“That’s the one,” said Alocar, scratching behind Lundy’s ears.
“Yeah, I miss it. Who wouldn’t? Now it’s just you and me, though. We’re the last of the old breed, General. Like I said when they retired you, the time to do something about it was then. We could’ve, you know.”
“The state comes before the individual, you know that as well as I. One man can’t overrule a state and still call himself a good man.”
“Yeah, but one man can also change a place for the better. Anyway, they had no right.”
“Maybe not. I just wish that there were something left over in life for me to do; something to do that feels like it’s worthy of being spoken of.” A last ruffle of Lundy’s fur. “Sometimes I feel like I’m living on borrowed time, neither here nor there. What’s the role of an old man in society? I thought I knew my role, at one point, but it seems that it’s changed.”
They sat there in near silence, the only sounds the waking of the houses down the hill and the small slurps that Rupert made as he drank his tea. Alocar stared at the street, watching as one of the guards heckled a passing servant. At least he still had these times with Rupert, a throwback, a relic, even, but comforting all the same.
“I don’t honestly know what the role of old men is,” Rupert said. “It seems that we’ve become something that we have no idea how to be. I guess, if you forced me to answer, I’d say our role is to make sure we whip the next generation into line, fix their mistakes before they happen and try to make them better than what we were. We’re wisdom-holders, General. That’s all we’ve got left, but it’s a big responsibility.”
Alocar chewed on his beard, the tip hanging just past his neck. “You know, that’s not a bad idea.”
“Of course it isn’t. I always had the best ones, didn’t I?”
“It’s not a bad idea, but I didn’t say I agreed with it. Why do we always need to push our problems to the next generation over? Isn’t there something that we can do now instead of just giving it to another? I feel like there’s something left out there for me to do that’s more important than just teaching young ones how to be the new me.” The heckled servant’s voice rose, but the guard silenced him. “Why can’t I still be me? Not just a shade. I don’t know, maybe I’m just senile already. That’s one thing you haven’t beaten me at, yet.”
Rupert chuckled. “I think I’ll let you win that particular battle,” he finished the last of his tea, “but really, General. Who else could I pound upon and feel so accomplished afterward? Back before cake replaced me as your right-hand man, you’d kick my ass from here to sundown. Maybe that’s your role as an old man.”
He gave Alocar a light tap on the arm. “Come on. A few more before I have to leave.” Rupert set the teacup down on its matching saucer, a green thing with circling ravens, and disappeared into the house.
Alocar grunted and watched him go. Their conversation had left him with a heavier than normal sense of uselessness. The chair groaned and he moved into the house. As he walked, he mapped out his plan of attack: if all he had left to do was teach another more capable than him, then he’d better make sure that Rupert didn’t beat him to death. The late morning sun scoured his eyes, and thoughts of the future evaporated as sword met buckler and he lost himself in the fray.
Angras
Let me out.
I ignored Angras.
“You know what to do?” I asked the three men standing in front of me. Cowering may have been the more appropriate term, except for the pudgy man, whose hands never stopped flowing from one position to another, moving through the air like snakes with wings. He, quite possibly, didn’t have the sense to be frightened, and I liked that about him, for he nodded without a word, twirled, and left.
Another, a cigar clamped between his straight white teeth, nodded as well, and then followed the pudgy man with winged hands.
The third, a fastidious soul with enough rings on his fingers to appear more than slightly pretentious, looked at me, to the floor, and then back at me. He coughed. I let my eyes deaden in their sockets.
“You will pay us?” he asked. I didn’t reply, simply stared.
At least kill this one. Make him know what it is to despair.
The fastidious man looked to his left and right, only to realize that nobody was there, and then departed, leaving me with Angras.
Isaac
Drip. Drip. Drip. If Isaac hadn’t long ago erected a mental steel curtain, bolstered with memories of his time outside Whispers, sanity would have abandoned him like leaves from a tree in fall. Drip. Drip. The guards were bored, and from their boredom stemmed a fine cruelty. Drip. As they had proved with Prisoner Twenty-Two, bodies can be hurt, but bodies are created with the knowledge that life brings pain, and so they are naturally resilient. Minds, conversely, have brittle defenses, easily shattered when a weakness is exposed. Drip. The simplest methods are often best: a leaky cloth sack set over a pail. Water accumulation. Drops smashing, repeatedly, obliterated on a small scale, and on a large scale, becoming part of a bigger whole as they joined their brethren in composing the water in the bucket. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Some prisoners took solace in the warfare between the pail and the water; for others, the sound tore at them with blunted fingernails. The unstoppable drip rusted and eroded their mental defenses until nothing but the foundations remained, and even those eventually flooded, leaving the prisoners adrift in a roiling sea of insanity. Isaac had been one of the crazies for a while, but now the water had become his friend – at the very least it was more reliable in its annoyance than any friend or acquaintance he’d ever known.
He reflected upon his situation. Five years in Whispers. Five years, and no way out that didn’t involve a hole in the ground and overstuffed maggots ravaging the remainder of his dead tissue. He’d come to this realization long ago, but always his will to live had burned brightly. Now, though, his desire to survive had guttered, and his acceptance of his willingness to die – to escape – had consumed that once bright will. And so he found himself in his current position. Did existence justify existing? He thought not.
Whispers – relentless despair made tangible – had effaced the little faith Isaac had once possessed, but what if he was wrong and suicide resulted in eternal punishment, as the Cao Fen taught it would? A life composed of nothingness filled him with dread, but the thought of eternal torture stayed his hand even as it crept toward his throat.
Isaac missed much of the outside world: the salty breeze on the shore of the Hamalian Ocean, the taste of a summer peach from the famed orchards of Browleson, even the simple repayment of a debt, to feel like he’d kept his word, proof that he was a man worth knowing.
But other things, the Cao Fen foremost among them, Isaac felt certain he would never miss. Over a hundred years ago, Prolifia had been a melting pot, religious freedoms abound, until the Cao Fen had decided that the current infrastructure needed remodeling. And so the Cao Fen had taken their competition to harvest, scything the tall-standing stalks of the Xiles Outreach, Ontegenon, Casani, and many smaller faiths, until nothing but weeds remained.
Unchallenged, the Cao Fen grew and spread across the land, but all religions need a demon to pit their followers against, and without the other faiths as likely scapegoats, something else had to fill the void; it was just Isaac’s luck that they’d picked Prolifia’s magic users: the Blessed. After a hundred years of diatribes from the pulpit, magic had become a sign of evil and the remaining Blessed had gone aground while the Cao Fen had, if anything, grown stronger. No, Isaac was sure that Whispers beat the outside world in at least one aspect: no Cao Fen.
Isaac snapped his fingers, almost as if expecting something, the sound small in the dirt confines.
It was a sad fact that if he could be sure of hell’s fairy tale origins, that his death would result in nothing more than a corpse and his mind’s erasure, then he’d follow the plan with nary a falter, consequences be damned. But, if he existed, maybe the God of Judgments would take pity o
n the remnants of the man that Whispers had destroyed.
He could continue his life of waking death in Whispers’ cold underground, or he could escape into the long night, and as he looked at the twin gates of decision, he pushed the latter open a nudge. It would take courage to live out his life in this miniature hell, and though he was afraid of a possible afterlife, he was more afraid of the remainder of a life spent here. Maybe, if he tried, he could convince himself that this was the brave route so that he could at least die without the stain of cowardice on his conscious.
They sat in one of the small churches not far from his parents’ house. His mentor’s black cloak blended subtly with the robust red walls and the glossy pews, gleaming like copper in the sun, though the parishioners shivered as the wintry air bit through their ragged layers.
His mentor nudged him. “Listen,” he whispered.
The priest droned on. “ . . . I say unto you, the people, resist no evil, and if one were to smite your left cheek, turn to him the right, and offer it up . . . ”
“Hear that?” Isaac’s mentor leaned close. “Guess we should offer ourselves up, evil as we are, eh?”
Isaac stood and began walking to the altar before his mentor snatched him back against the pew. “You need to learn how to understand humor, apprentice.”
“Okay” He smoothed back a cowlick.
His mentor looked around. “Know this: no matter what they say, how peaceful they might appear, they’re still out to get us, me and you. Never let anybody know what you are. It could save your life one day.”
Putting his arm around Isaac’s shoulder, his mentor squeezed, and, together, they listened to the rest of the priest’s message.
He put his legs against the wall and idly pushed himself across the floor, a broom in a place never meant to be swept. His cellmate fidgeted in his sleep. To fight was out of the question, especially after the first three years. The man he’d once been might have managed it, but though he kept his body fit and ready, any actual physical confrontation in which he did more than curl up in a ball was out of the question. Whispers had taken from Isaac all that he had to give; it had broken him and then healed him, only to break him again. After time, his will to fight had disappeared and even the minor things had become battles: opening his eyes every morning became a victory worth cheering, a solitary second of contentment became what would amount to euphoria in a life less sad.
Even his plan, nothing more than an assisted suicide, screamed cowardice; otherwise, he would just cut his wrists or hang himself like so many others had done.
Isaac’s dirt epitaph, rewritten with the obsession of a mind balancing on the point of an iron nail, was smeared, left to read, “. . . die alone . . .” and he hoped that it was true, because if not, and the guards discovered his provocation, then he risked being sentenced to the unofficially named Coated, the most feared and respected group of researchers in all Prolifia. Responsible for the majority of Prolifia’s knowledge in the scientific arts, particularly medicine and physiology, the Coated were a secretive bunch, and if the group stood for anything, it was with a crooked stance. The bulk of their experiments were done on the bodies of the dead, but living flesh suited their needs at times as well, and it was most prisoners’ worst nightmare to be fed to the Coated’s gaping maw.
He sighed. This would be easier if only he had the ability to take his own life, but the thought of such an action made his hands shake with uncontrollable tremors. To injure the skin that he’d fought so long to preserve . . . it felt like duplicity of the worst kind, and even if his plan had the same outcome, it wasn’t by his own hand that he’d fall, and Isaac’s mind seemed to accept that.
Torchlight flickered as shadows passed. Prisoner Twenty-One stole a glance at Isaac and then faced the wall, mouthing comforting words to himself. Isaac stood, and his cellmate’s feet thumped to the ground beside him.
Strong Jaw peered inside the cell, rubbing his hand slowly across his sword’s pommel piece. He drew himself up, and then, with a degree of formality ill-suited for Whispers, he spoke. “Prisoner Twenty-Three, you have saved a total of four words. How many would you like to save?”
Isaac’s cellmate threw up a quick hand and retired to the bottom bunk, watching.
Strong Jaw looked at Isaac, narrowing his eyes as he said, “Prisoner Twenty-Four, last that Whispers has to offer. You have saved a total of nine words. How many would you like to save?”
They stood in silence, facing each other through the bars.
“Prisoner Twenty-Four, you must respond.”
Isaac exhaled, and he adjusted his grip on the item behind his back.
“Last chance, Prisoner Twenty-Four.” The thick-necked guards stepped forward and Strong Jaw unlocked the door.
Nine words. He knew what Strong Jaw expected of him, but Isaac was past courage now, past fear, past rational thought and past everything other than a desire to end it all, and so he spoke as the words came to him, unplanned and wholly honest. “I miss the world, its people, and my life,” he threw the item he’d held behind his back, “so end it!”
The thick-necked guard on the left toppled, a piece of sharpened cot through his neck.
“Don’t!” Strong Jaw yelled at his surviving thick-necked guard, who had drawn his sword. “His end needs to be slow.”
With that, Strong Jaw clubbed Isaac with such force that Isaac’s head hit the wall, directly across the room. A sharp crack sounded, and Whispers roused itself, a few of the inmates straining their ears to hear the commotion. Across, in Eleven, Prisoner Twenty-One started biting his knuckles, reddening them in seconds.
Isaac tasted blood and the room greyed. Strong Jaw’s arm swung back, then forward, and collided with Isaac’s face like the kick from an ill-tempered mule. His nose bent left, cracked, and broke. He itched to raise his hands over his head and curl up, but he resisted. Arms laid themselves to the side and he stretched out. Soon, he didn’t even need to try. Something about fists hitting skin was just too intimate, too close, too personal. Strong Jaw roared, a wild beast uncaged. Blows rained down on Isaac. Once, instinctively, his hand twisted itself into dirt to find another piece of cot, but he tamped down the desire to live and forced his hand to relax.
Strong Jaw hit Isaac once more, and then, sated, rose to his feet. “Finish it,” he said.
“Trash,” the remaining thick-necked twit spit out at Isaac, his sword pointed at Isaac’s face. “That’s how you came here, that’s how you’re going to leave.” Isaac suppressed a laugh. It felt good for things to fall his way for once . . .
“Stop!” The sword halted, hovering over Isaac’s nose like a pointed guillotine.
The cell grew blurry as blood loss and the beating took their toll, but through it, Isaac heard a voice. “You and you, step away from that man.” Though the voice was even-keeled, it was also a voice accustomed to others following its orders. A face framed itself between the bars: dark hair swept back from his forehead but slicked high in the air, the man’s already narrow head appear elongated. Clean-shaven, smooth like he’d put away the razor only seconds ago, he scowled at Isaac’s broken nose.
“Idiots,” Isaac heard the clean-shaven man say. “Need I repeat myself? I said step away from that man, now! Actually, you know what, I take that back. You! Yes, you. Help that man to his feet.”
The thick-necked guard moved to his dead friend. “No, not him, you moron.” The man nodded at Isaac. “Him.”
He bent to obey but stopped at Strong Jaw’s raised hand. “And who are you to come in here and order us around? This prisoner killed Mal and attacked us. Law says he’s ours to do with what we will.”
The clean-shaven man nodded and said, “Rightfully so, but you don’t know who I serve.” From within his jacket, he showed something to the guards that made them both blanche. “And now you do, so I can either kill you or I can pay you.” At that, he tossed a bag apiece at each of the guards, plain brown things cinched at the top with pieces of yellowed string.
After exchanging a glance, the two guards pocketed the bags, and the thick-necked guard pulled Isaac to his feet, his grip tightening painfully around Isaac’s small wrist.
“Perfect!” The clean-shaven man clapped his hands. “I thank you for your cooperation and should you speak of this, more than just your lives will be taken from you. Are we understood?” The guards nodded, and he threw two more bags their way.
Isaac wanted to melt into the ground, into nothingness, and yet he stood, fresh air infiltrating his lungs. Life was never fair.
The clean-shaven man gave the prisoner a once-over while he spoke: small-framed, scrawny even, but Whispers would do that to you. Something flickered behind the man’s dark eyes, but disappeared before he could analyze it. The clean-shaven man wasn’t sure if this was the prisoner’s natural facial expression or simply a tool of concealment, but based upon what he knew of the prisoner’s background, he gambled that it was the second.
He stuck his hand out, but then, with a look at Isaac’s dirty hand, withdrew it. “I’m Linken. You may thank me as we leave, if you wish. Come along.”
Linken turned and walked toward the end of the passageway, past the numbered cells and toward the wooden door from which he’d entered, a stout deterrence when locked. He breathed a sigh at the sound of the prisoner’s legs following his own. Thank heaven. If he had decided to stay in his cell, then Linken wasn’t sure what he could have done to get him out.
His rescuee hadn’t said a word, a fact that both interested and frightened Linken, for he knew that had he been the one released from Whispers, babbling would have been the kindest word used to describe him.
Past the stout door, they stood on a dark wooden floor that operated as the prison’s only entrance and exit: a lift. The boards, lightweight but strong, covered a small, roofless room, perfectly circular in nature. The walls were, like the cells, bricked, and they rose more than sixty feet before a hole in the ground opened, the blue sky just visible, a catch of green leaves blowing past. Attached to the boards at intervals - eight in total - were pulleys, ropes running up to the top of the hole where a single guard sat. The counterweight that moved the floor to the top activated only on his say-so, and if a prisoner attempted to scale the ropes, they’d find themselves back on the wooden floor, oil varnishing their hands. Linken appreciated the ugly logic behind it. A jail need not be proud when a deeply dug hole worked just as well.
Fallen Victors Page 4