relief. Taliaesyn was listening with an understandable intensity.

“One of the noble-born?” the slave said at last. “Here, this Baruma fellow said I was a merchant’s son.”

“Baruma lies as easily as the rain falls,” Arriano said. “If I were you, Brindemo, I’d stop babbling about zotars and get rid of this man as fast as you can—but to a decent master, mind. If his kin come storming through here with blood in their barbarian hearts …”

“I know, I know.” Brindemo could barely speak out of sheer frustrated greed. “But twenty-five zotars! Ai!”

“Will all the gold in the world sew your head back onto your shoulders if …”

“O shut up! Of course you’re right. Baruma wanted me to sell him to the mines or the galleys, but that’s out completely of the question if the man’s an aristocrat.”

“I should think so! May Baruma’s sphincter loosen and his manhood plug itself.”

“And may diseased monkeys feed someday upon his heart! Very well, then. I’ll sell him as soon as I can find the right sort of buyer. If you hear of someone, let me know—for a commission, of course.”

“Of course.” Arriano held out his hand. “More wine, Taliaesyn.”

Even though Taliaesyn served the wine exactly as he’d been taught with all the proper courtesies, the harsh, brooding look in his eyes made Brindemo profoundly uneasy. I’d best get him out of here soon for my own sake, he thought, but ai! twenty-five zotars!

Taliaesyn had been given a cubicle of his own to sleep in, because Brindemo was afraid to have him gossiping with the other slaves. If Baruma came back, neither the slave nor the slave merchant wanted him to know that they’d been trying to unravel his secret. Although the cubicle had room for nothing more than a straw pallet on the floor, and a tiny niche in the wall for an oil lamp, it was private. After he’d been locked in for the night, Taliaesyn sat on the pallet for a long while, considering what Arriano had told him. Even though the lamp was out of oil, he could see perfectly well in the moonlight that streamed in the uncurtained window. It occurred to him, then, that it was peculiar that he could see in the dark. Before he’d been taking it for granted.

A few at a time, Wildfolk came to join him, a gaggle of gnomes, mostly, all speckled and mottled in blue and gray and purple, quite different from the ones in Deverry, or at least, so he remembered. At the moment, he was disinclined to trust anything he “remembered” about himself. Who knew if it were real or some lie of Baruma’s? He did, however, have a clear memory picture of solidly colored gnomes, in particular a certain gray one who was some sort of friend. Apparently he’d been able to see these little creatures for some time.

The ability to befriend spirits was so out of character for what he knew of Deverry aristocrats that he considered this strange fact for a good long time. Although he remembered little about himself, his general knowledge of the world seemed to be intact, and he was certain that your average warrior-lord did not go around talking to Wildfolk. Yet here was a particularly bold gnome, a dirty-green and grayish-purple with an amazing number of warts running down its spine, who was climbing into his lap and patting his hand with one little clawed paw as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Well, good eve, little brother.”

The gnome grinned to reveal bright purple fangs, then settled into his lap like a cat. As he idly stroked it, scratching it behind the ears every now and then, Taliaesyn felt something pricking at his mind like a buried splinter trying to force its way out of a finger. The Wildfolk, the very phrase “little brother,” both meant something profound, something that would give him an important key to who he was if only he could find the lock. It was a secret, a very deep, buried secret, hidden even from Baruma, perhaps.

“I wish you lads could talk. Do you know who I am?”

The pack all shook their heads in a collective yes.

“Do you know my name, then?”

This time the answer was no.

“But you somehow recognize me?”

Another yes. He wondered if he’d ever been an introspective man—probably not, if he reminded people of a warrior-lord or a knife-fighter. The bits of truth he was finding made less sense than all the lies. One of the noble-born, or an athlete, but either way, he saw the Wildfolk, and they considered him a friend. Again came that twitch at his mind. One of their friends or one of their kin? The hairs on the nape of his neck prickled as he said it aloud.

“Or one of their kin. I should know what that means, curse it all to the third hell!”

But he couldn’t remember. All at once he was furious, furious with his mind, with Baruma, with the twisted fate that had stripped him of himself and dropped him here, a piece of human trash in Brindemo’s market. He slammed his fist into the wall, and the pain and the rage mingled to force a brief moment of clarity out of his maimed consciousness. The Westfolk, The Elcyion Lacar, the elves. They saw the Wildfolk; they called them little brothers. He’d known the elves once—hadn’t he? Hadn’t he ridden to war with some of them for allies? Once, a very long time ago.

“Or one of their kin,” he whispered like an exhalation of breath.

He went cold all over in the warm night. It was a hard thing, after all, for a man to realize that he wasn’t completely human.

Taliaesyn stayed at the market for two more days of drowsy boredom. Although he did his best to probe his mind, he found the work hard going, confirming his own thought that he’d never been a man who paid much attention to his mind. He did, however, remember one small thing, the matter of the piece of jewelry. Although he couldn’t remember exactly what it was, Taliaesyn was sure that Baruma had stolen a valuable piece of silver jewelry from him, some heirloom, handed down to him by some member of his clan or by someone he admired—he wasn’t sure which. He did know, however, that having lost that piece of jewelry was a shameful thing, that he would be dishonored forever if he didn’t find Baruma and get it back. The shame fed his hatred until at times he daydreamed for long hours about killing Baruma in one or another hideous way.

On the mid-morning of the third day he was sitting out in the grassy courtyard when Brindemo brought a customer to see him. He was a tall man, quite dark, with close-cropped curly black hair and two green diamonds painted on his left cheek. The straight-backed way he stood suggested that at some time he might have been a soldier, and his shrewd dark eyes often flicked Brindemo’s way in contemptuous disbelief as the trader chattered on, singing Taliaesyn’s praises and creating a false history for him all at the same time.

“Very polished manners, sir, a merchant’s son and very well-spoken, but alas, he had a terrible taste for gambling, and fell in among bad company over in Mangorio, and …”

“Are you good with horses?” The customer broke in, speaking straight to Taliaesyn. “Most Deverry men are.”

“I am. I’ve been riding all my life.” As he spoke, he remembered another scrap of his earlier life: a sleek black pony that he’d loved as a child. The memory was so vivid, so precious that he missed what the customer said next while he groped and struggled to remember the little beast’s name.

All at once the customer swung at him, a clean hard punch straight at his face. Without thinking Taliaesyn parried with his left wrist and began to swing back. Brindemo’s horrified scream brought him to his senses. He could be beaten bloody for swinging on a free man, but the customer only laughed and gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder.

“I think you’ll do. I’m leading a caravan into the mountains. One of my muleteers fell ill, and I’ve no time to hire a free man to take his place.”

“What, honored sir?” Brindemo’s jowls were shaking in indignation. “A valuable barbarian, used as a muleteer?”

“Only for a while. I’m quite sure I can resell him at a profit later on. Arriano told me that he needed to disappear, for your sake and his, and I can manage that.”

“He told you what?” The trader’s voice rose to a wail.

“You can trust me. Eight zotars.”

“You have larceny in your heart! You wish to drive me out of business!”