Morgaedion
| Type | Prison island |
|---|---|
| Ruler | The Captain of the Guard |
| Notable sites | The marble hall, the cell blocks, the ground block |
| Notable inhabitants | Sacred Guard, Olphins |
| Status | Emptied and abandoned after the Nelazgian raid |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Morgaedion is the prison island of Eslura and the most guarded place in it. Rumour has it that the sun never casts its rays down on Morgaedion, and it is understood to be the place where a person can be made to disappear from the world for good.[1] It held Obellius Kalaar until his escape, and the whole of the Olphin race after the War of Shadows.[2][3]
The island is also where the Sacred Guard trains, and the Guard holds the power to send anyone it pleases to the depths of the prison.[4]
The island
The island lies out beyond Cape Heladria. Piercio brought Barnaby Britto's party out of the core of Alakyer onto a ledge above the water, and the prison was waiting far on the other side.[5]
Morgaedion is absent of all colour save the blacks and greys of its stone walls and lookout towers. Thick brick walls ring the island. A single dock reaches out into the ocean with several large ships tied along it, the transports for the island's prisoners; one of them is branded The Last Stop. Past a rocky beach the grass grows inky black, and a worn black dirt path runs from the shore to the front gates and the enormous field behind them.[6]
Seen from the air the prison rises like the back of a beast, its towers shaped like spines, its curved walls built of stone dark enough to swallow any sunlight that gets past the low black cloud. There are no windows, only slits too narrow for a hand, and the outer wall is topped with jagged metal prongs bent and rusted like twisted teeth. The tide foams weakly against a black sandy shore where no gull cries and no crab scuttles.[5]
Between the outer gates and the inner ones lies a wheel-rutted courtyard walled in stone, the last sight most prisoners ever see.[1]
The marble hall
Steps climb from the field into a great marble hall whose ceiling is lost in shadow the torchlight cannot reach. Dozens of finely chiselled marble statues line its walls, modelled on the island's previous captains of the Sacred Guard, each holding a lit torch. Lumikki Otsby found her brother Remidigon Otsby among them, named on a plaque and the smallest of the row.[6]
The cell blocks
From the hall the steps descend into the ground. Hundreds and thousands of cold dark steps spiral deep into the earth and connect the Guards to the countless cell blocks below, a maze of dark, musty cells and torture chambers that nobody crosses without a guide. The corridors narrow as they go, the cold closes in, and sparse torches throw a pale yellow light on damp roughhewn stone. Lumikki had heard that the farther down a person goes the more the soul claws at the chest to get back to the surface, and found she could not disagree.[1][6] Five separate paths lead off into the dark from the main room inside the gates.[5]
The ground block
The ground block holds Eslura's most vile criminals, and nearly every living being in Eslura knows of the prisoners kept there.[6] Its door is cast iron with a cutout in the shape of an S about as tall as a man's forearm, and it opens only to a large metal S that takes both arms to lift. The key is covered at The S Key.[1]
One corridor of the block holds a hundred or so cells with hands reaching out of many of them, and its last cell was Obellius Kalaar's.[1] That cell has a hole cut deep into the stone floor which drops further than a stone can be heard to fall.[6]
The captain's house
Remidigon lived on the field in a well-kept two-storey log cabin, which he called his new castle in a joke at his sister's expense and hung about with little flags to make it look more regal. His bedroom held his awards, a curtain rod he never put up, and a vault painted brownish-red to blend into the wall, in which the metal S was kept.[6]
Relagatra
A giant spider named Relagatra lives in the prison. Feeding her was the Sacred Guard's duty, she answers to Remidigon alone, and Alpin Loomin says nearly every Eslurian knows better than to meddle with her.[7] Barnaby found her about ten times his own size, hoarding a cocooned Olphin near the ceiling of a cavern.[8]
Garrison
The Guard units on Morgaedion answer to the Captain of the Guard rather than to the Sacred Head, which Alistair Archibald told Beatrice Tidal plainly when he set out the limits of her command.[9] Remidigon held the captaincy when the prison fell.
Prisoners
Obellius was locked away here for longer than Tab cared to count, and Remidigon's letters called him the island's special guest.[2][6]
The Olphins were brought here out of Treenode after the War of Shadows and held in the depths, an imprisonment Seely's research later showed they had not earned.[3][10] Aero Ellisvat says Tab would have been thrown into the ground block to waste away with the rest of her kind had Elmryn not taken her in.[11]
Sentences reach further than war criminals. Lumikki warned that if her feelings for Alpin Loomin were overheard she would lose her post and Alpin would be sent to Morgaedion.[12]
Notable events
- Demise walked in through both sets of gates carrying the Heart of the Book of Fire, was bowed through by hostage Guards, burned a woman prisoner alive in the corridor and took her soul, and delivered the Heart to Obellius in the last cell. Obellius's men had already taken the prison before he arrived.[1]
- Obellius escaped. Officer Kazke, burned and half-blinded, dragged himself to Galecrest to report it.[6]
- Lumikki rode a wave to the island looking for her brother and found the gates unguarded, the field empty, her brother's house flooded and the vault open. She found him alive in the ground block with his eyes gone grey, then opened the last cell, was caught by a column of fire out of the hole in its floor and thrown down it by a scaly, jagged-toothed creature she later recalls as a croc.[6][13]
- The Nelazgians raided the island and took the surviving Olphins into their army. When Barnaby, Alpin and Piercio came down on the beach on the back of the dragon Egras they landed among a hundred or so armoured bodies of the Sacred Guard scattered across the sand and the ground inside the gates.[5]
- Mavis led Barnaby through a hidden door to the Olphins living inside the walls of the prison. Barnaby went after Relagatra to bring back Monagan, and a gully delivered him a letter from Pemadee on the ground block saying that Ovallia had been invaded.[7][14]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Book 1, Ch. 1.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Book 1, Ch. 10.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Book 1, Ch. 11.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 9.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Book 2, Ch. 18.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 Book 1, Ch. 26.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Book 2, Ch. 21.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 24.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 22.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 17.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 23.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 7.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 25.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 27.