Free Three Hands for Scorpio by Andre Norton

Instinctively, I opened my mouth, and—yes, water, blessed true water, raised itself out of the flood about me, poured across and into my cracked and bleeding lips. I drank and drank.
    Drucilla
    WATER! TAM LAY beside me; her hands were unbound, and from each finger poured, impossibly but undeniably, a rill of water. I, Drucilla, drank deeply. For some reason, as the dryness vanished, I felt another need, not of my own but of my sister’s. By mind-speech, I answered what seemed to be an unvoiced question. Then once more I scooped up and mouthed the living liquid.
    Sabina
    MY FACE WAS awash— awash ? How? Whence came this water, that soothed not only the racking pain in my body but was as balm to my soul, as well? Swallow, I instructed myself, then try mind-touch . But that outflung net caught no sister in its invisible weave. A little alarmed by this silence, for it was difficult for any of us to know who we were without our two counterpart/complements, I found myself shaping the words: I am Sabina of the Scorpys .
    Tamara
    HOW LONG WE traveled on after that strange dream sharing, I cannot tell. However, when it ended, my spirit seemed to withdraw from the body that was called Tamara and rested in a place that sheltered and strengthened like loving arms supporting me.
    That refuge was irreparably shattered as my physical self was again dropped to the ground, this time onto a bed of small stones. The shock and pain of the fall pulled me back into my body and the mad, random place that my world had become.
    â€œBina? Cilla?” I Sent.
    â€œHere,” each answered in turn.
    Then my feet were seized and, by them, I was dragged roughly over the ground. By the daylight that had, impossibly after a night of such strange doings, come again, I saw that Maclan stood above us. He held a knife in
one hand, and now he stooped and grabbed up a handful of my hair as if to tear it from my scalp. Instead, he sawed the strand loose, and as he did so, he whistled.
    I recognized the air; widely sung, it had not only a taunting tune but vicious words guaranteed to enrage the whole of any Border family.

    â€œTh’ Snake, he did take Ninen’s Peel;
With it hardly did he deal:
Wives, maids, babes did swallow steel.
Snake? Nay, Dragon from the past—
Of him no man will see the last!”

    â€œShould I not take up the harp as a bard, my lady?” The Breaksword brushed my shorn hair across my face, grooming me as he preened himself. “And wait till you hear the next verse, which I have just composed! We do not hang you, you see—that is not the way of the Maclan. Your father set me in a lick-stone cell, and licking is how I gathered my water, see you—my tongue to cold, bare stone. I do not think you will have even that much where you go now. We deal with you as is custom, you see. They can hunt with hounds—bring their hell-taught magic to search—it will not serve.” I was puzzling over his words as he summoned his men once more.
    Our captors worked quickly after that. We were dragged forth again and pushed onto a flat surface; then that platform was raised into the air. Pinioned as we were, we could see but a braiding of taut-drawn rope above. Now our temporary floor swung outward, dipping a little so that I feared we would be rolled from the rimless support it offered.
    Down—they were lowering us down somewhere, and we could be sure that whatever waited us below would be no better than what we had left behind.

Six

    Tamara
    T he support on which we rested was swinging as a brisk wind pushed at it. We had not been secured in any way onto this platform, and the possibility was very real that we might roll off before we ever reached the goal our captors had selected.
    Even as I strove to brace myself against such a fate, it came upon me. I spun over, and then I was falling, falling until the blanket-roll that bound me thudded home onto another surface with force enough to drive the