I would have kicked the box if I could have but in truth, I was worried over what would happen if I fell out in broad daylight. Would I burn like that albino child that had been cruelly forced to work in the fields? She had suffered such severe sunburns that she went blind and later died of fevers.
So, I stayed quiet taking my chances that I would find an easier opportunity to escape once I arrived where ever it was that I was going.
I smelled Diomed, heard his great heart racing in agitation as he was hoisted from the hold and lifted onto the wharf. I smelled Arianell amongst all the other bodies and my heart beat the faster. I tried to shout but my voice was lost in the hubbub of the docks and the only one who paid attention was the wizard. He thumped the lid and told me to shut up or worse things would happen to me.
My box was loaded onto a wagon and we went trotting through the streets leaving the smells of salt and ships behind. Grass, trees and buildings odors became more prevalent. The stink of humanity dwelling in close proximity gave way to the countryside and the air itself began to smell of the richness of the nobles. Fine leather, well-built brick and stone mansions, clean air, clean homes and freshly washed bodies. Where before I could smell the diseases and poverty of the commoners and city dwellers, now I smelled the healthy upper crust.
The horses dropped to a walk and others surrounded us. I could hear them clear as daylight. They were Regulars sent from town to escort us to the Earl’s estates and bring me to his Lordship. I gnashed my teeth in frustration yet all I could do was wait.
They nearly dropped me unloading off the wagon, placed my box on a dolly and tilted me as they trundled it inside a vast Hall that echoed with their footsteps. The movement stopped and a very proper Erhesh voice asked, “Is this Lord Spencer’s delivery from the Newlands? He asked that it be placed in the holding cells until he can see to it personally.”
Blackfin answered him. “This object in question must be kept under stringent conditions. A cell that locks with silver bars, no windows and very little light. This person must not be fed food or water and no one is to enter without permission from myself or the Emperor.”
“No food or water?”
“None. His needs are very strict and I must supply them or he will fall ill and die,” Blackfin said firmly.
“I thought his father’s old room but–.”
“Have you a tower cell on the North side?”
“There is the North Tower, the top room is closed with no windows or natural light and the only access is through the East Gate where the Guard’s Armory is located.”
“Perfect. Guards close and below him, in case they are needed. Is there any other way in or out?”
“Just a lift but it only serves the one floor,” the butler returned.
“Load the crate and take it there,” the wizard ordered and a sickly sweet odor penetrated the interior of the box. Smoke eddied in. The more I breathed, the heavier my eyelids grew until I passed out, dead to the world on the floor of the crate.
I opened my eyes and saw stone. Large blocks cut smooth and circular in a room some 40 feet wide. Gray and sand colored with a smooth texture that was polished granite. The ceiling was high above my head–some 20 feet over it and the beams were heavy oak supporting the slate roof. There were no windows and I could not find a door. The floor was flat slabs of the same gray stone. No fireplace, just a potbellied stove that was vented through a hole in the stones and a metal pipe. It was not going and the room was cold but it did not seem to matter to me.
There was a nice four-poster bed with a feather mattress and clean sheets. Plump pillows and a comforter. A chest sat at the foot of the bed and held clothing. Rich, heavy warm things that an Earl’s son would wear. Slippers for inside, no boots and no outerwear.
I looked at myself. Sometime while I had been asleep or unconscious, someone had undressed me, robed me in night things and treated the burns and sores on my wrists. I was in a voluminous wool nightgown with gathered sleeves, an embroidered robe belted at the waist and thin slippers on my feet. My silver handcuffs were still on my wrists but the chains binding them together had been removed.
I wandered the room. Besides the chest and the bed, I had two chairs, a table, desk and armoire. A garderobe. No candles, lamps, no books not even dinnerware or silverware to eat with. Nothing to occupy my time or exercise my brain.
There were a few rugs on the stone floor and I lifted them just to make sure they weren’t hiding a hidden trap door. I had no idea how I’d been brought inside this box for it was a box, just larger and better furnished than my previous one.
After I had searched the room, its contents and the furniture, I had wasted only a mere half-hour. And that included checking under the mattress and bed. Other than a few dust bunnies, I found nothing. Even my sight which was sensitive enough to see a difference in the heat striking the outside walls, I found no hidden passages, shafts or doorways.
I stood in the center of the room and screamed. A howl of outrage, pure anger and the need to hurt something. Stepped back in astonishment for that was not truly who I was. Then, I sat on the bed and sobbed for what I had lost.
Time passed agonizingly slowly. I had no way of telling how much or how little. There was no darkening of the room to tell me if the sun was setting or rising, no hunger pangs to mark breakfast, nuncheon or dinner.
I slept mostly out of sheer boredom and I thought I would go mad if I had nothing to occupy my days and nights. Sleep was not the respite I thought, either. Soon after my eyes closed, I was carried back to Tir Nan Tuatha to stand before the Lyr. His silvery eyes glared daggers of ice at me, standing tall and defiant before him. He spoke and in my dreams, I understood him.
“You have found a way to defy my curse,” he sneered. “It is all you hoped for, yfed gwaed? Bachgen souless?”
“You have no power over me,” I retorted.
“But I do. If you return to me, I will take back the curse and you will become the Tifnéræn that you once were,” he laughed.
“And Arianell?”
“She will be punished, demoted and returned to her Border duties at the Southern Wall,” he said carelessly.
“Punished how?”
He sneered. “That is not your concern. She is only a low-bred female who managed to complete Ranger trials, the highest position she could hope for given her status.”
“She is more Lady than you would ever have the honor to know and love!” I spit back and he reared up, furious. The veins under his white skin bulged like blue worms and he no longer looked as beautiful.
“You lay with that narnhghlon leanaí?”
“She was never unclean, grandfather,” I said hotly and before he could reply, I was drawn back into the cold stone room to see one wall twist in a shower of magic. Several people emerged from a sliding door that opened on a small room. Once inside my room, four guards stood at its entrance, hands on swords and revolvers. I could smell the silver before I saw it, they were fortified with it. Bullets, blades and something in their blood.
Blackfin was there dressed in the High Court robes of a woman–freshly bathed, hair and face made up. He looked like a high-priced courtesan. The other two men I did not know but I guessed at their identities by their dress and manner. The shorter man stood at just over 6 feet, in his early 60’s with a still thick head of gray hair, those blue eyes that were a Spencer trait and the fine boned good looks that my father had had in abundance. Here was the thin, patrician nose, full lips and cleft chin I saw most mornings yet, without the apparently ingrained arrogance of a man used to ordering millions of soldiers to fight and die for his Emperor. I turned my attention to His Grace, Emperor Aldi von Erhen, ruler of the Oldlands, Newlands and soon-to-be invader of the Borderlands. If I did not stop him.
“Why did you have my parents murdered?” I asked not bothering to get up. I owed them no respect.
Blackfin slapped me so hard that it knocked me back over the bed. I came up growling and swinging, the guards stepped forward but he waved them back. I rushed him and his next blow hit me in the gut, doubled me over and I fell to my knees spitting blood.
“I have infused my blood with silver, Tobias. Should you manage to bite any of us, it will poison you so severely that you may not recover. I wear the gauntlets of Lyr of the Silver Hand; against it you are powerless.”
“I will rip out your heart and piss on it,” I snarled in furious anger and humiliation.
“He’s not the biddable boy I was expecting. Now, I understand how he survived your traps, Blake,” my grandfather said.
Blake? Blackfin’s real name was Blake? I would have laughed if I could have curled my tongue around it. “What do you plan to do with me? Are you going to murder me and steal my father’s land? Why did you need him out of the way?”
“The Hero of Cape Fear?” Blackfin mocked. “We needed your death as a rallying cry to start the new war. The people are sick of war, they would find no other reason to thirst for a renewal. Besides, your father had doubts against a new campaign and wanted no part in it.”
My grandfather looked like an old man, suddenly. “My son and heir admitted to me that his wife and children were a hoax. He married her to hide his perverted desires for a stable hand in my barns. He hired another man to impregnate her and secure his inheritance. So, by my order, I had them all executed.”
I stared in shock. This man, my grandfather had his own sons murdered, his daughters-in-law and his grandson.
“And me? Why do you want me dead?” I asked bitterly.
“I don’t,” he said in strangled terms. “I need an heir, I need a figurehead to rally the public opinion in the new war, a young child I could mold into a great hero.”
“I’m not so moldable, grandfather,” I said dryly. “I am grown up with my own opinions and beliefs.”
“I had spies watching you, Tobias. And your mother. I know about her,” he added quietly.
“You know nothing!”
“I know that she wasn’t from Aberden, that she was no crofter’s daughter. That her eyes were the same violet as yours. And your other grandfather’s,” he said.
Blackfin nodded. “You are half Borderlander, Elassan. That is why you are so susceptible to magic and silver.”
“If you think you can use me as a bargaining chip with the King, I am persona non-gratis with him,” I retorted.
“So, it was the Lyr Averon who cursed you?” The Emperor asked.
“You know of him?” I gawped.
“Of course I do. Did you think we went to war without knowing who or what we fought? Of course not.”
With a sinking heart, I realized that these two great lords had probably engineered both the massacre at Cape Fear and the war itself. I could understand why Erhen wanted the Newlands and to open the Border Wall but I was clueless as to what the Emperor could offer to a King with magic.
“But why?” I asked, hands spread in distress. “Why would you kill your own people? What doesn’t the old land offer you?”
“Technology,” he answered. “Your grandfather has amassed a library of pre–EA artifacts and has his scientists deciphering them. I too, have ancient treatises that explain how such devices could be built and powered.”
“You want to bring back the old days, of when mankind could kill entire cities with one button?” I was horrified.
“Where man could fly through the skies faster than a falcon, live underwater and create life from nothing. When we were gods,” my grandfather nodded.
“Did not the gods strike them down?” I returned bitterly. “Why do you need me to be a part of this?”
“Because you straddle two worlds, the Old and the New. The legends say we must have you, the books speak of a catalyst called the Tifnéræn. You saw the book and your photo. You are that catalyst.”
“You think I will help you? You are mad if you think I will call up a war!”
“You don’t have a choice, Tobias. All of Cayden’s Valley and the towns along the Caladienne Glacier have heard of your parents’ murder and your heroic trek to retrieve your horses. Your vile murder at the hands of the border people. They’re calling for war.”
“You’ll never get over the Border,” I laughed.
“Oh yes, we will because Lyr Averon will guide us in,” Blackfin said gleefully. “In exchange for you, he will open the Wall and let our soldiers through.”
I stared at them. “You’re all insane. These are people’s lives you’re endangering! Women and children! Have you no remorse? No conscience? I will not be a party to this!”
“You have no choice,” all three of them said and Blackfin forced me to my knees with his power; it made my will retreat so that I became a puppet.
Blackfin became my jailer, the only man allowed in the cell at the top of the tower. Once a month, he brought a youngster in young and comely. At first, they were young maids and when I refused to look at them, he brought boys and while I watched chained to the wall, he bled them and force fed me. I tried to fight him but once the blood hit my stomach, I had no control over the lust that filled me.
I would not take it from the child himself, nor did I ever see him bring the same one more than twice. Sometimes, Blackfin raped the boy in front of me torturing him until I screamed for the wizard to stop. His answer was always the same–submit, obey and he would not kill any more children.
At night, when he left me alone, I tried to hunt but after the first few weeks the rats became extra wary and scarce. Or I had caught and eaten them all. Some nights, I stood where I imagined a window to be and created my own visions outside it. Time passed and I became more and more resigned to my situation, more and more bowed under the dominance of the wizard’s magic, my condition, my grandfather and his Emperor.