Silence is Deadly (30 page)

“No. So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I’ll snoop around and talk to our fellow victims and see if I can learn anything.”

He moved back along the room, stepping over a prisoner who lay prone on the stone floor wracked with terrified shudders. A wizened oldster who sat nearby grinned cheerfully at Darzek, so Darzek stopped to talk with him.

Don’t get discouraged,
the oldster’s hands said.
Maybe you’ll be lucky, like me.

Lucky in what way?
Darzek asked him.

My number doesn’t come up. Been here four years, and I’m still here. Food is good, quarters aren’t bad, and they don’t give you much work to do. It isn’t a hard life if you don’t mind being herded down here on Holy Days and the like.

Darzek gestured at the arena.
Do you enjoy what goes on in there?

I don’t let it bother me. Sure—I know it could be me, in there. But it isn’t, and I’ll die of old age before my number comes up.

Four years,
Darzek mused. How many lives have you seen given to the Beasts?

Don’t know. Never bothered counting. A lot. But usually it’s only one or two at a time, and my number doesn’t come up. Of course I never saw a Choice. Today’s the first time there’s been a Choice. The knights say they’ll use a lot of us for a Choice.

Darzek walked on. He found the other four Synthesis agents, talked with them briefly, and left them. They had been brutally mistreated. One had been whipped almost to death, and his body was a sickening network of scars. They also had been starved before being offered to the Protector as victims, and they were still weak. They might be led out of the place, but no vigorous action could be expected from them.

Suddenly a familiar odor caught Darzek’s attention—a vile, pungent odor. He turned toward it and identified the source—a young Kammian who was seated against the wall in an attitude of relaxed indifference. Darzek could not recall seeing him before, but the stench he emitted was unmistakable. Darzek had a jar of the stuff himself, in his wagon, and he had been sniffing it and puzzling over it ever since Nijezor, the OO perfumer, had sent it to him.

With a sudden flash of insight, Darzek knew how the Duke of OO expected to become King of Storoz.

He also knew how he was going to prevent it.

Suddenly a familiar odor caught Darzek’s attention—a vile, pungent odor. He turned toward it and identified the source—a young Kammian who was seated against the wall in an attitude of relaxed indifference. Darzek could not recall seeing him before, but the stench he emitted was unmistakable. Darzek had a jar of the stuff himself, in his wagon, and he had been sniffing it and puzzling over it ever since Nijezor, the OO perfumer, had sent it to him.

With a sudden flash of insight, Darzek knew how the Duke of OO expected to become King of Storoz.

He also knew how he was going to prevent it.

CHAPTER 19

Darzek continued to prowl about, and be managed to examine the bars securing the exit door before a black-caped lackey chased him away. It could be opened only from the outside.

The females had been brought into the passage opposite theirs. Darzek peered across the area at the torch-lit opening until once again he was chased away, but he was unable to identify Riklo.

Finally he seated himself along the wall and considered his surroundings. This vast and complex network of natural caves had been altered and improved and extended by generations of priests. Probably there were kilometers of passageways, on a multitude of levels. Considering the frequent barriers and the ease with which one could get lost in the place, fighting one’s way out would be impossible. It would have to be done by subterfuge.

He was confident that he could escape by himself; but how to get the others out?

There was a sudden flurry of activity at the end of the corridor. The barred door swung open, and a procession of black-robed, black-hooded knights and lackeys marched in. The prisoners were summarily lined up against the wall, and a young lackey moved down the line painting on each prisoner’s forehead a glyph that served as a Kammian numeral.

A knight accompanied him and signaled each prisoner’s number as it was applied.
The paint rubs off easily,
he kept saying.
Anyone found with a bare forehead will be given to the Holy Beasts immediately.

Perspiration trickled down many foreheads, but Darzek, number thirty-three, noticed that no one brushed it away.

There was movement in the arena. A Beast dived hungrily at the barred door and then swooped upward. Momentary panic followed as the prisoners fled to the other end of the long room and the knights angrily sought to restore order.

Darzek fled with the others. He could not account for the sudden wave of terror that swept over him, but he experienced a dizziness he could only attribute to uncontrollable fright, and his pounding heart set his pulse booming in his ears. He wondered if there was some primeval impulse in all life forms that reacted with stark terror to the threat of being eaten—a threat both human and Kammian ancestors once had to contend with daily.

One of the few prisoners who seemed unaffected was the youth who reeked of the Duke of OO’s special scent. When the others fled, he strolled nonchalantly after them. Now he drifted back to the other end of the corridor to peer into the arena, and Darzek followed him. But Darzek’s uneasiness, and his pounding pulse and dizziness, continued.

A pair of lackeys began to haul on a rope that pulled the central cage toward the barred door.

Suddenly the Protector himself entered and strode the length of their room with a retinue of black knights trailing behind him. He stood for a moment looking out into the arena. If he felt triumphant at this, the moment of restoration of the Storozian kingship for which he had labored so long, he gave no sign of it. A knight spoke to him with fluttering fingers, the Protector delivered a shrug of approval, and marched away, still trailing his escort. Around the arena, a new row of torches flared, lighting the upper barred openings from which the dukes and their parties were to watch. A group of faces peered from each, but Darzek was too distant to identify any of them.

The outer door opened again, and a black knight strode into their room carrying a ceramic jar. When he reached the opposite end of the room, he stood for a moment peering into the arena. A lackey stood beside him with a torch. He waved it. In the opening across the arena, a torch answered.

The knight turned. He reached into the jar and pulled out a wood disc.
Thirty-seven,
he announced. He tossed the disc to the lackey with the torch, who pocketed it. Number thirty-seven, a large, beefy individual, toppled to the floor in a dead faint.

Lackeys dumped water on him, revived him, and hurried him to the arena door. The cage stood there, hauled into place by waiting lackeys. It was as tall as the door, and when the door was opened, it completely blocked the opening. Number thirty-seven was shoved into it. The cage’s door was closed; the arena’s door was closed and secured. The lackey waved his torch again, and there was an answering wave from the opposite door. Lackeys there hauled on the rope that would pull the cage back to the center. The moment it arrived there, the torch waved again, and the cage jerked upward. The victim was left crouching in the arena in helpless terror.

Darzek watched with a compulsion born of horror as wave after wave of dizziness swept over him and his pounding pulse produced both faintness and nausea.

For a terrible moment nothing happened. Number thirty-seven, suddenly imbued with hope, got slowly to his feet, looked about him, and bolted for the side of the arena. The first Beast to plummet downward raked his back and sent him sprawling. He rolled over, lashing out with arms and legs, as the Beasts swarmed onto him. Somehow he managed to clutch a wing, and there was a momentary stir of alarm among the watching knights and lackeys; but another Beast found his eyes, and another his throat. The feast had begun long before his struggles weakened. And while the Beasts squabbled and gorged, the cage was lowered and hauled back toward the waiting victims.

The knight reached into his jar again.
Number forty-two.

Lackeys dragged him forward, and four years of luck ran out on the wizened little male who thought to die of old age. Fear paralyzed his legs, and the lackeys had to support his body while they rudely stuffed him into the cage.

When the cage was raised, he had slumped to a kneeling position, covering his face with his hands. A Beast circled slowly and landed on his back. Pain goaded him into a furious struggle, but he had waited too long. He never did regain his feet.

Already those grotesque horrors seemed to have dulled Darzek’s sensitivity. His dizziness was lessening; his nausea decreased; his pulse seemed to be returning to normal; and all the time the Beasts squabbled and threatened each other with bloody fangs while they tore at the dead bodies, which now were being dismembered. One Beast flew off triumphantly with an entire leg.

The third victim was female. She behaved more courageously and resourcefully than either of the males. While the cage was being hauled to the center of the arena, she had removed her billowing skirt; and the moment the cage went up, she ran, twirling it about her head.

For a long, suspenseful instant the Beasts seemed befuddled by this, and she actually got two thirds of the way to an open door. But when they finally descended on her it was with the irresistible force of a ravenous horde. Again the nausea and dizziness swept over Darzek, and his pounding pulse returned, as he watched the Beast shred the unfortunate female’s flesh.

In the room where Darzek waited, the knight announced another number:
Seventeen.
Darzek, still standing beside the youth who reeked with the Duke of OO’s scent, was ready. He had set his amulet stun weapon at full power and positioned himself so that no one else would catch the beam. Now he pointed the gaping snout of his amulet and triggered it. The youth collapsed instantly.

No one thought anything of that. One victim already had fainted that day; no doubt it happened often. Lackeys dumped water on the youth, dumped more water, finally became curious. They examined him and called for a knight, who looked him over perplexedly. Probably few victims had been frightened completely to death when their numbers were called, and this one was dead.

But no one gave the oddity more than a moment’s thought—the dead male was doomed to die anyway, and there were other victims waiting. There was, in fact, a prisoner who had carelessly wiped the sweat from his forehead and removed his number—as a chorus of his fellow prisoners indicated with urgently fluttering fingers. It was not even necessary to hold another drawing. Knights seized him and rushed him toward the cage.

Darzek, feeling smug over his successful disruption of the Duke of OO’s sordid plot, stiffened as the substitute was hurried past him. This victim, too, smelled of the duke’s special scent—and Darzek could not get a shot at him without hitting at least two knights. He was in the cage before Darzek could think of a way to take action, and Darzek could not get close enough to the barred opening for an unhindered shot at him in the arena.

Cursing himself for underestimating the duke’s resourceful perfidy, he could only watch helplessly as the reeking figure acted the part of a terrified victim. He ducked and dodged, stumbled and fell, struggled to his feet, lashed out helplessly at the swooping Beasts. But the scent repelled them, as Darzek suspected it would. They dove, but each time they veered away, and the duke’s stooge finally worked his way to one side of the arena and darted through an open door.

The door swung shut. At the same instant all the torches in the ducal boxes save one were extinguished. In this revival of an ancient Holy Custom, the Duke of OO had been chosen King of Storoz.

Tension in the victims’ room relaxed immediately. The prisoners wiped the numbers from their foreheads, and knights and lackeys began organizing them for the return to their cells.

Darzek spoke tersely to Kjorz, and the two of them managed to keep the Synthesis agents, including Rok Wllon, together. The other prisoners had been living in dormitory rooms, ten to a room. There were no room assignments; the lackeys simply counted the prisoners off in tens, and each group of ten was marched off to one of the rooms. By holding back, Darzek and Kjorz managed to get themselves, Rok Wllon, and the other four Synthesis agents counted into the last group, which contained only nine prisoners.

Their turn came, and a knight and two lackeys marched them away. Darzek studied their route with care and searched for clues as to the way out of the place, and Kjorz was doing the same. The took a corridor that slanted upward steeply; then a walk of fifty paces and the climb of a corridor slanting upward in another direction brought them to the level where the prisoners were kept.

A lackey moved ahead and opened a door. The two non-Synthesis prisoners entered obediently. Darzek, at the head of the Synthesis group, calmly plucked the door from the lackeys hands, swung it shut, and dropped the bar in place.

Lackeys and knight were thunderstruck. They were unarmed—probably no hint of rebellion ever had occurred in that place. The rebel would have been fed to the Beasts at once, and all the prisoners knew that.