Not only would it be torture, but it would be self-inflicted.
Freedom. That was what would be promised to him if he succeeded.
He would not remain trapped.
He focused on the pain in his hands. The metal sent a strange shock through him every time he moved his hands, almost as if it were trying to prevent him from using them, but his legs were free. He tried to stand and found that he could lift the chair, though barely. Doing so caused the pain in his hands to surge again.
He sat back down, breathing heavily. Tears continued to stream down his face.
Haern didn’t know how long he sat there. Moments stretched onward, minutes passing into hours.
He tried again. This time when he got up, he managed to stand for a few moments, long enough that he could feel the weight of the chair as it clung to him, enough of a presence that he thought he could deal with the pain, but then the shocks began to roll through him again. His whole body spasmed, and he sank back down, collapsing into the chair.
Panting, not yet defeated, Haern continued to hold on.
Every so often, he could swear there was movement near him, but he wasn’t sure. How much of this did the Forgers know about?
They were probably watching, prepared for the moment that he made his escape. And when he did, he didn’t doubt that they would react, converging upon him, maybe piercing his feet or his legs with another metal rod to complete the torment.
If they would come, let them.
Haern stood again, screaming. He held on to the chair, pain surging through his hands, and when the shocks began to convulse him, he collapsed, dropping down on the chair.
It creaked, but only a little bit.
The pain abated after what seemed like hours.
Coughing, spitting out a trickle of blood, he stood again, and again he dropped onto the chair.
This time, the pain didn’t hit him until his hands jerked forward when he crashed into the chair. It was different than the electrical pain, a tearing sensation, almost as if it were ripping through his bones. He screamed.
Once again he stood. When he dropped onto the chair, it shattered.
He lay there for a long moment. The only thing that got him moving was the thought that the Forgers might come into the room.
Haern crawled forward. Sections of the chair hung from the metal bars wrapped through his hands. He didn’t have the stomach to try to break them free, and instead let them dangle, something that could be useful as a weapon if it were necessary. He made his way toward the door, reaching for the doorknob, wondering if perhaps he might find some way to get free.
Every time his hand hit the door, another jolt of pain shot through him.
He had to fight through this. He had to survive. If he couldn’t, he would let down the girls.
That as much as anything motivated him.
He was responsible for them. He had freed them from their captivity, and then he had been the reason they had gone to the Binders, and he would be the reason that they were saved.
Haern found the door handle, and he wiggled it until it popped open.
The man on the other side of the door turned toward him, and Haern screamed, smacking him with the board attached to his hand. He collapsed on top of the man, ignoring the electrical shocks that raced through him, slamming the board into the man’s face over and over again until it was a bloodied ruin.
Even then, he didn’t stop. How could he? If this man—this Forger—got up, they would drag him back, and Haern didn’t know if he had the strength to withstand whatever they might do to him.
When he was certain the man wasn’t going to move again, he dragged himself off the floor, continuing forward. It was a tile floor, and stone walls lined either side of him. Pain and weakness coursing through him made him stumble along the hallway, staggering forward until he reached a branch point.
Haern closed his eyes, focusing. Lorcith. That was what he needed, wasn’t it?
He looked down at his hands. Blood had clotted around the metal, staining the bars that slipped through them. They had pierced the wood, and if he could find someone who could pry the metal free, he could remove this from his hands, and then…
The sudden sense of lorcith called to him.
It was nearby, and up.
Haern staggered along the hallway. When he reached the stairs, he started up them. He dragged one hand along the wall, pain shooting through him, but that same pain kept him awake. It kept his mind alert. A trail of blood worked along the wall as he went, and too late, he realized that he shouldn’t have been touching the wall.
When he reached the landing, he came across two men.
Haern launched himself. He kicked one man in the head, spinning the board attached to his hand at the other, fighting through the agony. He crashed into the man he’d struck with the board, falling on top of him, and he swung the board over and again, blood spraying from him the same way it had the man below.
When he was convinced they weren’t going to get up, he paused and looked around. This was too noisy. Not only would there be the sound of his screams, but there would be the sound of the attacks, the steady thump and kick each time he knocked down one of the attackers.
Reaching the stairs, he staggered up them, stumbling onto the next landing.
Lorcith was near.
He could feel it. Not only could he feel it, but he could almost call it.
What lorcith was this?
He pulled on it.
As he did, the pain in his hands intensified, the electrical shock racing through him, as if he somehow were using the metal piercing him to add to what he was doing.
He released the attempt to pull on the lorcith. Instead, he let it draw him toward it, following the sense of it rather than trying to pull it to him. It might not be possible for him to pull it anyway if it were something large.
When he reached the end of the hall, he found the staircase that led up and down. Up was the sense of lorcith, but as he stood there, there was another sense, and he frowned, hesitating.
Down also had lorcith.
Should he go there?
He couldn’t tell, and with as much as his hands hurt, he no longer knew what to think. He tried to focus, but he couldn’t. All he could think of were the sense of lorcith piercing his hands and the sense of lorcith in the distance.
What he needed to find was whether any of the lorcith felt more significant. Not only more significant, but did any of it feel familiar?
As he stood there, swaying in place, he couldn’t help but think that up was where he needed to go.
Was that safe? Up meant higher into the tower. Up meant closer to the Forgers. Up meant that he might end up trapped.
Down might be safer.
The longer he stood there, the more uncertain he felt.
Finally he headed toward the stairs. Lorcith pulled him, and he answered, some distant part of him reverberating with the sense of lorcith, and he feared ignoring it, feared that if he chose not to answer, he would end up in even more pain.
All he knew was pain.
If he could end that, if he could find some way of removing the pain, he wanted to do it.
Pausing at the top of the stairs, he feared that he would come across more of the Forgers, but there was no one. Haern staggered down the hall, stumbling as he went, and he reached the door.
It was a simple door. On the other side of it, the sense of lorcith called to him.
A familiar sense of lorcith.
He pulled on it gently.
Coins.
That was the only thought that rolled through his mind.
Coins.
They were his coins. If they were here, it meant the girls were here.
It meant he was close.
Trying the door, he found it locked.
Haern slammed his shoulder into it. Again. And again.
The door popped open.
He stumbled forward and skidded to a stop.
The Forger, the same man he and his father had tormented, stood waiting. A dark smile crossed his face.
30
Lucy
Lucy had spent considerable time in Elaeavn, both in the city and in the forest, and yet, going back, even within her mind, was difficult. With everything that had happened to her in the time since she’d left, she was no longer sure if she could return as easily as she’d thought.
Somehow, she had to find the answers within her mind. The more she thought about it, the more uncertain she was she could get to the bottom of what she knew to be trapped within her mind. It was almost as if she were blocking it out, trying to force herself to think of anything else. She had to find a way past the block to uncover more about herself.
The answers were there.
They were visions, and more than that, they were a part of her, part of who she was.
She thought about her sister.
That was the one thing she dreaded—and had avoided for a long time.
She focused on her, thinking about Cara and times they had spent together. She hadn’t spent much time thinking about her over the last few years, trying to block those memories from her mind. There was a mystery to what happened to Cara, and yet Lucy had never considered it.
Perhaps that was why Ras wanted her to know herself.
If she couldn’t know herself, she couldn’t know anything else.
“Why are you hiding from me?”
Her sister had been under the bed, and Lucy had noticed her sneaking around, hiding, and yet Cara hadn’t wanted to come out.
“You’re going to laugh at me,” she said.
Lucy let out an exasperated sigh. “What makes you think I’m going to laugh at you?”
“Because you always laugh at me.”
“I don’t always laugh.”
“Often enough,” she said.
“Then stop doing such foolish things.”
Her sister shook her head. “They’re not foolish.”
“Are you going to tell me why you’re here?” Lucy looked around her room, and it was as she remembered, but then, as this was nothing more than a vision, her recollection, it should be as she remembered.
“Father has visitors.”
“He often does,” Lucy said.
“These visitors are talking about something.”
Lucy sighed. “If that’s all you’re going to say, then—”
“That’s not all I’m going to say. Why won’t you even give me a chance to talk with you?”
Lucy dropped down on the bed. She remembered being tempted to Slide away, and even in the memory, she couldn’t help but feel as if she were far more exasperated with her sister than the young woman deserved. At this point, Cara was barely ten, and Lucy had been fourteen, feeling as if she were not only the big sister, but as she was coming-of-age, she was the more mature one.
Perhaps it had been misplaced. Now that she understood what she’d gone through, she no longer knew whether the confidence she’d allowed herself to feel was true confidence or misplaced arrogance.
“What you want to tell me, Cara?”
“I just thought you’d want to know what they were talking about.”
“Why would I care what Father is talking about?”
“Because it has to do with the Council.”
Lucy glanced toward the door and could make out the faint murmuring of voices from the other side, but as she wasn’t much of a Listener, she wasn’t able to determine much beyond that. It was considered rude to spy on her father, but she didn’t even want to do so. She had no interest in the Council business, and yet there were times when she appreciated the fact that her father had some influence over the Council. It allowed them to live the way they did, in rooms that were far larger than so many within the palace were allowed to have. Most who were within the palace had small quarters, staying in them because they didn’t want to lose their access to the palace and to the Council. It would’ve been better for many of them to have taken up residence in some of the homes surrounding the palace, as the people who lived in those homes often lived in far more luxury than those within the palace itself.
“I’m not sure I care what the Council is doing.”
“They’re talking about him again.”
Lucy tensed. Him always meant Rsiran Lareth. It was one topic of conversation that managed to get her father worked up every time, and yet she had never really understood why. Lareth was harmless, at least when it came to the Council itself. He had helped Elaeavn. Everyone knew that.
Even at this time, Lucy remembered thinking how foolish it was for her father to be so caught up in the things Lareth had done, and yet some of that was because of her interest in Rsiran, wanting to better understand how to Slide, and knowing that without him, the city would have been claimed by the Forgers long ago.
“I think we have to ignore that conversation,” Lucy had said.
She found herself pausing the memory, trying to understand what she had been thinking of, and why this was the memory she’d chosen to work with anyway. This memory was strange for her to come back to, though it did tie into what had happened.
Had she paid more attention at the time, she might have better understood the way her father had been a part of some greater scheme against Rsiran, and perhaps they might’ve been able to prevent what had happened to him—and because of that, to her.
Then again, Rsiran was never really in any danger from her father. Her father didn’t have enough influence or authority to cause him any trouble, though he might feel like he did.
She pulled herself back into the memory, thinking through it.
It was a strange thing to approach this way. It was a matter of trying to piece through what she had observed when she was younger, working through her own memories.
With her ability to Read, there was no reason she shouldn’t be able to turn her power of observation internally like this.
“You ignore it. Then again, you ignore everything. I’ve been telling you what I’ve seen.”
“And what have you seen?” Lucy snapped at her.
She cringed at that memory. Why had she been so hard on her sister? Cara had good instincts, and even now, Lucy realized she should have paid more attention to what her sister had observed.
Not only did it have something to do with Lareth, but it had something to do with her father and whatever role he might’ve had with it.
“That’s what I came to tell you,” Cara said, crawling out from underneath the bed and crossing her arms over her chest. Cara was weakly gifted. She had medium-green eyes, and the braid in her brown hair hung over one shoulder. The set to her sister’s jaw suggested her irritation, an emotion Lucy remembered all too well.
She had wanted Lucy to pay attention to her.
It was more than that. She had wanted Lucy to listen to her.
And she had not.
She should have listened, should have paid attention, and should have known her sister wouldn’t have fabricated a reason to come to her. Still, she had ignored Cara.
Her sister stood across from her, stomping her feet and cocking her head to the side. The one ability she did have was Listening, and though it was rare, it was not always all that useful. The palace was constructed in such a way as to mitigate Listeners, and most people had known how to pitch their voices low enough to prevent anyone from Listening where they shouldn’t.
When the door to the room opened, her father glared at them. “The two of you need to be quiet,” he had said.
Lucy remembered nodding and turning away from her sister, shutting her out the moment her father had closed the door.
It was a mistake. And it had been the last time her sister had spoken to her.
She rested her head on her hands. It embarrassed her that she had spoken to her sister like that, that she hadn’t given her the opportunity to tell her what she had seen and heard. She couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps there was something more to it that she had fa
iled to fully grasp.
She had looked back, thinking about her sister, but was there something more she might be able to uncover? Her fall had been a mystery, and yet, thinking about what she remembered, she couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps there was an answer to that mystery.
Lucy remembered the way her father had been angry at her, and his strange reaction after her sister’s death.
Why would that have been the case?
Thinking back, Lucy couldn’t help but feel as if it wasn’t a typical mourning response, but then, how would she know what typical was? When it came to her parents, it was difficult for her to tell. Her father was always a reserved, almost cold, man. With what had happened to her sister, it wasn’t surprising that he had struggled.
Her sister had come for her help.
That was the part of all of this that left Lucy troubled. She had ignored her sister, had betrayed her. Something about what she had overheard was important enough for her to risk Lucy’s irritation.
Lareth. It had something to do with him, and it had something to do with her father and the Council, which meant that Daniel Elvraeth’s father would likely be involved in whatever it was.
She didn’t force herself back to think about the way she had reacted when her sister had been found. It was strange for her to have been so far outside of the city. Cara wasn’t one to spend all that much time outside of the palace itself. For whatever reason, she had been found near the shores of Elaeavn, at the base of a pile of rocks.
Lucy breathed out. She hadn’t been permitted to see her sister. Considering that she had fallen, and what Lucy had experienced in the time since her sister’s death, she imagined there was good reason to keep that from her. Why show someone as young as Lucy such pain? Strangely, she couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps her sister had been hidden from her for another purpose.
She never would have believed that before. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that there was more to what had happened with her sister.
Had Ras known?
The Elder Stones Saga Boxset: Books 1-3 Page 138
