The Draykon Series (1-3)

Lokant: Chapter Thirty-Nine

Devary was lying on his bed, again. He was thinking, daydreaming, anything it was reasonable to call this state of near insensibility. He'd lain in a half-dream for an indeterminate time, waiting with steadily decreasing hopes for some event to break up the monotony of these none-days.

Nothing had come. He'd given up trying to mark the passage of time; nothing changed in here. It was as if time had nothing to do with the place at all. His attempts to break himself free had failed one and all. This place was shrouded, muffled in some dampening enchantment and not a chink could he now find in that enclosing force. Opening a gate was out of the question: it was like trying to rip a hole in granite. And the door had some kind of lock that he couldn't pick, no matter how hard he tried.

Nobody ever came. Sometimes he would sleep; while he was unconscious food and water would appear, by some means he couldn't detect. For a while he had mercilessly denied himself sleep, determined to see and speak to the person who delivered the food. All he had achieved was starvation as well as sleep deprivation. Nobody ever came.

So, at last, he'd given up, letting himself fall out of consciousness as his only defence against the stupefying boredom.

When the gunshot came, the incredible volume of the sound jolted him out of his stupor so suddenly that he feared his heart would fail him. The excitable organ skipped a beat or two, then settled, and he breathed again.

He pushed himself off the bed and stood up. For some moments his head swam with dizziness as his long-inactive body swayed, his vision blurred. He moved closer to the door and waited.

The sound was not repeated for some time. He was about to give up, putting the interruption down as a product of his own bored mind, when several loud gunshots fired in a burst. Hope surged in his heart: gunfire proved the presence of intruders, and based on the logic of enemies of one's enemies those intruders might prove to be his friends.

He heard cries of pain and another couple of shots. His door bore only a tiny piece of glass, almost too high for him to see out of. He pressed his face to this miniature window but he could see nothing but the usual, merely a glimpse of the door opposite to him. He wished he could tell who was winning the conflict; had that dying cry been one of his kidnappers or their attackers?

When everything fell silent once again, he began to worry. He certainly could not be rescued if nobody knew that he was here. He began banging on the door and calling out, kicking with his feet, creating as much noise as he could.

Nothing happened. No further sounds reached him. His heart sank; dullness closed in on his fogged brain once more. Whoever they were, they weren't coming for him.

But then: footsteps. A voice, actual words spoken.

'Is this him?'

A face appeared briefly at the glass.

'No. Too old. Next one.'

The face disappeared. Then another was pressed against his window, somebody white-haired.

'There's someone in here?' a different voice said. Then came a hissed intake of breath. 'I know this person.'

'We breaking him out, sir?' That was the first voice again, young and female.

'Be quick about it,' said the man. Devary frowned. If he imagined those words spoken in gentler tones and decorated with somewhat more in the way of courtesy, then he knew the speaker.

It sounded very much like the strange fellow he'd met at the university. He'd last seen the man in Indren's private reading room. He had known about the tracer Devary wore; he'd even indicated that he might be able to help him.