Chapter Twenty

‘With humans ruling their own world the Wardens’ hands were tied. They refused to kill the humans themselves, but instead waited until they died of their own causes. Once they were dead, their bodies were taken to the Nin Wardens and placed into the rightful hall.’ 

The door moved slowly, almost as if it were too heavy to open. Creft wondered if the darkness pushed back against whoever tried to let the light creep in.  

Creft backed away from the stream as it filtered into the room. His eyes burned with the sudden infusion and he almost closed them, but his curiosity was greater than the pain.  

Even as his eyes watered, he dared not blink for fear of missing whatever came in. Creft saw two mice scurry away along the wall, down into their crevices. Then he saw the breadcrumbs littering the floor all around the room. How had he missed them? Even in the dark, he should have felt those crumbs. His belly ached with hunger and his missed opportunity.  

The hand that reached out around the door, flinging it open with a sudden burst, was gritty. Whoever the hand belonged to had toiled in the dirt or something very close to it prior to coming into the dark hell Creft was in.  

Creft pressed his back against the wall, compressing himself into a small human-sized ball. His heart fluttered with adrenaline. His instincts should have had him charging the person at the door, hoping to overtake them. Maybe he could get away. He wouldn’t have a very good chance at escaping, but it was something. Creft didn’t have the strength for it, however. The lack of food and water left nothing in him, so instead, he sat, awaiting his fate.  

The boot that first entered the room was much too expensive to belong to that same filthy hand. Creft’s brain tried to connect the two, but they were too different. Those boots were a noble’s boots, but the hand was of a laborer.  

Creft felt tears drift down his cheek, and his tongue instinctively darted out to catch them. Until that moment, he failed to realize how badly his tongue hurt from the dryness; yet now, he felt it throbbing for some relief.  

Could he now find that spilled cup of water from earlier? His eyes roved across the floor, not wanting to tear away from the person entering for too long. There was no cup in sight nor the tray the food had been thrown in on. How had they removed them without him knowing?  

Creft heard the second boot hit the cold floor as it entered the room. With the boots planted firmly in the light, Creft could also now see a pair of well-tailored pants to match the expensive boots. He followed them up and found a long red evening jacket over a red velvet vest.  

Creft felt his heart skip a beat. He only needed one guess to figure out who this man was. Those clothes were enough to tell him Pryce had finally come to pay him another visit.  

*** 

Alis rolled the copper wire between her thumb and forefinger. Somehow moisture had gotten into the circuits of the board, shorting out the wire. She set the radio down, sliding over to her chest of junk parts. There, she knew she could find the replacement parts she would need to make the radio operational again. She was silently pleased Rawn hadn’t found her hidden microphone and destroyed the connection. If it had been found, there would be nothing she could have done to fix it.  

Alis opened the chest and rummaged through it. It was good to get her mind off other thoughts for a little while. Maybe this experiment Caid had been going on about had something to do with her family. If it was in Cros, then she had every reason to believe it had something to do with the mines. Why else would they be taking slaves and not letting them return?  

Alis found the piece of copper wiring she would need to replace the burned one. She grabbed the snippers from an adjacent table, focusing on fixing the radio. Maybe Caid was wrong about it being too late to hear anything of importance. Alis snipped, clipped, and then wrapped the wire around the proper channels. She heard the soft crackle of electricity moving through the radio.  

“It is amazing what you can do with your hands,” said Creaton, who had somehow sneaked up behind her.  

Alis jumped a little to play it off as if she had known he was there. She continued placing the parts back into the radio.  

“Thank you,” she replied.  

She could feel Creaton’s eyes on her as she slid the pieces together. Alis slipped the cover back onto the radio, standing it up on the table.  

“Let’s see if it works now,” she said.  

Creaton came to sit down beside her. He said nothing but watched intently as she turned the buttons.  

At first, there was nothing but a soft hissing noise coming from the device. Alis almost thought she had missed something, but after a few moments, it evened out and she could hear someone on the other side breathing heavily.  

Both Alis and Creaton automatically leaned forward as if drawn in by the sound. They sat quietly, neither saying a word, barely daring to breathe.  

The breathing on the other end stopped, replaced with someone moving something around in the room.  

“Where is it?” 

Alis had only heard that voice a handful of times, but she knew it quite well already. It was Rawn, the leader of the Wardens. He sounded frantic. 

“Dammit, Maddog, where did it go?”  

Alis let out her breath slowly.  

“What are you talking about?” Maddog answered, or at least, Alis presumed it was Maddog.  

There was a loud banging and then silence, replaced by loud breathing again.  

“Head Warden Galmont’s daliwin is gone.”  

Creaton sucked in a breath. Alis looked over at him.  

“Wardens are never to keep another’s daliwin, it is against the code,” he explained. He turned to look at Alis. “Whatever they wanted it for can’t be for good.”  

*** 

 “You look absolutely deathly,” said Pryce.  

Creft finally let himself blink and the light became easier to distinguish without the rainbow effect from his tears. In front of him stood Pryce, in fine attire befitting a seer, making Creft more conscious of what he must look like now­¾filthy and smelly from lack of bathing, with hair most likely matted.  

When Creft looked at Pryce’s hands, he noticed most of his skin was black and sooty. He highly doubted Pryce had been doing any manual labor, but what else could it have been from?  

Pryce drew up his hands into the light when he saw Creft’s eyes lingering on them.  

“People will find out soon enough,” he said as he moved into the room, bending down beside Creft.  

“Until then,” he tugged Creft’s dirty undershirt, “we will get you up and to another show, you filthy thing.”  

Creft looked down at his attire. He had been wearing a nightgown when he went to bed before the fire, or had he been naked? He was having trouble recalling. Any clothes he may have been wearing were gone; he now wore a white undershirt and long brown trousers. These clothes, wherever they had come from, certainly were not his.  

Pryce placed his hands under Creft’s arms, hoisting him to his feet. Creft felt his legs wobble, doubting he had the strength to hold himself up.  

“Give yourself a moment, the blood will start flowing again and you will be fine. You haven’t been down here long enough to lose the use of your legs.” Pryce, who was much stronger than he should have been at his age, had hoisted Creft to his feet without a struggle.  

After a few moments, Pryce’s advice proved right, Creft got the strength back into his legs. He didn’t feel the tingling anymore when he pressed his feet into the ground. A few moments more and he bore most of his own weight. Pryce let go of his arm, Creft wobbled, but Pryce placed a hand on his upper back, stabilizing him.  

“Now we have a walk ahead of us,” Pryce said, putting his arm under Creft’s. Not only was Creft weak he was also unaware of his whereabouts. He allowed Pryce to guide him out of the room and into a short, narrow hallway. Outside, the walls were lined with the coal-producing light of electricity, the very thing Creft had fought against for so long, and the thing that had caused him to be imprisoned down in this hell.  

Creft watched the lights pass by as Pryce led him toward a set of stairs. Creft tried not to let his mind wander, but now that he was in the light, fear crept in again.  

*** 

There had been a considerable amount of noise coming from the other end of the radio. The last words spoken had been from Maddog as he exclaimed he was unaware Rawn had kept the daliwin. If the revelation had alarmed him, he failed to express it. Loud banging and some indistinguishable mumbles followed.   

Creaton, who had been sitting next to Alis, was now pacing. He looked like he was mumbling to himself, but Alis decided she would not bother him about it. Instead, she focused her attention on listening to the radio, waiting for Rawn or Maddog to speak again.  

“I can’t believe they would keep it,” Creaton said.  

Alis turned to look at him. Creaton ran his hand through his hair, looking very disgruntled.  

“You don’t know what a daliwin is, but it is very important for the Wardens,” Creaton said. He shook his head, speaking without looking at Alis. “I was ordered to destroy mine when I left the group and was warned of its residual energy. Even I don’t know the full extent of it, but I remember the code. To me it is a trinket, but to the Wardens it is their most prized possession.”  

Alis felt her hand glide toward her pocket, feeling her own daliwin. Caid still hadn’t told her much about the vial. She had completed two steps of the process, but how much of that pertained to what Creaton had just said? Did completing two elements create some energy for her as well? She decided no matter how much she liked Creaton, she would keep her daliwin a secret, at least for now.  

“But Galmont’s dead,” she said.  

Creaton stopped pacing. He finally looked over to Alis, blowing air hard from his pursed lips. She noticed sweat forming across his brow and the tips of his dark hair were wet already.  

“When a warden dies, he is burned with his daliwin, and that releases him to the Nine Wardens of the afterlife, at least that is the Wardens’ teachings. Without that release, a warden is said to never really die; his essence¾his power¾stays here with the living. If a warden keeps the daliwin of another warden, he controls the power of the past. No warden is permitted to take another’s daliwin.” Creaton rubbed the perspiration from above his eyes. “It has never been done before, not in the centuries of warden existence. I don’t even know what it means they’re planning, but I know it isn’t good.”  

Alis fingered her daliwin through the cloth of her shirt. They needed to tell all this to Caid, maybe he could make more sense of it. Maybe he would know what Rawn and Maddog would want with the daliwin of the former head warden.  

Alis got up to go find him but was interrupted by Rawn screaming in anger.  

“They took it!”  

The commotion stopped.  

“The bastards took it,” he continued “This is what Pryce meant by the power of the Nine Wardens above. The daliwin is at Pryce Manor.”  

*** 

Creft followed quietly beside Seer Pryce. With so little energy, he was almost too weak to climb the stairs even at a leisurely pace, so there was no way he could fight Pryce and the guards he’d encounter. Creft was no master of sword combat, at best, he would be a novice, at worst, he would be like a child with a stick.  

 He kept his head down, watching his feet, moving in line with his captor. Seer Pryce kept his hand on Creft’s lower back, guiding him slowly up the stairs. Wherever Pryce planned to take him, he was in no hurry to get there.  

The quiet solitude of his mind and the slow pace left Creft plenty of time to conjure up ideas of where they were going. Ultimately, each thought ended with his inevitable death by Pryce’s hands. He couldn’t imagine a scenario where he was a survivor of this encounter.  

He wondered about the state of the city. Had it fallen under the pressures of civil war, or had the people surprised Pryce, standing united behind the cause of freedom and prosperity? 

 Creft closed his eyes at the top of the stairs, imagining his worst fear¾ Parian in flames, smoke curling into the once blue sky and blocking out the sun. The city of Maralay would cause all living things to die due to careless misuse of resources and pointless war.  

Creft felt a gentle pressure on his back, telling him he had stopped to think too long for Pryce’s patience. Pryce didn’t say a word, but when Creft opened his eyes, he realized he was still not in the main section of Pryce Manor.  

The walls and floors here were solid, cold stone. The whole area was empty and bereft of decoration or color. He wondered exactly where he was, but there was no way of telling.  

Pryce continued to lead him through the room and the walls continued to fan outwards. At one point, the room became a single strip of light; the only source of which hung from a high ceiling ten feet above Creft’s head.  

Still, Pryce said nothing to him, and still his hand continued being his guide. Creft sighed with fatigue as they came to a second set of stairs. He hoped this one wasn’t as long as the last.  

This staircase was narrower and seemed to stretch forever. Creft had to watch every step to prevent himself from falling backward down the entire length of the staircase. A few times, he wondered what Pryce’s reaction would be if he just ended his own life by throwing himself down the stairs. The look on Pryce’s face would be worth it alone, but he wasn’t brave enough to follow through. Some small thing in his mind found hope in the situation. It was his thoughts of Creaton and the hope he was alive, looking for him. That was his reason for living now.  

At the top of the stairs, Pryce opened another door, and the air instantly warmed. Creft could hear a fire crackling somewhere off to his right, but Pryce guided him in the other direction toward a small wooden chair in the center of the room. Creft noted that although this room had very few things in it, it felt more alive than the bare stone room. He saw tables with tools upon them as well as several chairs that formed a circle around the chair where Creft sat. 

Pryce circled around him, clasping two chains around Creft’s wrist. Creft’s shoulders screamed at the stretching pain. He gave them a tug, but there was no use trying to pull them apart.  

“You will be thankful for these,” Pryce said.  

Then he walked over to the table, picking up a large sharp knife. He ran his finger across the blade, smears of blood appearing on his fingertip. With a smile, Pryce turned to Creft.