Boyett-Compo, Charlotte - Wyndmaster 1 (3 page)

wayward children who dared to question their fathers. She had learned to never ask lest she be forced to

endure another hour or two on her knees as her father continued his tirade against the baseness of the

male gender.

Only once had she dared ask her father what would become of her when he left this world. Who, then,

she’d asked, would protect her from the evil of men?

“I shall not leave this world without you being cared for in a manner in which I approve,” her father had

declared.

That declaration did not bear thinking on so she had pushed it from her mind.

Lying there as her headache subsided a little, she turned over on her side and stared at the wall, her gaze

searching for the small imperfection in the plaster that seemed to comfort her when she felt lonely and

alone. For hours she would stare at that flaw—the only thing that dared to not be perfect in her

room—and focused on peacefulness she did not feel.

“Why can’t I be like other girls?” she asked so quietly no one save the gods could have heard. “Why

can’t I
live
like other girls?”

Other girls were courted by gallant young men who swore eternal devotion to them, who went down

upon one knee to ask for their lady’s hand in Joining. Joinings were performed in elaborate ceremonies

presided over by impressively dressed priests and the marriage was sealed with a gentle kiss.

Had she not read of such happenings in the books she had managed to sneak out of her father’s

library—hiding them beneath her skirts or tucked down in the bodice of her gown? Did she not know of

knights and their sumptuous castles, of such gallant warriors being ready to die for the hand of their love?

Was not a life of living happily ever after the conclusion of such things?

Sighing heavily and feeling emptiness deep inside her that hurt her to the depths of her soul, Celeste

wished fate would intervene and send to her such a knightly man to free her from her bower.

Though the guards had informed him several of his men had tried to gain access to him during his

imprisonment, Sierran saw no one save the two men who were his jailers. No letter was ever delivered to

him even though he’d been told one had been attempted.

“They crucified him, Commander,” the guard told him. “For daring to try to contact you.”

“Who?” he’d asked, heartsick at the thought of one of his men dying for such a reason.

“Barnes, he was,” the guard replied.

“Barnes?” Sierran had echoed. “Frederick Barnes?”

“Aye, that might have been it!”

Grief drove straight through Sierran for Freddie had been his second-in-command and a lifelong friend.

To know the man had died in such a loathsome way hurt more than the lash of the cat.

After the guard had left him with the maggoty bread and foul-smelling water he was allowed, the

commander of the Ibydosian Force broke down and cried. It was not for his own predicament he

wept—although that was bad enough—but for the loss of a good man whose only guilt had lain in

wanting to comfort his friend.

“I’m sorry, Freddie,” he said, tears cascading down his stubbled cheeks. “I beg your forgiveness.”

Each day passed as wretchedly as the next with news of more men under his command having met a

gruesome fate at the hands of the fanatical general. The bodies of men alongside whom Sierran had lived

and fought for ten years littered the roadway into town. Left hanging to rot upon the wooden crosses to

which they’d been nailed, as still living food for the carrions circling overhead, those brave men had met

an unjust end simply for having been close to Sierran.

“Enough!” he’d screamed to the gods who had forsaken him. “Take me! Not them! Kill me! I deserve

what you do to me. They don’t!”

But surcease from his torment did not come. The pain only worsened to the point where tears would no

longer suffice and he spent his waking hours praying for the souls of the dead and his nightmarish nights

walking amongst the Shades, begging for their forgiveness.

He was lost, alone, and living in a hell not entirely the creation of the man who had sworn to break him.

A portion of that hell he had designed and built for himself and he resided there in a kind of numbing

limbo that would not allow him to take his own life—though he tried that once. Because he had, his jailers

had been given no choice but to shackle him wrist and ankle to the wall at Thurston’s order.

Death was not to be an option for Sierran Morgan.

Well into the second week of his captivity, the guards arrived at his cell door with four other men, one of

them holding heavy wrist and ankle shackles.

“They have sent for you, Commander,” the guard who Sierran had learned was named Crotchet

informed him. “It’s time for your sentencing.”

A wry snort came from the prisoner as Crotchet and his partner, Abrams, unlocked his shackles and

delivered him into the hands of the other two guards. Sierran had sagged against them, causing one guard

to backhand him across the face, bloodying the prisoner’s nose

“Can’t the bastard walk?” one of the new men asked with a hiss.

“Does it look like he can?” Crotchet shot back. “He’s been hanging on that fucking wall for nigh on a

week!”

The man with the shackles had snapped them into place on Sierran’s wrists then hunkered down to

attach them to his ankles, the bands so tight they pinched his flesh.

So they had dragged him from his cell, his bare toes scraping over the rough stone of the walkway. He

had been limp in the guards’ rough hands, unable to even lift his head as he was carried along. As they

took him past windows, he had shied away from the brightness, his eyes no longer accustomed to such

intensity.

The guards halted and he opened his eyes to stare down at the floor below him. From the corner of his

eye he saw the boots of other guard and flinched when one said “By the gods, he reeks!”

A door was unlocked and he was pulled down another long chamber. His shoulders and back were

cramping and his head swimming but he kept his jaws tightly locked closed, unwilling to make a sound to

let them know they were hurting him.

“All rise!” Sierran heard someone say.

The three-member Judicial Panel was seated already when Sierran was brought into the law hall of

Wardsgate Prison. He was weak from lack of food and sick from having broken down and ingested the

tepid water that had been his only nourishment during his incarceration. His face was gaunt, his glazed

eyes watering as he tried to stave off the watery pain that gripped his belly. He did not fear the

pronouncement of his punishment—that was a given for two of the members were related to General

Thurston and the third was a friend of the general's. What he feared was that he would soil himself in

front of the panel. He knew without a doubt such humiliation would surely break what will he had left.

Casting a surreptitious eye around him at his surroundings, he knew something wasn’t right. No trial

would ever be held without spectators or a defense lawyer to represent him. As his troubled gaze swept

the room he saw General Thurston there and beside him was a tall, cadaverous-looking man in a long red

robe. At the sight of that crimson-clad specter, Sierran’s blood ran cold for he knew who the man was

and what his appearance at the sentencing meant. He closed his eyes slowly, knowing he was doomed.

This was no legal trial sanctioned by the Federation but a condemning bought and paid for by Thurston.

“Commander Morgan,” the man sitting in the middle position upon the Judicial Panel spoke. “Did you or

did you not disobey a direct order given to you by your superior office, General Thurston?”

There was no way to deny the truth of the situation and Sierran wouldn’t have even if it would have

benefited him.

“Aye, milord,” he said hoarsely. “I did.”

The end had come swiftly and without any further debate.

“You give us no choice, then,” the Primary Judge said. “You are hereby remanded into the custody of

His Lordship the Dungeon Master of Dragonmoor until such time as you take your last breath.”

The sound of a gavel punctuating the Judge’s words cut off all hope Sierran had that there might be

justice for him in this world. He should have known better—and did—but hope died quickly and brutally

that day for him as he was dragged back out of the law hall and out into the blinding light of day.

Squinting against the hot, glaring sun, his bare toes stumbling over sharp rocks, he was thrown into the

back of an iron box on wheels, unable to keep the whimper from his lips as the flesh of his bare arm and

feet touched the metal—heated by sitting hours beneath an unseasonably hot November sun. He knew as

hot as the box was during the daylight, it would be just as cold in the frigid evening winds that swept

across Placidia’s plains.

“Do what you wish with him,” he heard Thurston say. “He’s stubborn and needs to learn his place.”

“Oh, that I shall, General,” Lord Charles, the Dungeon Master, replied. “I like nothing more than a

stubborn man with whom to while away the hours.”

Sierran was too sick at heart and body to even react to the vicious laughter that greeted those words. As

the wagon began to roll and the iron-clad wheels jolted hard over what had to be every rock in the road,

he lay there wishing himself dead for he knew death would be preferable to the vile things Lord Charles

Henry Allen would do to him.

Long before the sweltering iron box had gone a mile, Sierran lost consciousness from the super intensity

of the heat pressing in upon him, searing every breath he took.

Sierran came to some time later, thrust rudely into consciousness as water rushed up his nose and into

his mouth. He had been been pulled from the box, drenched in sweat, barely breathing, and the guards

had shoved him face-first into a water trough to revive him. His feeble struggles weren’t enough to make

a difference as the guards held him under, laughing as he strove to come up for air. He clawed at their

hands until he realized this was one way to end his wretched existence and he opened his mouth to take

in the liquid death.

Realizing his prisoner’s intent, Lord Charles stepped forward, slamming a fist into one guard’s shoulder.

“Pull him out!”

Brought up coughing and sputtering, Sierran felt the vicious hand that buried itself in his dripping hair and

yanked his head back. He could not stop himself from groaning.

“You’ll not die so easily or so quickly, Morgan,” Lord Charles warned. “I have many years to peel the

flesh from you inch by inch before I allow you to leave this world!”

The hand gripping his hair twisted sadistically then slammed Sierran’s forehead into the rim of the water

trough. Once more the welcoming arms of unconsciousness reached up to take him and he slid thankfully

down into its black embrace.

“Take him below. Garton, light their way,” Lord Charles demanded, dusting his hands together with

distaste. The stench of the prisoner was on his flesh and that was one thing the Dungeon Master could

not abide.

Dragging the limp man from the trough, the guards grunted under his dead weight as they pulled him

across the lower bailey and then through the door of the gatehouse, down the long, serpentine steps that

led beneath the keep into the very bowels of Dragonmoor. Ahead of them, a third guard held a burning

torch, its feeble light doing little to dispel the thick gloom.

“It ain’t right,” one guard said, shaking his mane of unkempt hair.

“You keep on saying that and you’ll be joining this one on the Slab,” the other one snapped.

“This man is a national hero,” the guard mumbled.

“Aye, well, even heroes can fall. Best you do as Roberts says and shut your mouth,” the man with the

torch warned. “These walls got ears.”

“Do you think the Federation knows where he is?” the guard persisted.

“Shut your mouth! He wouldn’t be here if they did!”

There was no need for guards on the lower levels of Dragonmoor. The cells were well underground and

the doors there kept locked night and day, the prisoners never allowed outside unless taken to the

dungeon at Lord Charles’ bidding. Those who had reason to venture past the heavy ebony door that led

from the bailey down the rough stone steps, made the trip to the cells quickly then left hurriedly for the

lightless, dank and stench-filled area was enough to make even the stoutest of heart uneasy. Some even

said the cells were haunted by the ghosts of those tortured and slain in the dungeon and that might well be

the case for unnatural sounds abounded near the cells, and cold unlike anything known to man permeated

the wretched chamber.

Dropping their prisoner into a cell at the far end of the row of small units, the guards made haste to

leave, Garton pushing them ahead of him as they came out of the cell. Locking the door behind them, the

three practically ran up the stairs for a low moan had started up the moment they’d turned away from the

commander’s cell and it had not come from the hapless man’s throat.

* * *

Sierran lay where they had left him. He had awakened as he was pulled over the stones and his shin

ached with the abrasions. The heavy shackles on his wrists and ankles were still attached—dragging at

his limbs—driving home the point he was no longer his own man but someone else’s. As weak as he

was, he could not have moved even had he the heart to do so. Before him was unrelieved darkness and