by Sandra Elsa
The next morning, when Robin pounded on her door, Bella was already dressed. They rushed to the mess hall and Bella relayed the order Torel had given her the night before.
Robin shrugged. “I’ve been given no orders except to ride herd on you, so I guess I’m going with you. He didn’t offer up a clue?”
“Not a one.”
They hurried through breakfast and reported to the Guard HQ. As they entered the front office Sergeant Alva, came to attention. “Sir, Sergeant Alva and Corporal Gunter reporting as ordered.”
In response to a muffled command, the desk sergeant waved them back. Bella led the way to Torel’s office. The Captain was digging through a supply closet. When they entered the door, he turned around, a mail coat in his hands. He looked at Bella and asked, “Have you tried your mail on?”
She shook her head. It had been heavy enough toting it from where it had been issued to her. She put it in the chest, rather hoping to avoid the need of wearing it.
“Then you don’t know if it fits?”
Torel had completely missed, or ignored, the forlorn look that crossed her face when he said ‘mail’. Carrying the hauberk and coif he had just dug out of the closet he sat at his desk. He pushed the mail across to Bella. “I suspect what you were issued will be as large or larger than your uniforms. Try this on.”
She grunted as she picked it up. The padding wrapped snugly around her body. Sergeant Alva helped her slip the Hauberk over her head. The bottom fell just below her hips, the chest was a little tight and the shoulders a bit loose but Bella was sure it fit better than the issue would. Robin picked up the arming cap and tucked Bella’s hair underneath it. She followed the cap with the coif. Bella staggered under the weight.
Torel nodded approval. Then looked at Sergeant Alva. “You’ll need your mail as well.”
A small groan escaped her lips. Quickly stifled but not before Captain Torel heard it. “This isn’t a punishment detail. I’ll not have my Guards in the dungeon, unarmored. Meet us by the supply room.”
Without another word, Robin got up and left. Bella started to follow, but Torel called her back. “She is perfectly capable of putting her own mail on. I wish to speak with you. Have you figured out why you're going to the dungeons?”
Bella searched for any clue she might have overlooked. She came up with nothing and had to admit that.
“Your friend from Sergeant Marner’s farm is still a guest. Since you arrived in the compound, he seems to be coming out of his stupor. I want you to try to speak to him. Try to make some sense out of his words.”
“Sir, I told you before I don’t understand him. He barely speaks Ronese.”
“I've asked Baltor to cast a spell for you to learn Telgarn. We will stop to see him first.”
“I thought Baltor was just an initiate. Is a language spell so easy to do then?”
Torel opened the door of his office and Bella shuffled out behind him. She was glad now of the conditioning of months of walking with a pack. The mail wasn’t as bad as she had feared it would be, once she adjusted to the weight.
“Baltor may be just an initiate but he has access to the books of magic. He has agreed to abide by my wish that he not report you to the Wizards’ Corps. We don't want anybody else casting spells on you, unless perhaps you can do the spell yourself?”
With a snort, Bella said, “Not likely. If I tried it I’d end up speaking everything but Telgarn.”
She followed him across the Guard compound to one of the small vacant rooms on the ground floor of the palace. Mops and brooms occupied corners of the room. Baltor waited for them, looking decidedly guilty. Bella supposed he was violating some kind of rule doing this without approval from the Corps.
Torel calmed Baltor’s nerves. “If anyone finds out you did this, I will tell them I ordered it. She’ll need the spell before the end of winter anyway. There is no way she could learn the language well enough to pass for Telgarn in less than three months. Whom I choose to perform the spell, is my decision.”
Baltor went into a trance. When he turned his attention to Bella she did not have the sensation of his energy searching hers. It felt as though he were plucking at her strands of energy, twisting and weaving them together. Her heart raced as she resisted the urge to fight the intrusion. She was glad she had, when he emerged from his trance wide-eyed, a silent scream dying on his lips.
Baltor gained control of his mind again and looked at Bella with a frightened expression.
“What is it?” Torel demanded.
When Baltor did not answer, Torel asked, “Is it done?”
This time Baltor tore his gaze away from Bella long enough to say, “Yes Sir. It’s done. Please do not ask me to touch her energy again.” He turned his gaze back to Bella, examining her from head to toe. In a hushed voice he asked, “What are you?”
Torel placed a hand on Baltor’s shoulder and pulled him back from Bella. He spun him around and repeated his earlier question. “What is it that has you so scared?”
“I don’t know. If I could identify it, it wouldn’t frighten me so badly, but as soon as I touched her strands, they came alive of their own volition. By the time I finished, a second consciousness seemed to be contesting my right to play about with her power. There are odd streaks of color I’ve never seen in anybody else. My experience is limited but I've never even heard mention of these colors of spirit.”
Bella’s interest was piqued. She had not searched her own aura in months. She had gotten used to just grabbing for the familiar strands, and had nearly forgotten the varied hues of her energy, too weak for her to access.
Baltor continued. “The bloodred energy is the one that is so terribly powerful. She does not yet control it, and if she does not learn to do so, it may rise up and control her one day.” Baltor’s attention swung distractedly from Bella to Torel. “I've never seen such a thing. For her own good you should allow me to mention this to Commander Paulus.”
Bella and Torel both turned forbidding stares on him.
Huffing, Baltor said, “I’m sorry, Sir, but if you ever require anything that would put me up against that force again, you will have to apply through the Wizards’ Chain of Command.”
Baltor wrapped his blue robes around himself and scurried from the room without a backward glance. As he left, Bella turned her sight inward. The colors were stronger but the bloodred greeted her warmly. To her it was not frightening or threatening. It was still not strong enough to be of much use, even if she knew what feats of magic she could perform with its energy. She didn’t understand how something so weak could frighten Baltor so badly.
Torel’s questioning glance brought a negative shake of her head.
Robin was waiting in the hallway and Torel led them through a maze of passages to a set of stairs. The stairs descended into total darkness. Torches lit as they approached. A glance over her shoulder told Bella the lights dimmed, as soon as the small group was too far away to benefit from them.
As they climbed deeper into the earth, Bella shivered. She’d never been so far underground and every step brought a slightly more claustrophobic sensation. Contemplating the gloom above and below caused her to dread the next step.
Thirteen, fourteen... thirty-five, ...forty, right-hand turn. Counting stairs she tried not to think about how far down they were going. Three right-hand turns, then a walk down a short passage and Torel started down again. Twelve... twenty-two-... Bella stopped. She looked over her shoulder as the light above flickered out. Looking to the front, only dark greeted her. One more step would bring the next light on. She had the count now. Knew when each light would snap on, but between this step and the last, the light was dimmer than Johann’s brown ball of wizard light on a new moon. Her knees shook uncontrollably as she forced her feet to take the next step.
Behind her Robin nearly trod on her heels. The light came on and she rushed to its welcoming embrace. Fifteen more steps and the light above snapped out.
Bella stopped
.
She couldn’t do this.
Conall surged up in her mind. “Don’t think about the dark.”
“It isn’t the dark. Or it isn’t just the dark.”
He dug deeper than her surface fear. “You feel the weight of the earth about you. Your Gray-bearded friend would be in his glory in such a hole.”
“I am certainly not in my glory.”
Behind her, Robin pressed a hand between her shoulder blades. Bella surged forward moving away from the gentle press of fingers on her spine.
In front of her Torel halted. “Are you all right?”
Damp with sweat, her skin was cool and clammy. “I c-c-can’t d-do this , S-Sir.”
Anger darkened Torel’s eyes. “Why can’t you speak with this prisoner? You already have, at least once.”
Robin waited silently, not sure enough of what was happening to intervene.
“It’s n-not t-that, S-Sir.” Bella took the next step that brought the light on below them, then turned to look back up the stair well.
“Then what is the problem, Corporal?”
“I-I c-can-t-t go d-down.”
She felt Torel search her aura, felt his sapphire warmth wrap her mind. Felt a sudden surge of anger as Conall erupted in a flash of blue power that rivaled Torel’s. She felt her own rush of green intervene between the two, wrapping Conall in a controlling web. Conall didn’t fight her and the sapphire energy ebbed to the calm familiar presence. Torel backed away from her, eyes wide. When Conall calmed, she turned back to Torel. “I’m sorry, Sir. The dark and the earth are too much. He only knew that I was frightened. He felt you intrude and fought.”
She was distracted enough to forget her fears.
“That didn’t feel like he was protecting you.”
“But he was, Sir.”
She didn’t add, ‘He was protecting me from you‘. The unspoken words hung in the air between them.
“When we are through here, we need to talk, Corporal.” He glanced meaningfully up the stairs to Sergeant Alva. “Do you think you can go on now?”
“I’m all right for the moment, Sir.”
“If it gets too suffocating again. You have permission to light it up. The wizards don’t come down here unless their presence is requested. Nobody will feel you use the energy through the wall of earth.”
Bella sent three balls of light out, as soon as permission was granted. One spun brilliantly far below, one hung just overhead casting a green light with the brilliance of a noontime sun and up the stairs a third globe hung. Conall chattered in her mind, keeping her distracted from where she was. She chastised him for his jealousy.
Robin just stared. Her eyes swinging without comprehension from one green globe to the next, then down to Bella.
Torel caught Sergeant Alva’s gaze, and ordered, “Not a word, Sergeant.”
She mutely nodded.
In this manner they descended one more long flight of stairs. Walked down a longer hallway, followed by a short flight of steps. At the last turning, just before the hallway went down again, Bella noticed an alcove on the inside bend of the hallway.
A Guard was posted there. His eyes did not rise to the globes of light. He stood at attention and saluted Torel as he paused.
Torel returned the salute, “All quiet, Corporal?”
“All quiet, Sir.”
Down the stairs, around a final corner and Torel motioned for Sergeant Alva to come up beside him. A hall of doors with bars in the windows opened off the bottom of the stair. It did not smell anywhere near as bad as Bella remembered the dungeons of her fairytales smelling, but there was still an odor of unwashed bodies and unemptied chamber pots. Or if she chose to believe the fairy tales soiled straw. Perhaps a pit in the floor.
Her mind was running away from her. Conall said, “They have chamber pots. These are not common prisoners. They are the King’s prisoners.”
Faces occupied some of the doors, staring out in wonder at the dancing green lights. Bella wondered how long they had been kept here in this hole under the earth. No matter what the cause, Bella couldn’t contemplate a punishment earning her being locked far away under the earth, in the dark. She was glad she had her own light source. She would lose her mind in less than a day if she had to remain down here in a cell.
In the fourth cell on the left side, a familiar face hovered. The Telgarn called out to her happily. “Lady Pink. You have come to help me.”
Torel looked at her, but she shook her head. “I'm here at Captain Torel’s bidding.”
Baltor had wrought his spell effectively. She could not even tell she was not speaking her own language.
Torel examined the prisoner. “Now you can talk?”
The man in the cell looked delighted. “Now I can talk. Without, Lady Pink, I am not myself.”
Torel glanced at Bella, then back to the prisoner. “She seems to do that to people.”
Bella was more concerned, with the Telgarn’s statement. “How do you mean, ’You are not yourself.’”
“I'm not able to think. But I felt you coming, for days. I owe you my life Lady, but something happened when you Healed me. I fear this hole in the ground, and yet I used to stand guard in holes deeper than this.” His gaze was caught by one of the spinning globes. “As you came down the steps, I knew the fear was yours, not mine.”
“How do you mean?”
Torel signaled a Guard at the end of the Hallway. The sergeant came forward and when Torel indicated the door, he removed a key ring from his belt and opened the cell. The prisoner limped to the back of the small dank room without being ordered to. The chamber pot stood beside the doorway. A long wide plank hung from the far wall covered by a single blanket.
She understood why this man would have been rocking in a corner. Especially if, as she began to suspect, some of her personality had seeped into his as they lay connected by the Healing aura.
Torel said, “He has now spoken more words than he has since my men picked him up. He has been nearly unconscious for months now, eating, sleeping, rocking, and muttering the same thing over and over.”
The man looked sullenly at Torel. “You do not know the hell I have lived in since Lady Pink left my side.”
“Enlighten us then, since you seem to have found your tongue.”
A sour look was all Torel earned. “I've told you what you wish to know, hundreds of times. I will not tell you again.”
Bella stepped forward and from his seat on the wooden plank, the man leaned forward. Her mind likened him to an animal eager for the touch of its mistress. She shrank from his need, but asked him, “Will you tell me what they want to know?”
“I'll tell you anything you wish, Lady, but they must leave.”
Torel walked out of the cell. Sergeant Alva cast a doubtful glance over her shoulder but obeyed her commanding officer. Bella was armed, not only with magic but with her sword and throwing daggers. Before the door closed, Bella called all three globes of light through it.
The man sitting on the bench across from her was young. Far younger than he had looked while she battled death for him.
He moved off the bench and knelt at her feet. “I know what you did for me Lady. I know you almost gave your life for me, and though I may end my days in this cell, I am yours to command.”
Bella backed away uneasily. “Please get up. You can’t be comfortable kneeling on the ground. I pulled the shards of bone from your side, I know how much pain you must still live with.”
“But I live. That is a miracle.”
“Let me see if I can do anything about the way you're bonded to me first. Then I'll try to mend the bone. What is your name?”
“I am called Dalanor, Lady. I would appreciate it if you could sever the tie, so I am not so paralyzed here in the dark, but you have done enough for me. Do not take my pain. You’ll not be able to climb the steps.”
Conall seconded the man’s words. “He does not need to move much. How will you get to Angel if you take
his pain? You are losing strength there, underground.”
His words were not lost on Bella. But she was determined to finish the job she started. “I would think the power of the earth would be greater here.”
Conall did not respond. So she searched out his mind. He did not respond because she was right and he had no answer. The golden brown energy should have been strong here. But it wasn’t, he was not lying about that. She checked herself and wondered briefly if Baltor had done something to her. All her colors were dim, except the bloodred that had frightened him. She reached out to this new strength and the globes of light cast a reddish tinge.
Dalanor cringed. “I'm sorry if I angered you Lady. You may do with me as you wish.”
She laid a gentle hand under his chin and forced him to rise. “You have not angered me. It is just a stronger source of energy. I can use the green if you're more comfortable with that, but my energy fades here, underground.”
The man, turned his eyes to her feet, he bowed his head. She touched his shoulder, lightly pushing him back toward the bunk he had risen from. Her soft touch brought his eyes back to her face, they glowed with a light she‘d only seen in priests who claim to commune with their particular God or Goddess. The thought caused her a moments uneasiness, and in her head, Conall whined, “Stay away from him, Bellana.”
“After what you did to Torel, you’re lucky I haven’t blocked you from my mind.”
Conall withdrew--defeated in the face of her anger.
In front of her, Dalanor backed up to his bunk. She checked his aura. She was unable to see where the connection was. Perhaps Angel… That would require getting Dalanor outside.
If Torel consented, she could do it. But first Dalanor would need to climb all those stairs. She looked to the dull gray in his aura. The wound had sealed well enough where she stitched it, but the missing intestine and bone fragments, prevented a complete recovery. She also saw a crookedly healed fracture she had missed in the initial Healing.
“Lay down,” she ordered, uncertain as to the wisdom of directing him by touch. He complied and she knelt beside him.
She used the process she had perfected for Healing poorly healed bones. Instead of drawing out the calcium deposits, she redirected them to create new bone to replace the missing. She reached out to the earth surrounding her and drew the needed minerals through the dirt floor. Transforming them to magical energy, she finished the task of rebuilding the bone. Then she knit together the old fracture and attempted to stand up.
The door opened the moment she grunted with the pain of Dalanor’s injury. Torel stood in the doorway, watching as she tried to get to her feet. Anger suffused his voice. “What has he done?”
The man in question was prone on the bed; afraid he’d catch a knife in the chest if he moved. Bella hobbled across to the doorway. “He has done nothing. I need to see Angel.” She indicated the prisoner, “Dalanor needs to come along.”
She limped past Torel and hoped he would do as she requested. Asking for a prisoner to be allowed outside might be pushing how far he would let her go. The globes of light followed Bella and inside the cell, Dalanor shrieked, “Do not leave me in darkness.”
Chapter 35