Chapter Eleven: The Crucible
There are moments of exquisite pain in our lives, where time and space swirl into an unknowable nexus of the imagination. Reality ceases to exist and the walls in front and the ground beneath seem to recede and are felt no more. The mind retreats inward, and begins to consume itself in endless, merciless circles of ever deepening despair and desolation. These moments are when the hope that has held us up, has propelled us forward, and given our very lungs the breath we need to survive, withers in our hearts and is blown away before the merciless wind of reality.
The Prince of Ravens, the nameless Prince, the Exiled Prince, the only Prince of the Realm ever cast down in the history of the Empire, woke in such a place, with no identity, no hope, and nothing to hold him together. He had been the Seventh Son of the Empress. Then he had been a kidnapped Prince, a wronged Prince hunted by his traitorous brothers and sisters but still true to his purpose.
Now he was nothing.
He sat silently where he had woken, propped up against a stone wall, not seeing the cell in which he had been caged, not feeling the cold metal cuffs connected to large metal chains that held him by the wrists nor the day-old burn from the Exile girl’s dagger that still made the palm of his hand throb. Even the Raven Talisman was silent and cool on his shoulders and back, though there was more than enough life around him to encourage it to awaken.
All that had happened since leaving the Fortress went slowly, repeatedly through his mind. Tomaz, the Exile girl, the Death Watchmen, Banelyn, the Path of Light. Pine trees, hunger, sunlight, darkness. Tomaz, the Exile girl, the Death Watchmen….
The thing that he felt most, as he sat alone in the darkness, was shame. Shame that he had somehow been negligent in his duty as a Prince. Shame that he had disappointed his Mother. Shame that he hadn’t seen the betrayal for what it was. Shame that he had wandered stupidly into the hands of the Seeker. But as hours passed, then days, the shame hardened into anger. What had he done to deserve it all? What had he done to offend the Empress? Nothing. Nothing! He was a model son. True, he was no Rikard. But he was a good Prince. He was a good son. So why? What had he done? WHAT had he DONE?
The Prince shot to his feet and let out a scream of anger mingled with despair that reverberated around the cell, bouncing off the hard wooden door across the room. He knew no one could hear him, and if someone did he was in the bowels of a Seeker’s lair, and all here were convinced of his guilt to some crime he hadn’t even known he’d committed. But the Prince screamed again, pulling against his chains, his manacles digging into his skin and drawing blood that began to flow down his arms in hot rivulets. He continued to shout, cursing the Seeker, cursing the world, cursing himself for being so stupid as to deliver himself up for slaughter, walking right into the Seeker’s trap … his Mother’s trap.
He was never sure how long he raged, alone in his cell, trying to deny what was true, trying to convince himself it was all a dream, but coming back again and again to the hard reality of his imprisonment. Hard reality. He had to be harder to deal with it. That was the answer.
He pushed his emotions into a small ball in his stomach. He wanted to refuse to accept what had happened, but he couldn’t. He wanted to lose his mind, but some last shred of himself - whoever he was - kept him clinging to sanity.
In the end, it was the nothingness of sleep that claimed him, the mercy of empty dreams. When he woke, he found himself alone. Sometimes there was food waiting for him, just at the edge of the length of his bonds. Sometimes there were rats that shared the cell with him, and sometimes fleas bit him as he lay on the straw that was his only bit of comfort.
He was alone with his thoughts, which led to his realization of what lay in store for him. He wondered which of the Children had been sent to retrieve him, and how long it would take them to arrive once the message came. How many days he had left to live, how many days until he reached the Fortress, this time in chains, and was killed. He wondered how he was to be killed. If his Mother would do it, or one of the Children.
He slept again in fits and starts, his mind going in and out of consciousness with no apparent preference. He sat in the same position, slumped against the back wall, unless he was eating or relieving himself, and soon his back grew cramped and hunched. He didn’t care though … things like a straight back didn’t matter any more. The minutes ticked slowly by, as the Prince awaited his fate. None of the possibilities were pleasant.
Finally, as he sat in the dark with his black thoughts, the door to his cell creaked open and he knew his time was up.
He stood, his legs weak but still containing enough strength to lift him to his feet. He would face whoever had come to retrieve him with dignity. He had been the Prince of Ravens, and he swore that whoever had come for him would not forget it as they led him to his death
Two Lesser Seekers came in, with brown robes and cloaks and the single gold rope of their office. Their faces were covered with black cloth masks, meant to remind them of their own insignificance, and golden seven-point stars hung around their necks to remind them of the Empress at all times.
The Prince examined them, and found himself amused: one, hunched over with age, was in robes and cloak far too small, and the other, standing as tall and straight as he could, was trying to fill in robes that were far too large.
“Is money scarce?” the Prince taunted them, his voice coming out in a croak past chapped lips and a raw throat. “You know you could always deliver me to Empress yourself. I’m sure there’s a bounty to be had.”
“Don’t tempt me,” said the smaller of the two in a female voice. She pushed back the hood of her cloak and removed the black mask. The Prince’s mouth dropped open as long black hair fell down to frame the face of the Exile girl. The bigger of the two stopped hunching over and stood up straight, pulling back his hood and mask to reveal the bearded face of Tomaz.
“What … what are you doing here?”
“Being stupid,” grumbled the girl, casting a long-suffering look at Tomaz who had turned back to press an ear against the door. She reached into her stolen robes and produced one of her long daggers, moved to the Prince’s right, and began to pry at the locks that chained him to the wall.
“But – but you’re impersonating Seekers! You could be Exiled for that!”
Both of them paused and turned to look at him. The girl went so far as to pull back from the lock far enough to look the Prince straight in the face and cock an eyebrow.
“I mean,” the Prince hurried on, feeling his cheeks grow hot with embarrassment, “why are you risking your lives for me? You shouldn’t be here – you should be halfway back to where it is you were taking me in the first place!”
The girl didn’t respond, but the Prince felt her hesitate for the briefest of seconds before attacking the lock again with renewed vigor. Tomaz turned slightly and responded in a quiet rumble.
“You’re one of us now,” he said simply.
The statement brought everything crashing back down on him that he had forgotten in the shock of seeing the two Exiles enter his cell. But enough of his loyalty to the Empire remained that he felt a surge of anger against the two outlaws. His resentment was still hot, and the rejection too new.
“No,” he said hotly, “no, I will never be one of you.”
He twisted as much as his chains would allow, throwing the girl off of him. In the next second, her dagger was pressed against his throat.
“Try that again princeling,” she snarled.
“Eshendai, now is not the time!” Tomaz said quietly. He turned to the Prince.
“If you come with us, you live,” he said bluntly. “If you stay here, you die.”
The girl and the Prince were almost nose to nose, glaring hatefully at each other. The noise of a far off grate swinging open came from outside the door, and then sounds of feet tramping across a corridor above them.
“I would rather die than become an Exile,” the Prince said finally.
The girl pushed herself off of him and spun, glaring at Tomaz. The big man moved forward so quickly he was a blur until suddenly the enormous bearded face appeared above the Prince.
“Where there is life,” the big man rumbled, “there is hope. Do not turn your back on us, who are trying to save your life, the same way that they have turned their backs on you. There are times when things happen to us. We cannot stop those things. But what makes a man a man, is what he does once that moment has passed. What makes a person who they are, is what they learn.”
“And where will I go now?” hissed the Prince.
“You will go with us.”
“To the land of the Exiled Kindred?” the Prince scoffed. “Where I will be treated as a prisoner of war? Where I will be tortured for information if I don’t give it willingly?”
“I should have known you’d be an idiot like this,” said the girl.
“And what would you do in my place?”
There was a long silence in which the girl just looked at him.
“I would live, just to spite the ones who would have you dead.”
The Prince looked at her for a long moment, and the anger he’d felt, the pain, hardened into something ugly and vindictive, something that he felt ashamed of, but something that gave him fire.
“Fine,” he said. “Unchain me.”
“Fantastic,” the girl said, rolling her eyes. “He better be worth this trouble, Tomaz.”
The sounds outside the cell became louder and it soon became clear that the Seeker’s headquarters were in an uproar. An alarm bell began to ring.
“They’ve discovered our presence,” Tomaz said grimly.
“How?” the girl asked, “we stored the Searchers – ”
“No doubt my cell is enchanted,” the Prince said. “Bloodmages could have placed enchantments around the door and the lock, they - ”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” the girl hissed.
“I didn’t know you were coming!” the Prince retorted venomously.
There was the sound of a key scraping in the lock, and the Prince fell silent. The girl and Tomaz switched places, the girl taking position beside the door in the shadows, and Tomaz approaching the Prince, grabbing the chains that were holding him in place. Clenching them in his enormous fist, Tomaz threw his full weight against the restraints. With a screech like a dying animal, the chains came out of the wall in a shower of powdered stone and mortar.
The door opened and three guards entered with swords already half drawn. Tomaz and the Prince, still in chains but no longer tethered to the wall, kept a safe distance away. The guards saw them and immediately spread out in formation, coming farther into the room. They never even saw the Exile girl.
There was a blurred series of motions, and then all three men lay motionless on the floor, the girl standing calmly over them as she sheathed her daggers.
Shadows and light, she’s good.
There was a strange tugging sensation on the Prince’s arms, and he turned to see Tomaz pull apart the links of the chains with fingers the size of sausages, once again accompanied by the tortured scream of metal. Not two seconds later, the Prince was left only with the manacles and a bit of chain hanging from each.
“Shadows and light,” whispered the Prince, astonished.
“You’re welcome,” Tomaz responded.
“We need to leave very quickly,” said the girl, who was now looking into the corridor. “There are going to be a lot of people here very soon.”
Tomaz grabbed the Prince by the scruff of the neck and pulled him toward the door until the Prince began to walk on his own.
Once in the hallway, a short stone corridor lined with torches in wall brackets, they turned right, the Prince following the lead of the Exiles, as he had no idea where he was. Both Tomaz and the girl had pulled their hoods and masks back on, though the Prince was unsure what help that would be since he, the top security prisoner, was with them.
They rounded a corner and were presented with a set of iron bars spanning from ceiling to floor.
“Shadows and fire, this wasn’t here before,” the girl cursed.
Tomaz motioned the Prince and the girl out of the way, obviously ready to somehow break their way through.
“Wait!” the Prince said. He ran forward and examined the bars.
“We don’t have time to wait, princeling,” the girl said with exasperation.
The Prince ignored her and continued to examine the bars. Near the top of the farthest right bar he saw what he was looking for.
“There,” he said, pointing.
It was a small mark most people would have missed, but one the Prince had been trained to notice on all things. It was a red tear-shaped droplet of blood. The sign of the Bloodmages.
With an awkward, jerky movement, trying to avoid hitting the bars with the manacles still dangling from his wrists, he reached up and touched the symbol with his thumb. The bars shot up into the ceiling, leaving the hallway clear. The Prince motioned for them to follow him through.
“How did you do that?” the girl asked.
“Bloodmages draw their power from all seven Talismans,” the Prince said quickly. “As long as I’m connected to the Raven, nothing they make can keep me out, even if the entire Empire is hunting after me. That’s why my chains were relatively easy to break - they were simple metal. None of their enchantments can hold me. Now, don’t we have somewhere to be?”
The girl brushed past him, Tomaz following quickly behind. They rounded another corner as a group of guards came into the corridor twenty yards farther up. Luckily, they hadn’t seen the group, or else thought they were all Lesser Seekers, the Prince hiding behind Tomaz’s conveniently large bulk. The Prince and the Exiles rounded another corner, and came to a small staircase, leading upwards. Two guards were stationed at the bottom, and they caught sight of the three immediately.
“Stay where you are!” one of them called, but it was too late. The Prince and the girl, side by side, hurtled forward, taking the guards by surprise. Falling back on his training again, the Prince used the same joint locking technique he had on the Death Watch soldier what seemed so long ago now. The man fell in a heap at the Prince’s feet, but as he turned away, the man reached up and pulled the Prince’s foot out from under him.
He fell flat on his face, slapping his hands against the ground to absorb the shock of the blow. Stars winked at the edges of his vision, but as he looked up he saw dagger saw sticking out of the Exile girl’s boot. He lunged for it, caught the handle, and spun, slicing the guard’s bicep, rendering his arm useless. The Prince rolled to his feet, crouching over the guard, staring into the frightened eyes of the man. This was good – now the Prince would be stronger and faster. He raised the dagger high. The Prince’s mind flashed back to the Death Watch soldier in the mountains.
With a growl of anger, he flipped the dagger up into air, grabbed it dexterously by the blade guard, and smashed the end of the hilt into the man’s temple, knocking him out cold but leaving him alive.
He rose, dagger still in hand, and turned to see the girl and Tomaz staring at him.
“Why didn’t you kill him?” the girl asked.
The Prince, nerves considerably on edge after his imprisonment, responded so viciously he was nearly snarling.
“I don’t kill unless I have to, remember? That’s an Exile’s job.”
If he had expected her to look hurt or stung or affected at all, he was sorely disappointed. She simply stood there and examined him, her face cold and dispassionate, but her eyes blazing almost brighter than the torches along the wall.
Tomaz muttered something to her that he couldn’t hear, something that sounded like “worth the trouble,” but that made no sense.
Before he could ask, there was a sound behind him, and they all whirled to face it. A number of men rounded the corner, some dressed in the rough black homespun of the Searchers the Prince had seen upon entering the lair. One pointed and gave a cry.
&nbs
p; “Quickly,” Tomaz said, “up the stairs!”
The Prince held out the dagger to the girl, offering it back, but she shook her head.
“Keep it – you’ll need it.”
The three of them made their way up the stone staircase, disappearing around the first curve. They continued to climb for ages, going around and around and always upward.
The Prince, kept in confinement for a week, tied to a wall, and fed little more than starvation rations, felt his strength ebbing away as his feet began to drag like lead weights. The Exiles began to pull ahead of him. Gasping, he hurried to catch up, hearing the alarm bell still ringing in the distance, knowing that this was his only chance to escape.
Through one final door, and he found himself out in chill night air.
He looked around, confused, and realized he was high up one of the towers spaced along the wall of the Inner City. He remembered that he had entered the lair through the Cathedral … the Seeker’s headquarters must be enormous. It might expand out underneath the entire city of Banelyn, and if this was a way out as well, then who was to say there weren’t multiple entrances and exits throughout the city? He looked over the wall and found he could see across Banelyn City proper, all the way to the Black Wall. Making his way to the side, he looked down over into the courtyard, and saw guards running back and forth, the entire city of the Most High in an uproar.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Along the wall,” Tomaz said, motioning behind him. The Prince turned.
The tower was connected to the top of the wall by a long battlement running toward the main gate and another door. There were guards stationed every few yards.
“How are we going to do that?” the Prince asked incredulously. Tomaz just smiled at him wickedly. He reached down and picked up a long piece of wood from a large pile the Prince assumed was meant to be the makings of a signal fire. Tomaz motioned to the girl.
“Ready?” he asked her in a quiet rumble.
“Catch me if you can,” she said with a grin, and shot off down the runway.
“What – what in the name of the Empress is she doing?”
Tomaz didn’t respond, but took off after her. The Prince, not knowing what else to do, ran as fast as he could behind them, the metal chains of his manacles striking his sides. The first guard turned just in time to see the girl make her way past him, and he turned and ran after her, though how he thought he’d catch her wearing full armor the Prince didn’t know. The second guard, altered to the presence of the Exile girl, turned and drew his sword, ready for her to attack, but once more she blew right past him, and he turned to follow as well, not even noticing the hulking shape of Tomaz and the smaller shape of the Prince making their way down the battlements after them.
There were a dozen guards in all, and the girl dodged each of them, as if she were in a foot race that only she knew about. She reached the door, and turned back to look at the guards as they came running after her, and threw up her hands in surrender. The guards slowed, all standing in a clump near the door.
Tomaz came up behind them, wielding the large wood piece.
Two of the guards went down before they even knew what was happening, the hard wood smashing into the sides of their helmets and knocking them out. The others turned in alarm and drew their swords, only to be attacked by the girl behind them. In a matter of seconds, all twelve were down, unconscious.
The Prince was at a loss for words. It took him a moment to realize that the girl had turned to the door, but couldn’t get it open. He stepped forward and shouldered her out of the way, recognizing the Mages Knot, one of the simple puzzle-combination locks popular with the Most High this year.
“A three year old could open this, you know that?” the Prince said to the girl. He twisted the wooden pegs around in the socket so that they formed a triangle, and pushed. The door swung open on well-oiled hinges, showing another spiral stone staircase, this one leading down.
“Well I’m very grateful we have you around to open all the tricky doors,” the girl responded, elbowing her way past him. She turned back to him before descending. “I’ll just take care of all the guards. And the rescuing. You know,” she smiled sweetly at him, “the manly things.”
She turned her back on him and disappeared down the stone staircase. Tomaz followed her quickly, chuckling to himself.
“Bloody Exiles,” the Prince muttered under his breath.
At the base of the tower they emerged to find themselves in the same gatehouse the Prince had made his way through on the Path of Light. This time it was free of guards, but contained instead two Searchers, and, in a ridiculous coincidence, the Lord Seeker himself.
The two trios stood staring at each other for a long moment, stunned by the others’ presence.
“Bar the doors,” the Seeker said.
“I think not,” Tomaz responded. He strode forward and grabbed the man, pulling him away from the other two. Time seemed to slow down, and the Prince felt himself swept forward. He didn’t know what he intended to do, but the rage that had festered in him in that dungeon had taken control, and he was simply acting. Leah had moved toward the other two, but he went straight for the Lord Seeker. He drew an arm back, and punched the man full in the face. Tomaz released him in surprise, and the man went reeling backward, nose crushed flat, before he fell to the floor, unconscious.
There was a stunned silence from all parties, even the Exile girl, and then both Searchers simply turned and fled. Both of the Exiles turned to him with wary looks. When he realized what he’d just done, he realized he was flushed and breathing heavy.
“He threw me in a dungeon,” he said by way of explanation.
The girl looked at Tomaz.
“Okay. We can keep him.”
An arrow shot past the Prince’s nose, and he jumped back with a very un-princely yelp. It thudded into the wooden wall behind him, and he felt a small trickle of blood well up on the bridge of his nose. The shot had been terrific - and fired through the open door to their right.
“Time to go,” the girl said. She disappeared through the door on the left, the one that led back into Banelyn City proper, and the Prince followed quickly behind, as Tomaz just managed to duck through the door without scraping the sides.
They ran quickly through the shadows, hearing the sounds of alarm from all around them. Members of the High Blood began emerging from their houses, some with looks of outrage on their faces, others scared and alarmed. The street lamps, which had been dimmed for the night, were suddenly flaring into unnaturally bright light, and the Prince felt a familiar dread creep through him. His hands began to tingle and his stride became slightly erratic.
“Bloodmages are here,” he gasped at the Exiles as they moved through the shadows of a garden. “We need to leave - now. If I stay close, they’ll be able to feel me the way I can feel people, and they’ll follow me like bloodhounds.”
“We came in over the wall, the way I followed you,” the Exile girl said. The Prince suddenly remembered that night, and how scared he had been of this girl, how certain he had been she was coming to kill him or stop him from reaching the Seeker.
“Were you following me to stop me or to see what I did?”
The girl did not respond.
“Now is not the time for questions,” Tomaz said. “We came in over the wall - is that way still safe?”
The Prince quickly nodded.
“No one should know about it but the Seekers - chances are the guards don’t even know there’s anything more than an abandoned guardhouse up there. I would bet that way is much easier to get through than the gates.”
Immediately, both Exiles turned and ran for the stables, trusting him completely, just as if he’d never betrayed them. For a brief instant, he couldn’t catch his breath, but then he was running just as hard as they were.