How will anyone save me? he wondered.
He thought of Borenson lying on the ground, his belly pierced by a lance.
They won’t save me. He realized. They can’t. Even if whole armies sailed from Mystarria, they wouldn’t be able to bring enough men to penetrate the enemy defenses.
It was with a rising sense of despair that they passed through the vale, rode up a winding mountainside, and entered a bleak fortress, its walls crude but thick and functional.
Once inside the city walls, the Bright Ones dragged Fallion and Jaz to a heavily guarded building, and into a dungeon where the tortured cries of men and women could be heard.
They passed a cell where a young woman sobbed noisily, cradling her right arm, trying to stop the bleeding from a stump where her hand should have been.
They were taken to a small cell and chained to a wall, their hands stretched overhead, the weight of their whole bodies resting on their wrists.
The prison cell consisted of three walls made of heavy black basalt blocks piled one atop another. The fourth wall was formed of iron, bars with a small door in it.
The bottom of the door had a clearing of perhaps three inches, just tall enough so that a plate could be slid under, for those who were lucky enough to eat.
Fallion and Jaz were not afforded the luxury of food. They were left hanging against a cold stone wall, slick with greasy water and mold.
There was no light.
Fallion could sometimes hear the snarls of strengi-saats deeper in the prison, and he feared that they prowled the hallways. He hoped that the bars would keep the monsters out.
And he heard Jaz crying, his young frame shuddering.
Fallion wanted to hold his little brother, offer him comfort, but he couldn’t even see Jaz’s face.
Jaz asked after a long while, “Do you… think that they’ll kill us?”
“We’re worth… more alive.” Fallion could not get his air. “They’ll probably hold us-for ransom.”
“What kind of ransom?”
“Forcibles, gold. Maybe… land,” Fallion said.
He wished that he believed it. They were the Sons of the Oak, the children of the Earth King. Borenson believed that with a word, whole nations would rise up to follow at their command.
And so, Fallion realized, to someone like Shadoath, they might represent a danger. They might just be worth more dead than alive.
The manacles were cutting into Fallion’s wrist; he wriggled painfully, trying to ease the pressure.
“How long?” Jaz asked. “How long will they… keep us?”
“A few weeks,” Fallion calculated. “Someone will have to sail back to Mystarria, raise a ransom, come back.”
“Oh,” Jaz said forlornly.
Fallion offered some more words of comfort, and after a bit he asked, “Would you like me to sing to you?”
That had always worked when Jaz was small and troubled by bad dreams.
“Yes,” Jaz said.
Fallion remembered a song about rabbits, one that had been Jaz’s favorite a few years ago, and he began to sing, struggling for breath.
“North of the moon, south of the sun, rabbits run, rabbits run.
Through winter snow, summer gardens, having fun, having fun.
Faster than wolves, fast as birdsong,
Rabbits run, rabbits run.
North of the moon, south of the sun.”
Someone came marching toward them. Fallion saw a flicker of light and heard the jangle of keys. His stomach had begun to tighten, and he hoped that it was someone bringing food.
But it was only a brutish man who stubbed past their cell, bearing a smoking torch. He wore a loincloth, a blood-spattered vest, and a black hood that hid his face. In his right hand he carried an implement of torture-a bone saw.
Fallion peered at Jaz, saw his brother’s face pale with fear.
The torturer went past their cell, and Jaz asked, “Do you think he’ll come for us?”
“No,” Fallion lied. “We’re too valuable.”
Down the hall, the torturer went to work, and the screaming began-a man whimpering and pleading for mercy.
He must have been round a corner, for Fallion could see little light.
“Are you sure?” Jaz asked.
“Don’t worry,” Fallion told him. “They… just want to scare us.”
So Fallion hung against the wall, his weight born by the manacles around his wrists, and sang to his little brother, offering comfort whenever he could.
His were small manacles, made especially for women and children, he realized.
They cut into his wrists, made them swell and pucker. He had to wiggle his hands from time to time, try to find a more comfortable position, in order to keep the blood flowing to his fingers. He’d seen a man once, Lord Thangarten, who had been kept hanging in a dungeon in Indhopal so long that his fingers had died, and he was left a cripple.
Yet if I wiggle too much, he knew, in a few days my wrists will chafe and begin to bleed.
So Fallion hung on the wall and tried to minimize his pain. With his wrists bearing all of his weight, his lungs couldn’t get air. After the first few hours, he learned that it would be a constant struggle.
In the darkness, Fallion was left to focus on sounds, Jaz’s breathing as he hung in his cell, deep and even in sleep, ragged when he woke. His brother’s weeping and sniffing, the clank of chains against the wall, the sobs of the tortured as they lay in their cells, the squeaking of rats, the snarling of strengi-saats.
He would not have minded the rats, normally. But after he had hung against the wall for a few hours, he heard one squeaking below. It rose and bit his big toe.
He kicked at it. The rat squeaked angrily as it retreated.
It will be back, Fallion knew. It will be back, when I’m too tired to fight.
He found that he had to pee. He held it for as long as he could, then let it go.
In the darkness, deprived of light, accompanied only by the smell of mold and urine and cold stone and iron, as days began to pass, Fallion despaired.
Several times the torturer passed by their cell, never looking toward them, his torch guttering, his keys jangling.
He came at dawn, Fallion surmised, and left at night.
“How long has it been?” Jaz asked time and again.
Only three days, Fallion suspected, but he told Jaz that it was a week.
One cannot despair forever, even in the worst of times. The body is not capable of sustaining it. And so the despair came in great waves, crashing around his ears sometimes, threatening to drown him, and then ebbing away.
Sometimes he dared hope. Straining for every breath, he’d babble to his brother.
“Maybe they’ve sent… messages to Mystarria, demanding payment for our release,” he’d offer. “We’ve been, at sea for eight weeks. It will take a ship that long to reach Mystarria, another eight weeks back.
“Four months. In four months we’ll be free.”
“When will they feed us?” Jaz begged.
“Soon,” Fallion promised time and again.
But they had been hanging on the wall for days. Fallion’s mouth grew dry and his tongue swelled in his throat. Greasy sweat became his only blanket. He woke and slept, and hung on the wall, sometimes unsure if he was awake or asleep any longer.
Now when the torturer passed, Fallion and Jaz would both cry out, their dry throats issuing only croaks. “Food.” “Water.” “Help.” “Please.”
