"
The points of the steel, razor-sharp, touched my palms, and I felt blood
run down my hand before the pain. With an effort that turned my face
white, I did not pull away from the point. The knives drove deeper.
Dallisa gestured to the _chak_. The knives dropped. Two pinpricks, a
quarter of an inch deep, stung in my palm. I had outbluffed her. Had I?
If I had expected her to betray disappointment--and I had--I was
disappointed. Abruptly, as if the game had wearied her already, she
gestured, and I could not hold back a gasp as my arms were hauled up
over my head, twisted violently around one another and trussed with thin
cords that bit deep into the flesh. Then the rough upward pull almost
jerked my shoulders from their sockets and I heard the giant _chak_
grunt with effort as I was hauled upward until my feet barely, on
tiptoe, touched the floor.
"Blindfold him," said Dallisa languidly, "so that he cannot watch the
ascent of the sun or its descent or know what is to come."
A dark softness muffled my eyes.
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