by Bryant Reil
He could hear Zen ahead. The elf slowed, though still seemed to have more energy than Saul. Should Saul eat him instead? It would be quite a tussle, and Saul wasn’t up for it.
He had no idea how long they had been crawling through the dark tunnels and didn’t even know if they were moving toward the surface. And if hunger didn’t kill them, a misstep in the pitch black could send them plummeting into a hole. A merciful end, perhaps, as starvation was not proving to be Saul’s preferred way to die.
“Opens up here to the left,” Zen croaked.
Saul nodded in response, knowing Zen couldn’t see it, but he wasn’t going to waste any energy speaking. He inched forward, directed by the sound of Zen’s breathing. Sauls’ groping hands found the elf reclining against a wall on a somewhat flat surface. Saul climbed over the elf – who refused to budge – and found a resting-place on the other side.
“Just gonna die here,” Saul groaned. “You may eat me.”
“She’ll find us. Long as we’re outside Ja’ava’s wards.”
“Who? Kyla?” This seemed a rather optimistic assessment of Kyla’s abilities on Zen’s part.
“No. Sophrosyne.”
“Who?”
“Kyla’s patron. Sophrosyne found me in the woods. I’d fallen in with some bandits after my parents were killed in Monarch. She just popped in and offered me a better life. A shorter one, I guess. But she’ll find us. She’s amazing.”
“Indeed, I am.” A soft voice penetrated the darkness.
Saul’s head shot up, only to encounter a low extension of rock above his head. There was a scent of moonflowers.
“Sophrosyne?” Zen asked.
“Yes. I apologize my arrival took so long. You have only just reached the outer limit of Ja’ava’s wards. Progress was slow. Here, I have brought you food, and water.”
A soft hand placed something that smelled of ham and cheese below Saul’s nose, He snatched it and shoved it in his mouth, barely tasting it. It was followed by another, and another, and a gulp of water in between. Saul could hear Zen eating just as voraciously. The woman patiently handed morsel after morsel, until both Saul and Zen held up their hands to stop.
“You…I love you,” Saul spurted after his last swallow of water. “Whoever you are. Wow. I was ready to eat my own leg.”
“Yes, I know.”
“We don’t know where Kyla is,” Zen sputtered.
“I know.”
Saul felt an elbow dig into his ribs and felt Zen’s breath on his face. “She can read minds.”
The food in Saul’s stomach nearly rose back out his throat. “Oh, please, no.”
The woman laughed. “You do have many strange and disturbing thoughts, Saul, but I have seen many minds, and yours is hardly shocking.”
“Can you get us out of here?” Zen asked.
“I can show you the way. Yet there are others in more imminent danger than you are, and Kyla among them. In the meantime, I have taken two of the light orbs from Aeolis, so you shall be able to see the way out.”
Saul felt a glassy orb pressed into his hand. This he was familiar with, as Kyla had one. He tapped on it to illuminate the cavern. It was smaller than he had supposed, and not even high enough to stand in. Sitting only a couple feet away was a woman with long black hair, wearing a black and silver dress. She was eminently beautiful, and her face soft.
“I see your thoughts,” she reminded him. “And I see you have a devoted girlfriend. Don’t let your fantasies carry you away from her.”
“Couldn’t help it,” he muttered. He was seldom embarrassed, but now his face was flushed red.
The woman sighed. “I suppose it’s my fault for choosing such a body. I may experiment with some new ones. You want to continue that way.” She gestured at a small crack that extended upward to the right. “Avoid the larger opening on the left. It drops into a crevasse. I shall return with more food, and hopefully someone who can teleport you out of here. It’s still miles to go before you reach the surface, and the exit is not in safe territory.”
Zen leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Sophrosyne’s neck. “Thank you,” he said. He was nearly sobbing. A sensitive sort, Saul supposed.
Sophrosyne patted him on the shoulder, smiled, and to Saul’s great alarm, vanished into a billowing black smoke.
***
Three-thousand five-hundred forty-six.
Kyla had long ago lost track of time but counted the seconds between guards passing above her cell. A watch came by about every six hours, but never exactly. Something they needed to work on.
She had tried more times than she could remember to climb the walls of the pit, but they sloped inward as they went up to the metal cap at the top. It was like being trapped in a bottle.
Once Aethelwyne discovered Kyla could no longer turn anyone to stone, she had tossed her into this hole and forgotten about her. She took Kyla’s purse and Calam’s stone. But Kyla had saved her magic ring, and the little marble, and the necklace. She cleaned them and swallowed them every time they passed, in case Aethelwyne finally decided to pull her out for questions and torture.
Questions and torture were starting to sound fun. How long had she been down here? Long enough that her arm no longer ached, though now it felt a bit crooked. The only break in the monotonous darkness was the periodic passing of guards above. Sometimes they walked over her as though she weren’t there. Sometimes they would drop bread. It was usually dry, but that was better than the times it was moist and squirming with maggots. Of course, now she would eat anything they threw her.
She strummed her fingers up and down her ribs. She had already been too skinny. She now felt like little more than a piece of skin stretched over a skeleton. More than once she thought of refusing to eat when food was thrown down at her, and just let herself die. At least then Aethelwyne had no chance of finding out about Sophrosyne, and Erebus, and what Kyla had done. Yet when the food came, Kyla couldn’t help but gobble it up.
There was a small hole in one corner, over a channel of running water. It served as both a toilet and a water source. She had long since stopped worrying about the hygiene of it all.
Occasionally the long silence was broken by shrieks or moans echoing through the corridors above and the water channel beneath. The few words she could decipher were mad ramblings. She would soon go mad too, too, too, too…
It was in this haze of hunger, and thirst, and loneliness, and madness, that she nearly missed the familiar voice that came up from the water, soft as a whisper.
“Help is coming.”
It took four more passes of the watch before Kyla’s diseased mind could plant a name to the voice, though she had no face to match with it.
“Ismenis?”
“Hello?”
Kyla’s mind wandered back, so far back, searching for the face to match the voice. It wasn’t the voice she had heard from the water. No. Not Ismenis. This voice she could pair with a face. She had once despised this face, but now she was so excited she wanted to shout her name. Only, she couldn’t quite remember it, and when she decided to just shout hello only a slight breath squeezed through her dry and swollen throat.
The woman, the girl, the friend, spoke again. “I would sing for you, only I haven’t the time, and I fear the guards are wicked and the pain might break Eunoe’s trance. She is talking to them by the door. Carmin’s here, too. She got us in. The wards and alarms don’t notice her for some reason.”
Kyla forced her head upward as the metal cap slid open. But oh, the light was so bright, she had to look away.
“We can’t get you out, just yet.” The voice, almost a whisper, was silk in Kyla’s ears. “Your patron told me to bring you some jam. She didn’t think to give you bread to go with it, so I’ve brought you some. Can you catch it?”
Kyla croaked.
“I guess you’ve lost your voice. Look, I’ll lower it down with my scarf. You can keep that, too. Let me loosen the lid for you. These people are worse than M
okosh. At least he gave us food and let us go outside, right?”
Mokosh. Yes, he had been pleasanter than this. Hadn’t he? She recalled being somewhat pleased about his death.
The jar came down slowly, with a long loaf of bread tied to the top. The loose end of the scarf spiralled to the floor.
“I’m supposed to tell you one thing, Kyla. Your patron said it was the most important. She said he will keep his word, if you can convince him to give it, though she would not tell me who he was, or how you are to reach him. But we must go. The guard is going to change soon. I will return to visit if I can.”
Kyla nodded. She thought of nodding, anyway, though perhaps her head hadn’t moved. There was a grinding above as the metal cap slid back into place, leaving Kyla once again alone in the dark. She shoved a chunk of the bread in her mouth. It was moist and didn’t squirm. She had never felt so happy.
Only once the bread was gone, and her mind returned, did Kyla’s focus turn to the jar of jam. She dumped the contents on the floor, scooping a few mouthfuls as she fumbled for the ball of aurichalcum. She picked it up and felt the sticky smoothness of the rare metal. She could feel, deep inside, the pained screams of the god of darkness, tortured and angry.
She spoke aloud, as best she could, unsure if he could hear. And though her voice cracked, it came out with more strength and authority than she had expected from herself.
“I want to make a deal.”
Dedicated to Natalie
Elf Doubt
Copyright © 2018 Bryant Reil
All rights reserved.
For more information, address the author at [email protected]
Website: www.elfmastery.com
