Fingolfin's Captivity

captivity

In the morning I talked siegecraft with the castle's engineers, and most interesting talk it was. Then in the afternoon I'd made my way to the forge, where I talked the mastersmith into letting me do some work. Well, not so much talked—I know elves are supposed to be talkers, but while I appreciate a well turned phrase I prefer a certain economy with words. Smiths tend not to be the garrulous type, either. I understand a smithy better than a noble court. At any rate, I walked in, racked some tools, set out a couple of my own, donned apron, checked the fire and cocked an eyebrow. He allowed as how if I singed myself it was my own Madonna-cursed fault, which I took as permission. Ah, there is a simple clarity and elegance to smithcraft. I was working on a sword—not so much for use as to investigate how certain dwarven techniques might be combined with Northlander pattern-welding. I suspect it would have been a poor sword, but I was learning something. If this siege lasted a while before my friends figured out a way to break it, I was thinking the time would be well spent. Things were looking up, thought I, as I walked up to our room to check how the others were doing.
Pop. As I walked in, suddenly I was somewhere else. Specifically, over a pit, falling in. But that wasn't left to chance—before I could fall, let alone clear my head, there was a shout and a slab of wood slammed me down into the pit. Stunned, I gathered my wits and tried for a spell, but nothing was happening, and I felt the absence about me—I was in no mana. Obviously you can't teleport someone directly into a no-mana space, so they had done the next best thing. I was in darkness, but after a moment the cover lifted; I saw many crossbows aimed at me, and the pit's sides were not especially climbable. They ordered me to strip or I would be filled with holes. Then a couple of soldiers came down on a ladder and clubbed me down; when I awoke, I was in a cell.
The cell was of stone and I could feel the mana around me; I thought this seemed amazingly foolish, as many wizards can pass through or reshape simple walls of stone. But no, although I myself was in mana, the walls, ceilings, floor and door were all mana-free. I shudder at the risk some mage must have undergone just to trap me—or rather, I suppose, to blackmail my companions. I was stripped, which seemed a trifle undignified, and there was nothing in the cell—no chains, no cot of straw, and most of all no chamberpot. After a time the place began to smell. So did I. I suppose it was also distinctly cold and uncomfortable, but the humiliation told on me far more. From time to time a square in the cell door was unlatched and food tossed in—again, they gave me neither bowl nor utensil; water was squirted in a stream, which I was obliged to catch in my mouth and drink down as best I could—another humiliation.
After a time, some people came in to talk to me. Soldiers and wizards and an inquisitor, oh my. The inquisitor's name was Cassius, and he wanted information and to inform me of my godless status and the possibility of repentance. Really, he was more interested in the second, and in a way not even that. I'm no veteran of interrogations, but I had the distinct impression that it was all rather pro forma. He didn't value my information much, and as an elf he was fairly certain that I wouldn't be sincerely converting to the faith of any mayfly's deity I have uncles older than (well, or did until the Blackwoods). My value as a prisoner seemed pretty clearly to lie elsewhere. But he was a professional. I think he was reading my mind, because he would ask questions and pay little attention to the answers I spoke, going a bit vague. And again, it seemed as if he was largely following the forms—if he read my mind, he didn't need to torture me and indeed I suspect my agony shut out many thoughts of information, but “the book” said interrogations include torture and he was going to do a good job of it. I expect some of you reading this imagine that you could hold up under professional torture. That is, I expect some of you reading this are fools. No ordinary person can resist torture for long—and it's worse when there's no point. No doubt if I had some dire secret and knew I was winning as long as I could hold it within me—but I had no secrets in particular, and I had nothing to win. And he knew my fears, too—those he did read. My worst did not come to pass, but it was threatened. I cracked, oh yes. In blood and piss and screams and shit and tears, where was the vaunted elegance of the elves, that grace under pressure that we think defines us? Far away and irrelevant.
But he didn't know everything about me. Not all, no. I am a maker; they thought, with nothing in the cell, they had denied me everything that could be used to create, but they were wrong, and when they took my dignity they made themselves more wrong. They were too cute—I realize now and indeed suspected then that I was being used as a lure, or the cell would have been magic-free throughout for greater security and to stop any from tracking me. I can create earth and stone, as many mages can. Now I knew that, did I do anything too obvious or constructive in that line they would stop me. But they had left me no chamberpot, and the cell began to stink. The guards themselves found it hard to take the stench, so they quietly failed to raise objection when I made sand to bury my offal in. Fools. For in that sand I could hide other things. Before the interrogation I would have scorned to rummage in my waste just to hide some tool, but my dignity was gone, and I determined they would learn the folly of taking an elf's limits away.
I have a rare magic. Some wizards can create items from nothing—but these do not last, they disappear as soon as they are no longer held or worn; there is an element of illusion about such things. They cannot exist without mana. I have studied the making and breaking of things long and hard, and learned the elvish magic that lets me make a finished artefact from raw materials, provided I could make it normally given the tools, and the artefact is real and true—only the shaping is done by magic. I made a shield of stone, and a glass sword from sand, and a couple of hooks, and hid them in the sand. And to wield the shield, for handles, I braided my hair—but I could not cut it neatly, for I was not supposed to have a blade. I yanked it out in handfuls. I wrapped the swordhilt in leather, for better grip—I used my own skin, carefully cutting where the inquisitors had cut and then healed, healing myself again afterwards so I looked unchanged. My screams were no doubt horrible; I expect they thought me mad. A matter of degree, I suppose. With the success of the swordhilt, I began to work slowly on a set of leather armour. It is well, I think, that rescue arrived before I had progressed far.
I expected rescue. But I also expected the defenses to be tough, perhaps too hard for my friends to reach me. A bit of help could make the difference. My plan was this: The cell door had two openings of sorts, a grill to look through, and the square flap through which food was sent, latched on the outside. If the alarm went up, I would begin to create an earth barrier in front of my cell door, and mock the sentry that he would be unable to come in to kill me before rescue could arrive. My hope was that he would come to look at what I was doing, and when his face was at the grille I would do my best to stab him through the eye with the glass sword. When he fell, out would come a hook which, fed through the grille, I hoped would enable me to open the latch on the flap. Opening the flap, I would put through my hand and the larger hook, and attempt to get the door key from his belt. I believe the lock to be within arm's reach of the flap. Out I would come, or perhaps better first drag my jailer in to gain his clothes and armour, depending.
In the event, they managed to punch a gate through right outside my cell door, overpowering any teleport blocks, much to my and I'd say my captors' amazement. I did injure my sentry somewhat—discounting the helpless prisoner within, he turned away to face the danger coming through the gate, and the glass point took him in the neck. It distracted him, but his gorget was too tough for me to do his business that way. But with no foes to fight through, the couple of sentries by my door, even though one was a mage with some competence, were never going to stop people like Errandis, Dain, Kraypike and Ismail. So I was rescued, a naked, stinking elf bereft of dignity, under the eyes of my friends. I was grateful, but I nearly broke once more at their refusal to leave me alone. Errandis was the worst—his noblesse oblige, wanting to help me when I needed him to not see me, to not have seen me. By helping, by giving, he drew attention to my lack.
I had no real interest in this contest between humans up until now. That has changed. I can have no dignity until this Monsignor Cassius lies dead. Perhaps not then. But whether I regain any claim to elegance or no, these people will regret stripping it from me.