Unbroken Chain

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Ashok awoke to a dull throb at the back of his skull. He was on his feet, blind, and breathing hot air. It didn’t take him long to assume the rest.

He was in a cell, chained deep in the caves behind the forges. Maybe it was Chanoch’s cell. He couldn’t tell for the hood covering his face. There were no sounds; the room was absolute silence and cold.

In a flash of morbid humor, Ashok remembered the cleric’s words to him, when he’d first woken in Ikemmu.

Perhaps someday you’ll see how we treat our prisoners. Prophecies abounded in Ikemmu.

You have no one to blame but yourself, Ashok thought. You should have left the city when you had the chance. But you didn’t really want to escape, did you? Ever since he’d ridden out of that cave and left the slaughtered members of his enclave behind, he’d been looking for punishment in place of absolution. He’d betrayed his own people, and he’d betrayed Ikemmu by not confessing the truth.

Ashok only hoped, before it was all over, that he would be given the opportunity for that confession. If they left him alone in the dark, forgotten, he would fade away and still bear the shame.

No. It wouldn’t happen. Uwan would come. Ashok knew the leader would be there in the dark, at some moment. He hadn’t left Chanoch alone.

Ashok closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but he was aware of the lingering ache in his shoulder. His hands were numb from being held above his head. A tingling sensation ran down his arms. And he was cold, so cold all over, except where his breath was trapped inside the hood.

They were none of them sensations that he cared to think about. All were associated with a lack of feeling, a frozen state from which he couldn’t emerge. Ashok stomped his feet hard just to feel the shock go up his legs. He twisted his body from side to side as best he could, trying to coax some feeling back into his limbs, but the chains were suspended so tightly he had trouble drawing a full breath.

He tried to remember the journey back to Ikemmu, but his mind was choked with fog. There were snatches, bits of conversation where his name had featured prominently, but he couldn’t remember the words. He hoped Tatigan had reached the surface and his caravan safely, and he enjoyed the brief regret that he would never see what the world of Faerun looked like. He imagined that it would be a place full of people like Tatigan and Darnae, and that gave him comfort.

Some time passed, and perhaps he slept, but more likely Ashok thought he drifted in and out of stupor. Once a guard came into his cell with a bucket and helped him to relieve himself. Ashok was faintly grateful for not having to soil himself, but the guard never removed the hood, and Ashok felt it was one of the most humiliating experiences of his life.

The next time the door opened, Ashok didn’t detect the heavy tread of the guards, but a single set of footsteps. They stopped in front of his cell. Whomever it was, Ashok could hear their slow indrawn breaths, and feel the contemplative silence with which the stranger regarded him.

“Well met, Uwan,” Ashok said.

“The guards tell me you’ve been restless,” Uwan said. “That’s a good sign. If you’d been subdued, we’d have had to move you somewhere else. We won’t risk you fading.”

“So I haven’t been condemned yet?” Ashok said. He turned his head to follow Uwan’s pacing outside his cell, though it was a futile gesture to try to see through the hood.

“Not yet,” Uwan said. His tone told Ashok that it was a foregone conclusion. “The evidence is being gathered.”

“By Vedoran,” Ashok said.

“Yes,” Uwan replied, and he stopped pacing. Ashok heard his hands moving over the bars. He could picture the leader deciding how much he wanted to say.

“Ask your questions,” Ashok said. He’d been waiting for the moment, and felt a profound relief that the time had finally arrived. “I’ve nothing left to hide.”

“Is it true?” Uwan said. “Did you kidnap Ilvani?”

“No,” Ashok said. “Not directly. My father ordered the attack on the scouting party. I was sent out of the city to track down a pack of shadow hounds that had been harrying us. Between them and Ilvani’s party, we were surrounded.”

“A wise tactical decision,” Uwan said. “Your father is a shrewd leader.”

“My father was a butcher,” Ashok said. There was no passion in his words, but they were no less true for the lack of feeling. “He sacrificed my brothers to each other and to the rivalry within the enclave. We had a heavily fortified position in those caves; we didn’t have the constant threat of attack, and we launched no offensives against other enclaves.”

“So without any enemies to fight, your own people became the threat,” Uwan said.

“We fought amongst ourselves, took any excuse to stave off the shadows,” Ashok said. “When I came to this city and saw the arms you displayed, I thought, what an impossible challenge, to launch an attack against your forces.”

“You’d found exactly what you needed to pull your enclave together and focus its attention on a new enemy,” Uwan said.

“And maybe I could stop slaughtering my brothers,” Ashok said. “Yes, that was the goal.”

“Why didn’t you go through with the plan?” Uwan asked. “Vedoran and the others … You had them all together on your home soil. Why didn’t you give them up?”

Ashok sighed. His entire body was numb, and he was weary from speaking while only drawing half breaths. He needed pain, something intense to focus his thoughts. He hadn’t felt so desperate in a long time. “I know what you want me to say,” he said. “You want me to say that it was Tempus’s will. It wasn’t.”

“Then why?” Uwan said, and for the first time anger broke through his carefully restrained tone.

“Because I had never known trust, or what it meant to fight with comrades who would defend me to the death, until I came here,” Ashok cried. “I didn’t want to lose that, so I attacked my own people. I used the nightmare to slaughter them.” He’d done no better than Reltnar. He’d acted out of the same desperate need to feel alive.

“You rescued Ilvani,” Uwan said. He seemed to be speaking to himself. “But that isn’t enough for the Beshabans. They want you executed, so they can prove the fallibility of Tempus.”

“By Ikemmu’s law, I should be executed,” Ashok said.

“We await the evidence,” Uwan replied.

“I’ve offered my confession,” said Ashok.

“Enough!” Uwan cried. Something metal-his sword perhaps-slammed against the cell bars and rang loudly in the quiet chamber. “I’ve heard nothing.”

“You can’t deny what you know,” Ashok said. “It betrays everything you believe. You’ll go mad.”

“Not for this,” Uwan declared. “You had a choice, and you made it. You chose the way of Ikemmu.”

“You may forgive me,” Ashok said. “But the shadar-kai cannot afford to forgive.”

Uwan laughed bitterly. “Is that why you do this? To taunt me with my own words? You’d throw your life away to prove that I was wrong about Chanoch?”

“You’re wrong about many things,” Ashok said. “Chanoch was one casualty. Vedoran was another. You’ve done him and others like him a great wrong.”

“And now I’m paying for it,” Uwan said. He sighed. “I know. Tempus aid me, I know that I’ve brought this upon myself. He tried to warn me. My god tried to tell me what you would mean to this city, but I didn’t understand. Now it’s too late.” He was silent for a breath then said, “Natan is dead.”

Ashok had thought he had no emotion left in him, but when he heard that he sagged against the chains.

“It will destroy her,” Ashok said.

“It may already have,” Uwan said bleakly. “She disappeared as soon as she returned to Ikemmu, when they brought you back in chains.”

“What happened?” Ashok said.

“Natan was murdered in the chapel,” Uwan said. “We discovered his body hidden in an antechamber soon after you left the city with Tatigan. Vedoran claims you are responsible. He accuses you of killing Natan when he had a vision of your treachery. He says that you planned to escape to the surface.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Ashok said.

“I thought not,” Uwan said as he began to pace again. “But the damage is done.”

Ashok closed his eyes. He wished he could sleep. He’d never desired oblivion more. “So it was all for nothing,” he said. The one good thing he’d tried to do in getting Ilvani out of that nightmare place, all undone.

“You’ll spend one more night here,” Uwan said. “Tomorrow at the Monril bell you’ll be taken to the top of Tower Makthar, and Vedoran and the Beshabans will present their evidence against you. They’ve rallied a large number of supporters to their cause, more than I thought possible. However I rule, it will divide the city. But if I judge you guilty, you’ll be brought back here to await your death by the shadows.”

He started to walk away. Ashok called after him, “You can’t ignore the evidence. If you act according to your emotions, you’ll lose the peoples’ faith. Then the Beshabans will be able to act, with the full support of the discontent shadar-kai.”

Ashok heard Uwan stop at the door. He knocked on it for the guards to let him out. “You’ve a tactical mind equal to your father’s,” he said. “I say this as a compliment, though I know it gives you little comfort.”

The door closed, and Ashok was alone in the dark again.