Prisoners of the Keep

by Susan Bianculli

  “I’m stuck!” I hissed.

  Jason and Arghen each took a turn in trying to pull me free, but all I ended up with was a sore arm.

  “Can you move your finger at all, Lise?” Jason asked.

  It turned out I could slide my finger around the center but not lift it off.

  “You are going to have to solve the maze, then. You should be freed once you have reached the end,” Arghen said confidently, though with some apprehension in his amber eyes.

  I looked at the puzzle. There were three exits from the center. I tried to follow it with my eyes first, but the maze’s lines kept wavering and changing.

  “I can’t see it properly. Can you tell me which entrance I should pick?” I asked.

  But neither the Under-elf nor Jason had any better luck in deciphering it.

  “There must be some sort of spell to cloud our minds on it,” Arghen finally said. “You will have to choose one and hope for the best.”

  I threw up a quick prayer to Caelestis and picked one at random. I slid my finger towards my chosen starting point, but my sore arm spasmed a little and jerked my finger into hitting the side of the maze wall just at the entrance. I felt like I’d stuck a bread knife in a toaster, or touched bare electrified wires with a wet hand.

  “Yeow!” I cried as the jolt blew my finger back to the starting position, leaving a slight smell of ozone in the air.

  “What happened?” asked Arghen and Jason together anxiously.

  “I, I got jolted with electricity—umm, baby lightning,” I said breathlessly. “But I’m okay.”

  “Wow. Be more careful, all right?” said Jason, concern in his voice.

  I blinked at the concern, but gave him a ‘duh’ look for the words. I focused on the maze and started again. As my finger slid along the route I’d chosen, the confusion cleared away. Too late, though; I could see my finger was headed for a dead end. I stopped and tried to slide my finger back to start, but the magic controlling the maze wouldn’t let me and I still couldn’t pull my finger off.

  “Get ready. I have to complete the maze, and it’s the wrong ending,” I warned.

  “We are ready,” Arghen assured me.

  I hit the dead end. My finger came free, and the door we’d entered by slammed shut. We heard three loud clicks of the door in this room locking, and then three large, grey lupine-like creatures appeared in the room from a cloud of copper-colored smoke. They looked like a weird cross between a Goblin and a wolf.

  “Barghests!” yelled Arghen.

  I drew my saber.

  “No, Lise! We’ll fight them off while you solve the door! That may get rid of them!” the Under-elf exclaimed.

  I dropped my saber to the floor and turned quickly back to the door. I knew which exit I had taken last time, so I did ‘eenie, meenie, mynie, moe’ and picked a different one. I heard the fight behind me progress in a series of howls and growls, and I sweated. I slid my finger fast along the maze corridor, and to my relief saw that I had picked the right one. I was going to finish! Out of nowhere, a dead weight hit me. One of the barghests’ bodies had fallen into me, and it nearly knocked me to my knees. My finger veered sharply towards the side of the maze, and I panicked. I didn’t want to be shocked again! I grabbed my wrist with my other hand and was able to prevent myself from knocking into the maze corridor. I stopped and trembled a little where I stood, taking a couple of breaths to calm down. The room behind me was abruptly silent except for the panting of Arghen and Jason.

  “We’re okay, Lise. You?” huffed Jason.

  “Yeah. I’m okay now. I’ve got the right ending, so here I go.”

  I finished the maze. As my finger exited the puzzle the door swung open. The barghest bodies also disappeared. The door opened into a kind of dead end corridor lined with iron-barred cells. As we cautiously entered it, I thought at first there was nobody here. We glanced into every cell as we made our way down towards the end, but all were empty except the very last one. There we saw a Surface-elf standing warily against the stone wall at the back of his cell, tense. He wore brown leather pants and a black leather vest over a green sleeved shirt. His eyes locked onto Arghen when we came towards his cell. He was so focused on Arghen that he completely ignored Jason and me. That rankled a bit, but I said nothing because it gave me the chance to really look at the prisoner. He had eyes the same shade of amber as Arghen’s, but other than that he looked like a Surface-elf fighter—very light sandy-colored hair, slim, fair-skinned, and muscular.

  “Are you Dusk?” I asked.

  But the Under-elf was already nodding. “It has to be, Lise. I can see the resemblance to Quiris in his features. Do you not agree, Jason? Although I am surprised to see that he is not a pure Under-elf, as my Goddess is.”

  That was right—I’d forgotten Jason had seen Quiris, too. Jason nodded reluctant agreement with Arghen as he moved up to work on the lock.

  The Under-elf yelled at him in a panicked voice, “Stop!” and pulled him away.

  Jason and I immediately brought our weapons up to defend ourselves from whatever Arghen had seen. But looking around didn’t show us anything to be alarmed about.

  “Why stop?” Jason asked in a puzzled tone.

  “Do you not see the cold iron bars? We will have to figure out a way to get around this!”

  I started to laugh, and Arghen looked nonplussed.

  “Arghen, you don’t have to worry about cold iron while we’re around. We’re human, remember? Cold iron doesn’t affect us.” I turned to Jason. “Go ahead.”

  I saw the Under-elf twitch as if he was going to yank Jason away again, but he trusted my words. His trust was rewarded as he saw Jason touch the lock without any ill effect, and me lean casually up against the bars. He shook his head in wonder.

  The sandy-haired Elf in the cell blinked, eyes still locked on Arghen. “Two—Humans, did you say?—one of whom knows my name, both of whom can touch cold iron, and who are in company with an Under-elf? How is this possible?”

  Dusk’s eyes flicked away from the Under-elf to us, back to Arghen again, and his eyes widened as he finally noticed Quiris’ insignia and pendant. Understanding appeared in his face.

  He relaxed a little, and said to Arghen with a friendly nod, “To answer your earlier, ah, statement—I am a Miscere.”

  “What’s that?” I asked as Arghen nodded in apparent understanding. “I’ve heard people say this word before, but no-one ever explains it.”

  “A Miscere is someone whose parents are of different races,” Dusk replied. “My father is a Surface-elf of the settlement we live in, and my mother was an Under-elf who lived there before she ascended. But how is it that you three have come here?”

  “We had come to free the prisoners who were outside, and Auraus told us to search inside for you,” I answered.

  Dusk looked anxious. “Auraus? Is she all right?”

  “Yes, she’s fine,” I reassured him. “She’s waiting upstairs with the others. Let’s get you out and go join her.”

  Relieved, Dusk asked Arghen, “Are you the leader of the expedition and battle that I have been hearing?”

  Jason jerked his head in surprise. “You’ve heard it? Well, then you’re the first. Not that that’s a bad thing.”

  He found the correct key to unlock the cell door and swung it open.

  Arghen replied to Dusk, “No, I am not the leader. This quest belongs to Lise, who is a Champion of Caelestis.”

  The Under-elf bowed a short bow in my direction as Dusk looked at me again.

  “Will wonders never cease? But thank you all for my rescue,” he said as he exited the cell.

  “No problem. Come on, and we’ll get you out of here,” I told him.

  CHAPTER 25

  Arghen, Jason, Dusk and I returned to the guard room. The atmosphere lightened considerably as Auraus, upon seeing the amber-eyed Miscere Surface-elf, threw her arms around his neck with a happy smile.

  “You are alive, Dusk!” she said, hugging hi
m with relief.

  “I am glad you are still with us, Dusk,” added Thoronis.

  Dusk nodded at the brown-haired Surface-elf as he hugged Auraus back. “I am fine, Auraus, Thoronis, Ragar. But I think I am more relieved to see you than you are to see me!”

  Ragar commented, “It is good to see that at least you are still the same.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Dusk asked, looking at him.

  Arghen interrupted as the Wind-rider turned pink again. “That is not important, Dusk. Now, we have achieved part one of our quest. We need next to accomplish part two.”

  “That being …?” inquired Dusk, mastering his curiosity.

  “Finding the rune key for Auraus’s collar,” I informed him.

  “So you know about the rune lock? Good. But its key could be anywhere, although I suspect it will be in the possession of either Bascom or Morsca.”

  “That’s what we think, too,” I said.

  “What are we going to do with him?” interrupted the mountain-cat-elf, thumbing over at Dusk.

  The Miscere Surface-elf held up his hands. “I can go with you if you want, Lise. In fact, I would rather this, in order to stay with Auraus.” He looked at her and touched her cheek with his fingers. “But if the other prisoners are outside somewhere, it would make more sense for me to go out there and take charge of them. For the last two seasonals I have been the leader of a group of bandit raiders called the Grey Riders, so I know what to do with groups of beings. I also know the area surrounding the keep is heavily guarded, and that needs to be dealt with if we are to escape.”

  I thought for a moment, but what Dusk said seemed right. Auraus looked a little sad but didn’t protest his words.

  I shrugged. “Okay, Dusk. Out this door,” I pointed to it, “is the cage yard, and at the back are ropes leading up the cliff to a blind we constructed. The freed prisoners are going to be somewhere around there.”

  “Right.” Dusk nodded. He then said to Auraus and Thoronis, “Before I go, I have to tell you that I have found out that Morsca and Bascom are lovers. When I was separated from you in Morsca’s audience chamber, she had me taken to a sitting room nearby for a little ‘chat’. She wanted to recruit me for her organization, probably thinking that because I was like her I would be disaffected from the world, making me more willing to join up.”

  “How are you like her?” Auraus asked, curious.

  “You remember that she is a Miscere, too, right? It turns out that her mother was a Mermaid and her father a Surface-elf. She apparently was abandoned at birth on the rocks by the Meloran Sea. Before Morsca died of exposure, she was found by a Goblin chieftain. He took her home to his wives and twenty-one children as a curiosity for her blue hair and pearlescent green skin.”

  “Oh, that poor Miscere!” Auraus said softly, sympathy in her voice.

  “Well, I would not waste too many tears on her now,” said Dusk in a grim tone. “I also figured out from my interview that she is trying to become a Goddess somehow and is using some city-state of the Under-elves to make this happen. Just how, though, I was not able to wheedle out of her.”

  His words brought shock to every face.

  “What do you mean?” I demanded of him.

  Dusk grimaced as he turned to me. “It is something of a long story, but I think she wants to follow in the footsteps of the Goddesses Caelestis and Quiris. They were once mortals but later became Deities.”

  My eyes popped, remembering the story Jason and I had been told.

  Auraus, mastering herself, said, “That is true, Lise. The story is on page forty-two of Caelestis’ Handbook for Champions.”

  Dusk continued, “In the interview, Morsca confirmed the private suspicions I had been harboring. She said that one upper worlder is worth at least twenty beings from the breeder pens the Under-elves keep. It is why she has been making travelers in the Garrend Mountains ‘disappear’ the last number of years. When she realized that I was not going to join her, she told me that I would make an even better trade than usual down under.”

  He looked apologetically at Arghen. “That is why I was suspicious of you at first when you turned up at my cell. I thought for a moment you were my new owner coming to collect me. I was very relieved to see my mother’s insignia on your clothes and around your neck, else once you had opened the cell I would have tried to escape and died, or thrown myself against the iron bars, rather than be taken to the Sub-realms.”

  The Under-elf nodded once. “I understand.”

  Auraus frowned. “How can she possibly think she would be successful? Caelestis and Alatis, Caelestis’ mate, became Deities because of all the Surface-elves, Wind-riders, and Surface-Under-elves praying for, and believing in, them after they’d sacrificed themselves to save each other in the battle to defend Treestall. Belief is what powers the Gods and Goddesses, not souls!”

  Dusk asked, “But what if Morsca does not want to become a benevolent Goddess?”

  Shocked silence filled the room for a moment.

  “But that is—that is monstrous!” Thoronis said, aghast.

  “But it could be,” Arghen suggested. “After all, the Deities who look more to the vices and actions that we consider evil might have a different standard of what it takes to make one divine. What if it is an amount of souls garnered by sacrifice?”

  “But that would have to be a huge amount!” I objected.

  “And?” he said simply.

  The Wind-rider spoke up. “I–I think this sounds right, Lise. It is preposterous, mad, and egomaniacal. But having been inspected by Morsca before being caged by her guards, I can believe it.”

  The mountain-cat-elf and Thoronis nodded in dour support of her words. Ragar bared his fangs as well.

  “I have a question. Were there any Kobolds, Troglodytes, or other races from the Sub-realms mixed in where you were imprisoned?” Dusk asked the ex-prisoners of our group.

  Thoronis, Auraus and Ragar shook their heads.

  Jason blinked. “So where are all these other sacrificial prisoners?”

  The Miscere Surface-elf replied, “There has to be another dungeon that is filled with the trade from the Sub-realms, then.”

  We looked grimly at each other as we realized our quest had just doubled in size.

  I spoke first. “We’ll have to find this other dungeon and rescue them, too.”

  Arghen said, “Agreed. But which should we do first: release Auraus, or find these other captives?”

  Thoronis suggested, “I would think freeing Auraus first would be best. That way we would have some magic on our side to counteract Bascom if we come across him.”

  “Ah, but there is the chance you may not meet him,” Dusk informed the brown-haired Surface-elf.

  “Oh?”

  “Do you recall when we had been taken into Morsca’s audience chamber upon our arrival, and Auraus was pretty far gone?”

  Thoronis nodded as Auraus dropped her gaze—whether from shame or embarrassment, I wasn’t sure.

  “Remember that Morsca was afraid that Auraus was going to die before getting her to the parley? After I had been separated out and you others had been taken away, Morsca ordered Bascom to leave and set up the next exchange as quickly as he could. As far as I know, he left yesterday morning to do her bidding,” Dusk explained.

  The mountain-cat-elf growled at these words but said nothing.

  “Then we need to get going now,” I said firmly. “I think the idea of getting some real magic on our side is a good one, so we’ll try and free Auraus first.”

  “All right,” said Dusk. “Then let me tell you what I remember of my travels through the keep.”

  The amber-eyed Surface-elf told us the route that he’d been taken from Morsca’s sitting room to the cell where we’d found him. He also told us the locations of the doors, cross corridors and staircases that he’d passed. I was amazed at all he’d remembered observing. He ended by wishing us all good luck as he picked up a weapon from the supply shelves.<
br />
  Auraus walked with him to the door that led to the yard. “You will be careful, will you not?”

  He replied, “I am always careful.”

  They shared a sardonic grin, and I guessed there was some inside joke there. As he opened the door, the Wind-rider swooped in and gave Dusk a long, hard kiss. Jason smirked at the shell-shocked expression on the Surface-elf’s face as Auraus pushed him out the door and closed it. Her cheeks were pink again as she rejoined the group, but she didn’t say anything.

  Arghen said with a grim look, “Now the hard part begins.”

  CHAPTER 26

  “From here on it’s going to be us fighting for our lives and the lives of the freed prisoners, Lise. Are you going to be okay about it?” Jason asked me in a low voice while we crossed the guard room one more time. We headed to the exit that led to the hallway with the door immediately across the way.

  I nodded once, unhappily. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t heard of these kinds of things before from my stories. But it was one thing to read about them and quite another to be doing them. I squared my shoulders as I had seen the Wind-rider do, and I thought of my favorite sword-and-sorcery video game.

  For the benefit of Arghen who looked concerned for me, I said in a louder voice than Jason had used, “I know, Jason. It’s hard for me, too, but we’re doing the right thing. Of that, at least, I am convinced. But we need to be organized somehow while searching, so Arghen and myself will be in the lead. You and Thoronis will be next, and Ragar and Auraus can watch the rear.”

  I opened the door and crossed to the door in the opposite wall. Thoronis slipped up to listen again, and he signaled he’d heard something as he went back to his position. Raising my sword, I shoved open the door and we rushed in. The dimly lit walls of the large room were lined with double bunks, with a stand beside each holding bits of armor. It was a guards’ barracks, and about half the beds were filled with sleeping beings. A female Goblin near the door woke up at the noise. She gave out a yell of warning as she caught sight of us and dove off the opposite side of the bed.