Pain lanced through him as well, pain such as he had never felt before. He knew he was destroying the crystal that held him -- but he also knew that this was not his body, his real body was elsewhere, and he sang a song that would make soul and body whole again, ignoring the pain, singing through it light and lightning vibrated around him, vibrated until he was all pain and sound, vibrating until his song reached a crescendo that was unbearabl And he shattered.
In that moment, he was aware of each of the mil- lions of shards of crystal that scattered through the room, their size, their shape, their velocity. It was as if his very soul had fragmented into all those pieces, each with a distinct set of eyes, and tiny chunks of himself were skittering hither and yon against rock, rafters and shelves containing other crystals.
Then, darkness.
Darkness, and a sense of weight, of being. Of arms and legs, of head and torso. The scent of wood and musty satin; the feeling of cloth beneath his fingertips.
He opened his eyes on darkness, and he knew he was back in the coffin again. But now he was no longer paralyzed, and he reached up with his hands and pushed the lid of the coffin up. The panel slid easily off, and clattered on the floor somewhere far beneath him.
Every muscle was stiff and sore, but he was per- fectly able to sit up. He looked around the darkened room, seeing the vague outline of what appeared to be other coffins lined up on shelves.
Suddenly the enormity of what he had just done flooded over him. He had broken the spell! He was free!
Filled with elation, he felt all over his body, making sure it was real and not some kind of illusion.
It was real, solid, and indisputably his. He was even wearing the same clothes he'd been captured in.
Now what? he thought, half-drunk on his joy, and half still in terror that he might be cast back into the crystal at any moment. Now -- I get out of here!
He crawled over the edge of the coffin and slowly let himself down to a cold, stone floor.
"Naitachal!" Lyam called over from his cell. "Can you move yet?
It had seemed like several candlemarks Soren's dart struck his leg, paralyzing him. The Elf had succumbed to sleep for part of that time on the cold dungeon floor, a shifting, semi-wakefulness that came and went. But now the drug seemed to be fading; after a bit of experimentation, as his legs and arms flopped in crude approximations of what he wanted them to do, he gained control over himself again.
Slowly, he moved from his sprawled position on the floor, and just as slowly got to his feet.
Lyam had been spared the dart. Naitachal sup- posed that the purpose of the drug was to prevent him from using magic, and not to physically incapacitate him. He reached deep for the energies of his magic, to create the most rudimentary shield But there was still a strange, black wall preventing him from doing anything magical. Whatever was pre- venting him from using his power was not the drug.
"I can move," Naitachal said. "But I can't work any magic. What was that Soren used on me?"
"I don't know, but I think it's the same thing they used on Alaire before they hauled him away." Lyam clutched the bars desperately, his knuckles white. "You can't do anything magically?
Naitachal shook his head "Not yet. But the drug's wearing off. If I pretend I'm still incapacitated by it, they may forget to dose me again. As long as I'm able to move, I still might be able to do something. Any idea where they took Kai?"
"The Prison of Souls," Lyam said dismally. "It Sir Jehan is incarcerating anyone there who might be a threat to him, whether or not they've used magic."
No guards stood watch over them now; but down the long hallway, from somewhere within the palace, he could hear the distinct sounds of fighting. Shout- ing, screaming, the clash of metal and leather. The sounds were distant, mere echoes down the hallway.
But unmistakable. The coup was in progress Jehan could spare no man to watch over them.
"There may be another way. Something I was going to look into, before we were interrupted," Naitachal said absently, trying to get to the cell door. But the chain pulled taut, stopping him before he could get within arm's length of it.
Fine, then, I'll look to that first!
He examined the padlock that fastened the chain to the floor. It seemed deceptively simple, but the key hole was curved, and narrow, nothing like he'd seen before. Though large and bulky, the mechanism inside didn't rattle around like the Althean locks Tich'ki had taught him to pick.
Fairies. You can't rely on them for anything.