by E. E. Holmes
It wasn’t until we had cleared the massive stone archway that the first signs of life began to emerge within the castle. To my right and left, four hulking Caomhnóir were grunting and straining as they shoved and pulled at the great crank that was now raising the front doors back up into their original and closed position.
I had assumed that the outer wall of the príosún was simply the outer wall of the building itself, and that once we were inside, we would be under its roof. But I was wrong. We stepped into a courtyard that held a second tower within the first, like a nesting doll of medieval architecture. What had appeared to be a great deserted barrier was swarming on the inside with all manner of protection, like a rock on the ground that had been turned over to reveal teeming hordes of life beneath. Caomhnóir were patrolling the top walls, stationed at the narrow windows, engaging in training exercises, and marching in formation all over the interior courtyard. The sight was alarming to me, because it looked very much like an army preparing for battle. But when I turned to Catriona to gauge her response, again her face was completely impassive. It seemed that the sight before us was exactly what she expected to see when she walked through the doors of the Skye Príosún, and she betrayed not a hint to the contrary. My overwrought brain was still trying to process all of this when four more Caomhnóir began marching toward us, all of them armed, one with a clipboard in his hand.
I looked at this Caomhnóir holding the clipboard with something akin to shock. It was jarring to see a man so far removed from my admittedly limited experience with what a Caomhnóir was supposed to be. This man had to be close to seventy years old, and though his figure gave the suggestion of faded strength and proud bearing, it was strange nonetheless to see a Caomhnóir look so old and stooped and battered. One side of his face was badly scarred, as though it had been exposed to something corrosive, like acid. He wore a brown leather patch tied over one eye, and his visible eye was a piercing, ice cold blue. His hair, or what was left of it, was white and had been shorn close to his scalp. He walked with a distinct limp, but rather than making him seem weak or compromised, this imperfection of his gait gave the impression of a wounded beast, all the fiercer and more dangerous because of the injury he had sustained. He limped to a halt in front of us, and the accompanying Caomhnóir quickly fell into formation behind him. He barely spared a cursory glance for me, before turning an expectant gaze upon Catriona.
“Good morning, Catriona,” he said, with the barest inclination of his head.
“Eamon,” Catriona replied, exquisitely careful to give no more deference to him then he had given to her.
“You’ve arrived awfully early,” Eamon said, pulling a battered gold pocket watch from a pouch on his hip and checking the time carefully before recording it upon the clipboard in his hand.
“You have no objection, I hope?” Catriona said dryly.
“Not at all,” Eamon countered. He gave a vague gesture over his shoulder at the flurry of Caomhnóir activity behind him. “There is no hour of the day or night that you would find us unprepared for your arrival. Surely you know that by now.”
“Of course,” Catriona agreed.
“I mention the time only to acknowledge the length of your journey,” Eamon said. “Undoubtedly, you have been flying a good part of the night.”
“Yes,” Catriona said. “But certain matters of a more… um… delicate nature are best handled when the vast majority of prying eyes and flapping tongues are well asleep, wouldn’t you say?”
The craggy folds of the man’s face lifted slightly on one side in the suggestion of a smirk. “Oh, indeed. There can be no doubt about that. I appreciate the forewarning, nevertheless. Is everything in order?”
“Naturally,” Catriona said. She nodded at Elin, who produced a wax-sealed envelope of paperwork from an inner pocket of her jacket and held it out for Eamon to take. He barely glanced at it, but instead handed it straight back over his shoulder for the Caomhnóir behind him to open and examine. After a few moments of scanning the documents, the second Caomhnóir nodded briskly, and Eamon made a small check upon his clipboard.
“Very well, then,” he said, tucking the clipboard under his arm. “The cell has been prepared to your specifications, and all Castings have been completed.”
“You’ll understand, of course, if I double-check all of that?” Catriona said with a somewhat condescending half-smile. “Just procedure, as you know.”
Eamon’s mouth might’ve been returning Catriona’s smile, but his eyes were full of frosty indignation. “Oh yes,” he said. “Procedure. Trackers’ privilege. We are well used to it by now.” With a sharp flicking motion of his finger over his shoulder, Eamon summoned one of the other Caomhnóir forward. “Please escort the Trackers and the prisoner to the appropriate block. See that everything has been done to their satisfaction. I must say,” Eamon added, looking at me for the first time with nothing short of contempt, “I’m rather surprised that the Travelers did not wish to deal with this one themselves. It is rare for them to outsource their means of justice, is it not?”
“It is,” Catriona agreed. “But the High Priestess claimed jurisdiction, at least for the present.” She leaned forward just a bit, conspiratorially. “You know how crude their infrastructure is,” she said scathingly. “Nothing at all like the sophisticated system we have here. Why, their leadership can barely keep their own Caomhnóir in line, and as to their Trackers…” Catriona used only a roll of her eyes to complete the sentence, but Eamon clearly got the point. “You run a much tighter ship here, Eamon,” she added, and put two fingers gently to the side of her forehead, in the suggestion of a respectful salute. “We know she’ll be in good hands here.”
“Yes, indeed,” he said, looking a touch surprised, but gratified by the implied compliment. “We will ensure that proper procedure is followed down to the very last letter.”
To our left, a peal of raucous laughter had broken out amongst some of the Caomhnóir who were sparring. They started to shove each other back-and-forth like undisciplined schoolboys. One of the elder Caomhnóir, who had been overseeing the exercise, stepped forward and brought his staff down across the shoulders of one of the men with a sharp, resounding crack. The man dropped to one knee, swearing, while the other leapt to attention, eager to avoid the same punishment.
Eamon, whose eyes had also been drawn to the scuffle, turned back to us with a satisfied expression. “You see? It is as you say. We’ve no tolerance for stepping out of line here.”
This entire exchange occurred on the periphery of my attention. I used the distraction of the fight to search the entirety of the inner courtyard, scanning face after face, desperate to find the one familiar one. But I did not see Finn anywhere. My nerves, already frayed at the edges, began to feel like live wires. We were coming closer and closer to the moment that Catriona would turn around and walk out of this place, leaving me completely alone. And I was starting to think I might not be able to stop myself from screaming after her to please not leave me behind. My fear was sharpening, and it tasted like acid on my tongue.
Eamon swept aside and gestured for us to follow two of the Caomhnóir who had been standing behind him. Catriona thanked him and pulled me along, perhaps a bit more forcefully than she needed to, but I knew it was all for show.
Not wanting to draw any more attention to myself, I dropped my head and concentrated on my feet, trying to put myself into Tracker mode. Now was not the moment to give in to my terror. Now was the moment to focus on why I was here, and what I needed to do. I began casting covert looks around to try to get my bearings in these new surroundings. I tried to memorize as many details as I could; the placement of the doors, the number of staircases, the arrangement of the Caomhnóir who were stationed on patrol. All of this information could be useful to me once I began Walking within the confines of the príosún. One thing was certain at once from my observations: there were far more Caomhnóir here than there were within the walls of Fairhaven. The place was absol
utely swarming with them, like an oversized ant farm. It was much clearer now why Catriona had been convinced that only a Walker could traverse the place unseen. My teeth began to chatter with the tension, and beside me, without looking at me, Catriona gave my arm a gentle squeeze of encouragement. It was all she could do to reassure me in the present company. It was a small thing, but I was grateful for it just the same.
Just as we reached the interior wall and the second set of doors, these ones much smaller and less imposing, a line of Caomhnóir trooped out into the courtyard, each carrying a long length of rope and a grappling hook. The last of them looked up as he passed me and his eyes popped with shock.
My breath caught in my throat. It was Finn.
He looked thinner than when I had last seen him, the muscles beneath his skin more pronounced, and his eyes rather sunken. His hair was tied back in a braid, and his face was covered in a shadow of stubble and dust. He broke formation with his fellow Caomhnóir, staring wildly first at me, and then at Catriona, who had also spotted him.
Whether she interpreted his desperate expression as I had, I could not tell, but she had certainly recognized him, and she knew something was wrong. She locked eyes with him and jerked her head sharply over her shoulder, as though silently ordering him to resume his marching. He looked once more at me, his eyes blazing with questions that I could not answer. I gave him a tiny wink and a ghost of a smile, hoping that this would somehow signal to him that everything was okay. He took a single step toward me, opening his mouth to speak, but Catriona yanked on my arm, pulling me away from him and steering me forcefully toward the inner doors. I did not dare look over my shoulder for fear of drawing the attention of the surrounding Caomhnóir.
Feeling lightheaded and shaken from my brief encounter with Finn, I followed the two younger Caomhnóir into the inner tower. Neither of them had a single glance or word to waste upon us, it seemed, which was lucky, because neither of them seemed to have taken the slightest notice of the silent exchange with Finn. Catriona and Elin, too, were behaving as though nothing had happened, and followed in equal silence. Every impulse I had was screaming at me to run back to Finn; only fear kept me shuffling forward with my captors.
We entered the interior tower, and I was unable to stifle a gasp. The front of this inner sanctum followed the curve of the outer wall, and stood six towering stories high. Staircases zigzagged the walls connecting six floors worth of galleries lined with iron railings. Each gallery walkway provided access to dozens of doors, each of them of heavy iron, and studded with ancient and rusty hardware, each with a tiny, barred window set high in its face. At the base of each door was a guillotine-looking contraption, which I could only assume was meant to be lifted to allow for trays of food and other necessities to be passed into the prisoners. And of course, carved into the stones surrounding each door, and branded into the metal itself were a set of permanent and binding Castings, meant to subdue and ensure the incarceration of each inhabitant. Corridors branched off at each end of every floor, leading to other wings of the fortress, other chambers and facilities that could not be seen from where we stood. A broad stone staircase descended through the floor at either side of the ground floor cellblock, which could only mean that more chambers existed beneath the ground on which we stood. The scale and bleakness of it all made me feel momentarily faint. How was I going to navigate a hellscape like this? My hands, clasped together, were now clammy and slippery with cold sweat.
To my slight relief, the Caomhnóir did not descend into the underground bowels of the castle, but turned to the left and began climbing the nearest staircase. We followed, climbing three sets of stairs, until we had reached the fourth floor cellblock. I could hear and see nothing that gave any sort of indication about who might be in any of the other cells on the floor, but based upon what Catriona had already told me, it was certain that they were all living people, and not spirits who had been incarcerated. It was also certain that none of them were Necromancers. She had assured me that prisoners such as those were kept in much more high-security areas of the príosún. Both of these pieces of information did little to calm me as we stopped five doors along, and waited for the Caomhnóir to work their way through the several locks on the outside of the door.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” Catriona said to the two Caomhnóir. “I’m glad to take it from here. If you would be so kind, Tracker Ford here has paperwork that needs signatures from a second prisoner.”
The taller of the Caomhnóir frowned. “A second prisoner? Eamon said nothing about a second prisoner.”
“Well that’s why I’m informing you now, isn’t it?” Catriona said coolly. “Elin, the paperwork?”
Elin produced a packet of papers and handed them to the taller Caomhnóir, who looked them over quickly, and then nodded, evidently satisfied. “That’s cell block six,” he said, handing the papers back to Elin. “Follow me please.” Then he turned to Catriona and grunted, “We’ll be right back to lock up.”
“I’ll be waiting with bated breath,” Catriona replied dryly. Then she watched for a few moments until Elin and the two Caomhnóir began to ascend the next staircase.
“Who is the second prisoner?” I asked her shakily when they had gone.
“Don’t worry about that,” Catriona said. “We just needed to make sure that you and I had a few moments alone.” She pulled the cell door open.
I’m not sure what I had been expecting. A pile of straw on the ground upon which to curl up and sleep? Manacles hammered into the wall? A metal bowl of food scraps, the kind of thing you might feed to a dog? Whatever nightmare I had conjured for myself, the inside of the cell came as a welcome surprise. It was clean and dry inside, with a small metal bed frame, a desk and chair built into the wall, two small bare shelves, where I might’ve put some personal belongings, had I brought any with me, and a small window covered with a metal grate that looked out over the outer courtyard. A pile of linens, towels, and clothing that looked not unlike a beige set of hospital scrubs sat folded neatly on the end of the mattress. A metal toilet gleamed in the corner, alongside a sink, a stool, and a silver cup containing a toothbrush.
“Home sweet home… for a few days, anyway,” Catriona said as she produced a key from the pocket of her jeans and swiftly released my wrists from the handcuffs.
“Thank you,” I murmured gratefully, rubbing at the places where the metal had begun to chafe.
“You’ll need to put those on,” Catriona said, pointing to the clothes on the end of my bed. She stepped over to the door and pulled it nearly shut. “First things first, however,” she said. “While you’re doing that, I’ve got one important detail to take care of.” She walked slowly around the room, taking in every rune and every Casting. At last, she came to a stop at a set of runes near the window. “Here we are,” she murmured under her breath, and pulled a Casting bag from her back pocket. By the time I had slipped out of my clothes and tightened the drawstrings on my overly large cotton pants, Catriona had made the necessary adjustments to the Casting.
“There you are,” she said with a grim smile. “You’re free to shift that mortal coil whenever you need to.”
“You’re absolutely sure?” I asked as I emerged from the head hole of my drab new uniform.
“Dead sure,” Catriona said. “As long as you don’t lose those soul catchers, everything is ready for you.”
I reached up under my hair and felt each of the braided sections with my fingers, taking stock and counting each of them again, as though they somehow could have magically disappeared from my head during the flight. “All set,” I said meaning to reassure her, but reassuring myself at the same time. “Fifteen soul catchers, ready to be yanked from my scalp as needed.”
“Excellent,” Catriona said. She reached out her hand. “Give me the clothing. And any jewelry, too. There are socks and shoes for you tucked under the bed there.”
I pulled out my earrings and all the rest of my jewelry. I hesitated, though, upon placin
g my locket into the bag.
“I can’t let anything happen to this,” I told her quietly. “It’s… Fiona painted it… my mother’s portrait…”
Catriona’s face tightened, and she reached out a hand. “I’ll hold onto it for you,” she said stiffly. “Get it back to your sister, for safekeeping.”
“Thank you,” I said gratefully, and dropped it into her hand. She tucked it into her own pocket, and then pulled the drawstring on the plastic bag, sealing the rest of my possessions inside it. “Theoretically, you get all this back when I come to pick you up.”
I nodded, trying to look unconcerned. The mention of her coming back to get me meant that she was, in fact, leaving me here, which of course I knew, but now that we were facing the moment itself, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep my panic under control.
Catriona stepped forward. “Test that connection for a moment,” she whispered. “Just to be sure.”
I took a deep breath, and tugged slightly at the barrier within my own thoughts, teasing it open just a bit, so that I could feel some of Hannah and Milo’s energy seep through.
“It’s open,” I told her with relief. “I can feel them.”
Catriona gave one sharp nod of satisfaction. She fixed me with a very piercing look and murmured to me, “You can do this.”
I couldn’t answer her. I was too busy suppressing some kind of hysterical noise that was trying to escape me, something that was part scream, and part sob, and part maniacal laughter.
The sound of boots outside in the hallway descending the nearby staircase caused the two of us to jump apart. Catriona raised her voice, and began speaking to me as though we were already halfway through a heated conversation.
