This small, unlit dungeon deep in the bowels of the bluff left her alone in darkness with her dark thoughts. The door was sturdy wood half a foot thick, mounted to the jamb by three iron hinges riveted with long metal pins that had rusted in place. A heavy deadbolt and an imposing wooden crossbar held the door shut.
Sovrena Thora knew these dungeons, because over the centuries she had dispatched complaining nobles and restless citizens down here. The incarceration had been for their punishment, sometimes for their own good, always for the good of Ildakar. And now she was trapped inside, just like one of them.
Thora was the most powerful sorceress the city had ever produced. Her rule had endured for more than fifteen centuries. With her gift, she should have been able to blast away the door or shatter the stone walls, but wizards had warded these cells long ago. The wooden door and the surrounding stones were chiseled with protective runes that nullified any magical attacks she might unleash, just like the symbols branded onto the combat animals or the morazeth.
She thought briefly of faithful Adessa and knew the morazeth leader would find and kill the despised Maxim, as ordered. Thora wished she could witness the execution herself, because her hatred for her husband went beyond even her anger at falling from grace and becoming a prisoner now. Thora resolved to be returned to her rightful place in Ildakar by the time Adessa brought back Maxim’s head.
Alone in the dark cell, she hardened her fist, felt her way across the blackness until she reached the wall where only the vaguest gray blur penetrated the small, barred window in the door. Even the tunnels were unlit, since no one would waste wood or transference magic on burning torches down here. The darkness and gloom were part of Thora’s punishment, but she refused to consider it a punishment. The darkness was her friend now, a place where she could contemplate her situation and make the necessary plans.
She pressed her palm against the cold, smooth stone. She felt the slime of algae thriving in the shadows, but the sensations were muted, her nerves dulled by the heaviness in her flesh. Her once-sensitive fingers were clumsy as she traced the surface, so she squeezed her hands into hard fists and pounded on the stone block just like the half-petrified soldiers of General Utros continually hammered the city’s outer walls.
With the muffled thud of the impact, she felt only a distant echo of pain. Curious, she struck with her other hand, harder, but despite her pounding, the solid blocks held fast, her dungeon secure. With one last slam of her knuckles, she stepped back. If she’d been entirely human, she would have battered her hands bloody, but she just felt a dull throbbing, with no real damage done to her hands or to the wall.
She needed to get out of here. Ildakar would fall without her.
Maxim was responsible for this current turmoil, but she blamed the treacherous duma members who had overthrown her, convicted her, cast the stone spell, especially the meddling sorceress Nicci, who had been the catalyst for so much disruption. Nicci and her impotent wizard companion had come to Ildakar seeking help, claiming to be nothing more than travelers with a message from the D’Haran Empire, but Thora had suspected them from the beginning. Nicci really wanted to become the next sovrena, to take Ildakar for her own.
Now the outside sorceress had the city, and Thora was locked in a dungeon while Nicci and the others faced an invincible army from the past. Thora knew that parts of Ildakar remained loyal to her. In the darkness, she envisioned the glorious buildings, terraced gardens, orchards and olive groves that she herself had built. Such a marvelous, perfect city.
A flash of anger heated her face. By the Keeper, how she wanted Nicci and the other traitors to fail and die horribly! Thora pounded uselessly on the stone wall again.
She worked her way around the cell and encountered a low stone bench whose front corner had broken away. The jagged edges had been smoothed by the worrying, sweaty, even bloody fingers of other desperate prisoners over the centuries.
The sovrena had a narrow waist, delicate features, and thin, graceful arms. She never considered herself weak, but she did not rely on physical combat when she fought an enemy. Even though her body felt heavy and dull with lingering stone, she did feel the gift still burning in her heart. She held out her hand and summoned magic, lighting a small flame, which winked into existence like a bobbing candle in her open palm.
The cheery flame was a bright glimmer of hope, casting a yellow glow around the walls. Now that she could see the details of her confined prison, she noted the spell runes around the doorway. Even though she knew it was useless, she summoned a larger blast of fire and hurled it against the wall, but the flames merely splattered and scorched the slime into a foul-smelling stain. Her fire curled around and ricocheted from one protected wall to another. Thora flinched as the flames lashed back and struck her, too, but her hardened skin protected her before the fire flickered away into a dull glow.
In wonder, Thora rubbed her arms where the flames had touched her. She felt a tingle, saw a scorch mark on her gray-white skin, but she rubbed it away. There was no damage to herself, nor to the cell. It was no use. She couldn’t get out, no matter how badly the people of Ildakar needed her to save them.
She spent the next hour hating Maxim for what he had done, for his plan to turn the slaves against the very city that nurtured them and asked only their devotion in return. How those weak people had whined at the injustice, at the hard work they had to perform, without seeing that she herself suffered more for Ildakar than any of them did! No one was more aware of the painful cost of their prosperity than Thora was. The slaves had sore muscles, perhaps, and some even lost their lives, but what was the cost of a few lives to build a civilization that endured for millennia? She despised those who refused to make the sacrifice for the greater good of Ildakar. She had certainly given everything.
Then Maxim had uprooted the underpinnings of her beautiful society. She’d loved him long ago, and now she couldn’t understand how she had been such a fool. Was she just young and naive, driven by the heat of romance and lust? Over centuries of sharing his bed, then sharing the beds of many others, Thora had learned that lust could be easily satisfied without surrendering her heart, or even common sense. She had wasted the best years of her youth on Maxim, letting him cheat on her, learning of it, forgiving him. She had turned her heart to stone long before any petrification spell, realizing how worthless he was. But the wizard commander was too powerful to be discarded, and she had kept him as her husband, in name only, a figurehead.
Now, Thora realized she might have overestimated his power. She had been in awe of his great petrification spell, just as she had been instrumental in the great bloodworking that formed the shroud of eternity. She could do it all herself, though. She didn’t need him.
It was clear that Maxim’s magic must be waning if the stone army had awakened. No wonder he had fled. But perhaps Thora’s gift was also fading. The shroud of eternity had dissipated over the years before they had brought it down entirely. She had been willing to work the final blood magic to restore the shroud permanently, but would it truly have endured?
The underpinnings of magic had changed, the fundamental rules of the world altered in ways she didn’t understand. Nicci had offered an explanation, although Thora didn’t entirely believe her about what Richard Rahl had done. But, Utros and his army had indeed awakened, and Thora herself had revived from the petrification spell. Yes, much was changing, and she had to use that to her advantage.