“Look at those eyes; clear evidence of an unnatural being, perhaps one without a soul. The world will feel no loss from his departure,” Shide told the royal visitor.
“Ah, absolutely disturbing to see, isn’t it? No creature like that should have even been allowed to enter our nation,” Jarvis sneered. “I’ve no desire to see any more,” he turned away from Silas. “Carry on with your work; I’ve got a dance to attend to this evening; I must be going,” and with those parting words he slipped out of the cell.
“Farewell, my lord,” Shide spoke negligently to the already closed door. He pushed Silas’s face to the side as he released his tight hold on the flesh of the boy’s cheek.
“So, we’ll teach you a lesson about the dangers of negligence,” Shide looked at Silas.
He pulled a sword from the sheath that hung on his belt. “I think we’ll do this one slice at a time,” the interrogator grinned an evil grin at Silas.
The boy began to struggle against the bonds on his wrists behind his back. He feet were still free, and he began to edge along the wall away from Shide, until one of the lantern holders stepped in and grabbed Silas’s shoulder to trap him in place.
“Let’s play a bit,” Shide’s blade suddenly flicked forward and swished downward, carving a shallow slice through the flesh from Silas’s right shoulder down across his chest toward the bottom of his ribcage on the left side. A bright red ribbon blossomed in the wake of the attack.
“There’s the first lesson,” Shide laughed.
Silas yelped in surprise, then stifled a cry of pain. He wished he had his knife with him to defend himself, the marvelous magical knife that had wielded itself on his behalf as needed.
There was a sudden clattering noise at the barred window, then a bright, inexplicable shower of sparks that drew the attention of everyone in the room. A loud metallic clattering sound echoed while the sparks blinded the occupants of the prison cell. The man who was holding Silas’s arm released his grip in surprise.
Silas felt a hard bump against his wrist, then a twisting of the ropes that bound him, then a sudden absence of pressure against his arms as the cords ceased to bind him. His fingers gripped something that pressed itself against his palm.
He knew what it was.
His arm swung around from behind him to a defensive position in front of him, while his hand firmly gripped the purple and yellow edged knife that had come to rescue him.
“What kind of deviltry is this?” one of the men with lanterns cried.
“What’s going on in there?” a loud voice from the hallway penetrated the door.
Shide started to swing his sword towards Silas’s neck with a strong blow that was intended to decapitate the boy. Silas felt his blade pull his arm down and forward, forcing the rest of his body to follow its lead, and making him duck beneath Shide’s attack, then stabbing forward and sinking his own blade deep into the chest of the interrogator.
Silas jerked the blade free and stood up, as Shide stepped back, a blank look on his face.
“What monstrous evil have you done?” the interrogator croaked, then he fell to his knees, and toppled over.
The two men holding the lanterns on either side of Silas each dropped their lights and reached for their own swords. One of the lanterns extinguished upon hitting the floor, while the other one tipped on its side and rolled back and forth, casting moving shadows that made the weird scene even more unsettling that it had already become.
“The door’s jammed! I can’t open it! What’s happening?” the voice of a guard outside of the cell called.
The sword-bearing soldier on Silas’s left began to jab his sword in a panicked attack, but the knife controlled Silas once more, slicing across the man’s neck, then throwing itself from Silas’s hand, over his shoulder to strike the man who was standing behind the beleaguered prisoner.
And with that, the battle was over.
Silas stood panting, shocked, looking about the cell. The lantern on the floor had ceased to rock, and its beams of light spread upward throughout the small room. Three men lay dead on the floor, and a small pile of sliced metal bars lay beneath the open window.
It was a way to escape, Silas realized. His knife had come to rescue him.
Chapter 19
Silas was free to escape.
“Why’s it quiet in there? What’s happening?” the guard outside the door shouted in muffled words that penetrated the door. Silas heard the locking mechanism click fruitlessly as the man outside attempted to enter. It probably wouldn’t be long before he’d press the door open.
Silas stood in stunned amazement. In a matter of minutes he’d gone from prisoner to condemned man to potentially free.
The haft of his knife quivered, drawing his attention. He needed to get the knife, of course. He needed to end his frozen astonishment and start moving, he realized. He stepped forward, struggled with, then pulled the knife free, and wiped the blood off the blade using the uniform of the dead man. He looked at the window that the knife had entered through; it was the route he would escape through. He had to.
Silas stepped over to the window and grabbed the ledge, but couldn’t easily pull himself up. He dropped back to the floor, heard the pounding on the door, and then wrinkled his face in disgust as he realized he would have to step on one of the dead men to raise himself closer to the window. He pulled a man over, propped him against the wall, then climbed up on his shoulders and squirmed his way into the window well.
He crouched there, before he raised his head and looked around in the darkness. Several flickering lanterns illuminated the stone plaza he was examining, but the wavering light revealed that the space was empty. The darkness on the far side of the plaza showed him where the opening to the gate was that would let him exit from the palace. He could see fairly well in the dark, it seemed, and he saw that the two guards at the gate were both inside the cubby hole to the side.
With a dash of luck, he might be able to creep past them and leave the palace. That was his goal – his first goal and his only goal for the moment.
A noise rose up through the window from the prison cell he had just escaped, alerting him to the fact that the guards outside the room had managed to open the door. There was a shout below him as the guards saw the dead bodies, and with that shout, Silas rose up from the well and sprinted across the plaza to the wall on the far side, where he pressed his back against the wall, just around the corner from the guards at the gate.
He stood there breathing heavily, considering his next option, when he heard the sound of a wagon drawing up to the gate, arriving from the city-side. The guards began to engage in conversation with the driver of the wagon, and while they did, Silas seized the opportunity to slide along the wall, then crouch down and move towards freedom, keeping the wagon between himself and the guards.
“Escaped prisoner! We’ve got an escaped prisoner! He murdered the interrogators and broke out of his cell!” a cry of alarm echoed across the yard behind Silas.
“What’s all that about?” one of the guards asked the other. “Go to the palace and find out what they’re going on about.”
The guards were distracted momentarily, and Silas seized the opportunity as probably his best chance to dash to safety. He began to sprint down the long alley between the tall walls that controlled the access to the gate in the palace. His heart was racing as he waited for a voice to shout out after him, but each bold step he took brought him closer to the intersection of the alley and the streets outside the palace. When he reached that intersection, he was so anxious to duck out of sight of the guards – without considering that they wouldn’t have been able to see him clearly in the darkness in any event – that he dove to the side, landed on the sidewalk and rolled and tumbled for five more yards before he came to a stop.
He was free, if he could avoid recapture!
He got up, still panting heavily, and began to jog as best he could while he labored to catch his breath. He could only imagine doing
one thing – he would have to try to find Prima’s caravan and rejoin it, once it had left the jurisdiction of the city of Eric.
Finding the caravan would be difficult though. He’d been told repeatedly of the dangers of talking to local inhabitants; conversations ran the risk of committing some faux pas or crime that might lead to his re-arrest. On the other hand, he had no hope of finding Prima on his own unless he did ask someone. He would have to find the first person who looks reliable, and ask them for information.
An hour later, he finally succumbed to fatigue and tension, and went into a tavern, where he hoped someone would freely answer his questions without taking offense. It made sense to him that the people drinking ale and wine would be the people least likely to care about how a question was phrased.
Inside the tavern he entered, he immediately found a man slumped over a table that also held an empty wine bottle.
“Excuse me sir,” Silas tried to ask in his politest tone.
“He won’t hear you. What do you need?” a waitress walking by appeared to be old enough to be Silas’s mother, though she was a low-cut blouse that made Silas avert his eyes desperately.
“I’m trying to catch up with my caravan. It was by the dock today, but now it’s leaving the city, and I want to rejoin it,” Silas offered the explanation he had worked out ahead of time. “I left to run some errands, and they took off while I was gone.
“Have you heard about it or do you know where it is?” he asked.
“Honey, I don’t know anything about your caravan, but you ought to go to the red gate; most foreigners have to use it,” she recommended.
“Which way is the red gate?” Silas asked in relief.
The woman provided complicated directions of landmarks and turns, which Silas did his best to understand and memorize. He thanked the woman, then exited the tavern and began jogging through the mostly empty streets; time was critical and he needed to hurry. He wanted to reach the caravan as quickly as possible, to find the relief he needed by being in a friendly environment once again. And he had to hurry as well, under the assumption that the palace would soon cast a search throughout the city to find him and bring him back to captivity.
The city was a maze, and for Silas – unused to large cities – it was a puzzle he could not solve. He tried to guess if the directions to turn left at the square meant the first left or the second leftward street at a square he encountered. Before long, none of the directions that he could remember matched up with the reality of the landmarks he was passing by.
But a new sensation was also starting to penetrate his decisions. He could sense where Hron was. Silas somehow knew the way to reach Hron. He could tell that the mule was distressed, and he wanted to reach the caravan not just to save himself, but also to comfort his companionable beast of burden.
He felt the mild temperature starting to slowly drop after nightfall, and cool air readily flowed in through the slice in the front of his shirt, where Shide the interrogator had cut both the cloth and Silas’s flesh with the attack that had been intended to be the first harm done as part of Silas’s torture. His hand crept to his chest from time to time to try to hold the garment together, while he continued to weave his way towards where he believed he would find Hron and the rest of Prima’s caravan.
Minutes into his pursuit, he reached an open plaza, and saw the wagons of the caravan lined up, waiting for permission to pass out of the city. And then he heard Hron give a joyful bray of celebration as the mule sensed the arrival of Silas back at the caravan.
“Someone shut that animal up or I’ll turn it into dog food!” one of the guards at the gateway shouted.
Silas scuttled across the plaza and made a beeline towards Hron. He reached the mule and immediately embraced its neck in a tight hug, thankful for whatever occult connection had tied the two beings together. He felt the mule shiver with happiness, and the long tongue flicked out to leave a wet streak on the side of Silas’s neck.
“Who’s that messing with the mule?” Silas heard the question in Ruten’s voice float down from where the man sat on the driver’s bench of the wagon, as the man tried to peer through the darkness as the unidentified figure in front of him.
Silas released Hron, then stepped carefully towards the wagon. “Ruten, it’s me, Silas. I escaped from the palace!”
“Silas!” Ruten was so surprised by the declaration that he blurted the name out loudly.
“Quiet!” Silas exclaimed. He stepped up next to the wagon and looked up at Ruten in the dim light. “I’m escaped. They’re probably looking for me. How much longer until the caravan leaves the city? Will Prima let me go with you?” he asked.
“Silas! I can’t believe you’re here! You say that you escaped from the palace?” Ruten tried to process the incredible news. “We’ve got to get you out of the city quickly. You stay here with your wagon while I go talk to Prima,” he decided, as he handed the slack reins to the boy, then jumped down from the wagon to stand next to him.
“Are you okay?” he asked, trying to see Silas in the darkness. “What did they do to you?”
“I got a cut, but not much worse,” Silas answered.
“Good, good. Stay here; I’ll be back,” Ruten took the news in stride, then dashed away.
Silas held the reins as he cautiously stepped up onto the familiar wagon and sat on the bench. It felt like a small refuge, a familiar place where he was much closer to safety.
Minutes later, Minnie came running back to see Silas. “Oh Silas, it’s true! Of course, I didn’t doubt that Ruten was telling the truth, but to see you alive!” she jumped up on the bench and hugged him tightly, making him blush in the dark as she planted a firm kiss on his lips.
“Now, move your wagon out of line and up to the front. Prima wants to get you out of the city as fast as possible, and we’re about to start going through the gate,” she commanded and explained. “Get moving,” she emphasized.
Silas snapped his reins lightly, startling Hron, who craned his neck for a moment to look back in aggrievement before he lowered his head and pulled the wagon forward and out of line. They moved past the others who waited in line, their identities obscured by the dim light, and then pulled in directly behind Prima’s own wagon at Minneota’s urging.
“Stay quiet, and let me take care of this; switch seats with me,” she told Silas, as she brusquely stood up and stepped over him, then edged him aside with a bump of her hip as she sat in the driver’s seat and took the reins.
“What are you doing?” Silas asked in puzzlement as she pulled her blouse up over her head and then adjusted the undergarments that were suddenly on display in the flickering light of the lanterns and torches around the gate.
A pair of guards stepped away from Prima’s wagon and waved it through the gate, then stepped forward to assess the next wagon in line.
“I just spilled wine all over my blouse,” Minnie spoke up first, cementing the attention of the guards upon her, so that Silas was noticed not at all. “We’ve had a good time here in Ivaric, or at least I have,” she leaned downward towards the guards with a smile, then laughed and lightly slapped away the hand of one who attempted to be too forward.
“Can we come back and visit some other time?” she asked.
“You can come back any time. You don’t even have to bring the rest of the caravan with you,” said the guard whose paw she had blocked.
“You don’t even have to bring your clothes with you!” interjected the other guard.
“You two are too cute and funny!” Minnie laughed gaily. “Thank you for your hospitality,” she brushed her fingertips across both men’s cheeks as she chucked the reins and set the wagon rolling forward to freedom.
“You just made them look like fools!” Silas sputtered seconds later, after the wagon was safely out of earshot of the guards.
“Here, hold these,” Minnie handed him the reins, then casually pulled her blouse back over her head and adjusted it nonchalantly.
“It
’s easy to make any man look like a fool,” Minnie finally answered. “The key is to never let them know it.”
Silas paused as he considered the implications of the statement.
“Well,” he said with a pause, “thank you for helping me escape.”
“I didn’t break you out of the palace of Ivaric! You hardly need to thank me for helping you escape – you pulled off something miraculous! I know Prima wants to hear your story as much as I do,” the woman turned and smile a genuine smile at him, one that made him feel like he was with a true friend.
“But since I’m here and Prima isn’t, why don’t you tell your story to me now, and then to him later,” she suddenly licked her thumb, then pressed it against his upper lip and rubbed. “You’ve got some dried blood there, but I don’t seem much else in the way of injury. Is there any?” She pulled her hand away from his face.
Silas looked down as he pulled the sliced front of his shirt wide open.
“That can’t be,” he exclaimed softly as he looked down.
“What? What is it?” Minnie asked eagerly.
“The interrogator, Shide, cut my chest,” he spoke the words slowly.
“I’m sorry, Silas,” Minnie lid a sympathetic hand on his arm.
“It’s okay. Well, it’s okay he cut me – I knew he did. But the cut has healed already, in yellow and purple, just like the other cut,” he explained.
“How can you tell? It’s too dark to see anything,” Minnie pointed out.
“I can see fairly well. It’s not that dark,” Silas rebutted.
“It’s practically pitch black,” Minnie insisted. “Only a bat could see its way around here; I’m surprised Prima’s got us rolling forward, except I know he wants us to get as far away from Ivaric as fast as possible.”
They were moving forward, and the light guides weren’t yet being set along the side of the road to assist them. And at that point, Silas felt all the stress and tension within himself spill past some barrier he had held secure. Emotions began to flow, as the enormity of all that had happened in the preceding hours finally made itself not just a series of events, but a part of his person.
The Mirror After the Cavern Page 15
