Lucius awoke to an unknown but smiling face. “Hello!” it said blithely. After the face, the next thing he noticed were the shackles on his wrists and ankles.
The cheery person standing over him noted his unease at discovering these bonds, and sought to lighten the inconvenience with explanation. “Those are standard for prisoners of war, I’m afraid. It’s not that we don’t trust you. In fact, if the geopolitical class they made me take taught me anything, it’s that you probably don’t bear any ill-will toward the Republic. Or at least you didn’t, until we chained you up, but as I was saying, it can’t be helped. Unpatriotic Freborian though you may be, it’s impermissible for us to forgo at the very least these most routine restraints. But you must endure! It shouldn’t be too long before they decide you’re not a threat and decide to release you.”
This most unmitigated insult piled on top of the rage of interrupted vengeance and unjustified captivity liquidated any trace Lucius may have had of composure. His veins throbbed, fists clenched, and in short order, the manacles and fetters binding him began to glow with heat and then fall away in pools of molten metal.
“Oh dear! You’re quite the mage, aren’t you? Oh, dear! Someone should have taken note earlier. We’re supposed to send them off separately. I’m afraid that display was really rather unwise. I understand there to be a prison somewhere in the Ribecarian Gulf for people like you.” The man shook his head vacuously and his bright blond hair bounced back and forth.
“Of course I’m a mage! I had a staff with me when I was attacked.”
“Ahh, that must have been why you were detained. It’s not wise to carry a staff around.”
“But we signed a peace treaty with you! Freboria surrendered! As a Freborian citizen, I am now a citizen of the Republic! You cannot hold your own citizens as prisoners of war! I was a bystander in pursuit of an assassin working completely independently of your invasion!” His voice was distorted in a paroxysm of vehemence.
“Calm down, calm down! One thing at a time. First, you had no papers on you confirming you as a citizen of Freboria.”
“No such papers exist! We are not required to carry documentation in our own homeland!”
“Second, Freboria is now a territory of the Republic, but that doesn’t mean that the population of Freboria is now citizens of the Republic. We officially administer the land, but each future citizen must swear loyalty to the Republic individually. Third, you had and have no reason to assume that the assassin was in fact working independently of us, although he was. Finally, you were armed.”
“So was everyone else engaged in defending Freboria from the raid!” With that, Lieutenant Atratus lunged at his tormentor, who would have been consumed in a few milliseconds by a great ball of fire had not he, with extraordinary reflexes, drawn his sidearm and fired into Lucius’s stomach. Lucius fell back onto the ground in searing pain.
“Nasty! You’d be awfully unlikely to survive a wound like that if you were anywhere but here, you know.”
“I’d be awfully unlikely to receive a wound like this if I were anywhere but here.”
A superior of the annoying man who had just shot Lucius was soon looming over them both and inquiring about what had just transpired. He was answered quite matter-of-factly and in few words by the man who had just shot Lucius. More words were then exchanged that Lucius was unable to discern.
As the superior left, Lucius complained, “If you’d had the sense to talk to me like you just talked with him, I wouldn’t have a hole in my stomach!”
The tormentor’s eyes rolled as his face metamorphosed into an expression of loathing and contempt. “That’s what I get for trying to be polite with you Monarchy scum! Go rot in the hole where we’re about to send you, you contemptible, royalty-loving icon of feculence!” He cruelly stabbed Lucius’s wound with the end of a stick, eliciting a scream of agony from the victim. “Shut up! You’re a mage! Heal yourself, you disgusting amoeba!” He kicked Lucius and walked away.
A medic appeared over Lucius a minute later. He looked confused, but began examining the wound. “This isn’t that bad. You’ll need treatment of course, but you shouldn’t be too worried.”
Lucius groaned. “I know. I’m a mage. I know how to take care of myself.”
“Oh! You’re a mage! Well, we all are, but to a pronounced degree? I’m afraid that’s ill-advised; not that you can help it, of course. We’ve been issued an order to send all prisoners with considerable magical ability south to some special camp. I don’t imagine it’s a good thing.”
“Be quiet! I know!” Lucius tried to yell. He made himself heard, but he was unable to yell.
“Don’t get yourself worked into another fit. You’ll only do more harm. Now let me dress this wound, and then I’ll get you over to the medical tent. It’ll take some magical surgery to seal off your stomach and get things healing properly.” Lucius complied. The medic applied a temporary bandage to the wound, and then walked away. As he left, Lucius looked around him. He hadn’t taken note of his surroundings before; first he’d been groggy, and then his attention had been held by the man who’d shot him. It was evening, so he’d been unconscious for almost a day. He then looked for a sign of Leeds but found none. The medic returned with another and a stretcher, onto which he was placed and carried to a large white tent that housed a few other wounded people.
The operation began almost immediately; Lucius was given a general anesthetic before he could say or ask anything. The operation shouldn’t have taken very long, but when he awoke, it seemed to be very early in the morning of the next day, and no one was around. The hours passed torpidly. Lucius stared at the moon intently as it rose; it seemed that ages passed without the satellite’s movement, and then he would blink and find it noticeably ascended. There was a dull, throbbing pain emanating from his stomach that neither subsided nor varied in its rhythm. Eventually, the area began to brighten. The moon faded as Arthe was bathed in the greater light of the sun. There had been ambiguous stirrings in the camp for a little time, but then a bustle began as the Republicans prepared to breakfast.
As the soldiers were eating, a nurse made rounds, giving food to the wounded. Lucius received as much to eat as the Republicans, and thanked the nurse, but before he began to eat, he called to the attendant. “Sir, do you know anything of the fate of my companion? We were captured together, I’m sure. I haven’t seen him here.”
The nurse looked puzzled for a moment, but then answered, “He was wearing a black cloak like the one you wore, had dull brown hair, and a round sort of face.”
Now Lucius was confused. “That’s right; but what became of him? Where is he? Has he been hurt?”
“Umm, no, he didn’t hurt anyone, but I think he had his own horse.”
Bewilderment grew in both men with each line exchanged. Here I note that while I represent all spoken language in my native tongue for consistency, there existed disparities of dialect throughout the continent. There was only truly one language, but it could vary widely from one place to another. The existence of the superstates of the Republic and Monarchy gave it more homogeneity by reducing the isolating effects of geographical borders, but these did not eliminate the phenomenon.
Lucius continued his futile interrogation for a short time, even using the vernacular of foreign cultures in an attempt to hit upon one that his nurse understood, before relenting and resolving to inquire with someone fluent in a dialect more similar to his own. Unfortunately, this opportunity did not present itself. Lucius spent most of that day convalescing, but no more. His recovery, while more rapid than it would have been without his talent for magic, was yet incomplete at the time of his transfer from the camp. It seemed that the order to send off powerful mages was especially imperative. As he was being helped into a large, armored truck, the doctor who had first offered him help after he’d been shot approached Lucius and put his hand on Lucius’s shoulder.
“I wish you the best treatment possible, and I hope you recognize that we’re all just following orders.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Ethan – that’s the name of the man who provoked you – has always been of questionable mental health, and we’re checking him out now.”
Lucius nodded in thanks, and then added, “Before I leave, I must ask. Do you know what became of my friend, with whom I was travelling? I thought he was captured with me.”
“No, he had his own horse,” was the last thing Lucius heard before being shoved into the truck.
In case you, the reader, are unfamiliar with what a truck is, I will explain. Trucks are like a combination of a wagon and a carriage. They are pulled almost always pulled by horses, but are sometimes propelled magically. They are large, enclosed, rectangular structures as wide as a road, or a lane of a road, and of varying lengths on wheels. They can be used to carry materials that must be protected from rain over long distances, and armored trucks are usually used to transport large amounts of currency or prisoners.
The truck was filled with other people, all of whom were asleep. There were small windows, but the interior was very plain. The truck started moving immediately in a southward direction, but after what was probably a couple of miles, it stopped. The door in the back opened and a man entered bearing a cup. He thrust it upon Lucius and commanded, “Drink.” Lucius had no alternative. He did so, and was asleep within a minute.
Much later, Lucius’s eyes fluttered open. The inside of the truck had been dark before, with brilliant but small patches of light from the windows, but now it was entirely dark. After the change in his surroundings, Lucius noticed the chains that now bound him, but these were of little consequence. He was locked in the vehicle, and the restraints would be easy to break anyway. They were merely an extra layer of security for the guards. What would really keep Lucius captive was the sleep potion and the guns the guards carried.
Lucius couldn’t tell how long it had been, but he had a vague feeling of much time passing. His family would surely be missing him; they’d expected him to be on a short assassination mission, and back within a day or two. Now they probably assumed he’d been captured. Given that, the next most reasonable assumption would be that he’d been taken prisoner, and that he would be handed back over to Freboria in one of the exchanges that were common.
This thought caused him stomach to twist with regret. When he’d lived in Freboria, he’d often entertained notions of being meant for greater things, but now that he was away, he felt that he was neglecting his duties to his family and to the province that had nourished him, however poorly, in his youth.
There was also the question of Bentley. Apparently, there was something about the phrasing of any question he might ask of his companion that made Republicans think of horses. In all probability, Bentley, being a mage himself, would find his way to the same mysterious destination that Lucius was approaching. Lucius felt responsible for his friend. Leeds had a mind of his own and could make his own decisions, but Lucius usually played the role of leader in their friendship, and it had been at his urging that they had pursued the assassin and then been ambushed.
These distasteful ideas caused Atratus to squirm a little where he lay, which he perceived to be the floor. Not long after he’d begun to move around, the truck slowed to a stop and the doors in the back were opened. This time, he was given food, or at least material that was edible, if not palatable. Lucius was unable to discern exactly what it was, but it had the consistency of dirt, and a taste a shade more revolting. Then he was offered another drink. He poured it into his mouth and moved his throat as if he were swallowing, and then feigned the onset of drowsiness and sleep. The silence that followed was nerve-racking. It was finally broken by the command, “Swallow.” This was quite depressing; it showed that there was no escape from the enforced depravation of consciousness, a thing which Lucius dreaded, for he had the strongest of aversions to helplessness. It was unclear how the guard knew that Lucius was not really asleep, or that he had not really swallowed, but there was no choice to be made. Lucius fell back asleep.
The following weeks were spent travelling thus. When Lucius found himself once again endowed with the ability to think, he remained exactly he had been when asleep, taking opportunity of the little time he had awake. He would try to figure out the Republican motivation of sending off captured mages to a special camp, but was unable to arrive at any definite conclusion. Magic was as old as life, and a talented mage was considered in any society no more queer a thing than a child with particularly good hand-writing, although the former talent was much more useful, and Lucius was right in assuming that this had not suddenly and inexplicably changed in the Republic. These periods of thought would end when the guards realized that he’d been laying asleep for longer than the sedative normally lasted, and so picked up his body, which remained limp, force fed him, and then poured more sedative down his throat. The other passengers of the truck were also always asleep. If one had ever been awake at the same time as Lucius, neither was aware of it, since both feigned sleep even when awake, and so communication did not occur.
One day, Lucius awoke to the sounds of merriment. There were laughter, singing, loud chatting, and, so far as he could tell, much consumption of alcohol. By this point, captivity had begun to wear notably on Lucius, and recently there had been times when, upon awakening, he would bolt up and stare out the window, no matter the location or time, allowing his eyes to soak in greedily the free world. He was unsure how to react to what he now heard, but after a few moments of contemplation, he realized that it must be the date of the Republican celebration of the Spring Festival. He started jumping up and down in the truck and singing, as loudly as he could, one of the most popular Freborian Spring carols. A few of the other prisoners began to stir, and one, a young man only a year or two older than Lucius who had been picked up farther south and on whom the journey had sorely worn, began singing along poorly the refrains, an action that inspired the immediate respect and gratification of Lucius.
The doors opened after a little of this, and two annoyed-looking guards stepped into the truck.
“Brothers! You have come to celebrate with us! It is Spring Festival! Certainly you knew. Have you brought wine? It is loved on both sides of the border, you know,” Lucius greeted them.
The first guard frowned. “In the Republic, someone your age would not even be allowed to drink it. But you do not know it is Spring Festival. You do not have a calendar here!” His accent was almost humorously thick.
“We Monarchists have an intuition for the dates of festivals! You cannot fool us! Now celebrate with us!”
The second guard shook his head and extracted a vial of liquid, certainly the normal sedative. Taking only a second to snap his chains with a spell, Lucius leaped upon the guard suddenly, gripped his jaw firmly, and poured a large portion of the potion down his throat. Such a maneuver would have been impossible had the guard not been intoxicated. By the time this was done, the others, while groggy, had set upon the first guard and killed him. The prisoners then ran out of the truck in a mass. Lucius lingered behind and looked with regret on the corpse that lay next to the drugged guard. The alarmed shouts of the remaining drunken guards forced him to action, however. He jumped out of the truck to see a congregation of five Republicans loading their guns. His eyes flicked from face to face, resting on each for a few seconds. There was soon chaos; he’d temporarily deprived each of them of sight. The sorcerer then approached them, snatched the guns from the hands of the blinded inebriates, broke all but one, and grabbed a sack of ammunition.
Lucius fled into the trees next to the road. But “fled” is almost the wrong word to use. Lucius ran less to put distance between himself and his captors and more just to run for the first time in so long. The taste of free air invited him onward.
But then he fell. His legs were weak from malnourishment and atrophy, and the adrenaline that had first sustained him had been depleted. He tried to pull himself up, and barely accomplished the feat. It was impossible to continue, so he rested against a tree trunk. Then there was noise from the direction of the road. The guards would be regaining their sight about this time, but shouldn’t have any weapons. Lucius stumbled on a few more steps, but had to stop again. The noises drew closer. He saw the outlines of his pursuers and raised his gun, but his enervation did not permit him to aim steadily. An anti-fatigue spell helped some, and Lucius tried again to take aim.
“Halt! I know that you are unarmed. I will shoot.” This order was met unexpectedly with gunfire. The guards must have had more guns in the truck. Lucius lamented his mistake of not checking for more. This left Lucius no alternative but to return fire, so he rested his gun against a branch and pulled the trigger. The recoil, while not excessively strong, was enough to knock the debilitated youth back. Lucius had been able to magically summon up the strength necessary to aim, but he would now be forced to employ every mote of willpower to shoot accurately in the face of the recoil.
The Freborian lieutenant quickly reloaded the single-shot, breech-loading gun and fired again. This time, the shot was followed by a cry of pain. This was repeated twice, but Lucius could not be sure of how dire the wounds he was inflicting were, and aiming effectively was growing more and more difficult, so he dropped his gun for the moment in favor of warding his pursuers off with magic. As they approached, Lucius fired a blue-glowing ball of heat from his hand toward the nearest enemy. If he’d been able to endow his attack with the energy he’d intended, Lucius’s heat bolt would have charred the guard’s torso almost certainly lethally and disheartened the other three, for Lucius counted four still running toward him, but instead, it, after burning a few leaves along its path, merely singed the Republican’s shirt. While it did not deplete physical energy, magical capacity did depend on the mage’s physical energy, so in this state, Lucius would be unable to muster an adequate defense with magic alone. For once, he sorely wished he had a staff or wand with him. Instead, he regretfully rearmed himself with the gun. By this time, the Republicans were much closer. Lucius shot one in the chest. The stricken man fell to the ground, surely wounded fatally. By the time his gun was reloaded, however, Lucius’s remaining enemies had surrounded him and were menacingly bearing the muzzles of their guns at him. Even in this position, he would normally have been able to save himself with some sort of spell, but not now. Lucius laid down the gun.
The men whom Lucius had so lately chosen to spare now looked on him with utter malice. The boy’s eyes searched the foreign visages for compassion, but found none, and fear entered his heart. He grieved his dead father; he mourned his inhibited childhood; he reviled the murderous impulse that had led him into this captivity, and although it had never occurred to him before, in this moment of defeat, Lucius realized how short his life had been. But as soon as the revulsion he felt had entered his heart, it left, and was replaced by the murderous impulse itself. His eyes clouded with the wrath that had begun to become characteristic of the youth, but he said nothing.
The guards seemed to acknowledge their inability to recapture the other escaped prisoners, because instead of searching for them, they began to beat Lucius, whom they recognized as the leader of the escapees. His consciousness was not slow in leaving.
Lucius’s time had been spent between a lesser darkness and a greater darkness. The lesser was the day, and the darker was the night. His eyes opened to the greater. A guard was standing over him. The features of his face were hard to distinguish in the blackness, but they seemed to glow with malevolence. Lucius wondered for a moment what could motivate these men. He had shown restraint, but they were now less restrained themselves. The sorcerer had realized early in his life that evil did not exist; there was only selfishness, a desire for good for oneself and a fear of harm. Might there not be some greater enemy who purged Lucius’s captors of remorse with fear? These thoughts were beginning to form in the prisoner’s mind when a powerful blow fell from the man standing over him, and he dropped again into a darkness transcending a mere lack of light.
This was to be the last time Lucius would be rendered unconscious on his journey. The next thing of which he was aware was a rocking sensation, and then a sound of rhythmic splashing and the thick smell of wood rot. He was in a brig. He propped himself up on an elbow and looked out a porthole over what he perceived to be the Ribecarian Gulf, though he’d only until then seen maps and paintings. The great expanse of dark blue waves rimmed by a distant, rocky shore was a new sight to the young Freborian mage. In the east, his eyes alighted on a light orange glow. The sun was beginning another iteration of the cycle that had been sustaining life on Arthe for millennia. But Lucius’s eyes were drawn from the early sunrise by a blinking light to the north. Among the rocks rose one larger, with steep, uniform sides that suggested human construction. The lighthouse was more than a century old. Its worn face seemed to watch the passing of ships with a stoicism easily mistaken for apathy. The former lieutenant, for Lucius was sure that he could no longer be considered a part of the Freborian military, wondered how many ships were on the same section of the sea at the moment. He couldn’t see any. Forcing his way out of the ship wouldn’t have been impossible, but swimming to shore would have been, as would have been evading the crew of the ship he was aboard.
The flicker of hope extinguished as quickly as it had arisen, Lucius returned his eyes to the dawn’s splendor. It helped to lessen the nauseating feeling of doom in his stomach. Ever since his abduction, he’d suppressed a sense of desperation, but now, since his failed escape, it was becoming harder to ignore. He was grateful for the ability to recognize beauty despite his condition, though. He closed his eyes and sighed, then moved his arms and legs around. He realized that if the voyage lasted much longer, this would be the greatest amount of time he’d spent conscious in weeks. As he lay there, his old curiosity, more acute now with proximity, recurred, and he wondered again about the nature of the place to which he was being taken.
For almost an hour the sun rose, the lighthouse shrank, and Lucius’s mind boiled with conjectures of the purpose of his captivity. The sound of drums on deck, answered by what must have been drums ashore, informed him that the mystery would not persist much longer. Soon he heard footsteps descending the stairs, and a guard on the other side of the barred door.
“Good; you’re awake. I won’t have to carry you,” the guard laughed. He unlocked the door and entered. Lucius noticed two more guards standing outside the cell. His shackles and fetters were detached from the wall of the brig, but remained on him. The guard grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet. The prisoner was then escorted onto the deck. It was curiosity more than the guard that forced his legs to carry him onward. Lucius possessed the fear of the further ill fortune that was sure to befall him that any sane person would, but his fear did not impel him to shy away from the unavoidable. It instead added weight to his concern, and made him more eager to face his persecutors.
From the deck, he beheld an island. This was exactly what he’d expected. The island seemed large. Lucius couldn’t see all the way around it, so he couldn’t be certain it was an island, but from his knowledge of the geography of the Ribecarian, he could at least be confident that his conclusion was accurate. Its shore stretched around sharply to the right and left only a few feet above the sea; floods were probably common during tempests. The land was grassy, and a few trees grew on either side of a brown stripe in the grass that was a road. While abundant, some of the grass and foliage seemed to have an odd coloration, as though the hue were slightly off its natural value. Lucius had not time to take in any more before he was forced into another, smaller truck with two other unfamiliar prisoners. He overheard one of the guards who had pursued him after his escape talking to the driver of the truck.
“I know you were expecting more, but the young one with the dark hair helped a bunch escape. We would have been delayed far too long if we’d tried to recapture all of them, so we just went after him. Stupid cur! The other two were ones being held near the coast for us to take in the next trip.”
As Lucius was exposed to this further evidence of the scale and organization of the Republican effort against Monarchist mages, he realized that until his escape attempt, he’d never heard the voice of that particular guard before, though he’d overheard his captors speaking frequently during his waking moments on the trip south, and it occurred to him that while he’d been drugged, he must have been moved from one truck to another with different guards in a long sort of relay. The mage shuddered at the thought of this perplexing campaign. Of course, it was impossible to say how many such chains existed on the Monarchy front, so the size of the operation remained uncertain, but it was not small, and this was perturbing.
The ride in the truck lasted only around five minutes. When he was taken out, Lucius saw seven buildings. Four were plain black squares, apparently each of only one story and with barred windows, arranged in a sort of square themselves, with a building at each point. These obviously housed prisoners. In the center of this arrangement was a smaller, completely windowless octagonal building. Its sides seemed to lean out a little, and the roof slanted upward toward the middle. At the center of the building, a spire rose around thirty meters from the pinnacle of the roof. To the left of all these was a larger, plain but less ugly, windowed building. Lucius surmised correctly that this was the barracks for the Republican guards. The smallest and closest structure was diagonal to the barracks. It looked something like a collection of small offices, and so it was, where the administrators of the camp conducted their work. Around the whole perimeter were eight small guard towers, large enough for no more than two guards, and only about two meters off the ground.
Lucius and the two other mages were led toward the nearer prison building on the right. It was built of some black stone, and was cold. Immediately inside, the ante room had two doors on either side, and one straight ahead. The doors were large, thick, and wooden, with reinforcing pieces of iron stretched across them. The three guards escorting the prisoners led them through the door opposite the entrance. This opened into a narrow stairwell, and the six descended in a single file, with one guard in the front and two behind. There was no natural light; the first guard carried a torch instead. Its flames shone on the damp black walls. Looking at the darkly reflective surfaces so close on either side to his face, Lucius could see the distorted, inhuman images of the others, made more severe by the wall’s harsh surface.
The descent was not terribly lengthy, but somehow the confinement made it seem protracted. Despite this impression, Lucius estimated that the group could be as little as five meters underground. Sounds were almost absent. There was a thick sort of ever-present quiet to the place that could still be heard, if quiet may be heard, in the presence of other noises. Under the deadened footsteps of the persecutors and the persecuted, a paradoxical silence persisted, as if the dungeon’s disinclination to noise still lingered tangibly. The noises that could be heard over that oppressive stillness included foremost the sound of water. There was a subdued cacophony of dripping and flowing and splashing. There were also elusive scratching and scraping noises that conjured up thoughts of rodents. An involuntary vision of a rat chewing on an unfeeling, infected toe appeared to Lucius’s now traumatized mind. It was quickly pushed away.
At the bottom of the stairs, hallways extended to the left, right, and forward. The procession turned left. Lucius was in the middle of the three prisoners. The first was deposited in cell on the right of the hallway. The door to the cell was at least ten centimeters thick, and apparently solid metal, but its hinges were oddly quiet. Lucius could not see into the cell, but the prisoner was taken into it, and after a few seconds, there was the sound of chains clanking together, and then whimpering that grew into wailing. The guard emerged, the door was closed, and the noise abruptly stopped. Lucius was led on with much greater trepidation until he almost faced a second unlocked cell. A hopeless instinct overpowered him.
There was a shout, a crack, a cry, and a sizzling almost simultaneously. In an instant, a guard was on the floor. His head was broken in two. Lucius, too, was on the floor, writhing in a voiceless agony inflicted by a wand held by the second guard. Its tip was bright with incandescence, and the flesh of Lucius’s back was almost melting away under its heat. Certainly it was now in contact with bone. Then the burning stopped, but the pain remained. Lucius was lifted up. He felt dazed and detached from himself. The transience of his fragile, physical body struck him numb. And as he was being carried into the cell, it also struck him that he had never taken a life before. That most valuable jewel of existence he clutched now with fingers so trembling he had wrenched from the hand of another.
Lucius was chained to the back wall of the narrow cell without noticing or caring. He was surprised he hadn’t been killed on the spot. As the door was closing, he noticed the third guard looking down with a face full of astonishment at the corpse still on the floor. There was likewise a stunned look on the face of the third prisoner. After that display, he certainly wouldn’t be trying anything.
The door shut loudly. From the sudden cessation of noise from the first prisoner, Lucius could tell that the doors had been soundproofed, but he could still not resist screaming. After that, a while passed. Lucius couldn’t be sure of the time. There were no rodents – the cell was completely closed off – but there were insects. Lucius passed the time by incinerating the bugs one by one.
Eventually, Lucius noticed a face through the tiny window at the top of the door. He stared at it unapologetically. There was a tap. The sound of water could be heard again Lucius had first heard it when entering the dungeon; it seemed the magical soundproofing had been switched off.
The person standing at the door, apparently a guard, spoke. “I thought I’d welcome the new prisoner.” Lucius had nothing to say. The guard continued. “You killed my friend.”
“That must be a rare occurrence for you to take note of me.”
“It is.”
“I’m surprised so few of us value our freedom enough to fight for it.”
“Well, you’re not free, and I’ve been told that you’ve got an awful burn on your back.” Lucius was silent again.
“I’m smart not to expect some sort of apology anyway.”
“Nonsense. You could torture it out of me.”
“You know, the guards who work here are not sadists.”
“No?”
“I can’t guarantee they’re all not. But this used to be a normal prison camp before Lemenge took it over. We were just soldiers doing our duty.”
“Your duty being the arbitrary imprisonment and brutalization of mages?”
“No.” The Republican’s tone hadn’t seemed at all frivolous before, but now it took on an even more sincere tone. “That wasn’t until later, as I said.”
“Then who is Lemenge?”
“A major general, and one of the top wizards employed by the army. He researches military applications of advanced magic. Most of the work he does here is into illegal “weapons of great potency,” and much of the work requires the channeling of extreme amounts of magic. It’s only possible by capturing and, well, enslaving large numbers of mages. I may as well tell you what you’ll be doing here. You’ll be taken to the center building and forced , along with four other mages, to use channel through a special staff. It’ll direct the magical power to a researcher, who will use it to work on whatever project happens to be scheduled. It will be exhausting.”
“Why is such a place as this necessary? Laboratories in the Monarchy exist where wizards voluntarily channel like that for the purpose of experimentation and research.”
“The intensity of the work here is such that no one would agree to it, and the unscrupulous commanders would rather not have to pay for the services of mages.”
“And I am to believe that you are not unsympathetic to the plight of the prisoners?”
“I am not.”
“Then why has nothing been done to end this? The Republic prides itself for its moral superiority and accountability to its citizens. Why has this place been allowed to exist?”
“No one knows about it. There are true laboratories on the other side of this island, you see. Lemenge lobbied for control of the entire thing, and he got it. Usually, prisoners with exceptional magic ability are placed in special, isolated sections of prison camps with more security, but Lemenge had the idea to send all such prisoners to a single camp. Eventually this order grew into something more; mages are now sought out. Worse than that, Lemenge encouraged the Arguanicans to respond as they did when the Monarchists started fishing in the Gulf. There are many of us here from before Lemenge took charge, but we are all prisoners.”
“Why does he do this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he thinks he’s doing the right thing by improving Republican military technology. Maybe he is a sadist. Maybe he is a megalomaniac. I think the last is the most likely.”
“And you can live with yourself, being a part of it?”
The face in the window lowered its eyes. “There isn’t any other choice.”
“There’s always another choice.”
“That is death.”
Lucius nodded.
“There is such a thing as an instinct for self-preservation. That’s why you committed murder a little earlier.”
“It wasn’t murder.”
“You may not realize it, but it was. The man you killed was just as sympathetic as I am. He was just as innocent as you are. No, I don’t condemn you, you see. What else can be expected when a human being is taken out of freedom and thrust into the most deplorable of conditions? That’s why it was a tragedy. But it was murder. He, like I, had no choice.”
There was a noise from the stairwell. The guard turned toward it. “Victor!” a new voice called. “Why are you here?”
“It’s time to bring the new prisoners up.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here. You’re early.”
“You’re late. Let’s go.”
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