Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) (37 page)

Catelyn must have dozed off because she felt herself
sliding toward the wall, and jolted awake before the side of her
head hit the stone. She steadied herself with her hands and
scooted closer to the corner opposite of where she had earlier
relieved herself, and leaned up against it, considering her future,
such as it was.

The first question that came to her mind was why had the
Emperor simply not killed her? She thought back to her torture,
however long ago that was, and the words he had spoken to her as
he’d intimidated and inflicted pain on her.

“You are at the heart of something...divine. As am I. We
have a purpose here. We are part of a larger world. But I don’t
know yet which side you will fall on. I...I need time to think.”

Catelyn was convinced that the Emperor was simply
insane. That he had so fooled himself into thinking that he was
somehow special, some part of a divine plan, that all reason and all
morals had been discarded in favor of acting solely to enact this
plan he so believed in. But worse than that was the fact that he was
also convinced that Catelyn was a part of this plan. He was likely,
even now, working feverishly to construct a narrative for himself
whereby she was important to his plans. Or something even more
ludicrous. Catelyn was having trouble imagining just how far his
insanity went, and what he would be capable of.

Catelyn had no hope that her life from this point forward
would ever be happy or good again. She believed that what awaited
her each day, from now until her imminent death, would be a
continual litany of agony and torture at the hands of the madman
Uriel.

Time lost all meaning in the cell, as Catelyn could no
longer tell the difference between a breath, a whisper or a prayer.
She had no idea how long she had so far been in captivity, nor how
much longer this imprisonment would last. She presumed that
soon enough, she would simply die, as a matter of sheer neglect.

This was enough to fill her with a hopeless dread, and she
spiraled into another depressive bout of sobbing. More time went
by, in which all Catelyn could do was suffer.

When this wave passed, and she calmed enough for the
walls to stop echoing with her own anguish, her bubble detected
the subtle sound of something else that was just audible coming
from the slit at the top of the metal cell door.

Without thinking of the pain, Catelyn stood, and strained
with everything that she had to listen at the gap.
What she heard was a voice.
It was a faint whisper, a hissing sound just barely audible

Catelyn’s heart hammered, wondering if there was
someone trying to talk to her, but she hesitated, wondering if it
could be some trap. However, her fear of dying here, alone, was
overpowering, and so she decided and called out.

The whispering stopped, as her greeting echoed off the
bare walls, until silence reigned again, only broken by the
occasional dripping from the hallway. Catelyn refused to give up so
soon, and repeated her cry.

She heard a man clear his throat, and it sounded like it
came from down the hall and several paces away, but she rejoiced
at the realization that someone was nearby, that there was another
human being in earshot of her and she felt like whooping in
delight.

The man did not respond at first, and Catelyn silently
spurred him on, hoping that he would find the courage to return
her greeting. She was thrilled when he did just that.

“I am Enaz,” the man said in a small, defeated voice.
“Enaz. Thank you,” Catelyn replied.
She allowed some time to pass in silence, and then she

began to ask him questions.
“Enaz, do you know where we are?”
She fully recognized that she was less concerned about the

answers and more interested in the fact that having another
person to talk to, to ask such trivial questions of, could help to take
her mind off of the dire situation they both found themselves in.
She needed to distract herself from thinking about the torture she
would probably be forced to endure once the Emperor decided he
was in the mood. Even so, Enaz seemed more than happy to
answer her.

“Yes. These are the old holding cells for the Citadel, which
the Emperor’s father and grandfather used to hold public
executions in the Citadel’s square,” Enaz answered, and Catelyn
could hear a sense of pride in the man, as he conveyed this
knowledge. Two things stood out about the man from just this
simple exchange. She immediately got the sense that Enaz was the
type of person who loved knowing things, and from the lilt of his
voice, she could also guess what sort of man he had been before
ending up here, a prisoner in the darkness with her.

“Public executions?” she asked, hoping to inspire him to
talk to her some more.
“Criminals in the old Empire were once tried before the
Emperor, and when they were found guilty, they were hanged or
beheaded.” Enaz spoke of these things, and of the Empire itself,
with open disdain, and Catelyn wondered what he had done to
have been sent down here and how long he had been here.
“I see,” she said. “Were you a scholar, by any chance?” she
asked, redirecting the questions to hopefully a more comfortable
subject. The man laughed.
“A scholar? Is there such a thing in Ereas?” He laughed so
hard he began to cough, and then to choke, and it was several
whispers before the fit ended. In that moment, Catelyn could hear
how poorly Enaz was doing. It sounded as if he had not had a
drink in days, his hacking cough was dry and hoarse. Finally, he
responded.
“You’re perceptive, Catelyn. A scholar, no but I was the
head Prior for a number of sojourns, and the personal advisor to
Uriel, the Third of His Name since my fourteenth sojourn.”
Catelyn felt herself begin to sweat.
The Emperor’s personal advisor?
She put her guard up immediately, and let silence reign
between them again. Enaz seemed to clue into her fear, and
acknowledged the obvious.
“If you’re worried that I’m a spy for his Eminence, let me
assure you that he and I are no longer on amicable terms, hence
my new living quarters,” he said, chuckling at some private joke.
Catelyn wasn’t sure how far to trust this man, but she
wanted to see him play his hand.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I saved several of the servant’s lives,” Enaz responded
weakly.
“I...I don’t understand,” Catelyn admitted.
“After Uriel concluded that Ortis had betrayed him
somehow, he had become even more unhinged than usual. He was
roaming the halls, killing at random, and he butchered some
number of the cleaning and serving staff without mercy. These
were his own people, the people who cleaned the blood and other
fluids from his bedsheets, who emptied his chamber pot of shit
and piss. These were people who still believed in him, despite the
frequent terror they lived under, and he slaughtered them like
chattel.”
Catelyn just listened, and she heard Enaz inhale deeply to
tell the rest of the tale.
“I’ve witnessed horrors in my life that I would never have
wished on my worst enemy, and remained silent while the
Emperor did whatever he pleased, but I could no longer stand by
and watch as he took out his petty anger on those whose only
crime had been to have been alive and in his presence. So I
rounded up all of the remaining servants, and ordered them to
clean the lowest floors of the Citadel, until there was no one left for
him to kill. I defied his Will, you see. And for that, I am to die.”
Catelyn listened intently, and sensed no lie in his voice. He
was telling the story truthfully.
“I’m sorry, Enaz,” she said quietly.
“It’s not as terrible as all that. It seems that the gaolers
have forgotten all about me, down here in the bowels of the
Citadel. I’m fed every other day, and one of them brings water now
and then, but beyond that they seem content to just let me rot
away the rest of my days.”
Catelyn groaned as she thought about his words.
“It’s not as terrible as all that.”

It sounded positively awful to her. Days without food, and
no reliable water to quench her thirst. She realized that she had
been wrong earlier. The Emperor’s torture of her hadn’t stopped, it
was just taking another form. Enaz must have seen great horrors
indeed if he could call such a situation “not as terrible as all that”.

Enaz seemed to gather his strength and asked “Catelyn,
what did you do to earn your place here in the Void?”
Catelyn felt a twinge of caution about sharing her story
with someone she hardly knew, but when the cautionary voice
tried to make itself heard in her mind, she immediately dismissed
it.
What in the Void could they do to you that is worse than
what has already happened?
And so Catelyn told Enaz the whole story, every part of it,
and every detail she could remember. Enaz listened with rapt
attention, only interrupting when absolutely necessary, to ask a
question or to allow Catelyn to rest her voice when it sounded like
it would give out or when her lips grew dry and she needed to wet
them again. When she laid it all out for him, including the
extraordinary things that she had experienced over the last few
sojourns, she began to understand what had led Emperor Uriel to
conclude that she held some secret or other that he could use for
his own purpose.
She had to admit that her life had been full of enough good
fortune, in spite of the bad things that had happened to her, that
she realized some might see certain events in her life as a sign that
she had been blessed somehow. And in truth, she felt that her life
had been blessed in a number of ways, and she began to wonder if
this truly was the end of her story or if there were more chapters
yet to be written.
When she concluded her story, Enaz was breathless at
first, but finally replied after a few breaths in thought. When he
spoke, his words were unexpected.
“Catelyn, Uriel cannot be allowed to keep the weapon.”
She was confused that of all the things she had just told
him, that this was the thing he had fixated on. She agreed that
Uriel didn’t deserve such a weapon, but he had already possessed
the crook for sojourns and she didn’t understand why it was so
critical to Enaz that he not hold the sickle as well. Regardless,
given her situation at the moment, there was little that she could
do about it. Enaz grew impatient when she didn’t respond.
“Catelyn did you hear me?”
“Yes Enaz, I did, but I don’t understand. Why is that
important? I held onto the sickle for over a cycle. It’s exquisitely
made, but it’s just a cutting weapon. It’s not special or anything.”
Enaz sighed.
“Catelyn, it’s more dangerous than you can possibly
imagine. In the right hands, these weapons were incredibly
powerful. In the wrong hands, they are devastating.”
Catelyn wasn’t entirely convinced. She expressed her
doubts to Enaz.
“Enaz, are you sure this isn’t just a fantasy? I haven’t seen
the Emperor grow ten times taller or shoot fire from his eyes.
What is it exactly that you think the weapons can do?”
Enaz let out an exasperated sigh.
“Catelyn, those things you mentioned are not power.
Magic is not real, like it is in children’s stories. I’m talking about
real power here. How is it, do you think, that the Emperor has
been able to so dominate our part of the world, and bend it to his
Will? How do you think he has kept himself healthy and strong
while other men his age are dying or entering their last sojourns?”
“Are you saying that the weapons do that?”
“No, not by themselves they don’t. I don’t know about the
sickle, but I have seen what the Emperor’s crook can do. It holds
no power of its own, but it can be used to amplify the Emperor’s
own Will. It can make his voice seem...hypnotic. It takes his
natural charm and focuses it like a lens, and makes him irresistible
to many. When he holds the crook, only the strongest can say no to
him. The majority fall in line. The effect seems to even apply to
extending his own life, through sheer force of Will.”
Catelyn imagined how such a thing could be abused, and
she had seen the effects of the Emperor’s Will first hand. But
something about what Enaz was saying didn’t sit right with her.
“Are you saying that he can control other people? Get
them to do whatever he wants them to do?”
“No, he doesn’t control them. He doesn’t command their
will, he convinces them to change their minds. It’s a form of
persuasion, yes, but in the end the people make their own choices.
That is what makes the weapon so dangerous.”
Catelyn wasn’t sure she was completely understanding.
“OK, the weapon helps him convince people, but if it convinces
them to go along with the Emperor’s plans or ideas, how is that
different than if he simply took control over them?”
“Because taking control of someone robs them of their
own will. They would know, deep down, that the choice had been
taken from them. They would question. They would eventually see
the discrepancy between what they believed, and the choice they
had made.”
Catelyn grasped what Enaz was saying now.
“But if they are making the choice, even if that choice was
manipulated, then they hold all the responsibility for acting on
that choice. It frees the Emperor from being held accountable,
because the people still make their own choices.”
Catelyn and Enaz sat in the darkness and the silence then,
considering. She began to wonder if the sickle acted in the same
way, and she questioned whether her encounters with others since
she had acquired the sickle had been genuine, or if she had been
subtly manipulating those around her, in effect subtly pushing
them to choose to do what she wanted them to do?
She immediately thought of Ortis, and his bowed head
glistening with sweat as he begged her to command him. Some of
her experiences didn’t add up with what Enaz had told her of the
other artifact...Ortis had not acted as though he had a choice,
though she had to admit that he sometimes seemed like a puppet
waiting for its strings to be pulled. She wondered, was the sickle
different? Or was Ortis’ display something else entirely?
She also thought of Silena, and she hoped that the sickle
had not been what had enabled the two of them to have
established such a deep and personal friendship. But she was
forced to question this now that she knew of these artifacts and
their purpose.
“Enaz, how do you know so much about these artifacts?”
Enaz paused for a moment, and then began to relate part
of his own story.
“I was fourteen when the Emperor took me away from my
home and family. I’ve been part of the priory nearly my entire life.
The priory has in its possession certain...knowledge. From the
beginning, I was raised up to a high rank within the priory, and
I’ve spent much of that time reading what I could of the way the
world was before the Walls.”
Catelyn tried to imagine the access he had, to books from
all across Ereas, and wondered what else she might be able to
learn from this man. What other secrets from the past might he
alone know? She contemplated other questions she wished to have
answered, and sat thinking in silence for a while.
She thought of so many things that she would want to
learn about the past, and about the weapons and the Empire, but
as she formulated her questions, the grim circumstances of her
present situation pushed itself to the fore and she stopped herself.
Every time she came up with a new question, she concluded that
the answers wouldn’t matter. Only one thing kept returning to her
mind, and only one thing would matter from this point forward.
She gave voice to that one thing.
“What are they going to do to me?” she whispered.
Even though she had muttered the words under her
breath, Enaz must have heard the question, because he answered.
“The only people they put down here are those who they
wish to make a very public example of. Uriel hasn’t used these cells
in sojourns, preferring the impersonal punishments of his Purges,
but he seems to have decided to make an exception for the two of
us.”
A public execution.
Catelyn had reasoned that there was a high likelihood of
her being killed upon her capture. In fact, she was moderately
surprised she hadn’t already been killed, as it was common for
“enemies of the state” to simply be executed on the spot, but to be
killed before a crowd of onlookers, and probably in the most
horrific and dramatic way possible? That was something she didn’t
look forward to.
She thought once more about the Emperor’s final words,
right before he had further destroyed her face with the vial of
bloodfire.
“You are at the heart of something...divine. As am I. We
have a purpose here. We are part of a larger world. But I don’t
know yet which side you will fall on.”
What in the Void did he mean?
she wondered.
Catelyn had once believed in divine purpose, in the same
way that she had once believed in the Divines themselves, but
recent events had showed her that she no longer held such beliefs,
if she ever had at all. Life was cold and cruel, and the universe
uncaring. There was no more inherent purpose to her life than
there was in the stone walls under her feet.
Still, Catelyn held tightly to the thought that having a
purpose was an important part of being a person. But she realized
that this purpose had to come from within. Each person had to
find their own path, make their own destiny, just as she had
survived for six sojourns through her own talents and sheer force
of will.
But Uriel still believed in something beyond himself. The
way he spoke, Catelyn wondered if perhaps he even saw himself as
being as important as the Divines.
What could he mean about which side I would fall on?
Does he honestly believe that I would ever side with him?
When she stopped and considered just how insane the
man appeared to be, how far removed he was from any trace of
humanity, she realized that nothing was out of the question.
And she also realized that she would die rather than give
the man any piece of whatever it was he sought from her.