Ikemmu. He was a prisoner of the city while you were a prisoner in those caves.”
“Two prisoners, two different prisons,” Ilvani said. But she was listening, Vedoran thought. That was the important thing.
“Ashok was able to rescue you because he came from the same enclave that took your scouting party prisoner,” Vedoran said. “I saw it myself-the way he knew the layout of the tunnels, where the guards would be- only I couldn’t confirm it until now. Ilvani, Ashok was responsible for what happened to you.”
He waited for her reaction, but she only continued to stare at the parchment sheets in her hands. She didn’t appear to have heard him, or the words weren’t registering in her mind. She looked down at Ashok, but her gaze was turned inward.
“He looks peaceful,” she said.
“Even the guilty can seem at peace,” Vedoran said. “Ilvani, I’m sorry to have to tell you all this. I didn’t want to.”
“Uwan,” Ilvani said. “Natan. Ask them.”
“They were deceived as well,” Vedoran replied.
Ilvani’s face scrunched up, but there were no tears. She looked as if she might break apart instead. She brought her hands up in claws to cover her face.
Vedoran took a step toward her, but she backed up and screeched, “No! Ask them. Ask them, and they’ll tell me, and then it can be but not before. Before it’s just words, and you’re putting them together so they’ll sound pretty.” She looked at him with an expression very close to hatred in her eyes. “Why do you all do that?”
“We’ll make this right,” Vedoran said. “I’ll present the evidence to Uwan, and Ashok will be dealt with, I promise you.”
Ilvani looked at the parchment in her hands and said a series of words Vedoran didn’t understand. The parchment floated up from her palm, hung in the air for a breath, and vanished.
Vedoran caught his breath. “What did you do with them?” he cried.
“Safe,” Ilvani said. “They’re safe in the Ashok box until needed.” She looked at him, a hard set to her face. “Time to go,” she said.
A woman made of stone, Vedoran thought. He realized he wouldn’t get her to change her mind. He briefly cursed the loss of the evidence, but perhaps it was meant to be.
Who better to make the case before Uwan, than the woman whose life Ashok’s people had ruined?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Ashok awoke to a dull throb at the back of his skull. He was on his feet, blind, and breathing hot air. It didn’t take him long to assume the rest.
He was in a cell, chained deep in the caves behind the forges. Maybe it was Chanoch’s cell. He couldn’t tell for the hood covering his face. There were no sounds; the room was absolute silence and cold.
In a flash of morbid humor, Ashok remembered the cleric’s words to him, when he’d first woken in Ikemmu.
You have no one to blame but yourself, Ashok thought. You should have left the city when you had the chance. But you didn’t really want to escape, did you? Ever since he’d ridden out of that cave and left the slaughtered members of his enclave behind, he’d been looking for punishment in place of absolution. He’d betrayed his own people, and he’d betrayed Ikemmu by not confessing the truth.
Ashok only hoped, before it was all over, that he would be given the opportunity for that confession. If they left him alone in the dark, forgotten, he would fade away and still bear the shame.
No. It wouldn’t happen. Uwan would come. Ashok knew the leader would be there in the dark, at some moment. He hadn’t left Chanoch alone.
Ashok closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but he was aware of the lingering ache in his shoulder. His hands were numb from being held above his head. A tingling sensation ran down his arms. And he was cold, so cold all over, except where his breath was trapped inside the hood.
They were none of them sensations that he cared to think about. All were associated with a lack of feeling, a frozen state from which he couldn’t emerge. Ashok stomped his feet hard just to feel the shock go up his legs. He twisted his body from side to side as best he could, trying to coax some feeling back into his limbs, but the chains were suspended so tightly he had trouble drawing a full breath.
He tried to remember the journey back to Ikemmu, but his mind was choked with fog. There were snatches, bits of conversation where his name had featured prominently, but he couldn’t remember the words. He hoped Tatigan had reached the surface and his caravan safely, and he enjoyed the brief regret that he would never see what the world of Faerun looked like. He imagined that it would be a place full of people like Tatigan and Darnae, and that gave him comfort.
Some time passed, and perhaps he slept, but more likely Ashok thought he drifted in and out of stupor. Once a guard came into his cell with a bucket and helped him to relieve himself. Ashok was faintly grateful for not having to soil himself, but the guard never removed the hood, and Ashok felt it was one of the most humiliating experiences of his life.
The next time the door opened, Ashok didn’t detect the heavy tread of the guards, but a single set of footsteps. They stopped in front of his cell. Whomever it was, Ashok could hear their slow indrawn breaths, and feel the contemplative silence with which the stranger regarded him.
“Well met, Uwan,” Ashok said.
“The guards tell me you’ve been restless,” Uwan said. “That’s a good sign. If you’d been subdued, we’d have had to move you somewhere else. We won’t risk you fading.”
“So I haven’t been condemned yet?” Ashok said. He turned his head to follow Uwan’s pacing outside his cell, though it was a futile gesture to try to see through the hood.
“Not yet,” Uwan said. His tone told Ashok that it was a foregone conclusion. “The evidence is being gathered.”
“By Vedoran,” Ashok said.
“Yes,” Uwan replied, and he stopped pacing. Ashok heard his hands moving over the bars. He could picture the leader deciding how much he wanted to say.
“Ask your questions,” Ashok said. He’d been waiting for the moment, and felt a profound relief that the time had finally arrived. “I’ve nothing left to hide.”
“Is it true?” Uwan said. “Did you kidnap Ilvani?”
“No,” Ashok said. “Not directly. My father ordered the attack on the scouting party. I was sent out of the city to track down a pack of shadow hounds that had been harrying us. Between them and Ilvani’s party, we were surrounded.”
“A wise tactical decision,” Uwan said. “Your father is a shrewd leader.”
“My father was a butcher,” Ashok said. There was no passion in his words, but they were no less true for the lack of feeling. “He sacrificed my brothers to each other and to the rivalry within the enclave. We had a heavily fortified position in those caves; we didn’t have the constant threat of attack, and we launched no offensives against other enclaves.”
“So without any enemies to fight, your own people became the threat,” Uwan said.
“We fought amongst ourselves, took any excuse to stave off the shadows,” Ashok said. “When I came to this city and saw the arms you displayed, I thought, what an impossible challenge, to launch an attack against your forces.”
“You’d found exactly what you needed to pull your enclave together and focus its attention on a new enemy,” Uwan said.
“And maybe I could stop slaughtering my brothers,” Ashok said. “Yes, that was the goal.”
“Why didn’t you go through with the plan?” Uwan asked. “Vedoran and the others … You had them all together on your home soil. Why didn’t you give them up?”
