CHAPTER FIVE
He remembered the way back to the gates leading down to the cavern of the Eternal Dungeon. Mr. Smith stayed a few steps behind him, so that Elsdon had the illusion he was walking back of his own free will, unbound by any force. The feeling washed through him like a cool breeze on a sweltering day.
Only when they reached the heavily guarded gates did Mr. Smith step forward. Elsdon followed him past the three sets of guards, who seemed unsurprised by his reappearance. Nor, when they arrived at the Record-keeper’s desk, did Mr. Aaron show any special interest in Elsdon. Instead he turned his gaze to Mr. Smith, who said, “Mr. Taylor requires the oath of eternal commitment.”
The Record-keeper pushed forward three pieces of paper that were already at his elbow. “Read it through carefully,” he told Elsdon. “If you agree to the oath, sign all three copies at the bottom.”
Elsdon looked down at the first piece of paper. His name, he saw, was already filled in.
I, Elsdon Taylor, do swear on this day that I will remain eternally confined within the Eternal Dungeon under whatever conditions the High Seeker deems necessary. Except with permission of the Codifier, I will not leave these walls before my death, and I understand that after my death my ashes will be buried here. I will never return to the lighted world. I will obey the Code of Seeking, and if I should break the Code or know of anyone else who breaks the Code, I will report the matter to the Codifier. I will obey all orders given to me by the High Seeker, except those which would conflict with the Code of Seeking. I understand that, in any case where my best interests come into conflict with the best interests of a prisoner who is being searched, the prisoner’s best interests must be followed. I am willing to suffer for the sake of the prisoners.
He read the oath twice, feeling both times as though someone was slicing through his bonds. Then he picked up the pen proffered to him by the Record-keeper and signed the papers.
The Record-keeper took two of the pages and pushed the third toward him. “This is your copy,” he said, and turned immediately to say to the guard who was entering through a door to the right, “Mr. Sobel! I have not yet received your report on your last prisoner!”
“Sorry,” the guard replied cheerfully. “I’ll take care of it before my shift tonight. —Trial go well?” he asked Elsdon.
Elsdon nodded.
“Thought it would,” said Mr. Sobel. “I’ll see you later.” He walked past the ceiling-high tablet and disappeared through a door to the left.
Elsdon looked around and saw that Mr. Smith was standing by the open doorway through which Mr. Sobel had entered; it was flanked by guards. Stuffing the copy of the oath into his pocket, Elsdon hurried to catch up. He opened his mouth to ask whether he should close his eyes for this part of the journey, but Mr. Smith was already striding up the doorway’s steps to a dark corridor.
The corridor, which ran left-right to the doorway, was filled with smoke and the roar of flames. Coughing, Elsdon strove to catch up with the swift High Seeker, who had turned left. Dimly through the smoke he could see figures next to black piles, thrusting shovels into the piles and then throwing the contents into recesses in the left-hand wall.
As he and the High Seeker reached the first figure, Elsdon peered cautiously into the recess next to him. A fire burned furiously within a narrow channel between two walls. Part of its heat was travelling down into a tunnel beneath the walls, while the remainder of its heat and light travelled upward. Seeing the thick glass sparkling on the far wall, Elsdon suddenly realized what this was.
The man who had been shovelling paused a moment, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He was dressed in a laborer’s smock, but he grinned in a familiar fashion at Mr. Smith, who had paused when Elsdon did. “‘Morning, Mr. Smith!” he said. “I didn’t know you were ever awake in the daytime.”
“Good morning,” Mr. Smith replied. “How is the work coming?”
“Good.” The laborer gave a nod of satisfaction. “That coal you recommended from Vovim is working out well.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” replied Mr. Smith. “We don’t want the prisoners to freeze, do we?”
“Not unless that’s the new torture you’ve thought up for them!” The laborer roared with laughter. The other laborers, who had been eavesdropping on the conversation, joined the merriment. The High Seeker made no attempt to share in the humor. He nodded, then continued down the corridor, followed by Elsdon.
They walked quite a ways. The furnace area, it appeared, stretched for much of the length of the Eternal Dungeon. Feeling suddenly shy, Elsdon said nothing as they walked, and Mr. Smith appeared similarly disinclined to talk. They passed doors along the right-hand wall, but the High Seeker ignored the doors. Not until they reached the end of the corridor did he turn to the last of the doors, pulling a chain of keys from an inner pocket of his shirt. With one smooth move he unbolted the lock, then ushered Elsdon through the doorway.
Elsdon travelled down a short passage, stepped across a second doorway, and found himself surrounded by people.
None of them took notice of him or the High Seeker. They were all hurrying back and forth through a corridor that ran parallel with the furnace corridor. This corridor, though, was lighted with lamps that brightened the place so much that it seemed day-lit. Some of the people held objects in their arms: bundles of clothing, great baskets of food, buckets and mops, children . . . Elsdon blinked, and suddenly he realized that half the people passing him were women. He looked over at the High Seeker and cried, “This isn’t the Eternal Dungeon!”
“Certainly it is,” Mr. Smith replied calmly. “It’s the most important part of our world, the outer dungeon. In many ways, the inhabitants of the inner dungeon – the Seekers and guards – are the least important members of the Eternal Dungeon. If we ceased to do our jobs for a few days, nobody but our prisoners would notice, but if the hundreds of men and women who keep this place running through their labor failed to do their work, the Eternal Dungeon would quickly die.”
Elsdon looked at one of the passing baskets; it held the same yellow apples he had been fed in his cell. Then he moved back toward the doorway to avoid being crashed into by a small boy and girl who were racing down the corridor, laughing. “You have children here too?” Elsdon said.
“Not many,” replied Mr. Smith. “We discourage them from being raised here; it’s not the proper environment in which to grow up, and we have a problem with overcrowding, as you can see. The Codifier permits a few young families to remain here, though.”
Looking around, Elsdon saw what the High Seeker meant about the overcrowding. The corridor was packed nearly to bursting with the dwellers of the outer dungeon, and the doors along the corridor were so narrowly placed next to one another that Elsdon guessed the apartments within them must be quite small. He began to suspect that the cell he had found so confining was one of the largest spaces within the Eternal Dungeon.
Which led his thoughts to what lay next. Turning to Mr. Smith, he said, “Mr. Sobel told me that he would be seeing me later. Does that mean he’ll be my guard?”
“The final arrangements for your confinement are still being ordered,” replied the High Seeker. “In any case, this isn’t the proper place to discuss such matters.”
As he spoke, he flicked his hands toward the guards flanking the doorway to the inner dungeon, whom Elsdon had not noticed in his excitement. Turning the chain in his hands to a new key, the High Seeker stepped across the corridor. He unlocked the door in the wall opposite, then opened it wide, looking back at Elsdon. After a moment’s hesitation, Elsdon stepped across the corridor and through the new doorway.
He found himself in a small room crammed with objects. A kitchen area lay to the right. Though no stove stood in the room, nor any sink or pump, there were storage bins; the ones that were open were filled with hard bread and dried fruit and other such long-lasting edibles. Some fresh cheese and fruit lay upon a shelf, protected by a glass cover, and on the narrow tabl
e sat a pitcher of water and a basin.
Immediately next to this portion of the room, cheek to jowl, was a living area with a cushioned bench facing a cushioned chair. The walls behind the bench held a series of sideboards surmounted with bookshelves, with a smattering of volumes lying upon the latter. A compact writing desk with an accompanying stool was tucked into the corner.
The living area, tiny though it was, took up most of the space in the room. Only at the far left of the room was a bed folded up against the wall, next to a small cupboard that Elsdon guessed must contain the chamber-pot.
He looked again at the High Seeker, still standing in the doorway, who said, “The Record-keeper has not yet assigned you permanent quarters, so you’ll remain here for a day or so. This is our guest apartment for people newly arrived to the outer dungeon.”
Elsdon’s gaze went over to the door again. It was half-closed, and he could see that the door’s lock could be opened from the inside.
For a moment, he felt too dizzy to speak. Then he looked back at Mr. Smith and said gravely, “Thank you. I won’t violate your trust in me; I won’t try to escape.”
The High Seeker nodded as he stepped in and closed the door. “Feel free to make use of anything you find in this place,” he said. “You’ll want to get some rest, of course. I don’t suppose you slept much last night.”
Elsdon gave a quirk of a smile. “I didn’t sleep at all.”
“I hope the noise in the corridor doesn’t disturb you, then. It takes time to become used to the living conditions of the Eternal Dungeon. Did you have any feeling of oppression when you first arrived here, because you were travelling underground?”
“No,” said Elsdon, his brow puckered with thought. “That never occurred to me. Do some of your prisoners dislike being underground?”
“I couldn’t say, but I certainly found it difficult to make the adjustment myself. I’d lived all my life aboveground, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d be crushed to death, either by the earth above or by the crowds around me.”
This unexpected revelation left Elsdon speechless for a moment. Finally he said, “That must make it hard for you. I suppose you visit the broad, open spaces of the lighted world whenever you can.”
“Whenever I can, yes.” The High Seeker walked past him to the bookshelves and took a black-bound volume into his hand, saying, “If you should grow bored, you might want to peruse this. You’ll need to know the contents.”
Elsdon took the book from him and looked down at the title stamped in gold upon the cover. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I’m eager to read this anyway. Mr. Sobel made your Code sound interesting. I’ll do my best to finish this before I have to leave here.” He looked up as he stopped speaking, and his voice caught.
Standing beside him was a man with a face. His eyes were the color of summer leaves, and his coloring was a pale yellow-brown. He looked to be fairly young, in his thirties. He had high cheekbones that gave him a somewhat foreign appearance, but otherwise he had quite an ordinary look to him. Elsdon might have passed him on the street without taking notice.
His expression held a stiff formality that reminded Elsdon of a voice that had become familiar to him. It took him a moment to notice that the face was framed by black cloth that covered the sides and back of the head.
Elsdon’s gaze travelled up to where the cloth that had hidden the face was flung back over the head, pinned in place by two clips. With the cloth back, it could be seen that a frame held the hood snugly against the head. The frame tucked its way around the area above the eyebrows and presumably followed the same course round to the back of the head.
Suddenly the stiffness in the mouth relaxed into what might have been the beginning of a smile, if it had not been so faint. “We do have faces, Mr. Taylor,” the High Seeker said. “I know that children are commonly put to bed with scare-tales about faceless Seekers.”
“I’m sorry.” Elsdon swallowed. “I didn’t mean to stare. I just didn’t realize that Seekers were allowed to raise their hoods around prisoners.”
“We’re not allowed to lift our face-cloths when we’re in public,” Mr. Smith replied. “It’s part of our uniform, which we must wear at all times; it helps to keep our relations with the other dungeon inhabitants on a professional level. However, when we’re in private with friends or neighbors, we are permitted to show our faces.”
Elsdon couldn’t speak for a minute; he stared down at his shoes. Finally he looked up and said diffidently, “I’m glad you think of me in that way, as a neighbor. I – I’m starting to think of the Eternal Dungeon like that. As a place to live, not just a place to be imprisoned.”
The High Seeker made no reply. After a moment Elsdon added in a rush, “I know that’s silly.”
“Not at all.” Mr. Smith’s voice was, as always, cool and formal. “I’m glad you consider this to be your new home. It’s how we like all of the eternally confined to regard it.” He took a step backwards and said, “I must leave, I’m afraid; I have only a few hours to sleep before I resume my duties. I’ll return at dawn, if you believe you’ll be awake then.”
“Probably,” said Elsdon with a smile. “I think you’ve switched me over to being awake with the night, like a bat.”
“Waking hours tend to be arbitrary in a place with no sunlight. Do you have any questions before I leave?” He eyed the silent young man before him, then said, “Mr. Taylor, I hope that at this stage of our acquaintance I need not tell you that you can be honest with me.”
Elsdon gave an awkward laugh. “I’m sorry, I just— I was wondering whether, when I’m confined, I’ll be permitted to see you again. I’d – I’d miss you if I couldn’t talk with you again.”
The High Seeker turned his eyes away suddenly, as he was wont to do when he was searching Elsdon. He was silent so long that Elsdon felt his face grow warm, and then reach the point of burning. At last the High Seeker looked back and said quietly, “If you wish to see me, then certainly we may meet. We’ll speak more tomorrow.”
“Good night, sir.”
“Good night.” And then the High Seeker’s face was hidden again as he left Elsdon in the tiny, unlocked apartment.
o—o—o
Eighteen hours later, Elsdon was in the same position he had held for virtually every moment of eight hours: curled up in the armchair, staring down at the pages of the Code of Seeking.
He was only one-quarter of the way through the slim volume. Every time he read a sentence, he found himself going back and rereading it over and over, and then he would fall into a meditation, and then he would read the sentence again. Once he brought the book’s binding up to his nose to breathe in the scent of leather; then he placed his cheek against the cover, which was warm from his hands. His limbs felt relaxed and his spine curved with comfortable ease against the soft cushions. He could not remember having felt this way since before his mother’s death.
The sound of a knock startled him out of his dreaming. Cautiously he walked to the door and opened it. On the threshold stood Mr. Smith.
The High Seeker did not speak until the door was closed again. Then he glanced at the book, which was lying open upon the chair. “You’ve found a way to occupy yourself, I see.”
Elsdon nodded. “There’s so much in it; it’s hard to absorb it all.” He hesitated. Mr. Smith had not raised the face-cloth of his hood, and Elsdon’s ears turned warm as he recalled how their last conversation had ended.
“Did any portion of the book interest you above the rest?” Mr. Smith asked.
“The rule that Seekers may not touch prisoners.”
He had spoken spontaneously; too late, he thought that this remark must reveal his lack-wittedness, for surely, among all he had read, this had to be one of the least important passages. But Mr. Smith nodded and said, “A difficult rule for any Seeker to follow, particularly when the prisoner is distressed by his searching.”
“Is that why you left the cell when I was crying?” The words leapt
out of Elsdon, unconstrained by caution.
If there was any change in the High Seeker’s expression, the hood hid it. “It seemed a matter best handled by Mr. Sobel, since you had come to trust him.”
“But I trust you also. I told you that before.”
Mr. Smith gazed upon him unblinking, the hood-shadow darkening his eyes. “I am glad to hear that. You are about to learn that that trust is mutual. Will you come with me, please?”
He gestured toward the door. Elsdon looked at the book on the chair before reluctantly closing it upon his bookmark. As he did so, he caught sight, for the first time, of the title page, and of the name written there. His breath whistled in, and he looked at the High Seeker, but Mr. Smith said nothing, and so Elsdon left the black-bound book behind, along with the brightly-furnished apartment and the unlocked door.
They made their way back through the furnace corridor between the inner and outer dungeon, and through the entry hall where the Record-keeper was absorbed with taking down information about a newly arrived prisoner, and then they reached the door which, Elsdon knew, must lead to the breaking cells.
“Should I shut my eyes?” he asked.
His hand on the latch, Mr. Smith looked back at him. “There’s no need,” he said, too softly to be heard by the men standing nearby. “We hood prisoners who are being searched because we would prefer they not see the corridor that leads to the cells. It wouldn’t confirm the scene of terror the prisoners expect.”
Elsdon could see why, once they had begun travelling down the new corridor. It was dimly lit, but the lights were ordinary oil lamps attached in a quite ordinary way to the walls. The walls themselves were plastered, and were painted a deep green that matched the eyes of the High Seeker; the floor was of wood and was polished to a shine. The Eternal Dungeon, it turned out, looked like Elsdon’s old school-hall.
Some of the doorways they passed were flanked by guards, but Mr. Smith stopped at a guardless door. As he opened it with his set of keys, Elsdon glanced up at the number painted above the door, and he felt his heart jerk. He looked over at the High Seeker, who was holding the door wide open for him.
“I’m to have my old cell?” He wished that his voice sounded steadier.
The High Seeker shook his head. “I needed a place for a test. A new prisoner has not yet been assigned to this cell.” As he spoke, he pulled something from his belt, and Elsdon realized, with another jerk of the heart, that Mr. Smith was carrying a whip.
If the High Seeker noticed that Elsdon’s skin had lightened abruptly, he made no mention of it. Instead he followed Elsdon into the cell, closed the door, and asked, “When you were at Parkside Prison, did you give any thought to what you would do if you were released?”
“Yes,” said Elsdon, unable to break his gaze from the whip. “I knew I couldn’t go home – my father wouldn’t want me there. I wasn’t sure what I’d do after that. I thought the best thing to do would be to find some way to stop myself from ever hurting anyone again.”
“And have you found such a way?”
Elsdon shook his head. “It’s just as well I’m to be eternally confined,” he said in a low voice. “I couldn’t be trusted to be free again. Not when I have this ugly darkness inside me, marring me.” Then he remembered, too late, and he looked quickly at the High Seeker.
Mr. Smith seemed unoffended, though. His voice was as cool and level as usual as he said, “Well, then, to find a way to deal with that will be our first task, won’t it? Because I can assure you, we do not permit the eternally confined to idle away their days – they must put their minds to work at whatever task is at hand.”
Hope leapt within Elsdon’s body. “You mean you’ll help me with this? Help me to destroy the darkness?”
“I cannot be certain that you’ll be able to do so. —Hold this, please.” He handed Elsdon the whip in a nonchalant manner, then moved his hands to his collar. “However, when a man is unjustly imprisoned, sometimes his only hope lies in imprisoning his prison-keeper. You may or may not be able to rid yourself of your darkness, but if you chain the darkness and make use of it, as it has made use of you, then the bond between the two of you will take on a very different character.”
Elsdon said nothing; he was too busy staring as the High Seeker removed his shirt, neatly folded it, and tossed it onto the ground. Mr. Smith wore no undervest. His chest was smooth, and his skin there was dark, hiding any blemishes he might have had. As he turned his back, though, Elsdon saw faint scars, long faded.
The High Seeker, moving forward, placed his forearms against the wall and pressed his body forward. He looked over his shoulder and said, “I would like you to beat me on my back.”
Elsdon dropped the whip; he had gone numb with the shock, except for his heart, which was pounding. He resisted an impulse to flee the cell.
Mr. Smith’s gaze flicked toward the fallen whip, but all that he said was, “This is the test I have in mind, Mr. Taylor.”
“I’d hurt you,” Elsdon whispered.
“You cannot hurt me badly; it takes skill to wield a whip with any great power.” Then, as Elsdon did not move: “Would it help if I told you I have been beaten before? It is a required part of the training of a Seeker, to undergo any torture he might inflict upon a prisoner.”
Elsdon knelt slowly. As his hand touched the leather, he whispered, “If I should lose control again—”
“There are guards within call; they would respond quickly. Mr. Taylor, you ought to know that I would not permit any test that would bring serious harm to either of us.”
“But why are you doing this?”
The High Seeker did not reply. Elsdon, rising, looked at the whip in his hand. He had held one before, when he was a young boy and had gone to his father’s stables to talk with the servants there, in the years before he began to avoid the servants, lest they guess his secret. He remembered the carriage driver placing the whip in his hand and saying, “Try it; you’ll enjoy it.”
He had enjoyed it all too much. Thinking back on it, he thought he knew why. With his stomach clenching in a painful manner now, he asked, “How many lashes should I . . . ?”
“Twenty will be sufficient, I believe.” The High Seeker’s voice was passionless and without tension. “Begin now, please. One.”
“Try it; you’ll enjoy it,” the carriage driver had said, and young Elsdon had pulled back his arm and swung the lash through the air, hitting a nearby post with the faintest of cracks.
The carriage driver had laughed and shown him how to change his grip. “Harder, lad,” he said. “The post won’t fight back. Give it all your strength.”
He tried again, swinging the lash over and over against the pole. It was odd: he felt no pleasure from the act of swinging and hitting, but afterwards, when he drew the lash back, he felt as though a tightness within him had been uncoiled.
“‘Tis the same with lovemaking,” the carriage driver told him when Elsdon explained this. “You may be sleeping with the ugliest whore in town, but getting that hoarded energy out of you always helps.”
Young Elsdon thought about that ugly whore, and about what it would be like to bring his whip down upon a horse. He found himself shivering in misery at that thought, and tried to remind himself that horses needed to be trained. A well-trained horse was a skilled horse, and he had seen for himself the pride that some of the horses had in their work. If whipping the horses would help them to become better—
“Stop.” The High Seeker’s voice was hoarse. There was only darkness in the holes where his eyes should have been, and his chest was heaving.
Elsdon, feeling the shock and fear shoot through him, dropped the whip and hurried over to Mr. Smith’s side, remembering at the last moment that the High Seeker was not permitted to touch him. “Are you all right?” he asked, his voice high with anxiety.
“Give me a moment.” Mr. Smith’s voice was no longer cool and level; it was rasping and gasping. He had turned sideways and was leaning his shoulder
against the wall, looking as though he would slide down to the floor at any moment. The movement hid his back from Elsdon, so that Elsdon was unable to see what damage he had done. Elsdon waited, his hands gripped tight together; he struggled to hold back the tears that were trying to squeeze through.
Finally the High Seeker opened his eyes and said, in a voice closer to normal, “You have more power in your arm than I’d thought.”
“I harmed you.” Elsdon could barely force the words past the tightness in his throat.
“You gave me twelve medium lashes; I’ll be fully healed within the week. Will you hand me my shirt, please?”
Elsdon rushed to do so, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Why apologize? You passed the test in an excellent manner.” Then, as Elsdon stood dumb, Mr. Smith took the shirt and began to pull it on, slowly and stiffly. “You did precisely as I asked you to. You beat me on my back, nowhere else. You stopped the moment I gave the order, even though you had been led to expect that you would be permitted to give me eight further lashes. You could not have shown better control. How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been with the ugliest whore in town and received release,” Elsdon said slowly.
To his surprise, he heard Mr. Smith chuckle softly. “I’ll try not to take that as an insult. May I assume that the whipping is the ‘whore’ for you, and that you received no pleasure from it?”
Elsdon nodded. “Not from the hurting. From the release. It’s like with Sara.”
Mr. Smith nodded. “I thought that might be the case.” He bent down, grunting as he did so, and retrieved the whip from the floor, wrapping it neatly in a circle before attaching it to the hook on the left side of his belt.
Elsdon said slowly, “You’re saying that, instead of working for my father, I should have taken up work that would have allowed me to release the violence in me in ways that would bring good to others – such as becoming a carriage driver.”
“I think your skills could take you higher than that exalted position.” Mr. Smith’s voice cradled a hint of amusement. “However, the principle remains. Many a fine general got his start when he realized that, if he did not find a way to chain his darkness and make it serve him, he would end up in the Eternal Dungeon.”
“And now I’m here.” Elsdon’s voice was dull; he was thinking of knowledge gained too late, and what he could have done with this knowledge if he had held it earlier.
“Now you’re here,” Mr. Smith agreed. “Which will simplify matters, should you wish to train to be a Seeker.”
Elsdon stood motionless. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then said, in the voice of a healer making a tentative diagnosis, “You’re mocking me.”
“I do not make mock on such matters.” And indeed, all shadows of amusement had vanished from the High Seeker’s voice.
“But I thought— That is, Mr. Sobel said that few men qualify to be Seekers.”
“Indeed. A Seeker must be willing to sacrifice fundamentals of life permitted to other men, such as marriage and children; he must have the ability to read beneath a person’s words to discover the unstated truth within; he must know in an instant if the prisoner is undergoing undue pain or is on the point of breaking; he must have the ability to go without sleep when a prisoner has need of him, to put aside passions when he is attacked, to resist the twin evils of remaining cold to the prisoner’s dilemmas or of immersing himself so fully in the dilemmas that he cannot view objectively what the prisoner may have done. Many of these qualities are learned over time. However, you have begun to show that you possess the quality most necessary in a Seeker.”
Elsdon felt his chest tighten. He said in a low voice, “You mean that I can torture prisoners.”
“I mean that you place the needs of others over your own.”
In the silence that followed, Elsdon’s eyes scanned the cell. It had become all too familiar to him during his short time there. He knew the color of the mortar between each block in the translucent wall. He knew exactly how far to the ceiling the door rose and how far it swung out. He had memorized the screws that held the bed-shelf in place. He had looked at everything there was to see in this cell, and had conned it twenty times over. To be in a cell like this for another fifty years, or a cell even smaller . . .
“You say I place the needs of others over my own,” he said to the waiting High Seeker. “The oath which the Record-keeper had me sign required that of me – that I place the best interests of the prisoner above my own. And the very first sentence of the Code of Seeking says that a Seeker must be willing to suffer for the prisoners.”
Mr. Smith nodded silently. He was in the stance he adopted when placing torture upon prisoners: relaxed, his eyes intent on the person before him.
Elsdon drew a deep breath and said, “If I accepted your offer to be a Seeker – if I let myself be freed rather than eternally confined within a cell – then I could never be sure whether I was doing this for the sake of the prisoners or for my own sake. So I can’t do that. I can’t.”
His voice shook on the final words. Angry at himself for his weakness, he tried to stand straighter under the High Seeker’s gaze.
Mr. Smith said nothing, but his eyes smiled.
Seeing this, Elsdon let his breath out, slowly this time. “That was the test. You were offering this temptation to see whether I would take it.”
“My offer is a genuine one.”
“But if I were a genuine Seeker, I wouldn’t take it.” Elsdon looked around the cell again. This time he remembered that the cell had one change from when he had been there before: its door was unlocked.
“Everything you’ve done since my judging . . .” Elsdon said. “Letting me walk back from the trial without guards, having me sign the oath of eternal commitment of my own will, placing me in an unlocked apartment overnight, offering to let me go free . . . It’s all meant to make it easier for me, isn’t it? When I walk into that locked cell, I’ll know that I was offered alternatives, and I chose not to take them.”
Still the High Seeker did not speak. Elsdon straightened his shoulders yet further and said quietly, “I’m ready now. You can take me to my new home.”
Mr. Smith gestured toward the door. Elsdon left behind the cell with its bright, flickering flame.
o—o—o
As Elsdon and Mr. Smith retraced their path along the corridor to the entry hall, they passed Mr. Sobel and Mr. Urman, who were escorting a hooded prisoner. Without a word, the High Seeker returned Mr. Urman’s whip to the guard’s hand. Mr. Urman took it without moving his eyes from the prisoner whose arm he grasped. Mr. Sobel, walking on the other side of the prisoner, gave Elsdon the briefest of smiles before returning his attention to the more important party.
Elsdon and the High Seeker walked back through the entry hall, which was empty now except for the Record-keeper, scribbling at his desk, and several pairs of guards, doing documentwork on the fringes of the room as they awaited new prisoners. Beyond them was the doorway to the corridor between the inner dungeon and the outer dungeon. Mr. Smith gestured Elsdon through the door, for Elsdon was continuing to lead the way, as though he were a host and Mr. Smith the guest.
They did not walk all the way to the outer dungeon this time. Instead, Mr. Smith stopped at one of the doors along the corridor, which was featureless but for its latch and lock. The High Seeker pulled his chain of keys out, used the appropriate key, and pushed the door. It opened to darkness.
The High Seeker looked at Elsdon, waiting. Elsdon swallowed around the heartbeat fluttering in his throat and said, “Sir, I wanted to tell you . . . Please forget what I said yesterday about coming to visit me. I realize now that this was a selfish request – your time must be with the prisoners who are being searched, not wasted with a prisoner who has already been broken.”
“This isn’t the proper place to discuss such matters,” the High Seeker replied, inclining his head toward some figures further down the corridor who were shovelling coal
into the dungeon’s furnace.
Elsdon looked again at the cell: it was utterly black, for even the faint light in the corridor did not penetrate beyond the first couple of steps. Pulling in a breath in the manner of a man who must swim deep and does not know when he will be able to breathe again, he walked into the cell.
He could hear behind him the soft chatter of the laborers tending the fires, and ahead of him, through the wall that faced the outer dungeon, he could hear the voices of people passing. He had a moment to think to himself that this was an unexpected bounty: he would be able to amuse himself by listening to the free inhabitants of the Eternal Dungeon. Then the door closed behind him, and he was left in the dark.
For a moment, with a jerk of the heart, he thought this was part of the punishment. Then he heard the quiet step of the High Seeker as he walked forward. It took all of Elsdon’s new-found courage to remain fixed in place. It was not simply the eeriness of being in a cell whose contents he could not see; it was being alone in the dark with a man like this. He forced himself to remember all that the High Seeker had done for him.
A minute later, Elsdon’s heartbeat eased as he heard the scratch of a match against sandpaper. The lamp needed time to take light, but after a while, although the room was still grey with shadows, he could see about him. The first thing he noticed was a door, placed against the wall of the outer dungeon. This puzzled him, for he could not imagine why the guards who tended him would need to enter from that direction. Then he saw the remainder of the room.
A kitchen area lay to the right; though no stove stood in the room, nor any sink or pump, there were storage bins. Nearby was a living area with a cushioned bench facing a cushioned chair. The walls behind the bench held a series of sideboards surmounted with bookshelves, with a smattering of volumes lying upon the latter. . . .
He swirled round to face the High Seeker, the heart now beating hard at his throat. “No!” he cried. “I told you, I can’t accept your offer to be a Seeker!”
“Do you still have your oath of eternal commitment?” Mr. Smith asked in an unruffled manner. He had raised the face-cloth of his hood, and his face was now naked to the younger man.
Elsdon thought for a second, then shook his head. “I’m sorry. I used it to mark my place in the copy of the Code of Seeking you showed me.”
“I’ll see that the book and the oath are sent to you. In the meantime . . .” The High Seeker pulled from the pocket of his shirt a piece of paper, its edges worn with use. “This is an older copy of the oath, so the phrasing has changed somewhat since it was signed. But it will remind you of what you swore.”
He opened the paper and handed it to Elsdon. One of his fingers, covering the initial line, pointed to the lines immediately below. Elsdon looked down at the words written there: “. . . swear on this day that I will remain eternally confined within the Eternal Dungeon under whatever conditions the High Torturer deems necessary.”
His heartbeat stilled somewhat as the meaning of the words penetrated him. He looked over at the High Seeker, who said, “As you surmised, Mr. Taylor, we cannot spare our time with prisoners who have already been broken. We only offer eternal confinement to prisoners whom we believe can be trusted to look after themselves, without need for more supervision than any other member of the Eternal Dungeon receives. There was never any question of placing guards or locks about you – not only would that be a waste of our resources, but it is unnecessary. You made it clear on the first day of your arrival in the dungeon that you have no need for such restraints.”
This time Elsdon did not look at the door behind him, knowing what he would see. “Thank you,” he said softly. “Thank you for trusting me. I’ll stay within this – this cell—” He stumbled upon the word, finding it difficult to apply it to his pleasant surroundings. “And I’ll do whatever work you require of me.”
For he had remembered, in that moment, Mr. Smith’s words about not permitting the eternally confined to idle away their days. All was clear now; he looked around the room, trying to sight whatever craft or chore the High Seeker wished him to do.
Mr. Smith said in a dry tone, “You might wish to take a second look at the paper you hold.”
Elsdon read through the remainder of the oath, whose phrasing was not so very different from the phrasing of his own oath. Only when he reached the signature did his breath whistle in. He looked up to see that there was a suggestion of amusement around Mr. Smith’s eyes. Elsdon said tentatively, “You’re a prisoner here?”
“I am eternally confined, yes. But I did not arrive here as a prisoner. All men who choose to become Seekers must sign the oath of eternal commitment, for if we held so great a privilege above the other prisoners – to be able to leave here and return to the lighted world whenever we wished – then we would become so distanced from the prisoners being searched that we would not be able to understand their fears and their hopes. . . . Other dungeons in the world, greedy for the skills of their torturers, make prisoners of the torturers, but ours is the only dungeon in the world where the confinement is offered and freely accepted.”
“So when I refused your offer that I should become a Seeker . . . When I chose to enter my cell rather than accept what I believed to be full freedom . . .”
“You qualified yourself in that moment to become a Seeker-in-Training. You showed that you place the needs of the prisoners over your own.”
It was too much. Elsdon stared again at the small comforts of the room about him, and at the two doors through which he could step at any time, and he heard the noises of his fellow inhabitants of the Eternal Dungeon, with whom he would be able to speak whenever he wished. He put his fists up against his mouth to suppress the sound there.
Beside him, Mr. Smith said quietly, “There is no need for you to rush a decision. You have undergone great pain – not only recently, but for most of your life. It will take a long time for you to heal from that; at the very least, you should rest for the next few weeks. It may become clearer to you during those weeks whether you should train as a Seeker or take some other job in the Eternal Dungeon. You would qualify for many positions here, and I’ve no doubt that most of the other dungeon inhabitants will be annoyed at me for trying to snatch a young man of such talents. So take your time to rest, and heal, and think.”
Elsdon was still standing motionless in the center of his cell when he heard something tinkle onto the bookshelf beside him. It was the key to the cell. Elsdon turned to see the High Seeker walking toward the door to the inner dungeon.
“I must go,” Mr. Smith said, looking back at him. “As you’ve seen, I have a new prisoner – I must work a little later today than I’d intended.”
The sounds of morning bustling now seemed to Elsdon like a lullaby sung at day’s end. It reminded him of how the previous day had ended, and of the words he had spoken then. As the High Seeker reached forward to touch the latch, Elsdon said abruptly, “Mr. Smith!”
The High Seeker had been reaching up to his hood. He stopped and looked back, eyebrows raised.
Elsdon walked forward to the door and said, his voice soft with hesitation, “You told me that a Seeker must have the ability to read beneath a person’s words to discover the unstated truth within.”
There was no change in Mr. Smith’s expression. “That is a quality much valued in Seekers.”
“You told me also that, when Seekers are in private with friends or neighbors, they’re permitted to show their faces.”
For a moment, the High Seeker’s face remained unscribed, revealing nothing. Then the blankness broke, and something touched the edge of his mouth: the smile Elsdon had heard before, but not yet seen.
“I have no need for more neighbors,” the High Seeker responded, waving his hand toward the wall adjoining the crowded corridor of the outer dungeon. “As you can see, I have too many already.”
Even before the High Seeker finished his speech, Elsdon’s own smile had broken through. “Good night, Layle,” he said, his
voice thick with shyness.
“Good night, Elsdon.” The High Seeker touched him briefly on the arm. “I’ll come by tomorrow after my shift, if I may.”
Elsdon nodded, and the High Seeker’s hand rose to touch his hood. Then the cloth covered the smile, and Layle Smith slipped into the inner dungeon.
With his departure, the cell grew quiet. Elsdon looked round at it, trying to decide whether to eat or read or sleep or explore the waiting wonders of the outer dungeon. Suddenly he flung his arms up, like a boy released from a hard schoolmaster. Emitting a cry of joy, he twirled about in the room for a bit before collapsing, laughing, onto the armchair.
Then his smile faded. Very softly, at the edge of his hearing, he could hear someone crying. The sobbing was hard, and it came from the direction of the inner dungeon.
He thought for a long while about this sound before he got up and walked through the door to the outer dungeon, in search of the guest apartment he had left behind, so that he could fetch the black-bound book lying there.
o—o—o
o—o—o
. . . The first of the Eternal Dungeon’s High Seekers was also its most famous, not only for his own actions, but for the manner in which Layle Smith influenced the men and women around him.
Time has destroyed many valuable records from the Eternal Dungeon. To our good fortune, however, a historian living three generations after Layle Smith, working from documents now lost, compiled a set of statistics concerning the “success” rate of the Eternal Dungeon’s High Torturers and High Seekers.
It comes as no surprise to learn that Layle Smith headed this list, with a ninety-seven percent success rate in breaking prisoners. Of the prisoners he broke, eighty-three percent were later sentenced to execution by the “magistrates” (judges).
These statistics are often cited to demonstrate the barbarity of Layle Smith. That the first High Seeker often used barbarous methods to break his prisoners no one today could deny. Yet the statistics hold a different meaning for anyone well acquainted with the history of the Eternal Dungeon.
Unlike institutions today where arrested men and women are questioned, the Eternal Dungeon was not sent prisoners whose guilt was thought to be open to question. Instead, the lesser prisons of Yclau sent prisoners whose guilt had already been determined as certain, so that the Eternal Dungeon could extract the confession needed to learn whether other parties had assisted in the crimes. Under the circumstances, what is surprising is not the high number of executions of dungeon prisoners, but rather the fact that the Seekers made any effort at all to discover whether the prisoners were innocent.
Moreover, a final statistic, usually not cited, offers us another perspective on Layle Smith. The same historian who compiled the statistics about the first High Seeker notes, in an off-hand manner, that eight percent of the prisoners who were sentenced to death because of testimony that Layle Smith obtained were offered eternal confinement within the Eternal Dungeon.
Eight percent may seem like a small proportion. But if we keep in mind how many prisoners Layle Smith searched yearly, and how long he retained the title of High Seeker, we begin to understand the reason for the many complaints, during this period, of overcrowding within the Eternal Dungeon. The Eternal Dungeon was a ship of refugees, packed from bow to stern with hundreds of men and women whom Layle Smith had rescued from death.
This is the image that Layle Smith must have held amongst his contemporaries, and the image should not be forgotten, even as we acknowledge that the darkness we recognize in him today was first noted by those who worked alongside him. “Light and darkness cannot exist in a single place,” some historians say, but the history of the Eternal Dungeon, and of its first High Seeker, suggests otherwise.
—Psychologists with Whips: A History of the Eternal Dungeon.
Rebirth 2
LOVE AND BETRAYAL
The year 355, the seventh month. (The year 1880 Barley by the Old Calendar.)
Much valuable information concerning the Eternal Dungeon has been lost over the centuries. To provide a telling example of this loss, the most important figure in the history of the Eternal Dungeon was its first High Seeker, Layle Smith; yet we know nothing about his appearance, his hobbies, or his loves.
The information about him that does exist confirms his importance in the history of psychology. He is without question the author of the fifth revision of the Eternal Dungeon’s Code of Seeking, which contained the rules by which the dungeon’s Seekers questioned criminals placed in their custody. Any casual reader of the fifth revision will recognize entire passages from the book, for this volume provided the basis for the later Code of Psychology, which to this day remains the most important work in its field.
All of this suggests that Layle Smith was a man of formidable skill. Frustratingly, however, we have lost most of the examples of his techniques of “searching.” What examples we possess are just as often records of his failures . . .
—Psychologists with Whips: A History of the Eternal Dungeon.
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