Текст книги "Incarceron"

Автор книги: Kathryn Fisher

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"I am everywhere" it whispered. "Everywhere."

19

Down the endless halls of guilt

My silver thread of tears is spilt.

My fingerbone the key that broke

My blood the oil that smoothes the lock.

-Songs of Sapphique

Claudia stared at the holo-image in dismay. "What do you mean imprisoned? You're all in

Prison, aren't you?" The boy grinned, a soft mockery she already disliked. He sat on the curb of what looked like some sort of dark alleyway and leaned back, gazing at her with a considering scrutiny. "Are we, indeed? And where are you then, Princess?"

She frowned. In fact she had run into the garderobe of the hostelry where the carriages had stopped for lunch, a stinking stone chamber too close to Protocol for comfort. But she wasn't going to waste time explaining. "Listen to me, whatever your name is—"

"Keiro."

"Well, Keiro. It's vital I speak to Finn. How did you get this Key from him anyway? Did you steal it?"

He had very blue eyes, and his hair was blond and long. He was handsome and he certainly knew it. He said, "Finn and

I are oathbrothers, sworn to each other. He gave it to me for safety."

"So he trusts you?"

"Of course."

Another voice said, "Well, I don't."

A girl stepped up behind him; he glared at her hotly and muttered, "Will you shut up?" but she crouched and spoke hurriedly to Claudia.

"I'm Attia. I think he's going to leave Finn and the Sapient and try to Escape as Sapphique did, and he thinks the Key will work for him. You musn't let him! Finn will die."

Bewildered by the names, Claudia said, "Wait. Slow down! Why will he die?"

"They seem to have some sort of ritual in this Wing. He has to face the Beast. Is there anything you can do? Some magic from the stars? You have to help us!"

The girl had the filthiest clothes Claudia had ever seen; her hair was dark and hacked into a rough, jagged cut. She was clearly worried sick. Trying to think, Claudia said, "How can

I do anything? You have to get him out of it!"

"What makes you think we can?" Keiro asked calmly.

"You've got no choice." A shout out in the inn-yard made her glance around nervously.

"Because Finn is the only one I'll talk to."

"Like him, do you? And who are you anyway?"

She glared. "The Warden of Incarceron is my father."

Keiro snorted. "What Warden?"

"He ... oversees the Prison." She felt cold. His scorn chilled her. Quickly she went on.

"Maybe I can find charts of the Prison, a map of its secret ways, its doorways and corridors that will show you the way out. But I won't tell you a thing until I see Finn."

It was a lie that would have made Jared groan, but she had no choice. She didn't trust this

Keiro; he was too arrogant, and the girl seemed angry and scared.

Keiro shrugged. "What's so special about Finn?"

She hesitated. Then she said, "I think ... I think I recognize him. He's older, he looks different, but there's something about him, his voice ... If I'm right his real name is Giles, and he's the son of... a fairly important person out here." She shouldn't say too much. Just enough to get him to act.

Keiro stared, astonished. "Are you telling me all that guff about coming in from Outside is actually true? That mark on his wrist means something?"

"I've got to go. Just get him."

He folded his arms. "If I can't?"

"Then forget the magic of the stars." She looked at the girl, their eyes meeting briefly.

"And this Key will just be a useless lump of crystal. But if you're his brother, you'd want to rescue him."

Keiro nodded. "I do." He nodded toward Attia. "Forget her. She's crazy. She knows nothing." His voice was low and earnest. "Finn and I are brothers and we watch each other's backs. Always."

Attia gazed at Claudia, her face bruised. Doubt moved in her eyes. "Is he related to you?"

she asked quietly. "Your brother? Cousin?"

Claudia shrugged. "Just a friend. A friend, that's all." Hurriedly, she switched the field off.

The Key glimmered in the fetid darkness. She shoved it into the pocket in her skirt and ran out, desperate for fresh air. Alys was loitering anxiously in the passageway, servants bustling past her with trays and dishes.

"Oh, there you are, Claudia! Earl Caspar is looking for you."

But Claudia could already hear him, the thin annoying bray of his voice, and to her dismay she saw that it was Jared he was talking to, and Lord Evian, the three of them sitting on benches in the sunshine, the hostel dogs sprawled in an expectant row at their feet.

She came out and crossed the cobbles.

Evian stood immediately and made an ornate bow; Jared moved quietly to make a space for her. Caspar said crossly, "You're always avoiding me, Claudia!"

"Of course not. Why on earth would I do that?" She sat down and smiled. "How nice. All my friends together."

Caspar scowled. Jared shook his head slightly. Beside them Evian hid a smile with his lace-edged handkerchief. She wondered how he could sit there so coolly with the Earl, a boy he was plotting to have murdered. But then, he would probably protest that it wasn't personal, that this was politics, nothing more. The game, always.

She turned to Jared. "I want you to travel with me now. I'm so bored! We can discuss

Menessier's Natural History of the Realm?

"Why not me?" Caspar tossed a hunk of meat to the dogs and watched them fight over it.

"I'm not boring." His small eyes turned to her. "Am I?"

It was a challenge. "Indeed not, Your Grace." She smiled pleasantly. "And of course I'd love you to join us. Menessier has some excellent passages on the fauna in the coniferous forests."

He stared at her in disgust. "Claudia, don't try that wide-eyed innocent junk with me. I told you, I don't care what you get up to. Anyway, I know all about it. Fax told me about last night."

She felt herself go pale, couldn't look at Jared. The dogs growled and fought. One brushed her skirt and she stamped at it.

Caspar stood up, smugly triumphant. He was wearing a garish collar of gold links and a frock coat of black velvet, and he kicked the dogs aside till they yelped. "But I'm warning you, Claudia, you'd better be more discreet. My mothers not as open-minded as I am. If she found out, she'd be furious." He grinned at Jared. "Your clever tutor might find that his illness gets suddenly worse."

She was so angry, she almost leaped to her feet, but Jared's light touch kept her sitting.

They watched Caspar stride away across the inn-yard, avoiding the puddles and dung heaps in his expensive boots.

Finally Lord Evian took out his snuffbox. "Dear me," he said quietly. "Now that was a threat if ever I heard one."

Claudia met Jared's eyes. They were dark and troubled. "Fax?" he said.

She shrugged, exasperated with herself. "He saw me coming out of your room last night."

His dismay showed. "Claudia ..."

"I know. I know. It's all my fault."

Evian sniffed the snuff delicately. "If I may be allowed to comment, that was a very unfortunate thing to happen."

"It's not what you think." I'm sure.

"No. Really. And you can drop the act. I've told Jared about... the Steel Wolves."

He glanced around quickly. "Claudia, not aloud, please." His voice lost its affectations. "I appreciate you trust your tutor, but—"

"Of course she should have told me." Jared tapped the table-top with his long fingers.

"Because the whole plot is foolish, utterly criminal, and almost certain to be betrayed.

How could you even think about bringing her into it!"

"Because we can't do it without her." The fat man was calm, but a film of sweat glistened on his forehead. "You above all, Master Sapient, understand what the iron decrees of the Havaarna have done to us. We are rich, some of us, and live well, but we are not free. We are chained hand and foot by Protocol, enslaved to a static, empty world where men and women can't read, where the scientific advances of the ages are the preserve of the rich, where artists and poets are doomed to endless repetitions and sterile reworkings of past masterpieces. Nothing is new. New does not exist. Nothing changes, nothing grows, evolves, develops. Time has stopped. Progress is forbidden."

He leaned forward. Claudia had never seen him so grave, so stripped of his effete disguise, and it chilled her, as if he were someone else entirely, an older, exhausted, desperate man.

"We are dying, Claudia. We must break open this cell we have bricked ourselves into, escape from this endless wheel we tread like rats. I have dedicated myself to freeing us. If it means my death, I don't care, because even death will be a sort of freedom."

In the stillness the rooks cawed around the trees overhead. Horses in the stable yard were being harnessed, their feet stamping the cobbles.

Claudia licked dry lips. "Don't do anything yet," she whispered. "I may have ... some information for you. But not yet." She stood quickly, not wanting to say any more, not wanting to feel the raw anguish he had opened in her like a stab wound.

"The horses are ready. Let's go."

THE STREETS were full of people, all silent. Their silence terrified Finn; it was so intense, and the hungry way they looked at him made him stumble, the women and the scruffy children, the maimed, the old, the soldiers; cold, curious stares that he dared not meet, so that he looked down, at his feet, at the dirt on the road, anywhere but at them.

The only sound that rang in the steep streets was the steady tramp of the six guards around him, the crack of their iron-soled boots on the cobbles, and far above, circling like an omen, a single large bird screeching mournful cries among the clouds and echoing winds of Incarceron's vault.

Then someone sang back, a single note of lament, and as if it was a signal, all the crowd picked it up and crooned it softly, their sorrow and their fear in one strange soft song. He tried to make out the words, but only fragments came to him ... the silver thread that broke

... all down the endless halls of guilt and dreams ... and like a chorus the haunting, repeated phrase: his fingerbone the key, his blood the oil that smoothes the lock.

Turning a corner, Finn glanced back.

Gildas walked behind, alone. The guards ignored him, but he walked firmly, his head high, and the peoples eyes moved wonderingly over the green of his Sapient coat.

The old man looked grim and purposeful; he gave Finn a brief nod of encouragement.

There was no sign of Keiro or Attia. Desperately Finn stared into the crowds. Had they found out what was happening to him? Would they wait outside the Cave?

Had they spoken to Claudia? Anxiety tormented him, and he would not let himself think the thing that he dreaded, that lurked in the dark of his mind like a spider, like Incarceron's mocking whisper.

That Keiro might have taken the Key and gone.

He shook his head. In the three years of the Comitatus, Keiro had never betrayed him.

Taunted him, yes, laughed at him, stolen from him, fought with him, argued with him. But he'd always been there. And yet now Finn realized with a sudden coldness how little he knew about his oathbrother, about where he had come from. Keiro just said his parents were dead. Finn had never asked any questions. He'd always been too absorbed in his own agonizing loss, in the memory flashes and the fits.

He should have asked.

He should have cared.

A rain of tiny black petals began to fall on him. Looking up he saw that the people were throwing them, tossing out handfuls that fell on the cobbles and made a fragrant dark carpet on the road. And he saw that the petals had a peculiar quality, that as they touched each other they melted, and that the gutters and streets ran with a sticky, clotted mass that exuded the sweetest of scents.

It made him feel strange. And as if it broke into a dream, it made him remember the voice he had heard in the night.

I am everywhere. As if the Prison had answered him. He looked up now, as they marched under the gaping maw of the gate, and saw a single red Eye in the portcullis, its unblinking gaze fixed on him, "Can you see me?" he breathed. "Did you speak to me?"

But the gate was behind him and they were out of the City.

The road led straight and it was deserted. The sticky oil trickled along it; behind he heard the gates and doors slam, the wooden bolts drawn across, the iron grilles crash down.

Out here under the vault the world seemed empty, the plain swept by icy winds.

The soldiers hastily unshouldered the heavy axes they carried; the one in front also had some sort of device with a canister attached, a Same-throwing machine, Finn guessed.

He said, "Let the Sapient catch up."

They slowed, as if now he was not their prisoner but their leader, and Gildas strode breathlessly up and said, "Your brother hasn't shown himself"

"He'll turn up." Saying it helped.

They walked swiftly, closed into a tight group. On either side the ground was seamed with pits and traps; Finn saw the steel teeth gleam in their depths. Glancing back, he was surprised at how the City was already far behind, its walls lined with people, watching, shouting, holding their children up to see.

The guard captain said, "We turn off the road here. Be careful; step only where we step and don't think of running off. The ground is sewn with fireglobes."

Finn had no idea what fireglobes were, but Gildas frowned. "This Beast must be fearsome indeed."

The man glanced at him. "I have never seen it, Master, and don't intend to."

Once off the smooth road the going was rough. The coppery earth seemed to have been scored and clawed into vast furrows; in several places it was burned, carbonized to a charcoal crispness that rose in clouds of dust as they trod on it, or vitrified almost to glass. Enormous heat would have been needed to do that, Finn thought. It stank too, an acrid cindery smell. He followed the men closely, watching their steps with nervous attention; when they paused and he raised his head, he saw that they were far out on the plain, the Prison lights so high above they were brilliant suns, casting his and Gildas's shadows behind them.

Far in the mile-high vault the bird still circled. Once it screeched, and the guards looked up at it. The nearest muttered, "Looking for carrion."

Finn began to wonder how far they would walk. There were no hills out here, no ridges, so where would they find a cave? He had pictured it as some dark aperture in a metallic cliff.

Now he was filled with a new apprehension, because even his imagination was betraying him.

"Stop." The guard captain held up a hand. "This is it."

There was nothing there. That was Finn's first idea. Relief flooded him. It was all a pretense. They'd let him go now, run back to the City, spin some gruesome tale about a monster to keep the people quiet.

Then, as he pushed past the men, he saw the pit in the ground.

And the Cave.

JARED SAID, "You promised them maps that don't exist! It was a crazy idea, Claudia.

Things are getting so dangerous for us!"

She knew he was deeply worried. She crossed to his side of the carriage and said, "Master, I know. But the stakes are so high."

He looked up and she saw the pain was back behind his eyes. "Claudia, tell me you're not thinking seriously about this folly of Evian's. We are not murderers!"

"I'm not. If my plan works, there'll be no need of it." But she didn't say what she was thinking: that if the Queen really did find out, that if he, Jared, was in any danger at all, she would have them all killed without hesitation, even her father, to save him.

Maybe he knew it. As the carriage jolted he glanced out of the window and his expression darkened, his black hair brushing the collar of the Sapient coat. "Here's our prison," he said bleakly.

And following his gaze she saw the pinnacles and glass towers of the Palace, the turrets and towers festooned with flags and bunting, heard that all the bells were ringing to welcome her, all the doves flapping, all the cannon were being fired in deep booming salute from every mile-high terrace that rose in splendor into the pure blue sky.

20

We have put everything that is left into this.

It is bigger than all of us now.

-Project report; Martor Sapiens

"Take this, and this."

The guard captain thrust a small leather bag and a sword into Finn's hands. The bag seemed so light, it must be empty. "What's in it?" he asked nervously.

"You'll see." The man stepped back and glanced at Gildas. Then he said, "Why not flee, Master? Why waste your life?"

"My life is Sapphique's," Gildas snapped. "His fate is mine." The captain shook his head.

"Suit yourself. But no one else has ever come back." He jerked his head at the Cave entrance.

"There it is."

There was a moment of tense silence. The guards gripped their axes tightly; Finn knew that this was the moment they expected him to make some sort of break for freedom, now that he had a sword in his hand and his back to unknown terrors. How many of those brought as Tribute had screamed and fought in panic here?

Not him. He was Finn.

Reckless, he turned and looked down at the crack.

It was very thin, and utterly black. Its edges were burned and scorched, as if the metal of the Prison's structure had been superheated and melted countless times into grotesque twistings and taperings. As if whatever crawled out of these metal lips could melt steel like toffee.

He glanced at Gildas. "I'll go first." Before the Sapient could object, he turned and lowered himself into the slash of darkness, taking one last rapid look into the distance.

But the scarred plain was empty, the City a remote fortress.

He slithered his boots over the edge, found a foothold, squeezed his body in.

Once he was below ground level, the darkness closed over him. By feeling with hands and feet he realized that the crack was a horizontal space between tilted strata, and it sloped down into the ground. He had to spread-eagle himself to fir in it, inching forward over a dark slab-like surface littered with debris that seemed to be stones and smooth balls of melted steel that rolled painfully under him. His fingers groped in dust and a lump of rubble that crumbled away like bone. He dropped it hastily.

The roof was low; twice it grazed his back and he began to fear being stuck. As soon as the thought touched him with cold terror he stopped.

Sweating, he gulped a deep breath. "Where are you?"

"Right behind." Gildas sounded strained. His voice echoed; a small shower of dust fell from above into Finn's hair and eyes. A hand grabbed his boot. "Move on."

"Why?" He tried to roll his head to look back. "Why not wait here till Lightsout, then crawl back. Don't tell me those men will wait out there until dark. They've probably gone already.

What's to stop us ...?"

"Fireglobes are to stop us, fool boy. Acres of them. One wrong step and your foot's blown off. And you didn't see what I saw last night, how they patrol the City walls, how vast searchlights sweep the plain all night. We'd be easily seen." He laughed, a grim bark in the darkness. "I meant what I said to the blind women. You are a Starseer. If Sapphique came here, so must we. Though I fear my theory that the way out leads upward seems doomed to be proved wrong."

Finn shook his head in disbelief. Even in this mess the old man cared more about his theories than anything else. He scrabbled on, digging the toes of his boots in and heaving himself forward.

For the next few minutes he was sure that the roof was dipping so low that it would meet the floor and trap him; then, to his relief, the gap began to widen and at the same time tip leftward and slope more steeply. Finally he could rise to his knees without banging his head on the roof. "It opens ahead." His voice was hollow.

"Wait there."

Gildas fumbled. There was a loud crack and light hissed; one of the crude, smoking flares the Comitatus had used to signal distress. It showed Finn the Sapient lying flat on his stomach dragging a candle from the pack. He lit it from the flare; as the spitting red light died, the small flames flickered, guttering in a draft from somewhere ahead.

"I didn't know you'd brought those."

"Some of us," Gildas said, "thought to bring more than garish clothes and useless rings."

He cupped his hand around the flame. "Go quietly. Though whatever it is it will have already smelled and heard us coming."

As if in answer, something rumbled ahead. A low grinding sound, sensed like a vibration under their splayed hands. Finn tugged the sword out and gripped it tight. He could see nothing in the blackness.

He moved on, and the tunnel opened, became a space around him. In the flicker of the tiny candle flame he saw the ridged sides of the metal strata, outcrops of crystal quartzes, strange furrings of oxides that gleamed in turquoises and orange as the light edged past them. He pulled himself to hands and knees.

Ahead, something moved. He sensed it rather than heard it, felt a draft of foul air that caught in the back of his throat. Very still, he listened, every sense straining.

Behind him, Gildas grunted.

"Keep still!"

The Sapient cursed. "Is it here?"

"I think so."

He was becoming aware of the space. As he grew accustomed to the darkness, edges and facades of sloping rock began to separate from shadows; he saw a pinnacle of scorched stone and realized with sudden shock that it was immense, and a long way off, and that the draft was a wind now, blowing in his face, a warm stench like the breathing of a great creature, a terrible acrid stink.

And then in an instant of clarity he knew it was curled all around him, that the black, faceted rock face was its scabbed skin, the vast spurs of stone its fossilized claws, that he was in a cave formed by the ancient, scaly hide of some smoldering beast.

He turned to yell a warning.

But slowly, with a terrible creaking weight, an eye opened. A red eye, heavily lidded, bigger than he was.

ALL THE way through the streets the noise was deafening. Flowers were flung constantly; after a while Claudia found herself flinching at the repeated thud and slither of the impact on the carriage roof and the scent of the crushed stems grew sweet and cloying. The climb was steep and she was tossed uncomfortably in the seat; beside her Jared looked pale. She took his arm. "Are you all right?"

He smiled wanly. "I wish we could get out. Throwing up on the Palace steps won't make much of an impression."

She tried to smile. Together they sat in silence as the carriage rumbled and clattered through the gateways of the Outer Citadel, under its vast defenses, through its courtyards and cobbled porticoes, and with each twist and turn, she knew she was becoming ensnared deeper and deeper in the life that waited for her here, the mazes of power, the labyrinth of treachery. Slowly the raucous shouts faded; the wheels ran smoothly, and peeping around the curtain she saw that the road was lined with red carpet, expensive swathes of it, and all across the streets garlands of flowers hung and doves flapped between roofs and gables.

There were more people up here; these were the apartments of the courtiers, the Privy

Council and the Office of the Protocol, and the cheers were more refined, punctuated by bursts of music from viols and serpents and fife and drum. Somewhere ahead she could hear roars and clapping—Caspar was obviously leaning from the window of his coach to acknowledge his welcome home.

"They'll want to see the bride," Jared murmured.

"She's not here yet."

A silence. Then she said, "Master, I'm afraid." She felt his surprise. "I am, truly. This place scares me. At home, I know who I am, what to do. I'm the Warden's daughter, I know where I stand. But this is a dangerous place, full of pitfalls. All my life I've known it was waiting for me, but now I'm not sure I can face it. They'll want to absorb me, make me one of them, and I won't change, I won't! I want to stay me."

He sighed, and she saw his dark gaze was fixed on the veiled window. "Claudia, you're the bravest person I know."

"I'm not..."

"You are. And no one will change you. You will rule here, though k won't be easy. The

Queen is powerful, and she will envy you, because you're young and you'll take her place.

Your power is as great as hers."

"But if they send you away ..."

He turned. "I won't go. I am not a brave man, I understand that. Confrontation disturbs me; one look from your father and I'm chilled to the bone, Sapient or not. But they can't make me leave you, Claudia." He sat upright, away from her. "I have looked death in the face for years now, and that gives some sort of recklessness, at least."

"Don't talk about that."

He shrugged gently. "It will come. But we mustn't think so much of ourselves. We should consider whether we can help Finn. Give me the Key and let me work on it a little more. It has complexities I've barely guessed at yet."

As the coach joked over a threshold she took it from her hidden pocket and gave it to him, and as she did so the wings of the eagle deep in the crystal flickered, as if it flapped them and took off. Jared pulled back the curtain quickly, and the sun caught the gleaming facets.

The bird was flying.

It was flying over a dark landscape, a charred plain. Far below, a chasm gaped in the earth, and the bird swooped and plummeted inside, twisting sideways into the narrow crack, making Claudia hiss with fear.

The Key went black. One single red light pulsed in it.

But even as they stared at it the coach rumbled to a halt, the horses stamping and blowing, and the door was flung open. The Warden's shadow darkened the threshold.

"Come, my dear," he said quietly. "They're all waiting."

Without looking at Jared, without even letting herself think, she stepped out of the coach and drew herself upright, her arm in her father's.

Together, they faced the double row of applauding courtiers, the splendor of silk banners, the great stairway leading upward to the throne.

Sitting on it, resplendent in a silver gown with vast ruff, sat the Queen. Even from this distance the redness of her hair and lips were evident, the radiance of the diamonds at her neck. Behind her shoulder, a scowling presence, stood Caspar.

The Warden said calmly, "The smile, I think."

She put it on. The bright, confident smile, as false as everything in her life, a cloak over the coldness.

Then they walked steadily up the stairs.

IT WASthe ironic stare of his nightmares and he recognized it, his voice hoarse. " You? "

Behind, he heard Gildas's gasp. "Strike at it. Strike, Finn!"

The Eye was aswirl. Its pupil was a spiral of movement, a scarlet galaxy. All around it, heaving itself up, the darkness convulsed, and he saw the vast hide of the Beast was studded with objects, bits of jewelry, bones, fragments of rags, shafts of weapons. They were centuries old; skin and hide had grown over them. With a tearing and cracking an outcrop of dark faceted rock became its head and reared up over him; spurs of metal slid out like claws, grasping the shuddering tilting floor of the cavern.

Finn couldn't move. Dust and fumes clouded over him.

"Strike!" Gildas grabbed his arm.

"Its useless. Can't you see ...?"

Gildas gave a roar of anger, snatched the sword from him, and thrust it into the clotted hide of the Beast, leaping back as if he expected blood to cascade out in a great gout.

Then he stared, seeing what Finn had seen.

There was no wound. The hide opened and dissolved, absorbed the blade, reassembled around it. The Beast was a composite creature, a grinding, swift formation of millions of beings, of bats and bones and beetles, dark clouds of bees, an ever-changing kaleidoscope pattern of rock fragments and metal shards. As it turned and rose into the roof of the chamber, they saw that over the centuries it had absorbed all the terror and the fear of the City, that all the Tribute sent out to placate it had been absorbed, eaten, had only made it grow huger. Somewhere inside it were the billions of atoms of the dead, of the victims and the children dragged out here by decree of the Justices. It was a magnetized mass of flesh and metal, its crumbling tail studded with fingernails and teeth and talons.

It stretched out its head above them and leaned down, bringing the great red Eyes close to Finn's face, making his skin scarlet, his shaking hands look as if they were red with blood.

"Finn,'' it said, in a voice of deep pleasure, a throaty treacle of huskiness. "At last."

He stepped back, into Gildas. The Sapient's hand gripped his elbow. "You know my name."

"I gave you your name." Its tongue flickered in the dark cavern of its mouth. "Gave it long ago, when you were born in my cells. When you became my son."

He was shuddering. He wanted to deny it, shout Out, but no words would come.

The creature tipped its head, studying him. The long muzzle, dripping bees and scales, fragmented into a cloud of dragonflies and re-formed again. "I knew you'd come," it said.

"I've been watching you, Finn, because you are so special. In all the entrails and veins of my body, in all the millions of beings I enclose, there is no one quite like you."

The head zoomed closer. Something like a smile formed and broke. "Do you really think you can escape from me? Do you forget that I could kill you, shut down light and air, incinerate you in seconds?"

"I don't forget," he managed to say.

"Most men do. Most men are content to live in their prison and think it is the world, but not you, Finn. You remember about me. You look around and see my Eyes watching you, in those nights of darkness you called out to me and I heard you ..."

"You didn't answer," he whispered.

"But you knew I was there. You are a Starseer, Finn. How interesting that is."

Gildas pushed forward. He was white, his sparse hair wet with sweat. "Who are you?" he growled.

"I am Incarceron, old man. You should know. It was the Sapienti who created me. Your great, towering, overreaching endless failure. Your nemesis." I zigzagged closer, its mouth wide so that they could see the rags of cloth that hung there, smell the oily, oddly sweet stench of k. "Ah, the pride of the Wise. And now you dare to seek a way free of your own folly."

It slid back, the red Eyes narrowing to slits. "Pay me, Finn. Pay me as Sapphique paid.