18. 17 #3
He scoffed, a choking, shortened version of the hacking laugh. “Seen. I don’t see.”
I reached my hand out, thrusting the paper up next to the bars. We wouldn’t have long until the guard returned. “Please look.”
“Please. Young girl says please.” He mimicked my voice terribly. “Trickery. There’s only one visitor I care for.”
I blinked. “Who?”
“Who? Who?” He echoed me like a bear-backed owl. “She says who.”
I recalled his final words, his obsession. His dedication. I thought for a second before I spoke. “Who did you want to forgive you? Who is the great one?”
He jolted now. As heavily as if I had slammed a metal baton against the bars. As if I had concocted a racket with a single word. He spun around to me, his eyes flashing in the torchlight. “You do not speak of him!”
Spittle flecked into his beard and onto the floor as he approached the bars with fearsome intensity. I took a quick step back, clutching the paper in my hand by my side. I would have wet myself in fear, if not for the pitiable combination of his limp and the bars between us.
He pointed his finger at me, his face now fully in the pool of my torch’s light. His features wavered in rippling rage, and I realised my hand was shaking. “Unworthy harlot! Unworthy!”
I took a deep breath through my nose and raised the piece of paper to the light again. “Have you seen this before? These circles?”
He didn’t look away from my eyes until the final word. “Circles,” he repeated, but this time it wasn’t a childish mimicry, but more like a prayer.
Juven looked at the paper. His accusatory finger, and then the entire hand, dropped. He let his forehead fall against the bars as he stared at the paper, his mouth open.
“You’ve seen this.”
For a moment, he looked much more lucid. He scanned my face. “Where was it?”
I grimaced.
It was enough. He had guessed its location. He laughed. The prisoner tipped his head back into the shadows and crowed out victory.
“What is it?” I pressed, glancing down the corridor. I couldn’t see the guard's approach yet, but if he kept up this volume, it wouldn’t be long. “What does it mean?”
Juven kept laughing in his hacking way. I waited, my toes tapping in a combination of sick anxiety, fear, and anticipation.
“My work. It will be continued,” he said, victorious.
I didn’t hesitate. “What work?”
Juven held the bars with both hands and stuck his head through the gap. It wasn’t quite wide enough, so the grimy metal only had the impact of pulling his cheeks into a weird grimace. “Nine must die so the one can return.”
Whatever heat the torch had offered seemed to go at once. I should have eaten something before coming here. I didn’t have the energy to be sapped like this again. It was too much.
Nine must die. Seera. Saskia. Jusia. How many more had already died? “Nine women? Nine devotees?”
Juven didn’t even seem to hear my question. His eyes were unfocused in the torchlight, muttering again. “Nine must die. Marked in his name.”
Nine, so one could return. Ten gods, and then Ragnifort fell. Nine needed to die, so the one could return. “Ragnifort.”
Juven’s eyes lit up. “His name.”
I heard it then, footsteps down the corridor. The light of a torch. The guard was coming back. I stepped closer. Close enough for Juven to reach out, if he so wished. I got into his eyesight, forcing him to look at me. “And then, what happens?”
Juven smiled. “He will come! He will rise.”
He will come.
My eyes jittered around this man’s pitch-black cell as I put it together. “If nine devotees die, with these markings, Ragnifort will return?”
“He will come,” Juven repeated.
“Who is doing this?” I asked. “Who else knows about Ragnifort?”
“Who? Who?” he mimicked again. I groaned as the torchlight was only two cells down. “He is coming.” Juven had noticed the guard and crowed out to him. “The light of his fire will return. The blue flame!”
I whispered as loud as I could dare. My last attempt. “Who is continuing the work?”
Juven only crowed louder, and pumped his fist.
The guard was here; I was out of time. I straightened and folded up my paper, as if I had just recorded his words. I placed it into my pocket and offered the bald man a queasy smile.
He clunked his torch. “Settle down, Juven.” Then he turned to me, offering me a sympathetic glance. “I’m sorry, miss. He gets like this. All raving and ranting.”
I nodded at him. “I understand.”
“Did you get what you needed?” he asked, glancing at my pocket.
I tapped it, my hand still shaking. He would read my tremble as fear. And he would be right. If even half of this madman’s ravings could be relied on, this was as horrible as it could be. “I think so.”
He nodded, as Juven continued to scream about Ragnifort’s return. The guard cringed. “You should go.”
I blinked, realising he had no intention to check on anything we had discussed. Thank Ekris. I nodded. “Yes, yes, of course.”
I turned, taking my torchlight with me as I retreated down the corridor.
Behind me, Juven yelled, the words following down in the darkness and haunting my steps. “He is coming!”