Prisoner of the Iron Tower

by Sarah Ash

  I will never be your slave.

  “Give me your powers, daemon. Obey me—or die.” As his captor leans closer, he catches the alien odors of his strange body of flesh, bone, and blood. Strong, delicious odors of salt and metals, water and carbon. The promise of life, strength, continuance—

  “Its light is fading,” cries another voice. “It’s too late.”

  “Not yet!” insists his captor. “Listen to me, daemon. I am severing your bonds, the bonds of fire by which I have bound you. Now you will do my bidding.”

  His captor stands so close now he can see the warm life-liquids pulsing through his veins, can smell their nourishing warmth.

  I will never be your slave. But you will be mine.

  His captor raises his hands in the air. At his command, the winged serpents’ tongues uncurl their fiery hold from his tortured limbs.

  “Free!” Released, he springs forward to embrace his captor. To unite aethyrial spirit with alien flesh.

  For one nauseating moment, he feels his captor’s flesh and bone rejecting him, shuddering uncontrollably at this obscene assault. Suddenly everything slows as he lets himself flow into his host, slowly merging until he is completely absorbed into this strange new body. Together they topple forward onto the ground. The host twitches and jerks in the sand and dust, trying to reject him, to vomit him out.

  And now it is he who shouts aloud in terror, “Help me!”

  The inner exercise yard was a small courtyard surrounded by high brownstone tower walls, blind except for narrow arrow slits.

  Gavril paused for breath in his daily circuit and gazed up at the sky. It was spring, no doubt of it, even though there was no sign of leaf or flower, not even a weed pushing up through the courtyard cobbles. The sky high above was a delicate shade of blue, the color of speckled eggshells. The air felt soft and the fresh breeze smelled somehow . . . green.

  “Keep running!” bawled his warder. “Your time’s nearly up. You’ve got three more circuits to complete!”

  Gavril bit his lip. No point aggravating his warders and losing his paints. For now he would play their game. He began to run again, forcing his unwilling body to move.

  It would take a long time to regain his agility. The long weeks of confinement and the heavy dosing with sedatives had slowed his whole system.

  Must keep fit. Must keep alert. Must sweat the drugs out of my body.

  “Time’s up!” It was not Onion-Breath today, but another he had nicknamed Lanky. Lanky was a tall, shambling man whose stooped frame gave no hint as to his considerable strength.

  Gavril continued running.

  “I said time’s up!” Lanky tossed Gavril the threadbare square of linen that served him as a towel.

  Gavril caught the towel and wiped the sweat from his face. Then he bent over, gasping to regain his breath.

  “You’re one of the lucky ones,” observed Lanky morosely. “You’ve got privileges. There’s some here as hasn’t been outside in years.”

  “In years?” Gavril straightened up. “How so?”

  “No friends in high places.”

  Gavril cast a glance behind him as Lanky led him away. To be incarcerated here in the same cell year after year . . . He shivered in spite of the sweat dampening his body. He knew he only enjoyed this taste of fresh air because Eugene wanted something of him. Eventually Eugene would tire in his search for the Drakhaoul, and his privileges would be withdrawn. And he would be left to molder here forever.

  “Clean yourself up!” Lanky ordered, pushing him into his cell.

  A bowl of tepid washing-water stood on the table with his little ball of yellow asylum-issue soap beside it, “to last you half a year, so be sparing!”

  “Where are my pictures?” He had left them in a pile on the table. Now they were gone.

  The door clanged shut. Lanky had locked him in.

  “My pictures!” he cried. He thudded his fists in fury against the iron door. “Where are they?”

  They must have taken them while he was in the exercise yard. For what purpose? What could they learn from them? To anyone uninitiated in his family history, they would be meaningless. He was not at all certain he understood them himself.

  But the very act of taking away the one thing that was significant to him was a violation. He had staunchly endured innumerable petty slights and humiliations since the life-sentence was imposed. Now he saw that, for all the so-called privileges, Eugene had ensured that the loss of his name meant the loss of his identity. His wishes counted for nothing. He was no one.

  “Damn you, Eugene!” he yelled till his throat was raw. “Damn you to hell and all its torments!”

  Director Baltzar handed the sheaf of drawings to the visitor.

  “The man’s mind is deeply disturbed,” he said. “And yet he’s evidently an accomplished artist. What a tragedy. Perhaps we should try to persuade him to paint a still life . . . or some flowers?”

  “So you do not subscribe to the view that this outpouring of violent and disturbing images is in some way therapeutic for a troubled mind?” inquired his visitor mildly.

  “Indeed I do not!” Director Baltzar said with more vehemence than he had intended. “I fear it may encourage him to dwell more on such dark fantasies. It may feed the flames.”

  “And his behavior?”

  Baltzar sighed. “My warders report that he has been shouting and banging at his cell door for hours. I am reluctant, in all truth, to bring you to him while he is in such a volatile state.”

  “You have reduced his medication, as requested?”

  “Much against my better judgment, yes. But as your instructions come from the Emperor himself . . .” He ended with a shrug, and then wondered too late if he had acted presumptuously in expressing a contrary opinion to the Emperor’s special envoy.

  “You are a medical man, Director. How do you interpret these drawings?”

  Baltzar felt even more uncomfortable now. He sensed he was, in some way, being judged by his visitor. But in what respect? Surely not his medical achievements? His degrees—from several eminent universities—were displayed on the walls of his study. His dissertations on the disorders of the human mind, bound in brown vellum and tooled in gold, lay on the desk for all visitors to see and consult. Yet when he spoke, he found his mouth uncomfortably dry. He swallowed hard.

  “I suspect they are the expression of some deep and unresolved conflict of the mind. These terrifying portrayals of great fanged snakes could be interpreted as his fear and resentment of authority.”

  “Hm.” The visitor nodded, apparently satisfied with this interpretation, but Baltzar did not feel in any way reassured. “We have talked enough. Take me to him.”

  “What, now?”

  “Now.” The visitor’s pale eyes stared directly into his own.

  Baltzar blinked. He had been about to say something, but his mind was utterly empty.

  “Wh—what was I saying?”

  “You were about to take me to Twenty-One,” said the visitor.

  “Yes. Of course.” Baltzar rang a little bell to summon the warders on duty.

  Gavril lay listlessly on his bed. He had lapsed into a daze, staring at the clouds endlessly drifting past his high window. Even blinking seemed an effort.

  Why had he been deluding himself with these crazy dreams of escape? There was no escape from Arnskammar. He was confined here for life.

  Now he wished he had died in the defense of Kastel Drakhaon, fighting side by side with his druzhina.

  Footsteps echoed on the landing outside. He did not bother even to raise his head. What was the point?

  Keys jangled. The locks creaked and the door swung inward.

  “You have a visitor, Twenty-One.”

  A visitor? Gavril turned over, in spite of himself.

  A wisp-haired, frail old man entered the cell. Behind him Lanky shuffled from foot to foot in the open doorway, awkward and ill at ease.

  “You may go now,” the old man said.r />
  “I’m not allowed to leave anyone alone with Twenty-One. Governor’s orders.”

  “The governor’s orders are that you return to the ward-room. I will send for you when I need you.”

  To Gavril’s surprise, Lanky nodded and shambled away, shutting the door behind him.

  “Good-day to you, Lord Gavril,” said the visitor. The old man’s eyes gleamed like quicksilver in the dull light of the cell. Gavril found he could not look away. Now he saw that the old man’s frail appearance was only a shell, a carapace hiding a dazzling power-source from the everyday world. And that power, he sensed, was as cold and inhuman as a force of nature.

  “Who are you?” he gasped.

  “We have met once before, Drakhaon. Do you remember?”

  Gavril shook his head.

  “You broke through my defenses. No one has done that before. But then, you were so utterly determined to rescue your mother.”

  “You were at Swanholm?” Nothing but a chaos of memories remained from that frenzied flight, when he had swooped down on the enemy’s stronghold to snatch Elysia from the Tielen firing party. When he could still fly . . .

  “You owe your survival to the intervention of one individual. You were exhausted, your powers all but spent. If she had not begged me to stay my hand, you would not have left Swanholm alive.”

  Gavril still stared at the visitor. His memory was fogged in mists. One moment alone of that day remained, lit with a horrible clarity.

  A dark-haired young woman stares at him across the smoking, charred remains of Feodor Velemir, her eyes wide with revulsion and terror.

  She knows him now for the daemon-monster he has become. She knows—

  “Astasia. Was it Astasia?”

  “You still do not know me?” the old man said, not answering his question. “My name is Linnaius. Kaspar Linnaius.”

  “The Magus?” Elysia had warned him of the Magus’s powers. And now here he was, trapped in this little cell, with no means of escape and no one to defend him. It was as if he were stripped naked. “What do you want of me?” His shoulder blades grazed the wall. He had instinctively backed away, without even knowing he was doing so. But there was nowhere else to go.

  “You are of considerably greater value to the Emperor alive than dead, Nagarian, I assure you. I am only here to ask you a few questions, that is all.” Slender fingers reached out to rest on his forehead, the back of his head.

  Gavril shuddered at his touch. He felt as if his skin were brushed by dead, dried husks of insects. And then a little flare of Drakhaon pride, too long subdued by the physicians’ drugs, suddenly rekindled. “Get out of my head.”

  He felt the Magus’s fingertips snatched from his forehead as if singed.

  “It is in your best interests to cooperate,” Linnaius said quietly.

  “The Emperor has taken everything from me. Everything! Must you take the last of my sanity too?” And then he stopped as a tidal wave of sensations, images, feelings rushed through his mind. He gripped hold of his head in both hands, overwhelmed.

  He saw the faces of his druzhina, eyes bitter at their betrayal, as one by one they went to surrender their weapons to the Tielen soldiers. He saw Elysia, distraught, her hands desperately outstretched as if she could tear him back from his captors. He saw Kiukiu turning to wave to him as her sleigh set out across the snowy moorlands. He heard his own voice confidently shouting, “I will come for you. . . . We’ll be together again soon.”

  “Ahh . . .” An aching moan of grief and loss welled up from deep inside him. He raised his head and stared at the Magus directly. “What have you done to me?”

  “Unlocked your memory, that’s all. The sedative drugs had dulled your brain.”

  And protected me from the torment of living with the knowledge of all I have lost.

  “So did you find what the Emperor sent you here for?” He would not let himself be intimidated by Kaspar Linnaius, powerful though he knew him to be.

  The Magus stared back at him a long time without answering.

  “You spoke the truth to him, as you perceived it,” he said after a long while. “That I can verify.”

  “Don’t speak to me in riddles. Tell me what you found.”

  “Your Drakhaoul is indeed gone. But you are not entirely free, are you, Gavril Nagarian? It has left you a legacy of memories, spanning many human lifetimes . . . and maybe more, besides.”

  “More?” Gavril felt a tremor of unease, even though the Magus’s diagnosis was ambiguously phrased.

  “I cannot tell.” Linnaius’s pale eyes seemed to grow more translucent as Gavril gazed at him. Silver eyes—seer’s eyes—probing deep beneath the surface of the everyday world. Time slowed as he found himself unable to look away.

  Dazzled, Gavril blinked.

  And found he was alone in the cell. Alone—and filled with the anguish of bitterly remembered loss.

  Why had Linnaius committed this cruel act? What had he wanted him to remember? And how would he use it against him—and all he held dear?

  CHAPTER 12

  “What do you make of these, highness?” Linnaius gestured to a sheaf of watercolors that spilled out from an open portfolio, their imagery dark-drenched with blood and shadows. “They are all the work of Gavril Nagarian.”

  Eugene lifted sheet after sheet from the desk. His eyes ached from looking at the vivid swirls of violent color as he tried to make some sense of the chaotic images of nightmare and madness.

  “So this is what Drakhaoul-possession does to a man’s mind,” he murmured. Snakes coiled and writhed around a tall archway; glittering daemon-eyes glowered from the smoke-wreathed cone of an erupting volcano. “The incoherent daubings of a madman.” He cast them down on the desk. “There’s nothing of use to us here, Linnaius.”

  “On the contrary.” Linnaius drifted closer to the Emperor and, with one spindle finger, began to outline certain images. “We see here an island—or isthmus—dominated by a single volcano. This crescent-shaped group of stars in the sky looks more than a little like the constellation we call the Sickle in Francia. And look, highness, at this gateway. It stands within an ancient temple, a portal enwreathed in winged serpents, daemons or minor gods. One crowned serpent dominates the gate and in its eye socket burns a sacred flame, red as volcanic fire.”

  “You think these images are clues to the daemon’s origins?”

  The Magus raised one gossamer eyebrow. “I am certain that Gavril Nagarian knows more than he has revealed in these paintings. He resisted my attempt to probe his mind with considerable force.”

  Eugene picked up the watercolor and stared at it, tilting it from side to side, trying to make better sense of it.

  “Then if he will not talk to us . . . he might open his heart to a friend?”

  “There was one I glimpsed close to his heart—before he countered my intrusion. A young woman in Azhkendir. The name I caught was ‘Kiukiu.’ ”

  “Kiukiu? That’s a woman’s name?”

  “Azhkendi names can sound crude to more refined sensibilities,” said Linnaius fastidiously.

  “Let’s contact the garrison commander in Azhkendir by Vox Aethyria and see if he can find anyone of that name.”

  Linnaius was looking at him, his pale eyes veiled. Eugene sighed.

  “You disapprove of my plan.”

  “I merely ask your imperial highness to consider what your true motives are.”

  “You know—” Eugene checked himself, unwilling to speak his darkest obsession aloud. “You know my wishes on that subject.”

  “And you know my advice, highness.”

  “But if it is true that the Drakhaoul can heal its host . . . Look at me, Linnaius.” Eugene gestured with his burned hand to his damaged face. “Is it any wonder Astasia still shrinks from me?”

  “Highness,” Linnaius said, the slightest glimmer of a smile illuminating his pale eyes, “we both know that it is not only the Drakhaoul’s healing powers you desire.”

 
Now that Linnaius had called his bluff, Eugene felt a certain relief. He could speak freely.

  “How can I keep the empire together if others wield greater power?”

  A frown passed as fleetingly as a distant cloud across the Magus’s face.

  “Ask yourself, highness. If the Drakhaoul’s power is so great, why are the Nagarians not rulers of the world?”

  It was a question that had kept Eugene awake at nights. “Unnatural lusts and desires . . .” Gavril Nagarian had said.

  “There is always a price to be paid,” the Magus said, as if reading his thoughts.

  Kaspar Linnaius threw a veil of concealing shadowsilk over his sky craft. He had deflated the canvas balloon sail, wrapped it up, and placed it in the wooden hull. No one would notice it now in the shadowy forest glade; a passing monk or charcoal-burner would see nothing but the lichened trunks of the great firs of Kerjhenezh.

  He set out to walk the last quarter-mile to the monastery. His progress was slow; today he felt the damp of spring rain in his bones. He would need to concoct another phial of the life-preserving elixir that sustained him.

  At last the whitewashed walls of the Monastery of Saint Sergius could be glimpsed ahead through the trees.

  He passed fishponds, murkily green and still, and then came to an orchard of apple trees, their branches covered with a snowfall of blossoms. At the far end of the orchard he could see bee skeps tended by an elderly monk.

  “Good-day to you, Brother Beekeeper. Where can I find the abbot?”

  The white-bearded monk replaced the lid on the skep and straightened slowly.

  So the damp is affecting your old bones too, Brother, Linnaius thought. I’d offer you a draught of my elixir—but if you knew what went into its preparation, you’d be sure to refuse.

  “He’s in his study; I’ll take you to him. . . .”

  “You’ll understand, Magister Linnaius,” said Abbot Yephimy, “that the brothers and I permit only the most devout and learned of scholars access to our precious archive.” He gazed severely at Linnaius, who sensed he was being assessed and found wanting. “But since you come on the Emperor’s business, I cannot deny you. Though I must insist you wear these archivist’s gloves at all times when you handle the ancient parchments.”