Chapter Eleven
Not Alone
WHAT SEEMED TO HAVE BEEN DAYS - the three could not tell for there was no signs of daylight however deep in the castle they were – meager meals of old bread and water left them hungry, Paetoric and Seften had given up hope of attracting any sort of attention let alone help and had resorted to futile attempts of discovering escape from the prison, carefully avoiding the foreboding lock on the cell door based on the experience aboard the imprisoning ship. Rhoin, despite the insistence of his brothers, was unable to utilize his magic to aid escape, as the passing imprisonment had left him drained of any sort of magic energy, unable to recover.
Seften, the dirty sand wearing into his clothing and skin, along with the gaunt expression long days of hunger can impress upon one’s face, looked more a worn prisoner along with Paetoric and Rhoin, who both suffered the same manifestations as he. He was on his knees, groping along the bottom of the crude stony wall, feeling for a loose stone or hole, when he thought he heard something. He pressed his ear against the wall hopefully to discern the sound, and waited in breathless silence, listening. A deep, groaning sound of what must have been a very large man. “Paetoric, Rhoin!” he called his brothers, “listen – another prisoner in the next cell over?”
Paetoric and Rhoin hasted over to Seften’s side, pressing their own ears against the rocky cell wall. They listened to the painful deep groans. “Hey!” Paetoric yelled, “Hey – can you hear me? Are you okay, who are you?” at which point Rhoin silenced him so that they could listen for response.
There was a long silence, after which Paetoric and Seften groped and tugged at the jagged rocks of the wall in new hopes of finding a loose stone, an entry of communication to the person behind.
A jutting stone shifted slightly at Seften’s push, then he and Paetoric shoved it back and forth, jarring it loose. The stone thumped upon the sandy prison floor. They clawed at the dark hole, peering into the unrevealing darkness to see the fellow prisoner. “Can you hear me, who are you? Hello?” Seften persisted earnestly.
Rhoin tugged Seften and Paetoric away from the hole suddenly, hushing them and pointing toward the small barred square window at the top of their cell door. The soft light played unevenly through the window, indicating that the torches casting the light had flames being moved by moving wind, and this was found to be from unknown persons walking by from the sounds of several pairs of walking feet. Judging by the sound of light armor clinking, Rhoin determined it to be guards.
The guards had apparently moved past their cell, stopping a ways down. One of them spoke. “So this is the one, eh?” said one guard.
“Aye, the one that was ordered to die in prison,” responded another guard, indifferently. They were talking about the man in the next cell over! “He very much upset the Arbiter, he did. He gave the order personally to me!”
A clatter of a tin water dish sounded, and they heard the scraping of it being shoved underneath the cell door. “Well, let him rot, then,” the first guard concluded. Their footfalls went back past the brothers’ cell and disappeared in the distance. After determining that the guards had definitely left by a long silence, Seften kneeled in front of the hole in the wall and called out to the prisoner. No response. “Please, I am from Windpass Isles and have been imprisoned for reasons I do not know! What was your fate, may I ask?” again to the unresponsive prisoner.
Seften awaited response to no avail. He finally gave up, and slouched against the stony wall next to the hole.
“My name is Rin,” grunted a very unrefined, deep voice form the other side of the hole.
Seften almost jumped in alarm, and then turned to face the hole, still not seeing the prisoner through the hole’s darkness. “I am one of many that have been unjustly imprisoned here,” Rin spoke.
“Have you tried escape, do you know how to get out of here?” Seften persisted.
Following a deep sigh, Rin replied, “No, I do not know how to escape, and I am only one of the few of my people who have tried. They are apathetic.”
“Why – why are they apathetic, what happened?” Seften asked.
“It is our belief – a belief I do not assume myself, but the rest of my people do – that we exist only to earn redemption from the evils cause by our ancient ancestors. So the great many of us do not rebel imprisonment and punishment.
“It is very unjust and unfair upon oneself to live generation-to-generation believing this way; you have to move on or at least make up for one’s wrongs. Am I wrong?” Seften agreed, and Rin continued. “The Kingship of Gaedia have imprisoned us, using us to their ends, by using our beliefs upon us, only I refused to agree. I was not the only rebel; the Gaedians removed the tongue from the mouths of every imprisoned one of us so that we could not speak out and protest, or rally to fight back.”
“So,” Seften began nervously, “they are to remove our tongues?” he finished asking.
“No,” Rin gruffly answered. “Only my people. They are afraid only of us as prisoners and slaves.”
“But how to you speak, with a tongue supposedly removed?” Seften inquired.
Another deep, throaty sigh, and Rin answered. “I pretended never to speak, never crying out, voicing nothing, and I passed among the other slaves and prisoners without having this mutilation done upon me. I risk talking to you now, prisoners, but I take this risk because I feel that perhaps you are with me, that you are friends in my cause.”
Although separated by the stone prison wall, Rhoin, Seften and Paetoric had a new member of their party, Rin, still strange and questionable in character, but an ally.
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