Firebrand

“She was just torn from her family?”

“All of us who have been brought here were.”

“I am sorry,” he said.

“Were you not taken from your family?” Nari asked.

“I don’t—” He was about to say he had no family, but then realized it wasn’t true. He had not only Estora, but Laren, too. In a sense, even his Weapons and the servants could be construed as family. He must return to them, especially Estora, for there was no telling what the aureas slee would do to her and his realm. He could not bear the thought of her being brought here to live with their children. And what of Karigan? Would the aureas slee hunt her down to punish him? He could not permit the elemental to harm any of his people, his family.

Nari went to a small pool of water. A rivulet trickled out of a crack in the wall into the pool. She returned with a cloth and a tarnished silver bowl full of water. She dipped the cloth in the water and dabbed at his scored cheek.

“How long have you been here?” he asked, grimacing at the sting.

“I do not know,” she replied. “There is no time here, and nothing to gauge it by, except when Slee brings a mortal.” She glanced at Magged, who now folded the gown and replaced it in the chest. “It is only through the growth and death of the mortals that I know time.”

DEAD ENDS

Nari’s words about the passage of time became more profound to Zachary the longer he remained in Slee’s lair. There was no way of telling if it were day or night in the cavern. No natural daylight reached them; there was no place from which to view the sky. At least no place, he amended, he had yet found. He guessed a few days to a week had passed, but he could not say for sure. They slept when tired, and ate when hungry.

Not that what was available for them to eat sated their hunger. He learned the women subsisted mainly on a breadlike fungus that grew in certain sections of the cavern, in deeper levels that had no illumination from glowstone. They also ate pale, mute crickets with long legs like spiders. Sometimes, Nari told him, Magged used a fine net to catch the white eyeless fish that swam in the underground stream that flowed in the lowest level of the cavern, but they were small and boney, and had to be consumed raw for there was no wood to burn. Slee occasionally brought them fresh meat, such as the komara from which they spun wool to make clothes and blankets, but it was rare. Slee, apparently, did not think of them much at all.

Zachary wondered how they did not go insane as he looked over the writing inscribed in the walls of the cavern where they resided. He ran his fingers over what looked like the scribblings of children that could have been dim memories of animals and trees and families in the outer world. There was Eletian script, and some that was Old Sacoridian. Rhovan and Hura-deshian, and other writing styles he could not identify, also covered the walls. He found dates and names chipped into the rock from hundreds of years ago.

I want to go home, was one plaintive inscription written in the common tongue, to be with my husband and children. Please, O Aeryc and Aeryon, help me.

How many hundreds, how many thousands, had been abducted by the ice elemental? How could it be stopped? Slee was accustomed to taking what it wanted, and Zachary was certain it would not negotiate. He must stop it. But how did one stop the wind or the rain, the sun or the clouds?

He wondered what transpired in Sacor City, what mischief the aureas slee was getting into. Would his people recognize the imposter? Laren surely would. His worry for Estora and their children nearly drove him mad. He also worried about the state of his realm, and preparation for conflict. What if his cousin, Xandis Amberhill, was found? What if he wasn’t? In the future time, Karigan had seen that he’d become one with Mornhavon, and had overthrown Sacoridia and led it into a very dark age. Zachary must escape the cave. He must protect Estora and his realm.

He glanced over his shoulder at Magged playing with rocks, piling them so they balanced. When they fell, she started over. He did not know if Magged had been born simple, or if her captivity in this place made her so. Then there was Nari staring trancelike into the pool of water. She had been Slee’s captive, he sensed, for centuries. How could she stand it?

No, he would not allow Slee to imprison his wife and children here. Somehow it had to be stopped, and the first step was escape. On impulse, he stalked off to the passage that led into the upper chamber with the throne and all the natural dripstone formations. Magged looked up as he passed by. Nari awoke from her trance.

“Where are you going?” they asked him.

He walked on without answering and only paused once he reached the upper chamber. He’d already searched it and looked through all the art treasures Slee had collected, but he found nothing of use and no exit.

He removed his borrowed cloak and started piling glowstone pebbles into it. Magged helped as if it were a game. When he’d amassed a satisfactory quantity, he gathered up the cloak and hoisted it over his shoulder like a sack, hissing at the pain it caused his ribs. He then looked over the stalactites and found a likely one that was not too large, but produced an ample amount of glow. He broke it off the ceiling with a good hard yank. It was to be his torch.

“I do not understand,” Nari said, “what it is you intend to do.”

“I am going to find my way out.” He strode off then, and headed down past their living chamber, down past the hot spring pools on the lower level. He heard Magged whispering worriedly to Nari as they followed.

“Others have tried this,” Nari said, “but a way has never been found.”