Cathexis: Necromancer's Dagger (35 page)

“
Well, this is how real adventures go,
you get cold, hungry, tired and you’re in mortal danger quite
often. Congratulations, you’ve hit the big time in adventures,”
Jatar told him sarcastically.

“Thanks a whole bunch,” G’Taklar replied
dryly.

“
Look at the bright side,”
Jatar
started saying.

“What bright side, it is pitch dark in
here,” G’Taklar responded dryly.

“
You could be dead, I am,”
Jatar
responded.

“Oh, that cheered me right up,” G’Taklar
noted.

“
Enough of this nonsense, it’s time we
figured out how to get out of here. Start by running your fingers
over the lock on your leg shackle, I want to feel the
mechanism,”
Jatar instructed.

G’Taklar complied.

Jatar felt what G’Taklar’s fingers felt and
he thought to the scared young man,
“Good, it’s a large lock of
poor workmanship. It’s likely they stripped you to take away any
sharp tools you might have had that could pick a lock. Feel around
the floor and see what you can find, we need a pointed object,”
the older cousin requested.

After only a moment G'Taklar said, “How
about this piece of straw?”

“
Keep looking,”
Jatar answered.

The young man crawled around the room while
feeling around on the floor.
Eventually,
he found a piece of string, but nothing that
could be used to pick the lock. After searching the room twice he
stopped and spoke in a panicked voice, “There isn’t anything, and
soon they’ll be coming to torture me! What should I do, Jatar?”

“
Calm down, there are always options in
life; you just need to look for them. Let’s make a list of what we
have,”
Jatar answered.

“That’s easy, we don’t have anything,”
G’Taklar exclaimed petulantly.

“
We have a few items, for
example,
string,
straw, a chain connected to your foot, fingernails, spit, hair and
a ring, at least when it eventually comes out”
Jatar listed
carefully.

“None of those will get us out of this
chain,” G’Taklar moaned.

Jatar’s thought broke in,
“Quiet, did you
hear something? Yes, I think there’s a rat in here!”

“Oh, now that’s just great, I’m naked and a
rat is here in the dark somewhere!” G’Taklar groaned, scurrying
back against a wall and shuddering. The picture of a huge rat
stalking him in the dark room came into his mind.

“
Are you obsessed with this naked thing?
I want you to calm down, that rat could be your ticket out of these
chains. Now listen to me carefully, you need to catch that rodent,
and then kill it before it bites you too much,”
Jatar
instructed.

“What do you
mean,
catch that rat? I’m not touching that thing,” the
young man announced.

“
Would you rather be stretched out on a
torture rack? I know you want to be taller, but that’s a rotten way
to get there,”
Jatar reasoned.

G’Taklar took a different tack, “Why do we
need that rat? I’m not going to eat it, really, I’m not
hungry.”

“
You’re not going to eat it, although
someday you may find that there are worse things you may have to
eat to survive. Luckily for
you, we
just need its body, but not for food.”

“How am I supposed to catch a rat in the
dark?” G’Taklar asked peevishly.

“
Listen carefully to locate it in the
room. When you hear it just
pounce
like a purclaw. Once you grab it, twist its
head to snap the neck. There, that doesn’t sound so bad, does
it?”
Jatar noted.

“Yes, it sounds terrible!” he
complained.

“
Hot coals, burning out your eyes...”
Jatar said, starting to describe the future torturing session.

“All right, all right, I’m listening for the
rat,” G’Taklar said, reluctantly.

He waited and got up in a crouch poised on
the balls of his feet. After a couple
minutes,
he finally heard a tiny scratching sound come
from about three feet away. He
leaped
across the room in a low skidding
dive
and swept his arms together in front of his
body. He felt a small furry thing bounce over his left arm.

“Damn it, I missed!”

Jatar was silent.

G’Taklar got up and waited again.
Eventually,
he heard the noise
again and
leaped
in that
direction, arms wide and sweeping forward. Again he felt the rat
scurry over his forearm, but
this
time,
he turned swiftly and made a grab for the small
creature. His hands grasped the hind quarters of the wriggling
little beast. The swift turn made him fall sideways and he brained
himself as the right side of his head smacked into the dark stone
wall. The pain was so great that he nearly passed out, yet G’Taklar
managed to hold onto the rat. He grabbed the rat’s head with his
free hand and quickly twisted the wiggling creature between his two
hands. The clawing, biting animal finally went limp.

“By Vorg’s souldead, I nearly bashed my
brains out on that wall!” G’Taklar exclaimed while rubbing his head
with his left hand, the dead rat in his right.

G’Taklar suddenly remembered he was holding
a dead rat and his hand opened and he tossed it away from him with
an exclamation of: “Uck!”

“
You did fine, but now go and find that
dead rat,”
Jatar instructed.

“This is disgusting,” G’Taklar responded,
but complied by searching around in the dark until his hand
encountered the warm, dead body of the rat. “All right, I found it,
now what?”

“
Start ripping it apart, we need to tear
out the largest bones. Then we can use them to pick this lock,”
Jatar explained.

Muttering, G’Taklar started ripping at the
rat’s body and immediately had difficulty with the operation. “This
isn’t easy, any suggestions?”

“
Try your teeth,”
Jatar
responded.

“Come to think of it, I’m doing all right
with just my fingers,” G’Taklar replied in response to Jatar’s
suggestion.

After a short time, G’Taklar managed to pry
some bones away from the tendons and tissues of the rat.

“
Now, try and pick the lock,”
Jatar
instructed.

“I don’t know how to pick locks,” G’Taklar
complained.

“
I’m not a sorcerer at it myself, but let
me give it a try,”
Jatar insisted.

“And how do you propose to do that since you
don’t have a body!”

“
Just relax your arms and think about
letting me use them,”
Jatar coaxed the young man.

“You’re not going to take over my body, are
you?” G’Taklar asked, fearfully.

“
Of course not, I’ll only have control of
your arms.”

“All right, go ahead,” G’Taklar agreed
reluctantly.

Jatar found himself in control of G’Taklar’s
arms. It was a strange sensation, but that was all G’Taklar’s mind
allowed. He chose a thinner bone by feel and inserted it into the
lock. He twisted it around in a
counter-clockwise
motion, trying to move the single
tumbler. The bone snapped.

“
Vorg’s breath,”
Jatar said in
G’Taklar’s mind.

“This feels weird, my arms are doing things
I’m not telling them to do,” G’Taklar declared.

“
You should feel what it’s like to just
have control of arms and nothing else,”
Jatar responded.

He picked up another bone, this
time,
he used the thickest one he had. It
bent, but then the tumbler gave and the bone moved around in a
circle and the lock snapped open.

“
I got it!”
Jatar exclaimed,
“Stand up and see how the chain is connected to the
ring.”

G’Taklar took back the control of his arms
and did as instructed. By feeling up the chain, he found another of
the same locks holding it in place
at
the ring.

“
Good,”
Jatar said, the then
added
, “Give me control of your arms again; I need to pick this
one as well.”

“Why?” the puzzled young man inquired.

“
A thick chain like this can make a
formidable weapon when swung around,”
Jatar answered.

“Yes, like in the story of
Furnian
the Mighty. He used the short chains
still shackled to his wrists to fight his way out of the den of the
dead,” G’Taklar said, brightening at the thought of one of his
favorite fictional hero’s exploits.

Jatar was amused by the sudden enthusiasm
that boiled up in the young man, he knew how much G’Taklar had read
and studied.
“I hope this chain works as well for you as the
shackles did for the warrior in your story,”
Jatar said, to
help maintain G’Taklar’s enthusiasm. This was the first thing that
had really gotten the young man’s mind off his fear.

Once he managed to unlock the chain from the
lock he said,
“Now that we’re free of the wall, let’s examine
the door.”

G’Taklar walked over to the door and felt
around. He found that it was a door made of
oil-soaked
rough hardwood with rusty iron bands
reinforcing it near the top and bottom. There was no
locking
mechanism on this side of the door.
“We’re stuck,” he exclaimed forlornly, “there’s no lock for you to
pick on our side.” Fear was seeping back into his mind at the
thought of the possible torture to come.

“
Come on ‘Tak, would Furnian have given
up so easily?”
his older cousin asked, trying to give him
encouragement.

“No, but he’s so strong he would have just
kicked down the door. I’m not that strong or large,” G’Taklar
responded.

“
Everyone has their gifts in life; I’ve
always been impressed with your intelligence. From what I have seen
you’ve read and learned more than any other boy your age. That’s
one reason I sent you to negotiate with Hervet, I trusted the brain
in that head on your shoulders,”
Jatar told him, figuring it
would not hurt to throw the boy a compliment.

“Not enough to send me to Zinterdalin
without your imprint watching over,” G’Taklar responded.

“
Oh ho, I see you were bothered by that.
Listen, I didn’t send the ring because I thought you were dumb, I
sent it because you lack real experience. This way I could start
giving you the experience to go with the book knowledge and natural
intelligence you already possess. With my imprint to help you
through the rough
spots,
I could let you go alone.

“
There were some advantages doing it this
way, you arrived with the outward look of being young, in charge
and alone. I’m sure when Lord Ufer Hervet looked at you and learned
that you were in charge; he thought he had a golden opportunity in
the negotiations. He knows what experience is worth and he probably
filed you away as smart, but completely green in the first exchange
of words.

“
I can only guess, but after negotiating
with you and my hidden imprint, he probably went somewhere quiet
and pulled his beard out in frustration,”
Jatar thought,
picturing the frustrated ruler.

“He did seem to turn red a few times after I
delivered some lines you supplied,” G’Taklar admitted.

“
That would have been great to see! Did
his right eye start twitching?”
Jatar asked.

“Yes, quite often, but he always smiled and
spoke as if nothing were wrong,” G’Taklar described.

“
That
twitch
is a dead give away with him, he was
about to burst a seam in anger every time he twitched. You see
‘Tak, that’s what I meant by experience. Some people have empirical
knowledge of the world and some people have learned purely by
studying
. The most
formidable people are those who have learned the knowledge and
gained the experience to use it, a rare combination. That’s why I
sent you on this embassy, to gain that experience to go with the
knowledge you already possess. My imprint was there just to smooth
the process by helping you avoid the pitfalls of inexperience and
to accelerate your development. If I hadn’t trusted you, would I
have let you borrow the most precious object the Ardellen family
owns? This ring is priceless beyond imagination; countries could be
purchased with it. Wars would be fought over it if anyone knew it
was cathexis, yet I trusted you with this heirloom. That trust was
well founded; it was quick thinking to swallow it when that sneak
attack happened. At least now we have a chance of getting it out of
here and back to Elizabeth. So try and quit worrying so much and
use the brains G’lan gave you; your worry is getting in the way and
mucking up the works,”
Jatar finished his lecture, hoping the
boy felt a little more confident. He would soon need all the
confidence he could muster.

“I’ll try my best Jatar, but I wish I was a
natural at these things, like you,” he lamented.

“
No one could ask for more than your best
‘Tak, but don’t think I just knew everything. I’ve been getting
wise instruction from my father and grandfathers ever since I took
the throne. This ring has their imprints in it as well.
Unfortunately, you can’t use their knowledge for awhile.”

“Why?” G’Taklar asked.

“
My aura is attached to this ring now.
Until you release me, and I want to go, it will keep you from
contacting any of the other imprints within the ring. With my aura
attached my imprint is too strong to allow the others
through.”

“You mean your soul is in this ring?”
G’Taklar asked in amazement.

“
Yes, it will not go on to the next plane
until released.”

“That’s horrible, your soul is trapped! What
happens if I release you?” the young man asked.