Ties That Bind
Chapter I: Captivity
She barely noticed the explosion that rocked the complex, sending a clattering rain of metal down from the shelves lining the room. All that mattered was that he was not here, that he had not entered after his voice had stopped echoing down the hall from the far chamber. It was only a matter of time, she knew, but even a moment's reprieve was welcome. She did notice when, moments later, the screaming stopped. She counted one heartbeat, two, three. Silence continued to reign, deeper than she had experienced since awakening in this place a lifetime ago. Even when he wasn't there, or in the far chamber, it wasn't silent – screams, sobs, pleas, maddened whispers, they all drifted up from the deeper levels, carried by some hideous, ingenious twist of the architecture. Now, with the echoes silenced, however temporarily, it felt as though the entirety of the world was holding its breath.
Another explosion sounded, this one closer. It was not content to simply dislodge the contents of the shelves. One toppled, crashing against the bars of her cell on the way down, hard enough to dent and shift the iron. She could see a crack in the wall behind where the shelf had stood, widening as chips of stone continued to rain down, joining the pile of rubble on the once orderly floor. A ward flared light and died, its geometry disrupted by the destruction, an impersonal assault it was useless against.
A flicker of movement drew her gaze away from the cracked wall, to the door and the grey-clad figure slipping through it. For a moment she was surprised that she hadn't heard the door open – the hinges were not particularly well oiled – and then she realized that the noise of the nearby explosion must have temporarily stolen her hearing. That she hadn't noticed this immediately disturbed her more than the impairment itself; it would, she was certain, fade soon enough, and proved more inconvenient than frightening. The lack of awareness, however, was something she could ill afford.
The figure in the doorway turned towards her, and she thought she saw an expression of surprise on the face within the hood. His lips moved, the words lost beneath the ringing in her ears. The continued sift of stone and mortar from the walls made her wonder if the words would have been buried anyway. She raised one hand to cup her ear in a gesture of apology. Frustration flashed across the man's face, more definite than the earlier surprise, and he started towards her cell. Too late she remembered the ward-rune scribed on the floor. She didn't hear the crackling discharge of energy as the spell triggered.
She did hear the man's screams.
Finally, he fell, amid a cloud of smoke carrying the stink of burnt meat, all too familiar. His hood had burned away from his face, leaving bare features that were surprisingly young where they weren't charred black and twisted beyond recognition. One eye remained visible in the ruin, and it stared up at her as though in accusation, the bright blue of the iris not yet glazed grey with death. She thought she should feel sorrow, or anger, or even guilt. She would have, once. She still did, she supposed, but it was buried beneath a sense of numbness born of too many horrors seen in quick succession. The death of a stranger, of someone whose name she didn't even know, didn't measure up any longer. At least he had died swiftly, if not well.
It took her several moments to recognize the pouch clipped at the man's belt – the nature of it, if not the object itself. Metal glinted dully, unmistakable once she truly looked at it. Suspicion flared, holding her paralyzed, and she wondered suddenly if this was just another torture. It would not be the first time her captor had dangled the hope of escape before her, though each time before the rescuer had been a friend, freeing her only to be struck down by the mage. Often, they took hours to die, only to appear again some other time, when the shock of the last mind game had worn off. Perhaps she had grown too suspicious, and he had decided upon a new tactic to break her of what little hope she had remaining.
It is the greatest irony of captivity: that in time the prisoner will come to work with his jailor to keep himself from freedom. Memory spoke with an old man's voice, a hint of dry humour ever-present beneath the tones of lecture. Only once had the false rescue come in the guise of that voice, and that time she had known it for a trick immediately. Gorion was long dead, buried beneath a cairn hastily erected not far from the keep that had once been his home. He had not been her primary tutor – he'd had another student, in his care long before she ever arrived at Candlekeep – but she could still envision the look of sad disappointment he would wear if he saw her now, so close to the chance for freedom, but hesitating to take it for fear of a mage's trick. And Faelwen, whose screams she heard most often from the far chamber, would be counting on her. She might be willing to entertain the notion of giving up on escape for her own sake, but she could not consign her oldest friend to the same fate. Not if there was still a chance.
Whispering a prayer to the Lady for luck, she knelt on the cold floor of her cell. The falling shelf had warped the bars enough that she could stretch her arm through. She winced as battered muscles protested, as the motion tugged at scars that were still tender, if at least no longer likely to split and bleed afresh. Her shoulder collided with the bars, and she hissed pain between her teeth. Her reach fell short; the lockpicks waited, taunting, a bare inch beyond the tips of her fingers. She gritted her teeth and shifted her position, wedging her shoulder slowly between the warped bars. The old, pocked iron chewed at her already tender and abraded skin even through her clothing, and it felt like an eternity before her fingers brushed the cool metal of the tools just peeking out beyond the lip of the pouch. A surge of adrenaline spiked her heart rate, and her hand jerked treacherously as she tried to maneuver the pouch open, spilling the precious tools onto the chipped stone of the floor. She cursed in frustration and wiggled lower in her cell, reaching to herd the picks towards her, near enough that she could grasp them. All suspicion had retreated, now that escape felt so near at hand.
Finally, she managed to maneuver the picks close enough to scoop them up. Several remained tucked safely into the dead thief's belt pouch, but she was certain she could work with what she had managed to acquire. She'd done as much with less, after all, and if she had been more in practice then than she was now, well. Necessity, they said, was the mother of invention. She settled back, breathing deeply in an attempt to summon the calm concentration she would need for the delicate work on the lock. Slowly she eased her way back into familiar patterns of thought, mechanisms and puzzles shifting aside fear and pain, if not replacing it entirely. Once her mind was as clear as it was likely to get, she pressed her ear to the backplate of the lock, reaching around through the bars at the front to maneuver the picks in the keyhole. The space was tight, and she winced as she left a patch of skin behind on the rough iron. It was not the best of positions to work from – working blind, with only touch and what of her hearing had returned to tell her how close she was. But finally the last of the tumblers clicked, and the cell door cracked slowly open, catching briefly against the shoulder of the corpse on the floor. She swallowed back a shout of elation and levered herself to her feet, bending briefly to claim the rest of the dead man's tools, along with the shortsword belted at his waist, for herself. His slowly-fogging eye watched accusingly as she stepped over him and made her way towards the chamber door.
The corridor beyond was dimly lit, the strange yellowish glow seeming to emanate from nowhere in particular. She didn't need to spend time in analysis to know that it was magical in nature, and spared a thought to wonder why her captor had not simply used torches for his lighting. Not that she wasn't grateful for the steadiness of the light despite its lack of intensity, and her eyes, well-trained to the gloom of dungeons, soon adjusted. She picked her way carefully down the hall, past doors leading off to either side, following the dim map of memory; she was uncertain how long it had been since she'd been separated from her comrades, but she did recall being herded along this corridor by her captor's servants. Though she kept her eyes peeled, she saw no traps along her path. If ever there had been any, the dead man or his companions had disposed of them. She whispered her thanks, though she doubted his spirit would hear. She hoped, anyway, that he had not lingered. She wouldn't wish this place on anyone, dead or otherwise.
Despite the continuing echoes of explosions interspersed with the sound of combat ringing from deeper within the dungeon, she came across no more corpses until she reached the main prison chamber. It was clear a battle had taken place here; several men and women dressed in garb similar to that worn by the dead thief who had reached her cell lay on the floor, bodies slowly cooling. The shattered remains of a stone golem lay across the doorway, and she picked her way carefully over it, half expecting the thing to stir at any moment. From the wounds on some of the fallen, crushed and warped bones that erupted here and there from their skin, it was clear that the golem had felled them. Others showed no outward sign of injury – magic could be subtle, something she knew well despite her own preference for the flash of a fireball over the simple theft of an opponent's life force. If she wanted stealth, she could slip a blade between a man's ribs as well as any other rogue. She moved past the corpses of those fallen in the fight, eyes scanning the cages within the chamber for any sign of her comrades. Most of the room's 'guests' were dead, at varying stages of decomposition. She did not allow her gaze to linger on them too long; she had seen enough of her captor's handiwork first-hand. Along with his skill at magecraft, he was a brilliant torturer.
Her breath caught in her throat as her gaze finally fell on Faelwen, in one of the cages set near the center of the room. The elf was crumpled in a heap on the floor of her cage, tangled dark hair spilling over her face, obscuring it from view. What was left of her clothing was stiff with blood and other bodily fluids, old and new, and for a long, horrible moment it seemed as though she must be dead. Then the tangled mess of hair shifted, stirred by the exhalation of a breath too shallow to even have perceptibly expanded her chest.
Playing dead?
"Faelwen?" the woman whispered as she picked her way towards the cage, mindful of the possible presence of glyphs similar to the one that had warded her cell. There was one, but it had been discharged during the fight. The scattered dust coating it would have told her what spell it had stored even had she not been able to translate the runes, and she shuddered slightly. Pushing the fear from her mind, she knelt by the door of the cage to work the lock. It was easier going than it had been with her own, but it still felt like far too long had passed by the time the last tumbler fell into place with a faintly audible click. She pulled the door open, wincing at the screech of hinges in dire need of greasing. The elf crumpled on the cage floor still hadn't moved. Slowly, she reached out to lay a hand on her friend's shoulder, far too thin beneath the blood-stiffened shirt. Faelwen had always been slender, but now she was gaunt, skin stretched tight over fine bones. "Wake up, you. C'mon, wake up!" The woman's voice caught, the plea half sobbed in desperation. She couldn't leave her friend in this hell, but neither did she think she had the strength to carry Faelwen if she wouldn't wake.
The hand that closed suddenly around her wrist felt like a skeleton's, so thin and cold was it. She bit back a shriek and stared down into her friend's eyes, visible now through the matted hair as the elf brought herself up onto one elbow. They looked almost black, the pupils so wide that the irises were only the barest ring of pale grey around them, and they held no recognition. "Faelwen, it's me!" The woman winced at the sound of her own voice, nearly an octave higher than normal and clearly frightened. "It's Imoen."
For several heartbeats, there was no reaction, no recognition. Finally, Faelwen blinked once, twice, comprehension suddenly dawning, edging out the maddened animal fury in her eyes. "Imoen?" Her voice rasped, and she swallowed with an audible click. "What – how?"
"One of the explosions damaged my cell, an' I was able to escape. C'mon, we gotta get out of here. I don't think I'd be able to get out again." The woman tugged experimentally against the hand trapping her wrist, grip still strong despite the obvious deprivation its owner had undergone, and Faelwen released her, looking chagrined.
"I thought you were – never mind. Help me up, and we'll get out of here before that bastard comes back. Where are the others?" Despite her sensible words, there was a queer light in the elf's eyes, and Imoen found herself wondering briefly if her friend really wanted to escape without encountering their captor.
It took more effort than she would have liked for Imoen to help Faelwen to her feet. She could feel the tension in her friend's too-thin body, and knew from her own aches that the process had to hurt, though the elf made not a single sound of protest. Typical, really – she had always been too stubborn for her own good, even when they had been growing up in Candlekeep. Since leaving, it had only grown worse.
Faelwen leaned heavily against the door of her cage for several moments once she was standing, eyes closed and breathing ragged. Finally, she straightened and asked, "Have you seen the others? Minsc? Khalid and Jaheira? Are they – here?" The brief pause, as though she'd changed the wording she'd intended mid-question, was barely noticeable. It would have been altogether unnoticeable had Imoen been only slightly less familiar with her old friend. She felt her jaw clench involuntarily, and shook her head. Though they both wondered the same thing, she knew neither herself nor Faelwen would voice it, as though wondering aloud if their comrades were dead would make it so. Or perhaps as though failing to voice the question would somehow keep the worst from having happened.
"I'm not sure. They've gotta be around here somewhere. I know the mage took 'em."
"Irenicus." Faelwen made the name a curse, and a promise. "The bastard's name is Irenicus."