Energies: Part II

The sheer mas and scope of everything was beginning to hurt. I couldn't bare to look up at the towering gray buildings for more than a few seconds at a time. I was sure they were going to fall over any moment. Jamis chattered on and on about the history of everything, but I hardly listened. It was like being pulled in twenty directions at once. I hated it.
Colorful, moving images splayed across the walls of buildings. Frighteningly happy images in this dull gray world. Everything was so loud. When I was escorted from the loading area where the ships had finally settled, I saw endless streams of smaller land ships. I cringed back into the guard that walked behind me.
Smiling, Jamis reached up and took my hand, unconcerned for the tall thin buildings over us or the fast and frighteningly agile boats around us. He was completely unafraid. I made a point to stop looking around myself and stare at the black pavement beneath my slippered feet.
Soon, Jamis had lead me into a building, it's swishing doors allowing us through. I looked up then, cautiously, and was relieved that the highest thing was the ceiling some twenty feet above my head. There were no land boats in here and it was much quieter.
A new set of guards relieved the ones at my back and my loathing for all things Erynese intensified when Minister Entark appeared before my eyes. His lip curled in a strained smile.
"You must be tired," he said, motioning for me to follow him
Jamis started off immediately and I trailed at an arms length.
"Being woken in the middle of the night sometimes has that effect," I scowled at Entark's back. He threw grin over his shoulder at me.
"You will rest, ten work," he informed me, a set of silvery doors opened into a small square room.
He stepped inside and turned to face us. I wouldn't have known what to do if Jamis hadn't lead me into the room and faced me in the same direction. The doors closed and we stood in silence for a time. I looked around curiously, wondering what we were waiting for. There didn't seem to be anything in the room, just a glaring light above our heads, and with six people it was tight fit. Then the silvers doors slid open again.
I blinked to be sure I was seeing correctly. The entrance area we were in only a moment ago was gone and a decorated hall way had taken it's place. Jamis tugged me into the hall to follow Entark.
"Where did it go?" I asked Jamis under my breath.
He looked at me quizzically.
"The entrance hall," I explained in a whisper. Surely he had noticed the change?
"Took the lift," he said simply, as if this explained everything.
I only stared blankly at him and continued to follow Entark down the hall when nudged lightly by the guards behind me. Presently, I was ushered into an expansive room. I took in little else but the huge window that stretched from floor to ceiling, allowing me the terrifying vision of what seemed to be the entire city sprawled out below me. Surely we couldn't be that high? As it was, I pressed myself to the far wall.
Entark frowned at me.
"Wat ails you?" he asked, glancing toward where my gaze was fixed. "A beautiful city, is it not?"
"Mhm..." I said conversationally, deciding to eye the thick weave rug beneath my feet instead of contemplating the sickening height I must be at to view the city below me.
A pair of shiny shoes appeared in front of my own. I tilted my head slightly, something like deja vu tickling my memory. Two fingers were placed beneath my chin, directing my gaze upward to meet the minister's.
"Now listen ere, little dear," he said darkly, his squinty eyes becoming more narrow. "Tey wis me to keep civil wile tey try to get it out of you."
I didn't know what he was talking about, and my mouth started talking without my thoughts catching up.
"Civil?" I asked, going for shock. "I didn't realize that was in your repertoire. I might have asked for it that much sooner."
His fingers pinched my chin. Jamis was at his side, speaking rapidly in a soothing voice. Entark took a step back, his hands shaking.
"Mark my words, little dear," he said through his teeth, "wen it comes my turn to try I will not old out."
I gulped, glad that--who ever "they" were--they had a tight reign on the irate minister for the moment. Though I had no idea what they wanted from me, Entark's menacing threat had me hoping I knew how to cooperate.
"Well, you know what they say," I tittered, trying to brush off the daggers he was shooting at me with his eyes, "if at first you don't succeed and all that."
"Quite," he growled.
With a sharp word in Erynese, he and the guards removed themselves from the room. I slid down the wall I had propped myself against and rested my head on my knees. Jamis was at my side.
"Yah don't worry," he said stroking my arm. "Minister not always so angry."
A shaky laugh escaped me.
"He didn't even look angry when he gave me a black eye, I'd hate to see him when he's livid."
Jamis nodded as if I hadn't tried making a feeble joke, then hauled me off to bed. Not that I could sleep. At all. One reason being that everywhere I looked around the room, a large, blue eye stared back at me. The object was mounted on everything, from the head board to the handles on the dresser. I knew that the the 'Great Eye' was worshiped in Eryn, but this was going a bit far.
A luxurious bed had been laid out for me, satin and lace sheets along with some other fine fabrics that I had never encountered. I lay, staring up through the bare, steel frame canopy, calling as loudly as I could with my mind for Larii. As dawn's light crept across the ceiling, no one had yet answered.
The door to the side of the grand bed slid aside and in tripped Jamis, a tray in his hands. It looked too heavy for him and I jumped out of bed to help.
"No!" he said, as I placed my feet on the floor. "Yah stay! It's my job."
He placed the tray beside me on the poofy blankets and smiled at me.
"Yah eat, I pick yah clothes."
"Mm," I said, eyeing the tray speculatively. It was covered in short, square bowls filled with what looked like different colored pudding.
Tentatively, I picked one up and sniffed at it before sticking my finger in for a taste. I grimaced, going for a regular-looking cup of tea. Jamis had thrown open the wardrobe and draped garments across himself to bring to the bed. It made him look like a walking laundry pile.
"Want to look yah best," he explained, dumping the load on the opposite side of the bed. "Yah have visitors."
I looked up at him, startled.
"Who's coming to visit me?"
The boy shrugged. "Politic man."
"When is he coming?"
"He here."
"What?!"
I jumped up from the bed, having to catch the hot tea as I accidentally sent it flying out of my hand.
"Not to worry," Jamis said calmly, coming and taking the tea cup from me. "Yah no like breakfast?"
Ignoring the question, I pointed to the door.
"You mean there's someone in there right now?"
Jamis nodded. My hand moved to my forehead, rubbing methodically.
"This is ridiculous," I muttered. "I'm a slave to them. You don't do all this for a slave."
Making up my mind, I straightened and walked right through the door, my sheer night robe flowing behind me. Underneath was a white set of stretchy pants and short sleeved shirt that made my tanned arms and legs stand out. When I came through the door, a tall Erynese man in fine gray pants and short coat stood producing an outstretched hand.
"Eh!?" squeaked Jamis, hurrying after me.
"Welcome to Eryn," said the man in perfect Elite. When I only stared coldly at his hand, he retracted it and put it between the buttons in the front of his coat so his arm relaxed across his middle. He still smiled.
"Thank you," I said stiffly, he was flanked by seven or so people, though only two of them were guards. I stared at them all in turn, my eyes coming back to the man as he began to speak again.
"We are so happy to acquire you," he continued, smiling as though this bit of information should please me. "You have no idea."
"I'm sure," I murmured. Now that half a dozen people were staring at me, I lost some of the fight I had before walking through the door. I crossed my arms, pulling the edges of the gown tight over my chest. "Do you mind telling me why you're so happy to have me?"
He motioned to the couch around a low glass top table, everyone else sat and waited for me. Feeling edgy, I shifted into a corner seat.
"What do you think of our fair city, Ashling?" he asked, leaning forward.
I deflected the question, "May I know your name? You seem to know mine."
"How rude of me," he chuckled, and bowed slightly in his seat. "I am Minister Onard. Simply put, I over see the efficiency of the city."
Though it was breaking all the etiquette classes I had taken under my grandmother's rule, I didn't bow back.
"How nice," I muttered. "And what does that have to do with me?"
"We have had dealings with your kind for generations," he told me, as if this explained everything. "They supply the power, and we provide suitable accommodations."
I looked at Onard blankly.
"I don't know what you mean."
"We know about your abilities, imen fyle," he said. "And we can help you lead a normal life if you would be so kind as to use them for us."
My eyes opened wide and I was at a loss for words. Had he really just asked me to kill everyone in the city? Before I could ask he pressed on.
"We found a way to harness the energy your people produce, and use it to power all of this," he waved a hand around the room. "The lights you see, the conditioned air, lifts, and even the vehicles are powered by such power."
"I'm sorry..." I said, becoming confused. "Conditioned... air?"
"Our factories, medical facilities, and much more depend on the power," he continued, not realizing he had lost me. "What we would like is your help, and you would have our eternal gratitude."
All of the people in the room stared at me, as if waiting for an answer.
"...If I help you, will you let me go?"
Everyone burst out laughing.
"Go?" Onard laughed. "Where would you go? Where would you want to go?"
"Oh, I don't know," I pretended to think. "Maybe some place I wasn't a slave."
"That is hardly the way to look at it," a woman close to me said, sympathetically. She wore strange glasses that seemed to hover before her eyes without the help of frames. "You could not count yourself amoung people like the boy-" she gestured to Jamis "-when you live in places like this."
Others nodded their heads.
"You mean this gilded cage?" I retorted. "And I suppose you wont brand my arm the same way you did Jamis'?"
Onard looked uncomfortable.
"It is a policy," he tried to explain, shifting in his seat. "It does not hurt. Not with the medicines we have now--"
"Let me explain something," I cut him off. "My 'ability'? I would gladly give it up. It killed over thirty of your soldiers. I can understand if you wanted retribution, but I can't control this curse inside me. Likely I'd destroy the whole city."
As I spoke, the lines around Onard's mouth got deeper as he pressed his lips together in anger.
"We are willing to give you anything you want for your cooperation."
"Look, I'm not trying to be difficult," I said, exasperated. "I cannot control this anymore than I can the sun rising. And what I want is my freedom, and you just said you're not willing to give me that."
Onard stood swiftly.
"Very well, let us know if you change your mind," he snapped his fingers and the rest rose and walked toward the door.
"That's it?" I called after him, still seated. He glanced over his shoulder and motioned to the guards with a cold smile.
"Maybe they can change your mind?"
The door slid shut as the guards came closer. I turned to Jamis instead.
"I need you to leave for a little while," I said. His wide, frightened eyes were on the advancing guards and he shook his head. "Go!"
At my firm command he turned and rushed from the room the same way the diplomats had gone. I sighed in relief as the door slid shut behind him. A gloved hand laced it's fingers through the hair at the nape of my neck and jerked me backwards.

----

I was proud of myself. I had held out for two weeks against their punishments. They tried to beat me into submission at first. I still had two broken ribs from the experience. With every punch, however, they were no closer to getting what they wanted. I was completely incapable of giving them the 'power' that lay inside me. The irony of the situation sometimes made me giggle uncontrollably, much to the displeasure of my tortures.
It hadn't all been fits of laughter, of course. They decided to brand me without the numbing herbs, and since I officially 'belonged' to the government of Eryn the brand was intricate and took up my upper arm from shoulder to elbow. That day I had screamed myself hoarse.
When the beatings failed, they resorted to other methods. Starvation and mind games were dealt out in turn, each with the same out come. By now I wanted to give them the energy inside me, but still didn't have the ability. The gods must have found the predicament terribly amusing.
The only thing that kept me from loosing my head completely was Jamis. He found ways to sneak me food when they starved me. When my wounds were bad enough, he was allowed to give me some treatment. His soothing words and large, chocolate eyes were the only friendly sights I had to look forward to.
I had been systematically down graded from the large apartment I had first been stowed in to a small, gray cell some where along the outskirts of the city. There was no bed in my dark room, but it didn't really bother me. When my ribs complained, I lay on my side and pressed them to the cold, metal floor. I was doing this when an old friend came for a visit.
"Minister, so good to see you," I said pleasantly, hardly looking up from the corner where I lay. "Make yourself comfortable, I'll be up in a minute."
Entark smile sardonically from the corner of my eye.
"Still resisting?" he asked, coming to stand over me.
"Like I said," I sighed, then winced as it hurt my ribs, "I'd love to help, really, but I don't know how."
The minister squatted now and tilted his head to see my face.
"I believe you," he said quietly.
I blinked up at him, then laughed. He frowned as I clutched my aching ribs and tried to quiet my giggles so I wouldn't hurt myself.
"No, really," I said, wiping tears from my eyes. "Good one. I haven't laughed like that in weeks."
"I am not... joking," he said, searching for the last word. "No one would survive this and not tell the truth."
Squinting, I regarded Entark. "Please don't tell me, you're going to play the good guy. I really can't do anymore games."
He reached down and patted my cheek patronizingly. "No tricks, little dear."
"Then what do you want?" I asked, trying to shy away from his touch.
"I have devised a compromise for you," he smiled, showing his yellow teeth.
"Oh. Goody."
"Come with me," he ordered, taking my arm and hoisting me up while I stifled a yelp from my ribs.
Without much choice, I trailed behind Entark with one arm protectively around my ribs. He lead me down the hall from my cell, where every few yards stood a guard on duty. I eyed them apprehensively, wondering if they might strike out at me.
"Did you know wy your grandmoter sold you to Eryn?" Entark asked suddenly.
The question had me stumbling over my feet.
"N-no," I said, regaining my balance and continuing forward.
"Se tougt you would be safe ere," he said. I gave a breathy laugh.
"She doesn't care what happens to me," I said surely. "She wouldn't be too sad if you all killed me."
He gave a shocked glance at me from over his shoulder.
"You are mitaken, little dear," he said. "Se knew you would be cared for if you came ere. It would be some place you could not urt anyone."
"Yes, I've been very safe," my arm came a little tighter around my side.
Entark chuckled and stopped a door, pressing his bare palm to the glass panel along the side of the wall. It slid aside and he motioned for me to go first. I hesitated, but went in. There wasn't much worse they could do to me now.
A chair was before me in brilliantly lit room. My eyes were so used to the dark, I had to blink for several seconds to get used to the light. Everything in the room was white, from the chair, to the ceiling, to the floor. In front of the chair was an entire wall of thick glass. And on the other side was a team of people bustling about in long, white coats.
"What is this?" I asked bluntly, turning to Entark.
"Ashling!" a small voice called. A door opened from the other side of the room and Jamis came running at me. I smiled reflexively, holding out my arms to hug him though it hurt my chest. I hadn't seen him in days.
"Yah well?" he asked, looking me up and down.
"I'm fine," I lied, though he eyed me skeptically. Apparently I wasn't a very good liar.
He pulled something white slung across his shoulder.
"For yah," he said, happily handing it to me and pointing to Entark. "Minister Entark found a way to help yah."
I looked up at the minister speculatively. "Has he."
The minister waved a hand to a curtain in the side of the room.
"Please, cange tere and sit down. I will explain."
Reluctantly I moved to the curtain, Jamis following to wait just outside it. The boy chattered the whole time, telling me how he had talked to Entark and begged him to help me. His courage touched me.
"And he said he would!" Jamis concluded when I came around the curtain again. I was dressed in much the same clothes I had used as pajamas on my first night in the City of the Eye. The short sleeves showed the grotesquely scabbing skin of my burned arm.
"That's very brave of you, Jamis," I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I hope you didn't get in trouble."
The boy swelled with my praise. "Being a slave not so bad. I can stay with yah when Minister is finished. He said!"
I glanced at the minister, talking with some of the white coats that had come into the room.
"That's wonderful..." I felt sick that Entark had lied to Jamis like this, because I knew he wouldn't give me up.
"You may sit down, Asling," Entark called.
Several people in white coats came to lead me forward, Jamis back away out the door promising to see me later. I tried to smile at him as he left.
Once I sat down, the white coats began strapping me in. Bindings went up and down my arms and around my legs.
"What's going on?" I asked Entark darkly. "Why did you lie to Jamis like that?"
"I know how to provoke you," he said, quietly.
Something pricked my arm, I glanced down to see a needle with a tube attached to it being stuck into and tied to my arm.
"Getting me angry isn't really that hard," I snapped at him. "You seem to do just fine without all this fuss."
I waggled my fingers around to indicate the room, they were the only body parts left that I could move. A metal halo had been attached, wrapped around my head to kept me firmly in place. Little dots with string coming off them were stuck to my temples and over my heart.
"You see," continued Entark, "you don't mind being urt."
"Don't I?!" I growled.
"You would rater put it on yourself tan, say, te boy," he gestured to the glass wall where Jamis stood watching everything around him intently.
My eyes snapped back up to Entark, the edges of panic starting to seep into my veins.
"Don't," I whispered.
The minister gave me a wicked smile.
"Please," I tried again, I felt my heart starting to beat faster. "I'll do anything you want. You don't need him."
"Oh, but I do," he assured me.
The white coated people seemed to be done with their ministrations, and filed out the door. Minister Entark leaned in then, a hand coming up to wipe away a single tear that had escaped my eye.
"I'll let you say good-bye," he whispered in my ear. Then he pecked me on the cheek, like Berrik had before I went to sleep as a child, and left the room.
More tears slipped from my eyes. I saw Entark join Jamis on the other side of the glass and my palms started sweating. I tried to shake my head as the child looked up at the minister, completely trusting. Entark smiled down at Jamis and seemingly suggest to wave at me because Jamis looked back and did so happily.
Jamis never saw it coming.
A quick twist of Entark's wrists and the boy dropped to the ground, his neck tilting at an unnatural angle. Heat rose inside me and tears blinded my eyes. Everything was growing hot and my limbs began to shake.
No. Heavens and hells, not Jamis. Please. He's just a boy...
Something erupted from the center of my being and swam out from my skin. It grew in waves, emanating out from me. Entark looked on in wonder, as did all the other people that watched. Never before had I wanted to kill a man so badly.
I was glowing, shaking with suppressed power that I tried desperately to hold onto. I couldn't kill everyone. I wouldn't. But something was different. The heat was unbearable, my limbs jerked against their restraints, and my teeth rattled in my head. My heart was pumping so fast I thought it would explode, too.
I held on to the arms of the chair, waiting for it to stop as I let the energy roll through me. Darkness would take me and it would stop...
Wave after wave came from me, as if I were an ocean, with no end in sight. My muscles screamed--or maybe it was me that screamed--and went numb as I slumped in my chair. But I didn't loose consciousness. The power still came; with each new eruption, emotions and thoughts were wiped away. Right and wrong bent, broke, and ceased to exist.
Nothing mattered. I didn't care. You had to have more than a physical heart to care with, and my heart was merely a fluttering bird in a too small cage. As if it were being called from me, the power kept coming. All feelings went with it.