Dreams of the Oracle

Chapter 4

Jack Linch leaned against the cold stone wall and stared at nothing. The darkness covered him like a cold, wet, blanket. He didn't move and kept his eyes only partway open. The familiar aches and pains of his trapped and cramped body were the only things keeping him semiconscious. He found it interesting that he thought more about going after those who took his freedom than he did about freedom itself. No thoughts came to his mind about how to break free. He had no wild plans about getting out of this massive fortress turned prison.

How he escaped didn't matter. He would get out. He would get out because there were people out there that he needed to punish. Oh yes, he would not let them get away with what they had done to him. Fate wasn't done with him. This was not how Jack Linch died.

Abruptly his scalp began to itch terribly. He reached up with a pale, clammy hand and scratched it ferociously. It was almost feeding time. The routine was as solid as the walls and he could tell by the level of hunger he felt how close he was to being fed. Although by now he had been living on so little for so long that hunger pains were only a pale imitation of what they had once been. Curse this filthy place. Indignation crackled down his spine and brought clarity through the haze.

The door opened suddenly. The familiar old man with his cart hobbled in to take Jack's bowl. The two bored looking guards stood at either side. Jack stared up at each one of them with a look of raw hate. The guards wore slightly rumpled uniforms, neither one looked any better than a hired thug. Discipline, it seemed, was not all encompassing in Calchas Prison. The old man returned the bowl and glanced at Jack's slop bucket; it was nearly empty as always.

These three throwbacks from society were the jailers of the great Jack Linch. Rage burned inside him with such intensity that for a split second the haze that clouded his vision and mind, the haze he had lived with for ten years, lifted. For a moment everything seemed to come into sharp focus. With an effort he forced it down deep inside him once again. Better to conserve it and keep it for when he was ready to use it. There was no need to lift himself from his monotonous delirium, not today, not yet.

His hate he had with him always. His rage though, his rage he cultivated and kept in check for the day when he would release it. He crawled to his bowl slurped up the contents without enjoyment or gusto. The bowl had more in it than usual but Jack hardly cared. Then, as he continued to consume the contents, his tongue touched on something hard and round. Some spiteful old cook had apparently thought it would be humorous to toss a rock into his soup. One day he would kill that man, and the wretch that brought the soup, and the two guards.

Jack reached his hand into the bowl to pull out the rock and toss it aside. But as his bony fingers closed around it he felt something, something he hadn't felt for more than ten years. His eyes widened and he held it up for closer inspection. Even in the darkness it shimmered, like a piece of glass...or a gemstone.

It couldn't be.

Experimentally he began to concentrate, reaching deep within himself to his repressed rage. Long ago it had been second nature to call forth his magic, but after all this time perhaps it was lost forever.

Then, like finding a grain of in a stream, he rediscovered the power within himself. It filled his entire body with an electrifying intensity. The gemstone in his hand, a ruby, began to glow blood red, lighting up the darkened cell. His senses came alive and his eyes blinked with sudden, inescapable, clarity.

Tears came to his eyes as raw power flowed through his body. He had almost forgotten what it was like. A slow smile came to his face as, for a few moments, he just stood there taking in the moment. The ruby in his hand glowed brighter, like a captured star. The aches of his body drifted away. He felt reborn and alive; the years of imprisonment seemed to fall from him like beads of sweat.