Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) (39 page)

Catelyn was feeling a series of wildly conflicting emotions
in the course of a single moment. Shock and exhilaration at
realizing that she could see again, quickly followed by fear and
loathing for this man Ortis, who stood silently gaping down at her
withered, naked body. Then, anxiety and despair that this man’s
presence here, in his Imperial armor, could only signal the end of
her life, and something more. Betrayal.

She looked up at him, trying to read the look on his face,
but it had been so long since she had seen another human being,
and without warning she began to cry. Tears, a sensation she had
not experienced in so long, streamed down her cheeks and she
held her hands to her face, weeping into her palms, while the brute
Ortis simply stood over her, mute and seemingly unsure what to
do. Something in the way that he looked at her set her off.

Anger took hold of her then, and all the emotions she had
bottled up since being imprisoned exploded, and she lashed out at
him.

“What are you waiting for? Drag me out to your precious
Emperor, and end this farce!”
Ortis’ face screwed up in anger of his own, and he simply
reached out and grabbed her by the wrist. His grip was firm, but
not harsh, which surprised her.
“Quiet!” he commanded. “I’m here to get you out, not
bring you to Uriel.”
He led her out into the hallway, stunned at first, and then
the realization that she was unclothed in front of the man hit her,
and she covered herself as best she could with her other hand.
Ortis noticed her hesitation, and stopped pulling on her.
“Wait here,” he said, more kindly than she thought
possible of him.
Ortis walked away, hanging the lantern he had been
carrying on a peg on the wall, and entered a nearby room, and she
could hear rummaging from inside. She briefly considered
running, getting as far away from this man as possible, but the
weakness in her legs put an end to any such plans.
Catelyn blinked, trying to clear away some of the fuzziness
she was still seeing in her eyes. She wasn’t surprised that her eyes
were full of crud, and she was still in utter shock that she could see
at all. Her elation was hard to ignore.
Ortis returned with dark prison garb clutched in one of his
big hands, and he held them out to her, and then turned away.
“Be quick, we’re taking an enormous risk being here.”
Catelyn almost balked and challenged him to prove that
she could trust a thing he said, but realized that she really didn’t
have much choice. She could barely walk, much less put up a
fight...she was operating purely on the excitement of her returned
sight and of being out of the cell where she had become convinced
she would have surely died. She donned the clothing as quickly as
she was able, which was much too big for her, especially after the
additional weight she’d lost being a guest of the Emperor.
When she was dressed in the pants and shirt, she
whispered this fact to Ortis, and he turned around, then pointed at
her head.
“What about your hair?”
Catelyn grabbed a handful of it with her hand, some of
which came away at the slightest touch, and said “What are they
going to do, kill me?”
Ortis smiled grimly, and Catelyn was shocked to see such
an expression on the face of a man like Ortis. Standing in the
hallway, she was able to study his face for the first time. He was
surprisingly older than she would have guessed from the brief
sense of him she’d had before with only her bubble. Despite that,
he was in quite good shape for a man of his age.
Ortis turned and led her toward a doorway which fed into
the stairwell from which he’d come. He was on the threshold and
about to ascend, when she remembered.
“Enaz!” she gasped, and ran back towards the cells.
Being out of the cell seemed to be doing wonders for her
stamina, as she did not collapse for the effort of moving. It was still
quite strange to be able to see where she was going, though. She
knew exactly which direction her had been in from her cell, and
she found his easily enough. She pounded on the metal door, but
he did not respond. “Enaz,” she hissed into the slit at the top of the
door.
Ortis had returned to stand beside her, a look of
annoyance on his face. Seeing people’s expressions again was
going to take some getting used to.
“Open it,” she ordered.
Ortis stonewalled, mutely crossing his arms. Catelyn
slugged his meaty upper arm with her fist, but it was like hitting a
sandbag. Still, he didn’t budge. She was rather surprised that he
hadn’t simply obeyed her. The last time they’d been this close, he
had knelt before her, begging to be commanded. Clearly something
had changed, and she realized she would need to take a different
approach with him now.
“Please,” she tried.
Ortis scowled, then sighed and uncrossed his arms, and
proceeded to open the metal door to Enaz’ cell.
As soon as the door cracked open, she could tell that it was
not going to end the way she’d hoped, but had instead ended the
way she’d feared. Ortis walked to the lantern on the wall, grabbed
it off of its peg and handed it to her. She had to blink to adjust to
so much brightness after half her life living in complete blackness,
but she extended the lantern into the small cell, and with her other
hand she covered her mouth to stifle the sob that burbled up from
inside her.
On the floor of the cell, huddled against the wall, lay what
remained of a man. He was stripped naked of course, and covered
in wounds, many of which appeared to have been self-inflicted. His
hands were covered in blood, and she could see where he had
carved gouges into his body with his long, sharp nails. His glassy
eyes stared through her and into the Void, and she could smell that
he had been dead for some time, maybe even a day.
She couldn’t recall when she had last heard him talk to her
from his cell, and truthfully she wasn’t even sure that their last
conversation had even been real. She considered that she might
have hallucinated that strange conversation about his journey
through Chaser’s Pass and of looking down upon the walls of
Freehold.
But then Catelyn noticed something that made her realize
that their conversation had been real, and that it had likely been
his last moment. Written on the wall, in his own blood, standing
out against the bland stone, was a single word:
Free.
She stifled another sob, and turned away. Ortis was there,
his massive frame blocking the hallway, and she shoved past him,
but as she did she caught the glimmer of tears trailing down his
own cheeks. She didn’t stop to consider the man’s reaction, but it
only amplified the fact that this man was an absolute mystery to
her.
He followed along behind, and the two of them made their
way into the stairwell, and up the stairs, Catelyn walking ahead but
realizing that she had no idea where she was going. She stopped to
let Ortis pass her on the stairs, and as he brushed past, she took
the time to look closer at him.
He was every bit of him a warrior. The way he carried
himself, with the confident swagger of a man who knew precisely
how to place his weight for balance and strength told her that this
man was more deadly than his age would let on. His bald head sat
atop a massive, thick neck, and his upper body was still heavily
muscled and imposing, even in the plate mail.
She wondered exactly what Ortis’ plan for getting her out
of the Citadel was. If it was true that Ortis had at one time been the
most highly trusted of Uriel’s men, then he certainly knew a few
tricks that could help them, but she had to guess that the Emperor
would anticipate such moves on the part of his former commander
as well. She nearly stopped to ask him what he had planned, when
she heard a familiar voice and felt her heart nearly jump out of her
chest.
“Ortis. Here!” Silena hissed from the top of the stairwell.
Catelyn hissed up the stairs herself “Silena! Is that you?!”
Ortis turned to glare at her, then glared up the stairwell to
where Silena was, and just shook his head at the two women and
the noise they were making, but Catelyn didn’t care. She bounded
up the stairs impatiently behind Ortis, and then she was there.
Catelyn had pictured Silena in her mind many times since
their meeting cycles ago, but she was even more beautiful a sight
than she could have hoped for. Silena was beaming at her, and
then her mouth fell open when she laid eyes on Catelyn’s face and
her newly repaired skin and eyes, but Catelyn gave her no chance
to say a word because she ran straight at her and engulfed her in
the tightest hug. Tears of joy fell from Catelyn’s eyes, as the two
women embraced.
Silena stammered “H-h-how?”
“I don’t know,” Catelyn admitted, although that wasn’t
entirely true. She hadn’t had much time to process it all yet, but
she figured that the return of her eyes must have had something to
do with the Emperor giving her that second dose of bloodfire, even
though that didn’t make sense. The bloodfire had burned just as
badly as the first time she had been exposed to it, so she was at a
loss to explain how it had healed the damage that had been done to
her before. Until she knew more, she decided to simply emphasize
her ignorance. The process was a mystery to her, so she was not
entirely untruthful in saying that she didn’t know.
“What on Ereas are you doing here, Silena?” Catelyn
asked.
“Rescuing you, foolish child!” she chided, but playfully.
Catelyn pulled back from the embrace and looked into Silena’s
eyes, and saw the courage there.
Catelyn’s heart filled up with love for this woman, this
truest of friends, who was now risking her own life and future to
help her get out. Of all the things that had happened to her this
past sojourn, Catelyn knew with certainty that the best part of it
had been meeting Silena. She had become like a second mother,
and Catelyn cherished the woman for her compassion and for this
selfless gesture.
“Thank you, Silena,” Catelyn said, knowing that those
words couldn’t even come close to expressing the depth of her
feelings.
Ortis cleared his throat and the two women turned their
attention on him.
Silena looked at him with venom, and Catelyn could now
see the hatred that before she had only been able to sense with her
bubble. The look that she gave to the man sent shivers through
Catelyn.
“Get us out of here, butcher,” she murmured quietly.
Ortis didn’t flinch at the name, or the accusation it
represented. Instead he simply nodded and proceeded to lead
them away from the stairs and through the Citadel stockade, into a
room where it appeared that the Imperial army of old had once
processed prisoners. Like the holding cells below, it hadn’t seen
much use in many sojourns, but there were still a handful of
Imperial soldiers on patrols through the facility, and Ortis easily
helped them to circumvent those obstacles by skirting around their
patrol route.
Catelyn had so many questions for them both, the first
being how they had put aside their differences enough to be
working together to get her out and second was how in the Void
they had managed to get inside the Citadel undetected. But despite
her questions, Catelyn was more distracted and delighted by the
fact that she could see again, and nothing else seemed more
important right at this moment than simply taking in the world,
even though all she was seeing were some empty rooms and
corridors and traces of the Empire she loathed.
She took in everything she could, seizing upon every detail
and etching it indelibly into her mind. She held onto these new
sights as though the Emperor himself were going to step out from
behind one of these empty corridors and take her sight away as
easily as he had seemingly returned it to her. She knew such
thoughts might seem ludicrous, but so had the notion been of her
ever seeing again with her own two eyes.
Ortis led them quietly through the abandoned corridors,
and Catelyn wondered why there were so few Imperials guarding
this area, but looking around she could tell that what Enaz had
said had been correct. They really hadn’t held a public execution in
some time, and the cells below had been empty save for the two of
them, so it appeared that as a result, this area no longer served a
purpose.
She also realized that if anyone knew about how to get
through the Imperial’s security patrols, it would be Ortis. He
would ostensibly know every detail, unless Uriel had decided to
change them, a fact she would have to ask Ortis about the next
chance that she got.
For now, she followed along in silence, watching all
around her, and watching her two rescuers. They certainly made
for an odd couple of allies, one a dear friend, the other a former
enemy. But despite her misgivings about Ortis, she was so thankful
to both of them. Her feelings toward him had become much more
complicated by his present actions, but she didn’t stop to dwell on
them just yet.
Ortis led them into a small room, with windows through
which she could see the outside world. She rushed to the window,
but Ortis pulled her back, and she glared at him. He wore an
expression of amusement, which angered her, but he simply
pointed to the outside.
“Catelyn, getting you out of that cell was the easy part.
Now, I have to figure out how to get you past this.” And he led her
slowly to the window at an oblique angle, and let her look outside.
The sky was still dark, with the barest hint of light on the
horizon, and she could tell that it was just before sunrise, but Ortis
hadn’t tried to show her how dark it was. When she saw what he
wanted to show her, her heart sank. Outside the room they now
occupied, just paces away, lay an open courtyard presumably
where the Emperor’s father and grandfather had held their public
executions.
There were the beginnings of a stage being built in the
center of the courtyard, and everywhere she looked, Imperial
soldiers and workers milled about in the pre-dawn gloom, toiling
away to construct the center stage or clearing the courtyard of
debris or standing at campfires cooking their breakfast. She could
see tents propped up and interspersed throughout the courtyard,
with other men likely sleeping inside.
It resembled nothing less than one of the work camps she
remembered seeing as a young girl when the Imperials had
decided to tear down one of the older buildings in her family’s
block.
“So, was this your great escape plan, Ortis?” Catelyn
asked, sighing heavily. “Maybe you should take me back to my
cell.”
He flashed her an annoyed look, but it was Silena who
responded.
“Trust me Catelyn, it was either this or walking right into
the heart of the Citadel.”
Catelyn felt bad about the comment as soon as she had
said it, but she also knew that she was still feeling the effects of
having nearly been starved to death. She might be running on
instinct right now, but she knew from experience that that
wouldn’t last, and she didn’t know how much longer she would be
able to stay on her feet.
“Sorry,” she said. “What is the plan, if you don’t mind?”
“Ortis thinks we can just walk right through them, since
they’re going to be busy with their own duties,” Silena said, but
Catelyn could hear the doubt in her friend’s voice, and now she
could also pair that with what her eyes were telling her. She didn’t
think much of this plan, and in part Silena’s own eyes had given it
away when she looked at Catelyn.