Incarceron Part 105

"My dear. So where is our young Prince?"

Jared was watching the bronze gate buckle inward. He flashed a quick, glad glance at Claudia.

Her hair was tangled, her face dirty. A strange smell hung around her. She said, "Right behind me."

FINN WAS sitting in a chair too, but this room was dark, a small cell, like the one he remembered from long ago, ancient, the walls greasy with carved names.

Opposite him sat a slim dark-haired man. For a moment he thought this was Jared, and then he knew who it was. He looked around, confused.

"Where am I? Is this Outside?"

Sapphique was sitting against the wall, knees drawn up. He said quietly, "None of us have much idea where we are. Perhaps all our lives we are too concerned with where, and not enough with who."

Finn's fingers were tight on the crystal Key.

"Let me go," he breathed.

"It's not me who's stopping you."

Sapphique watched Finn and his eyes were dark and the stars were points of light deep inside them.

"Don't forget us, Finn. Don't forget the ones back there in the dark, the hungry and the broken, the murderers and thugs. There are prisons within prisons, and they inhabit the deepest."

He stretched out his hand and took a length of chain from the wall; it clanked, rust flaking off. He slipped his hands inside the links.

"Like you, I went out into the Realm. It wasn't what I'd expected. And I made a promise too."

He dropped the metal on the floor, an enormous crash, and Finn saw the maimed finger.

"Maybe that's what's imprisoning you."

He turned sideways and beckoned. A shadow rose from behind him and walked forward, and Finn stifled a cry, because it was the Maestra. She had the same tall, lanky walk, the red hair, the scornful eyes. She stood looking down at Finn and he felt that a chain bound him, fine and invisible and she held the end of it, because he could not move hand or foot.

"How can you be here?" he whispered.

"You fell."

"Oh yes, I fell! Through realms and centuries. Like a bird with a broken wing. Like an angel cast down."

He could barely tell if it was her whisper or Sapphique's. But the anger was hers.

"And that was all your fault."

"I ..."

He wanted to blame Keiro, or Jormanric. Anyone. But he said,

"I know."

"Remember it, Prince. Learn from it."

"Are you alive?"

He was struck with the old shame; it made it hard to speak.

"Incarceron doesn't waste anything. I'm alive in its depths, in its cells, the cells of its body."

I'm sorry.

She wrapped her coat about her with the old dignity.

"If you are, that's all I ask."

"Will you keep him here?"

Sapphique murmured. "As he kept me?"

She laughed calmly.