The first thing Eremit experienced upon awakening was a feeling of illness in his stomach, followed by the realization that he was in motion; it was only then that he became aware that he was in pain—his back, neck, left arm, and right knee were all sore, attributable, perhaps, to nothing more than the movement of the conveyance. The pain in his head, however, was insistent, and so powerful it interfered with his ability to reason. He tried to think of where he was: in near darkness, shaking back and forth behind the ca-clop ca-clop of a pair of horses, but he couldn’t remember, though it seemed, in his confused state, that he was on the verge of remembering, and then everything would make sense.
He looked around, in spite of the pain in his head that the light seemed to make worse, and realized that he was in the back of an iron carriage, the sort used to transport prisoners. There was a thin coating of straw at the bottom, and a barred window on each side.
His first thought, nearly instinctive, was to yell out of the window and ask why he was there, by what right, and whither bound. He did not do so for two reasons: first, because he remembered, from his reading of the law, that those who drove such conveyances were under orders to neither hear nor respond to anything said by a prisoner, and, second, because he was convinced that, should he yell, he would die from the pain in his head.
He felt around his head to see if there was a physical cause and found a good-sized lump in back, tender to the touch. How had it come to be there?
He shut his eyes and stretched out on the straw, grateful, at least, that there was room for him to straighten his legs. He tried to think, to remember how he had gotten there, but he could not. “Well,” he said to himself, “but had I committed a crime, I should think I would remember. But then, what do I remember? The dusk, the ocean with Livosha. And then dinner, and then … ah, my head! There was something important I had to do. What was it? I cannot remember! What has happened to me? What caused to me to be in this place?”
It was only then he noticed that his hands and feet were free and tried to recall what the law said about when prisoners should, can, or must be secured, and when he was unable to remember, had the thought that if only he weren’t in this carriage, he could find his law books and look it up, at which time he lost consciousness once more.
He was next awoken by a change in motion, to wit, the carriage stopped. His eyes opened, and, as one will do under such circumstances, took stock, as it were, of his condition. He no longer felt ill, which was all to the good, and the pain in his head was reduced, but he still could remember nothing after the dinner with Livosha, save that he had had something important to do. No doubt, he thought, he had somehow been mistaken for someone else, or in some other way an error had been made. But he was a practicing advocate, and, if not experienced, at least licensed and learned in the law. “Come,” he thought to himself. “It will be strange indeed if this cannot be set right. Yet I wish I could remember—”
His thoughts were interrupted, then, by the sound of the locks being removed from the wagon door, which door was then opened. Eremit gasped, and the only reason his knees did not give way was because of the circumstance that he was already on his back.
He had seen those in the Kinship of the Mask before, of course—wherever there was a court, even in the most isolated district, there would be one or two Kinsmen in their pure, blank, gray masks, their gray robes with the markings of the Iorich, and their massive, scythe-like swords slung behind their backs making sure there was no violence during proceedings, and that prisoners were treated fairly, but never permitted to escape. He had seen them, but he now discovered, to his shock, how different it was when he, himself, was the object of their cold, impartial, detached attention. He had, it seemed, because of shock, and injury, and confusion, not realized, or perhaps had been unwilling to realize, the extreme gravity of his circumstances. But now, as the two Kinsmen opened the door and he looked at their masks, beneath which could be seen only distant, emotionless eyes, the full weight fell upon him.
One of the Kinsmen spoke, then, saying, “A quarter of an hour for exercise.” He then nodded to the chamber pot that had been placed upon the ground and stepped back to exactly the proper distance that would permit him to draw his weapon and sever one of Eremit’s limbs, or perhaps his head, if he were given cause. Far from giving them cause, however, the young Iorich found himself unable to move, unable to speak, but merely overcome with a poisonous mix of terror and despondency.
The Kinsmen said nothing: Eremit realized that they had seen this before, that prisoners sometimes were brought so low as to be unable to move, unable even to respond. But this, to the Kinsmen, was a matter of indifference. They had followed the rules and said what they were required to say, thus they had done their duty. And the knowledge of this bore Eremit down, and he could not help but cry out, “What have I done? What crime have I committed that this should befall me?”
It must be said that even in this state, he spoke not to the Kinsmen, whose perfect indifference he knew well, but to the gods, whose indifference he only suspected. Still, in the end, it made little difference to whom he spoke.
Years before he had had an undistinguished sword master who had managed to make of Eremit an undistinguished swordsman. But the sword master had taught him one thing that remained with him and came to his mind at this moment: “If you are scratched, make it seem as if you are injured; but if you are injured, act as if you were scratched. The knowledge of your condition is as valuable to your opponent as a low-line opening.”
So then. Yes. He would not let them see his condition. He made himself rise and exited the wagon, doing his best to remain balanced on his none-too-secure legs, used the chamber pot, and walked within the prescribed area.
He looked around but could not identify the region; he had never been here before, and was unable to guess even what direction they had gone. The ground was flat for the most part, with some gentle hills, and no smell of the sea. He looked at the top of the iron carriage and saw that it was piled high with barrels and crates: crates for meals for himself and the Kinsmen, barrels of water and fodder for the horses. The quantity told him that there was a long journey ahead, and that his captors had no intention of stopping before its end.
One of the Kinsmen informed him it was time to resume the journey and placed a small basket into the wagon, announcing, “Your meal.” Without a word, Eremit climbed back into the carriage and sat down as the door was locked and bolted, and the journey resumed.
Inside the basket was a loaf of bread, a cold leg of fowl, and a flask. He had a bite of the bread and one of fowl, then discovered he wasn’t hungry. He drank some water from the flask and closed his eyes.
My son, we must send you on a mission.
Yes, yes. That was it. A conspiracy, a mission to … Dorin, the Count of Westward. And he had gone and been given a meeting.…
It gradually came back to his memory, but it took somewhat longer for him to fully realize the significance, and then he gasped, and suddenly, in spite of his resolve, he cried out. What had happened? Had the conspiracy been real, and, if so, had it been foiled? He clenched his teeth and his fists. It must have been real. At any rate, it had penetrated into Dorindom Castle, right under the nose of Dorin himself.
What would Livosha think? He must have been accused of a crime; would she believe it? When he came home, would she wish to see him? Home. Would he even have one? What had happened? And so he discovered the torment of ignorance. It came to him that, of all things, he most wished to speak to Livosha about his predicament. He had never been so alone.
He felt himself slipping into melancholy, or worse than melancholy, mania; it seemed as if he was only holding on to his reason as an inexperienced driver holds on to a maddened team: with no hope of controlling it, hoping only that by hanging on long enough it will become easier.
In order to distract himself, he stared out of the barred window, and so eventually deduced they were traveling north, although to what destination he could not imagine; he knew of nothing in the north that had the least to do with him. He then set about taking a careful inventory of his possessions. His sword belt was gone, of course; he had, himself, handed it over to the guards. He looked in his purse and found the “handful of money” he had been sent off with, and found that it totaled fourteen imperials, three orbs, and seven coppers: a goodly sum, and one he was pleased he had not been robbed of (for although robbing a prisoner was strictly forbidden by the Kinship, yet he also knew that this rule had sometimes been ignored).
Next he looked through his pouch and at once saw that the pendant he had been given was gone. In fact, everything had been removed except for a certain paper, tied up in ribbons. He held it near the window and saw that it was a reference to certain legal documents that he was to invoke while presenting his case to the Lord High Justicer. And it was seeing this that, if the reader will permit the expression, pushed young Eremit over the edge.
For a time, then, frustration and despair overcame his thinking, and he screamed and cried out and threw himself against the walls of the iron wagon over and over, calling out to the gods, demanding answers, demanding release, as a thousand thousand prisoners before him had done, and the knowledge that these cries and gestures were, to his guards, so much sand in the desert, could no more stop them than the knowledge of the hard ground beneath can stop a man from falling once he has begun.
At last, exhausted, he fell back onto the straw and, as the wagon made its relentless way forward, he welcomed the oblivion that claimed him.
He would never have a clear memory of the next month, as the iron wagon rolled steadily northward. It gradually became colder, both from the failing of the year and the steady northward motion; during one stop, of which there were four a day as well as a longer one at night, one of the Kinsman threw a heavy woolen blanket into the wagon. The young Iorich wrapped it around himself without a thought, and the journey continued. He and Livosha had spoken of working together to learn the spells that would permit them to speak to each other’s minds, and, indeed, had spent pleasant hours discussing the pleasure in being able to have such conversations when one or the other was away. But alas, they had never gone beyond discussing it; reading the law rarely allowed one a great deal of leisure time. Nevertheless, he tried—imagining Livosha, or sometimes his mother or father, and attempting to form the spell out of sheer desire. We might say that, though disappointed, he was not surprised at his failure. And at least it provided a certain amount of distraction as the days and miles went by.
For a while, then, he gave himself over into imaginings, especially imagining that instead of devoting himself to the law, he had studied the magical arts, and thinking how he would cast spells to befuddle his captors and unlock the wagon and escape, as is so often done in romances (although, as he well knew, almost never in life, as the Kinship would always take precautions when transporting a sorcerer). These flights of imagination at first served to distract Eremit, but then they, themselves, became an additional source of torment.
After a full month had passed, Eremit became aware of new sounds. Though still taken by the lethargy of despair, he nevertheless looked out of the windows. Through the right-hand window he saw farm country, with rows of strong trees protecting plowed fields, though now, after the harvest, they were empty. Sometimes they would pass an oxcart going the other direction, full of supplies from the nearest town; sometimes a horseman would overtake them, a post rider at a gallop, or a nobleman riding for pleasure.
He realized suddenly that, once more, he was smelling the sea, only there were differences: there were more intense sulfur notes to it, and the seaweed seemed sweeter, and there was less of the odor of iodine than he was used to. Though he had not been keeping track of the days, nor had he made any effort to guess at their travel speed, he now calculated as best he could and concluded they had come north something like a thousand miles. If in addition to north their journey had taken them slightly west, then, from his memory of the maps he had once studied, they should be near the metropolis of Northport, the upper point of the Great Southwest Triangle, of which the other two were Candletown and Zerika’s Point. Here, it could be said, truly, that the south ended and the north began.
But why would he be here?
He shook his head and once more lay down on the straw, an arm over his eyes.
When he was next let out for exercise and to rest the horses, he could see a long, sandy beach with gentle waves rolling in. He went as close to it as his captors permitted and watched. There are some who see the Ocean-sea as an enemy, some who see her as a very wet granary, some who see her as a challenge, and some to whom she represents freedom. It must be said that, of this latter group, few of them live near her; this is more the response of some who live far inland when coming to visit her for the first time, and they afterward dream of her as a means of escaping a life of hardship, or privation, or servitude, or ennui. Eremit, who had lived his life within a stone’s throw of her shores, had never been one of these, though he had often admired her beauty as one might admire the beauty of a Dzur that has been taken in captivity and is being paraded through the streets: that is to say, a beauty, and yet one not to be embraced, but to be admired from a distance and treated with the highest respect.
And yet now, for the first time, something of that feeling came over him, and he longed to escape into her arms—not to take his own life; he had not yet fallen that low—but rather a more traditional escape—to sail away beyond the reach of his captors. The reader must understand, this longing never approached a plan, nor even an intention; he understood the Kinship of the Mask too well to even consider escape a possibility, nor would he have known what to do with such freedom as an escape would give him. Yet as he watched the endless roll of the waves, gentle as they were at that place and at that time, the longing came over him.
On hearing the command to re-enter the carriage, he took a last look at the shore, sighed, and climbed. The ride continued for several hours, until at last it pulled to a stop. Though scarcely interested, Eremit looked out, and saw that they were now in Northport itself, and, in fact, at the very port, which was proved by the oddly shaped harbor that is known so well, full of ships of all sorts, from heavy skybenders to powerful trimarans, to practical yawls, to yachts and sloops.
The door of the carriage opened, and Eremit saw the Kinsman was holding fetters and manacles connected by heavy chain. He felt a sudden thrill of fear at this sight, which was remarkable mostly because, until it happened, he had thought himself beyond feeling anything. Knowing there was no point in resistance, he held out his hands and stood quietly while he was thoroughly restrained, pleased—if the word pleased can be used under such circumstances—that the length of chain between his ankles permitted him to walk naturally.
One of the Kinsmen set out; the other gave Eremit a gentle push, then fell in behind him. In only a few steps, he could see where they were going, for directly before them was a ketch, fore-and-aft rigged, two masts, three sails, with the mizzenmast well forward from where it would be in a yawl. It had, no doubt, once been a fishing boat, perhaps a trawler, but now he could see the top of an iron cage sticking up from the hold to just beneath the height of the boom. At least I will have room to stand, he thought, noting the depth of the hold. The reader may observe that he didn’t for an instant concern himself with where his destination might be; he was too stunned and melancholic to care. That he even gave a thought to such elementary matters as his future comfort was, in his own mind, worthy of note. He tried to rouse himself with the reminder that, sooner or later, there must be a trial, and, whatever had happened, whatever he might be accused of, he would no doubt need all of his wits to present his best case. Yet so overwhelmed was he by the frustration of not knowing what had become of his mother and father, nor Livosha, nor how this had all happened, that his spirit could only respond by assuming an apathy that, in its way, prevented his over-strained imagination from devouring his intellects.
They made their way onto the vessel. The captain, an Orca, bowed deeply to the Kinsmen and ignored Eremit entirely. One of the crew—there were four of them as well as the captain, all of them Orca—pulled open the grating, and Eremit climbed in without a word. The top clanged shut, and there came the click of a lock, then another.
As such cells go, Eremit knew, there were many worse. As he had surmised, he was able to stand up in it, and, like the wagon, it was large enough that he was able to lie down as well. Moreover, there was a bed of sorts: an iron cot built into the side, with a straw mattress and a thick blanket. There was also a slops pail that was permanently built in and opened to the water below. Many prisoners being transported had, as Eremit knew well from his study of lawsuits brought against the Empire for mistreatment, suffered in far worse accommodations.
He sat on the cot with his head in his hands, then lay down, staring up at the bars of his cage. In a short time, he felt the motion as the boat left the dock; this was followed by the sound of the sweeps being placed, after which he felt her begin to cut through the waves. The wind, which Eremit had not noticed, must have been kind, because presently there came the sounds of the sails being set, and the sweeps stopped. He felt it as she found her wind, and for an instant, all of his feelings were concentrated in the desire to be on deck, to watch as she rode the waves. As this was, of course, impossible, he bit his lips until the blood came and clenched his fists, until, at last, lulled by the gentle motion, he was able to relax.
He was given four meals a day, simple meals of fish and bread, but they helped relieve the tedium. More, he was permitted on deck twice a day to exercise, during which time the two Kinsmen watched him closely, for it was not unknown, under these circumstances, for a prisoner to take his own life by throwing himself into the water, the weight of the fetters, manacles, and chains making any thought of rescue impossible. The captain and crew, for their part, ignored him entirely, not even acknowledging his presence by so much as a nod of the head. In the event, Eremit had not the least intention of taking his own life, and this for two reasons: the first was that he harbored a fear of drowning beyond all other fears, and the second was that, though frightened and doleful and near despair, still, he had not yet given up hope. The very presence of the Kinsmen is why he had this hope, for they worked to see that the rule of the courts was obeyed, and before imprisonment, execution, branding, or flogging, by law there must come a trial. He was resolved, therefore, to attempt to keep his wits as sharp as he could, and, still more, to hold off the melancholy that threatened to overwhelm him, until he could be given a chance to defend himself against whatever charge, from whatever source, might be brought.
The journey lasted twenty-six days. Just after noon on the twenty-seventh, the young Iorich was on deck exercising when he saw they were headed into fog—indeed, the thickest cloud of fog Eremit had ever seen. The crew did not seem disturbed by it and entered without any change in course, nor even so much as ringing the ship’s bell, as was usual under such circumstances. All that happened as they entered was that Eremit was at once directed into his cell, which he quickly realized was because the fog was so thick that his guards would be unable to see him even five paces distant.
The voyage continued, from this point, less than half an hour before there was activity above him, and the motion of the vessel changed. In the distance, he heard the ringing of a bell, but a far larger and deeper and more portentous bell than the one on the boat.
Then, at length, there came an odd sound, like the howl of the wind during a fierce storm, yet there was no corresponding effect on the vessel, and, only two minutes after that, there came a gentle bump, as if it were at a dock.
The hatch was raised on Eremit’s cell, and one of the Kinsman looked down from out of the fog and gestured. Eremit climbed out of his cell and followed his guards to the gangplank, which he trod carefully, keeping his eyes fixed on the back of the head of the Kinsman in front of him. From what he could tell, he was on an island that was all mountain; that is, the slope was steep and seemed to run all the way to shore, save for a pathway that appeared to have been cut out of it and a wooden dock that jutted out from some thirty or forty feet. He was escorted along this dock onto the pathway, which proved to be made of flagstone.
Upon setting his feet on shore, accompanied as it always was by the odd sensation that the solid ground was moving, he having become so used to the motion of the boat, he found himself surrounded by six strangers, four of them in Iorich uniforms of the more traditional kind, another in the same uniform except wearing gold braid around his shoulder, and the sixth, surprisingly, appeared to be an Athyra, who wore simple dark colored robes and stood apart from the others. One of the Kinsmen produced a key and put it into the hand of the one with the braided uniform, whom Eremit concluded must be the leader of the guard company. This individual accepted the key and, as he did so, exchanged a deep, exact, formal bow with the two Kinsmen, whereupon one of the Kinsman turned to Eremit and said simply, “You have arrived.”
The last thing the two Kinsmen did before returning to the ship, was to bow deeply to Eremit, as was the tradition, to signal that he was no longer merely a nameless object to be delivered, but was, to them, once more a person. The brutal irony of this traditional gesture, as if they had performed a service for him, struck Eremit almost as a blow, and he quickly turned away as he heard their heavy footsteps retreating up the gangplank.
He looked at the four guards and their commander, who now studied him with the same impersonal yet professional curiosity that a butcher might display when studying a kethna, and then the commander said, “Welcome to the Burning Island. You will follow me.”
“Burning Island,” remarked Eremit as he set in to follow his jailer while the others fell in around him. “How does it come to have such a name?”
The silence that followed this question was sufficient to convince Eremit that these guards, like the Kinsmen, had no intention of communicating with the prisoner. He sighed and contented himself with following the rocky path along which he was led, which at once began to rise and curve to the left. He could hear the crash of the waves on his right but was still unable to see anything through the intense fog.
The path continued for some small distance before turning abruptly into what appeared to be the side of a hill or a mountain, although Eremit had not been aware of anything on his left except the impenetrable fog. They entered through a sort of doorway that showed signs of having been carved out of the rock of the hillside and could be shut by means of a heavy, thick, wooden door, bound with iron bands, its hinges embedded in solid rock. Eremit’s last view of the outside world was the fog, after which he followed his jailers into the hill.
He did not see the light of day again for more than six hundred years.