The pillars of creation

Though he was relieved to know it wasn't what he had at first feared, prudence kept him cautious; the place felt strange and dangerous. He concentrated, trying to recall what had taken place and how he could have come to be in such a cold dark place, but it wouldn't come to him. His memory was all foggy, just a collection of random impressions; dizzying illness, pounding headache, profound weakness and nausea, being carried, hands everywhere on him, light hurting his eyes, darkness. He felt battered and bruised.

Someone nearby coughed. From another direction, a man grumbled at him to shut up. Oba lay still as a mountain lion, his muscles tensed. He worked at gathering his senses, letting his gaze carefully roam the dark room. It wasn't completely dark, as he had feared at first. On the wall opposite him a weak light, possibly wavering candlelight, came in through a square opening. There were two dark vertical lines in the opening.

Oba's head still pounded, but it was much better than it had been before. He remembered, then, how sick he had been. Looking back on it, he realized that he hadn't even grasped at the time how truly ill he had been. As a youngster he'd had a fever, once. This had been like that, he supposed, a fever. He had probably gotten it visiting Althea, the awful swamp-witch.

Oba sat up, but that made him feel light-headed, so he leaned back against the wall. It was rough stone, like the floor. He rubbed his cold, stiff legs, and then stretched his back. He wiped his knuckles across his eyes, trying to banish the lingering haze in his head. He saw rats, whiskers twitching, nosing along the edge of the wall. Oba was starving, despite the rank stench of the place. It smelled of sweat and urine and worse.

"Look, the big ox is awake," someone across the room said. The voice was deep and mocking.

Oba peered up and saw men looking at him. Altogether, there were five others in the room with him. They looked a scruffy lot. The man who had spoken, off in the comer to the right, was the only other man beside Oba sitting. He leaned back into the comer as if he owned it. His humorless grin showed that what teeth weren't missing were crooked as could be.

Oba looked around at the other four men standing watching him. "You all look like criminals," he said.

Laughter echoed around the room.

"We're all being wrongly persecuted," the man in the comer said.

"Yeah," someone else agreed. "We were minding our own business when those guards snatched us up and threw us in here for nothing at all. They locked us up like we was common criminals."

More laughter rang out.

Oba didn't didn't think he liked being in a room with criminals. He knew he didn't like being locked in a room. That felt too much like his pen. A cursory inspection proved his suspicion true, his money was gone. From across the room, under the crack of the door, a rat watched with beady little rat eyes.

Oba looked up from the rat, to the opening with the light. He saw then that the two lines were bars.

"Where are we?"

"In the palace prison, you big ox," crooked-teeth said. "Does it look like a proper whorehouse to you?"

The other men all laughed at his joke. "Maybe the kind he visits," one of them said, and the rest laughed all the louder. Over to the side, another rat watched.

"I'm hungry. When will they feed us?" Oba asked.

"He's hungry," one of the standing men said in a taunting voice. He spat in disgust. "They don't feed us unless they feel like it. You might starve, first."

Another man squatted in front of him. "What's your name?"

"Oba.»

"What did you do to get yourself thrown in here, Oba? Rob an old maid of her virginity?"

The men guffawed with him.

Oba didn t think the man was funny. " I didn't do anything wrong, " he said. He didn't like these men. They were criminals.

"So, you're innocent, eh?"

"I don't know why they would put me in here."

"We heard different," the man squatting before him said.

"Yeah," the keeper of the comer agreed. "We heard the guards talking, saying that you beat a man to death with your bare hands."

Oba frowned in true bewilderment. "Why would they put me in here for that? The man was a thief. He left me out in a desolate place to die after he'd robbed me. He only got what was coming to him."

"Says you," crooked-teeth said. "We heard you was probably the one robbing him."

"What?" Oba was incredulous, as well as indignant. "Who said that?"

"The guards," came the answer.

"They're lying, then," Oba insisted. The men started in laughing again. "Clovis was a thief and a murderer."

The laughter cut off. Rats stopped and looked up. They sniffed the air, their noses twitching.

The keeper of the comer sat up straight "Clovis? Did you say Clovis? You mean the man who sold channs?"

Oba ground his teeth at the memory. He wished he could pound on Clovis some more.