The Captive Kingdom

by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Mercy widened his arms to welcome me. “For my people’s sake, I hope you return with the third lens. For myself, I would be equally happy to see you washed out to sea.”

  “My happiness will come in watching you crumble in defeat tonight.” My eyes narrowed. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  He only smiled, something that genuinely made him look frightening. “Why is that?”

  “When I declare victory over the Prozarians tonight, I will preserve as many lives as I can … except yours. Do not get in my way tonight because I have no interest in saving you.”

  By then, Captain Strick and Wilta had arrived at the overlook. Folding her arms, the captain said to me, “I understand you better now. You are a curiosity of opposites, leaving me to wonder if you are a brilliant mind or a great fool. If you are a servant or a dictator. If you are the greatest of friends or the worst.”

  “I am no curiosity,” I replied. “I am simply a person with whom you never should have started a fight.”

  “And why is that? Do you fear losing? No, I don’t think so. Are you so arrogant that to lose would damage your pride? Again, I don’t believe that.” She smiled, coming to her conclusion. “Is it death that you fear?”

  My body tensed. “If understanding my mind is the point of sending me after the third lens, I will not go.”

  “You will go,” Wilta said. “But not alone.” The red-haired man who’d disposed of Erick’s body, and who had fought me outside Darius’s home, stepped forward from the group. “Phillip is an expert diver. Maybe you will find the third lens, or maybe he will find it, but we will not be tricked again.”

  I tightened my jaw and said nothing. Admittedly, this was a problem.

  Phillip knelt before Wilta. “Monarch, if I cannot return with the third lens, I will not return.”

  “I like his plan.” I patted his shoulder. “Go ahead with it, Phillip.”

  Wilta frowned at me. “Why do you keep resisting? Don’t you think it’s time you admitted defeat?”

  I widened my arms as far as the chains would allow. “Does this look like defeat?” I shrugged. “I mean, I know this looks like defeat, but things are not always what they appear.” To demonstrate, I stuck my pin inside the chain and released one, then the other, dropping the chains to the ground.

  Wilta was clearly unimpressed, which only meant she had never attempted to pick the lock of a chain before. She said, “Do you think that simple trick changes anything? We have played a much better trick on you.”

  Roden stepped forward, tears thick in his eyes. I’d never seen him looking so upset before, and when he began to speak, I understood why. “I failed you, Jaron. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  My fingers curled into fists. “Are you on my side, or hers?”

  “He’s on yours, and that was his mistake.” Wilta curled one hand over his shoulder. “Ever since his capture, we let him lie about his true loyalties, knowing eventually he would do something truly harmful to you.”

  I looked directly at Roden. “What did you do?”

  Roden took a deep breath to get control of his emotions, but still struggled to choke out, “I caught Tobias trying to free Amarinda from the jail. I had to deal with him.”

  I rushed forward as if to strike him, but Mercy pulled me back. “Deal with him? Where’s Tobias?”

  “He escaped, but Roden left him injured,” Wilta said. “We will find him again soon.”

  “Why would you have done this, Roden?”

  “If I didn’t help them, they’d throw us both into the opening!”

  My expression hardened. “That should have been your choice! You asked me to trust you and this is what I get for it?”

  “He’s weak,” Wilta explained. To demonstrate, she pushed on Roden’s shoulder and he immediately crumpled lower, tears still rolling down his cheeks. “Once we understand a person’s weakness, we can bring them down to nothing, and then we take control. That’s why my mother has sought to understand you, because we will do the same to you.”

  “I understand him perfectly now.” Strick turned to me again, her lips thinning as a smile spread across her face. “You do fear death, Jaron. That is the curse you constantly bear upon your shoulders, haunting your every step. But it is not your own death that keeps you awake at night. It is the deaths of those you love.”

  She had hit closer to me than anyone ever had, which unnerved me more than I dared to let show. Instead, I looked from her over to the cave entrance and muttered, “I am about to be the curse upon your shoulders. Before morning comes, you will kneel to me.”

  Before she could answer, I saluted her as I had done once before, then jumped back into the cave.

  I had tried to prepare myself for the icy cold that would greet me, but the instinct to suck in choked me almost immediately and I arose from the pit coughing on water and already shivering. The cave was much colder tonight, or maybe my strength was finally failing. I needed to get out of the water, if I could.

  Phillip had followed me into the water, though the tide had carried him some distance away before he surfaced inside the cave. “You cannot escape me!” he shouted. “We will find the lens together.”

  Ignoring him, I swam out from beneath the waterfall to the same wall that I had climbed before. By this time, I knew the holds well, though because of the river now running into the cave, the wall was wet and the holds were slippery.

  I shouted up to Strick, who was leaning over the opening, “You are wrong about me. The greatest of my fears is not death. It is that one day I will be faced with a challenge that I cannot overcome. Today is not that day. You will never see the third lens!”

  I doubted she could hear me, but that wasn’t the point. Nor was it even meant to be my response to Phillip, though from his side of the cave, he was glowering at me. I had only said those words because I needed to hear them.

  I didn’t know where I should be on the wall to see the third lens, only that once the moon rose into the proper location, I needed to be high enough to see the entire cave clearly. With that thought, I began to climb.

  The first attempt lasted less than a minute before I lost my grip on the slippery wet walls and fell, splashing into the frigid pool and sinking almost to the very bottom. The incoming tide was little threat to me, but the pull of the water to take me out to sea was almost more than I could fight. I finally righted myself, only to be caught by a wave, which sent me crashing into the side of the cave wall. I tried again from there, just to take hold of any place where I might breathe, but I fell again almost immediately. I climbed higher on my third attempt, looking across the cave to see Phillip on the wall across from me, shaking his head.

  “You are wasting your strength,” he said. “This is not about the climb.”

  “It’s always about the climb!” I shouted back, though the distraction cost me my balance and only made my fall harder than before.

  This time, the cold surface slapped against my body like I’d landed on rock. I also landed heavily on my injured leg, and it screamed at me when I tried using it to kick toward the cliff wall again. That same leg shook as I relied on it to lift me out of the water, but I had no other choice. I started to climb again.

  Thoughts entered my mind, telling me that this was not a fight I could win, and I pushed them away. What I had said before was the absolute truth. Every risk I ever took, every leap of faith, every step into the darkness, was to prove to myself that I could overcome any challenge that came my way. No matter how small I often felt, I needed to know that I could face the hard thing ahead because I’d already done harder things before.

  But I had rarely faced anything like this. If I only had to find the lens, or only had to climb these walls, it would be difficult enough. But this was proving to be impossible.

  And the impossibility of it was how the cold was affecting me internally. My teeth were chattering beyond my control and the tips of my fingers were numb. But I was already experiencing something worse: Thinking was becoming diff
icult. I couldn’t even remember how to think.

  I recalled my conversation with Imogen from early this morning, that I had come close to death before and always found a way out of it. She had said that was only because I had fought death before.

  So I would again. Gritting my teeth together, I found a hold for my fingers and climbed.

  I had been here before. I had done this before, though it was different tonight. The riverfall was back now, as it had once been. As Tobias had suggested, a grand moon was rising, sending a sliver of light through the opening. But tonight, that light reflected off the riverfall to the water below. There, strange lights suddenly appeared, not in the turbulent water coming in from the sea, but below it. The lights came from within the pit.

  “There it is!” Phillip said. “The lights will lead us to the lens!”

  I’d paid little attention to the pit the first time I’d seen it. It had appeared to be nothing more than a tube created by the volcanoes that formed this land, and maybe it was. But Phillip was correct — this was the pathway to the third lens.

  I studied the strange lights a moment longer, wondering about their glow in shades of blue, purple, and pink, darkening in tone as they descended deeper into the pit.

  Again, the devils must have been laughing at my expense. To obtain the third lens, I’d have to dive into a deep pit and survive a water-filled tube that might continue forever underground. Whoever designed this clearly did not want the lens to ever be found. I gritted my teeth and began to climb again. My leg ached horribly. Every part of me hurt by now.

  “Still wasting your strength.” From a position far below me, Phillip angled his body away from the wall. “I will get the lens first. I will get the glory.”

  He dove toward the pit, and should have made it, except at the same moment, a new wave crashed into the cave. Had he been higher, the greater speed of his body might have pushed him downward, but now the wave thrust him against the opposite wall. He crashed hard against the rock and was knocked unconscious, then the same wave carried him back out to sea. Just like that, he was gone.

  I cursed under my breath, then cursed again until nothing was left but to attempt the same dive from higher up on the wall. Maybe it wouldn’t matter. The very same thing could easily happen to me. Inhaling deeply, I let go of the cave walls and dove directly into the pit.

  The speed of my dive and flow of the water carried me deeper into the pit than I would have expected to go in only a few seconds. Soon, I was being pushed through a dark lava tube with my only light being what must have been a form of glowing algae.

  Once the tunnel flattened out, I began to swim, though my body was already begging to breathe. Finally, when I could stand it no longer, I rolled to my back and exhaled. To my surprise, there were no bubbles. This was air.

  I opened my eyes and realized I was floating past a thin layer of air, created by a pocket in the tube that was higher than the level of the water. I drew in a new breath just in time for the tube to narrow again, and I continued swimming. I pushed one finger upward against the lava tube. As soon as it widened, I rolled and took a new breath, then returned to swimming, never knowing how long it would be until I found more air. Never knowing if I would find more air. I just swam.

  Ahead of me, the tube seemed to split. To my left, almost impossibly, I saw sunlight, which was surely my chance for escape. But the glow that had carried me this far through the tunnel flowed to the right, into total darkness. Death.

  That was the direction I had to go. Not to fight against my fate, as Imogen wanted, but to accept it. I hoped that one day she would forgive me.

  I took what might be the last breath I ever drew, and swam to the right. By the time I realized the truth about the choice I had made, it was too late. I was carried headfirst over an underground waterfall with no idea of what lay below me.

  I splashed deep into an icy pool of water and fought my way upward with lungs about to burst. The river ran onward, continuing deeper underground and into total darkness, but there was land to the side of me. The air in here was as cold as the water, but at least it was air.

  I rolled out of the pool onto the patch of damp ground and looked up to find myself in a small room carved out of the lava rock. I could easily touch opposite walls with both arms spread apart, but the ceiling became lost in the darkness overhead.

  I attempted to climb the rock, but my injured leg failed me, and I fell back to the ground. I had no strength to escape this place. I didn’t know if an escape was possible, even if I did make the climb.

  Less than a minute later, that question was answered. The moon reached an angle where it shone down directly into the room, bathing it in light. A glint of metal caught my eye. Curious, I stood and limped to the far wall, toward a sword balanced on two hooks that were embedded in the wall. The sword’s workmanship was the finest I’d ever before seen, artwork as much as it was weaponry. I doubted the best craftsmen in Carthya were capable of producing such a sword.

  Both edges of the beveled blade were sharp, and the metal lacked any nicks or scratches. The hilt was ornate and made of curled steel with similar carvings on it as I had seen on the scope. I almost didn’t dare to touch it.

  Almost.

  My eyes lifted. Directly above the sword was the third lens, also embedded in the wall. I brushed a finger over it. There was writing on the glass that I could not read. I tried to pry it from the wall, but my fingers were shaking too much to be of any use, and the lens was in too deep anyway.

  I reached for the pin lodged in my belt, then cursed under my breath. It was no longer there. So I cursed louder.

  My gaze returned to the sword. It seemed like a crime to use such a fine weapon to pry glass out of rock, but I had no other choice.

  I lifted the sword, already amazed at how light it was for its size, how perfect its balance and grip. Breathing an apology to the craftsman who made it, I inserted the tip of the sword into the rock and carefully wedged it against the third lens. This was far more difficult than I had expected, and I worried about breaking the glass.

  Finally, I had my first hint that the lens was coming loose, though it was anything but good news. Water began leaking from inside the rock, and not a small amount of it. Just loosening the lens had started a chain reaction of cracking sounds throughout the entire room, spurts of water coming through seams in the walls, and a realization that my feet were now standing in water flowing up from below.

  A realization that I was about to die.

  I pried the lens free in the same instant water burst through the hole I had just created. It came at me with so much pressure that I splashed onto the ground. Where was all this water coming from?

  A splitting sound ahead of me turned to a deafening crash and the lava wall opened, rocks flying at me in a sudden flood of water. I was slammed to the far wall, finding myself rapidly being carried upward by the water. I tried to avoid the rocks swirling around me, but to no avail. One finally hit me, and water filled my lungs.

  I awoke on dry ground, coughing out water. Someone was kneeling behind me, propping me up. The moon was lower in the sky, suggesting morning wasn’t far away, but it was still a cold night, one that worsened my shaking after I drew in air again.

  “He’s all right, he’ll live,” Tobias said from behind me. I looked up at him and just managed to nod. I still couldn’t speak.

  “We can see he’s going to live,” Teagut said, crouching in front of me. “What kind of a physician are you, telling us what we can plainly see for ourselves?”

  “How do you feel?” Tobias asked me.

  “Horrible.” I took a few more deep breaths, each one sending fresh pain to my lungs. “It’s not only the water; I’m sick.”

  A few of the pirates around me chuckled, and when I looked back at Tobias, he held up the bottle of medicine he had created to fake an illness. “A heavy dose will cause nausea. I hoped it would be bad enough to make you spit out all that water.”

  I lay
back on the ground, still shivering. “I don’t know whether to thank you first, or to curse you.”

  “I saved your life, Jaron. So did they.”

  For the first time, I realized it wasn’t just Teagut around me, but all the pirates who had been expelled by Roden after I lost the fight to him.

  Teagut shrugged. “This is where Fink has been hiding. After he was caught, he told Roden about this place with a lava tube so far underground he couldn’t see the bottom of it.”

  “Ever since last night in Trea’s hut, I knew the second lens would send you underground,” Tobias said. “I studied the geography of the land while I was in hiding, and Roden asked the Prozarians a lot of questions about their search of Belland, and —”

  “Summarize, Tobias.”

  He sighed. “Roden and I figured you’d be the one chosen to go after the third lens, and that if you came back to the surface again, this was probably where you’d be. He claimed to have caught me trying to free Amarinda from the prison, giving me this reason to escape and wait for you here.”

  I’d known very little of what Tobias was doing, but Roden’s part in this plan was no surprise. Back when he’d put me in the crow’s nest, Roden and I had agreed that he would make the Prozarians believe that he was giving them what they wanted. Even when he was crying in front of Wilta about having failed me, he was leading the Prozarians in the direction he knew I would want.

  I said, “Roden claimed he injured you.”

  “Oh, he did, and it might be serious.” Tobias turned his head to show a tiny cut mark on his cheek, barely more than a paper cut. “Don’t laugh. It really hurts.” He added, “Roden also banished the pirates here, so that they’d be waiting to pull you out if you appeared. Which you did.”

  “With your face down in the water and unconscious and somehow still gripping that sword,” Teagut said. “It would have drowned you if the water wasn’t pushing you upward so fast.”

  My attention fell to the sword. I hadn’t realized it was still in my hand. If I had to say goodbye to my old sword, I couldn’t imagine a finer replacement.