When I left the stream I was trembling, and it was not the cool of the water alone.

I rubbed myself dry on my cloak and dressed as the shadows were lengthening, turning to red-amber and purple from the fringe of the pines. If I had had a god, I should have offered to him. For the gentleness of my slave so she should spare me the rod of her scorn.

Then, like a filament of the sorcery itself, I saw a figure coming along the path the women had worn to the stream, carrying a great jar to be filled. And it was Demizdor.

I was almost afraid of her, or of the moment, or of my own self. I had not, even at that instant, understood the power of the image, made worse by denial and three nights and days without it. You have had this bitch, I thought; you will have her again. She’s yours to take, so take her and have done.

I leaned on a young pine by the rushing water, and let her come up.

“My wives keep you busy,” I said. “That’s good. A slave should not waste her time.”

I put my hand on her shoulder to wheel her around to me. And she cried out, and the jar fell from her hands.

I knew at once she would never have cried so, simply at a touch. She would have been disdainful, silent, wooden, not this. This was unpremeditated, an expression of shock, or pain. Immediately everything in me was altered. I felt the change but did not recognize its principle.

“What now?” I said softly. “Has my dulcet wife been scourging you as she begged to do?” She did not speak. She stood straight and looked away from me.

Then I discovered a red wetness on my fingers that had met her body, and I took hold of her gently and drew her back and found that the shoulder of her smock was sticky. There was a lacing there; I knew it well, having had occasion to unlace a woman before. Presently I had the garment peeled open.

I had been looking at death and wounds head on for days. This was like my first sight. Her skin, cream and smooth as almond, had been ground into a pulp of blood and flesh on the point of her shoulder.

When I saw, my eyes blackened and there came a roaring white thunder in my throat.

“Who?” I said to her. Somehow, this time, I guessed she would answer.

“My mistress, the wife of my master the warrior,” she said, steady as a blade.

“Chula.”

Despite her immobility, her tone, she was burning hot under my hands. Her weakness cauterized mine.

“How did the sow do this to you?” I said.

“Oh, she is very just. I broke her enameled comb, your gift as I believe. So she combed my skin for me to remind me in the future to be more careful of her possessions. She said I should always have the scar. She made sure of it.”