“We did not come here to kill you or your son,” Sorin croaked, his black hair lank. His mind was clearing from the effects of being submerged in utter darkness. “We are not killers.”
“No?” she whispered. “You might not be, but the others with you were. They are dead and gone and will hurt no one again.”
As his mind emptied of the voices, a tingling spread at his forehead, a feeling that rose not by his skin but somewhere deeper. It penetrated the folds of his headache and set him free of it. It was warm, careful of his fragile state, and it spread throughout his mind in a comforting cocoon. He was being absorbed by it. It made him feel safe, and all he wanted to do was fall asleep and let the chaos of the world drift away.
He closed his eyes, the Woman King still speaking and lightly caressing him.
Then another voice sprang from the depths of his soul, a warning given awareness. There was something not right, something out of place. Unlike the voices to visit him in the darkness, the emotion inside his own mind was wholly foreign. He struggled to make sense of it. He had never fallen asleep like this, especially at such a desperate moment, and the Woman King was soothing him. Why would she help him? The strands continued to caress his beleaguered mind, but the warning strengthened and overcame the sensation he was feeling. He pushed the strands away, evading sleep, rejecting what it was being done to him, not fully knowing why he did so, but knowing if he didn’t he would be lost. At that moment of decision, the strands evolved to urgent need, a stranglehold of enthusiasm, and suddenly he knew what was happening to him.
She was in his mind, just as Thomas had warned him.
Out of anger and instinct, Sorin drove his mind like a wedge in between the warm feeling, breaking it in twain with a thought out of need and instinct. He aggressively moved to block her essence, and the wisps of threads in his mind—once so tender and careful—became red hot and angry at the awareness of their discovery. They twisted in his mind, lashing out to grip anything they could.
Sorin bore down against them, unaware how he was doing it but knowing he must. She was a pollution to him, a blasphemy of the mind, and he would not tolerate the invasion of his privacy. Cwen Errich’s intentions were clear; she intended to steal from him any knowledge he possessed, even by invading his most private thoughts and endangering her life in the process. She was willing to do anything and everything to recover the Hammer and discover his reason for being in the Reach.
He knew her too. Given access to her mind, he saw a woman desperate and angry, one who thought the boy was so innocent she did not need to send her witch to do the deed. Over it all, her hatred of the Kingdom reigned, one born of culture and society.
Sorin focused on each strand, gathering them like fish in a net, and realized he could kill her if he wanted to. He had captured her mind. She knew it too, fearfully fighting against his soul’s power with renewed frenzy. Instead of crushing her life’s light, he ended her intrusion by viciously casting her out of his mind and back into her own.
The Woman King, who had stopped her ministrations, yanked his head up by the hair.
“How did you do that?” She growled, pulling harder on his hair. “Who are you?”
Despite the pain at his scalp, Sorin swiped at his forehead and wiped away a thick paste that had been applied there. The warm sensation disappeared immediately.
“You will not attempt that again,” he ordered, his voice sharp.
She slapped him hard with a mailed fist and pain erupted along his left cheek. “Lin. Rillian,” she shouted behind her.
The men appeared in the door entryway, dragging another man between them. Their prisoner was a bloodied, still form with black, shaggy hair hanging over a face sliced with crimson gashes. One ear was gone, a blackened hole in the side of his head, and one arm was gone below the elbow, grisly filth left dangling. Burn marks pocked the skin around his broken nose, and his face was purpled from beatings. But when Sorin saw the eyes, he knew the man and why he dangled limply.
It was the body of Henrik Mattah. The warlock had mutilated and killed him.
“Your friend will rot with you in this cell,” she grated as the body was dropped on the cold stone floor. “Thieves of my property, thieves of lives—it is all the same. Those who steal or attempt to steal from me die. The ilk of the Kingdom is not welcome in these lands.”
“There is nothing to know,” Sorin pleaded, and he was immediately kicked in the side. Unable to breathe from the attack on his ribs, he gulped imaginary air and hoped his end was not at hand.
“Your friends are dead now. And you are going to be here a long time. Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll kill you quick.”
Sorin remained quiet and did not move. He would not speak.
“Leave him two weeks in the hole. Feed him mush once a day.” She turned back to him, flame wavering in her eyes. “When I next see you, you’ll be crying to tell me what you know. If not, it will be worse.”
She left, stepping over the dead body, leaving the physical remnant of the spy behind.
The door closed, the torchlight faded, and the darkness engulfed his life once more.
* * * * *
Sorin did not know how long he had been there. He was still within his cell, destitute, a flailing soul in the pit of despair. The place the Woman King had ordered him somehow preyed on his fears while depriving his senses of reality. In that loss, his mind had wandered free of its bonds, and his sanity had slipped. Now that he knew what the voices were, he would try to avoid their whispers and tenuous touches as long as possible.
It had been a long time since he last prayed to the All Father. He could not remember how long. In the past, growing up in Thistledon, he had done so regularly at church. Prayer had become a necessary habit to form, but he realized in the weekly monotonous execution of it, all meaning had been lost. He wondered how many people in his church had also unknowingly took for granted their communication with the All Father. It had not been intentional—Pastor Hadlin could not have foreseen his own involvement in the severing—but somehow, within the establishment of the church, Sorin’s individual connection to the All Father had been dampened.
In the hole, as he truly sat alone with only his own thoughts, he prayed and hoped for the strength to see him through the pain wavering in his future ready to destroy his present.
Then his memories moved to his parents. He thought of his mother’s caring disposition and positive outlook, and his father’s solid strength and determination to see right done at all costs. Although their shades had long since departed to the Beyond, they were still part of him. Their remembrance gave him hope still, even in this dark, chilly place, and he understood hope gave him power over his life rather than his life controlling him.
Sorin shivered in the darkness, aware of the dead body sharing the space. He ignored it, playing over the events that had happened. When the Woman King invaded his mind he discovered a latent power in him, enough to defy her witchcraeft and save that part of himself, never to be intruded upon. From what Thomas had said, Sorin’s friends might not have the ability to prevent the Woman King’s minions from stealing their minds. He did.
Thomas and the others. His friends. If what Cwen Errich said was true, they were dead, killed on her husband’s old barge and sent tumbling over the Falls. Sorin hoped they had found a way to escape.
When the voices began to taunt from the darkness, he did not hesitate. He knew what he would do; it was the same thing his mother would have done.
He sang, filling the chamber with his clean, pure voice, reaffirming his existence through song. The sound echoed into the dark recesses of the chamber, rebounding until it encompassed his hearing. The voices faded and disappeared. The cold, once paralyzing, lifted free. Sorin had become resonance incarnate, and he added lyrics to the notes, a prayer to the All Father for light. He had no idea if it would work or not, but he had observed Pastor Hadlin singing to create orbs at night or within closed doors and remembered the song
partially. He had to try. There was nothing left for him to do. The song became a torrent of need, and having reached the end, continued again from the beginning, a constant string of prayer. He did not care who heard him. The song to the All Father was warm on his lips, and he yearned with his mind for a miracle.
After minutes of singing, the darkness remained. The song died on his lips.
Moments later, he again tried to sing forth light, just a spark in a massive sea of black waves, enough for him to stay afloat, maintain his reality, and confirm the ability Oryn, Dendreth, and Thomas believed him to possess. Still nothing happened.
The dying echoes of his song recoiled into silence. All of the times Sorin been part of a miraculous event, it had been under stress. Calling the swarm of crows to confuse the dragon at A’lum. The revival of Artiq as the jerich attacked Sorin. The rising shade of Isere the Witch from the center of the Rosemere. These circumstances had happened either out of duress or who he was, too important to ignore any longer. He had to find that key to the power within and unlock it to save himself now.
He focused on what he believed to be the darkness in front of his face and concentrated. Sorin wanted light there; he needed light there. He pulled all of the fear, anger, and hardship he felt at being trapped in Keslich ’Ur and wove it one cohesive emotion. His heartbeat sped and thundered in his ears as his body and soul responded to the perceived threat. He believed with all of his heart, mind, and body light could be there if he willed it hard enough. He did not sing; he did not motion. The other times he had not been singing; he would not do so now, concentrating only on his need.
The power he had discovered defending his mind from the Woman King was there and blossomed into being, and he closed his eyes as he reached out for it and took it as his own.
When he opened his eyes once more, a pinprick of blue-white light floated in the air in front of him.
He leaned back against the wall, exhausted from the expenditure of emotional energy and the focus he had employed but pleased with the outcome. With the accomplishment came another worry: all of it was true. As the High King had hoped, Sorin had a power within him he could not explain. Without training at Godwyn Keep, he never should have been able to call forth the bright spot of light that now hovered above his head. Only priests who studied the prayers could know how to do what he just did. And yet he had not sung his prayer; it had opened into the blackness because he willed it to. He was no pagan; he was no warlock. How could he have done it? Unwilling to test the limits of the tiny spark of an orb and learn more about the affair, he closed his eyes against the horror of the body in front of him and rested.
Hours crept by and he began to doze when the miniscule sound of metal scraping against metal reached his ears. Sorin opened his eyes, the white pinprick of light chasing the darkness back with gray shadow, and peered at the door for what was to come. The telltale orange light of a torch outside his door signaled someone approached. Sorin stood, preparing for the worst, unafraid of showing the Woman King his new talent.
The door opened. It was not the Woman King or a guard. It was a cloaked figure with its hood pulled up to hide their identity. The cowl dropped away and a beautifully pale face with freckles confronted Sorin.
It was Arianna.
Sorin stared in disbelief.
“Come on,” she hissed, “We haven’t much time. The alarm will be raised at any minute if this door’s squeal reached a guard’s ears. Quiet now.”
Sorin stepped over the body and into the corridor. Arianna carried a torch in one hand and was concealing the tools she had used to unlock the door with her other. Her brown hair was pulled back away from her face and her eyes were as hard as steel. She replaced the cowl and took the lead, Sorin following her back the way the guards had initially brought him.
“We have to save the others,” Sorin whispered.
“They already have been. I saved them from the barge yesterday.”
“How?”
“Once Relnyn was freed, it was easy. Once I gave him his staff, he staved off the guards with his might while I freed Thomas and the Ward and then came back for you.”
“Where are they?” Sorin asked.
“Thomas and Tem are returning to Aris Shae,” she answered in a hushed voice, her eyes forward and alert. “The army outside these walls persuaded them to warn the High King. Relnyn is in the hills outside of the city, waiting.”
Sorin paused before saying, “How did you get in here?”
“I watched the castle, watched the guard rotations, watched how people come and go.” A smile creased her lips. “It really isn’t that difficult.”
“You ran into no one?”
“That’s not exactly true.”
“Then how did you remain unseen?”
“I am the High King’s Shadow,” she answered, and left it at that.
At one point two guards making their rounds came toward Sorin and Arianna, but she had moved them into a different corridor and pressed Sorin into the alcove of a cell door. The unaware men had walked on by, leaving the young man perspiring and Arianna with more determination in her eyes. They moved through the tunnels like wraiths, having left the torch behind long before, and quickly came to a door in better repair than the rest. They slipped out into cool night, his freedom nearly reducing him to tears.
“We will have to be quick,” she whispered. “To free your horse, we must open his pen, undo his bonds, and flee before the stable masters come awake. The wolves will sense us quickly, and our only hope is to free the stallion before they catch us in the act. And then we’ll have to find the Giant and put distance between us. Keslich ’Ur will cut loose the wolves to hunt us.”
Torches on the wall and around the courtyard illuminated the dark in sporadic patches. No one was around. It was the middle of the night. Stars twinkled above and the moon’s thin silver light peeked above the southeastern wall. Sorin took a deep breath of the warmer air and sighed in relief; he was free of the castle’s depths at long last.
Arianna moved along the wall, keeping to the areas the torches failed to acknowledge, slinking her way through the darkness like a ferret in search of freedom. The pen where Artiq was imprisoned loomed in the distance, an unhealthy growth attached to the inner wall, the bars and buildings shadowy. As Sorin approached, the rustling in the cages and deep, reverberating snores from the beasts came to them. The horse was kept somewhere in the wolves’ midst. The link he shared with Artiq—a link born from the same place within his soul the pinprick of light had blossomed from—flared anew in response to being near the animal.
They crossed the courtyard at a dash and darted into the middle of the pens. The High King’s Shadow was thorough, picking her path as though she had been there before, looking for the horse in the dozens of cages. More of the beasts woke, aware of the trespassers, and growls resonated in the air around Sorin. They did not have much time before the masters became aware of the intruders and cut Sorin’s newfound freedom short by releasing the wolves.
Suddenly, Artiq was there. The horse appeared undamaged, shackled at his four hooves and at his neck with heavy link chain. The bars of the case were only handwidths above his ears. He whinnied lowly and tossed his head as if happy to see them, and his black eyes reflected the starlight. The tools Arianna used earlier appeared out of thin air from the folds of her cloak, and she worked the cage’s lock open.
Fear flowed over Sorin; with all the wolves around, they had walked into a very dangerous situation. They had to be quick. The wolves were growing manic, slavering and pacing in their cages nearby, periodic howls erupting into the night air. Sorin had never seen beasts as large as the wolves and would never want to be the prey of their hunt.
With the pen door open and the shackles and heavy chains removed from the horse, Artiq strode from his prison and shivered, the muscles under his glistening coat anticipating the rush to freedom. The wolves around him went berserk, growling loud and biting at the air, angry one of the prisoner
s had become free. A man shouted nearby, but Sorin could not see him.
The horse waited. Using Artiq’s mane, Sorin mounted his bare back and pulled Arianna up behind him. The horse shivered but allowed it, and Sorin could feel the power resonating from deep within the animal. Captivity had not dulled the horse’s might; it had only given Artiq reason to gallop that much harder.
As soon as its riders were settled, the horse launched through the pens, into the yard around the castle, and toward the open gate. More shouts came from behind them, spurring the horse to even greater speed as it galloped through the courtyard, passing the sculptures and water fountain, through the gate, and into the dark town beyond. Artiq’s hooves striking the flinty cobblestone street was like thunder erupting in the night; the sound ricocheted off of the quiet homes and businesses of Keslich ’Ur.
“Where is he taking us?” Arianna screamed from behind, her arms wrapped tightly about Sorin.
Sorin gripped the stallion with his legs and worked hard to keep his seat. He turned his head slightly to yell back his answer. “I don’t know. I have no control over what he is doing, but anywhere is better than where we were.”
Artiq sped into the darkness of the forest surrounding Keslich ’Ur, the stars and half-moon their only witness.
Chapter 35
When the weak autumn sun was approaching its zenith, setting the forest maples, alder, and birch ablaze in their new, colorful coats, the song of howling wolves reached Sorin’s ears and sent shivers up his spine. The forest they rode through was ancient, filled with unusual plants Sorin had never seen, and fir trees nearly as magnificent as those in Lockwood rose interspersed above those soon to become naked from winter’s embrace. Autumn had come to the Reach, and the cool air only exacerbated the shivers Sorin had.
Sorin breathed deep, shoving the fear threatening to overwhelm him aside, and pushed himself from the tree he had been resting against. Arianna was above him on a giant rotting stump where a bush bearing red berries had taken root to supplant the tree that had long since fallen over. She had climbed there, plucking and gathering the berries for a mediocre breakfast, her own supplies too limited to see them through.
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