Chapter 30: Into the Depths

Faerel slammed her fist against the woman’s body.

“No, no, no, no!” She screamed as she shook the woman, even though her sides ached, even though she could tell she was rapidly losing strength.

“I was going to save you,” Faerel whispered.

She went back to her task at hand, steeling herself for it. One or two losses were inevitable. She knew that before she started. But the majority of the island would be under water soon enough, and awaiting the Silvery Halls of the King in the. And that made her smile.

She fumbled in her side pocked for the igniter, an alchemical twist that would burn with a bit of screwing. Faerel ignored the pain that flared up her side as she pulled it out, and twisted it, throwing it onto the pile of powder that lay beside her.

It didn’t burn.

Faerel looked at it. The alchemical twist was covered in blood. It was probably too drenched to light properly.

Faerel rolled her head back, staring at the cavern above. She had been so close. Suddenly the despair of the woman beside her didn’t seem so crazy after all. She fought with her will to keep her thoughts from turning down that same path.

Don’t think about it at all, if you must.

But she couldn’t. As she bled out onto the stone floor, the dead woman beside her, she couldn’t stop thinking about how close she had been. Why had the King in the Deep failed to bless her endeavor? He had provided support for her every other time! He had let her escape from the guards in Invercard; he had brought her the beetle to help her break her bonds on the Ingerwald canoe… why now? Why now, at the end of her long journey?

Faerel just couldn’t understand it.

But even if she couldn’t understand it, she could try to accept it. She only had so much time…

It’s okay, she told herself. Everything is going to be okay.

She closed her eyes, and sleep took her.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

When Faerel awoke, she was in chains. It was a normal situation, she supposed.

A gruff man sat beside her. He was not in chains. Well, then.

“You’ve caused this city a lot of trouble,” he growled. He spoke slowly, as if he was picking his words carefully.

Faerel did not answer at once. She glanced down at her sides, which had been patched up. She tried moving her hips, and pain shot through them. Patched up, but not completely healed.

Faerel looked back at the man. “It was for a good cause,” she assured him.

“I’m sure.” The man stood up, cracking his neck back and forth. “Your fellow prisoners told me what you did. It was a hell of a time capturing and killing them all.”

“You killed all of them?”

“All but you.”

She closed her eyes, and tried not to think of the fear and despair that she had put her fellow prisoners through. Most of them had bad enough lives before that any chance of gaining the Silvery Halls was a long shot… but even so. “Did you kill them quickly?”

The man shook his head. “No.”

“Why haven’t you killed me, yet?”

“You weren’t awake.”

Faerel bit her lip. “Ah.”

Her breathing sped up. Pain is part of the game, Faerel. Pain is part of the game.

“And I would like to have some answers, before I do. You were the leader of this group. You had a plan. It seemed to me like you were planning to blow up the Wall. Drown everyone. Why?”

Faerel considered it. “You probably wouldn’t understand,” she said, carefully.

“I already know you’re crazy,” the man said. “I didn’t expect to understand fully. I just wanted to know a piece of it.”

“I can’t,” Faerel said. “The less you know about it, the better for you.”

“What does that mean?” the man asked quietly.

“It’s all a game,” Faerel whispered. “I thought I had found a way to cheat the rules for everyone else.”

“Everyone else? Not for yourself?”

Faerel closed her eyes tightly, grimacing against the pain. “I don’t know,” she finally choked out through clenched teeth.

The man stood up. “Fair, I suppose. I’ve had enough of this. Pray to the gods, if you have the nerve. You’re coming with me.”

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Faerel rotated her wrists inside the manacles. She was chained at the hands and ankles to a large weight. The trip up from the dungeons of Raven’s Run to the top of the Wall had been tortuous. The man had chained the manacles on at the very beginning of their journey, and had a guard to carry the weight behind her. They had to stop several times for the guard to catch his breath. Faerel spent the time thinking of how to escape, but she hadn’t been able to come up with much.

She spent the time praying instead. Her prayers felt familiar, and oddly comfortable. She prayed that the King in the Deep gave her the tools to get out of the situation and continue the work she had planned. If he did, so much the better. If he didn’t, he didn’t.

Faerel took a deep breath, looking out over the Wall, where their journey had ended. The waves crashed, unrelenting, against the structure. Damn, she had been close.

The man was talking to the people who had been assembled there. He spoke in a deep and gruff voice, thick with confidence. Faerel didn’t listen to much of it. It was a typical statesmen speech, she thought—the city had been through rough times; it had been attacked from within and without. She continued to work her hands around the manacles, as if some finger position would be thin enough to slip out. Her ankles would be more trouble.

She perked up when she realized the man was talking about her.

“Do you have anything to say?” the man repeated.

Faerel felt suddenly nervous. “Yes,” she said. She hesitated, and cleared her throat.

“Please don’t give up,” she said, raising her voice as loud as she could without shouting. She didn’t believe what she was saying, but maybe they would. “You can get out. I promise you that there is a way out. Don’t give up, and never stop trying.”

The gruff man nodded. “Well said,” he muttered.

Two things happened at once.

The man gave the weight a shove with his foot. It fell down the Wall with a clatter, crashing against the stones. The chain attached to it was whipped down with it, the noise rattling in the air.

Faerel held the long end of the chain against the stone floor with her foot, and twisted both her wrists violently in place. Both of her thumbs broke from her hands with a sickening and audible crack, but she was able to pull her hands from the manacles.

The chain had caught up to her ankles, and Faerel was suddenly dragged off of the wall between the crenellations. She made a mad grab for the spire on her right, but she was unable to get a good hold with her mangled hands.

As she fell, her broken fingertips traced the stone of the Wall. Faerel felt the cracks and the imperfections in the stone, places where the wind and the water had begun to break down the immense structure.

She smiled to herself, knowing deep down that the Wall would break someday.

Then she hit the water and was dragged into the depths.

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