Chapter 18
I lay there for hours, not quite conscious yet, not all the way out. I remember shivering uncontrollably as if I were lying on a block of ice. So when the warmth of someone‘s hand touched me, I ached to have it around me, holding me. "I‘m so cold," I tried to say and couldn‘t because I was still gagged. Muttered in my head. My teeth chattered. against the rubbery vine.
The hands moved to my wrists and fumbled there.
"Can you help me?" A voice whispered in my ear and their mouth tickled. The hairs on my nape. I shuddered and they felt it. I forced my eyes open and stared into green eyes, thickly lashed in a face incredibly filthy with shoulder length hair and matted dreadlocks.
"Who are you that merits a bed in the special Inquisitor‘s roo m?" It looked like a young boy in black rags, cut down from a Druz uniform. I tried to answer. "Never mind. We have to get you out of here before they suck your blood. Have you a weapon?"
I opened my hand and heard his gasp as he touched the white scar of the coin; his fingers went to the gag in my mouth and removed it. Carefully from its grip inside and out. I spat weakly to get rid of the horrible brassy taste and coughed until my eyes watered.
"Don't use it," he said, and covered my hand. He laid his palm across my lips. His bones were very fragile; my eyes widened. He was a girl, but not a Druz---a girl like me with the same honey gray hair and enormous green eyes. "If you loose the Seillach‘s aura, it will call the entire Priesthood down on you and with you bound by the Tree, you‘ll die. And me with you."
"I‘m too banged up to move. Can you carry me?"
"First, we have to get you loose. The Ironwood cuffs do not break, nor burn or, nor cut."
"Then how will you remove them?"
She pulled up the chain where it was bolted to the table. "They can, however, be frozen."
She closed her eyes, muttered something and pulled from her pockets a small vial of glass. She opened the top carefully and plumes of smoke drifted up. Just as carefully, she trickled some on one link of each bond, and then whacked it with a small geologist‘s hammer. Pieces of wood went flying like shrapnel as the frozen links shattered. She picked up each piece and tucked it into her pouch. She helped me sit up and held me while my head swam. "I smell your blood."
I stared. Not exactly what you‘d expect the first chick to get a hold of you was going to say. "One of those dudes sucked the blood out of my leg. Where the other one cut me." I missed the look of horror on her face as I pulled up my leg and stared at the sash tied around my calf. "I don‘t feel so good."
"That's because you‘re low on blood, covered in black and were poisoned by the Druz.
Their bite is toxic." Her lips were thin and grim. She held me with one arm around my shoulders, used the other to dig through her pockets, and pulled out another small bottle. Smelling it, she opened and poured it down my throat before I could protest. It tasted awful, like cat piss and milkweed.
"Ugh," I pushed her hand away. "That‘s disgusting! Gross! What is it?"
"It's to make you stronger. Now, get up. We have a long way to go."
I felt numb yet capable of movement. I slid my feet to the stone floor and wobbled. "Who are you?"
"Call me Zip. Let's go."
"Go where?" I wanted to giggle. I couldn‘t see where we could go except through the bars and I was sure the big ugly ones had locked those. Besides, I sort of remembered them chaining me to this table. "Wait a minute. How did you get through the bars?"
"I didn't. Come on." She studied me. "It's not supposed to make you act like this,"," she muttered as I took a step on rubber legs. I could vaguely sense pain in the background, but it wasn‘t enough to stop me.
"What's your name, Seillach Carrier?" She asked abruptly.
"Jade. Jadewyn James." I giggled. "You smell, girl. You don‘t smell girly. You are a girl, right?" My hand of its own volition went to her chest and I felt tits---boobs–small, pert, and soft but definitely boobs. I searched for a nipple and she slapped my hands away and said something that sounded like a curse yet I heard the smile in her voice.
"Let‘s go."
"Go where?" I looked around the cell and saw only three walls of greasy stained beige stone, the table with the table, chains and the barred entrance. She went to the corner of the wall and leaned on it, and half of it swooshed quietly back to reveal a dark passage lit by smoking torches that burned with a greasy flame that was cold. I rolled my eyes. Secret passages. What else? She pushed me along and once inside, shut the hidden door with both hands and then stood there staring at me.
"Just because we‘re hidden doesn't mean we're safe. Come on, I have to reach the depths before they find out you‘re gone."."
"I don‘t understand any of this," I complained as she grabbed what was left of my shirtfront and dragged me along. I limped; my calf ached even through the mask of the painkiller. She took me through so many twists and turns that I was hopelessly lost without me reading my stings. I tugged on one and the reaction I got was so discordant that I realized it was probably not a good idea to try to read the lines in this place.
By the time she stopped, we were in caverns deep below the ground, in a world so bizarre and unique that I felt as if I'd fallen into Wonderland. Huge spires of crystal rose from floor to ceiling, waterfalls of rock frozen in Gothic splendor, an immense pool of brilliant blue water that reflected back at us with millions of a million images of the wonders around us. But not just clear crystal colors, these ranged from pink all the way to deepest midnight, it was that crystal cave in Mexico built on a scale only Disney‘s mind could have envisioned. The light was soft, diffuse coming from an unknown source. Yet clear enough so that I could discern the lashes on her cheeks. Long and black as night. She sat me down on a stump of sapphire rock and went about putting up a camp of sorts with a, sleeping bag, water bottle, a camp stove, first aid kit, a pillow, extra blankets and food. I waited passively to see if she was going to pull out a sink or a CD player. Maybe a TV.
"Take off your clothes. Or what‘s left of them," she said and I gaped at her. "Your rags.
Take off your clothes; I need to see your wounds."
All I had left on me was a ripped pair of sweats and a sleeve. The sweats had come from Murph's war bag. Slowly, I stood up, pulled off the top and rolled the legs up to my crotch, refusing to drop everything in front of her. I wasn‘t wearing any underwear. She looked at my bruises and the cut with evident teeth marks; it was turning green and with nasty fluid oozing out of the fang marks.
"It's infected." She went to the lake, dunked rags in the water and came back to my side.
Inside the first aid box were items much the same as on my plane---, antibiotic cream, gauze, alcohol wipes, syringes, bottles and vials of pills and drugs, antiseptics. She opened one of her own glass vials, saturated a gauze pad and wiped off the cuts. It stung and I could feel it worming its way under the skin. "The pilaster will eat at the infection and slow the Druz poison."
"Poison? I've been poisoned?" I felt a sudden gut wrenching that tore through the painkiller.
"Don't you know anything?" She turned her head and I raised my arm to gasp as the shoulder I bounced with a building reminded me not to use it. "Selwyn? Eilwynn?"
Two more figures came out of the darkness came out of the darkness, both had the dark gray hair and green eyes. We stared at each other. Both men were older than I was and from their looks, related to the dirty female. Both looked like of it, capable warriors and wore the elite black uniform of the Dursvan Forces. Their insignia was missing and pale patches marked where they had been.
"Who is he, Zip?" The younger asked as his face came out of shadow. He asked it harshly as if he were afraid of the answer.
"Jadewyn." She held up my hand so that a stray bolt of light illuminated the scar. Their intake of breath was the last thing I heard for a while.