Lady Of Regret (Book 2)

by James A. West

  After casting about and finding nothing of interest beyond a rotten barrel and a yellowed skeleton that might have belonged to a cat, Nesaea struck off at a quick clip.

  The passage ran straight and true for a long time. With each step, the sound of wind grew louder. A little farther on, she discovered not wind, but a stream rushing through a crack in one wall, and vanishing into another crack in the opposite wall.

  After leaping across it, she pressed on until coming to a door of iron bars. When she brushed a finger against one, rust flaked off, but the remaining iron was thick as her wrist. A lock and a coil of heavy chain secured the door.

  Nesaea tried to get at the lock with her picks, but it was on the wrong side of the bars. She withdrew a small vial from a pocket sewn inside her cloak. The fluid within the container was not magical, but to anyone unlearned in alchemy, the results would appear so.

  With the utmost care, she pried off the cork stopper, dribbled a few drops into the lock’s keyhole. Her elbow struck an iron bar, jostling a few more drops in. Nesaea caught her breath. Too much of any good thing could go bad in a hurry. With a sharp hiss, tendrils of smoke began drifting out of the aperture. As an acrid stench filled the cave, the round body of the iron lock started glowing, as if heated in a forge fire. A few seconds more, and it began to deform, slowly elongating and stretching to the floor. More smoke billowed, and glowing drops of molten iron began dripping to sizzle and hiss in the mud.

  Nesaea backed away, trying to remember if the alchemist she had bought the concoction from had mentioned anything to be wary of. Nothing came to mind, but that did not mean much, as many practitioners of the arcane were never exactly sure how their creations worked. Other than the pungent smoke, which burned her eyes and throat, the fluid was working as presented. In short order, she would be able to knock the lock loose and—

  The explosion came without warning, hurling her back the way she had come. Twisted iron bars rained down around her, and she wrapped her arms around her head. The smell of scorched metal filled her nostrils.

  After a few seconds, Nesaea sat up and wiped the mud off her face. A terrible ringing filled her ears. When she blinked, she saw the blinding white afterimage of the eruption.

  In the glow of the Eye of Nami-Ja, she quickly checked herself for wounds, but only found tender spots on her forehead and chest. By the following dawn, she expected numerous bruises.

  If I live so long, she thought, peering down the rocky passage. It seemed impossible that anyone could have missed hearing the blast.

  Water sprinkled down on her head from spidery cracks radiating out from the point where the iron-barred door had been anchored. There was no telling how deep she was, but the river flowed somewhere overhead. She swallowed, wondering if the bedrock had been weakened enough to collapse.

  Fearing the worst, Nesaea plucked the glowing orb out of the mud, and ran. She did not slow until coming to a short set of steps leading up to a thick oaken door. She listened for any sounds behind her. Between her gasps, and the fading ring in her ears, she heard nothing.

  Taking that as a promising sign, she covered the light of the orb beneath her cloak, dropped to her knees, and searched the gap under the door. Nothing moved, and no light shone. If no one is here, then no one would have heard the explosion, she thought, with a thread of hope.

  Freeing the Eye of Nami-Ja from her cloak, she picked the lock, pulled the door open wide enough to slip through, closed it behind her. She raised the orb to get her bearings, and discovered that she stood on a landing at the base of another set of steps carved into the rock.

  She climbed until her calves burned from the effort, but did not slow. The stair came to a narrow hallway lit by smoky torches. The smell of overflowing chamber pots and the sour reek of soiled flesh invaded her nostrils. Doubtless, the dungeon lay close by. A moment later, a man’s distant howl of pain confirmed her assumption.

  Nesaea drew her short sword and set out again over uneven floor tiles. Lynira had told that unless Lord Arthard’s torturer was needed, no one but a lone gaoler ever ventured beyond the keep’s lower basements. She was counting on the word of her mentor, and more, on the word of those who had given Lynira the secrets of Dionis Keep. If Lynira was wrong, then Nesaea’s entire plan would fall apart.

  She swept by storerooms, some with doors, most without. Other than a few barrels, most of the rooms waited dark and empty. Rats and spiders skittered in profusion along the corridor. Threadbare tapestries hung on the walls. She passed an arched stairwell leading up into darkness, doubtless to the keep’s storage basements. Before her, the hallway sloped down to a landing, where the gaoler, clad in leather and mail, reclined in a chair. His mouth hung slack, his bottom lip wet with drool.

  Nesaea drew another of her vials, tiptoed next to him. When close enough, she drew in a deep breath and held it, popped the cork stopper, and waved the vial under his nose. The gaoler bolted upright, and Nesaea scrambled back. Before he could utter a word, his eyes rolled up, and he slumped off the chair to crash against the floor. Putting away the vial, Nesaea smiled to herself. The man would sleep for a day, and wake with no memory of her.

  The howling man she had heard earlier screamed again. Nesaea’s nose wrinkled against the scent of charred flesh. The torturer was hard at his labors. She steeled herself for what she might find.

  Dark and dank, the passage coiled down into the foundations of Dionis Keep. The farther she went, the worse the smells became, and the louder the man’s cries grew. She heard a phlegmy chuckle that raised the hair on her scalp. Then came a sizzling sound, followed by a scream of agony. Nesaea clutched the leather-wrapped hilt of her sword.

  The winding corridor ended, and the floor widened into a stone ramp that let out on the floor of the dungeon. A few torches guttered, but a sinister light poured from a wide opening in one wall, giving the hanging smoke a reddish cast. The walls wept in the cool damp, as if flowing with blood. Indifferent rats slunk about, nosed through the clumps of moldy straw pilled in the corners.

  Beyond what Nesaea guessed was the torture room, a vaulted passage, with barred doors on either side, ran into thick darkness. If her father was indeed a prisoner here, she had to somehow get past the opening of the torture room to find him.

  “Believe me,” a breathless man begged, “I stole nothing. The steward’s mistaken.”

  “You mean to say, he’s a liar?” came a man’s phlegmy reply, his voice oddly cultured for one with such a monstrous trade.

  “No! Mistaken. Only that.”

  “I must say, the steward names you the liar. That puts us in a quandary. I dare say, if you seek to counter the steward’s claim, Lord Arthard would be more than willing to hear you out. Of course, to accuse any in his lordship’s household of such deception requires evidence. If such evidence exists, beyond your word, you must reveal it.”

  “N-no,” the first man gibbered. “There’s no evidence, as I took nothing.”

  A heavy pause filled the air with portent. “It strikes me, Palto, that I’ve never actually accused you of taking anything, nor have I named the steward as your accuser. For all you know, Lord Arthard conceived that I needed to hone my skills, and you were simply chosen out by ill fortune.”

  “What … what do you mean?”

  “What I mean, is that out of all the crimes for which you could have been sent to me, you chose to deny thievery. As it happens, that is the very crime leveled against you. So, either you are a thief who has never been caught, and so suffers a pained conscious … or you are guilty, just as the steward claimed.”

  The pause came again, gaining weight, until Palto blubbered, “’Twas just bread, Odran! A loaf, only that!”

  “Ah, now we come to it,” Odran the torturer said, sounding reasonable, sympathetic. Under his voice, Nesaea heard the sounds of iron scraping against iron, the pumping of a bellows. The red light oozing out of the torture room grew brighter.

  “Alas, it always begins so,” Odran said. “Fir
st a hungry belly compels the fool to steal a bite of bread. Nothing more, mind you, nothing anyone would miss, and surely not the fat cook, who doubtless pilfers more than her share. Otherwise, why is she so fat? Am I correct?” Odran did not wait for an answer.

  “But the unpunished hand soon grows bolder, yes? Yesterday a heel of bread, today a loaf. On the morrow, mayhap the shameless mind seeks something precious.” The rough sound of iron scraping over iron came again. “Tell me, dear Palto, how brazen is the thief who would steal from his lord’s own table? How much more would such a base creature take, if given half a chance?”

  “Just the bread,” Palto wailed. “Nothing more. Never was more than that—”

  A spitting sizzle cut him off, and he began to scream. Nesaea heard the violent rattling of chains, and Odran’s clotted laughter.

  She slid along the wall, peeked round the corner. The torturer’s back was to her, a slender man clad in leather trousers and a bloodstained tunic. He danced around Palto with a light-footed grace. The thrashing naked prisoner dangled by shackled wrists from a chain running through a pulley bolted to the ceiling. With an elaborate flourish, Odran swept a sharp, glowing iron across Palto’s chest, much the same as a painter working brushes over taut canvas. Each enthusiastic stroke swayed the wispy fringe of white hair hanging from Odran’s head. Where that molten-red tip touched bare flesh, it left smoking lines and charred blisters, and set Palto to shrieking anew.

  Nesaea strode forward and cracked the flat of her blade across the back of Odran’s skull. The torturer hissed and spun away, one hand at the bloody knot she had given him, the other brandishing his cruel instrument.

  “Mathun!” he cried. “We are beset!”

  “If Mathun is the gaoler,” Nesaea said, “he will not be coming.”

  “You killed him?” Odran said in disbelief, the poker falling from his hand.

  Palto, face drenched in sweat, eyes huge with pain, looked between them, then slumped in his bindings, chin dropping to his chest in exhaustion.

  “I merely put Mathun to sleep, which is fairer treatment than you will receive, if you do not tell me where to find Sytheus Vonterel.”

  “Who?” Odran asked unconvincingly.

  Nesaea stepped closer, ready to swat the torturer another blow. “The court magician. Take me to his cell.”

  “He’s not here,” Odran quailed, dropping his hand from his head to risk a look. A small crimson smear adorned his palm. By his mewling squeak and the horrified look on his face, Nesaea could almost believe he was not a merchant of pain.

  “As you despise thieves,” Nesaea said, “I despise liars.”

  Odran backed away, jammed his skinny backside into a corner. “I’ve no desire to lie. He’s not here, I say. Has not been, near on a month.”

  “Then where?”

  Odran clamped his lips tight. Nesaea closed on him, the point of her sword directed at his heart. “Skalos!” he blurted.

  Instead of hope, his answer filled Nesaea with dread. “You must be mistaken.”

  Odran shook his head. “Lord Arthard sent him off. For what, I cannot imagine.”

  “And, once freed, what could possibly hold my father to such a perilous journey?”

  Odran swallowed, face firming toward resistance. Nesaea jabbed the tip of her sword against the man’s throat.

  “Very well,” Odran squawked. Nesaea did not relent. She pushed the tip deeper, until the torturer babbled, “Lord Arthard holds the magician’s daughter for ransom until he returns!”

  “I’m his daughter, imbecile. Do I look held, be it for ransom or otherwise?”

  Odran’s eyes bulged. “No! Of course not, no. But I have seen the girl in your father’s presence, and he did not deny her. Why she is unknown to you is a question you must inquire of him.”

  “Where is this girl?” Nesaea asked, masking her surprise at having a half-sister.

  “I cannot answer,” Odran said, more composed. He smiled weakly. “I am my lord’s man, but he does not confide in me on such grave matters. Rumor has it that she was sent away, lest the magician get up to any mischief. He has powers, that one, if erratic.”

  That sounds like Father, Nesaea thought, her flimsy doubts fading. She made to turn away, then whirled back and thumped Odran a blow to the temple. He collapsed like a sack of grain.

  In her search of the cells, she found a few hollow-eyed men who had the look of bandits, but none matched her father. Unless he had discovered some magic to transform his appearance, he was good and truly gone.

  But did he go to Skalos, where Odran claimed?

  Following him was the only sure way to find out, and if not for those conniving monks who made Skalos their home, she would not have believed the torturer. As Sytheus Vonterel, and many like him down through the years, had bought his skills from those black-hearted mystics, it seemed likely Odran had spoken the truth. As for Arthard’s interest in the monks, he must have learned from Sytheus of their very special wares, and desired some for himself.

  After coming back to the torture chamber and cranking a winch to lower the groggy bread-thief to the floor, she used a key taken from Odran’s belt to unfasten his shackles.

  “Bless you,” Palto gasped.

  “Keep your gratitude until after you escape Dionis Keep,” Nesaea said.

  He struggled up on an elbow, wincing at the pains Odran had given him. “Won’t you help?”

  “I’ve already helped you enough to land me in your chains.” Nesaea tossed the gaoler’s keys on the floor beside Palto. “Free those you trust from the cells, and make your way as you will.”

  Palto looked at the keys, bowed his head in gratitude.

  Nesaea turned to leave, then called over her shoulder, “The next time you steal bread, do not get caught. Better yet, don’t steal again. Better still, get yourself far from Sazukford.”

  Palto accepted the advice with a weary smile, and Nesaea left him there, knowing the fool would probably not heed her.

  Before making her escape, she paused beside the unconscious gaoler, rooted through the small leather purse at her belt, pulled out Lynira’s warning note to Arthard. She dropped it on the gaoler’s chair, and fled.

  Skalos. She shivered at the name, almost wished she had never stopped in the Blue Piper to hear mention of her father fall from the lips of stranger.

  Chapter 12

  The first night after escaping Deepreach, the trail had led Rathe and Loro farther up the river gorge, deeper into the frigid Gyntors. The higher they climbed, the smaller the river became. Over the following days the forest thinned, giving way to talus slopes patched with broad fields of snow and ice. The mists remained, thick enough at times you could scarcely see a hand in front of your face.

  Horge never returned. It seemed certain the ratlike fellow had become a feast for Tulfa and his vile kindred, something Rathe would not wish upon his worst enemy. Wish it or not, he had been unable to spare the man a gruesome end, and that pained a part of him he had forgotten existed.

  One morning, with the sun fighting to burn off the mist, Rathe and Loro found themselves camped at the end of a vale filled with a partially frozen lake. Blade-shaped, the lake ran to the rock-strewn base of a distant mountain.

  “Have we ventured into some frozen realm of the Abyss no man has ever imagined?” Loro grumbled, gnawing the last of their smoked meat. “Gods and demons, I swear I pissed ice this morning.”

  Rathe rubbed his hands together over the fire, working numbness from his fingers. “Better than being in Tulfa’s belly.”

  “At least we’d be warm there.”

  “And dead. Of course, by now, Tulfa and his shadowkin would’ve long since shit us out.”

  Loro glanced at the horses, whose ribs were becoming more prominent by the day. They made busy munching frosty blades of grass. Like their masters, they had little hope of finding enough to sustain them. “Give it a few more days, and we’ll be as dead here as there.”

  Rathe eyed Loro, not
ed his girth had diminished even more, and could not argue the point. He stood up, feeling old and boney himself. “I’ll check the snares.”

  Loro grunted in answer. Their snares had provided scant few hares in the lowlands. Up here, where winter never seemed to die, they had captured only cold air.

  As Rathe moved away from their miserable camp, he eased an inch of his sword from the scabbard, making sure ice had not welded it in place the night before. He had heard of such, but never expected to be somewhere that he would need to take the precaution.

  He lost sight of Loro and the lake behind a screen of gray boulders and a stand of hoary spruce. The trees had the height of saplings, no taller than a man, but he detected untold years in their rough bark and tough, springy limbs, hung all over with coarse black moss.

  Mist enveloped him before he reached the first snare, set where two boulders had fallen together. It was empty. Rathe looped the leather cord around his wrist, moved to the next snare, set in a clump of wiry brush. Nothing. He kept on, gradually making his way downslope, until reaching the last of six snares. Like all the others, it was as bereft of game as the moment he had set it.

  He stiffened when an indistinct shape slid through the fog farther down the slope. So the hunter still hunts, he mused, too cold and too weary to feel alarm. Neither condition could stave off smoldering outrage.

  “Show yourself, and make an end of this!” he shouted.

  The fog devoured his voice. In the still that followed, Rathe heard laughter, recognized the shadow-man’s contemptuous mockery. He waited, expectant, but his invitation went unanswered.

  “Fear hones a man to his sharpest,” the shadow-man had said. Rathe guessed there might be a bit of truth to that. He also guessed his adversary’s true purpose was not to sharpen him, but to wear him down, get him jumping at every flicker and sound, so much that he started second-guessing himself and let down his guard.

  “I grow weary, coward!” Rathe shouted.

  Silence again.