Chapter 19: Chapter 19: The Dungeon

Alyse found her, climbing the maple in the garden. “Mother would be appalled,” Saoirse called down. “A lady climbing a tree.”

“Come, I have something to show you.”

Saoirse chose to look at a bird chirping on the garden wall.

A strong hand grabbed her ankle.

“Stop! I'll fall!”

Alyse pulled all the harder. “I said, come down, now!”

Saoirse quickly retreated, jumping down to land on her feet more securely than any cat. She stared at Alyse but couldn't see her aura. Nothing was working today; not her meager magic, not any of her many attempts to distract herself. She'd demanded to hammer hot iron at the black smithy's. Dutifully Jonas had complied, holding the piece with tongs for her. She'd hammered and hammered. Time and time again, he'd placed it back in the fire, heating it up, holding it for her and saying, “Go on now, Miss. Saoirse, strike hard,” until she was red faced and sweating, but every clang of the hammer had shouted, “Doomed, doomed, doomed.”

Even climbing the maple and lifting her face to the breeze hadn't vanquished thoughts of the dragon. In the garden, the rustling leaves whispered, “Yours is a bitter end.”

Alyse led Saoirse down a long hall in the servants' quarters. “The men have the rooms on the right,” she whispered, “the women on the left. There is a guard posted at night. His habit is to walk the length of the hall.”

At the end, the hallway made a T, the left corridor leading to the kitchens. To the right, a ten-foot-long passage ended in another door that opened into a large sitting area. Alyse ushered Saoirse inside the sitting room and shut the door behind them. “You'll have to be quick. No one can see you enter this room because there is no way out. If someone sees you go in here, but not come out, there'll be no end of questions.”

Opposite the door was a large window with a cushioned window seat. Scant light entered the room because outside an exterior wall, built by some stupid man, rose but a foot from the window. To the left of the door sat a stone fireplace, the fire built, but unlit. The wall to the right was covered with rough planks of wood extending straight down from the ceiling to the floor. Crossing to this wall, Alyse pressed into the edge of one of the planks. Soundlessly, a door in the wall opened toward her, into the room. She pointed to the planks of wood. “Count! It is the eighth piece.” She shut the door. “Go on. Give it a try.”

Saoirse pushed in, but the door did not open.

“Aye, there's a knack to it.”

After several more attempts, the door opened.

“In you go. It's time you knew the secrets of Castle Togair.”

Stepping in behind Saoirse, Alyse closed the door. Blackness, like the mouth of a dragon, enveloped them. Saoirse trembled. “I want out. I want out!”

Alyse held her fast. “No, you have to face it. It's only darkness, little one. There's no dragon here.” As Saoirse quaked, Alyse kissed her hair and rubbed her back. “I've got ya. Not letting you go. Never.”

Her panic, her rapidly beating heart, the sweat collecting on her brow, brought on the sight. Alyse glowed. She sparkled with stars of white. Her aura lit the world around them. “I can see. It's your aura, you're lighting the way.”

“What? You can see in here, lass?”

“Yes.”

“Good. This is one of the darkest parts. In other places, there are slits cut into the walls to let in the sunshine. At night, I have to feel my way and count my steps. You canna have a lantern in here; they will see the light through the many tiny holes in the walls. You great grandfather built . . .”

As she prattled on, Saoirse's heartbeat slowed. She let her head rest against Alyse and listened sometimes to her words, and sometimes to the beating of her heart. “There are four entrances . . . you must be quiet . . . they can hear you . . . the far ladders lead to the dungeons and the sea door.”

“You always smell like lavender,” Saoirse whispered.

Alyse closed her eyes. A tear trembled and fell. “I don't know how to save you,” she whispered. “I don't know.”

In the narrow space behind the wall, Alyse held Saoirse, and Saoirse held Alyse. And through the long silent moments, Alyse's aura, blindingly white, lit up the darkness.

The next morning, Saoirse rose before the sun and walked to the servants' quarters. The guard had left his post for an early breakfast in the kitchens. Saoirse tiptoed to the sound of pots clanging and the sizzle of bacon frying. She sniffed, but a different hunger drove her on. She crept into the empty sitting room, closing the door behind her. Crossing to the planked wall, she counted, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.” She pressed in on the edge of the eighth board. Nothing.

“There's a knack to it,” she whispered, calming herself.

On the twelfth try the door swung out toward her. Without Alyse's aura, blackness greeted her. Her heart missed a beat. She gasped for breath and slid to the floor, the doorway still open, the door to the room still closed, her heart pounding in her ears. “I can't do it. I need Alyse. I should have woken her up.” Her hands trembled. “How am I ever going to escape? I can't even walk through the door.” She shook from head to toe—and in her distress the sight came to her.

“What?”

In the sitting room, green light filled the air. A yellow green clung to the stones of the fireplace; a bright, clear green traced the grains in the planks. She peeked inside the passageway. Along the floor, a spider, a deep forest green, scurried along. A moth, a light pale green, the color of her mother's shawl, fluttered. Like beacons, tiny creatures of every sort lit the way in front of her. Chills ran along her arms and up her back. “It's the magic. The magic is helping me.”

As her heartbeat slowed, she stood and stepped into the passageway. With a deep breath, she closed the door behind her. On silent feet, she walked, retracing the route Alyse had shown her. The ladder ahead was lit by two beetles and a chameleon that blazed, not green as all the life she'd seen before, but a rainbow of colors.

She bent down, whispering to the chameleon. “Wherefore are you here? There's no food for you to eat.” She caught him and dropped him in her pocket, where he became a candle illuminating every step with lights of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Ants, two kinds, one a blue green, the color of the sea in the evening, and the other an orangey-green, were her most frequent companions. She also saw the occasional rat, blazing lime green.

Unerringly, she walked behind the kitchens and the armory and the throne room. Almost, she circled back. This was as far as Alyse had taken her the day before. But as the sun rose, light through strategic slits filtered in…

“Alyse said there were four doors. One in the turret, one in the sitting room. . .” She paused, thinking. “One in the stables.” A light, a dull, dingy, diseased gray, moved down the passageway to her right. She tiptoed toward it.

Murtagh.

When she touched his shoulder, Murtagh jumped, sending the small stool he carried banging to the ground.

She tensed.

But his aura blazed out white. He bowed his head, then looked up at her and said, “I deeply regret out last session. Please accept my apology.”

She pressed into his aura, expecting black threads of deceit, finding only pure white concern.

“I would consider it a privilege to tutor you.”

His sincere apology robbed her of speech as if she was an ancient oak planted in the ground unable to talk.

“I am truly sorry,” he said. Then picking up the small stool, he began to walk away only to turn back. “I'm glad Alyse showed you the passageways. She also showed them to me. I am here now at the request of your father. He's negotiating some grazing rights.”

She might have stood there shocked and unmoving for hours if the chameleon hadn't squirmed and tried to crawl out of her pocket. She turned from her quest for the stable door, and wandered, letting her feet go wherever they willed. She went up ladders and down ladders. She peered into bedrooms, seeing a naked man with a huge bottom!

A small squeak left her mouth.

He turned toward the sound. Her eyes opened even wider. She clamped her hand over her mouth. He was even more ugly from the front. A few rapid, tiptoed steps, and she could breathe again. A grin, then a giggle-fit seized her.

Wasn't that Lord Henry?

She fell to her knees, silently laughing. Oh, her stomach hurt.

A long hour later, with her chameleon-light still in her pocket, she descended ladder after ladder, the air around her growing cold and moist. Smells of privy pots and sweat assaulted her nose. Yet the magic pulled at her. Without words, it whispered, “Down, down.”

Ugh. The revolting odor. Retching threatened. As she lifted her foot to climb up instead of down, flickers of light danced in the air around her. Like starlings, they swirled and darted, then shot straight down, leaving behind then a trail of sparkling lights.

Down she climbed. Three short ladders and four much longer ones. On every ledge, rats shuffled, one as large as a dog. At the bottom, the wooden wall separating the passageway from the room beyond was haphazardly built. Wide cracks between the planks afforded her an excellent view—of horrors, of chained men, poop and urine-stained pants, bare bleeding feet, wrists bleeding and oozing pus from the shackles. Most were without auras, so dim was the life within them. Walking around the ladder, she followed the lights urging her on, seeing room after room. In one, a man was being beaten by two guards. She stood, each smack of their fists, a blow that murdered her childhood, her innocence. The prisoner wasn't even awake. “Ah, give 'em one more. You need the practice.” Smack.

An astonished gasp leapt from her mouth.

“What the hell was that? Came from behind the wall it did.” The bigger guard, the one without teeth, ripped fruitlessly at the boards.

“You'll never get 'em loose. Got too many iron pegs in 'em.”

Toothless shoved his fist into a board.

“If a man could get through there, don't you suppose one of these would have escaped? Give it up.”

When they were gone, she dared to move, to step, to breathe. No thief ever tread more softly. The floor sloped downward. Water soaked the stone walls. Everything was wet.

The twinkling lights stopped behind the wall of a cell where a man was chained to the ceiling by his wrists, his feet barely touching the floor. His aura, dimmed with agony, frayed with suffering, was the palest blue. Indeed, so pale was it that she might have called it violet or even gray had not the magic revealed to her its true color, the blue of a summer sky, and at its core an even brighter blue like the robin’s egg.

So filled with awe was she, that she spoke aloud, “Love?”

His eyes sprang open, searching his empty cell.

His unchanging, undefiled aura gave her the courage to continue. “How is it that you love even in this place when you are in such pain?”

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“Only . . . ,” he pulled himself upward to take a deep breath, “Only great love can defeat great evil.”

“Evil? Are you innocent?”

He nodded. “They question me . . . ” He spoke as if constantly out of breath. “ . . . want to know who is . . . magical.”

“They are looking for the magical person?”

He struggled to lift himself to gulp in air. “I can manipulate . . . ,“ She strained to hear the last word, “magic.”

He pulled himself painfully upward to breathe. He fully opened his eyes trying to see past the wooden planks that shielded her from him. “I couldn’t tell them who the magical person was because I didn’t know, not until now.”

No, no. I have given myself away. She turned. In her haste, she bumped into the wall.

He gasped out, “Won’t tell. Won’t tell. Read my aura.”

She hesitated. Looking back, to see in the depths of his aura not a single black thread.

Even now, when he could betray me and be free, even now his aura is filled only with love.

Within her the magic surged, filling her with its own longing—a longing to heal him. She focused. Her right palm tingled. Green and gold sparkles twinkled in the shadows of the passageways. With a slow outward breath she sent her healing to him.

“No!” he shouted. “Mask it. They will see.”

At once the sparkles fell, shattered, and disappeared.

Again, he pulled himself up, drawing in air. “Are you so young? It is a skill easily learned. You must hide your magic.”

A key turned in the lock. With a long creak the door opened. “We have him separated, my lord.”

“Good.”

Saoirse turned. That voice . . . it was . . .

Lord Togair walked into the room along with a guard, both men’s auras blazing red. By far the brightest was her father’s. And with the blood red light came the her father’s color sound, like a giant bell ringing. CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! The guard’s sound was the deafening rattle of a thousand bones.

“Tell me,” her father demanded. “Is Aonair Laoch magic?”

“No, no.” The chained man’s aura dimmed with dread.

With a flick of his wrist, her father motioned to the guard.

CRACK! The lash fell.

“Ahhh . . . ” He jerked.

“Why did a dragon attack Aonair Laoch?”

The man labored to breathe and speak. “I don't know.”

CRACK!

“Please, I know of no Laoch who is magic.”

CRACK!

Saoirse wanted to scream, “Aonair's not magic. I am!”

Wildly she looked around. Do something!

Grasping his chains with his hands and pushing up with his toes, the man looked straight at her, not at her father or at the guard, but at her, every word difficult, every syllable a struggle. "We cannot see love's destination, before we travel love's path.”

In her pocket, the chameleon wiggled. Hope leapt in her chest. She brought it out, releasing it between the boards. With the speed of lightning, the man drew magic from the dragon's kin. Using it like a flaming torch, he cut the chains that bound him. Freed, he attacked, now welding the magic like a whip, forcing the guard and Togair backward.

As Togair shouted, “Guards,” the mage scrambled through the door.

From the stairwell came the sound of pounding feet. “He's got magic!”

A scream was followed by thuds and dull moans of pain. The mage staggered backward into the room an arrow through his left eye. He fell, his head rolling to the side toward her. “Even death is not love’s end.”

The blue of his aura, meager as it was, faded into nothing. As he breathed his last, the magic he’d taken from the chameleon swirled upward in the air. When it turned toward her, hiding behind the wall, she pushed it away.

No!

With a flick of its tongue the chameleon licked it up.

Hours later, Murtagh found her, sitting on the wet floor, staring at the dead mage.

“All of the castle is in an uproar looking for you.”

“My father . . .”

Murtagh peered through the cracks. He immediately turned away, closing his eyes, bowing his head. “Oh, Drustan.”

“You know him.”

“He was well respected at the guild.”

“Father killed him. He killed someone that never harmed him, that didn't know anything.”

“He's afraid, Saoirse. He's afraid of the dragon.”

“I see fear in his aura all the time. He never looks at me with the blue of love. Always his aura is filled with the arrogant purple of his grand throne or the blinding red of his fear.” She paused, searching her memories, of her birthdays, of the times he took her riding. “I've never seen his aura blue. What if I told him—”

“You can never tell him.” Murtagh's mouth crinkled with disgust. “People who are different are feared or despised. Never accepted. Never. You can't tell him, Saoirse.”

He sat beside her. Both had their legs scrunched up in front of them, their backs pressed tightly against the stone wall. “Promise me,” he whispered.

“But he has an army. He could defend me.”

Murtagh’s words were flat, logical. “With your own mouth you said, his aura has never turned blue. He loves only himself.”

She began to sob. “It's always the same. He clangs with red fear, or blinds me with his gawdy purple arrogance.” Her sobs racked her small body. “I'm his child. Why doesn't he love me?”

The dungeon grew dark, as night set in. In the guard room, the sound of Saoirse's sobs had the jailers laughing. “Now they're crying like women.”

Her speech was more trembling and sobs than words. “He won't help me, will he?”

Murtagh shook his head. “No.” A weight pressed down on his chest, like a smithy's anvil. His right arm ached. “Ah . . . child. I hate this world.” He turned away to hide his own tears.

When she had cried herself to exhaustion, they went back to the turret entrance; she, using the sight, effortlessly led the way through the pitch-black passageways.

He came to her chambers the next morning to find Alyse alone. “I thought the young miss and I might read the books of the seers together. Perhaps—-”

Alyse shook her head. “She's gone. Who knows where? There is no talking to her. She knows, Nat. She knows that she is doomed. She is all desperation and anger and hurt. I canna reach her.”

 

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