by Rob Kinsman
“I want this cell, where I was kept before,” commanded Zoe, understandably mistaking the dank, ancient prison for a Travelodge. Hutch just laughed and pushed her roughly through the doorway and out of the room.
Shit.
The main bulk of the dungeons, which Zoe hadn’t known existed, stretched on for miles. Individual cells had been burrowed into the walls along the arteries of the maze of tunnels. They had been built in a bygone age, when enemy prisoners were counted in their thousands.
In the years since peace came to the land they had subsequently found new life housing the mentally ill, especially during the long period when sleep stories were being bred out of the population. It had been a time when countless children were born with devastating waking terrors, their minds unable to process the conflicting need for both freedom and an absence of imagination. They were locked here, out of sight and out of mind, until they died.
It was into one of these recesses in the honeycomb prison that Zoe was now deposited. Two conjoined iron cells had been slotted into the alcove, but a quick test revealed the bars between them to be as solid as the formidable door.
As Zoe waited, giving the guards time to return back above ground, she mentally downgraded her plan from ‘risky’ to ‘disastrous’. Everything had relied on being locked up within spitting distance of Nick.
Still, at least there was another ally who might be able to help.
When she felt the coast was clear, Zoe called out Sid’s name as loud as she could. It echoed around the vast hallways, sounding as if a choir of doppelgangers had also taken up the cry.
Nothing.
She tried again. They must be keeping him somewhere down here, this was the direction they’d taken him after his stint in the torture chamber.
Zoe waited. Listened.
And then she heard it. Very faint, but definitely a familiar voice. Sid’s specific words were lost against the sound of their echoes, but at least it was a start.
“It’s going to be ok. We’re going to get out of here,” Zoe called back in return. It was among the more unrealistically optimistic things she’d said in recent days.
She paced around the cell like a trapped animal. Her impulsive actions only seemed to have landed her in ever deeper trouble. She was a lazy office worker with a useless degree from a university whose most successful alumni was the managing director of a condom factory. These weren’t the sort of credentials that qualified her for saving worlds, even ones she’d invented in her head.
No. I am a queen.
Realising she was about to waste all her energy stomping fruitlessly around in circles, she forced herself to sit down. Assuming she found some way to escape from here, she would have to get rested and fighting fit. She should stop, calm down and…
Of course!
She did have one card left to play.
The rickety bed was about as comfortable as a bath full of porcupines, so she lay irritable and awake for some time. Fortunately, she was physically and emotionally exhausted. In time, her mind finally started to close off and let sleep take hold of her.
And then she started to dream.
She saw herself as a young girl, walking along the seafront at Blackpool with her parents. They were bickering, as per usual, but young Zoe didn’t care. She had an ice cream (an impressive four scoops), and even a cuddly dinosaur her father had won on the rifle range. The game was actually rigged, but fortunately her father’s liquid lunch had distorted his vision to the exact same degree as the rifle was crooked, scoring him a series of unlikely bullseyes.
Young Zoe loved everything about this place. The unmistakable smell of sea air, which she always associated with being on holiday; the lights and rasping sounds of the amusement arcades; the way the sea seemed to blur into the sky. Her senses were assaulted from every direction, an overwhelming thrill for someone growing up in a sleepy village.
The best was yet to come. Up ahead was their destination: the Pleasure Beach, a collection of death-defying rides, most of which Zoe was too young to go on. She didn’t care. She just liked watching them, seeing…
She awoke with a start. Alfred was tapping on the bars with his sword.
“Are you alright?”
Zoe nodded, working hard to conceal her smile. She’d hoped he would be assigned to her; what she had in mind probably wouldn’t work with any of the stronger-willed guards.
“I’m very good, thank you.”
“Oh. You looked…” His eyes scanned the ceiling, as if he would find the word he was searching for written up there. “Agitated.”
“I was having a sleep story.”
Alfred's reaction was immediate. A sharp intake of breath, eyes widening.
“It’s alright,” said Zoe. “They’re harmless.”
Alfred checked along the empty corridor, as if mere association with such a feared act would curse him.
“That’s impossible,” he said.
Zoe moved closer to the bars separating them, a seductress plying her craft.
“Don’t you ever wonder about them?”
“No.”
“When I sleep I see the most incredible things. Impossible creatures. Landscapes no human has ever witnessed.”
Alfred was clearly intrigued, but duty still ruled his mouth.
“But it’s illegal!”
“It’s worth the risk. When did you last go outside?”
“Well, never, of course.”
Zoe felt a flush of pity for him, and for everyone whose lives were bound to this place. Beneath the grand architecture and pretence of civilisation lurked a dark heart of fear and repression, a reality which most of its citizens were wilfully blind to as long as it didn’t affect them.
“Don’t you want to see how it looks out there?”
“No.”
“I can show you.”
His hesitation was only for a fraction of a second, but it was all the encouragement she needed.
“I was just checking you were alright,” said Alfred.
“When I close my eyes I go to a place that is all mine. You could do the same. Instead of working in this dark hole you could be a brave knight, slaying dragons, winning the heart of fair maidens. It’s safe. No-one will ever know.”
“The mages will.”
“Not down here.” Zoe strained, trying to remember the word Nick had used. “These are…”– Come on… Mara? Macka? Mana! – “mana caves. Spells can’t penetrate the rock.”
Zoe didn’t really know how you could tell a mana-cave from a cave-cave, but fortunately Alfred was equally ignorant. He made a dismissive grunt, which didn’t detract from the look of curiosity on his face.
“You can sleep for ten minutes, and in that time you’ll experience greater adventures than you will in your whole life here. I can show you how to do it. There’s no-one else about. You can sleep there.” She pointed her thumb towards the bed in the adjacent cell. “I’ll wake you if I hear anyone approaching.”
Alfred went through the motions of measuring up something he’d already decided.
“How does it work?
Zoe made sure that nothing she did made her actions look like part of an escape plan. She made no attempt to persuade Alfred to unlock the door, gave no suggestion that she wanted anything other than to help him think his own thoughts. Part of her even wished she genuinely could give him this gift.
Inventing a ritual to try and make it look like she knew what she was doing, she reached through the bars and touched his forehead. She closed her eyes, and began to recite a mystical chant. Unsure what to say for this, she went for a mumbled rendition of Karma Chameleon. Fortunately for everyone, Culture Club didn’t have a counterpart in this world.
When Zoe had used up all the lyrics she could remember, she went back to lay on her bed and suggested he did the same in the adjacent cell. This was the clincher, the moment when she’d discover if she was going to pull this off.
Appearances hadn’t been deceiving. Alfred was gam
e, and merrily wandered into the next cell.
“What do I have to do?” he asked.
“Just lay and sleep. Then the magic will come to you as naturally as breathing.”
As if to demonstrate this she closed her own eyes and began taking deep lungfuls of the stale air. Peering out from a tiny crack below her eyelids, she saw that Alfred was doing as instructed.
Then she waited.
After about ten minutes Alfred stopped shifting around. Zoe allowed herself a proper look at him. He seemed to be sleeping.
Zoe gently lowed her feet to the ground, and padded over to the bars separating their two cells. She slipped an arm through the gap, grasping for the loop of keys dangling from Alfred’s belt.
She couldn’t reach. Even fully extended, her arms were a good six inches away from where they needed to be.
Don’t panic. Stay calm.
As quietly as possible, she turned her bed onto its side. Although she guided its descent, the wooden frame still made a dull thud as it struck the stone floor.
Zoe glanced across as Alfred, who seemed mercifully undisturbed.
The bed’s leg came off the bed with relative ease, the whole thing was a rickety old piece of rubbish. Back on Earth the decrepit thing would, by now, have been either chopped up for firewood or sold on eBay as a ‘vintage bed, excellent condition’.
She fed the wooden pole through the slit in the cage’s bars, then threaded it gently through the key-ring. Alfred didn’t move. In fact he seemed almost dead. Zoe wondered if this was just how people slept here, completely inert, their bodies lacking any input from dreams to keep them active.
The keys came away easily and were soon in Zoe’s hand.
Realising she wasn’t out the woods yet, she forced herself to slow down. This was exactly when she would be liable to make one of her trademark stupid mistakes.
Padding over to the door as quietly as possible, she began trying the keys in the lock. The jingle they made as they clanged against one another felt like a deafening choir of church bells. Finally she found the correct key, and the door swung open. It creaked loudly, like something from a cartoon. Alfred began to stir.
Abandoning caution, Zoe darted across to his cell and stuffed the key into its receptacle.
“I didn’t see anything,” said Alfred, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” said Zoe. It took her captor a moment to realise that her words weren’t a reply to her statement, but by then it was too late. She had gone.
Finding Sid turned out to be considerably harder than Zoe had anticipated. Although he would frequently call, squawk or whimper back at her, the echo made it almost impossible to locate where he was. The din of Alfred’s repeated cries for help only confused the matter further.
The maze of cells was full of dead ends, side corridors and blind corners. Zoe was acutely aware that time was an issue. She’d been watched when she was in the castle, so there was every reason to assume that her escape hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“Sid! Where are you?”
The reply sounded like a dog barking, and was coming from at least three different directions at once. At one crossroads Zoe even managed to lose track of which way she’d come from. As escapes went, it wasn’t exactly textbook.
Finally she saw movement in one of the cells.
“Let me out!”
It was Alfred again. Zoe had gone round in a circle.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
Time to try a different tack.
“Where’s Sid? The other prisoner down here.”
Alfred crossed his arms, a surprisingly defiant gesture for someone incompetent enough to get himself locked inside the cell he was supposed to be guarding.
“They’ll be coming for you,” he said, looking hopefully in the direction of the entrance.
With regret, Zoe realised that she didn’t have enough time to carry on hunting for Sid. Her best course of action would be to go back up the stairs to the torture chamber and free Nick. It wasn’t ideal, she was wary of being left alone with him. She didn’t doubt that he would betray her again if it suited him, whereas Sid was as loyal as a faithful old hound.
Zoe headed towards the exit.
Nick must have heard her approaching because he was already on his feet when she entered the room. His clothes were torn, revealing fresh wounds beneath. Despite this, he stood as strong and proud as he could manage.
Zoe still had the bunch of keys in her hand. They locked eyes.
“So, are you going to let me out?”
Zoe didn’t move.
“You killed me,” she said.
She saw him contemplate a few replies, trying to gauge her mood.
“And you nearly hanged me. Shall we call it quits?”
He flashed his charming smile, but Zoe was in no mood for his banter. She’d come to free him, but leaving him to pay his captor’s price suddenly seemed appealing. It would be all too easy to just walk away.
“You made a deal with a killer, murdered me, and all so you could save your own skin.”
“You’re the queen. I knew they wouldn’t hurt you.”
“You hurt me. You stuck a knife into my stomach!” Nick didn’t interrupt. “What if you’d been wrong? If this world hadn’t existed?”
“I wasn’t wrong.”
The image of what the torturers would do to him crowded into Zoe’s mind like a scorpion come to spread its sweet poison. It would be justice.
Or revenge.
Disgusted with herself, Zoe searched through the keys until she found the one which freed him. The mood between them lifted, some silent truce having been reached. What he’d done was unforgivable, but in the circumstances she had no choice but to trust him.
“I need your help. We have to go back for Sid.”
“The madman? You are joking?”
“You said yourself that he helped us before.”
“The thing about madmen, is that they’re basically mad. Which isn’t a useful quality in a tight corner.”
“This way.”
Zoe indicated the door back to the deeper dungeons. Nick didn’t oblige, preferring the look of the stairs leading up into the castle.
“If we get stuck below ground they’ll have all the exits blocked before we can get away,” said Nick.
“The guards will already be on their way, you won’t be able to move in the castle. Look, I let you go so you could help me find him.”
“Then you should have mentioned that while I was still locked up.”
“It was an implicit condition.”
“It clearly wasn’t.”
They stood frozen. Stalemate.
“This is ridiculous,” said Zoe. “We can’t just stand here.”
But they did.
“Well, fuck you very much,” she snarled eventually, heading back down the stairs
Just before she reached the bottom she realised he was following her.
Alfred looked understandably bemused as he saw Zoe approaching again, Nick trailing just behind her.
“Make your mind up,” sighed the guard as she strode past.
They reached a crossroads. Zoe called out to Sid, but, as before, his reply seemed to come from all directions at once.
“He could be anywhere,” she said. Perhaps coming back for him would turn out to be a noble but futile gesture after all.
But, to her surprise, Nick was standing with his eyes closed, almost in a trance.
“Call him again,” he said.
Zoe was sceptical, but did as he asked. Once more, Sid yelped back from whatever dark corner he’d found himself trapped in.
“This way,” said Nick, striding ahead.
It transpired that Nick genuinely was able to distinguish the true sound from its echo. Zoe remembered the tale he had told her of the temple he had visited, the intimation that he had skills and experience outside those of normal men. In the end the correct cell was depressingly near to where Zoe had started h
er search.
The wounds on Sid’s body that would kill a normal man had healed over; magic had been used to prolong his life, ready for his next series of punishments. When Zoe released him, Sid flung himself into her arms for a hug. She worried she might snap him, so thin had he become. She held him tight nonetheless.
Nick’s keen senses heard it before the others. He held up a finger to warn them. Zoe strained to hear.
Marching. Several people, presumably soldiers, moving in unison.
“Apparently you’re in charge, Your Highness,” said Nick. “So now what?”
Before Zoe had time to think of a suitable retort, Sid pulled away from them and bounded off into the distance.
“Stop him!” cried Nick.
Zoe started to pursue the mad jester, but not to try and restrain him.
“Come on. He knows where he’s going.”
“I’d be amazed if he even knew his own name.”
Sid led them through the twisted network of tunnels, showing no concern for the ever louder sound of their pursuers.
“Are you sure about this?” Zoe asked Sid, not daring to speak above a whisper. “We need to go away from the guards, not towards them.”
Sid paid her words no attention, continuing on his own merry course. The stomp of boots was now soon so close now that even Zoe could distinguish the source from its echo.
“I’m done with this,” said Nick, slowing. Zoe scowled at him.
“Go on then. See how far you get alone.”
He pointed at Sid, who was heading into a large cell behind Zoe’s back.
“Look, he’s found us a bigger cage to die in.” Sid was scraping away at the rock on the back wall of the cell. “Is he going to dig us out of here?”
“Stop moaning and do something useful,” snapped Zoe.
“Like?”
Finally Sid found was he was looking for and pulled on a small rock, which turned out to be attached to a hidden lever. As he did so, the centre part of the wall swung open.
“A secret passage!” said Zoe.
“Awesome,” agreed Nick, despite himself.
