by Kim Wedlock
The interrogation had started three hours ago, and softly at Nolan's discretion, giving the mage the time to realise with every non-answer that his situation would only grow steadily worse. But though he'd been beaten limp by fist and blade - his lip and eye swollen, shoulder dislocated, leg certainly broken and his light skin a patchy mixture of berry-red, blue and purple - he had yet to give even an inch. That was not unusual for a mage, but Denek seemed particularly dedicated to obstinacy and smart-alec retorts, and his lack of surprise at the sudden removal of his 'untouchable' status baited them even more.
Salus's arms tightened across his chest. Denek had the answers - to the Order, to the artefact, and to everything in between. And he had been 'forgotten' by his colleagues for a reason, which they would drag out of him, too. It would just take persistence. Time. Patience.
But it was nearing midnight, everyone was waning, and Salus was fiercely aware that they were running out of time for that persistence, and he was personally running out of patience.
"How many more times? I don't know a damned thing about Karth or Koraaz!" The mage sneered with laborious effort as blood trickled from his brow. "For a speciality in intel-gathering, you're all remarkably inept. Tell me: how many threats have slipped past you because you've been too busy confirming the same fact sixteen times over?"
Like a fine, dry twig, that patience finally snapped. With menacing calm, Salus stepped away from the darkened wall, catching the mage's eye, whose broken lips tugged into a vile grin as the breaker stepped obediently to one side.
"Ah, the glorious Keliceran approaches. What an honour you do me! Or are you just tired of your lackey's ineptitude? I do hope you have different questions - this fellow's are starting to bore."
The mockery in the mage's eyes fanned Salus's contempt, but he remained the picture of professionalism. The thoughts and speculations of the others were hidden behind similar training as they tracked him from the shadows, but the pressure of their gazes forced his blood to course even hotter. He felt the burden of Erran's eyes the heaviest.
He stopped before Denek, who sat slumped in his bindings to a chair stained red and brown, and considered him for a long, deliberate moment. He was thinking little, but he watched Denek's eyes try to read the phantom thoughts he displayed in his own. His expression, a mocking sneer, the slightest pull at one corner of his lips, made it clear that he expected his ordeal to ease in Salus's inexperienced hands.
Salus suppressed his own identical smile. He would be disappointed.
He raised his hands, curiosity chasing the expectation from the mage's irksome face, and began to shape his fingers while Erran supervised surreptitiously from a distance. He did so slowly, taking care to avoid mistakes and conceal his own lack of confidence in the movements, but the combination was short, and there was no danger of Denek recognising its form. This spell, taught to him only the previous evening, was among the few of the Arana's own making; breakers' spells contrived and concealed from the Order's knowledge. And so the interest rather than panic that livened his face was both understandable and preferred. It made the shock of the pain that rattled suddenly down one side of his body all the more intense.
His muscles contracted, snapping him into a sideways hunch, and his voice, though stubbornly tight, rent a ragged howl more befitting of a beast than a man.
But Salus didn't smile in his satisfaction. He stepped closer as Denek raised his heavy head, turning him the blackest eyes, pained and confused, clearer and easier to read in his alarm than any common man's. "You," Salus began with a sedate and ominous certainty, his caustic disdain laid just as bare in his own, "will tell me what I want to know."
"Sorry, the what?" Anthis forced an innocent confusion into his eyes while the rest stared on, paralysed in horror. "I'm not...no, I'm afraid I'm not famili--"
His tongue pinned itself to the back of his teeth as the elf covered the distance between them in a flash, and his gaze frantically darted away, unable and unwilling to endure the wild eyes that dragged his secrets to the surface. He swallowed hard, and he was certain he heard the others do the same.
A bag was suddenly thrust into his hands. "You must find it."
Another wave of shock renewed their paralysis while Eizariin fixed him with fever. "The others want to stop you, but I can help--"
"Why?"
His eyes shifted impatiently to Garon, but they screamed a sudden and unmistakable shame. "Because," he continued, just as quickly, just as quietly, "the leaking magic plaguing the world is our fault. A few of us have been looking into it and searching for some way to stop it, others harbouring the same guilt as myself, but the krahvas, our elders, they absolutely refuse to acknowledge it; maintaining the secret of our existence is more important to them than correcting our past mistakes."
"Leaking magic?"
His increasingly urgent eyes then crashed on to Rathen - who seemed neither as shocked nor as nervous of his presence as the others - but though he hesitated, clearly reluctant in his tension to delve into the details, the spirit they'd seen in Anthis's eyes often enough won out in his. He sighed in defeat and spoke even quicker. "The ravein'okh was made as a testament to elven power - named Khryu'vahz, Khry's Glory, after its creator - and it's a travesty. It was built entirely of magic and it is potent. The magic has been locked behind its walls for centuries, but there has been no one to maintain those walls nor their preservation spells. They're breaking down and fragmented spells are seeping out through the cracks, and it's the potency of that preservation which is responsible for so many spell chains remaining whole enough to function outside of it. But without their foundations, they're affecting any element rather than what they were designed to - imagine a chair was conjured and made more comfortable by a second spell. If the spell that formed the chair broke down enough for the chair to vanish, but the spell for comfort remained whole enough, it could replace 'chair' with something else - and if that spell escaped, that replacement could be something as simple as a rock, or as random as a river upstream of turbulent water." His wide eyes darted severely over each of them. "Do you understand that danger?"
"We've seen it first-hand," Garon replied, the others continuing to reel. "But why will your people not fix this if they know what's causing it?"
Anthis's expression creased distastefully. "Because they don't want their dear children to learn of their ancestors' mistakes."
Eizariin sighed heavily. "He is, I am ashamed to say, quite correct. The few who have been allowed to investigate were permitted only by the highest command we have, but they've been forbidden from acting upon it. I don't know what the krahvas intend to do, but at the magic's present rate, it will be far too late when they finally do it. As far as I can see, you truly are the world's only hope."
Something in the darkness snatched Rathen and Eyila's attention, and though Eizariin didn't follow their leftward gazes, his eyes glazed in the same, distant way. He returned to them immediately, his expression somehow even graver. "There's little time. I must warn you: your magic will respond to this place. There are spell chains already loose that have demonstrated the danger to mages. You must be vigilant, watch for any unusual behaviour."
"Will he be all right?"
"Yes." But his pastel eyes fell dubiously upon Eyila. "But she may not." Another distraction, a disturbance in the darkness, one the three non-mages realised could only have been magic. The elf forced another familiar bag into Garon's hands, and a third into Rathen's. "You must go."
"Where?"
"To Khryu'vahz and find the Zikrahlehveyn!" He hissed in exasperation. "I can send you there, but now the others know what you're up to, you will be hunted." He began herding them into as small an area as he could. "Rathen's magic will be able to open the door, but once you get inside, you mustn't trust anything. Keep your wits about you. Find the Zikrahlehveyn and get out. Then hide."
"But--"
"No time!" A bundle of scrolls suddenly appeared in his arms, which he thrust into Ant
his's with an expression of promise and apology. "These will help. Now go! And good luck!" He smiled suddenly, a brief but honest flash directed wholly upon Anthis. "It was truly a pleasure to meet you."
The weak firelight vanished, and the narrow shaft of moonlight that had brushed them gently from the right blinded them head-on with the orb's sudden entirety.
None of the guards appeared to acknowledge the footsteps that echoed through the tunnel on his approach. But that wasn't unusual. Prisoners scurried fearfully to the furthest edge of their cells as he passed. That wasn't unusual either. And when he drew to a stop outside of one such barred alcove in particular, he received no kind of greeting from those standing straight and silent on its either side. And that, too, was completely ordinary.
The emptiness of that cell, however, was not.
Oliver looked quizzically to the nearest of those two guards. "Where is he?" He was graced only with a gesture, but that brief nod of the head towards a sealed door at the end of the corridor simultaneously answered that and every other question that would have followed. It also brewed a tingling dread in the pit of his stomach which snaked upwards into his heart.
It didn't show, of course.
He nodded his thanks, turned tidily and strode away, his footsteps no faster nor heavier than would be usual.
Only his white-knuckle grip on the food tray betrayed his alarm.
A shuddering gasp puffed free from broken lips, and a hateful, bloodshot glower fired from between loose, matted hair. But Salus remained unimpressed. "Why," he asked again, no less collected than the last, "does the Order want the artefact?"
Denek leaned over and spat the gathering blood at Salus's feet. His glare and menace remained unbroken until the same, simple movements of Salus's hand wrenched him sharply to the left, shocking from him another demoralising wail. "Why does the Order want the artefact?"
"Damned if I know," he growled tightly, but the gestures came again before he could brace for it. Every muscle in his back contracted, arching his body backwards until the chair threatened to dislodge vertebrae, and he howled again for the full, infinite moment it lasted.
"Why--"
"It doesn't matter!" He hissed, slumping forwards as he was released. "They couldn't use it if they tried!"
"'Couldn't'?"
"No! They don't have the magic for it!"
The spell came again.
"Why does the Order want the artefact?"
"Gah!! What is wrong with you?! Listen to me! I'm telling you what I know!" Salus's fingers twitched and a white flash of panic flared through Denek's veins. "The Zi'veyn," his fear said quickly, "it's an elven relic - it takes elven blood, elven magic to direct elven spells, including the spell inside it!"
"Oh?" The keliceran's hand stilled. "Then why does the Order want it? What could this undirectable spell do for it to enrapture them like this?"
"I don't know! Not for certain!"
Salus's eyebrow rose only the slightest in interest. "Are you sure?" Denek howled and jerked to the side again, but Salus held the spell for only an instant. The mage sagged and caught his breath in relief, but then his other side convulsed before his lungs could settle. This hold, too, was brief, and he slumped and gasped again. Then it came a third time.
He howled desperately. "It suppresses magic!"
"Good." Salus lowered his hand, at last. "That's the right answer."
Denek gritted his teeth in fury as his captor wandered leisurely to his other side, but he didn't vocalise the jibes and retorts that would usually have leapt off of his tongue. And Salus was no doubt aware of that.
"How do you know only elven magic can operate it?"
"Because elves made it," he hissed. "We know what it takes to make it work! No common mage among you could wield it!"
"No 'common' mage..." Salus continued to pace, keeping a subtle eye on him all the while, predicting and reading his reactions, his sneers, his flinches. "Koraaz is no common mage... Could it be used for anything else?"
"I don't know! Gah!! I don't know! I don't know how it was made or how to operate it! But it's not going to fall into your accursed hands anyway!"
"Oh?"
"No! We would never leave such a terrible, powerful thing where it could just be tripped over!"
Salus stopped and turned to face him. He looked down at the mocking grin revealed beneath his dark and tangled hair, and the hatred that thundered in his eyes. And that same sickening superiority, still present despite his split lip, brow and cheek, the blood, dried and fresh, coating his skin, and the irregular, haggard breath that came from rib damage. A superiority he had no right to.
His fist tightened and flew into the mage's bloodied cheek, landing with a wet thump. He was rewarded with little more than a grunt, but he wouldn't have taken satisfaction even from a scream. "You know where it is. Where has the Order hidden it? Why haven't they used it? Are they still trying to work out how?"
Exasperation crackled in the mage's eyes. "The Order doesn't have it! And they couldn't use it if they did! Only an elf or someone with elven blood could wield it - are you not listening?!"
"Mages have elven blood."
"Ancient blood!" He scoffed. "They've barely retained the magic!"
The two stared at one another, Salus's eyes pensive, Denek's ever-contemptuous. But the keliceran didn't raise his hands, though Denek's revolting glare dared it despite himself.
He stepped away, calmly, thoughtfully, and stopped in the darkness beside Teagan. Only when his back was turned did he let any trace of suspicion leak into his eyes, to which Teagan responded with a whisper of his curiously tinted voice. "Impossible."
But Salus shook his head, flexing his fingers, and stared with measure into the nearby blackness. "Nothing's impossible..." His body tightened. The chamber was plunged into silence but for the soft, irregular wheeze of breath being fought into submission, and his thoughts tumbled away before him.
It was a preposterous idea, one so absurd he didn't dare to put it into words, whose likeliness was thrown into question by the very fact that Denek was still there. He could have made his way out of the cells with minimal effort if that truly was the case...
But...those eyes. Salus didn't look around - he didn't need to. Those arrogant, pale eyes were ingrained into his mind. No average mage could have maintained that attitude under such duress...
The marionette, as the spell was affectionately known, may have been the limit of his own magical knowledge, but it was a spell that was easily amplified. Just as thrusting a fist and thrusting a blade took similar effort with drastically different results, with the slightest adjustment to the final gesture he could cause a spasm in the muscle, a cramp, or a blinding contraction so violent it burst blood vessels - an intensity impossible to predict by a mind hampered by stress. Erran had told him he had remarkable control over the detail, a fact Salus decided stemmed from his training as a portian, the result of a precise mind. And that precision, the spell's unpredictable severity, caused just as much torment as the spell itself. And Denek was suffering.
Wasn't he?
His attitude had changed when Salus took over. He'd offered nothing but sarcasm before he'd stepped forwards. Now, he was still sarcastic, it was true, but he also seemed more willing to speak. But was that only because of the spell?
No. Denek had underestimated him. Because of the meagre 'bond' that had formed like an old, frayed thread between them. And he was so sure of himself. He was still so sure of himself.
Those damned eyes...those damned, inhuman eyes.
Salus straightened and lowered his arms, easing the tightness in his jaw. Doubt swirled around him, but there was a pinpoint of certainty in his centre, one impossible to ignore. It was a preposterous idea - absolutely absurd. But it was so very unlikely that it should never have occurred to them, regardless of suggestion, regardless of evidence. And now that it had, it seemed horrifyingly obvious.
Denek was still there; he hadn't vanished and he hadn't
fought back. He doubted the strength of his magical bindings, but...he was still there. Bloodied and broken. And sure of himself.
Salus turned and approached his prisoner. He remained the picture of serenity, even as those vile eyes turned back upon him, even as their malicious arrogance clawed at his temper, even as blood was spat again at his feet. And it remained unbroken as he raised his hands and cast the spell again. And again. And again.
No one looked away as the beaten man writhed, his body jerking and wrenching as if rabid. Neither did they close their ears to his desperate howls or curses. And neither did they show their own private disquiet at the keliceran's skill and free usage of the torturous spell.
Finally, he suspended the torment, and his chilling ease had at last given way to agitation. "Where is the Zi'veyn?" He demanded quickly.
Denek bared his teeth. "I'm not going to tell you."
"If only elves and their kind can use it, what difference does it make if I know where it is or not? Why don't you understand?! It's for the good of everyone that it's kept out of the Order's hands! Who knows what the high magisters plan to do with it?! I'm trying to protect Turunda!"
"You would lead it to ruin!"
His heart stopped and his composure fractured. 'You would lead this country to ruin.' Elina's words bombarded his mind. They echoed sickeningly, reviving the rage that had filled him then, as he'd snapped the neck of his predecessor, returning with such force that he could have been back in that blinding, decade-old moment.
Heat surged through his body. His bones turned molten, his blood to pure fire. It didn't relent as his fist met Denek's pale cheek. It burned only hotter with every strike. His grunts of pain urged him on, but they were nothing compared to what he knew his magic was capable of drawing out from him. His spell, the trusty marionette, was cast over and over, twisting the mage into a dance of the possessed, and every howl, every terrible scream encouraged his fingers to contort again.
How dare he. How dare he! He didn't hear the words simultaneously bellowing from his own lips.