Her hands were bound behind her back, her ankles bound together. Some of her hair had fallen into her face, and sweat stood on her brow. She was dead afraid. The men had disappeared into a small chamber, the door of which she had never even noticed before, and though it seemed unlikely they would reappear, she could hardly expect they’d forget them. Surely nothing happened down in a secret room under a library, however interesting its contents. If she had had the misfortune of being stuck guarding this place, she would relish having a prisoner, she’d never leave him alone. It was a pity she was the prisoner, not the captor,if only for the lack of comfort prisoners received. Her body could prove that; it ached all over. Having lost all feeling in her hands and feet, Emyra was not concerned by the bonds right now, except for the little movement they allowed, As the rest of her body was horribly uncomfortable; she was leaning against the ribcage of a dragon, sitting on the stone floor, with no light but the flickering, dying flame of their torches, and the modest light that crept under the door. Berren sat across from her, and they were both looking at the ground in an uncomfortable, seemingly everlasting silence. They did not speak and the room was perfectly still, except for the occasional bursts of laughter from the room where the men had disappeared into. The torches lay about a meter away slowly burning down. They coloured the stone floor underneath a charcoal black, and its smell mingled with the scent of earth. For what looked like hours, Emyra sat among the bones of the first age, gazing around, amazed, frightened, shocked. Berren had been right. She shouldn't have gone down here.
Right now, she could be reading a book in a comfortable chair, or at home, having dinner; she didn't know what time it was, and didn't think it mattered. Whether it was an hour after noon, or midnight, she and Berren were still trapped in a secret room.
"You don't have any way of cutting us free, do you?" Berren asked her. She shook her head. Her knife, and Berren's weapons, lay in a corner of the room somewhere, and she had already studied what little she could see by the light of the torches; No sharp bones anywhere near. The fire could burn the rope through, but that was too tricky. She'd rather sit there until whatever would happen, hapenned, than be burnt to death. The Tellanon sometimes burnt men to death. Serial killers, sometimes, terrifying criminals. Emyra had seen them, and their screams had haunted her dreams for years after. The burnt men would take her, she'd believed. There must've been hundreds of the poor bastards. Criminals were often burnt by the rulers. Others they beheaded, some they flayed and a few just disappeared. Emyra would pick any means of death but to be burnt, especially somewhere no one would find her, but the idea of dying, by any means, and never being found, horrified her. Desperate plans of escape had been forming in her mind continuously, and all were ridiculous. Some involved the bones of the dragon mysteriously coming to life, others involved mice nibbling at the rope, until she was free. Neither of them happened; they’d have to care for themselves. There was, however, very little she could do. She would have crawled, but her legs were numb and her arms were behind her back, out of order. She started singing, softly at first, but the sound soon echoed through the hall, clear and high. Berren sang along, just to have something to do. His voice faltered quite often. He had learned songs of Valharian heroes, his mother had only taught him those. He only knew the most common thénish songs, and Emyra soon got bored of singing those. Instead, she sung of a hero Berren had never heard of. Its tune was uneven, and seemed to lack a pattern, but as he listened very closely, a slight pattern started to define itself in the apparent jumble of sentences
Her eyes they glittered, burning bright
Malice in the evening light
Rowansdaughter did not scream
A threat lay in her eyes' sheen
Her sword, by kills was shining bloody
Death it brought to our Enemy
YOU ARE READING
The Tellanon
FantasyNo one had ever seen that day coming from someone so ordinary. Emyra is a girl who enjoys books and dreams, a girl who thinks everything is beautiful. No one seems to think she is, though. Her colouring is different and she is feared and hated by so...
