The Eternal Dungeon: a Turn-of-the-Century Toughs omnibus
Page 68
CHAPTER THREE
Elsdon smiled in his sleep. He had pushed down his blankets a while back; his chest and arms could be seen, golden in the lamplight. The fire from the lamp picked out the sun-bright fire in his hair, making it burn in the dark bedroom. He looked like the goddess Mercy, on one of the days when she disguised herself as a boy.
Hell sat beside Mercy. Layle stared down at Elsdon, held back from destroying his love-mate for the same reason the god had failed to destroy his sister: out of love for the young man sleeping next to him.
Not so young any more, Layle reflected, carefully watching each rise and fall of his love-mate’s chest for signs of any break in Elsdon’s peace. Five years had passed since the first time they had done this; Elsdon was now fully a man, in both body and power. In those five years, Elsdon had held true to him through all the trials that the High Seeker had sent him: Layle’s confession of the truth about his past, his entrance into madness not once but twice, his slow healing from that madness.
And in all that time, Layle’s love for Elsdon had not waned. Every time it threatened to – every time the High Seeker began to take for granted the man whose life he shared – Elsdon would notice, and on the day he noticed, Elsdon would demand this sacred ceremony of him. That was what it felt like to Layle – as though he were offering up Elsdon as a sacrifice to the gods each time. Each time, for five years, the gods had declined his gift. And each time, he and Elsdon had emerged from the sacrifice reborn: Elsdon renewed in his dedication as a Seeker, Layle renewed in his love for Elsdon.
The junior Seeker murmured something in his sleep. Layle leaned forward, frowning, but Elsdon’s smile had not disappeared. Whatever it was he was feeling in his sleep, it gave him as much pleasure as their ceremony had. Reassured, Layle leaned back, resisting the impulse to stretch. He had been in this same position for seven hours now, and would not shift from it until Elsdon was awake again.
Elsdon did not like that. Each time, he wanted Layle to sleep beside him afterwards, or at least for them to stay awake together. But Elsdon was always drowsy after they were through, and Layle had been firm on this point. It was, he had pointed out, fair exchange for the fact that Elsdon always required that Layle reach his zenith when they did this, though Layle would have preferred to have placed all his concentration on keeping Elsdon safe. If Elsdon required Layle’s pleasure for his own to be complete, Layle had said sternly, then at least he could allow Layle the peace of mind to see this ceremony through to its end.
Elsdon, being a Seeker, knew why Layle needed this; he had permitted Layle his way in this matter. Tonight there was no sign that the ritual was anything more than formality, but he could not take the chance that he was wrong.
A soft rap on the door leading to the inner dungeon caused him to frown again. This was his night off; it was also Elsdon’s night off. The dungeon inhabitants, who were dimly aware that he and Elsdon played out unusual acts in their bedroom, were always careful not to disturb the two Seekers when their nights off coincided together. Nobody much liked the thought of walking in on the High Seeker while he was acting out one of his dreamings.
He took a swift look at Elsdon, but his love-mate was so deep into his honey-rich dreams that he had not heard the knock. Slowly Layle rose from the bed, taking care not to jar Elsdon from his rest. Pulling down the face-cloth of his hood, he walked into the next room, leaving the bedroom door open wide enough that he could still see Elsdon if anything should change there.
His visitor turned out to be Mr. Sobel, a guard wise enough to keep his gaze focussed entirely on the High Seeker when the door opened. “Forgive me, sir,” he said softly, “but I bear a message from the Queen, by way of the Codifier. Her spies from Vovim have just brought back a rumor concerning the High Master of the Hidden Dungeon; she believes it important that you know of this rumor. The Codifier asks that you meet with him, at your convenience.”
“Is the matter urgent?” Layle asked, though he already knew the answer. “At your convenience” was the Codifier’s way of saying that he would not claw the other person into fragments if the recipient of his message was delayed in arriving.
“He did not say it was, High Seeker.”
Layle nodded. “Offer my apologies to the Codifier and say that, if the matter is not urgent, I will come to see him tomorrow. If the matter is urgent, I’m afraid he will have to come here to deliver the message. I am on a death watch.”
Mr. Sobel was undoubtedly the best-trained guard in the dungeon; yet even so, his eyes flicked toward the bedroom and away quickly. “I’ll deliver the message, sir. Do you have any need for assistance here?”
“No,” replied Layle. And then, because his relations with his senior night guard had grown closer during the past year, he added what he would have said to no other man: “The danger is not great. I am being precautionary, that is all.”
Clearly relieved at the High Seeker’s news, Mr. Sobel departed, shutting the door as he went. Layle lifted the face-cloth of his hood and returned to where he had been before, sitting beside his sleeping love-mate. He spent a minute counting Elsdon’s breaths, to be sure they had not grown more rapid than before. He had learned this task long ago, when he was first trained as a young Seeker to care for his prisoners.
Death watch. That was what it was called when a Seeker remained beside the bed of a prisoner who had just been racked. At a low level, there was almost no risk that the rack would bring permanent damage or death to a prisoner, but when the rack was used at a high level, the danger existed. And death, when it came, did not always come while the prisoner lay on the rack. Inward injuries could be slow in making their effects known. If a newly racked prisoner survived the first twenty-four hours without sign of pain, Seekers had discovered through experience, he was unlikely to die.
It had become the custom, as generations passed, for Seekers to spend those first twenty-four hours on a death watch over their prisoners. If the prisoner began to die, there was little a Seeker could do; the healing arts had not yet advanced far enough to be able to mend most inward injuries. But a Seeker could at least be there, to witness the consequences of what he had done, and to offer the prisoner what comfort and companionship he could, in the prisoner’s final moments.
Elsdon’s breath was steady. There was still no sign that the High Seeker had injured him inside, though Layle would not be able to relax until the twenty-four hours were past. He looked again at the fine curves of Elsdon’s face, as a Seeker looks at the face of a prisoner who may be lost to him in a short while.
“I will never take you for granted,” he whispered to his sleeping love-mate. “I will never turn you from my door. And if the worst should happen and you should leave me, I will never cease to love you.”
He bent forward to kiss Elsdon.
o—o—o
o—o—o
. . . Many torturers in his time struggled with similar problems, and many must have questioned whether the Eternal Dungeon’s Code of Seeking had offered them the right solution.
In most nations, the process by which torture first began to be questioned as a reasonable act has been hidden to history. In our nation, however, we know the exact year in which the ethics of torture began to be questioned, and we know the names of the men who led the subsequent battle against all that the Code of Seeking had stood for during its first century and a half.
We also know who their primary opponent was in this battle. What followed next has been described by one historian as “a tragedy of ironies.” But unlike most tragedies, this battle would be filled with surprises.
—Psychologists with Whips: A History of the Eternal Dungeon.
The Balance 5
BALLADEER
The year 360, the sixth month. (The year 1881 Fallow by the Old Calendar.)
Historians have paid so much attention to Layle Smith, the High Seeker of the Eternal Dungeon, that little has been written about his companions. In particular, historians have neglected the man who was, by all ac
counts, the High Seeker’s most intimate companion: Elsdon Taylor.
I leave aside the endless – and frequently distasteful – speculation concerning the nature of the relationship between Layle Smith and Elsdon Taylor. That the two Seekers held strong affection for each other is all we can know for certain, and all that we need know. There is no reason for historians to be forever flinging open the bedroom doors of their research subjects.
So obsessed have historians proved to be with matters of sex that it has not occurred to any of them to ask a very simple question: Why, in the year 360, did Elsdon Taylor begin to hold opinions that were opposed to the opinions held by every other torturer in the Eternal Dungeon, especially the views of the High Seeker?
Elsdon Taylor, after all, had been rescued from death by the High Seeker. He had been trained by the man, shared living quarters with him, nursed him through his illnesses. And yet, at a time when no other torturer in the Queendom of Yclau questioned the conditions of his work, Elsdon Taylor abruptly underwent a startling transformation in his beliefs.
We may never know what caused the young Seeker to depart from the shadow of his mentor . . .
—Psychologists with Whips: A History of the Eternal Dungeon.