The Elemental Jewels (Book 1) (5 page)

He returned to the orphanage for the rest of the day, feeling restless.  He played tunes on his old flute to entertain the younger children, then ate supper with his friends and went to bed relatively early.

Just as he went to bed feeling restless, he woke up the next morning feeling restless as well.  Too many events and potentials and conflicts weighed on his mind, more weighty matters than he’d ever been exposed to in his whole previous life seemed to have all come to a head in the past few days, leaving him confused and anxious, and wishing that some miracle would come and simply cut through all the issues with one clean sweep.

When the afternoon finally arrived, Grange was relieved to finally be in motion.  He walked to the plaza, and took up a position in the western portion of the open space, so that he could watch for the beginning of Hockis’s magic show.  He worried that the ringleader was going to wait for the late afternoon crowd, who traditionally seemed to carry more cash, and thereby throw all of Grange’s delicately timed plans into a fractured mess.

But Hockis arrived as early as Grange wanted, and just a minute later, Garrel drifted into view as well.

That gave Grange a sense of relief.  Everything was in place, and suddenly all his worries melted away.  He would work the crowd and collect the money, same as always.  When they met to split up the profits, he’d tell his friends that he was finished with being a pickpocket, and wish them the best of luck, while he would move on with his plans to become a band member.

Then he’d bolt over to find Lurinda, and finally go to the north shore plaza to spend the night playing music, and maybe dancing with the lovely girl, and who knew what else would happen!

He inconspicuously sauntered over to the location Hockis had chosen for the magic show, a location that was different from the usual spot, closer to the walls and further from the alleys that Grange always preferred to escape into.  Grange felt a mild prick of annoyance, but he held it down as he began to examine the backsides of the audience, looking for the targets and beginning to develop a planned route that would yield the greatest profit.

Hockis was in his performance, laughing with the audience and holding their attention, although he fumbled his first juggling trick in a very uncharacteristic manner. 

“Now look at this volunteer over here,” he spoke loudly, giving Grange the clue that he was diverting attention over to Garrel.  It was fast, again out of the ordinary, but Grange was thankful that the pace had picked up to give him more time afterwards.  Accordingly, he sprang into action.

He reached into the pocket of his first target and delicately squeezed his fingers around a heavy purse.  He pulled it free as he walked on towards his next mark, then abruptly was jerked backwards by the purse.  His eyes flew downward in astonishment, and he saw that a fine metal chain connected the purse to the inside of the pocket.  The owner of the purse shouted in a deep voice, and then chaos erupted around Grange.

A man in front of him turned and swung a truncheon at his head, while another man landed a hand on his shoulder.  He thought he heard Garrel shout his name, and then a swarm of men had him surrounded, and were pummeling him into unconsciousness.

Chapter 4

Grange woke up, and wished that he didn’t.  He felt sore from the top of his head down to his shins.  He was in a damp, dark, gloomy place, and he gave a muffled moan as he started to roll over.

“Take it easy, Grange,” he heard Garrel’s voice, though it sounded distorted.

“Where are we?” Grange asked as he carefully sat up.  He was lying on a cold stone floor in a dark space.

“We’re in prison – the Tyrant’s own prison,” Garrel said.  “That no-good double-crosser sold us out.”

Grange had his hands up and his elbows propped on his knees as he rested his forehead gingerly on his hands.

“They beat you pretty bad,” Garrel told him.

“What happened?” Grange asked.

“Hockis set us up.  He gave us to the police so that he could go free,” Garrel said bitterly.  “He got caught in the last job, the one that he took so long to return from, where we went to the third rendezvous.  He told the patrol he could deliver us to them if they let him go, because he was just the front man.  We’re the real criminals, he told them, if you can believe it!”

Grange opened his eyes again, and realized they were adjusting to the darkness.  He could see faintly.  Garrel was sitting on a small bench that protruded from the wall.

“Help me up,” Grange asked, as he held up his hand.

“Oh, ow,” he said sharply as Garrel hoisted him upwards.

“They beat you pretty bad,” Garrel repeated as he situated Grange on the bench so that he could lean against the wall.  “I only saw you for a second or two, but there were a dozen patrol men punching you as you went down.  Only two took me.”

“What time is it?  When will we get out?” Grange asked.  He had no doubt that he’d already missed Lurinda, and probably the session with the band.  He’d have to beg his way back into the good graces of the band leader, if he could use an arrest as an excuse from work.

“We’ve been down here probably a day or so.  They brought one meal, but I couldn’t eat it,” Garrel answered.

“What happens next?” Grange asked.

“What happens is that you two stop talking and let me sleep,” a voice spoke up from nearby.

“The neighbors aren’t the best,” Garrel spoke in a low voice, almost a whisper.  “But at least it’s just the two of us in our cell.”

Grange gave a moan of pain and anguish.

“There’s a bucket in the corner if you need it,” Garrel offered.

Grange shook his head, then leaned back and shut his eyes.  “I was going to dance with Lurinda.  I was going to play in the band,” he moaned.

“You can forget all of that for now,” Garrel said.  “Maybe in a few months.”

“Months?” Grange asked in an agonized whisper.

“The other prisoners here say that criminals are being rounded up and shipped out to work at a labor camp in the mountains.  The Tyrant wants to build a canal, so that his ships don’t have to pay fees at Falls City,” Garrel explained.

“I don’t even know what that means,” Grange whispered.

“Neither do I.  I was hoping you could explain it to me,” Garrel sighed.

They sat in silence then, and Grange drifted off to sleep, leaning against Garrel’s shoulder.

When he awoke there were sounds in the prison ward.  A jailer was delivering food to the cells, with a companion who carried a lantern, and another who carried a mace.  Their bowl of food was slipped on the floor through a slot, and then the bright light moved further down the hallway past them.

“I’m hungry enough to eat it.  I’m just not going to look at it,” Garrel announced as he walked over to the pan and sniffed it gingerly.  He made retching noises while Grange remained on the bench, and then Garrel returned.  “I’m not that hungry after all,” he explained.

“So Hockis isn’t in prison?” Grange asked.

“Not as far as I know.  I only know what the patrol men told me while we were being arrested,” Garrel replied.

The next day Grange felt better.  He was still sore, but he could tell the sore spots were healing.  When the daily food delivery came, there were extra guards, and instead of slipping a pan through the slot in the door, the guards opened the door completely.

“Up and on your feet,” one of them said.  “You’re done here.”

“Are we free?” Garrel asked as he stood and approached the door.  Grange followed him.

“No, you’re on trial,” the guard said.  “Now move along; we’ve got others to pick up.”

They left the room and had shackles clamped around their ankles, then began to shuffle through the dim passages of the prison.  The guards stopped several times, and a dozen other prisoners were added to the chained shackles, then the procession climbed up three flights of stairs.

Grange was blinded when a pair of double doors was opened, and sunlight came streaming in as the chain gang slowly walked out of the prison into a drab, stonewalled yard.  Two minutes later they entered another building, and then were taken to an austere hearing chamber, where a judge sat at a high desk, and several other guards were positioned.

“The accused will stand in the box,” the judge ordered, as the chain gang was led to a cage in front of the judge.

“By the authority vested in me by the most righteous ruler of Verdant, the Tyrant, I find you all guilty of the crimes you stand accused of,” the judge promptly said.  “You all are hereby sentenced to death by hanging, at sunset today.”

The men in the cage gave voice to a variety of howls and shrieks of protest at the unexpected proceeding.

“Through the leniency of the Tyrant, I may offer you the opportunity to commute your sentence to five years of labor in service to your nation.  Those of you who wish to receive this boon shall so claim mercy,” the judge immediately instructed.

“I claim mercy,” Garrel instantly shouted, as did a half dozen others, while Grange stood in silent shock.

“Having heard all of you request the mercy of the Tyrant, I grant you all the remainder of your lives.

“The prisoners will be attired,” the judge ordered.

A guard unlocked the cage, less than a minute after it had been closed and locked.

“Approach me one at a time, and move slowly,” the guard ordered.

The prisoners approached him in the order that the chains allowed.  As they did, each was unlocked from the chains, and escorted by a guard to the back of the room, where they were ordered to disrobe, then handed a bright yellow shirt and pair of yellow pants.  Within minutes, they were all reattached to the shackles, and stood out like a bowl full of lemons as they waited in the back of the courtroom.  The judge left his chair without ceremony, and the guards took them away.

There were cries and shouts and wails from the prisoners as they were led away.

“I have to see my wife,” one man cried.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” another tried to claim.

“My business will be ruined; my family can’t survive,” a third said, just before a guard uncoiled a whip and began lashing it viciously at the protesters. There were more cries, until the lash fell more widely.

They left through a doorway and came to a courtyard, in an incongruously extravagant portion of the palace grounds, with beautiful towers, and walls with windows and balconies looking down upon the arrival of the prisoners.  They found another squad of forlorn prisoners in the same yellow clothing waiting for them there, with more guards surrounding them.

“All hail the glory of the Tyrant,” one of the officers present shouted, and the guards all looked up at a high balcony, where a man in luxurious robes was accompanied by a pair of young women.,  The guards saluted, and the man waved back diffidently.

A large pair of gates opened in one wall. 

“Now start running, you dogs.  Start running towards your destiny, and your chance to contribute to the greater prosperity of Verdant,” the officer shouted the command.  Some of the guards starting jogging, and the prisoners did too, awkwardly as some tried to run, some tried to walk, and some didn’t try to move at all, though the chain bound them all together.

Grange took a step forward, then jerked to a stop and tumbled forward when the man behind him stood still.

“Get up, you lazy criminal,” the guard with the whip shouted, and Grange felt the painful sting of the leather rip through his yellow shirt, leaving a welt on his back.

He scrambled up, then nearly fell again as the man in front of him tried to start to run.  Grange threw his hands down in front of him, bounced his palms off the pavement, and regained his balance precariously, though he scrapped the skin off a patch of his hand.

The group began to lumber along, as it passed through the gate, and they gained an awkward pace when they found themselves out in the city, under the observation of the residents.  There were jeers and hoots from both sides, while the guards kept screaming obscenities and urging them forward along the road.

Grange looked over at Garrel, who was connected to a separate chain, one that ran parallel to his own.  Garrel was like Grange, young and in relatively good physical condition.  The two of them were comfortably running along at the slow pace of the group.

“What are we going to do?” Grange asked Garrel in a low voice.

The whip immediately cracked in the air near his face, making him swerve dramatically, and nearly loose his balance.

“No talking among the filthy prisoners,” a guard shouted.

“Now pick up the pace.  We’ve got a long way to go,” another guard said, as he ran alongside the foremost prisoner in the front of the file of prisoners.

The awkward pace tried to go faster, and slowly the men gained a rhythmic stride that satisfied even the sadistic officer in charge of moving the men to where ever they were going.  The whip ceased its use, and the only sounds were the heavy breathing of the men, the rattling noises from their chains, and the scuffling of their feet on the road, as they passed out of the city.  They left the paved streets inside the city walls behind, and began to traverse the dusty country highway beyond the city.  It was a heavily traveled road that carried much traffic, leaving the surface of the way rutted and pitted in many spots as it followed the path of the Great River, which flowed from the east to the west in the broad, fertile mountain valley that was the home of the nation named Verdant, and its capital city named Fortune.

Grange was in a daze, a long, consuming state of shock.  He knew that his whole world had crumbled, that the great promise of one day soon had turned into a permanently lost dream.  But the speed of the whipsaw, the change from being so high to falling so low made him numb, almost catatonic, and the brutal treatment by the guards drove him deeper into darkness.  A tiny spark of resolute hopefulness barely glowed inside, wondering if he could somehow escape, and return to the city.  But the chaffing of the metal cuff around his ankle painfully disabused him of that notion.

The guards ran the prisoners for miles, until they reached a small post at the confluence of a small river that ran into the Great River.

“All prisoners into the water; everyone into the ford,” their chief guard shouted at the exhausted men in chains.  The road was a shallow ford across the stream, just a couple of hundred yards away from the mouth of the river.

A fresh set of guards came out of the post, as the prisoners plunged into the water, then shouted and squealed in shock.  The small river’s waters were icy cold – the water flowed directly down from the snow fields at the tops of the mountains south of the Verdant valley, so that the water was painfully chilled.

Grange stopped moving, as the rest of his chain gang also stopped.  He bent low at the waist, his hands resting on his knees.  He looked down, where he saw that his yellow pants leg was orange around the ankle that was manacled, the result of the bloody chaffing the shackle had inflicted upon his leg, and he saw tendril of fresh red blood seeping away in the current of the water as he stood in the stream.  The water was so cold that it quickly moved from painful to thankfully numbing, taking the sting out of his ankle as the cold overwhelmed his nerves.

“Good bye animals,” one of the guards mockingly called, as the escorts from the city turned the prisoners over to a new set of guards, who stood ready and rested.

“Stop your sleeping, and let’s get to work,” the commander of the new escort bawled.  “Everyone pick up a bundle,” he pointed to a pile of canvas packs next to the post building.

The prisoners started to wearily walk over to the post, when the man in front of Grange suddenly went berserk.  He lunged at a guard as he passed him, trying to grab the man’s spear.  The chain around his ankle pulled him up short of his target – he fell on his face, his fingers inches short of the spear, while he pulled Grange and another prisoner off their feet with his desperate effort.

The guard jumped back, then mercilessly slammed the spear down into the prisoner’s back, making him scream, then stiffen, and collapse into silence.

“Who’s got the keys?” the guard asked in a bored tone, as the living prisoners looked on in shocked horror.  “You,” the guard pointed the bloody spear point at Grange, “carry the body over and throw it in the stream, so that it gets washed away,” he commanded.