Chapter Thirty-Three Ruhlin
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Ruhlin
Silvahk found him in the healer’s chambers.
After the beast fight in the wuhltra, Ruhlin had carried Ohtera back to the Kelvengyr himself.
In her untransformed state, she weighed little and he was unwilling to surrender her to the Ventra’s care.
Fernhyld had been surprisingly composed upon learning of her lover’s injury.
Ruhlin saw more relief than despair as she clasped Ohtera’s hand.
Having set Ohtera down on one of the beds, he stayed at Fernhyld’s side, watching the healer do his work.
For all his shortness of temper and taciturn ways, the old man was a deft hand with cat-gut and thread, stitching Ohtera’s cuts closed before cleaning the deeper wound to her leg with a mix of boiled water and wine vinegar.
It caused her to call out in pain, clutching hard at Fernhyld’s hand, but she managed to keep her leg still while he completed his work.
“Too raggedy to stitch,” the healer muttered, peering at the strip of torn flesh marring Ohtera’s calf. “Some damage to the muscle too. Be a good while before you run again.” Rising, he went to his workbench and began adding various herbs and liquids to his mortar.
“What’s that smell?” Fernhyld asked when the old man returned with a bandage soaked in whatever concoction he had mixed.
“Poultice,” he grunted, wrapping the bandage around Ohtera’s lower leg. “It’ll start to itch something fierce in a few hours. Don’t take it off, lest you want to lose this leg, that is.”
Noticing Silvahk watching from the doorway, Ruhlin saw the Ventra’s features were hard, but concern showed in his eyes as he stared at Ohtera. “When can she fight again?” he asked the healer, the words spoken with a croak Ruhlin suspected came from forced stridency.
“Hasn’t your vile king tormented her enough?
” Fernhyld demanded in an angry sob. Turning to the doorway, she raised a hand to her blindfold, then stiffened in the signature pose of one suffering the stagna’s kiss.
Ruhlin caught her before she fell, casting a hard glower at Silvahk.
The Ventra retreated a few steps, features now pale with fear, but his gaze was not on Ruhlin but the slight woman in his arms.
Can he be more scared of her than he is of me? he wondered, looking again at Fernhyld’s blindfold and wondering just what lurked behind it.
“Leave her here,” Silvahk snapped, jerking his head at Ruhlin. “You are commanded to attend the Vortigurn.”
For the first time since his arrival, Ruhlin found himself being led outside the Kelvengyr’s walls.
Silvahk walked ahead of him with two Ventra at his back.
His captors were clearly unwilling to take any chances today.
They crossed a bridge and scaled the sloped pathway leading to the gloomy confines of the Vortigurn’s Unfinished Hall.
Much traipsing through a maze of corridors followed until they emerged into a broad courtyard.
Rising from its centre was the tallest structure Ruhlin had seen.
It stood well over sixty feet high, and, like much of this mismatched sprawl of architecture, was not yet completed judging by the scaffolding encrusting its angular walls.
“The Moon Shadow Tower,” Silvahk said, leading him inside.
The echo of his voice was amplified by the large hole in the tower’s floor.
Fifteen paces wide, its sheer walls descended into absolute gloom.
Ruhlin thought it might be a well but saw no ropes or buckets.
Also, as his eyes accustomed to the dark, they picked out dark stains on the hole’s edges.
Some were old and flaked, but others appeared fresh, glistening and wet.
“Named in honour of Trieya Vorlspeld, goddess of foresight and sound navigation,” Silvahk continued as they began to climb successive flights of stairs ascending to the structure’s summit. “Nigh a hundred years in the building and still not done.”
“Why not?” Ruhlin asked.
He didn’t expect an answer so was surprised at the Ventra’s muttered response: “Because it’s never quite high enough for him. He finds their screams too short.”
An explanation for this cryptic reply came when they had scaled about half the tower’s height.
A panicked shout from above was followed by an echoing yell, one that rose and fell in volume as a flailing figure plummeted past to disappear into the hole below.
Their scream continued even after they had been swallowed by the dark circle, ending in a distant thud.
“I thought he wanted to watch me die in the wuhltra,” Ruhlin said. Ever sensitive to danger, the monster coloured his words with a growl. Silvahk, well attuned to the signs of an imminent transformation, quickly fixed his gaze upon Ruhlin’s stagna.
“That he does,” the Ventra said. “This tower is not for Kelven. He wishes only to talk. So calm that beast, Amundyr. I would hate to see you fall.”
The monster’s wrath continued to build, obliging Ruhlin to reach for the inner calm that enabled their partial communication. Now is not the time, he told it. We must wait. Learn more of our enemy.
As before, there were no answering words, leaving him to translate the response from the resultant mix of emotions. He sensed grudging acceptance along with poorly restrained impatience. Evidently, the monster had grown very tired of their shared captivity.
Silvahk continued to study him carefully until, grunting in satisfaction, he resumed the climb. “I see even a glimmer of that thing in the Vortigurn’s presence,” he warned. “And you’ll be following these other poor bastards into the pit.”
His threat was starkly illustrated a few seconds later when another screaming unfortunate came tumbling past. His fall was less well aimed than the previous victim, Ruhlin seeing him collide with the edge of the hole before disappearing into its depths.
By the time they reached the top of the tower, Ruhlin had counted three more fallers and begun averting his gaze from their fate.
The steps ended at a flat expanse of mosaic tiles.
The space was lit by torches held by the Vortigurn’s guards.
The wavering yellow glow played over a floor covered in what Ruhlin took to be representations of the Altvar of the Upper Hall.
They were arranged in a dial around another hole, this one smaller than the one in the tower’s base.
The Vortigurn stood on one side regarding a kneeling, grey-haired figure in a black robe on the other.
The captive’s arms were snared in the grasp of two guards, his head bobbing as he wept.
From the stain in the air, the old man had surrendered to his fear with more than just tears.
Off to the side was another flight of stairs that ascended only ten steps before coming to an end.
The space lacked a roof and Ruhlin found his gaze momentarily captured by the stars glimmering in a sky darkened by the onset of dusk.
“Amundyr!” Lowering his gaze, he found the Vortigurn’s austere features set in a smile of welcome. “How glad I am to have you join us.”
“I wasn’t given a choice,” Ruhlin pointed out. He wanted to add a reminder that his name wasn’t Amundyr, but decided an additional, and pointless, display of defiance was unwise given what he had already witnessed.
“Oh, but if you had, I’m sure you would have chosen to come.
” The Vortigurn’s smile broadened as he gestured to the foul-smelling prisoner.
“For I find myself in company with an old friend of yours.” Gesturing for Ruhlin to come closer, he issued a curt instruction to the old man. “Speak your name.”
“N-Nehlvyr,” the captive stammered, raising his aged features to regard Ruhlin with desperate eyes.
He saw no bruises upon this face, but still thought it beaten.
A defeated and degraded old man, pathetically clinging to a vestige of hope.
Ruhlin saw it in the unspoken plea in the prisoner’s gaze, but couldn’t fathom why. He didn’t know this man.
“No?” the Vortigurn asked, raising an eyebrow at Ruhlin’s puzzled frown.
“Does neither name nor face stir a memory? But this traitorous wretch assures me you are acquainted. It is thanks to him, he claims, that you were brought into my loving embrace. Now I see he was lying to save his worthless neck. Oh well.” The king waved a hand at the guards holding Nehlvyr’s arms. “Throw him in with the others.”
As the guards began to drag their charge to the hole, provoking an outburst of terrorised whimpering, the mention of the old man’s claim struck a dim chord in Ruhlin’s mind.
Nehlvyr’s face had been so transformed by terror Ruhlin hadn’t matched it to that of a figure he recalled with all too much clarity.
It was only as the old man shook his head and the beak-ish shape of his nose became clear, that recognition dawned.
“The wayfinder,” he said, causing the Vortigurn to halt the guards with an upraised hand.