I was ten years old when the marauders came. I knew who they were from books and legends: romantic and dashing, with flowing midnight hair and sparkling swords. The images I had always had of the marauders left no place for the grim reality of their dirty black beards and cruelly leering eyes. I had almost looked forward to their coming, never associating it with the fear, the horror, the bloodshed they actually brought.
I was in the house of the Mahr , studying the craft of magic with his wife. Her name was Deryia, and she had been a student of the great sorceress Vivienn. She was teaching me the secret of summoning familiars that day, a ritual only allowed to those who were destined as priestesses or sorceresses. We were in the great dark hall which was also Deryia's laboratory of magic. I was wearing only my shift of clean white linen, knee-length and sleeveless. I stood inside a circle drawn in white chalk on the dark floor, ancient symbols marked all around the places where my feet rested and etched in black on my ankles and calves. I gazed up at the ceiling, closing my eyes and pretending I could see through to the moonless sky.
I was too deep in concentration to see the servant who ran frantically through the door. Deryia could not reach me physically across the magical barriers which protected my sanctity, but she called to me on the astral level.
'Kaija' I heard the voice only in my head, 'Kaija, Sh'vai, listen to me. You must return. A terrible thing has happened.'
'I hear and obey, Sh'lre' I replied, using the Old Tongue word meaning `mother', much as she had called me `daughter'. I lowered myself back into my body, abandoning my search for a familiar, and scratched through one soft chalk line with my bare foot. The magic evaporated and Deryia crossed to me.
"Come, Kaija," she slipped me into a half-laced tunic and took my arm. I had never seen her face so serious before. She took me through a hidden door down to the wine cellar, warning me what had happened and telling me to hide behind the crates and barrels. I wanted to see the marauders, the strong, handsome pirates I was sure would never harm a woman. May Aphaea be thanked that I didn't see more of them.
I was too young to be wived (and I thank the Gods that our society is not like that of the Southern Plains, where girls are wed at seven, eight, nine years old), but young enough to be traded. They found me while ransacking the liquors, and I was too foolish to hide better. I kept peeking out to get glimpses of them in the half-light, the torches clutched in their scarred fists casting eerie shadows on their features.
"Look here, boys!" I heard suddenly behind me in a voice without the slightest trace of kindness, "I found us a little wench!" His hands were strong and cruel, and I found myself lifted up by the collar of my tunic and dangled in the air; I was petite as a child even among my village, and these marauders must have been from the Northwest by their size and easy strength.
"Aw, throw her in a sack and we'll look at her later," another man replied; I noticed the gold rings in his ears that I thought must have marked him as their leader. I was to learn later that they were the prizes he had taken off of the women he had slain.
"Please, Sir," I began to beg, terribly frightened but even more thrilled. My request was cut off as a rough burlap sack was pulled over my head. I struggled, but little; it was obvious that one of these men could have handled at least four of me.
An extremely uncomfortable -- even painful -- half-day later, I was untied and brought to the chief of the marauders along with the other captives; my hands were knotted firmly behind my back and a strip of rough leather had been thrust in my mouth. My tunic had been worn to begin with, but it was now torn and fraying from the rough treatment of my captors. My hair was knotted and filthy, and I was miserable and sullen. The romantic illusion I had carried had been shattered by the reality of my treatment.
The leader of the marauders was a big man, bigger than any in my village. He had deep brown hair with just a hint of red, and a long beard. It would have looked handsome had he taken the time to comb and clean it, but full of tangles and brambles and dried blood, it made him look like a wild animal.
The leader, whose name, I was to learn later, was RedHawk, must have been intelligent for his profession. There was a sharp glint in his eye that I had seen in none of the other pirates, and in a flash of Sight I had a glimpse of him as the nobleman he might have been, had he not chosen this bloody route. I had a certain respect for him after that, despite my terror of the marauders.
RedHawk took only a brief look at each prisoner before pronouncing sentence. Most he ordered sold as slaves; some of the children he ordered kept and brought up as marauders themselves. The young women were to be kept as toys for the pirates, though I didn't understand what he meant, then.
I was the only girl my age in the group, and I thought with relief that my playmates must have escaped; it only occurred to me later that they had probably been killed. My elder brother was there, but he didn't see me. He had blood all over his left side, and a gash in his forehead. His head was down and he looked like he had died but somehow remained standing. I remember longing to throw my arms around him and cry, but I was kept tied and could not even attract his attention. I did not see him again after that. The rest of my family I did not see at all.
When the leader got to me, it took him a long minute to decide what to do with me. I heard one black-haired man suggest that I should be kept until I could be of some use; I was pretty enough.
That was true; my hair was golden, my eyes a pale green. My bone structure was delicate and my frame small but beginning to take on the signs of womanhood. Yet it was not a compliment to be called pretty by a pirate.
Finally, he spoke: I was to be sold. I was rudely thrust in with the other future slaves and we were sent down to the storage hold of the great ship. It was a bruising voyage, one which caused several of those captured to take their own lives. There were points when I would have, but I had no weapon. And in the back of my head was a husky, whispering voice which was not my own and yet felt as though it was part of me. It whispered whenever I grew depressed, telling me to live; that one day I would have satisfaction.
I traveled many days in the ship before I was sold. Among the other captives friendships, even families, were broken over the need to fight for the little food and stale water we were given. Those of us who escaped disease lived in our own filth, mixed with the decaying corpses of those who had refused to live in such conditions.
We finally landed and I was sold, bedraggled but with a strength I had not had before, to the Viosce, the leading citizen, of a Northern city. His name was Herthan Khomeir Al'Ladioac. He liked to be called 'Sir'. He was a harsh man, though no more so than most of his fellow Northerners, especially the aristocracy. His pride was his large family: three sons and four daughters. He thought much of himself, as did his neighbors, for having fathered such a large brood.
I was first a serving woman for his wife, Aeli, and a playmate for his youngest daughters. Aeli was a frail, dark-haired woman. She was taller than I at the time, but I have since outdistanced her by at least a hand-width. Her eyes were violet, and always spoke volumes that her husband never saw. She loved her children, all of them, but especially her youngest, Lei, who was the spitting image of her mother.
"I will bring her up to catch a good husband," Aeli told me once while I was helping her dress. Her long trains of state, voluminous silks and gauzes, were often too awkward for her to handle herself.
"I will teach her all the social graces, with your help," Aeli smiled at me. "As the Viosce's daughter, she will command the wealthiest suitors. She will want for nothing."
I bowed my head and closed my mouth.
When I came of age -- the Northerners marry late, so I was allowed a precious near-decade before I was considered old enough -- the Viosce took me as his mistress. He thought himself kind, but he was in fact simply weak; he would have been cruel, had he had the strength.
It was when he gave me as a present, an object, to his eldest son that I began to see my route of escape from this caged life. For though I had not been beaten or abused as several of my fellow slaves had, I resented my status as a non-person. I could not own property, could not participate in the running of the town, and had to keep in my owner's good graces to avoid being thrown on the street. My resentment burned inside of me like a silent volcano; it was only the whispering voice in the back of my head that kept me from erupting.
The Viosce's eldest son was named Carmon, a tall, red-haired lad who was a mere twenty-two when I was first given to him, four years ago. He, as his father, was fascinated by my body, by the paleness of my skin and hair, by my slim shape and my long, delicate fingers. I looked like a flower, or so he told me; something delicate and sweet, light and guileless. He did not say something to be plucked and kept, slowly dying, in an alien environment.
I had learned what pleases a man from the Viosce, who was a demanding master. I used his lessons on Carmon, teaching and learning with equal cunning and thought. He was convinced I wanted only to please him. He never realized -- still does not realize -- that my goal was always to entrap him.
In secret, with the help of other disgruntled slaves and servants, most who were with families much more abusive than mine, I began to re-learn the magic the Mahr's wife had taught me. I chalked circles and signs at midnight under a dark moon and threw my face to the heavens. I unbound my tunic and let the starlight rain down on a clean linen shift -- or on a bare body of pale pearly skin.
I invoked Aphaea, goddess of the dark moon and its magic, she who lives in the shadow and in the eyes of the midnight-black owls sacred to her. I invoked her half-sister, Lycothe, the goddess of revenge, she who is never seen by mortals until their death hour, and then only as a laughing fiend. They came to me and spoke, telling me what I needed to do. I recognized in their immortal speech the voice that had kept me from plunging a knife into my girlish breast on the pirate ship, the voice that had kept me from purifying the Viosce's house and family by rite of fire. The voice that had kept me alive.
I worked and prepared until I was ready to invoke the great magic. On a moonless night, I bared myself to the sky, my trusted companions by my side. Their prayers, too, had been given to Aphaea, and we would all profit by her gift to her priestess.
The circle on the white marble tile of the patio was not drawn in chalk this time, but in blood. A black cat lay on the block of stone we had declared the altar, its eyes glazed in death and its head attached to its body only by a blood-encrusted flap of skin and fur. I stepped inside the circle and called up the power of the runes, feeling the magic swirl around me and form the barrier that would keep my communion sacred. In front of the altar on the cold stone ground lay the ingredients of the spell: a precious ruby and the skin of a black rabbit as offerings to Aphaea, and also a pair of small crystal vials, one red and one black, an ebony-handled knife, and a strip of silver-threaded bandage.
First I raised the ruby, blood-red and stolen from the marketplace, over my head and muttered the opening prayers. Then I let it drop gently onto the midnight fur of the rabbit-skin. I lifted the short, sharp knife in my hand and, with only a thought for the pain, drew the tip across my wrist. The flow was gentle but sure and it dripped in rivulets down the glassy surfaces of the gem, soaking the fur of the skin before I wrapped a bandage of silver gauze around my wrist.
My voice rose, chanting the prayer I had learned from the goddess herself, and in a moment I felt the power rushing through me. I was no longer Kaija, Mahr's niece turned slave. I was no longer Carmon's mistress, or a priestess in training, or any mortal.
I was Aphaea, the goddess herself.
Aphaea pointed my hand at the offering of gem and once-living fur and felt it burst into sparks. She and I laughed, drinking in the mystical smoke and feeling more alive than we had in years. This was the sacrifice we deserved, and when the fire was almost out and our desire almost satiated, we turned our thoughts to she who had done this for me.
We unwrapped the bandage from our wrist and the wound re-opened at our mental command. We picked up the two vials, red and black, and let a single drop of blood fall into the black, a drop which let off a whiff of steam as it fell. Then, answering our command, the wound closed up to a thin line. We quickly drew the sacred knife across our other wrist, allowing a drop to fall into the second vial, the one of red crystal.
The goddess's time was limited now and we hurried. As our second slash-wound healed, we forced a divine tear into the red vial, and one into the black. Finally we raised each to our lips, breathing the holy essence of her breath into them. And her time was gone.
I was myself, Aphaea's initiated priestess, two vials clutched in my hands. Darkness started to swim before my eyes. I capped the vials with all the speed I could muster and dragged a foot through the circle of blood as my consciousness expired. The spell was done.
When I awoke, my companions were bending over me, fear in their eyes. They had seen the goddess enter me, had seen a gem of inestimable hardness burst into flame. I did not answer their questions -- all I could see were two vials. One was black and held a drug of death, slow and natural-seeming. The other was red and its contents were a potion which would incite love and obedience. Two vials and a pair of thin scars which would never heal.
Tomorrow is the day of my marriage to Carmon. It took only a suggestion for him to propose, once he loved me. As his wife, I gain all his property rights and all his possessions, which, especially on his father's death, will be great. The Viosce is elderly; no one will be surprised if he suffers heart trouble at this advanced age. And Carmon has promised to take me home once we are married a year. I can wait a year more; fifteen have passed already. And once I am home, far away from this city of slavery, I will assume my rightful place as priestess of Aphaea and I will rebuild my village from the Viosce's wealth. Carmon will not mind; Aphaea will see to him. Justice will be done.