Incarceron Part 13

The inmates of the Wing tried to dissuade him.

"Many have fallen," they said.

"Their bones rot in the black lake. Why should you be any different?"

He answered, "Because I have dreams and in those dreams I see the stars."

Then he swung himself up onto the wire and began to cross.

Many times he rested, or hung in pain.

Many times they called on him to return.

Finally, after hours, he reached the other side, and they saw him stagger, and vanish through the door.

He was dark, this Sapphique, and slender.

His hair was straight and long.

His real name is only to be guessed at.

-Wanderings of Sapphique ***

Gildas said testily, "I've told you many times. Outside exists. Sapphique found a way there. But no one comes. Not even you."

"You don't know that."

The old man laughed, making the floor sway. The metal cage hung high over the chamber and was barely big enough for both of them to squat in. Books on chains dangled from it, surgical instruments, a swinging cascade of tin boxes stuffed with festering specimens. It was padded with old mattresses from which wisps of straw fell like an irritating snow onto the cooking fires and stewpots far below.

A woman looked up to yell in annoyance. Then she saw Finn and was silent.

"I know it, fool boy, because the Sapienti have written it." Gildas pulled a boot on.

"The Prison was made to hold the Sc.u.m of humanity; to seal them away, to exile them from the earth. That was centuries ago, in the time of Martor, in the days the Prison spoke to men. Seventy Sapienti volunteered to enter the Prison to minister to its inmates, and after them the entrance was sealed forever. They taught their wisdom to their successors. Even children know this."

Finn rubbed the hilt of his sword. He felt tired and resentful.

"No one has entered since. We know about the Wombs too, though not where they are. Incarceron is efficient; it was designed to be. It doesn't waste dead matter, but recycles everything. In those cells it grows new inmates. Perhaps animals too.

"But I remember things ... bits of things."

Finn gripped the cage bars as if to hold on to his belief, watching Keiro cross the floor of the hall far below, arms around two giggling girls.

Gildas's gaze followed his.

"You don't. You dream Incarceron's mysteries. Your visions will show us how to Escape."

"No. I remember."

The old man looked exasperated. "Remember what?"

He felt foolish. "Well... a cake. With silver b.a.l.l.s and seven candles. There were people. And music ... lots of music ..."

He hadn't realized that until now. He was oddly pleased, until he caught the old man's eye.

"A cake. I suppose it may be a symbol. The number seven is important. The Sapienti know it as the sigil of Sapphique, because of the time when he met the renegade Beetle."

"I was there!"

"Everyone has memories, Finn. Your prophecies are what matter. The visions that descend on you are the great gift and strangeness of the Sta.r.s.eer. They're unique. The people know that, the slaves and the warband, even Jormanric. It's in the way they look at you. Sometimes they fear you."

Finn was silent. He hated the fits. They came suddenly, dizzy sickness and blackouts that terrified him, and Gildas's relentless interrogation after each one left him shivering and sick.

"One day I'll die from one," he said quietly.

"It is true few cell-born live to be old."

Gildas's voice was harsh, but he looked away. Buckling the ornate collar over his green robe he muttered, "The past is gone; whatever it was, it doesn't matter anymore. Put it out of your head or it will drive you to madness."

Finn said, "How many other cell-born have you known?"

"Three." Gildas tugged the plaited end of his beard free irritably.

He paused. "You're rare beings. I spent my life searching before I found you. A man rumored to be cell-born used to beg outside the Hall of Lepers, but when I finally coaxed him to speak I realized his mind had gone; he babbled about an egg that talked, a cat that faded out to just a smile. Years later, after many rumors, I found another, a worker of the Civicry in the Ice Wing. She seemed normal enough; I tried to persuade her to speak to me of her visions. But she never would. One day I heard she had hanged herself."

Finn swallowed. "Why?"

"They told me she had gradually begun to believe a child followed her, an invisible child that clutched her skirts and called her, woke her at night. Its voice tormented her. She couldn't shut it out."

Finn shivered. He knew that Gildas was watching him.

The Sapient said gruffly, "Finding you here was a chance in a million, Finn. Only you can guide my Escape."

"I can't ..."

"You can. You're my prophet, Finn. My link with Incarceron. Soon now you'll bring me the vision I've waited a lifetime for, the sign that my time has come, that I must follow Sapphique and seek the Outside. Every Sapient makes that journey. None have succeeded, but none have had a cell-born to guide them."

Finn shook his head. He'd heard this for years and it still scared him. The old man was obsessed with Escape, but how could Finn help him? How could flashes of memory and the skin-tingling, choking lapses into unconsciousness help anyone? Gildas pushed past him and grasped the metal ladder.

"Don't talk about this. Not even to Keiro."

He climbed down and his eyes were on a level with Finns feet before Finn muttered, "Jormanric will never just let you go."

Gildas glared up through the rungs. "I go where I want."

"He needs you. He rules the Wing because of you. On his own he-"

"He'll manage. He's good at fear and violence."

Gildas descended one rung, then pulled himself up, his small wizened face lit with sudden joy.

"Can you imagine how it will be, Finn, one day, to open a hatch and climb out of darkness, out of Incarceron? To see the stars? To see the sun!"

For a moment Finn was silent; then he swung down on a rope past the Sapient.

"I've seen it."

Gildas laughed sourly. "Only in visions, fool boy. Only in dreams."

He clambered with surprising agility down the diagonal of lashed ladders. Finn followed more slowly, the rope's friction warm through his gloves.

Escape. It was a word that stung him like a wasp, a sharpness that pierced his mind, a longing that promised everything and meant nothing.

The Sapienti taught that Sapphique had once found a way out, that he had Escaped.

Finn wasn't sure if he believed that. The stories about Sapphique grew in the telling; every itinerant storyteller and poet had a new one. If a single man could have had all those adventures, tricked all those Winglord's, made that epic journey through the Thousand Wings of Incarceron, he must have lived for generations. The Prison was said to be vast and unknowable, a labyrinth of halls and stairs and chambers and towers beyond number. Or so the Sapienti taught.

His feet hit the ground. Glimpsing the snake-green iridescence of Gildas's robe as the old man hurried out of the Den, Finn ran after him, making sure that his foil was in its sheath and that he had both daggers in his belt.

The Maestra's crystal was what concerned him now. And getting it was not going to be easy.

The Chasm of Ransom was only three halls away, and he crossed the dark empty s.p.a.ces quickly, alert for spiders or the inbred shadowhawks that swooped high in the rafters.

Everyone else seemed to be there already. He heard the Comitatus before he came through the last archway; they were shouting and howling Insults across the abyss, their scorn ringing back from the smooth unclimbable slabs.

On the far side the Civicry waited, a line of shadows.

The Chasm was a jagged crack across the floor, a sheer face of black obsidian. If a stone was dropped down it, no sound ever came up. The Comitatus considered it bottomless; some even said that if you fell into its depths, you fell right through Incarceron into the molten heart of the earth, and certainly heat rose from it, a miasma that made the air shimmer.

In the center, split off by whatever Prisonquake had formed the abyss, rose a needle-thin rock called the Spike, its flat platform cracked and worn. From each side a bridge of scorched metal rusted and dark with pig-grease led there.

It was a neutral place that belonged to no one, a place for truces and parleys, of hesitant exchange among the hostile tribes of the Wing. At the unfenced edge, from which he often had troublesome slaves thrown screaming down, Jormanric lounged on his throne, the Comitatus around him, the small dog-slave crouched at the end of its chain.

"Look at him," Keiro's voice whispered in Finn's ear.

"Big and thick."

"And as vain as you." His oathbrother snorted.

"At least I've got something to be vain about."