Authors: Usman Ijaz
They came to the entrance to the house, and
there Alexis saw Adrian and Connor being held by armed guards. The guards had
their swords drawn, as if expecting to put them to use. He looked at the boys,
saw the fear in their eyes, and relaxed a trifle as he saw that they were
unhurt. Nonetheless, he felt like wailing in anguish. It couldn’t end like
this, not in this manner!
One of the guards’ grip on him had slipped a
little. Alexis jerked his arm away, and then sent it crashing back into the
man’s stomach. One arm freed, he turned to face the other man, fist drawn back
to strike. The next moment he was on the ground with three bodies atop him
holding him down. He thrashed and convulsed against them, like a cornered
animal, yelling wordlessly, but the weight of the three men proved to be too
much. He saw the sudden movement of one man’s hand toward his head, and there was
bright pain ... and darkness.
Infernal darkness.
2
Adrian and Connor were led out onto the
courtyard under the dazzling daylight and to two awaiting wagons. Both wagons,
they saw, had iron bars surrounding the wagon beds.
Adrian stared at the surprised faces of the
small crowd of stableboys and servants that had gathered to watch them and felt
his shame and anger swell. He tried to resist the two men who had hold of him
by each arm and were pushing him before them towards the larger of the wagons, but
it was useless. His heart was thundering in his chest, and his eyes flickered
from face to face as they passed. He was suddenly intent on not weeping.
“Why are you doing this?” Connor asked. His
wavering tone suggested he was struggling not to let his fear show, as well.
“Be quiet boy or I will silence you myself,”
said a man who looked cruel enough to deliver on his promise.
Connor kept quiet.
Adrian glanced over his shoulder, and his
spirits sank lower as he saw two men dragging Alexis down the steps. If there
had been hope of any kind then, he would have clung to it, but at that moment
he felt more helpless and alone than at any other time.
A small door was opened in the cage on the
wagon, and Adrian and Connor were shoved into it none too pleasantly. They were
forced to crouch and kneel since the cage didn’t allow them room to stand. Adrian’s
eyes went to the other wagon, and he watched as Alexis’s lifeless body was
thrown into the cage like a sack of flour. The guards took their places around
both wagons, but his and Connor’s had the greater number, he noticed miserably.
Adrian looked around the courtyard, at all the
servants and stablehands that watched on in amazement, and felt sick to his
stomach.
This can’t be happening
, he told himself, but the realization
of it was all around him. What pained him most of all was how quickly they had
been robbed of the small peace they had felt in that house and been thrown into
this hell.
“Why are they doing this?” Connor asked beside
him.
Adrian glanced at him, and thought Connor
understood perfectly well why this was happening. It was because of him. He
looked again towards where Alexis lay unconscious on the wagonbed from the blow
one of the men had dealt him with his sword hilt, and again wondered how this
could be happening.
A large, round man stepped forward and addressed
the onlookers in the yard in a booming voice. “These three are hereby placed
under arrest for their crimes! For the crimes of being an Ascillian--” the man
pointed an accusatory finger towards Adrian, “--and for aiding and supporting one.
They will be dealt with under the laws of the Council!”
With that the signal was given and the wagons
were drawn out by horse while the guards marched beside them, hands on their
sword hilts.
Adrian looked at the guards, and saw more than a
few give him looks of disgust before looking away. For that matter many of the
servants and stablehands looked at him in revulsion as well.
“What do you think they’re going to do to us?”
Connor asked frantically.
“I don’t know,” Adrian told him, but in his mind
he remembered the dreams all too clearly.
They were led down a wide street, and the fat
man declared his indictment several times to the crowds that gathered to watch
as the wagons passed by. Many of them simply stared incredulously, but others
bent to pick up and throw rocks at the passing wagons. Adrian and Connor
retreated from these, but some still managed to strike them through the steel
bars. Adrian’s fear dwindled as he watched the malevolent faces of the crowd,
and was soon replaced by a surprising surge of anger. The guards were doing
double duty he suddenly realized, guarding them from escape as well as keeping
them safe from the crowd.
“You will burn, boy!”
“Abomination!”
He suffered through it all, the pelting rocks,
the vile names they shouted and the promised threats, until they drew up before
a large square building of white stone. Here the cage door was swung open and
he and Connor were roughly pulled out. The men held Adrian warily and looked at
him in sidelong glances, as if they all expected him to shoot fire out of his
mouth.
If only I could
, he thought miserably. They were herded into the
building.
Inside they were led past a large waiting room
with a few chairs and a table on one side, and down a small hall lined with
cells on both sides. Adrian counted eight cells in all, four on each side,
blocked off by long steel bars. One of these was unlocked and he and Connor
were pushed inside. The door closed and then the man with the keys locked it.
In a cell across the hall and one down from them Alexis was tossed in like sack
of grain. The guards then turned and began to walk away. Adrian leapt to his
feet and ran to grip the steel bars.
“Wait!” he shouted after them. “What do you mean
to do with us?”
One of the men stopped to look at him, his eyes
first surprised that he had been spoken to, and then full of brazen loathing.
“Lord Wendyl will decide what to do with you.” He spit in Adrian’s face and
walked away.
Adrian wiped the spit off and walked back to
where Connor stood. Neither one of them spoke. They had only to look at one
another to see the hopelessness they felt reflected in the other’s eyes.
Adrian went and sat on one of the hard cots and
wondered what was to come next.
6
Alexis awoke to the feel of icy coldness beneath
him. He stirred, and his head responded with dull explosions of pain. He
reached up to rub at his forehead gingerly, and felt the pain intensify as his
fingers brushed the spot where he’d been hit. Dry flakes of blood drifted to
the floor. Memory slowly drifted back to him. He opened his eyes and stared at
the cold gray stone floor, then looked around and wasn’t at all surprised to
find himself in a cell. A small barred window at the back let in some daylight.
He judged it close to high noon outside. He became aware of a strange racket
from outside the window and the sounds of men talking or giving orders.
Alexis forced himself to stand up, and winced at
the twinge in the wound in his shoulder. He wondered if it had broken open
again, but didn’t have the nerve to check. He wavered about and his head swam
in pain, but he made it to his feet. He felt at his torn lip with his
fingertips. Like the blow to his temple it had crusted over and the blood had
dried. He still wore his coat and his clothes, he saw, but he only had to look
down to prove to himself that his guns were still missing. He went to the steel
bars at the front of the cell and stared both ways down the hall. He understood
he was in a temporary cell, meant to hold drunks and brawlers; those with more
serious crimes hardly occupied these long.
“Alexis?” Adrian asked from across the hall and
one cell up. “Are you all right?”
Alexis only looked at him, and felt a steel band
loosen around his chest.
He’s
still alive
. “I’m ... all right,
considering everything,” he answered thickly. “What about you? Did they harm
you? Or Connor?”
Adrian shook his head. “No, they only brought us
here and left us.”
“How long ago?”
“Not long,” Adrian said. “Perhaps three hours
ago.”
“Did they tell you anything?”
Adrian hesitated, and then said, “One of them
said that some lord would deal with us.”
Alexis nodded. A local magistrate to carry out
the law. He wondered how much time that left them.
“Alexis, what do they mean to do with us?”
Connor asked as he came to stand beside Adrian.
Alexis looked at the two boys who looked to him
for an answer, and sighed. How did he explain to them that they were now simply
waiting out the hours to their deaths? “I don’t know,” he said, and thought the
lie on his tongue was obvious. “Go and sit down while I try to think of
something.”
The boys nodded but remained where they were.
Alexis walked down the steel wall, testing each bar as he went, but there was
no hope there. At last he sighed and went to the back of the cell. He stepped
on the cot and peered out the window. What he saw didn’t allay his fears.
Outside in the town square, a group of men were
hard at work erecting a wooden gibbet on a raised platform. They shouted orders
to one another as they worked with hammers and nails, while other townsfolk
watched them.
Alexis turned away from the sight and sat down
on the hard bed, head in his hands.
Landerly
, he thought,
how could
you?
He had known the old man since childhood, and yet all it took for
Landerly to betray him was the sight of gray eyes. He shook his head in
despair, wondering what they were to do now. He found that he wasn’t surprised
at all that this was how it was going to end, with them hanging. No, he had
been a fool to think it would end in any other way.
Sometime later he looked up at the sound of
footsteps echoing down the hall. He stood and went to the bars and saw two
Guards push trays of food into the boys’ cell by a small slot. They came to his
cell, and Alexis stood and watched them both. He didn’t know what he could say
to them, what he could do to convince them of the immense mistake they were
about to make.
“Get back,” said one of the guards.
Alexis moved back a few steps as one opened a
slot set near the bottom of the cell and pushed the tray of food in. They
turned to leave then, but he rushed forward.
“Wait!” he cried. They stopped and looked at
him. “You don’t know what you’re about to do. I beg you, let us go!”
The two looked at one another and then back at
him. “We could not do that even if we wanted to,” said the one who had borne
the trays. “I would have thought a man of the Legion would know better than to
get himself involved with his kind.” He nodded towards the boys’ cell with a
sneer.
“And I wish you knew what we are about,” Alexis
told them. “I can explain it to you, but I doubt you will believe me.”
“Probably not,” said the other man, “so save
your breath. You will need it tomorrow evening when Lord Wendyl arrives.”
Alexis sighed and watched them go. He saw the
boys looking at him and told them to eat their meal. He followed his own words
and went to sit at the rear to eat mechanically, listening to the sounds from
outside.
7
From time to time the guards came to check on
them. When they came there were usually only two, but around evening, as the
sun was setting outside, Alexis heard three sets of footsteps echo down the
hall. He went to the bars and looked out to see two men wearing the blue of the
Guard come striding down, and with them was Landerly. The old man looked about
himself warily, as though he half expected to find himself occupying one of
these cells soon. Alexis gripped the bars until his hands were white. The
simple sight of the man was enough for him to want to murder him.
“Why did you do it, Lander?” Alexis demanded as
they stopped before his cell.
Landerly started at the anger in his voice, then
steeled himself and sent the guards away. “I ... I did what I had to do.” He
was unable to meet Alexis’s gaze for long.
“And what does that mean?” Alexis shouted.
“Can you really fault me, my boy?” Landerly
asked. “He is an Ascillian. I do not know how you became mixed up with the
likes of him, but look where it has landed you.”
Alexis spoke through gritted teeth. “He didn’t
land me in this cell, Lander. You did! I feel that I could kill you!”
“It is too bad that you feel that way. I only
came to beg you to renounce the boy ... but I see that you will not.” He turned
to go.
“Wait!” Alexis called to him. “What do they mean
to do with us?”
Landerly stopped and turned to regard him,
running a weathered hand through his hair. “Well ... the boy they will hang, as
he deserves to, and maybe even the other one as well. But you ... I do not
think they can touch you, not without risking war with Grandal
and
Teihr.”
Alexis felt as though he could bash his brains
against the bars. He was safe, but what did it matter if Adrian died? “Lander,
listen to me,” he pleaded. “We are traveling to the Ruins on an important
mission, on behest of King Aeiron. We can’t fail! Help us! I beg you!”