“No!” she said, shocked and caught off guard. “Stop!”
It had broad, flexible blades and sharp edges, and it was cold… so cold. It tightened around her, constricting her, stifling her breath. And its terrible cold trapped her fire, contained her heat, smothered her rage… As she struggled for air and shivered with cold, the weapon robbed her of consciousness.
But just before everything went black, she thought she heard him say, “I’m sorry.”
When Chandra opened her eyes, she found herself staring into the beady eyes of a black snake. Its tongue flicked out at her. She flinched and tried to move back, but couldn’t. Her back was flat against a wall, her limbs uncomfortably chained in a spread-eagle position. Bound by her wrists and ankles, her movement was almost totally restricted.
As the snake’s big face moved even closer, Chandra turned her head and made a stifled sound of protest. She really didn’t like snakes.
“Ah.” Someone spoke in a low, breathy voice. “It’sss awake.”
She gaped at the snake. “Excuse me?” Her voice was a dry croak.
But the snake said nothing more for the moment.
Chandra blinked and tried to focus her vision. That was when she realized the “snake” was standing upright on a set of legs and wearing a black robe with a hood.
“Oh.” She groaned as the realization penetrated her confusion. “You must be one of the Enervants I’ve heard so much about?”
“Yesss.”
Her mistake was understandable. It was standing so close to her that its head almost entirely filled her field of vision. And from the neck up, this thing looked exactly like a snake. A big one.
She looked down and saw that it had hands; hands that were thin, almost delicate, and scaly black with long wrinkled fingernails. Strangely a snake with hands made sense to Chandra at this point. Actual snakes were pretty limited in their activities, after all; and none, so far as she knew, spoke or practiced magic.
Chandra wasn’t sure what to make of these creatures, but she was sure they wouldn’t like the inferno she was going to bring. But as she struggled against her bonds, she realized that she could barely move. And it wasn’t because the chains were that tight. She felt absolutely exhausted, as if she hadn’t eaten or slept for days.
Blinking a few times to clear her foggy vision, she looked at her surroundings. She was clearly being held in a dungeon. Stone walls, floor, and ceiling. No windows. No torches, either. No candles, no fire, no flames of any kind.
The only illumination in the room came from slimy-looking phosphorescent things clinging to the walls here and there. Chandra guessed that the snakelike sorcerers had brought them here from whatever swamp they called home.
With such faint light and no windows, the room was dark, stuffy, and dank. And it stank.
The odor of damp decay, she suspected, was coming from her companions. There were seven Enervants in the room with her. One was still peering into her face; its tongue flicked in and out every few moments, as if testing Chandra’s scent. The other six, who all looked just like the first one, were gliding silently around the room in a figure eight. Their bodies were evenly spaced as they followed the pattern at a steady pace. Their paths steadily intersected without ever bumping into each other or pausing in their flow.
Chandra found it eerie. “What are they doing?”
She coughed a little as she spoke. Her throat was dry and she was dying of thirst. But she’d be damned if she’d ask for anything.
To her surprise, her captor answered her. “Gathering ssstrength.”
“Oh. Can’t they do that elsewhere?”
The Enervant didn’t answer. It just kept staring at her.
She tried another question. “Where am I? The Prelate’s dungeon?”
The snake nodded, its head moving on its muscular neck in a slow, sinewy motion.
She tried to think of what else she wanted to ask, but she was so tired. It was hard to pull her thoughts together or make the effort to speak.
Chandra tried to remember what had happened to put her in this position.
She remembered the man, Gideon, and his weapon. She had never seen anything like it, but she was reasonably certain that he had used some form white-mana based magic to subdue her. Even in her weakened state, the weapon alone could not have pulled her into unconsciousness like that.
As if the Order back on Regatha weren’t burden enough, she was in a dungeon on Kephalai because of some interfering heiromancer? But why would he be in league with these creatures? It didn’t seem right.
Chandra remembered the feel of those coldly glowing white blades wrapping around her, constricting her, and trapping the flow of her fire. Imprisoning her power within her, so that she couldn’t fight or defend herself. Or even breathe…
It surprised her that this Gideon wielded magic. She hadn’t taken him for a mage. He looked like a warrior to her. Or maybe a tracker of some kind; one with special skills for an unusual quarry.
Chandra frowned, puzzled.
In that case, where was he now? Had he given her over, or had he abandoned his prey to superior forces?
Admittedly, Chandra hadn’t been at her best just then, but Gideon’s strength was impressive. Given that he was powerful, as well as quick with his hands, surely he didn’t have to back down in the face of a few soldiers?
Perhaps he had decided he couldn’t take on the soldiers and the gargoyles at the same time.
As Chandra watched the Enervants silently gliding through their pattern over and over in the dark dungeon, she realized that if Gideon had been ordered to kill her, then letting the Prelate’s men have her might accomplish his goal.
But she wasn’t sure he would leave such a thing to chance.
Chandra tugged against her chains, testing their strength as well as her own, and started thinking about how to get out of there.
She reached out with her senses, hoping to tap into the flow of mana. Even though she could feel its presence, she was having trouble concentrating enough to establish a solid bond.
What was wrong with her?
The Enervant who was guarding her suddenly hissed and turned its head away from her, which was something of a relief. She didn’t enjoy being the object of its unwavering, beady-eyed stare. Its attention was focused on the narrow metal door across the room. Chandra looked that way, too, wondering what had drawn its interest.
A moment later, the hinges whined a little as the door opened.
“Oh, goody,” Chandra said. “Visitors.”
Two of the Prelate’s soldiers entered, accompanied by another who she assumed was a telepath. Based on her physical appearance, Chandra assumed the woman belonged to the same order as the two mages who had died in the Sanctum of Stars earlier that day. Or had it been the day before? Come to think of it, Chandra had no idea how long she had been chained unconscious in this room, although the stiffness in her limbs suggested it had been a while.
The Enervants didn’t look up at the newcomers, didn’t even pause in their perambulations. They just kept moving back and forth silently, tracing their figure eight on the floor, over and over and over.
“Just watching them makes me tired,” Chandra said as the mage, moving around the snake-headed wizards, approached her.
“No,” said the woman. “It is not the watching. It is what you are watching.”
“That is not a very encouraging start to this conversation,” Chandra muttered.
“We are not here to encourage. Quite the opposite, really.”
Chandra eyed her.
“They are Enervants.” The mage nodded toward the six individuals moving steadily in their pattern. “This is their work.”
“Yes, I’ve been told. They’re gathering sssstrength,” said Chandra imitating her captor. “I don’t see why they have to gather it here, though.”