“Caile!” Makarria screamed, but before Caile was halfway there it was all over.
The guard inexplicably went limp in Lorentz’s grasp and stared in horror up at him. “No,” he whispered as Lorentz tore the dagger from his grip and plunged it into his chest.
“Wait!” Makarria yelled, but it was too late.
Lorentz stabbed him twice more in quick succession, and the man was dead, bleeding out onto the dust and gravel of the tunnel floor.
“No! Lorentz, why?”
Lorentz stood slowly and turned to regard her. “My apologies, Your Highness. It won’t happen again.”
A chill ran down Makarria’s spine. It was Lorentz’s voice she heard, but something was wrong. He rarely addressed her formally except in court. Had he been shaken? More afraid, perhaps, than Makarria realized?
“What happened?” Caile demanded, rushing to her side.
“This scum tried attacking the queen,” Lorentz replied.
Caile looked from the slain prison guard to Makarria and saw the horrified look on her face. “You did well, Lorentz. Go with the others and make sure we don’t have any more problems with the prison guards. I’ll stay with Makarria now.” He put an arm around her to keep her steady, and she gratefully leaned into his shoulder, shocked by the sudden violence, even after everything else she had seen.
The last of the guards was ushered past them, or at least the last of the mobile guards. One of Makarria’s soldiers had to pick up Warden Aymil like a sack of potatoes and throw him over his shoulder to carry him out. The warden’s eyes bulged at Makarria as he was lugged by, but Makarria hardly noticed him. Even in Caile’s arms, she felt disoriented. Dizzy. Everything had happened so fast, and using her powers had drained her.
“Go on, all of you,” Caile said. “Wait for us at the camp. Makarria and I will see to freeing the prisoners. Send a few men back down once the guards are secure to grab our fallen men.”
Lorentz nodded wordlessly and followed the soldiers back out the way they had come. Makarria watched him go, still unnerved by the death she had witnessed, but Caile was tugging at her hand for her to follow him deeper into the cavern. “Are you up for this?” he asked, jingling the key ring to the prison cells.
“Yes.”
Her dizziness and all thoughts of Lorentz were washed away by the prospect of finally releasing the prisoners they had come to save. Especially Conzo.
Seeing her look of determination, Caile grabbed a torch from a wall sconce and led the way. They walked past the pile of ashes that minutes before had been the ballista, and then through another barred gate. The cells were embedded into the wall to their right. Caile unlocked the first one, peered in and shook his head. He started to close the door again, but Makarria stopped him.
“I need to see,” she told him.
“But, Makarria…”
“It’s all right. I saw the room with the corpses. I can handle this.”
Caile closed his eyes and let her pass. She peered through the doorway and saw the prisoner lying on the floor, half decapitated, his atrophied, mangled neck still tenuously holding head and body together.
“The guards panicked in the moment before you stopped them,” Caile said. “Followed the orders of their warden until the end. There was nothing we could have done to save him.”
“Is it him? Is it Conzo?”
“Who can say?”
Makarria could only nod. Whoever he was, she had failed him.
Caile grabbed Makarria’s hand and the two of them moved on to the next cell. Inside was another dead prisoner, but this man had died of starvation, not execution.
“For the love of Vala, please tell me some of them survived,” Makarria whispered.
They moved on and she had a moment of hope in the next cell, but when they called out to the man lying on the floor he did not respond. Caile went to him and checked his breathing. “Gone,” he said, shaking his head in disappointment. “And recently. He’s still warm. He must have heard the yelling and known that his rescuers were here, but it was just too much for his weak body. All of them are starved. Even the guards. They’ve been cut off for nearly a year now, ever since Don Bricio’s death. No supply ships, nothing. I don’t know how they managed to survive this long. Perhaps those corpses you saw…”
Makarria motioned for him to stop, not wanting to even entertain what he was suggesting. They continued on wordlessly, past a series of empty cells, and then a larger cell—a torture chamber furnished with the most barbaric tools of the trade. Makarria shivered at the sight of the rack, the shelves of pliers and pincers, and, in the far corner, the drowning table. Bloodstains covered the stone floor like inky shadows beneath the flickering light of Caile’s torch. How many of those people in the burial chamber were murdered here? Makarria wondered. And how many more were murdered before them during Don Bricio’s and Emperor Guderian’s long reign? How many young, hidden-away sorcerers like myself were given up under the pains of torture?
Caile grabbed Makarria by the hand again and pulled her away from the gruesome scene. Beyond the torture chamber were a dozen more cells. Makarria’s heart sank as she passed by each one only to find it empty. Each and every one until only one remained.
“The last cell,” Makarria said.
“Do you even want to look?”
“Yes.”
They walked together and peered inside. Makarria started to cry at seeing the two prisoners slumped on the floor at opposite sides of the cell. After all we’ve gone through to get here. No survivors. Two of my soldiers dead. All for what?
“We came too late, Caile.”
“No look,” Caile said, going to the nearest prisoner. “He breathes. We’re not too late at all.”
“Too late for what?” the other prisoner wheezed, stirring. It was a woman’s voice.
Makarria gasped. “You’re a woman.” She rushed to the prisoner’s side and helped her sit up.
The woman was emaciated, but strong enough to raise her head. “What else would I be but a woman?”
Makarria couldn’t help but smile. “I don’t know. I’m just glad we found you and that you’re still alive.”
“Of course,” the woman replied, smiling in return, the dried skin of her lips cracking over the top of her front teeth. “I would never give Don Bricio the satisfaction of dying here.”
Tears poured down Makarria’s cheeks she was so happy to have found this woman, and the man too. Could it be Conzo?
“What’s your name?” Makarria asked the woman.
“Fina.”
“And your partner there. His name?”
“Thon,” the woman replied.
“Not Conzo?”
“No, not Conzo. Conzo was here once, but he died a long time ago.”
Disappointment filled Makarria, but only for a moment. The light in this woman’s eyes—the joy of being rescued—made Makarria realize she had done the right thing. No one deserved this sort of incarceration and torture. She and Caile had found only two survivors out of perhaps dozens of prisoners, but still two, and that made her forget everything else: the fatigue in her, the chamber they had found full of decayed bodies, her fallen soldiers, and even the peculiar behavior of Lorentz.
Souldrifter is available September 29, 2015!
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Dreamwielder Page 31
