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shutters. After a moment’s reflection, he decided that it
might be best to use Davin’s vacant room instead, just to be on the safe side.
    He remembered the whole rigmarole he had learned in
his dreams, in that faraway realm in his head where they had finally told him
to stop trying to create magic. It was the incantation his dream self had tried
for so long with no results, hoping to see just the tiniest bit of an effect
for all his hard work. He swallowed hard and then began.
    “Aleph kalai abdu,” he recited, while carefully touching the tip of his middle finger to
the tip of his thumb and carefully tracing a small circle in the air.
    The tip of his injured finger burst into a soft white
light.
    Kyrus stared at it for just a moment … and then passed
out.
     

Chapter
5 - Hard Time
    Choonk … choonk … choonk … choonk—CRACK—choonk …
    The heavy hammer swung rhythmically, slamming into the
rubble of more rocks than he could count. Denrik Zayne paused a moment to wipe
the sweat from his bald head before any more of it dripped into his eyes. He
was of average stature and not a solidly built man, but he had a body that had
long grown accustomed to hard labor even before coming to this place. His skin
had a weathered, leathery look, tanned by sun and rubbed raw by the ocean wind.
    Denrik was a sailor by trade, and had spent more years
at sea than some of the other prisoners had seen in their whole lives. He had
been in the New Hope penal colony on Rellis Island for nearly three years, and
he was to see seventeen more before he would ever again be a free man. He
regretted nothing more than having been caught, for he was unrepentant of his
crimes. Indeed, many at his trial clamored for the reinstatement of public
hanging, claiming that if ever there was to be an exception to the king’s wish
that no prisoner be executed, it would be for Denrik Zayne, Scourge of the
Katamic Sea.
    Denrik had been one of the most successful—and the
most feared—pirates in the region in recent memory. During the height of
Denrik’s power, few were the merchant ships that left port without an escort
from the Acardian navy. He had even been so bold as to engage and sink naval
vessels when he could catch them alone. Piracy was a profitable way of life,
but one that created a great deal of enmity. In the end, the Acardian navy had
caught his ship in a blind inlet, hiding away while being repaired, and he had
reluctantly surrendered. He found out during his trial that one of his former
crewmen had betrayed the location of one of the sheltered ports he used.
    The crack of a whip overhead had Denrik back to his
chore quickly. The prisoners spent all day breaking large rocks into smaller
rocks, and then sweeping them into sacks to make room for new large rocks to be
brought in. Denrik knew it to be a pointless exercise, designed to punish the
prisoners and break their spirits by forcing them to perform backbreaking labor
all day, every day. He knew the game, though, and played along, biding his time
and keeping in as little trouble as his nature allowed him.
    They were each stripped to the waist and chained in a
long line by the ankles. There were six men together, five others and Denrik,
and though the order might change day by day, Denrik was carefully kept from
the positions on either end, where a prisoner got to have one leg free at
least. As little hope as there was for a prisoner to break free of their
chains, Denrik carried a foul reputation, and the guards took any precaution
they could think of.
    When the prisoners were given their break for lunch,
they remained in the work yard. Guards brought out a thin gruel that had been
warmed by the blazing noontime sun to the point of making it nearly inedible.
The prisoners who were attached to Denrik’s chain were not allowed spoons for
their gruel, for the warden had strictly forbidden that anything that might be
used as a weapon come within Denrik’s reach. The order had caused Denrik