Chương 15: Amy and Jacob

Jacob Wanderbilt woke up in a cage. He looked around and saw that his was at the end of a line with four other cages, all of them occupied by other hapless prisoners like himself. They were being held in some sort of cave. Deep underground, going by the smell of sulfur—though perhaps that had more to do with the demonic runes drawn on the black dais in the middle of the room.

At the center of the dais, at the very heart of the rune formation, was an ornate pedestal topped by a small floating orb that glowed so bright it hurt to look at. In the light of the orb, he looked around and spotted his sword tossed among a pile of what he guessed was the other prisoners' belongings. In a panic he checked his coat's inner chest pocket and was relieved to find that the kidnappers hadn't taken his red dragon scale. Even with all his family's wealth, it wasn't something he could easily replace.

Both the sword and dragon scale had been bought just earlier today in response to the terrifying mugging incident from last night. Luckily for him, there happened to be a passing mage, but he didn't want to count on his luck a second time. He spent some time trying to figure a way out. A weakness in the cage, loose tools within reach—anything. He noticed the woman in the next cage staring at him.

"I'm Amy," she said.

"What's your name?"

"I'm Jacob," he replied.

"How long was I out?"

"It's hard to tell the passing of time down here, but I would say it's only been a couple of hours since they threw you in that cage." A couple of hours. He wondered if his house steward would have sent someone out to look for him yet. But even if he had, how long until they decided he was missing? How long until they assembled a search party?

"How'd they nab you?" Amy asked.

"I don't really remember," he said.

"Sure you do. You're just too embarrassed to say." She was right. He'd been shamefully careless.

"I promise I won't laugh," she urged.

"I was lured into an alley," he said. It was because of the dragon scale. A high-class material like that required a smith with special skill to work it, and it was commonly accepted that some of the best blacksmiths in Lorelark were lizardkin, whose workshops were often located in the less desirable locations, where rent was cheap and the neighbors didn't complain about the noise. She looked him over.

"You're dressed like a noble. Odd thing for your sort to be wandering around at night, let alone venturing into dark alleys."

"It wasn't night," he said, ignoring the fact that yet another person didn't recognize him.

"Probably early evening."

"They nabbed you in daylight?"

"Well, the room they lured me into was pretty dark." She giggled.

"You followed them into a dark room?"

"Hey, you promised you wouldn't laugh." She ceased her giggling.

"Sorry. I guess I just had to take any reason to be cheerful down here."

"No, I understand," he said. Judging by her appearance, she'd been held captive for more than a day.

"Then tell me, how did they get you?" She hesitated.

"It's the silliest thing."

"Now I've got to hear it. You got to laugh at mine." Amy nodded and took a deep breath.

"So there's this cat, right? I'm not allowed to have pets in my building, but I see it coming around every couple of nights, and I started leaving out some food and water for it. It became a regular thing, so I started buying proper cat food."

"Uh, we're talking about how you got kidnapped, right?"

"I'm getting to it. Well, lately I haven't seen it around, but the food gets eaten, so I kept leaving the bowls out. A couple of nights ago, I heard some noises. Hoping to catch a glimpse of it again, I went outside to check." He could see where this was going.

"Was that when they took you?"

"No, it was just my neighbor. Turns out, he's the one who'd been eating the cat food I leave out. That's why I thought the stray was still around. The noise was from him rummaging through my trash." She shook her head.

"I knew he'd fallen on hard times, but I hadn't realized it was this hard."

"What does he do, your neighbor?"

"He's a writer." If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. He could see why times might be tough for the neighbor.

"He's been working on this story," Amy continued.

"About a girl who travels through Kalimor with a cat she found. I think it might secretly be about me, since her name is pretty similar, and she has the same color hair. There's only a handful of chapters at the moment, but they've been doing the rounds through the neighborhood."

"Yet he's still struggling?"

"The problem is that only one person can read them at a time, and because we're stuck in the Dark Ages, most of us read pretty slow. He could make a decent living if he could get a copy out to every reader at the same time."

"But he has to write each copy by hand," he replied.

"He told me about a crazy idea he had once. A machine where you just press it down and it makes a copy really fast. But he's a writer, not an engineer, so he wouldn't have the first clue how to go about making one. And he obviously doesn't have the money to pay an expensive engineer to design one for him." A machine to print on paper. Writers had such fanciful ideas. But that was to be expected, since their job was to make things up. Next they will want a machine that writes the book for you. She sighed.

"Now I might never get to find out what happens to Amy-Lynn." He gave the matter some thought and said, "You still haven't told me how you got taken."

"I was hoping you'd forget," she admitted.

"It really is embarrassing."

"With all this hype, it better be worth it."

"All the hype's only in your head," she chided. She sighed heavily and continued, "So while I was out there watching my neighbor eating my cat food, I spotted a cat running past. It looked an awful lot like my stray, and you know how I've been really worried about it?"

"Oh no. Don't tell me you chased after it." She nodded.

"It was about three blocks out. They appeared out of nowhere and cut off my way back. I led them on an almighty chase, but they got me in the end."

"There's nothing to be embarrassed about," Jacob said.

"You fought your hardest and lost. That's a lot better than what I did."

"Well, here's the weird thing. This cat lady came out of nowhere and helped me get away."

"You got away?"

"I got away." He looked her over.

"But you're here."

"That's the embarrassing part. I was making my way home and walked right into a second group of them." They sat quietly for a moment, stewing in their shared embarrassment. He was the first to break the silence.

"So what's the turnaround time on this hostage situation? How long have you been in here?"

"I was nabbed on a Firstday. What day is it now?" she asked.

"Fourthday."

"They haven't spoken to me about a ransom or any of their demands," she said.

"Nor have any of the others. The one at the end has been here longest, and we think that's two weeks, though we aren't completely sure because he doesn't talk much."

"That's most unusual." He felt uneasy at this news. It meant that the hostage-takers were disorganized. How would he ever face his family if they found out he'd fallen captive to a bunch of amateurs?

"Is there a usual way this is meant to go?"

"I don't know, this is my first time," he admitted.

"But I know inefficiency when I see it."

"I hope they get their act together soon," Amy said.

"What if the cat returns while I'm stuck in here?" A laugh came from the cage at the end. They both looked over at the man, whose hair had become a tangled mess from his weeks in captivity and had turned his crazed eyes on them.

"You lotta think this is a hostage situation?" The man's voice was scratchy and manic, the sort you expect to hear shouting about the end-of-days from a street corner as you hurry past with your shopping.

"What's your theory?" Jacob demanded. The man pointed at the dais and the infuriatingly bright orb.

"Lotta haven't seen the runes? Lotta can't see the magic orb?"

"I've been trying not to think about those," Amy confessed.

"Ise heard them whispering," the man said.

"Long before lotta came with all the noise. The robes want to call up a dark lord." Jacob whispered to Amy, "What robes?"

"I think he's talking about the kidnappers," she whispered back. The man pointed at Jacob.

"His arrival marks the end for us! The ritual shall begin tonight!"

"I think he means that the kidnappers will be ready to perform the ritual now that they've gathered all the sacrifices," Amy whispered.

"Yeah, I figured as much," he replied. The crazed man continued to rave on, but Jacob wasn't paying attention. Instead he was looking over at the cavern's entrance, where several figures in hooded robes had made their appearance. Each carried a box, which they set down on the dais. From one of the boxes they pulled candles, which they placed in a pattern around the rune formation but left unlit for now.

From a second they removed five obsidian bowls and placed them in the marked circles around the perimeter of the formation. From the third box came rope, thick enough to bind a man, ten lengths in total, laid in sets of two beside each bowl. Once the candles were all set up, one of the robes removed a ceremonial dagger and inspected it. Jacob would have liked to say that it looked wicked sharp, but it was actually quite dull, as he saw when the robe tested it on cucumber.

Out of everything, this was the part that made the fear really sink in. It seemed that the robes had become sick of the crazed man's ravings, and the one wielding the ceremonial dagger approached the cage. But the threat did nothing to silence the man.

"You think Ise scared? You can't kill me! You lotta need five sacrifices!"

"[Earth Bind]." Silence finally descended on the cave as all the prisoners and robes stared at the cage where the crazed man had sunk up to his knees into the floor. The bottom of the cage was solid iron, and even that had given way to the spell.

"We do need you alive," the mage said, running his finger along the blunt blade.

"But I have no shortage of ways to make the last moments of your life very unpleasant." Something about the spell had awakened the last remnant of sanity in the crazed man's mind, and he stared fearfully—and silently—at the robed mage.

"Do you promise to be quiet?" the mage demanded. When the man nodded, he was released by a second [Earth Bind], after which he cowered in the corner of his cage. Jacob didn't know much about magic, but even he knew that [Earth Bind] wasn't a simple spell. He looked over at Amy, who seemed awestruck, and then toward the demonic ritual that was being set up. These people weren't just dabblers. This was a real demon summoning they were preparing. He turned to Amy and whispered, "That story you mentioned earlier.

You didn't happen to bring a chapter with you?"

"What?"

"I should like to read it." Anything to take his mind off what was to come.

"I only have the latest chapter on me." There was some shuffling as she shifted about in her dress and then pulled out the pages hidden in the folds within. These were then passed through the bars to him. He read the title. The Secret Apprenticeship of Amy-Lynn. Then he looked at her with wide eyes.

"Wait, this isn't one of those types of stories, is it?" She responded by making cat claws with her fingers and pretending to scratch the air. At first he appeared tentative, but soon Jacob was lost in the words. Watching him churn through the pages, Amy wished she could get to see how the story ended.