CHAPTER FIVE
The Hidden Dungeon was still. Somewhere in a cell nearby, a prisoner sobbed – a familiar refrain that had often lulled Elsdon to sleep at bedtime in the Eternal Dungeon. Elsewhere, the voice of one of the King’s soldiers sharply challenged a master who had ventured too near an exit. The chain links of the pulley grated against one another, stirred by some unseen force.
Other than that, the room was silent. Elsdon had long ago lost the power to scream.
He was still bound, and he could feel the bindings, but the bite of the straps came to him as though from a distance. Clearer to him was the ache from the wounds on his torso that had been reopened by the master’s tongue and teeth, the continued ache from his legs, and the blood trickling through his throat. He swallowed, and felt again the raw flesh silently scream from the contact.
It was worse on the other end. He turned his eyes toward the master, who had lifted his blindfold before stepping away from the rack. The torturer was in the process of buttoning his shirt. He did not look like a man who had gleefully finished his much-loved playtime. Rather, his face held the weariness of an elderly laborer who has completed one more dreary duty and is looking forward to the end of his workday.
The master’s work was not yet finished, Elsdon knew. He tried to remember what crime he had confessed to, but the thought slipped from his mind, like drops of water through an hour-clock. He swallowed again, tasting the bitterness of the blood.
“Layle will kill you for this.”
The master glanced over at him upon his whisper. “You mean, for raping his journeyman? Well, I admit that, under ordinary circumstances, I’d be offering up thanksgivings to the gods that Layle is barred by his death sentence from entering Vovim. Given what you told me yesterday, though, I’m inclined to guess that he sent you to me as a gift. He was always a generous boy.”
He did not smile as he spoke. Again Elsdon was left with the impression of a man who had undertaken disagreeable work and was glad it was over. A more striking contrast with the High Seeker could not have existed.
“You’re quiet, young Seeker,” the master commented, smoothing down his sleeves. “I’d have expected you to ask by now whether this is something I teach my apprentices.”
“I don’t need to,” Elsdon whispered through the mangled flesh of his throat.
“No, I suppose you don’t. You’re Layle’s journeyman; he’d have told you this much about himself, if he told you nothing else. Mind you, I didn’t have to give the boy much training. He’d already taught himself most of what he needed to know, during that final theft of his.” The master bowed his head to look at the cuffs he was fastening above his elbows. “A pity he chose the virgin daughter of the head of the Merchants’ Guild for his self-training. He might have gotten away with it otherwise.”
Elsdon’s chest rose and lowered, struggling to make do with what little air came through the swollen throat, which was still bent in a curve. Elsdon closed his eyes, then opened them again as he heard the master step nearer. His heart began to beat hard, even though his mind reacted to the coming event with nothing but numbness.
“Now, my dear,” said the master, “I may be a bit slow at times, but I’m not quite as poor at searching as you may have come to believe. I haven’t failed to notice that you appear to be more interested in hearing about my old apprentice’s life than about your own fate. Nor have I failed to notice that you just now referred to your master by his first name. Given the Eternal Dungeon’s obsession with formality, I can’t imagine that journeymen are normally permitted to address their masters in such a manner. What special link do you have with your High Seeker?”
Elsdon, his head flopped down like that of a corpse, said nothing.
The master reached over and picked up the discarded blindfold from the rack. “My dear, I could bind other parts of you if I wished.”
A sob swelled within Elsdon’s chest, racking his whole body. “No,” he whispered. “Not him. I won’t betray him. No!”
The last would have been a scream, had his throat permitted it. For a moment there was silence. Then sharp blades entered Elsdon’s neck and head.
When his vision cleared, he was lying flat once more, his head held upright by the head of the butterfly-woman. The master was staring down at him with intense eyes.
“May the torture-god of hell rack me for eternity,” the master said slowly. “I should have guessed. You’re Layle’s love-mate.”
Elsdon’s throat closed in on him. He waited. Then he saw the master move swiftly to the strap binding his right wrist and yank it open.
The second strap was torn open. Elsdon made an enquiring noise that resembled a whimper. The master glanced his way but did not pause as he freed Elsdon.
“My dear,” he said, “I may just have proven myself the slowest-witted torturer in all of Vovim, but one thing I do know: Layle Smith wouldn’t send his love-mate into danger without arranging a way for him to be rescued. And I do not wish to be in the same room as you when that rescue arrives.”
The pulley-chain clanked, three razor-teethed instruments fell from the wall, and an empty bucket tipped over. Elsdon felt the vibrations of the crash outside the room, travelling faintly through the iron rack. The great blow of sound was accompanied by shouts and more crashes, fainter, far away down the corridor.
The master, who had just pulled away the fourth strap, stood motionless at the foot of the rack, his head turned toward the door. Then he said quietly, “Too late, it seems.”
His gaze turned toward Elsdon, lying limp on the rack. Their eyes met.
“Kill me,” Elsdon whispered. He wasn’t sure whether his words were a question or a plea.
“Not here, my dear.” There was a measured calmness about the master, even as his body grew frantic with action. “If you are found here in the condition you’re in – whether dead or alive – then the raiders won’t rest content until they find your torturer. I need to get you out of here and hidden before I make my escape.”
As he spoke, he went over to the pulley and stretched its chain back to the rack. After attaching the hook to the wheel, he ran to the pulley controls and heaved three counterweights onto the controls. The pulley-chain went taut, but the rack remained motionless, weighed down by its heavy iron.
The master returned to the rack. “Do I need to gag you?” he asked Elsdon softly.
The words were too familiar; Elsdon felt his body grow cold. “No,” he whispered. “I can’t scream.”
“A small blessing. Let’s see whether the gods will give me more.” With one swift movement, he raised Elsdon in his arms, which brought every wound in Elsdon’s body into a shrill plea for attention. Elsdon’s scream emerged as a rattling of the throat.
The master deposited him on a bench nearby, then took up a position on the side of the rack opposite the wheel. With a grunt, he pushed.
The rack moved slowly, persuaded forward by the weights on the pulley and the great bulk of the master. It screeched its way across the stone floor, but Elsdon doubted that anyone heard it; the Hidden Dungeon was now filled with shouts and screams and crashes. The sounds still came from the far end of the prison.
He turned his eyes toward where the rack had been, and then looked again. There, in the midst of the stone floor, was a hole. A rectangular hole, with steps leading down it. No light emerged from below.
“There,” the master said with a sigh. “That should hold the siege for a while.” He left the rack pushed up against the door, came over to Elsdon, scooped him up into his arms, and then, as though in afterthought, hooked a lamp with the fingers of his left hand. He started down the steps.
Elsdon was only faintly aware of the coldness increasing, and with it the musty smell of still air and wet rock. Every step the master took sent a jolt through his body like a hard whiplash. He was sobbing now, which caused his throat to burn. He knew vaguely that they were in a place curving with great stone arches that met each other at cross-angles. The walls held doorway
s, and the master hurried through one of these. This brought them into another room with massive arches and multiple doorways. Again the master made his choice. The sounds of the hunt were growing fainter.
Elsdon lost track of the number of doorways they passed through. He was aware only of the pain that weighed down his body, like stones crushing a prisoner. He could not breathe now, and dimly he wondered how long it would be before his lungs gave up the chore of trying to work.
Then came the sound of shattered glass; the muted light that had surrounded them died abruptly. The master gave a muffled curse. He knelt down and laid Elsdon on the floor.
One of the pieces of shattered lamp-glass cut into Elsdon’s back. It made no impression on him. The sudden stillness of movement was like a warm blanket to his body. Air began to enter his lungs. He lay motionless.
He felt the master’s hand on his throat, feeling his pulse. The master grunted, though whether with pleasure or displeasure Elsdon could not tell. It was the only sound in this place, other than the dripping water. They had long since outrun the shouts and crashes in the prison above.
The dripping water reminded Elsdon of something important, something vitally important. “Thirsty,” he whispered.
He heard the master sigh, and then withdraw. Elsdon waited, not knowing whether he would return and too dull of mind to care. Then he felt a hand touch his mouth; it was covered with wetness. He licked at the water eagerly.
As though Elsdon had asked a question, the master said, “I told you that the old dungeons were closed up. The lesser prisons were built on top of their predecessors. When I was a boy, I and the other boys of our town would explore the dungeon beneath our town’s lesser prison. There was always a way in that curious children could find. The soldiers didn’t try to stop us, because they knew that there was no path connecting the old dungeons with the new lesser prisons. All of us believed that.”
His hand went up to touch Elsdon’s hair. He had taken off his mailed glove in order to bring Elsdon the water; Elsdon felt the rough callous of his thumb stroke the place where Elsdon’s hairline met the brow.
The master continued, “When Layle suggested that I send a letter to the King, advising him to hide the Hidden Dungeon within the lesser prisons, I thought Layle was doing nothing more than seeking to bring the King’s favor upon me. He was that type of boy: he kept his thoughts and his schemes to himself.
“Two years later, he went into the rack room of one of the lesser prisons where we were housed. He told me that he was going to clean the equipment there, and he asked me to check on him in three hours’ time. I thought nothing of it; the boy always had an obsession for seeing that his equipment was in working order. But when I arrived at the rack room, I discovered that – by means only the gods know – Layle had managed to push back the rack far enough that he could wriggle down the hole underneath it. The hole that he must have known existed in every rack room in every lesser prison of Vovim. I don’t know how he determined this; perhaps an artist who was decorating a prison discovered the secret when he re-incised a rack, and told Layle. At any rate, that was the night of Layle’s escape from the Hidden Dungeon.
“Well, I put the rack back in place, and when the boy was found to be missing, I denied knowing where he had been that night. Of course, all this was before I learned that he planned to take refuge in the Eternal Dungeon.”
His thumb finished stroking Elsdon’s temple; it journeyed down Elsdon’s cheek. The other hand, still wearing its glove of mail, did the same. “Now, my dear,” said the master, his voice softly echoing in the emptiness, “I’m afraid that this is where we must part.”
Elsdon whispered, “You remind me of my father.”
The master’s fingers paused at Elsdon’s jawline. After a moment, he said, “From the tone of your voice, I gather that isn’t a compliment. I’m sorry, my dear. I would like to take you with me, but once those raiders break through to the rack room, the hunt will continue down here. I need to be safely within the King’s palace before they reach me, and that’s too far to run with you in my arms. And if I were to leave you here alive . . . Well, I would have to answer to the King for that. I have no choice.”
“You have a choice,” Elsdon whispered. “Layle’s choice.”
The thumb stroked the underside of Elsdon’s jaw. “To try to flee Vovim, you mean? To try to break over the border, to make a new life in a foreign land, to hope that I could find suitable work there? Yes, Layle advised me to do that, in our last conversation together. My dear, I think you know by now that my old apprentice is a far cleverer man than I am. I might add that he is also far braver.” His thumb travelled further down, to the hollow in Elsdon’s throat. “This won’t take long, my dear. Don’t be afraid.”
Elsdon felt the thumb begin to press down, cutting off what little air remained in his throat. He could not move. He managed to choke out a single word: “Sun.”
The thumb withdrew. “Sun?” The master waited, but Elsdon made no reply; he was still trying to gulp in air.
“You want me to do this in sunlight?” the master asked. Elsdon managed to nod his head slightly. The thumb ran up to his brow, pushing his hair back from his eyes.
After a moment, the master said, “I suppose I can do that much for you – a final gift to Layle Smith. Not that he’s likely to appreciate this gift, any more than he appreciated the others I gave him.” His hands fell away from Elsdon’s face and slid under his back and knees.
Cold air, blackness, the sound of footsteps echoing against stone, curses whenever the master walked into a wall. The master’s hands, groping as he tried to find his way at the same time that he held Elsdon in his arms. Dripping water. Then faint light.
He heard the master sigh as he hurried forward with swifter strides. They began to walk up steps, and Elsdon, already half-unconscious from the jolting journey, moaned into the master’s chest.
Warm air. A breeze. No sound of footsteps. Whispering. After a moment, Elsdon identified the whispering as coming from rustling leaves.
He opened his eyes. Above him was the moon, piercing the purple-black sheet of the sky with its cold light. The whispers were emerging from straight ahead, but he could not see the leaves on the trees of the royal forest. The shadows were too black.
He felt another sob rack him. It had seemed such a small thing to ask, that he should see the sun again. He tried to remind himself that he was an ambassador, a Seeker, a grown man who should face his end with courage. But his body quivered with sobs, as though he were a child.
“Shh.” The master, who still held him cradled in his arms, knelt down on one knee and braced Elsdon’s body with that knee. His free, naked hand rose to Elsdon’s cheek. “Look again,” he said softly.
Elsdon looked. He was vaguely aware that behind the master, to the right of Elsdon, was the massive bulk of a hillside, under which they must have passed. Beyond it must be the lesser prison and the building where the prison conference met. To the left of him was more forest, its whispering trees easier to see than the trees ahead. And behind Elsdon . . .
He tilted his head back. Behind him was the sun, a deep red, just disappearing under the horizon.
He felt his breath emerge from him in a sigh. The land here was rolling hillsides, punctuated by roads and villages. The sun was setting in a valley created by two adjoining hills; it sent shadows the color of bruises over the Vovimian countryside. In the villages, street-lamps had already been lit for the night. They twinkled under the golden-red light of the dusk.
Elsdon felt the thumb move to his throat, but he did not turn his eyes away from the sun. It had slipped further down now; only a thin line like blood separated the day from the night. The thumb pressed down.
Darkness covered the land, striking away the light with a crack like thunder.
o—o—o
In most of the lands of the world, men and women had found the secret to immortal life. In those lands, the dead lived on forever, taken away to pa
radises in the sky or hell-dungeons in the earth. There they would remain as they had been in the world of the living, never changing, always the same.
It was said that one such immortal, living in paradise, could not bear this life. Seeking to escape from the tyranny of endless changelessness, he sought the secret to death. After many centuries, he found the secret and let out the blood of his immortal life. “Sweet blood,” he was said to have whispered, as he watched his immortality seep onto the blade he had used. “Sweet, sweet blood.”
What followed then he could not have expected; nor did he ever know what took place. But the immortals who watched him knew, and they saw how his blood gathered itself and was transformed in the world into new life. As a tree falls in the forest, and is covered in earth, and then changes its form to bring forth new vegetation, so too had this dying immortal learned the secret to rebirth.
o—o—o
Elsdon opened his eyes. He was filled with fear, because he could remember who he was. That could mean only one thing: that he had been judged unworthy of rebirth and was therefore being held in the afterdeath prison where unrepentant men and women must be made to recognize their crimes before they are released into rebirth. He wondered whether he would be given a Seeker.
Then his vision cleared, and he saw an arm raised above him. A thin line of blood was cut into it, running diagonally from the wrist to the elbow. Beyond the arm was its owner, the master. His head was turned to look behind him.
Standing behind the master, with his body moonlit against the black forest, was a man with a whip. He was clean-shaven and bareheaded, dressed in the grey uniform of a guard of the Eternal Dungeon. On his shirt, clear in the moonlight, was woven a single word: “Sobel.”
The master’s hand slid under Elsdon’s knees, and he rose slowly to his feet, holding Elsdon tight against his chest. The man with the whip said, his voice as cold as the dungeon air, “Let Mr. Taylor go, Master Aeden. You can’t use him as a shield.”
“My dear,” the master said in a mild voice, “if you’re as skilled with that whip as you used to be – and you have just proven that you are – then I well know that I can’t use him as a hostage. But I assume that you don’t wish for me to drop your love-mate on his head.”
After a moment, Layle made a sharp gesture with his whip handle, and the master torturer knelt and carefully laid Elsdon down upon the wet grass. He spent a moment stripping himself of his shirt and laying it over Elsdon; then he rose slowly to his feet.
Layle gestured again. The master cautiously unsheathed his dagger and dropped it to the ground. At a third gesture, he moved slowly away from Elsdon and the dagger, toward the side. He kept his gaze fixed upon Layle, and Elsdon realized why in the next moment as Layle’s whip, with the same crack as before, blurred forward and lashed the air immediately next to Master Aeden’s face, stopping him from moving any further.
Master Aeden’s chest heaved, and he took a deep breath. Otherwise, he stood motionless. He and Layle were facing each other now, not looking toward Elsdon, who could not move from where he lay, near the hole leading into the hill.
Through that hole, of a sudden, came sounds: faint shouts that began to grow louder. Master Aeden turned his head toward the old dungeon, and as he did so, Elsdon saw the line of blood upon his cheek, where the lash had landed.
“You seem to have been accompanied by friends,” the master torturer commented to Layle calmly as he looked back. “Moreover, you found the Hidden Dungeon quickly. May I assume that you had assistance?”
In as cool and formal a voice as he used when searching prisoners, the High Seeker said, “The King was distressed to learn from the United Order of Prisons that, unbeknownst to him, someone in his kingdom had been kidnapping the Yclau ambassadors and delivering them to the Hidden Dungeon. He gave the delegates of the United Order of Prisons permission to visit the Hidden Dungeon and discover for themselves what the fate of the ambassadors had been, and to arrest all those responsible for the imprisonment of the ambassadors.”
Master Aeden gave a humorless chuckle. “And my old friends wonder how I’ve become so cynical over the years. So it’s to be another cleansing – but this one coordinated by the Yclau. It’s a shame that the King doesn’t realize how much power he’s giving up in his attempt to impress the world by his cooperation with the United Order.”
Layle said nothing. His gaze had not moved from the master torturer, even to look at Elsdon. To Elsdon, Layle seemed naked and vulnerable without his hood, but the High Seeker’s hand continued to grip lightly the whip handle, while hanging from his belt was a guard’s dagger.
“And the fate of those judged responsible for the imprisonment of the ambassadors?” Master Aeden asked, his voice filled with nothing other than politeness.
“They will be questioned, under the rules of the Code of Seeking, and will receive a fair trial.” Layle’s Vovimian held the thick accent of east Vovim. There was no trace of an Yclau accent in his speech, even when he spoke the Yclau word “seeking.”
Master Aeden snorted. “I see. Another clever way for Yclau to demonstrate her power. And you, I take it, are to be her instrument of warfare. You will try to force your prisoners to state their regret for what they did – their regret for having followed the orders of their King – and if they refuse to do so, you will give them the humiliation of a public trial and public execution.” The master torturer’s voice growled low, like a threatened dog. “I thought I taught you better.”
Again Layle was silent, but he took a step forward. His hand moved to his hip, and he slipped the dagger from its sheath before holding it forth, hilt first.
“Ah.” Master Aeden’s voice emerged as a sigh. “Perhaps my lessons weren’t wasted after all. Thank you.” He reached forth his hand.
Layle pulled the dagger back, out of Master Aeden’s reach, but he did not sheathe it. He waited.
A smile played at the master torturer’s lips. He bowed his head briefly and said, with mock formality, “I regret.” Then he reached forward and took the dagger offered to him again.
“Why do I have the feeling,” Master Aeden said, “that you arranged this whole exercise simply in order to hear me say those words?”
There was silence again, but for the shouts, which were closer now. Elsdon, who had tossed off the shirt in his struggle to rise, was trying to speak over the shouts. All he could manage was to whisper Layle’s name. He knew that the High Seeker must be able to hear him, but Layle did not look his way.
Master Aeden flicked a glance at Elsdon, then held the dagger up in the moonlight, running his naked hand over the blade in apparent appreciation. Elsdon saw again the whip-mark along the underside of his arm, and into Elsdon’s mind came images of what had brought the three of them together in this moment.
Layle discovering that the entrance to the rack room was barred and guessing what that meant. Layle rushing from the prison and racing his way round the hill, through the shadowed royal forest. Layle aiming his whip in the bleak dusk toward the target of Master Aeden’s arm, in order to force him to jerk back his killing hand from Elsdon’s throat. To accomplish this, Layle had to bring the whip under the arm without marking Elsdon’s nearby chest. He had been aiming for a target only a finger’s breadth in width. He had done this in the dim light of dusk.
Master Aeden lowered the blade and smiled at Layle. “May I have a final embrace?”
“No.” Layle’s voice remained cold. “I don’t trust you.”
Master Aeden’s smile deepened. “My lessons definitely weren’t wasted. Well, my dear, you have a clever journeyman; I don’t suppose you’ll be wise enough to pay attention to his advice. You’re too much like me.” He turned the dagger in his hand.
Layle waited until the body had stopped twitching before he let his whip fall to the ground. He turned his eyes slowly toward Elsdon, and for a moment he did nothing except look at his love-mate, his green eyes running over Elsdon’s battered body like the warm breeze. Elsdon
did not need to lower his gaze to Layle’s groin to know what he would see there.
Layle walked slowly forward. He knelt on the grass next to Elsdon and the dagger and waited, saying nothing. His eyes were fixed upon Elsdon’s face.
“You knew this would happen to me,” Elsdon whispered.
“Yes.”
With his last remaining strength, Elsdon stretched out his hand and took hold of the dagger.
Layle did not move as Elsdon grasped the blade that the High Seeker had so carefully arranged to be within his love-mate’s reach. Elsdon gazed a moment at the honed dagger. It was still warm from Master Aeden’s hand. Then he slid the blade over to Layle and offered his hand to the Seeker. “Thank you for completing my training,” he whispered.
Layle did not take Elsdon’s hand. He bowed his head and remained in that position, motionless, until the hunting party broke out from the dungeon and rushed over to help the Yclau delegate carry his Seeker to safety.
The Eternal Dungeon: a Turn-of-the-Century Toughs omnibus Page 27