"I don't suppose this means were going to dinner?"
Naitachal inquired innocently.
"Silence, prisoner!" one of the guards shouted. "No talking! You're needed elsewhere!"
Naitachal already knew where.
The Prison of Souls.
Chapte Alaire remained crouched on the cold, stone floor, lis- tening for any signs of his captors. He groped for a weapon, but the mages had been thorough; they'd even taken his belt along with his little belt-knife. He listened with every fiber, but heard nothing but his pounding heart and his shallow breathing.
The room was as frigid as the pond in the garden, and his breath fogged before his face in the darkened room. A light source at the entrance cast a dim trian- gle on the floor; hard to tell what it was; perhaps an oil lamp, or a perhaps a candle. Flickering light made moving shadows all around him, the only movement in the room since he'd awakened.
Well, whatever is going on, they aren't going to come back for me right now, I guess. He relaxed a lit- tle, and straightened from his crouch. Well, is everything intact? Have they hamstrung me, or any- thing? I wouldn't put it past them.
But other than bruises and an aching head -- and the fact that he was still stiff and cold -- everything seemed to be in working order. His clothing was still intact, though he did wish it was black; that would have been useful for lurking in the shadows. The back of his head had a knot on it, his neck had a slight cut on it from the dagger at his throat, and there were some other slight injuries he didn't remember taking that were probably from the fight. If they had done anything else to him, he saw no indications of it.
The spell they had cast to take his soul, however, still fogged his mind. He felt as if he had awakened from a very deep sleep -- as if, in fact, he still was not quite awake.
He vaguely recalled that his mother, Grania, had reached across the vast distances separating their king- doms and had somehow broken the spell that kept his soul locked up in the crystal.
No, he corrected himself. She didn't break it. She inspired me to break it! Mother, how in the name of heaven did you do that? And where are you now?
He listened for her soft voice, waited for her gentle touch on his mind, but sensed nothing. She was gone now, as far away from him now as she had ever been.
He felt somehow abandoned, and terribly alone.
Naitachal -- Kai -- Lyam -- oh gods. What are they doing to you? Are you dead? Or have they turned you into crystals too? Panic and helplessness over- came him for a moment, bringing him close to tears.
But tears would not help his friends, nor would they save him. He could not remain here forever.
First, I need to cover my tracks, he thought, glanc- ing around the dark room, at the rows of shelves containing the coffins. Alaire shuddered at the reminder that a few moments ago he had been in one of them, destined to stay in it indefinitely while his soul was suspended in that strange state of numb not- being. Far above, on another row of shelves, he saw the crystals, hundreds of them. Each one was about the size of his thumb, each in its own little wooden cubicle, suspended with wire.
The crystal seemed so much larger, when I was in it, he thought. When he took a few steps, his boot crunched on something. The floor was covered with broken crystal.
He took his booted foot and swept the remains of the crystal under one of the shelves. There were still some pieces left, but he had cleaned up enough to fool the casual observer. Next, he pulled his former coffin off the shelf and dragged it to a corner, where he slid it under one of the lower shelves, out of The next task was not one he looked forward to. He almost decided it wouldn't be necessary, but when he saw the big, gaping space his coffin had once occu- pied, he knew that if he didn't put something in its place someone would notice.
I must have raised enough magic getting out of that damned thing that I'm surprised nobody's noticed yet.
Then again, someone might have, and they might even be on their way down right now.
He paused to listen for approaching footsteps, heard only the distant drip of water somewhere, and went about his task with tightly controlled fear.
These people are not dead, he reminded himself.
They're only sleeping. Under a The coffin lids were fortunately not nailed on. He opened the first one on his right and peered in. The man looked like a poor vagrant, passed out from too much to drink. He wasn't breathing, but his skin was a good color, and while it was cool to Alaire's hesitant touch, it was not as icy cold as a corpse would be in this place.
But his soul is gone, he said to himself, and shud- dered. He doesn't look anything like me. Keep going.
He replaced the lid and began a thorough search for someone who resembled himself. He came upon one poor soul who must have been about seventeen, with blond hair and a set of clothes that were a cut above poverty level. This boy had a much larger nose, and even larger ears, but other than that he looked vaguely like Alaire.
This one will have to do, Alaire decided, and replaced the lid, and then began dragging it towards the vacant space. With a great deal of difficulty he managed to lift the boy's coffin up to his former space and, panting and sweating, pushed it into place.
Now I've got to get out of here and find Kai!
For a dreadful moment he thought that his friend might have also been imprisoned here, before he remembered the Prison of Souls was only for magi- cians. And Kai was no magician. He must be somewhere else.
Alaire found a key ring, with four large keys on it, hanging on the wall beside the door. One of them opened the door to this very room, but he had no idea what the others matched. They must go to something, he thought. Might come in handy. He wrapped the keys in a scarf, to mute any sounds they might make rattling together, and stuffed them in his pocket. He entered the corridor just outside, and found himself at the juncture of three hallways, each leading off at odd angles. Candles flickered from sconces, providing dim illumination.
Wish I had a decent weapon. Those candleholders might be better than nothing, but not by much. He considered them, then rejected the idea. No, I couldn't even pry them out of the wall.
Since he had no idea of which way to go, he picked a corridor at random and headed away from his prison-room. The corridors twisted and turned at odd intervals, not really leading anywhere, and not revealing any new rooms or chambers. It was as if the corridors were an end unto themselves, a laby- rinth with no clear entrances or exits. Dust on the floor indicated no foot traffic had come this way for quite a while. The footprints he left behind concerned him briefly, but he could see no other way, short of levitation, of avoiding them.
And Naitachal hasn't bothered to teach me that ye The first indication that he had made any progress out of the labyrinth was when he scented the most vile stench he'd had the misfortune to encounter. His first impression was that this was a decomposing corpse, laid to rest down here and forgotten. But there were other odors besides the stench, some of old food and stale wine, some of fresh food, and some he could not even identify.
Dead, yet alive. He was afraid to find out what this thing was, questioned whether or not he really needed to investigate it. What can this smell possibly have to do with my escape from this place?