Massema paid Arn a few more visits, over the next few weeks, but Arn usually remained where he was and offered her only a few words in her tongue-contorting language. Arn wasn’t even speaking with Gamden these days—Gamden’s foolhardy plan to “make them important” again had only earned Arn greater imprisonment and torture.
After enough time had passed that Arn had begun to believe he would die in this metal hole, Drowen’s guards returned once more. They dragged Arn from his cell and took him to the small questioning room across the sun-blinded courtyard. Drowen waited inside, as well as a new comrade—one that Arn had not seen before.
Drowen Deathless, as he had called himself, spoke to Arn quietly. “The things you told us proved useful, Arn, but your usefulness wanes. If you want—”
“I told you to kill me.” Arn’s voice—ringing through the damp, dark chamber—chilled even himself.
“My slave Massema worries that that is the only want you have left,” Drowen agreed, but his tattooed forehead wrinkled as he raised his eyebrows. He put his hands gently on Arn’s twisted shoulders—Arn was chained between the ceiling and floor once more. “You’re welcome to expire in the cells below, but if any has the permission to kill you—it is Master Tarro himself.”
Arn nodded. “And where is Master Tarro?”
Drowen shrugged. “Not here.” He stepped back from Arn and looked at his guest, giving him the slightest nod.
The second man was robed just like the torturer who had laid hands of fire and agony on Arn’s body, but he was older and bearded. A scar ran along his jaw, obstructing a horizontal slice of his beard. He stepped closer to Arn. “I have something to offer you instead. But—as I have told you, Drowen—we must speak in private.”
“Your offers are meaningless,” Arn said. He spat toward the robed man, but the spittle fell short. In his native tongue, Arn blurted, “Your words are wind.”
“It’s not safe,” Drowen said. “We followed reports from that schemer—Quenden’s office to find accounts of his branding. Several guards were killed while Arn was in their custody. And you know well about the Merchant of Orm—”
The second man glared at Drowen. “In private, or not at all.”
The burly warlord shrugged. “Your risk, Vellek.” At a wave from Drowen, the guards in the room filed out. Their tattooed leader followed them.
The man called Vellek stepped closer to Arn once more, but Arn shook his chains and tried to get close enough to bite—or at least spit properly—on the robed fool. Unflinching, the man lifted a hand as though a wave could still Arn’s fury. “Please hear me out, Arn. My name is Vellek of Tav Rock, and, like yourself, I once saw things that were not there.”
Arn winced, despite himself. Of all the things this robed man could say—this was not what Arn had expected.
“They called me madman,” Vellek said. “I nearly turned my powers upon them, teaching them not to speak down on me…but after many years of resisting that urge, I began to see my visions less. I learned, in a manner of speaking, to block the things that were not real. Though it is certainly not the way for everyone—I earned the respect of my peers their way.”
“You fought them—your dreams?” Arn asked. He could snap this Vellek in half, even half-starved as he was. How could Vellek do what Arn could not?
Vellek folded his hands in front of him. “Drowen—perhaps of his own madness,” Vellek said with a wry smile, “is unwilling to let merit be lost. He wishes me to offer you what I have achieved, so that your life need not be ‘wasted’. But Arn—Drowen cannot order me to do this. I have helped some who sought what I offer, but others have claimed offence at it. Those who refuse consider their delusions to be part of their very identity…and who are we to say otherwise?”
Gamden was still in the cell—along with that growing aura of fiery sunlight. Arn found the notion of returning to an empty cell a relief, though the thought of Gamden fading seemed unsettling to Arn.
“Say the word, and I will leave you,” Vellek said.
Arn shook his head. Vellek had nearly fooled him with kind words. “…So I can rot while I wait for Master Tarro to kill me?”
Vellek looked down, quietly. “That is out of my control, Arn. I can only offer you what I have.”
A world without the dreamworld? Arn considered. He would not have forsaken Razaad. He would not have earned the disdain of Little Rat, the death of Shar—the brand between his shoulder blades. He glared up at Vellek and nodded. “Do it,” he sneered.
“It will take some time. An hour today, again tomorrow, and so on. It may even fail altogether,” Vellek said. He reached out one hand toward Arn—and Arn, expecting the agony inflicted by the last robed man, grimaced and braced himself. Instead, when Vellek touched Arn’s quivering shoulder, Arn felt nothing but the soft, wrinkled skin of a man who had never wielded a spear.
When he returned to his cell an hour later, Arn found Gamden and the red fire to be waiting for him. He said nothing—what had Vellek done to him if nothing had changed? Arn shook his head grimly and lay his head back against the warm metal wall that imprisoned him. He would go see Vellek the next day, if permitted—but to Arn, these games played by the warriors of this new land were fast growing tiresome.