Temple of the Winds

Zedd leaned toward Ann and whispered. "I don't think these people would hurt us. so keep that in mind. If they decide not to take us. the Nangtong may just slit our throats rather than have to suffer the humiliation of having to return with two crazy people."

"First you want me to play in the mud and now you want me to be a good little girl?"

Zedd smiled at her sarcasm. "Just until our new keepers take us away from the old." The Si Doak elder, the one with the rabbit fur over his head. squatted before his new acquisitions. He reached out and felt Zedd's arm muscles. He grunted disapprovingly. He felt Ann's arms and made a sound as if pleased at what he found.

Ann lifted an eyebrow to Zedd. "Seems I'm more agreeable to them than a skinny old man."

Zedd smiled. "I think they find you better suited as a human oxen. They'll give you the hard work."

Her satisfied expression vanished. "What do you mean?" He shushed her. Another Si Doak squatted down beside the elder. He had goat antlers fixed to his head. He wore what had to be a hundred necklaces over his buckskin tunic. The necklaces, some hanging to his crotch, others tight at his throat, and the rest every length in between, held teeth, beads, bones, feathers, pottery shards, metal disks, gold coins, small leather pouches, and carved amulets. He was the Si Doak shaman.

The shaman took Zedd's hand and gently held his arm out. He released it. Zedd let it drop. The shaman chattered his disapproval. Zedd understood enough to gather that he was supposed to hold his arm up. He didn't let on that he understood any of the words, and instead let the shaman lift the arm out again, and use a hand signal to indicate he meant Zedd to hold it there.

While the Nangtong guards still held spears on the two prisoners, the shaman retrieved long, coiled stalks of grass from one of the pouches at his waist. He chanted as he wove the grass around Zedd's wrist. When finished, he wove the grass around Zedd's other wrist, and then did the same to Ann. "Any idea what this is about?" she asked.

"It binds our magic. The Nangtong need do nothing to render our magic useless, but the Si Doak have to use some kind of magic of their own to suppress ours. This shaman is a man of magic. He has the gift. He's something like the Si Doaks' wizard." Zedd glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Or maybe you could say he's like the Sisters of the Light, with their collars. Like the collars, we won't be able to get these wristbands off."

Once they had the grass woven around their wrists, the Nangtong withdrew their weapons, picked up their portion of the blankets, collected their two goats, and quickly made good their escape.

The elder, the one with the rabbit skin on his head, leaned toward Zedd and spoke. When Zedd frowned and shrugged that he didn't understand, the man added sign language seemingly invented on the spot. He indicated chores to be done, and time, by showing the seasons: digging at the ground and pretending to plant, the heat of summer, and the freezing of winter. Zedd couldn't understand a great deal of it, but he understood enough.

He turned to Ann. "I believe that these fellows here have purchased us out of our death sentence. We are to be in servitude to them for a period of about two years, to repay them for our cost, plus a profit for their trouble." "We've been sold into slavery?"

"It would appear so. But only for a couple of years. Quite generous of them, actually, considering that the Nangtong were going to kill us." "Maybe we could buy our way out."

'To the Si Doak, this is a personal debt we owe them, and can only be repaid with personal servitude. To their way of looking at it, they have returned our lives to us, and so we must use part of those lives to show our gratitude. And to clean up after them."

"Clean up? We're to scrub floors to repay our debt?"

"I imagine they'll want us to cook, carry things, sew, care for their animals, those sorts of things."

As if to confirm what Zedd had told her, the Si Doak began pulling the thongs holding their waterskins off over their heads and passing them to Zedd and Ann. "What do they want?" Ann asked him. Zedd lifted an eyebrow. "They want us to carry their water." Three more of the Si Doak appeared with the remaining blankets, divided them, and handed them to their new bearers.

"Do you mean to tell me," Ann growled, "that the First Wizard of the Midlands and the Prelate of the Sisters of the Light have been sold into slavery for the price of some blankets and two goats!"

With a shove from behind, Zedd staggered after the departing Si Doak. "I know what you mean," he said over his shoulder. "For the first time I know of, the Si Doak have overpaid."