X. ENSLAVED AND ENSORCELED
The slaves were being held in a large cavern close to the sea. Corwyn’s frantic visit to the prison and the long absence that followed made the pirates guarding them rightly nervous. They fell quickly to the adventurers’ blades.
“You have no memories? Nothing?” Vahaera asked a blank-faced middle-aged woman. Cuatala was untying their bonds amid grateful stammerings and murmurs. Ystrien helped her. Graddick kept watching the cavern’s two entrances, expecting trouble at any moment, but none ever came.
A young woman spoke up. “We know the ship’s hold. We know we are from Mulmaster. We can remember bits and pieces of our lives from before this. Some of us were enslaved, but not all of us… But the tattoos, how they got there, who put them there–we don’t know any of it.”
“And this trance–what’s it like?” asked Vahaera.
“The trance?” the woman repeated. “It’s…troubling. You go away from everything. It’s not restful like sleep. Afterwards, you feel empty and sick.”
“Let me see the tattoo,” said Vahaera.
The blue ink stood out on the light brown skin of the woman’s forearm. The design was intricate and abstract. Within a diamond, several unfilled bars running from opposite sides crisscrossed like warp and weft. Some of these bars had slightly darker outlines than the others. At first glance, Vahaera thought they were simply variations in the inker’s art, but then she saw that they were Iokharic characters.
“Several letters in Draconic,” she said to Graddick, who was listening now.
“What does it say?”
“Nothing. It’s just letters–3, P, T.”
“Magic?”
“It’s not a magic word, and I don’t detect any magic in the mark itself. If it’s there, it’s very subtle,” she said with admiration. “Work of Red Wizards, almost certainly.”
***
The former slaves accompanied the party to Blackalbuck’s. Now Ulblyn had a dilemma on his hands. He had the means to pay for their passage to safer lands, and he worried that their tattoos made them conspicuous to anyone who wanted to recapture them; he also wanted to keep them close, lest the tattoos and inexplicable trances make them dangerous to themselves or others. Eventually, he left it up to them. Some stayed–including the young woman, whose name was Kizami. Some went. He thanked the party and hoped they’d continue to help.
“The rest of Corwyn’s crew is holed up along the coast,” he said. “Cuatala knows the way. The pirates share a hideout with local bandits. A clue to where these people came from might be there.”
