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“Ramukhan!” Hadjar called. The man halted. “By the Evening Stars, the Great Turtle as my witness, Demons and Gods smite me if I’m lying, I’d also love to... avenge her death. Alas, there is no mortal whose life could be placed upon her funeral pyre.”
A deathly silence filled the dungeon. Even the bats didn’t dare make a sound.
“Make sure to tell Tilis all about it,” the paunchy man answered mockingly, and added, “If you survive.”
He heard the man walking away once more, followed by the thud of a stone door. Or maybe a hatch. Hadjar’s imagination, which had been flourishing in the time he’d spent watching only the unchanging ceiling, had conjured up a hinged bridge.
“Are you sure you had a brother and not a sister?” Einen asked with obvious pain in his voice.
“I’m certain,” Hadjar grunted, “it’s you I’m suspicious of.”
“I’m surprised to hear you’re interested in what’s beneath my robes. I’ve heard that sodomy is strictly forbidden in the north.”
“I never understood why, but, nevertheless, in the past six months, I’ve never seen you naked.”
“So that’s what you’d need to see to be sure...” Judging by his voice, the islander felt sick. “You are definitely a real barbarian. In my homeland, only a man’s parents see him naked until he is able to wash himself. After that, only his wife sees him naked.”
“Everyone has their own quirks...”
For some time after that, they argued about the subject of nudity and the barbarism of different countries. Hadjar couldn’t understand why the islander was so embarrassed by nudity, and Einen used the word ‘shame’ a lot. Using this meaningless chatter, they tried to relieve their stress and the tension they felt. Nevertheless, the stronger a warrior was, the more difficult it was for them to face their own powerlessness. In their particular case, the powerlessness was being generously accompanied by the oppressive darkness and a hopeless dungeon.
“Wait a minute, Hadjar.” Einen’s voice became serious. “What did he mean by you having to ‘choose your fate’?”
Again, as if the underworld dwellers had been waiting for just the right moment to make a grand entrance, the sound of footsteps could be heard in the darkness.
Chapter 335
By the sound of it, there were at least ten people approaching. The many voices were almost a blessing after so long spent in isolation with just Einen.
“Stay back, you bastards!” Einen shouted as they got near him.
“Put a gag in his mouth,” a dry, senile voice ordered.
Soon, they could see three men in white, weird clothes — shapeless, roughly stitched, with the seams on the outside, patched and dirty. The owners of such robes were unlikely to hold a high position in society.
Judging by the sounds around him and by Einen’s muffled cursing, three other people had appeared near his ‘bathtub’, too.
The men held long, steel sticks: two had fishing lines and a self-tightening knot on top. Upon seeing the third, Hadjar sighed tiredly, frustrated and reassured. The third stick had a slave collar at the end, one with spikes coated in poison lining the insides. One dose of that poison would render any practitioner unable to access their energy. It was a very effective and abominable concoction. Amusingly enough, it was the most popular product of the alchemists in the nearby regions.
“Come on, get it over with,” Hadjar snarled at the boy walking along at his side. He had probably never seen a naked girl, he was so young. He hadn’t dared to come close to Hadjar’s ‘bathtub’ and was trying to fasten the collar onto Hadjar’s neck from a distance. Of course, he kept failing.
“Give me that,” the old man’s voice that had ordered for Einen to be gagged growled out. Hadjar was a bit grateful to him, as he’d been dreaming about that happening for many days now…
Taking the steel rod from the boy’s hands, the head servant finally appeared on the ‘stage’. These people didn’t have slave collars, but still wore rather modest clothes, so they were clearly servants.
The old man, who was apparently their leader of sorts, looked no better. Staring at Hadjar the same way one would a rat, he jerked the collar in place around his neck and turned the handle of the rod, snapping the two parts together.
The same click sounded from Einen’s direction.
“Drain the solution,” the old man ordered, handing the stick back to the boy.
“Yes, Salif,” one of the men bowed.
While Hadjar was being held against the wall of the dungeon like a mad dog, a strange seal was being applied to the various hieroglyphs on the side, in a certain order. After several layers had been applied, the hieroglyphs flared up. Somewhere below, a heavy flap creaked, and with a very unpleasant, chomping sound, the green glue began to trickle slowly into the hole. As his body was released from the viscous captivity, Hadjar slowly began to move his limbs.
It was difficult. Despite all the nourishing properties of the liquid, it had done nothing about his muscle atrophy. Fortunately, the poisoned thorn of the collar only prevented the external manifestation of energy, so nothing was interfering with its circulation inside his body. Gradually, after restoring the current of power along his meridians, Hadjar finally felt in control of his own body again.
“Get up!” The boy squeaked out.
His sharp tug on the rod sent pain coursing through Hadjar’s body. Hadjar was kind of glad to experience this pain. After a few weeks of imprisonment, it was like a light, warm summer rain. Standing up, unashamed of his nudity, Hadjar gave the boy a quick, sharp look. He shivered and looked down at the floor. He was clearly not a fighter.
Staggering and stumbling a couple of times in the process, scratching his knees and his hands vigorously, Hadjar got out of the bath.
Looking around, he barely resisted the urge to curse. He wasn’t too shy to swear in front of the young boy, but swearing was often a sign of weakness, and the last thing a prisoner, or worse, a slave, should ever do was give their captors the satisfaction of hearing such a thing.
The place where he and Einen (who was being dragged out of his bath, swaying and trying to hide his ‘shame’) had spent the past month and a half looked like a bathhouse. There were at least forty empty ‘bathtubs’ in this place. Just how many people do they normally imprison in here!
“Hold them down.” The old man made sure that the collars were firmly attached to the prisoners and then went ahead. “If they send any of you to the forefathers, it will be your own fault.”
“Yes, Salif,” the servants replied in chorus.
Two servants stood on either side of the prisoners. They put a ‘bridle’ around their necks with great dexterity. Getting into a sort of arrowhead formation, they pulled the prisoners toward the exit.
To Hadjar’s surprise, they indeed walked over to a stone door. It resembled the one he’d seen in the sheikh’s treasury — massive, but very functional. It glowed faintly in the dim light of the cave, and had various patterns and hieroglyphs painted on it. The resemblance had some implications... which would have to be pondered later.
Keeping up with the servants while feeling the terrible weakness in his whole body wasn’t an easy task. Hadjar often stumbled. After one such stumble, accompanied by the servants’ displeasure and the tightening of his ‘bridle’, Hadjar began to feel warm blood running down his shoulders.
His cold, blue eyes flashed. With a growl, Hadjar grabbed one of the rods. He fell to his knees, accompanied by the servants’ laughter that sounded like the barking of hyenas. Blue sparks of lightning danced across his arm, and pain shot through his body. The hieroglyphs on the rods glowed.
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