The Magelands Origins

by Christopher Mitchell

  Daphne’s mind was wheeling and turning. Give up her father to end the war. After seeing what he had become, his greed for wealth and power, maybe he needed to be restrained; maybe he deserved to be punished. But her family would be homeless, as the estate would fall forfeit to the crown if its head were convicted of treason. She imagined trying to explain to her mother why she had betrayed her family. For the greater good, she would say.

  The greater good.

  She raised her head, her eyes on the dark throne in front of her.

  ‘I know you’re lying.’

  ‘Child?’ the first voice said.

  ‘About the Creator speaking in my head. I know it happened. The only thing that’s puzzling me is why you would deny it.’

  ‘Please, Daphne,’ the second voice said. ‘Desist with your delusions.’

  Daphne ignored her. ‘Either you haven’t spoken to the Creator to check. Or you have. Either way you’re lying. The only reason I can think of why you would lie, is that it was you who betrayed me, by putting the vision in the Sanang leader’s head, and getting Rijon to intercept the orders and forge that damn receipt.’

  The room fell into silence.

  Daphne pushed a long strand of hair back from her face.

  ‘She must die!’ a voice cried out in anger.

  ‘The church cannot touch her,’ another said.

  ‘Then hand her over to the secular authorities, and let them hang her!’

  ‘We cannot allow her to repeat to others what she knows…’

  ‘She knows nothing,’ the first voice said. ‘She is obviously deluded, perhaps insane. But you raise an interesting point. It would perhaps be best to keep her fantasies away from the ears of the gullible. Wardens,’ he said, ‘take her back to her cell. We will devise another way to deal with her.’

  Daphne glared at them as wardens approached her.

  ‘You have the power to end the war, Daphne,’ the first voice said as they dragged her away. ‘Think on it.’

  Daphne spat on the floor.

  Chapter 16

  Confession

  Holdings City, Realm of the Holdings – 30th Day, Second Third Winter 503

  The first sign that her conditions had changed was that the guards did not remove her shackles when she was returned to her cell.

  The second sign was the food. Whereas before she had been given two meals a day, this had been cut to one small portion, supplied each dawn. Her water ration had been halved, and in the sixteen days since, she had often been forced to choose between drinking and washing. She wasn’t sure if the wardens had been ordered to be pettier towards her, or maybe they had just picked up a feeling from their superiors, but they had begun to treat her with disdain and contempt. She was never physically hurt by them, but they went out of their way to make her life miserable. Some days they refused to take away her chamber pot, or when they did, they wouldn’t return it when she needed it. They jeered at her, especially when she tried to get some privacy, and they would awaken her in the middle of the night by banging on the bars of her cell. Once, during a cold spell, they came in and took away half of her blankets, and left her shivering on the bed, while they laughed.

  Every day she felt weaker, dirtier, and her clothes stank. Her left arm ached in the chill air, especially around her elbow, and in the joints of her curled fingers. Under the iron bands around her wrists and ankles, the skin was rubbed raw, and oozed. Relieving herself had become a torment. The wardens would leer at her while she squatted behind the screen she had made from a blanket hanging over the back of a chair, and it felt like her body was burning up in pain when she peed. She hadn’t had a period in many thirds, and began to wonder if she would ever be allowed to fully recover. In six days she would be twenty-two, but she felt like an old woman.

  She knew they were trying to break her, but perversely it made her stronger. She had been through so much that she took a strange satisfaction in refusing to let the wardens see that they had got to her. She would gaze at them with a blithe smile on her lips, which seemed to annoy them more than anything else. She took pleasure from imagining beating them up, day-dreaming about surprising them one day, switching into battle-vision, and pounding their thick skulls off the walls.

  Never let your enemy see you weaken, her father had said. Show them only what you wish them to see. You are the master of how you appear. Forget the smell, forget the dirt, and the ripped and filthy clothes, your attitude and demeanour is all they will perceive if you hold yourself proudly, and keep yourself above their petty cruelty. They cannot hurt you if you do not let them.

  The wardens had gone for the night, and she lay curled up on her bed, wrapped in every blanket she had. It was dark and silent inside the cell block, and she let her mask drop. She treasured the moments when the wardens left her. Before she had met the prophet, she had been glad to see them, but now, when they hung around most of the time, she wanted nothing more than to be alone.

  From outside, she had occasionally heard shouts from the city below, but over the previous couple of days the noise had risen, and become continual. She could hear the massed roar of hundreds of raised voices, the ringing of steel, and the cries of the injured. The unmistakeable sound of horses’ hooves on cobbled streets echoed through her narrow cell, and she was driving herself mad with frustration at not knowing what was happening.

  The reflection of a light flickered through the window shaft. Daphne lay still and watched the shadows dance across the walls. Something in the city was burning, she realised. She had thought that everyone in the city hated both her and the war, but if that was so, then who was doing the fighting? Had the people risen against the Queen’s Household Cavalry, the permanent garrison based in the north-west of the Lower City? The cavalry were fiercely loyal to the crown and, as a consequence, were inclined to be ill-disposed towards the church. In the lower ranks of the army, religious devotion was more common, but among the Household Cavalry there was an ingrained hostility to the monarch’s only rival for power.

  However, any uprising against the garrison would be over by now, if it had taken place. The troopers would slaughter the crowds, if let off the leash by the queen, who would surely only do so as a very last resort. But if the cavalry weren’t fighting, who was?

  A lamp appeared in the passageway outside her cell, and a woman approached the door.

  ‘Holdfast,’ she said. ‘Get up.’

  She got to her feet, her chains rattling off the bed. She held her blankets round her, and put her confident face back on. Staring at her was Deacon Lessing, the woman who had escorted her to the citadel. Wardens crowded the corridor behind her.

  ‘We need something from you,’ she said.

  ‘In the middle of the night?’

  The deacon beckoned to the wardens. ‘Open the door.’

  One came forward with the key, and unlocked the gate. ‘Stand clear!’ he yelled, and Daphne took a small step backwards. The door swung open, and Lessing entered, the wardens following. Each was armed with a short baton.

  Lessing looked around, her nose wrinkling in disgust.

  A warden brought the lamp into the cell, and hung it on a wall-bracket above her little table and chair.

  Lessing gestured. ‘Sit.’

  Eight wardens, Daphne thought, as she walked over and sat by the table. They closed in behind her, and she could smell their smoky breath over her shoulder.

  Lessing crossed to the opposite end of the table, and pulled a sheet of paper from an inside pocket. She studied it for a moment.

  ‘You will sign this,’ she said, not looking at her.

  ‘And what is it?’

  ‘Your confession, of course,’ Lessing said, turning to face her. ‘A full and forthright admission of your treachery.’

  ‘May I read it first?’

  ‘Is there any need?’ Lessing sneered. She placed the paper down on the table in front of Daphne, and set next to it a thick old-fashioned quill, and a pot of ink, which she unst
oppered.

  She pointed to the bottom of the sheet. ‘Right there.’

  Daphne kept her hands under the table, and started reading.

  I, Daphne of Hold Fast, freely confess…

  Lessing was right, she thought. What did it matter? She wasn’t going to sign it.

  ‘I think I’ll decline, thank you all the same.’

  Lessing smiled.

  ‘We discussed this, you know,’ she said, ‘that you’d probably refuse. We’ve been too kind to you, that’s the trouble, and we’ve set some unrealistic expectations. For example, you believe that we would not inflict physical pain upon you.’

  ‘The church is forbidden from…’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Lessing said. ‘We all know that.’ She squatted down onto her haunches, so that she was level with her.

  ‘Thing is, Daphne,’ she said, ‘down here, who’s going to know?’

  Daphne sat back in the chair. ‘Why don’t you just get someone to forge my signature, like you did for the receipt?’

  Lessing stood again.

  ‘It astounds me,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘how you can lie like that, Daphne.’

  ‘While I’m not surprised in the slightest that your superiors would hide the truth from you.’

  Lessing laughed, but her eyes held nothing but hatred. ‘It’s all a big conspiracy, eh? Is that what you would have me believe? Poor little Daphne Holdfast, persecuted by the prophet. That’s the story your father’s been spreading through the city, poisoning foolish minds against us, and setting the citizenry at odds with each other. I know what you are trying to do.’ She started to rant. ‘The last twenty years have seen the godless spread among us like rot! Without the righteous hand of the church the Holdings is falling to fire and ruin, while the queen encourages it all! Well, Daphne, the queen’s days will soon be over. King Guilliam will put this nation back onto the right course, and the people will once again live under the guidance of holy scripture, shunning the evil of immoral and worldly distractions, living as a pious people should. Prepare for that day, Daphne, for it will be coming soon.’

  Daphne held Lessing’s gaze, but said nothing.

  The deacon relaxed, and rolled her shoulders.

  ‘I’m going to ask you one more time, Holdfast,’ she said. ‘Sign the paper.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sign it!’ Lessing screamed, a foot from her face.

  ‘Fuck you.’

  The deacon banged her fist down onto the table, knocking over the inkwell, and sending the paper fluttering like a leaf to the floor.

  ‘Take her arm,’ she said.

  Hands reached out and took a firm grip of Daphne’s left arm, lifting it up from her lap and pinning it to the surface of the table. Pain shot through her like fire. She clenched her teeth, but refused to flinch.

  Lessing bent over and retrieved the confession. She put it down onto the table, and set the inkwell back into an upright position. Spilled ink had spread over the surface of the table, a thin black fluid seeping away into the cracks. Lessing dabbed the quill into the puddle, and inspected the end. Satisfied that there was enough ink for a signature, she set it down next to Daphne’s right hand.

  She came close, right up to Daphne’s ear.

  ‘Sign,’ she whispered.

  ‘I will not.’

  Lessing nodded to the wardens. A heavy arm came over her shoulder and round her throat, restraining her and pulling her back against the chair.

  The hands holding her crippled arm started to twist and bend it upwards, and Daphne gasped and closed her eyes, the pain almost overwhelming her. She gritted her teeth and bore it, trying to shut off her mind. Without meaning to, she found herself drawing on battle-vision, and though it couldn’t deaden the excruciating agony coming from her ruined arm, it allowed her to view it more passively, as if it might be happening to someone else. She opened her eyes and looked into Lessing’s face.

  The deacon was staring, her mouth open as she watched the wardens inflict pain on her.

  Daphne’s fingers edged towards the quill.

  Lessing nodded again, and the wardens released her arm.

  Daphne picked up the quill, and threw it to the floor.

  Lessing slapped her across the face. ‘You stupid bitch! Do you want to die?’

  Daphne gathered the blood in her mouth, rolled it around her tongue, and spat at the deacon, spraying her chest in red-flecked saliva.

  Lessing stared at her, any qualms she may have felt drowned out by rage. She nodded at the wardens.

  ‘Again.’

  That second time, Daphne had lasted right until they had struck the crooked bones of her elbow with their batons.

  When she came to, with her head on the table, the only thing in her mind was pain, but she drew deep within herself and pulled on a thread of battle-vision, the way she had learned while on the run in the Sanang forest, just enough to keep going.

  She heard voices. The wardens.

  ‘This is fucked up, if you ask me,’ a man said.

  ‘I know,’ a woman said. ‘Torturing a cripple ain’t what I joined the church for.’

  ‘You were fine about it when we took the piss out of her before, stealing her blankets and that,’ a third voice added.

  ‘Come on,’ the first man said, ‘this is different.’

  ‘But she’s a traitor,’ the other man said.

  ‘Shush,’ the woman said. ‘The deacon’s coming.’

  Daphne heard the wardens get to their feet, the bed frame creaking.

  Footsteps came into the cell. With her eyes open a crack, Daphne could make out everyone in the room. The deacon approached the table.

  ‘Has the prisoner stirred?’ she said, glancing down at Daphne.

  ‘Nope,’ a warden replied.

  Lessing tapped her feet on the stone floor. ‘We’re wasting time,’ she said. ‘The high priests are getting impatient.’

  ‘Why is it so important?’ the same warden asked.

  ‘The fighting in the city is finely balanced. Her confession may tip it in our favour.’

  ‘Then why don’t you just forge it, like she suggested?’

  Lessing hesitated. ‘The church can’t…’

  ‘The confession is what? Going to be flashed up in front of a mob?’ the warden said. ‘Who’s going to check the signature? Our supporters already believe she’s guilty, while her father’s would say the confession was forged even if it was real.’

  Lessing was silent.

  ‘Look,’ the warden said, ‘no one here will say a thing, just put the quill in her hand like this…’

  Daphne felt the thick quill pushed between her fingers, and her right hand was rearranged so that it sat poised over the sheet of paper. She kept her limb slack and limp.

  ‘Then, you know,’ the warden went on, ‘you just move her hand, then you can say she signed it, and you won’t really be lying.’

  Lessing stepped close.

  ‘I do this for the greater good, you understand?’ she said to the wardens, as she leaned forward.

  Daphne clenched her hand around the quill, and plunged it deep into Lessing’s left eye. The deacon fell backwards screaming, her hands reaching for her face. Daphne kicked the table over, and ground her heel into the confession.

  Batons hit her from behind, and she went down under the rain of blows, which continued even as she curled up into a ball on the floor. Her head exploded in pain as a baton struck her left temple.

  Her eyes closed, and she felt herself be dragged over to the wall.

  Daphne lay bleeding and bruised on the cold cell floor, hearing nothing but an intense ringing in her ears. She opened her eyes, and glanced up at the deacon.

  Lessing was propped against the opposite wall, her mouth open in a silent scream, a look of horror on her face as she stared at the quill in her hand. Her left eye-socket was a bloody mess, and the side of her face was red and swollen. The wardens helped her up, and half-carried her from the cell, locking it b
ehind them.

  Daphne started to crawl towards the bed. The wardens had neglected to take the lamp with them, and she used its light to guide herself across the floor. She longed for some dullweed, if only Weir were around, she thought, as she grew dizzy. She lifted her hand to the bed, but slipped into oblivion.

  She awoke when a ray of sunlight from the shaft in the eastern wall reached her face. She opened her eyes, blinking and dazzled. Her mouth was dry, and she ached all over. Her back, her legs, her head, but most of all, her left arm. She fought back tears, and struggled up into a sitting position.

  Nothing was broken at least, she thought, though bruises covered her body. Her left ear was still ringing from the baton blow she had received, but she could hear the faint rumble of shouts and fighting from the city below.

  She noticed the confession lying on the ground where she had earlier trod on it. She picked it up, and ripped it to shreds. Amateurs.

  She crawled up onto the bed, and remained there for the rest of the day.

  When it grew dim, wardens appeared at the door, led by a robed priest.

  ‘Daphne Holdfast,’ he said, gazing at her through the bars, ‘the prophet has come to a decision in your case. You have spurned every chance the church has offered you and therefore, following your assault upon the deacon, the prophet has been left with no choice but to return you to the secular authorities for due punishment.’

  Daphne said nothing.

  The wardens unlocked the door, and entered the cell. Daphne got to her feet, clutching a blanket.

  They led her out of the cell and along the passageway to the spiral stairs. This time it was Daphne who was struggling and panting long before they reached the top.

  She stumbled as they arrived at the landing leading to the Old Tower. The wardens pulled her back to her feet, and they continued on, her chains dragging.

  They wound their way through the underbelly of the Upper City, until they reached the ancient foundations of the Old Tower. There, two squads of Household Cavalry were waiting in ranks. The priest nodded to the cavalry officer, and the captain frowned back.