Then I am walking through a corridor made of magic, whorls of prismatic colors sparking in and out of existence. I have hands again, and I reach out to touch one of the whorls. It creeps into me, filling me with warmth and strength, easing some of the pain.
At the end of the corridor, I step into a small chamber that is seemingly made of stone. A window looks out into blackness, and in the center of the room, a figure crouches over a small worktable, where a single candle burns.
I go up to the figure and find that he is a man, or the ruin of one. His ears and nose have been hewn off, his eyes put out. He has no feet and no hands, but he pinches a hammer between the stumps of his arms, and with it he strikes a small chest.
Sparks fly off the hammer, and the candle flame dances in a breeze I do not feel. I wonder why the candle is there at all; the world is only darkness to him, no matter how much light there is.
I realize that the candle is for me.
“What are you making?” I ask.
He must still be able to hear through the wreckage of his ears. He lifts his maimed face to mine.
Look and see,he says into my mind, for his tongue is gone, too. He turns from the worktable to offer the chest to me while I openly stare at him, not quite believing all the stories I’ve heard, not quite believing that the Bronze Lord is here with me at all.
“What are you doing in my head?”
He gives a soundless laugh.Binding magic requires much power.He sets the chest on the table, nudges it open with the stump of his arm.
The chest is wholly empty.
It is for you,says the Bronze Lord in my mind.For your magic. Will you give it to me?
“I don’t want to.”
Then you would not have come here.
It is disconcerting to look at him, but I am not repulsed by him. His skin is a warm brown; his white hair hangs shining and straight past his shoulders. Once, I think, he must have been beautiful. Surely another of the First Ones could heal him. Restore him to what he once was.
“It is my father who wishes to bind my magic so that I can save our people.”
And what do you wish?
The candle flame wavers, and there’s a flash of light outside the window. “To make him proud,” I whisper. “To make him love me.” I hadn’t known this burned so fiercely in my heart until this moment. Sorrow and wanting grip me.
The Bronze Lord nods, and I find myself wondering what color his eyes were, before they were put out.Then you know what you must do.
“I know.” I shake and shake, and I think it odd that I have a body inside my own mind that can do any of those things. “Take my magic, then.”
He smiles, but there is no joy in it. His lips form a soundless word that sparks bright, and the chest lifts into the air, spinning slowly. A pair of long silver hooks appear in front of him, and I get the idea that he holds them with hands that no longer exist.
I am sorry,says the Bronze Lord.
The hooks stretch toward me, sinking into my temples.
For a moment I don’t feel anything.
Then, pain, brittle, burning. Colors burst behind my eyes, and I am dust, I am stars, I am nowhere, I am nothing, nothing.
The hooks pull and pull, tearing my magic out of me and piling it like glittering sand inside the chest. The pain goes on and on; the hooks take and take.
But the chest is never full.
I sink to my knees in that not-place, surrendering myself to the eternal torment of the Bronze Lord.
And then it’s over.
I lift my head to find the hooks on the floor, the chest filled, shut, locked. The Bronze Lord pinches it between the stumps of his arms.
