PROLOGUE 2

Perhaps there was, but there is also a place for a pretty young girl newly arrived in the city, and her not nearly as worldly-wise as she thinks she is. And that place came and found me within minutes of walking through the city gate.

I know now that they watch the city gate, looking for girls like me who drift in from the country. But I didn't know it then.

A beautiful girl, not much older than me, with bright fashionable clothes, lovely hair, and laughter in her eyes made friends with me and took me to a tavern.

Bridget and I shared the best meal I had ever eaten, and over some real wine, I told her my story, and she promised to introduce me to a healer the next day.

When she found out that I had nowhere to stay that night, she insisted that I stay with her for the night. Even her spare bed was a real bed. I was in paradise - I had never slept in a real bed

. She changed to a beautiful nightgown - I was entranced at the idea of a nightgown that made someone appear so desirable. I wondered whether she had a boyfriend - or even a lover.

She seemed so mature. I felt so country, so backwards, so inadequate compared to her, in my filthy undershirt. If only my life had been like hers - how much happier I would be. Maybe I might even have a boyfriend.

From a draw in her dresser, she produced a velvet bag with a sweet pungent smell. She took some seeds out of it, crushed them, and then split them into two parts.

She told me to take it, that they were a nice dessert to finish off a wonderful night. In my desperation to be like her, I didn't think about it - after all she was going to eat them too.

Bliss.

Oh the bliss, I cannot describe it. It is so wonderful, the dreamlike state you enter when you eat the selial seed.

All I can say is that it is better than any other experience you can have. No pain, no suffering. And then, after that wonderful state, you enter a dreamless sleep.

I had heard of selial seed before, but it was against the law to have any, so I'd never thought that I'd see it myself.

I was addicted. I gave my virginity to a man by the name of Tom, that Bridget introduced to me as her lover, in exchange for a small packet of selial seed.

He owned me after that. Any person, any time, any how, I gave myself to any depravity anyone could imagine. All I got in payment was a small packet of Selial seeds after my whoring was done.

Tom, the bastard, was the third of the three men who ruined my life.

Oh, I wanted to die. For a year, I lived in his brothel. I worked every day. I tried to run away. I tried going without the selial seed. But it was no good. Every night, I had to have it.

And the better the tips I got for Tom, the more Selial seed he gave me. I tried to build up a supply so I could run away, but I couldn't. I didn't have the wit or the backbone anyway. The selial seed kept me in a haze of desire. For the seed, not for the other thing I did in my life.

Though I had a certain skill at that. I was the busiest of the girls, even though not quite the prettiest.

I knew I had reached the depths of depravity when I performed the same seduction on a newly arrived country girl that Bridget had done to me.

I got three days off whoring for that, and I spent all three days in seedie bliss state. Bridget had died, of the pox.

I had done my best for her, but I could see that she didn't want to live. I hoped for the pox. It couldn't be long, surely, and it was the only way out that I could think of.

One night, near dawn, just as the night's work was complete, soldiers burst into the brothel. I was sitting at a table near the front desk crushing my seed for the night.

Caught in the act. They stripped me, and dragged me, naked, through the city streets to the barracks, and threw me into a cell. In the morning, they put me before a judge in prison garb.

I was caught, red-handed; "Zia, Whore and Seedie". I only said one word in the whole trial: "Guilty."

The judge sentenced me to six months in the local jail, and a tattoo on my forehead marking me as a convicted whore.

I knew that I would die, having to go without selial seed. I passed Tom on the way out of the court.

He would die in the public square later that day, for his crimes of owning a whorehouse and selling selial seed. How I wished to see that. But they took me back to the cell.

The jailer told me what would happen to me. As a seedie, I would go insane without the seed. I would yell and scream and the jailers would have to listen to me.

So instead of putting me in a solitary cell, they would put me in the open jail with both men and women.

The other prisoners would use me as they saw fit until I was fully insane, then they would kill me. The longest a seedie whore had ever lasted was five days.

So they made seedie whores dig their own grave first. It seemed fitting, he said, since we were walking dead anyway.

I looked in my grave, and saw the wreckage I had made of my life. I thought about what he had said. I could see myself in there.

All too soon, I would be there. I was afraid. I was afraid of everything. I was afraid of dying. Somehow it had never seemed real before.

I was afraid of what would happen in the jail. Most of all, I was afraid of having to go without seed.