Something about her
impassive face stopped me cold. I had been, momentarily, raging with
fury and humiliation. Now I realized that this had been a calculated,
careful gesture to make me lose my temper and thus sap my resistance.
If she could set me to fighting, if she could make me spend my strength
in rage, my own imagination would fight on her side to make me lose
control before the end. Swimming in the glare of her eyes, I realized
she had never thought for a moment that I had taken any drug. Acting on
Kyral's hint that I was a Terran, she was taking advantage of the
well-known Terran revulsion for the nonhuman.
"Blindfold him," Dallisa commanded, then instantly countermanded that:
"No, strip him first."
The _chak_ ripped off shirtcloak, shirt, shoes, breeches, and I had my
first triumph when the wealed clawmarks on my shoulders--worse, if
possible, than those which disfigured my face--were laid bare. The
_chak_ screwed up his muzzle in fastidious horror, and Dallisa looked
shaken. I could almost read her thoughts:
_If he endured this, what hope have I to make him cry mercy?_
Briefly I remembered the months I lay feverish and half dead, waiting
for the wounds Rakhal had inflicted to heal, those months when I had
believed that nothing would ever hurt me again, that I had known the
worst of all suffering.
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