“What else?”
Nolo’s brows beetled as he deciphered the illegible report for information. “There’s something about a brawl too, but I can’t make it out.”
Jerlo barked a laugh and gestured to the Kid’s unblemished knuckles. “He doesn’t hit back.” Thank God, the Kid had yet to figure out how to put a magical smackdown on people.
“He did this time.” Nolo lifted the Kid’s left hand and displayed split knuckles. “The Kid’s left-handed.”
“Did you bag the fiend who did this?”
“Yes, sir we did,” Gregori said as he entered. “Fen, Dar, and Mich are escorting him upstairs. The Ranger broke off into a stream of curses at the sight of Sarn.
“The Kid should have received twenty lashes.”
“That’s way more than twenty lashes. His back’s shredded.” Gregori pointed out the obvious with a furious hand gesture.
Jerlo nodded to the white-faced Su and directed his next question at the Rangers silent medic. “How long do you need to patch him up? We need to move him to a secure location.”
Plenty of folks had issues with magic and mages. Better to situate the Kid somewhere safe from the magic haters. The too tall boy had taken enough abuse. More might do irreparable harm, and there were those who would kill him for nothing more than the shine of his iridescent eyes.
Su said nothing. He’d lost his voice to a sociopath’s interrogation when the lout had come sniffing around after Sarn. But his hands moved with brisk efficiency. After his examination, Su mouthed something, likely a report confirming nothing but skin was broken. Su gave the go signal, and they rolled the lanky boy up in a blanket. Single file they trooped out of the cell, his two lieutenants, and the medic, carrying their precious still-breathing cargo hidden from sight.
Jerlo stared at the cross in his hands. Unable to part with it even for a moment, he wound it around his knuckles, picked up a clean rag and dipped it. The tiny jewel in his Savior’s thorny crown illuminated the water. After squeezing the rag, he lowered the cloth intent on wiping away some of the blood. Tongues of green fire leaped out of the Kid’s wounds and batted the cloth away, shocking his fingers in the process.
Anger scorched his insides. “There will be no more of that. I order you to cooperate. Let the healers do their work.”
Jerlo dropped the cloth back into the bowl. He’d try again in a minute. Eventually, the kid’s magic would drop its guard. How long until it did?
As if hearing his thoughts, the magic flared up, shaping itself into a fist that it shook in his direction. He’d not seen the unconscious Kid’s magic this visible in eighteen months—since the last psycho had beaten its owner to a pulp.
“You have to let me help him. Those wounds need to be cleaned.”
What was he doing—arguing with an inanimate force? Jerlo rubbed his hand. It still tingled where the magic had zapped him. Shadows blanketed the cot and the boy lying face down in need of help but unable to receive it thanks to his damned magic.
“You let the healer work on you. Then you get strong, and you avoid everyone and everything that led you here to that cell. That’s a Goddamned order, you stupid fool.”
Whether he was talking to the magic or the unconscious Kid who owned it, Jerlo had no idea, and he didn’t care. He kept firing off commands in the same vein. Each one drained his anger a little more.
The Kid stiffened as promises he’d sworn in ignorance forced his attention and compliance. His eyes cracked open, but they held only a fraying thread of sense.
“Who’s your master boy?”
Sarn’s lips shaped two words, “you are,” but only a whisper passed his cracked lips.
“Then these are my orders. You will heal. You will put out of your mind everything that led you to that cell. No more teenage angst. No more moping around. No more sulking. No more silence. No drinking or drugging or whatever else you’ve been doing. You will speak when spoken to. You will show up ready to work and on time every damned night until you're released from your Indenture. You will figure out what ‘normal’ is and you will spend every minute of every day trying to be it. You will not even think of using magic unless absolutely necessary.” Jerlo halted his rant. Curtains billowed as a chill wind cut through the room.
The magic looked out of Sarn’s eyes, and its emerald light filled the bedroom-turned-sickroom with its anger. It hated the constraints placed on its damaged host, but it could do nothing to stop them. Its host had sworn to obey the small man rocking and ranting at his bedside.
Jerlo ignored the magic, its ire and the chains his words wove—chains binding the object of his anger to one purpose. By the time he ran out of words, the Kid’s eyes had ignited, and the magic’s fire filled them not with sense but with light and purpose.
Jerlo had turned a dark corner and done something he’d sworn he’d never do—he’d just hijacked the free will of a seventeen-year-old boy and slaved it to his will. And what’s worse, he could not stop issuing orders. Words were pouring out laying a foundation for the troubled kid to build his life on.
In the sickroom’s shadows, evil gathered growing stronger with each constraint Jerlo slapped on the Kid. It fed on the miscarriage of justice and its unnatural presence tore a tiny hole in the fabric of the world just large enough to send a tendril seeking its master—a powerful being who’d long ago been shut out of the world, but not the hearts of men.
Jerlo’s gaze fixed on the cross resting in the palm of his hand rather than the boy whose magic refused to let anyone bandage his wounds. It was safer to look at a symbol of his God rather than the source of his worry. His eyes traced the cross, but the metal reflected his wounded charge instead of the peace he sought. Even his Savior looked disappointed.
Somewhere high above angels sang a lament for mankind—the same one they’d been singing since time began. Their shining fingers plucked at his heart’s strings as their lips turned down adding their disapproval to the mix.
Jerlo sighed, and the cross’ chain slipped until it dangled over the water. Protect him, Lord, because I can’t. He let the cross fall into the bowl. Maybe some of its blessings would disperse into the water, and maybe he was a sentimental old fool who should let the healer get on with his work. But he remained hunched over his folded hands. His eyes never left the submerged crucifix reflecting the lumir light. His mind stayed locked on the promise binding him to this spot and the fate of one hurting boy.
Outside the sick room, cloth rustled but the door remained closed. It was only the Ranger on guard shifting his feet. No one else knew Sarn was here. And no one would be told either. By some miracle, the Kid’s owner was out of town. With winter setting in, Lord Joranth would stay in Jacora where the real action—political and otherwise—was.
Jerlo heard a sigh, and it startled him. Had he imagined a change in the air? Was the room somehow warmer now? Jerlo crossed the room with ease since the other two cots had been pushed against the wall. Drapes covered two of the three windows leaving the middle one exposed. It framed a sunset, but those golden rays fell well short of the window and the boy within. A mad urge to carry the boy outside where the sun could reach him rose but Jerlo pulled the drapes closed sealing out the world before trooping back to his vigil. Sarn’s magic would give up, and he’d be there when it did.
He squeezed the rag and tried again to clean the blood away. But he paused when he realized the Kid’s eyes were open a crack revealing a solid crescent of brilliant green.
“Sarn, can you hear me?”
The Kid remained silent. His gaze was as blank as a skull’s. Jerlo lowered the rag. Sarn’s magic offered only token resistance this time. It pushed against his fingers, but in the end, it folded and allowed him to press two fingers against the Kid’s carotid. When he located a pulse, his shoulders relaxed. The Kid was still alive just locked in a stupor.
A shape appeared in his peripheral vision startling Jerlo. He shifted, his hand falling to his concealed blade. He let go of its hilt wh
en he saw Su. The Rangers’ medic lifted a discarded rag from the bowl. The big silent man dabbed at the blood determined to discover how many lashes the Kid had received. Sarn’s magic gave up the fight and allowed it. Su caught Jerlo’s eye and with a nod, took responsibility for the Kid off Jerlo’s hands. Scrawled on the notepad Su always carried with him was this message:
Get the bastard who did this. Make him pay.
Jerlo nodded and squeezed his subordinate's shoulder on his way out. “I’ll fetch the healer and if he gives you any excuses, crush his windpipe. A healer who refuses to heal is no use to anyone.”
Su gave his back a hard stare, but he knew the medic would find a way to persuade the healer to do his duty.
“Don’t take any of his bullshit.”
Before leaving the room, Jerlo pulled out a lumir bead glowing the same hue and intensity as his charge’s green eyes. He stared at it for a long moment. Some claimed lumir’s perpetual illumination derived from the magic in its core. He held it between his thumb and forefinger for a long moment.
“Let it be a light for both our paths,” he said feeling Su’s eyes on him, then he fled the room.
A Will Caged Is A Will Sundered
The Present Day
Jerlo blinked at the windowless cell. A chain dangled from his hands, and at its vertex, a cross hung above a puddle of God knew what. What am I doing here? Hadrovel—Vanya—the oubliette—he was looking for answers.
A shaft of light illuminated a hooded head. “Why can’t I remember any of it—the execution, the dungeon stay, and so many other events? What did you do to me?” Sarn pushed back a hood revealing his face. His eyes were matte black and full of pain. An inky tear rolled down his corpse-pale cheek.
“Who are you?”
“Your slave.” Sarn wrapped translucent arms around his knees. “I am what you made me.”
“You’re not Sarn.” Jerlo held up the cross, and it glowed. “What are you?”
Sarn smiled and dragged a finger through one of the puddles, disturbing its calm surface. “I am the parts of him you tried to steal. I am the amalgamation of all the things you never let him deal with. I am all the hurt and pain you hide from him. But I’m still there, gnawing at him and there’s nothing he can do about it because he can’t deal with something he can’t remember. There’s no healing without closure, and you denied him that.”
Another Sarn stumbled through the barred door. He was eighteen, and in his hands, the spirit glass strobed. Inside its clear globe, gray energies swirled forming an eye. It blinked and launched lightning bolts at its glass enclosure. “Undo what you did. Let me make my own decisions. Take back the lie that is me.”
Jerlo groaned at the sight of that benighted orb. Two years ago, it had slashed through the conditioning that had made the Kid a better, calmer, more stable person and laid bare his tampering and the Kid’s problem-riddled core.
“Sit down and talk to me like a rational human being.”
At the sound of his voice, Jerlo turned his head to see himself through a mirror darkly. His other self’s eyes had bled to black as they gobbled up the revelation and left the Kid unable to recall what the orb had shown him.
“Forget what you suspected. I know what’s best for you. You’re too young, too damaged to understand.”
“Jerlo?” A thin hand shook his arm as the woman called his name again. “It’s now or never. The tide’s not going to stay low for long.”
Jerlo blinked at the empty cell and the woman crouched next to him. Sarn was gone. Likely, he’d never been there at all, just another figment of his fractured mind. Jerlo rubbed his eyes. It felt like his mind was at war with itself, and he was its unwitting audience. Get your head screwed on straight. You need to be sharp. Hadrovel is a wily one.
“Come on. Up you go. It’s this way.” Vanya dusted off her violet skirt and strode out expecting him to follow. But Jerlo gave the cell one last glance, unable to let it go.
“Why did you change me?” Sarn asked, and his apparition flickered behind those moldy bars. He gripped them until his knuckles turned as white as his eyes. “What was so wrong with me that you had to change it?”
“Nothing Kid, you were screwed up, hurting and I didn’t have the time or inclination to cater to that.”
“You’re not even sorry for what you did to me.”
“No,” Jerlo shook his head. “I did what I had to do.”
Far away, Hadrovel repeated his words, ‘I did what I had to do,’ as Sarn vanished, stricken by their exchange. Jerlo turned away, shivering as the echoes of his and Hadrovel’s identical assertions merged into one chilling statement of fact.
“Are you coming or what?” Vanya stood at the other end of the cell-lined corridor, indignation in every curve. The lumir stick she held reflected her anger giving her features a demonic cast that faded as he approached her.
“Lead on.”
“Well, it’s about damned time. I don’t have all day, you know. I have actual work to do.”
“As do I.”
Those evil fairies must have dropped another wagonload of letters, forms, and inquiries on his desk by now. Just the thought of the paper war he never seemed to win depressed Jerlo.
In a huff, Vanya led the way through still more unguarded corridors. All their cells were empty too. After the fifth such tunnel, Jerlo stopped.
“Where is everyone?”
It looked like a jailbreak had taken place moments before they arrived. But if one had, they would have heard the hue and cry, and they hadn’t.
“How should I know. Do I look like I keep track of the dungeon’s comings and goings?”
Jerlo waved her vehemence off. “No, I’ll track down Nulthir and ask him later.”
Guidron’s replacement should know unless he was already hip deep in it. Above the dungeon level were the mines and the Lower Quarters. Sarn, goddamn that boy, he lives in the Lower Quarters. And the Kid ought to be in his cave sleeping at this hour. Was it still the same morning? Without a window or any view of the outside, it was impossible to tell if time had marched on.
Darkness sat on this place squeezing out all light, and the pervasive damp made the air heavy and thick. Mist gathered around their feet and the cobbles slickened until every step taken meant fighting a slide down the grade they were ascending.
A half mile later, they paused at a narrow causeway. Puddles shone like pearls in the lumir light.
“It’s through that door.” Vanya pointed to the iron monstrosity wedged into the naked rock on the far side.
A rat skittered by Jerlo’s foot. Another one stopped and tugged at his laces. He kicked it aside, and it turned brushed silver eyes on him. More rats rushed across the causeway. Vanya screamed and stomped her feet intent on crushing them—as if she could get them all. The rats scaled her dress, and she dropped her lumir crystal when she hiked up her skirts and shook them.
“Get them off me!”
But the rats dug their claws into the thick fabric and clung on. One enterprising rat caught the chain around her neck in its teeth and pulled. It had silver eyes. The chain broke, dropping the key and its long-tailed thief into a seething mass of rats.
“No!” Jerlo dove after the key but missed by a hand span. The silver-eyed rat dashed across his back leaped off his head and kept running with the key clamped between its teeth. But the rat crashed into a closing door. Woozy now, the rat reared up on its hind legs and scratched at the door.
“Oh God, snakes!” shrieked Vanya.
Jerlo regained his feet just as the snakes slithered out of the underground river on both sides of the causeway. They bared their fangs and struck lightning-fast at the fleeing rats. Jerlo yanked Vanya behind a rock formation as a wedge of rats surged toward them.
“We have to get the key. There isn’t a spare.” Vanya twisted in his grip. Her thin fingers clawed the air, but they were too far from the wriggling mass of doomed rats.
“Unless you want to be dead from a snake bite, st
ay hid. Those are cobras, not your usual garter snakes. Which is strange considering how north we are. I didn’t think cobras would find Shayari hospitable.”
“Who cares what they are. We have to get that key.” Vanya brought her heel down hard on Jerlo’s instep, and he released her as pain hammered his foot.
Her headlong rush ended when three snakes turned and hissed at her. Their fangs dripped venom. She raised both hands in surrender then eased herself down until she could grab a rock. “Easy, I just want the key.” She threw the rock and hit the first snake on the head, concussing it. Her second rock struck the second snake, but the third lunged at her.
Jerlo seized its neck close to its head then flung the wriggling thing into the water.
Most of the rats were dead, dying or in the belly of the snakes, but there was no sign of the key. The rest scrambled up the walls and converged on a narrow precipice while a group of angry cobras hissed at them from below. For a moment, the rats merged into a man-shaped shadow then something reached down from above, and it disappeared.
“Now what? We’re locked in here with a bunch of cobras.” Vanya shivered and backed away from the snake infested causeway.
“The outer door locks from the outside?” Jerlo gestured to it.
Though, it made sense. If he’d built this place, he would have done the same thing. Funny how such a thing had never occurred to him until it was too late. Some tactician you are. Events have spiraled more and more out of your control since you left your office. Why had he chosen today to solve the mystery of the demon? What had made it so imperative that he had to drop everything to deal with it now?
That sense of urgency had waned now that he stood within spitting distance of the oubliette. And yet, everything had led him here to this causeway and those snakes.
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