Book 7, Chapter Twenty-three – Lian Cuisine (Killian)

Lian traced his fingers over the gouges he’d dug into the underside of the round table. There were eight short, deep marks, each one representing a meal brought to him by one of his silent, black-clad captors. He was fairly certain they were intentionally feeding him at different intervals, as well as only giving him meals once or twice a day. The problem was, he wasn’t certain if it was once or twice, so he had no real idea how long he’d been trapped in this monochrome room, and he hated that they’d managed to confuse him so badly.

A large wooden cup sat beside him on the table which was the only piece of furniture besides the chair in which he sat and the shelves of books that surrounded him. The cup was filled with water, and he knew from experience that if he knocked it over or drank it all, he wouldn’t get any more until the next time he was fed. The person who brought his meals remained, masked and silent, until the food was gone and the cup set aside, then took the gray tray, gray plate, gray napkin, and gray cutlery with them, leaving Lian alone again. The food itself was the only thing with any color he’d seen since he was brought here, other than the seventeen golden stars painted on the ceiling overhead.

Leaning back as if tired, Lian crossed his hands over his stomach, his fingers itching to tear at the restraints on his wrists. He’d tried that sometime between the second and third meal, and had achieved absolutely nothing except producing some carmine blood to contrast with the unrelenting monochrome nature of the room.

Closing his eyes to slits, Lian peered between his lashes, counting the stars for the thousandth time. There were always seventeen, so he didn’t know why he bothered. It was only their golden color that drew his eyes, pulling him from the black, white, and gray spines of the books, the black-stained wood of the furniture, and the gray carpet beneath his chair.

He’d pulled out and examined every single book in the room, including the ones on shelves so high he’d had to cling to lower shelves to make it. At first, he’d been careful with them, taking each one out, examining it gingerly, then replacing it exactly as he’d found it. This lasted until he went through every one without finding a single word he could read. Then he pulled them all down and threw them into piles on the floor.

That lasted until the next time he was fed. Nothing about his food looked or tasted different, but it must’ve been drugged, because he woke in his chair, all of the books returned to their rightful places. He refused to eat the next meal, but by the one after that, he was so hungry that it seemed better to eat and have the energy to attempt escape than to grow so weak he couldn’t run if he got the chance. He didn’t think he’d been drugged again, but he didn’t know, and that, too, made something in the back of his mind just a little bit angrier – a little bit more hungry for revenge.

He had, of course, tried attacking the person who served his food. He’d had years of combat training by now, and neither Kaden nor Dorian ever took it easy on Lian just because he preferred to use magic over fists and weapons. Edgar did, but Edgar… His mind shied away from that thought as if he’d just prodded a sore tooth. Edgar was Edgar.

Seventeen stars.

His mind had started seeing patterns even where they didn’t exist, just as it had done since he was a child. Lian much preferred living in a world ruled by logic, and patterns were logical. Seventeen stars, seventeen books on the seventeenth shelf. The seventeenth page of the seventeenth book, or the seventeenth word on that page. Except that none of the words made sense, whether they were seventeenth from some arbitrary beginning or not. They almost did. Like they were in some language he’d seen before, maybe even learned a few words of, but he couldn’t find the reference in his mind, which was almost as irritating as the fact that he was here at all.

Thinking, Lian allowed his eyes to unfocus. A few stars seemed to drift to the back, while other stars came forward, revealing themselves to be ever so slightly lighter in color, with one… He froze, and in so doing, he lost the image. Seventeen stars once again stood out against a field of gray and black. Seventeen identical stars. Except they weren’t.

It was ridiculously difficult to bring his eyes back into that relaxed and unfocused state again, but once he did, the same star popped out at him. It was the one closest to what he thought of as the third bookshelf, counting the one that concealed the door as the first, and moving to the right. More, when Lian managed to let his gaze drift down, still not focusing on the letters or symbols on the spines of the books, he found that one in particular stood out to him, appearing to protrude ever so slightly, though he knew from experience that they were all flush on the shelf.

Memorizing that spot, that book, Lian shut his eyes the rest of the way, and tried to look like he was drifting closer to sleep. He thought he was napping more than getting several hours of solid rest, but that, too, was something he had no way to measure. Now, it meant that anyone watching would have no reason to think this wasn’t just another of those fitful sleeps Lian had begun to slip into at random intervals.

What should he do? Was it a coincidence that the stars seemed like they were real if he looked at them in a certain way, from a certain angle? If not, why would someone intentionally design the room that way? It was an interesting trick of the eye, or light, or whatever caused it, because Lian was almost certain it wasn’t magic. Still, it felt strange, and Lian wasn’t a fan of coincidences.

Opening his eyes, he looked down at the table in front of him. He’d found the first pattern almost as soon as he allowed his mind to wander. The surface of the table was made up of many small pieces of wood in a parquet design. They were all stained nearly black, but they ranged from a deep, charcoal gray to something like the soft gray of a heavy fog.

Mixed into them was the shape of the very chair in which Lian sat, unmistakable once you noticed it. It was a bit obscure, perhaps, but clear enough to him by now, and it had amused Lian to place his chair so it mirrored the one on the table. That put him at a slight angle to the entrance of the room, rather than facing it, which was his instinctive preference, but he’d never been one to blindly follow his instincts.

He shifted his chair to the side, so he was more perfectly centered, facing the bookshelf that concealed the door, and tilted his head back. He had the trick of unfocusing his eyes now, but when he looked at the stars, rather than seeming sharp and clear, some of them just looked doubled, while others became blurry. Moving his chair back to the spot indicated on the table, he found that the stars repeated their fascinating and surprisingly beautiful trick.

What did this mean? He had two clues, for lack of a better word, with the first leading directly to the discovery of the second. He suspected that no matter where else he stood or sat, the stars wouldn’t align properly. He would have to do some more tests to prove that, of course, but if he was right… There was something strange going on. Was it something set up by his captors, or something that had existed in this room before they turned it to its current purpose? Would it help him, or was it simply a distraction for his exhausted and worried mind? Mere distraction or not, Lian intended to follow up on it.

He had never been certain if he was being watched. If he’d kidnapped someone, he’d certainly watch them, or assign an elemental to do so, but one of the things Lian had been looking for when he stripped all the books from the shelves was a way to physically spy on him – a peephole, perhaps, or a shelf that sounded hollow when he knocked on the back of it. Even the ‘door’ had looked and sounded solid, however, so Lian had given up on that, though he didn’t assume that meant they didn’t have a way he hadn’t thought of.

Still, the fact that they hadn’t come in right away when he’d started pulling the books from the shelves argued that either they weren’t watching him, or they had assigned an elemental that didn’t report every detail of his activities. It probably had instructions to let them know if he was hurt or managed to break out, but otherwise they didn’t seem to care what he did. If such an elemental even existed.

It was also possible that they were simply so arrogant that they truly believed Lian wouldn’t or couldn’t escape. ‘Lord Shadow’ struck him as annoyingly intelligent, but also the kind of person who was used to getting their way. That sort tended to make assumptions that could be used to others’ advantage, if those others wished to do so. Lian very much wanted exactly that. 

So, if they saw him doing something other than sitting, pacing, sleeping, or reading, it seemed unlikely that they would do anything to stop him. After all, they hadn’t bothered to tie him up or restrict his movement inside the room in any way. Would his investigation reveal anything useful? Probably not, but Lian wouldn’t spurn any opportunity to put his mind to some use other than helpless rage.

So. Seventeen stars, one of which was slightly lighter than the others, and next to a shelf Lian had already thoroughly investigated. Similarly, one particular book on that shelf stood out to him, but Lian was certain there was nothing special about the contents of the book. He had nothing but time, and he’d looked for even a single word or symbol he recognized on every page of every book.

As much as it went against his usual inclinations, Lian decided to ignore the fact that the book was a book. He could always pull it down and go through it again if he decided that the contents might matter. So what else was special about that book? Why had it caught his eyes?

Again, he allowed his eyes to unfocus, and spent a solid minute convincing his brain that the symbols on the book’s spine were not words – at which point he realized they were an arrow. The first letter, which would be capitalized in his language, was instead the same size as the rest. But one near the ‘bottom’ of the spine was slightly larger, while the three after it each became progressively smaller, until the last symbol was little more than a black triangle.

Feeling a thrum of excitement pass through him, Lian started to stand, then forced himself to remain seated. Not only did that make it more likely any watchers would miss what he was doing, but so far sitting in this chair, in this exact spot, had served him well.

The down arrow on the spine led to one pointing right, formed by a patch of wood stained ever so slightly lighter than the rest of the wood around it. It could have been a result of the natural grain of the wood, but once Lian started looking for it, it couldn’t be anything else.

Seventeen stars, seventeen arrows, leading back to the top of the seventh bookshelf to the left of the entrance. There, a subtle shading of wood stain created a new symbol, one that looked similar to one he had found in some of the books. But which books? He was certain it was familiar, and Lian suspected he’d find it in one of the tomes on that shelf, somewhere. Even if the symbol itself meant nothing, its placement in or on the book might tell him… what? Something. And something was a start. Something was better than waiting.

Lian crossed the room and pulled a book from the shelf.