David Chandler - A thief in the night

“It was elves. You know it was,” Balint said.

Morget nodded. “Revenants wouldn’t have searched their things. Nor would the demons.”

“And you know the elves, at least by reputation,” Balint went on. “You know what all the stories say they used to do to their human captives.”

“Be silent!” Croy thundered. Then he calmed himself. Forced his passions to cool themselves. “Please.”

“I don’t think there’s two ways to read this,” Balint said. “I’m sorry, but you must see it, too. The elves slew your woman. Your beloved.”

Croy wished she would let him think. “You can’t know that. You can’t know for sure that she’s dead-”

“Tell me, human. If the elf who butchered her was standing right here, right now, would you hail him and say, ‘Well met’? Or would you stick your sword so far down his throat it would come out brown on the other end?”

“That sounds reasonable,” Morget pointed out.

“Cythera isn’t dead,” Croy insisted. He could feel the blood burning under his skin. “She lives, still. I would know somehow, I would feel it in my bones if she had perished. The love we share is so strong that I am bound to Cythera by holy chains. It was my sacred duty to protect her. If I had failed her so thoroughly, the Lady would strike me down with lightning out of heaven.”

“Maybe She’s just waiting till you’re outside,” Balint interrupted. “Hard to throw a levinbolt through a hundred feet of solid rock.”

“My soul would have shriveled inside me,” Croy stated. “My heart would have broken. I would feel-”

“The world doesn’t work that way,” Morget growled.

“I would feel-something.”

But he did feel something, didn’t he? He felt doubt. For the first time since they’d been separated, he truly doubted that Cythera was still alive.

“I feel-I feel-”

“These are elves we’re talking about,” Balint said. “They probably had her sixteen different ways before they let her die.”

He knew he was being goaded. He knew she was manipulating him. It didn’t stop him from feeling the guilt. Guilt, for letting Cythera come to this haunted place at all. Guilt for not protecting her better. Guilt for leaving her side, even for an instant.

“I-feel-”

“Do you think she was the kind to scream when they tortured her, or would she not give them that satisfaction?” Balint asked.

“I-”

But Croy couldn’t finish the thought. His vision went red. His sword jumped from its sheath and he slashed at the air in front of him, not caring what he struck, only needing, desperately, to cut and thrust and stab anything that was in front of him. For Cythera, he howled in his head. For Cythera. For Cythera.

“That’s the spirit,” Balint said, with a nasty laugh.

He could barely hear her over the roaring of the blood in his ears.

“What do you want from me?” he demanded. “Why do you torture me like this?”

“I want revenge,” Balint told him. “Against the arseholes who killed Murin and Slurri. I might need your help to get it. So I’m asking. Do we team up and get our revenge? I aim to pull their giblets out their arses and strangle them with their own guts. What say you?”

“I say yessss,” Croy hissed.

“And you, Morget?” Balint asked. “You have no reason to love me. But will you help?”

“This design of yours, to slaughter elves. Does that extend to their pets as well? Their demons?”

“Of course,” Balint told the barbarian.

“Then my axe is yours,” Morget told her.

The elves took them down a crude flight of stairs carved out of the rock of the winding tunnel and down to another brick door. By that time Slag was able to walk a little on his own. Malden’s feet were sore with the constant marching, and his arms ached from carrying the dwarf, but those pains couldn’t compete with the searing agony in the muscles of his back.

He was afraid. Terrified, in fact. His back hurt because his body was in a constant state of tension. It had steeled itself for the blow it thought was coming, the moment when the elves turned on him and started to torture him.

His rational mind could not compete with the part of his brain that knew he was going to die, and that it would happen in the most horrible way imaginable. The part of his brain that only wanted to run away, to hide, to curl up and perish on its own rather than face that torment.

He tried to keep cheerful, to laugh and smile and raise the spirits of his companions. To help alleviate the fear he knew they felt as well. Yet he knew once they passed through this last door, only gruesome fate and inevitable death awaited him.

One of the soldiers rapped on the door with the pommel of his bronze sword, and it swung wide on its hinges.

Light, warmth, and music spilled into the tunnel. Malden smelled meat roasting over an aromatic fire. The elfin guards stepped aside and gestured for the prisoners to step forward, into the hall beyond.

“Let everyone have a good look at you,” one of them told Cythera. “This should be quite diverting.”

Malden watched her walk through the door, with Slag leaning on her arm. She craned her head upward to see her new surroundings, and her mouth fell open in awe. Malden followed close behind and could scarcely credit what he discovered.

The darkness of the Vincularium gave way to dazzling light. Standing lamps lit this room, just as they had the dormitory, but here their reddish light was mellowed by the yellow glow of a thousand candles that chased every shadow out of the hall. He could not imagine what the room might once have been used for, as no sign remained of the cold, cyclopean stone halls of the kind favored by dwarves. The elves had made this room their own, paneling the walls with elaborate wooden carvings or hanging them with rich, warm brocades that spilled out across the floor to become luxurious carpets.

Musicians in motley and crimson danced through the room, no two playing the same instrument. They seemed to be competing with one another yet their melodies wove together seamlessly, filling the air with bright piping and vigorous drumbeats. Jugglers lofted blazing torches high in the air, catching them behind their backs as they bowed to passing ladies in diaphanous gowns that trailed unheeded across the floor. Elves in heavy plate armor bashed away at each other with wooden swords, laughing as their armor rang, again and again. A groaning board ran the full length of one wall, laden with meats and wheels of cheese and enormous flagons of brown liquid.

Malden realized his jaw was hanging open, and he forced it to close. He caught Cythera’s eye and imagined his own face looked much like hers-wide with uncontrolled surprise.

Despite what the elfin soldier had told them, the gathered elves did not seem at all shocked to see humans enter their home, nor curious to get a good look at the newcomers. They seemed too enveloped in their own revelry, too devoted to their own amusement, to even notice a change in the hall, or the arrival of three beings whom they had reason to hate. Malden was glad enough for that. He saw no instruments of torture in that place, no real weapons, even, other than those carried by the guards that brought them hence. If the three of them were to be tortured to death, it seemed they must wait until the party was finished.

Above them a wide balcony let out onto the hall, its far side hidden by thick red curtains. One of these curtains twitched aside and an elf strode out onto the balcony to stare down at the prisoners. Malden could see at once that this one was different. He had an aura of command about him, and Malden thought the elf must be their king or maybe some kind of high priest. He wore a black garment that started as a cowl around his head, revealing only his face, then fell without seam or fastening to the floor, as if he were covered in a sheet with a hole cut out for him to see through. Small bells were sewn everywhere onto this mantle, and they rang with a shrill sound as he moved. He was tall and his face was sharply featured, but his eyes were strange. From a distance it was difficult for Malden to tell, but he thought one of the elf’s pupils was much larger than the other.