by Joseph Lallo
Immediately the silence seemed to push the tumult of wind and hoof back outside. Myranda spoke again.
"I know why you wanted to find me. I want to help you," Myranda assured.
"I wanted to find you because I was ordered to," she answered. "You can save your pleading and groveling for my superiors, if you make it that far."
"Surely they told you why they wanted me. Surely you asked," Myranda said.
Trigorah sat silently.
"You must have questions," said the girl.
"Many, but it is not my place to ask questions. I am not the interrogator. You will meet him again soon enough. After being assaulted by you, I am sure he will be pleased to meet you again," she said.
"Again . . . Arden? Arden is the interrogator?" Myranda asked.
The general was again silent. She reached out and snatched away the bag that Myranda had dropped when she entered. After pulling the dagger out and eying it briefly, she placed it back inside and scowled.
"You do not have the sword," she fumed.
"No, I haven't had it since Lain first captured me," Myranda explained.
"Lain . . . " she hissed. It was the first she'd heard of her target's name.
Trigorah's scowl somehow turned even more serious. Myranda could tell by her look that she was contemplating how best to attain the sword.
"The only way to get the sword and stop them from following is to-" Myranda began.
"Pay them. I know," Trigorah interrupted.
The General turned the idea over in her mind again and again. To pay was to fail, to admit that she could not do as she was ordered. And yet, the price had been so high already. The best of her men and the better part of a year had been spent in pursuit of this girl and the blasted sword she'd taken. Perhaps the time had come.
"It must be done," she said.
"Excellent. Once you pay Desmeres, we can attempt to convince Lain to-" Myranda planned enthusiastically.
"Quiet! Your future depends entirely upon what the other Generals decide. I will deal with Lain when the time comes," she snapped.
There was a defensive tone to her last comment. Myranda had quickly learned how much General Teloran valued duty. After spending so much time attempting to apprehend Lain, it must have become an obsession.
"How long have you been after Lain?" Myranda asked.
Again, silence was the only answer, a silence that would not be broken for hours. The carriage stopped only once, and only long enough to change horses. The cabin was hardly a luxurious one, built to keep those outside out, and those inside in. As a result there was barely a slit for a window. Myranda tried to turn her mind from the hunger that had been steadily gnawing away at her. Periodically she would glance at the General. The elf sat stoically, her eyes always locked on Myranda, as though at any moment the girl would mount an escape. Her armor, though no doubt exquisite when it was first made, showed the wear of decades of use. Here and there Myranda recognized a shiny gash in a plate as one left by Myn. Trigorah adjusted a sagging plate on her arm, only to have it fall away again. The belt that held it had been torn through, as had whatever clothing she wore beneath it. Myranda wondered how long ago it had happened, and if she was responsible. Between the tattered edges of leather and cloth, bare skin could be seen, as well as something else. Something that caught Myranda's eye. There was a gold armband. It was not cloth, but a cuff of gold that was clamped onto her arm in much the same way that the collar was affixed to Myranda's neck. The sight of it stirred something in her mind. There was something someone had said. Beware those who wear gold . . . The look of recollection must have shown on her face, for Trigorah broke the long silence.
"What is it?" she said, a demand, not a question.
"Nothing, just . . . something an old man said once," she said.
Myranda decided it was best to remain silent for now. A combination of exhaustion and weakness from hunger allowed her to drift off despite the uncomfortable bonds and violent motion of the carriage. It wasn't quite sleep, but it was better than nothing. Consciousness wavered in and out until she was jarred out of the doze by the abrupt end to her journey.
"Close your eyes," Trigorah ordered.
"Why?" Myranda asked.
The door was flung open and the light stung viciously at Myranda's darkness-adjusted eyes. Trigorah stepped out and a pair of the attending Elites pulled Myranda into the painfully bright light outside. She wavered briefly, forgetting that her hands were bound when she tried to catch herself on the edge of the carriage. Trigorah caught her and steadied her.
"Take a deep breath. This may be the last time you feel fresh air in your lungs," she warned.
Myranda's eyes adjusted and she took in her surroundings. She was in a courtyard kept meticulously free from snow, surrounded by a low, sturdy wall. Filling the courtyard was row after row of soldiers. They bore general issue armor that seemed crude in comparison to that worn by the Elites. Not a face could be seen, each hidden behind a visor or mask. At the center was a square stone building that seemed a bit small to warrant such defenses. She was being led inside. The doors were pulled open by the two guards stationed beside them.
Inside was pure darkness, not the merest flicker of light could be seen. Eyes that had only just adjusted to the light were faced with the task of penetrating the darkness again. A faint glow that Myranda soon found to originate in the gem of her collar was the first thing she was able to see. The pale blue light did little more than transform the darkness into a collection of ill defined shapes.
"Close your eyes," Trigorah ordered.
Myranda swiftly obeyed. There came the familiar hiss and sizzle of a torch being lit. Carefully the girl opened her eyes. The dancing yellow light revealed a scene she wished had remained hidden. The whole of the interior was a single large room with only the occasional pillar. The walls were lined with bars, divided into dozens of different cells, all empty. They approached an arched doorway that led to a set of stairs leading downward.
The stairs led down only one floor. The next staircase was at the far end of the floor. In this way it was impossible to move quickly up or down. Each floor had to be traversed in its entirety to reach the next. As she was escorted downward in just this fashion, descending further and further into the ground, some of the cells began to show occupants. She glimpsed at the people locked away. With each new floor she found herself feeling that she had seen these faces before. Some seemed to show a look of recognition themselves. A few showed something far stronger than recognition. In the short time that the torch illuminated their faces, these individuals shifted from shock to anger and hatred. She left at least one person on each floor screaming for her blood. With their cries echoing in her ears, she shut her eyes tight and allowed herself to be led onward. Finally she came to a floor that brought no new cries. She opened her eyes.
It must have been the bottom floor, deep below the surface. While this place was as large as the other floors, there were no cells. In fact, it was practically empty. All that could be seen was a pair of chairs, a pile of chains, a table, and the interrogator. It was he, Arden. From the looks of it, he hadn't changed from the ravaged armor he had worn when they last met. His halberd was in the corner of the room, far outside the sphere of light cast by the torch, but betrayed by a glow identical to the one from her collar. The look of clarity and intellect that had appeared fleetingly during their last encounter was now a permanent fixture on his face. Myranda's arrival added a look of pleased amusement to the collection of out of place expressions.
"Finally managed to bring her in, have you? Splendid. And the sword?" he asked.
"They were not carrying it. In the interest of timely and secure retrieval, I believe the best course of action is to pay the ransom," Trigorah recommended.
"Well of course it is. Had we gotten the payment to them before one of the other squads had shown up and spoiled things we would have been saved a considerable amount of time," he said.
"And lives,"
she added.
"Lives are cheap, time is precious," Arden said without a hint of humor. "Now, when I have spent some of that precious commodity with our first prize, you and I shall look into the acquisition of our second. Go, and leave the bag, and if that staff is hers, leave that too. The brute work is aside, this is a time for skill."
General Teloran slammed the door upon leaving. Only Arden and Myranda remained in the room. He flashed a rather incomplete smile at her.
"Have a seat," he said. "Relax."
Myranda sat.
"I am afraid that I may not be able to relax with you around. Not since you tried to kill me," she said.
"I do apologize for that. Couldn't quite place the face. It is a good thing your former captors wrestled me off of you. My colleagues would have been quite perturbed if I had killed you before I had determined your usefulness. Now, to that end," he said, snatching up her bag before sitting across from her and leaning forward. "Let us have a look at you."
Oddly, he closed his eyes as he said this. After a few moments he nodded thoughtfully.
"Respectably skilled wizard. Mainly elemental with a fair dose of the healer's art and a smattering of the esoteric. Not anything special, but respectable," he said. He began to remove objects from the bag and place them on the table.
"Who told you that?" she asked.
"No one. I can see it. I can smell it, I can even taste it. You've got a good, dense aura about you, and the spirits seem to like you. They pay particular attention to you. With some experience you could be a force to be reckoned with, as your little display at the mines would indicate. I'll have to see about getting you a better collar," he said.
"Listen, never mind all of that! You can untie me, and there is no need for this collar. I know what you want, and I want to help you," Myranda said.
"Do you, now?" he asked, raising an eyebrow and putting down the dagger from her bag. "This should be quite interesting. Tell me, what is it that we want?"
"You want to find the Chosen! This war is destroying the world and you know that the Chosen are beginning to appear to bring it to an end. You want to find them and assemble them so that all of the fighting can come to an end," she said.
"That is . . . one interpretation of our cause. Now, why do I want you, I wonder?" he asked.
"Because, I have a part in this, in the prophesy!" she said.
"You are Chosen?" he asked, eyebrows raised once again.
"No, but I can find them," she said.
"The Chosen will find each other," he corrected.
"No, the prophesy is changing, I have heard the spirits speak of it with my own ears," she said.
"You don't hear spirits with your ears," he said.
"They were speaking through a prophet," she said.
"All of the prophets north of the battlefront are in the employ of the Alliance Army. You couldn't have been listening to a prophet, and even if you had, we would have heard it as well," he retorted, finally losing interest in her and returning to his rummaging through her bag.
"Well he wasn't . . . Listen, why are we arguing? We want the same thing!" she urged.
He ignored her plea, placing bandages and vials on the table one after the other, shaking his head in amused wonder at the labels as he read each one.
"Such flawed little mechanisms you are," he mused quietly.
"Untie me and I will show you! I have the Mark, the Mark of the Chosen, on my left palm," she said.
"Oh, yes, I am keenly aware of that little fact. The hands stay tied," he said. He had come to the book she had taken from Lain's shelves.
"Doesn't that prove something? Doesn't that prove I have some higher purpose?" she asked urgently.
"Perhaps. That is yet to be determined," he answered distantly.
"Can you read any of that?" Myranda asked, suddenly hopeful that at least one answer might be discovered.
"Yes. All of it. It will be quite immediately useful to me, I think," he said.
"There is a page, just past the middle of the book, that has a single line crossed out. Find it! Tell me what it says!" she demanded.
"Though I am not in the habit of doing favors for my prisoners, I don't think I will need to flip to the page to tell you what it says," he said.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"It will say, 'Pay us the full price and you may keep her. The sword will be given to the courier upon payment. You can deliver the gold to the following location.' Directions follow, would you care to hear them?" he asked.
"Why would it say that?" she asked, confused.
"That is what every other page says," he said, holding the book up to her nose.
Both pages that she could see, and apparently all of those that she couldn't, bore the message he had read on an otherwise blank page, written in plain Northern, in Desmeres' hand. He must have taken the book she had stolen and swapped it for this one.
"I am curious, but that will not last long, I assure you. All will be determined in a moment," he said, standing and stepping behind her.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I am about to begin interrogating," he stated.
"But why? I will tell you anything you want to know!" she said.
"I don't know everything I want to know from you yet," he replied.
"Then I will tell you everything I know!" she said.
"You don't know everything you know," he stated.
Myranda's confusion briefly surpassed her fear, and it showed on her face.
"There is a plethora of information you have that you would just push aside as something I don't need to know, not to mention the facts that you know both halves of but you've never been bright enough to piece together. I shall have all of them by the time we are through. Since you are so eager to cooperate, all I ask is that you do not resist," he said, sitting before her again.
Myranda closed her eyes. She repeated to herself in her mind the reasons that she trusted the Alliance Army, the reasons they needed her, and the reasons she needed them. The short list of assumptions that had led her into their hands had been quite compelling and convincing when she'd first composed it. In the past few hours she had come to find it severely lacking. This monster of a man, a man in the employ of the Alliance, had made a disturbingly effective attempt on her life when they last met, and now she was to willingly submit herself to an interrogation at his hands! All based on an optimistic assumption! She resigned that certainly this had been a mistake, but there was no going back now. Desperately she scoured her mind for some thought to calm herself. As she felt the hulking man's fingers touch lightly to her temples, she finally settled upon something Desmeres had said. Things could be worse. That Epidime fiend he spoke of could be the one interrogating her.
As she thought, a peculiar, somewhat familiar, and terrible sensation was beginning to stir in her mind. It was a subtle pressure that she’d often felt when her mind was at its bleakest. She could not describe it, but somehow she knew that this was far stronger than she had ever felt before. The source seemed to be the fingers at her temples. They were not moving at all, and yet she could feel them digging deeper and deeper. It felt as though they were pressing in not on her skin, but her mind. She began to repeat her mantra more intently. At least it isn't Epidime. At least it isn't Epidime. The sensation grew. At least it isn't Epidime. Where had she felt this before? At least it isn't Epidime. Slowly she realized that there was not one voice chanting in her mind, but two . . . two of her own.
Like a flash of lighting, the burning fear of realization swept through her. The other voice, she'd been haunted by her own voice in her mind before. That was the sensation, the feeling she recognized. It was an intruder in her own mind. Why? How? Her racing mind was further muddled by the second voice. Before long she couldn't tell her own thoughts from those of this intruder. Finally she silenced them all. She did her best to do the mental equivalent of closing her eyes and covering her ears. Silence . . . Stillness . . . At least it isn'
t Epidime. The thought was not hers.
"You!" she cried, eyes opened. "You are Epidime! You were the one who hounded me every time I was stretched to the limit, whenever my spirit nearly gave out! You were the one who tried to push me to the edge."
She shook his hands away and tried to stand. He grasped her shoulder, wrenched it painfully, and forced her to the seat again. She made a desperate attempt to cast a spell only to be instantly and painfully reminded of the restraint on her neck. With his free hand, her mysterious captor summoned the halberd to him. Once within his grip the gem mounted in its blade shone brightly. Immediately the sensation in her mind intensified. It was almost too much to bear. She shut her eyes tightly again and turned the full power of her mind to the task of keeping the intruder out. The restraint about her neck flared again. She pulled back, gathering her strength deeper within her mind. The burning at her neck decreased, but still tore at her. She retreated farther and farther into her own mind, hiding from this foreign presence. Myranda found that if she pulled all of her strength deep, she could avoid the effect of the collar and still keep the dark, infiltrating force at bay. It was a monumental effort, every bit as taxing as any of the trials she’d faced in Entwell. Time passed, though how much was impossible to say. Her mind screamed for relief. As she felt her efforts waver, she began to think to herself in an attempt to keep her mind sharp.
"This was a mistake. I should have known better," she thought, feeling a sudden intense impulse to open her eyes. A brief attempt nearly led her to lose focus. "Keep your eyes shut, Myranda, keep your mind focused. What was I thinking? The Army has brought me nothing but trouble for my entire life. Why did I think I could trust them? Was my assumption that they would help me even my own? Did he somehow force me into this leap of faith? But he agreed when I said that he wanted the Chosen so that the war could be brought to an end. Maybe there is still hope. Perhaps this is a test of my loyalty. Perhaps I should give in, I have nothing to hide . . . No! Remember what Desmeres said. Epidime is not to be trusted under any circumstance. He might be one of them, those creatures, like the cloaks that attacked me. But then, Desmeres has lied to me before . . . or has he? No! He was always honest. He wouldn't have warned me about Epidime unless he knew that meeting him could cost me my life. I must resist. Is he weakening? No, no, just keep him out. Don't stop until he does, Myranda, don't take a chance . . . Why do I think he is bad? Desmeres said to watch out for him, but did he say he was bad? No. This man may be reasonable. After all, he could have killed us all if he is as strong as he seems. And he did let me go on his own. He could have easily strangled me to death, but he let go. I wish I could see what is going on. That feeling . . . he has tried this so many times from afar. Trying to warn me. Why didn't I listen? Now I resist. I should just let him into my mind. That would bring this torture to an end. I want to see what is going on. He is an intelligence officer in the Alliance Army. He has been one since the start of the war. He knows what happened to my father. I must see what is going on. There is no reason to keep my eyes closed."