Cathexis: Necromancer's Dagger (36 page)

“
My imprint will remain, but my soul will
go on to join the River,”
Jatar answered.

“Then that’s what I’ll do!” G’Taklar
decided.

“
Eventually, yes, but I don’t want to go
yet,”
Jatar explained.

“Why not?”

“
Because an imprint is just that, a copy.
Right now my soul is here, this is the real me. I want to see and
speak to my wife and son before I leave. Perhaps I will wait until
Michael is old enough to release me himself, as I did for my
father. That way he will know his real father, and not just the
imprint that will stay with him through the family ring,”
Jatar
explained.

“Then we’ll just have to get out of here
together,” G’Taklar reasoned.

“
Right, and since there’s no mechanism on
the door, what possible methods could be used to lock it from the
other side?”
he asked, now that he had G’Taklar calm and
thinking.

“They could have
padlocked
it, or they could have used a drop bar,”
G’Taklar decided.

“
Right, how could we tell?”
Jatar
asked, already knowing, but wanting the young man to gain some
confidence by thinking of a few things.

“If I shake the door we might hear the lock
rattle,” G’Taklar answered.

“
Good idea! , but what if the door
doesn’t shake?”
Jatar prompted.

“Then it is probably held by a drop
bar.”

“
Right, so give it a try,”
he told
him, now that he had figured out what to do.

Alternately shoving and quickly releasing
the door, G’Taklar tried to rattle it.

“It’s pretty solid,” G’Taklar reported.

“
Check the door jambs, how large are the
gaps?”
his cousin requested.

G’Taklar responded after a moment, “The gap
on either side is about the width
at
the tip
of
my
smallest finger.”

“
Yes, I could feel it. Get the string you
found earlier, perhaps we can get it around the drop bar and lift
it up and out,”
Jatar suggested.

“Great idea!” G’Taklar said with new
enthusiasm for possible escape.

He found the string and tried to feed it
through the crack between the door and the wall. After a couple of
tries,
he said, “It keeps bending
and falling down, we need something to help it through...
straw!”

“
Good thinking,”
Jatar
encouraged.

“I’ll use it to guide the string through,”
he explained, unnecessarily.

After a few more attempts, the string was
pushed through until just the end was left sticking out of the door
jamb.

“
Now try and hook the end back in lower
down, below the bar,”
Jatar instructed.

Taking a long piece of straw, G’Taklar spent
a few moments fishing for the string,
eventually,
his patience paid off and he felt it come
back through on the end of his piece of straw.

“
Now, be careful, the string isn’t too
strong. Lift the two ends up and see if the bar will lift out of
its slots,”
Jatar instructed.

G’Taklar did as his older cousin suggested,
but after a
moment,
he said, “It’s
stuck; if I pull any harder I’m afraid the string will break.”

“
All right, lift both ends of the string
with one hand and rattle the door a little to loosen the
bar.”

“I’ll try it,” he promised and attempted the
maneuver. After a
moment,
he said,
“It’s moving

“
Good, once it’s high enough to be out of
the holder, lower it back down carefully, if it was a tight fit it
should catch on the top of the holder.”

When he was finished G’Taklar asked, “All
right, should I try and open the door?”

“
No, it won’t open anyway, we need to do
the same thing to the other end of the bar,”
Jatar
explained.

“Of course, there must be two holders, one
on each side of the door.”

“
Yes, we need to lift this end up, hoping
that the other end doesn’t drop back into its slot, and then gently
push it open.”

A short time later they had the board out of
its slots.

Jatar explained the plan,
“You’re going
to push on the door with you left hand while keeping the string
held up with your right. If this has worked the bar is going to
drop to the floor and the door will open. That will make some noise
and might bring your jailers running. In case it does, turn
immediately and pick up the chain for a weapon and move swiftly out
the door. We want to surprise them if we can. If it’s too dark to
see, don’t go so fast you fall down some stairs or something,”
Jatar cautioned.

“I’ve got it, is there anything else you
want to tell me before I do this?” he asked, hoping Jatar had a
brilliant idea he had not yet shared.

“
Just don’t get so excited that you don’t
listen to me, we have two brains here, let’s use them both,
right?”

“Right,” G’Taklar echoed.

The young man paused a moment to take a
breath and then dropped the bar and quickly turned to get the
chain. He heard the bar hit the stone floor and then he was picking
up the chain. G’Taklar pushed the cell door open with his left hand
while holding the chain ready in his right. The screeching sound of
the rusty hinges murdered the silence. In the near pitch
dark,
G'Taklar could barely make
out a corridor going straight ahead.

“
Go, quickly,”
Jatar’s thought told
the frozen youth.

“Sorry,” G’Taklar muttered and then started
down the corridor. He noticed he was passing other cell doors to
either side. After the third
one,
his corridor
dead-ended
into
another hallway and he could turn left or right. “Which way?” he
asked Jatar.

“
Look both ways for me, good! Does it
seem lighter to you on the right?”
he asked after G’Taklar
complied.

“Yes,” he responded.

“
Then that’s the way we want,”
Jatar
replied, directing his cousin.

G’Taklar moved carefully down the new
corridor and he noticed it was definitely getting lighter as he
progressed. After thirty yards he came to a stairway going up.

“
Wrap the excess chain around your arm,
carefully, so that you don’t make rattling noises. Now, look up the
stairs, I want to see what’s at the top.”

G’Taklar complied and they could see the
stairs going up about thirty steps, at the top was a short stretch
of
floor
and then a closed door.
Dim light seeped in from around the edges of the doorframe.

“
Go quietly up the stairs, if you hear
something pause and listen.”

G’Taklar did as Jatar suggested.

“
All right, now listen at the door,”
Jatar instructed.

“I don’t hear anything. Wait… there are
footsteps coming!” he whispered in sudden fear.

“
Yes I can hear them; it sounds like two
or three people, and that’s too many. Quickly, back down the stairs
and go to the corridor we haven’t tried yet,”
he instructed the
terrified boy.

“What if it’s a dead end,” G’Taklar asked as
he navigated down the dark stairs.

“
We know the other one ends at our cell,
it can’t be worse than that,”
Jatar responded logically.

“I see your point.”

They arrived at the new corridor and moved
down it a short way. It soon became too dark to see, but by feeling
along the rough stone wall G’Taklar could tell that the passage
continued.

“
Stop, we’re far enough down this dark
passage that their light shouldn’t reach us, let’s take a look at
our captors. If they come this way we’ll have to run, but I’m
pretty sure that they’re headed for your cell.”

They heard the door open at the top of the
stairs, and saw the three men coming down, the man in the lead held
a lit torch. They were dressed in brown military uniforms, with an
emblem on the left side of their chest. The emblem depicted a skull
with a dagger thrust sideways through the empty eye sockets.

“
Tchulians!”
Jatar exclaimed,
“That’s one of their elite squads, you can tell by the skull
patch,”
Jatar informed G’Taklar.

“Those are the same bastards that attacked
our group,” G’Taklar informed Jatar.

“
So, Major Von Dracek wasn’t alone in his
plot against us, other Tchulian mercs are involved in this
conspiracy,”
Jatar surmised.

“What should I do?”

“
Wait until they’ve gone down the hall to
our old cell, then slip across the opening of the corridor. We’ll
try and sneak out ahead of them.”

When the three soldiers reached the junction
they turned left and immediately stopped.

“The prisoner’s escaped!” the one in the
lead exclaimed.

“
Vorg’s breath, we forgot to close the
cell door, with that torch light he can see it open and the cell
empty!”
Jatar exclaimed in thought,
“No chance to slip by
them now, quickly move down the corridor behind us, they may check
to see if you’re nearby!”

Behind
them,
they heard the Tchulians’ approaching
footsteps.

“He couldn’t have gotten past us in the
guard room, so he’s still down here.
Hewten
, go back for more men and torches to help us
search. If we don’t find him, the
commander will
feed us to the souldead.”

Then the soldier raised his voice and yelled
out into the dark, “Listen up boy, if you’re close enough to hear
me come out and give up. I promise
you
if you tell us where to find the signet ring, and we
recover it, I’ll guarantee your freedom. The ring is all we want.
If you continue down these corridors you’ll eventually reach some
rubble where the wall has crumbled and revealed some natural
caverns. Those caverns aren’t freedom, they’re death. Souldead
haunt
the old labyrinth of caves
below us. There’s one down there who’s particularly nasty, we’ve
tried to hunt him down for the past five years and in that
time,
he’s killed over forty
soldiers. We’ve found dead men with a hole in the top of their
skulls where he sucks out their brains. Give yourself up and you’ll
get a fair deal, I promise.”

“
Something about that man’s voice doesn’t
make me want to trust him with a coin purse, let alone your
life,”
Jatar told G’Taklar.

“What about the souldead,” G’Taklar
whispered in a barely audible voice as he spoke to Jatar.

“
I’m also not fond about the idea of
fighting souldead unarmed in the dark, but I’m positive that you
will be killed by the soldiers if they acquire the ring, no matter
what they promise. Sometimes it’s better to take your chances with
a possible danger rather than a sure one. If there are caverns,
there are exits to the caverns, let’s see if we can find one,”
Jatar recommended.

“I guess you're right, besides I just can’t
stand the thought of torture, especially when it’s my body being
tortured,” G’Taklar reasoned.

“
I can’t say that I blame you. Well let’s
get on our way, the sooner we get started the sooner we’ll see the
light of freedom, outside,”
Jatar stated optimistically.

Gustin carried Elizabeth away from the dead
bodies of the recent battle to a clearing, carpeted in brown pine
needles, by a tiny brook. He sat down and cradled her head in his
large lap.

Hetark sat down next to them and swabbed her
forehead with a cloth soaked in cold water from the bubbling
stream.

Eventually,
her eyes fluttered open and a moment later focus returned as she
looked up into Gustin’s face, “Gustin, have I overslept?” she asked
in a soft drowsy voice.

“No, milady, you may sleep as long as you
wish,” he replied gently.

Elizabeth’s brow furrowed as she tried to
bring her clouded mind under control, “I had a horrible dream, you,
Drake and Hetark were all dead.”

“It nearly wasn’t a dream, milady, but
remember the story of the famous old coin, the one that always pops
up to cause trouble?” he replied by
way
of answer.

She suddenly tensed as the
memory
of recent events started to return, but
then she smiled and said, “This is wonderful, you’re alive, and
Hetark, you too?” She asked turning her head to see the other
knight.

“Yes, the creature didn’t find me all that
appetizing; he wanted to move onto the main course. Drake is also
alive and Becaris,
Lasar,
and
Rasal are here, but before I explain please, where is Michael?” he
asked and the concern for the safety of the
heir
showed on his voice and strong face.

“Michael is safe,” Elizabeth replied.

“Even from the Darknull?” Gustin asked.

“That Darknull will never foul the air of
this or any other world again! With Michael’s help I destroyed it,”
Elizabeth said with satisfaction.

“But where is Michael now?” Hetark
asked.

“He is at the Kirnath School,” Elizabeth
explained.

“Good, then we should get on our way there
soon ourselves, I’ll feel better when some of us are there to guard
him against
danger,” Hetark stated
as he got to his feet ready to go.

“We’re not going to the school, and don’t
ask
why
at least not yet. I’ll
explain further when you’re all together. Tell me how I came to be
here, the last I remember I thought the three of you were dead and
I was heading back down the forest road to the fork. I wanted to
confirm that there was nothing I could do for any of you. Then I
was going to turn at the fork to lay a false trail away from
Michael. That’s all I remember, except I think I fell off my
horse,” she said, wrinkling her brow in puzzlement toward the
end.