“He tripped and fell,” Zachary said. “He’ll be up in a moment.”
“A moment too long.” Down came the rod.
Protect.
Zachary shifted to shield Binning, and the rod lashed across his shoulders. Before he could be struck again, he grabbed Binning’s arm and raised him to his feet.
“We are working,” Zachary said fiercely.
“Then get on about it.”
He put Binning’s arm around his smarting shoulders. “Think you can hold your basket?”
Tears streamed down the man’s cheeks, cutting runnels through the stone dust. Zachary gave him the lighter basket, and hoisted the heavier to his own hip.
“You shouldn’t have done it, lad,” Binning said. “Should’ve just let them finish me.”
Protect. The word had struck Zachary as a lightning bolt and given him the strength to overcome his own injuries and weakness to help Binning. Wasn’t this the duty of a king, after all? To protect his people?
Zachary gave him encouraging words all the way out to the pile to empty their baskets, then guided Binning back into the passage beneath the smirking gazes of the guards. They were like vultures looking upon carrion.
“Think I can shuffle along on my own now,” Binning said. “Had a weak moment back there.”
“I’ll keep close,” Zachary replied.
“My thanks. You are wearing Skinner’s old cloak.”
“Skinner?”
“Aye. They took him away to the one called Nyssa because he mouthed off at the guards. He never came back. He was an old farmer, like me.”
At the end of the passage came the clack of metal on stone as workers swung picks at the earth and stone that blocked the way.
As Zachary knelt to collect rocks into his basket, he asked, “Where did you farm?”
“On the border. A little northwest of North. It wasn’t much of a farmstead, mostly rocks.” He tossed one into his basket in disgust. “But it was mine. I was no tenant, didn’t owe no one nothing. Not even the king. But then Second Empire came and took the little I had.”
“Life on the border is not easy,” Zachary said. He knew the stories of those who braved groundmites and rugged living conditions there. As Binning had indicated, it was not good farmland, but having a place of one’s own was something. It was freedom, a way of bettering oneself and not being under the thumb of a landowner, or the king’s taxes. He smiled to himself. He admired the border folk for their ambition and courage despite the fact most of them despised him as their king. And now they’d been hit hard by Second Empire.
He helped Binning lift his load, then hefted his own, and they continued down the passage. Before they could be accused of moving too slowly by the guards, the midday meal was called. Binning dropped where he stood.
“Wait here,” Zachary said. “I’ll get you something to eat.”
It was the same as the day before, gruel and pan bread. Zachary found Binning with his back against a tree and handed him the food and a cup of ale.
At first they ate in companionable silence; then Binning asked, “Where you from, lad? Sounds like the coast to me.”
Zachary smiled. “Good ear. I hail from Duck Harbor, in L’Petrie.”
“I’ve never been to the big water, never been south of Sacor City.”
“It is well worth seeing.”
“Don’t think I ever will,” Binning replied. “Not in this life.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Look at us, lad. What are these people gonna do with us when there are no more rocks to move?”
Zachary did not have an answer for him. When they returned to work, Binning appeared better for the meal, such as it was, but Zachary stayed by his side. On one of their trips into the passage, they discovered the workers with the picks had uncovered something in one of the walls. As Cole raised his lantern to look, Zachary glimpsed what appeared to be a lintel. He could not linger, for he was threatened by the cudgel-bearing guard to keep moving. On subsequent trips into the passage, more and more was revealed of what looked to be a stone door. On his final trip of the day, ancient glyphs of the gods carved into the stone were exposed. Most prominent was that of Westrion, god of the dead, and his steed, Salvistar. They’d been burrowing into a tomb.
Binning sat with Zachary that evening for their supper. Stew again. He was absorbed in wondering what Grandmother was after in the tombs.
“Bad business,” Binning said, “breaking into tombs.”
Yes, it was.
Soon after eating, Zachary lay down to sleep. Binning stretched out beside him, sharing his body heat. He clenched and unclenched his aching hands with their shredded skin and broken, bloody fingernails. If Grandmother’s goal was reaching that tomb, then perhaps his rock-carrying days were over. Perhaps his life would be over. He fisted his hands, ignoring the pain. He could not allow Grandmother to succeed in obtaining whatever it was that she wanted in the passage. He would not allow Second Empire to overcome his realm. He would not die a thrall.
Think! came the command, but he was too exhausted in body and spirit, and he fell into a hard sleep.
• • •
The next day, he was surprised when they kept digging downward past the tomb entrance. No one bothered to open it. What was Grandmother after?
Binning held his own, but Zachary helped others if they stumbled or tired. He began to learn the names of his fellow captives and from where they hailed. Most were from the northern boundary, but Pitkin, a hapless merchant from Penburn, had been taken from the North Road. Then there was Lorilie, with her Rhovan accent. He helped her lift her basket when they both ended up at the end of the passage at the same time.
“I do not need help,” she said.
“Of course,” he replied. “I will not help again unless requested.” There were enough fierce women in his life that he knew when not to argue.
She gave him an aggravated look and hurried along with her burden as best she could. Zachary did not tarry, for the guard with the spiked cudgel watched him closely. Too closely. He followed Lorilie up the passage, nodding to others as they headed back down with empty baskets.
Lorilie, Rhovan. Think. And then it came to him. Lorilie Dorran, the leader of the Anti-Monarchy Society. Of course. She and her followers had inhabited the area around the Lone Forest, perhaps planning to create their own community free of the tyranny of kings, like many of the other border folk. At one time she’d been very active trying to turn his people against him. She had retreated north after his brother’s coup attempt, and little had been heard from the Anti-Monarchists since then. How, he wondered, would Lorilie react if she found out who he was? It was a diverting thought as he emerged into sunshine and dumped his basket of rocks.
That night during supper, Lorilie invited him to sit with her group. Binning, though uninvited but now seemingly attached to him, came, too. The others grudgingly made space for him. Zachary, considering his earlier revelation about who Lorilie was, was both amused and intrigued to be so favored.
She quietly asked how each person was faring. Pitkin nodded toward Zachary. “Thanks to Dav here, I probably avoided a caning.”
“Good,” Lorilie said, “we must help one another to stay strong, take care of one another, because no one else is going to. The imperialists will work us to death. Those of us who survive the dig? When it’s done, we’ll be put to use at some other slave labor, or be slaughtered outright.” She spoke as a leader, one who naturally exuded charisma. It was no wonder she had been the head of the Anti-Monarchy Society.
“King might send soldiers,” Pitkin said. “Before I was captured, he’d led skirmishes against Second Empire on the border.”
Lorilie gave him a long look, but she did not lash out at him. “Even if the king’s forces assault this place, what do you think our captors would do to us?”
> Zachary knew the answer, and so did the others. Now that he was aware of the captives, he could formulate a plan that might prevent their slaughter. That was, if he were free and leading the assault against Second Empire. Since he, too, was a captive, the notion was not going to get very far.
“I take it,” he said, “there have been escape attempts.”
The others nodded. “They do not end well,” Lorilie said. “The few who have tried were quickly captured and flogged by the Nyssa woman in front of us as an example of what will happen to any of us who would try. There are many guards who watch us. In the unlikely event someone got by them, there are traps set out in the woods.”
“What can you tell me about this place?” Zachary asked. “I’ve seen very little beyond the great hall of the keep, this building, and the excavation. And does anyone know what Grandmother is trying to dig up?”
No one knew the answer to the last, but they offered what they could about the layout of the keep and its grounds. He would have to try to escape eventually, once he regained his full strength, and the more he knew about Second Empire’s base, the better chance he had of navigating his way out. And when he was out? He would have inside knowledge of it for when he returned with a force to destroy it.
THE BRAWLER
The passage pitched sharply downward, which added to the strenuous work of removing debris. Zachary still had no idea what it was Grandmother sought underground, but though they uncovered no more entrances to burial chambers, more glyphs appeared on the walls. He could not pause to examine them closely with the guards watching, so what he got were fleeting glimpses, impressions of figures and symbols that gave him a sense of foreboding. He saw Westrion, wings spread, and his raptor’s countenance fierce, and Salvistar rearing. There were few other gods depicted, but several skeletal figures being faced down by a mounted knight carrying a lance. The horse looked as though it, too, could be Salvistar, but the knight was not Westrion.
The atmosphere of the passage was oppressive, and he was always relieved to reach the sunshine without when he made the trip to dump his basket, but he’d have to turn around and reenter the gloom. In the downward shaft, the sensation of oppression intensified. Those who labored with him, and even the guards, seemed to feel it, too, if their grim expressions were any indication.
It did not help that he worried about what was happening back home, how Estora and their children fared. How did she govern in his stead? He tried to remind himself that she had good counselors to help her, not least of all, Laren, who had advised him longest. Did they search for him, or did they assume he was dead? He couldn’t even imagine where they’d begin . . . As a captive of Second Empire, he felt helpless, unable to do anything about these great concerns.
At midday, work halted, much to Zachary’s surprise, but apparently no one else’s. They were led through the gap in the curtain wall and into the great hall of the keep where they were instructed to sit on the floor. Zachary looked, but neither Grandmother nor Immerez were anywhere in sight.
“What’s going on?” he asked Binning.
“Once a week they talk to us about their god, offer us a chance to convert or be damned for all eternity. Mostly they damn us.”
Ah, Zachary thought. The one god of Arcosia. He had nothing against any god. It was those who would push their particular set of beliefs on others that he detested. Maybe a sermon would take his mind off his concerns about his wife and realm.
Guards stationed themselves around the chamber, and an older man in robes shambled out and stood in front of them. He gazed down his beaky nose at them like an angry gull. Zachary thought this task might have been under the purview of Grandmother as spiritual leader, but she was nowhere to be seen. The lay priest, known as Elder Smurn, ranted against the heathen gods that the Sacoridians venerated.
“They are false! Superstition! Abominations! At the time of judgment, your souls will be cast into the blackest pit of damnation and will cease to exist.”
The ranting continued on, but just seemed to bounce off Zachary and his fellow laborers. They were exhausted, and used the time to rest with heads bowed. Some nodded off.
::Dav.::
It came to him as a whisper in his ear. He straightened his posture and carefully looked about himself. Was he just hearing things?
::I am sitting behind you.::
He did not dare look while under the scrutiny of the guards. He did not have to, to know it was Fiori using some kind of speech-throwing trick. He gave a subtle nod to indicate he heard and understood, even as Elder Smurn railed on.
::I am trying to figure out how to free you from here. I have not been able to find a way for myself, however. Too many guards. One day I will want to know the whole story of how you came to be here.::
Zachary smiled to himself and wished he could respond. He had many questions for the minstrel, himself.
“God favors Arcosia and her descendants above all others,” Smurn exhorted.
::You may remember from your history,:: Fiori continued in Zachary’s ear, ::that this keep is Ifel Aeon. It was a seat of power of the northern lords in ancient times.::
Of course, Zachary thought. Perhaps if he had not been hit on the head so many times, he would have figured it out himself. There were ruins all over the north, but this one was prominent in Lone Forest lore.
::Grandmother has sought not only shelter for her people here, but she searches for some sort of relic . . .:: Fiori paused, sounding uncertain. ::I have heard her mention a ‘seal.’ There are old parchments in Selium that describe the keep standing sentinel over a portal to—::
“Your eternal damnation!” The edges of Smurn’s mouth were foaming. “Repent! Repent!”
Binning snored softly beside Zachary.
::—and it can’t mean anything good.::
Zachary had missed a portion of Fiori’s explanation due to Smurn’s thunderous sermon. There was enough damnation to go around, he thought bitterly.
::He’s almost done,:: Fiori said. ::Try to lie low, keep safe, for all our sakes.::
The sermon ended abruptly with Smurn looking contemptuously at the dirty, exhausted slave laborers at his feet. Having done his duty, he whirled and stalked off. The guards came forward to prod their charges back to work. Zachary glanced behind himself, but Fiori was nowhere to be seen.
“Had the strangest dream,” Binning said as they filed from the great hall to the outdoors. “A man was whispering to me.” He screwed his finger in his ear as if to clear it.
“Oh?” Zachary said carefully. “What did he say?”
Binning’s brow became furrowed. “To keep watch over you.”
“That is strange,” Zachary replied, trying to sound surprised.
Back at the dig, he noticed two of the guards watching him and whispering to one another. He did not think it boded well. He wondered if they had somehow detected Fiori talking to him. He hastened into the passage with his basket so as not to draw any additional attention. Fiori was right that his safety lay in remaining beneath notice. Whatever those guards had already seen couldn’t be helped. They hadn’t recognized him somehow, had they?
As he worked and passed by the glyph-covered walls, he forgot the guards and thought about what Fiori had said, that Grandmother sought a seal or relic of some sort, and that the keep had stood over a portal.
Think.
One of the workers stumbled and fell to her knees in front of him. He hurried to help her rise. She was one of Lorilie’s folk.
“Thank you, Dav,” she said.
“Your knees are bleeding.”
“That won’t be all if we don’t get moving.”
He went back to work and as he trudged along with his burdens, he recalled what it was about portals and this old keep that stirred his memory. There were legends about how there were Earthly passages into the hells, where dark spirits and dem
ons dwelled, and that once, far beyond human ken, these evil entities ran rampant across the lands. In the more obscure sections of the Book of the Moon, the religious text kept by the moon priests, it was written that the gods waged war on the dark ones and rounded them up. It fell to Westrion to confine them for all time. Guardians were appointed to keep watch over the prisons, ensuring the seals that blocked them remained strong. The Book of the Moon went so far as to suggest that these guardians were actually mortal avatars of Westrion, his representatives on Earth.
Zachary, down on his knee, tossed rocks into his basket and glanced over his shoulder where other workers heaved pickaxes at the blocked passage. Did it lead to the hells, or at least to one of the prisons that contained dark spirits? Or, was it all pure legend? Grandmother seemed to think there was something back there, or why else have them digging out the passage? If she thought one of these seals lay beyond, did she intend to break it to release the entities? She was a necromancer. Perhaps she believed she’d have some power over them, but if it had taken a war with the gods to subdue them, he was not sure any human, necromancer or not, could control them.
Let it be legend, he thought. Many of the stories in the Book of the Moon were, after all, metaphorical, or even pure fantasy. Even in pure fantasy, however, could be found some kernel of truth.
There was not much he could do about it at the moment, but observe. Observe and plan.
That evening after supper, he sat by himself to work on the planning part when guards burst into the building. Other prisoners scuttled out of the way.
“This is never good,” Binning told Zachary.
“Why? What are they—?”
“Where’s Dav?” one of the guards shouted. “Dav Hill, where are you?”
All the other prisoners, even Binning, moved away from him as though he were infected with the pox. He climbed to his feet. “I am here.”
The guards grabbed him and dragged him out. He wondered if Grandmother finally wanted to hear the rest of his story about how he’d been caught by groundmites, but they didn’t take him into the keep. They pushed and shoved him through the woods to a clearing lit by lanterns with a bonfire in the center. A number of soldier types stood around the clearing’s perimeter, drinking. Binning was right. This could not be good. The circle opened, and he was kicked into the clearing from behind.
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