by Rachel Ford
He didn’t go in search of the master of the castle, because he figured Ieon must be asleep by now. Anyway – and perhaps more importantly – he’d rather beg forgiveness for trespassing than ask permission tonight, just in case the wizard decided not to be accommodating now that he’d messed up the horse breeding program and brought werewolves to his doorstep. Better to slip into bed and spend the night peacefully, even if it did lead to him getting booted out on his butt tomorrow morning, than to be thrown to the wolves. Literally, in this case.
Wilfred’s office sat empty. The kitchen too was deserted. Its counters were laden in slabs of meat, but none of it had been cooked yet. Jack felt hungry, but he didn’t want to cook. And though he knew food poisoning wasn’t a concern in video games…well, raw flesh on the countertops just didn’t look appetizing.
Added to that, he had a lot of adrenaline coursing through his veins – too much to really feel the need to eat at the moment. So he decided he’d let his character sleep it off, and breakfast there the next morning if he could, or on the road if he couldn’t.
He left the kitchen and went back down the hall to the same room he’d utilized the night before. He peered inside with a grimace. It looked exactly like it had the night before: bare and unwelcoming, austere and prison-like.
Still, a cot was a cot. And a cot away from werewolves is… He didn’t have anything clever to finish the phrase, so he just shook it off and stepped inside.
Except, he didn’t enter the little bedroom he’d seen on the threshold. He stepped into a putrid hive of human misery. Prisoners hung from the walls, languishing in irons and their own filth.
And the smell of that filth hit him almost as soon as the sight. Never in Jack’s life had he smelled anything so foul, so atrocious. But the closest he’d come had been two separate odors: a dead deer on the side of the road by his apartment building, and the holding tanks for septic waste at his grandma’s cabin. If those two odors – decaying flesh and septic waste – could have merged, and amplified, it might have been what he was smelling right now.
He stared ahead, at an old, crooked man who watched him with a blank stare. His arms were secured to the wall in irons, and so were his legs. He didn’t seem fazed by the arrival of someone else. He just – stared, unseeing, at Jack.
The same could not be said for the other prisoners. And there were plenty of them: dozens and dozens, old men and young, women and girls. There were children of all ages, from babies to toddlers to teenagers, crying and screaming and crawling through their own waste, or slumped against a wall forlornly. No one seemed to be sleeping.
A slimy hand seized Jack’s, and he recoiled at the warm, wet ooze. The source of that oozing was a little boy, maybe nine or ten. “You’re not one of them?” he asked.
Jack blinked. “One of who?”
“The wolves.”
“Of course not,” he said.
“Then you’re one of us.”
The boy said it matter-of-factly, like there was no question or debate to be had. “One of who?”
“A prisoner.”
“Like heather. I’m no prisoner.”
The boy shook his head. “If you’re in here, and you’re not one of them come to choose which of us to eat, you’re a prisoner.”
Jack was about to argue further when another child grabbed at him, with similarly filthy hands. “Have you got food, mister? I’m starving. Please, anything at all.”
Jack lifted his hands out of reach of any and all urchins, and then decided he’d seen enough. He didn’t fully understand what was going on, but he’d come in through the door. He’d leave through the door.
He spun around and gaped at a blank wall. His whole body sagged. “What the…”
One of the urchins grabbed at his arm again. He’d lowered it enough to put it back in the danger zone. “Bread, mister: just a crust.”
“Please, have you got anything at all?” another asked.
Jack backed away from them. “Stop it. Get your hands off me. Enough.”
A woman came over, moving slowly, like every step caused her pain. She was gaunt and pale and smeared in dirt. He took her to be an old woman at first, but as she neared and gathered the children up, he got a better look. Accounting for the filth and starvation, he figured she probably wasn’t older than twenty-five or thirty. He had no idea what she’d looked like before being in this place, but her eyes were soft and kind, and her voice gentle. “Forgive them, sir. We haven’t eaten in days. Usually, they feed them, at least the little ones. But not these last few days.”
“Who?” Jack asked. “Who feeds them? Where are we?”
“Don’t you know?”
“No. I was going to bed one minute, and the next – I stepped through some kind of portal or something.”
“I’m sorry, stranger. But you’re in the werewolf wizard’s dungeon.”
Jack blinked. “The wizard? You mean, Ieon?”
She shook her head. “No. Ieon disappeared many years ago. I suppose they killed him. Now, the one who owns this place calls himself Ieon, and lures strangers to their doom. I do not know his real name.”
“Hold on. Wait a minute. Time out.” Jack’s brain was racing a mile a minute. “You mean, all this time I’ve been under the roof of some kind of evil imposter wizard?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“So why didn’t the door turn into a prison yesterday?”
“Sir?”
“I slept in a room last night, in his castle. Tonight, it brought me here. Why?”
“I cannot say. Perhaps you were of use to the wizard. When my father worked as his gardener, he kept us out of the dungeon. But now that he is dead, here we are.”
Jack groaned. “The horses. The darned horses: he wanted me to breed stupid horses for him.” The woman stared with a blank expression. He realized he didn’t know her name. “I am Jack Owens. What are you called?”
“I am Friya. And these are my brothers, Folk and Trygve, and our cousin, Matild.” She was gesturing to the urchins who had pawed at him earlier.
“You say they haven’t eaten in days?”
“That’s right. Usually, our keepers will feed us. But they didn’t these last days. Perhaps they did not wish to risk you seeing the dungeons, so they kept us concealed, and did not come to us.”
Jack stared at the bony, ragged children, then at their equally bony sister. He thought of the food in his pack. It could sustain him for a long time in prison. Then again, could he really eat pies and whatnot while children starved in front of him? He sighed and drew out a plate of coconut pork. “Here,” he said. “Eat this.”
The children fell on it like ravenous animals, stuffing it into their mouths with bare, dirty hands.
A thought ran through Jack’s mind.
You have gained goodwill among the people of Ieon’s Valley.
Friya, though, didn’t take any food.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” he asked.
She shook her head. “It will be a waste anyway, won’t it?”
“Why?”
She smiled at him. “You really are new. They took Aron, my twin, last week. They will take me soon.”
“Took him?” Jack asked.
A pained expression crossed the young woman’s haggard face. “For – for food. That is why they keep us. I’m sorry. I know it is not an easy thing to hear. But they keep us either for food or for sport.” She glanced at the old man fastened to the wall and lowered her voice. “He shot one of the wizard’s dogs when it attacked his son, or so the story goes. He has not left this prison in twenty years, except to be dragged up for – sport.” She shivered and Jack nodded.
“Torture?”
“Terrible tortures. They are cruel, cruel beasts, Sir Jack.”
He nodded grimly and lifted a hand to her shoulder. “Eat, Friya. It will not be a waste, I promise you.”
“It will. Unless they catch someone tonight, they will come for me in a day or two. Better that the c
hildren eat than that it is wasted on me.”
Jack, though, shook his head, and pulled another coconut dish from his pack. This one was coconut chicken. “Eat, miss. They will not take you. I promise you: Ieon the Pretender’s false reign is over.”
She watched him with a hesitant expression. “No one has been able to defeat him, Sir Jack. Not in many long years, though many have tried.”
He smiled, a confident, if mildly obnoxious, smile. “But Jack Owens hasn’t tried yet. I promise you, Friya, I will free you – all of you – from this terrible torment.”
Chapter Twelve
They were bold words and earned him the immediate approbation of most of his prisoners. A few laughed and called him a fool, but Jack chose to ignore them. Anyway, the sight of food soon converted even the most hardened skeptic. Soon, everyone was singing Jack’s praises.
Eventually, the game alerted him:
You are well-liked by the people of Ieon’s Valley.
All of which left Jack with a tiny problem: he had no clue how he would actually make good on his promise to get them out. And “wait and see,” and, “I’ll tell you momentarily,” and so on would only stave off questions for so long. He knew that.
He needed a plan, and he needed one fast.
The cell setup wasn’t much help. It was a giant, windowless, doorless stone warehouse, with some people chained to the walls – those who had personally offended Ieon the Pretender – and others free to roam their final home. The so-called spare bedrooms in the castle basement apparently doubled as portals to this hellscape – when fake Ieon wanted to trap people, the rooms would send them here. He spoke with more than a few prisoners who had unwittingly passed nights in those rooms before, though, too. So they were real rooms, even if the entrance was linked to another place.
Which explained how he’d gotten here, but not how he was getting out. It seemed the only way in was from one of those portals, and the only way out was if one of the pretender’s minions came back and opened a portal.
Jack was pondering how he was going to save his own skin, and all of these people’s, when a portal appeared at the far end of the giant room. Migli’s face and bulk stood on the threshold. He was wearing only a night tunic and trousers, and his blunt features were screwed up like he was trying to see something far away. “Are you sure it’s here?”
A faint, faraway voice called, “It has to be. Look on the dresser, or behind it. It must have fallen.”
Migli puffed out his cheeks dubiously but shrugged. “Alright, my beauty.”
A few of the prisoners called out, “No, don’t do it,” or, “It’s a trap, run,” or some other warning.
Jack was too surprised to respond at all. He just watched Migli step through the portal in his nightclothes and slippers – into the dungeon.
The dwarf blinked in surprise, then turned for a hallway that no longer existed. “Katrice? My lady? My love?” He thumped his great hand on the stone wall, as if he expected it to vanish like some kind of illusion or night terror. The tenor of his voice changed from confusion to panic. “My dearest? My love? My lady of the kitchens?”
Jack rolled his eyes. No wonder Katrice sent him off to his doom, he thought uncharitably. Aloud, though, he said, “She’s not coming for you, Migli. It was a trap. They’re werewolves.”
The dwarf spun around again. “Sir Jack? You’re here too? What is this manner of living nightmare?”
So Jack explained what had happened as gently as possible, despite an annoying series of interruptions and lamentations on the dwarf’s part for his broken, betrayed, battered, beleaguered heart.
Migli accepted it with more forbearance than an actual person in that situation might have done. He stood there in silence, listening but not reacting. Which was the silver lining to the whole thing, Jack supposed. He wasn’t sure he could handle the little dwarf in the midst of histrionics.
But once he’d finished the story, he asked, “But where were you, Migli? How did you avoid capture for so long?”
“I reached the wizard’s home just like you. But I went searching for my lady fair. Alas, Jack: I can no more say those words. For she is not my lady. She used me to satisfy her carnal cravings, and now she lured me into this place, to satisfy entirely different appetites. Woe, woe is me, Jack.”
He rolled his eyes. “So you left me to die in the woods while you got laid, and it didn’t work out the way you wanted? My heart’s breaking for you, Migli.”
“Mine is already broken. Never more shall it beat for womankind. It has been too cruelly used.”
“Yeah, that’s very sad. But we should focus on getting out.”
“I’ve room left in my heart only for gold, the true love of my people.”
“Look, dude, I don’t care about your heart, okay? I care about not getting eaten by werewolves.”
“Does it even matter anymore, Jack?”
Jack stared at the mopey dwarf, and realized he wasn’t taking it so well after all. “Snap the heck out of it. I need your help.”
But Migli didn’t snap out of it. He continued to lament the loss of the third – or was it fourth? – true love Jack had met during their time together. He fell to singing a new composition, about betrayal at the hands of a woman, and the cruelest irony of all: that his matron of the kitchens should intend him for the dinner plate.
He was about ready to strangle the little man. His fellow inmates, though, proved more sympathetic. They showered the dwarf in well wishes and sympathy. Another man confided, “Take heart, my stout friend: you are not the first victim of her gastronomic seduction.”
Jack wasn’t sure if that meant Katrice had fed the new guy, or – well, the other f-word. He didn’t really care.
Migli did, though. Migli seemed to take the other man’s admission as a personal insult. “You? Lying fool, mind your tongue, or I’ll pull it out. Katrice would never soil herself with the likes of you.”
Which seemed a strange claim to Jack. The other guy was no prince charming, sure; but his worst aspects were the filth and leanness. Aside from that, he had decent features and a full head of sandy blond hair – a little darker for the dirt throughout it. But compared to Migli? Jack couldn’t pretend to know what went through a woman’s mind when choosing a mate – or a meal, for that matter – but Migli would have been at the bottom of his list. Either list, the food list or the other f-one. Which automatically meant this guy ranked higher than the dwarf.
For a minute, it seemed the pair might come to blows. The stranger took offense at Migli’s words and tone, and the dwarf took offense at his claims of peculiar acquaintance with Katrice.
Then another man stepped onto the scene, trying to placate them both. He was youngish, like the first guy, and relatively good looking under the same veneer of filth and starvation. He had dark hair and decent features. “Sir Dwarf, please, my friend speaks the truth. He meant no offense, nor should you feel a fool for the deception played upon you. It happens to the best of us.”
Migli glowered at him. “Are you going to claim that my fair Katrice bedded you too? That it was she who led you here?”
The new guy shook his head. “Not I. It was Wilfred whose fair words and fine figure lured me to my doom.”
Jack blinked. “You mean…the dowdy old butler?”
The new guy ignored him, but his words seemed to cool Migli’s temper. “How could she do such a thing to her little sugar plum?”
Jack scrunched up his face. “Good God, Migli, no one wants to hear that kind of stuff.”
“Alas, alas: I am betrayed.”
The two men nodded, clapping him on opposite shoulders. “So we were.”
“The cruelest cut.”
Jack groaned and turned his back on the trio. They would be no help, that was clear. But if he didn’t find a way out of this cell soon, he was going to go mad.
But he didn’t find a way out soon. He knocked his knuckles against the rock the whole way around. He pressed every stone that se
emed even a little out of place. He pulled at the torch fittings and stomped on the stone underfoot. None of it gave way. None of it turned out to be some kind of lever or button to a secret passage that would get them out of the prison.
So Jack resigned himself to the obvious conclusion: there was no way into the cell except by magic, and there would be no way out without it either.
He found Friya again. “Hey,” he said.
“Ah, Sir Jack. Thank you again for the food. I cannot tell you how much it means to us.”
“You’re welcome. But listen, Friya, you said something about them coming to get you, remember?”
She nodded, looking very grim. “But you said that wouldn’t happen.”
“Right. Well, uh, I’ve been thinking.”
“About what?”
“When they come for someone, what happens?”
“They usually come at night, when their hunt has proved meager. One will come in human form, but they will bring wolves too, so that we will not dare to attack them.”
Jack remembered the slabs of raw meat in the kitchen. “I think they caught something. Or someone. There was some kind of flesh on the countertops.”
“It may have been from the horses you mentioned, the ones that died the day before.”
He nodded. Not that he wished harm on the poor sky horses, of course, but horse meat would be better than people meat. “But that means they’ll have enough food for a while.”
She shook her head. “They will not eat it. They’ll kill anything, for they enjoy the sport of killing. But they’ll not eat horseflesh. Not when they have humans to prey upon.”
“Then what was it doing in the kitchen?”
“It’s probably for travelers.”
Jack scrunched up his nose. “You mean, we were eating horse flesh the other night?”