The cracked, weathered sandstone was stained deep red with centuries-old blood; the air reeked of rotting flesh from crimes past, buried in the vast crevasses between rocks that existed long before the Blessed People had repurposed this cavern into a prison. Every few hours, there were bursts of subterranean Cicadoidea whose acidic spit helped them tunnel through the cracks in the walls, leaving in their wake clouds of wing shards. Death, violence, and pestilence were constant realities beneath the Palisades.
Alonne’s flaxen hair was flecked with dirt and leaves—greasy and tied back in a messy, ragged ponytail. The Paladins had taken his clothing, his jewelry, his facial piercings, and thrown him down into their prison— a holding cell repurposed for the dregs of society, whose crimes could never be forgiven in the eyes of God.
Alonne had managed to creep past the roving bands of brigands and thieves, banded together around torchlit camps. Every child in the Blessed Lands grew up on tales of the iniquity of this place, how the lack of sunlight and food drove people to madness, cannibalism. It had seemed idiotic to associate with anyone—to risk betrayal, or worse. Alonne knew enough of the world to know that not everyone who smiled broadly meant it, that even kindness could be a ploy to exploit the vulnerable. So he had resolved to go it alone.
After hours of exploration, after slipping around in the darkness listening to the other inmates, men all, sing sea tunes and swap war stories, Alonne had stumbled into a tiny aperture, a cramped passageway through which he could hear running water. Alonne had squeezed himself through the tiny aperture, more than thin enough to slip between jutting rocks that would’ve stopped any man larger than he. On the other side, he found a trickling waterfall, a pool of sparkling freshwater, and a bed of soft moss.
Before his life had fallen apart, Alonne had exterminated rats beneath cellars, cleaned chamber pots, thrown blight-ridden corpses into mass graves, slaughtered hogs. There was a market for those who could stomach the filthiest jobs—a premium, by peasant standards, to be paid. Even hardened veterans from the Crusades went faint at the sight of plague rats, could not bear the stench of the human waste that mired their fair cities.
With filth caked beneath his nails, Alonne had taken home his pittance to buy bread, rent— to pay for his family’s taxes. It allowed for his youngest sister, Jeanne, to continue seeing the neighborhood doctor for the curse which plagued her, a disease—the priests of the Aerie had claimed—that had come from unseen demons conjured by witches that conspired against the faithful.
Alonne had never understood why people wanted him to clean leeches from their wells but also used the wretched things to suck the taint out of sick people. He left such decisions to be made by the educated. As he reminisced on his choices, knowing that his admittedly short life which would inevitably end soon, he was grateful he did not find the filth of the Palisades particularly troubling. If anything it was more of the same.
All he did was sleep, the days drifting by as he waited for the gallows. He didn’t eat, only took small handfuls of the pool’s water. If it gave him a wasting sickness then he supposed that it would spare him the noose, addle his mind until the jeers of the Paladins were nothing more than fever dreams. Either way, a small mercy.
Alonne relieved himself in a corner of his little haven, catching whispers and grunts from the tunnels outside. Prisoners postured with one another, declaring toughness to ward off any potential threats. The area outside his little glade was wide open and served as a bartering ground of sorts for the assorted bands of fellow inmates. They traded stories, news, and food; they sometimes fought and left one another for dead. Sometimes they would bring weaker prisoners into a private corner and have their way with them, bodies slamming together in a desperate and animalistic attempt to imitate intimacy.
One night Alonne heard one such coupling, his face pressed up to the crawl space through which he had arrived in his glade. The act itself called to memory the words the Knight-General had thrown at him before they had thrown him through the hole in the ceiling of the Palisades: “It’ll be surprising if you make it to your execution date. Pretty thing like you will get devoured down there.” Alonne was grateful that no full-grown man could have hoped to fit through the rocks that sheltered him, because it seemed that Paladin—pompous and horrid as he may have been—had been telling the truth.
Life went on outside of the glade. Alonne listened to prisoners fight, fuck, and chortle as they passed him by, unaware of the little hamlet in which he hid. He drank spring water and finally resorted to eating the bitter mosses that grew around the pond’s perimeter. He had enough to subsist in limbo, staring out at the darkness as bugs flew in the space above him.
Then came the sound of shuffling at the entrance to his hideaway—a grunt. Alonne jolted back to reality, looked around for a weapon—he needed to be able to defend himself, however possible. As he reached blindly for a rock, something, anything, the stone beneath his hand sang: a chorus of voices humming as the hilt of a crude sword rose from the ground itself to rest in his hand. He stared at the weapon in shock.
There were a few more grunts, a curse or two uttered. The voice was deep, clearly masculine. Alonne backed up into the corner, holding his sword in shaking hands.
Stolen novel; please report.
“Go away,” Alonne said. Somehow his tone managed to convey bravery, though he felt anything but.
“Hello?” the voice rumbled, even and emotionless. “It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Alonne did not lower his sword. In the low light, he could make out a hand groping for the way forward. Then a tall man with broad shoulders came sliding out of the narrow passageway through which he should not have been able to pass. Alonne scanned his frame in a mixture of wonder, confusion, and fear. The newcomer had very dark skin and dreadlocks down to the small of his back.
The tip of Alonne’s sword hit the ground; he lifted it again quickly. It was heavier than he cared to admit. “Who are you?”
The newcomer held up his hands. “My name is Khani.”
“Khani?” Alonne let out a breath, lowered his weapon. “I’m Alonne.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Khani said.
Alonne let the heavy stone sword’s tip fall to the earth with a clunk.
“It’s also a pleasure to meet a fellow mage,” he added, tone quiet. Conspiratorial.
“I’m not a mage,” Alonne said.
“You aren’t?” Khani crossed his arms, scanning the room around him. His eyes were bright amber, and his pupils were elongated ovals. Other than that he appeared to be an ordinary man—tall and lithe with carefully maintained locs. He did not walk so much as glide effortlessly across the ground with feline grace. “Then where did you get that sword?”
“I found it.” Alonne set the weapon down so that it was leaning against the wall—within reach, but not in his grasp. Holding it did not feel wrong, but it felt strange. The sound of those disembodied voices continued to echo in the edges of his consciousness, never too loud— but always present.
“Then you are the most fortunate person in this prison. Shelter, water, and a weapon. Luxuries most of us cannot afford.”
Alonne pursed his lips. “Are any of us really lucky, though?”
“No.”
“Let’s not get caught up in that kind of thinking. We’re all gonna get hanged, or worse.” Alonne smiled a little despite himself. Even if he knew that the other men in this place were dangerous, he did not feel threatened by Khani. He heard quiet symphonies in the air, violins and cellos and pianos and choirs harmonizing from wherever Khani stood. The ability to comprehend what he was hearing came only from the music he’d heard at the weekly Consecration ceremonies, where the faithful of the Aerie sang and danced, prostrated themselves before their creator.
Was he losing his mind, or was there something else at play here?
“True enough. May I at least have a drink from your spring, Alonne? I apologize if I have frightened you.”
Alonne glanced from the spring to the newcomer’s eyes. They were frightening and alien. “I suppose. I don’t know if it’s clean, but I’ve been drinking it for days and I haven’t shit my brains out yet.”
“A glowing recommendation.” Khani padded across the room and kneeled at the edge of the pool, cupped some water in his hands and brought it to his lips. “Ah,” he let out a pleased sigh. “This is lovely.”
“As nice as it gets, anyway.” Alonne sat down beside his sword and crossed his legs.
Khani took another drink and sighed in quiet satisfaction. Then he splashed some water onto his face, rubbing it deeply into his skin. Once clean, he leaned back, crossing his legs in a fashion that mirrored the other man’s.
“How did you fit through the passage?” Alonne asked quietly. “You’re huge.”
“I told you,” Khani said, “I used magic.”
Alonne looked through the gloom for a collar around Khani’s neck, a copper biding that the Paladins used to temporarily sever a mage’s connection to the astral world. While mages were capable of terrible and incredible feats, the collars rendered magical prisoners nothing more than ordinary people. The Church of the Aerie had a penchant for shackling heretics that dared to ignore their most important teaching: that magic itself was an affront to God’s design. Magic was an ultimate taboo, a sacrilege forbidden by all but the Paladins.
“Where’s your collar, then?”
“They have to know you’re a mage to know to put it on,” Khani shrugged.
Alonne’s eyes widened. “So you’ve got your powers?”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you break out, then?”
“By myself?”
“They’ve got guards, but they’re not gonna expect a magician to come flying out the exit.”
Khani chuckled, “I don’t know what you think magic is, but it has limits. I would be cut down swiftly were I to try to escape all on my own.”
After a bit of thought, Alonne asked, “You think there’s another entrance?”
“Not as far as I know, no. Why, are you intending to break out?”
“I don’t want to die. I’ll run away if that’s what it takes.”
“And why should I help you?”
“Because I shared my water, and didn’t stab you for coming into my territory?”
Khani laughed, a deep rumble in his throat, “good enough, I suppose. And here I thought the Blessed Lands were populated solely by spineless cowards. It’s encouraging to be proven wrong.”
Alonne worried his bottom lip between his teeth for a second, stood. “Can you fight?”
Khani followed suit. “Yes.”
“Then let’s look around.” Alonne stretched his arms, cracked his back. Then he picked up the sword. “I’m tired of being cooped up in here.” And now that he wasn’t all alone, perhaps it was safe to travel. Only the hungry stares of the other inmates had lead him into hiding—they either wanted to fuck him or eat him, or one and then the other—but there was no way in hell they’d try anything with this behemoth next to him. In theory, anyway.