The Saltsprays dragged Pirin up to the surface of Dulfer’s Reach. They wound through the caves, taking as direct of a route as they could. It still took days.
Whenever Pirin woke up, he struggled against their grips. How could he not? If he didn’t get out, they would hold him in place until the Red Hand found him. The moment the Hand reached the surface, Pirin was dead…
So his captors took to knocking him right back out as soon as he woke up—save for giving him water and meals. They had taken his haversack and his boots, and without his Reyad, the most he’d be able to manage was a Shattered Palm. He tried it once. Since Gray was too far away (the Saltsprays kept her at the back of the caravan, far from Pirin), he used one of the Saltsprays to start the Whisper Hitch technique.
After that incident, Lady Clase ordered him to be blindfolded, so he couldn’t tell even where he was.
Until, of course, he woke up at the bottom of the prisoners’ pit with his blindfold off. He laid at the sandy bottom of one of the two pits beyond the labyrinth’s entrance.
He rubbed his eyes, trying to gather his situation. The first thing he noticed was the ache in his skull and the splitting headache at the front of his mind.
Then he noticed that he was drenched in sweat, and that his throat was incredibly sore. It felt like he had just caught the common cold, but ten times worse.
His chest, where the Saltspray warrior’s knuckles had sliced him, now blazed with pain. No one had taken any care to heal it, nor keep it clean. They hadn’t even given him a bandage.
He wasn’t at risk of bleeding out, but he feared he was in for a much slower ordeal: infection. He reached up, trying to grab his collar and open his tunic, so he could see how bad it really was, but a shadow loomed over him. He blinked. The Saltsprays had taken his eyeglasses as well, so anything up close was incredibly blurry. But, from the robes and hair, he had an estimate.
It was Lady Clase.
As best as Pirin could tell, she scowled. Then, she stepped back into the middle-range of his vision, where he could best make out details. “Stay alive, if you will,” she told him. “Two weeks until the Hand comes up—by our estimate.”
She should have added ‘in case you want to know how long you have left to live’, but it probably wasn’t necessary.
Then, with a gloating sneer, she said, “Your promises could never have made the Saltspray sect great. Only our duty to the Dominion can do that.”
Pirin inhaled quickly, then whispered, “Gray. Where is she?”
“The bird? I’m sure it’ll do perfectly well as a cart-puller in the camp.” Lady Clase put her hands on her hips. “Or did you mean your sprite-filth girlfriend? I’m sure she’ll live long enough to watch you die.”
Pirin lifted his hand, trying one last time to conjure a Shattered Palm. Lady Clase slapped his arm away. “Don’t make us blindfold you again.” She folded her arms in front of herself. “Not that any of your techniques will do you any good down here. Go ahead, hit the walls. Or hit a guard. They travel in pairs—always—and trying to mess with their minds won’t go unnoticed. You’re done for, your majesty.”
She held up the umberstone disruption rune in front of him, as if she was contemplating slapping it on him just in case, but then she pocketed it.
“You want to let the Red Hand kill me?” Pirin panted.
“A little slow, are you?”
“I’ll die before he finds me…”
“Oh, that infection? It’s not a concern. I’m sure Saha’i will help you—whether we order him to or not.”
With that, Lady Clase spun around and walked away.
Pirin pushed himself up, then inched back to the edge of the room to prop himself up against the wall. The floor here was just packed sand, and the edges were lined with prison cells. They all had metal doors, and bedraggled workers rested within. The walls above were entirely made of bricks, and they were mostly flush with each other. If someone really wanted to, there might be enough ledges to climb.
But the guards would see, and they would stop anyone from climbing.
This was one of the prison pits he had seen on the way in. Glimmers of daylight poured in from the entrance to the tunnels far, far above. A rope ladder lowered towards Lady Clase. The guards formed a ring around her, pointing outwards with their salt-tip spears, until she had climbed up to the top of the pit. Then, they raised the ladder.
There were no other ways out.
Pirin wanted to fall back to sleep, and he feared that he did for a few minutes. But he finally mustered the will and consciousness to pull his shirt away from his wound.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
Three tears remained in his skin—running from his clavicle to the side of his ribs. Now, they were swollen and red. Puss leaked out from the lowest down cut, and the skin around it all had been stained a deep shade of sickly green.
Elves weren’t supposed to suffer from infections as bad as men would, so if it had gotten to this state, it must have been pretty severe.
He shut his eyes, trying to remember what he should do with an infection. Mr. Regos would have trained him how to handle and heal an infected wound, if only he could remember. Only vague instincts remained—he should clean it as best as he could, then find antibiotic herbs to purge the infection from his system.
The precise names of the herbs, he figured, wouldn’t help him—even if he could recall them. Nothing grew down here.
Pirin did the best he could. With a strip of fabric from the end of his tunic—the cleanest he could find—he tried wiping away the leaking fluid. There wasn’t much blood anymore, thank the Eane, but it still wasn’t ideal.
When he had the wound as clean as he could get it, he took the strip of fabric and bandaged the wound with a sling-like object. He tied a knot in it over his shoulder without even thinking about it—he must have tied a knot like it thousands of times before, and his fingers remembered the motions.
It was close to evening time. The little sliver of sky that he could see, past the rim of the pit and through the tunnel entrance, was turning orange with sunset.
Then the rope ladder dropped. At first, Pirin feared that Lady Clase was returning with new orders, or maybe she’d decided just to kill him on the spot and be done with it. But only more workers (specifically non-sect workers—prisoners—who were here against their will) began to climb down.
Pirin noted the next feature of the prison that prevented them from escaping: everyone was incredibly tired. They were covered in dust, and it looked like they could barely move their legs when they climbed down the ladder. How could they fight the guards, let alone scale the wall of the pit?
Most had bruises and scars of some kind. A few had limbs that dangled at awkward angles, and there was a patch of them in the middle who, if Pirin hadn’t known better, he would have said had walked through thornbushes all day.
If they were being made to hunt through the tunnels, then surely, they’d encountered wraiths and Rustlers too.
Most of the workers marched straight to their cells and ducked inside without a word. The guards didn’t even have to encourage them. A few lingered outside, in the center of the pit, and the guards didn’t pester them.
There was only one worker who seemed vaguely enthusiastic. Pirin scrunched his eyes, straining his muscles and trying to make out the man’s details.
Beard, graying hair? Without Pirin’s glasses, it could have been anyone. But then the man locked eyes with Pirin and took a few steps closer, humming a faint tune.
It was the same song that Nomad had been playing on his flute in the airship supply shop when Pirin had first met him.
“Nomad,” Pirin muttered, before the man even drew within Pirin’s optimal sight range. His beard had grown a little, and he didn’t have his flute-staff nor his full attire, but it couldn’t have been anyone else.
What was he doing here?
“Ah, I was hoping you would skip this part,” Nomad said once he was within a few steps of Pirin. He didn’t have to raise his voice to be heard.
Pirin asked, “Why are you here?”
Nomad shrugged. “Because I want to be.”
“But—”
“Maybe I’m keeping an eye on my candidates.”
Pirin gulped. His performance had probably been unsatisfactory to Nomad. “Sir, I—”
“I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself,” Nomad said. “So far, your slightly-improved Shattered Palm proved admirably against Lady Clase with its raw strength, and I’m happy to see how you’re making out with your Path of the Gnatsnapper.”
“It’s not a proper Path yet…” Pirin muttered.
Nomad continued, seemingly ignoring the comment, “Now, if you don’t get out of here, that’d surely be a mark against you. In fact, getting caught wasn’t ideal for your ranking as a candidate, but it’s salvageable.” He paused, tapping one of his boots on the ground. “I’m sure an Embercore like you is used to turning setbacks into opportunities. After all, you did figure out the Shattered Palm on your own.”
“Sir…are you favouring me?”
“Well, I am stuck in this pit with you, and Myraden is up in the camp—a little out of reach. I’ve kept a good eye on Lady Clase’s abilities so far, and the other Saltspray wizard about to join her…well, we’ll see about him.” Nomad dropped himself down in the sand in front of Pirin unceremoniously. “So, in other words: no. If you were about to die, I would not help, and if you were about to fail, I would not stop you. Not before you became my disciple, that is.”
“You helped me, back in the Dominion keep.”
“As if you weren’t going to break out of there on your own? Given a few more hours, you would have gotten out of there. No, no. Here I’m less certain, and I’d rather let destiny take its course.”
Pirin sighed. He had hoped that Nomad’s appearance would be a rescue. But as usual, Pirin was on his own.
“Though, I will admit, I am rooting for you. If you succeeded, it would be much better to have a disciple as fresh as you, with so many possibilities ahead.” Nomad put his hands down in the sand behind him and leaned back. “As of this moment, though, we are merely talking. I make no promises.”
Pirin exhaled slowly. He raised a hand to his shoulder, but his own fingers barely obeyed. How was he supposed to escape the pit in this condition?
“Pirin, cultivating the arcane is an art,” Nomad said. “In some lands, it is simply known as the “arts’. And that makes you an artist. The more you devote yourself to your art, the better it will be. The more you improve yourself, the more you will be able to devote yourself to your art. So really, magic boils down to one core tenet: become better than you were yesterday.”
Pirin shut his eyes and inhaled.
“I hear you’ve got about two weeks,” Nomad said. “That’s plenty of time to start improving your Reign, and plenty of time to strengthen your body—and not in the magical sense, yet. Eane knows, you could use a little more meat on your bones.” He turned away. “Good luck!”