Michael Foster - She Who Has No Name

Greatcarapacedbeasts lumbered across the pastures toheave themselvesat the walls, and the armies parted to make way for them. Enormousboulders flew at the beasts, but the beasts seemed resilient to everything. Then, the vision faded and the roar of the battle subsided.

‘ Hello? ’ came a voice and Samuel found himself standing in his room within the palace. At first, he could not tell if this was still a part of his dream or if he had actually awoken-somehow freed from his nightmares.

The Koian woman was leaning in the doorway, with guards visible at her back. She looked straight towards him, and he tried to answer back, but that image, too, faded and the Koian woman disappeared from view.

He caught flashes of her after that, standing in her room, or sitting idly in the gardens, or lying in her bed in the middle of the night. Each time, shewouldlook up, as if startled by his presence, before the scene would vanish and he would be left wandering in senseless dreams. He struggled to return to her, because for some reason he could not stop thinking about her and she was the only thing that made sense in this world of pain and anguish.

Whereat first she had confounded and annoyed him, he now found her intriguing and compelling. What he had considered to be her stubbornness and ignorance now seemed to be strength of will and innocence. Whereonce he had thought of her asalien and unsightly, he had grown to find her beautiful and fascinating.

More and more,he caught glimpses of her life in the palace and it seemed that the days were passing ever so quickly, for,every time he saw her,she was dressed differently, or the sun lay in different parts of the sky. Still, he strived as much as he could to stay by her side, for the alternative to being with her was unthinkable: the deep and silent void that lingered at the edge of his conscience, threatening to engulf him.

At times, she seemed to feel him, and she spoke as if to him, but the words were always muffled and unintelligible. He tried to speak back to her, but the sound caught in his throat. All he could do was hover at her side and follow her as she wandered forlornly down the halls, ever shadowed by Shara and a pair of watchful Paatin guards.

She visited the Emperor at times and Samuel saw them sitting and talking in muted tones. Although they often laughed and talked pleasantly, they both seemed distracted by a longing in their hearts. When she left the Emperor’s room, she was as quiet and lonely as before.

‘I miss you so,’ he heard her say, late one night as he hovered by her bed. It seemed incredible that he could hear her voice. ‘Oh,my Love. How foolish I have been.’

He tried to reply, but he had no mouth to speak. It seemed he was only a dream within a dream, and such things could never capture the wind to craft words from their throats.

He stayed with her intermittently throughout the days and nights. He could not control the duration or the frequency of such stays and,as soon as he started to feel he was gaining a hold on this existence, everything would fade away into the distance as he was drawn back into the darkness, forever infuriating him.

She talked to him in all her quiet moments and he could not ever imagine leaving her side. She spoke often of the baby growing in her swollenbelly, and he remembered their shared moment of tenderness. All he could do was damn himself for not realising his love for her sooner and he hoped that, perhaps, this dream would end and he would wake beside her, safe and well.

‘ Have you forsaken me already? ’ came another voice in his dream, and he imagined Leila looking at him with sadness. ‘ Don’t worry, ’ she said, regaining her strength and smiling once again. ‘ I forgive you, Samuel. Our life together was wonderful, but all things must change eventually. Be with her…be happy. I could not wish anything but happiness for you. You know I will always love you, and I know, in your way, you will still always love me. That’s all I ever wanted. My life was short, but you made it wonderful. ’

He imagined her turning softly and stepping away into the shadows,and he could feel whatseemedlike tears welling in his eyes, although they were hot and burned their way down his cheeks. Thoughts and dreams and reality had no boundaries any more, for without being able to wake, all such things had become as one.

Time seemed to pass like wandering aeons and,at times, Samuel broke from his dreams of the living and floundered more and more on the edge of waking. Less and less, he was able to visit the Koian woman and more often he found himself yelling in pain or caught in the nightmarishdeliriumof a fever. At one point, he realised he was screaming and the taste of blood was filling his throat. He scrambled to his feet and ran forward into the inky darkness only to strike his head on sheer stone, knocking himself straight back into unconsciousness. Another time, he thought he was free and escaping from the city,only to realise, as the blackness returned, that it wasbuta delusion-any images that came to him were now fantasy; only the blackness was truth.

At times, he thought he could hear a scraping, like some clawed creature pawing at him from beyond a wall, and a whispering sounded at the edge of his perception, sometimes forceful and insistent,at other times pleading and desperate. At one point, he felt that the wall around him had collapsed and that the whispering thing was now upon him, but it was all dreams and nightmares,fever and illusions. All he wanted was to return to his love, but the pain behind his face would not allow it.

He awoke more and more frequently, and it was only at these times that it was truly dark and quiet. He took such opportunities to explore his surrounds, crawling around on the hard stones and moaning for someone to help him. No one came to his aid and he could only collapse flat back onto some rags on the floor and wait for unconsciousness to takehold ofhim again. Each time, a tiny vestige of his strength returned, and soon he hoped to be able to hold onto his awareness long enough to discover what had happened to him.

He found himself surmising that he must beimmuredagain in the Queen’s catacombs, buried beneath Mount Karthma and,along with the thought,came a strange and sudden euphoria, for he realised he was fully awake.

He scrambled desperately to find the door, clawing away in all directions at the stone, only to realise that one hand was passing through air while the other met rock. Fumbling his fingers about his body, he discovered a wet stump just below his right elbow, and remembered what had happened.

Carefully, he raised his stump and explored the wound with his fingers. It had hardened and was dry in some places, but was seeping in others. Testing the extents of his prison, he felt around with his left hand held out before him, searching for the door. Eventually, he realised that he must have already made two or three circles around the chamber without finding anything. There was no door to find and the cell was scarcely large enough for him to lie in. Testing his suspicions, he ran his palm over the rocks, standing on the tips of his toes and reaching up. There was no ceiling above him that he could feel and the rocks seemed to lean in, as if narrowing inwards to form a chute.

It seemed that he was in the same cell that had been Balten’s home for so long, in the deepest recesses of the Paatin Queen’s catacombs. He was without an arm and without his ring and,even if he had either, he was separated from freedom by a mountain of magic-defying stone.

He was lucky that he had survived being thrown down into the cell in the first place, for the fall could easily have broken his neck, and lucky that he had not then bled to death as he had lain unconscious. If what had happened to Balten was any indication, he would be left without food and water until he rotted. Unless someone came to save him, he would be down here indefinitely-but all his friends had already fled the city.