Free Reave the Just and Other Tales by Stephen R. Donaldson Page A

else kept hidden. One night, Rashid leaped out of bed and grabbed at his knives too late to prevent himself from being gutted like an ox in an abattoir. A remarkable amount of blood splashed onto Fetim. Then he was dragged away.
    Before dawn, he found himself sold into slavery as a desirable—if temporarily blood-sotted and noxious—catamite.
    His purchasers tolerated no resistance. In any case, he had little to offer, being accustomed to seek his own pleasure rather than willingly to undergo pain. Therefore he submitted. It seemed conceivable that with the right degree of complaisance and cunning his life could still be quite pleasurable. Perhaps freedom was not too high a price to pay for homage to his desirability. A few baths, a few perfumes, a few hints, and he was set to work at love in a luxurious stable of young men resembling himself.
    The resemblance was only superficial, of course: the other young men had not been cursed by such a proficient as Selmet Abulbul. Rich merchants, minor sheiks, and occasional grande dames discovered in Fetim an attractiveness which plucked at their hearts. They were less aware of the fact that after a night or two with Fetim they were prone to die horribly.
    For some time, this caused him no difficulty. He was more conscious that as an object of lust he found lust to be less and less interesting. He was constrained to humble himself: the practices which brought him love took on the flavor of degradation. This, he thought, was the true meaning of the old usurer’s curse.
    He was mistaken, however. In the same irrational way that Akbar of the al-Hetal had pronounced his son responsible for the ruin of the clan, the family, friends, supporters, and adherents of Fetim’s butchered patrons concluded that the stable which owned him was to blame for the deaths. One night when he was especially miserable, a throng of sheiks, swordsmen, and rabble burst into the richly appointed establishment and began slaughtering everyone present.
    This was naturally not an action which the owners of the stable could permit to pass unchallenged. In the bazaars of Niswan, no man or woman dared make a shekel’s profit without guarding it in some way. At once, forces which had been retained for precisely this sort of emergency were called out. The conflict quickly escalated, and in a short time the gauze-curtained cubicle where Fetim had pleased his patrons became the effective center of a fervid and bloody battle.
    Maimed and dying boys and women and bystanders screamed. And Fetim screamed as well, although he was unhurt. He knew almost nothing about defending himself. In any case, he was unarmed. I was forced to work quickly to keep him from being cut apart at any moment.
    When I opened a corridor for him through the bloodshed, he found his legs and ran.
    As he did so, both sides of the battle turned their enmity in his direction and followed.
    By this time, the entire city had been roused. The King’s forces marched to suppress the conflict—and joined Fetim’s pursuit. Brigands and looters sought to take advantage of the chaos—and found themselves chasing a young man they had never seen. In self-defense, good men and respectable families armed their servants—who immediately snatched up torches and plunged into the tumult.
    The great father of djinn himself must have been listening when Selmet Abulbul had cursed Fetim of the al-Hetal. I was hard-pressed to keep my charge alive.
    I accomplished it by driving him into the sewer, which an enlightened king of a previous generation had caused to be dug under the length of the city.
    The stench and density of Niswan’s effluvium eventually proved to be stronger than the curse. While I dragged Fetim through the sewage—keeping his head above the surface largely without his assistance—his pursuers one by one lost interest in what they were doing and retreated. Before we passed under the wall and emerged into the fetid swamp which Niswan used as a