Far Edge of Darkness

Bitter liquid filled her mouth. She choked and tried to twist aside. They held her, forced the stuff down her, clamped her jaws closed so she couldn't vomit it back up. She whimpered, half-mad with the pain in her head and the confusion in her whirling thoughts. The dizzy, whirlpool sensation worsened. Darkness slithered into the edges of her awareness. She was still fighting to remember who she was, and where, when blackness reached out with questing, powerful tentacles. They wrapped around her, irresistibly strong, and dragged her under.

She woke several times to sensations of movement, nausea, and confusion. Each time, people waiting in the light forced her to drink the bitter liquid that shoved her—reeling—back into unconsciousness. When she roused again, some impossible-to-judge time later, she tried to hold down the nausea long enough to gain some impression of where she was.

Silence wrapped darkly around her. She received the impression she was alone in a small, dark chamber—at least, if the thick, close air were any indication. She lay on her side. Her wrists and ankles were still tightly tied, but she wasn't gagged. When the significance of that sank in, alarm spread cold fingers through her. Wherever she was, her captors weren't worried about her screams.

The world had stopped lurching beneath her. The only light came from two pairs of narrow cracks, one vertical, one horizontal, that marked the location of a small door. She lay on a hard surface. When she moved her cheek, she felt the rough grain of wood. Judging from the angle of the lower slit of light, she was approximately two feet above the floor.

But where? And who was she?

Pain, unexpected and treacherous, stabbed through the center of her skull. She cried aloud and squeezed shut her eyes. Nausea tore her throat. Her stomach heaved, then she was thoroughly sick, onto herself, onto the platform on which she lay. She doubled up, whimpering, and was sick again. When she tried to roll sideways, to throw up over the edge, she slipped completely off. An involuntary yell of fear cut off when she hit the floor with a bone-jarring thud. The slithering fall brought more nausea and the sound of footfalls outside the door.

It opened abruptly. Light flooded the room. She flinched from it and shut her eyes. Someone knelt beside her. She tried to escape, fighting irrationally despite the crippling pain in her head and the knowledge that she was bound hand and foot.

"Shh," a masculine voice whispered, "shh, you've hurt yourself... ."

The monster behind her eyes broke loose again. The man turned her, gently, to lie on her stomach across a hard thigh while she was sick again. He smelled faintly of human excrement and a smelly soap that reminded her of petting zoos full of goats.

"It's all right. Go ahead and be sick, little one. Shh..."

She tried to regain control of herself sufficiently to ask him where she was, or who she was—and the agony in her head redoubled. She cried aloud and was disastrously ill again. He held her until the tremors eased away and the nausea with them. When she lay quietly, he brushed her face with gentle fingertips, working them in circles across her temples.

She flinched, despite the surprising tenderness in that brief contact. More footsteps approached from beyond the door.

"What are you doing in there?"

The new voice was also male, sharp with disapproval or anger. Instinctively she didn't like that voice.

An odd tremor ran through the leg under her belly. Then the man holding her said, "She woke up sick." His voice, now that he wasn't whispering, was deep and very easy on the ears, but the language sounded... wrong... . Or did it? She didn't know. "I heard her fall out of bed," he added to an unknown man in the doorway. "She is very ill, Domine Xanthus."

Domine Xanthus—what kind of name was that?—swore. His voice emanated from the nebulous region above her. "Well, you're in there, now. Get her cleaned up." Domine Xanthus' accent differed from the other man's in a way she couldn't define.

"I will need a bucket." The voice nearest her sounded far more patient than Domine Xanthus', or maybe just a great deal more tired. The leg she rested against was knotted with muscles and about as pliable as steel. But he was very gentle when he eased her down to her back.

A series of impossible-to-identify sounds reached her ears; then she heard a thump and the unmistakable slosh of water nearby. The tired man spoke softly, almost in a whisper again.

"Easy, little one, I will wash your face now. Lie still, no one will hurt you... ."

When he touched her face with a wet cloth, she flinched back.

"Can you understand me?"

She was too afraid of being ill again to move or try answering. He added wearily, almost to himself, "Well, little one, I wish you knew what I am saying. I will try to be gentle, all right? Poor child."

His accent was very strange. She received the fleeting impression he wasn't speaking his native language. Vaguely she wondered what language he was speaking... and decided she didn't really want to know badly enough to risk that agony again.

The wet cloth touched her face again. He cleaned her mouth and cheeks very gently. The water was lukewarm. He rinsed her hair, then paused.

"Your clothes are soiled."

She heard a scrape and thumping footsteps, low voices... . He returned and knelt at her side again. She tried to get a look at him, but the bright light pouring through the open door triggered nausea again. She clamped shut her jaws and forcibly held it down. She kept her eyes closed.

What's wrong with me? she wondered desperately. What have these people done to me?

A knife sliced through the bonds at her wrists. Her benefactor—captor?—chafed her skin until circulation began to return. She whimpered at the pain of needles in her fingers and hands.

"Yes, I know it hurts, little one. Be easy, just lie still, easy... ."

Briefly a hand stroked her wet hair, then returned to her abused wrists. She tried again to get her eyes open and groaned. He'd knelt between her and the light, cutting off the worst of the bright ache in her head.

No... it was worse than an ache. Her brain felt out of kilter, as though something had kicked the world askew. She couldn't focus anything back on track again, and that frightened her more than captivity. Her head hurt too much to keep her eyes open.

The man reached inside the neck of whatever garment she wore, nudging aside a narrow metal collar she hadn't noticed, and grasped the edge of the cloth. The knife cut downwards with a soft ripping sound. She stiffened. His hands bared her naked breasts. She gasped and flinched, an ill-advised move. The sharp point of his blade nicked her. The pain in her head ballooned. She cried out and pulled her arms away, trying to grasp throbbing temples. His weight came down hard against her, pi

"Be still!" he whispered forcefully, holding her immobile. The next moment his voice—if not his hands—was gentle again. "There is nowhere to run, child, and you are very, very ill. Please do not fight me. I do not want to see you hurt. Just lie still, let me help... ." He murmured to her in the same way she might have murmured to a whipped puppy. The pain kept her from understanding his misapprehension for long moments. Involuntary tears squeezed out from beneath her clenched eyelids. She knew her face had blanched white. She felt dangerously close to vomiting again.

But the lurching sickness was only the symptom of something far more deeply wrong. She had to communicate with this man.

"Please..." she whimpered. "It hurts... ." God, was that her voice? What had happened to her?

"You do speak La—" he began in surprise, and immediately eased his grip. "What hurts? Your wrists? I did not mean—"