Shadow’s Lure (29 page)

The soldier with his head turned didn’t have time to make a sound as nine inches of honed steel pierced the back of his neck. Blood spattered the floor. Before the officer had time to yell, Caim opened a second mouth under his chin.

The sounds of the bodies hitting the floor echoed down the corridor. Caim glanced through the open doorway, saw it was an office—sparsely appointed and empty—and kept moving down the corridor. He stopped at the next door and listened. Hearing nothing, he went on to the one after that. Also silent. No. There was a faint sound like buzzing insects. Snoring. As the doors in this corridor were varnished pinewood and not reinforced, he assumed they led to guard barracks, storerooms, and such. The cells must be in another part of the prison house.

Caim put a finger to his lips and waved for the outlaws to follow. They reached the end of the corridor without incident and found a double set of stone staircases, one going up and the other down. By best guess, Caim figured they were at the center of the building. He waited for Ramon and Keegan.

“You sure your man’s on the top floor?” he asked.

Keegan nodded, but Ramon beckoned to the bearded outlaw with the prison guard for a cousin.

“Oak, is that cousin of yours reliable?”

The man shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose so.”

“Either he is or he isn’t.”

A cool sensation touched Caim’s ankle. He looked down to see a handful of shadows climbing over his feet. Images popped into his head: the stairs, long bare corridors studded with closed doors, a man in a gray uniform walking down a hallway swinging a stout club in his hand, and a door. Something about the door bothered him.

Oak started to say something, but Caim cut him off with a terse whisper.

“We’re going up. Keep your eyes open.”

The outlaws nodded. By the looks on their faces, they hadn’t expected to get this far and they were ready for this adventure to be over. Biting his tongue, Caim started up the stairs. He climbed two flights and came to a landing. Four doors branched off in different directions. Caim cracked open the doors and put his eye to each. Corridors led off into the dimness, each with many doors; these doors were rougher and bulkier in construction than those below. Prisoner cells.

By this time, the outlaws had caught up to him. Motioning for them to stay back, he continued his ascent. On each floor, four doors awaited. Caim didn’t bother checking them. He tried to calculate how many cells the building contained. Six floors with four wings each, and at least a score of cells per wing. The number boggled him. It spoke of a certain mind-set for the Nimeans to have constructed this monolith of imprisonment back when they conquered the land. Those who resisted were either put to the sword or locked away.
Come to think of it, the True Church held a similar stance on how to treat its adversaries. A simple matter of following a successful model? How many have perished in these dark chambers?

Caim chewed on his thoughts as he climbed higher. The outlaws inched closer with every step until Ramon and Keegan were practically on his heels. At least their luck held; they didn’t see any guards on their climb.

The stairs ended on a wide landing. Here, as below, they found four doors. Caim had been considering how to conduct the search. By the time they reached the top, he’d made up his mind. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t have much choice. Time was against them. Any moment an alarm could sound.

“All right,” Caim said. “This is where it gets interesting. I’m splitting you into four groups and—”

As soon as they heard “splitting,” the men started muttering to each other. The sounds bounced off the stone walls and down the stairwell. Caim’s gloves creaked as his hands clenched.

“Quiet!” he whispered, louder than he wanted, but it got their attention.

A noise echoed from behind the west doorway. It was soft, like it came from a long way off. A boot step? Or maybe the butt of a spear striking the floor?

“Listen,” he said, quieter this time. “We have to move fast. Each team takes a different door. Keegan and I will go west—”

A short man with his hood pulled down low slipped through the group. “I’ll go with you.”

“Fine,” Caim said. “The rest of you, try to stay quiet. If you find Caedman, bring him back here and wait for everyone else to return.”

“What if we run into trouble?” one of the townie outlaws asked.

“This isn’t a carnival. Do what you have to do, but don’t stop to see the sights. Just keeping going until you’ve searched every cell.”

Hooded heads nodded to him, and then Ramon took over, dividing the men by some order of his own determining.

Caim went to the door and lifted the door’s handle. A sliver of light spilled through the crack. Everyone stopped moving to watch. Although the corridor beyond was dimmer than those he’d seen below, he could see it was empty.

“Come on,” he mouthed, and slipped through the doorway.

The others’ boots pattered behind him as he went to the first door on the left. It was a stout portal of old oak secured by a thick beam. As there was no window or peephole, Caim was forced to open it to find out what was inside. He sheathed both knives. The short outlaw hung back a few paces. Swallowing a curse, Caim gestured for Keegan to keep watch as he put his hands under the bar and lifted. The braces attached to the wall squeaked when he applied pressure, but then released the bar without further protest. Caim paused, holding his breath as he listened. Somewhere down the corridor, a dull thud echoed, the same sound he’d heard before, but he still couldn’t identify it.

Caim set the bar on the ground and pulled on the door’s latch. It opened with just a slight creak. A powerful stench rolled over him as he stood in the doorway, the combined odors of rot, feces, and death. Fighting past the reek, Caim peered into the darkness. Inside was a small stone room roughly four paces by three, furnished with nothing but an empty pewter bowl on the floor. A shape huddled on the far side of the cell. He couldn’t tell if the occupant was a man or a woman. It had something like a shawl draped over its head. Caim stepped inside. The shape didn’t move as he nudged an exposed, filthy foot.

“Can you hear me? Hello?”

He received no response. No movement, no sounds. Not even a hushed grunt.

Stooping over, Caim touched the shape’s head through the shawl. It rocked to the side without resistance. Dead.

He left the cell and closed the door. Shaking his head at Keegan’s inquiring glance, he moved to the door across the hall. They repeated the process six more times, twice more finding corpses, and just stale air in the other four. In the eighth cell they discovered a living person.

Living maybe, but hardly alive
.

He was a man of advanced age smelling almost as bad as the corpses they’d found. A long dirty beard drooped across his shrunken chest.

“What do we do with him?” Keegan asked with a sleeve pressed over his mouth and nose.

The humane thing would be to put him out of his misery
. But looking at the pitiful wretch curled up on the cold floor, Caim didn’t have the heart for it.

“You,” he said to the short outlaw. “What’s your name?”

The boy hunched his shoulders like Caim had yelled at him. “Dongo.”

“Dongo, find something to prop this door open. We’ll gather him up on the way out if we have time.”

Caim and Keegan kept checking cells. They found a few more lost souls, most of them in the same condition as the old man or worse. One woman of indeterminate age, covered in dried blood, huddled in the corner of her cell. She screamed when they opened her door, and went on screaming until they closed it again. Keegan’s eyes were wide as they left that door, but Dongo crept closer as if he wanted to go inside.

“Leave it,” Caim said. “We can’t save everyone.”

Side passages branched off halfway down the main corridor, but Caim focused on the doors. It made sense that a high-profile captive would be kept somewhere convenient.

As they moved down the hallway, Caim saw there was a door at the end. He thought it was only another cell at first, but as they approached a sense of anxiety began to build in the pit of his stomach. While Keegan and Dongo unbarred another cell, Caim realized what was bothering him. The feeling was the same he’d been experiencing since he came north, a powerful presence that wrapped around him like a ghostly tentacle. Here, it was almost overwhelming.

And it came from the door at the end of the hallway.

Caim went up to the door. On the outside it looked like all the others. He reached for the latch.

“Caim!” Keegan called out.

Caim pulled his hand back. With a long glance at the door, he turned and hurried over to the next-to-last cell. Keegan stood halfway out the doorway. His face was ashen.

“What is it?”

“Look.”

The youth held open the door for Caim to look inside. Dongo knelt beside a lump of tangled rags in the middle of the floor. Caim went over to the young man. He stooped down and reached out to the layer of rags covering the lump’s head. Five thick fingers with hairy knuckles snatched his wrist and held it in a viselike grip. Caim yanked hard, but he was held fast. The lump’s other hand pulled the rags from its face, and a pair of ice-blue eyes glared at him from beneath bristly red brows. The face was exceedingly dirty, and ugly beyond imagination.

Caim drew his left-hand knife and put it to the lump’s chest.

“No!” Dongo cried in a feminine voice.

As Dongo grabbed his knife hand, Caim glanced at him. No, at
her
. Dongo’s hood had fallen back in her rush to stop him to reveal Liana’s features.

“Li!” Keegan yelled from the doorway. “What are you doing here? Where’s father?”

“He left the city. He’s not angry, Keegan. He doesn’t like what we’re doing, but I think he understands.”

Caim sat back on his heels. Keegan hadn’t realized his sister had accompanied them here, and Caim was a little angry at himself for not noticing either. He wasn’t sure what to do. Fortunately, the ugly man’s grip was faltering. Caim pulled free and stood up.

“You know this man?” he said.

Liana nodded. “His name is Samnus. He’s thane of the Hurrold clan. He was at Aldercairn, wasn’t he, Keegan?”

Her brother nodded from his post, but kept his distance.

“He stood up with Caedman against the duke,” Liana continued.

Caim’s gaze traveled across the man’s torso. Splotches of old blood marred his cloak of rags. His left arm was tucked against his ribs; the right foot looked twisted.

“We don’t have time to carry a cripple,” Caim said.

The ugly man growled like a wounded bear. “I can walk, damn you! Let me up and I’ll prove it.”

They stood back, and the man, Samnus, rolled onto his hands and knees. With exquisite slowness, he rose to a kneeling stance, and then got his feet under him one at a time until he was standing before them, albeit with a sway.

“I can help him,” Liana said. “We won’t slow you down.”

“I don’t need coddling, girl!”

Caim stepped up to the prisoner’s face until their noses were a finger span apart. “We aren’t here for you. If you fall behind, we’ll leave you to rot. Understand?”

Samnus grinned and revealed a mouthful of broken teeth. “Why are you wasting time then, boy? Lead the way.”

“We’re looking for Caedman,” Liana said.

The man nodded, and even that simple gesture betrayed the depths of his exhaustion. “The door across the hall. That’s where they’ve been keeping him.”

Caim headed out of the cell, and Keegan moved aside. Out in the corridor, the dark presence from the end of the hall beckoned, like an echo of a bad dream. Tiny quivers ran up his arms and across his body. He motioned for the others to stay back as he headed for the malignant door.

“Boy.” Samnus leaned in the entrance of his cell. “You don’t want to go in there.”

But Caim pushed open the door.

The room beyond was larger than a cell, but hardly spacious. Its stone walls enclosed several tables, a pair of wooden chairs, and braziers filled with dim red coals. Naked bodies occupied the tables and thrones, strapped into place, six men in all. They had been tortured to death. Though his nose was deadened to the stench by his exposure to the noisome cells, Caim’s eyes picked out the worst of the mutilations: flesh peeled away from the faces and chests, hands and feet hacked from their limbs, eyes burned out of the sockets, genitals sliced clean off. A pile of flesh scraps lay on the floor like a dog’s dinner. The professional part of Caim’s mind had to pause in admiration for the handiwork; it was exquisite in its precision, better than any sawbones he’d ever met could do. But that part of him that could still feel quailed at the sight.

The stench of Shadow was thick in the air, lingering around the bodies like the perfume of a departed lover. Pushing through his anger, Caim examined the corpses one at a time. He forced himself to touch them, turn their heads from side to side, lift their handless arms and peer into bloody sockets. Traces of black residue confirmed his suspicion. The memory of Mathias lying dead, a hole cut into his flabby chest, left Caim cold and angry.