The Eternal Dungeon: a Turn-of-the-Century Toughs omnibus

by Dusk Peterson

CHAPTER THREE

  An hour’s delay ensued; the first three-quarters of the hour was for the argument, while the fourth quarter was for another engineering discussion. The latter was all the more heated for Layle’s lingering uncertainty, but they finally reached the moment when Elsdon was lying on his back on a cushioned bench in the sitting room.

  The bench had been too low initially. Layle cast a dubious look at the books raising the bench’s height and said, “I don’t like this. I have visions of you tumbling, bench and all, once we get vigorous.”

  “That’s not my worry,” said Elsdon, waving his legs in the air. “What am I supposed to do with these? I’ll get tired holding them up like this.”

  “You can rest them on my shoulders in a short while,” Layle assured him.

  Elsdon gave a hoot of laughter and nearly rolled off the narrow bench. “Layle, I couldn’t possibly! Not on my first time; I’d die laughing.”

  “Well,” said Layle, looking down at the books on torture methodology that supported the bench, “I refuse to make love to a corpse, so I suppose we need to find another solution.”

  It took another engineering consultation before two chests were pulled up to the right and left of where Layle stood, at the end of the bench. Elsdon placed his feet experimentally upon the cushions piled upon the chests, then nodded. “This will work,” he declared.

  “As though you have any idea whether it would work, inexperienced one.” Layle ran a critical eye over the arrangement before nodding his approval. “We’ll probably have to make adjustments once we start, but I think we’re ready n— Oh, bloody blades!” He darted off in the direction of the kitchen, leaving Elsdon to watch his departure with bemusement.

  Two-quarters of an hour later, the apartment looked as though it had been pillaged by the Vovimians. Baskets in the kitchen had been upturned and sorted through, objects had been flung from chests, and shelves had been swept clean of their belongings. Layle stood in the middle of the sitting room, running his hands through the hair under the back of his hood and casting frantic looks at every corner of the room. He glanced unenthusiastically toward the door leading to the corridors of the outer dungeon, but even there lay no hope: it was past midnight, so the only dungeon dwellers who were still awake were the Seekers and guards who were busy on the night shift.

  Elsdon, who had been watching with increasing curiosity, asked, “Can’t we proceed without whatever it is?”

  Layle shook his head. “This is your first time; I can’t take the chance. Bloody blades!” He shouted the words to the ceiling, heedless of waking nearby dungeon dwellers. “I can’t believe this is happening. Look at this place!”

  He cast his arms wide, and Elsdon obediently looked about at the chaos that Layle had created. “I have the most well-equipped quarters in the dungeon,” Layle said in a tight voice. “I have dozens of examples of antique torture devices in my chests. I have hundreds of books on my shelves describing how to break prisoners. And I have . . . no . . . bloody . . . oil.”

  “Oil?” said Elsdon with interest. “Is that what you’re looking for? It’s in my pocket.”

  Layle turned his head to look at the Seeker-in-Training, who was sitting quietly upon the bench. “What?” the High Seeker said weakly.

  Elsdon smiled and pointed toward the bedroom, where clothes lay scattered around the chest Layle had emptied there.

  It took a minute for Layle to locate Elsdon’s trousers amidst the wrack upon the ground; then he spent another minute contemplating what he had found. Finally he walked over to the bedroom doorway and leaned against the doorpost, holding up the vial of violet liquid.

  “Young virgin,” he said in the level voice he usually reserved for especially difficult prisoners, “would you mind telling me why you are carrying around a vial of lovemaking lubricant?”

  Elsdon’s smile turned to a grin. “It’s for you, of course. I’ve been carrying it since the day you first admitted you loved me. I forgot to remove it from my pocket when I got angry at you.” He hesitated as Layle held the vial up toward the lamplight. “Is it all right? Garrett gave it to me. It’s the kind he uses with his love-mate.”

  Layle looked back at Elsdon. “It will do very well indeed. And I think you’ve just completed the first part of your training, which is to be sure that you always have the proper equipment at hand before you start your work.”

  He walked over and set the vial carefully down upon one of the chests before him. Elsdon was already lying on his back by the time Layle reached him. Though the youth was trying to remain sober, a smile kept creeping through. Layle examined Elsdon’s face for a moment more, and then, through long experience in reading prisoners’ faces, said in a matter-of-fact tone, “Frightened?”

  Elsdon’s smile didn’t waver. “A bit.”

  Layle retreated around the chests and came over to kneel next to the youth. “Don’t be,” he said softly. “I won’t hurt you.” He reached out to touch the golden-brown locks.

  The youth turned his head to look at Layle. He was breathing hard – this was hardly surprising, given that he was lying upon his back. Layle wondered briefly whether he should have positioned the youth on his stomach, but the claw had damaged the front of the thighs too much for that. He let his hand trickle down the prisoner’s cheek.

  He saw the fear deepen within the youth’s eyes, and he quickly withdrew his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  The youth’s expression remained fearful, but his eyes had grown uncertain again.

  “Not about the torture,” Layle clarified. “That was my duty. But about the rest of it. The truth is, when they brought you in originally, my first thought was, ‘This is the most beautiful young man in the world.’ I’m afraid I lost control of myself after that.”

  There was a silence, but for the heavy breath of the youth and the sound of screams and pleading in nearby cells. Then the prisoner whispered, “You think I’m beautiful?”

  “Of course you are,” said Layle, stroking the youth’s forehead in what he hoped was a nonthreatening manner. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that?”

  The youth was silent a moment before saying, “A boy in school said I was. I thought he was joking.”

  “You have a beautiful face, a beautiful body . . . and a beautiful soul to match them.”

  The youth bit his lip. “My backside isn’t beautiful any more,” he said.

  “That is part of your beautiful soul. It’s a visible mark of your courage.”

  The prisoner continued to stare at him, his eyes wide with eagerness to believe that the words were true. Layle leaned forward to kiss the prisoner lightly upon the forehead, closing his eyes at a momentary stab of pain within him. All of this loving talk came far too easily to him, easier even than his talk of “whore” and “slattern.” This gentleness touched too closely to a hope that he had been forced to imprison two years before, when he had discovered the limitations on what he could be.

  He had just turned sixteen when his master, to celebrate the completion of his first year as one of the King’s Torturers, had taken him on a trip into town – a sign of his master’s faith in him, for while trusted members of the dungeon such as his master were sometimes allowed a few hours away from the dungeon that was their life-long home, apprentices almost never were. In Layle’s case, though, the thought of fleeing the dungeon had never occurred to him. Why should he leave the perfect place of employment?

  And so his master had taken him to a brothel. Layle was not anywhere near to a virgin by that point, of course – his training as a torturer had been thorough – but he was still curious to know what lovemaking was like, and how it differed from rape.

  He did not learn that night, nor on any of the nights that followed as he stubbornly and systematically made his way through all the women’s brothels in town, then through all the boys’ brothels. He had even gone so far as to take the trouble to court a well-born young woman, so that he could seduce her into his bed.

  And e
verywhere he had met with failure. Even the seduction of the young woman had not raised his desire; there was something about her freedom, her lack of binding, that made his body rebel. He wondered sometimes if he had been born this way, or if his life would have been different if he hadn’t taken up torturing at such a young age. Perhaps the first year at his career had set his sexuality, like mortar turning hard.

  His master, whose sympathy had extended so far as to buy Layle a night with a high-class courtesan, had finally patted him on the shoulder and said, “Well, my dear, we can’t always have what we want in life. But I can promise you this: you’ll never lack for sexual partners in this profession.”

  Of course this had been true, and Layle had tried to set his mind back to the prisoners who provided him with an endless round of bodily delights. But his mind, it turned out, was less satisfied, and part of it continued to cry out for more, though he had ruthlessly imprisoned this part of him so that it would not damage his work.

  Now he found himself sighing, but the reality of what he was couldn’t be changed. It was sweet to be able to kiss the prisoner softly and feel the other youth’s fingers curl trustfully around his, but he could do this all night and his body would not respond. So he allowed his gaze to wander over to the marks of what he had done to the prisoner.

  He could see clearly the body, for it was lying now upon the rack. He had not bothered to strap down the youth, for the prisoner remained too weak to fight him. Besides, he wanted the youth to have the illusion of being free. There were few signs of torture on the front of the body; that had been a deliberate decision by Layle, reflecting his distaste of mutilation. But the body was limp and unresisting, just as it should be. The legs were spread apart, with a gap between them that the rack mirrored. The lower halves of Vovimian racks were designed to provide access between the legs of prisoners, though it took slower-minded prisoners a while to figure out why.

  Certainly this prisoner showed no sign of curiosity as to why Layle had laid him upon the cold metal of the rack rather than onto one of the nearby wooden tables. Layle leaned over to kiss the fingers curled loosely around his, saying, “I know I was wrong to take you the way I did, by force. But I couldn’t think of any other way to do it. I knew that someone as beautiful as you wouldn’t be interested in someone like me.”

  He dared not look at the youth now; he had never trained himself to school the expression on his face, since he had not wanted to hide his feelings from any of the prisoners, except at moments such as this. After a few seconds he heard the youth whisper, “It might have been different . . . if we . . .”

  “If we’d met differently?” Layle kissed the fingers again. “It’s generous of you to say that, but I know you’re just being kind to me. You’re so beautiful; you could have anyone you choose. You certainly wouldn’t want to give your love to a vile, ugly torturer.”

  “You’re not ugly.” The reply was so swift that Layle had to cover his mouth to hide his smile. More hesitantly, the prisoner said, “You said you’d arrange for my release. If we met again . . .”

  Layle shook his head. “I’m not permitted to leave this dungeon. It’s part of the rules here – it’s supposed to help us feel empathy with the prisoners.” This was the first story he had heard about the Eternal Dungeon. Since that time, a year ago, he had been collecting all the information he could about Yclau’s odd dungeon. He set that thought aside; it increased his uneasiness. “We’ll never meet again after tonight. I’m sorry about that, for my sake. But you’re better off not knowing someone like me.” He let his cheek rest upon the prisoner’s hand, feeling again the pain at his awareness that this type of talk came so easily to him. If his life had been different . . .

  Next to him, the youth continued to give hard, labored breaths. Then he said in a small voice, “You could make love to me now.”

  Layle’s breath hissed in with triumph; he hoped it sounded like surprise. He took the chance and turned his head – it was dark in the rack room, which was lit only by the branding fire. “My dear, you’re far too generous,” he said honestly. “But even if I didn’t know that you were making this offer out of charity to me, it’s just not possible. Your wounds are too deep. I’d only increase your pain.”

  “No, truly, you wouldn’t.” He could hear the mixture of fear and growing eagerness in the youth’s voice. “It would . . . it would help with my healing. Having you give me love rather than pain.”

  He bowed his head, as though trying to hold back from temptation. The youth’s voice rose another notch. “Please . . . If nothing else, it would take my mind off the pain.”

  “If you’re sure,” he said softly.

  “Yes.” The prisoner’s voice wavered, but Layle pretended not to notice. He leaned over and kissed the youth lightly, this time on the lips.

  “I’ll be gentle, I promise,” he told the prisoner. “I won’t hurt you again.”

  A look of anxiety travelled onto the prisoner’s face – he had obviously not thought about this aspect of the matter – but Layle leaned forward and kissed him once more, this time deeply, though slowly. He had a precise sense of timing as a torturer; it was one of the things that caused his master to have high hopes for him. Now his eyes were turned toward the other end of the prisoner’s body, awaiting the signal he needed that he should begin.

  The signal came. He pulled back with a sigh and said, “By the torture-god of hell, you’re too much for me. I can’t believe that you’re letting me do this.”

  The faintest of smiles travelled onto the youth’s face. “This is my first time,” he confided.

  “Then I’ll take special care.” He rose slowly, using unhurried movements to contrast with his earlier abrupt gestures. He did not want anything about what he did to remind the prisoner of the youth who had tortured him before.

  Yet.

  He hesitated when picking up the vial he had set aside on the rack, but the prisoner – obviously not the most quick-witted person to have passed through Vovim’s Hidden Dungeon – showed no signs of curiosity as to why such an item was waiting. Layle carefully spread the oil over both his hands; his refusal to dry-rape prisoners with instruments of torture had earned him much good-natured ribbing from the other torturers. Then he set to work on the rising flesh before him.

  He had hoped that the prisoner would associate his earlier rape only with Layle’s mouth, not with his hands, and this appeared to be the case. He could hear the youth’s breath increasing, and soon the moans began. Layle, wishing yet again that he could raise his own desire in so simple a manner, turned his mind away from the present scene, toward the near past and the near future. He did so lightly, concentrating the greater part of attention on what he was doing. That was another thing which marked him off from the other torturers – his willingness to pull back from his desires when they came into conflict with his work. His master, in a moment of utter honesty, had once told him that Layle’s skills were such that he was wasted on his present work.

  He knew this to be the case; he knew this all too well to be the case. What had once been the height of his joy – that he should work in this dungeon that shifted from hiding place to hiding place – had become stale to him. But when he thought of the alternative – to work at one of the foreign dungeons where he would be forever restricted and confined by senseless regulations – he knew that the only place for him was here, in Blackstone Prison, as Vovim’s Hidden Dungeon was called in its current incarnation. Only here could he show true creativity.

  His mind, all this while, had not strayed from the prisoner. Responding to the signals he was being given, he let his left hand wander down. His index finger began to push gently.

  Immediately he felt the tension in the youth’s body, and he paused. “Shh,” he said. “I told you, it won’t hurt, not unless you remain tense. You must try to relax.”

  “All right,” the youth whispered.

  The prisoner was obviously trying his best, but he could not fully obey th
e order he had been given. A moment later he flinched, and Layle quickly withdrew his finger. “You’re not ready,” he said quietly. “It’s all right, some people need more time than others to prepare themselves for this. You need to wait till you’re a bit older.”

  “But I want the first time to be tonight!” the youth protested. “I want you to make love to me!”

  He had to close his eyes against the strange mixture of feelings: desire arising from sadistic triumph, as well as pain arising from sorrow that none of what was taking place was real. He was not doing as good a job of controlling himself with this prisoner as he usually did; he had noticed that since the first day. His mind kept wandering away to other matters . . .

  He continued to stroke the youth slowly, saying, “There will be others. Don’t set your heart too much on one person; you might end up being betrayed someday.”

  “I can relax,” the youth whispered. “Please. Try again.”

  He proceeded carefully, timing his hands’ work with the same precision he used when timing how long to keep a prisoner on each level of the rack. Even so, he mistimed the youth’s eagerness, and there was an unfortunate pausing point at which he wondered whether he would have to reveal this seduction for the rape it was. But the youth insisted that he wanted to continue, and the youth’s body – amazingly resilient after three days of torture – chimed in its opinion on the matter. Layle started again, taking greater care this time to keep the youth’s state of desire low at the beginning.

  His own state of desire was something of a problem. It would have helped, he decided, if he had bound the prisoner, but he did not want to change course at this point. “I want to hold your hand,” he said softly. “Do you think you could take care of this part of the matter for me?”

  He held no expectation that the youth’s arms were yet strong enough to be lifted, but once again the prisoner’s body defied his prognosis, and the youth’s hand closed in upon where Layle’s had been working. Layle let his right hand drift down to where the youth’s free hand lay limp upon the rack. He placed his hand gently over the youth’s, then carefully, unobtrusively worked his way up until his hand was encircling the prisoner’s wrist. The youth, concentrating on what Layle was doing with his left hand, failed to notice.

  Layle let his hand tighten suddenly on the wrist, as though he had been hit by a wave of desire, and the youth, in a quite satisfactory manner, began to writhe with passion, his body pinned down on one side by Layle’s grip. Layle allowed himself to linger upon the image of the trapped prisoner for a while; finally he was ready.

  The youth was too. Layle encountered no troubles until he was full in, at which point the youth gave a surprised yelp and jerked on the rack.

  “Did I hurt you?” Layle asked gently, feeling himself throb at the thought.

  “No, it feels good! Is it supposed to feel that way?”

  He stared at the youth, momentarily disconcerted. “Didn’t you expect to enjoy this?”

  “Not that way. I didn’t think it would feel nice when you were inside.”

  “But then . . .” His mind was awhirl; he had not encountered anything like this before. “Why did you let me do this?”

  The youth smiled at him shyly. “I knew you’d enjoy it. I was looking forward to that.”

  The pain washed over him at once, crashing in great waves against him, over and over. He felt his grip tighten upon the youth. He struggled to break free of what he was feeling, but he only encountered worse: turning away in his mind, he saw suddenly the hope he had imprisoned. It was unshackled and looked upon him with grave eyes. The escaped prisoner held up a black book and said softly, “A torturer must be willing to suffer for the prisoners.”

  He knew the words. He had read them three days ago, shortly before the youth’s arrival, when he had finally succeeded in obtaining a black-market copy of the Eternal Dungeon’s Code of Seeking.

  He had read the book all through the night, sometimes laughing at the absurdity of what he read, sometimes feeling his heart thump as though he had encountered an unexpected danger. It was like reading about a dungeon where the torturers had gone mad. None of the rules made sense; none of the regulations were designed to help a torturer deprive and degrade and destroy a prisoner.

  Break a prisoner, yes. The word “breaking” was used in the book, and methods of torture – albeit extremely limited – were described in the Code of Seeking. Yet even here the obvious was turned topsy-turvy: the object of breaking was not to destroy the prisoner, but to give him rebirth. It was an image strange to him, for he had lived all his life in a land where the hell-god tortured his prisoners for eternity. Here in this book was a dungeon that claimed to be eternal, yet claimed that a time came when the prisoners’ pain was transformed into joy.

  For three days he had been trying to still his mind, to keep his thoughts focussed on his work. And now the hope he had imprisoned stood before him, waiting.

  The youth was waiting too. He was beginning to show concern that Layle had been silent for so long. In an automatic manner, Layle picked up the youth’s hand and kissed it. “I’m glad I can give you pleasure,” he said in a low voice. “There’s no one who deserves it more.”

  The youth’s smile increased. He was evidently losing all awareness of the pain that must still be coursing through him. Layle let his hands wander over the youth’s body, carefully avoiding the points of damage as he increased the youth’s arousal. It would not be long now, for either of them. Layle’s rhythm increased, and his breath grew hard. He closed his eyes, striving to push back his own pain and the hope that had brought it. His work, he thought; he must concentrate his mind on his work, and on the final duty he must fulfill with this prisoner.

  His hands wandered higher. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the youth was aware of the touching and was smiling from it, his expression now dazed from the passion travelling through him. Layle could feel the passion spreading in waves of shivers through the youth’s body. Layle’s heartbeat increased; the surge of the upcoming wave of desire began to build within him. His hands crept higher and touched the youth’s neck.

  He knew the exact moment at which the youth realized the betrayal. It came as it always did, with a sudden break in the prisoner’s smile, as though a mirror had been shattered. There was a moment during which the youth looked stunned, as though he had been hit on the head. Layle’s hands tightened upon the youth’s neck, waiting for the scream.

  It did not come. Instead, the youth’s expression cleared. He looked upon Layle with the eyes of Layle’s gentle hope, and he said quietly, “Don’t do this.”

  In the next moment, the wave hit Layle. His hands tightened, through long custom, upon the soft flesh of the neck; he heard the prisoner’s breathing stop and the body begin to flail in a useless attempt to escape death. He had no time to wonder whether the youth would use his hands to try to push his executioner back. Wave after wave hit Layle, the pleasure drowning him.

  And then suddenly it was gone – every drop of pleasure disappeared. He cried out, his body continuing to pound the youth as though it had not noticed the loss. He felt someone grip him, and he knew without having to look that it was the prisoner, who had escaped.

  He heard the hope he had striven to keep captive say softly, “You will not do this. You will leave this place and go to Yclau. There you will ask for sanctuary and request to work in the Eternal Dungeon. You will give up all that you have here: your freedom, your independence, your rapes. Never again will you spend your passion on a prisoner; that is forever gone from your life. Never again will you torture a prisoner to bring pleasure to yourself. Instead, you will take your skills and use them to bring rebirth to others. You will suffer for the prisoners.”

  His cry of agony filled the cell. He felt his hands slip from the youth’s neck, and in the next moment he heard the youth’s hard rasping as he struggled his way back to breath and life. Layle was sobbing now, his desire waning for what he now knew would be the
last time. Any passion he had in the future would be an act of solitude. He would be alone forever, giving to the prisoners and taking nothing in return. His dark desire was imprisoned.

  Within him, he heard the echo of its screams of rage.

  Shaking now, barely able to stand on his feet, he caught hold of the youth and heard the young man’s intake of breath. Barely aware of what he was doing, he scooped the youth into his arms. The youth was limp, unresisting. Layle carried him into the next room, then laid him down. The youth’s eyes were open now, looking up at him. Still shaking, Layle lay down beside the youth and put his arms around him.

  “I love you,” he said in a broken voice. “I love you, I love you.”

  “Shhh.” The voice was soothing. “Shh, it’s all right; it’s all over now. Put your head on my shoulder.”

  He complied with the youth’s order, trying to steady himself. Part of him knew that this was the moment at which he should be the one doing the comforting. That had always been his way when around others, but somehow he seldom managed to take this role when he was with Elsdon.

  “You’re shaking,” Elsdon whispered as he cradled Layle. “Are you always this way afterwards? Or did something hurt you in the dreaming?”

  “Yes,” said Layle, his hand tightening upon Elsdon’s. “Something hurt me a great deal. There was a breaking.”

  Elsdon’s breath drew in sharply. Layle felt the blood under the young Seeker’s skin pump harder. “Was there a transformation?”

  Layle nodded. He was still struggling to break free of the shaking.

  He told Elsdon as much as he dared of the final moments of the dreaming – not of the rape, which would never have been countenanced in any Yclau prison, but of the willingness to abuse. Even if Elsdon thought Layle had been remembering his last days at an Yclau prison, the tale made sense. Elsdon was silent a while, then said, “The youth in your dreaming . . .”

  He could trust Elsdon to center in upon the greatest danger. “No,” he said. “The youth in my dreaming was you. I wasn’t dreaming of someone else’s pain. I was with a prisoner at the time I made the decision to leave the prison I worked at before, but he was an older man. I arranged afterwards for him to be released. The dreaming had nothing in it of him; everything of the youth that wasn’t my own imagining was you.”

  “How much of me?” Elsdon asked softly. His body was still languorous from the lovemaking as he held Layle in his arms.

  “Very little at first. Your looks . . . your gestures . . . It was when you began to speak to me that things changed in the dreaming.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Elsdon. “I’d forgotten your instruction to remain silent.”

  Layle shook his head. They were still lying together on the bed; outside the cell, the corridors were quiet in the hour before dawn. No dawn would be seen in this underground world. The only light in this room came from the lamps, which had burned low and were casting a soft light onto Elsdon’s face.

  “You always know what I need better than I do,” Layle said. “Earlier in the dreaming, something had been struggling to break through – the part of me that felt revulsion at what I was doing. It couldn’t get through; I kept pushing it back. But when you started to speak . . . It was as though this world began to break through more and more. First we talked about your beauty, and then we had that conversation when you insisted that you could relax enough for me to continue, and then you said you had done this for the sake of my enjoyment. And that was the moment at which the breaking occurred.” He closed his eyes and shivered, feeling the echo of the pain touch him.

  Elsdon’s hands stroked him, steadying him. “It was a hard breaking?” he said quietly.

  “Yes,” Layle replied in a low voice. “Very hard. It had to be, to break me out of what I had made myself into. I remember that, though I’d pushed away the memory of the pain after all these years. If you’ll talk to some of the older Seekers, they’ll tell you how I was when I first arrived here – ‘like a prisoner who was kept on the rack for too long,’ one of them said. . . . Well, you know. It hasn’t been so long since it happened to you.”

  Elsdon kissed Layle’s brow lightly and shifted his position so that he was lying beside the other man. “Was there anything more of me in the dreaming?”

  He nodded. “The voice. The voice of the part of me that broke free at that moment and demanded that I transform myself. It was all symbolic in the dreaming, of course. In reality, I remember making those decisions, but I didn’t put them into words. But in the dreaming, you were the one who spoke the words. You bound me at the same moment you freed me.”

  Elsdon trailed his hand softly over Layle’s chest, his lids lowered in concentration at what Layle was saying. It was a Seeker’s look. The first time Layle had seen it in a young prisoner he was searching, he had known what Elsdon could be if he was willing to break himself. Now Elsdon said, as he continued the delicate job of binding Layle’s wounds, “This never happened in your dreamings before?”

  “Never. Always before, the dreamings had ended with the dea— With the darkest part of my desire. And with that darkness would come intense pleasure, but when the pleasure was over I’d feel filthy, as though I had been rolling in my own waste. This time, the pleasure was taken away from me, but afterwards . . . Well, again, you know. You remember what it was like.”

  Elsdon nodded. “I wish you could have both,” he said quietly. “The pleasure at the moment and the joy afterwards. But if you must choose, I’d rather that you have the joy.”

  Elsdon was silent a while, his ivory skin pale against Layle’s skin, which had started dark from his Vovimian blood and had been darkened further in his youth by prolonged nearness to the branding fires. Elsdon curled one of Layle’s chest hairs around his finger, then raised his head to look at the High Seeker. “Did you know this would happen?”

  “I didn’t know what would happen.” Layle lifted Elsdon’s hand and kissed it. “I was so terribly afraid when we began this, my dear. For years I’ve succeeded in keeping my dark desire imprisoned, using it to rouse me in my dreamings but never allowing it to touch the real world. When I connected it back to reality, through you . . . I half expected to lose everything. Myself, you, everything in this dungeon I care about—”

  Elsdon put his hands lightly over Layle’s lips. “It’s part of the breaking,” he reminded the High Seeker. “It’s the most dangerous part, where you risk all for the sake of an unknown good. I thought I would be executed when my breaking occurred. I thought I would lose everything. Instead I gained everything.”

  “Yet most prisoners are executed,” Layle murmured. “The danger of loss is so great. I was so close to it; if you hadn’t transformed me in the dream . . . Elsdon, I can’t tell you how that dream would have ended if you hadn’t transformed me. But it went too far. If failure had come, and the darkness had been let loose on this world, it would have been too much.”

  Elsdon moved suddenly, leaning over to scoop something from the floor. He laid the black book into Layle’s hands. “I don’t need to say anything,” he said. “It’s all here – some of the words are your own. You know it’s true. You just need to believe it.”

  Layle looked down at the Code of Seeking and gave a half-smile. “Bloody blades,” he said. “Who’s the Seeker-in-Training here, and who’s the High Seeker? Are you going to be assigning me prisoners next? Or pointing out the errors I made in this?”

  “That’s next week,” Elsdon said, putting aside the book with a smile.

  Layle looked over at the young Seeker; then he groaned. Elsdon turned swiftly back. “What’s wrong?”

  “Me,” Layle said, staring up at the ceiling. “This bloody fool you’re lying next to. It’s your first time, and here I am, droning on about myself.” He turned onto his side and took Elsdon’s hand. “How was it for you, my dear, while I was undergoing this wondrous rebirth? I know there was passion – was there pleasure also? And joy?”

  Elsdon’s gaze wandered
up to the ceiling; his smile faded away. “Well,” he said quietly, “I admit that I had high expectations beforehand. You know what virgins are like – they hope for the impossible.” He turned his head away.

  Layle felt fear cut into him. He ignored it, ruthlessly thrusting it away as he would when healing a crying prisoner. He touched Elsdon’s cheek, trying to push the face gently back. “Elsdon, what is it? Did I hurt you?”

  Elsdon turned his head. He was grinning. “My expectations were too low, it seems. Could we do it again?”

  For a moment Layle stared at the youth; then he attacked Elsdon, with hands and teeth and torso. Too late, he remembered the dangers of doing this, but Elsdon was already hooting with glee, laughing as Layle tickled him and nibbled him.

  A pounding from the wall adjoining the cell next door finally halted their tumbling play. The neighboring Seeker – in the usual placid manner of dungeon dwellers – had endured a full shift’s worth of groans, sobs, and screams, but a chorus of laughter had proved to be the breaking point. Layle and Elsdon collapsed into a pile full of chuckles and spent the next few minutes alternately shushing each other and smothering their chortles upon each other’s bodies.

  “You,” said Layle presently, “are a most unyouthful youth in all matters except the body. You’ll have to give this decrepit High Seeker a short space in which to recover himself before we begin another four-hour session.”

  Elsdon stared at him, his eyes widening with astonishment. “But Layle! We haven’t done the best part of my dreamings yet!”

  Layle sighed, looking up at the ceiling. Finding no help there, he stared back down at Elsdon. “All right,” he said in a level voice. “What part of your dreamings did we miss?”

  Elsdon’s expression transformed into a quiet smile. “The part where we fall asleep in each other’s arms.”

  The lamps grew dimmer, drawing to their rest. Layle leaned forward and kissed Elsdon’s hair lightly as he reached up to remove his own hood. “I can do that. I can do that through a thousand breakings and a thousand rebirths.”

  He pulled the bedcover over them both.

  o—o—o

  Deep within Layle Smith, the torturer who dwelt there watched the sleeping High Seeker. He rubbed the spot on his wrists where his chains had been shattered, and he smiled.

  It was always amusing to let prisoners think that they had been reprieved from the worst, so that their hopes would rise, only to be battered down at a later point. For now, Layle Smith could be allowed to think that he had transformed his evil desire into good. But his dishonesty with his love-mate had kept the evil alive within him. By the time it occurred to the High Seeker that he must tell Elsdon Taylor who he truly was, the evil would be strong enough to begin imprisoning the man who had imprisoned the torturer all these years. And then the torturer’s pleasure would return.

  o—o—o

  o—o—o

  . . . They believe that the seeds of Layle Smith’s madness were planted in the previous year, though we may never know what the cause was of that planting.

  The strongest evidence for this theory lies in a letter written by Layle Smith. Because the letter exists in fragmentary form, until recently historians have been uncertain as to the letter’s date or its meaning. But several scholars have recently advanced the theory that the “evil” referred to in the letter was Layle Smith’s approaching madness, and that the letter therefore dates from the early weeks of his illness, before he lost all control of himself.

  The letter reads as follows:

  “This evil arose out of the greatest good that ever came into my life, which for the past year has brought me joy and peace I never thought to have. I was taught by my old master that good ultimately transforms itself into evil, and it is tempting to think that this is the case here – that I am being destroyed, not by the darkness that had been imprisoned within me for so long, but by the gentle hope that persuaded me to loose the darkness and set it free from its bonds.

  “Yet I must hold to the belief which all of us Seekers live by, that evil ultimately transforms itself into good if one continues to battle for that transformation. I grow weaker by the day, and it is hard to hold to this belief. Yet I retain hope that, with the help of those I love, I will show that the Code of Seeking is right and that the torturer I once was is wrong.”

  —Psychologists with Whips: A History of the Eternal Dungeon.

 

  Rebirth 4

  IN TRAINING

  The year 356, the fourth month. (The year 1880 Clover by the Old Calendar.)

  It is commonly understood by historians that facts which may seem obvious to other societies and times are often obscure to people living in a particular society and time. No doubt this is as true of our own society as it has been of others, which is why the study of history provides a powerful lesson in the danger of accepting the ethical values of one’s culture without due examination.

  An example of this human failure to recognize societal evils can be found in the fifth revision of the Eternal Dungeon’s Code of Seeking. The revision’s author, Layle Smith, was without doubt the most foresightful man to hold the title of High Seeker – a man who was able to recognize certain abusive patterns in the handling of criminals in his time, and who could suggest new methods for bringing about justice.

  Yet any modern reader of the fifth revision – particularly those of us who work in psychology and owe so much to this pioneering volume on methods of character reform – will recognize that, by introducing new methods to correct past abuses, Layle Smith and his contemporaries opened the door for new abuses – abuses that, in their own way, were just as terrible as those that had taken place before.

  History provides such a dark record of humans’ blindness that it is refreshing to be able to report that many of the abuses which became possible following the publication of the fifth revision were accounted for and corrected in the sixth revision, which was published two decades later. Unfortunately, we no longer possess the name of the sixth revision’s insightful author, nor do we know what events shaped his views. . . .

  —Psychologists with Whips: A History of the Eternal Dungeon.