The morning sun made us stir, but nobody felt like starting again. I was the first one to move. I had to; otherwise I’d be sick in the middle of our rock.
I leaned over the edge and released what little I had eaten yesterday. I stopped and heard a little voice screaming and muttering at me. I looked down and saw an imp, shaking a fist up at me from where I had ruined his morning.
“Heather,” I called, after cleaning my mouth. She was awake and looked up at me, her eyes red and nose running. “I need you to draw something.” I handed her my journal and a pencil, then reached down to pick up a cleaner imp.
I held up the imp so Heather could sketch it. It was about 5-6 inches tall and had a baby face. It looked the little cherub’s evil twin; where the cherub was an angel, the imp was a demon. Though it still had the adorable face of a child, it had twisted horns poking out of its flaxen curls. It even had a forked tail. The chubby baby face was set in a scowl as its claws dug into my index finger. Heather was sketching as fast as she could, seeing my pain, but the imp just kept digging in. The horrible creature jerked my flesh back and I did a little sound of pain. The creature looked at me and its scowl broke into a sickly amused smile. It tore my finger again, and I cried out more. The thing actually laughed. Heather was sketching like mad and finally put her pencil down. I heaved a sigh of release and threw the little devil as far as I could.
That’s what Emily had meant about “little hands”, I realized. They’re what had been tripping us. I stood up slowly, still feeling faint. Serenity was immediately at my side with a cup of medicine tea.
“What’s in this stuff?” I asked, taking a sip.
“Pine, fennel, galangal root, and a pinch of thyme, aside from the lavender tea,” Sage told me calmly. I tried to remember the uses of those herbs, but the only one I knew was lavender, which was for protection, specifically against bad dreams, and was soothing.
“What’s it for?” I asked.
“It’s supposed to help you,” she replied. She looked at me as if she knew more than she let on. It was as if she knew more than I did. I took another long sip and felt my stomach settle. I gave Serenity a nod for thanks and looked around. Most of the other questers were sitting alone, still grieving. This would not do. We had to keep moving.
I slipped into my muddy jeans from yesterday and tied my loose shirt off so it didn’t hang down so far. I slipped my boots on and checked to make sure all of my charms were still in place. I fingered my mother’s talisman and sighed. I needed knowledge now. I needed a way to lead the others past this.
I slid my fingers through my hair quickly and pulled it up in a knot on the top of my head. I turned around to see people staring at me, dumbfounded.
“What are you doing?” Carson asked. His voice was still hoarse and his eyes were red. He really had gotten to know Emily.
“I’m getting ready,” I replied. “We can’t stop now. We can’t just sit here and do nothing. Every day we waste is a day more that the Hole can kill, can torture, and can capture more mages. I’m not going to let that happen. I’m not going to let those cursed wretches at the Hole have any more! They have my dad. They have Serenity’s husband. They have Emily’s sister. They aren’t going to have any more, and they aren’t going to have those people for long. I’m going to keep going. You all signed up to come with me. You all know this. You all saw this with your own eyes. You saw the awfulness, the cruelty, the horror of reality that you decided needed to change. Just because Emily… can’t see the wish granted, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be. That doesn’t mean it won’t be, because it will. It has to.”
I stopped talking, hearing the wavering in my own voice. I had to be a strong leader now. I had to show them that nothing was over until Talisman granted the wish. I didn’t even know why I was getting so emotional. I usually wasn’t.
Lead dropped into the pit of my stomach. It was just another symptom. Stomach and emotional imbalance must mean something … non-life changing.
Austin started moving around and I glanced up at him. He pulled a bag of dried fruits and a packet of instant oatmeal out of his bag. He made breakfast quickly and quietly while everyone else started to get ready for the day. I braced myself for another trek through the death-smelling muck that made up the graves of an unimaginable amount of people. A breeze blew the smell my way. I tried to push back the images of the pit at the bottom of the Hole, where the dead rested forever. It was almost as much of an escape as what I had made, the escape that should have been someone else.
I turned away from the smell and took the small bowl of oatmeal Austin offered me.
~*~
It was well past dark when we reached the next rock. Imps kept tripping us, but thankfully we were ready for them now. Sage kept blasting them with her wand, and others soon joined in. The little devils screamed and chattered evilly at us whenever it happened, rubbing the parts that had been burned by whatever spell. Sage shot at them with a dark expression, as if she blamed them for everything that had happened since we came into Talisman’s realm.
Serenity started a fire and Sage went off to her own corner to meditate again. At least, I think that’s what she was doing. A black-and-silver shimmer draped over her. She opened her eyes, then, and saw me watching her.
“What is it, Freeman?” she asked quietly. I walked over to her and sat down.
“You look worried,” I said. She stared into the fire, which was in the center of the smaller rock.
“I, uh…” she shook her head. “It’s the place. It reminds me of…” she trailed off again.
“What’s it like?” Carson asked. “Where’s Emily’s sister? Can’t you tell us now? We deserve to know.”
“Carson,” Serenity chided. “She will tell us when she must.”
“He’s right,” Jason argued. “I mean, we’re here fighting against the Hole, and what it stands for. We should know what we’re really fighting against.”
“Now, boys,” Argus gruffed.
“They’re right,” Sage interrupted. “You should know. Maybe it will drive you on like it’s driving me.”
“Are you sure, Sage?” Pete asked. Sage nodded and everyone sat around the fire, listening intently.
“The Hole,” Sage started, her eyes deadening a little, “is just that. Everyone has seen the basic schematics, right? There are a total of two hundred floors of cells, each floor with ten thousand cells. The very top of the Hole is the level where the warden lives. It’s a lush place full of luxury. The rest is stone and darkness. Each floor has a torture room. Even when you aren’t in there you can hear the screams. Or worse, you can hear the silence.
“Every cell only had enough room to stand. The bars are six-inches in diameter and only showed the pathway. Each hall was divided from the inner hole by the upper-path that was only for guards. It was raised six feet high. The guards would pace along it holding spears. When it was your turn to be taken to the torture room they would prod you with the spears. It stopped hurting after a while. At least, you stopped recognizing the pain.
“In the chambers they would try to get any information out of you that they could. A few just enjoyed the torture process by then. They would strip you down and chain you. Most preferred the Stretch. Others preferred the Dunk. I probably died ten times each Dunk, but they would bring you back just so they could do it again.” Sage’s detached air scared me more than what she was saying. “Sometimes they would fail. The bodies were never identified and were never disposed of properly. They just went down the hole that led to the bottom, where all the trash went. All the bodies went down there, and the stink filled the entire place.”
“Sage, stop,” Heather begged.
“But I can’t, Heather,” Sage snapped. “I can’t stop. It’s in me now. I see it every time I sleep. I dream about it; I wake up thinking it’s my turn to be tortured; I can still smell the stink. I can’t stop. It’s with me now, always. It’s always here. Everything I had to go through, everything they did to me, everything I had to do, it’s all in my head. It won’t get out.”
“But you escaped, right? You’re not a part of it anymore,” she sobbed.
“Why me?” she demanded. “There were so many brave, strong, and powerful mages in that hell, but I am the one that escaped. They deserve to be out here, but most of them are probably being tortured right now. They never cried out in their sleep. They stayed strong and silent. They never gave anything up. They stayed themselves throughout. Not once did they beg for mercy or for death; although, those two seemed to mean the same thing after a while. Not once did they cower or submit.”
“You begged for death?” Pete asked, horrified. “You, one of the strongest women out there, begged for them to kill you?”
“After a while I was wishing that they would forget to revive me after I drowned, or that they would actually break me in the Stretch. It became the only light of hope for me: one day I may die.”
“Sage, that’s awful,” Serenity gasped.
“But it’s true. This is what you’ve all wanted to hear from me, and now I’m saying it. Every time I went to the torture room I told them to kill me. I wouldn’t say a word after that. They would Lash me and Stretch me and Dunk me and Burn and Beat and Lynch, but still I lived. I tried to kill myself, or to egg them on so they would kill me. It never worked. I fought back several times, hoping they’d run me through with the Lance. I would stop eating, hoping that I’d starve eventually. The guards realized what I was doing and forced me to eat.”
“Sage,” Pete breathed, reaching a hand out to her. “You didn’t tell them anything, did you?”
“No, nothing important,” she said. Her eyes were glazed over; she was back in the dark pit she had been imprisoned in. “They never knew my name, or anything magical. I swore, as they took me in, that I wouldn’t aid in their demented search for mages.”
“So how’d you escape?” Austin asked.
“I had a dream about my father,” she told us quietly. Her voice was only a whisper in the wind, but everyone heard her. “I had a dream that he needed my help, and that he was looking all over for me. When I woke up I realized that I needed to get out and help him. That’s when I made my plan. I hid away all the food they gave me, starving again, and then exercising when no guards were looking. I built up all the muscle I could. The week before I broke out I ate everything and exercised some more. When they took me to the torture room again, I was ready.
“They were going to put me in the Dunk, that was his favorite torture, but I fought back. I grabbed the Lance and fought them all off. I was going to go down the chute, the trash chute that also held bodies. He was blocking the way, though. I had to get out, but he was in the way.
“I ran him through with the Lance.”
“Who?” I couldn’t tell who had asked, but I was wondering the same thing.
“The guard,” she said darkly. “I killed the guard that was always there. I killed the guard that made me give up.”
“Give up what?” Heather asked tentatively. Sage seemed on the brink of a meltdown, but I could tell that she needed to get this story out.
“He made me give up myself. He made me give myself up to him.” Her body closed in on itself, but her face remained impassive, if only slightly disgusted. An intense anger built up inside me as I realized what she meant. Sage, my Sage had been violated without her consent, and that single fact made me hate the unnamed guard with an all-consuming fire.
“Sage, are you going to be alright?” Heather sobbed. Sage had turned mute, tears streaming down her stonily impassive face. “Sage?”
“He broke me and cursed the child,” Sage spluttered suddenly, a thick sob in her voice.
“What child?” Peter asked, but I thought I knew.
“Mine,” she gasped.