Someday, if he had the
chance, he'd flay his own overseer, but that could wait. Even the agony
of the cut couldn't take his mind from Ser Perth's presence. Had Bork
slipped up--did the Satheri know that Hanson was still alive, and had
they sent Ser Perth here to locate him? It seemed unlikely, however. The
man was paying no attention to the lines of slaves. It would be hard to
spot one among three million, anyhow. More likely, Hanson decided, Ser
Perth was supervising the supervisors, making an inspection tour of all
this.
Of all what? Apparently then this must be another of their frenzied
efforts to find a way to put back the sky. He'd heard that they had
called up the pyramid builder, but hadn't fully realized it would lead
to this type of activity.
He looked around him appraisingly. The long lines of slaves that had
been carrying rock and rubble the day before now were being formed into
hauling teams. Long ropes were looped around enormous slabs of quarried
rock. Rollers underneath them and slaves tugging and pushing at them
were the only means of moving them. The huge stones slid remorselessly
forward onto the prepared beds of rubble. Casting back in his memory,
Hanson could not recall seeing the rock slabs the night before. They had
appeared as if by magic--
Obviously, they had really been conjured up by magic. But if the rocks
could be conjured, what was the need of all the slaves and the sadistic
overseers? Why not simply magic the entire construction, whatever it was
to be?
The whip hit him again, and the raging voice of the overseer ranted in
his ears.
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