My skin was warm once more; almost uncomfortably so, the fierce itching on my face and arm only exacerbated by the heat’s dissonance with my last memories. My eyes flew open, and there was light – light! – so I blinked, attempting to make sense of my new surroundings. It took me a moment to realise that I had a huge, disgusting gag in my mouth – it must’ve been there for some time. My fingers and wrists were locked down in metal bonds. I couldn’t move my head either, not with the way I was strapped into my seat, my cage – so I stared forwards instead, taking in what I could.
A blazing hearth, just a few feet from me on my right. I was elaborately chained into a kind of chair, a contraption that was located on the rug in front of the fire. The room was an opulent mess of bookshelves and paintings, arranged with no eye for taste, only wealth. Directly before my immobile feet, an extremely well-groomed (and extremely well-fed) dog was stretched out, basking in the warmth. Beyond, there was a table at which an almost equally well-groomed (and disproportionately well-fed) man was sitting. He had an orange moustache and a badly-disguised bald-spot and he was eating his dinner loudly, almost uncouthly, slurping down strips of beef, clinking cutlery each piece of which would equal in value to the yearly pay of a Sticktowner.
I was no longer hungry or thirsty. Was it a nourishment somehow achieved through druidry, or had they simply fed me under enchantment? Who had cleaned me? I couldn’t tell what I was wearing, but it was no longer my tunic and pants.
This gag… the sudden heat… all this humiliation… unnecessary.
Why? Why? What did I do to them?
Behind the rich man, arms folded across their chests, were Stormsword and Spiritwhisper, masked and stern-seeming. Now that I saw them together, thought of their names in tandem like that, I saw how alike they were, how good of a match they might make. She was always too good-looking for me. It was just a dragon’s whisper in an old lady’s ear anyway. It was all wrong from the beginning.
But my loathing for the enchanter suddenly crystallised, setting into the shape it would now hold forever, a blackened blade plunged into ice-water and achieving its final, lethal edge. If he’d thought he’d felt my jealousy, my hate before, what must he have been feeling now?
Give me access to my vampire right here and I’d kill you, Spiritwhisper.
In front of the heavyset man were two other champions, their backs to me. Timesnatcher and Fangmoon. It seemed that Timesnatcher was speaking, but I couldn’t make out his words over the crackle and roar of the flames… then he gestured to Fangmoon.
I saw her nod. She hesitated first – almost glanced at me, Mortiforn bless her soul – but she nodded all the same. I could imagine the pressure she was under to submit.
This… Fang… he’s… he’s treating it as a test for her… her loyalty… Testing that she hasn’t been tainted somehow by Nighteye…?
A test!
White-hot fury was injected into my veins.
How did I ever think myself a good judge of character? How did I think myself smart? I trusted him! I thought him a man of principle, someone to look up to, someone to idolise! He was the demon in the human skin all along. He was Duskdown’s true enemy. And I betrayed him. I betrayed Duskdown when he needed me to stop him being sent to Zyger by this foul thing… I betrayed the one person who wanted to take Direcrown out of the picture, right then and there, when it really mattered…
How stupid could I have been to ever believe in Irimar Nemmeneth?
My fingers were immovable inside the metal glove but that didn’t mean a thing. Pure anger built the shield without me making a single gesture towards its creation – blue lines started whirling –
The anger fled me, replaced between one moment and the next with a kind of overwhelming embarrassment, the kind that made you want to cringe and crawl and hide your face.
Spirit…
The moment my shield withdrew itself, Timesnatcher was next to me. He was still speaking and I could now make out his words.
“… Liberator of Zadhal cannot be treated as a common darkmage, or even an uncommon one. We can’t let it go public, my lord. The potential unrest amongst the public – it might be that the champions are never trusted again.”
Mr. Bald-Spot just gave a non-committal ‘hmm’, audible across the room now that he’d increased his volume, and continued slurping his food.
So Irimar doesn’t really want me to live. He just doesn’t want his own reputation tarnishing in the process.
“Much of what Feychilde has done was not his fault.” It was hard, listening to Emrelet talking in that faux-highborn accent, the accent she’d adopted after my incessant badgering about taking up the mantle of champion. It didn’t fit her, or it fit her all too well; I couldn’t decide which. She was projecting her words to Timesnatcher at my side.
Then her voice hardened and broke, a hint of Onsoloric slipping through the cracks: “Yet much was his fault. I don’t know if you vere provided with a copy of Mistress Henthae’s report, my Lord Audient, but he struck my own… my father vithout cause, using supernatural strength.”
Struck. Not ‘struck down’, or ‘killed’ or ‘nearly killed’, gods be praised… Yet, even still, she’s going ahead with it, arguing for my execution.
“However, the strain he was under on Moonday is clearly a mitigating factor – he saved Mund.” Timesnatcher placed a hand on my shoulder and I clenched down with my teeth on the gag, trying to jerk away from him, heedless of the pain of my straps. “Not for the first time.”
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“Not on his own, he didn’t,” Spirit said.
Mr. Bald-Spot rang a little bell beside his plate and a servant rushed forwards from somewhere behind me, already producing a handkerchief from their top pocket. They dabbed at his mouth gently for a few seconds, then he spoke in my hearing for the first time. His voice wasn’t quite what I’d have called nasal, but it was getting there.
“Oh, very well, Timesnatcher. I shall dispense justice as you recommend. I’m afraid, Stormsword, that the kind of spectacle you’re pining for is quite out of the question.”
It was only as I came to focus on his moving lips, mercifully clean now of gravy and other juices, that I noticed the pendant hanging on a fine platinum chain about his neck. Three small gavels, the largest crowned with a wreath of roses.
This… joke of a man… This is a judge?
“His monetary proceeds shall be sought out and seized, of course.” He picked up his cutlery once more, the patterns on the precious metal objects gleaming in the firelight where they weren’t occluded by gravy. “The miscreant shall be committed to Magicrux Zyger, and there’s simply no more needs be said on the matter.”
With a triumphant note in his voice, Timesnatcher turned from me and said, “Magister!”
Suddenly everything changed again. My vision blurred; the gag in my mouth disappeared and without realising it I was now gritting my teeth, clenching my jaw painfully. No plunge into blackness greeted me this time. I swooned, dizzied by myriad colours and half-glimpsed vistas, feeling nauseous – more than nauseous – like I was sitting on the edge of a cliff looking down – like I was flying without the twisted touch of a wraith or a friend-slaying wizard to aid me.
Like I was moving with an arch-diviner.
Killstop? Did you save me? Am I free?
I screwed my eyes shut, fighting down the urge to retch, empty an already-empty stomach, cough up bitterness and dust. I whimpered instead, the sound pulled from me involuntarily, motion-sickness dragging vocal chords from my throat and playing the strings like a harp.
Tanra? Please?
And, as unpredictably as it had begun, it stopped – I stopped. The scene before me had been replaced and I was walking now, not sitting. Not bound by chain or gag. Just walking, being ushered down tunnels by magisters under flickering torchlight.
Were we still in Mund, or had I been taken out of the city in my time-snatched stupor? Were there really caverns this extensive beneath my home? Why had it never occurred to me to wonder? I’d thought such places existed only in far-flung lands, in fables and legends. I was reminded of the adventurers’ stories of Ord Ylon’s lair, but the monstrous denizens of those tunnels were missing here. The spectacle in this place was all beautiful void, vast unlit emptinesses calling out to me beyond the firelight.
The everlasting flames weren’t particularly good sources of illumination; they were riveted to the walls of the cavern paths, and although the floors had been smoothed with wizardry I still stumbled on occasion as we entered patches of shadow. My feet were bare, but I didn’t care about a few bruises and gashes now.
I’d been placed under an enchantment of languor. I was a condemned man, and entering my mind, breaking my will – it wasn’t just permitted, but expected. My pains had evaporated. I’d been granted a momentary deferral of punishment, the eye of the storm before the hurricane washed again over me. I cast about idly, all thoughts of escape far from my imagination, all thoughts of those I was leaving behind far from my conscience. My worries were gone – I knew it for a fact that the dismay would reawaken later but, for these long silent minutes, I simply didn’t give a damn.
Someone was going to enter my home, maybe even enter the minds of my family members – confiscate my money, my assets… They would end up getting kicked out without me there to protect them. I knew it, but when I focussed on the idea of such a terrible-seeming thing, instead of feeling anything I just shrugged as I continued on my way. I realised belatedly that this was why Tanra had wanted to move her mum. She would shut down all the avenues that ended at her capture. Her mum was an important part of that.
Was that how I’d been caught? My use of the glyphstone?
I shrugged some more, stumbling on as the path sloped downwards again. I went in the company of these four fine fellows, as though they were my friends escorting me to the theatre.
Four waywatchers of a rank or assignment I’d never encountered before, garbed in the black-and-white magister’s robes but masked too, the metal features expressionless. Two of the faces were enamelled white with black eyes and lips, while two were black with white eyes and lips. The one at the front was carrying the rod. The others each bore a small sack. Kindling. Salted meats. Nuts.
Theatre snacks. Except the kindling. No idea who’d ordered a bag of dry sticks for their mid-entertainment meal.
I could suddenly imagine the revulsion inside of me, imagine it speaking.
“Where?” I blurted in a thick voice, stumbling as I walked. “Where – where –“
“How in the name of the Five is he doing that?” one of them, female and youthful, asked the others.
“No idea,” a delicate male voice answered. “He is Feychilde.”
“Was,” another woman said dryly.
One of them came alongside me as we strolled between the jagged, flame-lit walls of the cave. A rough hand took me by the arm, shook me. I smiled at the magister, and he seemed to relax.
“I don’t believe there’s cause for concern,” the delicate male voice said again. “He’s still under.”
“Almost there, now, newbie,” a fourth voice came: gruff, older.
A minute or so later I saw what awaited me as we turned a steeply-descending curve.
I was swooning on the edge, standing close to the lip of a dark hole in the ground. The ring of torches about the shaft gave no texture to its pitch-black emptiness. It was like a huge, natural well, dropping away into nothingness.
“Keep him still,” the gruff voice said – then people were holding my arms, positioning me while a spell was incanted in a high-pitched voice, reagents scattered on my head.
Finally, I was ushered to the very edge. I looked down. I felt the chill breath of the void on my face.
I don’t have my wraith, I thought; then: It’s okay. I can fall and die. I can go on my way.
But no.
“The flight-spell will take you down to the bottom,” the dry voice said from beside me, while another waywatcher was strapping something to my back, forcing me to find my balance again on the uneven rocky ground. “You’ve got about two minutes. If you dither too long, you won’t make it – you’ll land too hard in the water, and you’ll get all these lovely provisions soaking wet through. So you go now, okay?”
I nodded, but then I looked to the side, staring at her mask.
Feelings. There were feelings there.
Hate?
“Go, now! You could die!”
“I – don’t,” I gulped air, “wan – wan – wan –“
The young woman behind me gasped, and the dry-voiced one drew away as though I might be infectious.
Then two hands landed squarely in my shoulder-blades, just between the straps of the bag, shoving me forward –
The spell worked as they said. My descent was fast, but controlled. There was none of the nausea, which might’ve been due to the languor-spell – or simply due to the fact that I didn’t spin. I just fell like an anchor.
I craned my head back at first, watching, waiting, until the tiny speck of torchlight disappeared far above me, swallowed up by the incomprehensible distance that now loomed between me and the world.