by Jeffrey Hall
“Only when they shake hands with criminals,” said Requiem, fighting his panic to sound sure of himself. This wasn’t how they were supposed to get answers. He was a fool to ever have vouched for Garp and put him in such a situation.
“That. That was official business. The plans of the court are not for you to understand. They are meant to keep up with your king’s tithe.”
“Try us,” said Garp, thrusting him once more against the wall.
“In about one minute you will be tried,” said Benglar, and with one of his free hands he brought up a brilliant violet stone. It shone like a small twilight sun down in the depths.
Grey shielded his eyes. Garp flinched from it. But Requiem’s eyes widened at the sight of it.
“By Bolliad, what is that?” said Garp, trying to grab the man’s wrist to wrestle the annoying stone away.
“It’s a signal stone!” shouted Requiem.
“A what?”
“You know it well, emissary. Or should I call you Requiem Balestone?” seethed Benglar. “I should have known that the slimy king would try to slip you into our midst with something as banal as a disguise. I should have known not to trust that you were gone of this situation. Well, you have only a few moments to find out how many of my men are on the other end of this stone. What will you do then? Add more murder to your record?”
“Your men?” said Garp, his grip lessening.
“Let him go,” said Requiem. “He’s got a troop of guards listening on the other side of that stone.”
“What? After what we’ve seen him do?” said Garp.
“Either that, or wait for a fight,” said Grey.
“Open the door,” ordered Requiem to Benglar.
“And let you escape so easily?” Benglar shook his head.
“Open the door!” Garp thrust the man into the wall, making him cough.
Benglar fumbled for the keys and brought them up with his free hand. Garp snatched at them, but Benglar was quicker. He tossed the keys so hard and fast that they sailed past them and into the stairwell, clinking onto the stone and into the darkness. “Go fetch.”
“There has to be another way out,” said Grey.
“Stand aside and I’ll break it,” Requiem said. Garp threw the man to the side as Requiem completed a three-stroke spell. The magic left his blade like a battering ram and snapped the thick door in two, but not without taking its share. He felt a large wound open up on his back, traveling over his spine and up to the tip of his neck. Another wound he would need to cover up.
He nearly doubled over from the pain, but Grey was there to help him stay upright. Together they hobbled to the edge of the doorway, only to see a tunnel leading out into empty air.
“Only way you’ll be leaving this way is with the help of a belly-grup, and I’m afraid your one-time associate already took the last mount.”
“By the Abyss,” said Grey.
Voices echoed down the stairwell. They could see light lashing the darkness of the landing.
“Come on!” shouted Requiem, grasping his back and gritting his teeth.
When Garp still hesitated, Requiem tore him away from Benglar and threw him out of the corridor.
Benglar fell to the ground, rubbing his throat. “Run fast, Requiem! I hope your stone can whisk you away as quickly as it did the door!”
The voices grew louder. It sounded like dozens of people were hurrying down to their position. With no other way to go but down, Requiem descended into the stairwell with Grey and Garp in tow.
“Can’t we just tell them what he was up to?”
“You think they’ll listen to us?” said Requiem, his heart pounding. He was taking the stairs three at a time, his head turning every which way for some way out.
“He’s probably already lied to them, told them we’ve attacked him or something,” said Grey.
“Can’t you just cut them down?” begged Garp through ragged breaths.
“Not gonna murder if I don’t need to,” said Requiem.
“Then can’t we tell the Elder!” shouted Garp.
“And get through those guards?” said Requiem.
They came to another hallway. They could hear Benglar’s voice interspersed with those of others. They were close now. At the end of the hallway was another set of doors, these ones metal and scratched, as if claws had torn into them some time ago.
“In there?” said Garp, looking from the door to back up the stairs.
“Nowhere else to go,” said Requiem. He tried the doors. Locked. Of course.
“Can you do it again?” said Grey.
“They went down here!” a voice clearly sounded.
He drew on the strength of the stone, using a lesser spell than if he were to cut through the door entirely, but it still made the entirety of his wounds flare. He pulled the handle. The handle broke clear off, but the door stayed closed.
Requiem stumbled back, grunting from the surge of pain coursing through his body.
“They’re almost here!” cried Garp.
“Weapons then,” said Grey, and he unsheathed his sword.
Garp did the same, his hand shaking. “I ain’t trying to kill no soldiers.”
“Well, they’re going to try to kill you.”
“Wait,” said Requiem, breathing deeply. He gathered himself once more, trying to put aside the pain and the weakness he felt. With three slashes he unleashed a forceful blast that broke the door. A deep wound broke over his right arm, nearly making him drop Ruse and fall into the wall from the sudden potency of the pain.
“Inside,” said Grey, grabbing Requiem by his wounded arm and pulling him through the broken door, Garp scrambling to catch up behind them. “Put that pile together,” said Grey.
And Garp did his best to shove the broken remnants of the door together. When he was done he turned and looked. “You sure this is the place we want to be trapped?”
The room they’d entered was darker still. The floor was earthen and uneven, as if mined from the rock itself and never refinished. There was only a single glimmer stone somewhere deeper within it, and that single light shone off the bars that lined the nearby walls.
“It’s a... a—”
“Dungeon,” said Requiem, and a large one at that. The bars and the hallway that ran through them seemed to bend deeper into the stone, down into a darkness that could not have an exit.
“Well?” said Garp.
It was Grey’s turn to answer. “Come on.”
They entered the dungeon. The cells to either side were empty, but still echoed of their use. Bones littered the floor as if their inhabitants were forgotten and withered away. Fabrics and foul-smelling buckets lay scattered about. Pools of filth and leaky water had accumulated over the floor, and small grates chiseled into the stone were the only avenues that allowed the liquids to go anywhere at all.
Small lights shone into the dungeon at their backs. Requiem glanced over his shoulder and could see shadows dancing at the edge of the dungeon’s entrance. The leftovers of the door lay in broken fragments, a small barrier to prevent the soldiers from following. They hurried forth into the darkness, passing the cells without affording them a glance, almost passing by the lone occupant huddled quietly at the back of one.
“Hello?” came a soft, but familiar voice.
“Stop,” ordered Requiem, shrugging off Grey, his arm once more exploding into pain.
On the other side of the bars, Dash rose from her place on the dark floor. The faint color of her purple hair appeared beneath the light of the glimmer stone. It was a color that almost rivaled the heavy bags beneath her eyes.
“By the Abyss, what are you doing here?” seethed Requiem.
“Requiem, is that you?” she said, clutching the bars.
“It is.”
“What happened to your face?”
“Why are you here?”
“Ain’t got time for chats,” said Grey.
“The girl?” said Requiem.
“Still sleepi
ng for all I know. I ran into some complications,” said Dash.
“By the Abyss,” said Requiem. An axe fell against the wood of the broken door, sending chips of it scattering to the floor like spilled stone.
“Get me out of here!” she shouted.
“There ain’t no time,” said Grey.
Requiem caught the Geomage’s eyes in the near-dark. They were full and pleading, things that said she would die if he didn’t do something. Besides, who else could he count on to save the girl if they survived all of this?
“They’re coming!” shouted Garp, and he readied his sword.
Requiem picked up his blade, and with what little strength he had left, he hacked at the lock. Sparks flew from where it connected, but he was not strong enough to break the metal.
“Let me try,” said Grey.
Requiem stood aside, breathing heavily. The new wounds on his body screamed, an annoying agony he could not ignore. He felt sapped, a thing he rarely felt after strokes so tame. Was he really so old? Had the scar stone finally taken more of him than he could handle?
Grey hacked at the lock with his own weapon, but as hard as he struck it only left minor scratches on the lock.
The first of the soldiers kicked through. He came stumbling in with a small axe raised above his head.
“Shit,” said Garp as he rose to meet his opponent.
It would only be a moment before they were overrun.
Grey turned his attention from the lock to the warrior attacking his nephew, and for what seemed like the hundredth time since Requiem had met them, ran to help him.
“Don’t leave me,” pleaded Dash at Requiem’s side.
Requiem looked from her to Grey and Garp and the encroaching soldiers, and gathered what remaining strength he had. He backed up, and with two strokes of Ruse, he sent a minor version of the spells he’d used to break the doors at the lock in front of him.
The locked splintered. A scar wrapped over his thigh. He fell to his knees, grunting, the last of his energy sapped by the stone in the crossguard of his blade. He fought to keep conscious as the rest of the soldiers funneled through the doorway and into the dungeon.
Chapter 17
Dash could barely believe the calamity unfolding before her. Minutes ago she was half asleep on the ground, the voice of the shadows antagonizing her constantly, laughing at how the Elder used her and threw her right back into the dungeon he had pulled her from, only to be awakened by the very man she had struck an agreement with in the first place and freed. He and two accomplices who looked like they’d be about as good in a fight as a farmer with a fork. Well, at least the one with the missing hand.
Now there were about a dozen soldiers pouring into the dungeon, threatening to rip them apart. And Requiem was on his knees, barely able to stand. In no shape to fight or use his stone.
She would be right back in the same spot if not worse when all was said and done.
“You’ll die here. You’ll all die here,” said the shadows. It came like an overwhelming voice above the yells and clashes of the fight, finding its way under her skin. “You’ll all die if you don’t do something.”
“No,” she managed to say as she put her hand on Requiem’s back to steady him.
“Is there another way?” managed Requiem.
“What?”
“Is there another way out?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Then find one!”
Her head spun as the shadows laughed. One of the two men engaging the soldiers pushed one of them back towards the broken door, but two others sidestepped him and came forward. No way those two were going to stand against armored soldiers with spears.
“Do you have a stone?” she said to Requiem.
“A what?” he mumbled, trying to stand, clutching his leg like it had just been mortally wounded.
“A stone. Something I can use.”
He shook his head, regaining his feet.
“By the Abyss,” she cursed, patting her filthy and torn robes, hoping to find something she could use, but all that was there was the last of the two pieces of black lens she had scooped from the ground. The one she had been holding onto for when her wits were finally worn down and she could no longer stand the words of the shadows in her ear, or when she needed to escape to the Abyss. The one she could have used to escape the dungeon as soon as she was thrown back into it...
No, she thought. I can’t use it for that. I need it to see him. I need it to keep the voices out of my head.
“You must,” said the shadows, reconfirming her own disbelief.
The soldiers screamed and charged. The other two men met them, slapping at their spears with swords like they were attempting to bat away flies. In a few moments they would be overrun.
“Follow me,” said Requiem, limping in the opposite direction, but she knew there was no way he could escape. He fell back down to the ground.
“Alright,” she said, trying to convince herself, trying to convince the shadows what she was about to do was her own decision and not the shadows’.
She reached into her pocket and pulled free the final shard of black lens and brought it up.
“Do it,” said the shadows.
“You just want me to spend it so I’ll be forced to listen to you,” she shouted at the darkness.
The shadows laughed.
Requiem saw the nugget of black lens in her hand as he struggled to lift his head. “What are you waiting for?”
“I, I can’t.”
“You can,” barked Requiem.
“You must,” said the shadows, and it was said in such a voice that it sounded like her own. Like her sister’s, words she would throw down on Dash as she tried to shape her, mold her into something more than a street child, after their father’s fall.
Requiem must have noticed the panic on her face. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t.”
“You want me dead. That’s it. You want me a part of the Abyss.”
All the shadows did was laugh. And even as she heard the clangs of battle nearby and the anguished moans of Requiem beside her, the pang of giving up her last lens rang in more loudly than any violence or laugh of the shadows. She was giving up her retreat. She was giving up her peace. Most of all, she was giving up on her father.
For now. She would find more. She would have to. For now, she needed to survive.
It took all her power not to use her normal spell, the one she had said thousands of times over with a hunk of black lens in her hand, and instead recall the words she had experimented with so long ago.
“Meridatho lorin meshuran algaforian.” They flowed hesitantly at first, the weight of the situation bearing down on her so heavily that it made her throat tight and her own mind second-guess what came off of her tongue.
Mess up here and she’d not only lose the last of her black lens, but also their lives.
Yet as the final words left her lips, she felt the essence of the black lens pull through, and instead of staying, it left through her fingers. It left her like a black battering ram, yet it was not a physical thing. It was Abysmal. A gaseous bridge bore through the black exterior of the dungeon, leading to a faint purple light.
Astonished by her own creation, she looked at the temporary tunnel in amazement, blinking.
It was Requiem who snapped her from her daze. “Get through it!”
She tossed his arm over her shoulders and was surprised at how heavy he felt, but she bore the brunt of his weight, and together, they stumbled into the Abysmal passage.
Immediately the temperature changed to humid and moist. The smell of sulfur came to her nose, filling in all the senseless journeys she’d had in the Abyss with feelings. Her world turned purple and blue, like they were walking through a bruise. The purple light she had seen at the end of the tunnel now looked lighter, like something she could actually touch.
“Wait,” mumbled Requiem, and he hollered out of the passage, “Get in here!”
<
br /> The older man with the deep grey beard shoved one of the soldiers into the other, giving the younger of Requiem’s two companions a chance to run for the black-lens-made passage.
He shuffled in, swearing under his breath, looking back to see the older man running to catch up. He was still a few feet away when the passage started to narrow.
“Hurry up! It’s closing!” shouted Dash, and as soon as the words left her lips the bearded man fell to the ground, a spear sticking out of the back of his leg.
“Grey!” shouted the other. And he lunged, but Requiem grabbed him before he could sneak out.
“Leave him,” he growled. “The passage is going to squeeze us out.”
Dash watched on in shock. He was right. The Abysmal tunnel was narrowing at the edge facing the dungeon.
“Let go!” shouted the man with no hand. Requiem held his sword arm, but he struck out at the Scarred with his stump. As weak as he was, the blow did little to dislodge Requiem’s grasp.
A second later the other end closed entirely; their last view of the dungeon was of the soldiers pouncing on the bearded one with boots and fists.
“No!” the handless man shouted.
“Nothing we can do now,” shouted Dash, “unless you want to be squished!”
Though he didn’t look back he allowed himself to be dragged out by Requiem, who in turn was being dragged out by her.
All the while the shadows laughed, sounding right beside her, hawing in her ear, rooting for her failure like an angered mob.
She was breathing heavily, her lungs burning so strongly it felt like someone was putting a match to her chest. Yet even as it saved her life, she was lamenting the loss of the black lens.
“It’s closing,” grumbled Requiem.
And he was right. The passage was narrowing all around them.
She swallowed away her thoughts and pushed forward, using what little was left of her strength to pull Requiem and the still screaming, handless man, until they came to the edge of the tunnel.
“Shit,” she whispered.
The passage had allowed for their escape, but all it had brought them to was empty air. She peeked through the hole and saw they were not much higher than the Purple itself. A few minor spokes running from Bothane Rock into the mining tunnels on the wall of the mainland remained below, but the closest one was probably one hundred feet from their position. She looked up. A thicker spoke crossed the gap overhead, but it was still too far out of reach. The riveted side of Bothane Rock could be climbed, but neither she nor either of her companions were in any shape for such an adventure.