Souldrifter

by Garrett Calcaterra

  “And this shouting you call negotiating has been going on all day?” Makarria demanded.

  The man cast his eyes downward. “Yes. Negotiating and fighting, Your Majesty.”

  “Pass word to Prince Caile to come speak to me. If he objects, tell him it’s a royal command.”

  The soldier did as he was told and passed word to the man in front of him. The chain message made its way through the ranks, and a minute later the yelling ceased and Caile pushed his way back through the soldiers. He was not happy to see Makarria, as was evident by his deep scowl.

  “Why are you down here? It’s not safe.”

  Makarria met his glare with her own steely gaze. “Clearly. Otherwise you would have returned hours ago. What’s happening?”

  “A standoff is what’s happening! A very dangerous one that’s already cost us two men. You need to go back outside and wait. I promised your mother I wouldn’t let you come to harm.”

  “You and Lorentz and my mother can all lecture me later,” Makarria retorted. “We’re here to rescue people, not to see more die, and I’m not about to stand idly by when my power can help.”

  Makarria watched as the anger went out of Caile. He couldn’t stay angry with her any more than she could with him. They had gone through too much together over the last year in trying to remake Valaróz the realm it deserved to be. In every hearing, every council meeting, and every court appearance, Caile had been there at Makarria’s side, coaching her along, supporting her decisions, even when they were wrong. And when the official work was over, he was the first to crack a joke to lighten her spirits, or to sneak her out of the palace to explore Sol Valaróz in plain clothes. She realized that the anxiety she had felt waiting outside the prison had less to do with freeing Conzo and the other prisoners of Khal-Aband, and more to do with worrying about Caile’s safety.

  “Can we go save some people now,” she asked him, “or are you going to lecture me some more?”

  With an exasperated sigh, Caile brushed his neck-length blond hair back from his face. In the blue light of Makarria’s lantern, his stubbly beginnings of a beard shone almost silver. “Fine,” he relented. “But please stay behind me and do as I say if more fighting breaks out.”

  “We’ll see. Now tell me what’s going on.”

  “The passage turns to the right up ahead and there are a half dozen side passages with at least a dozen guards holing themselves in. We caught them unaware at first. Half of them surrendered, but then their leader riled the others up again. We had to retreat. They have a ballista of some sorts—a giant crossbow on wheels. It punched a bolt right through Brunco’s shield and chainmail. Rocio got it in the back. Both of them are gone. If we try to go around the corner, we’ll get it too.”

  The news of the fallen soldiers left Makarria heavy inside, but she focused on the task at hand. If she had learned anything as a new queen, it was that ruling was rife with sacrifice and remorse. If she let it weigh her down, she’d not be fit as a queen.

  “You’ve spoken with the leader?” she asked Caile. “Tried to treat with him?”

  Caile nodded. “The man is unreasonable. I’ve explained the situation. He believes well enough that Emperor Guderian and Don Bricio are dead, I think. I mean, he has to know something has changed—it’s been a year since they’ve received any new prisoners, and probably provisions.”

  “That might explain the bodies in the chamber above,” Makarria said.

  “You saw inside? We weren’t able to see anything, but I had my suspicions.”

  “It’s horrible, Caile. I’m afraid we’ve come too late to rescue Conzo, or anyone, for that matter.”

  “Don’t give up hope yet. The leader told me he’d kill the rest of the prisoners if we don’t retreat. I suppose he might be lying about there still being prisoners, but why would the guards have all stayed here if there was no one to guard anymore?”

  “I hope you’re right,” Makarria said. “Go on, take me to the front then. Let’s see if this leader of theirs will trust me more than he trusts you.”

  Caile nodded and led the way with Makarria and Lorentz right on his heels, the three of them worming their way single file past their soldiers in the cramped corridor. When they reached the front of the line, Caile held up a hand for them to halt and Makarria extinguished her blue light. The corridor curved to the right at a sharp angle. Beyond that was only sputtering torchlight and shadows. The air reeked now not of decay and rot, but of dust and the metallic sourness of spilled blood. Makarria could glimpse the shadowy forms of her fallen soldiers lying on the passage floor a short distance away.

  “Who here is in charge of Khal-Aband?” Makarria shouted, still angry she hadn’t insisted on coming with Caile from the outset. She could have saved those men.

  Harsh whispers emanated from around the corner, and then a clear voice. “I’m in charge here. Warden Aymil. Who speaks? Is that a woman?”

  “Don’t say your name…” Caile started to say, but Makarria ignored him.

  “I am Makarria Pallma, Queen of Valaróz, Dreamwielder. Don Bricio is slain and along with him Emperor Thedric Guderian and the sorcerer Wulfram. The Sargothian Empire is no more and the Five Kingdoms once again thrive as independent nations. I am here to relieve you of your duty, Warden Aymil, or reassign you if you wish to continue your service as a loyal servant of Valaróz. Either way, you must come with me. Khal-Aband will be no more. The prisoners will be released and retried for their crimes, if indeed they committed any. The prison will be sealed and collapsed.”

  “A dreamwielder, said you?” the man asked, forcing a laugh. “Such evil was eradicated from our land a long time ago.”

  Makarria closed her eyes and through his voice she could envision him, hunkered down thirty paces away behind the massive crossbow mounted on wheels. Warden Aymil’s once dark complexion had turned sallow and the skin hung from his limbs loosely, nearly indistinguishable from the tattered remnants of his uniform. Makarria could see it all through his voice—a dream vision of the flesh and blood man hiding in the shadows. His hair and beard hung in long, feculent strands down past his shoulders.

  “You heard correctly—I am a dreamwielder,” Makarria said, dreaming his whiskers and hair into a bouquet of sweet violets to prove her point. “And I’m not evil. I come in peace.”

  Warden Aymil shouted out in surprise and Makarria could hear the men around him muttering to one another as they took in the sight of their leader suddenly cloaked in flowers.

  “You have my word, all of you,” Makarria said. “We mean you no harm. Too many have suffered and died already. Disarm your crossbow, drop your weapons and we’ll take you back to the sun of Sol Valaróz unharmed. You have my word, as granddaughter of Parmenios Pallma, as the true heir to the throne of Vala.”

  More muttering, only to be silenced by Warden Aymil.

  Caile leaned in closer to Makarria. “They’ve been down here so long I think they’re afraid of the sun.”

  “You swear in Vala’s name you won’t hurt us?” one of the prison guards hollered.

  “Silence!” Warden Aymil yelled, clubbing the man with the blunt end of a spear. Makarria could feel the feral anger in him.

  “If we could only convince their leader, the others would fall into line,” Makarria whispered to Caile.

  Caile shook his head. “Trust me, it’s not going to happen. I tried. We’re going to have to take them by force.”

  “Can you disable that ballista?” Lorentz asked. “You know, close your eyes and dream it into something else? With the ballista out of the way, we can make short work of them.”

  “I can disarm it, yes, but we’re not attacking,” Makarria said. She’d already lost two men. She wouldn’t watch more die, not if she could help it. “I swear in Vala’s name I will hurt no man who lays down his arms and swears fealty to Valaróz!” she shouted into the passageway. “If I wanted to hurt you I could do so now without bothering to waste my breath.” She closed her eyes and visual
ized the wooden stock frame of the ballista. She pushed the energy in and around her into the timber and ignited it, bypassing open flames altogether and triggering instead an instantaneous combustion of wood into ash, which crumbled away before the prison guards’ eyes. Makarria gathered the heat released from the combustion and held it at the ready to draw upon if need be. “You see my power, now trust me. I mean you no harm.”

  There was a long moment of silence. Makarria held her breath, hoping to hear the sound of swords and pikes dropping to the ground. Instead, it was Warden Aymil’s voice that shattered the silence.

  “She’ll kill us all! Execute the prisoners!”

  “No!” Makarria shouted, nearly unloosing the ball of pure energy into the man but catching herself at the last moment.

  No more killing!

  Instead she re-imagined Warden Aymil; immediately, his arms flopped to his sides, his legs went stiff, and he fell to the floor. Makarria dreamed the impediment of his clothing away and the skin of his torso expanding to encase his limbs—binding his arms to his sides and his legs to one another with his own flesh. She’d seen the skeleton of a sea creature once, a small whale of some sort, and had been fascinated to find its tailbones were comprised of legs that could never walk. Makarria imagined it in her mind, a Warden Aymil with arms and legs still, but now a part of his body, buried beneath a layer of skin.

  She released the energy and made it so.

  Warden Aymil screamed out in terror, so Makarria enclosed the skin of his lips over his mouth.

  The sounds of guards scrambling around, swords clacking—a key ring jingling—echoed down the chamber. Even with her eyes closed in a dreamstate, she could hear it all.

  “STOP!” she shouted, her voice sounding far away to her, disembodied almost. “ALL OF YOU, STOP!”

  Not a single soldier or guard so much as whispered.

  Makarria opened her eyes only to find herself sitting on the ground, propped up in Caile’s arms. Her head swam with dizziness.

  She had collapsed, she realized.

  “Guards of Khal-Aband!” Caile shouted above her, “Lay down your weapons and place your hands on your heads! Our men will bind you, but only until we return to the safety of Sol Valaróz. You heard the promise of the dreamwielder. Even Warden Aymil she has spared.”

  The clanking of swords and spears dropping to the floor echoed down the passageway.

  “Go,” Caile ordered his men, urging them forward to take the guards prisoner.

  The soldiers rushed past Makarria with manacles and chains in hand, and Caile looked down at her, brushing her hair back to see her face. “Are you all right? What happened?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, not wanting to admit to herself even that she had almost pushed herself too far. “It just took a bit out of me to transform the warden, I guess. Here, help me up.”

  Lorentz was there, too, and the two of them helped Makarria to her feet.

  “That was foolish, but well done,” Lorentz said, placing a hand on her shoulder.

  Makarria smiled. “It will be worth it if we’ve managed to rescue Conzo, or anyone else even. Any enemy of Emperor Guderian and Don Bricio who earned imprisonment here is probably a friend of ours.”

  “We can hope,” Caile said, turning to Lorentz. “If you’ve got Makarria, Lorentz, I’ll go make sure we have all the prison guards secure.”

  “Yes, go,” Makarria told him, eager to search the cells for survivors.

  Caile trotted off to oversee the binding of the prison guards, and a few minutes later the first of them was ushered past Makarria and Lorentz, the guard’s hands manacled in front of him. Makarria smiled for him and said thank you, and also to the next guard, and the next, showing them that her words were not empty, trying to put them at ease as much as she could, although her own thoughts kept turning now to whether the man known as Conzo was still alive back there somewhere. According to legend, Conzo had been a simple beggar when Emperor Guderian and Don Bricio stormed Sol Valaróz thirty-five years before to kill the royal Pallma family, but that atrocity had transformed Conzo into something much more. A patriot until his capture two decades later, Conzo was a constant thorn in Don Bricio’s side, stealing from imperial tax collectors, sneaking prisoners out of the dungeons, painting the words “Usurper!” and “Murderer!” on all of Don Bricio’s coaches in the shroud of night, and perfoming all sorts of other vigilante acts that turned him into a folk hero among the people of Sol Valaróz. Even now, fifteen years after his capture, people still spoke of Conzo, the man who stood up against tyranny and fought for the common people. If he was still alive, Makarria meant to make him one of her counselors, a public official that her people knew and trusted. It might just be what she needed to finally gain their confidence.

  The last of the prison guards were being ushered past Makarria, and she smiled at them absently, still caught up in her own thoughts. She didn’t even notice one of the shackled guards pull a dagger from the front of his trousers and lunge toward her. Luckily, Lorentz did.

  Lorentz jumped forward and the two men tumbled to the floor, grunting, Lorentz’s hands locked around the guard’s manacled wrists to hold the dagger at bay.

  “Caile!” Makarria screamed, but before Caile was halfway there it was all over.

  The guard inexplicably went limp in Lorentz’s grasp and stared in horror up at him. “No,” he whispered as Lorentz tore the dagger from his grip and plunged it into his chest.

  “Wait!” Makarria yelled, but it was too late.

  Lorentz stabbed him twice more in quick succession, and the man was dead, bleeding out onto the dust and gravel of the tunnel floor.

  “No! Lorentz, why?”

  Lorentz stood slowly and turned to regard her. “My apologies, Your Highness. It won’t happen again.”

  A chill ran down Makarria’s spine. It was Lorentz’s voice she heard, but something was wrong. He rarely addressed her formally except in court. Had he been shaken? More afraid, perhaps, than Makarria realized?

  “What happened?” Caile demanded, rushing to her side.

  “This scum tried attacking the queen,” Lorentz replied.

  Caile looked from the slain prison guard to Makarria and saw the horrified look on her face. “You did well, Lorentz. Go with the others and make sure we don’t have any more problems with the prison guards. I’ll stay with Makarria now.” He put an arm around her to keep her steady, and she gratefully leaned into his shoulder, shocked by the sudden violence, even after everything else she had seen.

  The last of the guards was ushered past them, or at least the last of the mobile guards. One of Makarria’s soldiers had to pick up Warden Aymil like a sack of potatoes and throw him over his shoulder to carry him out. The warden’s eyes bulged at Makarria as he was lugged by, but Makarria hardly noticed him. Even in Caile’s arms, she felt disoriented. Dizzy. Everything had happened so fast, and using her powers had drained her.

  “Go on, all of you,” Caile said. “Wait for us at the camp. Makarria and I will see to freeing the prisoners. Send a few men back down once the guards are secure to grab our fallen men.”

  Lorentz nodded wordlessly and followed the soldiers back out the way they had come. Makarria watched him go, still unnerved by the death she had witnessed, but Caile was tugging at her hand for her to follow him deeper into the cavern. “Are you up for this?” he asked, jingling the key ring to the prison cells.

  “Yes.”

  Her dizziness and all thoughts of Lorentz were washed away by the prospect of finally releasing the prisoners they had come to save. Especially Conzo.

  Seeing her look of determination, Caile grabbed a torch from a wall sconce and led the way. They walked past the pile of ashes that minutes before had been the ballista, and then through another barred gate. The cells were embedded into the wall to their right. Caile unlocked the first one, peered in and shook his head. He started to close the door again, but Makarria stopped him.

  “I need to see,” s
he told him.

  “But, Makarria…”

  “It’s all right. I saw the room with the corpses. I can handle this.”

  Caile closed his eyes and let her pass. She peered through the doorway and saw the prisoner lying on the floor, half decapitated, his atrophied, mangled neck still tenuously holding head and body together.

  “The guards panicked in the moment before you stopped them,” Caile said. “Followed the orders of their warden until the end. There was nothing we could have done to save him.”

  “Is it him? Is it Conzo?”

  “Who can say?”

  Makarria could only nod. Whoever he was, she had failed him.

  Caile grabbed Makarria’s hand and the two of them moved on to the next cell. Inside was another dead prisoner, but this man had died of starvation, not execution.

  “For the love of Vala, please tell me some of them survived,” Makarria whispered.

  They moved on and she had a moment of hope in the next cell, but when they called out to the man lying on the floor he did not respond. Caile went to him and checked his breathing. “Gone,” he said, shaking his head in disappointment. “And recently. He’s still warm. He must have heard the yelling and known that his rescuers were here, but it was just too much for his weak body. All of them are starved. Even the guards. They’ve been cut off for nearly a year now, ever since Don Bricio’s death. No supply ships, nothing. I don’t know how they managed to survive this long. Perhaps those corpses you saw…”

  Makarria motioned for him to stop, not wanting to even entertain what he was suggesting. They continued on wordlessly, past a series of empty cells, and then a larger cell—a torture chamber furnished with the most barbaric tools of the trade. Makarria shivered at the sight of the rack, the shelves of pliers and pincers, and, in the far corner, the drowning table. Bloodstains covered the stone floor like inky shadows beneath the flickering light of Caile’s torch. How many of those people in the burial chamber were murdered here? Makarria wondered. And how many more were murdered before them during Don Bricio’s and Emperor Guderian’s long reign? How many young, hidden-away sorcerers like myself were given up under the pains of torture?