When they finally had an opening wide enough to pass through, the first man gestured to the second and under his breath ordered him to get a torch and take the two visitors in to see the prisoner they were interested in. It was obvious that he was eager to be out of Magda’s sight and away from her sharp tongue.
The second man nodded at the instructions and snatched up a torch from a pile at the side against the wall. He bent over the table to quickly light a splinter in the lantern and then set flame to the torch. As soon as he had the torch lit, he gestured for Magda and Merritt to follow as he ducked under the low opening and stepped through the doorway.
Magda hiked up her skirts and stepped over the high threshold. She and Merritt followed the hunched guard into a twisting maze of narrow tunnels that in places were no more than what looked like cracks in the bedrock. They took the second passageway to the left, down a split in the rock that was so narrow they had to turn sideways to pass through it. In places they had to walk through ankle-deep, stinking, stagnant water. To the sides, at intervals, were small iron doors set into places carved out of the solid rock. The fist-sized openings in the doors were all dark.
“Here it is,” the guard said, lifting a finger to the door.
When Magda only stared at him he jumped to stab the key into the lock and turn it. As the bolt clanged back the sound echoed through the cavelike tunnels. Holding the torch in one hand, he used his other to tug the heavy door open. Neither Magda nor Merritt made any move to help him with the difficult task.
When the door was opened enough to pass, Merritt cut in front of the guard and stepped through the doorway first. Magda followed close on his heels. The guard followed them in.
She could see by the light of the glass sphere Merritt was holding that there was a second iron door. The outer room they were in had a ceiling so low that she and Merritt had to stoop over lest they hit their heads. She knew that the cells for the gifted had double doors with an outer room as an extra layer of protection. Besides the iron doors, the small outer room, as well as the inner room, would be heavily shielded.
“Give me the key,” Merritt said to the guard. “You can wait for us back at the entrance.”
The squat, burly guard hesitated. Merritt snapped his fingers and held out a hand, palm up, wiggling his fingers impatiently. The guard reluctantly placed the key in his palm. Seeing the two of them silently waiting for him to leave, he fidgeted a moment, scratched a hairy shoulder, and then stepped back out the first doorway.
He ducked his head back in. “If you need anything, yell. Sound echoes down here, so we’ll hear you.”
“Well, if you hear the woman screaming, that doesn’t mean we need you,” Merritt snapped as he gestured a curt dismissal. “It only means we’re questioning her.”
As Magda watched the torchlight disappear into the distance outside the first door, Merritt unlocked the second. As she waited anxiously, he put his weight into pulling open the inner door. It was so cold down in the dungeon that she could see her own breath rise slowly in the still air.
Finally, the greenish light penetrated into the inner darkness.
There hanging by chains from manacles attached to the wrists of her spread arms, was a bloody, naked woman.
Chapter 72
The woman in the center of the inner room hanging by her wrists appeared to be nearly unconscious. She barely slitted her eyelids to see in the dim greenish light from the light sphere who was entering her cell. Only her eyes moved to take in Magda and Merritt.
She wasn’t older, as expected, but instead looked closer to Magda’s age. Her disheveled, straight, jet black hair was shoulder length with bangs that came to just above her eyes. She was so beautiful, even with strings of blood across her face, that Magda found herself pausing for an instant to stare.
Magda’s heart ached at the sight of what had been done to this poor creature.
The woman, even though she was only half conscious, still managed to level a black look at the two people entering her cell. She obviously expected more torture. Even though she was chained and helpless, Magda sensed that this was not a woman to be trifled with.
Magda reached out and gently touched the woman’s cheek. “We’re not here to hurt you. I promise.”
“She tells the truth,” Merritt said in a compassionate voice as he looked around, trying to see if there was a simple way to get her down.
The woman watched Magda’s eyes but didn’t answer.
Magda turned to Merritt. “Get her down, will you?”
“The chains are pinned into the rock. The key is the only way.” Merritt stretched up, fitting the key into the lock in the manacles. Despite how he tried, the key wouldn’t turn. “It doesn’t work,” he said.
“It’s probably rusty,” Magda said. “Try harder.”
“No, it’s the wrong key. I can feel that it doesn’t fit the lock properly. If I try any harder it will just break it off in the lock and then we’ll never be able to get them open.”
Magda started to turn away. “I’ll go get the right key from the guards.”
Merritt caught her arm, stopping her. “I have the right key.”
Magda frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”
As the Sword of Truth came out of its scabbard, the blade sent a clear, distinctive ring through the small prison chamber that had been hollowed out of solid bedrock. The steel looked as menacing as the greenish light flared off it as it sounded.
The woman’s eyes widened, expecting the worst.
“They’re heavy iron,” Magda said. “You can’t cut iron with a sword.”
Merritt flashed her a private, one-sided smile before turning to the woman hanging before them. As he lifted her a bit by her forearm and held her steady, he carefully slid the blade of the sword under the iron manacle around her wrist.
“Don’t move,” he told the woman. “I’m going to get these off you. The blade won’t cut you. But just to be sure, don’t move.”
It appeared to be too much effort for the woman to turn her head to see what he was doing. Instead, only her eyes turned to look at his face as he cautiously worked the sword under the iron band. She seemed puzzled; her smooth brow twitched slightly.
“Hold still, now,” Merritt said.
With a mighty effort, the muscles in his neck straining, Merritt pulled the sword.
A loud crack rang out as the metal band shattered. As the blade of the Sword of Truth erupted from under the iron manacle, bits of metal ricocheted off the stone walls and clattered across the floor.
With one arm suddenly freed, the woman’s weight dropped. Her bare feet were finally able to touch the ground, but she was unable to hold her weight and her knees buckled. She hung limp by her other wrist.
Magda could see that her weight hanging in the manacles had cut up her wrists. With the sudden added weight on just one wrist, fresh blood started flowing and running down her arm. Magda swept an arm around the woman’s middle to try to take some of the weight off the bleeding wrist. The woman let out a small moan.
Magda pulled off her cloak and wrapped it around the woman, covering her as best she could even though the woman still had one arm trapped and hanging from the chain pinned in the ceiling. The woman’s lips moved as she whispered her thanks. It was a voice as gracefully feminine as the rest of her.
Merritt tried to work the sword in under the other manacle, but it wouldn’t go. “Can you lift her any? Her weight is pulling her hand into the top of the shackle and I can’t get the sword through.”
Magda nodded and strained to lift the dead weight. “Can you help at all?” she asked the limp woman. “Can you use your legs to lift just a little? For just a moment?”
The woman strained to put weight on her legs. It was just enough of a help for Merritt to start to get the sword through. Magda could feel the woman shaking with the effort.
As soon as Merritt was able to get the blade fully under the manacle, he immediately gave the sword a migh
ty yank. The iron band shattered with a loud bang. Pieces of iron clanged against the stone walls. One piece hit Magda’s arm. The metal felt hot when it hit her skin and bounced off, but fortunately it didn’t cut her.
The woman collapsed into Magda’s arms. Controlling the descent, Magda went to the ground with the weight of the woman, keeping her from falling hard and hurting herself. Once safely down on the ground, Magda hugged the woman close and pulled the cloak around her, trying to cover her and begin to warm her icy flesh.
“Who did this to you?” Magda asked, unable to contain her anger. “Who put you in here and ordered this done?”
The woman looked up and shook her head. “I don’t know them. Men. Some men.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment in a stitch of pain. “I came to help. They wouldn’t let me. They hurt me instead. They said they were going to send me back in pieces to show others what would happen to them as well if they tried to do the same as me.”
“I’m so sorry,” Magda whispered.
Looking rather mystified, the woman frowned as she reached up and touched her finger to a tear rolling down Magda’s cheek.
Magda quickly wiped her cheek. “We’re going to get you out of here,” she told the woman.
The woman laid a hand on Magda’s shoulder. “Thank you, but you can’t help me.”
“Yes, we can,” Magda insisted. “Do you think you can stand?”
“You don’t understand. You must not help me. I am lost. You must leave me. You don’t know what you’re dealing with. The dream walkers will tell their contacts here and then they will do this to you as well.”
Magda shared a look with Merritt.
“We have a way to stop dream walkers from doing that,” Magda said.
“Dream walkers are powerful.” The woman turned her eyes up. “Are you so sure?”
“We’re sure,” Magda said. “Now, can you stand, just until we can get you out of here?”
The woman nodded. “If it kills me I want to walk out of this place.”
Magda had to smile at that. She could easily understand the sentiment.
“I’m Magda, by the way. This is Merritt. He’s gifted. As soon as we get you out of here we’ll protect you from the dream walkers so that they can’t enter your mind, and then when you’re safe, Merritt can heal you.”
The woman reached out and squeezed his hand.
With a finger, Magda lifted some of the jet black hair back off the woman’s face. “What’s your name?”
“Naja Moon.”
It was a name as exotic as the woman’s looks.
“Well, Naja, can you tell me why you came here, to the Keep?”
Naja looked up at Merritt and then back to Magda. “I came because Emperor Sulachan must be stopped or he will destroy the world of life.”
Magda straightened a little as she glanced up at Merritt standing over them with the light sphere. She leaned in again toward Naja.
“How do you know this, Naja?”
“I was his spiritist.”
Chapter 73
Before Magda could ask anything else, Naja’s eyes winced closed as she endured a shudder of pain. When the stitch of agony eased up, she struggled to catch her breath as she rested, huddled in Magda’s warm embrace.
Steam from her labored breathing rose into the still air of the small stone cell. Instead of asking anything else for the moment, Magda rubbed the woman’s hands, letting her rest while working some warmth into her icy fingers. The chill of being deep underground was an insidious killer, over time sapping a person’s energy and eventually their life.
Magda knew that the woman needed to gather her strength after having her arms freed. No longer hanging from the ceiling, she was at last able to breathe properly. Her wrists had finally stopped bleeding, but she had other, more serious wounds that Magda knew needed tending as soon as possible.
Merritt was impatient to get out of the dungeon—to be away from the shields so that he could heal her, but also to get them all away from the ever-present threat of the guards. By the way he kept checking the corridor outside the outer door, it was clear that he was concerned that the longer they waited, the more suspicious the guards would get.
They also had to worry that someone else might show up, possibly even those who had captured Naja, had put her in the dungeon, and had been torturing her. Getting trapped down in the dungeons would be the end of them all. No one knew they were there, and if they were locked in, no one would be coming to help them.
After catching her breath for a short time, Naja, without being asked, started to try putting weight on her legs. She looked to be even more impatient than Merritt to get out before the guards returned.
Naja finally stood to her full height. The woman’s clothes were nowhere to be found in the cell, but fortunately Magda’s cloak was big enough to wrap around her. Naja was thankful to have it, and clutched it to herself as she stood, testing her legs. She was proving to be stronger than Magda had expected.
The cloak would have to do for the time being. She was close to the same height and build as Magda, so Magda would be able to give her some of her own clothes. First they needed to get out of the dungeon.
“How is it that your blade did not cut me?” Naja asked Merritt as she moved her arms about, working the circulation back into them.
He looked back after checking out the doorway. “It has magic that prevented it from cutting you.”
“Magic does not work down here. I tried. I tried very hard.”
“This magic is not obstructed by the shields down here. It’s somewhat similar to the way the magic of the light sphere isn’t blocked by the shields. It’s complicated, and I don’t want to oversimplify it, but basically the sword’s magic won’t harm an innocent or a person believed to be a friend. I don’t consider you the enemy, so the sword didn’t cut you. I hadn’t tested that aspect of it, though, so I had to be careful. It appears to work as it should. It also appears, by the way it cut through those iron manacles, that the other side of its magic is working as well.”
This was news to Magda. He hadn’t told her the part about its magic not being able to harm innocent people. Merritt was full of wonders.
“Why are you two helping me?” Naja’s voice was clearly laced with pain, and justifiably, some suspicion.
“We’re actually hoping that you can help us,” Merritt said. “I heard that you wanted to join our cause. When we found out where you were, we knew we had to get you out.”
“I thought that the people here did not want my help. I thought I was wrong about the New World and the wizards who live and work here. Instead of my help, they chained me up in this awful place. They said that I was a spy and I was to eventually be put to death.”
“We believe that there are traitors, here, in the Keep,” Magda told her. “I think they had you put down here to keep you from helping our people.”
“I thought that I had made the worst mistake of my life in coming here,” Naja said, shaking her head. “I’m glad to learn that what I believed really is true, that there are good people here, as I had heard. But maybe it is not that there are traitors here.”
Magda frowned. “What are you talking about? Why would the men who captured you put you down here, if they weren’t collaborators with those in the Old World?”
She looked from Magda, to Merritt, and back to Magda. “Maybe dream walkers possess them and made them do it.”
Merritt stiffened. “Do you think that could be what is really going on?”
“It’s possible. Dream walkers can make people do terrible things.”
Magda let out a sigh. “We don’t know what is really going on. That’s why we came down here looking for you. We hope you can help us learn the truth.”
“If this place is shielded,” Naja said, “then maybe in here we are safe from the dream walkers hearing us.”
“That’s possible,” Merritt said. “The dungeon is heavily protected with some of the most powerful suppression s
hields ever created.”
“Your sword has a newly created form of magic,” Magda said. “It works down here in spite of the shields. The dream walkers were likely also created after these shields, so the shields may not be able to protect us from them.”
She cast a meaningful look at Naja.
Naja caught her meaning. “If one of them found me and was in my mind, watching us, I wouldn’t know it.”
Magda looked up at Merritt. “We can’t trust that the bond will work through the shields. We only know for sure that it works when not shielded. We dare not take a chance. Before we talk, we’d better first get her out of here and then get her protected from the dream walkers.”
“She’s right,” Naja said. “If you have a protection that works, then we need to get out of here and use it.”
Merritt lifted his sword a few inches and then let it drop back into its scabbard, making sure that the weapon was clear.
“As soon as you feel strong enough to go, we’re ready. We’re glad to have you on our side in the war, Naja. And we do need your help,” Merritt added. “Just as soon as we heal you.”
“If there are traitors in the Keep, spies who are working for Emperor Sulachan, and not merely dream walkers using people, then you need my help more than you realize.”
Magda didn’t like the sound of that.
Before she could say anything more, Naja started sinking again toward the ground. Both Magda and Merritt held her up.
“We need to get out of here,” Merritt said to Magda. “I think that she’s as recovered as she is going to get until I can heal her. We can’t wait any longer. We need to get her out of here, bonded, and healed. She’s strong, but her injuries are serious. It can’t wait any longer.”
“He’s right,” Naja said through gritted teeth from a stitch of pain. “I’m able to stand, now. Let’s go.”