The Eye of the Hunter (75 page)

Moaning in dread and lunging against the shackles, slowly Faeril struggled up through the ebon shadows and toward the light, dragging great, long chains behind, horrible images in the darkness all about—blood flying, bones breaking, intestines spilling, some images hideous beyond description, the mind refusing to comprehend what the eyes had seen—the damman struggling toward her buccaran’s voice as Gwylly called…and called…and called
…

Even as Faeril regained consciousness, she could hear herself groaning in terror, the nightmare clinging. A foul, putrid smell overlay the air. And she opened her eyes to find herself lying on a stone floor of a dimly lit chamber. She could hear Gwylly calling from behind, and she rolled over to see the buccan kneeling a short distance away. And now she saw that he was fettered, iron cuffs about his wrists, chains anchored in the stone wall.

Faeril groaned and sat up, her vision swimming with the mere effort, and found her own wrists ironbound, rattling links connecting her to heavy studs embedded in rock.

A look of relief mingled with anxiety washed over Gwylly’s face. “Oh, love, are you all right?”

Faeril took a deep breath and shook her head, trying to clear it of the dizziness, trying as well to clear it of the remnants of the horrid dream. “I’m a bit lightheaded. Gwylly.”

“That’ll pass, love. The green gas, you know…. You have the right of it: deep breaths help. Through your mouth, though.”

Faeril breathed in and out several times. “Where are we? And where are—” Her words chopped off, for beyond Gwylly and shackled as well lay Aravan and Riatha, Elf and Elfess unconscious. “Are they all right, Gwylly?”

“They are breathing, love. And I’ve seen them move.”

Gwylly lifted a hand and gestured outward away from the wall. “As to where we are…well, my dammia, some kind of Hèlhole, I would say.”

Faeril looked into the gloom and recoiled, a moan escaping from her lips. Corpses were strewn throughout the darkness—grinning jaws agape, sightless eyes staring, their flesh a horrid dark red, as of dried blood all over….

…And then Faeril saw that they had been
flayed
.

And
impaled
.

Split from crotch to navel, abdomens burst open, entrails spilling out.

I am still trapped in my nightmare!

But no nightmare this; instead it was horribly real.

Faeril covered her face with her hands, but still she could see the images. And smell the putrescent stench.

“Oh, Gwylly…”

Gwylly’s voice came softly. “I know, love. I know.”

Not looking at the dead, Faeril crawled to the limit of her chains toward her buccaran, haling up short. “They’re not long enough for prisoners to reach one another,” said Gwylly.

Faeril examined the fetters and links. Made of iron, the shackles were key locked, and they gripped snugly about the wrists. The chains themselves were perhaps five feet long, anchored in the wall some three feet up from the floor.

For long moments Faeril sat gathering her nerve, bracing herself for what she knew had to come next.
All right, my dammsel dear, you can’t plan an escape if you don’t look to see what’s here
. Faeril gritted her teeth and stood and forced her gaze out into the shadowed chamber, her sight sliding over the decaying corpses.

The room was illuminated by a small chain-hung oil lamp in chamber center, but it cast enough light for her to see that the huge room itself was virtually square, some sixty feet or so to a side and perhaps sixteen feet to the ceiling, from which hung other oil lamps, unlit. Centered about the middle of the room, four stone pillars stood at the corners of a twenty-foot square, supporting a structure of heavy beams crisscrossing overhead.

Beside each pillar sat a long, narrow table, and with a sinking heart Faeril could see that each was bloodstained and fitted with straps for holding prisoners down.

Beneath the lamp sat another table on which were tools, implements, and except for the tongs and thin-bladed knives, Faeril could not identify any.

In mid-room as well, chains and shackles hung down from the overhead beams, the dangling fetters some eight feet above the floor.

Against a far wall, what Faeril had first taken for a corpse in the shadows instead were saddlebags and bedrolls and their weaponry, all heaped in a pile. Faeril’s heart clenched at the sight of Urus’s morning star, but she shook her head—
I will grieve later
—and wrested her thoughts back to the task at hand.

Located at the midpoints of the walls were shadowed wooden doorways, closed. And except for where each door stood, manacles and chains were studded at regular intervals around the room, enough to hold sixteen prisoners in all, four along each flank, two on either side of a door.

Faeril and Gwylly were anchored next to one another, Faeril closest to a doorway, Gwylly between her and the nearest corner. Riatha lay ’round the corner adjacent to Gwylly, and Aravan beyond the Elfess.

As Faeril’s gaze lingered on her companions, Riatha stirred and opened her eyes, the Elfess breathing deeply, trying to rid herself of the dregs of the gas.

And while Riatha slowly recovered, Faeril continued her survey of their prison, now forcing herself to look at the
dead, glancing swiftly from one to another.
Thank Adon, Urus is not among them
.

Again she looked at the corpses, the bodies splayed, arms and legs akimbo. Stripped of clothing, all were armed as if for battle, and some wore helms or vambraces or greaves the metal strapped against raw meat and bones of head or arms or legs. Some of the slain were obviously long dead, while others seemed freshly slaughtered. All had been flayed and impaled. Faeril counted: nine rotting, their flesh decomposed, sloughing away; fourteen newly killed, butchered like cattle, not yet falling into decay.
Nine old victims. Fourteen new. Now where—?
Faeril gasped, realizing,
The fourteen caravan prisoners: Stoke has murdered them all!
Faeril wrenched her eyes away, unable to look upon this butchery any longer.

Riatha now sat with her back to the wall, her silver gaze taking in the chamber and its horrid occupants.

Aravan began to stir.

* * *

Faeril searched throughout her clothing, looking for anything that might be used as a picklock, though she had no skill in such. “Nothing,” she said at last, glancing up at Aravan.

The Elf looked at Gwylly. The buccan shook his head,
No
. Aravan turned to Riatha, the Elfess gazing across the room at Urus’s morning star. She, too, shook her head,
No
. “I thought not,” said Aravan. “They have stripped us of all that could do so.”

Gwylly slumped back down, then looked up. “Have you your amulet, Aravan?”

Aravan nodded. “Aye, and it is chill. Like as not Stoke’s lackeys fear it, will not touch it unless driven so.”

The Elf turned and braced his feet against the wall and took up the slack in the right-hand chain. Not for the first time, he strained to break a link or pull the stud from the stone—to no avail.

“Some pickle, neh?” said Gwylly.

“Wha—what, Gwylly?” asked Faeril. “I didn’t hear you.”

“I said, it’s some pickle we’ve gotten ourselves into this time, is it not so?”

The damman looked at her buccaran. “And one we are not likely to get out of alive either.”

Though they could not touch, Gwylly held his hand out
to her. “Ah, love, we yet breathe. And where there’s life…what I mean is, we must be ready to seize any chance to get free. If even one of us survives, then there’s still a possibility we can bring down Stoke—and speaking of Stoke, he may already be dead, killed by daylight.”

Riatha shook her head. “Nay, Gwylly, I think he survived the light of the Sun. The glass spheres that dropped through the murder holes, Stoke used such once before.”

“I know,” responded the buccan. “I read it in the journal of the Firstborns.”

“What is the hour, I wonder?” asked Faeril.

“Nearing sunset,” answered Aravan, his Elven gift unimpaired by his imprisonment.

Faeril’s heart thudded in her breast at Aravan’s words. “I expect that we will soon know, then, whether or not Stoke yet lives.”

* * *

It was nigh mid of night when the clack of bolts being shot and the clatter of key in lock and the clank of a bar being set aside announced the arrival of Baron Stoke.

The door swung open and in he came, accompanied by an escort of a half-dozen dusky Hlōks bearing cudgels and tulwars, the long curved blades glinting red in the lantern light. And in the shadows behind Baron Stoke came a Ghûl. Too, inward scurried two Rūcks, the swart
Rûpt
scuttling about the chamber to light oil lamps, driving back the shadows.

And Stoke bore with him a long golden stake, triangular steel blades glittering down its length.

Stoke paused a moment at the table containing the devices, as if to assure himself that all were present. Pallid he was and tall, with black hair and hands long and slender. His face was long and narrow, his nose straight and thin, his white cheeks unbearded. Dark humor played at the corners of his mouth, and when he smiled, long teeth gleamed, the canines sharp. He appeared to be in his thirties, though his actual age was nearer sixteen hundred years, a thousand of which he had spent trapped in a glacier. And then he looked up at his captives; his eyes were a pale amber—yellow, some would say.

Faeril shrank back against the stone wall, and Gwylly stood and stepped toward her, as if to come between his dammia and Stoke, yet his chains would not allow.

Riatha now stood, her silvery-grey gaze fixed upon this kinslayer before her, her eyes filled with bitter hatred.

Aravan’s shoulders sagged, and he spoke in Sylva.[“Although he resembles Galarun’s killer, this is not the yellow-eyed Man I seek.”]

With care, Stoke lay the golden spike among the other instruments, and then came and stood before his prisoners, his fists on his hips, his yellow eyes gloating.

Immediately behind him stood the Man-sized Ghûl, dead black soul-less eyes glittering in pasty white flesh, a red gash of a mouth filled with pointed yellow teeth, a cruelly barbed spear in his hand, a wide, spiked steel collar about his neck. Yet one side of his face was hideously blistered, as if he had been burned, and the hand gripping the spear was scalded as well, knuckles flame charred, wrist and forearm seared.

And he looked upon Gwylly with hatred in his eyes, as if he would murder the buccan, a hollow snarl growling deep in his chest.

Yet Stoke paid the Ghûl no heed, and instead one by one he gazed long at each of his captives, his eyes widening slightly at the sight of Faeril and Gwylly. Then his mad glare settled upon Riatha, and he spoke in a whisper that made Faeril shudder with the sound of it. “It has been long since I have had the pleasure of
harvesting
an Elf”—his yellow eyes flicked in Aravan’s direction—“much less two.”

Riatha stood in grim silence, her fists clenched.

Stoke’s gaze swung to the Warrows and then back. “I am surprised that these two yet accompany you, Elfess, for I did not know their Kind to be this long-lived, and they will please me much.”

Faeril glanced at Gwylly and then back to Stoke.
Adon! He thinks we are Tomlin and Petal
.

Stoke glanced at the far wall where lay their weapons, then turned once more to Riatha. “Too bad about my old foe, Urus, for it would have delighted me to hear his howls as I flensed him of his skin. Yet though I will not have that pleasure, he will serve me nevertheless: this morning I had his corpse borne into the repository”—Stoke gestured, at the door he had entered—“and later tonight he will join the ranks of my unconquerable army.”

Riatha ground her teeth in rage and would have stepped
forward but for her chains. “Urus is slain and will never serve thee, Stoke!”

Stoke laughed wickedly at her reaction, saying, “Not serve me? You fool, you know not even of what I speak.”

Stoke made a sweeping gesture at the corpses in the chamber. “When you were first chained, I would have left you in the dark, but I wanted you to see my…handiwork…so that you would have sufficient time to admire it, to anticipate and relish your own fate to come.

“Yet merely by seeing the fallen dead you cannot fully appreciate your destiny, no matter how beautiful they are, no matter the exquisite way in which they died.

“Nay, I must show you what you will soon be, how you and yours will serve me, Baron Stoke.”

Stoke turned, facing into the room. He stood in silence for a moment, as if gathering his strength, his will. Then his voice lashed out:

“ô nekroí!”

The arcane words seemed to hang on the air, as ice would silently cling. And the Rūcks and Hlōks peered nervously about and edged toward the door, as if they would bolt from the room.

“Egò gàr ho Stókos dè kèleuo humás!”

A chill seeped into the chamber, and Gwylly shivered, glancing at Faeril, the damman’s arms hugged about herself, her eyes wide with apprehension.

“Akoúsete mè!”

Aravan’s hand crept to his throat, the blue stone frigid.

“Peísesthe moi!”

In the flickering light, from the corner of her eye Faeril thought that she saw faint motion among the dead. Her heart hammering furiously, she wrenched her gaze in that direction in time to see a black beetle drop from the gaping jaw of a corpse and scuttle away.
Oh, Adon, did it come from the mouth?

Then Stoke’s harsh words rolled out into the chill:

“Stánton!”

As if from ten thousand throats, a ghastly sigh whispered through the chamber, and now Faeril was certain that she saw a corpse move, head rolling to one side, dead eyes staring at Stoke, or staring at Faeril herself!

“Stánton!”

Now ten thousand anguished groans wailed, and corpses
began to shift, dead arms and legs levering, lifting, a ghostly weeping filling the chamber, and now the Rūcks did run, disappearing into the shadowy hall beyond the open door.

Up jerked the corpses, lurching to their feet, weapons in hand, entrails dangling from burst abdomens.