From the instant the girl moved, Aile had willed her arm to lift. She threw the whole of her mind at the defiant piece of her body. It twitched, and again. The girl had not noticed, busy rubbing a knife in the mixture and humming to herself. Finally, it lifted. The elf pulled the knife from the bowl and Aile found the unwilling arm with her mind. She commanded it now, barely. She made her thumb stiff and swung, hitching her shoulder as best she could. Her aim was true, thumb pressing into the soft meat beyond the girl’s bandage. The mixture and tool were dropped and the elf screamed out. She stumbled backward away from the bed, terrified, scrambling herself beyond the cage door and pushing it closed.
“How? I used so much… Guards!” She turned and fled from the cell.
Time was short, Aile knew. They would come soon, to restrain her. She could move her arm freely. The rest of her body was creeping back to her, from the very edges toward the center of her being. Poisons meant to keep a body asleep often fell away quickly. Her feet moved first, and then her knee. She flung the useless limbs sideways, to the edge of the mat she was laid on. If she could stand, she would be able to do more. She crawled, wrists flopping awkwardly. She had arranged herself to stand when she heard loud steps. She forced the muscles in her thigh to pull the leg forward, her foot planting. The other following. She pressed up, losing her balance. Aile stumbled back into the wall behind, barely keeping the progress she had made at the cost of a strong knock to the shoulder. She pushed away from the wall, coming upright properly for the first time just as shoes reached the floor to her left.
Aile steeled her expression as the two elves with odd hair came to the door of her cell.
“Be calm,” the taller one said.
Unlikely.
“If you enter this cell, I will kill you.”
The taller turned, “Bring others.”
“Stop.”
The voice was aged and filled with authority. She dared not turn her head to look, worried that she would lose her balance in the attempt.
“There is no need. Not until the ceremony.”
Footsteps climbed the stairs and Aile kept her eyes focused on the men in front of her. They grimaced, looking at one another, and left without another word. The moment she was sure they were gone, Aile crumpled to the pad beneath her. Not much more than a sack stuffed with down and hay, if the noise it made was anything to go by. Her muscles ached as much as she’d ever known them to. It was the price of her consciousness, however. One gladly paid.
Hours passed. The girl returned, sheepish and not nearly so talkative as she had been. Her bandages had been changed and she brought food.
“I have… it’s supper.”
Aile walked slowly to the girl, hiding shaky legs as best she could. The elf held the plate through the bars. Aile looked over it and slapped it to the ground.
“I will not be poisoned.”
“It is not…”
The elf became sad at that and left with her head low. Aile went back to the pad. She worked her muscles firmly between her hands, hoping to bring them to some better state before next she saw elf faces. The cell and the room around it were thoroughly plain. A grain cellar, not some purpose built thing but it isolated her from the world well enough. The only cell was her own. They had dressed her in a gown of sheer silk and white lace. A strange thing on its own, but Aile had smelled the herbs the girl mixed. Given as they had been to Aile, the mash worked as a powerful sleep agent, but applied to the skin and left there, it served as a long acting calmative and hallucinogenic. A drug to make one docile, to brainwash them.
The night passed without another visit and the day beyond saw the girl make several more attempts at feeding her. There was no sense in risking their poisons. It was dusk when things changed their shape. The elves with the strange haircuts returned. Her Fire was still lost within her somewhere, held prisoner by the lingering poison. She stood, ready to do what she could with tired, feeble limbs that still only barely did as she asked.
The key went into the cell door.
“Try nothing. We do not wish to harm you.”
Aile sat placid on the cushion, waiting. She would have one chance, most like. She had hid the mortar beside her, near the wall. She swung it hard as they came close, but was slower than she had expected. The attack was deflected, the target unperturbed. It was futile, she knew. She swung her free fist and it was caught easily. The limb was twisted around, put behind her, and the elf forced her against the wall.
“Come!” He called.
The girl with the patch appeared beside her, gobbing a familiar smelling paste at the back of her ears. Aile felt her meager strength drain and the stones in her vision began to shift. The speed of the world was odd, speeding and slowing with a will of its own. They dragged her from the cell and she was stripped of the white gown. For the first time, she was taken above. A wide field, empty but for four raging fires and gathered people in a circle at the center of them. She was walked past it all, taken to a stone table and laid on it roughly. Her limbs were bound. She could hear whispers from all directions. They waxed and waned in the night air. She could feel every exposed part of herself too sensitively. Her nipples grew hard in the cold air. The restraints at her wrists and ankles did their job. She could not
