In the early days of our march I had witnessed struggles to get free, desperate attempts to muster power enough to break the bindings, to sharpen a stick for a weapon, to lure a stone into a hand. Once, on the first night, I had believed that someone was trying to speak in my mind with images of such beauty and hope that I lay awake, awaiting the rescuers that I was sure would fall upon our captors. Two days in the desert had ended all such futile endeavors and empty visions. Then came pleas for help, for Healers, for water, and prayers begging courage and strength. Two more days had silenced us all.

As we dragged ourselves to the back wall of the cage where a steel door opened into a dark, low building, the only sounds were the clank of chains and the soft weeping of those who could not rise. We tried to help them, but at the door any who couldn’t walk on their own were shoved back into the cage. My youthful comrade was among those left behind. He huddled in the corner. Shivering. Terrified.

I called back to him. “It is a wonder, is it not?” It was the tag end of an old Dar’Nethi joke. We who tried to see wonder in everything-sometimes even we were confounded by the paths of life.

Slowly a grin suffused the boy’s face, banishing fear and revealing a luminous spirit. “All of it,” he croaked, through his cracked and bleeding lips. “I’ll see you beyond the Verges.”

Several of the others left behind took up the refrain. “A wonder… beyond the Verges…” I saw handclasps and a few kisses and even heard laughter gracing the grim night.

Ah, holy Vasrin, I thought. From what marvelous matter have you shaped us?

The steel door gaped in front of me, and I was pulled through in my turn. While one guard checked the bonds on my wrists and hooked a short chain to my neck ring, a second man hobbled my ankles with a length of rope. The state of my feet would have prevented me running far, but I had contemplated a few of my favorite leg-holds when I glimpsed only two guards. Too bad.

As they led me stumbling through the dark passage toward a faint yellow light and the sound of splashing water, from somewhere deep in the dark place came a cry that chilled whatever mote of resilience still lurked in my soul. What, in the name of all that lives, could cause a man to make that sound?

Turn inward for protection… stay deep… let it pass. Nauseated, horrified, I didn’t even understand my own thoughts.

The passage made a sharp bend. Torches burned beyond an open doorway. As I was still squinting from the brightness, my guard led me to a wooden bench facing a bare stone wall. “Sit here and don’t move.”

Sitting still was not so simple a matter, as someone standing behind me took a knife to my head and began hacking off my hair in great chunks. But I did my best. When an unfriendly someone has a knife that close to eyes and ears and such appendages, it’s best to behave.

“Ready for the next one!” The call came from beyond another door.

“This one’s proper nasty,” said the guard, dragging me off the bench by the neck-chain. My hobbled ankles almost had me on my face in the piles of hair on the floor. “Going to dance for us, Dar’Nethi?”

A retort bubbled to my lips. No. Turn inward… stay deep… whatever you would say would only be an excuse for something you’d rather not experience. Save the wit for someone who’ll appreciate it.

The next bare room, small and square, had damp walls and a stone floor that sloped into a drain trench. The guards hitched my hands to an iron hook above my head. Then, they ripped off what was left of my clothes and a fair portion of skin where blood had dried and stuck them to me. Though I half expected it, I could not keep silent when a pail of icy water was thrown over me from behind. “Vasrin’s hand!”

“Come now, slave, you want to be nice and clean for the slavemaster, don’t you?”

They used a brush or a mop or some such contrivance to swab me down, then sluiced me off with another pail of water. Naked and shivering, I almost jumped a handspan off the ground when someone began to poke and prod my back and limbs. A helpless, horrid feeling. He moved around in front of me, a short, tidy Zhid whose eyes made my skin shrivel when he looked at my face. Pulling a length of cord from several that hung from a ring on his belt, the tidy man wrapped it snugly about my neck. I jerked backward, trying to calm myself with the thought that it had been awfully stupid to go to the trouble of washing me if I were going to be throttled. Indeed he removed it right away, paying no heed to my jumpiness.

“Give this to Dujene,” he said, scoring the cord with a small knife and handing it to one of my guards. “You seem to be a fine specimen.”

I presumed the last was to me, but I wasn’t used to making pleasant conversation with a hostile stranger who had free access to all of my vital parts.

“What is your name? And don’t be stupid. We’ll know if you lie.”

“V’Saro of Sen Ystar.”

“Age?”

“Forty-three.”

“Profession?”

“Swordmaster.”

“Indeed? And your true talent?”

“Minor Horsemaster. No time for anything else.” Stupid to think I had to apologize for my lack of talent to a cursed Zhid.

His pale eyes and his thick hands continued to inspect and examine me. “Too bad your true talents are insufficient to make you a warrior. Your physical construction demands it. But a practice slave will be about the best you can do. Some live quite a long time, months, on occasion. You’ll have to rely on your physical prowess alone, but-”

“Dujene is ready,” said one of the guards.

“Tell him this one’s for the practice pens. If he’s a decent fighter, he might be useful.”

I was led into a dim, smoky room that greeted me with a blast of heat. My stomach knotted as they half pushed, half pulled me onto my knees on the dirt floor. The stench of fear permeated the place. That scream had originated here.

“Spread him.” My hands were detached from each other and pulled forward and apart, forcing my upper body onto a slanted, and very cold, stone slab. Once my hands were fixed in place, someone removed the loose iron ring to which my neck-chain had been attached. Good riddance, I thought.

I couldn’t lift my head far enough to see much beyond the cold granite in front of my nose. A blurry dark-clothed figure hovered about my head. I didn’t like the blaze that roared behind him. Not one bit.

Someone spread a cold ointment on my neck while whispering words of enchantment. I inhaled deeply, trying to ease the dread that constricted every aching muscle. I smelled hot metal. They had talked of collars.

“This should do him,” said a dry voice. “We’ll see what sort of stomach such a sturdy fellow has.” Hands lifted my head and slipped a strip of hot metal between me and the stone. And, of course, in the position I was, I couldn’t pull back, not far enough to do any good when they wrapped it about my neck and it scalded the ointment away.

I didn’t scream. It was bearable; surely it was bearable. Go deep… do not feel… let it pass…

As the Zhid spoke enchantments that curdled my blood, the hot metal shifted and flowed and settled into position, smooth and close-fitting. Then they threw cold water over me. Sick and trembling, I thought I had come through the worst.

“Anyone important about who wants the pleasure of the seal?”

“You’ll have to set them yourself. Master hasn’t been seen all day, and he has no guests. I’ve got to get the next one ready. We’ve a hundred more.”

“Ah, I can do them faster anyway.” The guard went away, leaving only the man in black.

“Well, slave, one more thing to do. The joining. Back here…” He ran his finger along the narrow slot where the ends of the collar lay along my spine. “As Slavemaster Gernald would tell you if he were considerate enough to make himself available, we’ve discovered a substance far more effective than dolemar in controlling Dar’Nethi power. Mordemar it’s called. Not only prevents any use of true talent, you won’t be able to acquire power for it neither. No more of it. Ever again. Your collar will be with you until you die, and so you will spend the rest of your days half a man. Enjoy it.”

Liquid dripped on the strip of skin exposed between the ends of the collar. Hot, though nothing compared to the searing collar itself. But as the liquid seal filled the gap, completing the ring about my neck, it gnawed its way into my being as surely as acid devours flesh. And then I screamed.

Suffocation… paralysis… blindness… What words can convey the loss? A soul excised, the mind uprooted and ripped apart, the world reduced to two dimensions instead of three. What would be the universe without a color like red or blue or green? What would life be if there were, all of an instant, only men, or only women, or if there were to be no children ever again?

As the seal cooled and hardened, my screams faded to weeping. I had lost the Way. I could not savor the moment because I could not see the colors of the fire, only the blaze of it. I could not see the marvelous intricacies of the granite on which my tears fell, only a cold slab. No longer could I feel the air on my bare skin and sense all the places that air had been, the faces it had touched. I could feel only the cold and the heat and the pain. Death and cruelty could no longer be fit into any larger meaning, for the ability to take them into myself and see beyond had been stripped from me. No more. Ever again. Better… far better if they had taken my mind, if I had been made nameless and cruel, so long as I did not understand what I had lost.

I could not have said when they removed the common shackles from my wrists, replaced them with wide, close-fitting bands of the same dark metal, and sealed them as well. When one is in uttermost despair, no pain or indignity can make it worse. After removing the hobbles, they gave me a gray tunic to cover myself, hooked a tether chain to my collar, and led me back to the slave pen. They had removed the dead and the crippled, and put down clean straw. Everyone remaining had close-cropped hair, gray tunics, and collars, and like each one of them, I huddled into myself against the bitter night.