“Please,” the voice said anxiously, the eyes turning briefly to glance down the corridor. “There will be a change of cellmaster before too long. We must use every minute.”
Having decided that he was not dreaming, Ethan climbed to his feet. As he approached the bars, he finally recognized the speaker.
That gave him his biggest shock yet.
“But you’re Rakossa’s queen?…”
The girl expectorated, following it with a degrading word. “He calls me his concubine. The court refers to me as royal consort. I am his chiv-stool, for he wipes his feet on me.” Her voice held more hatred and bitterness than Ethan imagined possible. Each word was soaked in vitriol, every sentence washed with venom. Yet she spoke quietly and with control.
“I hight Teeliam Hoh, outlander. I was purchased to be less than a pet. Queen?” Fury kept her from laughing. “I am a thing he uses, plays with, like a favorite sword, yet the sword is cared for and treated better than I.”
Ethan was looking down the corridor himself now. “You mentioned a change of cellmaster. What about the one on duty now? He’ll be coming—”
“Nowhere,” she finished for him. “He and the other guard are dead. I cut their throats.”
Her hands fumbled at the old metal lock which sealed the cell. Mumblings and questions sounded behind Ethan as the noises and activity woke others.
“Then you believe us,” Ethan said excitedly, watching her hands work the heavy, ornate key. “You know Ro-Vijar for the liar he is.”
“I do not know the Landgrave of Arsudun for anything but the trail a dung crawler leaves behind itself after a meal.”
“If you don’t know whether he’s lying or not, then why are you doing this for us?”
Her bared teeth shone at him. “You think I do this for you? I do it for her.” She gestured up the corridor, returned to the lock and key.
Ethan looked in the indicated direction, made out the shape of a second figure. “Elfa.” Something clicked and then the door swung open easily. Tran in other cells were awake now, watching and murmuring tensely. Teeliam moved to free them.
Ethan moved toward Elfa, smiling happily. He stopped a meter away, and stared. Just stared. His disbelief was too great for him to curse the reality of what he saw.
The beautiful cat face was bruised and marred, one eye swollen almost shut. There were large patches of smooth fur missing, and places singed and blackened as if by fire. Elfa did not smile at him. In fact, her attention seemed rooted on the floor, though it was in a different place altogether. She held both arms tight around herself. The clothing she wore was simple, not what she’d been wearing when taken away from the rest of them.
Teeliam Hoh, having given the keys to other Tran, had come to stand next to Ethan. He turned a wordless, open-mouthed gaze to her.
“I know the inner passages of the castle,” she said, less bitterly now. “I knew one of you had been brought for questioning. Through a chink I saw how this Ro-Vijar asked questions, how nothing he said or did could be credited to a true Landgrave-protector.
“While I could not know the truth of what he said about you, I did know that everything else he claimed should be treated as a lie, for he lives and that is an untruth of itself.” She looked away from him, at the floor, then at Elfa.
“Rakossa was with him, watching, relishing the spectacle. After a while, he deigned to participate.” She shuddered. “I have had to endure his foul imagination for two years. Would that I could have gone mad.”
“Why.” Ethan swallowed, tried again. “Why did you stay here? Why didn’t you try to escape him?”
Now Teeliam found reason to laugh. “I do that several times a year, sky-outlander Ethan. Always I am caught, or bought back from those who find me. What Rakossa then does to me drives out all thoughts of escape for day-times. As will doubtless happen again after this. If I did not resist him, he would tire of me and kill me, for none can have a woman that Rakossa has had. And when I resist, he… imagines things.”
“It won’t happen again, woman,” said a deep, angry voice. September had come up behind Ethan and was staring compassionately at Teeliam. He had already examined Elfa professionally and chose not to stare at her.
“It does not matter. I would have done this only to anger him no matter what you do for yourselves or me, no matter what had been done to her.” She indicated Elfa, who had not moved.
“There is another thing. I believe you would wish to have these. I stole them.” She swung the small pack from her back, brought out their beamers.
“How long until the new cellmaster comes on duty?” Ethan clipped his own weapon back to his waist, tried to peer through sooty darkness up the corridor and stairs. Teeliam mentioned Tran time-units. “Maybe that’s long enough for us to slip up the stairways and fight our way back to the ship.”
“Are you offworlders truly the fools Ro-Vijar claims?” Teeliam eyed him disbelievingly. “You cannot go back through the castle. There are soldiers on every level above. You could not reach the courtyard before every warrior on the island had been assembled. I do not think your magical weapons which Ro-Vijar whispered of to Rakossa would be enough to repulse a thousand or more fighters in close quarters.”
“Gal’s got a point.” September bent his white-maned head down to her. “What you have in mind as an alternative?”
“I will cut the face of my father into his back and he will curse his manhood,” said a voice cold enough to match the atmosphere above ground. Elfa spoke at last.
“Surely you will.” Sir Hunnar had been standing in the shadows for an indeterminate length of time, watching Elfa. Now he moved into the light, speaking gently as he took her arm. “But not now, later. We must free ourselves first.”
She tried to pull free of his grasp. For a moment the green cloak and wraps she was wearing slid loosely aside. Ethan saw scars and markings he wished he had not.
“I will remove his fur one hair at a time,” she continued, in a tone that chilled Ethan’s heart. She made no move to cover herself.
“Yes, but later, later. I promise.” Hunnar fixed her cloak. How he kept his voice low and easy was something Ethan was never able to figure out. Now he slid an arm around her shoulders.
With an effort, Teeliam replied to September’s question. “Faint hope lies this way.” She started down the corridor, toward the cells farthest from the stairway. Ethan and September followed. With Hunnar’s support, a glaze-eyed Elfa stumbled uncertainly in their wake.
At the far end of the dungeon they found another doorway. It was low for a Tran, blocked up with masonry and cordoned off with braided pika-pina cable.
“It is told that in ancient times the worst offenders of the laws were put through there. A tunnel lies beyond. Where it leads to is not spoken of. But it is a place far from here.”
“Good enough for me,” said September, approving the plan. “Why is it sealed up?”
“Four Landgraves ago, the histories say, it was decided the punishment was too severe for even the murderers of children.”
“Wonderful,” Ethan murmured, eying the doorway as if some inconceivable horror might at any moment burst through the stones to devour them.
“Where does it go?” A prosaic query from the Slanderscree’s reluctant, but ever-curious Captain Ta-hoding.
Teeliam turning, told him. “It goes down to Hell.”
“Fine.” September smiled, “then I don’t expect we’ll be followed. At that moment he looked a bit like a daemon of the underworld himself. “Stand away.”