“What do you want?” he demanded, his sudden wide smile ruining the ferocity of his voice.
“Good evening, Durrin,” Hazad said quietly. “Is all in order?”
“As much as can be,” Durrin whispered. “But us standing here jabbering will not help matters. Get on with it.”
Azuri showed smiling teeth in the cold air, but called in an angry shout, “You know why I am here, you poxy wretch! I’ve come with a prize sought by King Varis. Open the gate and let me through, or find yourself spitted and roasting for his pleasure!”
Durrin hurriedly swung the gate inward, whispering, “Take care. The head gaoler, Ixron, is a vile snake at the best of times-which these are not. The rest of these dogs are little better, but they are friends after a fashion, made all the friendlier with your promised gold. Try not to hurt them too much.”
Azuri produced a clinking leather purse the size of his fist. “If you cannot fully turn the hearts of your friends with this, then they will die,” he warned, tone heavy with dark promise.
Durrin weighed the purse in his hand, eyes going wide. “More than promised … this will do. However, Ixron will never yield. Oh, he’d take the gold, but just as soon as you turn your back, he’d stick a knife in it.”
“We’ll deal with him when the time comes,” Azuri said, guiding Ellonlef through the open gate, even as the head gaoler emerged from a small mud brick building built into the wall and strode toward them. He halted them while Durrin was busy closing and barring the gate. A few guards striding along the wall walks glanced down, but showed no more than a cursory interest. Durrin had bought their apathy with the promise of precious metal.
“So, the City Watch has found one of the traitors already?” Ixron said, his steaming breath thick with the stench of sour wine. His dark eyes fell on Ellonlef’s face with a lecherous gleam.
“Yes,” Azuri answered, giving no indication he would say more.
Ixron tugged Ellonlef’s hood from her head to get a better look. His grin was vile and greedy. “Might be we need to interrogate this wench, before we dump her in the Pit.”
“Indeed,” Azuri drawled. “Perhaps, as well, you would like to see your stones hewn off and presented to the king for disobeying his commands?”
“You bloody damned Izutarians have no humor,” Ixron said with a scowl, and waved an angry hand for Azuri and the others to follow.
Staggering a little, he led them to a squat mud brick building in the center of the yard, unlocked the heavy wood door, and pulled it open. Sooty smoke puffed out on a gust of stuffy air. Once the smoke cleared, Ellonlef could make out a narrow, descending stairway lighted by a long procession of guttering torches.
“Well, take the slut down,” Ixron growled. “I have better things to do than stand here freezing my backside.”
“Be ready for my return,” Azuri said. Ixron snorted disdainfully. Then, after a closer look at Azuri’s flat gray stare, nodded in agreement.
Making a show of it, Azuri then prodded Ellonlef through the doorway, and followed after. Hazad came last. The door slammed shut as they made their way down into the hazy confines. The constricted passage, combined with an overpowering stench, made Ellonlef’s chest tighten. No man who had ever entered this place as a prisoner had come out again, not even his bones.
After a hundred steps, the stair let out in a wide chamber hacked into the granite many centuries before. Here the air was warmer, and damp besides. The very rock smelled of horror and death, ages thick. Ellonlef felt as if she could feel the ghosts of thousands of damned souls closing in around her, greedily seeking the heat of her life, wanting to steal it away.
“Are you well?” Hazad asked, scrutinizing Ellonlef.
“Fine,” she said curtly. “I just want to find Kian and escape.” She refused to heed the voice in her head telling her that he was already dead.
Azuri’s nose wrinkled. “This place smells of the grave.”
His statement did not help Ellonlef’s resolve to ward against the living memories buried in the surrounding rock, that of doom and creeping insanity. Those sent here, if they did not die straight away, first wasted away in body, then in mind.
Azuri moved across the chamber to a door of rusted iron. “Open, in the name of the king!”
There came a jangling of keys, then the door squealed ajar to show an emaciated guard who looked to not have properly eaten, or bathed, in years. “Gods cursed fool!” the man snarled at Azuri. “No call to yell. I can hear fine.”
“Shut that rotten hole in your face,” Azuri said, “and lead me to the man brought in at dawn.”
“What?” the guard asked, bemused. “Why would you want to see that scum?”
Azuri narrowed his eyes. “I said lead me to him.”
The guard growled a curse and reached for the battered hilt of his sword. Hazad pushed by Ellonlef and Azuri, closed a great fist around the guard’s throat, and slammed his head against the wall. “When you are commanded by a captain of the City Watch, worm, you obey without question,” Hazad rumbled, and threw the groaning man to the ground.
Blinking dazedly, the guard rubbed his bleeding head. “One day you Izutarian bastards are going to pay for treating trueborn Aradaners this way!”
“Are you as witless as you look, and deaf besides?” Hazad demanded, relieving the guard of his ill-kept sword. “Perhaps I should clean your ears with steel? No? Then shut your mouth and take us to the prisoner. We have something special for him … from the king”
The fool started to mumbled another curse, but Hazad dragged him to his feet and shoved him down the passage. Having no choice, the guard led them along a low corridor, bemoaning his split scalp the entire way.
The first passage, lined with doors of rotting wood, ended at another iron door. The guard unlocked it, then faced the trio. “Beyond here, prisoners are free to do as they will. Mayhap they’ll cut out your stinking tongues and eat them! While they’re at it,” he sniveled, glancing at Ellonlef, “mayhap I’ll take that pretty piece there for myself.”
Hazad’s open-handed slap ruined his lips and knocked loose a tooth.
Azuri pointed into the waiting darkness. “Lead,” he commanded
The man looked ready to balk once more, then thought better of it. He locked the door at their backs, then did as bid with hatred in his stare. He would prove dangerous, if the opportunity arose.
The way was lit by a few flickering torches set in holes in the walls, their smoke adding to the black cones of soot that ran to the ceiling. After a sharp turn took them beyond sight of the last door and the handful of torches, all was darkness. Prisoners of the Pit did not need light.
Azuri strode back the way they had come, took a torch from its place, and held it as high as the low ceiling would allow. The wavering glow did little more than remind Ellonlef of the passage’s narrowness. As they moved deeper into the now winding passage, the fickle torchlight showed more things she did not want to see. Bones of all sizes shared ground with dried excrement. Frequent alcoves ended at blank walls, into which were set rusted manacles and chains. All of the bindings were free of living prisoners, but a few held old skeletons.
The guard did not pause, or even seem to notice the bones. As he led them deeper, the air grew closer, more oppressive. Ellonlef observed signs left from the days when the Pit had been a mine. Occasional beams and rafters, now dry-rotted, shored up the walls, but more often than not the walls had crumbled into drifts of loose rubble.
“Do you know where you are going?” Hazad demanded, after what seemed hours of shambling on.
“Indeed,” the guard responded harshly, peering into the dancing shadows. “I can smell him ahead … fresh blood.”
“If he dies before we reach him,” Azuri said, “your life also ends.”
The man hunched his shoulders and scowled. “You sound like you want him to live.” Then, as if just piecing together what was afoot, the man spun, his face a mask of fury. “You bastards mean to free him!”