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It was all Albryan could do to keep from bursting into hysterical laughter as Dannine’s guardsmen half-carried, half-dragged him up the sandstone steps to the palace courtyard. Still thoroughly nauseated, only half conscious, he made quite a burden for the two burly individuals who had come to receive Dannine as the quetzal landed in a sheltered yard just within sight of Armour City’s magnificent sandstone palace.
Once the seat of the Eight Councillors and where they lived along with their families, the palace had been built not for defence, but as a symbol of might and wisdom. The guardsmen hauled him through a wide courtyard paved with white and green veined marble before reaching the great doors, where Albryan finally lost control of his stomach and vomited right upon Arran’s doorstep.
Dannine, who had been pacing proudly ahead of the guards, turned back with an exclamation of disgust. Albryan heard a loud crack, and to his faint surprise, as he knelt recovering, one of the burly guardsmen reeled back as if he’d been struck.
“You incompetent!” he heard Dannine yell, with not a trace of her former composure. She was upon him then, pulling Albryan forward by his wrist-chains into a dark corridor. “I shall take him to the Sylvaissen myself! You two stay here and clean that, like the servants you are!”
Albryan stumbled along behind her, feet awkwardly shuffling in the silver chains. He felt a lot better all of a sudden, and he tried to focus on the featureless passages she was leading him through, memorizing the way.
At last she stopped before a heavy ebony door on the fourth level of the palace. She was breathing hard with exertion, for she had had to exercise more and more of her magic to haul Albryan all the way up here, and it had begun to wear her down. Albryan knew that she had not eaten nor rested since catching him early that morning.
And now I know something of her reserves.
Albryan’s small elation did not last long, for the room beyond the creaking ebony door sent thrills of horror coursing along his spine. The crawling feeling of dark magic lay thick as incense in here, and the dreary sorcerous light that emanated from the ceiling contributed to Albryan’s disorientation, making him feel as though he had stepped into a subterranean cave.
A pale man dressed all in white was waiting in the corner of the room, his face made strangely artificial by the too-sharp light, but Albryan’s eyes kept going to a second ebony door set in the wall beside a low table beyond him. He could feel Dannine’s magical presence burning like a brand before him—could feel even more strongly the black fire that emanated from the pale man, who must be none other than Arran Sylvaissen himself. Still, both of these presences paled before the something he could sense behind that door. Albryan’s mind raced as he tried to imagine what was lurking behind it. How could Arran keep a power like that contained? Was there another sorcerer, one even greater than Arran himself, waiting within that secret room?
The thought faded to the back of Albryan’s mind as the pale man came forward, smiling broadly. “Captain Albryan Lana, at last,” he said, making a mock salute. Albryan went cold.
How would he know my name and rank—my description—unless he had inside knowledge already? His throat constricted. A traitor within Qwu’Mallorn. Someone sold me out. They must have.
Dannine bowed deeply before her adoptive father, who took her by the shoulders. “Once again, you have not let me down,” he said softly. His eyes slid back towards Albryan. “You will prepare him.”
He gestured towards an alcove in the spacious room. This space was floored with rough stone rather than the smooth tile they were standing on, and a hook hung suspended from a chain in the ceiling. Albryan instinctively hung back as Arran reached for him, though he knew that he was not, now, in mastery of his own body.
Arran pulled him forward and attached the hook to the chains that bound Albryan’s hands before of him. He winched the chain up, going until Albryan’s full weight was balanced precariously on the balls of his feet. Albryan felt painfully vulnerable in this position, yet he stood motionless, trying to suppress the sick fear that welled in his gut for whatever might come next. But the blood sorcerer only smiled pleasantly as he turned his back.
“You need rest, daughter,” he said to Dannine as they turned to leave the room. “Return this evening for the procedure.”
––––––––
He slept, hanging there in the harsh light of the room, lolling his head against his arm as he hung helplessly, unable to find a position where it did not hurt. He did not know how many hours had passed, but every muscle in his body was in screaming agony when suddenly he awoke to see someone moving about the room.
It was Dannine, and she was mixing something in a large clay bowl, her unbound golden hair falling slightly over one eye. She was still dressed in armour, her left hand bound in a strip of clean cloth. She quickly noticed that Albryan was stirring, and a smile spread over her face.
Advancing upon him, she flicked out a small knife and began to cut his shirt away from his body. Albryan flinched at the touch of the cold metal, and his face burned as she tore away strips of cloth to expose his naked skin.
What in the name of the spirit guardians is she doing?
Dannine produced a paintbrush and fetched the clay bowl, bringing it over towards him. He could see that it was filled with a heavy, viscous liquid that sparkled like molten silver. She dipped the brush in the liquid, making sure the thick bristles were well coated, and began to paint his upper body.
Albryan had to clench his jaw to keep from crying out. The stuff was cold, and wherever the brush-strokes went, his skin tingled as though she were trailing bare ice across it. Dannine’s smirk deepened as though she knew what he was thinking.
“What are you doing?” Albryan finally burst out. She ignored him. When he repeated himself, she calmly backhanded him in the face.
She was still wearing a gauntlet on her uninjured hand, and Albryan’s head spun with the force of the blow. He knew she had drawn blood; he felt warm liquid drip from his nose to his chin. She ignored that as well, and fiddled with his belt.
He had done his best to remain calm thus far, to try and think his way out of here, but panic was rapidly beginning to overcome Albryan’s mind. Dannine stripped him as naked as the day he was born, then continued to paint him all over, as detached as if she were basting a turkey for the midsummer feast. He was no longer in control of his reactions, and the icy touch of the silver paint upon his skin became an agony he was desperate to be rid of. He cried out and writhed against his chains, to no avail. He tried to lift himself off the floor, but found his muscles far too weak. His vision was blurring, and his heart pattered in his chest as he realized what the purpose of the silver paint was. A kind of magical sedative—designed to keep him unconscious until—until what? Unconscious prisoners could not be interrogated. What did Arran mean to do with him?
As if the thought had summoned him, the blood sorcerer appeared suddenly from a corner of the room, smiling. He spread a roll of black velvet out upon a low table, and Albryan caught a glimpse of what was inside. Saw the silvery tools, the gleaming blades which Arran lovingly caressed. Saw him pick one up, its point glint in the crazed light, saw Arran’s smile deepen.
That was the last thing he saw, for just as he tried to scream, darkness rose up and sucked him down into a tunnel where everything howled together, all his pain and fear built up into an incomprehensible torrent of confusion, and he knew no more where he was, nor even his own name.
––––––––
Far away, somewhere outside, it seemed that someone was trying to reach him. Stubbornly, he held on to the numbness, the unfeeling. There was a searing memory of pain, and fear was as bitter as cyanide in the back of his throat. If he could stay here, stay where all was numb, then nothing could hurt him, surely...
For what seemed like an eternity, he had had no body, and yet now someone was shaking his body, yelling incoherent words into its ear, gripping it by the shoulder. He felt cold. He felt...
All in a blind rush, Albryan opened his eyes and scooted violently away from the person who was shaking him. He cried out in panic, felt his back hit a rough stone wall. A moment of nauseating disorientation was followed by sudden realization that his surroundings had changed yet again. It was much darker here, dank stone walls barely lit by a guttering oil lamp somewhere above. Nothing like the eerie brightness of the laboratory that he only vaguely remembered.
His heart beat hard in his chest. The laboratory! What had happened there? His mind was sluggish, slow to bring up the proper memories. There was the silver paint, the numbness of sleep, and the face of Arran Sylvaissen... and what then?
He came a little more to himself, and realized that he was not alone. Of course; someone had been attempting to wake him, and it had not been Dannine nor her cursed father. Crouching in the shadows before him was a man dressed in rags, an old, frail man, narrow-faced behind a scruffy grey beard, gesticulating with both hands as if to calm him.
Beyond the old man, Albryan saw a row of iron bars, felt dirty straw prick through his trousers, and knew precisely where he was. In the dungeons of Arran’s palace.
“Easy, youngster,” the old man was saying. Albryan could comprehend the words at last. “Calm down...”
Albryan relaxed, slumping his shoulders backwards. The man sat away from him, falling silent. Albryan tried to sit up, but there were still silver chains around his ankles and wrists, rattling whenever he moved. The old man moved over and helped steady him, as Albryan endeavoured to tuck his legs underneath himself, to sit with at least a smidgen of comfort. The rags were threadbare, he saw as the man helped him, and beneath them he was emaciated to the bone.
“Thank you,” Albryan said with real gratitude, and a thin smile appeared on the old prisoner’s face. “How... how long have I been here?”
“Couple o’ hours,” the old man said shortly, his voice hoarse, as if he did not speak very often. Albryan took a look around. He and the old man occupied one cell of many, and they were all well stocked, with two or three prisoners inside each one. There was the usual dungeon-stench, of human excrement and despair, and the stony floor was cold and damp despite the thin covering of straw, penetrating even through his cloak.
His cloak? Albryan started, and quickly examined himself. He was dressed, as far as he could tell, in the same clothes that Dannine had cut from him in pieces, with the addition of the cloak he had thought lost along with his weapons and armour, the thick forest-green cloak that was always a reminder of Qwu’Mallorn for him. His belt—his boots—even his smalls—all were intact, as if he’d only dreamed the scene in the laboratory. Only his weapons were missing.
He licked at his bottom lip, felt swelling and tasted blood. So that had been real enough. And though the cloak was undoubtedly his—Dannine must have brought it with her—the trousers and shirt were wrong. They were far too clean.
Albryan lifted his gaze and saw the old prisoner, huddled beneath a blanket as thin as a dishrag, gazing at him. The man had striking eyes, a curious golden, almost yellow, like some great birds of prey possessed. Those penetrating eyes were set above a great beak of a nose, completing the illusion of hawkishness. Were he not a ragged dungeon rat huddling beneath a threadbare piece of cloth, the man’s gaze would have been authoritative and intimidating. As it was, Albryan found it somewhat unsettling.
Albryan searched for something to say, but the prisoner beat him to it. “You’re a mage?” he suddenly asked with interest. His voice creaked like a pump that had sat unused for years.
Albryan nodded his assent, and the prisoner regarded him silently for another moment. Then he asked, “Are you hungry?”
“I...” Albryan realized that he was. He nodded his thanks as the prisoner produced a crust of extremely dry bread from a corner, and handed it to him.
“The rats haven’t been at it yet,” the prisoner said. He folded his bare feet beneath himself and tucked his striped nightshirt into his threadbare pants before covering himself with the thin blanket again.
Albryan nibbled at the bread, barely taking the edge off his hunger. “How long have you been here?” he asked the prisoner, for something to say.
“If it is spring already...” The old man squinted a little. “Nineteen years.”
“Nineteen years?” Albryan repeated. “That’s—you’re not a mage. How did...” He trailed off, not certain whether his reaction had caused offence. The old convict did not move a muscle.
“I’m not a mage,” he confirmed quietly. “But those bearing the Gift were not the only ones to suffer under our king.” He studied Albryan intently. “You look... familiar to me,” he said at last. “What is your name?”
Albryan hesitated. He had an alias, of course, to use whenever he donned the clothes of a nonmage mercenary and set off into Vailana to gather whatever information the army needed. But his disguise was already cracked, and secrecy made no sense whatsoever when he had already fallen into the clutches of his sworn enemy.
“Albryan Lana,” he said.
The aged convict leaned forward, a gleam in his strange yellow eyes. “I never forget a face,” he said breathlessly. “You were only a little lad, as I remember, but your father was one of the Court justices. Your mother—I knew her passing well. The Lady Roseanne Jarrevoy. You are the very image of her.”
Albryan drew back, startled. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“My name? I was—Hiram Lynstream,” the prisoner replied slowly, as if he was having a hard time remembering. “I was an Alderman; I wrote the laws your father was expected to enforce. I sat beneath the thrones of the Eight for over twenty years, dispensing justice to the people. Or at least, that which I myself believed to be just.”
“It was so long ago...” Albryan hesitated as memory stirred, memories he’d not had occasion to dwell on for a very long time. “I think I remember you. Your hair was black then, and you were not so—so thin.”
Hiram gave a tight-lipped smile. “Living in a dungeon will not do wonders for your health.”
“But why were you jailed?” Albryan asked. Even as he spoke the words, realization came to him. “Your wife. You were married to a Mage-Gifted woman. I remember you telling my mother that children of mixed blood did not always have the Gift. We both did, me and my brother, but your daughter didn’t.” Sadness shone in the old convict’s eyes, and Albryan felt a chill of apprehension. “Did they get away?” he asked softly. “Your wife and daughter?”
Hiram shook his head. “I don’t know.”
He seemed loath to speak of it, and Albryan fell silent. But Hiram spoke again: “You come from Qwu’Mallorn.”
Albryan nodded. “I’m with the army,” he said in a low voice. Reminding himself of his true profession, he realized an important truth. He needed to get back. Someone had betrayed him to Arran. There might be a traitor in the midst of the army. Could Hiram help him escape this dungeon? The old man seemed frail, yet his eyes shone with a vitality that Albryan found hard to dismiss. Albryan knew that sometimes it was not the strength and skillset of the individual which drove them to succeed, but rather the amount of willpower they possessed. There was something about Hiram that made him think that willpower was not something the old convict was in lack of.
“I need to get back,” he said in a low voice.
Hiram nodded sagely. He looked around furtively, and lowered his voice. “The guards will come soon with food. We must be ready to escape.”
“How?” Albryan demanded in a whisper, nonplussed.
Hiram leaned closer. His strange eyes seemed almost luminous in the gloom. “Share your magic with me.”
“I’m sorry?” Albryan could not have heard right.
“You can channel magic to me,” Hiram clarified.
Albryan gaped at him. So the old convict has lost his mind after all.
He did not give voice to his thoughts, however, and Hiram continued: “Your hands and feet are bound. You can’t touch the magic in the other plane nor release it into this world. But you still have the connection to the source, the inborn link that makes you a mage in the first place. You can still channel magic into another living being.”
“I can’t release my magic into you,” Albryan responded, aghast. “It would kill you. It’s one of the first things we learn, to not let the unGifted touch us when we’re spellcasting.”
To his amazement, the old man shook his head, looking for all the world as though he were lecturing a pupil. “It’s dangerous,” he whispered, “because the unGifted do not instinctively channel magic. There are, however, techniques that one can learn, how to channel magic even if you do not naturally possess it, and I know those techniques.”
Albryan could not think of anything to say. Surely the old man had gone quite mad, stuck alone in this dungeon for nineteen years, concocting only Goddess knew what kind of lunacies in his fantasies of escape. Yet Hiram’s demeanour betrayed nought but calm urgency.
“We have nothing to lose,” Hiram said. “I won’t die, but if I do, you may be reassured that I would much rather have died in the attempt than given up all hope.”
Albryan found his voice at last. “How?”
“Trust,” the old man replied, simply. “My wife—magic was her art, her song, her way of life. She wanted to share all of it with me. Even then, there were not many who would trust a mage so implicitly. But I trusted her”—the old convict reached a hand out towards Albryan—“and I will give my trust to you.”
There were sounds down the end of the dungeon. The clank of a door opening. Footsteps. Distant voices approaching. Guards. If Albryan was to escape today, he realized, it was now or never. If he delayed, there was no knowing what would happen to him. Whether Arran would have him brought up into his laboratory for another session under silver paint...
Albryan swallowed bile. “What do I need to do?” he asked, hoarsely.
“Whatever it is you do to share magic.”
Albryan nodded his consent, pulled up his shirtsleeve to expose bare skin. All Mage-Gifted children learned to share their magic early on, with their brothers, their parents, with playmates. But only amongst others who also possessed the Gift.
“You should know,” he said hoarsely, as Hiram laid his hand upon the unsleeved arm with a touch of apprehension, “that I have substantially more magic than most. Your wife’s Gift was likely a minor one?”
The old man confirmed this with a nod. “But we should still try. I am not afeared of the danger.”
The guards were approaching. Albryan could discern a food-trolley being pushed between the cells, could smell hot gruel. He suppressed a pang of hunger. The prisoners held up rough tin bowls as the guards moved past, received a ladleful of slop each.
“I’m ready,” Hiram whispered.
Albryan went to the place inside himself that was connected to his magic, located somewhere in his subconsciousness, the place of dreaming. Something did not feel quite right. Perhaps it was the effect of trying to access his magic whilst being chained in silver. Like most mages, Albryan held an instinctive aversion to the metal, and right now it was physically preventing him from drawing upon his reserves. But they could make do with the magic that was circulating within him already.
Sharing magic with another mage was like two rivers meeting, mingling their separate paths into a greater current. Albryan tried to find that current in Hiram, and found only a void, a dry riverbed. He focused intently, pulling the magic through his veins, but there seemed to be a barrier between them, like a storm dyke, holding the magic back.
It was all or nothing. The guards were only yards away, and the doors at the end of the dungeon were open. Albryan pushed against the barrier with all his might, and all at once, like a torrent-fed stream breaking through a dam wall, the magic left him and streamed into the empty vessel that was Hiram.
There was no controlling it, no modulating the flow. Albryan jerked his arm from Hiram’s grip, fully expecting to see the old prisoner collapsing with a scream of pain. But Hiram was standing straighter than he had been, his eyes afire though his hands were shaking violently.
“Gods!” he breathed. “I feel ready to burn this place to the ground!”
“Don’t take it too far,” Albryan cautioned. He felt giddy himself, and he pulled Hiram back down to the straw. Hiram was taking deep gulps of air, as if to steady himself, and Albryan could feel the magic flaring, barely held in check by the prisoner’s frail form. “Hold it in,” he warned. The guards were ladling gruel to the prisoners in the cell next door.
“It’s too much!” Hiram cried. Albryan opened his mouth to yell as the old prisoner lurched to his feet, but anything he might have said was overpowered by the hissing flare of magic made fire, as Hiram fired off a ball of pure energy, straight in the direction of the food-trolley.
The fireball was gigantic. It lit up the whole gloomy space, flaring to life and exploding right through the body of the guard who stood nearest them. He vaporized instantly, vanishing into the sphere of glowing power. The fireball hit the iron pot of gruel, which exploded. Albryan put up an arm to shield his face as chunks of sheared iron, burned porridge, and dismembered body parts of the second guard, who had been standing right next to the pot, flew everywhere.
There were shouts and screams, and a crossbow bolt flew out of the gloom, directly at Hiram. Albryan saw it coming; in a flash of movement, he flung his hands out in front of the old convict. The bolt drove into a link of the chain that connected his manacles, and split it apart.
If Hiram was impressed by Albryan’s skill, he did not show it. Instead, he quickly shot off another fireball into the darkness, smaller and more focused than the first one. There was a rush, impact, and then more screams. Albryan seized Hiram’s arm to get his attention; he seemed in a murderous daze. There was plenty of magic there—Albryan knew that much—yet he had no more to spare should Hiram use it all up.
“Get us out of here!” Albryan gesticulated to the metal cage around them, and Hiram seemed to come to his senses. He seized the bars in front of him, and closed his eyes. The iron bars went red-hot, giving off an acrid smell, and began to hiss.
With his bare hands, Hiram tore the iron bars apart, and stepped through the hole. Holding his breath against the smoke, Albryan came after him. They broke into a trot, Albryan shuffling in his ankle-chains.
The prison was in pandemonium. Half the inmates were shrieking in fear; the others were bawling to be released. Albryan and Hiram reached the doors, and Albryan rushed past. This was clearly the guardroom, where an array of weapons hung from a shelf along with bunches of keys.
Hiram had paused just beyond the doors. Albryan seized two long swords, and yelled at him: “We must be gone!”
Hiram had turned back to face the bawling prisoners. He lifted both his hands into the air. For one horrible moment, Albryan thought that he meant to roast them all alive. But then, a great clanging resounded through the dungeon, as the gates burst from their locks, flinging themselves wide open, and a resounding cheer vibrated through the roof as the prisoners came surging out.
“We’d better go,” Hiram said, taking Albryan by the arm. There was a stairwell to their left, but Albryan could hear shouting and more footsteps coming down from the upper levels. Of course, the rest of the dungeon guards must have heard the commotion.
Hiram ignored the stairwell completely, dragging Albryan straight ahead into a narrow tunnel.
“You know the way out?” Hordes of formerly imprisoned men surged around them, ready to follow whatever path Hiram chose.
“I will make a way out,” Hiram shouted back.
He was as good as his word; after ten minutes of running, he turned to face the brick wall to their left. Raising his hands, he gathered the last of the magic, which Albryan felt as flickerings in the ether, and drove a hole straight through to the other side.
Clambering over pulverized bricks and scattered stones, Albryan and the rest of the dungeon’s inhabitants drank in daylight on the grassy slope of the hill. Arran’s palace was just visible, high above them, seemingly oblivious to their great escape. Albryan felt giddy. He clung to Hiram with a grin.
“You are the craziest convict I could ever hope to meet!” he cried as the prisoners streamed past in the golden light of a glorious new morning.
