The days passed slowly—slow as blood drying. Unlike blood though the gleam of dark sunlight that rested in the corner of Arn’s cell continued to grow. Some days, those when he started awake from the deepest mazes of the dreamworld, Arn could swear he saw a face reflected in the fiery spot—a grotesque and furious face.
One day, Arn decided to ask Gamden about it. “What do you see over there?”
Gamden squinted at him across the otherwise dim cell. Arn’s hallucination looked as grimy and unkempt as Arn himself. He shrugged. “Nothing good.”
“So, you see it too.” Arn turned and put his back to the strange light. For the first time, he started to wonder why. “What is wrong? It’s inside me, like a sickness.”
“The ruins of Scoa,” Gamden said.
“Or the poison I drank, to build an immunity?”
Gamden shrugged. “You have scars everywhere—the body can only endure so much.” Even after all this time, Gamden still acted as though he was his own man. He only spoke of things that Arn had told him.
Keys rattled. “Madman,” a gruff voice called, from down the hall. “Tikio cho”—was what they had said: that word that wrung Arn’s skin like a wet rag. “They’re coming for you,” called the other prisoner with his rough voice.
“Quiet!” The bark was followed by a metal clang—club on prison bars. Everything here was metal—the tomb that encased Arn, the bars that bordered the corridor, and even the clothes of the guards. The guard that came for Arn was not armoured so thoroughly in the stuff; he wore a metal shirt, but his pants were cloth. He glared into Arn’s cell with a look of unbridled fear. “On the ground, prisoner. Back to me.”
Arn sneered at him. They send me their quivering children, he thought. This man would not have lasted two breaths on Razaad. Then Arn saw the figure in the shadows—another of the warriors that were so clad in metal that their faces looked like skulls. Arn glanced at Gamden and said, “Maybe it’s all the metal—driving me mad.”
“Speak Common!” the guard ordered, tapping the bars with his baton. “On your knees now, or my friend will knock you senseless.”
Once he was on his knees, Arn put his hands behind his back. He had been taken from his cell once before: when another prisoner had turned up dead, they had searched all the cells for weapons. He knew they would bind his arms and shoulders. He knew they would tie a gag in his mouth. He knew they would tie an anchor to his ankle.
Not all the prisoners were treated so—but none were Arn.
Shambling and scraping down the hallway, Arn dragged his burden through the prison. He passed the cell of the man who had called to him, but the blood-stained man had nothing to say now. When they reached the stairs, the metal lump was removed, but the guards advanced ahead and behind him up the tight stairwell. The burden was reattached at the top. They crossed a courtyard—the bloodstains had been mostly washed out by now—and the sun was so bright Arn felt it in the back of his skull. Before his eyes adjusted, Arn stumbled off the route they had planned, and was rewarded with a welting bruise on one arm from the metal-shirted guard.
They reached a new room, little more than a cell, which adjoined directly to the large courtyard of Arn’s new home. Three men were waiting inside. One was another skull-faced warrior. The second was robed and held a small cluster of herbs to his nose. The third was a head taller than either of the other two. He was bald, but tattoos scrawled his entire scalp, clothed but metal spikes poked out all over the leather tunic, and smiled but not with humour.
Arn was chained in the center of the room, while the three looked on patiently. Hooks in the ceiling held his arms overhead. Hooks in the floor held his feet. The one with the chain-shirt tore off Arn’s tattered tunic, then stepped out of the room.
“You’ve seen your fair share of rooms like this, haven’t you?” asked the big man, though he could not have been much larger than Stone Spear, and Arn had taken Stone Spear.
Arn glared back at the man. Then, hesitating, he shook his head.
“And your scars? Your…this excuse for a face?” the tattooed man asked. He held out a hand to gesture Arn’s missing nose; he had bruises on his knuckles and small scars flecked his fingers and forearms. This was a fighter, not just a talker.
“I earned them,” Arn growled.
“You’ll earn some more, doubtless, but not today,” the man said.
“Who are you?” Arn asked. “Another lackey of big, fat men, like the one I poked with that knife?”
The burley fighter’s outstretched hand became a fist and his motion flowed from his back leg into Arn’s ruined face. The chains jangled loudly as Arn was snapped back against them. He immediately tasted blood. The pain was blinding—Arn grit his teeth and roared against the strength of his jaw. He gasped, blinked, and glared back at the giant man. “I am Drowen Targahal, also called Drowen Deathless; I may sit at Master Tarro’s table, but I am not a traitorous merchant or an entitled Baron. I am of the old blood of the Great Isle, older and wilder than the pompous salt-bloods in their walled cities. You will come to know a deep loyalty to me—or you will surely die.”
“I am loyal to none. I am the Deep, changing with the wind, but always deadly. So… get it over with.” Arn didn’t think he would miss this life much, and he didn’t think he would have another chance to kill them.
“Not yet,” Drowen Targahal said, raising his nose. Arn’s words had brought a smile to his face. “First, you speak.”
“I’m not one for words…”
The robed man stepped forward and removed his gloves; his hands were bubbled and scarred, disfigured by fire. At a nod from Drowen, he said, “We shall see. What shall I call you?”
Arn spat on the man, which caused Drowen to chuckle. “Begin,” the big fighter told his robed ally and the ally reached out his hand and placed it on Arn’s left shoulder.
The sensation began slowly, a warmth—like the sun on a clear day. It grew warmer still, like reaching over the cookfire. As the moments slipped by, it began to burn. The burning became hotter and hotter, until it felt like Arn’s shoulder was in the cookfire. His grunting became a guttural cry—the muscles in his arm and chest felt like knives, cutting his skin from the inside as they clenched against the searing heat. Sweat dripped into Arn’s eyes, mixing with the blood in his mouth.
Then the thin, robed man removed his hand. The pain was gone as soon as it had begun. Arn pushed his eyes to their peripheries, but nothing he could see of his shoulder showed burn wounds. The skin was only red and bothered. He shuddered, jerking the chains noisily.
“Is your name so valuable?” asked Drowen.
Arn shook his head. Nothing has value, he thought. They should finish me already… “Arn,” he whispered.
The Deathless nodded. “Arn.”
“Who trained you?” asked the robed man. “How did you kill Crar?”
“No one trained me,” Arn said. “And I used a knife.”
Drowen Deathless looked at the robed man and raised one eyebrow, contorting the set of skulls on that side of his scalp. The robed man gently touched Arn’s neck, and the screams and rattling of chains began again.
By the time he was dragged back to his cell, Arn had told them everything. He had told them that Razaad had trained him. He had told them what Razaad was, though they asked little more about it. He had told them how he had come to Starath—on the ship of Captain Emrez. He had told them that it was Quenden who had asked him to deliver the letter to Crar to enact some scheme he did not comprehend. And he had told them that it was Gamden, a figment of his shattered mind, that had killed Crar. Then, when it was done, he had begged them to finish it.
He was Shar on the raft—death was the only way forward.
But they did not end it. They dragged the scarred, broken prisoner back to his cell. When he was locked away with his madness once more, he heard the blood-stained prisoner from the other cell call, “I ruled this city once, and I feasted on the weak when we faced starvation—but it’s you they want. All the world is madmen, my friend. Madmen and death.”
Arn looked around his cell, past Gamden’s concerned eyes, and his gaze fell once more on the growing pool of red and orange light. The likeness of a face was still there, more clear now. It had red eyes, a cruel smile, and all Arn’s remaining wrath.