After three days in his new home, Marcus was dismayed when Jaskar and his tall, dark-haired sycophant called and demanded he accompany them to the great hall of Three Towers.

‘He’s my slave,’ said Kregar, folding his arms. ‘What do you want him for?’

Jaskar didn’t answer; he glanced up at the woman beside him and she gave Kregar an insincere smile. ‘Of course this is your slave – you spent a fortune for him – but he has information needed for the good of the Ark Andulan and the elders need to talk to him.’

After a long pause, in which Marcus could see that his owner was struggling to keep his temper under control, Kregar gave a nod. ‘Don’t torture him or harm him.’

The woman nodded. ‘We’re just going to ask him a few questions.’

It was humiliating, having a collar and leash fitted. Acting as though he was resigned to his fate was crucial to his strategy for escape. So as the woman strapped on the leather collar, Marcus held still and kept his eyes on the ground until a tug indicated that he should move.

Out in the streets busy streets, it was common enough to see other people leading slaves. Not one person wearing the rough brown garments that signalled slavery looked up at Marcus and so he took care to avoid staring at anyone too. All the same, he wanted to try to learn more about the town and especially where the various roads went. Clearly, no one had properly planned this town as the paths between the buildings were sometimes narrow and sometimes wide. Sometimes the street curved to follow a fence; sometimes it turned sharply left or right to go around a house. The town was a muddle.

Walking in a row – Jaskar, Dark Hair, then Marcus – it took about ten minutes before they reached the large, open square with the six statues of the Ark Andulan gods. Again, Marcus felt that the statues were poorly made, not so much in respect to the sanding and polishing of the finish, but in regard to the inexact proportion of their limbs, the way that a winged, bird-headed figure had an expression that was distinctly goofy, and a woman with a harp had robes that appeared to be weighing her down.

One of the few buildings of two-story height in the town of Three Towers was the one on the square that seemed to act as a town hall. Marcus had seen it on his arrival at the town three days earlier and now he was pulled inside. A corridor of wooden poles; a scent of smoke; compacted earth floor. This really was not a very advanced civilisation and the sense of oppression and fear that had at first filled his thoughts when he had learned about the existence of a slave-owning tribe nearby was now almost completely eroded. Intimidating images of vast cities with populations of millions and mighty ziggurats had been replaced by a sense that he was dealing with amateurs.

Living among the Ark Andulan was a bit like the time… oh sixty years ago now… that Marcus had been invited to display a sculpture in London for a Fluxus exhibition. The Fluxus movement had co-opted him as he was going through a phase of creating works that interacted with the viewer in a playful way. Like his ‘Exit Sign’, which pointed to what seemed to be a set of stairs leading down into darkness but which he had painted on the nearby wall. He had gone to that exhibition in a state of intimidation. Intimidated by London itself; intimidated by some of the reputations of the artists; intimidated by the possibility that Fluxus was a reborn Surrealism and knowing he wasn’t good enough for that. On seeing the exhibition, however, that intimidation had melted away to be replaced by scorn. The other works were puerile and technically poor too. He’d left as soon as he had walked around the gallery and on return to his cottage in Wales, embarked on an entirely new, ultra-realist phase of painting.

Now, as he was led into a chamber that had a large, poorly-ventilated fireplace in one wall and dozens of chairs arranged in a circle, Marcus felt contempt for his captors. They were the Fluxus version of a slave society. Not that he would show his disdain for them. He would do whatever they asked, learn what he could, and continue living up to the persona of a man who had accepted his position as a slave.

Eleven of the chairs were occupied: five men, six women, all middle-aged, and all well-dressed by Ark Andulan standards (lots of silver rings and necklaces on display as well as amber clasps fastening embroidered cloaks). As the woman holding the leash brought Marcus to the centre of the circle, Jaskar took a seat next to another short man, this one stocky, with a black beard.

‘Slave,’ said an elderly woman with a grey ponytail. ‘You are here before the elders of Ark Andulan to answer some questions. Answer them honestly and you will be returned to your home. Lie to us and we will lock you into a cage, to swing in view of all until you die. Do you understand?’

Keeping his eyes firmly on the ground, Marcus nodded and said aloud: ‘I understand.’

‘Where are the Fins?’ she asked.

Without hesitation, Marcus replied, ‘I am the Fins. Just me.’ Screw them. The threat of the cage was a bluff. These people, the town elders or whoever they were, were not all-powerful. He had heard Jaskar negotiate with Kregar and reckoned his owner would kick up a mighty fuss should Marcus not be returned to the workshop.

‘You told Jaskar, your captor, that there were twenty of you?’

It was a question, so Marcus felt he had permission to reply, though he kept his gaze on his feet. ‘I don’t know why exactly I said that. I thought you might treat me better if you imagined I had powerful friends.’

‘What kind of metal is this? Why doesn’t it become pliable under heat?’

The leash dropped. Footsteps sounded as the dark-haired woman walked away from him and then returned to put a piece of the destroyed spaceship into his hands.

‘It is a variant of steel. And it will bend, but only under far greater temperatures than you can achieve using a forge of pre-industrial technology. Your technology.’ Whether the metal actually was a variant of steel, Marcus had no idea, but he didn’t want to refer to the mind swap and so had to pretend to have the knowledge of a genuine space traveller aboard that ship.

‘What advanced weapons do you have?’

‘None; nothing useful survived the crash.’

‘Can you make advanced weapons?’ Up until this question, the elderly woman had led the way. Now a new voice came from his left, a man’s.

‘I cannot. Even if you had the right equipment, I wouldn’t know how.’

‘How did you obtain an artistry skill of twenty?’ Another questioner. Marcus didn’t want to risk looking up to check who it was.

‘I was an artist on my home planet for many years.’

‘Will more people come here from your home planet?’

‘I really couldn’t say.’

‘Why did you come?’

This was tricky. What had the AI person, Cortness, said? ‘We came to solve the Ultima quest.’

There were mutters at this answer. Not hostile ones though. They were interested.

‘What information do you have regarding the Ultima quest?’ This was Jaskar.

‘Nothing, other than this is a system planet called Grimworld, and that whoever solves the quest will obtain an extraordinary reward.’

‘And what made you think you could do solve it?’

‘Our technology: our weapons; science labs; drones. But the planet, Grimworld, attacked us somehow.’

Silence.

‘Very well slave, you may go. Serve your master well and serve the elders of Ark Andulan as we need.’ The woman who had spoken first dismissed him.

Even as he felt the pull of his leash, Marcus risked speaking. ‘Permission to say something, mistress.’

‘What is it slave?’ She sounded angry.

‘The statues of your gods. I can do better. If that was important.’

The pull softened.

‘Of course. You have artistry twenty. Now leave us.’ But the tone of her response was mild.

***

‘Master?’ By now, when there was no one else present in the workshop but the three slaves and Kregar, Marcus felt that he did not have to ask for permission to speak. Hair tied back, head tipped low as she formed a pot, Carmella did not look up but she did make a ‘tut’ sound as Farkin stared at Marcus and the stream of water he was pouring from a jug splashed to the side of the spinning wheel.

‘What is it, slave?’ Kregar was carefully packing a jug and mug set into a straw-lined wooden crate. Orders had been arriving faster than they could fulfil them.

‘I would like to decorate some of the urns with images of the gods. Can you tell me more about the gods? Would there be popular myths that your customers would like to see, Master?’

Kregar ceased filling the chest with straw and turned his bearded face towards Marcus, forcing Marcus to look down rather than meet his owner’s eyes in the manner that would have been usual between equals on Earth. ‘Is that possible? That you can display figures so detailed they can be recognised?’

‘It is,’ Marcus replied. ‘But not with our usual glaze. We need a pure black, one that is fast drying. On my planet it is made from a fish or an octopus that have sacs in their body full of black ink that they spray to escape their predators. The other salts and liquids we need you already have here, Master.’

‘We have such fish. Our clothmakers use the ink for dye. I will get some.’ With that, Kregar seemed about to return to his task. Marcus hurriedly returned to the real purpose of his proposal, which was to learn more about the gods.

‘And Master, what scene should I depict?’

With a grunt, Kregar stood up. ‘The gods are fickle and distant. And yet the people pray to them, just in case. We like the stories of Ferskar, who is half mortal and yet who often tricks the gods but who avoids punishment because he is the son of Torfen, the most powerful of the gods.’

Marcus had very many questions. For a start, he would have liked to have information about the six gods who were depicted in the square. What were their powers? Why those six? Were there more gods? It sounded like there might be, along with their mortal children. And were these real people from the past? Did the gods actually exist here? It didn’t seem that they intervened much even if they did. All these thoughts that sprang to mind were pushed aside and Marcus remained quiet. If he questioned Kregar too much, his ‘master’ would detect both a strong will in Marcus and that his slave was interested in learning for other reasons than selling pots.

‘There’s a story about Ferskar,’ continued Kregar after a pause, ‘that you can show a scene from, if you can get your glaze to work. Gorall is god of the birds and used to steal all our jewellery, which he collected in his nest. One day Ferskar found a mud that glittered brilliantly in sunshine and he had an idea. He spread the mud over a shield and when the mud was dry it seemed as though the shield were covered in jewels.

‘Then Ferskar dug a deep pit, which he hid by re-laying the turf on top of thin branches. On the next bright day, he flashed the shield in the sunshine, aiming it towards the nest of Gorall: thousands of sparkling lights attracting the god’s attention. Then Ferskar lay the shield carefully over the pit and hid behind a tree. As he hoped, the god came flying down to land on the shield, only to crash into a pit so narrow he couldn’t fly out again. Ferskar stood at the lip of the pit and mocked the fallen god. “It was only mud, not gems, that lured you here. And now you must make a promise before I will release you.” The god cursed and swore vengeance if he was not released at once, but Ferskar only laughed.

‘After several days, Gorall gave in and swore that he would never steal from humans again. And Ferskar made him swear too, that he would not seek revenge on any mortal for this offense. And again Gorall swore. And that’s why we no longer have birds swooping down to steal our gold and silver.’

‘Thank you Master, and does Gorall look like the bird-headed god in the big square?’

‘No one knows what the gods look like. So long as you give him wings and, yes, a bird’s head, everyone will know who you mean.’

‘And Ferskar, what does he look like Master?’

‘I always imagine him as tall, with a beard, strong and good looking.’ Kregar laughed heartily, ‘a lot like me in fact!’

And that, thought Marcus, was perfect. A range of pottery depicting Kregar as Ferskar would not only allow Marcus to learn all the myths about these gods, it would have Kregar value him even more highly, while annoying Jaskar and perhaps all of the town elders.