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By Root 729 0

him. He said his name over several times in the hopes that it would bring memories with it. Nothing came—nothing at all, not an image, not a sound, not a single word from the life he must have had before that morning, weeks ago, when he’d woken up in the hold of this ship. He could still remember his absolute panic when he’d realized that he knew nothing about himself, nothing about how he’d come to be chained there. For a few minutes he’d felt like a hysterical animal, throwing itself this way and that against the bars of a cage, biting even those who try to soothe it. But the fit had gone quickly, long before his captors had come down to gloat over him. He’d found the knowledge he needed, that morning: memory or not, he was still a man, he had speech, he had thought, and he would fight to keep that sense of selfhood.

Over the weeks that followed, he dredged up a few bits of memory from his past, and he’d woven them into a story that defined what he knew of his self. Now he had a bit more to add.

“I am Taliaesyn of Pyrdon, a merchant’s son once, now a slave—but a valuable slave, mind. They tell me I ran up gambling debts here in Bardek. I remember that Deverry law can’t save a free man when he’s this far from home, so I was arrested and sold to pay the debts. I must be the son of an important merchant; why else would a Deverry man be in Bardek?”

For a moment he considered the question, came up with no answer, and dismissed it. He had three actual memories to fit into the story. The first, of course, was his old tutor in the Bardek tongue, a memory that fit smoothly into the tale. The other two, however, were difficult and troubling. First, there was the beautiful blond lass. Now, although it was logical enough that a merchant’s son would have a wife or mistress (because in the memory she was getting into bed with him), why was she taking off men’s clothing instead of a dress? The second memory made even less sense. He saw a man’s face and shoulders looming in what seemed to be smoke or heavy fog; the man was wearing chain mail and a pot helm, and blood sheeted down his face. With the image came the words: “the first man I ever killed.” Merchants’ sons, however, didn’t kill people—unless perhaps the victim was a bandit?

Taliaesyn smiled in relief. It would make sense if he’d been leading a caravan and that fellow had been a bandit, and as he thought it over, another memory stirred, mules braying in a crisp dawn. Of course. Of course! And if the lass were his wife, traveling with him? Why, it would be hard to ride in long dresses—why not wear men’s clothes? He felt a deep satisfaction at knitting the tale together at last.

Yet the satisfaction was only momentary, because he was always aware that his captors might be lying to him. Although their story was reasonable, and in line with the general knowledge he remembered about the world, he could confirm none of it. There was this business of it being so hard to think. At times, he could barely put two words together or remember a thing he’d been told not a minute before; at others, the whole world seemed strange, far away yet brightly colored, and his mind made odd jumps and lapses. As he thought about it, it occurred to him that he often felt that way after being fed. They were probably putting strange drugs in his food. He knew that somewhere in his mind was a reason for thinking that these people were the sort to drug their prisoners, even though he couldn’t quite put a mental finger on it. Over the past weeks he’d come to think of knowledge, which he’d always taken for granted before, in terms of a very involved metaphor, that each thing a man knew was like a water lily. Each blossom floated in the sun on top of the pool of his mind, but it was dependent upon its long stalk and roots underneath to connect it to the earth and to all the other lilies. He felt as though someone had swung a scythe through his mind, leaving only a few broken flowers to wither on top of the pond, cut off from any connection or possible meaning. Although the conceit was peculiar, it fit in