The Black Tower (7 page)

It was hell.

All sense of reality vanished the moment she and the Dawn Knight fell through the
cutgate
.  Ijanna felt a brief sense of weightlessness, a moment of peace, followed by a gut-wrenching descent.  There was nothingness, above and below.  Black wind rippled against her body as she tumbled end over end into utter darkness.  There was no sound, no sight of the ground.  They fell through a void, straight into the depths of unimaginable fear.

Memories flooded Ijanna Taivorkan’s mind, a torrent of images, sounds and scents so vivid she had trouble distinguishing what was real from what wasn’t.

Her life had been filled with fear.  Her mother died when she was young, and her father understood from the start how cursed Ijanna was.  He made sure she would fulfill her destiny, that she would grow up understanding the pivotal role she was meant to play. 

Allaji mystics raised her, and that life was harsh.  Buried up to her neck in sand, forced to build and then destroy and then rebuild brick walls, running back and forth on sharp stones in the glaring mid-day sun while wearing a blindfold, repeating tasks over and over until she got them right.  She sat quiet for days in front of the sunset, starved and thirsty, waiting for enlightenment. 

She was alone, a half-breed, left to fend for herself by her Den’nari father, a hero of the war but a monster to her.  She was different from everyone she met, an outsider with a cursed birth.  They all understood who she was,
what
she was: a soiled remnant of the Blood Queen’s power, the creature meant to slay humankind so the world could heal. 

Those memories flashed by.  She fell through black smoke and felt eyes on her, a dire intelligence which probed her for weaknesses.

And then it found a memory it wanted.  Ijanna felt herself drawn down, sucked into a cold, dark place. 

She’d barely escaped the camps.  Weeks of waiting had finally paid off, and it never would have happened if she hadn’t met the Red Hand and their fanatical leader, Malath Zayne.  Fear iced through her chest at the memory of all of that death – blood-soaked bodies, endless screams, cries for pity, children wailing, people burning alive, rape and torture and unearthly pain.  On those rare occasions when she slept Ijanna was gripped with cold terror, huddled tight in a ball in the muddy pit where she was held, a blood-stained girl in an iron cage.  She dreamed of fire and blood and woke to find the world the same.  For a while every new cry sent a chill up her spine and brought tears to her eyes, but after a time she no longer even heard them, and she hated herself for that.

She was mad with terror and hunger.  The Dawn Knights refused to feed their prisoners.  Her infant son wouldn’t last long in those conditions, assuming one of the black-and-gold clad murderers didn’t decide to just dash his head against a stone first like she’d seen them do with other children.  One little boy cried out for his mommy after a soldier bashed her head in with a mace, and his reward was to be stomped to death in the mud.

The sight of so much death scarred her.  She’d never slept soundly since, and never would again. 

Why didn’t I help them?

Ijanna was special.  She’d always known that, as had her father, the Allaji, even Malath Zayne.  Thankfully the Jlantrians did not, and they never found out, not until it was too late.  The Dawn Knights had somehow made it so their Bloodspeaker captives couldn’t Breathe the Veil.  For some reason Ijanna still could, and though her powers were greatly reduced her secret became her burden.  Her body didn’t grow weak like it should have, and she
was
still able to produce milk.  She used her powers to maintain the illusion that both she and her son were on the verge of death, but thanks to her magic she was able to keep the two of them alive, and that was as far as she was willing to go.  Any more extensive use of her Veil energies would have brought the wrath of the Dawn Knights down on them, and in any case expending that much magic under suppressive measures might have killed her. 

But how many lives could I have saved?
she wondered.  The thought had kept her awake many nights, even years later – wondering how many she might have been able to get out of those camps, if she’d only had to courage to help them.  Her talent for illusion and stealth could have freed a few captives before they’d died, poor souls, helpless and terrified people, many of who weren’t even Bloodspeakers to begin with.  Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered, but she had no way of knowing that, not now. 
You chose to protect Sammael and yourself, and you’ll never know how many paid the price for your cowardice. 

It was why her mission was so important.  It was why she had to sacrifice herself. 

For once, have the courage to do what needs to be done.

She remembered the day of her escape vividly.  Tall trees surrounded the camp, cold greens and blues cast in malevolent walls of falling leaves and milky light.  Cobalt clouds twisted like islands in the clear blue sky.  The air was hot and dry, choked by fire smoke and the stench of bodies.

The death camps were extensive, a series of short hills topped with wood and iron cages constructed near large pits filled with bodies, oil and blood.  The charnel stench of burning and fear had seared into her skin.  Screams echoed through the trees, sometimes close and sometimes far away, often accompanied by the sound of cruel laughter.  Thick stone bowls held smoking fumes.  Down in the pits were splintered wooden planks, iron cages, mallets, whips, cloth sacks filled with grisly trophies and remains.

She could see right down into the holes – they all could, for the cages had been positioned to grant clear view of the horrors going on below.  There were piles of bodies cast carelessly to the side, their seared and scarred flesh turning black and blue.  White seas of maggots squirmed in the channels of cold skin.  The Dawn Knights wore cloths tied around their faces and used their mastery over the Veil to keep from catching any diseases, and the sight of their cold-hearted disregard for the carnage they’d created chilled her heart. 

She remembered feeling weak and dizzy from malnutrition.  None of it had seemed real.  Even with her magic to keep her healthy enough to secretly nurse Sammael, Ijanna had lost several pounds of muscle mass over the weeks she spent in the camps; her son, even fed and kept alive with her power, didn’t look much better.  But compared to the others they looked positively healthy – the prisoners were malnourished and pale, given only rags to wear if anything at all, and their eyes were sallow and sunken and their bodies turned frail from the lack of food and sleep.  They seemed dead already, but they still had the capacity to know fear, to feel pain, and the Dawn Knights made sure that they did.

Ijanna had never before met Malath Zayne prior to coming to the camps, but he was the only other captive there in who she immediately sensed some semblance of power, a reservoir of magical ability he held onto in spite of his exhaustion.  She imagined he normally would have been a handsome man, with a chiseled face and broad shoulders, thick blonde hair and penetrating blue eyes, and his cold stare could under different circumstances bring a giant to its knees, but like the rest of them he was just a shell of his former self: he’d been beaten repeatedly, his chest had been branded and skin peeled from his back, but he’d managed to hang on.  Since he was so good at suffering torture the Dawn Knights decided to keep him around so he could endure even more. 

There was resilience in his soul and defiance in his gaze, but that light was dimming every day.  Just as hers was.

Ijanna knew from the start who he was, even if she didn’t know how, and it soon became clear she was the
only
one there aware of his true identity.  She’d heard of him before, of course – basically every Bloodspeaker and Jlantrian had – and even though their circumstances played a major part he was still very little like she’d imagined he’d be.  The stories of his exploits and rebellious actions painted him as some sort of larger-than-life revolutionary, a man who gave rousing speeches and saw the world through a lens of righteousness, who’d turned to murder because that seemed to be what was expected of him.  In reality he was quiet, reserved…colder than she’d have thought.  At first she wondered if they hadn’t broken him, but she didn’t think so.  Like Ijanna he clung to some vestige of his magic that had somehow eluded the safeguards placed by the Dawn Knights.  A fire burned inside him like a sputtering beacon of hope.  When she looked in his eyes she knew he intended to live through their ordeal, no matter the cost.

He seemed disaffected by the carnage around them, the torture and pain.  Screams that twisted Ijanna’s spine in horror seemed to pass right over him.  They shared a cage along with a few others, all of them caked with mud and soot and blood and so discolored by bruising they looked like clay dolls. 

In the darkest hours of frozen dawns Ijanna and Malath talked of petty things, important things, things that meant nothing but in their own way meant everything.  They kept their voices low so they wouldn’t be heard over the sound of screams. 

She and Malath knew they’d die soon.  There seemed to be no avoiding it, so they talked of things that took them away from there: her time in Allaj Mohrter, his spent as a sailor on merchant frigates in the Moon Sea, books they’d both read, places they wanted to see.  Sammael seemed to like Malath because Zayne allowed the infant to pull on his hair.  Sometimes they both laughed, such a strange and alien sound in that horrifying place.  He spoke of his lover who’d died there in the camps, and though he did his best to remain stoic and distant it was clear her loss had deeply affected him, and when he spoke of her it was with a moribund sense of guilt, for he was clearly convinced her death was his fault.

Ijanna didn’t speak of her lover, who’d died months before Sammael had been born.  Some things couldn’t be shared, even there at the edge of doom. 

Malath didn’t fear dying, that was clear.  He believed Bloodspeakers, who he called by their ancient name of
shei’aar
, were the chosen ones, and that they would heal the world and lift it from its blistered and wounded state.  Many would die before humankind would accept the
shei’aar
as their replacements, but in his mind it was only a matter of time, and he was simply allowing nature to take its course by helping others like himself throw off their chains and prepare for the coming war.  Those in power had painted
shei’aar
as cultists who sought to bathe the world in blood.

“Why?” she’d asked.  “Why do they hate us so much?”

“Because they’re afraid of us,” he said.  “They don’t understand us, and yet they see that we are the future.  That terrifies them.  They want things to stay the way they are, want the Empires to last forever.  They don’t seem to realize the Rift War was that point in history when the Empires should have died.”  His voice was cold, and even with all of the horrors around them, something in Malath’s tone frightened her. 

They sat for a time after that.  It struck Ijanna as strange and somehow wrong that Malath Zayne, the one name to be attributed to the largely imagined threat Bloodspeakers represented to Jlantria, would die anonymously there in the camps, just another victim of irrational hatred and senseless fear. 

“What will happen to us?” she asked him.  The sky had gone dark as dusk approached, and she nursed Sammael in secret while she and Malath and the others in their cage listened to the pained cries of people being tortured in the pits.  A man was screaming directly below them, but Ijanna didn’t look, wouldn’t look.  His voice trilled far too high, and it was impossible to identify what was happening to him by sound alone: she heard metal, burning, flesh being torn.  Her skin crawled, and her veins filled with ice.  Ijanna wanted to fold in on herself.  She didn’t know who it was, and she didn’t care.  She just wanted the screams to stop.

“Our time will come,” Malath said.  His eyes were locked on something in the distance, some invisible place only he could see.  “They’ll take us from this cage, and then we’ll die.”  He looked at her.  His eyes almost seemed to glow.  “But they can’t kill us all.  They’ll never be able to do that, no matter how badly Azaean wants to.”

Ijanna took a deep and frightened breath.

“I don’t want my son to die,” she said.

Malath didn’t answer, not for a long time, just watched her with that stony expression. 

“I’m sorry,” he said at last.  “We all lose those we love.”

“Would they come for you?” she asked.  An idea was taking form in her head, a fluid notion she doubted could ever become a reality.  Just another desperate attempt to change things that couldn’t be changed. 

“Who?” he asked.

“The Red Hand.  If they...”  Her head was spinning, and it was hard to gather her thoughts.  Sammael was starting to fall asleep; she held him gently and patted his back.  “If they knew you were here...would they come for you?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.  “There’s no way they could find...”

“There is,” she said, and understanding dawned in his eyes.  Malath had spent some time trying to develop cooperative rituals, means by which small groups of Bloodspeakers could pool their efforts and combine their Veil energies so the cost to any individual wouldn’t be too great. 

She and Malath could combine their magic.  Ijanna’s ability to Breathe the Veil had been vastly reduced with the safeguards the Dawn Knights had erected around the camp, as had Malath’s, but together perhaps they could draw enough raw power to produce a useful effect.