Luke released his grip again and his hand fell to the stones with a thud. The stag pulled him through the channel in the floor and the dampness eased his passage. Though he hung on for much farther this time, they still progressed slowly.


    Additionally, the deer dragged him through the dark passage lower down. It was almost pitch-black in the previous room after the cessation of the bright glow from the miraculous floating circle, but against the comparative light from the stars, several turns around this new passage recalibrated Luke’s idea of darkness.


    After they both rested, and feeling a nudge, for he could only hear the deer’s breathing, Luke tremulously lifted his hand and grasped the once-broken horn. He did so less gently this time from fatigue, but the deer didn’t blench, and slowly started again.


    On and off they progressed for what seemed hours. At one point Luke fell into a faint and could not be roused. Upon awakening he knew not how long he lay still, though if the sun reached those depths he would have been surprised to see it rising. The faithful deer which watched him stood upon seeing him stir and presented its antler once again. Luke grabbed it, stronger this time, and the deer pulled yet another time.


    Stopping to rest and nearly ready to begin again, Luke thought he heard a noise. It came from ahead at no great distance. He remained still with his breath paused and mouth gaping slightly. He looked to the deer, which heard it also, but appeared less affected. It casually walked over to Luke, pressed its muzzle into his forward hand as if to say goodbye, and then he heard it trotting unconcernedly back up the tunnel with a steady click-click-click-click-click.


    Luke waited until he couldn’t hear it anymore and laid in bewildered silence. His friend, the only thing on earth that knew he lived, dragged him, wounded, into the depths of the earth and abandoned him. He would have let a flood of tears burst forth had he not so recently heard the words ‘you are wanted’ and seen the circle. He heard the noise again.


    Spirit still unconquered, Luke grimly raised himself to a crawling position and started forward. He continued deeper into the tunnels and advanced to meet the cause of the noise. He progressed slowly due to the darkness around and the pain within. Many times he turned aside only after bashing his head or hand into the wall. He reached out and placed one hand on the wall as he rested and felt its cool comfort. Now back in the rhythm of crawl-hopping, he preferred it to the deer dragging him along, although it had certainly been faster.


    Luke leaned against the wall until the noise sounded again- very close this time. Words followed the noise- human words. The voice sounded threatening yet scared; ready to fight yet exhausted. In the depths a man’s voice sounded. “Hurry up and have your fun,” it said in a wavering voice.


    Luke didn’t quit his place along the wall or move a muscle; his brain rejected the possibility of another human down in Semias’ hideaway. He shook his head to refocus his thoughts and, he thought, to keep himself sane. He closed his eyes as straining them at this depth did no good. Midway through the first step away from the wall he heard the voice again and listened, “Get it over with already.”


    Luke stopped again in dumb silence and pondered; he couldn’t be mistaken this time; he certainly heard the voice. He voiced his confusion at the inexplicable words. “What?” he said.


    He heard a splashing of water ahead and seemingly above him and started forward yet again, carefully reaching out his hand before every step.


    “Why didn’t you bring a light?” the voice asked again from directly above Luke. He hit against wood not twenty meters beyond where the deer left him and here he stopped.


    “What are you afraid of?” Luke asked. “And who are you?”


    “You tell me what you want first,” demanded the voice in a scared but feigned courageous voice.


    “I want out of here,” Luke said bluntly; for to him it seemed the most obvious thing in the world.


    “Are you a prisoner?” the voice asked, and the water before Luke sat undisturbed for the first time since it began.


    “Yes; are you?”


    “Yes,” it said. And then after a few seconds, “How did you escape? Help me.”


    “Is there a light around?” Luke asked.


    “There’s a flint and steel by a torch by the doorway.”


    “What door?”


    Luke heard water splashing again and felt a new urgency to find the torch. The voice said, “Directly in front of me about five paces. It’s on the left side.”


    Luke crawled in the direction he thought ‘directly in front of me’ meant and felt about. As he moved he suddenly hit the top of his left shoulder on a wall. He wanted to cry out in pain but instead said, “I’ve found the door.”


    He felt around until his hands discerned two objects on the ground. “I have the flint and steel, but are you sure there’s a torch?”


    “Yes; in a hook on the left side.”


    Feeling his way up the wall and supporting with his good foot, he found a hook in the wall and grasped where the torch must be. Sinking down to a sitting position, he fumbled about with the metal and soon struck sparks off the flint. They burned at his weary eyes but he kept it up and soon saw the beginnings of a flame. Looking up once it grew brighter he saw what he feared; a large barrel of water looming above him. It might seem innocent enough at first, but Luke knew this method of torture.


    He got up again and placed the torch back in its holder so as to have two hands free. The voice gasped from behind him as he came into view over the rim of the barrel. Luke turned around and leaned against the wall for support. He knew what to expect and didn’t gasp audibly at the victim’s obvious pain, but at recognition of a soldier he previously served with. It was Agar.


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    “L- Luke,” he stammered. “How on earth? What… but you…”


    Luke moved to help his friend and half-collapsed half-lunged forward. He tried to say something but a lump stuck in his throat making it even more painful to breathe. He crawled forward to the barrel again and drew his knife. The oak resisted the small blade well.


    Agar asked Luke, “Can’t you stand? You can just cut my bonds.”


    “No. I’ll try,” he choked out.


    It hadn’t occurred to Luke that he may be able to reach high enough on his one leg to reach the top but, using his knife, he clawed his way to the top. Concentrating not to drop the knife, he looked over the edge and saw Agar. Looking around for the ropes his eyes fell to under the water and he saw they fastened him to the floor.


    “I can’t reach them,” he said desperately, looking in his friend’s eyes, both welling with tears at seeing the other in such a poor state.


    As he started to lower himself over the edge to resume hacking a hole, he noticed a rope at the top. Shaking the tears from his face, he mumbled, “This isn’t a normal barrel.”


    “What do you mean?” Agar started to say, but Luke already brought his knife to the rope and quickly sawed through the taught fibers.


    The barrel appeared to explode and water gushed out all around. The boards slapped Luke to the floor but thankfully didn’t extinguish the torch. He moved to where Agar now stood; wrinkled and pale; soggy beneath his clinging clothes, and cut first one rope, then another, and then handed him the knife to finish the other ones as he collapsed onto the wet platform.


    After having cut the last bonds, Agar weakly stepped off the soggy platform and looked back to Luke.


    “You’re a prisoner too?” Agar asked again. “I thought I was the only one.”


    Luke slid off the platform to the ground and sat on a wet board.


    “No; me too.”


    Luke and Agar gave brief summaries of their respective narratives. Soon the obvious incongruities in their assumptions elicited more stories. Luke’s contained more variety and took a great deal longer to tell Agar everything that befell since his capture but Agar too had a story to tell.


    “Aelred and I were two of the scouts around our camp that night and we heard a creeping noise off in the distance. Of course I went to investigate and told him to stay behind just in case. I walked, crouched, and waited for quite a while without seeing or hearing anything. I turned back to Aelred when someone seized me around the throat and held my sword down. I stabbed behind me with my dagger but the grip was so tight I must have blacked out without much of a struggle.”


    Here Agar paused and Luke filled in a few of the details he needed.


    “Aelred came running terrified into the camp saying you were killed so we left immediately for Echo Slope. We met a company of Shalmen and none escaped but we heard another larger force in the distance and thankfully evaded it.”


    “I was there and heard the battle.” Agar resumed, “I knew you fled without me- thank gods- you wouldn’t have had a chance. They had my arms bound and me gagged and held me helpless with a rope around my neck between two soldiers. I couldn’t get at either one.”


    “Later that day a general and three others came up to my two guards and led us away from the rest of the group. I thought they meant to hang me, but we walked until night with nothing said of it. They obliged me to walk the next day as well and several after. I knew we headed east and a little bit north so I thought they meant to remove me to Myst’s Rim. Right when I was sure of it, though, another Shalmen found us in the forest and led us down here.


    ”I was dead tired from rough treatment and moved slowly so I don’t exactly remember the way. They left me with one guard at a time for perhaps a month.


    “No one knew I was alive but I kept my despair from growing by knowing I remained in Rohia. Also in a not in a too out-of-the-way place.” He stopped and shuddered. “Then a well-dressed sneering man came in with an awful looking fellow. The beasts dragged me bound down here and set me in this cask and filled it most of the way with water. The sneering man knew by my rank I didn’t have any useful information but I guess the coward wanted his fun.”


    Luke wanted to affirm Agar’s ill-treatment and said as much with a look. His friend’s nobly-born suffering cast away the pain and self-pity he felt and replaced it with gratitude that they were both alive and free.


    Free. But were they? Deep in an underground prison, the chances of their survival even now seemed dismal. Luke voiced his concern and Agar echoed it.


    “I think they’ve gone...”


    “When?”


    “About… um… probably at least a day or two ago,” Luke offered, trying to piece his intermittent consciousness together. “Did he give any indication where they would go?”


    Agar, now sitting against the wall with the torch in his hand and warming his frozen feet as best he could, replied, “That’s the last time I saw him. He said he was heading back to Rohalot soon. That must be where they’re attacking next.”


    Luke started up. “You mean you didn’t know the well-dressed man?”


    “No,” Agar said simply. “I don’t know any Shalmen.”


    “But he isn’t a Shalmen. At least he wasn’t born in Myst’s Rim like the others. He’s Semias Norworth- one of the king’s advisors.


    “That’s ridiculous.”


    “He ordered this done to me in probably the same room they kept you prisoner for a month,” Luke said, gesturing to his bruised body. “I know his face from an affair in Rohalot and am positive it was him. I’ve known of him for years.”


    “He’s working with the Shalmen?” Agar asked.


    “Apparently. I guess that’s why they keep finding weakness in our defenses and have such surprising victories. He couldn’t help gloating before what he thought killed me and he’s grudging Sensian’s downfall.”


    Agar sat silent for a while concentrating on the torch’s flame. It occasionally flared out to his leg and burnt the hair white but he didn’t heed that- the warmth brought renewed life to his lower limbs- but presently he responded to Luke.


    “Why didn’t he… he didn’t… why didn’t he kill you? You know somuch now.” Agar struggled to speak.


    “I suspect he thought he had when he left. A body can only take so much beating.”


    He hung his head and held it in his hands with the recollection of the awful memory bringing the hitherto ignored pain raging back to a constant throb. He tried to raise his other leg to rest his arms on another knee but gasped in pain.


    “Howwere youcaptured?” Agar asked, dumbfounded.


    “I fell through a hole in the roof of that upper cave. My ankle fell away when I landed and I didn’t put up much fight against Semias’ monster,” Luke replied, but, knowing the dangers of melancholy, said, “But at least their secret hideout is easier to find now and they might not come back.”


    He smiled and laughed weakly, but Agar, giddy at his release, laughed hard and accidentally touched the side of his foot with the hot end of the torch.


    “Am I correctly,” he asked, “in thinking we’re’re not too farfrom help?”


    Luke shook his head in the affirmative. “We’re within a mile of the high road between Echo Slope and Brownstone Castle.”