Endure

by Sara B. Larson

  One of the other sorcerers said something to him in their language, and he nodded.

  Eljin’s gaze met mine, and the bleakness of his expression spoke more than anything he could have said to me. He didn’t think we were going to make it out of this alive.

  He was probably right.

  When the sorcerers finally let us stop, across from yet another staircase, my legs burned and my breathing was harsh from the panic I struggled to keep at bay. Every hour the tunnel seemed smaller and narrower. The earth and ever-present blackness pressed in on me, filling my mind with visions of being buried alive.

  “You will sleep here.” The sorcerer led us to a door across from the staircase and opened it to reveal a tiny room of sorts, nothing more than a square carved out of the earth, barely big enough for both Eljin and me to lie down side by side.

  He suddenly shoved me in the spine, sending me sprawling to the ground. Eljin was next, yanked forward and then pushed past the sorcerers. Though he stumbled, he managed to stay on his feet. The door shut behind him, enclosing us in complete darkness. We both heard the click of the lock.

  “You’d better take advantage of the chance to rest. It will be your last for a long time.” The sorcerer’s voice was muffled by the door. And then there was nothing.

  I curled into a ball, my eyes squeezed shut, telling myself I was all right, that I was lying on my bed, that I was in a big, spacious room with windows and moonlight. But no matter how hard I tried, my breathing wouldn’t slow and my hands grew clammy.

  “Alexa?” Eljin’s whisper startled me. I’d almost forgotten he was there.

  I heard him move, and then his hand brushed against my shoulder.

  “Just breathe. In and out. Focus on your breath.” He stretched out beside me on the ground, his hand still on my shoulder, connecting me to him — to something other than my absurd fear. “I’ve seen others with this same problem. It helps to turn inward.” His voice was low, soothing. “Visualize somewhere calming and just breathe.”

  I did as he suggested, picturing myself standing in the courtyard of the palace, Damian by my side, the open sky above us. I inhaled slowly and exhaled. Inhale. Exhale. In. Out. Eljin pulled his hand away, and my eyes flew open at the loss of his touch; I immediately tensed and completely lost the image of Damian.

  “Just breathe,” he reminded me, but I couldn’t. My lungs rose and fell sharply as the panic surged back in. “Here, does this help?” he asked, reaching for my hand and holding it in his. I curled my fingers around his, clutching him tightly.

  “Yes,” I whispered, ashamed at my irrational weakness.

  We were silent for a long moment as I struggled to calm my breathing again. I rolled onto my back, so that we lay side by side in the darkness.

  “It’s all right to be afraid,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t mean you’re weak.”

  I shook my head, angry at myself for getting us into this position — for being afraid of this dark, small place deep beneath the earth. Neither of us voiced the bigger fears: Where were they taking us? And what would happen when we got there?

  “Did I ever tell you about the time my father taught me how to ride a horse?”

  “No.”

  “As a child, I was actually quite terrified of them.”

  “Of horses?” I asked in surprise. He’d seemed so confident and comfortable when the innkeeper’s son had brought Mira and Gusto for us. A pang of guilt and worry sprang up at the thought of our horses — I wondered what had happened to them.

  “Yes.” He chuckled softly. “I always had an excuse or pretended to be sick when he’d tell me it was time to learn to ride. Finally, one day when I was eight, he grabbed me by the arm and practically dragged me to the stable. He already had a horse saddled and waiting for me, a small black gelding.”

  As he spoke about getting bucked off and his father forcing him to climb back on and try again, his words slid past the knot of tension that coiled through my chest, gradually loosening it, until I was able to breathe slowly once more. My fingers relaxed in his as he told me about the rolling hills near his home and how he eventually worked through his fear and actually grew to love riding. As he described the freedom he’d felt as he’d galloped through the wild lands of Blevon, I pictured myself on Mira’s back again, the wind in my hair as she flew across the ground. Nothing but the sky above us. I hadn’t even realized my fear had slipped away entirely until my exhaustion overtook me, and I slowly drifted to sleep to the cadence of Eljin’s stories.

  When the door opened, jerking us both awake, I jumped to my feet, even though my body begged for more rest. How long had it been since I’d had a full night’s rest? I couldn’t even remember any longer.

  “Come,” the sorcerer said, but his voice sounded different. It was hard to tell with the dark robes and the hoods pulled up over their heads, but I was fairly certain he was not the same sorcerer who had brought us to this room.

  I walked out into the dank tunnel first and was surprised to see five men standing there instead of three, two of them holding lit torches.

  “You will do exactly as we tell you, and your friend will live.”

  I nodded as Eljin followed me out into the tunnel, his eyes widening slightly at the number of men waiting for us.

  “Walk,” the Dansiian sorcerer said, pointing down the tunnel.

  “Of course,” I muttered, realizing that my hope of being led up the stairs and into the light had been in vain. I glanced ruefully at the stone steps that would take us away from the darkness as we filed past them.

  One of the men with the torches marched in front of me this time, which was a slight improvement, as I could at least see a little bit farther ahead of us, instead of being forced to step continuously in the blackness.

  We walked in silence for hours, only stopping once at another small room where there was a pot we all had to use to relieve ourselves. Eljin and I had to wait and go last. The smell nearly gagged me when it was my turn. My stomach heaved, threatening to make me vomit, as I did my best to crouch over the pot. But because my belly was completely empty, there was nothing to come up anyway.

  The sorcerers replaced their torches with new ones that were piled inside the small room, and then we continued on.

  “Faster,” the one behind me barked after we’d walked for at least another hour. My legs ached, and my stomach burned with hunger. Weakness wormed through my body, driven by starvation, thirst, and lack of sleep.

  “We need food, or at least something to drink.” Eljin spoke up for the first time.

  “If you want to eat, walk faster,” the sorcerer repeated sharply.

  I pushed myself to move as quickly as I could, but I knew I was getting slower and slower as they continued to march us through the never-ending tunnel. I despised feeling so weak, but without food or water, my body wouldn’t allow me to move any more quickly. I didn’t understand why they were forcing us through this underground pathway, why they weren’t feeding us or giving us water, when I knew the king wanted me alive for some reason. Where were they taking us — and why did we have to go this way?

  Finally, after yet another hour or two, the man who seemed to be in charge let us stop. He again put us in a small room, but this time he said, “Sit here to rest for a moment. But do not sleep.”

  The door shut, leaving us in the darkness once more. I slid down the wall, until I sat on the floor, my feet straight out in front of me, my head leaning back to rest against the dirt.

  “Why are they doing this? Why are they forcing us to go through this tunnel?” I asked after a long moment of strained silence. I couldn’t see Eljin; I couldn’t see anything. Not even my own hands or legs.

  “I don’t know.” Eljin’s voice came from my left side, and I turned my head toward him, even though it didn’t make a difference.

  We were silent for another minute, and then I quietly said, “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t respond right away, and I could picture the anger an
d frustration that was probably on his face. When he finally spoke, the kindness and pity in his voice took me by surprise. “It was the only way we would have made it into Dansii alive. You did what you had to do.”

  Before I could respond, the door opened and the torchlight outside the room revealed one of the hooded men walking toward us, holding a flagon in one hand and a small bag in the other.

  “You must share.” He tossed the bags at us and then turned and walked out again. Just before the door shut, I scrambled forward to grab the items.

  I fumbled to open the bag in the darkness.

  “What is it?” Eljin asked.

  I finally got it open and reached in to pull out what felt like a single hard roll and a small chunk of something softer. When I lifted it to my nose, the aroma made my stomach cramp. “It’s a roll and a little bit of cheese.”

  “That’s all?”

  I didn’t respond, my fingers clutched around the food. Even if I was able to eat the whole amount, it wasn’t nearly enough.

  “You eat it,” Eljin said quietly.

  “All of it?” I asked incredulously. “You can’t mean that.”

  “It’s hardly anything. You have to stay alive — you have to save Rylan and get back to Damian. If I die, they won’t be able to use me to control you any longer. I’m not nearly as important —”

  “Stop it,” I broke in. “Here’s your half. I’m not going to let you starve.”

  I’d already torn the roll apart, and I stretched my hand out in the darkness, hoping he’d come forward and take it from me. There was nothing but silence for a long moment, but then I heard him moving across the small space toward me. When his fingers brushed mine, I pressed the piece of roll into his hand. Then I broke the cheese apart and gave him part of it as well.

  “Thank you,” he muttered.

  “You have to get back to Tanoori. And we still have to rescue your father. You have just as many reasons to live as I do.”

  We fell quiet after that, hurrying to eat our paltry meal. Before we’d had a chance to finish and drink the water, the door opened.

  “Stand up. It’s time to leave,” the hooded man commanded.

  I grabbed the flagon as I stood up, unstopping it and swallowing the last bit of cheese whole, then took a large gulp of the water and tossed it to Eljin, who did the same.

  The man stepped toward us and yanked the flagon out of Eljin’s hand.

  “That’s enough. Go.” He shoved Eljin in the back, sending him stumbling toward me.

  They marched us through the darkness until our legs practically gave out and then shut us in a room to rest for a couple of hours once more. The same cycle repeated for what felt like days, until I couldn’t stop the continuous trembling in my hands, from hunger and unrelenting panic. I began to believe I’d never see the sun or sky again. The only change was the hooded men who guarded us. Every so often, they would switch. I couldn’t believe they were all black sorcerers. If they were, Damian’s fears that we would never survive an attack from Dansii were even more accurate than we’d believed.

  Finally, when I was certain I was going to lose my mind completely or collapse on the ground and die from starvation and exhaustion, we stopped by yet another winding set of stairs.

  “Up,” the sorcerer next to me said, grabbing my arm and yanking me toward the stone steps.

  “Up?” I repeated in disbelief.

  He didn’t respond except to jerk me forward, making my shoulder pop. I didn’t ask again, hurrying up the stairs as quickly as I could. My heart thumped harder and harder against my lungs the higher we got, as the smell of earth and the constant, oppressive darkness began to lift. When we reached the top stair, a massive wooden door blocked our exit. The sorcerer beside me pulled a ring of keys out of his robes and pushed one into the lock. With a click, it released and the door swung open.

  Two more men in dark robes, their hoods pulled up, stood past the door, blocking the way. The sorcerer next to me said something in Dansiian, and the two guards stepped aside to let us through. Eljin and the other men were right behind me as we moved forward into a hallway lined with doors.

  There were no windows, but torches were propped in brackets in evenly spaced intervals. Even though I knew whatever lay ahead couldn’t be good, my legs went weak with relief — I could see more than a body’s length ahead of myself. I was no longer surrounded by damp earth.

  Another sorcerer came up on my other side, and then each of them grabbed one of my arms, as if they were afraid I was going to fight back now, after remaining so compliant the entire time. Their fingers dug into my muscle and bone as they dragged me down the hallway. I heard people behind the doors; the muffled sound of someone sobbing in one, and a strange scratching noise in another. Almost as if the occupant was scraping stone on stone. Who were they? And where were we?

  My momentary relief was extinguished when we turned a corner to a smaller, darker hallway with only two doors, rather than continuing forward to the staircase at the end of the bigger corridor. The doors were guarded by two massive men who held curved swords in their hands.

  The larger of the two, who had to be at least a head and a half taller than me, barked something at us in Dansiian, but the sorcerer responded calmly. Whatever he said was effective, because both of the guards straightened and quickly moved toward the door on the right, one of them unlocking it and pulling it open.

  “Who is it?” someone inside asked in Antionese — a voice I’d begun to worry I’d never hear again.

  My heart constricted as I strained forward against the men who still held my arms, desperate to see in.

  “You will wait here until the king decides what he wants to do with you,” the sorcerer on my left told me, and then he shoved me toward the cell. I stumbled through the doorway, then slammed to a halt when I saw him lying on a cot below a tiny barred window, his injured leg wrapped in dirt-encrusted, bloody bandages, thinner than I’d ever seen him, a beard darkening his jaw.

  “Alexa?” He stared up at me, his familiar brown eyes darker than normal in the dim light provided by a small lantern that was the only illumination in the cell.

  “Rylan,” I choked out.

  I rushed to his side just as the door behind me slammed shut.

  “What are you doing here?” he marveled as he forced himself to sit up so he was able to wrap his arms around me.

  I couldn’t respond past the tears that choked me. “You’re alive,” I finally managed to say. “You’re alive.”

  Rylan had always been so strong, it made me cry even harder to feel how much weight he’d lost during his weeks of captivity, as I sat beside him and slipped my arms around his back, pressing my head to his shoulder. His arms tightened around me.

  “More or less,” he finally responded. “But why are you here? I told him you’d never come — that he was wasting his time.”

  I pulled back to look into his eyes. “Rafe sent me a note telling me he would kill you if I didn’t come alone. I couldn’t let him do that.”

  Rylan reached up hesitantly to wipe the wetness from my cheeks.

  “So you followed us to Dansii? By yourself?”

  With a jolt, I realized, in my shock at hearing Rylan’s voice, I’d forgotten about Eljin. I jumped to my feet and rushed to the door, banging my fist on it. “Where is he? What did you do with Eljin?” I shouted through the wood, but no one responded.

  “Eljin is here, too?” Rylan asked behind me, his voice heavy with disbelief.

  “Where is he?” I pounded against the wood until my knuckles felt raw, but if the guards were still out there, they ignored me.

  The cot creaked, and I turned around to see Rylan trying to stand up. He half hopped, half limped toward me, hardly able to put any weight on his leg — the one I’d sliced with my sword before leaving him behind with Rafe. He noticed me staring at the bloody bandages and halted, his gaze dropping to the ground.

  “Why would Eljin come with you?” he asked, not lif
ting his eyes.

  “Damian convinced him to.” I leaned back against the door, my head aching. My body felt heavy, weighted down by all the mistakes I’d made. Eljin had risked himself to come on this ill-fated rescue attempt, and now he was gone. He’d told me that his father was just one man, that it was not worth leaving Damian to go after him. But that’s exactly what I’d done. I’d left my king and my kingdom to go after one man, dragging Eljin with me, and now we were all captured. “He didn’t want me to go, but Damian knew I wouldn’t let Rafe kill you. So he asked Eljin to come with me, to help me rescue you.”

  “You shouldn’t have come.” Rylan finally looked up at me, and I was surprised to see anger in his eyes. “Damian needed you — Antion needed you. And you left him weakened in order to come save me. One person.”

  His harsh words made me flinch. “It’s my fault you’re hurt. I would never have been able to live with myself if I left you to die without even trying —”

  “You should have!” he burst out.

  I blinked in shock, his words hitting as though he’d physically punched me.

  “You should have stayed with the king. If you had any idea what they’re planning — what they’re going to do —”

  Before I could ask him what he meant, a key scraped in the lock behind me. I hurried to straighten and turn, just as the door swung open.

  “Well, what a lovely surprise.”

  Fury coiled in my belly and I leaped forward, lifting my fist to attack the man who stood in the doorway, but the moment I did, my anger drained away, leaving me confused as my hand dropped to my side again.

  He barked out a laugh, a horrible, burning sound that I’d hoped never to hear again.

  “It’s so good to see you again as well, Alexa.” Rafe grinned at me.

  Rafe walked into the cell, and the door shut behind him once more. “Did you enjoy your reunion?” He glanced at Rylan, who sat down on the cot again, one hand on his injured leg, gripping it.

  “You promised to heal him,” I bit out.