The Arkanist

The Son of Dreaher

The cells beneath the Grey Wind were silent; so silent Visir could hear his breath falter shakily. It snagged and caught as he inhaled until he jammed his mouth shut, his teeth driving against each other like battering shields in a melee. He could hear a chip of tooth snap off, feel it tumble down his tongue and into his depths. He dared not cough it up. No, that would ruin the plan. It needed to be silent, as it was. And it shall stay silent.

         His thumbs curled around each other under the red torchlight, the embers twinkling on his shoulders like stars soaked in blood. The panels of wood beneath his body creaked slightly with a remote shift in position, but nothing stirred. All was silent. Aandil lay deadly asleep in his cell, the grim shadows consuming all with its long spidery grasp. The old man’s cell did not have a torch or candle. Nothing burned, and nothing glowed. Visir was lucky in a sense to have received one, being granted warmth and light during the chill, raw hours of a presumable night. He looked over at Aandil twice more, his black, robed silhouette barely discernable in the mantle of shadows. Only his pale, splotchy head shone through, with his faint wisps of snowy hair. Visir reckoned he did not even care if it was dark in his cell, for he was a blind old man, beaten with time and age. Like great white moons the man’s eyes flashed like lightning before Visir’s own, seeing nothing but eternal darkness. They had a certain eeriness to them, and so they haunted Visir.

         He thought of Arstain too, wherever he might be. Visir presumed he was just in another cell down in the hull, bidding his time in the darkness. He was used to that though, Visir assumed. The Darkness, that was his home, he’s back in it now, I suppose. The thought sparked his mind to life again, bringing him back to the plan at hand. It had taken him a long while, longer than he wished to rid himself of his dream. Or had it been a dream? He did not wish to linger on it, but it was hard not to. So many questions were left unanswered. Too many, Visir continually told himself. After… after this is all over I will find out. He hadn’t told Aandil yet, fearing what he might say. Screw it, fancy he already knows anyway.

         The Beast sat like a bear in the far corner of his cell, half his body dancing with pale candlelight. He was garbed in mangled, sable roughspun wool and cotton, fixed with leather lacings and worn breeches, soaked with piss. No matter how scented the candles, the smell of human waste always ruled. Visir’s crooked nose wrinkled at the ghastly smell.

The monstrous figure looked half-asleep, with his burly, corded arms crossed over his bulging chest and his thick head hanging so that his bearded chin slept on his breast. Visir had never seen anyone so big, so muscular. He had heard stories of the giants up in Vorae, in the Frozen Forests, and in Nordh, but they were not in the Lands of Winter. They were far from it. Was this man a giant? Aandil had told he’d came from Vaegon, though, and there were no giants in those isles across the Endless Sea.

         The other prisoner in Visir’s cell was surely asleep. His dirty blond hair hung in oily strands over his eyes, like blades of grass. His face was red from the glow of the torch, with a deep black tattoo running down the side of his face, inked across his gaunt cheek. He was a slave, the man, most likely from Erediath. All slaves from the southern realm were marked with an E along their faces, and the initials of their master whom they serve. However, this slave’s tattoo was nothing more then a black smear. It had been burnt off, with his selling from his old master to Shaalad’s cells.  

         The iron bars began to grind, then the piercing screams abated, with the small breast of water that had risen under the ship’s belly. They were at port, anchored in some bay, Visir presumed. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t know where, but he did know they were not sailing the salt sea. That much was made clear by the lack of movement he felt as he rested on the wood. He didn’t sway with the waves, or feel them crash against the wooden walls of the galley, violent and aggressive. Neither did he hear the seamen grunting and chanting as they pulled with their oars just above the cells in the upper holds.