B008P7JX7Q EBOK

by Ijaz, Usman

  The boys nodded but remained where they were. Alexis walked down the steel wall, testing each bar as he went, but there was no hope there. At last he sighed and went to the back of the cell. He stepped on the cot and peered out the window. What he saw didn’t allay his fears.

  Outside in the town square, a group of men were hard at work erecting a wooden gibbet on a raised platform. They shouted orders to one another as they worked with hammers and nails, while other townsfolk watched them.

  Alexis turned away from the sight and sat down on the hard bed, head in his hands. Landerly, he thought, how could you? He had known the old man since childhood, and yet all it took for Landerly to betray him was the sight of gray eyes. He shook his head in despair, wondering what they were to do now. He found that he wasn’t surprised at all that this was how it was going to end, with them hanging. No, he had been a fool to think it would end in any other way.

  Sometime later he looked up at the sound of footsteps echoing down the hall. He stood and went to the bars and saw two Guards push trays of food into the boys’ cell by a small slot. They came to his cell, and Alexis stood and watched them both. He didn’t know what he could say to them, what he could do to convince them of the immense mistake they were about to make.

  “Get back,” said one of the guards.

  Alexis moved back a few steps as one opened a slot set near the bottom of the cell and pushed the tray of food in. They turned to leave then, but he rushed forward.

  “Wait!” he cried. They stopped and looked at him. “You don’t know what you’re about to do. I beg you, let us go!”

  The two looked at one another and then back at him. “We could not do that even if we wanted to,” said the one who had borne the trays. “I would have thought a man of the Legion would know better than to get himself involved with his kind.” He nodded towards the boys’ cell with a sneer.

  “And I wish you knew what we are about,” Alexis told them. “I can explain it to you, but I doubt you will believe me.”

  “Probably not,” said the other man, “so save your breath. You will need it tomorrow evening when Lord Wendyl arrives.”

  Alexis sighed and watched them go. He saw the boys looking at him and told them to eat their meal. He followed his own words and went to sit at the rear to eat mechanically, listening to the sounds from outside.

  7

  From time to time the guards came to check on them. When they came there were usually only two, but around evening, as the sun was setting outside, Alexis heard three sets of footsteps echo down the hall. He went to the bars and looked out to see two men wearing the blue of the Guard come striding down, and with them was Landerly. The old man looked about himself warily, as though he half expected to find himself occupying one of these cells soon. Alexis gripped the bars until his hands were white. The simple sight of the man was enough for him to want to murder him.

  “Why did you do it, Lander?” Alexis demanded as they stopped before his cell.

  Landerly started at the anger in his voice, then steeled himself and sent the guards away. “I ... I did what I had to do.” He was unable to meet Alexis’s gaze for long.

  “And what does that mean?” Alexis shouted.

  “Can you really fault me, my boy?” Landerly asked. “He is an Ascillian. I do not know how you became mixed up with the likes of him, but look where it has landed you.”

  Alexis spoke through gritted teeth. “He didn’t land me in this cell, Lander. You did! I feel that I could kill you!”

  “It is too bad that you feel that way. I only came to beg you to renounce the boy ... but I see that you will not.” He turned to go.

  “Wait!” Alexis called to him. “What do they mean to do with us?”

  Landerly stopped and turned to regard him, running a weathered hand through his hair. “Well ... the boy they will hang, as he deserves to, and maybe even the other one as well. But you ... I do not think they can touch you, not without risking war with Grandal and Teihr.”

  Alexis felt as though he could bash his brains against the bars. He was safe, but what did it matter if Adrian died? “Lander, listen to me,” he pleaded. “We are traveling to the Ruins on an important mission, on behest of King Aeiron. We can’t fail! Help us! I beg you!”

  Landerly met his eyes, and in that gaze Alexis saw only the kind pity one might feel towards a stubborn child that simply fails to see the truth. “I am sorry, my boy, but I cannot. I dare not.” He turned and walked away, his hurried footsteps echoing down the hall.

  “Then take the blame when everyone is dying around you!” Alexis shouted after him. “Die knowing that you cursed the world into darkness and death!” Some of the guards had gathered at the front of the hall to see what all the commotion was about. Landerly stopped a little way down the hall, then shook his head and muttered something to himself before walking away.

  Alexis struck his forearm against the bars in rage. It couldn’t end like this. Not with them held captive in cells and the Ruins still leagues and leagues away. He stood there for a long time, head resting against the bars and wondering how such an ill fate could have befallen them. This mission was doomed from the beginning, he thought bleakly.

  “Alexis?” Connor said hesitantly.

  “Go and sit down, Connor. I have to think.”

  Alexis went and lay down on the hard cot at the rear of the cell.

  All of this because the damned fools couldn’t look past the color of a boy’s eyes. They suspected that Adrian would slaughter them all, using those fabled powers the Ascillians possessed, but Alexis knew that that wasn’t how the boy was at all. He’d spent a long time with him, and not once had he thought Adrian might harm him or Connor. Why couldn’t they see that? Why couldn’t they see that it was a boy they were about to hang and not simply an Ascillian?

  Why can’t you see the Ascillian instead of the boy?

  The thought felt so strange that for a moment he wondered if it was his own, then he sat erect as it dawned on him. They all saw what an Ascillian was rumored to be, but until now he had seen Adrian only as another child. And why not? He has never used any strange talents around me, nothing to change how I see him.

  Alexis leapt to his feet and rushed to the bars. “Adrian!” he whispered, hoping that their quiet voices wouldn’t draw the guards’ attention. Adrian and Connor walked to the bars together, worry clear on their faces.

  “Alexis, what is it?” Adrian asked just as quietly.

  “Can you get us out of here?”

  Adrian frowned. “I don’t see how.”

  “Do you ... can you use your powers to do something?”

  For a moment Adrian looked at him with a frown creasing his face. “I don’t know. Alexis, I’ve never done anything before. I’m not even sure I possess any powers.”

  Alexis refused to give up the hope he felt. “The Ascillians are said to have had control over strange powers, powers that let them do what they willed. It’s said they could move objects with their will alone, and that some could even communicate through their thoughts. Do you think you could do such a thing? Perhaps bend these bars?”

  “I don’t know,” the boy replied, worry and uncertainty straining his voice.

  “Will you try?” Alexis asked him.

  Adrian remained thoughtful for several moments. At last he said, “I don’t know how, but I’ll try.”

  “Good. Now do what you can.”

  8

  Adrian closed his eyes. He doubted he could do what Alexis asked of him, but he’d said he would try, and so he would. And what else was there left for them? This might be their only hope of escaping this prison. He imagined the bars parting and creating an opening large enough for them to slip out, but he didn’t even need to open his eyes to know that nothing had happened. There was no noise. Taking a deep breath, he began to search the darkness he saw behind his eyes and in his mind. He settled deeper into it, though he couldn’t be sure what he was looking for, only that he didn’t have it at
that moment. It was all that he could think to do.

  At last he opened his eyes and shook his head. “I can’t do it.” He watched the hope slowly drain from his companions’ faces.

  “Will you keep trying?” Alexis asked in a resigned tone.

  “All right.”

  Alexis turned and retreated deeper into his cell.

  Adrian went and sat down on one of the small cots in the cell. It was hard and uncomfortable, but the prospect of death soon overruled his discomfort. There was no window in their cell, the only light coming from the torches in the hall, and it was dark and full of gloom. The cell also smelled of urine. Connor came and sat down on the opposite cot.

  “Do you think you can do it, Adrian?”

  “I’ll try, Connor,” Adrian told him. He hated having their hopes rest on him, but it pained him to see his companions look so morose. He closed his eyes once more and tried to do something that would help them. What that something was he could only wish he knew. He thought of his dreams, the earlier ones with his mother, and the ones that had come after, the ones that had always shown him that dying sun. Please, help me! Help us! He pleaded, to whom he wasn’t sure; perhaps to the woman, perhaps to the source of that pulsating white light in his dreams.

  There was no response, or none that he could hear.

  Somewhere in the deep darkness behind his lids he saw what might have been a star. It was a small speck of light, so faint and far away that he was sure if he stopped focusing on it even for a moment he would lose it and be unable to find it again. In his mind he groped for that light. At first the light stayed far, but as he reached towards it, like a drowning swimmer struggling to reach the shore, he sensed rather than saw the light grow bigger.

  “Adrian,” Connor said beside him, worry tingeing his voice. “Are you--”

  “Shush!” Adrian told him, never taking his thoughts off that light.

  As the distant light floated closer Adrian wasn’t at all surprised to see that it was just as in his dreams. The light was dazzling. If a shape could have been put to it, he would have said it was similar to how one sees the sun at noon. The light pulsated in and out. Like a beating heart, he thought, and on top of this realization came the thought, It’s pulsing with the rhythm of my heart. He marveled at it. It appeared so hot that it should have seared his flesh, and yet it didn’t, but instead gave him a feeling of peace that was almost enough to make him forget their current situation. Almost. He reached for that light, fought to grab it before he could lose it ... and the pulsating light exploded. What remained was only the darkness behind his eyes.

  Adrian groaned and opened his eyes. Connor looked at him with his hopeful face, and Adrian slowly shook his head at him. The hope left Connor’s eyes and was replaced by a deep sadness, as though he had accepted their fate already.

  Adrian looked away and stared at the bars that caged them. He felt that if only he could have reached that light, then it would have made matters all right once more. But he’d failed. He sighed, and set to trying again.

  Chapter 22

  Fears in the Night

  1

  Alexis lay awake a long time that night. His supper sat where the guards had pushed it in, still untouched. From time to time he would look at it, thinking perhaps he would feel some hunger stir at the sight of it, but all he felt was a dark heaviness in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t even think of the food without wanting to retch. So he lay on his cot in his shirt, having discarded his coat to the floor, and stared at the moonlight on the walls of his cell. He lay there and thought of what tomorrow would bring them. He remembered the guards’ words as they had brought their supper.

  “Enjoy the food; it is likely to be your last in this world. Lord Wendyl arrives by tomorrow's eve.”

  The other guard, a scrawny northern man with a nose that had been broken often, sniggered. “He’ll send you off with the dusk, don’t you worry.”

  Alexis wondered about that and Landerly’s words. “I don’t think they can touch you, not without risking war with Grandal and Teihr.” Somehow he doubted that would prove much of a shield against the Council of Mareth’s indictment.

  The pattern of moonlight on his walls shifted and sometimes disappeared as clouds drifted across the moon outside. Alexis lay and watched the shadows in silence. He could hear someone weeping quietly in the boys’ cell. He thought it was Connor. The sobs had been going on for a while now, and all he could do was listen to them, and know that nothing he did or said would offer much comfort.

  Just as he was drifting off to a troubled sleep, a small metallic clang followed by a low tack-tack awakened him. Rats, he thought as he glanced about the cell, but he could find no vermin. And as he looked about the cell a small pebble flew through the barred window and bounced on the stone floor. Alexis looked at it as though he’d never before seen its like, and then sat up straight and stood to look out the window. He peered into the night, but could see nothing. The empty town square appeared ghostly in the moonlight, lost in a light mist. There was the glow of lanterns spilling out onto the street from what was likely a tavern on the other side of the square. There was absolute silence outside but for the sound of a flute being played drunkenly from down the street. And then a voice whispered from the shadows beneath his window.

  “Are you awake?” It was a girl’s voice by the sound of it.

  “I was never asleep,” Alexis replied. “Who are you?”

  The figure moved away from the wall to where he could see more clearly. It was a girl, he saw immediately. Her shoulder-length hair curled down to frame a narrow, young face. She wore a thick cloak and carried a large bundle on her back. It was hard to tell any more than that, but even in the shadows thrown across her face Alexis could see that she was no more than sixteen, if that.

  “I am Leah A’Kinney,” she told him. Alexis winced at the trumpeting tone in her voice. It somehow seemed perverse to disturb the quietness all around them - and incredibly stupid.

  “Keep it down, girl,” he said to her.

  “Girl? I am not a girl!” she hissed at him. “I was going to help you, but now I am not sure I--”

  “All right, I apologize,” Alexis said. God curse the stiff necks of women everywhere, he thought. “How were you planning on aiding us?”

  She bit her lip and frowned thoughtfully. “I had not thought of that in any great detail. Yet!”

  Alexis sighed. His nerves must have really been shot if all it took to flutter hope back to life in him was thinking a little girl could aid them. “Take some time and think on it, soon you won’t have anyone to aid.”

  “Be quiet!” she hissed at him impatiently.

  “Why?”

  “Because I cannot think with you talking.”

  “Not that, I meant why would you want to help us? You must have heard the rumors on everyone’s lips.”

  She thought on it a while. Alexis could see her rolling the question over in her mind. Then she said, “That does not make it true. Simply because everyone says that you deserve to be hanged is no reason to take your lives. Imagine if all the world were like that, there would not be much left, now would there?”

  “I suppose not,” Alexis said, smiling. The girl certainly had courage to even suggest aiding them, and he found himself admiring the intelligence that she’d shown so far. “So--”

  “Be quiet!” she whispered again and dashed out of sight.

  Alexis angled his face against the bars to see where she went but she soon disappeared out of his view and into the night. Moments passed, and then the sound of heavy boots on the cobble-stone street came to his ears. They grew louder as they came closer, a steady tock-tock. Alexis withdrew from the window and watched as a Guard walked over to where the girl had stood. The Guard raised one hand to his mouth and yawned, the other hand resting atop his sword hilt. He looked to his left and to his right, inspecting the shadows. He stood with his shoulders slumped and the weary air of a man who simply wishes to finish his du
ty and gain some rest. Seeing nothing of apparent interest the man began to head towards the tavern across the square. Alexis watched him go in silent loathing. The man soon disappeared out of sight, a ghost swallowed by the night in an empty street, and Alexis waited impatiently for the girl to return.

  He waited for what felt like hours to him, though he doubted even a full one had passed. A voice in his head told him that the girl wasn’t going to come back and his hopes would be left to wither as before. He dismissed the thought, but as the time passed and she still didn’t show herself, he let out a deep breath and sat down on his hard cot. And what could she do in any case? She’s only a girl, after all. But she had been willing to help them, and she had at least offered some hope to him.

  A small chip of stone fell on his shoulder. Alexis looked at it, and then stood up to look out the window. Leah stood there, her eyes darting to either side of the street.

  “I cannot promise you anything,” she said, “but I can promise that I will try to think of some way to assist you. I cannot linger any longer though, the Guards are patrolling the streets, and it will do you no good if they get curious about me.” She quickly turned to flee into the night.

  “Wait!” Alexis called after her, perhaps too loudly for they both jumped at the sound. She turned to look at him impatiently. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  She studied him for a moment, and then smiled and crossed her legs and bowed as though before an audience. Then she was gone, another ghost swallowed by the night, and the Legionnaire was once more left by himself.

  2

  Connor awoke to the dim interior of the cell, and immediately felt a familiar feeling of gloom settle over him like a putrid blanket. He couldn’t remember his dreams, only a quiet darkness, but that had been better than this place he had woken to. He lay on his cot and pulled his knees to his chest in an effort to keep warm. He groped for sleep, but it escaped him, and he was left to swell on their hopeless situation.