by Nhys Glover
I flashed to my last moments of consciousness. Laric had been telling them they’d made a mistake. They were taking the wrong person. Had they been leaving with just me at the time? I’d known they’d been trying to grab me, not Laric. But why, when he’d been their target for so long? And why had Laric offered himself up like that? He didn’t know where the circle was any more than I did.
“Laric?” I asked into the blackness, my voice soft and equally croaky.
“Who else were you expecting? Your weird little friend whose always joined at the hip to you? Well, not the hip anymore, I guess. And not so much a friend but a–”
“Can’t you stop with the insults for once?” I demanded tiredly.
I heard him sigh. It sounded like defeat, and I immediately wished he’d keep up the verbal jabs. At least it kept us from focusing on our dire situation.
“Do you want to use the time in here to end my dry spell? I’m not at my best at the moment, but I might be able to get it up, now I can’t see you.”
It was a pathetic attempt to continue the battle and he knew it, if his tone was anything to go by. I decided to ignore the jibe and focus on what had happened. Avoidance never did me any good, though I used it often enough anyway.
“They came for me. Why would they do that when before they’d always been after you?”
For a long moment there was silence, and then there was a noise—someone shifting position? How close was he? The darkness was deceptive. Laric sounded close, but not so near that I could reach out and touch him. Yet that might be an illusion. I extended my hand in the direction the voice had come from and the tips of my fingers encountered cloth. The cloth jerked away.
“Just me,” I assured him.
I felt him relax in my mind. Gods! I felt him... or feelings at least. Fear, relief, guilt.
“You felt my feelings?” He spoke my thoughts aloud.
Damn, he was getting better at that part of the mental connection too. Now it wasn’t just Landor who could read me like a book. I decided confessing my talents, as erratic as they now seemed to be around him, was the wisest course of action. He’d find out sooner or later anyway.
“The magic I was going to entertain you with at Trace’s meeting was my mind-reading ability. I thought someone would have told you that by now.”
He gave a half-hearted laugh. “No one confides in me. I’m still the enemy, remember?”
I heard the pain in his voice, as well as in his mind. He regretted so many of his choices, so many of his attitudes. If only he’d come in earlier. Maybe the priests would never have caught him, and he wouldn’t have then led them to us.
“You didn’t lead them to us. We came to you at the Goddess’ insistence. And they could have taken any of us in the last sun with that damned Soothsayer directing their actions. We don’t know why you were the one they targeted. So turning yourself in wouldn’t have safeguarded you, or any of us, from them.”
“Wow, you’re good. How long have you been reading my mind like that?” he sounded uncomfortable, as most people did when they realised I could invade their minds.
Pride surfaced as I registered his compliment. He said I was good. And I was, most of the time. I’d taken my magic for granted, until it stopped working properly. Now I saw how valuable it was. It may not be as useful in a fight as Zem’s strength and fighting magic, or Prior’s fire, but it was still useful and unique. I knew of no other mage like me.
I corrected myself, as I realised Landor was likely right about my magic still working just fine. After all, I could pick up other people easily enough. Like the priests who grabbed me. It was more that my men had the ability to unconsciously block me from their thoughts.
So why was Laric lowering his shields now? Was it because we were alone in this dire situation and needed each other?
Would he even think that way? I know I hated to see myself as needing him. But really... who else was there?
“Aye, who else is there?” he parroted off my last thought.
I cringed and was glad he couldn’t see the red burning its way up my neck and into my cheeks.
“You actually don’t look that bad blushing. That white freak, on the other hand...” He was trying for humour again. But even he could tell it fell flat, so he gave up trying.
My knee-jerk reaction had me firing back at him anyway.
“Don’t call Landor that!” I snapped. “And why did you tell them you knew where the ring was? You haven’t any better idea than the rest of us!”
I realised belatedly that, now I could read his mind, I was hoping he’d think his answer before he said it and I’d get honesty that way.
“A lass wouldn’t have been able to handle the torture they dole out. I was being gallant. I suppose I should now change that statement to won’t be able to handle the torture. That’s the last time I try to be gallant.” He said the last part with dry cynicism.
Truth. But there was more. The thought of me undergoing what he’d experienced had him almost fouling his breeches. Not just any lass. Me. He’d been terrified for me. And he still was. Gods, his terror was overwhelming when he focused on it.
But why? He didn’t even like me. Right from the start he’d been very vocal about my lack of feminine appeal. And I knew I hadn’t changed that much in the two intervening suns since then to change his opinion of me. Was this the Goddess’ work again, making someone who didn’t find me attractive suddenly find me worth risking his life for? I hated that idea. I just hated it!
“You should have let them take me,” I snapped. “You could have let the others know what had happened. Now no one will know. We’ll have disappeared the way Airsha disappeared from the rebel stronghold during the war.”
It was an ungrateful response to his sacrifice, given what he’d endured at the hands of the Devourers the last time, but I didn’t like thinking the Goddess was pulling his strings. And anyway, it was best if I needled him out of his terror. It would drown us both if I didn’t distract him.
“Someone saw us. One of the clerics opened the library door during the fight and then popped back inside again. Everyone will know and be looking for us. Though I doubt they’ll find us.”
That made me feel a little better. The thought that Zem wouldn’t know what had happened to me had been a constant worry in the back of my mind since I’d woken up in the dark. The idea that he could have been searching the stables, over and over again—like he’d done when Airsha disappeared—had filled me with a dread far worse than what I felt for my upcoming torture. I didn’t want him slipping back into that wounded boy again because of me. At least now he had a focus for his anxious mind and wouldn’t get lost in the mindless, repetitive circles that reminded me of a groundling chasing its tail.
“Where did they take us?” I asked, forcing myself out of my own tail chasing.
“No idea. I was knocked out. They sent in their biggest and most skilled fighters this time. I put one out of commission and wounded another badly, but it wasn’t enough.” He sounded defeated and almost resigned to his fate. Our fate!
“So we can’t be far from the old palace. Unless they used some kind of potion on us to keep us asleep, we’d have come around within a turn or so. Which means they’re still in the process of moving us to wherever they’ve taken the Godling. Maybe this is good luck. Maybe if we find where he is and esca–”
“Flame.” Laric pulled me up, his voice had become emotionless and dry as summer grasses in the Badlunds. “We won’t be escaping. These Devourers are exceptionally well organised. My escape, after months of torture, was a fluke. I got lucky. They won’t make that mistake again.”
I tried not to let his pessimism get to me. We’d really be lost if we gave up so soon. Especially when we were mere turns away from our people. There had to be a way to escape. There had to be!
Laric sighed, probably because he read my thoughts.
I began feeling my way around the darkness, using all the senses left to me. It was dank
but not muddy. It smelled of mouldering earth. The floor beneath me was dirt, so the chances were it was some kind of storage cellar dug out of the ground. Probably a root cellar or an ice room.
In winter, ice from Highlund was exported all over the kinglunds and stored in ice rooms beneath the ground to make it last as long as possible. Highlunders had recently invented boxes that insulated the ice from the outside temperature, but they were expensive and few people had them yet. Some Highlunders were against further work on the boxes as it put one of their major industries at risk.
What was I doing concerning myself with the economy of Highlund—or Highairshan as it was now called—when I’d been locked in a cellar by the Devourers? Focus! I needed to focus!
As this room didn’t feel quite cold enough for a cold room, I was leaning more towards root cellar. When my hands landed on hessian sacks filled with dirt-covered tubers, I knew I was right.
Most root cellars were either under a house or dug into the garden. In both cases, the door or hatch would be in the ceiling. Once I located the earthen wall, veined and threaded with fine roots from trees and plants nearby, I started to think that it was more than likely in a garden.
Which meant we were being kept in ‘storage’ until a later date. They would hardly steal us away and then leave us here to rot. Though, if they wanted to thwart the Goddess, leaving us to rot would do the trick. But if killing us had been the goal, they could have done that outside the library. But those priests had been thinking very clearly that they needed to take me alive.
So they wouldn’t leave us here to rot. They’d come back for us. When they did, I’d read their minds to find out what was going to happen to us. As long as the Soothsayer didn’t know about my ability, I could use it to get us more information. If I’d stayed behind, I could have interrogated the priests we’d knocked out. Pity there weren’t others with my skill among the mages.
Could the Goddess have allowed us to be taken just so we could find out crucial information that way? After all, she’d let Airsha be stolen away by Trace so that she could win him to our side.
The twinge of pain I always felt at the memory of Trace surfaced yet again, although now I could counter some of it with the knowledge that I was not responsible for his death. If Laric didn’t betray his brothers, then I wasn’t responsible for making him do so.
But guilt wasn’t the only thing that gnawed at me over Trace’s death. It seemed grossly unfair that he should die so soon after regaining his freedom and self-respect. And he’d fought so hard to stay alive after that beastling attack. If ever there was a man who wanted to live, it was Trace. Surely, the Goddess could have stepped in. Why did she warn us of some dangers and not of others?
I began to work my way up the wall until I was standing. Just. A taller person would likely have to bend over to get inside. Laric would have to bend over. Maybe we could use that fact to put pressure on the hatch when I found it.
My fingers worked their way across the roof, sending a hail of clods down on top of me as I went.
Coughing and sputtering as I got a mouth full of dirt, I heard Laric chuckling somewhere not far away. If I could have worked out exactly where, I would have kicked him. Instead, I ignored him and kept feeling my way.
At one point, I tripped over a bag of something lying on the ground and fell flat on my face. Strong hands closed around my upper arms and hauled me back onto my feet again. It was done wordlessly, and without any humour. I mumbled out a thank you and continued on.
After what felt like an age, I finally found the pair of wooden doors that kept the cellar closed off from the outside world. It was a well-sealed portal because not even a crack of light could be seen around the edges or through the boards. Alternatively, it could be night. But that would have meant far more hours had passed than I’d estimated.
Our morning meeting, where Laric filled us all in on his experiences with the Devourers, had finished up well before midday. We had then gone to the library, while the chancellor sent word to the mages to locate suitable visionaries or soothsayers who could help us.
My stomach had started grumbling just before Laric came over to harass me, so it was likely going on midday by then.
Laric should have been locked back up in his room after he’d been interviewed. Giving him a task in the library implied a level of trust I knew most of us didn’t have in him. But Airsha had been adamant that he was to be considered one of us now.
And he’d proven himself, hadn’t he? He’d tried to save me from the Devourers by offering himself up in my place. I wished I knew why. It had to be more than mere gallantry. Or fear for me. He hadn’t been just offering up his life for mine, he’d been offering to undergo endless, horrendous torture in my place. Not even the most gallant man did that for another. Unless...
No, there was no way he could have developed that depth of feeling for me in the time we’d known each other. If he did feel that way, then it was clearly the work of the Goddess. Not real. And certainly nothing to do with me.
But a nagging memory of a conversation I’d had with Landor kept pressing in on me. He’d said that the Goddess hadn’t made the bond between us, she’d simply utilized it. A soul could inhabit many bodies, or parts of that soul, and rarely would those pieces come together as one in a lifetime. You might meet one part—feel the love and connection that came with finding a part of your soul—and marry them, but the rest you would pass by because their life paths were different to your own.
So if Landor was right, and he was a very learned and intelligent man compared to me, then Laric was always a part of my soul, as was Landor, Zem and Prior. But only Zem and I had chosen to come together, because Airsha needed us and our life paths were compatible. Had the Goddess not required it, Landor might have lived his life out in that dark cellar. Prior might have enjoyed a productive, if lonely, life in Highairshan. And Laric would have become an anonymous fisherman. Or a target of mad priests who would have eventually caught him again and tortured him to death.
Which meant that what I felt for Zem and what he felt for me was not unique. Any one of the others could feel for me what Zem did. Which could mean that Laric truly did love me, whether he wanted to or not.
I wasn’t sure Landor’s theory made me feel any better than thinking the Goddess had made Laric love me. It still felt as if who I was didn’t matter. I could be a wart-faced hag with a cruel temper and the men of my harem would have still loved me. And Laric could have betrayed his brothers and killed Airsha with his nightmares, and I would still have loved him. That couldn’t be right.
I brought my mind back on task again. So, midday when we were taken. Could seven turns or more have passed since then? It didn’t feel like that was possible. My stomach was a little empty, but not much more than it had been in the library. And I was thirsty, but it felt like that was more because my throat hurt from where the bastard had nearly strangled me.
So it felt more likely that it was still daylight, and that was the reason we’d been stuffed in this root cellar. It was harder to move us in daylight than at night.
“I used my magic on the two who took us,” Laric said into the silence that had, up until then, only been broken by my breathing and my shuffling around.
I stilled instantly. Had I heard regret in his voice? Why? These were the bastards who’d tortured him. If he’d had the chance to turn the tables, why wasn’t he gloating about it?
“Because I hate what I can do. It makes me feel dirty every time I use it. Like it taints my soul.”
Ignoring his feelings, I focused on the best piece of news I’d heard since coming around in the dark.
“Then that’s good, isn’t it?” I said excitedly. “They threw us in here because they were getting tired. As long as there aren’t more of them...” And then I realised why he’d given up.
“You think that we’re going to rot in here, don’t you? You think those two are out there somewhere, lost in their nightmares, and no one else knows
where we are?”
I felt him shrug in his mind. “Either that or there are more of them ready to take us on to our next destination. If the Godling escaped in a barrel, then it’s likely there are a whole series of way-stations set up along the road to the Clifflings. And he couldn’t be left out in a house, as there were intensive searches going on all the time. That’s what the guards at the palace told me. So they’d use root cellars like this to hide him in during daylight hours.”
“This isn’t a very habitable place for someone like the Godling. There isn’t even a bed.”
“Yes, there is.”
My mouth dropped open and I gasped. He’d been lying on a bed all this time, while I’d been lying on the floor?
“How very gallant of you,” I muttered in fury.
“I woke up here. I didn’t call dibs on the only bed in the place.” His voice held a note of humour.
“When you woke up you could have... I don’t know...” I spluttered into silence, too incensed to make my mind work properly.
“I had just woken up when I heard you moving around. I didn’t even know it was you until you answered me. And then you were up and planning our escape. Would you have taken the offer of the bed, if I’d made it?”
Now he was just being sarcastic. He knew full well I wouldn’t have. Taking the bed would have meant I’d given up on escape, and that wasn’t going to happen.
Still, it was the principal of the thing...
While I’d been mulling over Laric’s gallantry, or lack thereof, my fingers had been testing out the hatch. The hinges were on the inside and seemed rusty, if the sharp, crusty surface under my fingertips was any indication. If I could get the screws out of the hinge plates, the doors would just lift off at the sides, even if there was a bolt holding the doors closed on the outside.
I tried to remember what the root cellar at Airsha’s homestead was like. It had two doors like this that opened outward. The hinges weren’t on the outside either. A metal rod slid between the handles to hold the doors closed. But the rod hadn’t been particularly sturdy, as it wasn’t designed to keep anyone out or in, just to stop the doors flapping in the wind or the groundlings from getting in.