Dead Man's Shadow, Chapter 6

A single instant passed in stunned silence. Neither Elena nor the priest managed to react to the unexpected sight beyond a few blinks. It was Elena who managed to get over the shock first. She cursed, a single dark word, then launched herself at the priest from her kneeling position. She slammed into his midsection, cutting off his startled cry almost as fast as it had begun. The two of them fell to the floor, and Elena clamped a hand over the priest’s mouth, hoping to keep him from shouting again. To her surprise, he bit her hand and twisted under her, throwing her off with a mighty heave. As she slammed into the stone ground, the priest shouted an alarm, and Elena cursed again.
Knowing that she had less than a minute to escape and hide, she swept the priest’s legs out from under him as he tried to rise, and he fell back to the floor in a tangle of robes. She leapt at him, managing to get on top of him again and this time landing a punch to his face. This knocked him out completely, but it was too late. Other doors opened into the room that she was in, and several more priests entered. More shouts sounded, and most of the new arrivals leapt on her at once. She struggled, managing to catch a few of her assailants with wild blows, but the priests attacking her were far stronger than she would have expected from priests. She took a fist to the chin and fell to the floor, seeing stars. Before she could recover and scramble back up, three of the priests held her down, while others relieved her of her weapons and gear. She struggled against the knee pressed into the small of her back, but it was no use. The closest she got to escaping was when the priests took her satchel off of her shoulder, as they had to partially lift her off of the floor to do so. The immediately slammed her back onto the floor, holding her head against the cold stone as they did. Once again, Elena saw stars. While she was still having difficulty seeing, she felt her wrists twisted painfully behind her and tied together.
With her struggling now stopped, the priests stopped trying to hurt her. It was only a small consolation, as Felix’s words echoed through Elena’s head. If you are caught, you will likely be killed on the spot. She braced herself to feel a knife between her shoulder blades, but nothing came. Instead, she heard an authoritative voice sound in the room.
“Who is this?” The voice was unfamiliar, speaking in an elegant dialect of Castillian. “What is going on?”
Another voice answered. “An intruder, Father. She broke in and assaulted Father Francisco.”
The first voice spoke again. “Who would dare to break in to the church on this night?” Footsteps rang out against the floor, and Elena found herself staring at an expensive shoe as the speaker stopped next to her head. “An Avalon. Of course. She must be from the College, here to rescue Valeri.”
Elena did not say anything. There was no excuse for her presence here. Nothing that she could say would make any difference. She instead focused on maintaining as much dignity as she could while being pressed into the floor by a trio of priests.
“What shall we do with her, Your Excellency?” the second voice asked.
“Take her down to the dungeon,” the first voice answered. “Perhaps knowing that his rescuer has been captured as well will convince Valeri to begin talking.”
Elena’s captors hauled her up to her feet, eliciting a grunt of pain from her. They held her tight, and she got a good look at the man who was giving orders. It was a middle-aged man wearing what appeared to be the robes of a Vatacine bishop, but in scarlet instead of the usual darker colors. He, much like Felix from earlier, was wearing a wide-brimmed hat. His eyes were cold and dispassionate, filled with less thought towards her than he would have given the weather. Elena returned his cold stare with a hostile one, but then her captors pulled her away. She found herself shepherded through a side door and down the staircase on the other side. These stairs were stone, lit by torches in brackets on the walls. On the way down, Elena tried to look for an opportunity to break free, but it was no use. The space was too narrow, and there were too many people watching her. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, one of the priests moved to unlock the door there while another grabbed Elena’s hair and pulled her head violently backwards to dissuade her from trying anything. A pained breath escaped through her teeth.
With the door open, Elena was shoved bodily through and into the catacombs beneath the church. The light in this room was far dimmer, lit only by a handful of candles, and it took Elena’s eyes a few moments to adjust. As they did, she saw that while most of the coffins were still in place, wooden walls with doors had been constructed across many of the alcoves to turn the place into a dungeon. There was no way of knowing how many of the improvised cells might have been occupied, and she had no time to try and guess. Her captors moved her to one of the cells in particular, which was unlocked a mere second before she reached it. Light from the main crypt spilled into the cell in front of her, which was even more dimly lit. From what she could see in the faint light, the room contained a single chair, a grey-haired man wearing a dirty suit tied to said chair, and a lone candle.
And hanging from the ceiling, a single rope coiled into a noose.
A cold pit opened up in Elena’s chest, and memories rose up unbidden. A cold night, an empty room, a storm about to break. Terrible, terrible silence broken only by the sound of a single word, spoken in her own voice.
“…Dad?”
The memories evaporated in an instant as her captors forced her to her knees before the prisoner. She hit the ground with a grunt. One of her captors grabbed her hair again and forced her to look up at the prisoner. Her eyes met those of Dionís Valeri, the man that she was supposed to rescue. His face was bloodied, and he squinted uncertainly at her, but his pale eyes still shone with a powerful resolve. Whatever Felix might have feared, Elena could tell that this man was far from breaking.
“Well, Mr. Valeri, I must admit, you impress me.” The head Inquisitor moved back into Elena’s line-of-sight, hands clasped behind his back. He bent down slightly, fixing Valeri with that cold stare of his. “You must be more important than you claim.”
“What is the meaning of this?” Valeri demanded, voice surprisingly authoritative, given that he was a captive as well.
“Not five minutes ago, we caught this woman breaking into the chapel in an attempt to rescue you.”
Shock flashed across Valeri’s eyes. “What?”
“You heard me.” The head Inquisitor turned to Elena. “It seems that the College organized a rescue for you. Or did you do it yourself?”
“I… I have never seen this woman before in my life!”
The head Inquisitor’s eyes narrowed. “Are you so sure?” Without warning, he slapped Elena across the face. Her head jerked sideways, and she let out an involuntary gasp of pain as parts of her hair stayed behind, still held in the hand of one of the other priests. The head Inquisitor grabbed her head and yanked it back around so that Valeri could see her face once more. “Think carefully.”
Valeri took his time, studying Elena’s features carefully. No flash of recognition entered his face, and Elena was not surprised. Until earlier in that day, she had never even heard of the man, let alone seen him. As far as she knew, he had never even had a chance to encounter her before this moment. Eventually, he too came to this conclusion and turned his gaze back to the head Inquisitor. “I don’t know what you expect from me, Your Excellency, but I do not know this woman.”
“Then you do not think she is member of your College?”
“I have told you before: I am not a member of the Invisible College! I am just a bookshop owner!” A note of desperation had crept into Valeri’s voice. “What more do you want from me?”
The head Inquisitor shook his head. “I see now that it is not enough for you to damn your own soul through your actions.” He turned to regard Elena again. For a few moments, he was silent, and Elena could almost hear her own heartbeat in the quiet tomb. “If you truly do not know her, then I suppose she is of no use to us. It’s a pity.” He turned back to Valeri. “It is a rare occurrence when the sins of one man destroy another.”
A chill seemed to fall across the room. “What are you implying?” Valeri asked quietly.
“Only the truth can save her now. Yours or hers.”
“I’ve told you the truth. I don’t know her!”
The head Inquisitor shook his head with feigned sorrow. He bent down in front of Elena, fixing her with those terribly empty eyes. “And what do you have to say for yourself, impure one?”
“Go to hell,” Elena spat at him.
She was expecting another blow, but one did not come. In fact, the head Inquisitor’s expression did not change in the slightest. “If such is to be the case, then you will be the one to greet me at the gate.” He straightened back up, looking over Elena’s shoulder at her captors. “Hang her here. Give this pathetic wretch something to think about.”
The pit opened in Elena’s chest so quickly that she became physically dizzy. The rest of the memory that had begun at the sight of the noose rushed back in that instant. The almost-closed door, the light falling in onto… Sheer terror filled her to the very top, endless nightmares crashing down on her in an instant. Her single deepest fear.
“No!” she shrieked, lurching to her feet with inhuman strength. Her captors’ grips slackened for an instant, and she broke free. She sprinted towards the door to the cell, but it only took a second for the priests to recover. They caught her and dragged her back towards the center of the room. She fought with everything she had, but it was no use. Within seconds of her attempted escape, she was right back in the middle of the room, below the rope once more.
Tears erupted from her eyes as she continued struggling. “Not like this, please! Anything but this! Please! Not like this!” She begged again and again, only vaguely realizing that she had at some point drifted from speaking Castillian to her native Avalon instead.
Heedless of her cries, the Inquisitors lifted her up and forced her neck through the coil of rope. Elena fought against them, kicking out frantically, but all she succeeded at doing was irritating them. Eventually, the Inquisitors got firm grips on both of her legs and held her up. Immediately, Elena stopped kicking, terrified that they would drop her. If she fell now, she would wind up with her feet about a foot off of the ground, unable to breathe as her own weight drew the rope tight.
“Please, no…” she begged through a throat already worn raw by sobs. “Not like this…”
“Stop!” Valeri shouted. “Please! I beg of you! Spare her!”
The head Inquisitor raised a hand, and the two men holding Elena up stilled. She herself froze, tears still streaming down her face. “You know what you must do to save her,” the head Inquisitor said.
“I swear by Theus Himself and everything that is sacred and holy in this world that I do not know this woman. If she is deserving of punishment, then lock her up, but please, do not kill her to force me to give up something that I do not have!”
For the first time since she had seen him, the head Inquisitor’s expression changed as he glanced back and forth between Elena and Valeri. A flicker of what might have been genuine disappointment came to his face. “I see,” he said, apparently to himself. “How unfortunate.” He turned to Valeri. “I believe you now. You truly do not know this woman. Still, I have been praying for a way to make you see the necessity of confession. Perhaps this is the answer to my prayer.” He returned his gaze to Elena and made the sign of the cross in the air before her. “May you find a measure of forgiveness in this, your final act. Drop her!”
“No!” Two voices cried out in the same instant before Elena’s own shout was cut off by the cruel bite of the rope across her throat.