The Necromancer Trilogy - Eachanstone

Chapter Twenty - News Flash: Crucifixion Hurts

Tala had decided, for pretty much the first time, that she had been wrong. She had had no idea how much this would hurt. In fact, she couldn’t have even begun to consider how much it would hurt. It had never entered her mind that something as simple as this could hurt so much.

You know, she thought, I have a whole new respect for the son of god. Crucifixion hurts.

She wasn’t exactly crucified. But she was nailed to a wooden cross. There were nails through her hands. Nails through her feet and calves. Splinters pressing into her neck.

On the bright side, her train of thought continued, at least they didn’t set Maria on me.

They had all heard stories about what Maria had done to Celia. Or, more accurately, they hadn’t heard stories about what Maria had done. That, in itself, said more than Celia ever could have done.

Tala wasn’t quite sure if she was still sane. The pain had entered her mind and, somewhere along the way, she had stopped crying and screaming and had returned to being cheerfully and aggravatingly helpful to her captors. Maybe that was insanity. Or maybe it as just normal.

 Her cross was lying on the floor of what looked like a storeroom. Tala was grateful that she could lie down, but her nose was itchy again. Right now, it was better to focus on that as a major problem rather than pay more attention to the reason why she couldn’t scratch it.

 Sooner or later, she was going to be taken out and killed or sacrificed or tortured some more. She wasn’t quite sure which. Or maybe they intended to leave her here and starve.

 Tala hadn’t told them anything. At least, not very much. Anything she had said tended towards unimportant and was probably incoherent. This calm-after-the-storm had, naturally, been preceded by screams and tears and pleas for mercy. Tala wasn’t quite ready to be ashamed.

 What was it, she wondered, that changed someone’s perspective on pride? It was something about the pain, about how unexpected it was and how completely helpless you were, that made you suddenly realise that you didn’t want to be proud and brave and strong. You just wanted them to stop.

That’s why torture works, she realised, not because people are weak. But because they realise what matters to them and what matters is to survive.

Sophie wasn’t sure what was happening. She only knew that this room stripped her of her powers. She had no magic. She was imprisoned. And, to make matters worse, someone had forced a crown onto her head.

 It was a tiara, actually, though Sophie couldn’t see it. She’d tried to remove at the moment she could but the thing seemed to be welded onto her scalp. She could feel it drawing blood, all the time.

The door clanked open.

“You are summoned to witness, Night Princess,” a hard-faced Necromancer told her. “The final enchantment must begin. We must find the location of the Eachanstone…and destroy it.”

Sophie stared at him. “There’s a final enchantment?”

He responded with an evil smile. “Oh, yes!”

Celia looked up at the dark, foreboding walls of Primdon Castle, badly illuminated by the late evening half-light. She’d never visited before, and had been hoping for a crumbly old ruin. Just her luck to find the place well-maintained and fully-functional.

“This,” she murmured, “has got to be amongst the most improbable things I’ve ever done.”

“Really?” Bastard gave her a surprised look. “This beats the time with the gargoyles and the terrorists?”