CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Chaldez awoke to find himself curled up on the mud floor of the hut, and was sure he had not slept at all. Dazzling strips of sunlight showed through numerous cracks in the walls, and he could now see that there was a pile of loose straw at the back of the hut. Gratefully he crawled into it and dozed off.
He was awoken again by the sound of the bar across the door being lifted out of its slots. The door was dragged open and daylight flooded in. Chaldez blinked at the figures silhouetted against the bright sky. One of them came towards him and pulled him to his feet and led him out. Chaldez stared at his visitors. The two men of the night before, one of whom was now grasping him, had been joined by two women and a number of children, who gazed at him in open-mouthed silence while their elders spoke angrily among themselves.
Chaldez watched their faces, and realised that they were not in fact angry. The words they used had a hard sound, and were uttered with a vehemence that was at odds with the facial expressions that accompanied them.
The two men were not quite as large as they had seemed the night before, and he was shocked by their coarse appearance. One of them had a cast in his eye and the other a scar down one side of his face but they were of similar build. The women could not have looked more different from one another. One was dumpy, and had a round face, the skin on it taught and shiny. The other was small and slight, the boney ridge of her narrow nose standing out between close-set eyes. Teeth, crooked and blackened, crowded behind the thin lips of a wide mouth. Her voice, even more than that of the others', seemed to be raised permanently in a strident, hectoring tone. And she it was who first noticed the stout brass chain that Chaldez was wearing around his neck. She pointed at it, and the man with the scar - he was also the taller of the two men - came close to Chaldez and examined it. He fingered the oval locket, but it had been designed to keep secret from just such as he the Roe Aada ruby lying inside it. He tugged at the chain and shouted into Chaldez's face when it failed to come away. Chaldez shrugged, and immediately received a stinging blow across the cheek from the thin woman. She repeated the man's command.
How could Chaldez explain to these people that the chain could only be unfastened by a key, which he did not possess? Tears welled up in his eyes. The woman pushed the man to one side and examined the chain and locket herself. She could see that the chain was fastened by an unusual mechanism, and gave it a couple of tugs. Her initial excitement passed, perhaps because the chain had proved to be brass when she had thought it might be gold. She glared at Chaldez, fury in her eyes, spat a remark into his face and turned her back on him, jabbering all the while to the others. The children continued to stare at the stranger, and were then hustled away by the two women.
Daylight allowed Chaldez to see his surroundings properly for the first time. He was in a fenced compound and on either side of him numerous unglazed earthenware vessels of more shapes and sizes than he would have imagined possible were piled up. Between them and the compound fence tottered untidy heaps of spiky brushwood.
Immediately in front of him was the strange half-buried house he had noticed the previous night. Its gently domed roof, which appeared to be made of sods of earth from which grass and weeds sprouted like unruly hair, was not much higher than himself. Narrow slits in the low walls served, he presumed, as windows, and the doorway was so low he supposed an adult would have to bend double, almost, to get through it.
Around the house, on it even, were goats and chickens.
Hardly had Chaldez time to take all this in than he was locked up once more in the rickety wooden hut. Quite soon a girl of about his own age brought him a wedge of bread and some water in an earthenware pot. She handed them to him without smiling, and in silence, and was gone.
Chaldez was still trying to swallow the last of the coarse hard bread when the door opened once again and he was pulled outside by one of the men, and set to work.
His captors were potters, and as he soon realised, brothers. They lived in neighbouring compounds, and Chaldez's main tasks were connected with their joint enterprise. Half an hour's walk from the village was a clay pit, and from here he had to dig out clay, carrying it back in a wicker basket. Sometimes he was taken to a wood to gather fuel for the kiln, dragging it behind him on a sort of sledge.
The potters themselves supervised him on these excursions, or if too busy, put him in the charge of one or more of their children.
The potter in whose hut he slept was called Kadz, the one with the scar. His wife, the thin bitter woman who had first noticed the Roe Aada locket,was Venna. It was soon apparent that she regarded Chaldez as the family's own slave. In the mornings, before the men had found any work for him, she would have him brought to the door of the house by one of the children, and there he would have to wait until she was ready to give him his instructions. At night the members of the family relieved themselves into shallow, wide-rimmed pots, and invariably Chaldez's first task was to carry these out and empty them into a pit, which he would have dug previously. Venna always watched him closely, and should any spill, or should the pit not meet with her approval for one reason or another, she would belabour him with a flat but sturdy length of wood which she kept handy for chastising the children with.
Among other jobs she made him do was to chop wood for the domestic fire, and pluck, draw and clean the foul that the family occasionally ate. If a goat was killed he had to clean that too, and he had to be careful not to throw out offal that he would not have dreamed of eating, but which his captors prized highly. Every error he made earned him a furious beating from Venna's piece of wood, her random, ill-aimed blows accompanied by shouts and curses.
The children regarded him as though he was one of the livestock, hitting and kicking him when he failed to understand their commands. Only Doo, the eldest daughter, gave any indication that he was not be used and abused with casual disregard. Sometimes he would glimpse a fleeting half smile when she brought him his wretched food, and her brothers and sisters learned that it was unwise to ill-treat Chaldez in her presence because she was likely to lash out, if not with her tongue then with the back of her hand. The first time they experienced this they would stare at her with wounded astonishment, but her authority was such that they dare not remonstrate.
Of the two potters, Kadz was more inclined than Hagrig, his brother, to grow angry with Chaldez when he failed to understand an instruction. He might repeat it two or three times, and if Chaldez still failed to grasp what was wanted of him, give him a cuff or simply shrug and walk away. Hagrig would then patiently show him the task that had to be done. He also made an occasional effort to get Chaldez to repeat names of things, or perhaps a sentence, so that in time the Sairish prince picked up a working knowledge of the islander's language.
The highlight of his life became the visit to town, half a day's walk away, where the potters displayed a selection of their wares. It meant setting out well before sunrise, but this was a minor nuisance compared with Venna.
The town was poor and mean, but its market was full of interest for Chaldez. There was always a troop of musicians, and sometimes there might be a powerful lord in evidence, his bossy and flamboyant entourage pushing aside the crowds to make way for him.
A market was held roughly every 28 days; on his fourth visit Chaldez was setting out the potters' wares when an agitation in the crowd alerted him to the approach of some great nobleman. Craning his neck, he caught sight of a small troop of soldiers, followed by the great man himself, surrounded by his officials and attendants. And among these, quite well turned out, was Dan Pemmel.
Chaldez recognised him immediately, but it was a moment or two before he could believe that it was indeed his friend. With a frenzy borne of desperation he called and waved, but he had left it too late, and anyway, the market-day hubbub completely drowned his voice. He attempted to push his way through the throng, but had gone only a few paces when a hand closed on his shoulder, the fingers digging into his flesh so that he yelped in pain. He turned to find himself looking into the angry face of Hagrig.
Until that moment the thought of attempting to escape had not occurred to Chaldez, and for the simple reason that there was nowhere for him to escape to. But he knew, with a feeling of dread that froze him, of what Hagrig now suspected him. Back among the pots the two brothers railed at one another - or seemed to - interspersing their shouted remarks with many an angry look in his direction. He assumed they were blaming one another for so nearly losing him.
For the remainder of the day he was watched closely, and punished for the most trivial mistake or misunderstanding. That evening, after the long walk back from town carrying as many unsold pots as could be draped around him, he was given no food but thrust roughly into the hut. He was uncomfortable from hunger and still tense with alarm, and yet felt more hopeful than at any time since the shipwreck.
Not once during his captivity had he dared to think about the future; he had lived from day to day, but now he gave himself up to speculation and planning.
Dan, he felt sure, was far better off than he was. It was more than probable that he was being held in servitude, but his appearance and bearing suggested that it was no where near as vile and demeaning as his own. If only he could get a message to him . . . he was certain that Dan's master would remove him from Kadz and Hagrig as soon as he found out who he was. He began then to pin his hopes on seeing Dan at the market again, and in no time he believed himself to be as good as rescued.
The next morning Venna kept him waiting at her door longer than usual, and when eventually she came out she began at once to scream at him and strike him with her piece of wood. But worse was to come; when the next market day arrived Chaldez was left behind. Venna scolded and bullied him all day. Towards the evening, his co-ordination destroyed by exhaustion and hunger, for he had been allowed even less food than usual, he accidentally knocked over a stack of storage jars, and several broke. Venna ran at him with her piece of wood and rained down blows on his shoulders, arms, head, legs - anywhere she could hit him. He did what he could to fend them off but she was remorseless. He fell to the ground, and still she beat him. She would, perhaps, have continued until he was dead had she not been interrupted by the wife of Hagrig, the plump Fyre who at that moment entered the compound.
She flew at Venna, shrieking in alarm. Venna ceased her onslaught, and Fyre at once went down on her knees and cradled the head of the barely-conscious boy in her arms. Venna flung down her piece of wood, and cursing furiously, stamped off into her house.