by Jada Fisher
Elspeth merely raised her eyebrow and nodded, moving to join the end of the huddle. It made Ukrah’s heart ache that hardly any of them even reacted to their presence, either out cold from exhaustion or just resigned to their fate. Even in the low light of the flickering torches, she could make out bruises on many of their faces and a certain gauntness to them. When was the last time they’d even had water?
She didn’t know, and for the moment, it would have to remain that way. But soon, so soon, she would make all of their captors pay.
5
Break the Chains
They sat there for much too long.
When they had first discussed their plan, Ukrah knew that there would be a period where they would just have to sit there until some witch hunters came around and they were able to start some trouble. But at least several hours had passed with them sitting there, completely unattended, and she couldn’t help but wonder if these witches even wanted to be free.
There was no one around. No guards. No one to make sure they were in check, and yet hardly any of them moved. It didn’t make sense to her. When she had been captured, she’d used every moment of being unsupervised to plan for herself.
Then again… She had also planned her whole capture. Used the slavers as a means to move herself quickly across the border before any survivors of her people found her and tried to burn her again. She had largely been in control of her situation and had some sort of talking guardian bird thing to help her.
The people surrounding her were considered not a threat by the witch hunters, or at least according to the girl. They were weak or injured. They’d been starved, had their lives ripped out from under them. Beaten. They’d seen their friends killed. Maybe even their families. Most of them probably couldn’t even harness their magic for any sort of defense. It seemed terribly cruel to be cursed with something that made people want to kill them, but didn’t give them any benefit. Maybe Ukrah could use a bit more empathy toward their situation. Maybe.
She couldn’t say how long it was until a group finally came up in the darkness, her blindfold making her guess that there were anywhere from three to five of them. They were talking with each other, laughing and telling some sort of joke about a merchant from Margaid. It was such a normal, banal sort of conversation that it gave Ukrah a strange sense of displacement, like two parts of reality weren’t matching up. But then the men came closer and their tone quickly shifted.
“Look alive, heretics. It’s time to water the garden.”
Now that was much more familiar. Ukrah recognized that sickly sweet, condescending tone that some of the slavers had used on the slave group she was part of. Especially that man in the shack that had inspected them. She heard the faint sloshing of water then sluggish movement from some of the bodies around her.
“Come on now, on your knees if you want to drink. Supplication if you want to survive.”
Ukrah tried her best not to gag at that, instead focusing on hoping that they would start at the other end. Because if they started with her group, she and Elspeth were going to make a scene and that would no doubt end with no one else getting water. Even if it was necessary for their rescue, she hated the thought of denying any of the ragged prisoners around her the chance to quell their thirst at least a little.
She held her breath, laying on her side and just staring into her blindfold, as they walked across the room. It was hard not to sigh in relief when the men did indeed start on the other side, taking the sloshing with them.
They approached what she guessed was whoever was at the opposite end, and Ukrah heard something dip into the water. She hadn’t entirely been expecting one of the men to speak, but she supposed she should have known better.
“Do you reject your curse of blood and accept the light of the Three into your soul? To give yourself to the love of the All-Mother, to accept the righteousness of the Storm and go willingly with the Grandfather?”
The words were weighted heavily and hit Ukrah at her core. There was so much malevolence to his act, to making whoever was kneeling in front of him worship gods who apparently had nothing against witches but were too weak to fight when the Blight’s machinations led to outlawing them. Ukrah knew from Eist teaching her the history of their world that that had been a huge blow in weakening the Three and had pretty much lead up to the confrontation that killed the god-woman’s parents. And these idiots wanted witches to be proactive in their destruction.
“I swear it,” came the raspy voice of the prisoner, so quiet, so broken, that the magic within Ukrah began to crackle violently. She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep it down, reminding herself that any sort of interference too early on her part would result in more innocents killed than saved.
“Then enjoy their blessings.”
There was quiet for the moment, then the sound of desperate gulping.
“Whoa there, not too fast. You drink too quickly, and you’ll get sick all over my shoes. That would certainly be a waste, wouldn’t it?”
There was only a ragged sound as a response, then footsteps indicating the man was moving on. A few moments later, the same words were said, but by multiple witch hunters at the same time. It was hard to pick out their tones when rage was ringing so violently in her ears, but she guessed that she was right about there being three of them. Not that it quite mattered considering she was just hoping to make a nuisance rather than overpower them, but it made her feel better that they weren’t going to be completely outnumbered when they were hauled away.
The men moved down the line methodically, their words becoming a sort of buzzing in the back of Ukrah’s skull. Her nails were biting into the palms of her hands, forcing herself to behave when all she wanted was to destroy them. By the time they made it to her, she was nearly reverberating with the effort of keeping it all inside.
They hadn’t planned it when they had attached themselves to the limp body at the end of the line, but Ukrah was the first that they reached with the girl beside her and Elspeth on the end. When they did finally step in front of her, their presence loomed over where she lay, dark and foreboding even though she couldn’t see them.
“Get up, witch.”
She could hear the sneer about his lips as he said that, even with the blindfold. There was a slight moment where she panicked internally, wondering if they could tell that she wasn’t someone that they had caught, but then they were grabbing one of her arms and hauling her onto her knees.
“If you want to drink, you must beg for forgiveness.”
Ukrah said nothing. If she wasn’t bound and blinded, she would have been staring at them with all the balefulness she was feeling inside. But since she couldn’t do that, she let the heat inside her simmer a bit longer.
The man started saying the words, the same ones he had said to all the other witches, but they burned through her, bouncing around in her head like a drum, echoes all building on each other one right after the other.
But when he finished, she didn’t say the words back. She just sat there, daring them to do something.
And they certainly did.
The man let out a tsk and then suddenly a hand was in her hair, ripping her head back. Before she could so much as snap at anyone, another hand—clad in thick leather—clapped over her mouth and gripped her chin, effectively forcing it closed.
She wasn’t sure what the point of snapping her mouth shut was when they were trying to make her say their vile words, but the answer quickly came to her as water was dumped right over her nose.
Funny how such a simple act caused such an instantaneous and violent effect on her body. One moment, she was relatively fine, and the next, her mind was screaming at her that she was drowning, her body thrashing violently.
Funnily enough, she’d never drowned before. There’d never even been a threat of it in her life. She was from a desert, where a scarcity of water was the threat.
“Hey, let her go!”
Suddenly, the hands holding her went away.
There was noise, and Ukrah pulled her hands up to rip off her blindfold.
Elspeth had lunged forward and tackled one of the men holding her while the girl was biting into the thigh of the other. Ukrah didn’t hesitate and joined the fray, gripping the man reaching for Elspeth and wrapping her chains around his outstretched arm.
It was stupid how they had chained up their prisoners, binding their ankles together and leaving their hands mostly free. Ukrah understood that they were supposed to be the weak, the young, and the wounded, but it was clear that the witch hunters were far too overconfident.
The magic within Ukrah, the spirit that she housed, reared up. It wanted to tear into the men. Rip them limb from limb. But she shoved it down yet again. She needed to bide her time. She had to lose.
Ukrah wasn’t sure where the line was between fighting hard enough and not enough, but when Elspeth let out a wounded sound followed by a desperate whimper, she figured that was as close to a signal as she was going to get.
Slackening her grip, Ukrah allowed the man she was struggling with to yank her over his hip, sending her crashing to the floor. It didn’t feel great, but she’d had worse, and she pushed herself up weakly—pretending to fight back. But then the man’s boot was on the back of her neck, pressing down into her and forcing her further into the floor.
“If you have enough energy to be such trouble, then maybe you have enough energy to answer some of Roaric’s questions.”
Ukrah could practically feel the jolt of concern that rolled through the witches around them, who seemed absolutely shocked that anything had happened at all. Well, some of them seemed shocked. Many of them were so out of it that they could waver slightly in place, as if they were trying to catch up with reality.
The man above her stepped down a little harder, and Ukrah was reminded of just how fragile human necks were. She couldn’t help it as she let out a groan, and again it took all of her control to keep the spirit within her from lashing out.
“Hey, careful there. You want to end up like Pranor? What if you kill one of the ones they’re looking for?”
There was a disgruntled sound above her, but the pressure eased up. “Ugh, seems like a waste to care so much about these heretics.”
“They don’t care about them. But there’s something awakening all of these creatures and one of them apparently has some sort of secret in them. You can defy the elders if you want, but I’m not interested in any of that.”
“Whatever. Let’s just get them down there.”
Success. They were roughly yanked to their feet, and their bindings were rearranged until they were connected in a shorter line. Ukrah wasn’t still one hundred percent certain why it had been necessary for the subterfuge and to be physically brought down rather than sneaking down themselves, but she was relieved that it was happening, and she was barely bruised from it. Considering her luck, she had been anticipating a lot worse.
They started moving soon after that, moving to the other end of the room where she saw another ramp not unlike the first stretching downward, illuminated by quite a few flickering torches. And it was as they went down the slope that she realized how their faux capture was absolutely necessary.
Unlike the first little landing, this ramp was deep and long, seeming to go on for much more than it ever should. There were also guard stations built into it, four in total, and Ukrah counted at least ten men posted there before they hit bottom. Each station was outfitted with what looked like an alarm bell and far too many weapons, and was in sight of at least two other postings.
It would have been impossible to get down there without being spotted, and any of the witches from the lower floors that tried to escape wouldn’t be able to get up. They would be sitting ducks for all those crossbows unless Ukrah was able to use the spirit inside of her to eliminate them all at once.
But she was pretty sure that wasn’t possible, because in all the times she had called on her power, it had only been able to go after people she could actively see. Or at least had seen within the last few breaths. She wasn’t sure how it would work in a cave full of enemies who she didn’t know and who had far too many hostages at their disposal.
She was so caught up in the guards and in their path down the rocky slope that she didn’t quite realize when they hit the bottom. Looking around, she began to understand that the first floor really was for just storing the witches that were close to death, because the scene in front of her was like something out of a nightmare.
There were cages and cells lining both sides of the walls, all differing sizes. Some were large and reminded her far too much of the cells back in that barn, but others were so small there was only a single person crammed in it, their hands or feet cruelly chained outside. The witches inside these prisons clearly were not like the ones upstairs, all broken and wounded and too worn to so much as think of fighting. The prisoners in front of her were practically radiating malevolence and fight.
“Put them on the wall,” the leader of the three men in their little escort said, gesturing to the side. Before any of them could even so much as ask what ‘the wall’ was, Ukrah was being roughly yanked to the side by her arm.
They went just past the cages where the room suddenly opened into a wide expanse, several paths leading to different areas, but they didn’t take her to any of those. Instead, they shoved her up against one of the rocky walls, her head hitting the hard stone and making things spin.
There was the sound of rattling chains and her feet being released from the bonds that connected her to the others, then her hands were being forced up into other manacles. But these ones were different from the others. Instead of being sharp and rusted, worn with the passage of time, they were smooth and almost blindingly cold. She let out a hiss, but that was quickly covered up by something going over her mouth.
She thrashed, trying to snap her head to the side, but then too many hands were holding her still. Panicked and more than a bit confused, her muscles spasmed as she tried to fight. But she knew she had to lose this fight too, so it was only a few moments later that they finished placing a strange sort of metal muzzle on her—a thick band of metal in a strange shape that was as blindingly cold as the manacles.
Something about it made her dizzy, like the world had suddenly gone soapy and she was trying to hold her balance on it. The connection she had to the churning, often blindly zealous force within her dimmed, reminding her of Voirdr’s effect on her, but ten times worse.
She didn’t get much of a chance to dwell on it, however, because then the chains binding her wrists were hauled upwards, lifting her all the way onto the tips of her toes and leaving her swaying slightly.
It hurt her shoulders and her feet, but she couldn’t voice any of that because of the strangely cold muzzle. She couldn’t even curse or spit at the men. That, combined with the strange, slipshod feeling, made for a heady mix of confusion.
“Ukrah, are you alright?”
She wanted to rub her eyes, but couldn’t with the way her hands were bound. Instead she could only blink woozily and watch as the girl and Elspeth were chained right next to her. The men were struggling to put the muzzle on Elspeth, who was fighting them as best she could by wiggling and throwing her head from side to side—snapping her teeth when she could—but that only lasted a handful of breaths before they had her muted as well.
But Ukrah had enough of her wits about her to see that the woman wasn’t affected like she or the girl. Her eyes remained bright and were shuttling about, taking in everything she could. That didn’t make sense to the desert girl at all, but after a few more beats, she put it together.
There was something about the muzzles that was specifically for witches, something to dull their connection to magic, keep them passive. It was the only thing that explained the heavy, addled feeling coursing through her, and why the girl next to her looked to be half-asleep, swaying back and forth.
Ukrah didn’t even know that was possible. Sure, Dille had taught them about
counter-curses, siphoning energy, and affecting people’s connection to the magic inside of them, but there had been no mention of anything about magic-suppressing muzzles or anything of that nature. Did the governess not even know? Ukrah wasn’t sure. Her relationship with the woman was still tenuous at best, although it had gotten better since they had started to be more serious about her lessons. She was sure that finding out what Ukrah actually was had probably settled the woman and the sense of foreboding Dille had towards her.
“Ah, not so feisty now, are we?” one of the men asked, pushing Ukrah so that her back hit the wall again, only to send her swinging back and forth.
Her shoulders were screaming from the pain, but she couldn’t work up the energy to care. Everything was so hazy, so soft around the edges and blended into each other. The only thing Ukrah had it in her to do was glance at Elspeth, trying to convey exactly what she needed to about the muzzles.
Somehow the woman seemed to catch it, and her eyes went half-lidded and sleepy as well, leaving the three of them just swinging there, on their toes, quietly.
“It’s almost no fun when they’re like this. They’re not even scared. They should know that their reckoning is coming.”
“They will soon enough. You know how Roaric makes everything a bit clearer.”
They shared a laugh, and Ukrah would have rolled her eyes if she had the ability. But she couldn’t, so they just waited there.
It didn’t take long for them to grow bored and wander off, leaving the trio there, strained on their toes. Time was hazy, as it so often went in her life, but she noticed the more moments that passed, the more she came back to herself. The more the coldness in her manacles and muzzle started to warm and her head began to clear.