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“Yes, High Priestess,” they both reply, dipping their heads.
With that, the other priestesses flock out of the dungeons with Ahelin, leaving Natharius and me and our two jailors.
fourteen
Istaredownatthe golden manacles binding my wrists. Light flickers across the runes engraved into the surface, pulsing with a steady rhythm like the ebb and flow of the tide. Ahelin pressed them so tightly together the metal pinches my skin.
The two priestesses Ahelin ordered to guard the dungeons stand sentry like statues. They don’t move even once from the dungeon’s iron doors and rarely blink. I wonder whether stoicism is a part of a priestess’s training. I do my best to think about that rather than my much more terrible thoughts.
Like Arluin. His necromancers. Father’s corpse enslaved to his will. Legions of undead storming the world.
My failure.
But when I fall asleep, I’m unable to stop all those terrifying thoughts from invading my mind. My dreams are haunted by fragmented images of Arluin and his undead, some from the night Nolderan fell, others from a future which has yet to pass but is now cemented by my failure.
Everything I’ve done so far—wielding dark magic and bargaining my soul to summon a Void Prince—has been in vain. And I didn’t even make it past the Ghost Woods.
In my nightmares, Kaely laughs at me. Her features are twisted by the taint of undeath. My flames slam into her and consume her reanimated corpse, and her taunts turn to screams.
Eliya is there inside her crystal coffin, clasping an illusionary rose to her chest. Her eyes snap open. She asks me why I let her be killed. Why I failed to bring her murderer to justice. Then her face is replaced by Father’s, and his eyes are filled with dark magic. He shakes his head and tells me what a disappointment of a daughter I am. That he should have disowned me years ago when it was clear how useless I am.
Finally Arluin appears, and he sneers at me and says how easy it was to fool me. How lonely and broken I was and how I jumped at the affection he showed me while pretending to be Nolan. How blindly I trusted him.
When it all becomes too much, I’m torn out of my dreams and wake to tears spilling across my cheeks. And Natharius staring at me. I wonder whether I made any noises while weeping in my sleep.
The Void Prince says nothing. He hasn’t said a word since the priestesses threw us in here. When I lift my head and meet his eyes, his attention flickers across to the bars behind me.
I bite my tongue to hold back a wry laugh. How unexpected. I thought he would mock me to no end for my tears, but it’s as if he didn’t notice them at all. Unless perhaps the demon is too busy feeling sorry for himself for being caged beneath this temple.
I lift my hands. The manacles clang together. It’s a struggle to wipe away my tears with the back of my hand, and it involves contorting my wrists at an odd and painful angle, but I succeed in the end. Then I sit there and stare at my manacles again, contemplating my failure. At least the Arluin who appeared in my dreams wasn’t real and was only a figment of my imagination, terrible though he was. It seems these holy manacles are suppressing Arluin’s tracking spell, as well as my magic. Either that or he wasn’t available tonight to torment me in my dreams.
I’m not sure how long I slept, but both priestesses are still standing guard at the door and haven’t yet been replaced, so I doubt it’s morning yet. With the dungeons being so far beneath the temple, there are no windows. The only light comes from the torches scattered across the walls.
How long will they keep me inside this dungeon? For eternity, as I joked to Natharius? Will I have to spend the next three hundred years inside here? Will my only escape be death from old age? Then I’ll have more imprisonment awaiting me, coupled with the eternal torture of my soul at the hands of the demon in the cell next to mine.
In the end, all I traded my soul for was a few days of journeying through Tirith. Maybe that’s all I’m worth.
But I won’t let myself cry again. I dig my nails into my palms as deeply as I can. The strain causes the manacles to pinch my wrists harder. I focus on the pain until the urge to cry fades into bleak despair.
I peel myself from the bars behind me. I’ve been sitting against them for so long they’ve imprinted themselves into my back. My limbs are stiff, but I make it to the center of the cell, and I lie there on my back, pressing it against the cold stone floor to relieve the ache. I stare up at the ceiling and spend a while longer contemplating all the consequences of my defeat.
Maybe my imprisonment won’t last three hundred years. Maybe Arluin will conquer the world before then. Maybe he and his undead will tear apart the city and find me down here afterward. Or maybe I won’t live to see Arluin conquering the world. Maybe the priestesses will execute me first.
I don’t know which future fate has planned for me and I can contemplate it all I want, but it will bring me no closer to knowing the truth.
Somewhere amid all those bleak thoughts of my demise, I fall asleep again. This time, my dreams are empty and no one enters my mind. Not Arluin, not Eliya, not Father.
After some time, I wake to creaking. It must be morning now since two new priestesses enter the dungeons to replace the others. They are accompanied by a third priestess who bears trays filled with food and water. At first I don’t recognize her but when she draws nearer, I realize it’s Yadira.
I scramble forth to my cell’s door and cling to the bars. “Yadira!”
She doesn’t look at me as she retrieves a key from her white robes and uses it to unlock Natharius’s cell. The demon doesn’t lift his head. Or so much as twitch. I’d think him asleep if his eyes weren’t open. He hasn’t moved at all.
“Yadira!” I try again. She takes a cautious step into Natharius’s cell and places the tray close to the entrance. Then she leaves and swiftly locks the cell behind her. Golden light ripples across the bars as the High Priestess’s ward restores itself.
“You have to listen to me!” I continue. “Everything I said about the necromancers, about Nolderan’s fall—all of it is the truth!”
Yadira stops in front of my cell and lifts the key. “Step away from the door.”
