Sabit couldn’t stop herself from trembling as the slave merchant loomed over her. She had felt fear before, of course. Storms would ravage her homeland every summer. As a girl, Sabit would crawl under the sacks of grain in the storehouse to hide from the from the rolls of thunder that seemed powerful enough to pound the very earth flat and the lighting so bright it seemed to sear the endless sky itself.
Sabit felt like that frightened girl now. The thin flesh-peddler had become as frightening as any storm. His thin reedy voice struck her ears like a thunderclap. “Tell me your name.”
“My name is …” He wanted to sell her to her enemies. He wanted to sell her to Kehnan. “You can call me … Heguir’s Bane.”
“Stubborn filth!” the merchant cried out, gripping the talisman until his knuckles were white. “Do you not fear me? Does not teror grip your heart?”
Sabit’s heart hammered in her chest. With quavering voice, she said, ”My fear matters not, for it is a trick. Your fear is true thing. You know that I will end you. You know that I am Heguir’s Bane.”
Heguir roared in frustration. Taking Sabit’s spear from his guardsman, he raised it as one would a switch over a defiant child. Sabit’s body cringed of its own accord, pulling her into a ball of arms and legs, her eyes still glaring hatefully at him.
“Master, do not do this!” cried the woman who bore the poultice and the twisting yellow tattoo. She dropped to her knees beside the merchant and clutched his leg.
“I do what I will, Rayshabu,” growled the slave-merchant. “Do not think that your beauty or your name will sway me.”
“You do what profits you, Master,” Rayshabu reminded him. “There is another way. A more profitable way.”
“She cut my flesh! I’ll not reward her for that,” Heguir snapped.
“Then reward yourself, Master,” Rayshabu said. “Without a name, she is money spent. With a name, you will find buyers and much gold. If she cannot be moved to speak by the path of fear, try the other path. Send us both and I will walk beside her. I will get you her name.”
The slave-merchant laughed. “I see your need, Rayshabu. And I shall collar it. Get me her name and I shall let you stray the fairer path for three days. Fail, and you shall tread the darker.”
The woman smiled broadly and laid herself down upon the stone floor next to Sabit, who still huddled against the wall where she was chained. Heguir released his grip on the silver talisman and Sabit felt the fear drain from her body. From the collection of talismans that hung around his neck, he picked another, a tiny parrot clutching a glass vial of yellow sand in its claws. He pressed it against the silver hawk and turned them both upside down.
“You owe Rayshabu a debt of gratitude, wretch,” Heguir sneered as he turned both talismans upside down. “And you owe me your name!”
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Wayfarings of Sabit: Chains is copyright (c) 2018 by Michael S. Miller. All rights reserved. New chapters post every Thursday (and the occasional Monday). You can support this and other stories on Patreon: https://patreon.com/michaelsmiller Find more sword and sorcery fiction at http://ipressgames.com/fiction/.