James gasped a breath out of the darkness that surrounded him. He couldn’t move. His arms were thrust up past his ears, his entire weight borne upon wrists bound by rope. Groaning between his outstretched arms, he peered uncertainly into the gloom.
The darkness was such that he could not see the floor beneath his feet, nor guess whether he was alone in his incarceration. The only discernable detail of the room was the door, etched into the darkness by the golden light leaking between its edges. In its centre was a small circular window revealing a view of an empty corridor beyond.
A chill breeze whirled up into the room, abrading his naked body and racking him with shivers. The shrill rattle of countless leaves filled the small space like waves raking across a pebble beach.
‘The Citadel,’ James groaned.
Twisting fruitlessly within his bonds, he yelled into the darkness. But if anyone waited beyond the door they were content to let him suffer.
You will suffer.
Those terrible words, spoken to him by the cloaked figure of his vision, brought back memories of violence and bloodshed. Everyone he knew, everyone who knew him in this world, was dead. The beast had performed its duty with ruthless precision, felling his companions as easily as the trees it had pulled from the earth. With nightmarish clarity, he watched again the gruesome replay of Wellin’s body ripped to shreds, Torrinth, Fen, Tavin and Kirrin, brutally stamped out of existence.
And Leander…
Her beautiful, defiant face came unbidden amidst these gruesome recollections. He remembered her last stand against the towering monster, her fragile blade drawn against an impossible foe. He had never found a way to feel anything remotely resembling affection for the spiteful young woman, and yet her final futile actions to save his life moved him more deeply than he knew how to measure.
Swallowing the sorrow that threatened to overwhelm him, he sought instead for an explanation for his incarceration. As his body slowly rotated in the darkness, he muttered another word amidst the hiss and rattle of leaves.
‘Galen.’
The once magnanimous and level-headed man he had first met in the great hall of Galendar had been reduced in his grief to someone almost unrecognisable. The same man who had spared his life within the walls of his own home had looked upon him amidst the devastation of the beast as though he were a stranger; suspicion, fear and anger had somehow wrested the friendship and kindness that had been his gift at their last parting.
When the scant light within the cell suddenly shifted, all further thought evaporated from his mind. Forcing his head back up from his chest, he saw that the circular window was now obscured.
‘Help!’ James shouted, twisting his neck towards the window as his body slowly rotated away from it. ‘Fetch Lord Galen, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding!’
The figure standing at the door appeared for a moment to hesitate, and then the door swung quickly open, hitting the wall with a resounding thud. The sudden outpouring of light made James squint, but when his eyes had cleared, the dark silhouette of a tall man filled the open doorway.
James squirmed uncomfortably as the other man glared down at him. The silhouette was familiar, the golden light illuminating long, white hair that was once more neatly parted. A tight ball of fear settled into the pit of his stomach when he realised he was again face to face with Leander’s father.
‘Lord Galen… I’m… I’m so sorry for your loss,’ James muttered quietly.
As his words filled the latent silence, the taint of guilt was carried even to his own ears.
‘Silence!’ Galen shouted. ‘You will answer my questions and say nothing more, lest you wish to be cast to the bottom of the lake. Is that understood?’
James recoiled at Galen’s open hostility but managed to nod mutely from between his outstretched arms.
‘How did you come to the land?’ Galen snapped.
James shivered as another blast of cold air swept into the room. The man’s question was unsettling, for it was a question he had asked of him twice before.
‘I told you already!’ James cried.
‘You will answer my questions or you will be slain,’ Galen replied coldly.
‘I don’t know!’ James shouted.
‘Then, who was it that aided you?’ Galen asked, his eyes narrowing shrewdly.
James paused, his lips trembling.
Perhaps now he understood something of Galen’s transformation, for the subtle rephrasing of his question suggested that Bettiny had indeed told him of the vision he had experienced in the bathhouse of Galendar.
‘I don’t know who it was for certain,’ James replied meekly. ‘I couldn’t see his face. It was too dark.’
‘Who?’ Lord Galen screamed.
‘I… I had a vision…’ James stuttered, ‘in the bathhouse of Galendar. An old man spoke to me, telling me to seek out the last magician.’ His body shivered as another gust of wind spiralled about the cell walls. ‘I don’t know what he meant and I don’t know who he was, but I think he was the one who brought me to this world.’ He stifled a sob and tried to look Galen in the eye. ‘You have to believe me when I say that that’s all I know!’
Galen regarded him intently from the shadows. Something akin to triumph shone keenly within his eyes as though his suspicions and threats had finally borne fruit.
‘And what were you sent here to do?’
‘I wasn’t sent here to do anything! You were the one who brought me here!’
‘Lies!’ Galen spat, striking the side of the door with a clenched fist.
James bowed his head as tears rolled off his face and into the darkness. When Galen spoke next, his voice seethed with menace and the promise of violence.
‘Perhaps tomorrow you will find your tongue more willing to divulge that which you have withheld.’
And, with that, the door to his cell was slammed shut.
James sobbed as the dull echo of the door’s closing reverberated through the thick walls. Tears that had seldom fallen for the losses he had endured in his own world, returned once more for what he had lost in this. As well as the lives of the people he had counted as friends and companions, he had finally lost the respect of the one man who had ever shown him any hope in this miserable delusion he had become trapped within. Now that Galen had turned his back upon their friendship, he might as well have been dead to him also.
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With his grim fate apparently already sealed, he closed his eyes and listened to the ceaseless creaking of branches. It was a long time before the nullifying escape of sleep came to his rescue.
***
James awoke to bright sunlight flooding into his cell. Blinking against its glare, he regarded the door and the circular window set within it. But, the light didn’t issue from the window as he had expected. Frowning, he studied the entrance to his cell more closely. In the light of day, it was revealed to be set within the sheer side of a wall. But if there were steps that gave entry to his place of incarceration, he could not see them.
Craning his head to the side, he peered down in search of the floor. But what he saw there made his body jerk in terror. He had not found a floor, because there was none to be found. Instead, a drop of hundreds of feet yawned beneath him; a shifting throat of red-golden leaves which framed the rocky shore of the island far below.
James screamed as a sickening vertigo clawed at him. The tenuous length of rope twisted and creaked alarmingly as he trembled on its end.
‘Help me!’ James yelled at the top of his lungs. ‘I’ll talk, I’ll talk!’ he repeated frantically.
But for all his shouting, the door to his cell remained closed.
Clamping his eyes tightly shut, he gradually wrestled back a semblance of calm by fixating upon the pain burning within his arms and wrists.
Time stretched on, filled only by the sound of the straining rope and the creaking of the great trees that surrounded him. The sounds were calming after a while, and so it came as a shock when another sound intruded upon his senses. Careful not to look down, he opened his eyes upon the door set within the cliff face of the wall. Instinctively, he bucked upon the rope when he saw the long, thin object sliding out of the circular window towards him. For one horrible moment he thought that it was a blade, slowly sliding out into the room to sever the rope above his head. But as it drew nearer, he saw that it was something altogether stranger; for it was not a knife, but a wooden spoon, tied to a length of pole. When its wavering end reached his face, he saw that its bulbous end was filled with a steaming broth the colour and texture of mashed corn.
Apprehensively, he brought his lips to its edge and took a tentative sip. Like everything else he had eaten within this world, its taste was beyond description, but nevertheless it was delicious and awakened his hunger.
When the spoon was drained, the pole slid back out of sight.
‘More,’ James’ voice grated, ‘please, give me more.’
Moments later, the spoon reappeared and returned to his lips, bearing more of the delicious broth. The laborious process was repeated several times until finally the spoon did not return, and he was left alone once more to the vertiginous silence of his cell.
***
Days passed in slow agony. James’ hands became dark and swollen above his bonds, but the pain in his arms had long since receded into a shroud of numbness. A distant part of his mind was concerned that permanent damage had been done to the nerves there, but with a ruthless sneer he reasoned that such concerns were ill-placed when faced with the enormity of the insanity that had brought him here.
He was fed and watered twice each day by the same ponderous movements of the long spoon, but despite his repeated attempts to communicate with the one who fed him, he never received an answer.
To appease the crushing boredom of his confinement, he eventually braved his fear of heights to gaze down at the drop below him. In time, he grew to appreciate the sight of the shifting branches that surrounded him, their ceaseless movement reminding him of those distant days convalescing within the garden of Galendar. Occasionally, his gaze would travel further, to the very bottom of the long drop where the rocky edge of the island met with the waters of the lake, hundreds of feet below. There he would watch the gentle waves of the lake lapping the crags and crevices that lined the island’s edge. One day, he thought he saw a figure upon the rocks skirting the distant roots of the fortress walls, but the sight was fleeting and indistinct. The only other living creatures he saw were the ubiquitous squirrels, which constantly bounded between the branches beneath him like fragments of detached sunlight. As the days wore on, he began to wonder if there were any people left to populate the dream that held him captive.
On the morning of what might have been the fifth or sixth day of his incarceration, he was awoken by a shocking blast of cold that made his heart lurch within his chest. As he fought to regain his breath, he blinked water from his eyes and regarded the door now opened in the side of the wall. A tall, muscular woman, dressed in a suit of tarnished white armour, smirked back at him from the opening, an empty wooden barrel clasped between her hands.
Other than Lord Galen, she was the only other person he had ever met with hair that wasn’t as black as coal. Like all other Gelder women, her long white hair was braided into a complex design which she draped across one shoulder; the intricate knot of hair displayed with pride as though it were a badge of honour.
Stooping to her side, she hefted another large wooden barrel into her arms and regarded him sternly.
‘You have been called to an audience with Lord Balen,’ she said, her voice deep and solemn. ‘You cannot be permitted to address him in your present state, so I have been sent to remedy the matter.’
With a grimace, she swung her powerful arms and ejected another torrent of water into the air between them. Spluttering and cursing, James shook his head, freeing the water dripping from his hair and the tangle of his beard. Despite his pitiful state and precarious situation, he glared at the woman from where he hung. With her hands upon her hips, she regarded him in turn with open curiosity, ignoring the anger burning in his eyes.
‘What a strange man you are!’ she said, brazenly eyeing his privacy.
The woman’s ridicule coloured his face with embarrassment, but the days spent hanging in the cell had slowly awakened his capacity for anger.
‘And what a strange man you are!’ he shouted, spitting a gob of water into the void below.
The young woman smiled as though she took pride in the jibe and glanced toward a third barrel sitting beside her.
‘One more?’ she asked contemplatively.
James glared back at her as water dripped from his body.
‘Yes, I should think so,’ she smiled ruefully. ‘Barbarians are dirty creatures. I doubt there is water enough in the entire lake to remove the filth that clings to you, but this shall have to suffice for now.’ And with that, she flung the last of the water over him, grinning as he fought for breath.
‘Now, to the matter of getting you down,’ she said, absently regarding the bonds tying him to the ceiling.
Following her gaze to where the rope was bound, James gave an involuntary jerk.
‘How the hell are you going to do that?’ he shouted in panic.
Ignoring him now completely, the tall woman placed her hand upon the door frame, her fingers tracing its surface as though feeling for some illusive pattern. When her hand eventually came to halt, she closed her eyes, pressing her palm flat against its surface. The curious display brought to mind what Fen had done to “awaken” the abandoned house in the depths of the black forest.
‘She’s a melder,’ he thought distractedly.
The rope gave a sudden lurch causing James to squeal. Fixing his eyes back to the ceiling he saw that the branch upon which the rope had been affixed was moving! Slowly, it was detaching itself from the others around it, like a willow switch sliding free of a wicker basket.
‘Be careful!’ he shouted.
The tall woman smiled, but her eyes remained closed, her hand pressed firmly against the wall as though it were an extension of the solidity beneath it.
‘Break my concentration again and you may well escape the confines of your cell more quickly than you would desire,’ she said, frowning with concentration. ‘But, I fear that would be a fall you would not survive.’
James clamped his mouth shut, and instead looked helplessly up at the unwinding branch. The last of its length peeled away from the ceiling with a dull crack that sent the rope jerking downwards.
‘Get me the hell down!’ he yelled.
The branch gave a sudden lurch in reply, and then he was falling. James’ stomach flipped inside him as his body became weightless, but just as he thought he was about to fall to his death, the branch gave a disdainful flick and he was pitched through the open doorway and onto a hard floor. Before he could recover his senses, rough hands were lifting him into the air. The guards were large and clad likewise in suits of white armour, their hands like steel bands upon his aching arms.
‘Take the prisoner to the Clyst,’ the formidable woman commanded, absently massaging the hand that had been pressed to the door frame.
Leaning forward, she peered directly into James’ eyes, her breath hot upon his face.
‘Farewell, barbarian. You will need every one of your gods with you to survive this day.’
The strong hands of his bearers took his weight between them, and then he was carried from her scowling face and into the gloom beyond.