by Sarah Dalton
The realisation hit her like a runaway horse, hard and fast. It made her insides slither and squirm in fear. She stared uselessly down at the iron chains around her feet.
“That’s right,” Valeria continued. “You are never getting out of this. You will die in this prison. Now come on.”
“What?”
Valeria pushed her shoulder with the heel of her palm. “Walk.”
“Where am I going?” The tightness wrapped around her chest and Reva felt as though she could not breathe. Something was wrong. She searched the faces of the other prisoners around them in the courtyard. That was when she saw Rosa’s smirk and cold eyes. No.
“You are coming with me.” Valeria pushed her forward, forcing Reva’s legs to finally move.
She shuffled along next to Valeria with the weight of the other prisoners’ faces watching her with every step. She could do nothing but allow the hateful woman to guide her towards the west guard tower. When she saw the building looming ahead, bile rose in her throat. It was a common threat, but Reva had never heard of it actually happening. The Sisters said it all the time, said they would give you to the guards. The men lived far away from their homes surrounded by women young and old. Men had needs, the same as women but sometimes fiercer. Her legs did not want to move, she did not want to continue. If only she could run away—but she could not.
“Not there,” she begged. “Not the tower.”
But Valeria pushed her forwards, digging her knuckles into the small of Reva’s back. They kept going, closer and closer towards the tower, inching forward. When Reva slowed down, Valeria cracked her whip and Reva fell to her knees. Then the Sister grasped her by the hair and yanked her back to her feet. She stumbled, tripped, and sobbed as Valeria pulled her into the tower. Reva bit her lip and tried to calm her pounding heart in the gloom of the tower. She wrapped her arms around her body, cowering beneath the penetrating gaze of the guards. One glanced up from his plate of fresh peach and figs to wink at her. Another paused from sharpening his blade to eyeball her with a hungry stare. Where are these men from? she thought. Are they felons? Petty thieves… or worse?
But Valeria pushed her away from the guards and into a narrow hallway with a low stone ceiling that Reva would be able to touch if she lifted her hands above her head. The air was close and hot, and took the breath from her lungs. The corridor sloped down, with torches burning on either side, the flames almost touching Reva’s shoulders as they walked down deeper into the bowels of the tower.
What is this place? she thought. The corridor came out to a long room filled with iron cells on one side, and a wall dripping with moisture on the other. The smell made her gag; it was mould and excrement and rot mixed into a repulsive concoction. Valeria pushed her past the iron cells as she nodded to a guard sat at a crooked wooden table on the side of the room with the dripping wall. He looked up from picking his nails with his blade.
“Put her in a cell,” Valeria ordered. “The one at the end.”
Reva’s eyes followed Valeria’s gaze along the row of cells to a wooden door set in the stone wall of the tower. There was a barred window the size of a loaf of bread part way up the door. She shivered.
“Right you are, Sister,” said the guard. Reva regarded him for the first time. He was older, perhaps fifty, with grey in his beard and lines etched into his skin. But he moved with ease and held his knife as though he knew how to use it. “Come with me, lass.”
When his fingers wrapped around her arm, Reva shivered again. She tried not to look at those filthy hands touching her. She decided to obey by walking in step with the guard as he led her towards the dark, heavy door at the end of the room. When she turned back, she saw Sister Valeria smiling, and running the length of her whip through her fingers. I have never hated a woman so much as her, Reva thought, and the thought unsettled her.
The guard used two keys to unlock the door, and a heavy bolt to open it. The cell itself was more like a coffin than a room, barely wider than the span of her arms. Her chest was tight again. She could not breathe as the heavy door slammed behind her. She had told herself to stay calm and be brave, but she sank to her knees and sobbed instead.
“I wanted to make a difference,” she said to the cold, stone floor. “I wanted them to be happier.” But she had brought pain to herself instead.
It was there, in an untidy heap on the ground, sobbing and gasping for breath, that she eventually fell into a slumber. She did not know how she fell asleep, only that it must have been caused by pure exhaustion. After all, she was little more than a bag of bones after weeks of travelling through Estala on the run from Prince Stefan’s men, and then working with little food or water until her body hurt all over. She was glad of the sleep, glad that the darkness overtook her and erased her memories, if only for a short while. If only they could be erased forever, because the pain of waking almost made the sleep not worth the respite.
Because the cell was so small, she was not able to lie with her legs straight, and she woke with terrible cramps in her legs, and an ache in her knee joints. She climbed to her feet and circled the small room. Five steps, she thought. Five steps and I have walked the entirety of my cell. At one time her spacious chambers had seemed confining and suffocating; now she knew what true confinement was.
A clanging sound made Reva gasp, and at first she thought the cell door was being opened, but then she saw the glint of light coming through the door, the size of a letter. Through the draw fell a cup of water, spilling on the stones. Her throat was raw and dry. She lurched forward and caught the cup at the last moment, draining the few mouthfuls left in the vessel. Then she snatched the moulding bread from the ground and devoured it, mould and all. An hour later her stomach lurched as if to vomit the contents, but Reva sat and focused her mind until the urge went away.
She sat like that for a long time, doing little but thinking and listening. Sometimes she heard the voices of the guards chatting to each other. Every time the sound of voices drifted up to her cell she expected the door to open and she wrapped her arms around her legs and pressed herself up against the wall, but no one came. Once she overheard a conversation between two guards gossiping about another guard and a Sister. The conversation was crude and explicit, to the point where Reva wondered if it was true. She could not imagine any of the Sisters performing the acts they spoke of, but then before she had been taken to the prison she could not have imagined a Sister killing her handmaid or whipping a child until she bled.
In the dark, solitary cell, Reva found herself falling into a rhythm. She would sit and listen intently to the sounds of chatter when her water and bread fell through the opening in her door. Afterwards, she would fall into an uneasy sleep where she dreamed of the people she once knew: Ammie, Francis, Luca, her parents, even the king. Then she would wake with cramp in her muscles and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, so dry she considered licking the moisture from the stones. After the sleep she would walk her five steps around the cell over and over until she was dizzy. Then she would sit and eventually fall asleep, before hunger gnawed at her belly until the bread came again.
There were times when the cell was so hot she sweated until her tunic was stiff beneath the arms, and then there were times when she was so cold she huddled into a ball and wrapped her arms around her bones for warmth. When a rat came to visit she fed him a crumb from her bread. But when she tried to stroke his dark fur, the rodent crawled back through whatever hole he had emerged from.
At one point Reva played with the tiny slit of light coming from the barred window of her door. She lifted her arms and moved them, watching the light travel over her skin, marvelling at the layers of dirt that caked her. There was little way of knowing time. The light from her door never faded, never extinguished. She had no way of knowing whether the food she received always came at the same time, or whether the guards brought it at their own wont. At one time she tried to count the amount of times the bread and water had been delivered, but she soon l
ost count. Her thoughts fractured, to the point where she could no longer concentrate on anything for any more than short amount of time.
But she was lucky that at least Ammie would visit. She ran her fingers over Ammie’s chest and marvelled at the job they had done sewing her up and piecing her back together.
“Did it hurt?”
“Oh, no. Well, perhaps for a moment.”
“Did you see your family?”
“Of course. They hugged me and told me that I must come back to you, that you needed me.”
“I always need you, Ammie.”
“But you should not.” Ammie lowered her head and fixed Reva with a penetrating glare. “You should need yourself and yourself alone. Who do you think is going to help you now? Who do you think will rescue you? Who do you think will help you?”
“Why, you, Ammie. Is that not what you always do?”
Ammie shook her head. “Why don’t you fight, Reva? You used to be so good at fighting.”
“I tried. I told them my story. We… we told each other our stories, but look what happened. The Sisters locked me in here. I am dying, I know it. I am wasting away until I will be no more than bones on top of stones. I am fading.”
“No. You are not wasting away. I should know about bones, Reva. You are not yet bones. You know what to do.”
“I do?”
“Yes. You know how to fight. And you know how to be clever.”
Ammie leaned forward and whispered in Reva’s ear.
That was when she heard the sound of the bolt scraping open and a key turning in the lock. The great door was heaved open, and two faces emerged from the doorway. Reva began to cry as Ammie disappeared, leaving her with Sister Valeria and the old guard with the greying beard.
“She’s been talking to herself for hours, that one,” said the guard.
Valeria smiled down at Reva. “It’s time for you to leave, merchant girl.”
A strong hand reached down and pulled Reva up from her armpit. She tried to stand up straight, but her weakened legs buckled beneath her, forcing Valeria to take her weight. Reva realised at that moment that she was crying, and that tears were dripping down her chin.
She cried as they dragged her back up to the guard’s living quarters, and cried when they pulled her out into the bright sunshine that made her screw her eyes shut in pain. She cried as they dragged her through the courtyard, and cried as they dumped buckets of cold water over her and threw a clean tunic at her. She even cried as they took her to the hall and left her to change.
But when Sister Valeria left the hall, Reva stopped crying, because she knew what to do.
Stefan
Sweat soaked his brow and seeped through his jerkin. The Xanti sun emanated its relentless heat, sizzling Stefan’s skin and turning him a shade akin to Brother Mikkel’s potions. He had tried to stay in the shade for as long as he could, but that meant staying away from his generals, and missing out on what they had to say. However, it turned out that they had little to say, at least while they waited for the scouts to return from their mission. Stefan regarded the Shadow Valley with disdain. It was too open, too vulnerable. They had been travelling through it for days and he hated it.
After the death of the merchant, Stefan had sent scouts through the valley to find the rebel camp. They came back with news that his battalion was visible from the foothills of the Ash Mountains and that was too dangerous. All the rebels had to do was climb the highest of the foothills next to great Zean and they would see his entire unit, horses, archers, all of them. Then they would lose their main advantage—surprise. With Brother Mikkel’s approval, they had sat down and figured out a winding path that took them away from sight. It was still somewhat open, but unless the rebels were expecting an attack, they should remain undiscovered. It would add at least three days onto their journey.
His men rested east of the long, open Shadow Valley, between two hills leading up to the Ash Mountains. There they discussed further plans for the attack on the rebel camp. They sent out scouts for a second time, gathering more information on the camp, including numbers. Stefan was anxious to hear what they had to say, but he was confident that the rebels would be ill-prepared. He remembered how his father had annihilated the rebellion when he was a child. There was no chance that the rebels had managed to gain enough strength to defeat his battalion.
“We should travel around the valley between the foothills towards the volcano,” General Coren said. “Take half the men east, half the men west, and approach them in pincer formation.”
“Flank them on both sides with full force,” Tyca agreed.
“What does it matter?” Stefan said with a sigh. “They are underprepared and undermanned. We will beat them no matter what we do.”
But the two generals ignored him and continued their discussion.
“Do not be so sure,” Mikkel said softly.
Stefan had not heard the Brother approach, though his spine straightened when he felt the man’s breath on his neck.
“What are you talking about? We know that they are weak and unorganised. Father beat them back during the rebellion, leaving just dozens. That was four years ago and they have been hiding in this forsaken place all this time. There is not a chance in all the kingdoms that they are at any kind of strength.”
“They are still sorcerers,” Mikkel continued. “And sorcerers are unpredictable. Never assume you will win, my prince, for assumptions are worth less than feathers weigh.”
Stefan rolled his eyes and rubbed at a sore spot on his thumb. Some creature had snuck into his tent last night and pricked his thumb. The bite had not troubled him in his sleep, but now it throbbed and the end was swollen and pink. Mikkel had applied some sort of tincture to the wound but it did little to ease the soreness.
“Fear not, Your Highness,” Mikkel continued. “With the right guidance and the correct approach, you will crush the sorcerers.”
“I am not afraid,” Stefan said, pouting and rubbing his thumb.
“They are here,” spoke General Tyca.
“The scouts? Well, it is about time.” Prince Stefan stepped forward to stand in line with his generals and wait for the two young soldiers to join the camp. They had chosen the youngest and quickest, for the job required travelling by foot and an ability to hide should the enemy come close. Still, the two young men had taken their time.
“Your Highness.” The shortest, a young man of no more than fifteen, with olive skin and dark eyes, bowed to Stefan and waited for the signal to tell his information. “I bring news from the east of the camp. I saw no more than a hundred. Of those, at least thirty of them are old, children or infirm. They have a camp, food, and they are training. I saw young men and women training with sword and shield. And…” The man paused. “I saw their sorcery. Anios protect me, I saw it. It was unholy. They manipulated air to their own will, and created gusts of it to knock others down. I saw a girl change into a dog, and water thrown like a ball.”
“Did you see my brother?” Stefan asked.
“I did not, Your Highness, but I did not go close enough to see faces.”
Stefan turned to the other scout, a tall, wiry young man of nineteen with thin lips and a protruding nose. “And you? What did you see?”
“I saw the same, Your Highness. From the west I saw their animals, little more than a half dozen donkeys. There was a tent with some weapons inside, but I did not see much else that was different. There seemed to have been a fire. One of the tents was burned.”
“A fire.” Stefan rubbed at the bite on his thumb. “And my brother?”
“I am afraid not, Your Highness. But perhaps he is disguised in some way. There were people changing into other beings. It was foul, Your Highness, a crime against Anios.”
“These rebels need wiping out,” General Coren said. “After we find your brother, of course. It may be difficult if there is some sort of disguise. I have heard that Menti can wear the appearance of another. In the same way they shift into
an animal, they become another person.”
“We must not be afraid to kill the sorcerers for the sake of keeping my brother alive,” Stefan said. “The king said so himself. My brother does not deserve to live for what he did to Prince Matias, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a traitor.”
The generals silenced and the scouts stared at their feet. Stefan relished the moment of power.
“Now, tell us everything else you learned.”
The two scouts drew maps in the dirt while the generals nodded sagely. Stefan watched Mikkel’s face as his men talked of battle tactics. He held his tongue and decided to let the seasoned generals make all the major decisions.
“I do not like the sound of these powers,” General Tyca said. “They say that one Menti is worth a dozen trained soldiers. It is hogwash, no doubt, but we shall proceed with caution all the same.”
“A few powers will not stop the man who is the embodiment of Anios,” Mikkel said, gazing at Prince Stefan.
“Of course,” the general muttered, his cheeks turning bright red.
Stefan frowned. His men were supposed to be followers of Anios but he could tell that they often feigned their beliefs. He had little love for the two generals, but he needed their expertise on the battlefield.
“Take bread, cheese, wine and whatever we have left from the merchant’s cart to the troops. Water the horses and tell the men to sharpen their blades. We will attack the rebel camp under the night sky and we will not leave any man alive,” Stefan said. General Tyca opened his mouth to speak, but Stefan cut him off. “My brother is no longer a prince and no longer my father’s son. He is a murderer and a Menti. I demand his head.”
“Very well, Your Highness.”
The men bowed to him and hurried off to pass the orders along.