“It should continue,” Dorrin said. “When the Knight-Commander bound my magery—when I was a young woman—that binding lasted through his death until the new Knight-Commander released it.”
“We cannot afford to lose you,” Valthan said. “The realm cannot afford to lose you.”
“I am needed only if I do what the prince commanded,” Dorrin said. “Sir Valthan, I have been a soldier too long to risk my life needlessly—or withhold risk where it is needed.”
He gave her a long, puzzled look, then nodded.
“Stay here with the prisoners,” Dorrin said. “I will take an escort of Phelani into the keep; they are experienced with the sorts of dangers that might be found here. I want to do this before dark, and afternoon is waning.”
Selfer had posted guards at the keep entrance; now he told off a hand to be her escort. “I’m coming, too,” he said.
“You are not,” Dorrin said. “If I fall, someone must get word to Valthan, and then to the prince—and someone must burn out the keep.”
“My lord—you know what I saw in Vérella, before Paks redeemed us. I need to be part of this—”
Dorrin turned to him and put a hand on his shoulder; tears gleamed in his eyes; she felt hers burn. “Selfer, in this I must command you. The need is greater—and the task more difficult—where I place you. I know you have courage to face what lies below, but what I need is your determination not to let any evil free. Do you understand?” After a long pause, he nodded. “With Falk’s grace and Gird’s, I will return unharmed, but if I do not, you must do what is necessary. Whatever that may be.”
Before Selfer could answer, she turned to the others. “Touch nothing without my word; this place has as many traps as some of those Rotengre houses. Vossik, you and one other will come with me to the bottom of the stairs. Two on the landing partway down. One halfway down the first flight of steps, to call messages up and down.”
At the foot of the stairs, Dorrin turned right, and twenty strides later paused before opening the door to the blood chamber. She could feel her own pulse pounding. Ridiculous. She was an adult now, not a helpless child. Of course the memories would rise here, of all places, but she had the skills to subdue them. This door had no lock. It needed none. It reeked of blood magery; centuries of fear and anguish had permeated the wood. No one would go there who did not seek what it hid.
“Stay here until I call,” Dorrin told her escort, then touched her ruby, murmured, “Ward of Falk and the High Lord’s grace,” and pushed it open, hanging her lantern on the familiar hook by the door. A soft scuffling sound met her ears. Along the left wall, as in her childhood, cages held small animals … rabbits, kittens that started mewing at once. Eyes gleamed in the lamplight. She ignored them all for the time being, taking a second lantern from a shelf of them, and lighting it. The room was centered with the tables and frames on which the Verrakai bound their victims to practice blood magery. At the far end, another door led to the cells, where human victims might or might not wait in darkness, terrified. To the right, the chambers where, in her childhood, a priest of Liart might be housed if one came to stay.
Those doors were open; those chambers were empty; she reported that to Vossik. Another, smaller, held the instruments, glinting in the light of the second lamp she lighted and set on a ledge. She closed that door, and went to the one at the end, opening it after a prayer for those who had been, and might still be, suffering.
A terrible stench rolled out to meet her, all too familiar from her years of warfare; Dorrin pinched her lips and set the lamp on a ledge. Facing her were three cell doors. Her stomach roiled. She had been locked in the left-hand one, as punishment: days and nights of terror.
She lifted the bar on the first door. Empty. The second … she gagged at the stench. Here someone had died, and recently. As she stepped into the cell, light revealed the carrion beetles scuttling for cover from a corpse too small to be an adult. Tears burned her eyes. Too late … would she always be too late?
In the third cell she heard harsh, uneven breaths. By the lamp’s light, she saw a naked man, curled on the floor, streaked with his own filth. She bent lower; his face had been battered, one eye gouged out. His swollen tongue protruded from cracked lips.
“Falk’s grace,” she whispered. “Give him ease.”
At her voice, the man groaned and stirred.
“Help is here,” she said. She unplugged her water bottle and dripped a few drops on his tongue. “Soon you will be better. I promise.” He shuddered. Backing out of the cell, she called Vossik, who came into the outer room at once. “I need a burial party and someone to carry a wounded man,” she said.
She went back to the wounded man and poured a little more water on his tongue as she waited for the others to arrive. He roused a little, groaned, moved his tongue, and opened his one eye. “Wha—nooo … no more.”
“No more,” Dorrin said. “It’s over.” She dripped more water in his mouth; he swallowed.
“Who—”
“The Duke’s dead,” Dorrin said. The man’s ruined mouth stretched in what might have been a smile. “The prince sent me, to be the new Duke.” She gave him a little more water. He blinked, and she realized that with the lamp behind her, she was only a black shadow. “We’ll get you out of this very soon …”
“Tam—?” Hardly a breath of sound at that.
Dorrin had already realized that the young person in the next cell was probably this man’s brother or son. She dipped her head. “I’m sorry … Tam … died.”
“Gird’s grace,” the man said; his one eye closed.
A squad arrived then, clattering down the stairs and into the dungeon. Dorrin went back out into the main room, explained in a low voice what she’d found.
“Only three cells?”
“In this part of the dungeon, yes. There are twenty on the other side, through the door to the left as you came down the stairs. But this is where Liart’s priests lived, where the most dangerous magery is, so I had to check this myself. You’ll be safe enough now. Clean up the boy’s corpse and lay it on a table upstairs, under a cloth. If his father lives to morning, he’ll want to see it.”
By full dark all the prisoners were upstairs in the keep, munching bread and cheese, their cells left to the rats and beetles. The man from the torture cell clung to life with the help of the cohort’s physician; his son’s body, under an embroidered bed hanging from the main house, lay surrounded by candles with two of the cohort to give an honor watch. Dorrin sent for Sir Valthan to witness what she had found, then told Selfer to supervise their care and the external security while she returned to the house with Valthan, who still needed an accurate list of Verrakai family members.
“Have you eaten, my lord? I know you ate no lunch—”
“No—”
“We have hot rations—”
Of course he would have seen the troops fed—and no doubt from their own supplies. She did need to be alert for her next task, rifling her uncle’s study to find the family rolls. Dorrin nodded, and wolfed down the familiar Company rations, then went back inside through the kitchen entrance, where the head cook was scolding her assistants as they cleaned pots and prepared for the morrow. She asked the head cook’s name.
“Farintod, m’lord,” the cook said. “But I’m called Farin, or just Cook.” Once more, Dorrin probed with her magery but could find no malice, only a combination of annoyance and fear, among the kitchen staff. Perhaps she might eat food they prepared the next day, when their former rulers were gone … but not until then.
In the main hall, Valthan’s lieutenant reported that the prisoners had first refused to eat the simple meal served them, but eventually hunger overcame pride. Now they lay on the floor under the blankets Dorrin had allowed after ensuring that they had no hidden weapons. The glitter of eyes in the lamplight proved they were not asleep, but at least they were down and quiet.