Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [22]
CHAPTER EIGHT
AT DUNGEON’S HEART
I always imagined dungeons as cold places, with fetid water dripping on fungus-slimy walls. The dungeons of Timmuzz are not like that. The halls where I walked were of a delicate coral color, dry and warm, and well-lighted with rundal-oil lamps that cleanly scented the air. And though they were below ground, in the belly-soil of the island of Nyshphal, the corridors were wide and the cells as adequate as any cage can be.
I found Kreeg pacing his adequate room like a spear-maddened ghyre. I hadn’t needed to kill anyone to find him. That didn’t mean I hadn’t hurt a few. The dark robes of a Sevarian monk had served me well as a disguise. I’d entered the keep unopposed, and because the monks commonly minister to the prisoners I’d been able to surprise what few guards I’d encountered on my way into the gaol. Those guards were now bound and gagged and resting uncomfortably in various hiding places. I didn’t think they would soon be found, but still imagined that getting out of the dungeons would be tougher than getting in, even though I now had a set of keys dangling in one hand.
Kreeg’s glare was enough to fell a stugah when I opened his cell door and stepped through.
“I need no priest,” he growled. But when I pushed back my cowl and he saw my face, he rushed forward and bear-hugged me.
“I won’t have to kill the Emperor after all,” he crowed, squeezing me even harder.
“No you won’t, I said, gasping. “Seeing as how you are killing me for him.”
He blinked, then quickly released me and stepped back. “I am sorry, Ruenn,” he murmured.
I only laughed and slapped his shoulder. Then I handed him the weapons I’d taken for him—a short-sword and the four-foot ironwood stave that is sometimes used on recalcitrant prisoners. None of the guards I’d knocked out had worn armor big enough for the massive ex-slave, though I’d found a steel cuirass for myself that I wore beneath the robes.
As we turned toward the door of the cell, Kreeg stopped me again, with a hand on my arm.
“I am also sorry...Ruenn. That I was not there when they came to arrest you. That Vlih dog. Rhandh. It was a trap.”
I met his gaze. My eyes went hot. “I know,” I said grimly. “But Rhandh was only doing what he was ordered. Our betrayal was not his.”
Kreeg nodded. He had apologized to me—though truly there had been no need—and now his straight-furrow mind was already turning itself toward the next concern in his life.
“We get out. But how?”
“I have an idea. But first we fetch Diken Graye. And Valyan after. Graye is the best chance of finding my brother,” I added.
I had wondered if even Kreeg would protest the idea of taking along Diken Graye. But he trusted me and followed without comment as we exited his cell and turned down the corridor toward the central core of the dungeons. After all, I’d led him deeper into dungeons before and gotten him out. I prayed I would again.
The underground prisons of Timmuzz are shaped vaguely like a wagon wheel; the interrogation chambers where Diken Graye would be held were at the hub. With lamps growing fewer and the smell of the corridors growing steadily more rank, we reached those chambers in a few dhaurin (minutes). In a few more we found that which we sought.
Diken Graye sat alone in a stone cell, unharmed, apparently untouched. The key to his door of iron bars hung on the wall, and I had no suspicions of it being too easy until sudden torches flared up behind us. I had just reached to take the key, but now I stopped and turned, my skin grown clammy with sweat beneath my robes.
Immediately outside of Graye’s cell was a circular room about fifteen feet across. It contained a heavy, scarred table and several chairs. Three sets of steps led down to it. We had come down one set. Kuurus