The Prisoner of Carronne - 17. Chapter 17

-- Chapter Seventeen --

In the cold light of morning, Septimus returned to the catacombs beneath Carronne.

The torches burned low along the narrow passageways, their smoke gathering in sluggish coils beneath the vaulted stone. The rubble from the collapsed tunnel still lay where it had fallen, though the guards had already begun clearing it away under the watchful eyes of their commander.

They worked quickly, as no man wished to linger any longer in the presence of the Dark Lord than was necessary.

Septimus moved among the broken stones in silence, and his black cloak brushed the dust as he walked, his boots grinding slowly across the fragments of rock and shattered timbers that had once sealed the passage.

The scent of earth and damp stone lingered in the air. He stopped where the tunnel had collapsed.

Here. This was the place.

Septimus crouched, studying the rubble with careful attention.

The trap had been well-placed. Too well for soldiers. Too well for frightened prisoners already on the run.

His gaze shifted toward the floor of the passage. There, faint in the dust, were small marks.

Footprints.

Not the heavy tread of armoured men. These were small. Quick. Light.

Septimus’ eyes narrowed.

Of course!

The realisation came to him with sudden clarity. The guttersnipes. The street children of Carronne who haunted the alleys and drains like shadows.

No guardsman knew the hidden veins of this city as they did.

They had led the prince through the underbelly of the city. They had guided Luther. They had slipped past his soldiers and sealed the tunnels behind them like ghosts.

Septimus rose slowly.

‘So,’ he murmured.

His voice echoed softly through the catacombs.

‘It was the children.’

The torches flickered, while green light burned briefly within his eyes.

‘They will pay for their insolence.’

Behind him, Judayah remained silent, while a guard shifted uneasily.

Septimus turned. ‘Bring me the Commander of the Guard. To my Chambers,’ he ordered.

The guard bowed hurriedly and fled up the tunnel. Septimus and Judayah followed, leaving the catacombs and then climbing the stairs into the castle, before eventually they reached the door to Septimus’ chambers.

Just moments later, the commander arrived, breathless from climbing the stairways to the Dark Lord’s lair. He was a broad man, scarred from many campaigns, though the confidence he usually carried seemed to vanish entirely each time he was called to account.

One glance towards Judayah and the doors to the chambers were opened, then Septimus entered. Judayah knew what was coming and pushed the man through the doorway, before closing the doors and backing away.

‘My Lord . . .’ the guard said, as he went to one knee.

Septimus did not look at him. He had crossed to the far side of the room and pulled back a drape hanging in front of the window, from where he then looked out over the wretched city below. How he wished that he could quit this drafty pile of stone, and claim instead, the grand Palace of Jeebath, with its marble halls and golden trimmings. Yes, that would be a far more fitting residence for someone of his stature, he was sure.

‘How many soldiers guard this city?’ the Dark Lord asked quietly.

The commander blinked.

‘My Lord?’

‘How many?’

‘Nearly two thousand.’

Septimus nodded slowly.

‘And yet,’ he said, ‘you were defeated by children.’

The commander’s face paled.

‘My lord, the tunnels . . . it is impossible . . .’

Septimus turned. The man stopped speaking.

For a moment they simply stared at one another in the dimly lit room, where the only light seemed to be what came through the narrow slit of a single window. Then Septimus stepped closer.

The commander felt the air grow suddenly warmer, even though the chambers had been ice-cold just moments before, and he frowned slightly.

‘My Lord . . . ?’

Septimus’ eyes burned bright-green, and the commander’s breath caught. Then something moved behind the Dark Lord.

It wasn’t a shadow. It was something larger. Something alive. Something unfurling, curling across the floor. With eyes glowing, a shape emerged in the darkness.

The commander staggered back.

‘W-w-what in the name of . . .’ he stammered, but these were the final words he would ever speak.

Outside, in the corridor, Judayah stood waiting. Listening for what he knew would surely follow.

At first there was silence.

Then came a scream, but it was cut short by another terrible sound, something that might have been a roar, and a crash of something heavy striking stone.

Then, only silence followed, while time stretched out imperceptibly, as Judayah remained waiting, knowing that his presence would be expected when the doors finally opened again.

And when finally those doors did open, Septimus stepped out alone.

Judayah dared to glance past his Master, to see if there was any presence of the Commander of the Guards, but there was none that he could see. He did not ask what had happened. He had no need to. He merely bowed his head.

Septimus’ voice was calm once more. ‘Send the guards into the city.’

Judayah glanced up. ‘For what purpose, my Lord?’

Septimus crossed the floor of the antechamber, and from its single window, he gazed down upon the distant streets below.

‘To find those wretched children.’

*   *   *

The order spread through Carronne, even before the guards had left the castle gates.

Word travelled strangely in the city. Not through proclamations or bells, but through whispers and glances and small gestures that passed from person to person faster than any soldier could run.

The first to hear it was Tobias, the scullery boy in the lower kitchens; the companion of Carel, the Warlock’s boy.

He had been carrying a basket of onions toward the back stairs when two guards had entered the room, speaking in low voices they clearly believed no one would notice.

‘Septimus wants every gutter rat dragged in,’ one of them muttered.

‘All of them?’ the other asked.

‘All.’

The boy froze where he stood. He knew that Carel had escaped, in the company of the Warlock and the prisoner who had been rescued, but he feared for those who had helped them. Those whom he considered friends.

Carefully, he set the basket down, wiped his hands on his apron, and slipped quietly through the back corridor before the guards or anyone could see him. Within minutes, he was gone from the castle entirely.

By the time the soldiers reached the streets, the warning had already begun to spread. A baker’s apprentice carried the news into the market square. A fishmonger repeated it to a cart driver. A woman drawing water at the well whispered it to the priest of the small shrine near the east gate.

The priest, in turn, rang the shrine bell just three times, and slowly. Those who lived in Carronne knew what that meant. There was trouble afoot.

Accompanied by the whispers that were already spreading, the meaning was clear. Hide them.

By the time the patrols began sweeping through the alleys, the street children of the city had already begun to disappear.

Doors opened to them without questions. Ladders were lowered from loft windows. Cellars were unlocked.

In the narrow lane behind the tanners’ yards, Kit gathered the first of them.

Drake was now gone, riding with the knights as he had always sworn he would someday do, so the others looked to Kit without needing to be told.

Kali was there. Zef too, clutching a half-stale loaf of bread he had somehow managed to acquire even in the chaos. More children slipped from doorways and shadows until nearly twenty of them stood in the alley. Tobias, the scullery boy, was now one of them also.

‘Soldiers are searching everywhere,’ one girl whispered.

‘I know,’ Kit said.

He glanced toward the rooftops where pigeons fluttered uneasily.

‘They’re looking for us.’

‘What do we do?’ Zef asked.

Kit considered the maze of alleys around them. Then he grinned.

‘We do what we always do. We hide.’ Then he pointed upward.

‘Up?’ Zef asked, then grinned. ‘Of course.’

Within moments the children had vanished onto, and into, the rooftops.

Just as the underbelly of the city belonged to them, so too, did Carronne’s upper world – the narrow ridge cap, the leaning chimneys, the broken gutters and half-rotted beams that connected the old houses together like a crooked ladder into the sky. They knew every loose shingle and crevice.

Below them, the soldiers searched. They kicked open cellar doors. They overturned market stalls. They dragged beggars from their blankets and questioned them harshly. But they found nothing.

Every child in Carronne had vanished.

At one point a squad of guards passed directly beneath the roof where Kit and the others lay flat against the tiles.

The soldiers argued loudly.

‘I swear I saw three of them run this way!’

‘Well, they’re not here now, are they?’

‘Septimus will have our heads if we come back empty-handed.’

Kit listened to them for a moment, then carefully tossed a loose tile into the alley behind them.

The stone clattered loudly.

The guards spun toward the noise and rushed down the wrong street entirely. Zef covered his mouth to keep from laughing.

Hours passed.

The search spread wider, growing more frantic as report after report returned to the castle with the same answer.

Nothing. Not a single child could be found.

From the rooftops and hidden cellars of Carronne, the street children watched the soldiers storm through their city like blind giants.

And everywhere they looked, the people of Carronne quietly turned against them. Against Septimus.

A merchant deliberately pointed soldiers toward empty alleys. A washerwoman closed her shutters just as a patrol approached the roof ladder. A fisherman ferried three frightened boys across the river in the bottom of his boat, beneath a pile of nets.

Even the priests opened their temples.

When night finally fell, those children still left gathered once more atop the old granary overlooking the harbour. They could see fires burning in the castle towers where the soldiers still searched.

Kit stood on the ridge cap and looked out across the darkened city. But the streets below were quiet. The city had hidden them well.

Kali sat nearby, sharpening his small knife on a whetstone he had borrowed from somewhere.

‘Septimus will be mightily pissed!’ he said.

Kit nodded. ‘Good.’

Zef tilted his head toward the distant castle.

‘Think Drake and the others made it to where they were going?’

Kit smiled faintly. ‘I know he did.’

‘How do you know?’

Kit shrugged. ‘Because Drake always does what he sets out to do.’

The wind shifted, carrying the distant sound of horns from the castle.

Kit looked toward the dark horizon beyond the city walls. Somewhere out there, Drake rode with the knights now. The thought made him strangely proud.

Then he turned back toward the others.

‘Come on,’ he said.

‘Let’s disappear again before they start looking up.’

One by one the children slipped back into the maze of rooftops and hidden stairways that only they truly understood.

And beneath them, Carronne slept uneasily.

Not even Septimus could find the children that night.

*   *   *

The sea lay before the riders, pale and restless, breathing in long, slow sighs. The air smelled of salt and kelp, and something faintly metallic beneath it. It was almost as though time and tide had worn the land itself thin.

They had reached Shalamar at dawn, just as the first rays of the sun had touched the shoreline. Jamal reined in and came to a stop as he took in the scene before him. He had never been to this place, yet he felt he knew it. He dismounted before the others, drawn toward the shore without quite knowing why.

The beach was not sand, but stone. Pebbles crunched beneath his feet. Thousands upon thousands of pebbles lay piled and spread along the waterline, each worn smooth by years of patient washing. They gleamed in the early light; blues deep as storm clouds, greens like glass, reds and ambers warmed by the sun, milky whites veined with grey. Some were dull and matte, others polished to a quiet shine, as if they still remembered the sea’s touch.

Jamal knelt and let a handful slide through his fingers.

They clicked softly against one another, a sound like distant bells.

He noticed how the larger stones sat higher on the beach, dry and warm, while the smaller ones lay closer to the tide, darkened and cool, shifting slightly with each wave’s reach. The sea did not rush here. It advanced, withdrew, and returned again, endlessly reshaping the shore without ever breaking it.

‘This place remembers,’ Jamal murmured, not realising that he had spoken aloud.

‘You’re right.’

The voice came from behind him; calm and unhurried.

Jamal turned, to find a man standing there, barefoot on the stones, his cloak plain and sun-faded. Behind him stood Ansel and Marin, one to either side.

This was Enoch, the knight they had come for. He was slighter than Jamal had expected, his beard straggly, his hair bound loosely at his neck, his expression thoughtful rather than stern.

He inclined his head. Not to Ansel, and not to Marin, but to Jamal.

‘I wondered how long it would take,’ Enoch said. ‘I had heard whispers on the winds, but Chandar’s word is what I was waiting for, and I know he does not send lightly.’

Jamal rose and faced the ageing, though still commanding knight.

‘I carry his call,’ Jamal said. ‘And his admission.’

Enoch smiled faintly. ‘Yes. He always remembers that part last.’

Jamal drew out the amulet then, more from form than necessity.

Enoch glanced at it briefly, just long enough to confirm what he already knew, then closed Jamal’s fingers gently back around it.

‘You needn’t show me,’ he said. ‘I had already decided.’

Marin arched a brow. Ansel watched closely, saying nothing.

‘You will answer?’ Jamal asked.

‘I will,’ Enoch replied simply. ‘I never stopped being bound. I only stopped waiting to be asked.’

Later, while Ansel spoke quietly with Enoch, and Marin stood watching the sea, Jamal walked the length of the beach alone. Taking the time and the care to remember it.

He memorised the way the stones shifted underfoot, never quite settling. The sound they made when the tide drew back, and then washed back over them; a whispering rattle, like breath through teeth. The colours revealed when the water thinned over them, brighter for a moment before dulling again as the wave retreated.

He picked out a single pebble — blue-green, streaked with white — and turned it in his hand, noting how one side was flatter, the other perfectly rounded.

This is how the sea shapes things, he thought. Not by force, but by return. By repetition.

He thought of letting the stone fall back amongst the others, but something changed his mind. Instead, he slipped the stone into the small satchel that hung at his waist.

When he finally turned away, the image of the beach was fixed in his mind, not as a picture, a single view, but as a texture, and a sound. Something that endured.

One day, he knew he would speak of this place to someone who could not see it, and that the truth of it lay not in colour alone, but in how it felt to stand there, with the sea remaking the world one small stone at a time. Then remaking it again.

*   *   *

They broke camp late that morning, the sea mist still clinging to the low ground as the sun climbed behind them. Enoch moved with an easy familiarity, as though the rhythms of travel had never quite left him, yet he made no move to take the lead.

Instead, when the horses were saddled and the packs secured, he paused.

‘Which way do you intend to travel?’ Enoch asked.

The question was directed not at Ansel, who was senior in years and service, nor at Marin, whose presence bent space around her like a drawn blade. It was directed at Jamal.

The moment hung, subtle but unmistakable.

Jamal felt it at once – the slight stillness, the way Whip and Deven quieted without knowing why. He saw Ansel’s gaze sharpen, saw Marin tilt her head. Measuring. Waiting.

‘The river road,’ Jamal said after a breath. ‘It’s slower, but less watched. We can rejoin the high track beyond the river flats. That will lead us towards Carronne, before then we head west, for Highshaw.’

Enoch nodded, accepting the answer without hesitation. ‘That seems wise.’

No caveat. No correction.

He turned and began adjusting his saddle as though the matter was settled.

Marin watched Jamal for a long moment.

‘Well,’ she said at last, a crooked smile tugging at her mouth. ‘Either he’s grown since yesterday, or you’ve decided to be contrary.’

Enoch glanced up. ‘Neither.’

She snorted. ‘Then why him?’

Enoch met her gaze calmly. ‘Because he is the one who carries the call. And because he listens before he speaks.’

Marin opened her mouth, then closed it again. She looked back at Jamal, eyes narrowing, not with hostility, but curiosity.

‘Hmph,’ she said. ‘That’ll get beaten out of him eventually.’

‘Not if we’re careful,’ Ansel replied quietly.

*   *   *

The reports came to Septimus slowly at first. Then faster, until at last they came all at once.

Standing at the long table in the war chamber of Castle Carronne, The Dark Lord gazed upon the great map of the Five Lands of Candor spread before him, and the smaller maps of each land and their cities. Beneath the light of three tall iron braziers, with flames burning high, casting long wavering shadows across the walls where the banners of conquered houses now hung, he studied them carefully.

Judayah stood a few paces behind him, silent as ever.

The chamber doors opened and a captain of the city guard entered, helmet tucked beneath his arm. Dust and sweat clung to his cloak. He dropped to one knee immediately.

‘My Lord.’

Septimus did not look up from the map.

‘Well?’

The captain swallowed. ‘We searched the market quarter . . . the river docks . . . the tanners’ lanes and the hill streets beyond the northern gate.’

Septimus waited.

‘We found nothing.’

The words seemed to hang in the chamber.

Judayah watched carefully.

Septimus reached for the map of the city, then his fingers moved slowly across the surface of the map, tracing the narrow lines of the streets within the city walls.

‘Nothing?’ he repeated quietly.

‘No children, my Lord. None at all.’

Septimus finally raised his eyes. The captain felt the weight of that gaze like a hand closing around his throat.

‘The city hides them,’ Septimus said.

It was not a question.

The captain hesitated only a moment before answering.

‘Yes… my lord.’

Septimus nodded once.

‘Very well.’

The captain blinked.

‘My Lord?’

Septimus turned back to the map.

‘They will surface again . . . eventually.’

The man looked confused, but wisely did not press further.

Septimus gestured toward the door.

‘Send in the next.’

The captain bowed hurriedly and withdrew. Moments later, another officer entered, this one commanding the northern watch.

‘My Lord,’ he said, kneeling. ‘No riders have passed the north gate since last night.’

‘None?’

‘None that matched the description.’

‘And we still have forces stationed to the north of the city, where the road narrows at those rocky outcrops?’

‘Yes, my Lord.’

Septimus studied the map again.

Two days. Two days since the escape.

Horses must have been found by now. Food taken. Supplies gathered. The prince and the knights would not travel blindly, but they would be heading somewhere.

Septimus placed one finger upon the map and began tracing possible routes.

North along the trade road. South towards the fishing coast. East upon the Dark Sea. West towards the Plains of Ashmere.

Yet none of those felt right. Luther was not a fool. Nor was Chandar, whose knowledge of the city would most certainly have been behind this event.

What would come next?

They would seek allies. They would rest. They would gather strength before striking back.

Septimus’ finger stopped.

Highshaw.

The valley lay far beyond the eastern passes, hidden among ancient ridges and old forests where the kings of earlier ages had once held council.

And far beyond that, the Valley of the Ancients. A place of legends.

Septimus’ mouth curved slightly.

‘Yes,’ he murmured.

Judayah glanced toward him.

‘My Lord?’

Septimus straightened. ‘What do you know of Highshaw?’ he demanded.

‘There is nothing there, Master, other than a muddy lake. The place has been used as an encampment in the past, but all dwellings and structures were razed in fires long ago.’

‘Luther and the others would know of it?’

‘Of course.’

‘As we have the north covered, send riders on the west road. Have them place eyes on Highshaw and watch for any movement. Place watchers at the southern mountain pass beyond Farrow Ridge, in case they have used that path, then send word to our agents in the fishing villages along the coast.’

Judayah stepped forward immediately, committing each order to memory. ‘Yes, my Lord.’

Septimus nodded, knowing that all points of the compass had been covered.

‘And the ravens?’ asked Judayah.

Septimus looked toward the tall windows of the chamber where the evening sky had begun to darken.

‘Send them to every Lord who has sworn loyalty to Carronne.’

He turned back to the map.

‘If Luther believes he can escape, I will make certain he finds no refuge. If he believes he can restore the Order to its former glory, or raise an army, we will ensure he cannot.’

Judayah bowed his head. ‘It will be done, Sire,’ then slowly he backed away from his master.

Septimus stood for a long moment in silence once the chamber had emptied.

The fires crackled softly, while outside, the bells of Carronne rang the hour. His gaze drifted once more to the western mountains.

Highshaw.

Perhaps . . . or perhaps not. It did not matter. Sooner or later the Prince would surface again, and when he did . . .

Septimus’ eyes burned briefly with that same cold green light.

‘They cannot vanish from the world,’ he said softly to the empty room.

Then he turned from the map. The hunt had begun.

To be continued . . .