Authors: Usman Ijaz
A small chip of stone fell on his shoulder.
Alexis looked at it, and then stood up to look out the window. Leah stood
there, her eyes darting to either side of the street.
“I cannot promise you anything,” she said, “but
I can promise that I will try to think of some way to assist you. I cannot
linger any longer though, the Guards are patrolling the streets, and it will do
you no good if they get curious about me.” She quickly turned to flee into the
night.
“Wait!” Alexis called after her, perhaps too
loudly for they both jumped at the sound. She turned to look at him
impatiently. “Thank you,” he whispered.
She studied him for a moment, and then smiled
and crossed her legs and bowed as though before an audience. Then she was gone,
another ghost swallowed by the night, and the Legionnaire was once more left by
himself.
2
Connor awoke to the dim interior of the cell,
and immediately felt a familiar feeling of gloom settle over him like a putrid
blanket. He couldn’t remember his dreams, only a quiet darkness, but that had
been better than this place he had woken to. He lay on his cot and pulled his
knees to his chest in an effort to keep warm. He groped for sleep, but it
escaped him, and he was left to swell on their hopeless situation.
The gray walls of the cell and the cold steel
bars only accented the feeling of being stuck inside a dark hole. It was
morning outside, but all he had to tell him so was the sight through the window
of the cell across from him and a natural brightness to the corridor. He wished
to see the sun again, not simply to see it through a barred window, but to
stand underneath its warm light and know that he was free. He supposed he knew
now how caged birds must feel; to know that all that separated them from the
world was a thin wall of captivity. In time the birds would accept their fate
and their imprisonment and would accept the fact that they were free to look at
that once-familiar world, but unable to touch it. Their world would become the
cage that held them. Just as his world now seemed to comprise of this dreary
cell. Would he in time come to accept it as well?
Stupid fool. They’re going
to hang you at the end of the day, what time do you have to accept anything?
The
voice in his head was right.
He rolled over and looked at Adrian, who lay
facing the wall. Connor thought his cousin was awake, but he couldn’t be
certain. He remembered the many nights that he had woken to the sound of miserable
sobs coming from the bed across from him. Last night, however, it had been him
that had wept and he was certain that Adrian had heard him. What had set him
off was simple. Lying on the uncomfortable cot, he had been wondering what his
father and his sisters were doing back in Port Hope - did they miss him? Did
they look up every once in a while from their chores and wonder what their
brother was up to? Had his father hired others to care for the stables? - and
along this track his mind had led him to the realization that he would never
see any one of them again. And that cold fact had broken whatever vestige of
hope had held him together.
Now that he thought on it, hadn’t he thought as
he was drifting off to sleep that he had heard voices coming from Alexis’s
cell?
Maybe. Then again I wouldn’t be surprised if he was talking to
himself.
Connor sat up then and looked at the trays of
food that had been pushed in. His stomach was empty, but he only looked at the
tray. He knew he needed the food, he was just not sure he wanted it. He knew
that while it might fill him up for the moment he would hardly taste any of it.
Eventually he stood and went to get the tray of food, two heels of bread and a
watery porridge, and brought it back to his cot. He ate it mechanically. Adrian
rolled over and looked at him, and Connor wondered how the mere sight of gray
eyes could push people to murder. He supposed then that it was not the sight of
gray eyes but what the eyes represented in the minds of the people.
“How did you sleep?” Adrian asked as he stood to
retrieve his own tray.
“Not well,” Connor said munched on his bread
miserably.
The two ate in silence then, a quietness that
seemed to hang between them and only emphasize what they didn’t wish to speak
on.
Alexis came to the front of his cell and
beckoned them. The two boys went to the bars stretching from ceiling to floor
and stood watching the Legionnaire. Connor couldn’t help but think that Alexis
looked sick again. His face was pale and his flesh seemed taut, dark circles
under his eyes.
“How are you two doing?”
The boys shrugged disconsolately.
“Adrian, did you try to see if you could do
anything?”
Adrian nodded. “There’s nothing I can do.” It
seemed to hurt him to admit that.
Alexis lowered his head wearily, and then shook
it to clear it and looked back at them. “Don’t worry. We’ll think of
something.”
He turned to go then, but Connor leaned forward
and said, “I thought I heard you speaking to someone last night. Were you
talking to yourself?”
Alexis stopped and turned to regard them with
his hollow gaze. But Connor thought he caught a glimpse of something else as
well in those eyes; he didn’t know what exactly, but the first thought that
came to his mind was of suppressed hope. Then Alexis blinked and his eyes were
empty. “I think I might have been speaking in my sleep. That must have been
what you heard.”
“Oh,” Connor said. Alexis turned and walked
deeper into his cell, and he and Adrian went back to their beds.
“I wish things were different,” Adrian whispered,
his voice barely audible.
“So do I,” Connor said quietly. “I wish a great
many things were different.”
Adrian looked at him closely for a long time.
“Do you remember anything of your mother?”
Connor was startled by the question. When he
regained his thoughts he answered quietly. “All I remember of her is from the
portrait my father has in his room. I know she had red hair and a pretty smile.
Nothing more.” Tears brimmed in his eyes as he said this last. He wiped at his
eyes. “Do you remember anything of yours?”
Adrian remained quiet for several moments. At
last he spoke, so quietly that Connor had to strain to hear him. “I remember a
hint of how she smelled. And nothing else, save what the dreams have shown me.”
“Do they still bother you?”
Adrian thought it over. “Not as much as they
used to. Now it is not always the same. Why did you want to come with me,
Connor? You could have escaped all of this by staying behind.”
Connor felt ashamed that the same thought had
crossed his mind. “Yes, but then what would my mother have died for? I would
never have known.”
“You may never know either way,” Adrian said. “I
don’t know how you can.”
“Neither do I,” Connor admitted. “But if we ever
reach this Source, then perhaps I will know what cause she died aiding.”
Silence reigned once more. Then Adrian said, “I
hope you do.”
3
The day passed slowly.
Adrian and Connor spent much of it sitting in
misery, knowing full well that every hour that passed brought them another hour
closer to their deaths. Alexis didn't talk to them much, which Adrian found
odd. He would have expected the Legionnaire to try and comfort them, but Alexis
only paced his cell nervously, as though waiting for something to happen.
He and Connor sat and sometimes they talked of
the life they had shared in Port Hope. The talks usually started with “Do you
remember when...”, or “I wonder...”, but they always ended with them both
feeling heavy of heart. After a while they stopped talking of Port Hope,
realizing that it brought them both too much pain. What good did it do to
wonder what Jaime was getting up to, anyway? None.
Adrian lay his head back against the stone wall
and closed his eyes. With his eyes closed he could hear the sounds from the
world outside a little better, and the voices of the Guards from up the hall.
He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the sound of their voices
traveled down the corridor. They seemed to be playing a game or something of
the sort and laughing often.
In the darkness behind his lids he pleaded to
some force that he knew would not respond.
Help us! Please! We can’t do this
on our own.
He didn’t expect a reply,
and thus was surprised when a
new thought came to him, faintly as though through another room.
You must accept
it.
He immediately began to wonder if he had even heard the voice, or had
it even been his thought? He thought he knew what the voice referred to. He was
about to focus on that bright point of light that he had seen before when a
great commotion echoed down the corridor. It sounded like a struggle in
progress, with men shouting to one another in tones of command and anger.
A Guard shouted in a loud strained voice. “Get
out! Get out, you imbeciles!”
There came the sound of a table scraping against
the floor as it was shoved back, and then a shrill cry of pain erupted. “
My
arm!
”
“Let us through!” shouted another voice.
“Use your swords if you have to!”
“We want to see the boy!”
“Get out! You will all see him soon enough!”
Adrian looked to Connor, and then his eyes went
to Alexis’s cell. The Legionnaire stood at the bars, trying to see what was
happening in the Guards’ room.
More cries of pain and fury came from the room,
along with the sounds and grunts of men striking out and being hit, and below
it all was the howling sound of furniture scraping across the bare floor.
And then one voice shouted over the din. “You
will hang boy! You will die sure enough like the rest of your kind! The crows
will feast on your damned eyes!” Then the commotion faded away and was cut off
by the sound of a door being slammed shut and barred.
Footsteps came down the hall, and a moment later
the Captain of the Guards stood before their cell. He flicked his matted golden
hair out of his eyes while his other hand still held his sword. The sword was
streaked with blood. He looked at them closely for a few moments, and then gave
Alexis a cursory up-and-down glance. He turned to leave.
“Wait,” Alexis called after him. “What
happened?”
The captain stopped and studied the Legionnaire.
“Some fools tried to force their way in.” He turned and looked directly at
Adrian. “I will be glad when this mess is over,” he said, and walked away
looking disgusted.
Adrian let out a breath that he hadn’t been
aware he was holding in. His heart beat like a drum, and he felt a cold fear
spread through him. For a moment there his mind had screamed rescue, no matter
his attempts to fight this wild hope down, but it had only been death in the
form of an angry mob. His feelings crossed swiftly from fear to a dazed
bewilderment. What had he ever done to make these people hate him so much? And
as he rested his head back and closed his eyes again to stop the tears that he
thought must be coming, anger seeped in freely.
I’ve done nothing! They hate
me, but I don’t think they could even give me a reasonable answer as to why.
And these are the people I am risking my life to save. These are the people I
am risking Connor and Alexis’s lives to save? Why?
The question consumed
him, demanding an answer. He searched his mind for one, and one floated from
the darkness, along with the distant pinprick of white light.
Because you
are not them. Because it has fallen to you to make certain that the Light does
not fade away from this world like so much else.
Damn the world and damn them all to hell
,
Adrian thought bitterly. He pushed away at the distant light, not wanting
to be filled with that sense of calmness and peace that he certainly did not
feel at the moment, but the light remained where it was. Adrian opened his eyes
to escape that light, and saw Connor looking at him from across the cell with a
sense of worry and sympathy. That was somehow worse. Adrian closed his eyes to
it and the rest of the waking world.
In an anger that he had never felt so strongly
before, he reached for that light, to grab it and tear it to get it to leave
him alone. It no longer mattered to him that reaching the source of that light
might be a way out of this for them all; he simply wanted to be left alone.
The light drew towards him, becoming larger and
larger and brighter. Adrian reached for it, but it escaped him. He reached for
it again, pounced on it in fact, and the light flared to twice its size and
brightness. The white brilliance hurt, and Adrian winced, but this was a
brightness in his mind and he couldn’t escape it.
Then the light burst and he was left with his
dark thoughts.
He didn’t know how long he sat there with his
eyes closed, hours perhaps, letting his mind wander from thought to thought,
until Connor jerked him back to the waking world.
“Adrian ... he’s here.”