I let out a frightened shout, fighting for balance. Suddenly, I was on the edge of a tremendous drop, at the ledge of a high window. Blue sky swirled above me, filled with stone towers and conical roofs in tilted confusion. Something sparkled and spun through the air beneath me toward the sparkling water far below.
There was noise behind me. Thundering footsteps. Shouts.
My arm flew out for balance as I staggered back from the ledge. I turned around. I looked around, stunned, confused.
I was in a stone room hung with tapestries. There was a woman on the floor in a pool of blood. The woman was beautiful, and she was dead.
She was twenty at most, with round cheeks and a noble brow and golden hair spilling around her face like a halo. She was stretched out on the cold gray stone and clothed in a long, elegant gown of some fine white material. There was a bloody gash in the fabric right below her breasts. Blood stained her bodice. There was blood in a pool all around her.
And there was blood on the dagger—the dagger I was holding in my hand. There was blood dripping off the point of it onto the slab between my feet.
Someone started pounding on the door.
MAYBE I SHOULD HAVE TRIED TO ESCAPE OR THOUGHT to drop the knife—or thought something. But I couldn’t think at all. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing, how I was seeing it, what was happening to me, where I was. Had I wandered onto a movie set? And the knife in my hand … What the hell was going on?
I looked around in an idiot daze. Someone was still pounding insistently at the door, and yet my eyes roamed stupidly over the tapestries on the wall. Torches flamed in the spaces between them, the wavering light giving life to elegant medieval scenes of reapers in fields, huntsmen on horseback, gentlemen and ladies dancing daintily hand in hand. The pounding, pounding, pounding at the heavy wooden door seemed far away and unreal.
Then the wood tore with a terrible cracking noise, and the door burst inward.
A small army of men flooded the room. Men in black leather and chain mail. Men with drawn swords that flashed in the flamelight from the torches.
“Ah, God! She’s dead!” one of them shouted.
I stared at them, my mouth open. I thought this would have to be over in a moment. It was some kind of hallucination, that’s all. In another moment everything would be normal again.
The men—there were six of them—parted into two groups of three as a seventh man came in behind them and pushed to the front. He was obviously the leader. Tall and fit and broad and ramrod straight. Black haired and black bearded. He wore a red vest with a gold dragon embroidered on it. He wore a sword in the scabbard on his hip. He wore an ironic expression of disdain for the world. He looked handsome and bold.
His eyes went down to the dead woman, then up to me. He sneered.
“You son of a bitch,” he said.
Without thinking—because what could I think? What the hell was happening to me?—I gestured at him with the dagger in my hand.
He must’ve thought I was going to attack him. In a movement too swift to see, he drew his sword and swept it at me in a casually brutal arc. The flat of the heavy blade smacked into the side of my head. My mind seemed to go flying out of my body and then snap back into it and sink down and down into a murky distance inside me. The room, the men, the world all accordioned away, far away. My eyes rolled up in opposite directions. I felt my legs turn to jelly. The dagger dropped from my limp fingers and fell, twirling, to the floor. I wilted down after it.
The next thing I knew, I was dimly aware that two men were holding me, one gripping me under each arm. They were dragging me thump-thump-thump down a torchlit stairway, my legs trailing limp, my toes bumping along behind me. There was blood in my eyes and on my cheek. I shook my head, trying to clear it. I tried to speak, but my jaw hung slack. I heard myself groaning.
We reached the bottom of the stairs. I struggled to get my feet under me. I managed to stumble along as the two guards hurried me onward by force. My head started to pulse with pain—real pain, no hallucination—as if a big pain balloon were blowing up and deflating inside me, filling me with fresh pain each time. It was awful. My mouth still hanging open, I looked around. I caught glimpses of an underground labyrinth of dirt and stone. A third guard was striding ahead of us, leading the way. Corridors ran off left and right under sepulchral archways. Heavy iron doors were set, here and there, deep into the hewed rock. Torches flamed and flickered in sconces on the wall, set far enough apart so that the jittery shadows melded into brooding darkness between them. The air stank of shit and despair.
“What’s happening?” I tried to say. “Where am I?” But the words came out blurry, like words in a dream.
“Jailer!” the lead guard shouted.
There was a loud clank of metal. Hinges creaked, the sound echoing off the vaulted ceiling. A door swung open somewhere. My head lolled on my shoulder as if it would come loose and fall off. My vision rolled sickeningly. I caught sight of fire. A torch, nearer, brighter than the others. I managed to turn toward it. I saw a horrid, insectile little man.
The jailer. He was no more than four feet tall. His bent and scrawny frame swam inside a worn gray robe. His head was cowled, but I could see the warty, bug-eyed, and absurdly beak-nosed face grinning weirdly out of the folds of the cloth. He held his wildly flaming torch aloft in his left hand. In his right, he held a ring of enormous keys. The keys clanked and jingled as he walked toward us.
“Who’s this?” he said. He had a voice like a rusted machine, slow and creaky.
“His name is Austin Lively,” said the lead guard. I blinked, shocked, because that was my name, my actual name. How could it be? How could he know me? “He’s charged with the murder of Lady Kata Palav.”
Even with my brain befogged and rattled, those horrible words shocked some speech out of me. I struggled weakly in the grip of the guards. “Murder?” I shouted. “Are you nuts? I didn’t kill anyone! I don’t even know what’s happening! I don’t know where I am!”
The words came out slurred, thick, indistinct. No one paid any attention. It was as if I’d made no sound at all.
The jailer started down a corridor, muttering to himself and giggling. Flipping through the keys on his ring. Quick and pigeon-toed, he skittered like a roach. The guards frog-marched me after him.
We passed under a brick arch. I turned from one guard to another, one stony, indifferent face to another, trying to tell them it was all a mistake, trying to push the thick words past my thick tongue. No one even glanced at me.
The jailer moved to one of the iron doors. The latch gave a hollow thunk as he unlocked it. The hinges groaned as he hauled the door open. A thick stench poured out of the deeper darkness in the cell beyond. Something within that hellhole gave a deep animal huff of rage and hunger.
My eyes went wide. This was real! This was really real! And now the guards were dragging me toward the cell’s open doorway. The jailer stood back and watched, grinning with sadistic pleasure, holding his torch to light the way, his warty face hideous in the wavering flames.
Terror went off inside me now like a bomb. I tried to dig my heels into the dirt and stone of the floor, tried to stop the guards from dragging me into that cell, locking me in with whatever was in there.
“Stop! Listen to me! This is a mistake! I didn’t do anything! I don’t belong here!”
I had no chance. The guards were big men, much stronger than I was, and I was still weak and dazed from the blow to my head and from the shock of finding myself in this impossible place. They overpowered me easily. Forced me past the grinning jailer. Forced me over the threshold. Hustled me over the dirt floor as I struggled. Hurled me face-first into the cell wall.
I grunted as I hit the stone. Still, I spun around to try to fight. But one guard pressed his sword point hard into the hollow of my throat, making me gag, pinning me. The other guards grabbed my arms and snapped manacles around my wrist.
“What are you doing?” I shouted. “Stop!
It’s a mistake! I’m a story analyst!”
Too late. I was chained to the wall. It all happened in a second.
Then the three guards stood aside—and I saw the monster.
I had never heard myself scream before. Not really, not like this. It just broke out of me, beyond my control.
Across the cell, lit by the dancing orange flames of the jailer’s torch, stood a massive and uncanny creature, savage, brutal, and utterly grotesque. It was at least twice as tall as the biggest guard and huge at the center, its torso a great ball of meaty flesh. It had arms the size of a bull’s haunches and stout, short legs bulging with muscle. It wore nothing but a filthy rag around its loins, and its flesh was covered everywhere with thick, curling, filthy hair. Its face: horrible. Shaped like a squashed boulder with the wide, bloody, fanged mouth of a shark, a bulbous, streaming nose the size of a softball, and one eye—one immense and dreadful eye—smack in the center of its forehead. I would not have believed that a single eye could contain such depths of ferocity, such a rage for bloodshed and destruction. And it was staring straight at me.
The thing was in a frenzy, struggling against its chains, sending up a sort of squealing roar that spiraled up from one height of fury to the next. Its daggery teeth snapped and flashed as it tried to get at me.
The lead guard shared a laugh with the others. “You don’t want to get too close to him,” he advised me with a smile. “He’ll take your head off with a single bite.”
I gaped at the creature. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. “Listen,” I said hoarsely to the guard. “You can’t leave me in here with that thing. This is all a mistake.”
The guards all laughed some more, and the jailer laughed, trying to be one of them. Showing off, he stuck his torch in the monster’s face. Taunting it, tormenting it, while it squealed and snapped at him, roared and strained.
“Oh no. You’ve had your share of heads this lifetime, ogre,” he said to it—trying to impress the guards. “You’re going to entertain the crowds by dying slow.”
The monster squealed and bared its fangs and pulled so hard on its chains that I saw dust fly from the walls where the chains were anchored. My heart seized in fear that the anchoring rings would tear free.
“All right,” said the lead guard. “That’s enough. Leave him alone. Let’s go.”
The jailer gave a satisfied snigger. He lowered his torch from the ogre’s face. The guards headed for the door.
They were leaving me—leaving me here with that thing.
I shouted at them, “Wait!” Staring at the beast who stared back at me with his single eye as he raged and wrenched his bonds. This had to be insanity. It had to be. It couldn’t be happening. But it was. It was. “Wait!”
The guards marched out. The jailer grinned at me one last time, then followed them.
The cell’s iron door slammed shut.
DARKNESS.
The ogre went on screaming his squealy scream, his chains rattling. I cowered, wild-eyed, against the rough wall, praying I would wake up. Because this had to be a dream. It had to be.
The moments went by with intolerable slowness. The stench was suffocating. So was the helplessness. So was the fear.
But after a while, I don’t know how long, the darkness seemed to have an effect on the monster. His roars began to subside. The clanking of his chains grew intermittent. Finally, with a last low growl, he fell quiet. I heard him settling on the floor with a huff.
My eyes had begun to adjust now. The darkness, I saw, was not utterly dark. The torches from the dungeon corridors sent a faint, shivering glow through the square opening in the cell door. Soon I could make out the shape of the monster. I could see him sitting against the opposite wall. I saw his huge eye blink and then sink slowly shut. His great head tilted forward. His chin came to rest on his chest. He began to snore. It was a sound like the bowels of the earth shifting.
For the first time since I had come here, I had a moment of relative quiet, relative peace. I tried to breathe. I tried to calm myself. I had to think. I had to figure out where I was, what I could do.
I ran my hands over my clothing. Did I have my phone with me? My keys? Something I could use to call for help or to pry off these manacles. But no. These weren’t my clothes at all, not the clothes I’d been wearing—when? … a few minutes ago—when I was in the hall at Global Pictures. I was wearing some sort of vest—suede, it felt like. And leggings of rough cloth. No pockets. No pouch. Nothing I could use to get out of here.
Frustrated, I looked around, squinting to try and see through the shadows. And now, with a small shock, I realized for the first time that there was someone else here—someone besides the monster.
There was another man, sitting in the corner to my right. He was chained to the wall too. I could see the links rising from his nearest wrist to the ring above and behind him. The longer I stared, the clearer I saw him: a starved, half-naked creature, with long, dirty black hair. His head hung down. His hair dangled, obscuring his face. I thought he must be asleep, like the monster. But then, as if he felt my eyes on him, he looked up. Looked at me. Even in that darkness, I could see the tears glistening in his eyes and on his cheeks. Then he lowered his face again. His body shuddered. I could hear him weeping.
“Hey,” I whispered. I glanced at the ogre. I didn’t want to wake the thing. But when the man just went on crying, I whispered louder, “Hey!”
The man lifted his head again—lifted it slowly as if it were a great weight.
“What is this place?” I asked him. “Where the hell am I?” He only stared at me as if he couldn’t understand the question. “I don’t know where I am,” I said. “Tell me. Please.”
He had to work to speak. His voice was hopeless, thick with tears. He answered as if I ought to already know. “It’s Eastrim. The castle dungeon.”
“Eastrim. In California? Are we in California?” And when he was silent again, “Where is Eastrim? I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s the council seat of Galiana. On the border of the Eleven Lands.”
This sounded so absurd—the Eleven Lands—like something out of a second-rate sword-and-sorcery novel—I thought at first maybe he was being sarcastic. But then this whole place—the dungeons, ogres, castle guards—it was all sword-and-sorcery stuff.
I opened my mouth to ask more. But I didn’t ask more. I didn’t say anything. I just stood there, my mouth still open.
Galiana … wasn’t that what he'd said? Galiana? My mouth closed slowly. I licked my lips, thinking, thinking. Something had stirred in my memory. Galiana. I knew that name. I’d heard of that place before. Somewhere. Where? I couldn’t remember.
“Galiana,” I said aloud.
But now the man lowered his head back down. He made an awful noise and began sobbing again.
“Where is Galiana?” I asked him.
“Oh please, please, please,” was all he said. Sobbing. “Please …”
I wasn’t going to get any more out of him, not for a while. I scanned the cell to see if there was anyone else here. No one. Just the monster, still sleeping, still snoring, and the sobbing man.
Suddenly, I was aware of how weary I was, how heavy I felt, as if the weight of all this craziness was just now sinking down on top of me. I lowered myself to the floor. Propped myself against the wall. The thick shit-stench of the place was even thicker down here. It made my gorge rise and my stomach roll. I wanted to stand up out of it, but I was too tired. Exhausted.
My head continued to pulse with pain. I put my hand to the sore spot and flinched. I felt dried blood, skin scraped raw on a bump the size of a fist. I squeezed my eyes shut against the throbbing ache of the wound. I leaned my head back against the stone.
Galiana, I thought. Where had I heard that word before? Maybe if I could remember, I might begin to make some sense of this. Maybe …
What seemed like a moment later, I quickly lifted my head. It had fallen forward. I realized I’d been asleep. How long? I
didn’t know. But something had woken me. What was it?
With a jolt of fear, I thought: the monster!Maybe he’d woken up. Maybe he’d gotten free! But I located him in the dark, still on the floor, curled up on his side now, still snoring. The emaciated man in the corner to my right also seemed to have fallen asleep.
What had woken me up, then? I scanned the dark cell. Everything was still. Then—wait—yes—out of the corner of my eye … I had seen something for a moment, but it was gone now. I stared at the spot. Seconds went by. Then there it was again. A dim, colorful flash. A strange motley sparkling, very brief, there and gone. I leaned forward, peering at the place where the flash had been. It took a while, but finally, I made out a figure, a silhouette, a shadow there.
My stomach turned. It was some sort of animal. Something like a rat, but huge, the size of a small dog. It was sitting not two feet away from me. Just sitting. Just gazing at me. I could see the glint of its eyes.
My chains rattled as I drew back from the thing. But a few seconds later, it happened again: that dim, sparkling, multicolored flash of light. White, red, yellow, blue, green, and golden particles of illumination flew off the creature like confetti.
I gave a little gasp of amazement and disgust. In the momentary glow, I saw that the rodent had a human face, a woman’s face, bizarre and haunting on that animal body.
A second later, the dancing sparks of light winked out and the rodent—or whatever it was—dropped back into the shadows again.
My mouth had gone stone dry. I had to lick my lips before I could speak. And should I speak to a thing like that? But I did. I said, “What are you? What do you want?”
But before she had time to answer—if she could answer—footsteps sounded on the dungeon stairs. I turned quickly toward the door.
I heard a shout: “Jailer! I’m here for the heretic!”
The emaciated man in the corner bolted upright, fully awake. “Oh, God!” he screamed. He scrambled to his feet, his chains clanking.
Another Kingdom Page 2