He saw the depictions too. The violence. He remembers the stories told around warm hearths. Of the Stormers. A bloodthirsty people who conquer lands for one reason and one reason alone: to kill. To drink the blood of those who would oppose them. To ravage the women and enslave the children.
Riding crazed horses that live for the thrill of the battle, they’ve fought the water people, the Soakers, for many years, trying to destroy them and take control of the Big Waters.
But they’re not real, right? Just stories. The king’s walls are just an artist’s depiction of the stories. Surely.
We pass under a smaller multi-colored stone archway, and into an even larger corridor, wider than ten men and taller than five. There’s a voice booming from an open doorway on the right. “The oldest bottle I said!” the voice erupts. “This is the second oldest. Go back to the cellars! NOW!”
As we step by the opening, I look inside the room. It’s like no room I’ve ever seen before. Constructed on white marble pillars, the room’s so big it could fit a hundred of my houses. Two hundred of Buff’s. A long blue carpet extends like a ribbon from the entranceway, all the way across the sparkling floor, where it reaches a seat. Nay, not a seat—a throne. With clawed paws like a bear, the granite throne looms upward, big enough to seat a family of Icers. But in it, basking in the exuberant daylight streaming through a dozen massive windows, is one man. Although I’ve never seen him before, he can be only one person: the king!
I stop, feeling the sharp prick of the guard’s sword on my back.
Why would they take a common criminal past the throne room on the way to the dungeons? I ask myself. It makes no sense.
The king is a big man, old, maybe forty, maybe older, with a shaved bald head and a thin, neatly trimmed graying beard. He looks even bigger sitting on the raised throne.
A thin, white-clothed man scuttles down the blue carpet, away from the king and his booming voice, gone to fetch the oldest bottle of whatever drink the king desires. For a moment King Goff watches after him, almost amused, but then he looks past his servant, to where I stand. Our eyes meet and—
“Move along!” the guard barks, jabbing me harder. Unconsciously, my feet move forward, one after the other, like they have all my life, but my head is back in the throne room, facing Goff, the man who stole my sister. I’m so close.
Moments later, we descend into the dungeons. The air thickens and moistens and a nasty smell tickles my nose. Something’s died down here. Or someone. Many maybe.
The guard plucks a torch from a wall fixture and waves it near my face, burning me. I flinch away but don’t cry out. He laughs.
Sword at my back once more, he forces me forwards into an alcove. Seated on a squat wooden chair with a broken leg is a giant of a man, wearing a black mask with only mouth and eyeholes cut out. Across his lap rests a double-sided, double-edged battle axe. All four of its razor-sharp edges gleam under the firelight.
He stands, his girth filling half the small space. We’re crammed in the other half with the guard. Wafting from his armpits is an odor that smells like what I imagine death would smell like. As I try to get a hold of my rebellious stomach, I consider yelling “I surrender!” and impaling myself on his axe, but I manage to close off my nostrils enough to regain control.
“Ain’t you a couple of tasty morsels,” he bellows, laughing before he’s even finished saying it, a growling echoing chortle that spouts a stream of rotten breath, proving that this dungeon master is more than just a one-smell act.
He takes a step closer, which means his belly touches me—not his clothing, but his actual skin, because he’s not wearing a shirt. Thankfully, I am, but the barrier seems so thin and insignificant I have to choke back another pulse of vomit.
“No funny business,” he says, showing us all his teeth, which amount to half of what he would’ve started with as an adult, yellow and chipped.
“Nothing funny here,” Buff says, and I agree wholeheartedly.
“All yers, Big,” the sword-poking guard says.
As he turns to go, I say, “See you later,” but he doesn’t look back or return the sentiment. Probably because he doesn’t expect he will.
“In,” Big says, and I wonder whether he came out so large that his mother couldn’t have possibly chosen any other name, or if the nickname was given later in life, when he quickly exceeded his peers in every physical way. Probably the former, if I had to guess.
When I forget to move, Big punches me forward, his fist like a battering ram, sending shudders through my bruised body. By the way Buff grunts behind me, I can tell he got the same treatment.
Torches line the walls of the dungeon, casting shadows in all the right places. Or the wrong places, if you’re me and you can only imagine what’s reaching out from the dark spots as you pass them.
I try to get a good look in the cells we pass, but their bars are thick and the shadows are deep, and if anyone’s in them, then they’re well hidden and quieter than a baby on its mother’s teat.
“Get in,” Big says, motioning with his axe to an open cell door on my left. I limp through, turn back to watch Buff do the same. “Not you,” Big says, stopping Buff with an axe blade to his throat. He seems to use the axe for a lot of things. Like if he were to shave his back, which clearly, based on the thick tufts of fur growing back there, he doesn’t, he would probably use his axe to do it.
He slams the cell door shut with a clang, twisting a big key in the lock in a practiced motion that I expect took him years to master given the sausage-like girth of his fingers, which clearly aren’t made for dexterity. Clobbering, yah. Pummeling, most definitely. Turning keys in locks, not so much.
“Later, buddy,” I say to Buff as Big pushes him forwards.
“Enjoy the food,” he returns with a dried-blood smile.
I take a moment to study my surroundings, which only takes a moment, because the cell is tinier than Buff’s house, and decorated with a miniscule assortment of gray stone walls, floor, and ceiling. A metal pail sits in one corner. I get the feeling I’ll be holding the urge to use the bathroom as long as possible in this place.
As I settle in on a spot on the floor that looks slightly less dirty than anywhere else, I hear a clang, the rattle of a key in a lock, and then the thud of heavy footsteps as Big lumbers past. “No funny business,” he hollers as he slams the dungeon door behind him.
I sigh. This is what I wanted. Right? Chill yah, I tell myself. It’s better being locked up on the inside, where Jolie might be somewhere nearby, than free on the outside, always wondering what happened to my sister, whether she’s alive, whether she’s safe.
“Buff?” I say.
“Yah.” His voice isn’t particularly close, but it’s not far either, maybe six or seven cells down the row.
“How you feeling?”
“Like a punching bag.”
“You’ll heal,” I say with a smile.
“I know,” he says.
“Buff.”
“Yah.”
“Thanks.”
“You owe me,” he says.
I’m about to respond when something scrapes the wall in the cell next to mine.
Chapter Seventeen
I sit statue still for a few seconds, listening intently. Was it my imagination? Was it the scrape of a rat’s tiny claws? Or was it something else entirely?
“Don’t try and avoid me, Dazz,” Buff says. “Just because we’re locked up doesn’t mean I won’t come collecting one day. And it’ll be something big, something mind-blowingly huge. You’ll wish you’d never asked for my help in the first place.”
But I’m not listening. Well, I’m listening, but not to Buff. I’m listening to the wall, because I hear the scrape again, only this time it’s louder, and it almost sounds…intentional, like someone’s trying to get my attention. Well, if so, it works, because I scoot across the stone floor, unconcerned about the dirt and whatever else has stained it so dark over the years. I shove my ear right up against the wall, willing Buff to shut his trap.