Kingdom of Magicians

by Timothy L. Cerepaka

  Chapter Four

  Keo and the Wanderer were taken to the town jail, a small, square-shaped building located on the south side of the Magician's Tower. Here they were stripped of whatever possessions they had—including things that could not be used as weapons, such as Keo's food for his trip to Capitika—and tossed them both in one cell together, but without removing their shackles. The Enforcers warned the two not to try anything funny and that they had full permission from Skran to beat them if they tried to escape.

  Once the Enforcers left, Keo looked around at the tiny cell that he and the Wanderer shared. It was half as large as the cabin back home, with only one measly window several feet above Keo's head that was blocked off by three thick metal bars. The wooden floor was dirty and cracked in several places, while the one cot built into the wall looked like it was about to fall off. The place smelled of urine and excrement, which made Keo wonder how often the Enforcers bothered to clean this place out. There was also what looked like a dried bloodstain on the wall, which didn't make Keo feel any better about this place.

  The Wanderer, on the other hand, didn't seem terribly worried about being tossed into such a disgusting place. He took a seat on the cot, which creaked under his weight, and looked around at the cell like he had expected better of it.

  “What a shitty jail,” said the Wanderer. He grimaced and rubbed his head. “And, god, does my head hurt. That scrawny sand crawler can really hit hard with that piece of wood he calls a staff. I'll be better, though.”

  “You seem awfully relaxed about being tossed in jail, with no idea of when or if we will ever be released,” said Keo in annoyance, folding his arms across his chest as he looked at his cellmate. “I shouldn't even be here. This is ridiculous.”

  The Wanderer shrugged. “I've been in worse. Once I was thrown in a cell that I couldn't stand up in. For three weeks.”

  “Wait, so you've had run-ins with the law before?” said Keo.

  “In different places, yeah,” said the Wanderer, although again he seemed pretty at ease. “One of the perks of being a Wanderer is that I have seen the interiors of many jails. And this is one of the worst, the 'too small for me to stand up in' one notwithstanding.”

  Keo groaned and walked over to the bars of the cell. Wrapping his hands around them, Keo looked up and down the hallway outside, but it was empty. There was a large iron hook on the opposite wall where the keys were probably kept most of the time, but at the moment it had nothing on it. Keo recalled seeing the jailer with the key ring attached to his belt, which meant that it was impossible for Keo to get the keys and use them to escape right now.

  Sighing, Keo pulled his hands off of the bars, walked over to the wall on the right side of the cell, and sat down against it. He looked at the Wanderer again, who still seemed pretty content despite the situation they were in. He was even humming a tune that Keo did not recognize.

  “I don't even know your name,” said Keo. “What is it?”

  The Wanderer looked at Keo and said, “Call me Dlaine of the Fist. You?”

  “Keo of the Sword,” said Keo.

  The Wanderer raised an eyebrow. “Oh. So that's why you were such a terrible fist fighter. You're probably more used to fighting with swords than with your fists.”

  “I am,” said Keo. He sighed. “But I had to leave my sword with the guard when I entered town. And I will probably never see it again unless Skran decides to let me out.”

  “What the heck's a Skran?” said Dlaine. “Sounds like a disease.”

  “The local Magician who runs the town,” said Keo. He pointed at the window above their heads. “He lives in the big Tower in the center of New Ora. The Enforcers work directly for him and he's the guy who makes the laws around here.”

  “Let me guess,” said Dlaine, gesturing at the cell they were in. “He's not exactly a fair or just leader, is he?”

  “He's not tyrannical, but he is usually too eager to jail people for the smallest offenses, especially people from out of town like you and me,” said Keo, nodding. “But it doesn't matter whether he's a just ruler or not. What matters is that I am stuck in here and this will mess up all of my plans.”

  “What are your plans?” said Dlaine. He cracked a grin. “Got a date with a cute girl tonight?”

  Keo looked at Dlaine in annoyance. “No. I was going to Capitika to see a friend of mine, but now I will probably never see her again because I'm stuck in here.”

  “Capitika?” said Dlaine. He rested his chin in his shackled hands. “What a coincidence. I was planning to head there myself after I got done with my business here.”

  “What do you want to do in Capitika?” said Keo, tilting his head to the side.

  “None of your business,” said Dlaine. “Anyway, you seem like a good guy, Keo. I apologize for punching you in the stomach. I tend to be a 'punch first, ask questions later' kind of guy. Nothing personal.”

  Keo winced at the pain in his stomach, which had subsided since they had been taken to jail, but which was still hard to ignore. “I noticed.”

  “Anyway, how long are criminals kept in jail around here?” said Dlaine, glancing around the cell.

  “It depends,” said Keo. “Depending on whether you actually committed any crimes and how serious those crimes were, you might be behind bars for a long time. If you haven't committed any crimes, though, they usually let you out after a day or two.”

  “Then why are you so worried about not getting to see your friend in Capitika?” said Dlaine. “After all, you didn't commit any crimes, right?”

  Keo thought about whether to tell Dlaine about the demons. But he decided against it because he did not yet trust Dlaine with that information. Dlaine certainly seemed like a friendly guy, at least now that he wasn't punching Keo in the stomach, but that did not mean that Keo could trust him with this information just yet.

  So Keo lied and said, “I told my friend that I would be there in three days, so if I am here for even a day, that will make me late and she will probably get angry at me for it.”

  “Then let this be a lesson that you shouldn't make promises you can't keep,” said Dlaine, shaking his head in disapproval. “But anyway, I can't be in here for a long time. I also have a deadline for getting to Capitika and I can't waste even one second inside this musty old jail cell.”

  “How do you intend to escape?” said Keo. “Are you a Magician?”

  “Nope,” said Dlaine, shaking his head. “Magic is inborn and I was never born with even an ounce of magic in my blood, so I'm not a Magician.”

  “Oh,” said Keo. “So do you have a lock-pick or something that you can use to escape?”

  “Again, nope,” said Dlaine. “The Enforcers took most of my stuff from me when they patted us down, including stuff I could have used to escape.”

  “Then how do you intend to escape at all?” said Keo. He glanced at the heavy lock on the cell door. “Because I'm no master thief, either, and have never been put in jail, so I don't know any techniques we could use to escape.”

  “I have a friend on the outside who can get us out,” said Dlaine. He glanced up at the window. “Don't see her yet, but I'm sure she'll show up pretty soon. Then again, she can be awfully lazy when she wants to, although she's bound to the same deadline that I am, so she doesn't have any excuse not to bust her ass trying to save me.”

  “Who is your friend?” said Keo. “I didn't see anyone with you when you were fighting Yasfa.”

  “She was there, but you just didn't see her,” said Dlaine. “Which is for the best, since her presence would have drawn too much attention to us, and attention is the last thing that we want.”

  “Why?” said Keo. “Because you're a couple of outlaws?”

  “There's that, but there's another reason why we prefer to stay under the notice of the law,” said Dlaine. “Sadly, I think I might have slipped up by letting my anger get the best of me when I fought that Hasfarian guy. My friend keeps telling me that my temper is a problem, but
I just never believed her until now.”

  Keo wasn't sure that Dlaine thought his temper was a problem because he certainly did not sound worried about it. The Wanderer only sounded concerned that he had let his temper get him into trouble, although Keo didn't worry about that because it made no difference to him whether Dlaine realized that his temper was a problem or not.

  “How good is your friend at breaking people out of jails?” said Keo.

  Dlaine chuckled. “Let's just say that she is one of only two people to escape from the Dark Prison and leave it at that.”

  Keo's eyes widened. The Dark Prison was supposed to be the most fortified prison in the entire country, said to be impossible to escape from due to the spells cast on it by the Magicians. It was controlled by the Magicians, who put their worst criminals in there. If Dlaine's friend could escape from the Dark Prison, then that meant that she was probably an extremely powerful Magician herself. It made Keo wonder if he had ever heard of her, but when he thought about it, the only female Magician he knew of was his friend Nesma, and even then he only knew of her because she had been his childhood friend. Then again, Keo knew of very few Magicians outside of Skran and Nesma, so that was probably why he did not know about her.

  Keo was eager to ask Dlaine more questions about his mysterious friend when Dlaine suddenly looked up at the window of the cell, smiled, and said, “There she is. You might want to move your head.”

  Keo frowned and looked up at the window, but he did not see anything except for the small, thick bars that were too close together for even his hand to fit through. “Move—?”

  As soon as that word left Keo's mouth, the bars detached themselves from the window and then fell down directly on his head. The fall was not actually that great, but when the bars hit him on the head, it was still painful and made him cry out in pain.

  “Ow,” said Keo, rubbing his head with his shackled hands as he looked up. “What the heck?”

  Dlaine did not seem to notice the pain that Keo was in. He just stood up from the cot and said to the window, “Jola, are you there?”

  There was no response, but Keo thought someone must have been there, because Dlaine smiled and said, “Well, then get us out of here, girl! It took you long enough.”

  More silence, and then Dlaine, with a puzzled expression on his face, said, “What? Why not?”

  Keo looked up at the window again, but still saw nothing. He wondered if Dlaine had lost his mind, but Jola had to be there, because how else could the bars have removed themselves from the window, seeing as neither Keo nor Dlaine had magical powers themselves?

  Then Dlaine suddenly nodded in understanding and said, “Okay, I get it now. But don't wait too long. Remember the deadline. We can't be even a day late, do you understand?”

  There was no response, at least not one that Keo heard. A second later, the bars flew back up to the window and repositioned themselves where they had been a moment before, looking like they had never been removed at all.

  Keo—whose head still hurt from when the bars had fallen on it—stood up and then looked from the window to Dlaine. “What was that all about? Was that your friend? The one who broke out of the Dark Prison?”

  “The one and the same,” said Dlaine. He sat back down on the cot.

  “Why is she just leaving us here?” said Keo. “I thought you said that she was going to help us escape. Yet all she did was knock down the bars, somehow talk to you without me even hearing her speak, leave, and replace the bars.”

  Dlaine yawned and then lay down on the cot like he was going to take a nap. “Jola thinks this is a bad time to try to free us. It's day time, which would make it hard for us to sneak out of the town, and even if it wasn't, that window is too small for either of us to sneak through right now.”

  Keo sighed in frustration. “Then when will she save us?”

  “Tonight,” said Dlaine. He yawned. “Meaning that you and I are going to spend the next several hours in this cramped little cell trying not to breathe up each other's air.”

  “Tonight?” said Keo. “That can't be right. Are you certain that she can't get us out of here before then?”

  Dlaine shrugged. “I'm certain that she could, but Jola most certainly isn't. And I tend to trust Jola's judgment on these matters, so we're stuck here until then.”

  “But you also have a deadline to meet,” said Keo. “Doesn't it bother you at least somewhat that you are going to have less time in which to meet it?”

  “Yeah, but what can you do?” said Dlaine with another yawn. “Anyway, I've spent the last few nights camping in the wilderness. This cell is hardly what I'd call a fancy hotel suite, but at least it isn't exposed to the rain and cold. So I'm just going to rest for a while so I'll have energy for tonight's escape.”

  With that, Dlaine closed his eyes, turned on his side, and soon was snoring deeply.

  Seeing Dlaine sleeping so peacefully made Keo angry, but he also knew that there was no way that he could get out of here on his own. Only this Jola girl, whoever she was, could save them now, and she would not be able to do that until tonight.

  That meant that Keo had as much to do in here as Dlaine did. So, grumbling under his breath, Keo sat down against the wall again, except this time he sat against the wall on the opposite side of the room so that those bars would not fall on his head again. Even so, Keo found it impossible to sleep because he was so worried about the possible demon invasion that was going to happen in six months.

  Nonetheless, after a while, Keo succeeded in drifting off to sleep, although his dreams were punctuated with nightmarish visions of the demon he had fought back in the Low Woods, a whole army of such demons in fact, ravaging New Ora and the entire country of Lamaira. It was a dark dream indeed.

  ***