The Book of Deacon: Book 02 - The Great Convergence (17 page)

"You are the death of us! You are the death
of US ALL!" the priest managed.

Epidime hauled him out of the cell and handed
him to a guard to be led away.

"You know, I have managed glimpses at what
you've been keeping from me. A flash of your mother's face, a
whisper of your father's voice . . . minutia. Trivialities.
Pointlessness. Random, worthless events in your life. I have a
feeling that, when you are broken, that is all I will find.
Memories that you hold dear. Regardless, I will have them. I will
see every cherished scene of your mind. Every moment in the garden
with your mother, every precious visit from your father. Keep that
in mind. And sleep well tonight," Epidime said.

The week before was nothing compared to the
week that followed. Every day another of the prisoners was brought
before her. She had at least seen, though often in passing, each
one of them before. Simple town folk, shopkeepers, everyone who
might have touched the sword. Some did not remember her. In those
cases, Epidime forced her to explain to them that she was the
reason that they were locked away. For most of the prisoners, their
crime had not been explained to them until that moment. The anger,
the sadness, the confusion, all rushed forth in a tearful burst of
emotion. At the precise moment that Myranda felt that the heart had
been torn from her body, Epidime would make his attempt. It was
agony in its purest form. And each day was worse. He would handpick
more and more pitiful stories. Sobbing mothers torn from children.
Soldiers yet to see their families after returning from the front.
Worst of all, she knew that there could be no victory. If she gave
in, they would be killed. If she was broken, they would be killed.
All she could do was buy more time. All she could do was delay the
inevitable.

After another week, Epidime approached alone,
but Myranda was not so naive as to assume that today would be any
easier. He carried a black cloth bundle. On his face was a smile of
pure delight. Myranda didn't waste the strength to imagine what
sort of torture he'd come up with this time. She merely prepared
herself.

"Well, Myranda. What do you suppose I
received today? It will interest you greatly, I am quite sure," he
said.

Myranda did not speak. She pulled together
her mind, ready for anything he might try. Slowly he dropped away
just a hint of the cloth. He touched the thick black covering
carefully, as though it was an animal that might bite. Myranda's
thoughts flashed to Myn, and a prayer passed through her mind that
the creature was not inside the bundle. That prayer was answered,
but the truth could hardly have been worse. The top of the cloth
dropped free to reveal a splendid, bejeweled, engraved hilt. The
hilt of a sword.
The
sword.

"Here it is. The source of your sorrow. I
suppose you may still harbor some illusions that you have some sort
of value. That you might be important, and that is why we wanted
you. No. It was all for this. The trials of your life of late have
all been due to your association with this piece of metal. You
could have been anyone. Anyone at all. This weapon means more than
you ever will. And now it is mine. You do know what this means,
don't you? Don't think I haven't seen it. That slim thread of hope
weaving through your mind. That Lain might come, that he might
somehow vanquish me and rescue you and perhaps even all of these
others. That will not happen. They have been paid. They have
accepted. You are now as worthless to them as you are to everyone
else," he said, venom fairly dripping from his words.

Myranda turned all of her strength to keeping
the hopelessness from showing through. He would not have the
pleasure of seeing her pain.

"Unfortunately, this little prize means that
I shall have to leave you for a while. I am under orders to aid a
colleague with a few projects he has been working on, and this may
just come in handy. However, lest you forget me, let me leave you
with this to torture you in my absence. There is a moment which,
despite my recent additions, remains the most devastating of your
life. The massacre. It has come to your mind often recently, hasn't
it? You've wondered, how could it happen? The leaked intelligence
that would have allowed the attack was never delivered. Even if it
had been, how could the attack have been so successful, the
destruction so complete? Kenvard was a capital, and close to the
front. It was fortified. It could have held off a force a dozen
times the size of the one that had swept through on that day. It
had before. How could it happen? . . . It was our men. There was no
southern force. I handed down the orders from General Bagu
personally. Leave no one alive. The leaked information was to cover
it up, to provide loose ends that would tie up nicely in the minds
of the people. Of course, I cannot say for sure precisely the names
of every soldier involved, but I can tell you this. They were
skilled, loyal, obedient, and trustworthy. They all came from the
very top . . . Your father was at the top, wasn't he?" Epidime
said, lowering his voice as he spoke so that his last words were a
whisper.

With that, he stepped into the darkness, only
the gem of his halberd visible, staring at her though the black
like a mocking eye until he was out of sight. She waited until the
distant grind of heavy doors signaled the monster's exit. When she
was certain he was gone, her head dropped, her mind burned. Anger,
fear, frustration, hate, desperation, and more battled for control
over her mind. Had he not truly slipped away, Epidime would have
found no challenge at all in defeating her now. Her cries echoed
through the halls. The pair of guards at her door had no reaction.
She didn't take the care to bury her magic inside of her, and
spurred on by the intense emotion, the crystal at her neck was
burning at her viciously. She didn't care. Nothing could match the
pain in her heart.

The torrent of emotions did not abate until
she passed out from exhaustion. She slept a dreamless few hours and
awoke in the same pale blue tinged darkness she had lived in for
the past two weeks. The rest had done little to restore her
strength, or else she likely would have begun the entire process
over again. Instead she sat weakly. Her temples had a dull,
constant ache. As her head hung low, she realized something. The
crystal that hung down from her neck had changed. Even from the
little of it that she could see it was clear that the surface had
begun to fracture. She shook her head, hoping to clear the cobwebs
a bit, and looked around her. There were other things that had
changed. Here and there she could see scorches on the walls. She
faintly remembered turning her mind to flame spells in attempts to
spill off some of the anger. The force she had put into them would
have been enough to reduce the bars to little more than bubbling
pools, but the crystal had done its job for the most part.
Myranda's clouded mind slowly began to clear. As it did, the
possibilities presented by this new knowledge began to develop. A
pair of the masked guards approached the door of the cell. She sat
still as one replaced the damaged crystal and the other
administered the daily swill.

Myranda knew that these were merely nearmen,
and couldn't possibly read her mind as Epidime had been attempting,
but she had learned to err on the side of caution and thought only
the most innocuous thoughts in their presence. When they had gone,
she began to plot. Some of her spells had gotten through. When she
poured out all that she had, some tiny effect could be brought
about. It would be painful, but she may just have hope of escaping
on her own. She would have to focus, despite the pain of the
collar, on spells with a concentration she seldom managed without
her staff. It wouldn't be easy, but it was hope. Hope would sustain
her. Comforted by the fact that her day long outburst had brought
no reaction from the nearmen, she set about her task.

#

Far away, her struggles were viewed by pained
eyes. Deacon had felt that if he could only see what Myranda was
doing, it would put his mind in order again and he could get back
to his work. First, he was plagued by the fact that images were few
and far between. Now he had the opposite problem. Night after night
he saw her, restrained and tortured. He poured through books for
some solution, some way to know precisely what was happening. The
images would persist for hours sometimes, but they would waver and
twist, leaving Myranda herself as the only solidly recognizable
thing, and they were always silent. Sometimes there were others,
but recently she was alone. He would focus on the images and try to
get more information from them, but he simply lacked the strength.
Worse, the other wizards had grown weary of his pleas for help in
the matter interrupting their own studies and would no longer even
speak with him. Finally only two would listen to him, Solomon and
Calypso. Of the two, Deacon found Calypso to be the most helpful,
and took to confiding in her almost daily. Disturbed by his latest
visions, he took his usual place by the lake and waited for her to
appear. A mermaid, long flowing hair and emerald tail shimmering in
the sun, surfaced from the lake. The very moment that she did,
Deacon began. Calypso had become accustomed to his habit of
skipping pleasantries and diving directly into his points.

"From what I was able to see last night, I
can say for certain that the crystal around her neck has been
changed. Are you certain you have never heard of this practice? A
crystal used as some kind of torture? Perhaps I should look through
the library for it again," he asked.

"If it wasn't there the third time it won't
be there the fourth," she said. "You know what you need to do."

"I need to know what is going on," he
said.

"It won't help," she warned.

"What do you mean? Of course it will! I can't
get her out of my mind because I am not certain of her place in the
prophesy. When I know what has been happening to her, I will be
able to study the prophesy in search of elements of these events. I
will find them. Then I will know that all will be well and my mind
will be at ease," he said as convincingly as possible.

"You know, you really are very creative. If
you won't think rationally, at least follow your own rules. Logic
says you should follow the clues to the truth, not chose the truth
that suits you and cater the evidence to fit," she said. "You are
purposely overlooking the real root of your problem because you
know it is a sickness for which there is no cure."

"Oh? And what is that?" he asked.

"I won't call it by name. You would only deny
it and scurry away to your rationalizations. All I'll say is that I
know, and deep down you do too, that you will only find some kind
of relief if you find a way to go face to face and-" Calypso began,
only to be interrupted.

"Speak to Hollow!" Deacon blurted.

"What?!" Calypso asked, left blinking from
the sudden and unjustifiable leap of reason.

"Hollow! I need to find her place solidly in
the prophesy to put my mind at ease, and the only man who can do
that with absolute certainty is Hollow!" he said, leaping up.

"Deacon, listen to yourself! Hollow only
speaks when he has something to say, which is only once in a great
while," she said.

"Then I will coax it out of him," he said,
running off.

"The man isn't a man at all, he is an empty
shell. You would have better luck coaxing an answer from your own
echo. You are being foolish, unreasonable, and overly optimistic.
Those are all symptoms, you know!" she called after him before
shaking her head and whispering to herself. "That boy is going to
lose his mind."

#

Elsewhere, Myranda had spent the majority of
two days focusing her mind fully on the task of unlocking the
collar from her neck. After having no success, she decided that the
restraint likely was specially designed to prevent removal in this
fashion. In all likelihood all of the restraints were similarly
designed, but she couldn't afford to assume that. As painful as any
attempts to escape were, the pain was preferable to the
hopelessness of imprisonment or worse, dwelling on what she had
learned of the massacre. She turned her attempts to the wrist
restraints attached to the chair. Almost immediately she could feel
progress. At the end of an hour of intense trial, she heard a click
that made her heart jump. The lock hesitantly released and she felt
the metal shackle swing lazily open. Her left hand was free! The
pair of guards, nearmen, patrolled silently as they always did. It
had become clear over the days she had spent under their guard that
they could do little more than they were told. They were, however,
acutely sensitive to sudden changes, and always offered a look in
her direction when the grunts of effort and pain came to an
end.

Myranda kept her hand in the shackles as it
had been before. As the wrist shackles were behind her chair and
she was facing the bars, the fact that one had opened would not be
noticed. After a few moments the guards turned back to their silent
patrol. With a free hand it would be possible to hold the crystal
away from her chest by the chain and spare herself some of the
pain, but she quickly dismissed the thought as far too risky.
Instead she attacked the second shackle just the same as she had
the first. She was tired, but the freedom dangling tantalizingly
before her was enough to keep her going. Eventually a second click
signaled the release of her other hand. As she spent a few moments
resting, she realized that there was a problem. She was facing the
bars, and thus her ankle shackles were plainly visible. If she was
to make good her escape, she would have to free both legs without
the guards noticing.

The young woman's mind ached from overuse.
Weeks of resisting Epidime had forced her to push herself to the
limit frequently enough that she had discovered precisely how far
she could go before breaking. If she attempted anything as taxing
as the shackles had been, she would not have the strength to stand
when she was through. Indeed, it had been so long since she had
stood without the aid of a cruel hand clutching each shoulder, it
was possible that she already lacked the strength. Myranda shook
her head. If ever there was a time for desperate acts, it was now.
When the plodding footsteps of the guards seemed to be at their
quietest, she grasped the chain at either side of the accursed
crystal and lifted it away from her chest. The effect was
astounding. The fog in her mind cleared noticeably, and she felt a
fair amount of her strength return. Two swift spells slipped past
the weakened effect of the restraint and popped her final two
shackles open. Distantly, the footsteps began to quickly grow
louder. They had heard!