Chapter 5 – Darkness

We passed through a doorway from pitch black into blacker pitch. The Ungulion jerked the chain between my wrists, so hard I almost lost my balance. A harsh clang drowned the rattling of the links, then a heavy weight dragged down on my arms. I took a step forward, experimentally, but lurched back again as I reached the end of the fetter. Then I backed up and my hands brushed against rough stone that felt like a wall or a pillar. It didn’t matter which. It just meant I wasn’t going anywhere.

My motions must have annoyed the Ungulion, because suddenly the chain yanked back, hard. The Ungulion had refastened the fetters, so that now I couldn’t move at all. I snapped the chains once but it was more for defiance than any belief in its utility. My wrists flared with pain and I stood still.

The Ungulion’s robes whispered as it moved away. Then came the sound of stone striking stone, and a spark danced in the void. One lone candle began burning, a tiny flickering thread of gold. Somewhere behind me wind whistled through a chink in the wall, died, then picked up again. I shivered, straining to make out the dimensions of the room. I could see nothing but a ring of slick rock glistening under the candle. No other light broke the gloom, and I could smell only long-wet stones and the blood on my own face.

“Who are you?”

I jumped so violently that the metal rings bruised my wrists again. I could have sworn the Ungulion had left me alone. The breathy voice wreathed through the dark silence, echoing off the walls, so that I couldn’t tell which direction it came from.

“Who are you?” I asked.

I peered blindly into the shadows as I spoke. Pain erupted across my cheek. A metal cuff, striking me so hard that my ears rang and my mouth filled with an acrid, coppery taste. I spat, then gagged. Blood. I was still trying to gather my senses when I realized I was staring into two eyes, not six inches from my face. They reflected the feeble candlelight, or maybe they glowed with their own hellish light. I jerked my gaze away, closed my eyes. Wished I hadn’t asked.

“Who are you?” the Ungulion asked again.

This time I caught the glint of the bracer as he raised his arm. I flinched.

“Merelin!”

I regretted it as soon as I had said it. Sixteen-year-old girl or not, I had to do better than that. I thought of Yatol, bleeding in his cell. What had he gone through? I couldn’t imagine he had given up any information that easily, or at all. I could do it for him. Could be strong for him. I had to.

“Merelin,” the Ungulion rasped. “That is only a name. Who are you?”

“I’m nobody. I’m just a girl.” My breath came shallow. “I ran away! I got lost, and now I’m here.”

“You were in the Perstaun. Nobody comes to the Perstaun by choice.”

Two breaths. Steady. I struggled to stand a little taller.

“Maybe I came looking for you.”

I clacked my jaws shut, but too late. The words were already out there. Brilliant, Merelin. Provoke the thing. What are you thinking?

The candle flickered with a sudden grinding of stone on stone. No new light appeared, but I could hear more footsteps – another Ungulion. My interrogator went to join the newcomer, the two of them standing so that they blocked my view of the candle.

“Has she said anything?”

“Not yet. She’s insolent, and useless. Let me kill her and be done with it. We have the other. We can break him eventually.”

“Did you search her?”

“She had nothing. Strange garments, but nothing of interest.”

One of them came over to me. I felt more than saw it beside me. Their voices sounded similar, but somehow I knew that this was the new Ungulion looming over me, so close that if it had been a person, I would have felt its breath. Not feeling anything terrified me. Even worse, a rotten stench drifted around its lipless mouth as it spoke.

“Where are you from?”

My thoughts raced. They certainly wouldn’t believe I was nobody if they knew I’d come from Earth. But I didn’t know anything at all about this place. No names, no geography, nothing. I didn’t even know how the people lived. All I’d seen was the camp, but I couldn’t imagine everyone here lived like nomads.

“From…my village,” I said. “It’s, uh, near the desert.”

“How do you know Yatol?”

I swallowed hard. “Who’s that?”

For a moment neither of them spoke or moved. I wondered if I’d fooled them, but my optimism was short-lived. I suddenly got that feeling again, like their nails were picking into my thoughts. I screamed in fury and jerked against the chains, but couldn’t raise my hands to my head to block out the sensation. When a surge of electrifying pain shot through my head, my head snapped back and hit the stone with a sharp crack. My stomach churned. I shook my head violently, willing away the memories. I couldn’t let them see what I knew. Wouldn’t.

Seconds or minutes later they abruptly ceased their efforts. With the soft clap of metal soles on stone they retreated to the far side of the room.

“Was she this much trouble when you brought her?”

“Yes.”

The stone doorway scraped open again.

“Unusual.”

“She’s lying.”

“Do you suppose she has anything to do with him?”

“I don’t know, but I suspect she does.”

“I suppose we must break her. Summon…”

I couldn’t hear what else was said. As the door shut, the draft extinguished the candle.

* * *

The next thing I knew I was back in my cell, lying crumpled in the corner. My head screamed with pain, and my mouth still tasted like blood. For a few minutes I lay quietly, trying to calm my breathing and gather my thoughts. They swam around in my mind in muddled confusion, snatches of worries and fears that I couldn’t catch and comprehend. Yatol. Ungulion. Summon what?

I propped myself up on my elbow, pulling strands of hair from my sticky mouth. Had they summoned it, whatever it was? Did I give them information? Think, Merelin. But I couldn’t remember anything after the candle went out.

“Merelin!”

Yatol? His voice sounded weak, a bare rasp in the silence. I crawled over to the wall, resting my forehead against the stone.

“I’m here,” I said when I managed to find my voice.

“Are you hurt? Are you all right?”

I just wanted to curl up in bed with my head under the pillow and try to make sense of the pain. I couldn’t tell him that, though. I couldn’t answer at all. After a moment I felt little vibrations in the wall as he began pulling away the chunks of stone on the other side.

“Yatol, they were going to summon something.”

My voice quavered, pathetic.

“Azik,” Yatol said. “The Breaker.”

That didn’t sound good.

“I think I fainted. I don’t know if I told him anything.”

“He hasn’t arrived yet.”

“How do you know?”

The long silence made me nervous, then finally he said, “You wouldn’t be here now if you’d seen him.”

“Have you ever seen him?”

He didn’t answer. After a moment the scraping of rock resumed, and I forced my hands to make an effort at helping him. The first chunk of rock dislodged Pyelthan. I caught it before it hit the floor, wrapping my fingers gratefully around the cool circle before tucking it back into my pocket. Leaving it behind, unguarded, had been a huge risk. It had worked out fine – in fact I was pretty sure I’d been right to hide it. Somehow I think they had been looking for it, when the one Ungulion asked the other if I’d had anything interesting on me.

“Yatol, is the Ungulion going to come back?”

“No. Another will pass in a few hours to check on us, but by then…”

His voice died and we worked in silence. Once we had cleared the gap I slithered carefully through on my elbows. On the other side I stayed in a crouch, not trusting my shaking legs to stand. Yatol had gone back to sit against the outer wall by the window, the straws piled beside him. He wouldn’t look at me, but focused intensely on his work. Somehow he was braiding the straw into a tight, thin rope. I couldn’t believe that the moldy wisps didn’t disintegrate as he twisted them. His hands moved deftly, quickly, coiling the lengthening rope as he worked.

But I couldn’t focus on his hands. I only saw the bruises and inflamed gashes on his arms, the streaks of blood dried brown on his shirt and the patches of bright glossy red where he had reopened some wound. I stared at the blood still oozing from the abrasions on his brow, and I winced. Blood didn’t usually make me queasy, but the look of his face did. I couldn’t say why. There didn’t seem to be an inch of him that was uninjured.

For a solid two minutes I stood staring, afraid to go near him. I wondered what had happened to him. Apparently a lot more than had happened to me – besides bruises on my wrists and a swollen cheek, I couldn’t tell that I’d been hurt at all. But Yatol worked calmly enough, as if he were oblivious to the wounds that covered him. His indifference finally reassured me, and I crouched beside him to touch the rope.

“What are we going to do with that?”

“We get out.”

“Get out, how? We’re sort of locked in here.”

“I won’t let you be taken before Azik,” he said fiercely.

He frowned a little, his eyes barely flickering up toward me. After a moment he nodded toward the window.

“See if you can pry the bars out. All but one, the leftmost one.”

I stood on my tiptoes and took hold of one of the bars. It seemed a little loose, so, ignoring the ache of my wrists, I wriggled it in its socket until it started pulling free. I braced one foot against the wall and tugged as hard as I could, and collapsed in a shower of dust with the bar in my hand. I sat stunned, shaking my head to get the bits of stone out of my hair.

Yatol glanced over with a strange amused smile – a brief break in his dark concentration – while I tried to recover my dignity by calmly brushing my hair back from my face. He was laughing at me. I glowered but he had already turned back to the rope and didn’t see it. I managed to get the other two bars out, and by the time I finished, Yatol had woven all the straws into one long, smooth rope. I watched him secure it to the remaining bar, test the knot, and toss the coil out the window.

“Come after me,” he said, and pulled himself onto the ledge.

“Won’t the bar come out?” I cried. “We just dismantled half a wall of this stuff!”

“This bar will hold. Or did you think I’ve been idle while I waited for you?”

“Waited for me…?”

I’d only been gone half a day, and probably not more than half an hour in the dark chamber. How long could he have been waiting? But he only met my gaze in silence, then slid one leg over the edge of the casement.

“Yatol! Wait, stop. It’s so thin. It’s just straw! It can’t hold!”

“Trust me,” he said, and was gone.

I vaulted up onto the ledge and clung to the bar, hoping to keep it secure as he made his way down. He soon reached the ground, but my stomach flipped as I watched the rope tossing back and forth, the sands rolling like the surf on a windy day. I shuddered and took the cord firmly in both hands, and lowered myself out. Sweat beaded on my face, mingling with blood and matted dirt and streaming down. My eyes stung but I couldn’t let go to rub them. I blinked fiercely and concentrated on what I was doing.

I’ve never been one for rope climbing. In all the gym classes I’d ever taken, I could only remember one time I’d managed to get to the top and back down again, without making the teacher climb up and coax me down. I wasn’t particularly afraid of heights, when I was on solid ground. This was anything but solid ground.

I stared at my hands and refused to look down, but my arms began to shake, burning with the effort. My wrists, sore already, felt like they were breaking. I swung like a deadweight, while my arms seized with that terrible paralysis. I can’t, I thought, mouthing the words. I can’t. But I was too afraid of the Ungulion to say it aloud.

My gaze strayed downward to Yatol. I could barely make out his features, pale and worried. My hands were exhausted, my palms raw. It was all I could do to keep hold of the rough fibers of the rope. I took a deep breath and lowered myself a little way, then a little more. The rope creaked, and I thought I felt the tiny tremor of a breaking strand. I tried to brace my foot on the wall, but it slipped on the slick stones and the jolt nearly made me fall. Sheer terror seized me. I had to get down. Or back up. But I couldn’t go back, no matter how much I wanted to be on solid ground. Yatol was waiting for me below. And above? Ungulion. Azik.

I managed to get nearly halfway down when the hideous sound came again, the droning wail that shook the bar and made the rope quiver in my hands. An Ungulion leaned over the casement, face contorted with fury. Its rotten skeletal hands groped out, plucking at the rope with sharp nails. All fear of the rope fled and I climbed down at a dizzying pace. Suddenly the rope snapped. The sand came rushing up at me. I crashed against the rocky wall and scrabbled at its face, tearing my hands and ripping two nails before I caught a protruding rock.

The terrible hands swung out toward me, the plaintive moan rose to a shriek. I took one breath, and pushed myself away from the wall.