“They’re large,” Narcissus said. He was taking a break from staring at his reflection. He was polishing his mirror with the hem of his tunic.
“Large!” Amelia laughed, the first normal sound they’d heard in this place. “They’re giants!”
Two huge black hounds came through the doorway and began sniffing down the corridor. They had short, shining fur, pointed ears, and long, thin tails. Their mouths were open and their long pink tongues were lolling out, providing a sharp color contrast to their sharp white fangs and their glowing red eyes.
Batanya pressed herself as far back in her cell as she could go, unless she could gouge a niche in the stone wall. She managed to say, “Do they let the dogs come into the cells?” Dogs! It would be dogs! Why couldn’t the prison level be guarded by hydras, or gargoyles? Anything besides dogs.
“No,” Narcissus said. The dogs swung their heads toward him and took a tentative step closer to the bars of his cell. With a complete disregard for the long, sharp teeth and the demonic eyes, Narcissus moved to the front of the cell and stretched his hand between the bars. The fearsome beasts took a big sniff, and the one nearer Narcissus let the young man scratch his head.
The three women stared at this, and Narcissus smiled. “Even dogs are attracted to me,” he said happily. “But you know, I love them, too.”
Batanya shuddered when she thought of some of the things she’d seen in her travels. She hoped the bars remained in place, for Narcissus’s sake. “Attracted” could translate in many ways.
After a moment, the hounds seemed to lose interest in Narcissus and resumed their prowl down the corridor. The red eyes fixed on each prisoner in turn, and a growl began rumbling through their chests as they came to Batanya’s cell. Her face was set in the clenched expression of someone completely determined not to show what she was feeling, but she was pale and sweating.
“Just stay back from the bars,” Clovache said, keeping her voice smooth and calm with a huge effort. “They can’t get you. They’re just reacting to your…” Clovache couldn’t bring herself to say the word in connection to her senior.
Batanya understood her, though, and she said it herself. “Yes, they smell my fear.” She hated this, hated herself for feeling it. Hated having a weakness. You’re a warrior, she told herself. That was years ago. You’re too old to feel this, now.
Both the hounds thrust their heads against the bars of her cell, and they began to bay. It was like nothing she’d ever heard. It took every ounce of grit she had to keep her knees stiff. Two human guards came rushing down the corridor to check out the hounds’ agitation. The hounds were by now so excited that they wheeled and leaped toward the guards, who were completely taken by surprise. Both men were armed with a form of gun, but before the stocky man on the left could draw his from its holster, the nearest hound had leaped upon him and taken out his neck with one huge bite. The guard’s head, its expression still startled, rolled grotesquely across the floor, coming to stop at Amelia Earhart’s cell. The other man was faster and steadier. He was ready to fire before the second hound was on him. His finger tightened on the trigger and the first bullet thudded into the beast leaping for him. The hound landed short, whimpering, and its decapitating buddy swung his head toward the attacking guard and growled.
But the tall, brawny fellow was not going to back down. “I’ll shoot you down!” he screamed, and the dogs seemed to think better about attacking someone as aggressive as they were. The one that had been shot was healing already. A gout of black blood spattered on the stone was the only reminder of the wound.
“They’re not going to die,” Batanya said. She and Clovache noticed at the same moment that the black blood on the stone was beginning to hiss, and a cloud of smoke was rising from the place where it had lain. When the smoke dispersed, there was a miniature crater in the floor of the corridor.
“God almighty,” said Amelia Earhart.
Narcissus crooned to the dog, “Did the nasty man want to shoot you?” and the hound that had been shot snuffled the hand that Narcissus extended through the bars. Even the guard watched incredulously.
The hound licked Narcissus’s hand.
Clovache’s mouth fell open and they all waited to see what would happen. But Narcissus didn’t scream and fall on the ground in pain. He stood regarding the huge beast with self-centered benevolence, and the huge tongue, long and thin and somehow obscene, slathered the beautiful pale hands with dog spit. Only the blood was corrosive.
“Hmmm.” Batanya was calmer now. She was ashamed of her display of fear, and she’d begun thinking. The hounds padded off the way they’d come, the guard watching them cautiously and keeping his gun drawn. Only when they’d left the room and he’d watched them exit the guardroom beyond did he squat down to get a grip on his former colleague’s ankles. He tugged. Leaving an unpleasant swath of body fluids in its wake, the corpse began moving. Finally, it vanished from sight. After a moment or two, the guard came back for the head. He didn’t speak to the prisoners, and the prisoners didn’t say a word.
After he was gone, Clovache said, “I’m guessing the guards are chosen among the unpopular and the incompetent.”
Narcissus smiled. “Yes, the guards don’t last long. For a while, I got special concessions when I told them that since the dogs liked me, they’d be less likely to attack the ones who gave me things that made me happy. That worked for while; I got the mirror, and some extra food, and even a hairbrush. But then the bigger hound got angry with the female guard, one of those insectlike ones, and snapped off her foreleg. I didn’t get any extras after that.”
“How’d she walk without the foreleg?” Clovache asked.
“Not very well. In fact, I had to laugh,” Narcissus said.
Batanya looked at him. He was quite heartless, she decided, unless the pity and sympathy were directed at him. But he wasn’t useless.
“How often do the hellhounds come around?” she asked Amelia.
“Twice a day, at least that’s what they did yesterday,” Amelia said briskly. “I think this is morning, and this was their first visit. Do you know what time it is?”
Batanya shrugged. “I lost track.”
“I guess they’re let loose for regular patrols. Or maybe they’re controlled some other way. I haven’t seen a handler. They get to do what they want, as you saw.”
Batanya sat on her bed and began to think. At least she and Clovache were side by side. There was no point in counting on any help from Narcissus. At any moment, his mirror could distract him, and his only concern was himself. At any moment, he could decide that his own comfort and pleasure were better served by inaction than action. But Amelia seemed plucky.
Perhaps Narcissus, a mythological character known even in Spauling’s literature, could be considered timeless. Maybe he was even immortal. But Amelia Earhart, according to her own testimony, was a complete human, tied to a specific time line in Earth’s history. Somehow, she’d time-traveled successfully, a fact that the magicians and technicians who powered the Britlingen Collective would find extremely interesting. Not that they had any business tampering with time; in fact, the possibility gave Batanya deep misgivings. But returning with Amelia, if that was possible, would make up for having let their client Crick get captured. Plus, Amelia seemed like a sensible woman, and she didn’t seem to have any idea of how to return to her own time and place in the world, whatever that might have been.
“Listen, Amelia, Clovache,” Batanya said. She didn’t like that Narcissus could overhear, but she had no option. She had no writing materials, and she wasn’t telepathic, and she didn’t know sign language. When I get back, she thought, I’ll ask the teachers to put sign language on the curriculum. She smiled. It was extremely unlikely they’d live to do that, but she could tell her survival sense had decreed that she should plan on it.