They reached the stairs and filtered into two lines, each taking a side of the hole. Because it was so near to the wall, only Verret and Dahveed went to the left, placing their backs to the wood and pushing themselves into the corner where the stairs met the wall. Verret stood closest to the hole, staring across at Terian, who was just behind Grinnd and Amenon in the line on their side. Amenon was still, resolute, and Terian could tell he was listening. There was no sound to be heard, though, all noise drowned out by the terrible snoring from above.
Terian stood with his back against the wall, the hard wood and his weight pushing his armor against him even through the light padding he wore to cushion it. He could feel the spikes on his pauldrons dig into the grain of the wood as he pressed against it, leaving indentations. The smell that permeated all of Kortran was present here as well, the stink of the titans, and the smell of footprints that had trod in those filthy streets. It was so thick he could nearly taste it over the salty remnants of the jerky he had eaten hours ago. He saw his father make the hand sign to move and he did, careful not to butt up against Amenon in front of him but to follow a respectable distance behind. Thalless shoved a hand past Terian and cast Nessalima’s light, forcing Terian to look away just briefly before turning back to see Grinnd and his father already down on their knees, grappling with a rustling figure wrapped tight in a bedroll.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Terian said, pausing just behind the two of them. They surged to their feet, the struggling figure firmly grasped between them as Amenon reached back and hauled off, punching the man wrapped in the bedroll squarely in the face. He slumped, unconscious, and Grinnd delicately wrapped his arms around the man and hoisted him on his shoulders.
“So that’s Sert Engoch,” Verret said, not sheathing his sword but keeping his voice to a whisper.
“I’m not certain,” Amenon said, coldly dispassionate. “Let’s have a look at him, Grinnd.”
The big warrior brought the limp body down and Dahveed brought his hand closer, the soft glow of the Nessalima’s light spell illuminating the face of the possible heretic. The dark elven features were impossible to deny, and they looked plump, every bit the same as the ones on the poster, and possibly even a little fatter.
“Remind me to hide out among the titans if ever I feel compelled to run away as a heretic,” Dahveed said with wry humor, “as this fellow doesn’t seem to have suffered much in his life as a fugitive.”
“Their scraps are enough to fill a table for us,” Xem said with quiet awe. “What do you suppose they eat?”
“Their own dead,” Grinnd said, causing every head to swivel to him. The imperturbable warrior shrugged, keeping the body of Enoch, the heretic, perfectly balanced as he did so. “A variety of the large animals that live here in the southern lands. Dragons, when possible. Elves occasionally, or whatever of our smaller northern kind comes this way, but that’s more of a lesson; we’re far too insubstantial to make a meal for them.” He wore an expression that told Terian instantly that he was not lying, that he’d read it somewhere reliable.
There was a sort of deep quiet, and Bowe turned to Amenon. “Shall we leave, my lord?”
“We have our duty to tend to,” Amenon said stiffly. He waved a hand around the room, at the little piles of things, a few small tomes. “Take everything. The Sovereign will want to know what he knows.” He waved a hand at the inert body lying over Grinnd’s shoulder. “We need to return our prize to Saekaj.” He gave a nod to Bowe, who began to cast a teleportation spell. “So that we can begin the arduous—and painful—last moments of Sert Engoch’s life.”
Chapter 14
They were in a little room in the basement of Terian’s father’s house, in the farthest reaches. It was square and big enough to hold the entire team, plus their prisoner, who was strapped to a table, still unconscious, with a little room to spare. The smell of fear was heavy in the air, and to Terian’s mind it wasn’t that far different from the scent in the streets of Kortran. A dungeon. He’s had his own dungeon built.
As if he was reading Terian’s mind, Xem, who stood next to him, shrugged. “When you’ve got to torture as part of your job and you don’t want to have to travel to the palace or gaol to do it …” The slow, audible breathing of the prisoner was the only discernible noise of note, and it overcame all the quiet, ambient sounds that the team was making.
“I remember this whole room being a coal bin when I was a child,” Terian said, looking around the dim, dank room, lit by a single candle.
“Your mother has fresh firewood brought down from the surface every day now,” Amenon said, stepping into the room while letting the door squeak shut behind him. “It’s better for her constitution than that black dust and the thick, heavy smoke.”
“Also, it freed up all this space for your very own torture room,” Terian said with a ring of sarcasm. “Because no manor in Saekaj is really complete without a place to wring the screams out of your enemies.”
“Indeed,” Amenon said with a total lack of irony, “it seems that the men who built it do quite the booming business. Though I hear most who have one use it to keep the servants in line, set an example for them.” He clinked his hand against the chains that secured the heretic to the table. “I had to make sure I got chains adaptable enough to fit any guest we might have, from trolls all the way down to gnomes.” He smiled, and it was horrifying to Terian’s eyes. “They were very accommodating.”
He’s being ghoulish just to unsettle me, Terian realized. He’s taking my taunt and throwing it back in my face. “Do you enjoy torture because it’s part of your duty to the Sovereign, or would you do it gladly even outside of your work?”
Amenon’s face grew impassive, and his hand clinked against the metal table more quickly now. Any amusement that had been present a moment earlier was gone. “We have a task at hand.” He looked over the entire crew, huddled around the walls. “Less is more, I think. All of you save for Terian may go. I have every confidence that your efforts today will please the Sovereign, when I make my report to him.” He nodded once and they began to file out.
“Lucky me, I get to stick around for the blood and beatings portion of the show,” Terian muttered under his breath. Xem gave him a sympathetic look as he exited. “Save me a drink,” he said as Xemlinan walked out.
“You’ll be conducting this interrogation,” Amenon said without preamble as Grinnd, the last to leave, shut the door behind him with a clank. There was a small stand just to the side of the table, covered over with a small white cloth. Terian’s father pulled the cloth off delicately, revealing all manner of instruments beneath. There were short ones and long ones, but the commonality was that they all had points on them, in spite of the hooks and claws that some seemed to sport.
Terian raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think I’ll need those.”
Amenon let just the faintest hint of a smile show. “Good. I worried that perhaps your long absence would cause you to forget what a dark knight can do to bring pain and terror.”
Terian let his face twist naturally with the hard emotion that bubbled up from within him at his father’s words. “I trust if ever I forgot, you’d remind me in the most painful way possible. You know, like you did yesterday.” He took a step toward the inert body of Sert Engoch, heretic. “Time for a rude awakening.” He pulled his gauntlet off and brought his fist down on the man’s cheek, hard, rocking his head back and causing his eyes to snap open.
“Oh, good, you’re up,” Terian said, burying the tentative feelings that were worming around inside deep within. I will not fail this most basic of tests now that it’s been laid in front of me. “I thought maybe I’d have to start gutting you while you were still sleeping.”
The heretic’s expression showed only a moment’s worth of fear before it became straitlaced. “I have long expected this moment to come. Gutting me would be a sweet end to what I’m certain will be a long and tedious process that I have prepared for.�
�� He gave a nod as he looked around the room. “Very well then, go on with it.”
Terian took his helm off by grasping one of the points. He set it gently on the ground and shook his long hair to let it breathe. He could feel the sweat causing the strands to stick together and ran his gauntleted fingers through to loosen it up where it was matted. “I don’t think you understand,” Terian said, looking to his father, not the prisoner. “I’m not here to torture you to death because you’re a heretic.” He leaned an armored elbow rather uncharitably into the soft space below Engoch’s sternum. “The Sovereign wants information that you possess,” Terian said, and pressed down, causing Sert to grunt with pain as the small, jutting spike on Terian’s elbow joint penetrated the skin, “and you’re going to share it with me.”
Engoch’s face was at peace, his expression staid. “No, I shall not.”
“Yes, you will,” Terian said with a calm assurance and just a tinge of sadness. “The only question before us is how much blood you’ll lose, how many bones will be broken, and ultimately how much suffering you’ll experience before we’re done.” He leaned over to look Sert in the eyes, and the heretic’s pupils were dilated and fixed, trying to remain centered. There’s fear in him yet. He’d have to be afraid to hide in that hole in Kortran. “You must know we have healers. I can cleave you limb from limb and then restore you, drain you nearly dry of blood and then replenish it, kill you and bring you back to life time and again.” He adjusted his elbow so that it no longer drove into Engoch’s sternum. “You will, eventually, tell me what I want to know. The only question is how much you’ll suffer before you do it.”
Engoch watched him for a moment, his eyes no longer fixed and staring straight ahead, but instead looking at Terian’s for brief glances, then darting back to where they began.
“You know I’ll do it, don’t you?” Terian said, leaning over him, almost conversational. “You’re a heretic, so you’ve studied magic? Some of the process of it?” Engoch gave only the faintest of nods. “Then you know about dark knights. Who we are. What we do. What defines us.” Terian did not wait for an answer. “Let me tell you something about me, make my introduction.” He eased off Engoch and took a few steps away, beginning a slow, loping walk around the torture chamber. His father stood by the door, watching him with narrowed eyes, assessing him. “My name is Terian of House Lepos, and I’m a failure of the worst sort.” He didn’t look at Engoch as he circled the man. “I left my house to the shame of my father just after I became a dark knight—after the ritual, you know,” he glanced and saw Engoch watching him, but the heretic turned his gaze away upon seeing Terian look back at him, “and I joined a guild out in the wide world outside Saekaj. I failed at that, too, though. I’m a disgrace as a son, and every woman I’ve ever cared about has run screaming away from me.”
He hooked a slow arc around the table and ended up by Engoch’s face again. “I have failed at nearly everything up to this point. Guildmate, lover, son. The only thing I’ve never failed at—the only I’ve ever been good at—is being a dark knight. Fighting using the spells darkness has bestowed on me, the weapons that make me a knight of the shadows.” He dangled a hand over Engoch’s face. “And now I have a second chance. To not fail as a son. As a subject of the Sovereign. And all it will take is me using my skill as a dark knight.” He twirled his finger around the face of Engoch in a slow circle, bringing it lower and lower. “What do you think, Sert?” He felt the hoarseness creep into his tone. “Is there enough at stake for me?” His voice got coarser, and lower, and he took a long breath as he leaned over the heretic. “Do you think I’ll fail this time?”
He touched his gauntleted finger to the pale, damp blue flesh of Engoch’s chest and the heretic screamed, a short, sharp shriek that was followed by breath after excited breath, drawing frightened panic out of the dark elf. “I will tell you …” Engoch croaked, “… everything I know.” His breath came in hurried gasps, one after another.
Terian didn’t smile, and there was no satisfaction as he touched his cold finger to the inside of his gauntlet, left it dangling, pressed against Engoch’s chest. He said nothing, felt nothing, and simply stayed there, still as a statue, as the heretic began to speak a long, breathless tale that flowed right over Terian’s shoulder and into ears behind him. He stood there all the while, though, unmoving, finger still poised to deliver his first torture.
Engoch, meanwhile, only cried the same word, over and over again, as he reached the end of his tale.
Aurastra.
Chapter 15
“That was excellent work,” Amenon said as they reached the door to his office and his father shouldered it open. “A bit more talkative and less action-focused than I would have employed, but undeniably effective.”
Terian walked without any spring in his walk; his father seemed to have boundless energy. “Yes. Now that you’ve gotten what you want from him, I suppose he can die. Or go to the Depths, or whatever.”
“Indeed,” Amenon said, easing behind his desk where a stack of parchment awaited him. He ran a finger over the topmost piece of paper before picking it up and crumbling it before tossing it into the hearth. “His final fate remains in the hands of the Sovereign.”
Terian hesitated as his father went to the next piece of parchment in the stack. “What Engoch was talking about, these books that he was declared a heretic for reading …”
“Hm?” Amenon looked up after balling up another parchment and tossing it into the hearth where it began to crackle and smoke. “Oh, yes. Trifling details. We recovered the volumes from his rat’s nest, and he’s confessed to what they’ve told him, so barring any sort of disposition from the Sovereign to the contrary, I believe this concludes our business with him.”
“I didn’t know that the Sovereign cared enough about heretics to send his elites after them,” Terian said, trying to word his statement as carefully as he could. Best not to raise his ire if I want an answer.
“He generally does not,” Amenon said without looking up. “But this one was one of the Sovereign’s own librarians, who escaped in his absence. I suspect it was a personal grievance in addition to being, most probably, an area of wounded pride for the Sovereign.” He paused. “I sometimes forget—you have not stood before him in the past, have you?”
“No,” Terian said, standing his ground near the edge of the desk. “He was gone long before I was born.” Which you should know, being my father. He left that unspoken. “If he took affront to this Engoch stealing his books—”
“And knowledge,” Amenon said, tossing another piece of paper into the fire. The stack of correspondence that had accumulated while he was gone was now down to half the size it had been only moments earlier. “The Sovereign has plans, strategies. Whatever business he had with this Sert Engoch goes beyond simple heresy. You should know that by what he told us after you tortured him.”
Terian flinched. “I didn’t even hurt him.”
Amenon looked up, watching him carefully. “But you would have, and he knew it.”
Terian kept his gaze locked on his father’s. “I would have.”
“I will speak to the Sovereign about this Aurastra,” Amenon said, glancing back to the desk and its contents. “Though I confess I am not familiar with it.”
“It’s a dwarven village,” Terian said. “Close to the northern reaches of the Dwarven Alliance, far up in the mountains. Mining town, about three weeks beyond Fertiss.”
Amenon narrowed his gaze at Terian. “Indeed. Then it would appear that there is something of interest in this … Aurastra, something that the Sovereign will want to get his hands on.”
“I’d be interested to know what it is,” Terian said as Amenon crumpled the last of the parchment and tossed it into the fire.
“No, you wouldn’t,” Amenon said, rising from the desk and walking toward his son. He laid a hand awkwardly on Terian’s shoulder. “We don’t wish to know the secrets of the Sovereign unless he
desires us to assist with them. Then, and only then, do we take information. Even then we take as little as possible.” He drew Terian a little closer, the better to look him in the eyes, unflinching. “We serve the Sovereign, but believe me, you do not want any more of his secrets in your mind than the bare minimum necessary to do his bidding.” Amenon’s grip on Terian’s shoulder loosened, and Terian felt it grow slack as his father clinked a gauntlet against the small, un-spiked area on Terian’s pauldron. “They would weigh you down.”
Terian looked up and met his father’s gaze. “What would you have me do now?”
“Nothing,” Amenon said, and his reserve was slightly lessened. “You have done adequately well this day, and so the night is yours. I would advise sleep, but I doubt you shall heed that advice, so I shall only say that I desire for you to return by the break of day, in case I have need for you.”
“Very well,” Terian said stiffly, and his father clinked his hand against the pauldron once more before leaving, without another word.
Chapter 16
Terian found himself lying on the bed, listless, staring up at the ceiling of his room. It was beige, a plaster construct built over timbers brought in from the forest above. All the facades of the houses of Saekaj were built like this, not made of the cheap and plentiful dirt and kiln-fired mud and clay of Sovar homes. Saekaj homes were the showpiece of opulence, of surface materials, just as the diets of their residents were. The lessers ate the food of below. Terian could barely remember the taste of fish from the Great Sea, so long had it been since he’d had any of the Sovarian delicacy. It was considered a poor meal in Saekaj.
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