Chapter 10.
Adanar answered the door and greeted Buffy and Giles warmly. Willow hung back nervously until the Ganaru noticed and gave her a friendly smile, saying gently in his musical voice,
"So you are Willow. I feel your magic and you are powerful indeed. We must sit down together and discuss the way magic functions on this plane. Dawn told me all she knew but there is only so much an observer can truly appreciate and understand, isn't there?"
He ushered her into the dining room to join the group sitting about the table and her nervousness was not as overwhelming as it had been. Dawn came in from the kitchen bearing a tray of coffee, mugs, sugar, cream and a pot of tea for Giles. As they faced each other for the first time an awkward silence fell until Dawn broke it by saying calmly,
"Hello Willow. I wasn't sure if you'd prefer coffee or tea but I'm sure there is enough tea for you and Giles to share. Unless you're feeling up to trying to pry the bourbon out of the ghostie's dead hand and he's so not into the sharing thing."
Spike gave her an offended glance and stated,
"I'm sure it's not politically correct for you to discriminate against me simply because I occasionally dematerialise, Dawn. It must qualify as being species-ist, don't you think Rupert? And I resent the implication that I'm greedy! I'm not, am I Gunn?"
"I wish you hadn't been quite so hot on sharing last night."
Gunn muttered while trying hard to keep his head from making even the slightest movement. Angel gave him a look of disbelief and demanded to know,
"You got drunk with Spike last night? After the doctors advised you not to drink for a couple of months? What were you thinking! What was Spike thinking?"
"Not much thinking going on after the first few, eh Charlie?"
Spike said cheerfully, ignoring the disgusted glance Angel bestowed on him. Before the two vampires could get into one of their interminable slanging matches Dawn put an end to it by reminding them firmly,
"We're not here to provide an audience for you pair of testosterone fuelled, un-dead alpha males! So if you must butt heads do it by glaring silently at each other."
She waited until they had settled back onto their chairs and pointedly began ignoring each other.
"That's better. This is going to be hard enough without having to try to be heard over the top of you two. Ok, first thing I'm going to do is give you a list of my unpleasant experiences so that you can all just accept them as happening frequently and as being part and parcel of being a slave, a female slave. Beatings, whippings, rape, starvation, being in chains, long hours of very hard labour, being inspected when up for sale; indifferent, bad or cruel owners, lack of sleep, the constant fear of punishment or death and all kinds of psychological abuse and torture."
Dawn looked at them one by one and said,
"There are some things that are horrible to think about and others you won't hear because I spend twenty four hours a day avoiding any thought of them. I didn't meet Adanar until I'd been there just over three years, so when we get to that part he'll tell you about being captured by the slavers and taken to Kridjator. If you have any questions please wait until I finish, because I don't really want to be talking about Kridjator at all, so just let me get it over and done with, ok?"
They either nodded or murmured their assent. Willow was twisting her hands until the handkerchief she held was shredded. Dawn took a deep breath and began her story by telling them that the Kridjatori were a violent, brutal, unpredictable and extremely superstitious race who indulged in blood sacrifice to placate their many murderous gods.
Of her own ordeal, she told them that Warren had died by the time she had regained her senses after going through the portal. Barely able to move and in shock she was found by a desert trader and his slaves. Because she wore no metal collar and cuffs, he suspected that she was an escapee and kept her tied had and foot and tossed into the back of a cart. During the month it took them to cross a barren plain and reach a large oasis deep in a long gorge,Dawn had considered trying to escape but the heavier gravity and the meagre thorny shrubs of the desert were too forbidding.
By the time they reached the city in the gorge, Karlten, Dawn had managed to pick up a little of the language used by and to slaves. The trader handed her over to the city Slave-master who, after keeping her in the punishment cells while he investigated how a slave came to be un-banded, finally sold her to a brothel owner. At the brothel she had been amazed to discover how many of the girls, women and a few young boys had been captured by slavers in other dimensions and from other worlds. Earth-human women were rare; they did not stand either the gravity or the brutality well enough to make them profitable. She had been there for almost four months when her owner brought a Samarian trader to inspect his stock.
This was Strega, the same Samarian who was in L.A. at the moment. Dawn had rapidly learned the language, the common slave tongue being used between Kridjatori and allies as well as between slaves and the masters. From snatches of over heard conversation, the gossip of guards and other slaves she learned that Strega and his partner in the slave trade, Hadretz, had offered the Kridjatori a method of using genetic testing to help improve their slave 'breeding stock' and the implications appalled her.
"I had to get out of there before they tested me."
She told Buffy earnestly,
"I might not be a Slayer but I have your genetic code and that's why I survived when other humans couldn't. If they found something in my genes there was every chance they'd breed from me and come looking for others like me. I couldn't take that risk! So I did this."
She touched her scarred cheek briefly.
Buffy shook her head slowly, tears filling her eyes and her voice husky as she told her sister,
"You did that to protect me? Oh Dawnie, that's .."
She was unable to finish and it was left to Gunn to tell Dawn,
"One of the gutsiest things I've ever heard of! You can cover my back anytime!"
Willow's eyes widened as something occurred to her,
"If you hadn't done that then the First probably would have won! We couldn't have protected the potentials from the First and the slavers at the same time! It would have tipped the balance in the First's favour."
Dawn shrugged,
"You guys would have managed. The Scoobies have always managed to scramble to the top somehow. Anyway, it got me a trip to the punishment cells and a new job in a Berdea mine. Berdea mining is a hell all on its own."
She described conditions as being comparable to concentration camps, Soviet gulags and Devils Island. Cold, damp, stuffy caverns and tunnels too narrow and too low to move anyway but by crawling, cramped cells, starvation rations, brutal guards and working sixteen hours a day made the death rate soar to unbelievable levels. The Berdea crystals themselves were dangerous to mine; the dust settling in the lungs killed some by drowning them in their own blood while tiny particles lodged themselves under fingernails and the skin, causing nails to fall off and great ulcers that could lead to death by blood poisoning.
She fell silent, staring into the middle distance as she relived rather than related one incident.
"There were eight children there when I arrived; the result of slave women being part of the perks of the job. One was almost five but most were under two years; thin, starved, big eyed kids like on famine posters. They never left the cells, they were left on their own while their mothers worked and more than one baby died from rat bites. But the owner let them remain with their mothers."
She stopped, lifted her mug of coffee with a trembling hand and tried to moisten her dry mouth before she went on,
"Until the day he decided to 'cull the unproductive' mouths. We could hear them screaming all the way down into the shafts we were working. The mothers were frantic and the guards clubbed one woman who tried to get out of the tunnel to death. It went quiet after fifteen minutes or so and we still had seven hours left to work. Knowing we'd find something ….. "
Dawn closed her eyes and a tear escaped to trickle down her cheek. Then her eyes flew open, as if the image on the back of her eyelids was too painful to bear seeing. The room was silent,
"They were all dead of course. The smallest three had been swung against the cell walls. There was blood and brain matter every where and they'd thrown the bodies down the hole that opened to the cesspit below the cells. We lived there, with the children …"
She fell silent and they all sat, horrified, outraged and shuddering at the thought of such casual cruelty. After a minute or two Dawn began again, eager to move past the incident.
"Not long after that I began stealing the best crystals, just as a way of making myself believe I would escape one day. One day I got into a fight with one of the guards who'd kicked a pregnant girl to death because her morning sickness slowed her down. I did a damn fine job on him; he got a few punches in, broke some ribs, but I managed to get his whip away from him, flogged him to his knees and strangled him with it! They'd have killed me but a visiting Death Ring owner offered to buy me for a good sum. I was able to smuggle my crystals out with me."
She told them how she was trained to use swords, axes and javelins for fighting in the Ring. How she had fought badly at first and suffered several injuries until she learned the craft of a gladiator. Of the companionship of the other fighters and how difficult it was to find yourself in a duel to the death with friends. But she had learned and fought hard and survived long enough to become a 'paired' with the Ganaru healer, Adanar.
She finally stopped and stretched, suggesting,
"We all need a break and a drink before Adanar tells you his story. Damn the coffee, hand over the bourbon Spike."
