Ditan sat on the floor of his cage. He refused to think of it as a wagon even as it rolled along. Touching the symbols that lined the walls and floor, he felt nothing. No tingle or sensation, neither hot nor cold, just a strange smoothness that felt counter to the grain of wood. Abnormal. He remained relatively free, if roaming a cage counted as freedom.

Sariam’s treatment had passed in a blur. Once Eilic left, she restored his shoulder and sealed most of his wounds. The carvings the Sentinel dug in his flesh remained as scars. Everything else seemed normal.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt pain like that in my life, he thought. Eilic enjoyed every minute that he could torture me.

-We…are…sorry…-

There was a hazy lucidity and desperation in the elemental voices. They struggled to reach him. He hadn’t seen the colors or heard from them now for hours if not longer.

I don’t know if it’s these symbols or the Sentinels keeping you from me, he lamented. They said something about a Grimcell?

-Much…pain…cannot…-

He heard more than desperation. It sounded like suffering in more than words, but intuitively he could feel what they expressed to him across whatever distance they had to traverse.

I think we’re all a bit sorry right now, aren’t we? He wanted to weep for them. So he did. He missed their insanity, their strange way of talking. Until they had been blocked from him, he hadn’t realized how much he’d come to rely on them. Without them, he was alone. He hoped Trynneia had fared better in her captivity than him.

Ditan had no energy to rage or fight. Whatever Sariam had done for healing took from his reserves to repair him. Accelerated healing. The Red had dug out some smallclothes from one of the crates and given him a long shirt to wear. Made for a human man, it felt odd and large, baggy in every area. He pulled it tight around him, content to try and remain warm and comfortable.

It hasn’t even been half a day since the trial. The wagon creaked around him, bouncing on rocks and announcing its displeasure during the journey. This is the worst dream ever brought to waking life.

He looked at the stump of his left wrist, perfectly smooth as if he’d never had a hand there. Ditan couldn’t even remember what it had been like, except when he tried adjusting his clothes or pissing in the chamber pot. Or eating. Or literally anything else. He missed the utility of it more than remembering what it felt like. Isn’t that odd?

Periodically he would glance at the various torture implements surrounding him. Ditan refused to let dark thoughts weigh him down. Instead, he tested each tool as he could, trying to leverage the sharp points to chisel at the door. Every effort failed to mar the wood. Whatever they’d done to reinforce this cage; they knew leaving those tools within would serve no good.

I’m sure it’s some damn test anyway. Let me think there’s hope to break my way out. That or end my own suffering voluntarily. It doesn’t matter to them.

That was the true reason Sariam had lowered him and let him free to roam, he knew. Eilic relished tying him up and stretching him to the point of breaking. All of it is a game to them, he thought as he ran his hand through his hair and stared at a particularly jagged dagger.

Ditan had no desire to remove it from the wall. He just marveled at how sharp it looked, how each serration dipped its savage angles before returning to razor-sharp nooks, over and over again. Who would make something like this? A butcher, maybe? He blanched at his answer. Yes, Eilic would happily butcher me.

“What have we gotten ourselves into, Tryn?” he asked aloud. “The Light looks less and less appealing the more I deal with it.”

High up on the rear door, the bars taunted him. Ditan wanted to look through, but all he got was fading daylight. Must be near sunset, he reasoned. Locked latches sealed each crate around him tightly shut, and all were nailed to the floor or wall. Perhaps both. Nothing moved.

With his head fuzzed, the voices effectively remained silent. Ditan felt his confinement acutely with only the constant strain of the wheels rolling beneath him.

“Okay. I don’t know what I’m doing. That’s okay. That’s okay,” he said, trying to calm himself. “What do I know about Praxen?”

“Nothing, yeah. That’s right. Another long legs town. City? I don’t know. Light, I hope that’s where they’re taking us. No one is straight with me in this group. I don’t trust Eilic. The witch is crazy. At least they haven’t killed me.”

-Yet.-

Hush. No, wait. Don’t hush.

-Live…- The voices overlapped then faded. He’d lost them again.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Ditan sighed. “We’re headed there anyway. The Warden wanted the Magistrate to send us away. It was all planned,” he said, looking around his cage. “They wanted to capture a shaman and got me.” In some odd way, it amused him. “All this had to be for Driver. He robbed ‘em good, and now I get to play.”

While he sat idle, he watched light flow through the symbols from one to the next. They made a circuit around him, passing in ribbons and bands up and down the walls, floor, and ceiling. Just when he thought he’d witnessed a pattern, it shifted to become something new.

You’re fightin’ to get to me, I know. Not much I can do from in here, I’m afraid. While Sariam and Eilic had left several weapons and “tools” on the walls, he could do little to reach them. Ditan refused to climb on the crates and jump across to the other side of the wagon on the chance he might succeed in knocking one off the wall. That presented too much opportunity to draw unwanted attention.

“I should rest,” he said. “Don’t know when I’ll get to next.”

Somewhere nearby, he heard a girl scream, though from pain or despair; he could not tell which. It did not sound like Trynneia. Tryn’s voice should be a touch deeper, this one had a crystalline clarity to it, wrought with hoarseness. Had she been yelling before? Have I been out of it so long I ignored that?

The wagon kept rolling as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Such a length of time passed until it repeated that he almost thought he imagined it. To hit the point home, the scream continued for several moments before dropping away. Whoever it was, he felt glad only that it wasn’t him.

That’s selfish, isn’t it? Am I too selfish to worry? I’m glad it wasn’t me. I’ll get mine soon.The thoughts brought him no comfort. None of us are really getting away.

Ditan shut his eyes and tried to meditate. He hummed to drown out the clatter of wheels and the clopping of hooves. His right hand rested on his left wrist as he sat cross legged on the floor of the wagon. Every rock in the road jostled him.

-This is the only way to peace.-

He dared a smile at hearing the voices. Relaxing, his head and shoulders slumped until his chin touched his chest. The tone of his hum changed, more deep as his neck pitched down.

Had it really been just earlier today?

With every breath in he chose one tune, changing it upon exhalation. Never one for making music, he’d enjoyed listening time and again at the Harvest Hearth when Chet brought a musician in to play. Ditan varied the notes as he could, clearing his mind of thoughts, though his guiding principle was finding the melody again. He’d touched upon it once.

Clatter, clatter, bump. Clatter, clatter bump. Hum. He extended his senses, melding his hum to the vibrations in the wood and the ambient noises around him. Again, he felt a sense of rightness, though it retained its own tuneless quality. The environment of the road created its own chaotic little melody. Ditan tried to match his tone to it.

He settled into unconscious matching, letting his hum suit the shifting rhythm of the world as he passed through it. Comfort rumbled through his chest, contentment that brought peace in a mindless way both compassionate and gentle. It soothed him.

Ditan found himself struggling often; a rock clipped out from under a wheel instead of lifting it, or a horse whinnied. These interruptions set him off his tune. He gathered his breath and started anew, finding different things to hum with or about. Wind passing by or the speckling of dust against the wall of the wagon provided additional inspiration.

Every break in his tune forced him to adjust and incorporate his growing perception. He dumped thought, listening to his intuition, trying to understand without comprehending. The elements had reached out to him, communicating in their own way. Now he tried returning the favor.

Soon he locked into something. Ditan coasted on a new melody while a new calm settled around the wagon. Motion ground to a crawl, then ceased altogether. Distractions melted away and he fed the music with his soul, matching the harmony. He wouldn’t call it music, but at least a breakthrough. Hints of sadness crept through, a disturbed melancholy dirge underlying his efforts.

Ditan followed that strain, unsure and unwilling to consider whether it was his own morose situation or something else, just yearning to feed the music with that little bit of himself he felt he possessed in earnest. The hum spread and he opened his mouth with a wordless vocalization, more pleasant than anything he thought he could manage.

Symbols all over the walls sparkled. The light from outside had grown dim, as the first sun began to set on his captivity. He saw none of this, but felt it carried into his chest by the reverberation of the music off the wagon’s walls. Something hard smacked against one of them and broke his spellbound trance.

We’ve stopped, he realized at once.

-Yes. You have.-

Are you here? He dared not hope he’d managed to contact them, not yet. As too often already, they did not reply.

The door shook and something rattled. He knew someone had to have heard him. Ditan shifted around where he sat, leaning against the front of the cage to face the rear. Put as much distance as I can between us, he reasoned, knowing it did no good. Take what control I can, he thought.

“What did you think you were doing in here, gobbo?” Eilic said, flinging open the door, rage writ large upon his face.

“Just humming a tune to keep myself company. It’s lonely in here. And cold,” Ditan replied. “Can’t a man entertain himself?”

The Sentinel gripped Ditan’s over-long shirt and lifted him, slamming the goblin’s back against the wall and raising him until their eyes met. Eilic squinted back. “Mother gave you a shirt.”

“She at least understands human decency.”

Eilic scoffed. “Goblins don’t require decency. Go back to your mud and rocks. You should never have left.”

“It hurts ya to do yer mother’s bidding, doesn’t it? What about the Warden? Do ya cater to his whims too?” Ditan hung limp in the man’s grip. He knew struggling would only urge Eilic to more violence, since his words already put him on the edge.

“She listens to me.”

“You ask her opinion on everything, and bolt when she tells you. Kinda subservient, if ya ask me. Funny. A man like you I wouldn’t think would listen to any mere woman.”

Eilic slammed him against the wall a second time. Several of the implements rattled adjacent to them. “Modius is coming. Save your smarmy words for him. As for your music, you’ll change your tune.” The Sentinel dropped him. For a goblin, the fall was far enough to hurt, which is exactly what Eilic intended.