Oathbreaker, Book 1: The Knight's Tale - Colin McComb

Pelagir’s arm, strapped to the table, stripped to the bone, and scalpels moving above it
like fireflies. Tiny troughs funneling molten metal into cast channels along his tendons and
muscles.
Agony.
Legs, feet, arms, neck. His face. His eyes. Screams from nearby tables. Anguish pours.
His throat has torn. He can feel metal wires being affixed to his muscles, anchored to his bones.
The eyes of the Archmagus through the holes in the man’s mask. They glitter with joy
above the bloodstained face and gloves. His apprentices, who rush through the chamber.
Through it all, the quiet, murmured chanting of the apprentices and the quiet sound of
metal on flesh. The priests begin to move, looking into his eyes, then the eyes of the others.
The ceiling of the cavern, the lights beaming down, halos around the heads of the
surgeons. Pelagir has moved beyond pain and into a hazy realm. He watches the movements of
the Archmagus as a detached observer now, watching the man’s hands move surely through the
violations of his body. Each second the young man chooses to live or die, and each second he
chooses life. Each choice is an act of will, each one harder than the next.
The Archmagus’s hands, inside his skin, manipulating him. His fingers jerking open and
closed. His legs twitching. Sutures and bandages, soaking through with a deep crimson.
The chamber quiets. At two of the other tables, legs drum out a final beat as their owners
succumb. From the seven remaining, Pelagir hears quiet and rasping moans. The Archmagus’s
apprentices wheel their patients from the room. The priests murmur their benedictions above the
bodies of the dead and depart.
Behind them, pools of blood glisten wetly under the lights. Shiny metallic things crawl
from slats behind the walls and suck these pools efficiently from the floor, then scurry back to
their holes to await the next experiments.
And then came the graduations.
The first was private, and hardly a ceremony, held in the recovery room of the Tower of
the Archmagus, one week after the ordeal. It was a dim room, with shutters on the high windows
and a stout oak door at the head of the stairs. The eight young knights could hear the wind and
birds outside with incredible clarity, and even the soft lights mounted high above them seemed
almost too bright for comfort.
Colin McComb Oathbreaker, Book 1: The Knight's Tale
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