Betrayed (Hidden Worlds Book 1) Read online

  I looked around, and even through the haze I recognized what stood there: a guillotine. A blade, its edge diagonal, gleamed high in the machine. I knew a brief second of clear horror as I wondered why a society that could develop relatively modern sanitary facilities could not think up a better way to execute people, then even that thought slipped away.

  I glanced over at Christy; she appeared to be asleep. All the men were talking softly, and I noticed a fourth man, fidgeting with some of the mechanisms in the machine. Suddenly, a soft, black, very thick cloth was wrapped around my face, and I could see nothing. Hard male hands thrust me forward towards where the guillotine stood, and I was bent over, my neck put across a leather holder. This was it, I thought, but I was so totally in the grip of the drug that I could not even cry out.

  I heard a voice behind me. "Aye. It's time." Then, utterly unexpectedly, I felt the back flap of my tunic top lifted and the opening in my trousers parted. I heard the whooshing hiss of a blade, and just before everything went black, I felt a stinging stab in the muscle of my buttock and I wondered, with the last moment of consciousness, why, if they were cutting my head off, did it hurt in my bottom.

  Chapter 7

  Once, when I was at the Uneversity, I read an eyewitness account of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. Her little terrier had crept forward with her as she was taken to the executioner's block, concealed under heavy black skirts, only to emerge, barking hysterically when they came to drag her headless body away. It had bothered me more than I had wanted to admit when I read it and now, I dreamed of this, a frantic dream that seemed to recur with variations. In one, they executed the dog.

  There were other, troubling visions. I saw huge horses bearing down on me on a dirt road. I thought I remembered being strapped to a table while my body was probed and penetrated in humiliating ways. I envisioned myself watching helplessly as a huge man, his open palm flashing, punished my friend's bare, high buttocks to scarlet. And it was all mixed in with brilliant light and whirling and screaming and a pain in my head that was beyond…

  I was alive. Even while I had the dreams, enough of a thread of rational consciousness intruded that I was capable of having and maintaining that thought. And although time was completely elastic, and I could not perceive if what passed were minutes or months, I slowly became aware that there was activity outside myself. Voices, vague and muddled, but belonging to others without a doubt, pierced the fog. Sensations… I was moved, turned, touched, hurt… And then the dreams faded and I slept.

  I was in a bed, in a soft cocoon of covers, with a pillow under my head. There was a dreadful ache in my arm, a stinging in one ear, and a headache that was exquisitely painful. The arm that throbbed seemed affixed somehow, tied down. I floated into consciousness, thinking that an animal had my arm in its teeth…

  Waves of pain washed through me as if no part of my body had moved by itself in a long time. I wanted to shift but found that my body was not responding to my brain's commands, but finally, with great concentration, I managed to push my hand over my body, trying to get at the hurt arm.

  "Och, now, none of that." A woman's voice came out of the fog, and a hand, gentle but firm, caught my exploring one, and pressed it down firmly where it had been. "Ye still have need o' it. I'm knowing it's sore, but ye have to leave it be."

  Utter blackness surrounded me and I wondered if I were blind. I reached up and my fingers encountered heavy wrapped cloth. I swallowed over a throat that was thick and dryly painful. "Where am I? Why can't I see?"

  "Ye're in the infirm, lass," the woman's voice came again. "And ye can't see because ye've a wrapper on your face. It'll be coming off in a day or two, but for now, ye've got to let it be."

  I dropped my hand down to my side, mostly because holding it up required too much energy. Muddled thoughts were beginning to coalesce into a picture, and suddenly I knew where I was, recalled clearly what had happened. I started to shake, remembering everything… the betrayal of my shipmates, our capture on the road, the dreadful examination at the hands of the physician, Christy's punishment, and finally, our… execution? But that couldn't be right. I was most definitely not dead.

  However, before I could frame another question, I was gently, but firmly pushed onto my side. There was no strength in me; I went over as bonelessly as a jelly-fish. "This'll just take a second, lass," the woman's voice came, softly. "I'm just giving you something to help you sleep."

  I felt the bed coverings and whatever loose garment I had on my body being lifted away, and then the brush of something cold and wet on the skin of my buttock, followed by a sharp, hard stab. I cried out, but the pain, instead of worsening, stopped as quickly as it started, and then the coverings were replaced and I was rolled easily onto my back again. Warm covers, comforting in their weight, were wrapped around me. "You'll be sleeping now," she murmured. I heard a rustle of clothing and sensed that she had left my immediate vicinity.

  But I did not sleep instantly. Instead, I floated, trying to make sense from a situation that didn't seem to have any basis in reality whatsoever. I'd been taken to a guillotine and strapped in, I'd heard the blade swish down… hadn't I? Apparently not, for I was very much alive. But how… why?

  Had I been saved from execution at that last moment by my shipmates? Although it seemed unlikely, since they'd left me to begin with, wasn't it equally unlikely that the very people who'd sentenced me to die only minutes earlier would have suddenly changed their minds?

  Perhaps, I conjectured, one group on the ship, horrified at our abandonment, had prevailed over another, a mutiny of sorts. But after considering this explanation for only a few seconds, I rejected it. There had been plenty of men on the ship that had seemed decent, who would never had supported our betrayal. But I was certain that most of them had not known ahead of time what was planned for us and probably did not know now the truth about what had happened.

  Hal Turner, the ship's Primo, would have had to fabricate some excuse for taking off without us. If they had returned to look later, I'd no doubt that one of the search parties had found "evidence" we'd been eaten by wild animals, and that was that. The vids from our implants were probably being monitored by only a handful on board. No, with so few knowing our true fate, it was hard to see who would have "mutinied" to save us.

  As much as I would have liked to believe that I'd been rescued by my shipmates and was now safely aboard the Drakkon, that seemed impossible, so that left only my captors. I was still in the company of a woman with the Scots' accent that identified her as a Gamma Rigel colonist. Even where I lay was unfamiliar: all sleeping platforms on board the Drakkon had only climate control, no coverings whatsoever, to say nothing of the soft warmth currently enveloping me.

  But why would my captors set up an execution only to abort it at the very last moment? To scare me? To get me to talk? I rejected that. Any society that would condone the level of corporal abuse I'd seen here didn't need to stage executions. The information could simply be whipped out of the poor victim.

  I started. And what of Christy? I remembered my last sight at her; she'd seemed asleep. Had she been spared the fake execution completely? Or had she also been placed in the guillotine, then mysteriously "saved?" Or perhaps her last "act" had had a much more "real" conclusion. Had they decided to leave one of us alive for further questioning, and I'd gotten "lucky?"

  I remembered my bottom being bared and feeling a burning jab, just like I'd just felt again… after I'd been put in the guillotine. I knew enough about archaic medicine to assume that those stings had been the injection of a drug via an old-fashioned needle. Some of those dreadful-looking devices, the needles thick and gleaming, still existed in museums.

  But why? Why drug someone… if you're going to kill her? Why pretend to kill someone… and then not do it? It didn't make any sort of sense. Yet, yet… there was something… It was almost as if… as if… Suddenly, I could not maintain the thought. I'd fought the drug long enough and now, in my warm dark
nest, I lost the battle and slept.

  When I awoke, I was aware that time had passed. My sense was that it had been hours, perhaps as much as a day since I'd been given the injection by the caretaker. I couldn't tell exactly, but at least I felt a grounding in reality. Whatever had proceeded it, I had no grasp on whatsoever. It might have been two hours… it might have been a month.

  The sensations that I felt now were different. The pain in my ear was gone, as was the headache. The pain in my arm, however, was worse. I shifted, my fingers again questing for an answer as to why my left arm hurt so badly, and was quickly startled by a scolding voice. "Enough o' that, missy. So it's awake ye are, and just in time. The physician's here to see to your eye."

  I swallowed, my stomach taking a quick hop at the word "physician." My last experience with one of the local doctors, which suddenly crashed back into my head with explicit clarity, had been horrid. But then the sense of her words intruded, and I felt a new stab of fear. "My eye? What's wrong with…" My voice emerged as a barely intelligible croak. But before I could complete the question, the sound of moving bodies and a male voice greeting the woman came to my ears. The physician, I assumed, but the voice, thank the stars, was different from what I remembered at the school.

  Hands reached for me, propped me up, and almost instantly I felt a tugging at my head. The wrapping which was keeping my world completely dark was being removed. I felt my body break out with a cold sweat. Was I blind? Why would I be? What could possibly have happened to my eyes?

  But the questions were answered soon enough. As the wrappings fell away, I perceived light, dim and gray at first, then growing, and then the last strip fell away… I was blind. After a fashion. I could see light, but nothing else. My voice rose in a wordless shriek.

  "What is it?" The male voice was right next to me. "Do ye have pain?"

  "Oh, God, I can't see. I'm blind. What have you done to me?" I could barely get the words out.

  "Open your eyes, wee ninny." The man's voice, in spite of his words, was not unkind, just exasperated. "Ye must open your eyes."

  I struggled, but could not do so, and suddenly felt a warm damp touch on my skin. My eyes were being wiped, gently, and within seconds, I opened them. Shapes quickly merged into people. Hovering over the bed was a man dressed in a long robe, identical to the one worn by the physician that had examined me at the school. Accompanying the physician was an older woman dressed, again, all in black with the familiar wrapped head-covering. A Matron. Any lingering doubts that I had about being still on Gamma Rigel were put to rest.

  Both of them were physically large, and this impression was intensified by the fact that the room was very small, with an extremely low ceiling. The whole thing almost seemed cave-like, as if I were in a tiny little "hole in the wall." In fact, there was barely room for the bed, the Matron, the physician, a small cabinet, a tray table, and a chair. The ceiling was so low that the physician was stooping, his head almost brushing the ceiling. He reached forward, and laid a folded cloth gently over one eye. "Does everything look normal?"

  "Yes," I nodded, so relieved that I could see that I could not find it in my heart to be anything other than cooperative.

  He switched the cloth to the other eye, and suddenly the world was blurry. I felt as if I was looking through a very fogged piece of darkened glass. "How about now?"

  "No… no." I shook my head and swallowed hard. "It's all blurry. What's wrong? What's going on?" As I tried to focus the eye, I realized that the pain I'd perceived earlier as a headache had actually been centered behind this eye, and I still felt a slight throbbing ache there.

  The cloth dropped and everything was clear again. The physician was looking down at me with an expression that was not particularly concerned. "To be expected," he shrugged. "How much it's improving, we'll just have to see."

  I felt a stab of frustrated anger. "Will you please tell me what's happened?" Tears came into my eyes, and they stung, but I blinked them away and continued. "Where's my friend? I-I remember being…" I could barely choke the word out, "…executed. What is going on?"

  A slight flicker passed between them as I said the word "friend," but then the physician shook his head. "It's not our place to explain anything to ye. We've our orders from the Lord. He'll be coming soon enough to set ye straight on what's been done." Looking up through my one clear eye, I saw that his impassive face held no trace of compromise; pressing him would probably accomplish nothing. I remembered, though, the flicker I'd thought I'd seen at the mention of Christy's name, and I pushed him on that. "What of my friend? Christy MacCleod?"

  The physician shook his head dismissively, and the Matron bustled away to the cabinet. I sensed she did not wish to meet my eyes either. "It's not for us to say," the physician repeated. "Lord'll be telling ye soon enough." And that was that.

  Without acknowledging me further, he walked over to where the Matron was looking down at a piece of paper affixed to a board, and they began a low-voiced discussion of medications and what I should be fed. I listened, eyes shut for a few moments, but the conversation was nothing dramatic, so my eyes opened again and I began glancing around.

  I looked down at my body. I was swathed with dark-colored coverings, and my eyes immediately fell to where my arm lay, next to my body. Outside of the coverings, my left arm was bare to above the elbow, and was strapped, inner arm up, to a board. Protruding from the inside of the elbow was a tube, and around the tube, the skin was dark with a rainbow of purple, red, and yellowish bruising. The thin tube ran up to a pole where a glass jar hung. Obviously, what was in the glass jar was running into my body via the tube. I gasped, horrified, and reached for the tube to yank it out. But before the physician or the Matron, who had looked over at the sound of my gasp, could stop me, I had stopped myself. The pain was excruciating.

  "Here now," the physician grabbed for my arm, "don't touch." His brow furrowed. "It does look bad. Vein's collapsed. Take this out."

  The Matron nodded brusquely. "She'll be eating now, anyway."

  Waves of agony had been shooting up my arm in the moments since I touched the strange tube, and I'd stayed silent simply out of shock and pain. But as soon as the pain receded, I looked up at my captors furiously. "What is it? Get it out."

  "Now calm yerself, lass. It's the only way we could be feeding ye while ye were so sick. Matron'll be taking it out as soon as I leave."

  I felt fury suffuse my entire body. Although these two were not unkind, the fact was that they had not told me anything, and I was still being treated almost like a child. "Goddamn it," I snapped. "Will someone please tell me what's going on here? Where am I? Where's Christy? Why did they pretend to kill me?"

  The physician exchanged a glance with the Matron, then sat next to me on the small bed and grasped one of my shoulders in a firm grip. "They told us ye'd be a handful, and now I'm seeing it." His face was not angry, just matter-of-fact, as if anything I did could not be more than a minor irritant to them. It was the same expression I'd seen on the faces of the Matrons and the physician at the school, and it made me feel very insignificant. "Sick ye may be, lass, but your bottom's sound enough, and Matron Lena has a nice little linden in her drawer. There might be a great mystery about ye and your friend, but you're not special as ye think. Ye've cheeks that will warm like any other, and Rohan's made it clear that if we need to be doing it, we can. Now ye'll be minding your tongue and doing what the Matron asks of ye, or ye'll be lying in this bed on your stomach with a hot rosy bottom poking in the air, I'll warrant. Lord Rohan will be coming to see ye within the day and he'll tell ye what ye need to know." He fixed me with a firm gaze. "Are we understanding each other, missy?"

  I glanced up, sullen and resentful. I'd felt a brief stab of hope when he'd said, "a great mystery about ye and your friend." This just did not seem like something that would have come easily to his tongue if Christy had been dead. That positive emotion, however, had been quickly offset by the threat. All the feelings of frustrated h
elplessness that I had had during my one dreadful day on Gamma Rigel came flooding back.

  But again, what could I do? There was nothing in the demeanor of either one that gave any indication that the threats were idle. Physical discipline of girls and women was so commonplace on this planet that the very clothing they wore was designed to accommodate it, as I had so graphically seen at the school. Rebellion would merely bring the promised torture, delivered in a completely pragmatic way. And I'd seen the after-effects of this discipline already. A punished bottom went well beyond "rosy;" Christy's spanked skin had been a very healthy dark pink, and the bottoms of the girls we'd seen at the school had glowed scarlet. Frustrated, I lowered my eyes.

  The physician said nothing and after a few moments of silence, he dropped his arm and walked off. "You be taking the intravenous out now, and getting her ready for the Lord. He intends to put her with his sisters, so you're to clean her and get ready her for that."

  "His sisters?" The Matron's voice went high. "But how?" She shot me a glance that was frankly horrified.

  The physician shrugged. "What other choice…" Suddenly, seeming to realize that I did have an intelligence higher than that of a potted plant and that I was following the conversation with interest, his face closed like a book. "It's not for us to say, Lena. Where else can he put her that's…" another quick glance in my direction, "safe? Just do as he says." And with that final comment, the physician stooped through the door and left the tiny room.

  Matron Lena sat next to me, and touched my arm gently, frowning as she examined the bruising. She shook her head, and I could sense her frustration. "Bruised ye up something fierce," she muttered. "But no help for it. We do the best we can…" She met my eyes. "I'll try to be as quick as I can, but there'll be some blood, unless the vein's totally gone."