B008P7JX7Q EBOK (30 page)

Landerly met his eyes, and in that gaze Alexis
saw only the kind pity one might feel towards a stubborn child that simply
fails to see the truth. “I am sorry, my boy, but I cannot. I dare not.” He
turned and walked away, his hurried footsteps echoing down the hall.

“Then take the blame when everyone is dying
around you!” Alexis shouted after him. “Die knowing that you cursed the world
into darkness and death!” Some of the guards had gathered at the front of the
hall to see what all the commotion was about. Landerly stopped a little way
down the hall, then shook his head and muttered something to himself before
walking away.

Alexis struck his forearm against the bars in
rage. It couldn’t end like this. Not with them held captive in cells and the
Ruins still leagues and leagues away. He stood there for a long time, head
resting against the bars and wondering how such an ill fate could have befallen
them.
This mission was doomed from the beginning
, he thought bleakly.

“Alexis?” Connor said hesitantly.

“Go and sit down, Connor. I have to think.”

Alexis went and lay down on the hard cot at the
rear of the cell.

All of this because the damned fools couldn’t
look past the color of a boy’s eyes. They suspected that Adrian would slaughter
them all, using those fabled powers the Ascillians possessed, but Alexis knew
that that wasn’t how the boy was at all. He’d spent a long time with him, and
not once had he thought Adrian might harm him or Connor. Why couldn’t they see
that? Why couldn’t they see that it was a boy they were about to hang and not
simply an Ascillian?

Why can’t you see the Ascillian instead of
the boy?

The thought felt so strange that for a moment he
wondered if it was his own, then he sat erect as it dawned on him. They all saw
what an Ascillian was rumored to be, but until now he had seen Adrian only as
another child.
And why not?
He has never used any strange talents
around me, nothing to change how I see him.

Alexis leapt to his feet and rushed to the bars.
“Adrian!” he whispered, hoping that their quiet voices wouldn’t draw the
guards’ attention. Adrian and Connor walked to the bars together, worry clear
on their faces.

“Alexis, what is it?” Adrian asked just as
quietly.

“Can you get us out of here?”

Adrian frowned. “I don’t see how.”

“Do you ... can you use your powers to do
something?”

For a moment Adrian looked at him with a frown
creasing his face. “I don’t know. Alexis, I’ve never done anything before. I’m
not even sure I possess any powers.”

Alexis refused to give up the hope he felt. “The
Ascillians are said to have had control over strange powers, powers that let
them do what they willed. It’s said they could move objects with their will
alone, and that some could even communicate through their thoughts. Do you
think you could do such a thing? Perhaps bend these bars?”

“I don’t know,” the boy replied, worry and
uncertainty straining his voice.

“Will you try?” Alexis asked him.

Adrian remained thoughtful for several moments.
At last he said, “I don’t know how, but I’ll try.”

“Good. Now do what you can.”

8

Adrian closed his eyes. He doubted he could do
what Alexis asked of him, but he’d said he would try, and so he would. And what
else was there left for them? This might be their only hope of escaping this
prison. He imagined the bars parting and creating an opening large enough for
them to slip out, but he didn’t even need to open his eyes to know that nothing
had happened. There was no noise. Taking a deep breath, he began to search the
darkness he saw behind his eyes and in his mind. He settled deeper into it,
though he couldn’t be sure what he was looking for, only that he didn’t have it
at that moment. It was all that he could think to do.
At last he opened his eyes and shook his head. “I can’t do it.” He watched the
hope slowly drain from his companions’ faces.

“Will you keep trying?” Alexis asked in a
resigned tone.

“All right.”

Alexis turned and retreated deeper into his
cell.

Adrian went and sat down on one of the small
cots in the cell. It was hard and uncomfortable, but the prospect of death soon
overruled his discomfort. There was no window in their cell, the only light
coming from the torches in the hall, and it was dark and full of gloom. The
cell also smelled of urine. Connor came and sat down on the opposite cot.

“Do you think you can do it, Adrian?”

“I’ll try, Connor,” Adrian told him. He hated
having their hopes rest on him, but it pained him to see his companions look so
morose. He closed his eyes once more and tried to do something that would help
them. What that something was he could only wish he knew. He thought of his
dreams, the earlier ones with his mother, and the ones that had come after, the
ones that had always shown him that dying sun.
Please, help me! Help us!
He
pleaded, to whom he wasn’t sure; perhaps to the woman, perhaps to the source of
that pulsating white light in his dreams.

There was no response, or none that he could
hear.

Somewhere in the deep darkness behind his lids
he saw what might have been a star. It was a small speck of light, so faint and
far away that he was sure if he stopped focusing on it even for a moment he
would lose it and be unable to find it again. In his mind he groped for that
light. At first the light stayed far, but as he reached towards it, like a
drowning swimmer struggling to reach the shore, he
sensed
rather than
saw the light grow bigger.

“Adrian,” Connor said beside him, worry tingeing
his voice. “Are you--”

“Shush!” Adrian told him, never taking his
thoughts off that light.

As the distant light floated closer Adrian
wasn’t at all surprised to see that it was just as in his dreams. The light was
dazzling. If a shape could have been put to it, he would have said it was
similar to how one sees the sun at noon. The light pulsated in and out.
Like
a beating heart
, he thought, and on top of this realization came the
thought,
It’s pulsing with the rhythm of
my
heart.
He marveled at
it. It appeared so hot that it should have seared his flesh, and yet it didn’t,
but instead gave him a feeling of peace that was almost enough to make him
forget their current situation. Almost. He reached for that light, fought to
grab it before he could lose it ... and the pulsating light exploded. What
remained was only the darkness behind his eyes.

Adrian groaned and opened his eyes. Connor
looked at him with his hopeful face, and Adrian slowly shook his head at him.
The hope left Connor’s eyes and was replaced by a deep sadness, as though he
had accepted their fate already.

Adrian looked away and stared at the bars that
caged them. He felt that if only he could have reached that light, then it
would have made matters all right once more. But he’d failed. He sighed, and
set to trying again.

Fears
in the Night

1

Alexis lay awake a long time that night. His
supper sat where the guards had pushed it in, still untouched. From time to
time he would look at it, thinking perhaps he would feel some hunger stir at
the sight of it, but all he felt was a dark heaviness in the pit of his
stomach. He couldn’t even think of the food without wanting to retch. So he lay
on his cot in his shirt, having discarded his coat to the floor, and stared at
the moonlight on the walls of his cell. He lay there and thought of what
tomorrow would bring them. He remembered the guards’ words as they had brought
their supper.

“Enjoy the food; it is likely to be your last in
this world. Lord Wendyl arrives by tomorrow's eve.”

The other guard, a scrawny northern man with a
nose that had been broken often, sniggered. “He’ll send you off with the dusk,
don’t you worry.”

Alexis wondered about that and Landerly’s words.
“I don’t think they can touch you, not without risking war with Grandal
and
Teihr.”
Somehow he doubted that would prove much of a shield against the
Council of Mareth’s indictment.

The pattern of moonlight on his walls shifted
and sometimes disappeared as clouds drifted across the moon outside. Alexis lay
and watched the shadows in silence. He could hear someone weeping quietly in
the boys’ cell. He thought it was Connor. The sobs had been going on for a
while now, and all he could do was listen to them, and know that nothing he did
or said would offer much comfort.

Just as he was drifting off to a troubled sleep,
a small metallic clang followed by a low
tack-tack
awakened him.
Rats
,
he thought as he glanced about the cell, but he could find no vermin. And as he
looked about the cell a small pebble flew through the barred window and bounced
on the stone floor. Alexis looked at it as though he’d never before seen its like,
and then sat up straight and stood to look out the window. He peered into the
night, but could see nothing. The empty town square appeared ghostly in the
moonlight, lost in a light mist. There was the glow of lanterns spilling out
onto the street from what was likely a tavern on the other side of the square.
There was absolute silence outside but for the sound of a flute being played
drunkenly from down the street. And then a voice whispered from the shadows
beneath his window.

“Are you awake?” It was a girl’s voice by the
sound of it.

“I was never asleep,” Alexis replied. “Who are
you?”

The figure moved away from the wall to where he
could see more clearly. It was a girl, he saw immediately. Her shoulder-length
hair curled down to frame a narrow, young face. She wore a thick cloak and
carried a large bundle on her back. It was hard to tell any more than that, but
even in the shadows thrown across her face Alexis could see that she was no
more than sixteen, if that.

“I am Leah A’Kinney,” she told him. Alexis
winced at the trumpeting tone in her voice. It somehow seemed perverse to
disturb the quietness all around them - and incredibly stupid.

“Keep it down, girl,” he said to her.

“Girl? I am not a girl!” she hissed at him. “I was
going to help you, but now I am not sure I--”

“All right, I apologize,” Alexis said.
God
curse the stiff necks of women everywhere
, he thought. “How were you
planning on aiding us?”

She bit her lip and frowned thoughtfully. “I had
not thought of that in any great detail. Yet!”

Alexis sighed. His nerves must have really been
shot if all it took to flutter hope back to life in him was thinking a little
girl could aid them. “Take some time and think on it, soon you won’t have
anyone to aid.”

“Be quiet!” she hissed at him impatiently.

“Why?”

“Because I cannot think with you talking.”

“Not that, I meant why would you want to help
us? You must have heard the rumors on everyone’s lips.”

She thought on it a while. Alexis could see her
rolling the question over in her mind. Then she said, “That does not make it
true. Simply because everyone says that you deserve to be hanged is no reason
to take your lives. Imagine if all the world were like that, there would not be
much left, now would there?”

“I suppose not,” Alexis said, smiling. The girl
certainly had courage to even suggest aiding them, and he found himself
admiring the intelligence that she’d shown so far. “So--”

“
Be quiet!
” she whispered again and
dashed out of sight.

Alexis angled his face against the bars to see
where she went but she soon disappeared out of his view and into the night.
Moments passed, and then the sound of heavy boots on the cobble-stone street
came to his ears. They grew louder as they came closer, a steady
tock-tock
.
Alexis withdrew from the window and watched as a Guard walked over to where the
girl had stood. The Guard raised one hand to his mouth and yawned, the other
hand resting atop his sword hilt. He looked to his left and to his right,
inspecting the shadows. He stood with his shoulders slumped and the weary air
of a man who simply wishes to finish his duty and gain some rest. Seeing
nothing of apparent interest the man began to head towards the tavern across
the square. Alexis watched him go in silent loathing. The man soon disappeared
out of sight, a ghost swallowed by the night in an empty street, and Alexis
waited impatiently for the girl to return.

He waited for what felt like hours to him,
though he doubted even a full one had passed. A voice in his head told him that
the girl wasn’t going to come back and his hopes would be left to wither as
before. He dismissed the thought, but as the time passed and she still didn’t
show herself, he let out a deep breath and sat down on his hard cot.
And
what could she do in any case
?
She’s only a girl, after all
. But she
had been willing to help them, and she had at least offered some hope to him.