The waterhole lay dark, oozing black mud and darker shadows; but behind the rocks, the crimson sun was rising.  She was old enough to know what was happening on the other side of the fire, she was twelve years old, and in Shainsa a girl of twelve was old enough to be chained, old enough to be near at hand in the birthing rooms.  But these women with unchained hands, these Amazons, they had sent her away as if she was only a child herself.  Beyond the fire, in the growing sunrise, she could hear her mother's voice, feel the pain thrusting through her own body like knives, see the carrion birds circling lower and lower as the sun rose; and now the sunlight was like the blood poured out on the sands, like the stabbing feel of knives and her mother's anguish, pouring through her body and her mind...

Jaelle!  Jaelle, it was worth it all, you are free, you are free.... but her hands were chained, and she was struggling, screaming, crying out....

"Hush, love, hush..." and Peter was patiently untangling her flailing hands from the bedclothes, cradling her in his arms.  "It's only a nightmare, it's all right -"

Only another nightmare.  Another.  God above, she's been having them every night.  I don't know what to do for her.

Jaelle squirmed away from him, not quite sure why, only knowing that she did not want to be too close just now.  She sought his face, frowning, troubled, for the hostility she could not find in his gentle voice.

"Kyril -" she muttered.  "No.  For a moment I thought you - you were my cousin Kyril -"

He laughed softly.  "That would give anybody nightmares, I guess.  Here, count my fingers.  Only five."  He pressed his hand against hers and she smiled faintly at the old joke between them.  He was so like her cousin, Kyril Ardais, save for the six-fingered hands Kyril had inherited from his mother, Lady Rohana.

Kyril's hands, fumbling about her all that summer, until she had finally, sobbing with wrath and humiliation, had to use on him the Amazon training which made a trained Renunciate almost impossible to dominate.  A Renunciate, they used to say, can be killed, but never raped.

For Rohana's sake she had not wanted to hurt him....

"Honey, are you all right?" Peter asked.  "Should I go get a Medic?  You've been having these nightmares every night... how long is it now?  Ten days, eleven?"

She tried to focus on his words.  They seemed to have some strange echo that ached in the palms of her hands,  reverberated in her sinuses.  The edges of the room seemed to be outlined with fuzzy lights, swelling up and shrinking and swelling again to loom over her.  Her eyes hurt, and she jumped up with a wavering surge of nausea, dashing for the bath.  The retching spasms shattered the last remnants of dream; she could not remember now what she had been dreaming, except for a curious taste and smell of blood in her mouth.  She swallowed the flat sickly water from the shower, trying in vain to rinse it away, and Peter, troubled, went into the refreshment console and dialled her some kind of cool drink.  He held it to her lips.

"I am going to take you to a Medic tomorrow, love," he said, watching her finish the drink, which bubbled and stung her lips; when she put it away he shook his head.

"Finish it, it will settle your stomach.  Better?"  He examined the headset on the pillow; somehow she had torn it loose in the dream.  "There must be something wrong with the language program they gave you, or the D-alpha is out of synch - that can mess up your balance centers," he mused, holding it.  "Or maybe  it just stirred up something in your subconscious.  Take it up to Medic tomorrow, and ask them to adjust it on the EEG file they have for you."  He might, she thought distantly, just as well have been speaking in some language from another Galaxy; she didn't know what he was talking about and didn't care. He held the earpiece to his temple, shrugged.  "It sounds all right to me, but I'm no expert.  Come on back to bed, sweetheart.''