by Jeff Crook
The kitchen door burst open and Kharzog strode out. He approached the visitors and planted himself, with iron boots set side wide apart, before them.
“What do you intend here, good sirs, ruining my custom?” he growled.
“Step aside, Master Hammerfell,” Arach Jannon said. “This is a matter of law.”
Cael rose from his chair and dashed toward the back door. Kharzog spun, bellowing unaccustomedly. For the drawing of one breath, Cael wondered at the dwarf’s reaction. Then he discovered why.
He bowled into the waiting arms of a Knight of the Skull, the priestly order of the Knights of Neraka, who was guarding the back door. She was almost as surprised as he was and only managed to grasp the edges of his cloak before he spun free. His coppery hair flashed behind him, signaling his identity.
“That’s him! Grab him!” Sir Arach shouted from the bar. His Knights gripped their clubs and rushed the elf, knocking over tables and chairs, sending the tavern’s patrons sprawling and diving for cover. More Knights, many of them half drunk, poured from the curtained booths and alcoves, eager for a little fun. Cael leaped for the back door, grabbed the handle, jerked it open, and confronted an alley full of Knights. At the sight of him, they surged toward the door. He slammed it shut and turned.
A force like a wave struck him from behind, tossing him against the door, crushing the air from his lungs. He gasped in pain. Iron hands wrenched his aims behind his back, ripped the staff from his hands, then lifted his feet free from the ground. He struggled violently, kicking blindly. Harsh laughter answered his cries as they wrenched his arms in their sockets. Muscles tore, tendons creaked. He screamed in agony and ceased his resistance, knowing they would tear his arms from his body if he continued to struggle. He collapsed. Someone struck him with a mailed fist, and he tasted blood in his mouth even as his mind fought to remain conscious. The room swam.
Someone grabbed his chin and shook his head until he was awake. His eyes blinked open, and he stared about him. Sir Arach stood before him, while several other Knights crowded near. A pair held Kharzog Hammerfell by his beard and wrists, although he put up a decent struggle. Cael shook his head to clear his wits, but that only brought fresh pain, like steel rods being driven through his twisted neck.
A high-ranking Knight of the Skull stood near the Thorn Knight, a look of bafflement on his wine-red face. Sir Arach Jannon held Cael’s staff reverently, lust flaring like a green light in his eyes.
“I still don’t understand, m’lord,” the Skull Knight said as he stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I know of this fellow. He’s only an elf, and crippled at that. He looks harmless enough. And he carries a staff, which is ludicrous in this day and age.”
“This harmless elf, Sir Knight, slew five of our brother Knights of Neraka in single combat,” Sir Arach barked.
“With what? That staff?” the Skull Knight asked incredulously. “Against trained Knights. Respectfully, sir—”
“Not with a staff, you imbecile,” the Thorn Knight barked. “With this!” And so saying, he grabbed the staff by the thickest end, gripped the middle under the arm, and tried to pull the blade from its ironwood sheath. His face turned red with exertion. The sword refused to materialize The staff remained a staff.
Muffled laughter pattered across the room like morning rain. The Thorn Knight glared around, and the room grew silent again. He approached Cael and grabbed the elf by the throat.
“Tell me how it works,” he growled.
Cael spat blood in the Thorn Knight’s face.
Arach released his hold, then struck Cael with a clenched fist across the nose. Blood poured from the elf’s nostrils.
“Never again will you make me look like a fool!” the Thorn Knight hissed.
A dull thud just behind the right ear, a moment of blinding agony, and darkness closed over Cael’s eyes.
“Damn you all to black hell,” Kharzog roared, seeing his friend fall under the blows of the Knights. “Leave him be!” He thrashed his arms, trying to break the grip of the two Knights holding him. Sir Arach turned and eyed the dwarf with amusement.
“The dwarf is an accomplice. Arrest him,” he ordered.
“Arrest me?” Kharzog shrieked. “This is your justice? This is the justice of the Knights of Neraka?” Setting his teeth into a fierce grin, the dwarf planted his iron-shod boots wide apart and clutched the arms of those holding him. Slowly the two Knights’ feet left the floor. Growling like a bear, the dwarf turned and flung one into a nearby table. The other followed, crashing into his companion, and bringing howls of outrage from the patrons whose drinks were swept to the floor. Fighting erupted around the room, as years of pent-up frustration at the rulership of the Dark Knights were released. Contraband weapons appeared from nowhere, while those who had no weapons used chairs, bottles, crockery mugs, and other improvised weapons to fend off the swords and maces of the Knights, to strike blows many felt to be long overdue.
Kharzog sent a drunken Knight sprawling across the floor with one blow of his hammerlike fist. He ducked the clumsy swing of another, then stooped beside the first and dragged a hand axe from the Knight’s belt. He then looked around and spotted Sir Arach, who was carrying Cael out the back of the tavern. With a roar, he waded through the melee, bellowing the Thorn Knight’s name.
Sir Arach spun, his good hand outstretched with fingertips aglow. The old dwarf felt something strike him, an unseen force that slowed his steps. His arms felt as though they were weighted down with anchor chains. He could barely lift them to wield his axe. Sir Arach strode closer, knelt, and lifted a short sword from the grasp of a fallen patron.
Battling the spell that paralyzed him with all his dwarven spirit, tears streaming into his beard, Kharzog lifted his axe and aimed a clumsy blow at the Knight’s knee. Sir Arach easily parried the stroke, then sent the axe spinning from the dwarfs grasp. Kharzog’s jaws cracked as he ground his teeth in rage.
“Amazing,” the Thorn Knight shouted over the din of battle. His eyes showed genuine admiration of the dwarf’s courageous effort. “Given time, I think you might actually break free of my spell.”
“Of course, I cannot allow that to happen,” Sir Arach said with a grim smile as he slid the blade of his short sword between the dwarf’s ribs.
Chapter Twenty-Six
In the next chamber a door opened, and a pair of Knights of Neraka dragged a man out into the dungeon passage. The man clawed at the doorposts, kicked, pleaded, begged, and screamed, but they lifted him bodily from the ground and carried him down the long arched shadowy hall to the iron door at the end. There they stopped, and a man wearing only a leather apron came out with a hammer and chains. While the prisoner wept, the jailer clapped irons around his legs, waist, and wrists and the Knights stripped his clothing. They dragged the man through the iron door. The jailer followed, slamming the door behind him with a resounding bang, cutting off a parting wail of despair.
Cael turned away, slumping to the floor of his tiny cell, his elbows resting on his knees, his forehead on his crossed arms. Heavy chains draped from the manacles around his wrists to the ones around his ankles, as well as to the iron collar around his neck. The collar had already begun to chafe the underside of his jaw, but that pain could not be compared to the dull pounding in his head. One sea-green eye was swollen shut, the skin around it the color of a plum. He breathed through bruised lips because the blood from his broken nose had dried, clogging both nostrils. Slowly, he worked his tongue forward, wetting his parched lips and gingerly feeling for loose teeth.
He suspected several ribs were broken, because whenever he coughed up blood, he nearly fainted from the pain. His back felt as though he’d had a family of dwarves dancing on it. His joints ached as if he’d been racked for several days, his neck throbbed as if he’d been hung for twice as long. He was swiftly growing sore in other places from sitting for a night and half the day in a stone chamber neither tall enough to stand up in nor large enough to lie down.
A
voice at the iron door roused the elf from his musings. Looking up, Cael saw the round face of a city clerk peering through the three-inch-square hole in the door, but the man wasn’t looking at him. Instead, his eyes were lowered, as he read, “Cael Ironstaff, elf, homeland unknown, age unknown, parents unknown. You are accused of five counts of murder of her Dark Majesty’s soldiers, one count of burglary, one count of breaking and entering, one count of possession of an illegal weapon, seven counts of use of an illegal weapon, one count of possession of an illegal magic item, seven counts of use of an illegal magic item, one count of disguising your person for the purposes of subterfuge, one count of traveling without proper identification, and two counts of assault with the intent to commit bodily harm. You stand before his most dread lord, Sir Arach Jannon, Knight of the Thorn, judge of the city of Palanthas. Prepare to plead your innocence or declare your guilt.”
The clerk stepped aside. The tiny window remained empty for a moment, then the narrow, rat-eyed visage of Sir Arach appeared, glaring down at the thief. “Stand up before your judge,” he snapped.
Slowly, Cael struggled to his feet, his chains rattling. He had to stoop, the ceiling was so low.
“So, we meet again,” Sir Arach said. “This time, you do not have any friends around to help you.”
“No, but you do,” Cael said through his swollen lips.
“A pity we cannot meet, one to one, to see who is the better man,” the Thorn Knight bragged.
“Truly, a pity. Perhaps another day,” Cael said thickly.
“Alas, I fear your days are numbered.”
“Where there’s fear, there is also hope, as my shalifi used to say.”
“Not much hope, considering your life is soon to end.”
“Don’t count your draconians before they hatch,” Cael responded. “I could stand here and trade clichés with you all day, but these chains are heavy. Do what you will and be done with it.”
“Very well!” Sir Arach snapped. “You have heard the accusations. How do you plead?”
“Guilty on all counts,” Cael said, adding, “I’m proud to say.”
“Good! I like a man who owns up to his deeds. Shame is a foolish thing. Clerk, please note that the prisoner declared his guilt of his own free will and without coercion,” Sir Arach said, turning to the scribe. The pen scratched on the page.
“Of course, you realize the punishment your crimes warrant. An assault upon the Dark Queen’s agent is an assault upon the Dark Queen. The usual punishment for the murder of her Dark Majesty’s soldiers is death by slow torture,” he said as he returned his gaze to the interior of the tiny cell. Cael stared at him.
“The slowest torture possible, mind you. I have servants steeped in the arts of exquisite pain. They can draw out the torture of a man for months, even years. I imagine that a long-lived elf such as yourself could be made to endure for several decades.”
Still, Cael stared, saying nothing.
“Yes, it would be most horrible for you, rest assured. Yet, I could be persuaded to reduce the sentence to a quick, painless beheading…”
Cael blinked, his face as yet displaying no emotion. “I thought that might get your attention,” Arach Jannon chuckled. “All you have to do is reveal to me the secrets of your staff, and I’ll see that you do not suffer.”
Cael looked away.
“Think about it, my dear elf.” Sir Arach said. “Unless you have a will of iron, eventually you’ll tell me everything I want to know anyway. Why suffer days, nay, months of agony, when you can end your suffering in one swift moment?”
“One might think, your lordship, that the court is more concerned with my staff and the acquisition of power than with the administration of justice,” Cael said blandly, not looking at him.
Sir Arach spluttered a string of oaths and curses. “Strike the prisoner’s last remark from the record!” he shouted at the clerk, then turned one last time to the elf.
“I offered you mercy, elf! You will tell me every secret of the staff. Do not imagine for a moment that I cannot break your will, for I have done it many times and to stronger elves than you. Now you have made your own bed, and I have no more patience for your prattle. The sentence shall be carried out as ordered.”
Cael lowered his eyes, his head sank to his chest. He slumped to the floor, exhausted.
“Death by slow torture!” Sir Arach shouted, striking the door angrily with his fist.
A peel of mad laughter woke Cael from a dreamless reverie. He jerked awake, rattling the chains on his wrists and ankles. The Screamer, as Cael had named the poor demented soul locked in the next cell, loosed another cry of self-induced horror that ended in a series of hyenalike twitters, warbles, and whoops. A little farther down, from yet another cell, a voice harsh with thirst shouted, “Shut up, you giggling idiot!”
He was answered by yet another series of bloodcurdling shrieks.
“Shut up! Shut yer stinkin’ mouth!” the other inmate shouted. “Let me get my hands on… by the gods! Get me outta here! If I… I only… by the gods!”
“Rats! Rats! Oh, I ate one. There’s another! Rats!” the Screamer cried. “Oh… no! Not that. Not again. Not…” and so on, until the screams came again.
“Just shut up, will yer just shut up,” the other inmate wept. “Please, for Gilean’s sake, won’t somebody please kill me?”
Cael kicked at a rat nosing about his feet, then adjusted his position against the wall. A little rotten straw barely softened the wet stone floor beneath him, while a tiny grate next to the floor allowed his waste, as well as the water seeping from the stone walls, to slowly escape. Very slowly. Above him, a tiny window in the iron door was the portal through which light sometimes shone and his food, when he was lucky enough to get any food, was lowered.
He had no idea how long he’d been in this cell since his “trial.” The only way that he had to calculate time was by his feedings and by the regular torture sessions he endured. Tomorrow, or the next day, or perhaps the next, they would come for him again to question him with the rack or red-hot iron or something new. Again and again.
At each session Sir Arach reminded him how simple matters between them were. If Cael would only answer his questions, it would all end, quickly, painlessly. That was the one thought that kept the elf alive. The Thorn Knight couldn’t kill him until he discovered the secret of the staffs powers.
Ironically, it was only in the last few days before his capture that he’d begun to suspect and experience the full extent of its magical powers. The staff had been given him by his shalifi, Master Verrocchio, the greatest swordsman in all Krynn, a little less than a year before. With the staff came knowledge of some of its powers, including its ability to become a sword with a magically keen edge, to merge into a solid surface so that it might be hidden, and to lengthen or shorten at will. Because it was made by sea elves, it also gave its owner the ability to breath underwater. However, its seeming power against magic and undead were new to Cael’s experience. He wondered if these two new powers were somehow connected to his location, to Palanthas.
When the staff was placed in his hands and he felt the cool dark wood against his palms, he sensed what his master had told him he would feel, that the staff would serve him. He felt an instant bond to the weapon, and as he slid his hand down its length, the blade appeared effortlessly. In the year since that morning by the sea, the bond between himself and the weapon had only grown. At times he felt it was alive and if he had ears to hear, it might even speak to him. When he was away from the staff, he felt as if he were torn in two, as if he had left a part of himself. When the staff was in his hands, he felt whole, complete, and with that came a sense of peace as well as power.
He had already vowed that he would never reveal its secrets to Arach Jannon, no matter how much he was tortured. As the torture continued, he came to realize that the longer he kept such knowledge secret, the longer he would live. His elven blood would not allow him to surrender to despair. It offended
his sensibilities to even consider relinquishing his staff to buy a swift end to the pain.
With these thoughts, Cael let himself slip back into the haze from which he’d been so rudely awakened only moments before. The Screamer now snored soundly, having exhausted himself. He’d wake again, no doubt, in a couple of hours, and once again give voice to the madness and horror of this place. Cael couldn’t sleep, couldn’t rest Every breath he took was full of pain, as if the air itself was poison. Every breath was to gag, every sniffle of dungeon air sent his stomach heaving as surely as though he were leaning over the rail of a wave-tossed ship. He was tempted to shout for the guard, but he knew that would do no good. No, what he was really tempted to do was weep.
In the darkness of his cell he noticed a light beginning to well from the tiny sewer grate near the floor. Never had he beheld such a beautiful glow, even as he wondered at its source. The golden light danced through the sewer grate, growing in brightness until he thought he’d go blind. Even as the light grew, the malodorous air neared an extreme beyond human or even elven endurance. Cael at last identified its source, the putrid scent fielding the memory directly from his reeling brain.
“Gully dwarf!” he retched.
“For that I ought to leave you here,” a shrill voice barked in reply. The silhouette of a head appeared behind the sewer grate. The head was bearded, but Cael could distinguish little else without leaning closer, something he was reluctant to do.
“Gimzig?” he inquired.
“At your service, sir,” answered the figure. The gnome continued to spout a rapidfire stream of words, while fumbling with some large cumbersome object that looked like a giant spider trying to attack his bearded face. “Have you out of there in a jiffy, got a spider here in my pack that will do just the trick on these deep set bars, good thing they aren’t steel. Passage is so small I didn’t think I would get it in here, but where there’s a will there’s a thousand ways, as my grandfather Gornamop used to say. Say you look a little thin and worse for wear, haven’t they been feeding you now and then? Well, we’ll set that straight, just let me put this thing in place here with the legs against the stone and grasp the bars like so, did you notice the modifications? No? Well, that should do justthetricknowpresshereandlockthisintoplaceand… whoa! Look out!”
