by Jaime Castle
The assumed leader of the masked men stepped toward the basin, flicked his hand, a slow stream of blood still pouring from the wound. A large fire erupted from the pit at its center, nearly licking the ceiling with its tendrils.
The bloody, hooded man barked something at the others in Drav Cra. One by one, they filed out until only Torsten, and an unconscious Whitney were left with him.
He turned from the flame, lowered his hood, and slowly removed his mask, revealing the face of a man—pale as parchment and nearly as thin. His nose was long and crooked, like a carrion bird. Torsten tried to get a sense of the man’s age but it was impossible. Black paint surrounded deep eye sockets within which no eyes could be found. A thick necklace of sharp teeth and bones rattled around his gaunt neck.
Only once before had Torsten seen a man who looked like him. A seer—the mouth of Nesilia, their heathen god—on the frigid shores of Drav Cra. Liam’s sword had cleaved that man in two when The Glass claimed a young Oleander as their own. There was only one reason such a wicked man would be so far south.
“Where is he?” Torsten asked through clenched teeth. He wrapped his hands around the bars of his prison and pressed his nose through the narrow opening.
The seer spoke to the flames in the language Torsten didn’t understand. Torsten’s head suddenly began to ache, like the inside of his skull was put to the torch. The seer’s words morphed, shifting into the common tongue in the midst of a phrase.
“—a blot, a stain upon this land,” he said. “She must be eradicated and he will do it. A knight, a master of shadows, and a—”
“Where is your master?” Torsten growled, interrupting him. “Where is Redstar!” He banged on the cage with what little strength he could muster.
The seer aimed his eyeless face at him. The sight made Torsten uneasy. Heathen swine! What more terrible way to deny Iam than to carve out the keys to the soul?
Whitney was just beginning to stir and jolted upward, hitting his head against the low ceiling of his dwarven cage. Torsten couldn’t imagine any other reaction to waking to see such a gruesome façade.
“He won’t get away with this,” Torsten said.
The seer stopped and leaned down in front of the cage. He may not have been able to see, but Torsten felt like the dark holes on either side of the man’s nose bored directly to his core. Out of nowhere, he grasped Torsten’s hand, pulled it through the cage, and sliced the tip of his finger. The cage shook as Torsten tore free and slammed against the back wall.
The seer brought a bit of Torsten’s blood to his lips, his tongue lashed out, staining it red. It reminded Torsten of a lizard or a toad catching its prey.
“Interesting,” he said, voice like a serpent. “I sense that you have already been in contact with our lady below. The master will want to see you.” He stood, turned, and left without another word.
“Get back here, heretic!” Torsten rattled the cage, but he was answered only by his own echo.
XXI
The Thief
“THIS IS HOG’S PISS,” Whitney said, scratching at a line in the stone wall at the back end of his cage.
Torsten grunted an indecipherable reply.
“You realize this is the third time in almost as many days I’ve found myself locked up in a cage?” Whitney asked. He banged on the low ceiling. “And a Dwarven one too boot? I’m starting to hate them.”
“You’re a bloody thief,” Torsten said. “What do you expect?”
“Oh, and you’re so noble, are you, Knight?” Whitney crawled across the cage to look through the brass bars that separated them. “I’m no idiot. I know a Nesilia cult when I see one. What did you do to anger the Buried Goddess and get us all thrown in here?”
“There is only one god’s opinion which matters.”
Whitney scoffed. “I’ve been to every corner of Pantego, friend. Seen men worship everything from silence to flowers. It was all as real as Iam to them, but say it out loud and you’ll find yourself in a dungeon just like this one.”
“And now you see why. There is only one God who loves mankind. The others spread and corrupt like a virus. All they seek is power.”
“I know of a guy who conquered just about everyone in Pantego for a god you say, ‘loves mankind,’” Whitney said. “Doesn’t sound too loving to me.”
“He loves enough to pursue,” Torsten said, resolute.
Whitney made a raspberry sound with his lips. “If Iam gave a lick about us we wouldn’t be in here. Now it’s up to me to find us a way out.”
Torsten leaned his head against the back wall, then closed his eyes as if nothing was wrong. Whitney wanted to punch him, but couldn’t reach. More importantly, he wanted to punch that damned dwarf from the tavern. “Rob the King,” he’d said. “It’ll be fun.”
Hog’s piss.
Whitney crawled the length of the cell, which didn’t take long. If he laid down and stretched his hands, every limb would be sticking through the bars.
What am I doing?
Chasing after a baby’s toy toward the most dangerous place in Pantego. He’d have been better off falling down a dwarven mine shaft… one they still inhabited at least. They might have had the decency to offer him an ale at the bottom.
He glanced back at his companion who’d constantly cursed his being and spat on him the way knights tended to do to thieves. The man who’d done the total opposite of offering a drink—tied his hands and dragged him along like a bad pet. It hadn’t been much longer than a day and they’d been attacked by dire wolves, found a man crucified in a burning town, and now been nabbed by some psychotic cult practicing blood magic. Torsten had never said that’s what it was, but Whitney had seen plenty of magic before.
All that, yet the thing his mind kept drawing back to, was how easily the brave knight pretending to nap in the neighboring cage was able to condemn the crucified villager to death—like it was just another day at work.
Whitney preferred to do his work alone. Even if his partner wasn’t a justice-hungry, obey-the-authorities-at-all-costs goody-goody like Torsten, being involved meant another life to worry about.
Whitney preferred only worrying about himself.
Stealing may have been the only thing he was good for—and he was damn good at it. Why did he need to prove himself by stealing a silly little toy from an insane Drav Cra warlock and his made-up spider queen? Whitney had stolen the crown off the king's very head.
I’m not going to sit around, waiting for Torsten to feed me to the spider just to save his own hide.
He searched the cage walls, ceiling, and floor, for anything that would help him break out, but found nothing.
He swore and kicked the rock wall at the back. A piece of stone broke off. It pinged off one of the bars of his cage and struck him in the thigh.
A smile crossed his face. He rushed over to the fragment of rock and picked it up. He took a step toward the wall between him and the knight.
“Torsten,” Whitney whispered. The man didn’t stir. “Torsten,” he said lilting his voice like a child playing street games.
Finally, asleep.
Whitney squeezed his hand through the bars into Torsten’s cage. He prodded the knight’s only remaining gauntlet and checked to make sure it didn’t wake him. All that hard work keeping him awake on their horseback ride was paying off. Taking a deep breath, he ripped the gauntlet free, wincing as he pulled it into his own cage. Torsten continued snoring, snorted, and turned his head away.
“Some knight,” Whitney mumbled under his breath.
Giving the room a quick scan, he stretched the gauntlet out along the floor. The rock made a dull clunk as it banged on the jointed metal of the pinky finger. He continued, cringing with each hit, worried he might rouse Torsten or draw the attention of one of those freaks. Finally, the end piece of plating broke free.
“Would you keep it down?” Torsten grumbled. “I’m trying to think.”
“Sorry,” Whitney answered. “Cages give me jit
ters.”
He waited a few minutes until he heard the steady rasp of snores again. Then he continued banging. He paused, then did it again, and again, flattening the metal into as thin a sliver as possible.
It wasn’t the finest lock-pick he’d ever crafted, but not the worst either. Considering the hooded cult hadn’t seen fit to leave a guard watching over the cages, they were either not used to holding prisoners, overconfident, or both.
Not a good combo while trying to confine Pantego’s greatest thief!
Whitney twisted his hand between bars and lifted the lock with the other. The angle killed his wrist, but he clenched his jaw and got to work. The tip of the gauntlet’s finger-piece just barely fit. He lowered his ear and listened for the familiar clicking of tumblers in the lock.
It took longer than he cared to admit, taking breaks only to rest his hand or bang on the piece of metal again to reshape it. Occasionally, he glanced up to see if Torsten had awoken and to make sure none of the robed figures were approaching. One walked by once holding a candle, but he or she didn’t even bother to look over.
Whitney’s fingers were shaking by the time he heard the lock click and fall open.
“Got you!” he exclaimed, then realized how loud he’d been.
The lock off and he admired his handiwork. The makeshift pick was barely in one piece, but it had worked.
This is one for the records.
Making a lock-pick out of a piece of glaruium to escape a cult of fanatics and the Wearer of White. He’d barely have to add any flair when he told it at taverns across Pantego.
Opening the cage door, he stopped. A loud rumble came from Torsten’s stomach. He stared down at the tool on the ground where he left it, then kicked it into the knight’s cage.
“Good luck, oh noble one,” he whispered. “You’ll need it.”
Even if the knight woke up in that moment, Whitney would have a head start—and that’s all he ever needed. It was the least he could do for the man who’d sprung him from the Glass Castle.
Whitney turned and crept down the long, poorly lit passage. It felt good to be able to stretch his neck. That was the thing about dwarves: Only their prisons suited their size. They built everything else in a way that dwarfed giants.
Whitney came to the end and peeked around the corner. There wasn’t much activity in the large room adjacent to him but what he saw made him even more curious.
Etched into a slightly curved wall on the far side of the room, wrapping behind a crumbling throne, was a mural pieced together from stone tablets. It depicted a woman with a spear in the center, one foot planted firmly on the chest of some enemy. He didn’t have time to see who it was before he heard movement and drew himself back into the hallway.
He held his breath as one of the robed ones passed by, not more than a meter from where he stood hidden. Only once the person passed, and Whitney was sure no one else would come, did he let the air out. He couldn’t afford to get caught for admiring artwork. He pressed on through the room, moving cautiously, finding cover behind piles of fallen stone, crates and barrels.
He arrived at another hall, only this one wasn’t long and empty. It looked like a corridor at an inn, only the open doorways spaced along it had curtains instead of doors. Living quarters.
How does anybody live in a place like this? Might as well get locked in a dungeon.
He cursed his luck. A good thief always avoids sleeping quarters unless there’s good reason.
What better reason than survival?
Whitney pushed forward, stopping before each room to check for watching eyes before passing. The first few went by without incident, no one home. He had almost decided they would all likely be empty when he came across one that wasn’t. The old man inside, and it was a man, stood naked, face aimed up at the ceiling with his eyes closed. His back and arms were covered in faded scars.
Whitney didn’t have time to linger—nor did he want to. He took two large steps across the curtain, then made a break for it. Carefully monitoring the sounds of his footsteps, making sure they landed heel-to-ball so he’d go unheard, he reached the end of the hallway and peered around the corner. No time to catch his breath. Ahead of him was an open gate. A bridge beyond it spanned a narrow ravine. Water gushed somewhere amongst the shadows at the bottom, and he could hear the bronze wheels of a mill turning in the current, still operational.
He’d hoped to escape the ancient dwarven fortress without incident, but with each step, it seemed less likely. His heart beat steadily, rhythmically. It took him a second to realize it wasn’t his heart, but actually a distant drum beat.
Whitney skulked toward the bridge, staying low. It crossed to a clearing at the bottom of a narrow valley. The fortress was apparently built into the cliffside, hidden. A perfect place to bury a cult to the Buried Goddess.
Pesky dwarves and their hiding places.
He stuck his foot out to test the brass planks. Satisfied they seemed sturdy enough and grateful for the sound of the rushing water below to muffle any sound he made, he crossed slowly. He expected his recent luck to run out and cause the bridge to collapse. It didn’t.
Once he was safely across, he ducked into the shadows and began to plot out his next move.
A dozen of the robed figures were in the clearing illuminated by the light of the moons. They were distracted by what he imagined was an unholy ritual taking place around a fire pit. A narrow path behind them skirted up the bluff, dotted by torches. It was the only way up unless he wanted to take a swim in the rapids and see where they dumped him out.
Always go up.
It would help if he could understand a word the cultists spoke but he had no such luck. While they chanted and drummed, he sidled around the clearing, back pressed against the rock, keeping to the shadows. He wrapped back until he could see the front of the Dwarven Fortress carved into the opposite side of the ravine.
Two massive relief sculptures of dwarven warriors stood proudly on either side of the open gate, their axes crossed above it. They were so large, their eyes were literally windows. He could tell by the flicker of flame through them.
He reached the path and didn’t bother looking back. He picked up his pace, sticking to the wrinkles to avoid torchlight. A chilly breeze hit his cheeks when he got high enough to see the heads of the dwarven statues. When he turned back to the path, he noticed a torch bobbing towards him.
Someone was approaching.
He backed up into a shallow nook that barely concealed him and listened for footsteps. It was impossible to hear anything that subtle over the echoes of drums pounding below. Ducking low and counting on the minimal throw of torchlight to keep him hidden, he waited until the time was right to strike. Without a weapon, he was at a clear disadvantage, but these cultists only seemed to wield knives and he’d slipped by guards with halberds.
The figure rounded the corner and Whitney sprung into action. He threw a punch into the groin of whoever it was. A cheap shot, sure, but only fools like his father valued honor over survival. The only problem was, the person he punched didn’t go down.
That complicated things. Whitney wasn’t one to hit women, but this one took full advantage of his confusion by lashing out with a perfectly targeted chop of her hand. It connected with Whitney’s upper arm and it felt like a bone had snapped.
“Ow!” Whitney yelped as he leaped back. “Okay, we’re really fighting then.”
“Stop talking, fool,” the woman snapped. Her voice had a softness, despite her tone.
Whitney swung at her with his fresh arm and she dodged him with ease. Then again. He tried one last punch and she absorbed the blow, grabbed his forearm and flipped him. He landed hard on his back, his head dangling off the edge so he could hear just how far a fall awaited him. She drove her knee down into his chest, wrenching his arm to the side.
Whitney gazed up at her, expecting to see one of the ceramic masks of his captors, but instead found a familiar face. Shrouded in the shadows of her ho
od or not, it was a face he could never forget.
“Sora?” he said.
XXII
The Thief
“WHY IN THE WORLD did you hit me?” Whitney asked as Sora helped him to his feet.
“You hit me first,” she said. “In the balls.”
“But it didn’t hurt you!” he said, brushing the dust off his pants and rubbing his lower back where he’d landed. “What are you doing here? Oh, shog. You’re one of them?”
She gave Whitney a light shove. “Do you want to stand here and talk, or get out of here before they find us?”
“So, you’re not one of them?”
“Move!”
She shoved Whitney harder this time, sending him stumbling down the tunnel.
“All right,” he groaned. “Still as impatient as ever, I see.”
She led him to the top of the winding path where they came across the bodies of two men, spilled tankards of ale between them. One wore robes, the other, nothing. At first, Whitney feared they were dead, but their chests rose and fell.
“You did this?” Whitney asked.
“I needed a robe and they were standing guard,” she replied matter-of-factly. “Slipped some of old man Wetzel’s sleeping tonic into their drink.”
“I…Why?”
“To blend in you fool,” she admonished. “They weren’t planning just to punch a woman in the balls if they caught me sneaking about.”
Woman. Hearing her say that gave Whitney momentary pause. The last time he saw her back in Troborough, she was far from a woman.
Whitney collected himself, squatted down, and grabbed a set of small, curved daggers from the still-clothed body. He tucked them into his belt, then leaned in further to check the man’s pockets.
“Seriously?” Sora said.
“Once a thief, right?” Whitney winked but doubted Sora could see him in the dim light.
