Stone walls, hanging chains, a cold and gritty floor . . . thick memories like a torrential raging flood overwhelm me. I would have you know; however, this time around I am aware, so very much aware of the reasons for my imprisonment. These reasons you will soon discover, but in the first confinement, the one holding my king’s fury, I knew nothing—no causes, no answers, no justifications. And it is there that lay the beginnings of this dark and ominous anger within me.

I feared death then for naught, yet now death is certain. This I know. Here in my foreboding cave--this cell--the sounds come to me from above. Chanting crowds call in unison, filling these lower chambers with the rhythms of insistence: Death to the apostate! Kill him! Kill him! Crucify him on the rail! Hang him! Drawn and quartered! They call, and I know the calls are for me. Fatefully, it appears that the maddening fear of age-long

freedom’s loss has again come, and this time definitely. Even so, to the Jhemani a man without freedom is a punishment death is heir to.

Thinking back to that time before: I remember, hanging in my chains, hearing the horrible screams of terror gushing like blood from the castle walls . . . screams they were, not for me, but screams of hurt, of an anguish that only death could cure. When the sounds came no more, a dark and gloomy silence followed—a thick silence unlike any I had ever experienced. It covered me as if a cold pail of confusion and scorn had been hurled across my face—a waste that dried into a callous film of resentment from which flakes of sadness soon would fall. I struggled to accept my reality, my injustice, but it came not easily. Yet the ever present why could not be satisfied. The quiet—thick as earth’s black ooze—hard-pressed me, and I began to lose any sense of proportion.

This time the screams are not of terror as before, but of rage, and all come not only from above, but also from deep within me. They come remarkably clearly, and I am wholly aware that neither will subside until I