CHAPTER 87

"Father, stop!" I yell as I scramble up to my feet.

“Step aside, Malco,” Medrein hisses. “It’s a trick. He looked into your mind and saw what he needed to say to save himself. Do not fall for it.”

“No!” the caged man yells, yellow eyes shining in his pale face. “It’s true; I swear it. You have not heard from the elf for many days now. I do not know what happened, but I’m certain of how it happened. I can tell you. Help you!”

“Father…”

“We’ve lost enough time here! This man knows the secrets of the remaining Champions. He knows how we hid.” Medrein’s face contorts in a scowl. “Through me, he knows where some can still be found. The error is done. The least I can do is unmake their weapon.”

Though the anger is patent in Medrein’s voice, the spear doesn’t tremble or shake, its tip resolutely pointed at the prisoner.

“I’ve told them little of what I know,” the prisoner says quickly. “Valkas and Meriana are more interested in the other half of my power, and I’ve told them little of the secrets I have fed on. Please,” his blood-tainted hands curl around the curve of the metal bars. “I’ve been used as an unwilling weapon, but I’ve kept the faith. My allegiances remain unchanged, and I’m set towards my destiny.”

A warble of sound out in the corridor follows his words. The other prisoners, getting restless? Medrein hears it too. His face sets.

“How many did you feed upon?” he asks. “How many died at your hands?”

The caged man’s expression falls.

“Too many. You, nearly. But not by choice, Medrein. It was my life or yours. Desperate circumstances.”

“You should have died, then,” Medrein says. “Should have starved instead of following their demands.”

The prisoner doesn’t answer Father. Instead, he turns to me, predator eyes slicing through the darkness.

“Do you recall Lysander’s servant, Malco?”

“Do not address him!” Medrein roars.

“Amelia? She’s not—”

“No, not her,” the caged man shakes his head. “Someone less conspicuous.”

The question confuses me. Amelia did most of the necessary housekeeping chores in Hollow House. Most of them, I assumed, by means of her summoned nightmares, since all I ever saw her doing was cooking and training me. But then I realize who he means. The other servant. Quiet, out of the way.

“Yes,” the prisoner says as my expression changes. “A man with a scar on his head. A man Valkas sent. A man carrying orders he cannot fail to fulfill, thanks to my power.”

I’m only half-listening as I summon the misty pages, cycling quickly through the options until I open the orange Secrets header.

Twisted Minds (Local)

In Black Sword Keep, servants talk about the strange and labyrinthine rooms in the catacombs where no one is allowed to enter apart from a few select Godtouched.

Meriana seemed vexed that someone apparently knows her secret.

You have found the door to the forbidden rooms, surrounded by tortured and broken prisoners, your father Medrein among them. All the prisoners were wounded on the forehead. Why?

You have begun to unveil the truth: Valkas and Meriana have a Champion in chains. One whose abilities allow him to prod into the minds of others. But who is this man, and what is the Godtouched’s ultimate goal?

Persons of interest: Thomas, a servant. Maid Meriana, a Godtouched.

“Thomas,” the prisoner says.

Suddenly, all doubt flies away.

“Father, it’s true. We must bring him.”

“Malco…”

Malco…

The second voice is in my thoughts. It takes me a moment to recognize it as Rue’s.

Not now, Rue.

“Everything he said is true,” I tell Medrein. “Lysander helped me, Father. He’s Valkas’ enemy. If something happened, if he was attacked, I must know what happened.”

“It’s a trick,” Medrein repeats. “As soon as he’s out, he’ll use his powers on us.”

Malco!

Rue’s mental and physical fidgeting grow louder, impossible to ignore.

What!

Hear that?

Medrein keeps speaking as he approaches the cage, spear lifted. Whatever there is to hear, it’s lost among the echoes of his words. I try to focus.

There’s nothing there, I think. What do you—

And then I realize what he means. There’s nothing there. The prisoners are deathly silent.

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“Father,” I whisper. “Something’s—”

The hard stone wall explodes inward and something horrible, squat, impossibly muscled, with hooves and a round head where shines a single, round eye, bursts forth with a mad screech. I have no trouble recognizing it. I’ve killed it before, after all, down in the dungeon. The cyclops snaps its long teeth together and charges.

I jump out of the way of a swinging, trunk-like arm, but Medrein is too slow. The thing strikes his chest and pushes him against a wall, forced to defend against the monster’s brawn and its sharp tongue in tandem.

Someone stands on the other side of the broken wall. Someone in red and gold robes and hair pinned in a messy bun that only highlights the fury in her eyes.

“You thought you could escape,” Meriana yells. “Steal my test subjects! From me! What were you doing to him!”

The Godtouched’s apoplectic screeches are loud enough to compete with the cyclops. Behind her, I can see the prisoners, wild-eyed and scared, faces pressed against the bars of their prison.

To one side of the room, Medrein is pinned against the wall, spear caught between him and the cyclops, which is doing its best to pummel my father’s body to a pulp.

The caged man is screaming something I can’t make out, but he’s not the problem anymore. Rue shapes himself into a long, thin shortsword in my hand, and I charge at the Mage.

I’m expecting her to pop out some magic. Fire, lightning, darkness. What I’m not expecting is her to stand there, motionless everywhere apart from her face, her hate-filled eyes. She doesn’t contest my advance at all. Instead, the cyclops I left behind roars, and I feel something wrap around my ankle. I have only time to look down and see the thing’s slimy tongue contract before I’m flung off my feet and against the bars of the cage.

Sharp pain blooms on the back of my head and the world goes dark for a second. When I come to, Medrein has taken advantage of the monster’s momentary distraction and stuck the metal spear through its torso. Not that the cyclops seems to have noticed. It rushes Medrein again with an avalanche of punches. Each would have felled a lesser man, but Father can take a few and dish out some of his own. They’re evenly matched, but only Medrein has just gone through a long period of incarceration.

I make to stand. If I lend a hand, it might be enough to even the scales…

“Boy! Malco!”

The caged man is right behind me. Only the bars keep him from whispering directly in my ear.

“Not now,” I say. “I need to help—”

“Help by being smart,” the man snaps. “That creature is Meriana’s creation, her summoned servant. If you hurt her enough, the thing goes as well.”

“I can’t kill her,” I say. “If she dies, she’ll warn the rest. We’ll have Godtouched swarming in!”

“Yes,” he nods. “You’re right. Release me. I’ll do it. It’s your best chance.”

“I…”

I don’t trust you, I want to say, but I don’t dare. This man is my path to finding out what happened to Lysander, not to mention to gaining power by solving the Secret.

“That thing will kill your father,” he says, calm, contained, ragged yellow eyes fixed on mine. “You’ll sit there and watch him die, and then it will break every bone in your body. In the end, Meriana will give you to me.” His teeth come into view, sharp and very white. “And I will accept the offering, Malco. I cannot do otherwise.”

“Swear,” I say. “Swear that you won’t turn on us.”

“I swear it!” he says.

I look into his eyes. The eyes of a snake if ever I saw one, but a snake who’s absolutely sure of what it’s saying. Gripping the bars, I dart behind the cage.

“Yes!” the man hisses.

Rue, I think, ignoring him. I need you to turn into a lockpick.

I only turn into weapons, Malco.

There’s no time to argue! Turn… Turn into a very short, very thin dagger with a bent tip. Doubtfully, he begins to change, to morph. Yes, there. Make the tip smaller, the whole body thinner.

Is this really a weapon, Malco?, he asks, uncertain.

Yes, I say, more kindly than I feel capable of. Something Amelia said comes to mind. All a weapon is, is a tool.

A tool for hurting, maybe.

Well said. And this will hurt. I promise you.

There are three locks total. One binds the chain to the necklace around the prisoner’s throat. The second fixes the chain to the stone wall. And the third and heaviest is the lock of the cage itself.

The wall first, I decide. It’s no use freeing the man from the cage if he’s still bound to the rock. Disabling that mechanism takes me only a moment. Rue did his transformation job well, and the Lockpicker Perk gives more than passing knowledge of what I’m doing. Two clicks are all it takes before the chain snakes into the cage, every link clacking loudly against the bars.

Oops. I

“No!” Meriana yells.

So far, she’d been paying attention to the fight between Medrein and her pet, barely concerned with me as long as I didn’t try to fight her. Now…

I rush to the cage’s lock before it’s too late. Meriana’s hateful gaze finds me between the bars, and her cyclops pushes Father away before lunging against the cage. For about the third time in as many minutes, my head becomes intimately familiar with the heavy metal bars and I’m thrown against the wall as the entire cage spins on the stone floor.

The cyclops isn’t done. Its hooves skid on the stone floor as it throws a punch that I barely manage to dodge. The stone wall behind where my head used to be cracks under the monster’s immense strength.

I struggle to my feet, search my body for a weapon, for Rue.

Malco?

Crap. He’s still stuck in the lock.

Rue, twist!

I fall under the second swing of the cyclops’ tree-trunk arm and come up behind him. I’m faster now, I try to convince myself. I’m not the same Untouched kid who had to resort to trickery to defeat this thing in the dungeon. I’m stronger, I’m faster, I can beat—

The cyclops turns, and its sharp tongue swings in an arc towards me. I was counting on its slow-moving punch again. I watch the long string of muscle, the bladed tip snake to my face, my eye, and I know – I know – that I’m powerless to stop it.

And then Medrein catches it. Massive hand around the sharp end, the metal spear coming in next and striking the beast through its shoulder. For a moment, the cyclops wavers. It looks surprised, uncomfortable. The next instant, the cyclops sucks the tongue in and Father yells. I see fingers fly. The monster tackles him then, throwing my father bodily against the wall, and opens its mouth for a final, vicious bite.

My Incendiary Dart explodes on the cyclops’ back, making it slam its teeth on nothing. Medrien gets an arm on the creature’s neck to keep the teeth away, pressing up so its mouth remains closed, that dangerous tongue trapped inside. The other hand, dripping copious amounts of blood, slams again and again into the monster’s pale, yellow eye.

They struggle. My spells blast once and again on the monster’s body, burning the scales away and revealing the tender muscle beneath. But they’re not enough. Slowly, inexorably, the opening maw approaches Medrein’s face, single eye closed, ignoring the punches.

Until a scream pierces through the mess of fighting. We all turn, the monster quicker than all, to see the prisoner leaning over a prone Maid Meriana. She looks up into his eyes, screams again.

The cage door hangs open.

“No, no, no, no, no, no!”

The man only smiles.

“Yes.”

His hand shoots down, gripping Meriana around the forehead. I watch as her eyes widen and her screams falter. She chokes.

The cyclops disappears at once, turning to smoke, to the thing illusions are made of.

Meriana’s body shakes once, and is still, arms falling to her side and eyes rolled far back into her skull. But the prisoner doesn’t release her, not even as blood begins to seep from under his palm, course down her face and drip staccato on the floor.

I force myself to look away and tend to Medrein. He’s in a bad way. The entire side of his face is purple, and two fingers are missing from where the monster cut him. He spits out a glob of blood to the ground as I help him up, sparing the ex-prisoner only a glance before turning to me.

“Are you alright, son?”

“Fine,” I say. It’s true, beyond the headache.

“Then we should go.”

“Father, I…”

“What?” he snaps.

A sigh courses through the small, broken room. The prisoner straightens, shakes his shoulders.

“That is better,” he says, stretching, the length of chain still dangling down his back from the steel binds around his throat. Only then does he turn to us, palms open. The left one, with the tiny hook-teeth, is dripping blood. The right one glows with a bright, white oval with the same shape as the void in its sister. “Malco means that he’s owed something. He performed a great service today, Medrein. I thank you both. My name is Malakei.”