Read Online Brechalon by Wesley Allison - Free Book Online

disappeared. He sighed and then
walked across the courtyard to the motor shed. Zeah reached down
and picked up the rubber stopper that Saba had left, then stood up,
stretched his back, and went up the steps and back into the
house.
    * * * * *
    It was the first time that Nils Chapman had
seen prisoner eighty nine doing anything other than lying curled up
in a fetal position. Today she was sitting, cross-legged in the
center of the room. It was hot and muggy and he had to wipe the
perspiration from his eyes in order to see her clearly. She was
muttering something, but he had to listen for a minute to make out
just what it was.
    “… nine hundred seventy four days.
One thousand nine hundred seventy four days. One thousand nine
hundred seventy four days.”
    “ Why are you counting the days?” he
called to her through the small window in the armored
door.
    She locked eyes with him, but didn’t stop
repeating her words.
    “ Are you hungry?” he
asked.
    She stopped. “Yes.”
    “ Alright. I’ll get you
something.”
    Chapman made his way down the stone corridor
toward the south wing and the kitchen. He hadn’t quite reached it,
when he ran into Karl Drury going the other direction. The other
man wore his usual scowl and his shirt was soaked through with
sweat. He didn’t need to ask what the other man wanted.
    “ Why don’t you leave her alone?”
said Chapman.
    “ Why don’t you piss off?” Drury
replied and shoved him into the wall.
    Chapman immediately leaned back toward
Drury.
    “ I’m not afraid of you,” he
growled, which was in fact not true at all.
    “ You’d better be,” the other man
hissed, producing a knife from somewhere. “I could gut you right
now… or maybe I’ll do it tonight, while you’re asleep.”
    “ Tosser,” said Chapman, but he
hurried away toward the kitchen.
    Purposefully waiting a good half hour before
returning to the north wing, Chapman unlocked the door after he was
sure that his sadistic fellow guard had gone. Prisoner eighty nine
was sprawled across the stone floor like a ragdoll. It was no
surprise that she had been raped, but the guard was shocked at how
badly she had been beaten. Apparently she was not nearly as
acquiescent as she had been before. Her eyes were open, but they
stared at the ceiling, unmoving.
    “ I brought you a Roger’s
Pie.”
    He sat the wooden bowl containing the bun
filled with meat and turnips next to her head. Her eyes rolled
around in her head then looked at him. She sat up and snatched the
pie from the bowl, stuffing it into her mouth.
    “ Have to keep my strength up,” she
muttered with her mouth full. “One thousand nine hundred seventy
four days.”
    “ Why are you counting?”
    She finished the pie, but didn’t reply to his
question.
    “ Is your name Zurfina?”
    Suddenly her eyes came alive, full of fire, of
danger, and of power.
    “ Zurfina the Magnificent,” she
said.
    “ Can I get you something
else?”
    “ Why?” she asked, the now dangerous
grey eyes narrowing.
    “ Um, I don’t know.”
    “ Bring me a knife!” she
hissed.
    “ I can’t do that,” he said. “Even
if it wouldn’t get me sacked, you’d hurt yourself.”
    He now saw that the woman had a series of slash
marks up the length of both arms and on both thighs.
    “ You’re trying to kill
yourself.”
    “ I promise I’m not going to kill
myself,” she said.
    Chapman turned to leave and stopped in his
tracks. Covering the entire wall of the cell all around the door
were strange symbols, black against the grey of the stone. Though
they weren’t really letters and certainly weren’t from any language
that he knew, there was something nevertheless familiar about them.
They seemed to swirl and move unnaturally, as if the wall was made
not of stone but of rubber or something similarly malleable and it
was being manipulated from behind, creating waves and
bulges.
    “ Kafira,” he swore, and then he
jumped as he heard the woman stir behind him. When he