was one of the most difficult things I had ever done. Only losing would have been harder.
Writhing monsters came into my cell. One had yellow snakes with black eyes growing out the sides of his head. They stared at me with dead eyes that laughed at my struggles to break free of the myriad hands that gripped me.
The monsters took me to see the green-eyed mage. He did things to my head and to my body, things that left me shaking and nauseated, things that didn't leave so much as a bruise.
He used magic to hurt me, but it was only pain. I knew its nature and its name; it had nothing more to teach me. When the wizard brought agony in liquid waves over my body, I accepted it and became it. My body cried out and fought, but my mind rode the fiery demon and was untouched. I had my limits. I could tell that eventually the pain would devour me, but for now I was safe.
The wizard didn't see. He observed the surrender of my body, without seeing the patience that waited beneath.
After a few days the demons who dragged me from cell to wizard's den and back quit being frightened of me. When I cried, they seemed sad.
"He was a rare fighter," said one. "I'd have liked to have him at my back."
"You want an insane man fighting at your back," bleated a little sheep -
"Lad," corrected my little voice. "Just a boy, not a sheep." As always the pain had made the voice closer to me - if I wanted to, I could see as the voice did. Later the remnants of the session would make it difficult to hear my silent, hidden self. I blinked carefully and saw a boy, younger than Tosten.
The monster under my left shoulder grunted. "If you think this place holds the mad, you haven't been paying attention, boy."
There was fresh water waiting, and after the monsters left I picked it up in shaking hands,
"Drink," urged my little voice, already growing fainter. I pressed the clay rim against my lips and drank it until the pitcher was dry.
Chapter 6
6 - TISALA
My aunt says that if common goals make good friends, common enemies make better ones.
Tisala sat in the private room of the tavern and watched the door. She'd sent out a message over an hour ago, but there was no telling when Rosem would get it. She sipped at her drink and then leaned her head against the wall. The hood of her cloak shielded her eyes from the candlelight and she fell asleep.
"I thought you were dead," said a quiet voice, waking her. "Let me see your face."
Tisala blinked at the man standing beside her table. He was shorter than she, but broad through the shoulders. A scruffy, bright red beard hid the features of his face except for the wide nose that had been broken more than once. She pulled the hood away from her face. "Hello, Rosem."
"Gods, girl," he said, sitting across from her. "When the house you were rooming in burned down, I waited for you to turn up for a full week. Then I wrote to your father."
"The house burned?" she said. "Did everyone get out?"
Tight-mouthed, he shook his head. Tisala swallowed and rubbed her face, as if that would wipe away the faces of the people she'd lived with for the past few years. Jakoven must have had the house burned to cover her disappearance.
Rosem reached out and caught her hand, pulling it into the dim light of the tallow candle.
"Who took you?" he said.
She pulled her hand back. "Jakoven." She explained how she escaped and where. "So you see that I owe the Hurogmeten. Can you get me into the Asylum?"
The Asylum was a beautiful building about a mile from Jakoven's castle. The pyrite-flecked marble of the facade made it look more like a temple than a holding pen for society's embarrassments. There was even a pond just big enough for the two swans in the small but meticulously groomed lawn.
Tisala's flesh crawled as she shuffled in beside Rosem. It had taken him a healthy bribe to the woman whose place she took to get Tisala in again. No one would notice the switch because the cleaners were practically interchangeable. The woolen robes they wore were designed to let them fade into the background as they went about their work. They talked only to one another, never to the inmates or the guards.