Twenty-Five –
The Quest of Legends:
Misadventure –
To Descend into the Depths of Torment,
To be Saved by the Power of Love
How did it come to this?
Elowyn sat on the ground, her head in her hands, staring hopelessly – blankly – out in front of her, as a cold, clinging fall of rain poured down around her: turning her gown and cloak into a mess of sodden fabrics, and her hair into a mess of pale golden tangles. She raised her head a bit, and gazed briefly at the trio of friends who stood around her in the rain.
They all looked so hopeless…but now, they were.
She felt a great, hard pressure on her chest then, threatening to overwhelm her with its intensity, and her throat became tight, painfully tight; her eyes burned with scalding tears, which caused her vision to swim, and the scenery around her to become even more blurry and gray.
Gray as storm clouds…
"We must do something," she finally choked out.
Her friends were silent, until Robbie took the initiative to speak; in a hollow, almost bitter and defeated tone, he said, "I don't think the question is what we must do, Elowyn…it's what can we do? Is there anything we can do?"
And Elowyn looked at him, into the familiar faces of the friends she had known and loved, with all her heart and soul, since her birth, and saw what lay within their features.
Then she laid her head back down on her folded arms, and cried.
How did it come to this?
* * *
In order for the reason for their current despair to be understood, a minor flashback must be included within the intrepid adventurers' tale. Or perhaps a not-so-minor flashback.
They had left the Pings and Hobknobs' village without delay, and had made a speedy journey into the wilderness once again. Slowly, the forest began to thin before their eyes, and Jaedin told them all that they would now be turning their course towards the border between Elvendome and the dread desert realm of Sytherria.
Elowyn, trusting in his judgment and knowledge of the lands through which they must travel – in order to reach the portal to the Dark Realm: ostensibly, a Dark Gate – followed his every direction, as did her friends. Jaedin had proved himself at least somewhat trustworthy by returning to them not once, but twice, when he might have been able to do otherwise, and although they still remained uneasy about turning their backs completely on him, they managed to journey along without further…arguments…between various members of the group.
Then, the day came when they found themselves riding out from underneath the last fringes of the trees. Before them, they saw a wide, long stretch of grassy fields, which came up in rolling hills to a pointed, craggy cliff, which plunged down to a deep, treacherous-looking ravine far below its edge. On top of this cliff, there was an enormous, walled structure that appeared to be some sort of city. Jaedin reigned in his mount and gestured to it, his eyes never leaving its solid, seemingly impenetrable façade.
"Isiravadad," he told them: rolling the syllables gracefully off of his vampyric tongue, with effortless elegance and fluid precision, beauty.
Elowyn shortly marveled at how fluent he appeared to be, in not only his own language – that of his people – but of many others as well, which he had displayed in their travels thus far. She then marked that he was turning in his saddle – to look at her.
His silvery eyes penetrated deeply into her own.
"Otherwise known as the Silver City."
Elowyn instantly knew that there was something off about the whole situation then; why would Jaedin be taking them directly towards a city that had such a name…if vampyres normally avoided silver, wasn't this place's name a sort of portent for them…
Before she could consider this any further, he spoke in reply to her unspoken thoughts. Impassive and coolly appraising, he looked at the distant city: the expression on his proud, high features unreadable, as always.
"Some several hundred thousand years ago, I was sent here – to this place, but before it had ever attained its current name," he said, without emotion. "I was sent here under the auspices of the Ebony Queen, who sought to make an attachment – an allegiance, between its residents and the Dark Realm; as, at the time, it was well known that the people who make their dwelling here are a clannish and fierce sort, fully capable of providing superior effort in battle. She wanted them to join in the war against the faeries – and the elves, and whoever else chose to fight against them."
He paused, and Elowyn took note of the thunderclouds that gathered in his eyes.
"I did come here, and I laid my proposition before them; the elders of the city came out to meet me in the place I designated for our negotiations, should these come to pass, and for long we went back and forth in argument. At length, they gave me their answer. No: they would not join with the Ebony Queen in her war, nor would they subject themselves to any overlord or monarch. They would embattle themselves against any and all whom they pleased, but they would not join with the Queen. I told them that their reply satisfied me, and to return to their city."
And now his eyes narrowed.
" 'How many men does it take to carry and then spread a message to an entire city?' I asked my captain of the guard…"
He seemed, almost, as if he was speaking to himself, living again a memory of long ago. He certainly wasn't looking at any of them; his gaze had, instead, fixed itself on the great walled city before them, looming up against the cloud-enshrouded midmorning sky.
" 'My lord himself knows, and none other.' Captain Dahk-Marr replied to me…"
Then—
" 'Only one.' I told him."
Jaedin sat up straight in the saddle again, coming out of what had almost looked to be a trance of some sort: a distant memory-induced state; and he looked at them all, full lips curving upwards in the faint semblance of a flickering, fully bitter and utterly world-weary smile.
"They were killed, within moments of their departure from my headquarters: all but one of the delegates fell, with arrows in their backs," he said, his voice toneless and cynical, dry. "Then, the very next morning, I gave the order to have every man in that city – every male between the ages of fifteen and sixty – brought out, to the very field that we now stand upon the fringes of."
His attention withdrawing from them again, he removed one hand from its grasp on the reins of his mount, and held it up, his eyes roving intensely over the black-leather palm, fingers, and wrist – almost as if he were wondering at their capacity to inflict suffering and death.
"I wiped them out – every last one of them."
He was silent.
"And now their bones alone remain to testify to that day. One of the mistakes I made then: one among the many, was to allow them to know what I was."
Then he looked at them, squarely.
"Since that time," he said, in an uninflected, calm, and matter-of-fact tone, "Every vampyre that has had the misfortune to stumble upon the Silver City has been routinely slaughtered – tormented until they reached their deaths. That was my fault; I let them know what I was, and I gave them a reason for everlasting resentment, and a need for vengeance. Hence, the name Silver City – Isiravadad – the bane of vampyres. And we must go into it."
This shook them all out of their depths of spellbound, near disbelief; abruptly, Elowyn's eyes flared, dark and wide, and she became a few shades paler, and Sala's mouth dropped open, while Brendan looked intensely and narrowly at the Dark Lord; Robbie, however, was the first to speak from among them.
"What? Why in the nine rings of the underworld is that necessary? Is there no other way for us to travel around it?"
Jaedin's merely smirked – telling them instantly that, as usual, he knew something that they didn't. In reply to Robbie's words, he said, "Oh, there is a very easy way to travel around this city; it's not as if it takes up that great of a girth here in the nether grasslands of Elvendome. I could guide us around it blindfolded, if I really wanted to…no, Prince Robeneron, it is actually quite imperative that we enter Isiravadad. Dark Gates are rather peculiar things, you see – they tend to shift position every so often, so that only the most knowledgeable and dare-I-say powerful members of the Dark Realm can locate them, and even then, one must have a key to enter in."
Now his smirk became slightly grim.
"Many years ago I had dealings with a certain odds and ends dealer, whom I have since learned has taken up a residency in the Silver City. I've no doubt that he is trying to hide from me."
Jaedin then shot a look full of meaning at Elowyn, lips pursing a bit.
"His name is Xinth, and he happens to possess one of the last remaining keys to the Dark Gates – I've no idea where the bizarre creature got it, but such history is immaterial. If we wish to enter the Dark Realm, we must first retrieve the key, before we move any further on our quest."
And so it was decided that – in order not to draw attention to themselves with their obvious faery-appearances and travelers' garb – Elowyn and Jaedin alone would enter the city, and go in search of the pawn-shop owner, Xinth. Her friends were reluctant to let this come to pass, but the fact remained that, of all of them, Elowyn was the one that Jaedin would cooperate for, the only one of them whom he would willingly consort with.
Most of the time, that was.
She was safe with him, it was remembered, because of her necklace, and Jaedin could not very well risk treachery – as they were slowly beginning to doubt he would, in the face of his promise and recent acts – in a place where some of his very worst enemies resided. If anyone, anyone at all, had even the slightest suspicion that there was a vampyre in the midst of the Silver City…Elowyn tried not to think of the consequences of this, as she mounted up behind Jaedin on the saddle of his coal-black stallion.
Before they rode off, towards the city, she looked back one last time at her friends, who stood in a half-circle with each other at the edge of the woods. They all wore tight, strained looks on their pale faces, and she could tell that the strain of their journey was slowly beginning to wear on each of them. This will all end soon, she told them, desperately, within her mind. Soon, it will all be over. Soon. I promise you.
In front of her, Jaedin turned his head slightly: angling his shaven skull so that he could look back at her, out of the very corner of his eye. The light from the gray sky above them caused his silvery eyes to glitter a bit, and she restrained her urge to shrink back from him.
"Are you prepared to leave, Princess?" he inquired, his voice soft, gentle, and velvety – purposefully so, she decided: like a cat that purred quite loudly one moment, and then struck out, with fangs and claws, the next.
Oh yes, the Dark Lord frightened her.
He intimidated her, with his age, with his desires, and with his vast experience, and he attracted her. She felt drawn to him, in a way that no man had ever drawn her before. He had not hurt her, yet, and he had proved himself at least somewhat trustworthy – she was teetering on the edge of finally thinking that, perhaps, it was finally time to stop wondering whether she could give him her faith, and simply doing so. One inch further, and she would plunge off of the edge—
And into his arms.
She nodded, and felt those very arms tighten underneath their black velvet sleeves, as he moved to shift the reins' position in his capable, deft hands. With no other way to seat herself, she clasped her hands in front of his waist, holding on around him as he prodded his mount in the sides to a rolling gallop; she, after a moment, leaned forward and let her cheek rest against the broad, curving plane of his back, her skin rubbing against the smooth velvet.
Slowly, the city of Isiravadad drew near to them, growing larger and larger, until they had ridden into the shadow of its walls.
* * *
Oh, that they had never entered that thrice-accursed city!
Elowyn, upon remembering what had occurred there, felt tears spring to her eyes again – tears of rage, of futile effort, and utter helplessness. Oh, yes, they had found the key that he had spoken of: she and Jaedin, and oh, yes, Jaedin had been his proper terrifying, arrogant, and all-around menacing self as he threatened the bug-eyed little creature known as Xinth with a thousand different ways to die, should he have disposed of the key before that time.
Still, the rain continued to pour down around her, and she felt its coldness seep into her soul, filling her until she felt nothing but a queer, numb sensation, all over her.
What had they done to him…she could never forget that sight…
The memory of his capture – Jaedin's capture – was nothing but a blur to her. One moment, they had been walking down the cobblestone street: together, towards the Dark Lord's waiting steed. The next moment, there was a horde of angry, writhing human beings pressed around them, on every side, and they were reaching out: reaching out with hard, rough hands to grab her, her hair, her arm, her clothing, ripping and snatching at her, their voices a horrid cacophony in her sensitive faery ears. Then they were drawing her back, pulling her away, and she saw that it was not her whom they were after: of course not – it was Jaedin.
Her vampyre guide; the Dark Lord.
She heard the name 'Xinth' mentioned over and over, along with 'pawn-shop merchant', and 'bloody vampyre', and a hundred thousand much worse things. They had been tipped off of a vampyre's presence in the city, by someone, and Jaedin had failed the mirror test. When he walked by a mirror, Elowyn now learned, Jaedin would cast no reflection, as no vampyre would; only in special mirrors could his reflection be shown. And in the depths of the mirror that she did recall walking by, with him at her side, there had been only the image of the slender young girl with long waves of pale golden hair, and sharp green eyes. Nothing of her escort.
Elowyn closed her eyes.
Her soul felt as if it had been torn out of her, wrested from within her chest, and ravaged: pummeled about, dragged over razor-sharp glass, and punctured until it was nothing but a broken, bruised, and bleeding pulp of what had once dwelt within her. And she felt this for the one who should have been, she knew, her worst enemy – she felt this for the being who would have done everything he could to destroy the world she knew and loved, her very family and friends. How could this be so? How could she feel so deeply for him? It wasn't anything that she could explain! She despaired, because of this, and because she knew that, without Jaedin, they would never reach the Dark Gate in time. They would be lost.
She could do nothing.
Night drew on, with a cold, dank chill to replace the gray, rain-ridden air of the daytime, and the sky above them was soon stained with a sickly orange hue at its very horizon. Elowyn wrapped her sodden cloak more closely about her, in an attempt to warm herself – to banish the coldness that simply refused to go away – and tried to think.
Always, always, had she been told that nothing was impossible, in her world. Even death could, at times, be thwarted; it was under the sovereign power of the Fates, and the Three Themselves that this was so.
How many times, however, had she been tempted to cry out to Them that she no longer wanted this life – why did they torment her? Already in her short seventeen years of life, she had been cursed with a prophecy of doom that hung over her head, inescapable, and then with the presence of a Dark Lord, whose desires for her both unnerved and exhilarated her. So, even if she did seek an answer of Them now – The Ones who held sway over her life, and everything in it – would They deign to answer her, to give her the answers she needed?
The answer, as always, was Yes.
It would take a miracle, she reflected – a somewhat acerbic smile playing about her rosebud lips – to save someone like Jaedin…but it was something that she had to do. After all, what could a mere city of mortals: mortals who were corrupt, depraved, and cruel-hearted, from what she had seen in their visit to Isiravadad, do to stand against the powers of the Light? If worked against in just the right way, could they not also fall, eventually…?
Sometimes, you just have to stop wondering what you can do, and simply do it.
Elowyn knew now, in her heart, that this was true. She had to stop considering whether she could trust Jaedin, and simply do it – trust him. She must force herself to surmount her own doubts, and enter the Silver City, in search of him. No matter what happened outside of all that, she had to at least make an attempt at saving him! She couldn't just let him…
Oh Fates, she suddenly thought, as a wave of horror assailed her. I don't want to think it – can he die? He cannot!
Or, at least, she didn't want him to.
She stood up, abruptly, and was about to turn to her friends, to speak to them, when – suddenly – a volley of fireworks erupted in the sky. They all cowered, momentarily: recoiling at the unexpected noise and explosive light before realizing what was happening. Elowyn glanced sharply at Brendan.
"What was that for?" she asked him.
Brendan shook his head, his eyes dark and slightly narrowed.
"I do not know…" he replied, and then he closed his eyes and was still, and Elowyn knew that he was searching into the midst of the city, to find the cause for the commotion. She did the same, and the answer came to them at the exact same time. Her eyes shot open, as she gasped.
"It's the Carnival of Foolery," Brendan rasped, unsteadily, and got to his feet. "Tonight, they celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the Silver City, its name-giving day; they will execute all their prisoners at the event, and revel over the deaths."
Robbie and Sala were already mounting up; Brendan and Elowyn hastily took to their own mounts as well, Elowyn snatching up the reigns of Jaedin's mount – which she had been left alone with, after the Dark Lord's mortal assailants had dragged him off, totally forgetting her in the wake of his capture – as they moved. Brendan snapped out orders.
"We'll have no trouble getting into the city; the gates are unguarded, but once we are there, our trouble lies in finding our vampyric friend. They'll most likely have him – wherever he is – under a heavy watch: five or six guards, at least, and everyone else will be on a careful alert for anyone who might make an attempt at rescuing him. We'll need a diversion."
At Elowyn's side, Robbie made a curt gesture of his head, nodding to Brendan's words.
"Think no more of it," he said. "Most likely, he'll only cooperate for Elowyn, if we do find him, so you two ought to go in search for him; Sala and I will take care of your diversion."
"Robbie," Elowyn said, grabbing his hand. Her nephew looked into her eyes, his face dark and unreadable in the shadows; his ice-blue eyes glimmered in the low light, the only things that she could truly see of his face. "Be careful," she told him.
He nodded.
"Find him, Elowyn. We've come too far now to lose everything."
I promise. She could only find the strength within herself to mouth those words to him, but their silence did not make them any less potent, nor true. Robbie held her gaze for a moment longer, and then brought his mount around, and rode off – a silent, gliding shadow that sped across the wide plain with its twin: Sala, on her horse, following behind.
Then Elowyn and Brendan likewise left the fringes of the forest, and rode towards the castle. As its gates loomed up ahead of her, she thought again of her first sight of them – close at hand; only this time, she had a new thought to occupy her mind.
I don't know how they've kept you, Jaedin, or what they have done to you; and I don't know what we were before, or what will happen afterwards, or how I will like it, but I swear to you one thing—
Regardless of anything else, I am with you.
* * *
The streets of Isiravadad were bereft of their normal hustle and bustle, deserted by their inhabitants, who had gone to the enormous, multi-coloured, tent-like dome that had been set up for the revelries in the center of the city. Everywhere about, there could be seen garish streamers and decorations, draped on posts, buildings, fountains, and scattered lifelessly on the ground.
A pair of darkly garbed, slender young figures walked silently down the silent, still avenues, casting about themselves for any sign of life – looking at everything. The taller of the two, a startlingly handsome youth with hair of ebony and eyes of sapphire, and the pale complexion of one who is faery-born, shook his head: looking troubled.
"I really don't like this," Robbie said to his companion, who nodded wordlessly in agreement to his words. "These people seem to me like the kind who don't just have a grudge against an ancient Dark Lord – it appears as if they dislike everybody."
Sala scanned her surroundings with piercing, darkened hazel eyes. She far from liked the Dark Lord, but she knew that his guidance was a necessary evil – as it were – to their quest. Without him, the world would be plunged into darkness, including the world of the very people in whose city they now walked. Finally, she replied to Robbie.
"Quite," she said. Suddenly, she stopped – sensing movement, sound, life, from up ahead – and flung a hand back, placing it hard on the boy's chest, and shoved them both into the shadows of an alleyway. At length, a large detachment of carousing men, apparently guards of the city's militia, came smashing along the street, some of their number passing very close by the faeries' place of concealment. Robbie glanced at her, question and wariness in his eyes. Sala watched as the men went on their way, and only after she was certain that the danger was gone did she let them come out of the shadows.
A thoughtful look crossed her face.
"Now, was it just me, or did they mention the specific directions to the place where their so-called 'convicts' were being kept?" she asked her comrade.
Robbie wore the same look, tainted with slyness.
"You know," he said, slowly, "I believe they did. How very odd…Sala, my dear friend, what would you say a…oh, perhaps call it a jailbreak, might do, in this city? It has the potential to cause quite a bit of chaos, you know."
Sala's expression turned positively devilish.
"Robbie, my dear boy," she replied, "I was thinking the exact same thing."
And they ran off, into the night.
* * *
Jaedin awoke, and darkness surrounded him. For a few precious, almost delicious seconds – in the time between true awakening and unconsciousness – he very nearly imagined that he was back in his chambers in Dranthiris-Ankhar, and soon he would be going to the Tower of Adamant to once again attempt to woo his princess.
Then, the great, thudding pain hit him.
He gasped and opened his eyes – still darkness – his eyes weren't even open! Something had been tied over them, something that was rough and chafing, and simply denied him any eyesight whatsoever. Disorientated and confused, he tried to move – and couldn't. On every side of him, he felt a coarse, hard surface: stone. The blackness that was around him was so thick, and the pain that was now beginning to wrack through his body was excruciating.
A dagger of agony ripped through his stomach, and he lurched forward, curling into himself, and grit his teeth against the sensation. Vaguely, he felt a sense of past anger, a need to escape, and then fear – fear that he had not known since—
They had captured him, the blasted vampyre-hating mortals! They had captured him, and then they had tormented him, using his every weakness as a weapon against him. He would have instantly escaped, and destroyed them all, had it not been for the silver shackles that they'd clapped down over his wrists, even as he struggled against their hands, trying to get to his princess. Elowyn – they'd have let her go, presumably. If they'd done anything else…
As his anger filled him, he found that his sense of reality was returning; his memories came along with it as well. How many hours – or was it an eternity? – had they spent torturing him, finding every last pressure point, every last weak spot, that he had in his body? He remembered the torture implements – a cat-'o-nine-tails, its ends tipped with shards of glass, shards of silver, molten silver drizzled over his bare skin, pliers…
His cell – when they threw him into it, shaking so violently that he was nearly in a seizure – hung with the garlic that his already empty stomach twisted and turned at the smell of, causing him to retch, his throat to burn: ragged at the abuse of vomit, bile, and the cries that his captors would not heed…
The four windows, in every wall, barred but allowing the sunlight to come into the room at every hour of the day, affording him no respite, no rest, no release from the pain: from the dizzy, thoughtless buzzing that now occupied his mind, instead of thought…
Oh, there had been more – much more.
And now…now they had entombed him.
It was almost funny – or perhaps he was simply going mad, as he sat there in the stone sarcophagus, wrapped in the linens of the undead, with his air supply in short demand. He was almost tempted to laugh, in spite of the pain in his body. It wouldn't be long before he ran out of air to breath entirely, which was how – he supposed – most life-burial victims eventually expired. An unexpectedly merciful twist to a tortured death, and one that he was almost certain his captors hadn't intended. Knowing them.
They'd poured far too much of the poison of silver into his blood for him to so much as faintly consider using his powers to get himself out of his stone prison. The mere touch of that particular metal was, and he knew this far too well, enough to severely sap a vampyre's powers, and telling from the state of agony that both his mind and body were now in…
He would die.
Oddly enough, this thought seemed distant and almost calm. Jaedin the Dark Lord, in real and uninhibited life, would have railed against the thought of becoming one with true lifelessness; living the life of a wraith for over five hundred thousand years was cause for shuddering enough. But the Jaedin who was now imprisoned at the hands of mortals, who had tortured him until he had reached his breaking point, and then had placed him in what they had surely meant to be his final resting place, before the life had really left him…
He leaned his head back against the cold coarse stone, and was very, very still. He could get no sense of Elowyn anywhere; and usually, this was what happened to calm him the most. The sensation of her presence, in his world, acted as an unusually sweet respite from the world of howling darkness that he existed in. He welcomed the sight of her beautiful young faery face, and he knew that he would welcome the feel of her against him, with open arms.
Elowyn…
Speaking even her name was a great effort. His lips, he felt, were cracked and bleeding, bruised and swollen to a gross extent, and his face felt as if it were one massive, open wound. He'd had bones broken before, many a time, now that he recalled it; he knew well how they felt. And right at the moment, several of his ribs felt as if they were scraping close to his lungs and inner organs in a way that even he found slightly disconcerting. He flexed his fingers, carefully, and was surprised to find that they would still move – they'd left him his hands intact.
And you want her to see you now? he asked himself, mockingly, as he lay there in the darkness, unmoving. You'd look just as you did the first time you met – a living, breathing nightmare. She would run from you so quickly that you would have to chase after her in order to even make her hear you. But…then…all you've really ever done in regard to her is chase after her…it wouldn't be that much different, now would it?
But death – death would be different.
Then, for the first time in his life, the Dark Lord of Sytherria felt an emotion well known to many members of that world, and the others beyond it…
Despair.
* * *
Robbie and Sala's diversion had worked like a charm.
Most of the 'convicts' that had been kept in the Silver City were the labeled freaks and outcasts – namely a number of vampyres, and any mortals who had somehow displeased the city's regular inhabitants. None of them had truly done anything worth the punishment of torment and death in the Carnival of Foolery. The prince and his companion had sneaked into the prisoners' holding area, and artfully released the people held within the cages. When the prisoners broke out, pandemonium ensued, and within moments, the entire city was in an uproar.
Meanwhile, Lord Brendan and Princess Elowyn had found their way to a large, thick-walled fortress. As they stood before those walls, looking up at its many-towered enormity, they glanced at one another. This place, it was obvious, was an area that not many people were permitted to enter. It was a place that kept its secrets in, and everyone else out.
And when Elowyn closed her eyes, and carefully reached out into the shadows, she could detect, very faintly, the echoing nuances of someone's presence. Far from her, this someone was, and seemingly ensconced within both stone and earth. But this was impossible – wasn't it? Where could they have put Jaedin that would have been—
Then, from within her mind…
Elowyn…
He said her name slowly, huskily, drawing out its syllables to make it long and flowing, liquid in its grace: no longer simply bright and musical, speaking of the sunlight and the daytime, but of something else entirely. He made it seem like a caress, and she could see him drawing his fingertips along the side of her face, smiling down at her as she let his presence wash over her in dark, black velvet waves, pouring into her. Before, she would have thought him arrogant – for invading her mind the way he did: touching her thoughts in a way that she had never permitted anyone to do, and causing her to have thoughts of only him.
Again, the whisper…
Ell-o-wyn…
She reached out, blindly, within her mind, trying to reach him – to touch him, but all she felt was air. And she became suddenly terrified – he was within her, as she was within him, and yet now she could only just hear him calling her name, from somewhere within the void. A great gulf was coming in between them, with arms that were now moving to push them apart, separating him from her. No! If she had to plunge into the darkness, then she would do so – at least she would be in his arms. Let the darkness come, but he would be there to protect her. Protect her? her better senses screamed at her, enraged by this unthinkable, dastardly affront. Protect her – a Dark Lord? What was she thinking? How could she honestly—
"Now is not the time to think," she murmured to herself. She turned to Brendan. "He's here!" she told him, urgently. "He's here – they have him locked up somewhere, but he's within this fortress. We must find him!"
Brendan nodded, the low light from the torches that flamed nearby – on the walls – glancing upon his head and shoulders, making his dark green tunic and gray wool cloak seem tainted with fire: his sandy hair highlighted with streaks of gold. He reached out and took her hand, as they began to run for the building's entrance.
"We must," was his reply. "But I know not how we shall find him."
And somehow, she knew that his words had more than one meaning.
* * *
As Elowyn and Brendan entered the empty jail-fortress and began their desperate search for the captured Dark Lord, Robbie and Sala escaped through the streets of the city and rode out into the plains once again: there to wait for their friends' arrival. Their part of the escape was done.
The light of the torch that Elowyn carried in one hand, lifted high to allow her to see far ahead of herself, splashed and flickered madly over the cold, smooth stone walls of the corridor that she now ran down. Brendan followed close behind her, silent but for a word of guidance or warning to her now and then.
Somehow, her sense of Jaedin's presence was leading her not into one of the many prison cells within the fortress, but to the places deep beneath the fortress itself: a maze of interconnected tunnels, chambers, and dead ends that seemed to have no end.
It reminded her of a crypt.
As she ran, she kept calling out to him, trying to reestablish her connection with him, trying to make him respond to her. But it seemed as if he couldn't – every once in a while, she would catch a faint flicker of life, of recognition and awareness, and she would hear him whisper her name within her head, but that sense was growing weaker and weaker, dying.
She brushed this thought off; she would not think of it.
You will not die!
The corridor that she ran through was slanting downwards, at an increasingly steeper incline, and she felt herself begin to slip. Frantically, she put out a hand to the wall, in an attempt to steady herself, but the stone was smooth and treacherous: slippery, and she felt herself begin to fall. Arms came from behind to help her up then and she glanced briefly into the worried eyes of her uncle. He was thinking of something, and it did not look as if it were something good; however, when she tried to read him, she was met with a barrier of thought, and could not go any further. Brendan helped her to her feet and spoke as they ran on.
"There's not much time left, Elowyn – we must find him now, if at all."
If at all…
Elowyn bit back a surge of overwhelming emotion at this, and plunged on ahead, desperately trying to see through the haze of tears that threatened to overwhelm her vision. Why was it that only now – now, when she had at last made her decision to trust, to take things as they came to her, and no longer question – was she faced with this loss? She was not certain that she could bear the gravity of a separation from the one person who, it seemed more and more, could give her the answer to all the mysteries in her life; she shied away from even the thought of it—
Suddenly, they were both standing in a chamber that was completely pitch black, and very, very cold: its walls entirely constructed of stone – pure stone – with no torches placed anywhere about to light the darkness. Elowyn stopped, her breath echoing in the silence.
"Brendan," she whispered, scarcely daring to move, "What is this place?"
"It's a tomb."
A blade of pain shot through her then, as she tried again to get a sense of where Jaedin might be, in this place; it was a pain unlike any she had ever known, a white-hot agony that seared into her and filled her mind to the bursting point with its intensity.
His pain.
"Brendan!"
Her scream immediately brought her uncle to her side, but she tore herself away and went running further into the darkness; her torch illuminated the massive bulk of a sarcophagus, upon which had been detailed the figures of some kind of pagan deities, with words – runes in the language of the people of Isiravadad – etched into its lid. Elowyn dropped the torch onto the floor and put her hands on the lid, frantically pulling at it.
"He's here, he's here," she said, over and over again, sobbing the words; tears of both anger and fear streamed from her eyes, as she imagined what Jaedin's captors might have done to him before throwing him into the uninhibited darkness of a tomb. "Brendan, he's here – this is where they put him, they left him here!"
Brendan tried to speak to her, tried to make her move away from the stone coffin, but she flailed at him like a madwoman, refusing to slacken her attempts to remove the lid from the thing. Finally, he put both arms around her waist and simply – and unapologetically – moved her aside.
"Elowyn."
The tone in his voice brooked no argument, and she looked at him – her face pale and tear-stained, her hair hanging in limp, wild strands about her head and shoulders. Brendan unsheathed his sword, and gestured for her to do the same.
"Together."
Little had either of them expected just how heavy the sarcophagus' top portion would be; even with the pry bar-like leverage of their swords and their combined faery strengths – which was considerably more than even several humans could exert – the lid only just began to move. Air hissed out from the thing as they did so, raising a cloud of dust in the room and making them both cough. Then – slowly, as the centuries seemed to tick by, moving in slow motion – the lid began to move; inch by inch, moving, stone scraping across stone…
The darkness within the coffin was revealed; the two faeries managed to shove the lid onto the ground; it fell through the air, nearing the floor…
BOOM!
Elowyn, without a moment's hesitation, threw herself to the side of the great stone fixture, and had her arms reaching down into it before Brendan had even realized it. She was weeping again – silent, with hot tears of rage and hurt – as she put her hands out into the shadows. Something was there – something stiff and mostly cold, but with faint warmth to it. She groped around and found the broad expanse of an unmoving chest, then laid her hand flat on top of it. Heartbeat – let me find a heartbeat; if there is one prayer I may have answered, let it be this one, she prayed, desperately, within her mind. Let me find a heartbeat: let him live.
His heart did indeed still beat; Jaedin moved against her hand, at her touch.
"Quickly – get him out."
At Brendan's abrupt order, they together reached underneath their fallen guide and brought him out of what had almost been his place of interment. The torches were fading, having been dropped onto the ground as Brendan and Elowyn had worked on removing the lid of the coffin, and when she looked into what would have been the face of the Dark Lord of Sytherria, she could see nothing. Nothing, that was, but a swath of bandages, over all the features.
"Jaedin—" she said; alarmed, she turned to Brendan for answers, but before her uncle could reply, the living mummy's head swiveled in her direction. From beneath the thick linen strips, she heard him make a noise, as if he were trying to speak – trying to breathe, but couldn't very well.
"El-wyn. Eh-yo-wyn."
He began to move shakily in her arms, as if he was trying to find her – blind, and bereft of his senses – and she remembered, almost too late, how much taller and how much heavier he was than she. His greater weight, as he grew nearly limp with only her and Brendan's mere hands to hold him up, nearly knocked her over. She raised her hands and placed them on either side of his head, a sickening shockwave going through her as the skin of her palms came into contact with the burial strips. The mummy ceased his movement, although he continued to breathe unsteadily, and she felt that he was looking at her, even though he could not see her. He was listening.
"Jaedin," she repeated.
There: now he knew it was her. Jaedin instantly recognized that voice – even though his mind had become almost as a blank, he knew that voice: the tones that reminded him so much of thin, nearly insubstantial wisps of gray smoke, and silvery velvet, and dawn on a pale spring morning. It was she – it was his princess.
Elowyn felt his enshrouded arm move against her back, flattening itself against her gown until it met fully her spine, felt its warmth. She didn't realize what he was doing until it was almost too late; he leaned forward, concealed face coming close to hers, and spoke, his voice coming out as a garbled mutter, a jangle of words that she could not understand, as he moved his hand against her spine, trailing it slowly up towards her shoulder blades.
Oh yes, he knew it was her, and he had no hesitation about proving it, he told her, within her mind. There, he was Jaedin himself again, and not the limp, weakened figure whom she now held in her arms.
Get away from me, she ordered the specter in her head, with unveiled disgust. Leave us alone. Leave me.
And, surprisingly enough, he did.
Elowyn then turned to Brendan.
"We leave – now."
* * *
They found the Silver City in an uproar, with people of all ages, shapes, and sizes running about like mad; hence, they managed to make their way through the streets virtually unmarked, their nearly unconscious companion with them. Once they had reached the fields outside the city, Brendan and Elowyn revealed that their mission had been a success, and all five departed.
Never would they return to Isiravadad.
* * *
It was dawn by the time that they stopped riding, and by then, none of them knew where they were. They could have been so far off-course that even Jaedin would have been hard-pressed to tell them of their location, but this was a scarce-heeded thought. Among the gifts from the Pings and Hobknobs had been several quite remarkable gifts, and not the least among these was a splendid, several-room tent, which would instantly set itself up upon being removed from the pack that it was carried in. This item was brought out; here, they would spend the night.
Without a moment's delay for rest or refreshment, Elowyn and Brendan laid Jaedin's all-but lifeless body onto a cot, and quickly began to remove the linen strips that his captors had so carefully wound around his body. Brendan looked as his niece as they worked.
"Elowyn," he said, carefully. "We've no knowledge of what they might have done to him – are you certain that you want to be here when these are all removed?"
He gestured at the rapidly growing pile of linen on the ground.
Elowyn paused for a moment, balking at his words. It was true – she had dealt with blood and wounds to an extent, before, but not greatly. Jaedin's injuries, inflicted upon him by his enemies… But then, the figure on the cot groaned, moving in a painful, piteous manner upon the cot, and she felt her heartstrings thrum in response, striking a deep chord within her. No: no matter what her own inhibitions were, she would not leave him at this hour. Not when he needed her.
And so she shook her head, resolutely.
"No, Brendan," she said. "My place is here. I will not shirk it."
Brendan held his gaze on her for a moment longer, then nodded: accepting her decision, and motioned for her to begin undoing the wrappings on his arm. "Then if that is what you wish, it shall be so; I will be glad of your help."
Then, together, they continued the process.
It took them a very long while to remove all the wrappings, and when they did, there was an enormous heap of bloodied linen strips on the floor. Elowyn took a step back when they – at last – removed the shroud about his head. Her hands went to her mouth, as if she were trying to hold back words, a shriek, or nausea. Possibly all three, Brendan reflected; he turned a grim pair of eyes on the injured Dark Lord. He had seen grievous injuries before, but this…
He quite understood her look of pale-faced, wide-eyed, disbelieving horror.
"Oh Fates." Elowyn breathed, her breast heaving as she struggled for breath, unable to calm herself. "What did they do to him?"
Calmly, analytically, Brendan named off the causes of the injuries – repeated torture with various instruments, beatings, broken bones, internal poisoning, induced vomiting, dehydration, floggings, and over-exposure to the sunlight. The Dark Lord must have been a highly resilient vampyre, he noted: capable of enduring much pain and stress. Any other vampyre would have died after an hour of such torment.
And Jaedin had lived through an entire day of it.
Brendan looked back at Elowyn, marking her pallid features and trembling movements. "Elowyn," he said, solemnly, "We've got to get this silver out of his blood – its poison will surely end him if we do not act quickly. Will you be able to help me?"
She nodded, gazing at the figure lying before her. It hardly even looked like Jaedin – all of the proud, sharp features were still there, but they were now marred with sickness and injury. His head was lined with what appeared to be bulging, stressed veins, his skin white. Around his eyes was a ring of dark, purplish-red, and the grayness of his eyes themselves, when he opened them to stare, narrowly, at his surroundings – at the people he did not recognize – were almost devoid of their black pupils, having turned a disturbing shade of blue-gray, bloodshot. His full lips were an ashy purple, bringing out the stark red line of his scar, and around them – even within his mouth – she saw traces of thick, scarlet blood.
Looking at the rest of him made it even worse. He had what she abstractedly noted to be one of the most perfect forms she had ever seen – the Dark Lord was long-limbed, tall, and graceful, with strong and elegant hands, she had already known, but now she saw just how finely proportioned he was. His tormentors had left him his pair of black velvet breeches, but these were now tattered and bloodied, hanging in shreds about his legs; his chest and arms were marked with horrendous gashes and tears, bruised to epic proportions, and his back was entirely covered by long, raw, open wounds. Whip lashes. Her eyes traveled down the length of his still form, seeing more – battered legs, smashed ribs, burn marks.
He had only two scars – the one on his lip, and one on his wrist.
The latter she remembered only too well.
As they went to work on him, hoping desperately to save his life – the life of the one who had, at one time, been sent out with the directive to murder them all – Elowyn knew only one thing: knew only five words, which resounded in her mind, directing her sole attention upon the figure of her fallen Dark Lord…
Istver-ar, eran su aman.
One within me – master and only lover of my inner self.
* * *
A/n: Ooh, dark, long, and angsty! My cup of tea. *smiles benignly at gaping readers* Oh, come now, don't look so disturbed. You know I won't put him through anything truly nasty…anything that lasts for quite a long while and begins with the letter D, that is, and is personified with the figure we all know as the Grim Reaper…come to think of it, that's more of Jaedin's own persona, so definitely not to worry. It'll be all right soon… Meanwhile, I shall sit back and wait for reviews (please…?) and will update soon, as I have quite a few chapters on hand to post right now. Just wait until I get bored, my friends…
In the meantime, r&r, and I hope this little (ha-ha and HA) story of mine puts a nice little cloud-drift of fantasy and faery tales in your lives as we all – well, all right, some of us – head back to school…