The Sorcerer's Abyss (The Sorcerer's Path)

by Brock Deskins

  Azerick looked at the food set out for him and tried to identify what it was. A slab of meat seared on the outside but still oozing blood from within butted up against a pile of green vegetables that looked like leeks but were definitely not leeks. The meat was light in color, like pork, but had a strong gamey scent and taste.

  He looked at the food on Lissandra’s plate. The meat looked the same without the benefit of searing. If it were any rarer, it would probably try to flee. There were no vegetables, but she did have a palm-sized honeycomb on her plate.

  The Guardian caught Azerick looking. “I like to indulge. It is what helps me keep my sweet disposition.”

  “And for that I am grateful,” Azerick responded sardonically. “You may want to ease up on the salt, however. It appears to be nullifying whatever effect the honey has on you.”

  “Are you finished eating, or do you lack the manners to not speak with your mouth full?”

  Azerick took the hint to shut up. He was certain the Guardian would not hesitate to take his food if he kept talking. The strange vegetables were bitter and spicy, like a pepper crossed with horseradish. Azerick coughed a mouthful back onto his plate.

  “You need to eat those,” Lissandra said. “They possess vital nutrients.”

  “I don’t see you eating them!” Azerick snapped and drank deeply from his cup, which he promptly spit out as the concoction burned the inside of his throat.

  “I am not as weak as a newborn babe. And you need to drink that as well. Spit any more out and you will lick it off the table. It is not easy to brew.”

  “It can’t be half as bad to brew as it is to drink,” Azerick mumbled. “What is it, concentrated armpit sweat from an ogre?”

  “I could say yes. It would make you feel better than if I told you the truth.”

  Azerick decided he did not want to know what any of it was, but if it helped return him to normal, he would consume it all. Feeling helpless was not something he liked. In fact, Azerick could not think of a single thing more distasteful. The more he thought about it the angrier he got. He tore into his food and ate without tasting. Only the foul liquid required him to consume it with care.

  Lissandra dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “We shall start with the simple exercise of walking. You will simply walk around this chamber, using the seat here to rest only when you cannot continue any longer. Once rested, you will resume your walking.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until I tell you to stop.”

  “So just walk? You don’t want to make me carry you or throw rocks at me? Maybe pour some oil on the floor?” Azerick asked.

  “Not yet.”

  Azerick bit back a retort and stood. Oddly enough, he already felt stronger. He stumbled once as he walked to the wall of the circular room but caught himself before he fell. Using his right hand to steady himself, Azerick circumnavigated the room with care.

  The room was large and it took several minutes for him to complete each circuit with his dreadfully slow shuffling. Azerick made only two and a half circuits before fatigue forced him to shamble to the table to sit and rest.

  “What do you think you are doing?” Lissandra asked.

  “I am tired,” Azerick responded shortly. “You told me I could use the seat when I got too tired to continue.”

  “You managed to walk to the table; therefore you are not too tired to walk the floor.”

  Azerick’s face burned as he glowered at the Guardian. “What do you want me to do, walk until I collapse then drag myself to the table to rest? Or would you prefer if I just laid on the floor whimpering?”

  Lissandra took a sip from a fresh cup of tea. “Either one is fine with me. I leave it for you to decide. If you are asking my opinion, I would tell you crawling is slightly more dignified than lying there like a dying animal in the street.”

  Azerick inwardly seethed with rage and humility, but he refused to rise to the bait. He felt certain Lissandra was intentionally stoking the fires of his anger and ego. He could not control his physical weakness, but he would control his temper. Azerick felt the craving for control over himself and his surroundings like a drunkard craved strong drink. Control was everything.

  Azerick stood back up forcefully and fell. Using the stool and table, he hastily got on his feet and carefully made his way back to the wall to resume his walking. Bridled anger motivated and energized his steps. He stopped thinking about his weakness and exhaustion, letting his mind fantasize about the Guardian sprawled out on the floor, desperately trying to crawl to the table, and begging for Azerick’s help.

  So lost in his anger-induced daydreams, Azerick did not detect the approaching end of his physical limits. When he collapsed, it came as a complete surprise, almost as much as realizing he had made three more complete laps. This time he did crawl to the table. It took several minutes of monumental struggle to reach his seat.

  When Azerick finally opened his eyes and looked at the tabletop, he was surprised to find another plate of food set out, identical to the previous meal. He had no idea when Lissandra had prepared and set it out. Azerick did not care. The moment the scent of food wafted up and reached his nose, his stomach growled noisily and did not care about how it tasted.

  The next day was much like the first, only Azerick was able to dress, get to the table, and walk much farther without resting than he had yesterday. By the end of the fourth day, he could walk almost like a normal man, an old man, but not someone infirm.

  “So what will it be today?” Azerick asked as he sat down to eat. “Shall I walk on my hands for you?”

  “Do you think you can?” Lissandra asked.

  Azerick thought a moment. “No.”

  “Then we will save that for later. Today, you will continue to circle the room, but now I want you to bend down deeply with your foreleg while extending your trailing leg. You will dip low enough that your back knee almost touches the floor, but do not let it do so.”

  “What happens if it touches?”

  “Then I shall throw rocks at you.”

  Azerick smiled and reminded himself not to give the Guardian any more ideas. He had slowly come to the opinion she was not as stern and dispassionate as she let on. He felt Lissandra’s tough approach was partly for the benefit of his training and partly from not being accustomed to being around people. On a few occasions, Azerick caught the Guardian smiling out of the corner of his eye when she thought he was not looking. Granted, the smile was subtle and mostly on the inside, but Azerick liked to think he saw it.

  If walking had been difficult, the lunges were torture. Not only did it take extraordinary effort to get up after each dip, it took a lot of fine muscle control to keep from falling over, which he did several times. Azerick failed to make a single complete circuit of the room before collapsing, and this time he did choose to lie on the floor like a dead animal.

  “Are you going to simply lie there all day?” Lissandra asked.

  “No. It should be nightfall before too long,” Azerick groaned.

  “Shall I serve your supper on the floor as well?”

  “It would probably be easier than moving the table.”

  The Guardian looked at her charge with annoyance. “I suppose I shall leave you with some small shred of dignity and put it in a bowl for you.”

  “You are all heart. You should not coddle me so much,” Azerick quipped. “Could you do me a favor?”

  “What?” Lissandra asked in exasperation.

  “Pull off my slipper, and then hit yourself with it.”

  Azerick let out a yelp when a rock struck him in the shoulder with significant force and pinpoint accuracy. He rolled onto his hands and knees before struggling back to his feet. He rubbed at his bruised shoulder and took several deep breaths before returning to his exercises.

  CHAPTER 17

  Inquisitors Elias and Fennrick sat in plush chairs across from Duchess Paulina who reclined on a sedan sipping wine in her parlor.

  “
Fennrick, what progress on the girl and the Codex have we made?” the Duchess asked.

  Both inquisitors shifted nervously in their chairs. “None, Your Grace.”

  Duchess Paulina set her glass on the low table separating her from her guests and sat up. “None? It has been almost four months since you brought her here. How is this possible?”

  “The girl is extremely resilient,” Fennrick explained defensively. “She has been subjected to significant torture before, and there appears to be little we administer that she has not already undergone. Couple that with her madness, and we face a significant challenge. I did inform you this would take time.”

  “Yes, and in this time I have been plagued with the company of nearly a hundred pilgrims from The Academy, a dozen requests, each more insistent than the last, to hand over the Codex Arcana, and another five hundred requests from every wizard and charlatan in the kingdom to view it to see if it will speak to them. Headmaster Florent has threatened to start sending journeyman wizards here by the wagonload if we do not gain access to it soon!”

  “Perhaps Fennrick is being too gentle,” Elias suggested. “If she has faced pain before, we simply need to apply more pain than those Sumaran barbarians did.”

  Fennrick shook his head. “It is not that easy. I have applied a great deal of pain. When it gets too much, she simply goes catatonic and becomes completely unreachable, for days sometimes. If we continue to push as we are, we risk sending her over the edge forever.”

  “Then what are we going to do?” the Duchess demanded.

  Elias stared at the ceiling and let out a slow breath. “I am at a loss, Your Grace.”

  “Of course you are! You always are because you are an idiot! Obviously I was asking Fennrick.”

  “I have concluded that we will not find the solution through physical means, even those of discomfort as we have been using. Sleep deprivation, near drowning, excessive heat and cold, none are working,” the inquisitor said. “I think the resistance her emotional condition gives her against physical coercion could hold the solution.”

  Paulina leaned forward interestedly. “Explain.”

  “I have been studying the girl and doing research on mental abnormalities and think that if we are ever going to break her or convince her to help us, we must focus on her mind with no other physical stressors. We know there is a weakness already present. We simply need to find the most effective way to exploit it.”

  “I assume you have some ideas.”

  “I do. I think it is time she had some visitors.”

  Ellyssa sat on her cot, held her knees, and gently rocked back and forth. It had been days since they had last tortured her, and she knew they would be coming again soon. She used to fear their coming with each beat of her heart, but not anymore. When the pain and turmoil got too bad, she simply went away. It was getting easier to go away these days. The first time it happened she thought she had died, but then reality slammed home once again and she found herself back in this room.

  She looked forward to going away even though it took so much pain and fear to get there, but it was worth it. When she went away, she was back home using her magic. Ellyssa realized it was not the huge, flashy, destructive magic that brought her the most joy. It was the simple things like the time she stalked Wolf through the forest while he was hunting. She created an illusion of a rabbit and watched as Wolf chased it for over an hour, cursing furiously every time he failed to hit it with one of his arrows. Ghost saw right through her magical camouflage and almost certainly knew the rabbit was a fake, but he never let on. That was one unusual wolf.

  Thinking about her magic got her wondering about the spells used to keep her from reaching the Source within her cell. She had first thought the runes carved deeply into the walls made the entire interior a magic free zone, but later realized the wizards here had no problem using magic to torture her.

  It meant there had to be an associative spell in effect as well, one that either acted with the runes to prevent her from using magic or allowed the inquisitors to cast within her cell. She searched her body for any magical sigils but failed to locate any. There could be something on her back, but she had no mirror to check. More likely, those tasked with her torture wore an item, like a bracelet or pendant working in conjunction with the negation magic in her cell to give them access to the Source. If this was the case, all she needed to do was take it from one of them, and then she would bring this whole place down upon them all.

  The problem would be getting it. Ellyssa needed to know precisely what it was and where they wore it. If she tried to relieve them of it and failed, she likely would never get another chance. So far, she had seen nothing that appeared to be what she was seeking, if it even existed. For this reason, she held on, waiting for the day one of them got careless and revealed it.

  Ellyssa snapped out of her thoughts when she heard voices echoing through her door from the passageway beyond. She flinched and drew back on her cot at the sound of the heavy bolt being drawn back. A startled gasp escaped her mouth when she saw Allister and Miranda filling the doorway.

  “Hello, dear,” Allister said kindly. “How are you?”

  Ellyssa looked down at her feet drawn up against the edge of cot and remained as silent as Miranda.

  Seeing he would get no response, Allister continued. “We wanted to come and tell you we did not abandon you. The Academy, particularly the Office of Inquisition, wanted to execute you for your crimes. I made a protest to The Academy and Miranda sent an official plea for leniency. Although we were able to achieve a stay of execution, we were unsuccessful in getting you a pardon or moving your incarceration to North Haven. We even beseeched the King, but The Academy has a significant amount of autonomy. We have exhausted our last resources to try and improve your situation despite the damage you have done to the school and those within it.”

  Ellyssa looked away and studied the runes on the far wall as tears cleaned away some of the accumulated grime on her face.

  “Inquisitor Fennrick told me of his offer to move you to more comfortable accommodations if you helped them use the Codex,” Allister continued. “I know you feel responsible, and maybe some of your unwillingness to accept their offer is so you can continue being punished for killing Azerick. You do not have to do that, child. You have suffered enough. Help them, and help yourself, because none of us can help you anymore.”

  Ellyssa returned her gaze to her feet, refusing to meet the old wizard’s eyes. “I can’t.”

  “Why not? You are not just helping them or yourself, you are helping to advance magic as we know it for all wizards. Ellyssa, The things in the Codex Arcana could save countless lives.”

  Ellyssa shuddered and shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Miranda finally broke her silence as her anger reached its limits. “I understand perfectly! You have always been a stubborn, selfish child!”

  “Miranda, please,” Allister begged.

  “No! I am sick and tired of pretending I forgive her, that I still give a damn about her! Her selfishness killed my husband, and I hope she clings to that same stubbornness so she can live in the same pain I do every day for the rest of her miserable life. I cannot stand to look at her anymore,” Miranda declared and stormed away, wiping the tears from her face as she retreated.

  Allister watched Miranda for a moment before turning back to Ellyssa. “I’m very disappointed in you, as would be Azerick.” He turned and followed Miranda.

  Ellyssa flopped down onto her bed as sobs wracked her body. She desperately willed herself to go away again, but it was the wrong kind of pain to pay the fare, so she had no choice but to lie there and endure it.