Tala met Jondralyn’s concerned gaze. Lawri’s speech was becoming ever more disjointed.
“Lindholf will be found innocent,” Lawri repeated. “Just like Squireck was accused of murder too, and then found innocent. Well, Squireck actually won his innocence. But I see Lindholf in the arena someday too. He will stand tall in the center of the arena, and two others will be there with him. In the middle of the arena with everyone cheering. And then he will just disappear. Poof! He will just be gone.”
Lawri held up her left arm, pulling back the sleeve of her dress. “And I shall wear a gauntlet of sparkling silver.” She dropped her arm quickly, wincing in pain, suddenly realizing she had exposed her infected injury.
“What in the name of the Blessed Mother is wrong with your arm?” Jondralyn asked, almost startled at the sight.
“Oh, nothing.” Lawri pressed her arm down into her lap. Jondralyn grabbed Lawri’s arm and yanked back the sleeve of her dress. Lawri cried out in pain.
“What have you done to yourself?” Jondralyn pulled off Lawri’s lace glove. Tala drew in a sharp breath. The underside of Lawri’s wrist was bloated, festering with infection. Veins, puffed and inflamed purple and red, streaked up her arm nearly to her armpit.
“How can you even stand the pain of this?” Jondralyn fixed her eyes on Lawri. “Val-Gianni needs to examine you.”
“It’s nothing, really.” Tears were in Lawri’s eyes. They were tears of pain.
Jondralyn turned to Tala. “Go find Aunt Mona and meet us in the infirmary. I am taking Lawri there now.”
† † † † †
Val-Korin and his bodyguard, Val-So-Vreign, were with Val-Gianni, Jondralyn, and Lawri when Tala arrived at the infirmary with Mona Le Graven. The Vallè sawbones had a towel over Lawri’s arm and was pressing down, draining gouts of pus. The whole room smelled of dead flesh and rot. Mona did the three-fingered sign of the Laijon Cross over her heart.
“It feels much better now,” Lawri said, tear-streaked face looking up at Val-Gianni. She was sitting on a cot full of white pillows. “It got too painful for me to drain it myself. That’s why I just let it go.”
“Has she been showing signs of delirium?” Val-Gianni asked of no one in particular. “Talking nonstop. Talking nonsense. Acting sleepless. Speaking of weird dreams.” Jondralyn nodded. Tala too.
Lawri looked straight at Tala. “It really does feel better.”
“Why was I not told of this before?” Mona La Graven’s eyes flew around the room, looking to everyone for an answer. Then her gaze fell on Lawri. Her face turned red with anger. “As if our family doesn’t already have enough to deal with.”
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Lawri said.
“The question is, why wasn’t Val-Gianni told of this sooner?” Val-Korin stated.
Val-Gianni nodded, pressing the towel over Lawri’s arm, holding it tight, still bleeding the wound. “This is more than just a trifling injury. The truth is, the infection has done much damage to her arm. I will give her the proper medications, but if the arm doesn’t heal soon, if things get worse and the infection does not fully dissipate, we may have to amputate.”
“Amputate,” Mona gasped, eyes boring into those of her daughter’s. “Blessed Mother Mia, girl, what wraiths have taken you and Lindholf of late? Who did this to you? How could you let an injury like this go unnoticed? I swear, neither one of you is a child of mine. Such rank stupidity.”
Lawri seemed completely oblivious to her mother’s scolding words. She gazed up at Tala, seemingly unconcerned. “Looks like those green medicine balls you gave me didn’t work at all.”
“Green medicine balls?” Val-Gianni’s gaze narrowed. He glared at Val-Korin. Tala kept her own face impassive, dread creeping up her spine. Could he know what the green balls are?
“No matter,” Lawri went on. “I probably just dreamed up the green balls anyway.”
What nonsense is this?” Mona questioned, the anger on her face sharpened. “What green balls? Who cut your arm, Lawri? How did this happen?”
“I was in a scuffle,” Lawri answered.
“A scuffle?” Mona gasped. “I will flay alive the person who did this to you. With whom did you scuffle.”
“King Jovan.”
“King Jovan!”
“It was Jovan, Mother,” Lawri said, eyes on the pus draining from her wound. “He cut me. The king cut me.”
“King Jovan cut you?” Mona exclaimed. “Don’t be daft, Lawri Le Graven. Do not tell lies.”
Lawri looked up at her mother for the first time, eyes now foggy. “Please . . . don’t be sore at Lindholf . . . or me—”
and then she fainted sideways into the pillows.
* * *
Cowards will all die. Some warriors are more secure with survival than seeking violence. Bloody violence will save you; awaiting survival won’t. Nor doth Raijael or Laijon give guidance to a knight unjust. Cowards shall always eventually be slain.
—THE CHIVALRIC ILLUMINATIONS OF RAIJAEL
* * *
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
GAULT AULBREK
14TH DAY OF THE ANGEL MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON
AMADON, GUL KANA
Abuzzing swirl of dusty grit and gnats trailed the heavy oxcart. When the beastly contraption carrying the three prisoners rumbled to a halt, a flurry of trumpets rang out and the crowd trailing the oxen stopped their advance. A contingent of waiting Dayknights immediately surrounded the wooden cart.
Gault was facing to the left, chained to a wide, ten-foot-high oak stump. His back was pressed against the rough and knotty wood, allowing him to look over the angry mob that had followed the cart through Amadon toward the slave quarry. Lindholf Le Graven was chained on the other side of the same oaken stump. A girl no more than twenty years old, was tied to a similar pole near the front of the cart, her face streaked with tears. Her name was Delia. Lindholf had called her by name when the knights loaded her onto the cart and chained her to the pole. She’d uttered no greeting in return. Gault surmised she was the barmaid Mona Le Graven had mentioned in the dungeon.
The mobs lining the streets of Amadon had hurled refuse at the three of them. Early on, Gault had taken a blow from a heavy rotted cabbage to the temple that had threatened to black him out. During the remainder of the ride, he had struggled to clear his head. The teeming throngs continued to jeer and curse and throw. He was covered in slime, some of it dripping down the front of his shirt, some stuck in the stubble of hair atop his head. He hadn’t shaved his scalp since his capture.
And now here they were at the slave quarry.
Leif Chaparral’s younger brother, Glade, ordered Silver Guards to unchain the three captives. A handful of knights climbed aboard, unhooking Gault, Lindholf, and Delia, clamping iron bands around their wrists, the bands connected by chains. Similar shackles and chains went around their ankles.
Gault was dragged across the surface of the slimy cart and dumped onto the hard marble ground. Lindholf and Delia landed on either side of him with two unceremonious thuds. Buckets of water were dumped over all three, washing away the slime.
The gauntleted hands of a tall Dayknight hauled Gault to his feet, and he was roughly forced forward. Lindholf and Delia stumbled along beside him. Glade Chaparral trailed just behind the three sopping prisoners. More black-clad Dayknights with pikes lined the path that led to the yawning pit—Gul Kana’s infamous slave quarry at Riven Rock.
“You can’t send me down there,” Lindholf cried. “You know I didn’t do anything, Glade. You can’t do this to me.”
Glade kicked the back of the boy’s leg, sending him tumbling forward to the harsh marble ground.
“Please.” Lindholf gasped in pain, rolling over, crying loudly, a puddle forming under him from his drenched clothes. “I thought I was your friend.”
“Get up!” Glade shouted. “Get up and keep your slave mouth shut!” He threw a punch at the boy’s midsection. Lindholf threw up his shackled arms,
only partially blocking the blow. He curled up and vomited on the slick marble surface of the road.
“Pick his sorry hide up!” Glade ordered the knight nearest Lindholf. “Carry him if you have to!” The boy was hauled up forcibly.
“Please,” Lindholf pleaded, shrugging the knight’s hands off, walking on his own.
“Not another word!” Glade shouted in his face. “And if you cry out even once when I stick the branding iron to your neck, I leave it there thrice as long.”
The three prisoners were again pushed along the marble road toward the gaping quarry and the iron cage awaiting them at the rim—the cage that would lower them down into the pit. A black cauldron rested in front of the cage, smoke rising from it. Above the cage, leaning out over the pit, was a stout wooden scaffolding girt with a number of gears and pulleys. Heavy ropes and chains stretched from the pulleys to a giant wooden turning wheel some fifty feet from the quarry’s rim, a team of twelve horses hooked to the wheel.
Gault could see that along the rim of the pit to either side, at least two dozen other such similar sets of wooden scaffolding, pulleys, ropes, chains, turning wheels, horses, and iron cages stretched off in both directions. Far across the pit—a mile or so away—he could make out a half-dozen other such similar apparatuses, but those were much larger, massive turning wheels hooked to teams of horses numbering in the hundreds. He reckoned those distant blocks and pulleys were for lifting larger slabs of marble from the pit. Several dozen slabs of marble the size of small buildings were stacked along the far rim. From so far away, the men working atop those marble pyramids looked no bigger than gnats.
The three prisoners were marched straight to the smoky cauldron in front of the iron cage. Glade snatched an iron tong from the coals of the cauldron, its tip molten red. The Silver Guard behind Delia forced the girl to kneel before Glade, wrenching her head to the side with two gauntleted hands, exposing her neck, holding her steady. With a look bordering on sexual pleasure, Leif’s younger brother pressed the fiery slave brand against the girl’s pale neck just below her left ear. Delia’s scream was agonizingly shrill. The brand was pulled away and a large red RR was cooked into her skin. She was hauled to her feet and Glade jammed the branding iron back into the cauldron. The stench of burnt flesh was in the air.
Gault was forced to his knees in front of the cauldron next, head also roughly forced to the side, exposing his neck. Glade stirred the coals of the black pot with the branding iron. He pulled it forth a second time, and without dawdling pressed it hard to Gault’s skin. Gault clenched his jaw, gritted his teeth. He had seen captives branded before, even watched soldiers burn to death in war. But he had never before felt the pain of fire on his own flesh. It was a scorching assault that seared straight down to the bone. By the time Glade removed the steaming iron, Gault had gained a new sense of respect for all those who had sat through Enna Spades’ similar slave brandings in grim silence.
Lindholf was forced to his knees and the iron was reheated. “No, please,” he begged as Glade stirred the coals. With torturous glee on his face, Glade pulled the iron free and sank the gleaming slave brand straight into Lindholf’s neck. The boy screamed.
Glade pressed hard and long, holding the scorching orange brand against Lindholf’s tender flesh thrice as long as required, just as he’d promised. When he finally pulled the brand away, blood and char poured down Lindholf’s neck and over the front of his prison garb. The boy wailed in pain as he was hauled to his feet and dragged toward the open cage at the rim of the quarry. Gault and Delia were forced in that direction too.
To either side of the cage, the quarry itself loomed awesome and cavernous, over a mile wide in every direction. To Gault’s estimation, it was a sheer drop of more than three hundred feet on all sides. There were places in the distance that looked as deep as five hundred feet—and in those deepest reaches of the quarry gleamed pools of water.
Gault was shoved into the cage behind Lindholf and Delia, accompanied by six of the Silver Guards. The iron door was slammed shut behind them. The flat iron floor was solid underfoot, the iron bars not quite wide enough to slip through, the quarry’s depths seemingly infinite beyond the bars.
He stared across the vast expanse in dreadful fascination, enthralled. The quarry below was almost blindingly white under the harsh sun. The hundreds of slaves working at the bottom stood out against the marvelous marble like tiny black ants. In places, the walls of the quarry were peppered with various caves, crossbow-wielding guards in shining armor perched in those many alcoves and dark openings.
There was a shout followed by the crack of a whip somewhere behind him. The horses dug in, and the large wheel slowly ground to life behind him. The clash of the chains, the grind and scrape of metal on marble, all of it was shrill and sharp as the cage dropped into empty air. The sensation of slowly falling fluttered in Gault’s gut.
† † † † †
“A woman slave,” a gruff voice said when the iron contraption finally reached the bottom. The door swung open and fine white dust filtered into the cage. “Don’t ever see a woman down here,” another said.
Delia was immediately met with leering looks from both the heavily armored quarry guards and various slaves gathering around the cage.
“Lookit the tits on her!” an enthusiastic shout sounded from somewhere.
“Shut your yappers!” a lanky quarry guard shouted as he held open the cage door, blinking against the grit as a small wind kicked up. He placed his hand on the hilt of the dust-covered longsword hanging at his hip. Gault stepped from the cage first, Delia and Lindholf right behind him. Everything and everyone was frosted in a fine layer of pure marble powder, the blustery air thick with it.
The three new slaves were guided into this dusty mist by their six Silver Guard escorts. They were marched up a set of rickety stairs to a stilted wooden catwalk built fifteen feet above the quarry floor. Once atop the swaying catwalk, they were turned over to another set of guards led by a burly fellow with a round, dented half-helm. He eyed Delia up and down lecherously. The girl’s prison garb covered her well enough, but that didn’t stop the drooling idiot from disrobing her with his beady little eyes. The girl was terrified—tears streaked the white dust gathering on her face.
The burly leader eventually broke his hungry gaze from Delia and launched into a short, choppy speech. “Follow me. Far side of the quarry. We go along the catwalks. A few miles. An hour’s journey. Cuffs and shackles stay on. So watch your step.” He whirled and strutted away along the fifteen-foot-high wooden structure. Gault, Delia, and Lindholf followed the burly guard. A handful of guardsmen with spears marched behind them.
The precarious footbridge stretched off to the south, eventually connecting to a vast latticework of other such stilted catwalks, ramps, ladders, and rope bridges. This complex maze of wooden runways was joined by various winding staircases that followed the uneven contours of the quarry floor. Massive square blocks of marble rose up in their path, whilst sheer drops and deep marble canyons fell off to dizzying depths on either side. They skirted around every obstacle via the wooden runways.
The dust and smell of the dirty slaves toiling below was overwhelming. Gault didn’t like the looks of any of it; chains, ropes, pulleys, wooden barrels, troughs of milky water, hundreds of tents and crude lean-tos, and quarry guards stationed atop each and every catwalk at fifty-foot intervals, each with a dusty crossbow and spear.
All of it made him nervous. All of it made him wish for his comfortable cage back in Purgatory. All of it spelled misery.
† † † † †
Laboring in the deepest part of the quarry, and the sun was already crushing Gault with its heat. It felt like he’d been in this horrid pit his entire life. Yet it had only been half a day. Every muscle in his body hurt. Aching thirst, cracked lips, grit in his dry, parched mouth. He was nearly tempted to drink from the ten-gallon wooden bucket of human waste he carried.
; The seventeen other slaves on his crew of chiselers, sledgemen, and sawmen had been given a short ten-minute break. But not Gault. He was ordered by Higgen, the head slave and a tall, muscular fellow, to carry the shit bucket up the slanting, hundred-foot marble slope they called the chute. Atop the chute was a flat area with five holes drilled into the quarry floor in a perfectly symmetrical and perfectly pentagonal pattern, each hole about three feet apart and no more. Higgen claimed the marble around the five holes could not be cut or sawed or even scratched. Slaves had tried digging near the holes over the centuries, but the stone was too hard, so the whole area surrounding the holes was left alone. The five holes were a mystery, and considered almost sacred ground in the quarry. Gault was not to dump the shit-bucket here anywhere near them.
Also atop the chute about fifty feet north of the five holes was a spiderweb of ropes leading up to the hoists and pulleys above, Gault was to tie the bucket to one of the ropes and give three stiff yanks. Then someone five hundred feet above would haul the bucket up the side of the quarry. The chute was sloped at just the exact torturous angle to make it almost impossible to walk up, much less carry a cumbersome bucket full of waste. Still, Gault made it to the top, walked carefully around the five holes, tied the handle of the bucket to a rope, and gave three tugs.
As he made his way back down the chute, he looked up at the guards on the catwalks. They each had specially fashioned crossbows that fired hundreds of tiny shards of marble down onto any prisoner slacking off their job. Both Gault and Lindholf had already been peppered with the stinging marble shot once. They’d made the mistake of asking for water without being told they could do so by Higgen.
The Blackest Heart Page 60