Chapter 22
It was huge, this cavern and filled with great crystals in white, translucent and greenish yellow. Crystals as large as a cathedral’s cloisters lying haphazardly on the ground and growing out of it at every conceivable angle. It looked like a child’s jumping jacks gone mad and the air vibrated with the resonance of magic.
She was seated near me cooking on a fire that came out of the stones and watching me in-between bites. I stood up and rubbed my head. It ached and there was a terrible craving in me, I needed to return to my cell. I walked off only to be brought up short by a shackle on my ankle tied to a large block. I pulled but it didn’t budge.
“Let me go,” I said hoarsely. “I have to go back to my cell. If I don’t go back, the master will punish me.” I cried. She looked uncomfortable. “Please,” I begged. “It hurts so much what he does with the collar! I can’t take anymore! Please bring me back!”
“He can’t reach you here, Tobias,” she said gently. “You are on the Forgotten Way. No one but you and I can travel the underground path for this is only the Dracule’s magic. Can you eat?” She held out whatever it was that she had cooking and I took a piece. Tasted it and chewed stolidly, swallowing when it was nothing less than mush. No blood in it, no flavor just something that filled the empty spot in my belly. I was too agitated to rest and the shackle prevented me from pacing. She watched me for a time and then, stood up as she approached me. I stepped back away from her, the rules quite clear in my head from the master.
Obey his every order.
Do not eat from human or Elassai or animal.
Unless he says to do so.
Do not leave the cell unless it is to accompany him.
Do not speak unless told to answer.
Do not look him in the eyes.
I will kill anyone or thing,
If it stands between me and his commands.
I will not try to kill myself,
Or put myself in a position that brings about my death.
My life is his to end, as he sees fit.
Obey his every order immediately.
Disobedience brings another session of the collar.
I buried my face in my hands and sobbed in mortal fear at what awaited me when I returned to the master’s side. A soft hand pulled mine down and stroked my face, lingering on my lips. “Toby, don’t cry,” she whispered. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Trust me as I trusted you.”
“I don’t remember you!” I shouted in anger. “All I know is that he owns me and I won’t risk that torture again!”
“Toby, it’s not just Connacher you have to worry about–it’s also Blackfin and Lyr Averon. They’ve invaded the Borderland, marched onto the Glacier and are attacking the city buried under the ice. A city that found and harbored you. Lyr Averon knows this and that you know the way in, know their secrets so he’s coming after you. They won’t stop until you are in their hands. They will murder everyone and everything that stands between you and that city.”
“What city? I don’t know any city! I just remember falling and the cold water, that’s all. Agenor found me on the river bank, half-drowned and broken.”
“If you fell from the glacier, Toby, you fell further than any frost giant and lived to tell about. Look at me.” I struggled to stare into her eyes, to do so put me into that frame of mind that opened me to the cravings yet when I looked into her eyes, I did not see that fear. She cradled my face and I drowned in those lavender pools, saw her lips come closer and she kissed me. She smelled of sweat and musty dirt, sharp calcite and quartz and the acrid bite of ozone after a thunderstorm.
I found myself on my knees with my arms around her, my head nuzzled into her neck and my teeth pressed against her skin. “Go ahead, Toby. Take what you need,” she urged. “It will help you heal and bring back your memories.”
I bit her and as the blood surged into my mouth, images burst into my head. Shocked me so that I stopped drinking as I was assailed almost to the point of madness. I thrust at her chest but she held me tight. I saw her and her brother running from her king’s warriors and finding safety in the wilderness. I saw her joining the Rangers as a new recruit under a different name with hair and eyes that no longer matched her description. I saw a boy arriving home to find his former hand dead and replaced by an imposter. I saw him running on the ice to escape a wizard, his grandfather firing a silver arrow into his back.
“I ate my friend,” I said in horror. “He served Davlos up to me as a homecoming meal.”
“Do you remember now?” She smiled at me with her blood trickling down her neck and the taste of her thick in my throat. The master’s warning warred with my returning memories and I felt the collar warming. I pushed her away and tore at my throat as the pain drove me to my knees. I screamed in agony.
“Toby, I don’t understand! How can his magics reach you here? It’s not supposed to work underground!”
“Because it is here underground with me!” I shouted. “The collar is bound in my blood!” It went on for too long before that small, meager sip faded and with it, the pain of disobedience.
When it was over, I lay on the stones spent and she was sobbing. “If you can’t feed, you’ll die, Toby.”
“I can go back,” I whispered. “I must go back. Between the collar’s curse and Lyr Averon, I have no recourse. I’m being pulled apart in two directions, Arianell.” I said her name with longing and desperate hopelessness. “I must go back to Connacher – he at least does not want the King to destroy the world.”
“You can’t, Toby. He’ll kill you. Or use you to kill Lyr Averon,” she protested.
I sighed and held the collar with trembling fingers. “It matters not what I want or what you want. It only matters what he wants. I cannot control my own mind or my own body. I cannot survive under the ground by drinking the blood of creatures or man. Connacher has seen to that. If I want to live, I must crawl back to my master. And even that he has taken from me. His last command to me was that no matter how I desired it, I would not give up my life or seek a way to end it.” She said nothing as I stood up and held out the shackle. She did not move. “Would you watch me suffer in agony, Arianell? Watch me wither and burn as my body consumes itself for food and the collar torments me into a mindless worm? Please, spare me that.”
“I could end your suffering,” she whispered broken-hearted.
I shook my head. “I would kill you before that could happen. He made sure of that when he spelled me. I will kill anyone who stood before me and his commands.”
She drew her sword and cut the chain. Pointed up at the largest mass of crystals. “That way lies the entrance, Tobias.” I left her. I did not say goodbye and hardened my heart on her last words for I could not bear to hear them.