by C. Gold
“It is important for you to feel the intensity of this moment.” The knife caressed his skin from his throat down to his heart. “Here we are.” The figure cooed with delight before plunging the tip into his chest.
The blade didn’t go deep, but something inside was ripped and torn away. The pain was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. He clenched his teeth, refusing to cry out. Sweat broke out over his body even though he was freezing cold.
The scarred hands lifted the blade dripping with his blood and moved to his right wrist. Again the tip plunged in and he could feel more tearing inside. A whimper escaped his cracked lips and his body shook. When the other wrist and both feet had been assaulted, Radcliff was panting.
“It is ok to scream, everyone does, especially on this last part,” the oily voice whispered in Radcliff’s ear.
The dagger was now glowing with a bright white light that obscured his view of the hooded torturer wielding it. Radcliff had to clamp his eyes shut tight when it shifted closer. Even through his lids, he saw the light growing brighter. Then the blade’s cold tip kissed the skin on his forehead. Flinching, he tried turning his head to the side, but something held it in place. A hot searing pain bit down and an agonizing pull of something fundamental to his inner self caused a new level of agony beyond what he’d already experienced. Radcliff’s body arched up, and he fought his restraints. Echoes of his screams reverberated around the empty chamber. A compulsion kicked in to keep him conscious as waves of soul searing agony tortured him for what seemed like an eternity.
Radcliff barely felt the scarred hands caressing his body over the pain eating at his insides. “So much power,” the voice whispered with lust. “And now it’s all mine.” He licked his lips and whispered in Radcliff’s ear, “So tasty too.”
“Screw you,” Radcliff croaked past his tortured throat. It was barely even a whisper, but the hands stopped moving so perhaps he heard.
“Know this, Mage.” The voice now drawled with smug satisfaction. “I have stolen your magic and bound you to this tower. Nobody else knows where you are so there is no help coming. Your power is mine for eternity.” His laugh was a foul, bone chilling sound that sent shudders through Radcliff.
When Radcliff realized he was alone, he cracked open his eyes. Staring back down at him from the ceiling was an inscribed pentagram with white glowing crystals embedded at each apex and a larger one in the center. Runes of binding ran along the lines connecting them and runes protecting the entire construct from harm ran along the circle’s edge. The agony in his heart in knowing that his magic was there just out of reach matched the agony of his body at having it ripped out. This time his scream was one of anger and despair.
CHAPTER 1
The Man With No Memory
The man didn’t remember who he was and did his best not to care or worry about not knowing. Instead he kept a rigid, busy schedule so he wouldn’t have time to think about it. Each day he woke at the same time, did the same daily chores, touched the same rune in the kitchen to create the same pitiful amount of food he would eat during the day and read from the same book before going to bed. Each action was performed at exactly the same time and for exactly the same duration except for one.
At precisely noon each day, he sat down at his desk in the study and opened a hefty journal. Many of the earlier pages were yellowed and faded with age, their edges crinkled. Fortunately, a bookmark saved him the added time of thumbing past hundreds of pages, though it couldn’t spare him the knowledge of just how long he’d been stuck like this. Gritting his teeth, he dipped his nib in the ink and made a vertical mark at the end of a long page of similar marks. His already pale skin turned paler after he counted them.
There were exactly 364 vertical marks staring back at him with no horizontal lines crossing them off. He recounted them just to be sure. Still 364 marks sealing his fate for today. His heart sped up and his palms turned sweaty. He cocked his head to one side trying to examine his reaction. It wasn’t just annoyance at the break in routine. His body was telling him this was something to avoid while his mind was ordering him to open the drawer. He refused at first, but the compulsion clamped down hard and wouldn’t let go. The pain grew the longer he fought against it. Though he had no solid evidence as to why he should keep struggling, he had an intuitive sense of dread. It wasn’t enough to counter the need to obey.
Defeated, he opened the top drawer of the desk and took out a rectangular box. Inside was a long knife and a folded piece of paper. He placed the knife carefully on the desk and made sure to align it in parallel with the edge. At least with this he had control. Plucking the paper out of the box, he opened it.
Remember.
Power from the magical rune slammed into the man’s body and every muscle contracted in pain. A raspy scream tore loose from vocal cords unaccustomed to use. He grabbed the knife and tried to plunge it into his heart but another compulsion froze his hand mere inches from his flesh. A second wave of sheer torture interrupted this new battle, and the knife clanked to the stone floor as he vomited up his lunch. The chair fell backwards when he staggered to his feet. Using the desk to stabilize his wobbly legs, he lurched away from the steaming puddle and looked up. Six points of white light pulsed in time with the excruciating throbbing deep inside, and he remembered everything as if it happened yesterday. My name is Radcliff!
His power had been stripped from him and placed in the very crystals he now looked at, binding him to the tower and taunting him with his loss. Compulsions forced him to keep track of the days he spent in limbo and when a year passed, he was forced to remember everything.
In a feeble effort to fight back, Radcliff worked out a way to steal a trickle of power and keep it to himself. It was a pathetic quantity compared to what he was used to, but to a man lost in a desert even a tiny drop was a feast. Year by year he horded each precious wisp of magic until it was just enough to summon an object.
The first object he summoned was his soul dagger, a secret weapon he’d crafted long ago while still an apprentice. It would be able to slice through any protective magics and let him recover his magic. But first he would need a way to reach the ceiling.
For five hundred long years, on the day of remembrance, Radcliff drained a trickle of magic from the runes overhead. After ten such sessions, he was able to summon a crate. The years crept by and the stack grew taller until finally, it was done.
On that special day as he stood at the apex of victory, Radcliff discovered the final compulsion which stayed his hand. Oh how he screamed in impotent rage. Bleak despair finally engulfed him and he began inventing ways to bypass the compulsions and end his life.
Today was the one thousandth year of his meaningless existence and the one thousandth day of remembering just how many days he’d spent crawling like a worm when he should have been flying and he was still no closer to any of his meager goals than he’d been that first day. How he longed to hurl one single spell and blast the tower to its foundation. Fists clenched tightly in rage, he knew from previous memories that his next step would be to toss the few things left in the study until the agony in his body forced him to stop. Before he could do more than stagger back to his abused chair he heard pounding coming from below.
Radcliff tried to calm his angry breathing and angled his head to listen closer. There it was again. A pounding accompanied now by indecipherable yelling. Aching in every way possible, he hobbled down the single floor of stairs to the entryway and shuffled to the door. There he had to stop and catch his breath since living on a mouse’s diet had ruined his body long ago. From here he could hear words being spoken, but they were in some long forgotten dialect. No, he thought bitterly, I’ve been shut away from the world for so long even the language has changed. Well, not that it mattered. Someone wanted in. Suddenly all the pent up hate and rage returned. Why should he even bother? Let the world burn for all he cared. Maybe then he’d finally die and end his living nightmare.
The pounding g
rew more frantic and Radcliff’s rage slowly morphed into curiosity and a need for diversion. Who would even be out there? From his few attempts to escape he knew the tower was surrounded by rocky desolate terrain and no civilization in sight. Not knowing where he was, he could only surmise that the person out there traveled quite a long distance to reach this hellhole. He itched to open the door and see who it was. But then what? Invite them into the lair of a broken madman?
“Why not?” Radcliff decided. He lifted the bar from the door and cracked it open to see violet eyes staring back at him. Thoughts of strangling her crossed Radcliff’s mind as he tried to slam the door shut. Whatever she was here for, it couldn’t be good for him. He exhaled with a grunt of pain when the door slammed into him and knocked him back, allowing the woman responsible for his thousand years of living hell to push her way inside.
She asked him something, but the accent was unfamiliar and the words were meaningless gibberish. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Sorry, is this better? I forgot you wouldn’t know Escalian. They are the latest addition to the empire.”
Even though Radcliff understood her now, he couldn’t think past the burning rage he felt at her presence. Slowly backing up, he put more distance between them. Why wait all these years before killing him? How ironic. After spending hundreds of years trying to die, now he wanted to live.
“Where is your dagger?” she asked.
Hopefully in my hands rather than yours. Wait, how did she even know about it? Since he didn’t have enough magic to summon it, Radcliff made a dash for the stairs and made it to the top step before the woman tackled him to the floor. He struggled to push her off his back, but she had him well pinned. She abruptly rolled off him and watched with wary eyes as he turned over onto his back.
“Look, we have no time for this. Give me the dagger and we can leave.”
Leave? Radcliff blinked. He couldn’t leave. Then he remembered why he originally summoned the dagger. She could free the gems. Squashing the spike of hope, he remembered she was the source of all this—trusting her was a bad idea. He frowned and shook his head no.
The woman sighed with irritation. “Your window for escape closes. Enemies who thought you dead are at this very minute closing in to end you. I’m your only choice for life. I suggest you choose quickly.” She crossed her arms and tried to look indifferent but Radcliff saw a glint of fear cross her face before she got her emotions under control. What is she afraid of? It sure as hell isn’t me.
He stared at her while fighting an emotional tornado ripping through his mind. Rage and shame at what the Spider had done to him, anger at this woman for sentencing him to torture, and hatred for those who betrayed him fueled his need to survive even beyond the compulsion she implanted long ago. He would have to trust her to set him free and when he regained his power, he’d show her and everyone else who crossed him the true meaning of fear.
Radcliff slowly pushed away from the floor and walked on shaky feet to the study. Perhaps this was a mistake, perhaps he died today, but he picked the dagger up and handed it to her hilt first.
She took the weapon and began studying the collection of rocks and crates that formed a slipshod ladder to reach the ceiling. Radcliff remembered his own failed effort to do what this woman was doing and was both apprehensive and hopeful. Though he tried to quash his hope, Radcliff’s heart leapt into his throat and began to race when he saw her hand push through to the ceiling and the first gem dropped free. He anxiously watched as she dropped each gem in a small sack. Excitement coursed through him when she pulled the last one free.
He eagerly snatched the bag when she set foot back on sturdy ground. But when he opened the bag to look inside, a compulsion began commanding him to throw the gems away. His body shook from the effort to keep hold of them.
The woman took the bag away and said, “I better keep these for now.”
Radcliff’s empty hand balled into a tight fist and he hissed. He wanted them back even though a second ago he wanted them gone.
“We need to leave right away.” She walked quickly out of the study and down the stairs. Radcliff followed more slowly. She was already out the door by the time he made it to the landing. She popped back in and shoved a large wrapped bundle in his arms. “Here, put this on.”
Radcliff frowned as he opened it and saw the sturdy leather clothes. She seemed serious about him leaving but how could he with all the compulsions tying him here? He was just finishing lacing up the leggings when he heard her gasp. He looked over his shoulder and caught her looking at his bare back in shock.
“What happened?” she asked in a gentle voice that grated on Radcliff’s nerves. He much preferred her animosity to her false pity.
“Again!” Master shouted in time with the rod landing on his exposed flesh. Eight-year-old Radcliff bit back a cry of pain and repeated the spell while being beaten. This time he wouldn’t flinch and mess up.
Radcliff shook off the all too vivid memory and shrugged in silent reply as he donned the shirt. It wasn’t her business and nothing he wanted to talk about let alone remember. She dropped a pair of boots at his feet and he used the excuse of lacing them up to avoid looking at her. The silence grew into a thick palpable thing until she finally relented.
“I need you to fight the compulsion long enough to mount up. Do you think you can do that?”
“And then what?” is what Radcliff wanted to say but his untried throat made it sound more like a cross between a wheeze and a gravelly growl. He coughed and tried again to remember how to speak. Painstakingly enunciating each word slowly he managed to be understood.
“I will tie you to the horse and render you unconscious.”
Radcliff laughed, an ugly hacking sound like a cough. It had a raw, bitter edge tinged with madness. He was certainly mad to go along with this hackneyed plan let alone trust her while he was helpless.
The woman ran out of patience and grabbed his arm. “We are leaving. I suggest you prepare yourself. I can’t lift you on the horse but I can drag you behind it.”
It’s not safe. Those words repeated in Radcliff’s mind as soon as his feet left the threshold of the tower. Anxiety mounted, but he kept a steady pace. Halfway to the horse, the agony ramped up. You will cast your spell despite my distractions or you will die. While brutal, his childhood lessons left him with an ironclad will. And like that victorious child of long ago, Radcliff never faltered as he took each step even though his limbs trembled from growing weakness and his mind became a vicious battleground. He sat on the horse and finally looked upon the crumbling tower that had been his prison with all of his hate. When I’m free, I will burn you to the ground, he vowed. The compulsion twisted tighter, bringing tears to his eyes, but he sat firm and denied it. Though when the woman’s magic led him to sleep, he gladly latched onto it and welcomed the escape from torment.
CHAPTER 2
The Rescue
Amira guided the horses around one of the few low-lying shrubs and tried not to think about the Destroyer or her formidable task. She glanced back again to scan the horizon. Checking for signs of pursuit, she lied to herself, even as her eyes raked over the unconscious man slumped on the horse behind hers. The intimidating man she met briefly, so long ago, looked frail now even underneath the bulky winter clothes. His matted gray hair, shaggy beard, and taut skin stretched over sharp bones made him look ancient even though mage kind didn’t age—only those completely bereft of magic grew old. But what happened to a mage stripped of nearly all of his power? She clenched the horse’s rains tighter and stifled the guilt. He destroyed her home city. He deserved what he received.
She journeyed north as fast as safety allowed in order to gain enough distance to avoid pursuit, though eventually she would need to work her way back south. Glancing behind her yet again, she sighed with relief to see the top of the tower finally vanish. Excellent timing since she just ran out of room. Before her was the infamous great northern barrier. Peering upward, it seemed to touch
the sky. The unnaturally smooth stone wall was a product of magic though nobody knew exactly when or how it happened. The most popular story tells of a mage war long ago and an evil wizard (always one of those in these tales) who cast a spell while trying to escape that blew up the front half of the mountain. The resulting spew littered the ground for miles around and altered weather patterns until no one could live here.
The wind snapped Amira’s cloak around as she impatiently scanned the wall that stretched as far as the horizon in either direction. The surface showed little signs of erosion and no hint of the crevice in her vision. To the west, dark clouds obscured what little light remained and cast the entire rock face in shadow. The strong smell of ice in the air warned of a magical storm brewing. Bad news since the storms in this region were deadly. If she didn’t find the shelter soon, they’d die. The logical choice would be to turn east, since that’s the way she had to head anyway and it would give her more time to find the refuge promised in her vision.
As each minute passed without a break in the smooth wall, Amira’s tension mounted. She began to doubt her vision and her choice of directions. The horses became skittish as the storm neared. She soothed them with nonsense words and had to dismount to keep a tighter grip on them. The lengthening shadows made footing treacherous as she picked her way across the wasteland. Strong gusts turned into a steady gale of mixed rain and sleet which pummeled her in the back like a boulder thwarting the ocean’s angry spume. A moaning sound started up as chilled air raked against the barrier, fraying her already unsteady nerves. Amira cast a panicked look around for anything to use for shelter. The sound changed pitch right as she passed a deeper shadow and the slight change in air pressure gave her hope.
Before she could investigate, a sound like rolling thunder roared close behind and worked the horses into a frenzy. Amira tightened her grip on the bridles to steady them and made the mistake of looking back over her shoulder. A solid curtain of ice chunks the size of small boulders rained destruction as it swept across the land and was nearly upon them. Amira’s hands were shaking as she pulled the horses closer to the rock face. The panicking mounts smashed her against the wall and barely avoided crushing her in their haste to escape the coming doom. She managed to strong-arm them into the darkness that miraculously opened into a narrow cavern large enough for them all to fit. The roar of ice smashing against rock chased them inside and was amplified in the cramped space.
