You're talking to a tourist
Whose every move's among the purest
I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine

One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble
Not much between despair and ecstasy
One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble
Can’t be too careful with your company
I can feel the devil walking next to me
	---“One Night in Bangkok”, Anderson/Rice/Ulvaeus

Imoen rolled over onto her stomach and rested her chin on her folded arms. The woolen blanket on the cot was scratchy against her forearms, but at least this Spellhold place was warm and dry. She’d been here nearly a tenday now, and last night she’d finally been rid of nightmares. Irenicus (she trembled even now just at the mere thought of his name) had been conspicuously absent since she’d arrived, and that was what she cared about.

All she wanted was to be free from these memories. She wasn’t even sure she could fight him if she had to. He’d managed to cow her, and she couldn’t even quite remember how. She recalled the pain well enough, and the horrors he’d forced her to witness, but how had he kept her from trying to seek an escape, or even to kill herself? She knew there had been opportunities to grab a knife and lay it at her own throat. During that business with Khalid’s “autopsy” she had stood silently next to a whole tray of lethal instruments, and yet not laid hand to one of them, though death would have come as sweet relief. Why had she not done so?

The answer flashed upon her in another fragment of memory. Those bodiless brains in the jars, that’s why. Irenicus was a sadist indeed. He had driven her to such desperation, but then made it impossible for her to have even the final escape. Imoen’s body racked with shudders as she lay there on the cot, remembering Irenicus’ bland voice announcing that the penalty for misbehavior would be condemnation to float in one of those vats until he could find a way to restore her body. The idea of spending eternity locked into one of those glass cases, unable to see, speak, hear, or feel, yet never able to slip away into merciful oblivion, was the worst punishment she could imagine. At least here in Spellhold she might be able to seek refuge in death. If the time came, she would beg Kelemvor to provide her a way out of her misery.

For the first time she really began to wonder what this new prison was like. Oh, they could call it an asylum all they liked, but she knew perfectly well what it was: an oubliette, a place of forgetting. The Cowled Wizards thought that they could simply dump anyone that created a hassle or posed a threat here. Problem solved; out of sight, out of mind. She knew Tisha sometimes called her short-sighted, but the flaw in the Cowlies’ reasoning was blatantly obvious even to her.

She seemed to remember that in the first few days… what was today, anyway? She was pretty sure it was still Mirtul, but how long had she been here? Well, when she’d first arrived, she thought that she’d first been shown into the office of someone called Wanev. The man had gone nattering on and on, but she had no idea what he was saying, nor was she in any state to be curious about what she was missing. She just sat, waiting for Irenicus to burst in at any moment. There’d been one awful moment when she’d hallucinated that he’d done just that. She’d watched him lift a paper knife and drive it straight into Wanev’s right eye up to the hilt, then methodically twist it until it broke through into the brain pan and began to ooze--- she stopped short. No, she would not recall any more! It had been a hallucination only, for all its seeming reality, and Wanev had gone on droning away some minutes more. Yet what disturbed her most, now that some semblance of normality was returning, was that she had not even screamed. She’d just sat like a stone, impassively watching Irenicus perform such a brutal act.

She rolled up and sat on the edge of the cot, reassured by the feel of the sharp edge of the bedframe pressing against her legs, by the rough caress of the charcoal-gray blanket. She caught a glimpse of herself in the polished sheet of thin metal that had been bolted to the wall to serve as a mirror. Obviously, the wardens thought glass was too dangerous, yet they were not completely callous about their inmates’ needs. After all, she did have a bed to sleep on, which beat a stone floor, iron cage, or pile of moldy straw all hollow. The face that looked back at her somewhat murkily was not what she remembered. There were signs of imperfectly healed bruises, her eyes were sunken, and her hair!

Imoen had the peculiar sensation of feeling her old personality flooding back into the emptied shell she’d become. Her hair was wrecked! Look at all those tangles, those split ends, and how oily and dull it lay against her skull. Ewwwwww! How long had it been since she’d had a bath, anyway? And she’d probably been in these clothes ever since she’d been spirited away from her sister and her friends. Okay, this was just not cool anymore. If they went to all the trouble of giving her a mirror, surely they could let her have a comb and a bath.

She walked over to the barred cell door. “Hey! Guards! There anybody out there? I got a question.” Her voice seemed a bit rusty with disuse. Or maybe she was just thirsty; she couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten or drunk. There wasn’t a reply at first, but then a little girl’s head peered out from the adjoining cell.

“Lonk’s gone to bring up the cookies and milk. It’s almost snacktime. Do you want to come with me? I’ll show you the room where we eat.” The girl seemed almost pathetically eager to talk to her. Imoen was dumbfounded. Why would the Cowlies have felt compelled to lock away a child? What could she possibly have done?

Her first wave of surprise was cut short by another when the brown-haired girl confidently reached up and shoved open her own cell door, then walked over to stand in front of hers.

“I wondered when you were going to come out and play with us,” said the child in a pretty little voice as she pulled Imoen’s bars apart. “I’m Dili. At least, I’m Dili today. Tomorrow maybe I’ll be you. Or maybe not,” she said thoughtfully. “I think I’d rather be Aphril. She’s not so dirty.”

Bemused, Imoen allowed herself to be led around several corners to a dining room painted a bland shade of pale green. The tables were bolted securely to the floors, and the chairs were tethered to the table legs by short lengths of steel cable, so that they could be moved only just enough to allow you to sit down. Several other people were already standing idly about, or sitting down sipping milk from tin mugs and eating cookies that were served from a tray held by a gnome.

“That’s Lonk,” Dili said respectfully. “Don’t ever try to take his face or Wanev’s; they’ll get really mad, and then you won’t get any cookies for a tenday. Oh, yes, and you can’t go out of your room at night, or do mean things to the others. You lose cookies for that, too.”

The gnome’s eyebrows lifted as he spotted Imoen. “Well, well, so Sleeping Beauty has finally decided to join the world once more. You got a name, woman? Wanev told me when you came in, but you looked so bad I decided not to worry about remembering it until I knew if you were gonna live. Seems like you decided not to die, after all.”

“Er, my name’s Imoen. Dili says your name’s Lonk, is that right?”

He chuckled. “Lonk the Sane, that’s me. We’ll get along fine as long as you remember a few simple rules. First off, Wanev runs this place. Don’t irritate him. Second, I’m the person who feeds you and makes sure you don’t hurt anybody else. Don’t cross me, either. Third, no fighting. Fourth, don’t try to use any magic without permission, not even a faerie fire spell. If you do, you’ll go down to the Hole.” He paused, evidently just waiting for her to ask what it was. She humored him.

“And the Hole would be?”

“A special cell. No light, bread and water once a day only, one blanket on a stone floor, and worst of all, no magic. Period. A dead magic area cropped up inside here during the Godswar, and there are two cells built to its exact shape, with solid rock underneath. No magic in, no magic out. And you’ll have a dull headache the whole time, from not being able to touch the Weave. I don’t recommend it.”

That explained that. Now she needed to find out just how much freedom they were really allowed here. “So we’re not locked in our cells, except at night?”

“No, you can wander around most of this floor, but don’t touch any door that says KEEP OUT. I’ll tell you when it’s time to go to bed.”

Now she brought up the point that was closest to her heart at the moment. “Could I have a bath? And a comb?”

“Get Dili to show you. No towels, though. There’s a hot-air vent you’ll have to stand in front of to dry off. I’ll issue you a robe when I’m done here.”

Well, that earned this place at least two stars above Irenicus’ hostelry, she thought sardonically as Dili led her down another corridor, chattering brightly all the while. The food wasn’t up to Patricia’s standards, but cookies sure beat burnt gruel, which was all she’d had for several days. If only she could feel certain that Irenicus would never follow her here, she might not even mind being thought mad.