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

by Dusk Peterson

CHAPTER TWO

  The High Seeker ran his thumb over the curve of the surface. The surface was chill and slick to the touch, and so transparent that he could see all that lay beneath it: the white skin of the prisoner encased in ice.

  Layle’s hand ran up the ice above the prisoner’s chest; his eyes were taking in the signs of age upon the prisoner’s body. Then he reached the throat, and his thumb halted. The ice curved with the throat, following the line of the prisoner’s body as though the body wore tight clothing. Layle pressed his thumb more firmly against the ice.

  It stung like a dozen bees upon his skin, but within seconds, water began to drip slowly down from where Layle’s thumb heated the ice. After several more minutes, he had reached the whitened skin.

  It felt chill as well, but it was warmer than the ice. Under his thumb came a faint beating, at slow, irregular intervals. He spent a moment calculating its rate from the regular rhythm of his own breath. Then he brushed his thumb across the skin, feeling the height of the goose-pimples there.

  The throat moved slightly, embracing a swallow. He waited until the prisoner’s swallow was gone, then closed his eyes and concentrated his hearing on the barely perceptible whisper of air emerging from the hole he had created: a breath, shallow, labored, coming at fitful intervals. Layle let his thumb slide away and he stepped back, frowning.

  “Well?”

  Layle glanced over his shoulder at his master. In this ice-covered cavern, the phosphorescent light was brighter than in the corridors outside, and Master Aeden’s pupils were small spots against brown fields. Layle turned back to look at the prisoner. The man’s whole body was encased in ice, including the eyes, but the glass-like ice showed the slight movement of the prisoner’s eyes as he looked from his torturer to the High Seeker. His pupils were so wide that they nearly swallowed the color of his eyes.

  Layle reached over to the cavern wall upon which the prisoner was attached, standing stiffly upright. Pulling off a shard of ice, he raised it until it caught afire with light. The light-ray hit the prisoner in the eyes, but there was no change, either in his expression or in the eyes.

  Layle let the shard fall with a tinkle to the ground. “How long has he been like this?”

  “Can’t you tell?” Master Aeden’s voice was challenging, as it had been when he was training Layle.

  “Yes. But my answer doesn’t match the evidence before me.”

  “So what do you see?” his master asked softly.

  Layle let his gaze travel once more over the frigid form before he said, “The prisoner is about forty-five years old. He has worked as a laborer, probably in the fields, judging from the types of cuts on his hands. He is in the early stages of freezing. He can still understand easily any questions he is asked, and if you were to allow him freedom from the ice, his movements would be little impaired. He is at the stage where freezing is a pain, not yet a comfort to be embraced. The warmth is being slowly sucked from him. He is . . . four degrees colder than usual, I think.”

  He heard a sigh from behind. “Ah, my dear,” Master Aeden said. “I think your coming here is worth it to me just to hear those words. There have been times over the years when I wondered whether my memories of you were nothing more than the fond dreamings of a torturer nearing old age, who has created in his mind the image of an infallible apprentice.”

  “Then let me break that image through my fallibility,” Layle said, his gaze transfixed upon the prisoner’s eyes, shifting from one speaker to the next. “At a minimum, your prisoner could not have been here for less than six hours – it would have taken that long for the ice to take the form it has. Moreover, he is entirely encased in ice, with no breathing hole. He should be dead by now. What’s keeping him alive?”

  “If I told you, would you understand?”

  Despite himself, Layle felt a small smile touch his lips. “No. Knowledge of machinery was never my strength.”

  “Yes, I’d gathered that from the number of times you broke my rack while it was under your use.” Master Aeden’s voice was dry. “If you hadn’t been as skilled with prisoners as you were, I would have confined you to using the Adoration.”

  “Too slow.” Layle reached forward and touched the prisoner’s skin again. The heartbeat had not changed. “There are better methods of breaking prisoners.”

  He heard a sigh behind him. “Our eternal argument. I fancied you had come to recognize the value of a sure, steady method of dealing pain to prisoners.”

  Layle said only, “How long has the torture lasted?”

  “Sixteen months. That’s right, isn’t it?” Master Aeden raised his voice, and the prisoner shifted his eyes toward the speaker. Otherwise, there was no movement of the eyes to indicate surprise.

  Layle felt a coldness enter his stomach and a wave of heat enter him further down. It was a combination he was used to, so he paid it no mind. “Why?” he asked quietly. “The prisoner can’t even confess his crime to you – you’ve sealed his mouth.”

  “Why should we want to hear his confession? We already know what he’s done.”

  There was a small silence, disturbed only by the wind whistling through the cavern. Where Layle’s thumb had lain upon the prisoner’s throat, the moisture had returned to ice.

  “I see,” Layle said in a voice he could not strip of bitterness. “So this is like the rapes you taught me to perform as a boy. It doesn’t matter that the prisoner has given his confession; you will continue his pain for a while longer, in order to demonstrate your power over him.”

  He was aware, even as he spoke, that he was acting in an unprofessional manner, criticizing a colleague in front of a prisoner. He could not stop himself. This was how it had been in the old days, when he and his master had halted periodically in their work to argue with raised voices over the proper method by which to proceed, while the prisoner writhed between them, awaiting his fate.

  Now there was only silence. Finally Layle turned his head slowly. Master Aeden was looking at him with an expression that would have been unreadable, had Layle not been who he was. As it was, he could sense clearly the mixture of anger and pain that his master was successfully hiding from the rest of the world. “You are mistaken,” Master Aeden said softly. “This prisoner was searched and confessed before his arrival here. This is a punishment dungeon.”

  Layle turned his gaze swiftly back to the prisoner. The prisoner followed him with his eyes, the remainder of his body immobile.

  Sixteen months?

  Sweet blood, that was only the beginning. Layle felt his chest grow tight, all the pleasurable warmth below forgotten. He had known this was happening in Vovim. He should not be surprised. He should not feel the pain anew.

  This prisoner before him was the fruit of Layle Smith’s tireless efforts to extend prison reform into his native land. As the result of international pressure that Layle had orchestrated upon Vovim, the King of Vovim had agreed to lift the traditional death sentence for some of the lesser crimes.

  And here was what the King had given the prisoners instead. Lifelong torture.

  Layle felt a grip upon his shoulder, and he became aware at the same moment that someone was softly cursing. It was himself. He bit his lip closed and let Master Aeden steer him out of the cavern. He was shivering as though he were the one encased in ice, and he was not surprised when Master Aeden, without comment, dropped his cloak back upon Layle’s shoulders. His master’s arm followed, and Layle allowed himself to be guided down the curving corridor.

  After a while, Layle asked, “Were you ordered to work here?”

  “Yes. But it makes no difference; I am pleased to be here. Now, hear me out, my dear,” he added, though Layle had not spoken. “I know that the role of executioner never appealed to you – nor to me, for that matter. But if a crime is committed, someone must carry out the just punishment that the criminal deserves. You used to tell me that you hated the thought of torturing innocent prisoners. Well, you should be happy to work in a dungeon where every p
risoner you torture is guilty and will merit the pain he receives.”

  “Just punishment.” Layle gave half a breath of laughter. “Master, you know well enough how little justice exists in Vovim. Do you truly believe that all of the prisoners here are guilty? That even most of them are?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  The response startled him. He pulled away from Master Aeden’s arm and looked over at the older torturer. His master said nothing, though, but trailed his hand over the whorled pattern of the rocks they were passing. “Beautiful, isn’t it? Nature’s art. It’s been a while since you’ve seen prison art, I imagine.”

  Layle was silent a moment, wondering, with professional calculation, whether this was the moment to press Master Aeden on the topic he was avoiding. Then he said, “Yes, I’ve missed that. I’m afraid that the Eternal Dungeon is of no great beauty, as outward appearances go.”

  “Visit Vovim for the arts, visit Yclau for machines – that’s what they say.” Master Aeden’s smile deepened.

  “We have art tradesmen,” Layle said.

  After a moment, he recognized the defensiveness of his reply. He glanced at Master Aeden and saw that his master was openly grinning. A smile tugged at Layle’s lips, and he conceded, “They deal mainly in Vovimian artworks. Yes, I miss the arts in Yclau. When I was quite young, before my father died, my mother and I lived in a cottage that had an etching framed on the wall. It showed the artist’s concept of the divine world.”

  Master Aeden snorted. “Why do I suspect that the picture was of the torture-god’s dwelling?”

  Layle’s smile quirked as they made their way down the corridor. “You know me too well. It was a beautifully detailed picture of hell, showing the great spiral downwards to the bottom of the pit. Every soul’s punishment was lovingly depicted. At the very top of the picture, looking down upon everything, was a torturer – at least, I assumed he was a torturer, because he had a smile on his face. He was holding in his hand a tiny black object. I used to spend hours trying to decide whether the object was a hot poker or pincers.”

  Master Aeden snorted again. “And you implied just now that I tried to corrupt you. My dear, any five-year-old boy who spends his days dreaming of torture needs no lessons in corruption from me.” He stopped at a doorway and waved Layle forward. “You look a bit chilly – it’s warmer in here.”

  Layle stepped through the archway and was met at once by a blast of heat, as though from an overstoked furnace. He drew his breath in sharply; he was proof of the old saying that torturers cannot abide torture upon themselves. After a moment’s pause to collect himself, he accompanied Master Aeden into the heart of the cavern.

  It was not as bright as the ice-torture cavern had been, and so it took him a minute to make out the dozens of figures before him. They were bound to poles, but he could see only their shoulders and heads, for the remainder of their bodies were immersed in a dark pool at the center of the cavern. His nose quivered with a familiar scent. Even before he drew close enough to see the color of the pool, he knew that it was composed of blood.

  A low humming like that of bees came from the mass of prisoners bound inside the pool. The moans were not loud or piercing; they were like the groanings of a man who has endured too hard a labor. Rimming the pool, watching the souls carefully, were men and women holding hayforks, occasionally poking any soul whose moans had diminished. They glanced up as the newcomers arrived, and a couple of them nodded their greetings to Master Aeden.

  Nobody greeted Layle, but he guessed that they knew who he was, for several of them drew back as he came forward, as though shielding themselves from a chill wind. He was used to that. Ignoring them, he knelt down next to the pool and cautiously touched the blood. It was uncomfortably warm, but not scalding. He looked again at the moaning souls, lingering in their suffering.

  An elbow nudged him, and he looked over to see that Master Aeden was offering him a cup. “Here,” he said. “This will warm your body.”

  Layle nearly had it in hand before he realized that the cup contained blood. He shook his head, and Master Aeden sighed. “You’ll need to become used to the food and drink here, you know,” the master torturer said.

  “No.”

  Master Aeden’s expression flickered; Layle guessed that the other man had surmised the all-encompassing nature of his reply. Rising up from where he knelt, Master Aeden said briskly, “It’s crowded in here. Let’s go where we can talk.”

  They walked through the moaning cavern, passing between shadows and dim light, until they reached a narrowing of the cave. Layle followed Master Aeden through the gap and found himself in a cavern without light, other than what trickled through the doorway. Dimly ahead of him, he could see a river of blood moving sluggishly toward the pool behind them. Layle’s heart beat hard for a moment, but when he looked for the source of the river, he realized that it was the rocks themselves, pouring out blood in a small waterfall. He could see no hole to escape through.

  The whisper of the fall was the only sound in this place; the moans in the nearby cavern were too faint to reach here. Master Aeden sat down at the riverbank, sipping slowly from the rejected cup and occasionally making a face at the taste. Layle sat beside him and stared at the river’s surface, too dark to reflect any object.

  “My dear, how did it happen?”

  He did not pretend to misunderstand. “It wasn’t due to the Code, master. I was a Seeker for nearly twenty years, abiding by the Seekers’ Code, before the madness came upon me.”

  He lifted his eyes toward his master. Master Aeden’s long beard had touches of grey upon it, and his eyes were flanked by creases that had not been there when Layle was apprenticed to him. Otherwise he looked much the same as in the old days. Except for the line across his cheek. Layle had seen that line only once in his lifetime, upon their last meeting: when Master Aeden had stood outside the Hidden Dungeon, naked of all weapons and with the fresh scar of Layle’s whip upon his face.

  “Master,” Layle said quietly, “if you’ve had me brought here because you’re angered that I tried to kill you, would it ease your pain if I told you I have regretted that deed every day since then?”

  Master Aeden lifted his eyebrows. “Why should I be angry at you? I’d tortured and raped your love-mate. Any man would have done what you did.”

  “You were acting upon the King’s orders. And as for vengeance . . . Elsdon didn’t want me to hurt you. He tried to stop me from killing you. I did what I did, not for his sake, but for my own. Because I hated myself for feeling desire at the sight of his mutilations. Because I hated you for making me what I am.” He flicked a rock into the water; it rose to the surface and floated down the river in the direction of the pool. In a low voice, Layle added, “You were right in what you said, though. I was corrupt long before I first met you.”

  He felt a touch of the hand upon his chin; then his face was lifted and turned. Master Aeden looked upon him with eyes that made Layle’s chest tight with the memory.

  “My dear,” said his master gently, “you always had one great fault as a torturer: you were too hard on yourself. You let your conscience torture you more than you tortured any prisoner. Though I didn’t approve of your decision to flee to the Eternal Dungeon, I hoped that there, at least, you would find a way to make peace with your dark desire.”

  Layle turned his head away, staring into the shadow-black blood. “I did, after a fashion. When I first arrived at the Eternal Dungeon, I tried to rid myself of my dark desire. Even before I realized that I couldn’t break that binding, I had found a way to keep my desire from harming others: I fed it with dreamings of the past and the imaginary, so that it wouldn’t act in the real world.”

  Master Aeden sighed. “You gave your desire stale food, when you might have remained in Vovim and fed it with a banquet.”

  “Master, what a Seeker can do—” He realized that his voice had risen so loud that it was bouncing off the cavern walls. He lowered his voice. “I can’t explain
it; you would have to witness it to understand the joy. I am so indebted to the Code that any sacrifice I can make to it is small in comparison to what it has given me.”

  “Mm.” Master Aeden examined his fingernails for a moment before nibbling upon one. Layle saw him swallow the nail-shaving. “I begin to understand. You were always more pious than me, my dear – I prefer to wait to hear what the gods want of me rather than offer sacrifice beyond which they might demand. But I suppose that sort of waiting is difficult in a land where no god ever speaks his wishes. Well, you made your sacrifice to your new religion – but something went wrong. Your dark desire wasn’t satisfied with what you fed it?”

  “For seventeen years it was.” Layle brushed the blood-warm rocks with his fingers. “Then I met Elsdon Taylor.”

  “Ah.” Master Aeden’s response was little more than a sigh.

  Layle turned to look at his master. “You spoke with Elsdon.”

  Master Aeden gave one of his deep smiles. “We had the opportunity to chat during his torture, yes. A fine young man – if you’re seeking my blessing, you have it. But I can see why he would have disturbed your equilibrium. He certainly disturbed mine.” He ended on a dry note.

  Layle hesitated. This was not a matter he had spoken of to any person other than the Eternal Dungeon’s healer; amidst all the dungeon gossip, Layle wished keenly to preserve the privacy of the bedroom he shared with Elsdon. But if anyone had served as a father during Layle’s youth, it had been Master Aeden, and his master already knew half the story.

  As though sensing Layle’s need to be prompted, Master Aeden said, “You found a way to make love to him.”

  Layle nodded, returning his focus to the rocks. “He understood my difficulty and encouraged me to use my dreamings as a way to raise my desire with him. When we were together, I would dream my dark dreamings and would give him orders that corresponded in some way to what I was doing to him in the dreamings – orders that wouldn’t hurt him in the real world.”

  “Ah!” Master Aeden’s delight at this news shone like a light in the cavern. He reached forward and squeezed Layle’s hand. “Very clever, my dear. I wish I had thought to suggest this when you first struggled with your problem, back in your apprentice days. But I suppose it needed the right partner to be carried off properly. So your love-mate is a good play-actor?”

  Layle shook his head. “He doesn’t play-act. He followed my orders, but he didn’t know what play we were acting. I never told him at the time what my dreamings were about.”

  “What?” Master Aeden’s voice was sharp as he pulled back. “My dear, what nonsense is this? I thought better than that of your young man.”

  Layle tightened his fists and then swiftly loosened them, retreating from the instinct he always felt to torture anyone who attacked Elsdon. “Master, you don’t understand. Tell me, when were you last at the theater?”

  “Why, just yesterday, my dear. You know I never miss a performance if my leisure hours permit it. We have quite a fine theater company here – though I’m bound to say that the directing lacks finesse. That’s probably because our director is being hung in chains. He’s not always as alert as we’d like him to be.”

  Layle waited until the shudder had passed through his body and the heat had receded from his loins before saying, “The Yclau have no theater.”

  A long silence followed. He supposed that Master Aeden was still absorbing this news, as he might have absorbed the news that the sun no longer existed. Then Master Aeden said, in the tentative voice of a man reaching a conclusion, “You’re making mock.”

  “I’m not. Oh, they have something they call theater. The director decides beforehand what speeches and activities will take place in the play, and then the players memorize their lines and movements, and when that’s done, they perform their play.”

  “Good Mercy above!” Master Aeden’s voice resonated with shock. “I always knew they were barbarians. No one there does proper acting?”

  Layle shook his head. “Just the children. They play-act the Vovimian way, deciding first what their roles will be, and then playing out their parts as they are inspired. They have a game there, Torturer and Prisoner – you’d like it.”

  Master Aeden chuckled. “I’ll pass it by, thank you. Unlike you, torturing is my job, not my leisure. . . . Your love-mate grew up in Yclau. Surely, if he play-acted as a child . . .”

  Layle shook his head once more. “Master, it’s not that simple. I’m sure Elsdon never played Torturer and Prisoner – he couldn’t have. When he was a boy, he was bound and tortured by his father.”

  For a moment, silence spread between them, like widening waters. Then Layle felt Master Aeden’s hand cover his once more. “I see,” his master said quietly. “I wondered why my simple act of binding him broke him so easily. . . . So he cannot play-act that he is being tortured.” Layle shook his head, and Master Aeden sighed.

  “It seemed not to matter at first,” Layle said. “We were happy together; we both thought we had found all we ever wanted.”

  “Was my torture what destroyed the peace between you?” Master Aeden’s voice was even as he withdrew his hand.

  “Elsdon has always thought so. Not that he dwells on your role in the matter – resentment isn’t in his nature. But he thinks that I blamed myself overmuch for sending him to Vovim, and that this is what drove me into madness.”

  “And that wasn’t the reason?” Master Aeden’s voice remained quiet.

  “Not the full reason. It played a part, but even before Elsdon left for Vovim . . . There had been trouble between us. Not in our souls, but in my body – I was finding it harder and harder to respond to him. And when he came back from Vovim . . . He knew that I would dream of his torture under you the first time we went to bed together again, yet he tried . . . We both tried. My failure was greater than his. I’ve never been sure why.”

  Master Aeden sighed again. His breath rippled the sluggish water, sending waves travelling in the direction of the pool. “My dear, if I were to direct a company of two, and if I told one player, ‘Perform this role for me,’ and I told the other player, ‘You are not to play-act – just follow my orders blindly’ . . . How good a play do you think would result?”

  Layle pulled up his legs against his chest and rested his chin upon his knees. In a tight voice, he said, “You are saying we have not been in union with one another.”

  “My dear, whatever your bodies may have been doing together, your minds have been in different places. And where the minds are disunited, the bodies cannot stay in union for long. If this were only a passing affair, and you were to seek other love-mates—”

  Layle shook his head quickly, and Master Aeden sighed again. “You’ve tried since the madness?”

  “To make love to Elsdon? No, that would be too dangerous; my control over myself has dwindled in the past three years. But Elsdon and I have tried to stay linked together when I enter into my dreamings, as we did in the days when we made love – it’s the dungeon healer’s best suggestion for how I can keep from being sucked into the madness again. It hasn’t worked. It’s what holds me back from working with prisoners again: the knowledge that I no longer have a way to feed my dark desire. If I try to stay linked with Elsdon, I fail; if I enter into a dreaming on my own, I risk being pulled back into madness. And if my dark desire is given no food and decides to feed upon the people around me . . .”

  Master Aeden let out his breath slowly, its sound almost obscured by the waterfall of blood. “My dear, out of all the men and women in the world, why did you choose to fall in love with the one man who cannot give you the type of love you need?”

  Layle felt a wry smile touch his lips. “I’ve asked Elsdon that question often enough. I don’t know why he remains with me – I’ve tried to persuade him to leave me endless times. I tried to escape him through my madness, to free him so that he wouldn’t be hurt by me any more. It didn’t work; he came for me. He’ll come for me again and spend his life
searching for me.”

  After a while, he turned his head to look at Master Aeden. His master said nothing; he was staring over the blood to the dark wall beyond. Then he opened his mouth to speak, but any sound he might have made was swallowed up by a roar as the ground broke free of its bindings and shook.

  Layle toppled over. He clutched the rocks, as though trying to hold the ground steady. All he could think through the deafening rumble was, At least death comes here rather than to the Eternal Dungeon.

  It was the nightmare that haunted every Seeker who knew the history of the Eternal Dungeon. The dungeon’s predecessor had been destroyed a century before, when the cave it was housed in collapsed, killing most of the torturers and guards and prisoners. The remaining torturers and guards had used the calamity as an excuse to overturn the old system of searching prisoners and to create a new system, marked by the publication of the Code of Seeking.

  Then, with perhaps a little less forethought, they had housed themselves in another cave. Their new cave was said to be stronger than the first and unlikely to collapse, but Layle had not held as much confidence about this as his predecessors had. Every slight vibration in the Eternal Dungeon caused the hair on his skin to stand upright.

  And now the death he had feared had come, but at least it came only to him, and not to Elsdon and the other Seekers. Amidst the continued thunder of the earthquake, Layle closed his eyes and waited.

  And felt the rumbling subside. A moment later, a hand tugged at his arm.

  “Time for us to be going, my dear,” Master Aeden said cheerfully. “That’s the beginning of your shift. We can linger a while in the torturers’ common cavern, but after that, we need to get you to your work.”

  Layle pulled himself carefully to his feet. “That was a signal for a shift?”

  “Alas, yes.” Master Aeden’s voice turned weary. “I do wish the High Master would find a subtler way to indicate his desires. But I suppose it’s to be expected. Watch your step, my dear – there’s always a loose rock or two lying about at the beginning of shifts.”

  Layle followed him back along the dark riverside, and then through the dim archway, and then stood motionless. The cavern with the pool had disappeared: Layle stood on the rim of a cylindrical cavern which rose so high that he could not see the ceiling above him. Beside him, Master Aeden was softly cursing.

  “I wish he would stop moving the caverns about like that,” the older torturer grumbled. “Now I’ll have to spend the rest of the day figuring out where my prisoners are.”

  Layle said nothing. His gaze had dropped to what lay below him: the whorls of the cavern, plummeting endlessly like the hollow interior of an auger shell. The cylinder narrowed as it deepened; spiralling around its edges was a pathway. The upper portion of the path, where Layle stood, was open like a balcony, but not far beyond, the pathway grew darker and turned into a double row of small, windowless rooms – cells, Layle guessed. He could see tens of thousands of them, and he could see all that took place within them, for the ice ceilings that covered them were translucent. In each cell a prisoner lay, and in many of the cells were torturers as well, working with diligence.

  “Master,” Layle said slowly, “this is hell.”

  He looked up to see that Master Aeden was smiling at him. “Of course it is,” said the man who had been his master. “You killed me, remember?”