This time it was Rosha’s turn to pull the chain up short.
CHAPTER TEN
Into the Bowels
THE NEXT DAY began strangely. Ligne did not appear at breakfast. When Rosha didn’t either, Pelmen became alarmed. Brushing aside Yona Panni’s questions, he left the table and began questioning various friendly servants he found seated near him. A few quick conversations relived him. General Joss had returned late the night before, Pelmen was told, and Joss and the Queen were said to be locked in critical conversations behind closed doors. Since she hadn’t summoned Rosha, the warrior had chosen to take breakfast in his room. Pelmen felt sure he knew why Rosha would delay as long as possible revealing his hood less condition.
A few minutes after breakfast, the fool appeared outside the throne room door. “The Queen won’t see you!” a guard announced, blocking the entrance with his pikestaff. Pelmen recognized the man as one who’d been on duty two days before, when he’d made his unannounced entry into the Queen’s presence. Obviously, the fellow was determined not to allow it to happen again.
“Something wrong?”
“That’s no concern of mine or yours. Move along!”
Pelmen wasted no time in obeying those instructions. He made his way swiftly to the kitchen. For the last two mornings he’d arisen early to cultivate a friendship with the cook. He hoped to make that friendship pay off the path to the dungeon led right through the kitchen.
“Ho, fool!” the cook cried cheerily when he saw the painted clown come down the steps. “You’re back quick today!”
“The Queen’s grown tired of my company. I hope you’ve not?”
“No, indeed!” The man smiled, showing his toothless gums the result, he’d explained to Fallomar, of sampling too many pies in his youth.
“This is a time I can enjoy you. Breakfast’s over, and it’ll be a while before we begin dinner in earnest though I do have a few treats in the oven.” The cook slapped the stonework lip of the cistern that held the castle’s water supply. “Sit down. Talk to me.”
“I’ve little to say this morning. I fear this fool has had his fill of fooling for a time.”
The cook nodded. “I get tired of my own cooking some-tunes. You’ve no need to entertain me.”
“Ah but I hope you’ll not stop feeding me?”
The cook snickered, and slapped Fallomar on the back. “Don’t you worry. In fact, I may have something for you to nibble on now. Let me check my ovens.” The man walked to the far side of the giant kitchen where stood the rows of rounded ovens.
“There you are!” Pelmen heard someone shout behind him, and he whipped around to see Maythorm plunging toward him.
“Oh, no.” He sighed.
“Playing up to the Queen, aren’t you Maythorm shouted, shaking his finger. “Trying to make me appear incompetent!”
“Maythorm, you really don’t need my help for that ”
“What are you doing here?” the cook roared, and Pelmen turned in time to see him set a steaming dessert on the cutting block and seize a meat cleaver imbedded in the wood beside it. The cook started forward.
Maythorm stopped his own charge and regarded the on-coming cook with some alarm. The man was twice his size and frowning nastily. “I… I have no quarrel with you.”
“But I have one with you! There’s the little matter of my Th in Waiting niece!” The cook was picking up speed. With his head lowered and his ample belly flopping, the cook strongly resembled a charging tugolith, Pelmen thought.
Maythorm proved himself quite nimble. He vaulted a table, putting it between himself and his attacker, and cried in a high-pitched shriek,
“Who is your niece?”
It was the wrong thing to say. The cook stopped and stared, his eyes bulging with rage. “You mean you don’t even know?” the cook bellowed.
He started over the top of the table. Maythorm raced for an exit any exit. “You come into my kitchen again, and I’ll drop you down the cistern!”
Maythorm was gone.
The cook grinned toothlessly at his painted friend. “Moves quick, doesn’t he?”
Pelmen’s eyes twinkled. “I’d heard he was fast with the ladies. Seems he’s rather swift of foot as well. Ligne ought to send him to the Merchants’ Games next year.”
“If the Queen would send me and my cleaver as well, we’d be sure to win,” the cook cackled.
Fallomar smiled, then looked down into the dank darkness behind him. A cold draft blew up from the cistern’s depths. “Would you really drop him in?” he asked.
“Not likely,” the cook muttered, brandishing his famous cleaver and slashing it through a chunk of red meat. “Not unless I wanted to follow him down it. The Queen would probably drop me in after him, and you’d hear nothing of either of us again.”
“It’s just a well, isn’t it?”
“Not exactly. It’s a reservoir, carved out of the rock. It’s fed by the river, when the water’s high. Spills through an iron grating on the south wall.” The cook slammed his cleaver into the cutting board, and it quivered there as he went on: “It’s poor water, believe me. All the filth of upper Chaomonous spills through that grillwork. We have to boil every bucket we raisel”
“It’s safe though,” Pelmen muttered to himself; then, when the cook gave him a puzzled look, he explained, “I mean secure for the Imperial House. I assume no one could get through the grate?”
“Who’d want to?” the cook snorted. “No. Not big enough. So there’d be water enough to last out any siege.
Though whoever would be fool enough to lay siege to this fortress would be a fool indeed. Oh, no offense intended,” the heavy man added, in deference to Fallomar’s profession.
“And none ” Fallomar cut himself short when he saw Ligne bolt rather furtively from the door the steward had just exited. She hurried through the kitchen and down another corridor. She held her cloak around her as if that might hide her identity from the very people whose jobs demanded they watch her every move. “There’s the Queen,” he announced to the cook. “I think I’ll go amuse her.” He got up.
“I wouldn’t,” the cook warned, raising his heavy brow.
“That’s why you’re the cook and I’m the fool!”
“What if she’s not amused?”
“Then come visit me occasionally. And bring a pie.”
“Be careful!” the cook called as Fallomar danced down the hall.
Ligne had already turned in through the dungeon door. That was good.
He hoped to bluff his way past the guards, but it would only succeed if she were out of earshot, on her way into the lower depths. He paused briefly outside the door, then plunged in.
As with every dungeon he’d ever visited, the initial impact was more olfactory than anything else. A rank stench hit him with suffocating force, stopping him in the doorway. He forced himself forward.
“Ho, fool, what goes?” a warder called out of the fetid shadows. “I’ve been expecting you, to be sure, for hardly a fool comes into this court who doesn’t finally join us here. But I expected you to come in chains and under guard not by yourself!”
Fallomar chuckled. “I came early to inspect the rooms. I wanted to reserve a good one before they’re all taken! Did the Queen pass through here?” He started to circle the guard, but there was the ching of metal striking stone, and he found his way blocked by a pikestaff.
“Stop!” the guard snapped. His voice softened immediately as he continued with concern, “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Why, to prison, of course,” Fallomar offered.
“And that quickly, unless you give me a reason for this!”
Tbt “Wizard i Waiting
The guard leaned toward him. “Hear me. Quit your fooling and take yourself somewhere else. This is no place for you, especially not now.”