Erich's Plea: Book One of the Witchcraft Wars Read online

one, in all its long history had ever escaped from its confines, except in death. Slade had never believed half the rumors that had surrounded Diablis before, now he saw clearly they were all true and worse. He also knew why so many of those imprisoned here died and, it was said, were glad to, death being preferable to daily life in Diablis.

  Each day that passed for Slade saw his strength being steadily sapped; his once lean and muscular frame becoming daily more wasted. Between the pitiful amount of barely edible food, the near constant beatings or other, more inventive types of torture Slade had become a shadow of his former self. Only two things had so far prevented Slade from succumbing to the horrors of Diablis.

  Physically he relied on the strengthening exercises practiced by the monks of the Black Lotus. The exercises, a compulsory part of his training, had once kept him lean and strong, now Slade believed they were keeping him alive. To survive emotionally and mentally Slade found himself relying on memories of Ming to endure Diablis's tortures.

  Slade recognized the irony, that Ming, who he had spent the past five years trying so hard to forget now haunted his thoughts, waking or sleeping, and he welcomed the memories. His thoughts of Ming and the relationship they had once shared had given Slade the courage to endure the beatings, the torture and the cold, hard stone of his underground cell.

  This far below ground it was impossible to tell the time accurately but very faintly he could hear the far off sounds above him that typically heralded a new day. Soon enough guards would come for him and escort him to whatever torture was to be his fate that day. Still moving carefully Slade dressed in the filthy prison uniform he had been issued, which was now little more than rags. He performed his morning ablutions then slowly and painfully began to work his way through the series of exercises.

  As he worked through the strengthening exercises Slade wondered about his former teacher. Solomon was head of the Black Lotus monastery, and had trained Slade, his older brother Ulrich and their younger sister Ursula. The master had taught all of them many extremely useful tricks. Tricks that now might help him escape, which Slade would willingly employ at the first possible opportunity.

  Given his growing conviction the bizarre dream was a true omen of danger Slade vowed he would somehow find a way to do the impossible and escape, and he would have to do it soon. While the strict regime and constant torture that was life in Diablis prison seemed to afford no opportunity and Slade could not readily see a way out he would nevertheless have to make a way.

  Shortly after beginning his second set of exercises two prison guards arrived. They were big, burly men with the rough, dark skin and slightly flattened noses that were evidence of some orcish blood. The guards were obviously not Ixlan natives, who tended towards pale skin and dark hair. This was hardly surprising; very few of those in charge in Ixlan were natives.

  It was hard to believe that the island kingdom of Ixlan and his home kingdom of Saxenburg had once been close allies. In fact Slade’s grandfather, Vidar, had been a cousin of Ixlan’s former ruler Eldritch. Since the invasion, however, Ixlan and Saxenburg had become bitter enemies.

  Although the invasion had happened before Slade’s birth he had heard all the stories. A little over forty years ago the once peaceful island kingdom had been thrown into chaos by orc armies that had swept across the land looting, burning, killing many of the people and forcing the rest into slavery. Eventually even King Eldritch had been slaughtered, his head posted on a spike outside the gates of Diablis city.

  The assault of the orcish armies had been swift and brutal, taking all by surprise and there had been no time for Slade’s grandfather to send aid to his cousin. By the time Saxenburg’s troops had landed on the main island the orc army was so firmly entrenched that the men, Slade's father Erich among them, were lucky to escape the island with their lives.

  Word had eventually filtered through The Kingdoms that a man known only as ‘The Dark One’ was Ixlan’s new ruler. Who he was or where he had come from no one knew. All that was known about The Dark One was eventually learned through bitter experience. His unwarranted cruelty, his tyranny, and his apparent omniscience all too soon became legendary.

  A once beautiful archipelago of islands whose folk were mostly fisherman and traders Ixlan had now become a home to cutthroats, murderers and a pirate haven feeding the otherwise illegal slave trade. Justice, law and order were now unknown in the islands with the surviving natives reduced to slaves for their new overlords.

  As an island kingdom with a highly trained and skilled navy, Ixlan was impregnable, yet Slade’s father had never relinquished his dream that the kingdom could one day be reclaimed. Although who his father wished to reclaim the kingdom for Slade had never known as Eldritch’s only son and heir had disappeared during the invasion and never resurfaced.

  Slade, like his father, was tall and normally very well built, over six feet of lean muscle with the reddish hair and pale skin typical of Saxenburg. His captors, however, were taller still and in his currently weakened condition, considerably stronger. As such Slade did not even bother to struggle when his captors took hold of his arms to lead him away.

  For the past two months this had been a silent procession through the maze of cells to one of the many hideous subterranean torture chambers. Today however, his half-orc guards were talkative; to each other, of course. The language they spoke was not orcish or Common. It was unusual but eventually Slade recognized it as a form of one of the hill giant dialects.

  When he identified the language Slade was so puzzled by this he stumbled and almost fell, only to be roughly dragged upright by his jailers. Where, he wondered, would a couple of bloodthirsty Ixlan guards have picked up hill giant? The majority of the giant tribes lived in the Northern Badlands and they were a peaceful people whose only wish was to be left alone.

  Today was certainly turning out to be a day of surprises. First the strange dream, then hearing his captors speak for the first time, in a dialect that made little sense, and now it appeared his guards were not taking him to one of the underground torture chambers after all. As they turned into a long, narrow corridor Slade could see a staircase at the end of the hall. A staircase leading up, not down.

  The Wheel Room

  Apart from the day of his arrival, Slade had spent no time on the main floor, which was the only part of the prison at ground level. Like all prisoners he had been processed in a large room on the main floor, stripped of his belongings then given the rough trousers and loose overshirt of the prison population and taken below ground. Slade searched his memory for details of the main floor but his time there had been so short that he had only the dimmest impression of the layout.

  The stairs ended in a small stone alcove that made an abrupt right turn into a huge, blindingly bright sunlit room without any ceiling. Slade blinked back tears from the painful light and tried to make sense of the room before him. In the centre of the long open room was an odd structure, like a wheel turned on its side. It had a central core with iron bars coming off the core at evenly paced intervals. What purpose the structure served was impossible to tell but its use was immediately apparent.

  Several prisoners were already chained to the iron bars and were walking endlessly in a circle causing the central core to move. A few of the prisoners appeared relatively healthy while others were virtual skeletons, their skin hanging loosely from bones. He saw that some of the prisoners were darkly sunburned while others appeared to have only recently been brought to the wheel room, given that their skin was still so pale.

  Stationed around the room were several more guards. Some, like Slade’s captors, of probable orcish descent, others obviously human but every one of them equipped with long whips, crossbows, sharp daggers and heavy leather jerkins.

  Slade was half walked and half dragged to one of the empty spokes, his hands tied quickly to the bar with strips of leather. The whole procedure being performed on the move as the other prisoners continue
d to turn the wheel. Once Slade was tied to the structure there was no choice but to keep moving.

  As he walked, Slade tried to get a sense of the room’s location within the prison complex. The wheel room, as he termed it, seemed to be positioned in the centre of the main floor. Slade remembered Diablis as a long rectangular building. He could see doors leading out of this room to either side and there was a pair of reinforced wooden doors in the middle of the northern facing stone wall. There were no doors in the wall behind him, which Slade believed meant it was probably an outer wall. Unfortunately he saw nothing that seemed to offer any chance for escape.

  Slade soon realized that this part of the prison complex had been very cleverly designed to catch the full rays of the sun for as long as possible. Morning, afternoon and deadly midday sun beat down on Slade and his fellow prisoners as they walked or, more frequently stumbled on and on in a pointless and endless circle.

  That this pointless and backbreaking labor was performed under the blistering sun only made the work more torturous. With sweat dripping from his body Slade could not even begin to imagine how unbearable this would be in summer; it was torturous enough now in the middle of