Page 7 of Chained Knight

What the…Suddenly, the scene veered from terror to bleak comedy. What kind of fucked-up trip was this? “Chains?” she said, and could have kicked herself for sounding so stupid. “Oh. Hello.”Hello? Is that all you can come up with?

Metal clashed and rang again. It seemed like an awful lot of noise in the deep hush, and she seriously considered retreating to the broken gate until she could figure out what the hell.

Maybe he sensed as much, because the entire pile went still once more. The suspicion that this was all an elaborate prank circled Ari’s head briefly, fled when a nervous cough tickled her throat, and the shaking was back again. Her arms came up, crossed defensively; she hugged herself as her legs trembled.

Breathless silence stretched between them. The castle, humming to itself like an undisturbed wasp-nest, took no notice.

“Ah,” he said, quietly. A long, soft syllable, like a mechanic under a raised hood seeing the problem, finding it was one he had the tools and parts for. “At last.”

At last, what?“I’m sorry.” The apology, tiny and squeaky, was dismally familiar. Occasionally it might mollify her husband, but usually it was just another landmark on the road to huddling in a corner, trying to sob silently and not set Mike off further. She took one blundering step back, and another; her left heel landed badly on a cobble and her ankle threatened to roll. “I didn’t know, the door was open so I?—”

“Don’t. Don’t go.” Harsh now, command with a strange edge of pleading. “Please.”

That was the moment she realized he wasn’t speaking English. More distressingly, she wasn’t either. The words changed as they left her mouth, mutating into something else—a rolling cadence very much like Spanish, but with the accents placed strangely.

Oh. Oh boy. Fortunately she wasthinkingin her usual language, but the sheer unreality of the situation softened her knees. Ari swayed, and the pile of metal links twitched as if he was startled by the sudden movement—or as if he wanted to catch her. A darker shape amid the chains was a gauntlet ofdull metal, fingers outstretched, and the arm it was attached to strained under layers of imprisonment.

Ari couldn’t get in enough oxygen. Go figure, she’d finally met someone else here and it was the Man in the Iron Mask, plus he was speaking in tongues. Absurdity warred with wine-dark terror, her heart pounding and the roaring in her ears hatefully familiar. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, again.

And once more the words changed as they left her, into something more likeI ask your forgiving.

“No need.” He spoke much more softly now, and it struck Ari that he was trying to sound… well, maybe comforting, or at least nonthreatening. Something was translating the words as they hit her ears. “We have surprised each other, it seems.”

That’s one way to put it. “I didn’t mean to.” Hushed and conspiratorial, as if apologizing on the way to her seat in a crowded movie theater. Could people dream in foreign languages? She didn’t know. The ragged edge between panicked laughter and hyperventilating fear was familiar, and she hated it. “I just got here, and I don’t… I don’t know anything.”

“I see.” Quiet and thoughtful, the voice also echoed hollowly inside the helmet. It sounded like a speaker trapped at the bottom of a metal well. “You have done no ill, my lady. Please, be at ease.”

My lady? At ease?If this was a psychotic break it was an interestingly archaic one, both in aesthetics and linguistics. Something about the cobbled space and the gallery was naggingly familiar, lingering just on the tip of her brain. Had she seen the castle in a painting before, possibly in a textbook or a print? “I don’t know if it’s possible.” Her shoulders hunched; at least if he was chained up he couldn’t get mad and chase her.

Or so she hoped.

A strange, bitter sound echoed from the helmet. After a moment, she realized it was a laugh, deep and genuine, thoughpained. Her conscience pinched, but before she could find anything else to say he spoke again.

“Perhaps not.” He shifted, but only a little; the chains didn’t permit much movement, wrapped over and over in a weird cocoon. “Yet I must ask. Will you aid me?”

Oh, crap. “Um.” The thought that whoever lived in this castle probably had this guy in a metal burrito for a good reason warred with empathy and the natural urge to help anyone in distress. Even in this situation she couldn’t stop thinking about the absurdity of it all; maybe that was her original sin. Mike near-constantly accused her of laughing at him, of looking down on him. Maybe she had, unconsciously, and he’d known.

But this guy wasnotMike, thank goodness. She’d recognize her husband’s voice, even filtered through a helmet.

The silence turned even more ridiculous, and Ari realized he was waiting for her to speak. “Why are you chained up?” Her accent in the weird new tongue was different, shortening certain words and linking others together; she probably sounded like a country bumpkin.

“Because I did not care enough to gainsay those who did so.” Still outstretched, the gauntlet relaxed slightly; he wasn’t straining against the bonds now. Just holding his arm out, as if there wasn’t a whole mess of metal draped over it.

Oh, is that all?Ari had learned the hard way that the only safe place for sarcasm was inside her own aching head, but still the words almost escaped. She swallowed hard, wishing for more of that cool, crystalline pondwater; it was weird that she wasn’t hungry.

Then again, there probably wasn’t anything edible in Purgatory.

“Oh.” A ridiculous, simple syllable. The silence returned, awkward as the caesura after some embarrassing malfunction at a dinner party.

What were her choices here? Banging on the castle doors, covered in dried mud, and asking them politely why they had this guy locked up? If she was stuck in an asylum or having some kind of delusion in jail, he was probably a fellow prisoner. Which made him a question mark, but on the other hand…

She had to admit, she had no idea about the other hand. The distressing reality of this place bore some interesting, unwelcome, and entirely insane implications Ari didn’t feel equipped to untangle at the moment.

“Those inside will not treat you kindly,” he said, as if reading her mind. The chains made soft clinking noises as his arm dropped slowly, motion controlled at every moment like a dancer’s stage-gesture. “Especially if they sense what you are.”

“What I am?” She repeated the phrase, trying to pronounce the syllables as he did, hoping he wouldn’t think it was mockery.

“Yes.” The armor and chains were motionless again. Was there really someone inside the casing, or just blank space? “Will you aid me, then?”

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