"There's no exit yet," sighed Daphne, pointing out the obvious as usual. They had followed the painting's eye direction down a long hall that seemed to stretch on without end. They had found no door or window of any kind, however.
     "But it didn't mention an exit here," pointed out Naomi, waving the paper with the clues. "Just treasure." She leaned against the wall. "We're lost."
     "And Aubrey is in trouble," said Ianthe. "I can feel it."
     "And Bryan is, too," added Daphne, bouncing on her heels in anxiety.
     "We'll help 'em. Don't worry," assured Maik. "If we can just… find a… door or something…"
     They all leaned against the wall and sighed.

     There was a series of poundings on the door of Bryan's cell. He had been sleeping, but his eyes snapped open. Soon the door swung open. A guard grabbed Bryan by the arm and bound his hands behind his back. Another guard had done the same to Aubrey in the adjacent cell. The two were ushered down a spiraling staircase into a room with a small table and pushed roughly onto the wooden bench in front of it. Two plates were placed in front of them, each containing a scoop of scrambled eggs, limp salad with [fake… they're cheap…?] [Whichever--I don't care.] bacon bits and ranch dressing, and a slice of bread and butter. A glass of water followed, with a fork. The guards untied their hands, and Aubrey and Bryan picked up their forks. Bryan dug in hungrily. Aubrey stared at the mediocre meal as though willing it to change into a pizza. "This is the food?" he asked. (NOTE: The guard goes outside at this point. He can see them, but he can't hear them.)
     Bryan nodded, his mouth full. He swallowed. "You get used to it."
     "Why? How long have you been here?" asked Aubrey.
     "A few days, I think. The food's not great, but it's better than the questioning sessions."
     "Questioning sessions?" queried Aubrey, breaking his concentration on trying to work up the nerve to taste the salad.
     "Yeah. They want to know how I got here. I keep tellin' 'em I don't know, but they never believe me. They just keep getting meaner…"
     Suddenly Aubrey looked at Bryan. A strange feeling, like of clouds melting away, took hold of his brain. "Bryan!" he cried. "What are you doing here?"
     Bryan gave him an odd look. "We went over that. I got here somehow--I think through the TV, but now I'm not so sure for some reason--and they…"
     "No, no! I mean… well, don't you recognize me? I'm Aubrey Yaelyr! You're Bryan DeWind! We're in the same school, the same grade! We eat lunch together sometimes!"
     Bryan looked at him blankly. "There must be some mistake."
     "No, there isn't - there can't be! What did they do to you to make you forget? Why did I forget? Ianthe! I forgot that Ianthe and the others are coming to save us!" He looked at Bryan and added, "Daphne! Daphne Celora! Remember her? Blond pigtails, kinda weird? She's worried about you! You had a school class together! She...I think she kind of likes you. They're coming to rescue us! They must be!"
     Bryan still looked bewildered. "I don't know a Daphne, or you. I'm telling you, you've got the wrong guy."
     Aubrey scowled. "Then where are you from? What school?"
     Bryan thought. "I… I don't remember. I don't remember much before my coming here. But it can't be true… why can't I remember?"
     "They're doing something to make you forget… whoever they are. But I'm telling you, they're coming. Ianthe and Daphne… and Elisay and Naomi, too… and the other guys--Maik, Piyteur, Daivi, and Myki, and Blake. You know Blake and Naomi, too, I think. At least you've seen 'em around."
     Bryan had only eaten a mouthful of scrambled eggs, and Aubrey had eaten nothing. Suddenly Bryan's mind underwent the same clearing. "Aubrey! What the heck is going on? Why didn't I see who you were?"
     "I'm guessing the food. Don't eat it--it might be drugged," Aubrey responded. "And maybe something in the cells, too, since the food wears off."
     "Well, as soon as we go back in the cell, we'll forget who we are," said Bryan. "If Daphne and the others do come for us, we won't recognize them. What can we do?"
     "I don't know. Can't we write something to give to them… or something? We can't let ourselves get back confused," said Aubrey.
     "And I've got news for you," said Bryan. "Sooner or later they're gonna question you, too. And if they catch the others…"
     "We'll be stuck here forever. This is not good," sighed Aubrey.
     The guard stuck his head in the door (he'd been standing at the room's entrance). "EAT!" he yelled. "Eat!" The guard appeared to have only a minimal grasp of the English language, somewhat Neanderthal.
     "Uh-oh," said Aubrey. He put a forkful of salad in his mouth, to Bryan's terror. "Don't!" hissed Bryan.
     The guard turned away. Aubrey spat out the salad. "I'm not," he said. "Meanwhile, we have to come up with a plan. Think!"

     "Look, I'm telling you, I don't know how! I just sort of got here!" insisted Aubrey. He and Bryan were being questioned.
     A tall, mostly bald man (what little of the blondish hair he had left was sticking up crazily at his temples, vaguely mad-scientist style) glared down at Aubrey. "Impossible," he said. "That boy"--referring to Bryan--"says that he doesn't know, either. Untrue! I say you both worked together. How else would you have ended up in the same place?"
     "We don't know, really," said Bryan. "We can't tell you what we don't know."
     "What do you want, anyway?" asked Aubrey.
     "Don't you see? The ability to slide between worlds! Amazing how you even managed it. I want to know how! And I will know how!"
     "But we don't know!" cried Aubrey.
[Note: Hey, guys, did we miss something? In the beginning of this, we couldn't find a door. How did we find this one? I thought we got there when Daffodil played her feadog stain and we held on to her. Did I just forget or something?]
     The girls and Maik were on the other side of the door, but couldn't see in. "It's them!" cried Ianthe, who had her ear to the crack between the door and the wall. "Now how do we get in?"
     Daphne tried the latch. It turned--the door was unlocked. "How about that?" she asked, trying to sound innocent.
     Maik said, "All rahght, everyone, brace yourselves… here we go! Now!"
     Daphne flung open the door. Two guards stood in their path. Everyone in the room froze and looked at the crew. Maik took advantage of the shock and pinned one guard to the wall with a mighty shove. Daphne, in the heat of the moment, grabbed the other and attempted to subdue him, but he flung her to the ground. Daphne clenched her teeth in pain. But before she could pick herself up, the bald man had taken a syringe and injected something into her arm. The others, in trying to quiet the other guard and grab Aubrey and Bryan, hadn't realized what the man was doing. "Take her," he said to the guard. The guard left, carrying Daphne. [The guard that had thrown Daphne, that is.] Now there was only one guard, Dr. Comolrin, and the rest of the crew, now including Aubrey and Bryan. The boys, incidentally, had been taken to questioning immediately following dinner, which they had refused to eat, claiming they weren't hungry. Aubrey had first met Dr. Comolrin, "meanie extraordinaire", as Aubrey had mentally nicknamed him. (Reminds me o' how Dan signs yearbooks 'tenor extraordinaire"! He's evil, but far from bald. ^BOING^ of hair…)
     Now Dr. Comolrin realized that he was unarmed and outnumbered. By the time more guards would come, they would have escaped. He fled from the room… but not from the castle. He meant to get them all some how. The other guard followed.
     "Great! Now Daphne's gone!" said Naomi, frustrated. "We've gotta find her!"
     "I bet we know where she is," said Aubrey, speaking for himself and Bryan. "Or where she will be. In a cell. And she won't recognize us. It's the injection, we think."
     "Yeah, we almost didn't recognize you, either. If we'd have eaten the food, we wouldn't have. Aubrey was the one who figured everything out," said Bryan.
     "Aw, great," said Naomi. "This is bad. Seriously bad."
     "And hey…" said Elisay. "Does anyone know where Piyteur and the others are?"

     Daphne was thrown into the cell that Aubrey had been in, though she didn't know that. In fact, she didn't know much of anything. If Daphne had been her normal self, she would have said that her brain felt like fried mush--first mushed, then fried, so that it was sticking to her skull and not functioning. But as she wasn't her normal self (or as normal as usual, which still wasn't much), all she felt was like her thoughts were slowly fading away of her friends and Bryan and everyone. She did notice, however, two people in the adjacent cell… she groped in her mind, trying to recall them. But her mind had slipped into confusion.

     "If I know anything 'bout castles an' basic military, then the cells an' any prisoners in general will be highly guarded," offered Aubrey.
     "This is great. How're we gonna save Daphne now?" Naomi asked.
     "About the drugged food… If we could drug all of the guards' food, maybe even Dr. Comolrin's, then we could safely get the keys, free Daphne, find Piyteur, Myki, Daivi, an' Blake, an' hightail it outta here!" Ianthe said this all quickly, like it was directly from her brain, no thinking through, which it was.
     Maik sighed. "That'd be great… if we had maps so we could get around safely without bein' found."
     "We do." Elisay took out The Castle. "But they're all in runes." She handed the book to Ianthe.
     "It's a good thing this is written using the runic alphabet an' no complex characters, 'cos I only know the alphabet. Wow! Apparently, these walls are riddled with secret passages. In that case, I'll go, ah, fix the food. An' dinna worry, if I'm in trouble, I got my feadóg stáin. But if I dinna report back in twenty minutes, Aubrey has his feadóg stáin to get the book. He can read runic, too." She hugged Aubrey and disappeared into the wall, book in hand.

     Daphne sat in her cell, mind still clouded. Suddenly a corked vial with paper rolled around it descended from the ceiling. She took the vial and undid the paper. On the paper in a slightly fancy writing gone sloppy was written: "Hullo! Your mind's all fuzzy, huh? Just drink part of this vial an' all will become clear. Share it with the two guys in the next cell. Trust me, please. It'll help out later if you can remember. An' dinna eat any food or drink anythin' besides this. It's important. Just drink this liquid an' make sure the other two do, too. Thanks. Peace, Love, Monkees, and Psychojelloness Infinity, Your Friend In High Places."
     "What've I got to lose?" Daphne shrugged and drank part of the liquid. It all came rushing back to her. She looked into the adjacent cell. "Myki? Daivi?"
     "That's us. How'd you know that?" asked Myki.
     "Just trust me an' drink some of this. Here, read the note. An' leave some just in case more people get caught." She handed the vial and note through the bars to Daivi. Soon they were restored, and half of the anti-drug was left.
     "So how'd you get 'ere, Daphne?" Daivi questioned.
     "Well, I got captured when we were tryin' to save Aubrey an' Bryan--"
     "Bryan? Who's that?" asked Myki.
     "He's a friend of mine from school. He's how we knew something was wrong here."
     "Oh. We ran into some guards when we were tryin' to help Piyteur an' Blake. They must still be hidin' 'cos they're not here," explained Myki.
     "Let's 'ope it stays thaht way or thaht the othahs find them fuhst," Daivi prayed.

     Ianthe hummed silently (don't ask how that's done, 'cos it's too complicated to explain) as she sprinkled the drug over all the food in the pantry. She'd already visited Dr. Comolrin's private larder… There was no way that anyone would escape being drugged…

     Piyteur and Blake cowered behind a grotesque statue in a corner. Two guards were conversing a mere five feet away. Things were not looking good. Just then two hands covered their mouths and pulled them back into the wall. A panel closed in front of them. The hands released them. In the faint light they looked at their captor… or was it savior? "Ianthe?!" they whispered in unison. (Yeah, an' I'll thank ya t'keep yer hands OFF o' MY BLAKE in the future...! X-Þ )

 

Chapter Notes

In which Naomi gets back at Ianthe... (no, not really, tho she'd LIKE to.. that's MY Blake's lovely mouth yer touchin'!!! *glare*)
 
     *ahem*