Book 5, Chapter 38: The Long Road
A jarring woke me up as my shoulders and hips smacked against a hard floor. Creaking sounds. Sunlight warm on my shoulders. But too bright, far too bright, though my eyes were shut. The footsteps of horses and people.
When I could open my eyes and fight through the pain the sun brought – I was so thirsty – I found myself in a wagon. Bumped around by the rhythm of the road. I felt sick to my stomach and closed my eyes to hold back vomiting.
Thick, cold iron bands around my arms. Through squeezed eyes, I studied them. Perseidian iron. For what it was, this was good or at least not as bad, as it meant they thought the metal hindered my magic.
It was a struggle, but I rolled onto my back, squinted up and around. The wagon was fully covered by bands of the charcoal and gold iron. From the wooden flooring I lay on, they curled up into a metal dome above me, high enough for me to stand, and back down. Like I was in a giant, elongated birdcage. On display for my new owners.
Yet they weren’t just to bar my magic. Odd shapes, drawings and writing in the metal that reached up and around the space. As I stared, they became knowable, but my eyes began to throb and I couldn’t read them long. Their intent was clear. This was a prison, one designed for mages and magical creatures.
“I see now that capturing you was unnecessary.” On horseback, to my left, the grand magister.
The pain becoming more manageable, dropping to an intense migraine, I sat up slowly. The iron woven all around me must have cost a fortune. In front of my prison was a wagon, with three mages sitting facing me. Staring. Intensely concentrating at me.
The one on the right, his hair was grey but, for a moment, it became darker, black as a wave of pain washed over me, lessoned as his hair – and now that I was paying attention, his skin – seemed to age.
“Water, please.” I said to the wizard riding alongside.
“Against the bars, behind you.”
Shuffling around, I found a large, clay bucket with a dipper inside. Immediately pulled it out, drank and drank. It was musty and stale but full of relief.
“If,” I put the dipper back, “you didn’t need to capture me, why the hell did you?”
He held Etienne’s satchel up, “He had you going to the same place. It seems I misjudged Etienne.”
“What are you babbling about?”
“We’re taking you to the temple he sent you to find.”
I felt nothing but anger for the man. Didn’t know if I wanted to waste my breath on him. “You caused the deaths of countless men for nothing.”
“If we didn’t stop you, so many more would be killed.”
“Was it worth betraying your own countrymen?”
“If only we could have stopped you that day. Do you know how many you killed two days past? I fear Laemacia has lost a generation of its young men.”
Another wave of pain, I closed my eyes and didn’t say anything further, pressing my fingers to my head, trying to push the agony away.
***
Another jolt opened my eyes. Somehow, I’d slept. Sitting upright, pain lanced through my back. The throbbing in my head had either stopped or become normal, like a heavy load atop my eyes, but not debilitating. It was dark out. Yet our caravan, such that I could see, continued.
A new set of three mages were staring at me by torchlight. I stared back.
They were intensely concentrating. It happened again that their features seemed to change. The man on the right was older than his companions. Grey hair, wrinkles around his half-lidded eyes, sagging skin. Another bump jolting me, hurting, but I held onto the bars, the torchlight flickered and I questioned my eyes. He seemed younger, hair darker, skin smoother.
I turned my gaze to the leftmost. He appeared in his early twenties and fit. But a wave of nausea hit and it was all I could do to hold onto the bars, bent over, trying to remain still. When it passed, and I looked up, in his place was an old man, white hair and liver spots, sunken, dark skin under his eyes.
I had to sit down, and turned around, back against the bars. Held my head, concentrating on breathing, trying to get the pain and nausea under control.
The iron of this cage likely wasn’t dampening my magic. The glyphs lining it, sure, they were hard to look at, but I could read them and they invoked containment. Yet it was the mages who were doing the bulk of the work here. They were somehow holding me, my power at bay. Painful, debilitating. Like Etienne’s spell, but less intense, less deadlier, and not, apparently, killing the caster.
I wondered if I could break that. Their concentration.
I moved further into the cage, getting out of the torchlight. Sat down and examined the three mages again.
Now the rightmost man had darker hair, smoother skin. I concentrated, breathing deeply, tried to call the rage, let it loose, put flame on my hand. His hair grayed, skin becoming leathery, as did the other two. Their faces became more determined, their hands white against the staves they held, and my temples felt like ready to burst.
The world went white. I squeezed my eyes shut, wincing, holding my forehead. It took a long while before I could think again. Not sure what I accomplished, but I proved a causal link between their aging and my powers.
Opening my eyes, I looked through my fingers. The mages had become younger again.
Somehow, they were syphoning off my power. And that somehow dampened me, to say the least, kept me controlled. Yet it wasn’t as awful as it had been with Etienne. Nor was it as bad as before, yesterday perhaps, when the grand magister spoke to me.
I turned away from them so they wouldn’t see my smile.
***
Something stuck into my ribs. “Wake up.” It was light out. Morning had come and we were still on the move.
I rolled away from that side of the cage.
Wizard Tye was back, holding a long staff. “When did you take her?”
“What are you talking about?” I wished I could muster enough power to lance a laser through his head.
“The princess. The body you now inhabit. When did you take her?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to be here. This awful world, so backwards and full of war.”
“You didn’t mean to?”
“I didn’t choose to come here. I’ve no idea why I’m here.”
“You must have some idea.”
I held my head as another wave of pain came and went. “Release me so we can talk like normal people.”
“It is tempting. Few can say they’ve spoken with a deity before. But you’re far too dangerous.” He looked away. “I saw her die. At least, I thought she’d died at the time. The princess took a terrible blow to the head. She bit one of the soldiers tying her up and he smacked her with a shield. She didn’t move for a long time.”
Oddly, that made me feel better. It meant I hadn’t killed the girl myself. Or thrust her out of her body. It also meant I wasn’t her having a strange and terrible psychotic break. Probably.
“That’s when you entered her body, isn’t it? She spoke so strangely from that day on, but only I seemed aware of the change.”
“That’s why you wouldn’t speak to me! I was searching for a way back to my home, my body or whatever. You could have helped but you did nothing and look how that worked out.”
“You really don’t know why you are here?”
“Does this happen on the regular? Is this normal to you?”
“No one has captured a deity in living memory.”
“I’m not a deity!” At least, I thought, I don’t remember being one. But you’d think a god would have an easier go of it.
“I had to search through the history books in long dead languages to learn how it was done. Etienne must have done the same. But I can’t figure out his motives. Did he tell you them?”
“He was trying his best to help. You just make everything worse. You killed our own troops to attack me!”
“They aren’t your troops. That isn’t your body and you are not the rightful princess.”
“What did you do to the Lady Sapphire?”
“The Barclay girl you had hanged?”
“I didn’t order that. I would never.”
“Do? Nothing. She figured out you were an imposter long before I arrived in their duchy. She confirmed my suspicions about how you changed. The dowager thought the princess had been possessed by a demon but, no, not possessed. Replaced.” He pointed his finger at me, “Well, demon or deity, where we are sending you, you won’t return from.”
He rode away.
I rolled over.
He wasn’t exactly wrong. I really wasn’t the princess. The kingdom, the Laemacian empire, these were not rightfully mine. All the soldiers who’d been injured or killed fighting the princess’s enemies, fighting on behalf of an imposter.
The birdcage suddenly seemed appropriate. I was a cuckoo, a bird who sneaks in and replaces the children. The why of it, though, was something I could not fathom. Yet there had to be a reason. If Etienne was right, it was waiting at the temple.
***
The road we traveled on narrowed as it elevated. It seemed we were traveling along the side of a high mountain. On the other side, not quite a cliff, but a pretty steep slope down, with a fast-flowing river carving out the valley below.
This mountain was not like the rolling hills. It was high. So, we had gone beyond them. Getting closer and closer to this place of imprisonment and answers. I had to imagine it also contained some kind of punishment. And made me wonder, was this temple the reason I’d come here? I’d rather hoped it was the friendships I’d made on the way.
The pain was becoming tolerable. Mild, even. But I felt helpless. I could keep pushing those caging me – and I did, from time to time – but the resulting backlash always put me down for a few minutes. And they relieved each other, every so often. They came fresh and kept me worn down.
I focused on the clean air I breathed, white clouds above shimmering slightly in the sunlight, seemed to ripple as the air pushed against them, air that was ever restless as the planet rotated below. Blue sky beyond and almost, on the edge of imagination, hints of the black space further out. Closer, the leaves on the trees were blurry and sometimes melted into each other like a Monet painting. The fractals in the trees suddenly became clear. The angles of large branches coming off the main trunk repeated in the smaller branches coming off them, and the stems of smaller ones as they fanned out.
The light streaming through the bars made them look closer and further away, as if the scenery behind was added to a green screen. The bars wobbled and bent and straightened and then I knew they’d put something in the water. It was why the days passed so quickly. And probably kept me from gaining the concentration needed to reach my power.
Alcohol didn’t give me hangovers, but I did get inebriated. Drugs, it seemed, worked on me, too. My mind wandered from cyanide to lysergic acid, wondering what the effects would be on my body. Without ill consequences, their immediate effects drove the experience.
Something darted underneath my prison. Scratching. A yip! Overhead in the sky, far off black dots circling, following, blurring into long curving lines. My beloved creatures, symbols, following, giving me hope.
Again, I looked at the voyeurs. No, with furrowed brows and steady gaze, they didn’t notice, so deeply were they concentrating on me.
Bushes shaking off to the side of the road, orange fur. A prison break? But then the bush waved in the wind, its branches shaking, began to dance for me. Perhaps I saw nothing but the effects of what was in the water.
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