His journey through the stronghold took him
down from the brightly sunlit upper levels to the dank, flickering
holding cells below. The last of them, buried deep enough in the
bowels of the place that the heat of the beating summer day was
replaced by the coolness of the earth, was the only occupied cell
on the entire floor. Whereas the other doors on the floor were
simple iron grates, this one was made of thick planks and
reinforced with iron bands, offering openings only in the form of a
small metal grill at eye level and a slot at ground level. Four
fully equipped soldiers guarded it. Two of them held curving swords
and wore thick leather armor. The other two were dressed in thick
embroidered robes and wore jeweled rings on three fingers of each
hand. These were the casters, trained mystics who made up barely a
fraction of the Tresson army. Most regiments had only a single
caster. To have two guarding the same room spoke volumes for the
threat that awaited within.
“Esteemed Commander Brustuum,” greeted the
first of the swordsmen with a respectful bow of his head.
“Soldier,” the older man said with a stiff
nod. “She’s awake?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Has she caused any trouble?”
“No, sir. She has continued to be very
cooperative, though she will not eat.”
“And the secrecy of her presence has been
maintained?”
“All in the stronghold believe that the cell
is still being used to hold the accused traitor, Trimik.”
Maintaining the secrecy of his prisoner had
been difficult. Only seven of his men within the facility knew.
Beyond them, only the military patron who provided the food,
funding, and equipment was aware. The word had gone no further. It
hadn’t even gone to the high command. Some things were simply too
important to be left to those in charge. They were too often
dedicated to diplomacy, willing to give away too much. But ensuring
they didn’t discover his prisoner until he was satisfied meant he
had to expend a tremendous amount of resources to maintain the
charade that she’d not yet been caught.
It had taken a fair amount of time to plot
out troop assignments that kept enough men in the field to appease
any superiors who might look in on him while keeping enough of his
men on hand to be certain that their prisoner remained secure. Of
the two, the security of the prisoner was the most crucial. The
woman didn’t appear to be dangerous, but neither did a viper until
it brought its fangs to bear, and by then it would be too late.
Therefore, he’d sent as many troops as he could spare out to search
for a woman whom he’d already found so that he could be left to the
task of questioning her.
He paced down the hall toward the cell,
watching as a rat skittered from one empty cell to another, and
wordlessly motioned for the appropriate steps to be taken to allow
him access to the prisoner.
The mystic conferred briefly with his
partner, then each stepped beside their commanding officer and
folded their hands, interlocking the gems of their rings. They
uttered a few throaty chanting syllables. Brustuum grimaced as he
felt the crackle of arcane energies run over the surface of his
body. He detested magic. If he’d not been so skillful a commander
he might have gone so far as to ban it from any units under his
command. As it was, he knew all too well the value and even
necessity of a mystic defense against the troops of the north, so
he allowed and fostered the necessary evil of wizards within his
army. He watched as the magical warding was removed from the door
and it was unlocked.
The inside lay in utter darkness, save for
where the dancing lantern light of the hall spilled, but even that
seemed to enter only reluctantly, pushing weakly against an
overpowering pitch-blackness within.
Brustuum snapped his fingers. “A lantern.
Now.”
The soldiers quickly supplied him with a
polished-copper oil lamp, which he held out before him. The light
fell upon a figure seated on a straw-stuffed bedroll and leaning
against the clay wall.
It was a woman dressed in standard prison
attire: a simple sleeveless tunic and a pair of trousers that ended
just below the knee. The clothes were, by design, poorly suited to
travel in Tressor. They would offer little protection from the
punishing sun. Thick iron chains lay coiled neatly beside her,
connecting shackles at her wrists and ankles to thick rings driven
into the stone of the walls.
Such defenses seemed to be far more than were
necessary for such a prisoner. The shackles were nearly too large
for the delicate ankles and wrists to which they were affixed. Her
skin was so white it almost seemed to glow in the light of the
lantern, and her hair was black but for a single streak of gray. As
she raised her head to look upon her visitor, she showed a face of
middle age or younger. She was not unattractive, her face bearing a
crisp, almost angular beauty. At this moment, the most distinctive
feature of that face was its utter lack of concern. If anything,
she viewed her visitor with vague disinterest, as though his visit
had pulled her from more interesting thoughts. Brustuum scanned the
floor around her. A plate of thick porridge with a wooden spoon sat
to her left, largely untouched. To her right was a handful of dead
rats. They’d been piled with apparent care, and they seemed
desiccated as if by years of dry desert air.
“On your feet,” Brustuum commanded.
The prisoner obeyed, though with a casualness
that would have been more appropriate for a request than an
order.
“I am told you’ve not been eating your food.
Be aware that starving yourself will do no good. If necessary, I
shall have my men force food down your worthless gullet rather than
lose you before I’m through with you.”
“I wouldn’t dream of starving myself, sir,”
replied the woman, her voice oddly chilling. She sounded
unimpressed by both her keepers and their prison. “It is simply
that your
recent
offerings do not suit my tastes.
Fortunately I’ve found a passable substitute.”
She gestured with one hand toward the pile of
rats, causing the shackle to slide noisily down. The sudden sound
caused the guards outside to stir.
“I do wish you would provide a
proper
meal, as you did a few weeks ago. You were a far better host
then.”
“You’ll have no more of that. Until my
mystics can make sense of what you’ve demonstrated and further
demonstrations are called for.”
“That hardly seems polite…”
“For now, I have more questions. Do you
recall what we last discussed?”
“Oh, you. Yes, I believe you were telling me
where to find Mott?”
“I was telling you no such thing. You were
telling me all that you’d done since arriving. I have been able to
corroborate your recollection thus far, so you shall continue.”
“Yes, right. I recall now. Yes. I suppose we
can continue if you wish, but might you know when I shall be
allowed to be on my way? I appreciate the steps you’ve taken to
keep my dealings from the others, as it has helped me to remain in
compliance with the wishes of my masters, but there comes a point
when the delay will do more harm than good. I am, after all, out of
place. If Teht were to arrive and find me missing, I’m quite
certain she would be just as displeased as if she found I’d made a
spectacle of myself against her wishes.”
“And you, of course, wish only to please your
masters.”
“Don’t you?”
“If their plans are wise and their methods
just, then I do.”
“So we are of one mind. When shall I be
allowed to leave?”
“You will leave this place when I am
satisfied you have shared all that there is to share.”
“Lovely. I shall continue then. Remind me,
where were we when we were interrupted?”
“You had confessed to murdering a farmer on
the northern edge of the Southern Wastes.”
“A farmer… a farmer… Oh, yes. I recall. Let
us continue…”
#
Several Months Earlier…
In a sparsely treed field, somewhere in the
southern half of Tressor, Turiel sat on a stone surrounded by the
skillfully butchered remains of animals. Though the sight was
inarguably a gruesome one, it was not nearly as hideous as it might
have been. Some gazelles, a wildcat, and a bear lay dissected on
the ground around her, but they had been separated with such care
it looked less like the scene of a slaughter and more like a
taxidermist’s shop. She had laid out intact skeletons, the bones
unnaturally white as though bleached. Muscle groups were arranged
with care on the dusty ground, and skins were somehow removed in
one piece. If such a thing were possible, it would almost seem that
Turiel had taken the animals apart with the intention of putting
them back together when she was through.
Mott was by her side, and his appearance had
once again changed. He’d grown somewhat, not only thanks to an
overall increase in size, but with the replacement of some of his
scrawnier pieces with burlier parts. The spidery legs were stouter
now, still insect in structure but mammal in appearance, and
numbering eight rather than six. They had shaggy brown fur and
ended in bony two-toed claws. On the serpentine body, in addition
to the already unnatural presence of scattered tufts of hair, the
scaly skin had taken on the horny thickness of a crocodile’s hide.
Its jackal mouth—the head being the one part that had remained
unchanged—opened and it chittered.
“You
must
learn patience, Mott. Yes,
we are to find Teht and learn why she has left us for so long
without instructions, but what is our
purpose
if not to hone
our skills? We came so swiftly to the Wastes to begin work on the
second keyhole we missed the opportunity to see what the beasts of
this land had to offer. And they have
much
to offer. Look at
the wonders we have found in just a short time wandering the
land.”
She tapped her staff twice on the ground, and
tendrils of black traced its length and peeled away from it,
swirling along the skeleton of the bear. Like a beast waking from a
long slumber, it climbed to its feet and stood before her. She
turned her fingers in a slow circle, and the skeleton obediently
turned about.
“Good, strong jaws on this bear…” She reached
out and plucked its head away, hefting it. “Perhaps a bear’s skull
next time?”
She dropped the skull, its body still
standing and awaiting new orders. Before the skull hit the ground
Mott caught it with a coiled tail, flipped to its back, and rolled
the skull about like a kitten with a knot of string.
“Let me see, let me see,” she said. She
opened her fur wrap, made from harvested skins earlier in her
travels, and reached into the tattered black robes beneath. From
within she pulled out a small bundle of old, well-used but
well-kept pages and leafed through them. They were scrawled with an
unnatural foreign script and detailed sketches of beasts never
meant to exist. “Here. The dragoyle… no, no. This skull isn’t right
at all. It is so very difficult to find a match for his designs…”
She turned to Mott. “Do you suppose Demont did so on purpose?
Crafting creatures too different from those of nature to be simply
duplicated? Bah! I’ll get it right one of these days. I simply need
something closer. A beak. The thing has a beak. I wonder… a detour
to the seaside cliffs to the west? I seem to remember something
about great birds there. Roks, I believe they were called. That
would give us a fine skull for a dragoyle. And wings as well. A
griffin would work well, and I know that those can be found in the
mountains. First to the cliffs,
then
to the mountains, you
think?”
Mott churred and began to gnaw on the
skull.
“Yes, of course you are correct. We stay to
the west coast. If we do not find a rok, then we can continue to
that place with the dragons. The blasted dragoyles are based on
them. They
must
be near enough to be used. Then we can get
you that set of wings I promised, too.”
Mott chittered and dropped the skull.
“… Because I feel it would be an excellent
illustration of my skill and initiative if I was able to craft a
dragoyle of my own. It should be simple enough with the correct
resources. I want the D’Karon to know that I’ve learned their
teachings well.” She looked about and stroked her chin. “Much as it
pains me to do a poor approximation of their fine work, it would
pain me further to waste so many wonderful pieces.”
Turiel picked up the discarded skull in one
hand and her staff in the other. She shut her eyes, and many bones
scattered about her began to jerk and twitch. More strands of black
coalesced about her staff and peeled away, coiling about the bones
and seeming to thread into the muscles and organs. When every last
scrap was under her influence, Turiel opened her eyes and willed
them into the air. Skeletons reformed, mixed and matched from all
of those that had donated their bodies. They came together to
create what might have been the bones of a misshapen dragon. Then
came the flesh, stretched thin around the monstrous frame. The skin
came after that, sealing with a surge of dark energy but leaving
the skull bare.
With the form complete, she curled her
fingers into a fist and the tendrils of dark energy bled through to
the surface, staining the skin black and causing the hair to
embrittle and fall away. The final product was a fair approximation
of the monstrosity known as the dragoyle, though anyone who had
clashed with one would see the faults immediately. It was only the
size of a horse, or a bit larger. The hide was more leathery than
rocky as well, and vicious teeth were mounted where a beak should
have been.
“There. Good practice if nothing else,” she
said, eying her creation critically.
Mott churred.
“There was not nearly enough material to make
a pair of wings, and I haven’t the strength to render them
functional right now besides. Just two more things to be done.”