Chapter 28. Alone

endaran lay sprawled upon his belly, faintly aware of the chill stone pressed against his cheek.  He was afraid to move for fear of drawing unwelcome attention. His body shuddered with the memory of unendurable pain.  Slowly he convinced one eye to open and was greeted with inexorable darkness.  He blinked, listening to the distant rush of water and the slow plink of moisture dripping from the walls and ceiling.  Lifting a hand he heard the heavy clatter of iron chain and felt the clasp of metal around his wrists. 

Swallowing and gagging as the miasmal stench of the water far below bludgeoned his senses, he struggled to rise, finding his knees and at last staggering to his feet.  He scanned the darkness, seeking light and finding none.  Had he been blinded?  Warily he grasped the chain that dangled from his right wrist and tugged on it, detecting that it was anchored low to a wall behind him and he drew toward it, feeling his way forward.  His seeking fingers found the rough pattern of bricks and mortar.  Shoving down a moment of panic, he perused the wall with his fingers.  Surely there was a door and he could bang on it.  Someone must be nearby, a guard perhaps.  Or one of his torturers.

Hesitating, he stood there for a moment, trying to remember what had happened before he had arrived here.  He must have fainted from exhaustion or shock.  Vaguely he remembered being scrubbed of the blood and filth of torture in a dark courtyard before being adorned with a magnificent robe of crimson and black silk.  He ran his hand over the elaborately embroidered cloth and recalled the young woman, the monk, who had gazed sadly upon him and administered the sleeping draught to ease his pain and fear.

Growing nauseated with horror, he redoubled his efforts to find a door, something he could lean against and await his freedom.  They might have tossed him in a cell, but someone would come for him eventually to bring him food or water if nothing else.  He worked his way against the wall, his belly pressed to it as the chain that anchored his left hand reached its full length.  He probed with his right foot, stretching it out over a yawning void where the floor vanished.

Panic percolated through him as he detected the drop.  Perhaps it was a simple lowering of the floor, a grate perhaps to drain away the filth.  Yet the distant rush of the water issued from far below and in his minds eye he imagined the drop and quailed.  There was one way to find out and he knelt, tracing the floor with his hands until he found a loose crumb of mortar the size of his thumb.  He cast the stone over the edge and listened.  The darkness swallowed it without a trace.

The hair of his nape stood up and he crouched with his back pressed to the wall.  The impenetrable darkness seemed full of danger now.  Biting his lip, he crawled away from the wall, feeling ahead of him until, at the farthest range of his wrist shackles, he felt the edge of the floor once more barely three paces across from the wall.  He crawled toward the other end and discovered no other walls.  He was on a ledge.

“Is anyone there?” he croaked, shivering as the emptiness swallowed his words and replied with only the distant chatter of the reeking water.  Trembling, he redoubled his efforts to find a door, his hands working over the bricks and mortar but finding nothing.  He worked his way higher, but there was no sign of a door or grate.  Struggling to keep his emotions in check, he now searched the floor, crawling as he swept ahead with his hands until he discovered a shallow basin worn in the stone.  A rank puddle of water gathered there from the sweating ceiling high above and overflowed to meet the stream below.  Large drops struck his scalp, heavy from their great fall and cold as death.  He recoiled, shivering.

There must be a way out otherwise how had they put him here?  Someone had shackled him so that he would not simply walk into the void and fall to his death.  There had to be a door or grate, but as he called out into the darkness it seemed the emptiness extended equally far above him as it did below.  He was alone and not another living soul could hear him.

Alone.

No, not alone.  Someone would bring him food.  Someone knew he was imprisoned there.  Pendaran swallowed against the knot of grief and fear in his throat. 

He did not want to die here alone.

No, don’t go there, Pen.  Calm down.

Water.  He was parched.  He shuffled toward the basin and pressed his belly to the floor to drink of it like an animal.  It was cold and bitter, tasting of metal and dirt.  But it was wet and it was water.

I can do this.  All I have to do is stay calm.

Pendaran huddled against the wall, fighting with all of his training and strength to resist the plunge into madness as wave after wave of fear crashed against his composure. 

Alone. 

Oh gods, have mercy on me.