Терри Брукс - Tanequil

She got to her feet again and walked to the door, peering through the slit into the corridor beyond. She could see parts of cell doors set into the far wall. Torchlight flickered and cast a mix of shadows and light, but there was no discernible pattern. She could hear faint sounds of movement and talking, but could not make out the sources of either. Smells permeated the air, and none of them was pleasant.

What am I going to do?

She turned away from the door and stared back into the darkness of her cell. No one who mattered knew where she was. The boy who was coming to rescue her—a boy!—had no idea where to look for her. Not that she thought it mattered. A boy wasn't going to make a difference anyway. No one was. Perhaps Weka Dart might have been able to help once upon a time, — it was difficult to tell. But he certainly wouldn't be able to help now. The Ulk Bog had warned her against going back, almost as if he had known what would happen. The idea stopped her in midthought, a dark and suspicious voice in her subconscious. But she dismissed it quickly. It wasn't as if he had sent her to her doom. She had chosen her own way, and he had chosen his. She had done this to herself. Now any help from him was improbable at best. He was safely away and would stay so.

Questions nagged at her. What was she doing here? Why wasn't she already dead? The Straken Lord had brought her into the Forbidding, and it knew who she was. When she had been the Use Witch, she had disposed of her enemies swiftly and without hesitation, once they were in her power. A live enemy was always dangerous. So why was the demon keeping her imprisoned? Was there something about the transfer of its ally into the Four Lands in exchange for her that required it to keep her alive? She had not considered the possibility. Maybe the magic that had facilitated the transfer failed if either of them died in the other world. But did they both die in that situation? If so, then the Straken Lord had a vested interest in protecting her until its ally was ready to return.

She thought awhile about how that return might happen, but it was impossible to figure out without knowing what her counterpart had crossed over to accomplish.

Her thoughts drifted to other things, to the turmoil in the Four Lands, to the betrayal by her own Druids, and to concerns for her family. It was possible that those enemies who had dispatched her here would try to eliminate Bek, as well. Once he found out she was missing, her brother would come looking for her. Her enemies might try to stop him. It wouldn't be the first time that an enemy had come after members of the Ohmsford family with that idea in mind. The fact that she was Ard Rhys made the current generation of Ohms–fords targets in a way they hadn't been since the time of Shea Ohms–ford and the Warlock Lord.

The longer she spent thinking about the ramifications of what had happened to her, the more determined she became. Her sense of indecision and confusion disappeared. Her fear turned to anger. She began to pull herself together, to regain the shattered pieces of her confidence. She no longer accepted her imprisonment as a condition about which she could do nothing. No one had ever imprisoned her and kept her so. She had not gotten so far in the world by giving in to her weaker emotions. She had not survived by giving up in seemingly impossible situations.

She tested the strength of the chains and belt again, this time trying to move the belt around her waist so that the buckle was more to the front. She was able to do this by sucking in her breath and jerking her hands all the way to the right. This brought the buckle around to her left side far enough that she could see how it was made. What she saw gave her hope. If she could find something to hook it on, she might be able to pull the leather tongue free of the metal clasp and then loosen it from the catch, as well.

A search of her cell walls, stone block by stone block, turned up nothing. What protuberances she discovered were too smooth or flat to be useful. She turned her attention to the door. The handle was a smooth metal grip fastened to the door at both ends. No help there. But on making a careful check of the hinges, she found a metal nail head on the lower hasp that had worked free from the wall just far enough to offer a possible hook.

She spent the next hour working the leather of the belt tongue, where it passed through the buckle, around the nail head and pulling it loose, inch by inch. All the while, she listened for the sounds of her jailers, for the soft scrape of boots on stone, for the tiniest creak of a door opening. She heard nothing.

At the end of the hour, she had freed tongue from buckle and was working on the catch. This was harder because the leather had to be pulled back much farther and with greater force. She struggled with it until she had exhausted herself, then tried again. Somewhere along the way her strength gave out and she fell asleep.

She woke to the sound of her cell door being opened. Hobstull appeared, blank–faced and empty–eyed, his topknot bobbing gently with his unhurried movements. He carried a tray on which rested a cup of water and some unidentifiable food. He set it by the door, glanced over at her perfunctorily, and went out again without speaking, closing and locking the door behind him.

When he was gone, she got to her feet and went over to the food. Because her hands were still chained to her waist, she could not use them to feed herself. She was forced to kneel and eat and drink like an animal. Her rage burned with a white–hot fury, but she made herself consume everything. She would need her strength for what lay ahead, and what lay ahead was freedom.

She began work again on the buckle as soon as she was done. She was stronger now, both physically and emotionally, and she stuck with the endeavor long after common sense told her it wasn't working. She did so because she couldn't think of anything better to do or any other plan to try. There were times, she knew from experience, when it was best just to continue on rather than to shift directions, even when it didn't seem as if you were getting anywhere. Your chances of success weren't always something you could measure accurately. Perseverance in the face of failure counted for something.

In the end, she was rewarded. Long hours later, the tongue at last pulled free of the troublesome catch, and the belt fell away from her waist. She held it in her hands, staring at it for a moment in shock, relief and fierce satisfaction surging through her. Her wrists were still bound by its chains, so she could not rid herself of it entirely, but she had a more complete range of motion than before and could lift her hands to her throat and the hated conjure collar.

But even as she started to search for the clasp that would open it, she hesitated. It was possible that any effort at trying to take off the collar would trigger a response of the sort that had laid her out earlier. It was also possible that the Straken Lord would be alerted to the fact that she had tampered with it. She could not afford for either to happen until she was safely away from the fortress. But if she left the collar in place, she could not use her magic to protect herself or to aid in making her escape. She would be imposing a severe handicap on herself before she even found a way out of her cell.

It was asking a lot. Maybe it was asking too much.

Reluctantly, she lowered her hands. She would leave the collar in place for the time being and take her chances.

She went back to working on the clasps and chains that bound her wrists to the belt. The iron from which they were made would not be easily bent, and she lacked the tools to do the job in any case.

She would have to get out of the cell before she could do anything more.