The High Druid's Blade: The Defenders of Shannara (14 page)

She was just starting ahead again—freedom in sight—when a door opened in front of her and an old woman emerged. The woman was bent and worn looking, dressed in a skirt and blouse that were stained and old, a scarf tying back her long gray hair, and high-top boots on her feet. She was hauling a bucket and mop, and she carried a collection of rags under one withered arm.

A cleaning woman, Chrys thought, freezing in place. Too late to go back or try to hide. She waited for the old woman to turn the other way, to not notice she was there.

Instead, the old woman turned directly toward her and froze. For long moments, the two just stared at each other.

Then Chrysallin raised a finger to her lips in a universally recognizable plea for silence. The old woman watched her, then nodded in agreement. Chrys moved ahead, heading for the stairway. As she angled past, the old woman beckoned her to step close.

Leaning in, the other whispered, “There are guards at the bottom of the stairs. If you want out, there is a better way.”

Chrys hesitated, then nodded. “Can you show me?” she whispered back.

The old woman nodded and wordlessly led her back the way she had come to a door she had already passed, opening it onto a hidden set of narrow steps. Motioning for her to follow, she led Chrys down three flights of stairs into a cellar crammed with boxes and smelling of damp and mildew. What light there was came from slits cut into the stone of the foundation walls, almost at ceiling height, and covered over with a heavy, diffuse glass.

The old woman led her across the cellar floor, winding through the stacks of boxes, avoiding places were water had pooled and cracks in the floor had opened. Once or twice, Chrysallin thought she saw movement in the shadows—quick and furtive. Rats. She stayed close to the old woman, her guide through this gloomy country she did not know. It took them a long time to reach the far end, and then they were at an old ironbound wooden door recessed deep in the stone of the wall. The old woman stopped there, released a series of locks and latches, and pulled the door open to the outside.

Chrys peered past the woman’s stooped shoulders to a twilight in which stars were just beginning to come out in a darkening sky. In front of her, steps led upward to a street lined with houses and streetlamps. She could hear the distant sounds of voices and the movement of carriages and horses.

She could smell the fresh air of the city. She could taste her freedom.

She turned to the old woman who was watching her through rheumy eyes, hands clutched to her breast like a supplicant. “Go on, now,” she hissed. “Run!”

Chrysallin almost bolted, but then she hesitated. “Will you tell me your name?”

The old woman smiled. “It’s Mischa.”

F
OURTEEN

E
X
PECTATIONS
DANCED
TH
ROUGH
C
HRYSALLIN
’
S
mind as she fled Dark House and Arcannen for places unknown but infinitely safer. She ran through the twilight and darkness toward freedom, thinking at first only to put distance between herself and her captors but then realizing a plan was necessary. Afoot, she could never hope to escape. She needed an airship in which to fly to her brother at Paranor. She needed to find the airfield she had found with Jayet the last time she was here.

It was not as difficult as she had imagined it would be. She remembered the route easily enough, and she found the landmarks that would guide her on her way. She tracked them successfully, one after the other, taking care to remain clear of crowds and unfriendly places, doing what she could to make herself invisible to those she passed. At first, her running drew unwanted attention, and so she slowed to a fast walk in places where there were crowds. But soon she was far enough outside the heart of the city that only a handful of other people appeared, and she broke into a run once more.

She was in sight of the airfield when the men came out of the shadows between buildings on both sides, and she was trapped. They swarmed over her, bearing her to the ground, pinning her arms and legs. She was tall and strong for a fifteen-year-old girl, and she was not easily taken. But in the end, she was taken nevertheless.

What happened after that was horrifying. She lost consciousness at one point while fighting to break free—a blow to the head delivered by one of her attackers that dropped her into a blackness in which she seemed to drift for a very long time. When she came awake, she was lying on a table in a darkened room, her arms and legs pinned in place by cuffs about her wrists that were pulled tight by ropes attached to rings set into the legs of the table. A sheet covered her, and her clothes were gone. Again. She was fuzzy-headed and oddly disoriented. She could barely make herself care about what was happening to her, although she was aware of her situation. She wondered who had her now. It had to be Arcannen and his minions, didn’t it?

She tried to see through the darkness beyond where she lay, sensing there was someone present, hidden back in the gloom. But she couldn’t make anything out. So she lay passively, having no other choice, waiting to see what would happen next.

She didn’t have to wait long.

Almost as soon as she resolved to be patient, a door opened and men in hoods and robes entered the room. Smokeless torches were ignited on poles set at both ends of the table on which she lay, providing illumination that reached no farther than her immediate surroundings. The men—four in all—placed themselves at the corners of the table. None of them spoke. They just stood silently, looking down at her.

“Begin,” said a muffled voice from the darkness.

They did. They went to work on her with callused hands, wooden clubs, metal implements, and vicious promises. They started with her feet and worked their way up her naked body. They left no part untouched. They were thorough and systematic in their efforts, and from the beginning it was clear they possessed neither sympathy nor compassion for her suffering. They hurt her every time they touched her. They hurt her in so many ways she lost count. She could not see what they were doing, and her inability to anticipate only added to her pain. She screamed and cried and begged them to stop, but nothing helped. It was as if they didn’t hear her. It was certain that they didn’t care. These were men who had done this before. They were men who enjoyed their work.

She passed out over and over, only to awaken in white-hot agony anew. The torture went on and on. The men paused several times to rest themselves, to drink from an aleskin, to throw water in her face, to wake her with slaps and harsh words, to rest arms grown weary with tightening and twisting and pressing and jamming. But mostly they kept at it. Time lost meaning for Chrysallin Leah. She pleaded for someone to tell her what was wanted. She begged to be told if this was punishment or an effort at persuasion. She gritted her teeth and tightened her muscles. She twisted and squirmed and hunched her body against what was being done to her.

She prayed after what must have been hours of suffering that she be allowed to die. Even death would be preferable to this.

When they finally stopped, backing away to admire their work perhaps, a tall figure stepped into view. Arcannen? But this was a woman, one she had never seen, her features arrogant and commanding, her posture rigid and upright. She was Elven, her hair gray, her face lined with age. She studied her captive for perhaps a half a minute, made a few strange gestures, talked softly to herself as she did so, then turned and walked away.

Chrysallin was left alone then. The woman and the men departed, and the room was shrouded in darkness. They had thrown the sheet over her once more, and she could feel the blood seep into the cloth and glue it to her skin. Her pain was a red-hot scream that flooded through her. She saw into the darkness through a screen of red, and there was a coppery taste in her mouth. She was certain the bones of toes and fingers were broken, but couldn’t see them and was afraid to move them in any way that would let her know for sure. With this much pain, every brush against the tabletop was agony.

What was worse was the sense of defilement and emotional carnage. She was fifteen years old, and she had been subjected to things she had never imagined she would be forced to endure. Tears flowed down her cheeks at the thought of them. She was shaking with rage and pain and a terrible sense of loss.

Paxon would make them pay, she told herself. Paxon would do to them what they had done to her!

But how long would it be until Paxon reached her? How long before he could come to her rescue? All her plans of escape had vanished in the wake of the day’s punishment. She no longer believed she could get free without Paxon’s help; there was no other way. She had put herself in this situation the way she put herself in so many unfortunate situations—by overestimating her cleverness and skill, by reckless belief in her own ability to avoid anything. She had attempted to do what she had been told not to do, and now she was paying the price.

She thought for long minutes about the Elven woman who had watched it all. What did she have to do with Arcannen and her kidnapping? What did she have to do with any of this? She wanted something, but she seemed in no hurry to tell Chrysallin what it was. Today’s torture had been an object lesson in the nature of control. She was letting Chrys know that she didn’t care when she got what she wanted. What mattered was that Chrysallin understood her captor could have anything she wanted from her, anytime she desired it. What she wanted the Highland girl to know was that she was in complete control.

That Chrysallin’s life was in her hands.

They came for her again sometime later. She could not tell if it was day or night, but she thought it was a new day because she had slept and her pain had lessened marginally. They entered the room as before, the four men lighting the smokeless lamps at the head and foot of her table, and they ripped off the sheet without concern for the wounds that were torn open and the skin that was shredded. The woman slipped in while Chrysallin’s screams were dying into whimpers, and the girl didn’t even know she was there until she spoke.

“Begin,” she said.

They did. All over again. It was a virtual repeat of the previous day, the pain beginning in her toes and working its way up her legs to her torso, and from there to her arms and head. It was a long, relentless assault on her body and mind, and there were times when she was awake that she thought she would go mad. On this second day, she blacked out repeatedly, which forced them to find more creative ways to bring her awake again so they could continue. A few new adaptations were applied, most involving underarms and ears. Burns were added to the repertoire of tortures, some applied with iron rods, some with coals. New damage was inflicted. Chrysallin could smell her own flesh burning. She could smell the stench.

At the end of this day, when the tall woman with the long gray hair and the Elven features came over to study her again, Chrysallin stared back, memorizing every feature, burning the hated features into her memory, wanting to be certain she would know her should she ever get out of this. She hated the woman with every fiber of her being, even more so than she hated the men that were carrying out her instructions. Chrysallin hated her enough that if she could have gotten free, she would have tried to kill her on the spot.

When the woman was gone, taking her creatures with her, Chrysallin was drained of energy and damp with sweat and blood. Her body throbbed and twitched with pain, and there was no relief to be found. Every shift of her limbs, however small, produced fresh agony. Attempts at waiting it out only caused her to be more aware of it. In the darkness, she could not see the damage that had been done, but she could tell it was considerable. She believed she would never look the same when this was done. She would be marked for life, both without and within. She would be rendered a shadow of who and what she had once been.

But she did not cry this night. She refused to cry. She would not let herself. Instead, she channeled her suffering into rage—a white-hot anger that made her want to scream and tear at things. She fed this rage with promises of what she would do to the gray-haired Elven woman once she was free. She gave it direction by thinking how she would inflict on her captor the same pain she was suffering. It was wishful thinking, but it gave her an outlet for her despair and for her need to respond and not feel entirely helpless. It gave her another life outside of the one she was enduring. It gave her a focus and a mission. She wasn’t sure she could survive another day of what was being done to her, but she knew she was going to try if for no other reason than to deprive them of the satisfaction of watching her break apart. And, of course, the possibility of somehow gaining revenge.

She dreamed that night, and in her dreams she was in a desert crawling on her hands and knees across burning sands and jagged rocks, her body torn and bloodied and her strength almost exhausted. For as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but emptiness. No trees or water, no buildings, no people. Except that there was someone walking beside her as she crawled. When she managed to look up, she found it was her nemesis, the gray-haired Elven woman, keeping pace with her, glancing down now and then and smiling with satisfaction, showing no other emotion, saying nothing as they proceeded. The sun beat down, the heat rose off the carpet of the sand, and the woman never offered any of the water she drank from a skin she had slung across her shoulder.

The dream went on a long time—or at least it felt that way—past any semblance of reality, a steady progression of sameness meant to demonstrate what was already all too clear. Chrysallin’s fate was out of her hands. Nothing was going to change. The suffering was going to continue.

And when she woke, brought out of her sleep by the reappearance of her captors for another round of torture, the dream became reality.

In the Federation capital city of Arishaig, Arcannen was visiting a variety of friends, associates, allies, and wielders of political power to whom he dispensed favors—or from whom he sought them. He had been connected to almost all of them for years, building relationships that allowed him to pursue his special efforts at acquiring and employing magic in spite of the strict laws against doing so—mostly because he made certain that those who looked the other way or openly supported him benefited from what he did. Among those who received him were Ministers of Defense, Treasury, and Transportation, several ordinary Ministers lacking specific offices but who came from populous cities, a pair of high-ranking commanders in the Federation army, and a handful of lesser sorcerers with whom he shared a common interest in liberating the use of talismans and artifacts that unlocked various forms of magic.

It was a tedious business, but he wanted to leave no one feeling snubbed. He was an important figure in the Southland world of banned magic, and all sought his friendship and support. They were to some degree frightened or at least wary of him, but he regarded that as a form of respect and did his best to encourage it. Unpredictability and the certainty of retribution should he be crossed were the strongest characteristics of his reputation, and he made good use of them. A while back, one of the lesser magic wielders living in Arishaig had let it be known that he would no longer consider himself an active part of Arcannen’s network, but would go his own way. He was allowed to do so—in pieces, one each of which made its way to the other magic wielders and a few key ministers.

But while Arcannen did not shy from using violence or blackmail, mostly he accomplished what was needed through diplomacy and clever planning, always allowing others to share in his good fortune.

All of which was the point of this visit, but in particular regarding his plans for the Leah siblings, Paxon and Chrysallin. To do what was needed, he required the support of the prickly and sometimes recalcitrant Minister of Security Against Magic, Fashton Caeil. Unfortunately, the Minister was the one man he could neither bribe nor intimidate, for Caeil was as powerful and ruthless as he was. He had been cultivating the man’s support for years, slowly building an alliance that demonstrated his good intentions toward the Minister while at the same time drawing on the other’s resources and powers to claim things that would otherwise have been denied him. Because without Fashton Caeil’s assistance, Arcannen’s involvement in acquiring magic from those who possessed it within the borders of the Southland would have been a dangerous undertaking indeed.

While Fashton had no use for the Druids and their rules, he also had no problem with using magic where it would benefit his climb to power. Like all of the members of the Coalition Council, it seemed, he desired the position of Prime Minister. But his plans far exceeded his grasp, Arcannen had determined early on, and so he was prepared to bend the rules for the sorcerer so long as it helped him on his climb up the political ladder. It was a bargain that had rewarded them both.