My head pounded profoundly.

I floundered my way back into the world thinking that if there was some record for being knocked unconscious, or passing out, the torch must have passed to me. A cold, packed dirt floor pressed against my cheek. Ancient brown straw with a vague hint of yellow dotted the floor in clumps. Beyond this, rock walls. There was a constant slow patter of water from somewhere. The thick air stunk of mold and old urine. There was a crusted mat of dried blood on the rear of my head. It stung when touched.

I staggered to my feet in confusion and inspected the nearest wall. A small drain, less than a two inch port, bored through it at a downward pitch, just above the floor. Except that it pierced stone, I would have thought it a mouse hole. It may have connected with a cesspit somewhere, an effort to prevent flooding, or just been due to the work of some previous tenant. My bladder needed relieving, and there was not as much as a piece of crockery in my digs. Light filtered through a small grid inset in the solid door of one wall. There were no other openings.

I tended to my immediate urges, still woozy, then sat to consider the situation. It struck me that I had not seen Mage Orton on the mountain top. In fact, none of the men, as I thought on it, had been familiar to me, so two possibilities existed. One, I had somehow offended Duke Wayland, and all had been as represented, or two, I had been trapped in some fashion by MaCaan, or someone attached to him. There wasn't any way to be completely certain whose prisoner I really was. Whatever the case, my captor needed me or I would not be alive and considering the issue now.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

These ruminations were just to occupy my mind, I realized. While my Roundel had been taken, the samples pouch hadn't, so I spilled out the chunk I'd found  and reexamined it.. There was nothing new to be learned, so I put it away.

Time passed.

I slept again, dreaming an odd delirium of images. Dimanda wringing her hands, Chord's angry features, and strangely, Gort's ceramic form, working its way through a shoulder high thorn patch. The ominous and unaccountable nightly fantasies had returned to haunt me. Visions of walking through ancient forests of immense oaks and pines, hammering on odd constructs, most unidentifiable to me, before a towering rocky vent in which golden flames rushed from deep in the earth. I woke and walked the periphery of the cell, exercised to try and work out the various kinks and pains I seemed to have accumulated, was still accumulating.

My belly was constantly rumbling now. I found the source of the dripping sound, a small seep from the ceiling near one of the walls. I stood beneath it and tried to capture some. It was ghastly stuff, and barely able to quench my parch. I no longer smelled the stench of the place, and must have looked like a bum after a three day binge.

A fever took hold, and I spent a fair amount of time sitting propped up against the gray stone walls, chilled and sick. I removed my shirt and bound it in a bundle behind my head in an attempt to protect its wounds from contact with the sewer-like floor. This left me bare from the waist up, shivering constantly, and regretting taking it off.

I slept and woke, then slept again. How long this went on was unknowable, perhaps days. At some point, the echoing sounds of feet treaded the passage outside my cell.

There was a rattle and clink of iron. The heavy door of the cell bumped, and then swung inward.