Chapter Fourteen #3
I remember looking out of the window. From my vantage I could see all the Denizens in the courtyard.
The trolls huddling under their umbrella, hiding from the creeping sun.
Squinter, wrapped in a full-body blindfold and chained to a post like a monstrous balloon.
Listless hagworms, their old-woman faces ever more wrinkled and withered.
The minotaur, slumped against a wall. Indeed, the captured Denizens were so thoroughly defeated that Orphir had moved guards from the courtyard to the castle walls, in anticipation of a rebel assault.
Only Only-Sister seemed animated; she paced back and forth, as if she’d caught a scent. The stump of her maimed tail struck me as heraldic.
Beyond the walls, the little town carried on, the early morning excitement of the minotaur already subsiding into the business of the day.
What would once have been a seven-year or even seventy-seven-year wonder was now barely remarkable.
Things marvellous and strange fade into irrelevance when you’re inside the walls of your home.
And beyond the village fields, the green canopy of the forest. I watched birds take flight like dragons against the grey sky.
I remembered sitting in my tomb in the Dungeon, listening to the RAS adventurers smashing their way closer and closer. I could tell where they were by the echoes, by the sound of splintering doors.
Down in the Dungeon, down in the dark, I knew the warning signs.
I’d forgotten how to read the surface world.
Fear rose up in me. What if I was already too late?
What if the rebels hadn’t listened to Neb, and at any moment a host of foes might burst from the cover of the trees?
I didn’t want to be trapped in this keep.
Equally, what if Orphir knew of my conversation with Neb?
What if he suspected me of being in league with the rebels?
Since my resurrection, I’d heard endless stories about Orphir’s spies and sinister methods.
He said he’d brought me back because he could trust me, but I suspect I was brought back mainly as an experiment.
If he could restore a talking skull to life, then repairing a failing changeling should have been even easier.
What were the “great works” Orphir spoke of? What was he about to do?
I must admit I panicked.
In my panic, I emptied the last coins from the royal coffer into a sack. I wrote a neat zero in the ledger, just to close it out. And then I went downstairs on a heroic mission of mercy.
If only I’d had a cloak to billow.
Bait was kept in the depths of the keep, in a dungeon cell below the deepest cellar.
I descended the stairs from my room, then another stair down to the kitchens, then yet another narrow spiral staircase, pushing past servants and scullions.
In the dim light, their faces seemed as monstrous as any Denizen’s, and I felt my courage draining away with every step.
The cellars were pitch-dark, and I’d neglected to bring a candle. I felt my way along, blindly fumbling through unfamiliar passageways, barking my new knees and unspoiled shins against unseen obstacles – until, at last, I saw torchlight.
Two guards, standing outside the door of a prison cell.
I pressed myself against the wall, my heart pounding with fear.
It was very distracting. What was I doing there?
What could I possibly accomplish? I’d entertained wild fantasies of rescuing Bait – the impetuous influence of young Neb – without considering the practicalities.
How would I get her out of the cell? Once out of the cell, how would we leave the cellar?
The castle? And then what? Back to an empty Dungeon, only ghosts and ghasts for company?
Maybe we’d take the roads, a travelling mountebank again, just me and Bait and a wagonful of fake medicines and faded magic – and a vengeful Orphir at our heels?
Or should we throw our lot in with the rebels, and whatever uncertain hope they offered?
And then another question rose, eclipsing all the rest: even if I rescued her, would Bait forgive me?
The wise mentor in these tales is supposed to have all the answers. I had none.
Would I be better served by turning my back on the child?
I’d betrayed her once; why complicate matters by risking an uncertain redemption?
Perhaps it would be best if I went somewhere safe to cogitate a cunning plan instead?
Wouldn’t it be better – safer, too, for all concerned – if I just walked away?
I tried to walk away, but it was dark and I bumped into a wall.
“Who goes there?”
Always nice to meet a guard with a sense of tradition. I turned around as he thrust a torch perilously close to my face; fortunately, I was hairless as an egg.
“Cornelius,” I said with a bow.
“Who?”
“Ah! I am a colleague of my good friend Orphir. Him you know, I’m sure – the Chancellor, royal physician-in-ordinary, court astrologer, high and exalted such-and-such.”
They were unmoved.
“The fellow who pays your wages,” I added. “Best for all, I think, if you let me pass.”
“No one’s supposed to come down here.”
“Rest assured, my worthy friends, that I am here with full knowledge and permission of my illustrious colleague. I’m here to see the prisoner.”
The guards looked at one another. “No one’s allowed in.”
“There isn’t a prisoner,” said the guard.
“And if there was, no one would be allowed to know,” added his colleague.
“Friends,” I said, “I am privy to many secrets. This prisoner who may or may not exist – a young woman, is she not? Her face has likely been hidden from you, but you’ve maybe heard her yowling and barking like a beast? Small and prone to biting?”
One of the guards nursed a bandaged hand.
“Aye, that’s the one.”
They let me into Bait’s cell. It was bare: a bedroll, a chamber pot and little else. An uneaten breakfast on a tray. The only light what little spilled in under the door. I could dimly make out a lumpen shape on the bedroll.
“Bait?”
She did not respond.
I glanced around the room, wondering how I could rescue her. It was unpromising. Four solid stone walls, only one door. No hiding places, nothing that could be used as a weapon except for that chamber pot. Could I talk my way out? Unlikely.
The desperate thought struck me – a spell?
I had nothing to draw upon, beyond whatever scraps had fallen from Orphir’s experiments.
If we were in the Dungeon, I might have made Bait invisible, or turned the guards into toads.
But we were in a dungeon, not the Dungeon. There was nothing here to work with.
Escaping with her was impossible. Utterly impossible.
All I could offer, I realised, was comfort. A promise that despite recent regrettable choices on my part, she was not alone.
“Bait, it’s me. Cornelius.”
She did not respond.
“I’m very sorry for not visiting. I tried – well, I should have tried – but I’m indebted to Orphir, and he’s placed a great many duties upon my shoulders. You must be very angry, but please try . . .”
I tried another tack.
“The Tunnel Surveyors captured Sir Peledon this morning. As I feared, he’s wholly beast now.
I know you must be disappointed. I don’t think he knows where he is, the poor fellow.
But he’s chained up in the courtyard now with the rest of the Denizens.
Maybe if you behaved, and stopped resisting Orphir’s spells, you could be allowed to visit him. ”
Even as I said it, I knew it was a lie. Orphir would butcher the minotaur for sorcery no matter what.
If he didn’t need that magic to cure the princess, then he’d use it on the rebel forces, or some other foe.
If he came across a coin, he would pick it up and spend it.
It was not his nature to be merciful or generous or kind.
“Bait, whatever happens, I’m glad to have known you. When you found me . . . I was hollow. A failure of a master and a failure of a man. There was nothing in me. I’d have stared at the wall for eternity. You pulled me out of that. You reminded me I wasn’t quite dead.”
I sat down on the bed next to her. She did not react.
“But, child, the most important lesson I can teach you is this, and it’s a hard one – nothing matters but staying alive. Everything else is negotiable. Staying alive – that’s the first Rule, above or below.”
Not a fitting lesson for a young princess. Not the lesson that the noble Sir Peledon wanted me to teach her when he first employed me. But he was a mindless beast, and I was alive again.
I was alive again.
I was alive! Alive in that body, and that body had hands and arms, and legs that could run. I could do more than talk! I could act!
A thrill of determination ran through me, potent as sorcery. I could rescue Bait! I could spirit her away from this dungeon. I could get her to Neb and the rebels . . . somehow!
True, there were guards just outside the door, and more guards beyond that, and sentries on the walls, and any number of heavily armed RATS, not to mention Orphir and all his fearsome sorcery and I had no idea, but .
. . but in that moment I was willing to risk death.
A second death, admittedly, but a much more heroic one than the first.
“Bait,” I whispered, “I’m going to get you out of here.”
She did not stir.
“Bait, do you understand?”
She did not respond. Not even the customary “no”.
It was only then I realised that she had already escaped, and I had delivered my heartfelt confession to a rolled-up blanket.
In my defence, there was very little light in that cellar.