Chapter 20

Akeelay

Chapter 20

    I slowly woke up. I vaguely remembered the fight from the night before, and letting a spell get through to me.

     I groaned and sat up, my head throbbing. I was in a square dark room, long enough for me to lay down both ways. The only light slotted in through a small barred window in the door, casting long, thin shadows across the stone floor. Where was I? I wondered. I reached for my knife and found it missing, along with the rest of my stuff. I only had my clothes.

     Had the sorcerers captured all of us, or had it just been me? I hadn’t seen Dossik, but he had gotten rid of a lot of the sorcerers. There had been maybe 50 there?

     There were too many questions that needed to be answered bouncing around my head, and my pounding headache wasn’t helping matters.

     I’ll repeat the question, because that was what I was thinking – Where was I? I hoped we were still in Melzult. If I (or we, if the rest were here) could escape, we wouldn’t have nearly as far to go if we were still in the same general area.

     I waited. I don’t know how long it was. We don’t have very good measures of time. We all know basic time measures from your world, but for amounts of time longer than a moment and shorter than a day, like your “hours,” we don’t have words for. We do use the word “hour” occasionally, but it’s hard to measure. No clocks.

     But anyway, I guess it was about two of your hours before something happened. My headache had subsided somewhat by then, so I could think more clearly.

     In that time, I had checked the door. No handle on my side. No windows. No way out. The view from the barred window in the door was of a dark hallway, but there was light coming out of a door halfway down that was ajar.

     After a couple of hours, like I said, something happened. The light was blocked out, and I glanced up to see who I had supposed was the lead sorcerer the night before swinging open the door.

     “What do you want?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

     “Come with me,” he said harshly. “Don’t try anything.”

     I stood up and walked out cautiously. He pointed me forward down the hallway. “Walk.”

     I walked. I didn’t want to get killed when I still had, hopefully, a decent chance of escaping. He escorted me through a few hallways and into a brightly lit room, closing the door behind him. I squinted at the sudden light and nearly gasped aloud when I saw what the room contained.

     I hadn’t seen Lymlock up close until that moment, but he looked just as he had from far away, only more dangerous. He had deep brown hair and, as I looked at him, hazel eyes.

     “Hello, Akeelay,” he said, with a perfect calm. How did he know my name? That’s right – the trees. So bizarre.

     I was afraid of him, but I tried my best not to show it. “Hello, Malin,” I replied, using his first name.

     His eyes flashed. He had deadly hazel eyes. “Don’t call me that!”

     “Touchy, aren’t we?” I replied without thinking. It was an automatic response; I regretted it as soon as the words were out.

     “I will kill you, Akeelay Pather.” His voice was angry but carefully controlled. I watched, wary. If he was going to start throwing curses everywhere, I would have to run.

     The door banged open.

     “Here are our other guests,” said the sorcerer there.

     Yet another sorcerer (how many were in that place?) pushed in just the two people I wanted to see the most, and didn’t want to see at the same time. Maybelle and Kaolin both were locked in what I assume were caerthin handcuffs and looked ready to kill someone, from the expressions on their faces.

     I wondered why Kaolin wasn’t doing anything. He was immune to caerthin.

     Lymlock laughed happily, smugly.

     “Hello, Maybelle.” She glared at him, but kept silent. He continued. “And we meet again, traitor.”

     “I do have a name, you know,” he said, annoyed. “You seem to forget that, Malin.” I winced, hoping Lymlock wasn’t in the mood to kill.

     “Watch it, traitor,” he snapped. “As your little human girlfriend here has found out, I don’t like being called that.”

     Kaolin shot a worried glance at me, silently asking, “Are you okay?” I nodded slightly in response, relieved that that was all that had happened. I didn’t really mind him calling me Kaolin’s “girlfriend” as much as I would have minded Kaolin dying.

     “And, if you even have magyk left, don’t even think about trying anything,” Lymlock continued. “I wouldn’t mind killing your friends, and I might accidentally slip if you try to escape.”

     “I wouldn’t think of trying anything, of course,” Kaolin said half-sarcastically, teeth gritted.

     “What do you want?” Maybelle asked Lymlock, exasperated.

     “You’re working against me,” he said, in a more serious tone. “You three and that centaur. Where is he?”

     “Of course we’re working against you,” I said. “You took over my home, and I want it back.”

     “How touching,” he replied sarcastically. “And the centaur?”

     “We don’t know where he is,” Kaolin said.

     “Shut up, traitor. I wasn’t asking you.”

     “Like he said, we really don’t know where he is,” I confirmed.

     “Right. And I really believe you.” Sarcasm again. That was quickly getting old. “Verita!” he said, pointing at me.

     “Truth spell,” Maybelle muttered. I knew; I could feel the effect of it, constricting my throat.

     “I’ll ask you again,” Lymlock said. “Where is the centaur?”

     “I don’t know,” I repeated. He glared at me, and I shrugged. It was the truth, whether he liked it or not.

     “Where was he during the fight?”

     “Helping us.”

     “How?”

     “By attacking the sorcerers.” Because he just asked ‘how’ instead of asking how he wasn’t captured, that was as specific as I needed to be. He stared at me suspiciously, but he knew I couldn’t lie.

     “Next question,” he said coldly. This was turning into an interrogation, and that was the one thing – well, one of the few things – I really didn’t want to have happen. “What is the goal of your quest?”

     Like he didn’t know.

     “Well, right now it’s to escape,” I answered. “Then, we’re trying to get the talisman of Turoi to wake up the king and queen.”

Although he hadn’t asked anything really important yet, I didn’t like the truth spell. It felt awful to just have magyk pull the answer out of your head and force it out of your mouth.

“And how did she – “ he pointed at Maybelle – “not get captured with the rest of the wizards at the castle?” Whatever question I had expected, it wasn’t that.

“She was smart enough to go in a different way,” I replied. “But I don’t think that really matters now, so I don’t know why you’re asking.”

The truth spell did have at least one benefit, I realized, even if it was small. It allowed you to say rude things, as long as they were true, and claim that it’s not your fault.

He suddenly smiled, and I knew that couldn’t be a good sign.

“Is there anything you really don’t want me to know?”

I hate sorcerers.

“Yes.”

“What would that be?” He was smirking now.

Especially him.

I tried to resist, but I couldn’t. “That I wish you were dead right now, and I nearly killed Renjin, and that I’m really afraid right now.”

He laughed, sounding both mocking, and impressed by his own brilliance. He didn’t seem annoyed by the fact that I wanted him dead, or that I had almost killed one of his sorcerers.

“Anything else that you don’t want the people in here to know?”

I was doomed.

“I’m in love,” I said unwillingly.

Lymlock snickered. “With who?”

“I hate you,” I said, then continued in the same breath, muttering, “Kaolin.”