The Nine Bishops

Eighty-four thousand, nine hundred ninety-eight. Eighty-four thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine. Eighty-five thousand, Mika counted to herself. She stopped there and decided not to count any more for a while. She had made counting a routine, since there was nothing else to occupy the time, and it was the only means she had to keep track of time at all.

Mika was isolated from everything she knew. The dark room, the prison that had become her home, had not even a glimmer of light. With nothing to mark the passage of time, time itself had become almost a foreign concept.

She’d started the counting ritual after reaching the point where she felt she had already thought about everything there was to think about. Eighty-five thousand was a good marker; a little more than the number of seconds in a day. She had counted that far numerous times, so many times that she’d even lost count of that.

Early on, her thoughts were on Micah. After years of dwelling on tiny fragments of her past, Mika had learned so much in a few short minutes that it took some time to absorb it all. First, she was shocked to discover that any member of her family other than her uncle was alive. That discovery, which should have been joyful, turned out to be the complete opposite.

Micah had visited her many times in her cell, presenting his proposal again and again. In the darkness of the cell, the one thing she could see of him was his eyes, the royal seal in them glowing through the darkness, changing colors.

Behind those eyes, she knew, lay a cruel vision.

Mika had tried pleading with him, telling him there was so much about the Filth he did not understand; that they were not unlike anyone else. But it was wasted breath. Every time she started to make her point, the conversation ended in a quarrel. Micah would end it by telling Mika he’d give her more time to think it over.

Mika believed she had been trapped now for more than three months. Adding to the suffering she experienced through isolation, the collar clamped around her neck kept her from moving, let alone using magic.

It seemed to be made of the same material as the rock Master Beng had given Mika long ago. It suppressed her magic abilities and major motor functions. She could move her arm slightly, but she could not lift her legs at all. So for what felt like an eternity, Mika just sat in solitude like a vegetable.

Fortunately, Mika did not hunger, thirst, or need to use the stool. Either the magic in the room or the collar was somehow preventing her from requiring these things, leaving her with nothing to do but think. Even worse, she was prevented from sleeping, which meant she couldn’t meet her father in her dreams. The endless hours awake added their toll to Mika’s ordeal.

She was afraid of the physical and magical atrophy she had to be experiencing. She knew she needed to train physically and mentally to maintain her abilities. With no way to train physically, she did her best to train mentally through visualization, one of the few things that could help her pass the time.

She visualized all her good memories, from times she had spent with her aunt and uncle to the happy times in her guild. Mika got so good at visualization that she almost felt she was with the people she most cared about. But nothing could really replace the moments she had shared with them, no matter how real it felt in her imagination.

Infrequently, Mika would think about ways to escape. It was absurd, she knew, since her dark cell was created magically and she had no functional means of leaving it. But Mika couldn’t afford to be complacent; that way led to diminished sanity.

Despite her determination to keep her wits, there were times when she’d catch herself talking to herself. Mostly, she would have long monologues with the darkness.

The darkness was her only friend. The darkness always was willing to hear her thoughts, though it never spoke. She’d been alone so long she’d almost forgotten what it was like to hear another voice. Mika would vent about the good and bad contracts she’d had. Most of the venting eventually led to a diatribe against Nik.

Mika had thought a lot about Nik’s betrayal. She had trusted him for so long that she had forgotten why she should have not trusted him. He had literally put her in this cell. And after all this time, he hadn’t visited her or explained why. For a long time, she had expected him to come, but hour after dark hour, day after unseen day, went by without him.

Nik, she reflected, had always given the impression of being genuine with Mika, but it seemed he’d never revealed his true character. He was the Bishop Joker, after all. The Bishops’ names were always based on their magic strain or characteristics. Mika had assumed Nik’s title was a reference to his strain, but now she realized it was about his very character.

Above all else, Nik served the king, and in this case, Micah. He’d always known Mika’s history and her relationship to Micah. Nik had never told her the truth—but then, she berated herself, it had been naive on her part to think that he would. Bishops had their own motivations, but all of them chose to serve the king. There was no good reason to imagine that Nik would put his allegiance to her above that of the king. He, too, had sworn the oath that prevented Mika from using her magic on Micah.

After reflecting deeply on all of this, Mika couldn’t believe how easily she had trusted him. She wished it were possible to forgive him, but Nik hadn’t even given her an opportunity to ask him why he had played the long game with her.

Why was she being subjected to such an awful fate? In many ways, lying awake in dark isolation indefinitely was worse than death. The only thing more valuable than her life was her time. So long as Mika was held prisoner, she could not do anything for anyone.

Beyond desperate now, she considered simply conceding to Micah. Coming around to his point of view would mean freedom, at least in his eyes. But succumbing would probably bring magical consequences she couldn’t yet foresee or be prepared to accept.

Like the oath Mika swore, there were strains of magic that she did not fully understand. That the oath had magical repercussions had come as a shock. She wasn’t sure there was any way to defeat Micah, if it came to that. For all she knew, the oath was indefinite and unbreakable, unless she was able to master her own Arcane ability. But as long as her magic was suppressed, she would have no way to train that ability.

Mika occupied herself with such thoughts for hours in her unending isolation. One day, when they became too much to bear, she vented her frustrations aloud to the darkness.

Suddenly, Mika heard the darkness respond, in a voice she recognized, seemingly from nowhere. Mika called back in her head, but there was no response.

She sat in silence, considering where in her mind the voice had come from. It had been so long since she’d talked with someone, she’d almost forgotten what it was like to hear a voice. Even Micah’s voice might have been welcome at this point.

She wasn’t frightened by the voice of the darkness, only surprised at the voice it had chosen, a voice she’d been longing to hear for too long.

“Why talk after all this time?” she asked the darkness, trying to sound normal, though the situation was far from that.

There was a brief pause, during which Mika began to suspect that maybe she was truly going insane. But then, after seemingly pausing to think, the darkness responded, apologetically.

“I haven’t been able to until now. If I was able to, I would have.”

“It’s been ages. How can it be that you couldn’t talk until now?”

“I didn’t think things would turn out this way,” the darkness responded, speaking like an old friend.

“I was wrong to think that things would turn out any other way,” Mika said.

“Things were meant to be different. I know you have no reason to trust again, but I promise I can make it up to you,” the darkness replied.

Mika wanted to believe the darkness, but she had lost all trust. Sitting in a pitch-black cell so long, she’d had plenty of time to think over all the decisions she had made in the past. If she trusted the darkness, she would only be making herself vulnerable again.

“Will you give me another chance?” the darkness asked, after giving Mika time to think it over.

She hesitated. Her ability to trust was shattered, but if she refused to trust and remained in her current predicament, she could not maintain her sanity. After Nik’s deeply painful betrayal, Mika was almost numb to another. Maybe it’s worth taking another risk, she thought.

“I don’t know,” Mika responded, after deliberating. She remained torn, because every word the darkness said felt like truth. But she’d been in this situation before and wasn’t sure if she was ready to go through it again.

“I wish there was more time for you to make your decision. I know you have no reason to trust me. But if you can take one more leap of faith, if you can take my hand, I will show you why you can trust me.”

Mika knew a decision was urgent; otherwise this chance might not come again. Now that the situation presented a fresh opportunity to exercise trust, Mika felt drawn to it.

Though Mika’s rational side argued against accepting the darkness’s apology, her heart was telling her something different. And then it struck her: in her short time as an Arcane she had learned one critical thing: that magic came from the heart and not the mind.

So she made a critical decision: She went with her heart’s decision and not her mind’s.

Mika didn’t see a hand in front of her, but she reached out slowly anyway, to the extent the collar allowed. Something met her hand. She felt a strange sensation, one that seemed to assure her she’d made the right decision.

Instantly, the room around her began to dissolve. The dark stone walls faded, and even the ground disappeared. She had the sensation of floating through a dark tunnel. It should have been frightening, but Mika felt safe, especially when she saw, to her wonder, a faint light somewhere at the end of the tunnel.

It was the first light she had seen in a long time, and truly the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. The light was just faint enough to illuminate something—no, someone—in the darkness in front of her. She couldn’t make out the person’s features, except for one thing she’d never forget: a pair of bright yellow eyes, brighter than any light Mika could remember.