Poritrin’s river delta was not at all like Harmonthep’s gentle rivulets and marshes. More than anything, the slave boy Ishmael wanted to go home . . . but Ishmael didn’t know how far away that was. At night, he often awoke screaming in the compound, battling nightmares. Few of the other slaves bothered to comfort him; they carried their own heavy burdens.

His village had been burned back on Harmonthep, most of the people captured or killed. The boy remembered seeing his grandfather stand up to the slavers, quoting Buddislamic sutras to convince them of the wrongness of their actions. In response, the vile men had ridiculed old Weyop, making him look insignificant and ineffectual. They might as well have killed him.

A long time after the slavers had stunned Ishmael, he’d awakened inside a coffin of plasteel and transparent plates, a stasis chamber that had kept him immobile but alive. None of the new slaves could cause trouble as the Tlulaxa ship traveled across space to this strange world. All the captives had been awakened for unloading . . . and sale in the Starda market district.

Some of the Harmonthep prisoners had tried to escape without any idea of where to run. The slavers stunned some of them just to quiet their wailing and thrashing. Ishmael had wanted to fight back, but sensed he could accomplish more by watching and learning, until he found a better way to resist. He needed to understand Poritrin first; then he could consider how best to fight. It was what his sagacious grandfather would have counseled him to do.

Weyop had quoted sutras that told of imminent evil from outside, of soulless invaders who would steal them from their way of life. Because of those prophesies, the Zensunnis had left the company of other men. In the decaying Old Empire, people had forgotten God and then suffered when the thinking machines took over. Ishmael’s people believed it was their fate, the great Kralizec, or typhoon struggle at the end of the universe, that had been foretold for millennia. Those who followed the Buddislamic creed had escaped, already knowing the outcome of that hopeless battle.

Yet that struggle had not ended according to the prophesy. Part of the human race had survived the machine demons, and now those people had turned against the “cowardly” Buddislamic refugees with revenge in their hearts.

Ishmael did not believe that the old teachings could have been wrong. So many sutras, so many prophesies. His grandfather had seemed certain when he spoke of the legends . . . yet still their peaceful Harmonthep village had been overrun, the strongest and healthiest taken as slaves. And now Ishmael and his fellows were on a far-off world, their bodies for sale.

Weyop had said that non-Buddislamic outsiders were condemned to eternal damnation . . . yet the Tlulaxa flesh merchants and the new masters on Poritrin controlled their food and their lives. The boy and his companions had no choice but to do as they were told.

Since Ishmael was the youngest captive, the owners expected little of him. They ordered his work group to watch over the boy, to make certain he completed his tasks . . . or if he failed, to pick up the slack.

Despite his aching muscles and blistering skin, Ishmael worked as hard as the others. He watched his despairing fellows waste time with complaints, an attitude that angered the owners and led to unnecessary punishments. Ishmael kept his misery to himself.

He spent weeks up to his knees in the slimy mudflats where ropes and stakes marked out fertile shellfish beds. He ran back and forth to basins that contained clam seedlings, scooped up handfuls of the tiny bivalent and rushed them out into the wet fields. If he cupped his hands too tightly, he crushed the delicate shells— such carelessness had already earned him a thrashing with a sonic whip when an agricultural supervisor saw what he had done. Like icy fire, the whip had made his skin bubble and spasm. The discipline left no mark, caused no physical damage, yet that single whip stroke burned a permanent scar in his brain, and Ishmael knew to avoid that forever.

Punishment would accomplish nothing and could only make him more miserable, while giving the owners yet another victory over him. He chose not to grant them that. Despite the fact that it was an insignificant matter, he would attempt to control it as much as possible.

Right now, seeing the workers in the mudflats, Ishmael was almost glad his parents had died in a storm, struck by lightning in a skiff on the large lake where seeping oil made the fish taste bad. At least they couldn’t see him now, and neither could his grandfather. . . .

AFTER THE FIRST month on Poritrin, Ishmael’s hands and legs became so impregnated with black mud that even repeated lashings could not remove the stain. His fingernails were broken and caked with river muck.

On Harmonthep, Ishmael had spent his days wading through the marshes, collecting eggs from qaraa nests, netting turtlebugs, and digging osthmir tubers that grew in the brackish water. From a young age, he had been toughened to a life of toil, but here he resented the work, because it was not for the glory of Buddallah, not for the health and well-being of his people. It was for someone else.

In the Poritrin slave compound, women cooked their food, using the unusual ingredients and spices they were given. Ishmael longed for the taste of fish baked in lily leaves and of sweet reeds whose juices could make a boy drunk with delight.

At night, half of the communal dwellings were vacant because so many slaves had died from the fever. Ishmael often crawled to his pallet and fell deeply asleep. Other times, he forced himself to remain awake and sit in the storytelling circles.

The men talked among themselves, debating whether to select a new leader for their group. To some of them, the concept seemed pointless. There could be no escape, and a leader could only inspire them to take chances that would get them all killed. Ishmael felt sad, remembering how his grandfather had expected to name a successor one day. Yet the Tlulaxa flesh merchants had changed all of that. Unable to reach a decision, the Zensunni men talked on and on. It made Ishmael want to drift off to the oblivion of sleep.

He liked it better when the men told old stories, reciting the poetic “Songs of the Long Trek” about the Zensunni Wanderings, how his people had sought a home where they would be safe from both the thinking machines and the League Worlds. Ishmael had never seen a robot and wondered if they were only imaginary monsters to frighten disobedient children. But he had indeed seen evil men— the raiders who had decimated his quiet village, mistreated his grandfather, taken so many innocents captive.

Sitting at the edge of the firelight, Ishmael listened to the tales of his people. The Zensunni were accustomed to tribulations, and they might have to tolerate even generations of slavery on this planet so far from home. No matter the challenge, his people knew how to endure.

Of all the stories the boy had heard, the covenants and prophecies, he clung to one above all the others: the promise that the misery would one day end.