TIME IS THE MERCY of Eternity, or so the poets say. But the mind makes Eternity of Time. When Milton’s monster said the mind might make heaven of hell, it was the father of lies who spoke those words—the very devil whose image my ancestors took for their sign. Great though the mind may be, even in its capacity for self-deception, it has limits. No mind can make heaven of hell, not even mine. You cannot dream your way out of prison, not truly, nor think your way from the camps. No one would say to those suffering under the Lothriad that they could simply imagine a better world. It is one thing to tell the slaves of the Cielcin to shoulder their burdens and fight to survive, quite another to tell them to imagine they wear no chains.

I could not imagine I was free, or think my way out of pain.

The torment on the wall continued until I thought I must lose my arm, until I knew I must starve. The tortured appendage was blue from blood loss and contusion, and ached worse as the blood returned to it each night. The torments of my guards worsened, their laughter grown harsher and more cruel. The mute slaves visited less and less, and when the Cielcin returned and did not lower me down the wall, but draped my arms over their shoulders and marched me down through the Dhar-Iagon beneath the sculptures of the Watchers and out into that accursed city and down once more by several winding stairs and blind tunnels to the cave cell with its iron door, I did not resist them.

Alone again, I slept—and for how long?

No one came. Not even Death—though I heard her bony feet and the rustle of dark robes at the door to the hall many a time. Against my more rational parts, the animal in me staved her off; forced me to crawl on my belly like a worm first to the water’s edge, then to the replenished stock of ration bars Urbaine had left for me.

I could not let myself die.

Valka was alive. I knew she must be. Urbaine . . . Severine . . . Iovan . . . I knew they all had lied.

I could not die.

Not again.

The pain ebbed by inches, wounds hardening to scars. In time I knelt, and stood, and cleaned myself in the waters, thereafter drinking only from the thin stream that ran down the limestone wall. In time, I began to carve my marks in the stone wall again, away from the first set I’d made.

I was sure I’d marked a standard year, and surer still that more time had passed, for I could not account for my time above the gates or the time I spent recovering on the floor. I might have lost months.

But I had recovered, though I had not recovered anything like my full strength. I could hardly stand, and though my limbs were wasting of muscle, they seemed heavier to me than ever they had before. It was a trial to walk from one end of my cell to the next, and so most often I sat with my back against the wall, staring at the shrinking shadows as Urbaine’s watchful eye drifted lazily overhead.

I muttered to myself, and in time fell silent.

The ration crate emptied and stayed empty. Desperation drove me to catch the slimy things that swam in the waters of my pool, to eat them raw and spit out the bones. In time I forgot the foul taste of the creatures, as I had forgotten the taste of wine and the warm caress of the sun. I had healed, but I had not healed well, and the motion of my torn shoulder was awkward and unsteady. I could not raise that arm above my head no matter how I stretched it, nor could I raise it at all without pain. No matter. Though the three fingers left to me on that hand remained, that hand could never grasp a sword—not well. In the Empire they might grow the bones and flesh anew, might mend the poorly knit tissues of my shoulder, but I was not in the Empire.

I might never see the Empire again.

That was a strange thought. I had grown to love it, in its way. For all its faults and failings, it was home. I loved my Empire not for what it was, but for what it should be, what it must be. For whatever it was, it was not Dharan-Tun. It was not Padmurak. It was not Vorgossos. It was a place where humanity might live. Might live . . . and remain human.

But it was lost to me, as I was lost in the dungeons of the enemy.

Lost without a star, without the light of some other world to remind me that hell was only here, to remind me—as Gibson once had—that most of the universe was peaceful and quiet.

The only light I had my enemy had given me, and it illumined nothing save my cage.