The first thing I did was test the chain. It seemed to be forged of iron and was not particularly thick or heavy, although it didn't budge an inch when I jerked on with human hands. So I let the Fury loose again, reveling for a few moments in the simple release of it, the expulsion of pent-up anger, the spreading of the dark wings. But the iron chain, thin as it seemed now in my larger hands, was as unbreakable as diamond. Even the clamp which fastened it to the wall seemed to have been put there solely to taunt me. I roared and pulled and pulled and roared, but I could just as easily have hauled the mountain from its roots as budge that clamp. I gave up when I noticed the guard laughing at me through the window. Growling, I made a rush at him, and laughed myself when he flinched in spite of the door between us. But the chain jerked me up hard a good ten feet from his leering face.
Resolutely I turned my back on him and returned to examining my bonds. They must be magic, I thought, fashioned by Shoachim for the express purpose of binding a Fury. As I pondered the thought, I began to cool down a little, and it was then that I noticed how tightly the collar bit into my neck. It couldn't actually cut me, I noticed (Shoachim wouldn't want to give me an opportunity to kill myself), but it was tight enough to cut off my circulation and breathing. If I'd actually required either function, I'd have passed out already. As it was, the collar did cause me more than a little pain. So, since I had no use for it any longer, I reigned in the Fury and sat down on the cold stone floor.
Well, I thought, I might as well study my surroundings. It was something to occupy my mind, and there was always the possibility that I might find a way to escape. The cell, I saw, was a cube approximately twenty feet on each side, almost spacious for a dungeon. I couldn't help wondering what it had originally been built to contain. Nothing human, I imagined.
The ray of torchlight seeping through the window highlighted tiny nicks and scrapes along the walls--chisel marks, I realized after a moment. And that meant that the cell--maybe even the whole dungeon--had been built by someone other than the magician who'd created the upper castle. As depressed as I was, I took some comfort from this thought. I'd already formed a sort of mental image of the mysterious builder, and I didn't think he or she was the type to delve dungeons.
I'd had time to learn every chisel-mark and cranny of that cell before Shoachim returned. I couldn't tell how many hours or days had passed, but I'd seen six shifts of guards, watching carefully for anything that might work to my advantage. I might have tried to lure one close enough to attack if not for one unfortunate fact: just beyond the guard station, a wall of golden force stretched from floor to ceiling--more of Shoachim's doing, naturally. The soldiers passed through it easily enough, but then again, they'd been able to reach inside my cocoon, too. Without being able to test it, I knew beyond doubt that that force field would hold me back even if I did manage to escape my cell.
The last changing of the guard brought the original smug watchman back. In my mind, I'd begun to think of him as Bluto. The others I called Larry, Moe, Curly, Laverne, and Shirley. Bluto was bolder this time around, actually unlocking the door and stepping inside to taunt me, swinging the key to my iron collar bare inches beyond my reach. And even though I knew I'd accomplish nothing by taking it from him, I still rushed him twice and came up short both times, which only made him laugh even harder.
My hunger had grown now to a level I'd never experienced before...never let myself experience, that is. Even after I failed to kill the Sultana, when my body told me in no uncertain terms that I'd made a mistake, I'd never hurt like this. I felt as though fire ants were gnawing at my belly, and a sort of prickly malaise ran through all my veins. Worst of all, with human hunger I could at least have looked forward to periodic lulls, troughs of numbness where the stomach struck a truce with its emptiness. But this craving went on and on, broken only by hot spikes of sharper pain. Surely, I thought, I'd gone longer than this without killing in the past. Why was the hunger so sharp now? It had to be my situation, and the knowledge of the suffering around me. At least, that was what I told myself.
Shoachim arrived in conjunction with a particularly sharp pang of hunger, and I was fortunate that I heard Bluto scrambling to attention before he entered. It gave me a chance to compose myself a bit.
"You're looking thinner," the sorcerer remarked as he stepped into the room. "I wasn't sure if you would. The texts never made it clear if the Fury's hunger was purely psychic, or physical as well. I'm pleased to see that it's both."
I gave him a hot glare. Then my eyes dropped to what looked like a bundle of rags in his arms. "It's nice to see that a man in your position isn't too proud to do his own laundry. Or did the maid get time off for good behavior?"
Shoachim regarded the bundle almost tenderly. "I believe I promised you an entree." Like Bluto, he came a few steps into the cell, then halted just beyond my reach. "I suggest you catch this," he remarked, and tossed his burden my way.
For a second I wasn't sure I wanted to catch anything he threw at me. It could be a trap. Then two skinny arms and legs flew free from the bundle, and I dived like an outfielder after a fly ball.
Shoachim had given me a little girl. She was about six years old and grubby as a mud pie, with long, thickly matted straw-blonde hair and a ragged gown. She was fast asleep.
Uncomprehendingly, I stared up at the smirking sorcerer.
"Enjoy," he said, and left the cell.
I sat very still, gazing in wonder and confusion at the sleeping child. This was Shoachim's "entree"? A pang of fear laced my gut. Maybe it wasn't a child at all, but some kind of demon or monster in human form. What would happen when I woke it up? Maybe I'd be best off killing it now.
Fortunately, rationality prevailed. The child smelled human enough. In fact, she smelled a little too human; apparently, she hadn't had a bath in weeks. I shook her gently and, as she opened her eyes, I noticed there were no telltale jeweled sparks, just a sunny, utterly human blue-green.
"Mommy?" she murmured, her face open and trusting in half-slumber. Then she rubbed her eyes and stiffened as she saw the truth. "Who are you?" she asked, in a voice that sounded much older than it had a moment before. "Where's Daddy?"
"I don't know where your parents are, sweetheart," I told her, and her face screwed up.
"My mother's dead," she said, in a tone that accused me of negligence for not knowing this basic fact of life. "And daddy and I are supposed to be locked up together. What did you do with him?"
"I didn't do anything with him," I blinked. "Shoachim's got me locked up too, see?" I jingled my chain at her. "He brought you to me while you were asleep."
The little girl scowled, then flew suddenly from petulance to hysteria. "Daddy! Daddy!" she screamed; and running to the door, she hammered it viciously with her tiny fists.
I was helpless to reach her, so I simply moved as close as my chain would allow and squatted on the floor with my arms open, making soothing sounds. I didn't try to tell her everything would be okay, because I didn't want to lie.
The girl continued to rage for a good ten or fifteen minutes, then collapsed at the foot of the door, hiccuping with spent hysteria. Finally, she looked up and seemed to remember she wasn't alone. "Who are you?" she asked, as if for the first time.
"My name is Kyriel. What's yours?"
"Rajel."
"What a pretty name. How old are you, Rajel?"
"Six and a half." The familiar adult-child catechism seemed to comfort her, and she smiled slightly. "You're a supernatural, aren't you?"
My jaw dropped. Did everyone in this part of the mountains know my secrets? The word and the knowledge had flowed from the child's mouth as easily as her own name. When I regained my composure, I decided honesty would serve me best in the present situation. "That's right, I am a supernatural. But how did you know? Did Shoachim tell you?"
"Of course not," the girl sniffed, her attitude suggesting that I should have known better than to even ask. "I'm a sensitive, like my Mommy. And Daddy's a healer. That's why Shoachim came after us."
Rajel, like many children her age, was convinced that the rest of the universe was intimately familiar with her life story. It took a long time to reel the whole story out of her, but eventually I learned that came from a long line of psychics who lived in the mountains north of Shoachim's palace. The wizard had first appeared when Rajel's father was a boy, and as soon as he had built up a power base, he began killing off every neighbor who posed even the remotest threat to his security. And that included all psychics, no matter what their abilities.
The purges reached Rajel's village when the little girl was three. Knowing they could never hope to match the sorcerer's power, her people chose to hide their psychics and pay the tribute Shoachim demanded. Their ploy worked for three years. Rajel didn't know why, exactly, it failed in the end; but one day Shoachim's forces came swooping up the south and slaughtered her people by the hundreds. Her mother was one of the first to die. Her father, Ashur, headed up a brief rebellion, but in the end they were defeated and all his fighters were executed. Only he and his daughter were spared, to be imprisoned until Shoachim decided how best to punish them.
And now Rajel had been placed with me -- as part of my punishment, Shoachim had implied. But could it be that I could be part of her and her father's punishment, as well? Instinct told me to pursue this line of reasoning, but I was already weak and confused, and I just couldn't put the pieces together. Then Rajel, who had fallen quiet after delivering her tale, looked up at me with huge, curious eyes. "What kind of supernatural are you?" she asked, and my stomach cramped.
The truth hit me like a brick, and it took all the self-control I could muster not to push the little girl off my lap. "I-I'm the kind that takes revenge on bad people like Shoachim," I stuttered, and looked away so she wouldn't see the fear in my eyes. I was hungry for death, and Rajel was meant to be my entree.
The Guardians had warned me that if a Fury was deprived of the kill for too long, her hunger could become a desperation, then a madness. Eventually, the bloodlust would grow so strong that she'd slaughter anything in her path, evil or otherwise. After all, the dagger that was meant to spike sinners into hell could cut and kill like any other weapon.
Of course, the Fury who killed an innocent person would pay the price for it. The Guardians were very specific about that. She'd lose first her nature, then her life. But she'd die sane, the murder having restored her senses. She'd know what she'd done, and when the final punishment came, she'd welcome it.
And this was what Shoachim had planned for me: to drive me crazy with hunger and have me kill an innocent child. It was the worst torment I could possibly imagine. The sorcerer knew me too, too well. Or was this the Sultana's idea, born of her contempt at my sparing her life?
In the end it didn't matter. I had no escape--not in this world, anyway. All I could do now was wake myself up. It was a sorry end to a short career. I was abandoning Rajel and her father to whatever new torments the sorcerer could dream up, abandoning all those wretched souls above to a life of misery, abandoning Shoachim himself to a life of happy plunder. I squeezed my eyes shut until the tears ran down my cheeks. It would have been better for everyone if I'd never found R2 in the first place. Rajel, at least, might not be here. She and her father had been captured right around the time I banished the Sultana. Had Shoachim spared them even then with the idea of using them against me?
"Why are you crying?" Rajel asked, and I opened my eyes and tried to smile at her.
"I'm just sorry for how everything turned out," I said, and reached out to smooth her tangled hair. "I wish I could save you, honey, but I can't. So I have to leave."
The little girl's eyes grew round with terror. "Don't go," she pleaded, and grasped me tight around the middle. "Everybody always leaves me. Please, Kyriel, don't you go, too. I'll die!"
Heart breaking, I gently pulled her arms away. "I have to, Rajel. Otherwise, I might accidentally hurt you, and you don't want that, do you?"
"You won't hurt me," the little girl declared obstinately. "I know you now, and you're nice."
"I wouldn't want to hurt you." I picked her up and moved her to the farthest corner I could reach, then backed away. "But you know I'm a supernatural, and I have so much strength that sometimes I can't control it. If I stay here, that's what's going to happen: it's going to get out of control. So I have to leave." Suddenly, inspiration struck. "It's what your daddy would want me to do."
I thought of Ashur, sitting alone in his cell, perhaps hugging his knees and rocking back and forth as he prayed for his daughter's safety. Doubtless, Shoachim had told him exactly what he had planned for her. It would be part of his punishment.
At the mention of her father, Rajel nodded and relaxed marginally, seeming to accept my decision. "Now, don't move," I told her. "You're going to see some real magic. You can tell your father about it when you see him again." I wondered what Ashur would think about my disappearing trick. He almost certainly didn't know about duals. But I'd said and done enough. My hunger had increased even in the short time it had taken me to make my decision. I had to go.
Sighing, I closed my eyes and concentrated, picturing the sleep tunnel in my mind. In R1, it stretched downward, so that the sleeper seemed to sink into dreams. In R2, it rose upward. But in both worlds, a tiny break interrupted the tunnel's smooth side. This was the passageway, the umbilical cord, that linked the two worlds. I could see it clearly in my mind now, growing as I drifted closer to its mouth. My R2 body, which had seemed all too solid and sensitive when I closed my eyes, now felt as weightless as a cloud. A single breath would disperse it.
Suddenly my inner eye caught movement in the umbilical. This had never happened before; was it part of the process of waking myself up? Would I see my R1 body coming toward me through the passageway, ready to reclaim my soul for good? No, this figure was taller than I was, and heavier. My heart sank to my toes. It was Shoachim.
His mouth never moved, but I heard his voice quite clearly in my mind. "And so you see the punishment we planned for you. I think you're not so disappointed now, eh, Kyriel?"
Rage and hatred flooded my mind, and out flashed the Fury, almost unbidden. I barreled toward him, shrieking, and didn't know whether I wanted more to kill him or to run him over. Rational though was swallowed up in rage.
Shoachim's hand flew out before I'd halved the distance between us. A brilliant burst of gold shot from his palm, smashing into me with the force of a sledgehammer. Blinded, dizzy, doubled up in agony, I tumbled into the far wall of the sleep tunnel. It gave under my weight, and for a moment I imagined I could feel something behind it, caressing my body with greedy intent. If I'd had time, I would have been revolted. But I thrust myself away and dove again at the sorcerer.
Again he beat me back.
After the third attack I had only enough strength left to hang in mid-tunnel, bruised and shaking with frustration. I could feel the opposite poles, R2 and true dreaming, pulling at me like magnets. Before long I would have to choose one or the other or be torn apart. Shoachim, I thought, must be in the same situation, no matter how calm he looked. The sleep tunnel wasn't made for extended visits.
My captor regarded me with folded arms. "You will never escape this way," he said. "I won't allow it."
"You can't stop me," I gasped. "I'm going to keep trying as long as I'm sane, and eventually I'll come back here when you're not around. No matter what you do, you can't make me kill that little girl."
The eerie almost-smile flickered across his face. "You don't understand, Kyriel. I'm not here even now. What you see before you is a simulacrum, not a human being. As often as you come here, you will find me waiting. So yes, I can stop you from leaving."
He was telling the truth; he had to be. There was no other way he could have been in the umbilical before I arrived and stayed there, unmoving, throughout our battle. I was defeated, and in a moment I would be sucked back down the tunnel into my cell.
But Shoachim still wasn't finished. "Are you feeling hungry, Kyriel?" he purred. "Hungrier than you think you have any right to feel? I've been working on you. Every hour has become a day as far as your metabolism is concerned. In other words, you haven't killed in nearly three months. Now, my research has taught me that the average Fury kills every two weeks on the outside. So it's no wonder you're starving." He paused, looking thoughtful. "And yet, somehow I don't feel you're as far along as you should be. I'm tuned in to your metabolism, you know, and at this rate I calculate you could go on for as much as two more weeks. But I feel a bit tied down, waiting for you to break, and Simona is growing impatient back home. So I believe I'd best double the rate of your decline. After all, I'm sure you'll be just as glad as I to get this over with quickly."
My last strands of self-control snapped like old rubber bands. I made a final, doomed rush at the sorcerer, and Shoachim's bolt sent me ricocheting back the way I'd come. The last thing I heard him say before I reentered the cell was, "I'll see you again when you've made your kill."
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