Unleashed Fury (BloodRunes: Book 1) (38 page)

They walked slowly along the final passageway
and came out into the torture chamber once more. Gryffon stood
there for a moment, biting his lip. “There has to be something that
we're missing.” Layna felt that odd tug of familiarity again and
looked back up the passageway they had just come down with the urge
to go and look in the last cell once more. “That's it!” exclaimed
Gryffon triumphantly. “Look here, there should be another
passageway right here between the one we just came down and the
doorway. Following the pattern of the rest there is plenty of room,
so unless it's not there because something else is...” He started
back down the passageway with Layna in tow. They came to the last
cell that Layna had been wondering about, and Gryffon stepped
inside. Layna winced, but followed. “Well, would you look at that,”
Gryffon said.

Layna glanced from the wall he was staring at
back at Gryffon. “What is it?”

“Doesn't this wall seem awfully
well-preserved to you?” he asked. Layna took a closer look, and
this time did notice that whilst the walls of the other cells had
shown cracks and moss, this one looked as though it could have been
built yesterday. Gryffon started running his hands along it,
studying its surface for a lever or other means of entrance. He
muttered to himself.

Layna walked to the far left corner and had a
flash of déjà-vu. She glanced behind her, noting that from here it
was impossible to see into any other cells. She reached up a hand
to feel at the wall, and it passed straight through. “Gryffon,” she
said shortly.

He looked up at her, and brightened at her
discovery. “Well, what are you waiting for?” he asked her in a
gently teasing tone. His cheeriness seemed so out of place.

She took a deep breath before sending her
mage light through the illusion, and then stepped through the stone
wall herself. She gasped as she passed through the other side, and
hurriedly moved out of the way so that Gryffon could come through.
To the left, where the last branch in the wagon wheel pattern that
Gryffon had pointed out would have been, was a huge storage room,
and it was filled to the brim. Obviously the looters had not
thought to try walking through the cell walls. To the right was
another hallway, this time lined with actual doors instead of cell
bars. In an unspoken agreement, Gryffon and Layna took a left to
look at the storage room before tackling the hallway. Layna could
not believe her eyes as they scrutinized its contents.

It held piles of people's belongings:
remnants of clothing, shoes, and jewelry. The piles were taller
than Layna. She could only imagine how many people it would take to
collect that many of any of those things. The room came to a point,
and at the skinny end there was a large desk which held an open
book.

Gryffon went to look at it, and he blew the
dusk from its pages. His breath threatened to make the whole book
collapse into dust itself so he refrained from touching it, but
perused the open page. “Looks like a list of people with their
crime and what possessions they had.” He snorted. “Most of the
listings under crime are nothing of the sort. Listen to this:
'Lillith Posen; one tunic, one wedding band, one pair size 7 shoe.
Jailed for buying bread from a person believed to have set foot in
Treymayne.' How ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous or not, she probably died
horribly for it,” put in Layna seriously.

Gryffon nodded in disgust, and they moved out
of the storage room towards the hallway. Layna was filled with a
sense of dread that far outweighed the initial aversion she had
felt when first descending the stairs. As they opened the first
doorway, Layna knew why. Runes covered the walls, which also had
odd splash-like discolorations that Layna had the sinking feeling
had been blood during the room's heyday. In the middle of the
chamber was a table, the wood stained a deep dark red that had
little to do with the original color. Shackles were affixed to the
walls like in the cells, but otherwise the room was strangely empty
save for the table. The table looked as though it had at one point
probably had leather straps that went across it. There were remains
of the metal bindings on either side.

Layna felt herself getting dizzy, and the
room and the runes seemed to swim in circles around her. “I can't
be in here,” she managed to choke out, and she rushed out into the
hallway, gulping for air as though the room had been suffocating
her.

Gryffon followed her out and put a protective
hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

She nodded numbly and let out a quick
steadying breath. Gryffon took her hand, and together they walked
up the hallway. They systematically opened each of the doorways and
peeked inside, but did not go in any more of them. They recognized
the rune that Gryffon bore on his chest, but did not see any sign
of the one that Layna had. They came to the last doorway at the
very end of the hall and cracked it open. This room was the same as
the rest, save one difference. This one still had someone in it.
Or, at least, what was left of someone.

A delicate skeleton, barely held together,
was stretched across the far wall. It was held up by shackles on
the wrists, ankles and torso. Layna stepped cautiously towards it
and let out a strangled cry at the agony that this poor person must
have endured. There were chips of bone missing where they must have
been hit so hard that they had fractured and had since fallen out.
Almost every bone showed signs of having been broken and knitted
back together. As Layna looked tentatively with her mage sight, she
was horrified to see the extensiveness of the damage that had been
inflicted upon the skeleton. Many of the wounds would normally have
killed someone, but obviously the person had not been allowed to
die as they showed signs of having healed before the person finally
perished.

As she looked closer, she saw that there was
gold trim lining the bones, holding them together. Layna knew, as
she was still holding on to the power and was therefore able to,
that this too had been done while the person was still living.
Layna shook her head in disbelief that any human could possibly do
this to another, and she wept for the woman. For a woman it was,
she now knew. Through her connection with the long-dead woman's
remains, Layna could still feel the ripples of pain despite so much
time passing. She reached up to claw at the shackles in an effort
to get the woman down.

“What are you doing?” Gryffon asked her
urgently.

“I have to get her down and cremate her in a
proper funeral. It will be a symbol for all of them,” she said
through her tears, “for all the innocent people who suffered and
died here.”

Gryffon replied by stepping forward to help
her undo the shackles. She was grateful for his acceptance of her
need to do this without question; she wasn’t sure that she could
put into words the emotions that this place evoked in her. She felt
guilty for what had happened, though it had been long before her
time.

Together they very gently laid the woman on
the table. Layna took off her cloak and spread it over the woman as
a funeral shroud. She whispered the blessings of peace, extending
her prayer to all those affected by this place. Gryffon remained
silent as she stepped back and reached for the power as she had
with Mila, and she very carefully set the bones on fire, focusing
the power so that it was hot enough to burn them to ash. It took
quite some time as Layna was determined to burn off every speck of
the offending gold lace-work before starting the ritual of burning
itself.

When the skeleton had disappeared, leaving
only a tiny pile of dust in the vague shape of a person on the
table, Layna extinguished her fire and was pleased that she had not
even scorched the table.

A breeze suddenly came out of nowhere and the
dust scattered off the table, disappearing into the wind.

Layna and Gryffon stood in silence for a
moment before Gryffon spoke. “How is there a breeze way down
here?”

“Magic,” was Layna's answer, but she followed
where the ashes had blown and could feel air moving through a crack
in the wall. She pressed a hand against the spot and was rewarded
by a creaking as the wall slid back into itself, revealing yet
another secret passage.

Once more they sent their mage lights through
before them and followed behind. It was a narrow spiraling
staircase lined with more runes, and Layna tried not to brush up
against the walls as if even physical contact with them would
contaminate her.

At the top was another door that looked as
though it would slide into the indentation along the side of it to
allow them to pass. Layna paused as she saw what was on the door.
It was unmarred by the smaller runes, like those that completely
covered the rest of the walls, but in the center of its starkly
blank surface was unmistakably the symbol from her neck.

Gryffon and Layna exchanged a look and Layna
raised a shaking hand to push the door aside. As she had guessed,
it slid back into the wall next to it to reveal an opening. Layna
thought she saw an ornately decorated room in the dim light beyond
it and she stepped into the room with nervous exhilaration, hoping
that it would reveal some information about the mark that labeled
its door.

Her excitement deflated quickly as she looked
around. She sighed. It looked as though the passageway had brought
them back up to the main part of the castle, and this room was as
threadbare as the rest.

Gryffon, with his greater knowledge of the
castle's lay-out was able to deduce more from the threadbare room,
however. “Looks like this was the King's chamber,” he
commented.

Layna winced. Perhaps it was significant that
her mark was on the door that led here after all. “Can we get out
of here now?” she asked pleadingly, and to her relief, Gryffon
agreed.

Layna stretched out in the bath house back at
the Phoenix, happily letting the water lap up over her chin as she
relaxed in the warm water. It felt wonderful to unwind after days
on the road, and she let the heat seep into her bones. Slowly, it
removed the chill from having visited the dark fortress, and Layna
tried hard not to dwell on the horrible feeling she had gotten from
being there. She still felt wary, as though a presence was watching
her, blaming her for the awful things that had happened there, and
she was glad to be gone.

As the water finally started to cool, Layna
resisted the urge to use her newfound power to reheat it, and
reached lazily for a towel. She took another and bound her hair,
bundling it and the towel on top of her head. She wrapped the first
around her torso, sliding her feet into slippers, and made her way
back to the room. She opened the door to the rooms to reveal
Gryffon pouring over a book, and she sighed happily. “You really
should go soak out all your aches in the bath house,” she told him,
“It's simply divine.”

Gryffon looked up from the book and laughed.
“Perhaps I'll do just that. Getting rid of all this dirt would be
an improvement too.” He did a double take at her, and suddenly grew
serious. “What did you do with the charm I gave you?”

“It's right here in my pocket,” Layna said
defensively. “I just took it off earlier because it was tickling my
neck.”

“Put it back on,” Gryffon commanded her
urgently.

Layna complied, though she was hurt at the
harshness of his words. She groped through the pockets of the
clothes draped over her arm and found the charm. She dropped it
around her neck. “There. Happy?”

Gryffon relaxed, and seemed to sense her
discomfort. “Sorry,” he apologized. “It's just that it's more than
just a necklace, it's a shielding charm. When I first met you, I
had the suspicion that you had talent, and a lot of it. We thought
it would be best if you didn't draw attention to yourself if you
did happen to discover that you were able to do magic.”

“We?” Layna demanded, her temper flaring.

Gryffon looked embarrassed answering, “I'm
sorry, I couldn't tell you at first, and I happened to mention to
my handlers that I might have come across a high talent. They
didn't want you falling into the hands of the priests and having
who-know-what happen to you so they suggested the charm. I kinda
forgot about it until I suddenly noticed your bare neck tonight. I
didn't mean to keep it from you or anything, really. I even added a
protection charm to it too, because I…when I gave it to you I
didn't think that I'd- that'd you'd be-” He sighed, and his
shoulders slumped. “Will you forgive me?”

Layna glared at him for a moment, and then
relented. “Alright, thank you. So what's the big deal that I took
it off for a few hours?”

“Only that you're using magic now on top of
having a lot of talent. You're like a beacon without it to anyone
who's watching for magic-use. From what we've learned, there could
be those who are, especially around here. Not to mention that mark
on your neck, we don't want to alert anyone watching for that to
your presence.”

“No, we certainly don't,” Layna agreed and
then mused, “I thought that like with the messages you send, that
any kind of magic gives off a radiant feel. How can a magic charm
hide magic? And we’ve been doing magic anyway, so how is this
different?”

“Well,” Gryffon explained, “First off, the
magic we are working is relatively small and therefore wouldn’t
necessarily attract a lot of attention. Once a talent is
discovered, you’re body gives off a radiant ‘feel’ of magic, which
is stronger the stronger the talent is. So in your case, it’s
pretty apparent. The charm works to counteract this beacon of
power. It still is obvious that there is magic present; it just
works to disguise it. It first tries to fool someone into thinking
that it is only the charm that is magic, and not the person itself.
If this doesn't work, it makes it look as though you have less
talent than you really do. So someone doing a cursory scan of the
area or who looks at you briefly wouldn't notice, unless for some
reason they try and break into the shield. A person with more
talent still could do it, but it makes them think there's no reason
to. Plus, the charms are done by very powerful mages back in
Treymayne. I don't think that there are many here who are more
powerful. Since your Dark Age there are only a select few with any
real talent such as you.”