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╩ 44 ╩
“They put you here because they hate you. They hate your wisdom, hate your skill at manipulating them, hate that they have failed. They hate you for being a woman and they hate you more for who you love.”
“Wrong,” she replied, “they love their countries and their People. Hate cannot come from love. They are competitive and they fear a loss because it is a loss for those they love.”
“They are afraid of you. They fear that you will bring the east down upon them. They fear your freedom, fear who you serve, fear what they cannot understand.”
“Wrong,” she replied, “fear is a mark of ignorance and these People are given power because they are wise. Wariness is a virtue and they are wise to show it, so they are not at fault.”
“You are the problem. You have failed in your mission here. In your vain attempt to control and manipulate those around you, you have squandered all of your allies. Coralm died because of you, the Fortress will be forced into servitude because of you, and the Alliance will know war because of you.”
“Wrong,” she replied, but there was hesitancy there, and so she went to meet it.
“You are foolish, prideful, overconfident, but worst of all, you are dishonest. No one know your true self, you… What is that light?” at the last comment her own voice had seemed foreign to her, but there was light and its presence after so long in the darkness seemed beyond understanding. She shielded her eyes and then turned her head away altogether. The light stopped about five paces from her.
“Who are you talking to Luminary?” came the voice of the Djaught Mehethe. At first she could not respond. She had been laying on her side because it had felt most comfortable to lay that way, but she straightened up and put her back to a wall, her knees up to her chest. The light was still too great to look at, but she tried to face him even as she shielded her eyes.
“I am talking to myself. It is a meditation of Poentry’s method. You send every fear, every fallacy back at yourself and solve them, reveal their flaws. We make our problems bigger than their parts, imagine dragons where there are rats. This place is good for such meditations.”
“I will trust your judgment in that.”
“How long have I been down here?” He hesitated before responding.
“Let me see your face.”
“The light is too bright.”
“Let me see it and I will tell you.” She looked to him, he eyes pierced by the pain of that light.
“Three days,” he said, and there was a wet flop by her side, “water for you.” She fumbled for the skin and drank from it greedily. After a coughing fit, for it was colder than she had expected, she turned her head back towards him, still shielding her eyes.
“Why am I here? That is what I have been asking myself. I think that I have not been myself recently.”
“No, no you have not. A spirit of the dead rides you. Djasho, or perhaps some other poet or deadman. We had no choice but to put you here when you would not submit to the Curator. Have you changed your mind.”
Rage welled up in Polena, but she found the strength, or perhaps the pride, to calm it.
“I will not. I am a servant of the People. His words are of no value to me. Besides, I feel much better now.”
“Yes, because it is trapped down here, the spirit does not see any value in riding you. But that means only that it is still here with us. I bear a candle upon my brow, and blessed lantern, and my own rod and sword. It cannot harm me.” Polena was impressed with his confidence. In it she heard the same certainty she always took from him, as if every phrase was as truthful as “the sun shall rise tomorrow.”
“So why did you come to me?”
“To give you water, and to see if you were dead.”
“Well, I am not. Do you want to know what I think about the tomb?” A silence passed. Somewhere in the distance there was a great crash. The light shifted unsteadily.
“Wait here,” he said. Polena could hear him retreating, could tell the light had passed, but the pirceing spots on her eyes had not gone away. Now that he was gone she felt the presence of that place in on her again, as if someone were sitting beside her, watching. At first, this feeling had been terrifying. Now it was familiar, almost inviting. She let it sit, and listened. Past the sound of her own breathing, past water dripping somewhere, past a whispering that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, she could hear Mehethe calling. She could not make out the words at first for the echoes, but after a few repetetions she caught it. It was three words, demanding and angered, more emotion than she had ever heard from him.
“Open the door!”
Now he was trapped too. Slowly, she picked her way, crawling along the ground. The presence in the darkness crawled with her, in time with her, almost atop her. She heard another loud crash and stopped a moment. The presence stopped as well. It was a wet, strange, heavy thing that moved with her. After a while she went on. When she came into the light, still afraid to look directly at it, the presence left her.
“They closed the door on us?” she asked. The smell of fresh dirt mixed with that of the candle wax.
“Closed it and then collapsed it,” he was quiet a moment, just a moment and in that silence Polena felt like she saw more of him than ever she had with her eyes. “We have been tricked. An ambush maybe? My men are dead, or worse, traitor to me.”
“So we have time then?” no response.
“Djaught, would you like me to tell you what I think about this tomb?”
“When the candle burns out, Luminary, you are going to be upon me.”
“Maybe. Does that change anything?” A silence.
“No.”
“That is Right,” She propped herself against the wall again and pulled her knees close, eyes still shut against the light. She was dirty, starving, parched from thirst, and sore beyond recounting. She cracked the barest hint of a smile all the same.
“Let me tell you a story Djaught.”
She could feel him listening. At the edge of the light, lurking out in the darkness, something else listened as well.
╩ ╩
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