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

cesspit, we had left behind everyone who wanted him dead.
    Unceremoniously, I dredged him from the far end of the swamp. Then, because he still did not wish to make an effort on his own behalf, I let him fall to the dirt.
    Once again, he sobbed like a girl. This time, however, his emotion was composed of revulsion and fear: his grief was for himself. After a while, he raised his head and said, “They deserved what happened to them. I wish I could have stayed to watch them die.”
    “Deserved it?” I asked. “What makes you say that?”
    He blinked his eyes stupidly for a moment. “You are the djinn who watches over the accursed.”
    “Good for you. I knew you would figure it out eventually.”
    “I wish that you had rescued me sooner.”
    I ignored this inane remark. “Now that you know who I am, why don’t you explain how all those dead and damaged people back there came to deserve what happened to them?”
    “They enslaved me. They forced the most disgusting acts upon me. They took advantage of my loneliness and my helplessness to sate their foul lusts. Do not accuse
me,
djinn. I know my innocence.”
    “Good for you again. How did you resist them?”
    “How could I resist them? They were many and strong. I am alone and weak.”
    “It’s easy,” I insisted. “You just say no. Then you keep saying no until they give up.”
    “Easy!” He snorted derision.
    “All right, for you it wouldn’t have been easy. You’re too weak and helpless. What about Rashid?”
    “Rashid?” Fetim had already forgotten the caravan master.
    “Did you tell him you didn’t want to be his catamite? Did you offer to work for your ride to Niswan? You did not. You saw that gleam in his eyes, and you thought, ‘Here is another who will do all I wish and ask nothing because I am adorable in his sight.’ He would have treated you honestly if you had done anything to deserve honesty from him. And then all those poor people in Niswan would still be alive.”
    “Go away,” he replied, cutting to the heart of the matter. “Go away and let me die. Then you will have no more cause to reproach me.”
    He did indeed appear pitiable as he huddled upon the verge of the swamp. Though I knew it to be a false kindness, I granted him silence.
    In fact, he could have died. He was ignorant of any roads—and little able to care for himself. After a long and rancid night, he took to his feet with the dawn and walked out into the desert as though intending to exhaust himself and thereby hasten the end of his sufferings. Soon he was thirsty. And soon thereafter he was hungry. He had come away from Niswan without sandals, and the pressure of the sand began to wear sores on his feet. The sun blistered him. His needs took on the strength of rage. They expanded until they filled the horizons. Under the weight of the desert sun, his misery increased until it became as great as his self-pity. Then he collapsed into the sand.
    Nevertheless a great journey lay ahead of him, which he must not shirk. It was not my task to make him comfortable. I did not permit his thirst to kill him, however. I kept his hunger within limits his flesh could bear. I did not allow the sores on his feet to become infected enough to threaten his life. And when he lay himself down with the avowed intention of not rising again, I reached into his mind and found enough fears to goad him back to his feet.
    Gradually, his physical distress ground his self-pity and his revulsion and even his pride away: he had no strength for them. He had only his pain, his fear of death, and me.
    After a number of days which he could not have counted—and which I had no interest in counting for him—he came to the River Kalabras. Falling on his face among the reeds at the riverbank, he drank enough of the muddy water to ensure himself a fever.
    While he drank, I observed a large felucca riding the current nearby. Confident that he would be rescued, I permitted him to lose consciousness.
    The craft,