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Chapter 48. Mind Games |
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or a long time, all he could do was lie there and breathe. The slow knell of his heart was unnaturally loud in his ears as his sluggish mind awakened to flesh. He had names for the sensations. There was cold and wet. There was warmth and hunger. His mouth tasted of honey and salt. There was swallowing, digesting, purging, breathing. And hurting. Pain drew him awake and his rasping cries rebounded from the grim stone walls of the chamber. Hundreds of fiery needles bored into his skin and he was utterly helpless to do anything about it. He cried out to the gods, an instinctive appeal such as a child might make to its mother in the throes of inchoate fear. Sweat poured from his flesh as he bucked and writhed. Then, as quickly as it had come, the sensation faded and he lay back in the blankets gasping and exhausted. He opened his crusted eyes and was greeted by a confusing tangle of colors, shadows and light. Rough shapes of people and bedding swam into view, but he could not keep focused and his eyes burned. “Do you hear me, Mog?” He swallowed with effort and attempted to form words. Who was she? How had he gotten here? The notion that there had been something before this, something even before the impenetrable darkness entered his mind and he panicked. Fear and loss crashed through his senses and he moaned softly. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong and he could not remember what. “Don’t speak, just nod.” He managed to nod after some effort, wondering how he knew what that meant. “Make him presentable,” the woman said to someone else in the room, “and if he asks for food or drink, give him warm broth and nothing else.” What followed then was an uneasy melding of comforting familiar sensations over which he had a frightening lack of control. His face was lathered with a strong smelling soap followed by the keen scrape of an exquisitely sharp blade. His head was eased into a basin of water and his hair was washed, then hacked with shears and toweled roughly dry. Someone hauled him up and made him sit despite his inability to maintain that position. They sponged him clean and he realized he had on no clothes. “Get orf!” he howled, finding his legs somehow and kicking at the indistinct figure. Then there were two of them bearing him down on the bed as he squirmed and fought to escape. Something tightened over his arms and chest, then his belly and elbows. He could not lift his hands away from his sides and something bit painfully into his wrists. He roared at them to let him go but all that came out were animal howls. More anger boiled up inside him that he was so helpless and he lashed out again with his feet only to find he could no longer lift them. “Lie still. Stop fighting.” A long string of expletives erupted from Mog’s mouth. He had no idea what they meant, but they had a strange quality of expressing exactly what he was feeling at that moment. “Quiet or you’ll go back in the jar,” said a harsh woman’s voice that he remembered as if from a nightmare. Mog hesitated, his gut clenching in horror. Not the jar. He never wanted to go through that again. A clean sheet and blankets were drawn over him as he lay on his back. He could barely move now, but he was comfortable and warm. And tired. So very tired. “This should do,” said the woman to the figure that was now drawing the blankets up under his chin. A soft pillow was wedged under his head and he sighed wearily, his eyes growing heavy. “He should recover in a few hours. If he starts using magic summon me.” “Mog?” He stirred from the depths, his mind a pool of black stagnant water and the voice like lazy ripples across its surface. Swallowing with effort, he drew a deep breath and opened his eyes, blinking numbly as the sights and sounds of the little room collided with his starved senses. The ornately carved posts of the bed swam into focus, followed by the expanses of rich midnight blue fabric draped over him and tied back on one side of the bed where the voice originated. Mog turned his head on the pillow to gaze upon her. The dark paneled walls and grim tapestries served as camouflage for the figure’s equally dull lace and silks and ornately coifed black hair. Only the bright white cloisonné mask with its gold trim loomed out of the shadows like a serene moon. She was perched on a chair at his bedside, a small gloved hand resting upon the blankets over his right shoulder. The voice was familiar, sweet and strangely comforting. He just wished he could remember who it was. “Can you hear me, darling?” she murmured, “Are you alright?” “Lemmy?” he croaked. But it could not be. The Lemony he remembered did not sound so sad and lost. Then the memory of what had befallen them burned vivid in his mind and a low moan of horror escaped his throat. “Mog, have they hurt you? Tell me?” she pleaded. “I’m alrigh’, Lem,” he managed, his delicate senses pounded by her cresting fear and the oppressive weight of despair, “Please, me love, do not fret so.” Mog closed his eyes in a feeble attempt to focus and draw a protective wall of calm around his raw senses. Lemony’s presence loomed over him like an approaching storm and her emotions threatened to overwhelm him. He could not afford to lose his composure now, not when she needed him to be calm, not when he understood so little of what was going on. All he could remember of their last moments together was capture and surrender and the sudden intense pain of his spirit being bound to the horrible jar. “I’ve missed you so,” Lemony wept, the intense loneliness of her time without him lanced his mind and he wanted to hold her and rock her in his arms like a child. It was horrible experiencing her like this. The Lemony he knew had an irrepressible love of life and a note of laughter in her voice. It was as if all that was good and joyful had died, leaving behind a frail shell inhabited by a sorrowful ghost. Gods, what had they done to her? “Lemmy, why are yeh so sad?” She answered him in the only way she was able, dropping out of the chair to press her masked face into his side as she sobbed. Though she struggled to speak, there was no need, he understood. Their captors had broken her spirit, treated her so cruelly she had learned the futility of hope. “Are they watchin’ us, Lemmy?” “Yes,” she wept. “If you must abandon me to survive, I understand.” He could not be sure she heard him within the shattered depths of her mind. The floodgates had been opened and she was no longer even attempting to hold back the rawness of her grief and horror. Mog saw flashes of the torment she had endured, the memories so vivid and painful he had to withdraw into rage or become overwhelmed. “Who is he?” he demanded as he was seized with fury. “Josef,” she whimpered, “I can’t let them hurt you, Mog. I love you. I love you so much.” “Visiting time is over,” said a grim voice. Mog gazed up at the severe figure of a woman, her dark eyes locking with his. He did not recognize her and yet she was familiar and he remembered the taint of her dark magic. Somehow he knew she was connected with the magic that had sealed away his spirit and rendered him helpless. Lemony clung to him, weeping inconsolably as a man came to lead her away. Mog swore angrily, growing silent when he realized he was alone with the vile white-haired woman. “How dare yeh harm Lemony,” Mog snarled at her, his rage boiling over. Not surprisingly, the woman only laughed, mocking his helplessness. There was nothing he could do. Now that he was fully conscious, the oppressive bite of the thick leather bands around his body reminded him of this fact. Mog fought the urge to hex her, knowing it would prove pointless and lead to unnecessary suffering. A second figure stalked into the room, a man with the same icy gaze and predatory stance as the woman. They were related somehow, and he had encountered this one before while blindfolded. He remembered the sharp taint of his mind like the taste of blood. “May I practice on him?” asked the man, showing deference to the older woman. “For an hour. Fetch me when you are done.” The woman departed and the heavy door was closed with an unnecessary rattle of keys. Where could he go? He could not even rise from the bed let alone flee to the door. Practice? What did he mean by that? “Do you remember me, Mog?” the man asked with a gloating laugh. “I reckon yeh’d be Josef,” Mog snapped, overwhelmed by a sudden urge to throttle the man. “So uncivilized,” Josef laughed, “and I hoped you would be better at shielding your thoughts from me. Are you going to disappoint me and offer no sport?” “I’d give yeh sport enough if yeh let me up,” Mog growled, “and I see no need t’ ward me thoughts about killin’ yeh.” Mog shuddered as the man lashed out at him, not with his fists as he had with Lemony, but with the saber sharp thrust of his mind. Without thinking, Mog headed him off, turning him back with an impenetrable barrier of confusion and darkness. Only an idiot believed Mog’s outward appearance of an affable bumpkin. On the inside he was steel. “So you have been trained,” Josef said with a grim smile, trying to hide the fact that Mog’s defenses had brought him up short with the mental equivalent of being slugged in the gut, “I believe our little sessions will prove most instructive.” Mog said nothing, only narrowed his eyes and drew upon a seemingly bottomless reserve of rage and hatred. He had not mentally sparred with another mesmer for a very long time and a part of him relished the idea of tearing this vile jackal apart from the inside out. As Josef focused upon him, more cautious this time, the pain erupting between his temples was a sharp reminder that it was an unfair match. Mog was a prisoner. Josef could wear him down by dint of being able to retreat physically to recover. Which he did when Mog successfully repelled him again. “Intriguing,” Josef gasped as he stood out of reach across the room rubbing his forehead, “I don’t think I’ve ever encountered that maneuver.” “I’ll give yeh a maneuver,” Mog thought bitterly, “if yeh didn’t run away.” But he never had a chance to follow his defensive forms with a counter attack. Josef harried him like a wasp against a leashed dog. Stinging and withdrawing while all Mog could do was shake him away and snap futilely at empty air. One or two stings he could endure, but as the minutes ticked by, his head began to throb with pain and it became a supreme effort to repulse each attempt to invade his mind. Soon blood seeped from Mog’s nostrils and his breath rasped painfully in his throat as the effort of deflecting each brutal attack spilled over into the flesh. All he could do was withdraw deeper into the thinning shell of his psyche, allowing his poor body to absorb an increasingly larger portion of each assault. “Well done,” the man purred contemptuously, “I do believe you’ve managed to last longer than the others.” Mog closed his eyes, focusing on the sound of his breath and the pounding of his heart. He would not lower his defenses, he would never let Josef violate the innermost sanctum of his mind. He would sooner die. Lyssa grant him the strength to resist. He was not sure how much more he could take. It was as if someone had filled his skull with molten lead. To his relief the pain faded and keys rattled in the lock as Josef departed. Alone at last, Mog released a final cry of agony and surrendered to darkness. |
