Chapter 8
The dungeons had always been a terrible place—deep within the castle’s innards, where the sole light came from torches.
Cells lined both sides of the corridor, furnished with heaps of mouldering hay, dented buckets and worn blankets.
Water dripped down the mould coating the walls, and rats darted across the passage.
As usual, only a handful were held today.
Ardenia was not a realm that let people rot in cells for years.
Men sentenced to life for grievous violence were sent north to the mines.
Those caught stealing or committing petty disorder were usually kept a few nights before being made to repay through coin or labour.
As for murderers or those who committed crimes so grave no amends could balance them, executions were carried out down here at dawn.
A pair of drunkards snored in one cell. A third prisoner, pink-eyed from drink, lurched up at the bars as the torchlight struck Richard’s face.
“Well now,” he slurred, gripping the iron. “Would y’look at that. Got a proud lord’s look about you. A beauty come to visit the scum, eh?”
Kaelen shifted closer, his pauldron brushing Richard’s shoulder with every step. Ahead, Dain walked alongside Morland.
In another cell farther down, a scrawny man dangled both arms through the bars and whistled at Kaelen.
“Saints above,” the man crooned. “Look at that one. I’d go meek as a lamb for a night with him.”
His companion behind him grinned. “Think he’d keep the armour on?”
Dain turned to growl at them, “Another word from either of you, and I’ll have your tongues cut before supper.”
Silence ensued, save for a few muttered obscenities.
The interrogation rooms lay in the farthest corner of the dungeon, beyond a tall gate flanked by two guards. Morland produced a key, and the gate swung open.
Richard had not been in this corridor in years.
Not since the day Haldric brought him down to observe the questioning of a sorcerer who’d dabbled in necromancy.
Richard had kept his face blank as the sorcerer screamed and pleaded, but on returning to his chambers, he had vomited and taken a sleeping draught.
Morland opened the final door. It was a different room from the one Richard had been in before—larger, with a sunken ceiling and a neatly laid-out table. Knives of varying lengths, pincers, coiled whips, a mallet, and a bowl of water.
Chained to the far wall was Lyell. He had been collared to a ring set low into the stone, the chain long enough to let him sit and stand and pace a little.
Additional chains bound his hands, runed manacles scraping his wrists raw.
With the Threads cut off from him, he had no way to guide or free himself.
Lyell’s mousy hair hung lankly about his face.
One eye was swollen nearly shut. His lower lip was split.
Bruises mottled the line of his throat and disappeared beneath the collar of a shirt half-unlaced and slipping off a shoulder, exposing cuts and the jut of collarbone.
All his fingernails had been ripped off, blood and pus leaking from a few, and rod-like burns were scattered on his arms. Even so, the tattoo of the three fledglings huddled together was stark on the underside of his forearm.
“Three of Cups. A toast. New friendship. Our paths, my dear friend, will cross again.”
Richard dismissed the memory of Flint’s laughing voice with a flick of his head. There was no use for such sympathies. This sorcerer had almost caused Briony’s death.
He crossed the room, hooked a nearby stool with his foot and placed it before the prisoner.
“Your Majesty,” Kaelen said. “Do not get too close.”
Richard sat down, a head taller than Lyell, who’d clambered onto his knees. Dain came to Richard’s left, hand on his sword, and Kaelen stood by Richard’s right. Morland, however, watched with the guards from the door.
“Your Majesty,” Lyell rasped, his sightless eyes staring up at Richard. “Decided to see me yourself, have you?”
Richard crossed his legs. Lyell reeked of sweat, dried blood, and healing salve—no doubt to mend cuts before slicing them open again. The man’s breathing was shallow, and tremors flitted through his frame.
“I am told, Sorcerer,” Richard said, “that you have endured Chief Morland’s attentions without surrendering anything of use. I am impressed.”
“Keep your impressions, Your Majesty,” Lyell said. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t grovel. I’ve had a trying week.”
Richard chuckled. “Noted. Then let us not waste each other’s time. I want answers. Who were the witches that accompanied you? Why did they want my sister’s blood?”
Lyell snorted and stared at a point above Richard’s shoulder. “You sit there in your fine clothes, fresh from your bath, drenched in ambroa and cedar—a perfume more costly than a cottage.” He shook his head. “You expect me to hand a pampered king answers because you deigned to visit?”
“Bold words for a man fettered to my wall,” Richard said softly. “I can make lives very painful.”
Lyell smiled grimly. “Do your worst, Your Majesty. I don’t care for my life.”
Richard placed the toe of his boot under Lyell’s chin. The leather nudged upward, tilting the sorcerer’s face towards the torchlight. Lyell clenched his jaw but did not jerk away.
“And who says,” Richard murmured, “it is your life I intend to make painful, Master Lyell?”
Lyell went rigid. His lips parted, the split in the lower one cracking anew. “You know my name?”
“Your lovers arrived in High Ardenia three days ago.” Richard withdrew his boot and kept his voice light despite the sour taste on his tongue. “Tried to rescue you. Quite the scene, I am told.”
The chains snapped taut. Lyell lunged, wrists straining against the manacles, his chest heaving. “Don’t—don’t you touch them. They’ve nothing to do with this. They didn’t know I was—”
“The woman.” Richard hummed. “Edith.” He rested his chin on his fist. “She was arrested first. Broad shoulders. Strong hands. She certainly has the build for hard labour. I have dispatched her to the mines.”
Lyell whimpered. “No—”
“Backbreaking work, the northern mines. Hauling ore carts through tunnels too narrow to stand in. The cold alone kills half within the first winter, and I am told the rock dust shreds lungs from the inside.” Richard examined his nails.
“A woman of her constitution might last two years. Perhaps three, if she’s fortunate.
” He gave a sigh. “Pity. A waste of good muscle.”
Lyell’s ruined hands were shaking. His eyes brimmed, tears catching the torchlight as they spilled down the hollows of his cheeks.
“Please. She is ill already. She—she has done nothing wrong—”
“Now, the man.” Richard steepled his fingers. “Flint.”
Lyell made a strangled sound.
“Oh, he is something, is he not? Quite the mouth on him. He was only apprehended after he talked his way past three checkpoints.” Richard tutted. “Such bravado.”
He rose and knelt before Lyell. The sorcerer recoiled, but Richard caught his face between both hands, thumbs resting below those tear-filled eyes. He leaned close.
“He really is striking, your Flint. Even with that burn across his face.” Richard’s thumb traced a slow arc over Lyell’s cheekbone.
The sorcerer trembled so violently that his teeth chattered.
“I have always wanted a pet, Lyell. Something to keep chained at the foot of my bed—just at the foot, mind. I do not lie with stray dogs. But it would be a delight to have one sing me to sleep and amuse me with stories. Flint would make an entertaining whelp, do you not think?”
“Stop,” Lyell choked. “Stop, please—”
“I shall keep him collared, of course. Give him a blanket if he behaves.” Richard clicked his tongue.
“Though I worry about his ruts. Quite the appetite in him, your lover, and I am sure, given the chance, he might well bed half our maids and footmen. Perhaps I should have him gelded to curb such zeal—”
“No!” Lyell’s forehead dropped against Richard’s knees, chains pooling on the floor. “Anything- anything you want. I’ll tell you everything—every scrap of it. Just don’t—don’t hurt them. They’re all I have. They’re everything I have. Please. Please.”
Richard sat back on the stool, dimly aware of Kaelen lurching back a step. “Who were the witches?”
For a moment, Lyell could do nothing but sob into Richard’s boots. Then, he drew in a deep breath and forced himself upright.
“The witches,” he said shakily. “They’re part of a western coven. The Sanguis Order. Numbering at least fifty, from what I overheard.”
“I have not heard the name.”
“You—you wouldn’t,” Lyell stammered. “They don’t register themselves. They hide in the forests and abandoned buildings, moving camp after camp. A month ago, they found me.” He grimaced. “No—tracked me. Scried me out.”
“For what purpose?”
“My sorcery. Shield-work. Barriers. To be able to shape invisible walls is a rare form of mastery, and one they thought useful. When I refused, they cursed Edith with the Hollowing.” Lyell squeezed his eyes shut.
“It strips a person’s memories. Day by day, piece by piece, until the mind is an empty room.
The week before I left, Edith couldn’t remember our dogs.
Forgotten the names of the very pups she’d raised for years.
Flint forbade me from joining the witches—said not to worry, that he’d sort it out, but the next day, Edith forgot who we were.
Us. It came back to her after some hours, but I could bear it no longer. The witches have the only cure.”
“They told you it was me they meant to kill?”
“Yes. They told me it was your blood they wanted.” He swallowed hard. “I swear it. I don’t hurt children. None of us do.”
“That hardly makes it better,” Dain snapped from Richard’s side. “You sought to kill the king!”
“I sought to heal my own!” Lyell tried to yank his hand towards his heart, but the chain stretched too short. “I was desperate!”
Richard remembered the shield conjured between Briony and the dagger-wielding witch. “What did they want with the blood?”
“To open a portal.”
“A portal where?”
“Into a land none can enter or leave. That was all they said.”
Richard’s breath hitched. Gloamvarn.
“Why my sister’s blood?”
Lyell shook his head. “I don’t know. I swear it.
I only held the barrier and cloaked them in invisibility.
I was told nothing more than I needed to know, and those witches were not even the main circle of the Order—they seemed so ready to die, as though they’d been chosen for some ridiculous suicide assignment, and they seemed happy about it.
I even told them the chances of us escaping after—” He clamped a trembling hand on Richard’s knee.
“Please. Please, I have told you all I can. I do not know where their base lies. I met none other, I heard no other names—”
Richard stood. The movement startled Lyell into a panic.
“My lovers!” He grabbed Richard’s boots and pressed his forehead to them. “Flint and Edith—please, Your Majesty. Set them free. Take my life if you will, but please, release them.”
Richard sighed. “Your lovers are at home, Lyell. Where they have been all along. I never had them.”
Lyell’s unswollen eye bulged, and beneath the bruising, his face went white. “You—you lied?”
“Yes.” Richard bent to seize Lyell’s chin. “Now, you shall carry a message to the leader of the Raven’s Guild.”
Lyell’s brows creased. “A message?”
“Tell Flint this,” Richard said. “I return his lover as a mercy, but I will, one day, collect the debt.”
Dain swore. “What in the hells? You cannot mean to release him.”
Morland rasped from the door, “Your Majesty, this man abetted treason on crown grounds.”
“He will not do so again,” Richard said. “Lest he wish all of the Raven’s Guild be razed to the ground. Have a healer go with him. See whether anything may be done for Edith’s curse.”
“We don’t need the king’s healer.” Lyell wrenched his chin from Richard’s hold. “We’ll manage without your charity. We always have.”
Richard cocked his head. Flint had been the same way. Showing a distaste for the crown that stretched beyond ordinary reason. “You bear me a separate grudge.”
“A grudge?” A bitter sneer crossed Lyell’s features. “Yes, you may call it that.”
“I do not recall meeting you before.”
“Of course you don’t,” Lyell said quietly.
“What’s another orphan amongst a hundred swarming you?
Twelve, I was, when you came bearing gifts.
A tribute, they said, for the crown prince’s sixteenth birthday.
Cakes and blankets and little carved toys.
” He grimaced. “When you swung off your horse, I forgot to breathe. Never had I seen one so radiant under the sun. How fitting that it should be the last day I had my sight.” His voice shuddered.
“The last day before such cruel terrors were forced upon us, all done by your damned hand.”
Dain cracked his knuckles. “You dare speak so when His Majesty has shown you kindness—”
“It is fine, Dain.” Richard frowned at Lyell. “Chief Morland, have him healed and returned to his guild.”
He strode from the chamber. The corridor’s chill seeped through his tunic, and the torches seemed to glow dimmer.
Dain and Kaelen followed suit, the Lord Commander blustering that Richard had gone quite mad to release an accomplice to treason, while Kaelen stayed ominously silent. But Richard had greater concerns.
The Sanguis Order.
A western coven. A portal. Briony’s blood meant to open the way into Gloamvarn.
Richard’s hands curled into fists.
This was Galdran’s doing.