The Prisoner (The Dark Elf of Syron, #1) Read online

  “Anguish…” the Prisoner repeated. “Neither you nor him know what anguish is. His understandable worry for you is but a fleeting discomfort. It will soon go away as he sees that I meant what I said and you’re not in any danger when you come here. He won’t even remember it.”

  “With respect, I doubt it, sir,” Lenora said. “And it isn’t just me that he’s worried about.”

  He waved it off. “Let us leave this subject. Human worries are no concern of mine. What have you brought me?”

  “Roasted pheasant with fried potatoes and vegetables and a bottle of red wine.”

  Lenora placed everything on the desk, laid out the silverware and a napkin. She was not looking at the Prisoner, but she knew he was studying her.

  “Here you go, sir. Everything’s ready.”

  “Thank you.” He rose from his armchair and moved to the chair behind the desk. “Please have a seat,” he said, gesturing at the armchair. “I would like you to read or speak to me as I eat.”

  “As you wish, sir.” Lenora sat down. “Which would you prefer?”

  “Do you have a preference?”

  She hesitated. Talking would give her an opportunity to satisfy her curiosity, but she did not know whether she was allowed to ask questions.

  “I think I would rather read. I’m afraid my conversation would bore you.”

  “You don’t come across as a silly girl, so I don’t think it would, but we’ll do what you wish today. Perhaps we will speak tomorrow.” He picked up a book and handed it to her. “Here. Please read this, from page twenty.”

  Lenora opened the book on the requested page and started reading. It was a legend about winged horses. She wasn’t familiar with it and found it interesting, although a bit childish. Perhaps it was just an old text; sometimes those tended to sound a little naïve.

  The story was only three pages long. Lenora finished reading it, looked up from the book and gasped: the Prisoner’s eyes fixed on her were dark purple, with bright yellow pupils. Words froze on her lips.

  “What is it?” he asked in a distracted manner, as if coming out of reverie.

  “Your eyes, sir…”

  “Oh.” He blinked several times; the intensity of the colors began to fade. “Did your father not warn you?”

  “He did, but… I’m sorry, I just wasn’t prepared.”

  “I did not mean to frighten you. This is something I can’t always control.”

  Lenora couldn’t help wondering at how polite he was, even as her heart continued to pound. Was he always like that? Or just with her, for some devious reason?

  “Would you like me to read the next story?” she asked.

  “No. Thank you. You may go now.”

  She was surprised to be dismissed so soon, but happy to leave. Those eyes were making her skin crawl.

  Her father waited behind the door, she could tell he barely kept himself from leaping to her to make sure she was all right. Lenora nodded and walked past the guards to the stairs, keeping her hooded head low. The warden followed.

  “Everything’s fine,” she whispered as soon as they were out of the soldiers’ earshot. “He has kept his word. I just served the food and then read to him, that’s all.”

  ***

  As Lenora’s rattled nerves settled down, which happened quickly enough, curiosity took over. She kept thinking about the Prisoner. She’d wondered about him before, but her father’s unrelenting refusal to reveal anything had eventually put an end to her questions. Now that she had seen him, the questions stirred again. Who was he? Was he really so strong that no prison could hold him? If so, why was he staying here at the Dormigan?

  Asking her father would be of no use, he’d only get all alarmed again, perhaps even think that the Prisoner had used his powers on her to enthrall her.

  If he lets me speak today, I’ll ask him, she decided. There’s no harm in that. If he doesn’t want to answer, I’ll apologize, and that will be the end of it.

  But when she brought the Prisoner’s lunch, she found him in quite a different mood.

  “Leave it on the desk and go,” he said, not even lifting his head from the book. “Do not bring dinner today. Do not come until I tell your father to send you again.”

  Lenora stood rooted to the spot, fear washing over her. Did she do something wrong? Did she ruin everything?

  “Have I displeased you, sir?”

  “No.”

  She couldn’t just leave.

  “I must have done something to upset you. If so, I am sorry. It wasn’t intentional.”

  “It’s no fault of yours. Please go away.”

  Shaken, Lenora returned home. She quickly pulled herself together at the sight of her mother sitting on the porch, reclining in her special armchair with adjustable back. Thin and pale, her still beautiful eyes so large on her wasted face, she looked even more frail than yesterday, it appeared. She was fading away, her poor mom, fading away fast.

  But, weak as she was, Olivia Torren was impossible to trick.

  “What’s wrong, my dear?” she asked.

  “Oh, nothing, I’m just a little tired. Who helped you come outside? Selina?”

  “Selina, yes. But don’t try to change the subject. It’s not like you to be ‘a little tired.’ Tell me what happened.”

  Lenora knew she couldn’t talk her way out of it. Her mother was aware that they tried to spare her upsetting news, and she hated it. She said it made her feel like she was no longer a part of the family. So once she’d catch on to the fact that something was being kept from her, whoever attempted it had better confess.

  Confessing about the Prisoner, though, was not easy. Mother did not even know that he existed; they never spoke of him in her presence. Lenora sat down on the porch steps and did her best to make it sound as harmless as possible. She mentioned nothing of the Prisoner’s special accommodations, strange appearance, or hidden power. She just said he was a well-mannered, educated man, possibly a nobleman.

  Olivia listened, her head resting on the pillow, eyes looking somewhere far, far away.

  “But it’s obvious, dear. You tell me he lost a daughter; he wanted to see her in you. I bet the story he’d asked you to read was her favorite story. Whether he found you too different from his girl or somewhat like her, it pained him. It made him feel his loss all the more. So he sent you away. He might never want to see you again.”

  Lenora blinked, taking it in. Indeed, now it seemed very obvious.

  “You are so wise, Mom,” she whispered, kissing her mother’s hand. “I’m sure it’s exactly as you say.”

  However, her mother was mistaken about the last part. The Prisoner called for Lenora on the next day.

  “Sorry for the yesterday’s outburst,” he said when she entered the cell. “I was in a bad mood. Monsters are prone to that.”

  He was sitting in the armchair again, the raven perched on his shoulder.

  Lenora wasn’t quite sure how to interpret his comment, or how to respond.

  “Why do you call yourself a monster, sir?” she asked, taking the food out of the basket.

  “Because I am. Do you have reasons to disagree?”

  “I know next to nothing about you, sir. I can’t say.”

  “What do you know?”

  “Well…”

  Lenora tried to buy a bit of time, arranging the plates, not looking at the Prisoner yet once again feeling his intense gaze on herself. She knew she had to tread very carefully here. There was no telling what could insult him.

  “You’re said to be very dangerous, but no one ever explained to me why, or what you did to end up here in the Dormigan. I’ve heard people call you a dark elf, but my father doesn’t seem to think so.”

  “Your father is a smart man,” the Prisoner said. “There’s no such thing. Elves do not willingly choose the Darkness. They might be deceived, forced, or beguiled to do something that will play into the Darkness’ hands, but they won’t take its side.”

  “Is that w
hat happened to you, sir, if I may ask? Were you deceived?”

  He remained silent for a long time; Lenora did not dare to look up or to repeat the question.

  “Why do you ask? Curiosity or perhaps an assignment?”

  “An assignment?...” She ventured a glance at him and instantly regretted it. The Prisoner’s eyes were black, pupils red. Lenora did her best to hold herself together. “No, sir. No one told me to pry things out of you, I assure you. Neither my father nor anybody else. No one even knows I come here, only him.”

  The terrifying eyes scrutinized her for what felt like no less than ten minutes.

  “You are not lying,” he said at last. “Very well. I will tell you. Are you done with the meal?”

  “Yes, sir. Your lunch is ready. Pancakes, omelet, sausage, and milk.”

  “Thank you. Please have a seat.”

  Lenora lowered herself on the edge of the armchair as the Prisoner moved to the desk, the raven flapping its wings on his shoulder. The bird expressed interest in pancakes, so the Prisoner took one, placed it into a separate plate, and cut it into small pieces.

  “The leaders of my clan had made a pact with dark wizards,” he began, offering the plate to the raven and watching it eat. “They wanted to turn several of us into powerful warriors who would help to protect the elven realm of Zyrrea, to fight off the ever-multiplying hordes of mountain trolls. Dark wizards had told them that the power itself was neutral, neither evil nor good. Just like fire can be used to both warm and burn down a house, they said, this power could be used for good or dark deeds. Our leaders believed them and decided to go for it. Why not give such power to an elf? He or she won’t use it for dark purposes, so it’s perfectly safe, right?”

  Lenora listened, holding her breath. The idea seemed reasonable, but she knew it was a rhetorical question, and the answer had to be, Wrong.

  The Prisoner added more food on the raven’s plate and continued. “The wizards, however, hadn’t told them everything. If there will be one thing that sticks in your mind after this conversation, Lenora, let it be this: there are no safe bets when you deal with the Darkness. There’s always a catch. It will always bite you back. What the wizards ‘forgot’ to mention was the fact that the power they imparted activated through suffering. The more intense the suffering, the greater the power one would obtain.”

  The girl sat still, frozen in fearful anticipation of what she was going to hear next.

  “What did they do to you?” she whispered.

  His elven ears heard it, although the question was barely audible.

  “I do not know what they did to impart the power,” he replied, “I was unconscious in the process. I woke up with two scars. No, the one you see on my face isn’t one of them. They are on my chest and right arm. Then, to activate and grow the power, they’d made me watch my family being killed. By draccans.”

  Lenora gasped. She’d heard of those terrible beasts and couldn’t sleep after seeing pictures of them. They didn’t just kill. They played with their prey first.

  “By draccans? Did your elven lords agree to it?!”

  “One of them did, as far as I know. He had misled the rest and spoken on their behalf. Later he claimed he had only agreed to ‘pain,’ not knowing what sort of pain it would be. I killed him anyway.”

  Lenora watched his hardened face. The eyes were not looking at her, so it wasn’t too scary—or perhaps having heard what he had been through made him less scary to her.

  “I think… I think my father would have done the same,” she said.

  He nodded. “Yes, he probably would.”

  Before she could stop herself, the question tumbled off her lips.

  “How old was your daughter?”

  She feared his reaction, but the Prisoner showed little emotion.

  “She was four. My son was eleven.”

  Lenora swallowed a lump in her throat. A daughter and a son. Probably a wife, too. She wished she knew what to say.

  He still hadn’t touched the meal, and the food was getting cold, but Lenora saw that it wouldn’t do to call his attention to it. How could he eat with such memories stirred? On the other hand, those memories probably never were far from his mind.

  “What had become of you after that, sir?” she asked.

  “I turned into what you see. They wanted a nearly invincible warrior who would fight against evil; they got a nearly invincible creature who no longer believes in goodness and doesn’t care what he does.”

  Lenora wondered whether he meant it, and if he did, whether he realized that it couldn’t be so.

  “Surely, you haven’t completely lost faith in goodness, sir. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have cautioned me against dealing with the Darkness.”

  He shrugged. “I haven’t become a servant of the Darkness; I’m still an elf, after all, though most elves would probably disagree. But refusing to serve the Darkness isn’t the same as standing for the Light. I hope you understand the difference.”

  “So you are trying to say you’re somewhere in the middle?”

  “I’m not in the middle, I just don’t care. Arian, the supposedly good Creator, didn’t care to protect my loved ones. They didn’t just die; they died horrible deaths. That… ended everything. Nothing matters to me anymore.”

  Lenora chose her words carefully as she answered. “I am only sixteen, sir, a young human girl who knows nothing compared to you. Nothing I say will sound new or wise to you, but if you still care to hear my opinion, I will say that I think goodness still matters.”

  The Prisoner shook his head. “Not to me. You are right: you’re young and you know very little. You know nothing of suffering.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, sir. While your heartache is much stronger than mine, I know what heartache is.”

  For the first time, he looked at her with a hint of disdain. “Unrequited love?”

  Lenora held his gaze. “No. My mother is dying. Three physicians have told us that nothing can be done.”

  His face seemed to soften a little. “Oh. So you do know some of it.”

  “Yes. It’s hard, it’s…” She didn’t want to cry, but tears were dangerously close. “It feels hopeless. I don’t know why Arian isn’t answering my prayers, and it’s getting harder to believe that he ever will. Sometimes… sometimes I imagine what it’s going to be like without her, and I just don’t want to go on living. I’m sure you can relate to that.”

  The Prisoner nodded. “I can. The only reason I haven’t killed myself is that there’s a chance it would prevent me from reuniting with my family in the other world.”

  “See, we feel the same at least in some ways. Well, here’s what I’m getting at. Despite all that, I still think goodness matters. It’s… like a stronghold. We shouldn’t give up on it. You know, I make clothes for poor children; people think I’m trying to earn Arian’s favor so that he heals my mother. They are wrong. That’s not the reason I do it. I pray for her to recover, yes, but if Arian refuses, making clothes won’t help.”

  “You do it because you still want to do something good?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Like I said, because goodness matters. It’s important to cling to it.” Lenora sighed. “I’m sorry, I can’t explain it better.”

  They spoke for a long time that day. Lenora’s father was sick with worry when she finally walked out of the cell.

  “What happened? Arian help me, if he laid a finger on you—”

  “No, no. Nothing happened, he just wanted to talk,” Lenora said. “Please, be kind to him, Father.”

  Captain Torren stopped in his tracks. “Why, I always… Did he indicate he’s being mistreated?”

  “No. You treat him well, I can see it, but I’m talking about… compassion.”

  ***

  Chapter 3

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  The governor’s arrival to the Dormigan Prison was a sight to see. Fancy carriage, decked out horses, mo
unted escort of six men, also dressed up as if they were coming to a ball. Captain Torren couldn’t help wondering whom Malgrid was trying to impress. The prisoners? Most of them couldn’t even look out of their tiny barred windows.

  He watched Malgrid Jorensen emerge from the carriage. A blue velvet doublet with gold trim, a matching hat, a flowing white cape.

  Worthless fop, Torren thought, plastering the expression of respectful attention on his face. Please, Arian, don’t let him tick the Prisoner off.

  “Good morning, Governor,” he said with a quick bow. “Where would you like to begin?”

  “As if you need to ask, Torren,” Malgrid replied, his tone tired and annoyed. The moment he was appointed the governor, he had adopted this manner of a wise sage frustrated to no end by the stupidity of his subordinates. “I want to see the creature my brother caught.”

  The warden had little hope to dissuade him, but he still tried.

  “Are you sure you need to spend your valuable time to inspect the cells personally, sir?”

  “Yes, I am sure. You’re right, I have no time to check them all, but I will most certainly inspect this one.”

  “Very well. Please follow me.”

  He led the governor and his six men to the main tower.

  “You guard him well,” Malgrid commented as they climbed the stairs, seeing soldiers everywhere.

  “I am doing my best.”

  “I’ve read your reports. According to them, he causes no trouble?”

  “No trouble so far,” Torren confirmed. “No attempts to escape.”

  “Good. You know how disappointed the king would be if that ever happened.”

  They stopped in front of the door; Torren ordered the guards to unlock it. Malgrid looked confident, but his next question betrayed a degree of discomfort.

  “He is, of course, properly restrained, right?”

  “Of course,” the warden nodded. “Feet shackled, hands tied.”

  And if you had the slightest idea of how useless these restraints are, you’d never dare step through this door, he thought, watching the soldiers remove the iron bar.