CHAPTER THREE
Three weeks later, as Elsdon Taylor stood shivering in a cell of the Hidden Dungeon, he found himself regretting that he had not seen the sun.
He had seen little at all since his final talk with Layle. His meeting with the Queen had been brief; she had done no more than to tell him to follow whatever orders the High Seeker had given him. Before the sun rose the next day, Elsdon had been placed within a carriage with drawn shades, seated between two of the Queen's finest bodyguards.
He wondered what had happened to those bodyguards, and to the carriage driver; then he decided that he did not want to know. The attack on the carriage had occurred while he was asleep, worn out by the long journey in which he had not been permitted to leave the carriage even to sleep or refresh himself. It was like living in a cramped cell, and it had taken all of Elsdon's resolve to remember that he held the high honor of being an ambassador for the Queen of Yclau. He was not a prisoner, he had told himself. He must remember that, and refrain from screaming.
He lost his resolve the night of the attack. He remembered little except his own shrieks as he was blindfolded and bound. Then his attackers dealt with his screams by knocking him on the head, and when he awoke, sick and dizzy, he was here in this cell.
The King of Vovim, it seemed, had made his judgment of the new ambassador without even seeing him.
Pressing his folded arms against his chest in an attempt to stop his shivering, Elsdon wished he had been permitted to keep his own clothes. It was not merely that the thin, sleeveless prison uniform he had been given was colder than his old Seeker's uniform. He missed his hood. He would have given anything to have worn the cloth that hid the expressions on his all-too-revealing face.
He stole another glance at the man before him, wondering whether he would respond favorably to a description of the Code of Seeking. Elsdon doubted it. The man was built like an ogre: broad chest, muscle-bound arms and legs, hands that looked as though they cracked prisoners' bones daily. The dagger sheathed at his hip seemed superfluous. To complete the effect of barbarity, his face was covered with a mass of hair that trailed down to the center of his chest. Elsdon had seen beards on prisoners – depriving male prisoners of a barber was one of the ways in which Seekers made the prisoners feel vulnerable – but he had never met anyone who willingly adopted such a savage appearance.
The torturer's voice was surprisingly mild when he finally spoke. "Well," he said, "this is a pleasant change. I've never broken a Seeker before."
Elsdon felt his shivering increase. He clutched his arms harder to his chest. "I'm innocent of any crime."
At this announcement, the Vovimian smiled. He had high cheekbones, such as Elsdon was accustomed to associating with Layle, and his eyes were bright and merry. "Try reciting to me the Vovimian alphabet next," he suggested. "Or a nursery rhyme. I might find that to be more of a lesson."
Elsdon took a deep breath in an effort to steady his heartbeat. "If you know that I'm innocent, why are you searching me?"
The torturer clucked his tongue as he placed his hand lightly against the rough-hewn stone of the cell wall. "If you tell anyone here that I hold such a sentiment, I'll call you a liar and have you racked. However, if you would care for a suggestion . . . I think you should delve deeply into your soul and find a crime you have committed. It would save you a lot of pain."
There was a silence as Elsdon reviewed in his mind all that Layle had told him of this place. Then he said in a stiff voice, "May I at least know what crime I have been accused of?"
"Conspiracy to assassinate the King. The two assassins your Queen previously sent confessed their crime to me. They've been dealt with." His abrupt gesture left no doubt as to what sort of dealing they had received. "All that remains is for you to offer your confession – to this crime, or to a lesser crime. If I were you, I'd confess to a lesser crime. That would save you the humiliation of a public trial."
"Public trial?" Elsdon's heart leapt like an eager puppy.
The torturer sighed. "I forgot that you were Yclau. You can put out of your mind any thoughts of rescue, young Seeker; 'public trial' does not mean here what it means at home. It means that a few, selectively chosen friends of the King will be permitted to hear the charges placed against you and will also be permitted to mock you at length. Then they will have the delight of laughing as you are bound to four horses of the royal stables which are commanded to charge in opposite directions, tearing your body apart. Or tear what's left of you apart, after I'm through with you. So you may prefer to confess to a lesser crime. Just be sure that it's a capital crime," he added, as if as an afterthought. "The King won't be satisfied with anything less than your death."
"You're gracious," said Elsdon.
The torturer smiled, saying nothing. Instead, he backhanded Elsdon to the floor.
The torturer's hands were covered with gloves made of finely linked chain-mail, as though he were a cavalry soldier. For a moment Elsdon lay motionless on the floor, feeling tears leak out of his eyes. He tried to move his jaw, which felt as though it had been wrenched away from the rest of his skull. Then he slowly pulled himself to his feet.
The torturer was still smiling by the time Elsdon returned to his previous position. "Sarcasm from prisoners isn't rewarded in the Hidden Dungeon," the man said, in the same mild voice as before. "Best to remember that."
"I wasn't being sarcastic," Elsdon mumbled around the burning sensation in his cheek.
The torturer raised his eyebrows, stepped forward, and grabbed Elsdon's hair, jerking his head back. Elsdon was filled suddenly with a white-hot flame he had not felt for many months. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate his mind on thoughts of his work, as Layle had taught him to do in such circumstances.
"You want to try to kill me," the torturer remarked reflectively.
"Yes," said Elsdon softly. "But I won't try."
"Wise of you. I have a full repertoire of ways to make your death unpleasant." The torturer released his hair and stepped back, saying, "So, you were being polite to me before. I don't often get prisoners who thank me for my suggestions."
"It's part of my training." Having pushed the flame of his murderous rage back into the cool darkness where it usually lurked, Elsdon felt safe enough to open his eyes. "We're taught as Seekers to show respect for others."
"To torture with kindness?" The Vovimian's smile turned to a grin. "I ought to have expected that, given who your High Seeker is. . . . Well, my dear, have you thought of any naughty deeds that you wish to confess to me?"
"No, sir. I have committed no crime against your King or your people." Elsdon's voice was quiet.
"No need for the 'sir'; we're not in the Eternal Dungeon here. Take off your clothes. All of them."
Elsdon was still gaping at him when the mailed hand smashed into his other cheek. He could not keep himself from crying out this time as he fell to the floor. He was tempted to stay there, but a kick in his ribs a moment later convinced him otherwise. Quickly he rolled away, stumbled to his feet, and began pulling off his clothes with shaking hands.
He could not find the courage to look at the torturer as he did so. It had been difficult enough looking at his bare face until now. Somewhere, he supposed, he had read that Vovimian torturers still held to the ancient barbaric custom of appearing naked-faced to their prisoners, but since no Seeker would strip his prisoner of his dignity by such unprofessional behavior, Elsdon had forgotten to prepare himself for this. He found himself wondering with dread what new expression the torturer's face would hold when he looked up next.
To his surprise, though, the torturer's expression was bland when he finished stripping himself. "Good," the torturer said. "Now kneel."
After a moment's hesitation, Elsdon did so. The floor in this cell was covered with straw, which in turn was covered with slimy substances that Elsdon did not care to think long about. There was no privy in this place; the cell's stench had kept him awake the first night.
The stone floor
under his shins sent chills biting up to his loins. He bit his lip and kept his head bowed, guessing this was the effect the torturer desired. Light and shadows criss-crossed the straw, falling from the barred window over the closed door.
"Interesting," mused the torturer, nudging Elsdon's stomach experimentally with his boot-toe. "I wouldn't have thought that a Seeker would be so easy to break."
It would be safer, Elsdon knew, to remain silent, but he heard himself ask, "If I'm not to call you 'sir,' what shall I call you?"
"'Master' will do."
His head jerked up at that. The torturer stood smiling over him, his face half-lit by the light from the corridor. "Not quite broken, are we?" the torturer said. "I thought not. . . . If it will ease your pride in any way, 'master' is my title. All torturers of the Hidden Dungeon receive that title once they have finished their journeyman years. Tell me, why are you kneeling if you don't consider me your master?"
"What is your name?"
The boot that had been nudging him moved forward so swiftly that Elsdon was bent over and retching more slime onto the floor before he knew what had happened. The torturer waited until he was through vomiting before pulling him to his feet by his hair. "My name is not one I share with the filth I search," he said, his voice finally losing its mildness. "Now, answer my question."
Elsdon had to take several gulps of air before his stomach would settle down enough to be cooperative. "We're taught to respect others in the Eternal Dungeon, master, and to follow the rules of the dungeon. If the rule here is that I must kneel to you, then I will do so."
A quirk of a smile appeared on the master torturer's face. He released Elsdon's hair and said, "The rule here is that you will do as I tell you, when I tell you – and if you obey me, I may not hurt you."
"May not?" Elsdon said swiftly.
"May not . . . or may, if it suits my fancy. This is the Hidden Dungeon, young Seeker."
"Yes, I see," Elsdon said, with such bemusement that the master chuckled.
"Take a minute to get your breath back," he advised. "And think again as to whether you want to give your confession. You'll give it in the end, you know. It would be wiser for you to confess now."
Elsdon – trying to decide whether to rub his hand against his burning right cheek, his bleeding left cheek, or his aching stomach – thought to himself that there was no greater test to a man's courage than to place him in a dungeon filled with ropes and chains and racks and tell him, "Lie, or suffer pain."
He knew the measure of his own courage. He knew, as well as Layle did, exactly how long it would be before he broke. And so, in the manner of a man who faces the inevitable, he wondered whether a quick death wouldn't be preferable to a lingering one.
It had taken him only one night – a night spent shuddering in the corner of his cold cell – to conclude that he had reached the time of his death. He had thought through every possible alternative: that the Queen had sent spies to track his carriage, that he would find a way to send a message of help to Mr. Sobel, that Layle had disguised himself as the carriage driver and was even now finding a way to rescue him from the Hidden Dungeon. Each contemplation had ended with grim knowledge of the most likely truth: that he was alone in a dungeon whose location was hidden from the Yclau, and that he would die here. The High Seeker, after all, had made no promise that Elsdon would be rescued if he were arrested. All that Layle had promised was that Elsdon possessed the power to bring about change in the Hidden Dungeon.
Which left Elsdon with the responsibility to stay alive until he had done all he could to accomplish his mission. Taking a deep breath, he said, "If I were to confess to a crime, I would be implicating, not only myself, but also the Queen, who sent me here. That I should die an unjust death I can accept, but I am not the sort of man who would smear the reputation of the ruler to whom I owe loyalty."
"My dear," the torturer said in the patient voice of a man struggling to instruct an obstinate child, "by the time I'm through with you, you would smear the reputation of your own love-mate. . . . Are you cold, by the way?"
Elsdon was in fact chilled to the bone, both outside and inside; he guessed that his shaking must be obvious by now. He nodded.
"We'll have to warm you up." With that, the master turned to the door, knocked on it, and spoke briefly to the guard who opened the door. When the door was closed again and the master had turned back, he held in his hand a long piece of black metal.
Elsdon, staring at it, felt his knees outdo the other parts of his body in their shaking. He took several rapid breaths in an attempt to clear the dizziness in his mind. The metal was black all through – no hint of any other color. That was important. This could not be as bad as it looked.
"No white-hot pokers today?" he said, his voice squeaking through his attempt at levity.
The master smiled. "Not today. If you'd been assigned to another torturer, matters would have proceeded more quickly; you'd likely be on the rack by now. But I'm in favor of the slower, steadier method. I find that my prisoners are less inclined to die suddenly on me, and are more likely to offer creative confessions. The King likes creative confessions." He glanced at the tip of the poker, held his hand a finger's breath from it, and then nodded, satisfied. "Well, my dear, do I need to tie you for this?"
Elsdon's knees very nearly gave way at that moment. He shook his head quickly, wishing again that he had a hood to hide his expression.
The master, though, interpreted his look as last-minute jitters. "Good," he said in a soothing voice, as though comforting a young man about to undergo a difficult task. "I prefer cooperation on the part of my prisoners. It allows me to concentrate on my work rather than worry as to whether the prisoner is about to strangle himself in his chains. Against the wall, please."
Elsdon had a moment to reflect, as he walked toward the wall, that the Vovimian torturer, for all his apparent contempt of Yclau politeness, was showing very little inclination to fulfill Elsdon's visions of Vovimian barbarism. Not uncultured, whispered Layle's voice in Elsdon's ear, and Elsdon grasped at the voice, trying to imagine to himself that this was nothing more than another session in bed with the High Seeker.
He placed his body flat against the wall of the cell, and regretted it immediately as the cold dragged its fangs across his back. It was too late to shift, though; the master had moved forward and was standing in front of him, the poker poised before Elsdon's chest.
"Now," said the master, all amusement emptied from his face, "what was your mission in Vovim?"
"To serve as an ambassador for the Queen of Yclau, discussing peace terms with the King of—"
His sentence ended in a gasp as the master lightly touched his shoulder with the poker, as though he were knighting him with a sword. Elsdon closed his eyes and tried to concentrate his thoughts on his ragged breath.
Breathe, he told himself. Keep breathing. Think about your breathing. The pain will pass. The torture will end. Breathe. Think about your lessons in school tomorrow. . . .
"That wasn't so bad, was it?" said the master, mildness returned to his voice. "No worse than burning your finger on a tea-kettle. Or a hundred tea-kettles – it all depends on when I stop. Let's just try again, shall we? What was your mission in Vovim?"
"To enquire after the fate of the previous ambassadors, and to express the Queen's displeasure—"
He ended on his knees this time, trying to retch out the bile from his empty stomach.
This wasn't going to work. His old lessons of concentration during pain weren't going to work, because his old reassurances were no longer true. His father would not tire of abusing him; he would not be let free to go to school and undertake his ordinary activities for a week or two before the torture began again. This pain would not end. It would go on and on until he was broken.
Or until he brought transformation to the Hidden Dungeon. I believe that your suffering will make a difference to the prisoners in Vovim, the High Seeker had told him. I would not send you there o
therwise. Layle had trusted him enough to recommend him for this crucial mission. He could not betray Layle's trust in him.
He clawed his way up the stones, barely noticing their icy teeth, till he had reached his feet again. The master raised his eyebrows and gave him a swift, assessing look. "You've been tortured before," he commented. "I suppose that's part of your training in the Eternal Dungeon?"
"Yes, master." He saw no reason to state who had given him his original training.
"What a waste of time. The job of a torturer is to give pain, not receive it. Are you ready?" He lifted his poker.
"No," Elsdon whispered.
The master chuckled. "They all say that. What was your mission in Vovim?"
Elsdon shut his eyes, tensed his muscles, and said, "To tell your King about the Code of Seeking."
He heard a step and flinched; then he heard the door creak open. He turned in time to see that the master was saying something through the crack of the door. The door closed again, and he heard the sound of voices as the guards outside moved further down in the corridor.
The master waited until their voices had disappeared before saying, "That was for your sake, my dear. The confession you just made would be likely to see you roped between those royal horses I mentioned before."
Elsdon stared at him a moment before saying, "Thank you."
The master's smile deepened. "Not at all. I have my soft moments – particularly toward polite young men. I prefer to see that their deaths aren't messy."
Elsdon felt himself begin to shake again and realized that the sweat on his body was turning to ice. "I don't suppose," he said in a quivering voice, "that I could persuade you to ensure that my death doesn't take place at all."
The master's smile gentled. "My dear," he said quietly, "if you know anything about the Hidden Dungeon, then you know the consequences for me of such an action. I trust that you don't need me to answer your question?"
Elsdon shook his head slowly. The master stepped forward, his poker raised once more, and said, "I must admit, I didn't expect you to become that creative in your confession."
"Is it a crime, then, to mention the Code of Seeking here?"
"Well, the King doesn't care for the Eternal Dungeon. Nor does he care for Seekers, for that matter. He particularly doesn't care for your High Seeker; the King has an old grievance with him. Why your Queen was so foolish as to send a Seeker as her ambassador is beyond my powers of reason."
Elsdon, keeping his eye on the head of the poker, said, "Because only a Seeker could explain in full about the Code. Our Code is a powerful set of rules for dungeon workers. It allows us to break more prisoners than the King's Torturers—"
He stopped, his voice swallowed up by the sound of the master laughing. Still holding the poker in his mailed hand, the torturer wiped his eyes with his elbow-length sleeve.
"My dear," he said, still gasping from the laughter, "I think that you had better go back to telling me nursery rhymes. I'm likely to learn more from them."
Elsdon said stiffly, "You may think that you know what the Seekers do. But if you could read the Code—"
"Read it?" The master reached behind his back, and Elsdon went rigid, wondering what instrument he was reaching for. But all that emerged from behind his back was a book. A slim book, bound in black leather, with gold letters stamped upon its face.
"Which parts of it do you advise I read?" the master said, his voice liquid with amusement. "The part about when to wear one's hood? Or the part about which titles you may use to address the prisoners? Or perhaps I should read the part about how true Seekers bring rebirth to their prisoners."
Elsdon stared at the Vovimian letters spelling out the title he had seen a hundred times in his sleep. "Where did you get this?" he whispered.
"From your High Seeker, of course. He sent copies to all of us here, care of our King. The King was amused enough that he gave them to us so that we could read aloud the funniest bits before burning the volumes. Your High Seeker sent me two copies of the book, though, one under my own name and one under the name of my brother. He was always clever, Layle Smith. And he knew that I liked a humorous book to fall asleep to."
Elsdon could not raise his gaze from the golden letters of the volume. The pages of the book were well-worn, evidence that the book had been in the master's possession for quite some time. Time enough for Layle to forget? How could he forget sending the Code of Seeking to every torturer in the Hidden Dungeon?
"Ah, I see." The master drew the volume back and placed it behind his back; this time Elsdon noticed the shift in fabric as the torturer hid the book under his shirt. "Your High Seeker didn't tell you about this, did he? He let you think that you were being sent here in order to reveal the great secret of the Code to us."
Elsdon looked up and said in a voice that tried to be steady, "What makes you think that?"
"Because I know your High Seeker, my dear. That's how he always worked. I can't tell you how many times he lured a prisoner into trusting him, into believing that his torturer was his friend . . . and then, just when the prisoner was most relaxed, your High Seeker would betray him into death." The master stared at his poker contemplatively as he said, "The odd thing is that I always suspected that his offers of friendship were as sincere as his sentences of death. He was the sort of person who was quite capable of loving that which he murdered. He was a dangerous boy; most of the masters here were convinced he'd enter into madness one day." Raising his poker, the master said, "So, I will pretend that you did not confess to a crime that I have already permitted myself to forget. That requires a third and fourth punishment." He laid the poker onto the soft skin of Elsdon's armpits.
When Elsdon's whimpers had ended, the master said, "Try to squirm less next time, my dear – I'll be aiming toward your nipples next."
"Not on them," gasped Elsdon. "Above."
The master paused with the poker poised over Elsdon's chest. "Are you giving me orders? I wouldn't suggest you do that again." He laid the poker on his chosen targets, a finger's breadth above Elsdon's nipples.
Elsdon was sobbing when the master pulled him off the floor. "Lesson learned, I assume," the master said cheerfully. "Let's return to business."
Elsdon shook his head, struggling through the fog of pain to remember his Vovimian vocabulary. "Not . . . not ordering you. Telling you. Above the nipples . . . then above my knees . . . then between my legs . . . then below my nipples . . ."
The master raised his eyebrows, but waited until the poker had met its next two targets before saying, "You provide the most interesting commentary to torture, young Seeker. How do you know my usual procedure? Every torturer here has his own method."
Elsdon, scrabbling at the stones in his attempt to stay upright, did not reply. The master shifted his poker until it was level with Elsdon's groin and said mildly, "I've always considered it a wise policy to answer any question asked by a man holding an instrument of torture."
Elsdon tried to swallow the sobs in his throat. "I learned that from the High Seeker. I'm in training under him."
"Ah, I see." The master's poker shifted back down to Elsdon's legs. "And how is Layle these days? Still having wet dreams about the prisoners he racks?"
Elsdon closed his eyes, trying to cling to the darkness there. "You claim to know him?"
"Know him? Of course I know him. Who do you think trained him?" His knee nudged at Elsdon as he said, "Legs apart, my dear. And I suggest that you hold onto the chain above you. This is going to sting a bit."
o—o—o
When he was ten his mother died, and he took the path that many Vovimian orphans did: he joined a band of street children. It was there that he first showed his talent for torture.
Torture was not the usual practice of the street-toughened band; the children were accustomed to keeping themselves alive by stealing food and money at the marketplace. But the local soldiers had become more vigilant at the marketplace in recent months, sending offenders off for sh
ort spells in the local lesser prison. And so the band's leader made the daring suggestion that they should begin raiding houses at night. No one could decide, though, whether it would be possible to find the goods they needed before the householders awoke.
At this point, the band's most accomplished thief spoke up. He refused to tell his plan beforehand, saying only that this was too dangerous a mission on which to bring the band's female members. The boy was well-respected by the other children, since he had a talent for creeping through the shadows on festival nights and plucking people's purses in places where any other child would have been blinded by the darkness. And so the children agreed to follow his plan.
That night, in a house at the edge of town, a miser who lived alone was overpowered in his sleep, blindfolded, and bound. He was then tortured for information on where his treasure was kept.
The youngest boy in the band was sobbing by the time that the band's best thief took his small dagger and cut the miser's throat, having finally obtained the information he needed. The rest of the boys tried to maintain a stoic appearance, but all of them were sickened. The leader, quickly assessing that the others' sentiments matched his own, refused to allow the young torturer to plunder the miser's hiding place. Afterwards, he vetoed the idea of repeating this form of theft in the future.
What followed was a power struggle between the leader and the best thief in the band. The young torturer might have won the struggle if the other boys had not witnessed what had taken place in the miser's house. The boy was thrown out of the band at age twelve and forced to make his own way in the world.
One month later, in the same town, a merchant was overpowered in his sleep, blindfolded, and bound. This particular merchant had no desire to hold out under torture. He immediately told where his small savings lay and was left bound, gagged, and alive by his attacker. Of his attacker's appearance the merchant could say nothing except that the man had spoken in a whisper and was powerful in body.
The local soldiers made a connection between this episode and a murder that had taken place four weeks before, but did not pursue the matter far. The merchant's savings had been small, and he was not an influential enough member of the community to make a full-blown search worthwhile. As for the miser, he had been much-hated, and since none of his goods had been stolen, it was generally reckoned that an old enemy had killed him.
Four months after the merchant's mishap, the torture and murder of another man took place in a town nearby. This time the merchant's goods were stolen. The local soldiers, consulting with soldiers in the original town, made a connection with the earlier crimes, but again the merchant was not an influential enough member of the community that his murder would excite interest.
For the next three years, the thefts continued at sporadic intervals, the only noteworthy aspect of them being that, in every case where the merchant immediately told the true location of his goods or said truthfully that he had no valuables stored in the house, he was allowed to live. Somehow the thief had a talent for knowing when his victim was telling the truth. As time went on, more and more merchants opted for the policy of storing their valuables elsewhere or immediately confessing to the thief, rather than run the risk of dying slowly and painfully.
The Merchants' Guild eventually complained to the King that the local soldiers were not showing enough interest in the thefts. The King seemed disinclined to pursue the matter until, in the third spring of the thefts, the most spectacular crime of all took place.
The nature of this was such that the authorities could no longer ignore the thefts. A massive search was set out for the criminal, coordinated by the King's soldiers, but the soldiers' quest was frustrated by the fact that no living victim had seen the thief or heard more than his whisper. All that was known was that he must have been a powerfully built man; all the victims agreed about that.
It was at this point that the boy who had cried at the thief's first torture came forward. He had kept his mouth shut for three years, as had the other children of the band, bound by the unwritten street code that forbade bands from snitching about their members, or even former members. But the latest theft had been accomplished in such a heinous manner that the band members had agreed that they could no longer remain silent. The youngest boy was picked for the mission of going to the soldiers, as he had an innocent face that would overcome doubts.
All this, the master torturer learned several days later, first from the King's soldiers, and then from the mouth of a fifteen-year-old boy screaming his confession from the rack.
The master's first acquaintance with his prisoner had come through the arrest records, and what he read there confirmed his long-held belief that the torturers of the Eternal Dungeon were fools. Their hope in prisoners' rebirth seemed to be based on the belief that prisoners' evil nature was shaped by the people around them: that if the prisoners met the right people, their natures could be shaped back to their original goodness.
The master considered this theory to be muck. In his experience, most people who did evil had been evil from the day they were born. This boy was a clear example. His early childhood had been no harder than that of many other children, and his time in the band had been, by the witness of the children and of those who had seen the boy during those years, a relatively pleasant period. There was no reason the boy should have turned to criminal torture – unless he was a boy born to do evil until someone stopped him by strangling him.
The master was thinking this on the first day, as he walked through the door to the rack room, where the King's soldiers had chained the prisoner, guessing that his time in the Vovimian dungeon would be short. There the master found a tall, scrawny boy whose eyes were wide as he stared around at the instruments of torture on the wall.
They were not wide with fear.
"What is that? How is it used?" asked the boy without preliminary, pointing as best he could with his chained hands. The master, amused, told him the answer as the boy listened, his eyes shining. Questions poured out of him: What effects did the instrument have on prisoners? How long could it be used? What was the best way of using it? What were the advantages and disadvantages of the instrument?
The master spent a few minutes answering the boy's questions and then suggested, in a mild voice, that the only proper way to understand the instrument was to see it in use.
Any theories he might have held that the boy was a masochist disappeared as the boy's olive skin paled to white. The boy hesitated barely a second, though, before nodding, and the eagerness had not left his eyes.
What followed was the strangest torture session the master had ever undertaken. Much of what occurred was familiar to him: the creaking of the instrument, the smell of burning flesh, the screams. But between screams, the boy would gasp out questions about the instrument's use, and the torturer would answer.
They proceeded this way for three days, slowly making their way through a few of the dozens of instruments in the room. By the third evening, the master's experience told him that it was time for the rack, and it was here that the boy gave his confession. His confession matched certain details of the crimes that had never been publicized – not that the master had held any doubt for three days that he was searching the right boy.
The boy knew by now, of course, what followed a confession; that had been one of his questions. As the master stood at the head of the rack and laid his hands upon the boy's throat, the boy flinched. But his eyes did not turn from the walls where the instruments that remained unused hung shiny and bloodless. In the boy's eyes was regret.
The master then took the action that, in years after, he would identify as the most foolish moment of his life: he smuggled the boy back to his own room and filled out a form stating that the confessed criminal had been executed and his body delivered to the mortuary.
There was some fuss after that, as the mortuary had no record of such a body's delivery. The master's record was clean, though, and the High Master of the Vovimian dungeon was
willing to back him.
Two months later, the master brought forward a boy with the beginnings of a beard and announced that this boy was his nephew, who had been sent by his parents to be apprenticed to the master. If the High Master noticed that the boy held a striking resemblance to a missing corpse, he was wise enough to hold his tongue. The master was one of the more accomplished torturers in the dungeon; the High Master could ill afford to lose him to the royal execution horses. And if the master preferred to put a criminal to good use rather than waste him into death, the High Master apparently had no difficulty with this course of action.
And so the boy became an apprentice torturer in what would one day be known as the Hidden Dungeon. And all who met him remarked on the fact that his most noteworthy feature was the excitement in his eyes whenever he stood in the same room as an instrument of torture.
Rebirth (The Eternal Dungeon, Volume 1) Page 19