The Invisible Chains - Part 3: Bonds of Blood (32 page)

Well, let them try. His thoughts were interrupted by the sickening sound of splintering wood as the two bolts and the hinges gave way and his door came crashing down in his room.

“No, no,” he yelled as two naked guys stormed upon his bed.

“
They're naked again. Of course they are naked again. What is it with these guys? Are nightshirts unheard of
where they come from?”

“Guys, please,” he moaned as Rahendo climbed in his bed on one side and the curly one on the other.

While Rahendo grabbed his shoulders and spooned him —
again
— Ryhunzo snuggled up to him from the other side, making Obyann's nose itch with his curls. He pulled his nightshirt down as low as it would go.

Seeing he would get no rest at all if he kept resisting, he acquiesced, grudgingly, in the situation.

“Thank you, Obie,” Rahendo whispered from behind his back, planting a wet kiss on his shoulder.

He shivered. Landemere hadn't exaggerated though. He felt, by an unmistakable pressure against his buttocks, that Rahendo was indeed generously endowed in certain parts. He repressed the thought as fast and as deep as he could.

“Yeah, Obe, thanks man,” Ryhunzo said.

When Arranulf came home, about an hour later, he was at first alarmed, thinking that someone had broken into Obyann's room. Looking in and seeing his three friends sleep peacefully together, he was partly relieved.

He went to his own room, slightly depressed.

“
Two. Now he's sleeping with two guys at the same time. And I can't get one guy to share my bed. They even
break down his door to sleep with him. What does he have, that I don't?”

When the first drops of rain started to fall, Anaxantis descended the stairs of the castle walls. He was just exiting the small turret in which they ended, when one of his guards accosted him.

“We have caught an intruder, my lord. He was probably trying to enter your private apartments.”

“Where is he now?” Anaxantis asked, alarmed.

“In the dungeons. They're about to put him to the question.”

The guard led the way and Anaxantis followed him down the stairs to the dungeons, which were hacked out of the rock upon which Lorseth Castle stood. At last they entered the most backward room, at the end of a long corridor with at both ends thick, oaken doors. Screams would not emanate from this place.

Inside the walls were hung with all kinds of instruments to pinch, puncture and rip off human flesh. In the middle stood a rack. On it, his arms stretched out behind him, lay a naked man. Hemarchidas, Lethoras and the dungeon master stood beside him.

The dungeon master, a wiry man in his fifties, called Hrenwick, was turning a big wheel very slowly. The ropes groaned under the stress. So did the man on the rack.

“Stop that,” Anaxantis said curtly. “What's going on?”

“Guards heard a strange noise, as if someone had knocked over a bucket, in the hallway to your private apartments and went to investigate,” Hemarchidas said. “They found him, hiding in one of the niches. We were just about to question him.”

“I see,” the prince said.

“Look, Anaxantis,” Hemarchidas said, “there's no need for you to be here. You don't have to... sully yourself with this business. Let us do the work. He'll tell us everything he knows and then some things he didn't know he knew. I promise you.”

Anaxantis looked over the naked man on the rack. He pointed to his groin.

“Look there,” he said.

“Anaxantis, this is no time for—”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, Hemarchidas,” the prince interrupted him. “Look at his pubic hair. It's red.

But the hair on his head is blond, bordering on white.”

“He bleached his hair,” Hemarchidas said pensively.

“Yes, he did,” Anaxantis said, staring in the man's face.

He kept studying the bound man's features for a minute or so.

“I know you, I think,” he drawled.

“He said his name is Serimar Delono,” Lethoras stated.

“No... no, that's not it. He was one of my brother's friends. Garth Something.”

“Gorth. My name is Gorth,” the man on the rack croaked. “Gorth of Sidullia.”

Hemarchidas and Lethoras looked at each other in surprise.

“He's come to murder you and free your brother, that's obvious,” Hemarchidas whispered in Anaxantis's ear.

“Let us interrogate him further. We'll learn everything there is to learn. Then... well, accidents happen.”

Anaxantis turned around.

“Out. All of you. I'll interrogate him myself.”

Hrenwick was already making for the door, but Lethoras looked at Hemarchidas who in his turn looked at Anaxantis, almost pleadingly.

“Don't do this. Let us do it. Such things leave scars. You're not... Let us do it.”

“Out. Out,” Anaxantis repeated, this time in a harsh tone. “I said oantis �I “Are you sure you want to do this,” Hemarchidas asked.

“Yes. Yes, I am,” the prince said, more softly now. “But, thank you.”

The door closed behind them, and Anaxantis started to take of his mantle. When they heard the second door, at the far end of the hallway, close, Gorth came up the few inches his stretched out limbs allowed him to.

“Going to do your own dirty work, little butcher?” he spat.

Anaxantis sighed and threw his mantle over Gorth's naked body.

“If I release those straps, are you going to give me any trouble?” he asked.

Gorth was taken aback.

“No. No, I won't,” he stammered after a few moments.

“Do I have your word as a nobleman on that, my lord?”

“You have.”

The prince went to the far end of the rack and released the straps that held Gorth's arms stretched above him.

“You can do the ones on your feet yourself,” he said. “Your clothes are there, on that bench in the corner,” he added.

Then he turned his back, to give the prisoner a modicum of privacy. When he turned around again, Gorth was tucking his shirt in his pants. Anaxantis sat down on the rack and motioned Gorth to sit beside him.

“How did you get in, my lord of Sidullia?”

“Simple,” Gorth muttered. “I snuck in with the servants this afternoon and stayed behind, hiding until they had left.”

“
Your first answer. Your first lie,”
Anaxantis thought bitterly.

“I see. What were you planning... to do,” he asked softly. “The truth, please.”

“I... I don't know what I was planning exactly.”

“
Your second lie.”

“I suppose I wanted to free my friend. I suppose that when you came home I hoped to somehow overpower you and make you let him go.”

“You would have killed me.”

Gorth looked unsurely at the young prince, who looked straight back at him.

“If you had resisted, or posed a threat somehow, yes. Yes, I would have killed you. You keep my friend a prisoner. The Gods may know what else you have done to him.”

Anaxantis didn't answer for a while.

“It's not as if I keep him in steel chains,” he said eventually. “If he really wanted to leave, there is not much keeping him back.”

“You keep him in some kind of chains. Why?” Gorth asked.

“That's between him and me,” Anaxantis answered. “Was this the first time you went up there?”

“Eh, yes,” Gorth said.

“
Your third lie.”

They both stared out before them.

“What now?” Gorth asked.

Anaxantis shrugged.

“You can go. You're not to come near the castle ag">“Ycasnaxain.”

“What do you mean? Is that all?”

Anaxantis nodded.

“Come. I'll clear it with the guards.”

Hemarchidas had protested for a while, and repeated once again that Anaxantis never would grow old, but in the end there was nothing he could do. The prince had ordered that the prisoner should be released and was not to be troubled. And that was final.

“It's all right, Hemarchidas,” Anaxantis had said. “Now go to sleep you two, I want a word in private with the dungeon master.”

Reluctantly the Cheridonians had left.

“Is there somewhere we can talk?” Anaxantis asked Hrenwick.

The dungeon master nodded and led the way to a little room.

“My little home away from home, your highness,” he said amiably while pointing to a chair in a doubtful state of equilibrium.

He himself took a stool from under the little table to sit down on.

“What can I do for your highness?” he then asked.

Anaxantis hesitated.

“Hrenwick,” he started haltingly, “it is my understanding that your family has occupied this position from father upon son for many, many generations.”

“True, true,” the dungeon master mused. “A noble profession, though many people would disagree. But that's because they don't understand, you see.”

“How is that?” Anaxantis asked, though he doubted the wisdom of his question. It seemed the dungeon master didn't get many occasions to talk about his work, and that he wasn't likely to let a willing listener get away quickly.

“Ah, as my great-great-grandfather used to say: an ounce of torture of the guilty can prevent a ton of bloodshed of the innocent. It's become kind of the family motto. In his day there were still groups, not many though, who pretended they were fighting for Amirathan independence. They were robbers and murderers, more like it. So one day they caught two of their leaders. After ten hours of very hard work — because, you see, it is very hard work to inflict the maximum of pain without killing your, eh, subject — they sang like little birds. Oh yes, they did. As a result they caught the whole gang sitting in their lair. A quick trial and they were hanged, the lot of them. Spared many an innocent life it did. All thanks to my great-great-grandfather and his hard work.”

“You seem to know a lot about the history of your profession.”

“I do, your highness. You see, it's a craft. There are no schools you can go to and learn it. Its techniques are taught by fathers to their sons. They're not exactly secrets, but not too many people seem to want to know the particulars. Isn't that just like people? They want to be kept safe. They don't very much care how it's done.”

“Yes. Yes, I see. I was wondering... Do you know... Was there any special treatment for... for those who forced themselves upon others?”

Hrenwick squinted his eyes.

“Rapists, your highness means?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Anaxantis replied uneasily.

eanght="8pt" width="1em" align="justify">“Ha, yes. Prince Pie—”

“Prince Pie?”

“Well, he sort of made that we don't have many rapes anymore in Amiratha, didn't he? It was in the time of my great-grandfather. My father often told me the story when I was a wee little boy. You see, Prince Pie was the then lord governor. Nasty piece of work by all accounts, pardon the expression, your highness. Not at all like your good self. Was sent here by his father the high king, because he couldn't stand his presence at court any longer. A fat, uncouth fellow, by your leave, your highness, it seemed he was. Didn't wash himself too often either. More drunk than sober, he was. Well, his name wasn't actually Pie, of course. It was Berimar—”

“Berimar? Wait... No. That can't be right. Your great-grandfather, you say? Then that prince must have been the later king Berimar III. Berimar the Fair.”

“Yep, that's him all right. Wasn't anything fair about him, though. Not in those days there wasn't. No, I'm lying. Turned out he was fair, after all.”

“Better tell me from the beginning.”

“Well, like I said, he was sent here by his father as a kind of punishment. The province was relatively quiet by that time. Oh, here and there the flame of independence was kindled once in a while and stamped out again as soon as it flickered too high. We were a bit the backwater of the kingdom. Not much to do around here. Far away from the refined distractions of the court at Ormidon. The prince loved his meat pies, he did.

Was why he got his name, you see. All in all he wasn't too unhappy here either. A lot of his friends had come with him. They passed the days hunting, which prince Pie loved, the evenings eating and drinking and the nights fornicating everything that took their fancy.