Please note: I am updating this draft of The Prisoner of Arlunn. The most important change is that the main character's name has been changed from Philip to Rian.
44
The morning was dull. Once Rian had learned that Kyran was alive and imprisoned once again in the Tower, he stopped worrying as much. And without Arryk there as a constant irritation, Rian really could relax. He filled the tub in the small bathroom that adjoined his cell and soaked for half an hour.
After he'd eaten, Rian spent some time reading the books Rhana used to teach him vocabulary. At least it was a distraction.
The others avoided the area near his cell. Azure and Barris left. And later Quince and Rhana arrived to replace them. They barely greeted Rian; both vanished upstairs for over an hour.
Only Braejeunné moved back and forth downstairs, setting spells or strengthening the walls—Rian wasn't sure. When she came closer, Rian spoke to her.
"So, you don't trust me any more?"
She glanced over at his cell. "Arryk is cautious," she said. "I think it frightened him that you've been learning spells so quickly."
"I thought he wanted me to learn quickly," said Rian, aggravated. "He's the one who's been teaching me."
"Maybe he doesn't know what he wants," said Braejeunné. She was pretty. She had dark auburn hair, pulled back in a long braid down the back of her head.
A nagging pulsating buzz kept bothering Rian. "Your paravescea is out of balance again." He nodded upstairs.
Braejeunné glanced up. "What? How can you tell?"
"It's a sort of a ringing sound—can't you hear it?"
She shook her head. "I'll check with Quince. He usually takes charge of managing the paravescea."
With that, she left.
Rian grew bored. He felt restless and didn't really want to study vocabulary. There was little else to do locked in his cell. A half hour passed and suddenly the ringing sound grew much worse. The pulsating buzz grew louder and more out of tune. It grated on his nerves. He wondered if the others were going to fix that. If it became unbalanced, Quince had told him that it could be very dangerous. The energy within it could explode.
Before long, Quince came down with Braejeunné to speak to Rian. "You're right," said Quince. "The paravescea had gone out of balance, but ... I think I've made it worse."
Rian nodded. "Yes, it's worse now."
"We should leave," said Braejeunné. "We'll find Arryk and come back."
"We can't take him with us," argued Quince.
"Well, we can't leave him here," said Braejeunné.
"We could leave the fortress, but stay in the Interstitium," suggested Quince.
"But can't it explode, if it gets unbalanced?" asked Rian.
"That's possible," said Quince. He hesitated. "I know that Arryk said not to let him near the paravescea, but we really need help."
"I don't know," said Braejeunné.
"With Arryk gone ... I just don't know if I can do this myself," said Quince. He looked over at Rian, as if for help.
"You want me to fix the paravescea?" asked Rian.
Quince took a deep breath. "Perhaps you could try. Would you?"
"All right," said Rian.
Still Quince hesitated, no doubt under some new order from Arryk. "If I let you out, will you give me your regal word of honor that you won't hurt any of us, or try to escape ... or try to sabotage anything?" By anything, he meant the paravescea.
What did Rian have to lose? Anything to get out of this cell. "Yes, I give you my regal word of honor ... not to do any of those things."
"Good," said Quince, relieved. He unlocked the door and let Rian out. He followed them up the two flights of stairs to the top of the tower. When he entered the paravescea room, he stopped dead in his tracks.
The room held a foreboding, dangerous feeling. The paravescea glowed a sullen red color and out of tune pitch caused a painful pulsating buzz. It looked about the size of a basketball and near the same color. Previously, it had been a bit bigger than that.
"It's bad," said Quince. "The worst I've seen it yet. It has me worried."
"Yes," agreed Rian. He walked over to the black control orb. Even passing his hand over it alerted him to danger. He pulled his hand away.
They all linked hands: Rian, Quince and Braejeunné. Rian took a deep breath and, using his mage hand, he made contact with the paravescea. Immediately the force of it grabbed hold of his mind and he fought to stay conscious. Hungrily, the paravescea pulled energy from them at an alarming pace. As soon as Rian could, he used his mage hand to constrict the flow of energy—down to almost nothing.
Quince gave him a nervous glance. "Perhaps we should just wait," he said.
"No," said Rian. "I think it's too unstable for that. Let me take a look at it." He closed his eyes and focussed on the ball of energy in front of them. Inside the paravescea, the energy pulsed so wildly that it caused Rian's head to hurt. He didn't see any way to work with this. Soon, he opened his eyes, shaking his head, partly to free it from the high pitched sound.
"If it's too much to handle, perhaps we should shut it down," suggested Quince. "I can walk you through it."
Rian looked up at the paravescea. "But isn't it really hard to set up? I thought Arryk said that they barely managed it."
"True."
"I haven't given up," said Rian. "I just need to study it a few moments; see if there's something I can do." Again he closed his eyes and looked inside the paravescea. But that didn't seem to help. To balance it, they'd need to grow it bigger by letting it feed on their own life-energy... and surely they needed more people to do that. There had to be another way.
He studied the outside of the sphere. There, he found some small conduits leading out from the paravescea, like little pipes through which Rian could only assume energy could flow, maybe to another paravescea.
Another paravescea.
Rian had an idea. He cast his mind out into the darkness, using the paravescea as his eyes. He found it, somewhere to the northwest of them: another paravescea. And this one powered all of the Interstitium, keeping it in existence. This paravescea was large and healthy. Quince had said that you could join two paravescea towers together. Why couldn't he do that—take energy from this one and siphon it over to their own meager paravescea?
He knew it could be done, but the only question was how. So he studied the Interstitium paravescea. From it, he saw a beam of power that vanished out away from the Interstitium. No doubt that's where it drew it's power from: somewhere else—Arlunn, perhaps.
And from the Interstitium paravescea, going out from it in all directions were those small invisible conduits which Rian presumed could carry energy. What else could they be for? They were like little magic pipes. He followed one after the other with his mind, looking for one that might join up with their paravescea. But they only passed nearby. They did, however, intersect with some of the conduits from their own paravescea.
Could he hook them together or link them? That had to be the method; he just wasn't sure how to do it.
But the way the paravescea was now, it was too unbalanced. It was like the energy had gone rotten inside. To purify it and put it back in balance would take far more life-energy than than the three of them could donate. It was too much.
Carefully, Rian found one of the conduits connected to their own malfunctioning paravescea and slowly opened it, similar to the way he opened the opening to the paravescea to let energy in, but this time, the energy began leaking out. All that tainted, misaligned, twisted energy began to leak out into the conduit and away from the paravescea. He took this chance to try and direct the energy down the conduit. When the energy reached the conduit leading to the large Interstitium paravescea, Rian tried to shut it off. A lot of it escaped, running off in different directions.
He hoped that wasn't dangerous somehow. He knew what Arryk would say.
But Rian saw no ill effects. He closed off intersection of the two conduits, and the energy began heading for the main paravescea. He worried what might happen, if their corrupted energy mixed with the energy in the main paravescea, but in the end, very little made it. A lot leaked off. Rian followed it down the conduit, closing off several other intersections. But by then, the remaining energy was fairly negligible.
"Rian! Stop!" he heard Quince shouting.
Quickly, he returned his consciousness to their own tower. He looked around and saw that their paravescea sphere had shrunk from the size of a basketball to the size of a baseball. Now perilously small, it throbbed from its lack of balance.
"Don't let it all out, it will implode!" shouted Quince.
Carefully, Rian shut off the conduit.
"Why did you do that?" asked Quince.
"There's no way we can fix it the way it was. We had to get rid of the excess energy."
"You don't even know what you're doing!" said Quince, worried. "We should wait for Arryk!"
"We can't now," said Rian, nodding at the eerie pulsing sphere. It made the hair on his neck stand up just being in the same room with it.
"We'll have to shut it down."
"Just let me have a try," said Rian. "I'm working on it." He thrust his consciousness back into the paravescea. He knew that Quince only had so much patience, though he had more than Arryk. Rian was sure he could do this.
He found the Interstitium paravescea again and with his mind, he opened—slowly, oh so slowly—one of the conduits that would siphon power from it. The pure energy shot through the conduit. Where it leaked, Rian adjusted the intersections, tightening them with his mind. The pure energy poured neatly down the conduit and into their own paravescea.
Pure energy. He watched it carefully, with his mind's eye, as it grew. He wanted the proportion of new energy to be at least four times that of the old energy.
"Rian!" yelled Quince again, sounding panicked.
Disentangling his mind, Rian opened his eyes again.
"You connected our paravescea to the Interstitium's?" His expression was somewhere between dread and elation.
"Yes, we needed the energy and you said that it was possible."
"Yes, but—" he forgot his objections as he stared up at the paravescea sphere. It was now bigger than a large beach ball. Already, Rian could tell that it was much more balanced.
"I have to finish," said Rian, and he closed his eyes, going back to work. He stopped the connection to the Interstitium paravescea. Now, he could work with what was left. He probably spent at least half an hour working on balancing the energy. Instead of a sullen red, it was nearly pure white. There was just a little warbling of disharmony. Something that wasn't right. No matter what he did, he just couldn't seem to get that last bit of energy in tune.
It didn't seem right. And with this much energy a small imperfection might just grow into a serious problem quickly. Somehow, the energy grew stagnant sitting in their paravescea. He didn't see any way to remedy that, without opening the conduit to let a stead of flow of energy in from the larger paravescea. But then their own sphere would just grow too large.
There could only be one solution, as he studied it. He had to fix a second conduit that ran from their own paravescea back to the Interstitium paravescea—completing a circle. That way, it would be like a stream, always running and perhaps that would keep it pure.
It took another half an hour to set it up. He was surprised how patient Quince and Braejeunné were with his progress. They stood there with him, waiting. Rian supposed this was standard procedure with them, spending hours working the paravescea. Anyway, it had to be done, if they didn't want the whole thing to backfire and destroy their fortress.
So, once it was done, Rian easily balanced the last bit of energy.
"I think I got it," said Rian.
"Are you sure?" asked Quince. But surely Quince could tell a difference in the room, even if just by looking at the paravescea sphere. It looked healthy. "If you don't get it just right, it will give us trouble."
"Yes," said Rian, nodding. "I'll double check everything." He did need to make sure that the rate of flow was smooth and that no energy was being lost. He closed the opening down smaller and smaller until it got to that perfect tone. He felt a thrill of energy. Now refined and in its purest state, the energy came alive. Submersing his mind in it felt almost like a dream. He was aware of ideas, landscapes, people, thoughts, random bits of information, whisperings—all going on around him.
Fascinated, Rian followed the conduit back to the Interstitium paravescea and put his awareness inside their sphere. The result was the same. He felt drawn to know more. He followed the conduit feeding the paravescea down through the darkness to Arlunn, to their paravescea tower. It was like he was standing inside the sphere on top of their tower.
Voices and whisperings haunted him. He thought he saw faces and shapes of people and animals in the light. Visions burst into his mind of various knowledge, spells, people, buildings, history.
Wondering where it all emanated from, Rian followed the light down even further through the darkness and found yet another tower—a beautiful world with an orange sky, dozens of tall towers, like skyscrapers. Names, years, people, lives, minds, thoughts, problems, wonders all pressed in on him.
Bewildered, he tried to take it all in. What did it mean? Was this real?
Would he be able to get back?
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