Paul Collins - The Spell of Undoing

She frowned. ‘Where are you?’ she whispered, then all at once she recognised the Square of Dreams. Two Tolrushians moved with stealthy purpose through the shadows, pausing and listening. The other two, plus one wolfhound, were missing.

As a wolfhound began to growl, she broke contact and ran out of the park to find the raiding party.

Tab arrived at the square out of breath. With her heart hammering against her ribs, she slid into the nearest shadow. She tried to meld again, reaching out with her mind…then something hit her from behind and she crashed forward into darkness.

Tab woke several times. A buzzing sounded close by, and wind buffeted her. When she tried to move her hands she discovered she was gripped by claw-like pincers. A herb-soaked cloth was strapped around her mouth – that accounted for her drowsiness. Her head nodded and she lost consciousness again. In that brief moment of wakefulness Tab had seen she was hanging from a flying machine. And though she couldn't see the land below, she knew it was a very long way down.

The next time she woke, she wished she hadn't. The hard bunk beneath her, the harsh lighting, and the metal bars told her all she needed to know. She tried to sit up again, but her head felt as if it had been split with an axe. Her vision swam, and she slumped back on her bunk. She must have fallen asleep because she woke several more times in the night, but each time she heard horrible noises and screams from somewhere nearby. She stuffed her fingers in her ears and curled up tightly, more frightened than she had ever been in her whole life.

Finally, Tab woke and she knew it was morning.

She caught brief ‘glimpses’ of the world outside as a series of rapid mind-melds flashed through her brain without any effort on her part: she was a rat poking its whiskery nose cautiously from a jutting drainpipe; a cat prowling a battlement, questing for food; and a hawk-like bird of prey gliding past a filthy, tattered sail that flapped in a light breeze; then she was back inside her dismal cell. With a sinking heart she knew she was on Tolrush.

Unsteady on her feet, Tab carefully crossed her cell and clutched the bars. She craned her neck to peer up and down the corridor but could only see more cells. The cell opposite hers was occupied, though she couldn't tell by whom.

‘Hey, you in there,’ she hissed. ‘Can you hear me?’

Somebody stirred, sat up briefly, giving her a look of pure terror; it was the boy from her vision. His eyes held such desolation that Tab gasped. Then he buried his face under his thin blanket.

Keys jangled and she heard footsteps coming along the corridor. Tab moved away from the bars and sat down.

A guard unlocked her cell. ‘Stand up in the presence of the King,’ he growled. He went to kick her but years of experience in Mrs Figgin's orphanage had given her swift reflexes. She dodged easily.

The boy-king she had seen in her mind-melding with the rat swept into view. Kull Vladis didn't seem as imposing in the flesh as he had in her vision. He was not more than five years older than her. But there the similarity ended. He was already massively muscled and a monster in the making. His brutal face and small darting eyes revealed treachery and cunning.

Kull eyed her up and down. ‘Answer my questions and you will live,’ he said. ‘Where is the magicians’ icefire gem?’

Tab blinked at the boy-king in surprise. Before she could open her mouth, the guard slapped her, hard. Tab grunted in pain, and her ears rang.

‘You will answer immediately and truthfully,’ said Kull, bored. ‘I'm told you're the thief who stole the gem from the Magicians’ Guild. You then pursued a fellow by the name of Fontagu Wizroth and were present when the Spell of Undoing was itself undone.’ He paused, and seemed to be mocking her. ‘I have it on good authority that the icefire was not recovered by your magicians. Indeed, no one has seen that particular gem since it was stolen, though the ruins of the slaughterhouse were thoroughly sifted. So let me repeat my question -’

‘I don't have the gem,’ said Tab. ‘I -’

Another blow knocked her to the ground.

The guard snarled, ‘Answer when spoken to, not before.’

Kull smiled. ‘I believe you returned to the slaughterhouse, found the icefire, and hid it. My advisers suspect that you then used it to hurl Tolrush into this,’ – he spat fiercely – ‘this demon-riddled hell! So I ask you once more. Where is it?’

‘I don't have it.’

‘Brand her. We shall see if she knows more than she's telling.’

Tab woke screaming.

She clutched her left hand to her chest, but no matter how hard she pressed, the pain wouldn't go away. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to unclench her fingers. Pain seared through her arm, and made her gasp. When she could see again, she stared at her hand. The palm was ruptured and blackened like charcoaled meat. Crying, she dipped it in a pail of water…and fainted from the excruciating pain.

Dreams came to her. The branding was just one part of the torture. They had flogged her, hung her upside down from a high beam by her feet and tried to drown her by shoving her head repeatedly into a barrel of ice-cold water. The torture had gone on for hours. As she slept she jerked and cried out, cringing away from unseen horrors.

Tab woke hours later. She was no longer in her own cell. She raised her head. She now shared the cell with the boy she'd seen when she had first woken to find herself in this hellhole. Two swarthy-looking men sat slumped in the cell she had previously occupied.

Her mind, still groggy from pain, became more alert then. She forced herself to sit up. The boy's bunk was hard against the other wall, barely an arm's reach away.

Tab knelt by the other bunk. Very gently, she shook the boy's shoulder, aware of how stick-thin his arm was. The boy suddenly recoiled in horror, kicking and screaming. His foot caught Tab on the jaw and knocked her backwards. The boy scrabbled as far away as he could, whimpering.

Tab rubbed her jaw and got back on her knees. She could see the terrified boy watching her from a gap in the blanket.

Ruefully she said, ‘You've got a kick like a mule, did you know that? Owww!’ She tried moving her jaw from side to side. It hurt, but nothing seemed broken. ‘How many guards have you brained by now?’

The boy said nothing, but his tiny whimpers had stopped. He continued to gaze at her with enormous brown eyes.

‘My name's Tab. I'm from Quentaris.’

Nothing.

‘They kidnapped me and brought me here – last night, I think.’ Nothing.

‘I'm an orphan. Grew up in Mrs Figgin's orphanage. She was horrible. An old bat. Actually, bats are all right. She was more like an old she-dragon… Well, some of the time. She could be really gentle on her better days.’

The boy did not answer, nor did he look away.

‘You know, I'm a prisoner here too,’ said Tab, trying not to sound exasperated. She realised one of the boy's legs was poking from the blanket. His shin was painfully skinny and a large seeping sore was crawling with flies.

Tab wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh, what have they done to you?’ She blinked back tears and stretched out a trembling hand to move the blanket so she could see the wound better, but fretting, the boy jerked his leg away. He was crying now, silently.

Tab reached for his hand. The boy cried out like a frightened animal and covered his head with his arms, cringing away from her.

Tab froze, her arm in mid-air. Slowly, she drew it back.

Softly then, she continued talking about her life growing up as a Dung Brigader, not ever having known her parents; she talked about Quentaris and what it was like and how much she loved it, even though she herself had not been born there, but had stumbled from a rift cave one day, an articulate four-year-old who knew her own name but little else; she talked about meeting Fontagu and the Spell and the great Rupture, and how her life had changed for the better; and in an even lower whisper she told the boy how she had discovered her ability to mind-meld. ‘Somehow the magic in me was awakened by the icefire itself,’ she said, thinking back. ‘And that eventually helped me become an apprentice magician. I've had that dream from as far back as I can remember.’