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

by Dusk Peterson

CHAPTER FOUR

  Mr. Jones had the appearance of being a great deal more than half retired: his face was that of a prune, and his fingers were as fleshless as the pen he tapped upon his table. He had a sharp gaze, though, and seemed to delight in directing that gaze toward the prisoner, standing rigid next to his translator.

  Weldon gave a worried look at Zenas, and then turned his attention to the only other man near the magistrate’s table. This man was sitting; he was dressed neatly in a well-cut suit that was rich without being ostentatious. The man’s hand was resting lightly upon the head of his walking stick, which did not have a skull at its top, despite the rumors of how the Vovimian elite were supposed to dress themselves. Eyeing the man, Weldon concluded that, if Mr. Grove was as much a monster as his father had been, he did as good a job as the ambassador at hiding the fact.

  The magisterial recorder reached the end of reciting the witness that Zenas had provided to Weldon. Weldon did not look round to see how the numerous guards in this room were reacting to Zenas’s chilling tale, even though Weldon knew that his own guards were among them. By tradition, the Eternal Dungeon’s guards departed from the judging room the moment they had delivered their prisoner, in order to symbolically indicate that the prisoner’s fate now lay in the hands of the Queen’s officials. Both Mr. Crofford and Mr. Boyd, though, had seemed disposed to linger on this occasion, so Weldon had quickly motioned them into a corner where they would be inconspicuous. He knew that Zenas’s tale, being a matter of public record, had spread quickly throughout the dungeon, and he wondered how many of the dungeon inhabitants were waiting anxiously to know the results of this trial.

  The magistrate made a few notes to himself in a leisurely manner, and then raised his head to look at Mr. Grove. “Do you wish to respond to Mr. Zenas’s witness, sir?” he asked.

  Mr. Grove raised one eyebrow. “Is there reason I should wish to do so?” he asked in good Yclau.

  “You might want to counter any slanders placed against your father,” the magistrate suggested dryly.

  Scrutinizing Mr. Grove carefully, Weldon tried to pretend to a professional indifference to the man’s presence, but it was not easy. Yclau magistrates were inclined to place heavy emphasis upon the witnesses of kin to possible murder victims. Indeed, Layle had once told Weldon that he believed it was the accusatory witness of Elsdon’s father that had caused the magistrate to sentence Elsdon Taylor to death.

  This was a different case than that one had been, Weldon reminded himself. Elsdon had attacked, not his father, but his sister, and he had been unable to prove at his trial that there was a direct connection between his murder and his father’s abuse of him. In this case, it was clear that Zenas had killed Mr. Hallam in an attempt to save his own life.

  At least, that fact was clear to Weldon. He could only hope that it was clear to the magistrate now nudging Mr. Grove to provide witness against Zenas.

  Mr. Grove raised a second eyebrow. “I heard no slander,” he replied. “I heard a slave confess that he killed his master in cold blood.”

  Restless shifting could be heard throughout the room. From the corner of his eye, Weldon saw that the Queen’s guards were exchanging looks with one another at this evidence of Vovimian barbarity. The magistrate’s expression did not change.

  “Very well,” he said, “if you have no further witness to give, then we may proceed to the sentencing. Mr. Chapman, will I be saving your breath if I assume that your High Seeker wishes to keep this prisoner eternally confined?” His voice had turned dry again.

  Weldon felt the words like a blow to the stomach. They were clear indication of how the magistrate planned to sentence Zenas. No doubt the magistrate had decided to give Zenas the highest sentence possible as a way to bypass Mr. Grove’s attempts to overrule the magistrate’s decision through a request for extradition.

  “Yes, sir.” Weldon did his best to keep his voice professionally calm. “The High Seeker believes that would be the best course in this case.”

  The magistrate tapped his pen to free the ink at its nib before writing something down. Without looking up, he said, “It is the Eternal Dungeon’s privilege to make such a claim on the prisoner, of course. However, I should inform you that, if the Eternal Dungeon claims this prisoner for eternal confinement, I will ask the Queen to overrule the decision. By law, eternal confinement can only be offered to prisoners in cases where the Eternal Dungeon believes that the prisoner should be searched for evidence of further crimes. No evidence has been offered at this trial that the prisoner has committed any other crime than the one of which he is accused. Do you wish to proffer such evidence, Mr. Chapman, or, alternatively, do you wish to spare the Queen the trouble of deciding between your claim upon the prisoner and mine?” He raised his head and gave Weldon a sharp stare.

  “Sir, the Eternal Dungeon withdraws its claim upon the prisoner.”

  He heard his own words as from a distance. They came automatically to him, the product of years of training himself to obey his superiors in the Eternal Dungeon. The High Seeker had ordered him to release the prisoner in a case like this, and so he would.

  Yet even as he spoke, he knew that this was not the end of the matter. He knew, like a man meeting his fate, that when the time came for the Queen’s guards to take the prisoner to be hanged, he would break his oath as a Seeker and fight to save Zenas’s life. He knew that his battle would fail and that he would be tried for treason. He knew that he would die.

  All this came to him in an instant, and was accepted by him in an instant. He felt an easiness fall over him as all the deep unhappiness he had felt since his son’s death dropped away.

  He looked at Zenas, feeling pity swell in him. Sweet blood, if there were only some way to save the boy. But in a room filled with the Queen’s guards, there was no chance of that. The only thing he could do was show Zenas that someone besides his father cared enough to fight for him, and to die for him. He must hope that would be enough to bring about the transformation that the boy deserved to undergo before his death.

  The magistrate coughed, and Weldon realized that he had allowed his attention to stray. He looked back at Mr. Jones and discovered that the magistrate had a small, tight smile on his lips.

  For a moment, Weldon felt only incredulity that one of the Queen’s magistrates would allow himself to depart so much from his duty as to smile at the death of a prisoner. Then, in one of those lightning-quick moments of insight that allowed Weldon to work as a Seeker, he realized that Zenas was not the one on trial here at all. Weldon was on trial, and he had just passed his test.

  The magistrate allowed the smile to fade as he turned toward Mr. Grove. “Sir,” he said, “I intend to sentence Mr. Zenas to be confined to the Eternal Dungeon until he is eighteen. At that time, by Yclau law, he will be an adult and will have the opportunity, should he wish, to fight any attempts made to extradite him to his own country. Do you wish to protest this decision?”

  Mr. Grove stared at the magistrate. Leaning forward, onto his walking stick, he said with raised voice, “This is justice? A slave stabs to death his master, and you call this justice?”

  “It is justice in accordance with Yclau law.” The magistrate’s voice was once more dry.

  Mr. Grove continued to stare, and Weldon noticed that one of the Queen’s guards had stepped closer, his hand on his sword hilt, in case trouble should arise. Then Mr. Grove shrugged.

  “Well,” he said, rising to his feet, “I will return home and tell my mother of your decision. She knows the reputation of the Eternal Dungeon. Perhaps this will satisfy her.”

  “Good,” said the magistrate briskly. He glanced at the clock in the corner of the room, grimaced at what he read from its dial, and slammed his papers into a stack in a manner that cut short Mr. Draper’s whisper of translation and caused the prisoner to jump. “Zenas Hallam,” the magistrate said, barely glancing at his prisoner, “I find you guilty of defensive murder, and I sentence you to six years’ imprisonment in th
e Eternal Dungeon. I think we have enough time before the Queen’s speech to catch a quick lunch, don’t you?” He glanced at his recorder, who nodded, and the two of them exited through the back door of the room. The Queen’s guard melted away.

  Weldon was glad that the hood hid his face. His jaw hung slack in a most unprofessional manner as he watched Mr. Grove quietly gather together his gloves and hat. Then another lightning-quick insight reached Weldon.

  Mr. Grove had left home the moment he reached the Vovimian age of adulthood. He had not only left home, he had left his native land and had lived in Yclau ever since then. And when Mr. Hallam had arrived at the Queen’s palace, after nine years of being apart from his son, Mr. Grove had been unable to find the time to visit him.

  What had taken place between Mr. Grove and his father to cause Mr. Grove to flee so far? Whatever had occurred, Mr. Grove apparently possessed enough sense of duty toward his mother to make a token attempt to bring her husband’s killer to justice.

  But no more than a token attempt. Seeing the relaxed manner in which Mr. Grove collected his belongings, Weldon guessed that, in six years’ time, Mr. Grove would make no attempt to force Zenas back to Yclau. Provided that Zenas stayed in Yclau, he would be safe from Vovim’s unforgiving system of judgment.

  Mr. Grove caught Weldon’s eye on him and gave him a curt nod. “I thank you, sir, for your willingness to take upon yourself the troublesome burden of a disobedient slave. Zenas, you will follow whatever orders you are given by your torturer.” He added something in the old tongue, presumably the same words as he had just spoken.

  Zenas, who had just finished listening to Mr. Draper translate the final moments of the proceedings, went rigid at Mr. Grove’s words. He looked over at Weldon and made a soft inquiry.

  “He wishes to know whether he might be permitted to speak with his master’s son,” the translator explained.

  Weldon hesitated, and then beckoned to his guards, who were still waiting in the corner of the room. Weldon guessed they were there simply out of curiosity to see the end of this drama, for any prisoner who was offered confinement within the Eternal Dungeon did not require guards thereafter. No prisoner would be offered eternal confinement if he required guards.

  Mr. Boyd and Mr. Crofford stepped forward to stand by Mr. Grove. Weldon was pleased to see that their eyes were on the ambassador’s son rather than on Zenas as the boy approached. Zenas kept his gaze on Mr. Grove’s face until he reached the Vovimian man. Then he knelt down and said something quietly, his head bowed. The ambassador’s son replied, without any note of anger in his tone. Zenas nodded to what was said and retreated on his knees. When Zenas finally rose and turned, Weldon saw that tears stained his face.

  “What did you say to him?” he asked Mr. Grove sharply.

  Mr. Grove shrugged. “He asked my forgiveness for murdering my father. I told him the truth, that he would be racked by Hell eternally for what he had done.” He gave a bow to Weldon, saying, “I do not believe that the boy will be of any further trouble to you. Good day to you, sir.”

  Weldon was hard pressed in the next few seconds to keep to his Seekerly training rather than revert to the older customs whereby, as a youth, he would have treated such remarks. He contented himself with silently watching Mr. Grove leave the judging room. He suspected that even a Vovimian would find it disconcerting to have his exit scrutinized by a mute, hoodless man.

  Once the Vovimian was gone, Weldon let out his breath, beckoned to the translator, and began to make his way toward the door.

  He heard a sound behind him, like the light mew of a forgotten kitten. He turned. Zenas remained where he had been before, near the guards; he was making no effort to follow. In a voice so soft that Weldon could barely hear him, he said something.

  Weldon looked over at the translator. Mr. Draper said, “He begs your pardon for his importunate enquiry, but he wishes to know whether it is possible that you will be able to stay with him during the execution, as you had indicated you might – or so he had thought, but he begs your forgiveness if he misunderstood what you said earlier.”

  Weldon stared at Mr. Draper. “Didn’t you translate to him the magistrate’s sentence?”

  Mr. Draper simply shrugged, as though suggesting the difficulties of translating Yclau into so complex a language as the old tongue.

  Weldon returned his gaze to Zenas. The boy had his arms crossed and pressed hard against his chest, as though he were standing naked in deep snow and endeavoring to keep warm. His breath was rapid. But he made no further plea; he merely waited for Weldon’s decision.

  Weldon walked forward slowly, accompanied by the translator. When they reached Zenas, Weldon caught Mr. Boyd’s eye. The senior guard promptly pulled Mr. Crofford out of the room, muttering something to the other guard about an opportunity to attend the Queen’s speech. Zenas watched them go, his brow puckering with puzzlement.

  “Mr. Draper,” said Weldon, “please tell Mr. Zenas that he will not die. The magistrate has decided that he should live in the Eternal Dungeon until he is an adult. Explain that to him. If you can,” he added, giving the translator the hard stare he reserved for guards who had neglected their duty.

  The Vovimian translator seemed amused by the reproof. With a quirk of a smile, he spoke in the old tongue to Zenas.

  Weldon saw the news reach the boy like a blow. Zenas sucked in his breath, held it, and then quickly made an enquiry. The translator considered this question a moment, and then evidently decided that further attempts at translation would go to naught, for he nodded his reply.

  Zenas sank to his knees. Taking Weldon’s hand, he said something soft, his gaze fixed upon Weldon. Mr. Draper reported, “He knew from the moment he met you that you were a messenger from Mercy herself. He swears to you that he will serve you with loyalty, body and soul, and that you need never fear that he will bring shame to your household as he did to his old one. He will do all that you require of him and never protest.”

  Weldon felt as though he had taken a blow as well. He opened his mouth, and then realized that any words he spoke now would be with shaken breath. He waited until his heart had calmed somewhat before saying, “Tell him— No, it will be easier to show him. Tell him only that he need not kneel to me. That is not the custom here.”

  The translator reported this to the boy, who quickly scrambled to his feet, murmuring an acknowledgment of the order. Weldon did not await a translation but instead turned to the translator. “Mr. Draper, do you have time enough to return to the Eternal Dungeon?”

  Scorning so much as a glance at the great Yclau clock hanging on the wall, Mr. Draper brought out his pocket-watch and peered at it. “If it does not take long,” he responded. “I am due to begin my translation of the Queen’s speech presently.”

  “I have only brief need of your services,” Weldon assured him. “Come.” This time he took care to beckon Zenas.

  o—o—o

  Dungeon custom required that prisoners who had been offered confinement to the Eternal Dungeon be permitted to walk back unescorted, leading their own path to their new home. Weldon attempted to do this, but every time he allowed his pace to lag behind Zenas’s, the boy would slow down until he was walking a pace behind Weldon. Finally Weldon surrendered and placed his arm round Zenas’s shoulder so that they walked together. Mr. Draper glanced at them with curiosity, but made no comment.

  Fortunately, they met no one on their way; this part of the palace, being an annex of the dungeon, was reserved for use by the inner dungeon inhabitants and the Queen’s guards. Weldon dropped his arm from Zenas before they reached within sight of the guards at the gates to the Eternal Dungeon, so as not to give the guards heart attacks. The great gates – barred, not solid, in order to permit the maximum amount of air into the dungeon – swung open as the guards sighted Zenas. Belatedly, the guards noticed Weldon and nodded their greeting to him.

  The steps down to the dungeon’s entry hall were dark and silent; the light from the
palace corridor did not travel far, and nothing could be heard from below. Zenas’s step had slowed. Weldon knew that he must be remembering his terrifying entry into this dungeon: the dim entry hall, the guards emerging from the darkness and placing an eyeless hood over his head, the light-mute march to his cell where unknown horrors awaited him. Weldon looked over at Zenas and saw that the boy was breathing rapidly, like a small animal trying to keep itself from bolting.

  Suddenly there was the sound of scraping metal, and a small light flared in the darkness. One of the guards hidden in the shadows below had recognized Zenas and had realized that this was not a new prisoner approaching, but an old one. Within seconds, all of the shutters on the lamps had been lifted, and though the light did not reach the high ceiling above where the bats slept at this time of day, the floor below was cheery with brightness. Weldon heard an approving murmur from the guards in the entry hall as Zenas made his way cautiously down the steps, staring at the guards.

  Weldon smiled as he guided Zenas up to the desk of the Record-keeper, who was pretending that he had no interest in anything other than the ledger-book he was jotting in. As they reached his desk, the Record-keeper looked up and put his hand enquiringly on the thin stack of forms nearby, bearing Zenas’s name.

  Weldon shook his head. “He has been sentenced to six years’ imprisonment here,” he said, raising his voice so that the guards could hear.

  Another approving murmur filled the entry hall. The Eternal Dungeon was full of men and women who had received eternal confinement as a form of penance for their crimes, as well as Seekers like Weldon who had voluntarily chosen eternal confinement in order to become Seekers. For such men and women, eternal confinement was a comfort, or a duty willingly taken. But to the average guard, who came and went as he pleased between the dungeon and the lighted world, eternal confinement was a fate only one step less than death. In six years, Zenas would be free again to re-enter the lighted world; Weldon could almost hear the collective sigh of relief.

  The Record-keeper lifted his eyebrows at the news of this unorthodox sentence. He pulled away the papers containing the oath of eternal confinement and pushed forward a bound volume. “In that case,” he said, “he need only sign the book.” He opened the guest book to the appropriate page.

  Weldon picked up the pen and looked over at Mr. Draper. “Can he write?”

  Mr. Draper’s snort of amusement shot through the entry hall, causing the sleepy bats above to flutter their wings. Startled, Zenas looked up toward the darkness as Weldon leaned forward, dipped the pen in the Record-keeper’s inkwell, and wrote the date and Zenas’s first name. Then he signed Zenas’s name a second time, this time in the Vovimian alphabet. Mr. Draper gave a second snort, but this one did not sound as though it held any contempt.

  Weldon attracted Zenas’s attention back from the bats and indicated, through gesture, that he wished Zenas to mark the book with an X. Zenas did this without so much as blotting the ink. As he put down the pen, he looked at Weldon, evidently seeking a sign that he had done his duty correctly. Weldon nodded, wishing that his hood did not hide his smile. With a gesture, he escorted Zenas and Mr. Draper to a small, inconspicuous door on the right wall of the entry hall.

  They entered a dimly lit corridor running left to right. The left end of the corridor led to most of the Seekers’ cells, but Weldon turned right. Leaving behind the roar of furnaces belching out smoke into the corridor, they soon reached the more subtle sound of sliding metal. To their right, immediately adjacent to the entry hall, came a large doorway, shut with glass as though it were a department store’s picture window. Weldon was not surprised when Zenas stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the room beyond the glass. Weldon had done the same, the first time he had seen the Lungs of the Eternal Dungeon.

  At first glance, they looked like nothing other than an ordinary engine, but a longer look revealed that the accordion-like apparatus within the great room was releasing no steam. Its power came from steam engines high up in the palace, beyond the reaches of the Eternal Dungeon. Here could be seen only the root-tips of the vast machinery that kept the dungeon alive: the collapsing accordion here existed, not to create power, but to give life.

  With one, powerful expansion, the right-hand Lung sucked in air from the lighted world. Then the Lung collapsed, sending the air to the interior sections of the dungeon, through a complex system of ducts. At the same moment, the left-hand Lung pulled in bad air from the dungeon and exhaled it into the lighted world. Smoothly the two Lungs worked, never tiring, never ceasing to gift the dungeon with the air it needed to survive.

  Weldon had been a resident of the outer dungeon one very bad day in his thirty-second year when the Lungs broke down and the dungeon had to be hastily evacuated, prisoners and all. He had been left with an acute consciousness of how much the dungeon’s warren of rooms and lights and other benefits of modern civilization depended upon the raw power of Yclau’s industrial revolution.

  Zenas, coming from a land where such a revolution did not yet exist, stared wide-eyed at this evidence of the sophistication of his new home. Weldon was disposed to let the boy watch as long as he wished, but he could see the translator checking his watch, so he carefully guided Zenas away. Zenas came without struggle, refraining even from looking back at the wonder behind him.

  They turned left soon after that, making their way down another dim corridor, less smoky than the previous one. Ahead of them, light chatter emerged from the Seekers’ common room. Weldon could hear Elsdon’s voice among those of the other Seekers who took night duty and were therefore enjoying their leisure hours now, in the daytime. He found himself remembering the conversation he had held with Elsdon the previous day.

  “I thought my father could do no wrong,” the junior Seeker had told Weldon. “And then, for a while, I thought the High Seeker could do no wrong. If Layle had not possessed the courage and generosity to reveal his frailties to me, my slavish devotion to him would have become just as dangerous as my slavish devotion to my father. Layle saved me from that.”

  They were halfway down the corridor now. Weldon stopped at a door, unlocked it, and pushed it open.

  His living quarters were dark, and it took him a moment to find the matches and to light the oil lamp. In the lighted world, some households were beginning to use gas lamps, but such lamps would have been far too dangerous within the confined spaces of the dungeon. Even oil lamps had their dangers; Weldon paused a moment to do his twice daily check that the vents to the ducts remained unblocked. He had never found the vents obscured, but he always checked, having known one of the outer-dungeon dwellers who died from bad fumes when a careless maid moved a trunk in front of the dwellers’ vent.

  He found himself looking critically at the room when he finished. This being a home with no windows, the oil lamps’ soot lay twice as thick upon the walls as it would have in a home in the lighted world. He had become resigned long ago to the fact that no amount of energetic scrubbing by the outer dungeon’s maids could keep his cell as clean as his parents’ home had been. He could only hope that his cell did not look too dingy to a child. He switched his gaze to Zenas to check whether the boy seemed disappointed.

  Zenas was not looking at the dirt, nor at anything else in the living area. His gaze was fixed upon the curtain to the alcove, which was open just wide enough to reveal the stuffed lion cub.

  Weldon carefully drew the curtain back and waved Zenas in. Zenas approached the room cautiously, looking round at the other toys, but his eye returned to the cub. He came up close to it, and for a moment it appeared that he would touch it. Then he hastily stepped back and directed a question at Weldon.

  “He wishes to know whether this room belongs to your son, and whether it is your son that you wish him to serve,” explained Mr. Draper.

  Weldon had to take a moment to swallow before answering. “Tell him that this room belonged to my son when he was alive. Tell him that my son died a month ago.”

  He
could tell the moment at which the news was conveyed to Zenas, from the manner in which the boy’s face grew grave. In a somber voice, Zenas said something. Mr. Draper translated, “He is grieved to hear of your great loss and wishes to know whether he might do anything for you to ease your sorrow.”

  Already, Weldon noticed, the boy was picking at the clasps of his shirt, but tentatively, awaiting the appropriate order. Weldon took a deep breath.

  “Tell him,” he said, “that I have no need for a slave, no need for a beloved in that sense.” He saw Zenas’s fingers flick open the first clasp as the boy heard the word chau, but Zenas halted again as Weldon continued, “Tell him that I have no need of a slave, but I have very great need of a son. Tell him that I have brought him here so that he can be my beloved son.”

  Mr. Draper translated rapidly. Zenas looked from Weldon to Mr. Draper, and then shook his head. He said something briefly.

  The translator shrugged. “He does not believe me,” he reported to Weldon. “He thinks I have misunderstood you.”

  Weldon sighed. “How do I tell him myself?”

  It took five minutes of whispers between the two of them for Weldon to reach the point where he could produce something that vaguely resembled the old tongue. By the time he was through, he held greater respect than he had before for the translator’s linguistic abilities. Coming forward to where Zenas awaited him, his fingers still resting upon his shirt clasps, Weldon said, “Zenas, I am your father. Papa tos suum, Zenas.”

  The hand on Zenas’s clasps went suddenly still. For a minute more nothing happened, until Weldon was ready to turn to Mr. Draper and ask him what an appalling mess he had made in his attempt to speak the boy’s language. Then he noticed that Zenas was biting his lip, and his chin was quivering.

  Weldon reached over and took the cub, then carefully placed it in the boy’s arms. Kneeling down, he said softly, “Zenas, papa tos suum.”

  His back was to the translator; as he spoke, he raised his hood so that Zenas could see the tears underneath. He made no attempt to hide them. This was his gift to the boy: a gift he had begun to give in the youth’s cell and would give every day of his life, for as long as Zenas needed him. Whatever other follies he had committed, Weldon was determined that Zenas should know that he was a fallible man, with frailties as great as Zenas’s.

  The boy’s breath caught. With the hand not clutching the cub, he reached out and touched one of the tears on Weldon’s face. Then, in a choked voice, he said, “Ador te suum, Papa.” He flung himself into Weldon’s arms.

  Behind them, the translator reported, “He says he loves you.”

  “I know,” Weldon said in a low voice as he embraced Zenas. “Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Draper. I think that my son and I will be able to communicate from this time forth. I hope,” he added out of customary politeness, “that I have not made you miss the Queen’s speech.”

  “Mr. Chapman,” replied the translator in a voice holding neither amusement nor contempt, “I would have missed a dozen speeches by both your Queen and my King for the opportunity to have witnessed this. This will give me something appropriate to say when I return home this summer and must listen to my family drone on about the barbarities of the Yclau.”

  Weldon waited until the door had shut behind the translator; then he turned his head so that he could kiss Zenas on the cheek. The boy was quiet in his arms now, and there was a smile on his face.

  o—o—o

  They were still sitting together on the floor an hour later when the door opened again, and a familiar voice said, “Weldon, you’re here, aren’t you? I met with the High Seeker; he spoke to me at length about your latest prisoner and said that you would be here afterwards, because he had granted you day-leave to rest after the boy’s trial. I trust that you were able to save the poor child? —By all that’s sacred, you must be here somewhere.” Birdesmond’s voice lowered to a murmur as she moved to another part of the living quarters, searching. “I hope you’re home, because I had a brawling fight with Mother this morning when I discovered she hadn’t been posting my letters to you, and then I spent three hours tangled in traffic in a dusty tram. All I want to do now is take a long, cool bath and then go to bed with y— Why, what is this?”

  As she spoke, Birdesmond reached the entrance to the alcove and saw Weldon and Zenas on the floor. Her hand went rapidly up to lower the face-cloth of her hood, and then just as rapidly dropped. Custom demanded that Seekers cover their faces even in the presence of a strange child, but Weldon’s wife had never been one to follow custom when it went against her instincts.

  Zenas twisted in Weldon’s arms to look at him. “Mama?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Weldon nodded. “This is your mama, your mother. Go and greet her.”

  He gently pushed the boy onto his feet. Birdesmond, always the quicker-witted of the two of them, was already down on one knee, her skirt swept back and her arms reaching out.

  Zenas walked forward cautiously, as he had when re-entering the dungeon. His gaze was fixed upon Birdesmond’s face. Then he appeared to reach a decision, for he rushed into Birdesmond’s arms, cub and all.

  Weldon rose to his feet. When Birdesmond raised her face from Zenas’s shoulder, her eyelashes sparkled with moisture. “You’ve been busy while I’ve been gone,” she said softly to her husband.

  “I’m afraid so.” Weldon smiled back at her. “A prisoner had need of us.”

  o—o—o

  o—o—o

  . . . The Eternal Dungeon’s documents record many examples of this personal assistance. As a single example, I may cite the case of the man known to history simply as Zenas.

  In the many biographies written about Zenas, it is generally noted in passing that Zenas spent his early youth in the Eternal Dungeon. This is treated as a subject of little interest. Instead, the authors imply that the most important years of his life came during his childhood, when he endured great brutality as a Vovimian slave, and during his manhood, when he returned to Vovim and took on the veil of the aekae. Thus garbed, he began his mighty work as one of the prophets of Vovim, denouncing the rich and powerful. His words were said to be all the more effective because they came from a man clearly possessed with the qualities of modesty, humility, and gentleness. These qualities, accompanied by a fierce desire to bring an end to the suffering of the oppressed, proved to be a pivotal factor in the eventual downfall of the old Vovimian monarchy and the rise of the new Vovimian government, which abolished slavery and other atrocities in that land.

  It is usually implied by Zenas’s biographers that the prophet acquired these characteristics during his childhood, and that his time spent in the Eternal Dungeon was merely a detour on his road to greatness. Yet we may note that, while Zenas never returned to Yclau, he remained in correspondence with his adopted parents until the ends of their lives, and that he spoke often of the Eternal Dungeon as the place where “the gods taught me my future.” Whether the Seekers had a part to play in the gods’ teachings, Zenas did not say, but any historian of the Eternal Dungeon cannot help but be struck by the similarities between the transformation that the Eternal Dungeon sought to bring to its prisoners and the transformation that Zenas successfully brought to his native land.

  Readers of this volume may wonder at this point why I have taken so wide a detour of my primary subject. The title of this volume is “Transformation,” yet most of the transformations I have described took place outside the boundaries of the Eternal Dungeon, and any connections between the Seekers and the men and women who wrought such change were important but brief.

  The reason I have spent so much time dwelling on these incidents is that we must place the Seekers’ work in its proper perspective. The Eternal Dungeon did not invent the concept of transformation, nor was a single man in the Eternal Dungeon responsible for the adaptation of that idea to the use of transforming the hearts and minds of prisoners. Indeed, many books have been written about the history of the term “transformation�
� in Yclau’s native religion, a religion that long preceded the arrival of the Eternal Dungeon. To suggest that one person in the Eternal Dungeon was the sole creator of transformation is to give him more credit than he deserves.

  That said, there is no doubt that a particular technique of transformation was born in the Eternal Dungeon. Unlike the other transformations I have mentioned, this technique went unnoted by the chroniclers of its time. No newspaper mentioned it; even Weldon Chapman, the contemporary historian of the Golden Age of the Eternal Dungeon, left out all mention of it in his writings.

  Yet this technique of transformation would, in the long run, have as great an effect on the world as the uprisings and revolutions I have mentioned. Thanks to the documents that Weldon Chapman collected for posterity, we know the origins of this technique, and we therefore know that it was invented by a single man.

  Thus it is that we must return to the tale of Layle Smith.

  In the third month of 359, nine months after Zenas’s arrival at the Eternal Dungeon, eighteen months after Layle Smith began to emerge from his Second Madness, and nearly three years after Layle Smith’s mental instability first made itself apparent, the Codifier wrote the following words in a page of his record book: “Due to Mr. Smith’s continued refusal to return to his duties in searching prisoners, I have advised the Queen that Mr. Smith should be relieved of his title as High Seeker and be required to enter into retirement.”

  The rest of the page is blank, like a breath being held.

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

  Transformation 4

  THE CONSULTATION

  The year 359, the third month. (The year 1881 Clover by the Old Calendar.)

  Recently, revisionist historians – rightly recoiling from the smothering effusiveness of early biographies of Layle Smith – have suggested a very different portrait of the Eternal Dungeon’s first High Seeker. They depict Layle Smith as a cold-hearted murderer and rapist who reached his exalted title as a result of chance and who remained, to his dying day, a dangerous and unscrupulous man, feared by all who met him.

  Ironically, the primary evidence for this portrait is drawn from Layle Smith’s indictments of himself in his letters. To sense how far his self-image lay from reality, we need only read the most important eyewitness account of Layle Smith’s First Madness.

  This account comes from the Codifier, the man who supervised the ethical conduct of the Seekers at the time of Layle Smith’s High Seekership. Excerpts from the undated entries of his official records follow hereafter.