Mirren looked at me, her head moving slowly from side to side. Then her eyes grew wide. “I’ve been here too long. Someone is shaking me.” Standing, she gave me an inscrutable look that might have held pity or judgment or both. “Put it away.” She pointed at the rest of my life lining the walls. “All of it. Leave the barest portion of yourself here,” she ordered. “Just the last few moments of your imprisonment.”
I tried to smile. I knew what she meant to do. “That won’t stop him.”
The anger I’d seen in her at the first, returned. “We’ll see, Lord Dura.”
Pressure, sharp and intense, built against my mind until my thoughts broke and broke again. Darkness grew at the edge of my vision, swallowing the walls of the sanctum, growing until it consumed the shelves, the trestle table, and the candle upon it. And me.
Chapter 34
I woke to cold and damp. My hands groped and found stone, wet with the same chill that tightened my legs into cramps. Gehata and Mirren would be coming for me. I tried to play the scene in my head, but my thoughts wouldn’t cooperate. They moved, sluggish as a stick floating on the Rinwash.
The bishop would come for me. I nodded. Yes, that felt right, but his men would enter my cell first. They’d come with their sword points out front. Gehata wouldn’t take the chance that I might touch one of them and turn him.
Had I?
I shook my head, and my thoughts oozed with the motion, muddy and thick. Had? Was I remembering?
One of them would cover my hands. Then they bound them.
Hints of visions haunted me. No. Gehata hadn’t been here yet. I cast further back, remembering my imprisoned isolation in perfect clarity. I needed to live, and for that I needed a plan.
Mirren would delve me for whatever information Gehata might find useful. What would that be? What had Gehata wanted?
I shook my head, but I couldn’t reconcile conjectures that felt like memories.
Power. Gehata wanted power.
He wanted the rest of the Vigil. If one of us remained outside of his control, his position as head of the Merum church was precarious at best. It wouldn’t take much to convince the rulers to gather their armies and march on Cynestol. And the Darkwater would be left undefended. Thousands upon thousands would venture into the forest like a deluge bringing ruin to the north.
After Mirren delved me, one of the guards, or perhaps Gehata himself, would open me with a dagger and let me bleed to death allowing plenty of time for my gift to find its way to—
I stopped as the barest hint of light shone outside my cell, without no sound. Gehata was coming, but where were his men? The light grew, and I withdrew into the corner of my cell as if I could find some escape there. Fear bubbled through the ruin of my thoughts.
Fight, I told myself. If I couldn’t hear the sound of boots, they weren’t coming for me in strength. A key turned in the lock.
Only Mirren stood in the hall. I threw up a hand to shield my eyes from the light of her torch, but I didn’t attack. Despite the fact that she showed no weapon, fear held me, and I wanted to cower in the corner and beg her to go away. I struggled to think as hints of nightmares and reality blended.
“The fear will fade,” she said, “but we have to get out of here. Dawn is less than an hour away.”
She held out a gloved hand. I didn’t take it, but I managed to step toward her. “We have to get Bolt,” I said. I tried to ignore the way my voice quavered.
“And the rest,” Mirren added. “The guards will change any minute. If they discover the keys gone, the cosp will fall on us like an avalanche.”
“Bolt first,” I said. We went up one level, my legs as confident as a newborn colt’s, and down the long hallway until we found his cell.
He blinked once in the lantern light and with that simple motion appeared to shed any indisposition of his captivity. “I don’t suppose you brought my sword.”
“That would have raised questions I couldn’t answer,” Mirren said. “We have to go back to the lower levels.”
I shook my head. My thoughts still wouldn’t cooperate. “Why?”
“I told you,” Mirren said. “We have to get the others.”
Instead of following, Bolt lashed out, grabbing Mirren by the arm. Her mouth opened in a silent cry of pain. She struggled to bring her other hand to bear, striving to touch him, but he caught her by the wrist and a mewing cry whispered from her.
“What did you do to him?” Bolt asked.
“I muddled his thoughts,” Mirren said. “Let’s go. We don’t have time for this.”
My guard shook his head. “Where did you learn how to do this?”
“From the man Bishop Gehata took.”
“Volsk.”
Bolt released Mirren’s arm, shoving her toward the stairs. “Run, girl.”
We went down the dark rock steps, splashing accumulated water with every other stride, passing the level where I’d been held to the one beneath. In the light of Mirren’s lamp it was indistinguishable from the others, but it held the sense of occupation, a hint of warmth or breath that belied the initial impression of emptiness.
Mirren took a dozen steps and opened the door on her right, raising the lamp, but no one ventured forth. “He’s weak,” she said.
We stepped into the cell and drew in a collective breath. Bolt reached down and lifted Volsk as easily as I would a young child, but his head lolled
