Chapter 26:
In the Service of Gods
Passing into the tunnel, my skin tingled and my ears popped. I examined the spot where the tunnel and the closet converged and saw dim, milky light. This tunnel system wasn’t physically attached to Sparrow Hall, instead it must have been connected using some sort of magic. It had to be magic, given that the closet was three stories off the ground.
I eased my way deeper into the tunnel. There were no torches or braziers to help illuminate the way, just the scant light from my candle. I worried that any swift movement would blow out the candle, so I moved slowly. The echoes of my footsteps were deafening and if I stopped walking, I could hear the candle burning. Mildew mixed with the scent of tallow in a bizarre combination. The flame trembled in my hand as I started shivering. The air was cold like a cellar, damp and sunless.
The road didn’t fork as much as I predicted, mostly it weaved back and forth while staying level. At the first fork I heard a sound coming from the right. I fought off the knee-jerk reaction to call out. Would it be wiser to go towards the noise or away from it? With nothing else to go off of, I went right.
The sounds were like something moving around, scrambling and shuffling. My breathing became shallow as I tried to make as little noise as possible. Logically, I knew the candlelight would give me away long before my breathing but in the dark, alone, my body reacted faster than my mind.
“Who is it?”
The words shocked me so badly I almost dropped the candle and my spool of thread. A gasp was ripped from my throat. The voice was familiar, elderly and male.
“You’re early. Are you even supposed to be here?” He wasn’t raising his voice and yet I could hear him as if he were next to me, the silence allowed his soft spoken words to sound like shouting.
I lowered the candle and squinted into the darkness. The outline of something was visible far ahead, but it wasn’t a person.
“I’m Rin. Have we met before?”
There was a flurry of scuffling. “The Seer?”
It clicked in my mind. I resumed walking toward the voice. “You’re the old man, from the dungeon.”
He let out a dry chuckle. “Indeed, that was me.”
A few more steps and I was close enough to see stone bars jutting out from the surrounding rock, much like the bars of the dungeon. A cell was the end of the tunnel. Behind the bars stood the old man. He wore the same ratty outfit as the last time I’d seen him, his white hair tangled and greasy.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I was a Seer once, like you,” he said. “This would have been decades ago. My name is Arthur.”
My blood froze. “W-what?”
“Hmm. Yes, I suppose it would be rather surprising given how well they treat you that a Seer would end up. . .” he trailed off and gestured around himself.
“But why?”
Arthur liked his dry lips. “Are you being followed? Do we have time to speak?”
I glanced back down the dark tunnel where I’d come from. “I-I, yes? I think so. It’s the middle of the night. I doubt anyone will check up on me.”
“It would be wise for you to doubt less,” he said gravely. “Your position is more precarious than you think.”
“Tell me,” I begged. “Tell me what you mean. Tell me what the hell this all is.”
“I’ll keep things brief, brief as I can. You shouldn’t linger here.” Arthur cleared his throat. “I was like you, dragged here against my will. I woke up in a cave and they told me I was supposed to save the world. I had no interest in that. I fought back with all I had for weeks. It got to the point where I was starving myself in protest. Then, they brought my brother here.”
“They can do that?” A new fear I hadn’t even considered bloomed in my mind.
“Oh yes, they can. The cost is steep, but I pushed them to pay it. My brother arrived and that put an end to my protests. Time went by as we prepared to climb that damn mountain, and the Seekers learned that my brother was a lot more amenable. Not just to their cause, but in general. And so I was demoted, stripped of the right to be a Seer.”
He laughed without mirth until he started coughing. Once he got his breath back, he continued. “They lied about it, of course. Told people that I’d been misidentified, that I wasn’t a true Seer. My brother was. They threw me in the dungeon and used me to keep my brother in line. He went on to save everyone, prevent the End of Days, et cetera. Then he comes back and asks for my freedom. Except they’re not really inclined to do that because if we were to be reunited, we would have asked the gods to return home. They didn’t like that, they didn’t like that one bit, those disease-ridden, vile, disgusting, putrid buckets of scum.”
So this was the man Seeker Len had been talking about when he’d been testing me in his office; there had once been a case of mistaken identity and that “mistake” was Arthur. I could see he was getting incensed. “Why didn’t they want you to return home?”
Arthur grimaced. “Because it costs too much, of course. There’s a high price in getting us back to Earth. They didn’t want to pay, so they kept me as a hostage until my brother died.”
A heavy quiet fell on us. “I’m, I’m so sorry.”
Arthur reached forward and gripped the bars of his cell. A lurid light came into his eyes. “And now I’m here. Wasting away until I can die and they can bury me far away so that I don’t haunt them. That’s why I’m alive, because they fear what I might do to them if they murder me. Murder warps the soul. They’ve branded me a criminal and left me to rot.”
His voice was rising. I hushed him, but he kept going.
“They’ll promise you whatever it takes to get you to do what they want, then, once you’ve danced for them like a bear in a circus, they’ll throw you away.” He was on the verge of tears now, trembling like a leaf.
I was nauseous. It was my nightmare come to life: nothing I did would get me home. Still, I was oddly grateful. Here was the first honest, informed person I’d met in Wosurei. Everyone else was either evading questions or running around with pieces to a puzzle they weren’t allowed to understand. Perhaps it was naive to assume that this man was telling the truth without proof, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
A sharp crack echoed from somewhere deep in the labyrinth. My head snapped toward the dark tunnel.
“You must leave,” Arthur said.
“But there’s so much more I need to know,” I protested.
“You found me once, you can find me again. Don’t worry,” he said with a wry smile. “I’ll be here a while.”
“Thank you, Arthur.” I turned to go, then stopped. “Your brother, what was his name?”
He was quiet for a moment, then said, “Duncan.”
I nodded, then went as fast as I dared back toward my room, rolling up my thread as I went.
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