Catelyn raised her head toward this madman and felt herself fill with a mixture of rage and despair. She both wished him to suffer, and she wished him to end hers.
“Ah, but there I go being nostalgic again. Forgive me, it’s so rare that I’m able to converse with someone worthy of my intellect. But I can see...oh, sorry, perhaps that word offends you? I can sense that you...are like me. That you have been given a higher purpose here in our little slice of paradise. I believe that is why the sickle found you.”
At the mention of the word sickle, Catelyn knew he was talking about the weapon and she felt sickened by her choice now. She had given it to him. She had had no choice, but listening to him now, Catelyn was filled with shame at the notion that she had given it to someone who was so clearly insane.
Uriel chuckled.
“Insane? No, I’m not, I assure you.”
Catelyn was taken aback and felt herself reeling. Had he just read her thoughts?
Again, Uriel chuckled.
“And you now wonder if I have some way to look inside your thoughts. I assure you, such powers are nothing but superstition. No man can see the thoughts of another. Our world doesn’t work that way. If it did, my destiny could have been achieved far easier, I assure you.
“No, I am simply exceptionally skilled at reading people’s faces, listening to their body language. But I do have to admit to having some help.”
Catelyn felt him turn away and reach for something on his belt. Catelyn stiffened, expecting a sword point in her gut, or a razor sharp blade to slice across her throat. She no longer feared it.
Get it over with, you bastard, she thought.
When Uriel turned back around, he was holding something metal in his hands. She hadn’t sensed it on his belt before, but her senses were still reeling from the pain. The worst of that was subsiding, but she was still unable to breathe without sharp, lancing agony shooting through her ribs and lungs.
“You can’t see it, but this is what is known as a crook, once a tool of shepherds the world over and a symbol taken up by men who would lead others to their destiny. It has been in my family for three generations, since my grandfather, Uriel the First of His Name, discovered it when they were building the Citadel.”
Uriel walked up close to her and took her arm, and placed the object in her hand.
“Go on, tell me if you recognize it.”
Catelyn’s hands were so weak that she almost dropped it, but she finally grabbed it with both hands, and clutched it tightly. She could sense a familiarity, but she was still not using her bubble, and without it her hands felt clumsy and she simply shook her head.
“Use your senses,” Uriel ordered.
Catelyn turned her head up toward him. Does he know about my bubble?
She let the bubble form slowly, as it amplified her pain levels almost to what they had been when she had been left to hang, but as she did so, the immediate recognition of the weapon in her hand shocked her as much as if she had been splashed with a bucket of ice water. The handle of the crook was etched in the exact same way that the other weapon had been. The sickle, as Uriel had called it, bore the same naked figurines, and was made of the same unbroken metal.
“Yes, I can see that you understand now.”
He took the crook from her hands effortlessly. Catelyn worked her mouth until she could formulate words.
“What do you..want with...me?”
Uriel paused, and through her bubble she could smell and hear his uncertainty.
“You can probably tell that I’m not quite sure yet. I do know one thing for sure. I’m going to help you see that your petty forms of defiance, such as your foolish choice to grow out that hair, are nothing more than misguided mistakes. I will begin by showing you the error of your ways.”
Catelyn sobbed, knowing that she would not be able to take any more.
“Please...please no more. Just kill me. I’m sorry...just let me die. I’m just a foolish girl, I’m not worth…”
Uriel slapped her hard across the face, and she winced as the pain in her jaw exploded through her entire upper body and blood seeped into her mouth, filling it with the taste of iron.
“Don’t be condescending,” the Emperor said. “You are smarter than that. We both know you are not some foolish girl. Oh, yes, as soon as I saw you in that marketplace, I knew that you were the same girl who stirred up the Danes to incite their vigilante spree in the Seat. You are the reason that Ortis abandoned me. You are at the heart of something...divine. As am I. We have a purpose here. We are part of a larger world. But I don’t know yet which side you will fall on. I...I need time to think.”
Catelyn began to sob, realizing that time for him to think would mean time for her to be hung up on her chains again.
“Please...please...no…” she cried, knowing that it was futile to plead, knowing that Uriel did not know the meaning of mercy.
“But first...first I wish to give you a gift. You see, you’ve been marked, as I have. Branded by history. We are unique in that regard, but I can also see that you have had much taken from you by being so marked, which is not how such things should be. I am not an unreasonable man, and so I wish to offer you something for all that you have suffered. Perhaps it will make my path...our paths...clearer, if I do this for you.”
Uriel approached Catelyn, and she shied back, her heart racing in fear and unsure of what he intended to do. He reached out, tilted her head up so that her face was directly in front of his, and raised his other hand to her nose. She sensed with her bubble that he was holding something...some sort of glass vial.
And then, awareness began to bubble up into her consciousness, and she began to panic as the smell of what was inside the vial reached her nostrils, and she tried everything she could to get away from the man, fighting with everything that she had left, but it was no use. She was held by the chains, held by his strength. Held by his Will.
Catelyn would never forget the rancid smell of what was inside that vial. The smell, like the damage it had done to her face, to her chest, to her eyes, had left permanent scars on her body and was seared into her mind forever.
Bloodfire.
“...no...no...no...no…” was all she could utter through the sobs and the horror that overwhelmed her in that moment.
Uriel stroked her cheek, said “shh...shh” and then upturned the vial directly onto her face. The pain arced across her face and head, reaching out to grab at her with razor sharp claws from the past, taking her back to that moment six sojourns ago when she had been blinded and her life altered forever, and Catelyn could do nothing more than scream. Her world had already been destroyed once by bloodfire, and now it was to be the end of her life. Her last thoughts were of the people that she’d hurt, whether directly or indirectly, over the past six sojourns and also the people she had come to love again. Sera. Elexia. Silena. And then, she sought out the two who had mattered the most.
Mother...father...please forgive me...
The blackness of the Void once again reached up and claimed her, dragging her down into its cruel and terrible depths.
Chapter 18
Catelyn scrambled up from unconsciousness, gasping deeply, resurfacing into a world of pain. Instinctively, she burst her bubble around her, and after several whispers of intense, crushing agony, discovered that she was not dead yet, and in fact was lying face down on a dank, wet floor, breathing shallowly.
How? she wondered.
The cool stone floor was wet under her cheek, and she felt like getting up, but she quickly recalled her last memories of having been tortured and the arcing pain of the bloodfire. She couldn’t remember what had transpired since then, and didn’t know if she was still in the Emperor’s chambers, so she made a point of not moving in case he or anyone else was nearby, watching her. She didn’t detect anyone with her senses, but she was in so much pain that she didn’t fully trust her senses yet.
Every part of her body felt as though it were on fire. The pain was so
intense that if she hadn’t been conscious during part of her torture, she doubted whether she would have been able to distinguish one type of pain from another. Her face was blazing with the pain of the bloodfire, and she could only imagine what additional damage had been done there. Her chest and arms were still throbbing from the hanging, and her legs and hips felt as if she had been kicked or beaten, though she couldn’t remember that happening.
After a few more whispers of consciousness, she grew accustomed enough to the pain so that she could tentatively reach out with her bubble in order to examine more of her surroundings. The first thing she became aware of was a dripping of water from several paces away. The noise produced a slow, methodical rhythm of drops, from ceiling to floor. Catelyn found the repetition soothing, and latched onto the sound, counting the drops to try and take her mind off the pain she was still experiencing.
Armed with something to distract her, she pushed lightly at the edges of her bubble, slowly expanding it and taking in more of her surroundings. She heard the impact of the droplets echoing off the walls, and this simple noise allowed her to visualize the room she was in. She could already tell from the sense of the walls hemming her in, that it was not big, barely big enough for her to fit inside, even curled up as she was. If she stretched out her arms and legs, she would hit the walls before being able to fully extend them, which enabled her to guess that it was less than two paces per side. A cell, then. A cell so small that even she, as small as she was, couldn’t lie down flat without curling herself up somewhat.
When she scanned each of the small walls, she discovered that one of them was partially open near the top, with a slit opening to a hallway outside, from which she heard the sound of the dripping water. There was nothing at all inside the cell, except for her and the four bare walls.
Realizing that she was alone in the cell and safe from further torture, at least for now, Catelyn decided to test moving her body. She moved her legs, flexing her ankles and stretching out her toes until they touched the wall of the cell. As she moved her leg, she quickly grasped that she had been stripped naked.
She felt like crying again, for all the pain she had endured, for all the humiliation she had gone through, but she just couldn’t. She decided then and there that she could either lay there as though she were dead, or stand up and prove that she was still alive.
And so slowly, she stretched out her arm, rolled her shoulder under her, and pushed herself up onto her knees. The worst of the pain was already beginning to fade from her, and she was even getting used to the sensations still radiating throughout her body. From her knees, she pushed her arms into the floor with all of her strength, until finally she was upright and she reached out and grabbed the walls with her hands to steady herself. The surface beneath her hands was smooth and weathered stone, and in that smoothness she could imagine the hands of other prisoners over the sojourns who had occupied this cell before her. With her hands pressed to the wall she stood, her entire body shaking with the effort and screaming in protest, but she needed to stand again. To feel the ground under her feet, to feel herself standing tall.
She knew she would not able to stand this way for long without the support of her hands against the walls, but it felt like a victory, and she cried with joy, bringing one hand to her mouth as soon as she felt strong and stable enough.
After gathering herself once more, she leaned against the wall that had the slit to the outer hall at the top, and felt along the edges of it and, as she suspected, this was not a wall, but a door. It was made of metal, and she could smell the rust embedded in the hinges and plates where the door had been shut tight. She stood as tall as she could on her toes, to sniff at the slit to the hallway outside. She could smell nothing unusual from the hallway; just more dank stone and the lingering odor of unwashed bodies.
She considered calling out, but with her bubble so depleted and weak, she couldn’t sense anyone nearby, and didn’t think it would help her situation to aggravate any of her captors by yelling into the hall.
She had more immediate and pressing needs to attend to, at any rate. Pressure from her bladder made her aware that her first need was finding some place in the cell to relieve herself. Unfortunately, there was no drain in the floor, just more of the bare and weathered stone, same as the walls. She focused her bubble on the floor’s surface, and could detect the hint of bodily excretions where other prisoners had made their own choices about such matters, and ended up picking one corner to make her water, struggling not to think of the prisoners who had occupied the space before her, and what she might have been lying in.
With that that pressure gone, she turned her focus to her physical situation. She was hungry, but even more thirsty, and she could feel the dryness of her lips with her tongue. She didn’t know when the Imperials would bring her food or water, or whether they simply intended to keep her locked away until she succumbed to starvation or more likely dehydration. But this was a choice that was out of her hands, and so she tried her best to not think about how badly she was craving food and drink.
Next, she physically and mentally assessed her injuries and decided that although she was still in severe pain, she hadn’t sustained any permanent injuries to her body below the neck. However, she was deathly afraid to reach up and touch her face, unwilling to learn just yet what Uriel had done to further disfigure her.
She thought back to that moment and wondered what had possessed him to use bloodfire on her again. She also wondered why it hadn’t killed her, as he had seemingly poured an entire vial of the stuff directly into her face. When she had been injured and blinded with it before, it had only been an indirect splashing of bloodfire. She had partially seen what a full dosage had done to the man who had attacked her and her family that day. His face had been utterly ruined...and she now imagined that was how she must look, only he had died of his wounds, and somehow, she was still here, breathing.
Her legs were failing now, and so she sat down again, bringing her legs up in front of her and hugging her knees closely. There was nothing for her to do now, but wait.
Catelyn must have dozed off because she felt herself sliding toward the wall, and jolted awake before the side of her head hit the stone. She steadied herself with her hands and scooted closer to the corner opposite of where she had earlier relieved herself, and leaned up against it, considering her future, such as it was.
The first question that came to her mind was why had the Emperor simply not killed her? She thought back to her torture, however long ago that was, and the words he had spoken to her as he’d intimidated and inflicted pain on her.
“You are at the heart of something...divine. As am I. We have a purpose here. We are part of a larger world. But I don’t know yet which side you will fall on. I...I need time to think.”
Catelyn was convinced that the Emperor was simply insane. That he had so fooled himself into thinking that he was somehow special, some part of a divine plan, that all reason and all morals had been discarded in favor of acting solely to enact this plan he so believed in. But worse than that was the fact that he was also convinced that Catelyn was a part of this plan. He was likely, even now, working feverishly to construct a narrative for himself whereby she was important to his plans. Or something even more ludicrous. Catelyn was having trouble imagining just how far his insanity went, and what he would be capable of.
Catelyn had no hope that her life from this point forward would ever be happy or good again. She believed that what awaited her each day, from now until her imminent death, would be a continual litany of agony and torture at the hands of the madman Uriel.
Time lost all meaning in the cell, as Catelyn could no longer tell the difference between a breath, a whisper or a prayer. She had no idea how long she had so far been in captivity, nor how much longer this imprisonment would last. She presumed that soon enough, she would simply die, as a matter of sheer neglect.
This was enough to fill her with a hopeless dread, and she spiraled into
another depressive bout of sobbing. More time went by, in which all Catelyn could do was suffer.
When this wave passed, and she calmed enough for the walls to stop echoing with her own anguish, her bubble detected the subtle sound of something else that was just audible coming from the slit at the top of the metal cell door.
Without thinking of the pain, Catelyn stood, and strained with everything that she had to listen at the gap.
What she heard was a voice.
It was a faint whisper, a hissing sound just barely audible
even to her highly attuned senses, but she could not make out the words, or any details of the speaker. Catelyn’s heart hammered, wondering if there was someone trying to talk to her, but she hesitated, wondering if it could be some trap. However, her fear of dying here, alone, was overpowering, and so she decided and called out.
“Hello?” The whispering stopped, as her greeting echoed off the bare walls, until silence reigned again, only broken by the occasional dripping from the hallway. Catelyn refused to give up so soon, and repeated her cry.
“Hello?” She heard a man clear his throat, and it sounded like it came from down the hall and several paces away, but she rejoiced at the realization that someone was nearby, that there was another human being in earshot of her and she felt like whooping in delight.
“My name is Catelyn!” she called. The man did not respond at first, and Catelyn silently spurred him on, hoping that he would find the courage to return her greeting. She was thrilled when he did just that.
“I am Enaz,” the man said in a small, defeated voice. “Enaz. Thank you,” Catelyn replied.
She allowed some time to pass in silence, and then she
began to ask him questions.
“Enaz, do you know where we are?”
She fully recognized that she was less concerned about the
answers and more interested in the fact that having another person to talk to, to ask such trivial questions of, could help to take her mind off of the dire situation they both found themselves in. She needed to distract herself from thinking about the torture she would probably be forced to endure once the Emperor decided he was in the mood. Even so, Enaz seemed more than happy to answer her.
Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) Page 33
