There had been a strength in that man few others had. There had been a true sense of self-pride and capability that came through even when he was angry and upset. There had always been power in those hands, purpose in that handsome face, honesty in his stalwart heart. That had been the man who could have defeated Tohre, Teal thought. But that man was gone. Gone all these many years.
Teal felt his throat closing. Would there ever again be such a man? A futile smile touched du Mer's full mouth and his twin dimples stretched with despair. No. There would never be a man like Conar McGregor ever again.
He missed Conar. He would often stray to the whipping post, stand there, and feel the guilt. He had betrayed his friend. He had betrayed Conar's woman. He had wanted to atone for his doubts, his betrayals, but Liza had never given him a chance. She had welcomed him back with arms wide, arms that held no malice, no spite, only forgiveness. She had unknowingly hurt him deeply when she had forgiven him.
He loved Legion A'Lex almost as much as he had loved Conar, but he hated the thought of Legion marrying Conar's woman.
She should have died with Conar, he thought, feeling guilty for the notion.
One more sin for which he must one day atone.
Chapter 8
* * *
The first thing Sentian Heil saw as the black-hulled ship dropped anchor was sand—as far as his eyes could see—shimmering, pale orange sand. Endless, unrelenting sand. No trees. No bushes. No structures. No living things. Only a vast sea of sand and a cluster of tall bluffs in the very center of the sand. Hazy smoke drifted upward from the tallest of the bluffs and spiraled high into the scorching brightness of an unforgiving white sky.
What he smelled first was the overall cloying stench of sand. Something less recognizable wafted under his nose and he sniffed, not sure what the godawful odor could be. His nose wrinkled with distaste. He looked at Grice Wynth, shackled to him, and made a face. Grice shrugged.
The first thing Sentian Heil felt when he and his manacled partners set foot on the barren beach was the intense heat rising from the sand. A suffocating heat, pressing down on them as though a giant was laying palms on their heads. It made it hard to breathe; the air drawn felt heavy and thick in their lungs. The sun beat down with vicious indifference, blinding them, but somehow increasing the physical aspects of their new environment. Their feet grew warm within their rundown boots and the men looked at the glaring brightness of the sand, could almost hear the sizzling, cracking heat bubbling beneath the surface.
"All right! Line up!"
The captain and his men shoved the prisoners into a wavering line, then shackled each man's ankles to the man behind him. The weight of the thick chains dragged; several prisoners stumbled. When they did, the captain had a ready kick for them.
Grice ground his teeth as Chand fell against him, but despite the fatigue and fever he felt, he managed to keep his young brother erect. Hunger pains turned his vision dark in the relentless heat. He grimaced as Sentian received a hard blow to his shoulder for trying to help another man and went sprawling for his effort. The jerk on his own manacle pulled viciously on Grice's wrist and he fell beside Heil, dragging Chand and Tyne Brell—shackled to Chand—down with him.
"If you men can't stand, mayhaps we need to drag you, eh?" One of the burly guards laughed and slammed a dusty boot into Tyne's side.
Brell doubled over. A tight grimace of pain flashed across his grimy face as he sucked in air through clenched teeth. Grice made a lunge for the guard, but came face-to-face with a lethal-looking blade. He stopped, crouched on one hand and knee, and glared at the guard.
"Go ahead!" The guard smirked, waving his sword in Grice's face. When the young prince dropped his gaze, the guard guffawed. "I didn't think so!"
Sentian managed to get to his feet. Physically it would be impossible to escape ,since each man was attached to the other; but none were in any condition to try. The trip from Ghurn to whatever hell-place this Labyrinth was had taken well over three months. Three months with little food, stagnant water, abusive conditions, and rats.
For two hours they trekked into the desert, the guards wielding pikes, swords, and whips. The longer they walked, the farther away the bluffs seemed to be. Black smoke still poured out of the central bluff and hung in the air. That same foreign smell hung on the still air and made their eyes water.
The smell was also getting worse. The heat was intensifying, as well. They could feel it through the soles of their boots, blistering hot, encroaching. Those hapless enough not to have boots were moaning and crying with pain. The guards had allowed them to wrap burlap sacks around their feet, but the fabric did little to blunt the sand's red-hot heat.
Close to sundown, a full three hours after they began their march, the eighteen prisoners and twelve guards approached the first of the bluffs. Squat and ugly, it looked like a poisonous toadstool perched upon the sand. It mushroomed out at the top where it looked to be a good two hundred feet across, dwindling down to a fifty-foot-thick base. A wall of rough rock, at least forty-feet high, fanned out on each side of the bluff and connected it to the others that, from a distance, had seemed to form a ring. A smell of sulfur permeated the outside of the rock and pale yellow powder was lodged in the cracks and crevices of the rockface.
"Through there!" the captain bellowed, pointing.
Sentian was the second in line, behind a man none of them knew and who had not introduced himself. He, like the man, looked to the place where the captain had pointed. All Sentian saw was a sheer face of yellow-tinged stone. But upon looking closer, he finally detected a break in the stone, an almost-hidden crevice. A guard slipped through the crevice, disappeared, as if by magic. Obviously the line was an illusion and far thicker than Sentian thought.
The first prisoner stepped into the crevice and also disappeared. There was a six-foot length of chain between each man and Sentian was at the crevice before he could react. He put up a hand to keep from falling, braced himself against the rock, and withdrew his hand, letting out a yelp. His hand was already blistered badly in the time it took to hold it up to examine it in the fading light. All around him, guards laughed.
"Did I forget to warn you about them rocks?" A guard shoved Sentian through the crevice and turned to the others. "Don't be touching nothing! You never know when it might burn, stick, prick or bite!" His mirthless laughter echoed across the barren desert like the caw of a predatory bird.
His face red with hatred, Sentian went from little light to no light at all. He couldn't even see the hand before his face. Disoriented, afraid to reach out to feel his way, he stood motionless. He nearly fell when Grice stumbled into his back.
A bright flash of light poured out of the darkness. All three prisoners put up their arms, shielding their eyes from the glaring intensity. Chand blundered into them. They were forced further into the bluff, into the stifling, cloying heat, as more men piled in behind.
Sharp rock formations rose up from the floor of the bluff, shadowing the light within the hand of the guard who had first entered. An eerie glow came from behind the guard. The sound of running water echoed off to the right. Sentian was reminded vividly of the grotto under Boreas Keep and knew such an underground lake must be near.
When all the prisoners and guards had entered, the captain pushed some hidden device and the crevice creaked shut behind them.
"Just so you'll know, the entrance is sealed. Anyone who tries to open it will be feeling all along this here wall and he just might find something interesting that will pop up to greet him."
The guards shoved the prisoners against one section of rockface, well away from the crevice, and the captain stepped aside. He took a pike from a guard and touched the wall with it. The prisoners stood open-mouthed as row upon row of sharpened sticks shot up from the sand. They would instantly skewer anyone who might inadvertently try to find the hidden lever.
"As you can see, we take every precaution to see no one leaves this here place!"
"Better tell them about these here critters, too, Cap'n!" One of the guards laughed as he held up a wiggling animal, a species of which none of the prisoners had ever seen.
"Aye, guess I'd better." The captain folded his arms over his brawny chest and stared straight at Grice. "There are tunnels beneath these bluffs and there are eight bluffs in all. They circle one another, sort of like a maze, you might say. Once you get inside the Labyrinth, you'll have one hell of a time finding your way out without a map. I've been in here more'n a hundred times and I still don't know my way in and out without my map. Should any of you manage to find your way out of the main bluff, you'll still have to find this one. Men have tried and men have died. You'll pass their bones on your way into the colony. There are more ways to die here than you have ever heard of."
He grinned and nodded toward the creature in his guard's hand. "That little bugger is called a scorpion. You'll find him wiggling around in the sand out there in the Labyrinth. He's got a tail, that's how Ned's holding him, that can kill you if he stings you with it. Even if it don't kill you, it'll make you sure wish you was dead. Your skin'll turn black and pop open like a cattail!" His beady black eyes came alive with evil. "There's all kinds of snakes and rats. My advice is to be careful!"
The guards moved away from the prisoners. The captain led them toward the back of the bluff, toward the eerie light that—now that their eyes were somewhat accustomed to the semi-darkness—lit up the ceiling.
"Step lively, men," the captain warned. "We'll be moving along some treacherous pathways."
It took nearly an hour of twisting, turning, steeply declining steps, dog-leg juts, spiraling runways, one leading off from two more identical to it, to reach the bottom of the bluff.
From outside, the rock seemed to be no more than eighty to ninety-feet high, but it was obvious to the prisoners that the bluff was far deeper in the ground.
Another hour of maze-like turnings took them deeper into what must have been a second bluff whose floor was nothing more than what appeared to be bubbling lava. Only a thin, narrow bridge of natural stone arched over the hot, hissing sea. If not for the heavy anchor chain spanning the bridge, guard and prisoner alike might well have tumbled into the sea of shifting lava below.
An acrid aroma came up on white plumes of stifling smoke and made the men cough and gag. The heat was so intense, it was difficult to breathe. The sulfur smell grew so strong the men had to hold their tattered shirts over their noses to try to blot out the stench. Sweat glistened on their emaciated bodies and mingled with the already noxious smell of unwashed flesh to create a rancid, ripe odor almost as bad as the sulfur.
Once over the bridge, they took a sharp left turn and had to duck, bending themselves almost double, to enter another bluff that was filled with a faint white glow. They stepped from a low tableau and felt give beneath their feet. Ahead was a rock formation jutting out over a black expanse of water. Here and there gaseous islands of fog flowed quietly over the water. Three long boats, each of which could hold ten men, stood at anchor off a long iron dock.
"Climb in, boys! Be careful. If you should slip…" He picked up a stick of wood from a pile near the dock and threw it in the water. A hissing sound came, then something dark and scaly popped up from beneath the surface and grabbed the stick in a fierce, tooth-filled maw. The water surged, splashed and the creature disappeared in a rolling wave of thunder.
"Some kind of freak of nature, they say," one of the guards said. "Don't know what she is, but she likes the taste of flesh, she does. The boats are lined with steel plating and she seems to be affeared of 'em." His eyes were hard as ice, his grin malicious in the light cast from the torches several of the guards held. "We call her Mercy."
Another guard chuckled. "That's 'cause she ain't got none!"
Chand looked out over the midnight black water where patches of spectral fog flowed and could see shifting, lapping waves where the creature was obviously swimming. A putrid smell assailed his nostrils and he turned a frightened face to his brother.
"It'll be all right," Grice mumbled, not sure of that statement, himself.
"Here, now! No talking!" a guard yelled, his toothless mouth gaping obscenely as he looked Chand up and down. "Get ye in the boat, pretty boy, else I take it in me mind that ye want me company. Alone!"
Chand mover closer to his brother.
"Don't let him worry you none, Your Grace. He's just trying to scare you," the tallest of the guards whispered to Chand. He was standing right behind the young Prince, and although he didn't touch him, Chand could feel encouragement from the man.
Grice glanced around and saw a fleeting, sympathetic smile of reassurance on the man's hard face. He felt some measure of gratitude and managed to nod so the others wouldn't see.
After unlocking the leg and wrist irons from several men, the guards pushed three sets of prisoners toward the boats. The men gingerly settled themselves into the hulls. Sentian, Chand and Paegan Hesar, who was shackled to Tyne Brell, were given oars for their boat. Rylan Hesar, Chase Montyne, and two young men of noble families from the emirate of Dahrenia were given the oars to a second. Men the others didn't know manned the third longboat. The prisoners pushed the boats away from the iron dock and rowed into the pitch black sea.
The metal oars were extremely heavy, and with the iron manacles already on their wrists, the men's arms were soon straining in their sockets. Their muscles felt on fire. Groans drifted over the water and echoed off the damp cavern walls. It sounded evil, like the antechamber of hell. The steady sound of slapping water against the hull, the rumble of that unknown creature as it occasionally broke the surface of the water, combined with the water seeping down from overhead made for a miserable trip.
At first it was only a glimmer of ghostly light far to the front of their boats, then it became brighter, more distinct, and with it came sound. The sound of metal striking metal. The light grew across the horizon until it blended with the lapping waves and became one long finger of brightness at the end of the long cavern. Smells came, too. Burning, the same stench they had smelled when they landed, only now twice as intense, twice as bad. The ripe smell of rotting flesh and vegetation.
As they neared the natural break in the rock that soared high above, Sentian could make out the light source—torches set on high poles. As the boats swept under one last, low-hanging jut, he saw a beach, huts, and other bluffs rising behind the torchlight.
Low structures of clapboard and thatch were scattered around the beach entrance, forming a semi-circle around a large, whitewashed building sitting squarely in the compound's center. The beach was deserted, but the sounds of hammering came from deep within the tallest bluff.
A wide, straight ditch ran through the center of the compound, just behind the largest building. From the smell of it, it was used as a privy. The mouth of the ditch was at the farthest end of the compound, behind what looked to be a punishment gallows, and it ended in a narrow finger running into the black pond.
"Not your dainty little chamberpots, it is, Your Graces?" The captain smirked. "Shit is shit, though, and that be your shitter!"
Sentian ran the boat up close to a makeshift jetty, trying to make sure it held fast so he could loop the bowline around the steel post nearest him. He had a feeling if he missed his mark, someone would have to climb into that flesh-eating water and it wouldn't be one of the guards. He pushed on the oar with what little remaining strength he possessed and finally sat exhausted over the long oar, his eyes closed and his breath coming in ragged gasps.
"Not bad, boy," the captain said in a grudging voice. "You must have been a sailor."
Sentian's eyes, and his pride, rose to the man. "I was a soldier."
"Were you now?" The captain grinned. "And where was that?"
"Serenia." There was fierce loyalty in Sentian's weary voice despite his recent ordeal.
"At Boreas Keep by chance?" The captain turned his head, a strange look on his face.
"I was an Elite."
If the captain took it in his mind to beat him for the statement, that was all right. It was the only shred of pride Heil had left.
"The Prince's Elite?"
"Aye." Sentian wondered about the looks that passed between the captain and one of his guards.
"Oh, then, you'll like it here, you will," the captain said. "You'll like it well 'cause we got a passle of Elite!" A belly laugh erupted from the man's broad gut.
It didn't take them long to disembark, but not without incident. Rylan Hesar was bone-tired, so tired he could barely stand. When he crawled out of his boat, he stumbled and fell, the toe of his boot vanishing under the black, lapping water. He heard the deep bite even before he felt it. He yanked back, screaming with pain, frantically trying to kick off his boot. He stared in horror at the hideous creature whose teeth were latched onto his foot.
"Get it off him!" Paegan yelled, trying to get to his brother.
A guard struck out with his pike, connecting hard with the flat, triangular head of glistening green scales. The monster lost its grip on Rylan's foot. It flipped backward and dove below the surface. Only a concentric circle of black water marked its presence.
Paegan lurched toward Rylan, but Tyne Brell grabbed the younger man around the waist. "Leave off, Paegan! They might run you through, man!"
Paegan swung around to face the small, effeminate man who held him and briefly wondered at the massive strength in those thin arms. Brell's black hair was ragged, his beard thick and scruffy, his face coated with grime, but that remarkably stern face was staring at him with authority, an authority that denied defiance.
The manacles on Rylan's feet and wrists were unlocked and two guards carried him away, his moans drifting back to the men who stood by helplessly.
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