Oh, Eowen!
Chapter Twenty-One
At Southwatch time drifted away like a cloud across the summer blue, and Coll Ohmsford could only watch helplessly as it passed him by. His imprisonment continued unchanged, his life an uneasy compendium of boredom and tension. His thoughts were unfettered, but led him nowhere. He dreamed of the past, of the life he had enjoyed in the Vale, and of the world that lay without the black walls of his confinement, but his dreams had turned tattered and faded. No one came for him. He began to accept that no one would. He spent his days in the exercise yard, sparring with Ulfkingroh, the gnarled, scarred, taciturn fellow into whose care Rimmer Dall had given him. Ulfkingroh was as tough as nails and he worked Coll until the Valeman thought he would drop. With padded cudgels, heavy staffs, blunted swords, and bare hands, they exercised and trained as if fighters preparing for battle, sometimes all day, frequently until they were sweating so hard that the dust they raised in the yard ran from their bodies in black stripes. Ulfkingroh was a Shadowen, of course—but he didn’t seem like one. He seemed like any normal man, albeit harder and more sullen. At times, Coll almost liked him. He spoke little, content to let his expertise with weapons do his talking for him. He was a skilled and experienced fighter, and it became a point of pride with him that he pass what he knew on to the Valeman. Coll, for his part, made the best of his situation, taking advantage of the one diversion he was allowed, learning what he could of what the other was willing to teach, playing at battle as if it meant something, and keeping fit for the time when it really would.
Because sooner or later, he promised himself over and over again, he would have his chance to escape.
He thought of it constantly. He thought of little else. If no one knew he was there, if no one would come to save him, then clearly it was up to him to save himself. Coll was resourceful in the manner of all Valemen,—he was confident he would find a way. He was patient as well, and his patience was perhaps the more important attribute. He was watched whenever he was out of his cell, whenever he went down the dark halls of the monolith to the exercise yard and whenever he went back up again. He was allowed to spend as much time sparring with Ulfkingroh as he wished and allowed as well to visit with the rugged fellow to the extent that he was able to engage the other in conversation, but always he was watched. He could not afford to make a mistake.
Still, he never doubted that he would find a way.
He saw Rimmer Dall only twice after the First Seeker visited him in his cell. Each time it was from a distance, an unexpected glimpse that lasted only a moment before the other was gone. Each time the cold eyes were all he could remember afterward. Coll looked for him everywhere at first until he realized it was becoming something of an obsession and that he had to stop it. But he never stopped thinking of what the big man had told him, of how Par was a Shadowen, too, of how the magic would consume him if he did not accept the truth of his identity, and of how in his madness he was a danger to his brother. Coll did not believe what Rimmer Dall had told him—yet he could not bring himself to disbelieve either. The truth, he decided, lay somewhere in between, in that gray area amid the speculations and lies. But the truth was hard to decipher, and he would never learn it there. Rimmer Dall had his own reasons for what he was doing and he was not about to reveal them to Coll. Whatever they were, whatever the reality of the Shadowen and their magic, Coll was convinced that he had to reach his brother.
So he trained in the exercise yard by day, lay awake sorting out chances and possibilities by night, and all the while fought back against the insidious possibility that nothing would come of any of it.
Then one day, several weeks after he had been released from his cell, while sparring once again with Ulfkingroh in the exercise yard, he caught sight of Rimmer Dall passing down a walkway between two alcoves. At first it looked as if part of him had been cut away. Then he realized that the First Seeker was carrying something draped over one arm—something that at first seemed like nothing because it was so black it had the appearance of a piece of a new moon’s night. Coll stopped in his tracks, then backed away, staring. Ulfkingroh glared in irritation, then glanced back over his shoulder to see what had caught the Valeman’s eye.
“Huh!” he grunted when he saw what Coll was looking at. “There’s nothing there that concerns you. Put up your hands.”
“What is it he carries?” Coll pressed.
Ulfkingroh braced his staff against the ground and leaned on it with exaggerated patience. “A cloak, Valeman. It’s called a Mirrorshroud. See how black it is? See how it steals away the light, just like a spill of black ink? Shadowen magic, little fellow.” The rough face tightened about a half smile. “Know what it does?” Coll shook his head. “You don’t? Good! Because you’re not supposed to! Now put up your hands!”
They went back to sparring, and Coll, who was no little fellow and every bit as big and strong as Ulfkingroh, gained a measure of revenge by striking the other so hard he was knocked from his feet and left stunned for several minutes after.
That night Coll lay awake thinking about the Mirrorshroud and wondering what it was for. It was the first tangible piece of Shadowen magic he had ever seen. There were other magics, of course, but they were hidden from him. The biggest and most important was something kept deep in the bowels of the tower that hummed and throbbed and sometimes almost sounded as if it were screaming, something huge and very frightening. He envisioned it as a dragon that the Shadowen had managed to chain, but he knew he was being too simplistic. Whatever it was, it was far more impressive and terrible than that. There were other things as well, concealed behind the doors through which he was never allowed, secreted in the catacombs into which he could never pass. He could sense their presence, the brush of it against his skin, the whisper of it in his mind. Magic, all of it, Shadowen conjurings and talismans, things dark and evil.
Or not, if you believed Rimmer Dall. But he did not believe the First Seeker, of course. He never had believed him.
Still, he could not help wondering.
Two days later, while he was taking a break in the yard, the sweat still glistening on his body like oil, the First Seeker appeared out of the shadows of a door and came right up to him. Over one arm he carried the Mirrorshroud like a fold of stolen night. Ulfkingroh started to his feet, but Rimmer Dall dismissed him with a wave of his gloved hand and beckoned Coll to follow. They walked from the light back into the cooler shadows, out of the midday sun, away from its glare. Coll squinted and blinked as his eyes adjusted. The other man’s face was all angles and planes in the faint gray light, the skin dead and cold, but the sharp eyes certain.
“You train hard, Coll Ohmsford,” he said in that familiar whispery voice. “Ulfkingroh loses ground on you every day.”
Coll nodded without speaking, waiting to hear what the other had really come to tell him.
“This cloak,” Rimmer Dall said, as if in answer. “It is time that you understood what it is for.”
Coll could not hide his surprise. “Why?”
The other glanced away as if thinking through his answer. The gloved hand lifted and fell again, a black scythe. “I told you that your brother was in danger, that you in turn were in danger, all because of the magic and what it might do. I had thought to use you to bring your brother to me. I let it be known you were here. But your brother remains in Tyrsis, unwilling to come for you.”
He paused, looking for Colls response. Coll kept his face an expressionless mask.
“The magic he hides within himself,” the First Seeker whispered, “the magic that lies beneath the wishsong, begins to consume him. He may not even realize it yet. He may not understand. You’ve sensed that magic in him, haven’t you? You know it is there?”