‘And thus we come to the place where all my best deductions fall apart: I just can’t get past that. But I am confident there are plenty of magical possibilities to defeat Nerak, and I bet you a case of beer the place to start is with Steven’s staff. There’s something he just doesn’t understand, and it will be his weakness; I know it.’
‘“Nerak’s weakness lies elsewhere”,’ Gilmour quoted.
‘Could that be the place?’
‘I don’t know, but you give me hope, and gods know I need plenty of that these days.’ His knees creaked as he stood up from the fire and swallowed the rest of his wine in one gulp.
Two days later, rested and well provisioned, they left Traver’s Notch with Brand’s company.
BOOK IV
THE PRISON WING
Hannah woke to the sound of the underground pistons, popping and churning, popping and churning. She didn’t know if that’s what they actually were; she imagined furnaces boiling water to build steam that spun cranks, pushed pistons and blew warm air up through the palace vents, or perhaps heated air that expanded inside great balloons then exhaled through ducts servicing the keep above. All her imagined machines were gangly-limbed monsters that sputtered and farted great belches of humid air up through the palace. Were an attack ever to come on the ancient castle, all Prince Malagon had to do was loose his heating system on the enemy lines.
As she lay there on the floor, she felt the heat begin seeping into her cell until she was sweating freely; later, when the massive creature was chained back in its place, the heat would wane and she would wrap herself in the cloak and await the onset of another frigid night.
She had seen no light – except for guards passing who carried torches – since the soldiers wrestled her, kicking and scratching, into her cell. She had no real idea whether it was day or night; she charted time by the heat, or lack of it; soon after the furnace started up, the door would open just enough for one of the guards to slip a bowl of brown mush inside. She counted that as morning.
At first, she had refused to eat it, her stomach in knots as anger and fear warred for control, until Hannah’s indignant stand – I’m an American, damnit – gave way to terror and she curled up in the corner and cried herself to sleep.
After a few days, the hunger pangs grew too painful to ignore and Hannah forced herself to eat the tasteless gloop; now its arrival represented the highlight of her day. She always thanked the soldier, but so far no one had said a word to her.
She tried to mark the days, but was it fifteen now, or twenty? She couldn’t find anything sharp enough to mark the walls of her cell, giving up after tearing two fingernails to the quick. Besides, there was only ever light for the few moments it took to shove her gloop through the door, so scratching lines in the rock seemed pointless.
Instead, she named the days: her father was fanatical about baseball, and obsessed with the 1975-76 Cincinnati Reds; he claimed it was the greatest baseball team ever assembled on one field. Now Hannah tallied her stay in the Malakasian prison: ‘Gullett, because you have to start with Gullett, Bench, Perez, Morgan, Rose, Concepcion, Foster, Geronimo, Griffey, Senior not Junior, although the kid can get it done when he needs to; then, Plummer, Armbrister, a lucky call there in game three, Eddie; and Rawlins Jackson Eastwick, the Third. That’s just a name you have to say out loud. Okay, so what’s that, twelve days, plus a few before I started the count, so that’s – fifteen days? Right, fifteen. Tomorrow, we’ll go back to the utility infielders.’
When she ran out of Cincinnati Reds, she moved on to the New York Yankee squad from the ’76 World Series, but it was hard to remember all the players. Then she tried making up song lyrics, which amused her for a day or two. It seemed important for her to occupy her mind, because otherwise she’d start thinking of her arrival in Welstar Palace…
They had been bound and gagged, and dragged from the Welstar docks, through the encampment to the palace, and Hannah had her first up-close encounter with Seron, the creatures she had seen in the distance outside the forest of ghosts. Nothing her friends had said had prepared her for these huge monsters, staring vacuously, apparently oblivious to the open sores, boils and pox marks that covered their bodies. Even now the memory of the stench made Hannah retch: the stink of death and decaying, foetid flesh… part of her hoped that she would die there, rather than having to cross that field of pestilence again. What kind of soldier stood staring without a care while his flesh rotted from his body? These people – if they were people – would be the grimmest fighting force ever assembled – what good would it do to shoot one of them with an arrow? Or even with a rifle?
Hannah blinked away the tears and started again. ‘Gullett, Bench, Perez, Morgan, what a strange swing you had, Joe; Rose, Concepcion…’
One morning Hannah missed a meal. She had waited all night for her brown gloop; when it arrived, she forgot it. The following morning a soldier picked up the untouched trencher and swapped it for a fresh serving of mush. Hannah started to shake: things were getting worse. She filled her mind with batting averages, prices of antiques stacked in her grandfather’s store, the names of all the peaks she had climbed in Colorado, the keys and key signatures of all twelve tones in the chromatic scale. She decided she must be on the threshold of madness because one night, battling the particularly insidious chill, she managed to recall a quadratic formula she had no memory of ever learning, let alone what it was supposed to do.
For water, Hannah had a trickle running down the back wall. She awakened each day apparently free of dysentery, so she drank as much as she could, reminding herself, especially during the blazingly hot days, to stay hydrated. At night, the trickle sang as it ran down the wall and dripped down between the flagstones. When she couldn’t sleep, she made up songs to the rhythm of the rill.
The key of C, C, C.
It has no sharps.
The key of C, C, C.
It’s the hairy smelly key of C.
The key of G, G, G.
It has F sharp.
The key of G, G, G.
It’s the filthy rotten key of G.
The key of D, D, D.
It has F and C sharp.
The key of D, D, D.
It’s the tired wrinkled key of -.
A loud click emanated from somewhere along the hallway outside her cell; Hannah quieted, listening intently, and heard a second click and footsteps approaching along the hall. She peered through the cracks between the wooden door, expecting to see the flicker of torchlight, but the hall remained dark. She whispered more nonsense under her breath.
The key of F sharp, F sharp, F sharp.
It has F, C, G, D, A and E sharp.
The key of F sharp, F sharp, F sharp.
It’s the crippled beggar key of F#.
The key of C sharp -
The footsteps paused, then came towards her cell.
‘Hannah?’
‘Steven?’ She was embarrassed at the hoarse rattle in her throat. ‘Steven, is that you?’
‘Where are you?’
Adrenalin flooded through her and she stood and stumbled across the chamber, shouting, ‘I’m in here, Steven. I’m in this one, right down here.’ She banged her fist against the door, hearing the echo resonate along the cavernous hallway. He had to hear her; she was making enough noise to wake the dead.
‘Hannah?’ the voice called back, ‘where are you?’
Something slimy slithered across her foot. She screamed, twisting away so violently she felt something in her back snap, a tendon or a ligament stretched too far. She ignored the throbbing pain as she huddled in her corner and screamed, ‘Steven! Can you hear me, Steven? I’m in here, Steven! Please let me out! Steven, please!’