Roar, page 21
Why? Was it because the Eternal King was busy with other matters? Like putting all of his gold into this war that the Oracle seemed to think was coming? Or did he simply not care? He also wondered what it was like on the other side of the city where the Palace of the Sun could be found. Were buildings there also being left to fall into ruin? Or did those buildings get rebuilt?
Thorm put his questions aside the moment he reached the Office of the Inquisition and noticed the two soldiers assigned to the night watch lying on the ground, fast asleep. It was time to concentrate on his work. The sleeping soldiers looked as though they'd simply collapsed where they were stationed. Thorm was pleased by that. Even strutting out in the night boldly and remembering that he was a lion, it was better that no one saw him.
Behind them the building was in complete darkness. But given the lateness of the hour that was to be expected. The lamp posts were lit every evening, but the gas was turned off at twelve bells. What he didn't know was whether those inside were asleep because of his spell – in which case they wouldn't be easily woken – or simply asleep because of the hour. In the latter case they would wake if he made too much noise. Thorm had no way of knowing if the spell would have reached those inside the building. Wind didn't travel through closed windows. There could be people inside who were wide awake. Armed soldiers. He would just have to deal with them if he came across them.
Thorm padded silently past the sleeping guards and up the steps, before using his spell of unlocking on the huge iron double doors. It worked as always but there was still a clicking sound that he could hear clearly in the quiet of night.
For a brief moment he stood there in front of it, frozen as he waited to hear the sound of someone coming to investigate. But no one did and after some of the longest seconds of his life, he realised that no one was coming. After that Thorm pushed the doors open and entered the building.
Inside things were much as he had imagined they would be. The huge iron doors opened to a large foyer with a bench along the wall and a single giant counter facing it. It was here that those who wanted to report suspicious activities would wait to see an inquisitor. And there were such people. But they weren't usually the best intentioned of people. Those who reported such things tended to do so either because they were actually loyal to the King, or because it served other, less noble purposes. There were plenty of stories told about members of the criminal fraternity using the Office of the Inquisition as a way of getting rid of their competition. Or else of buying their way out of trouble by giving the inquisitors leads to other crimes. There really was no honour among thieves.
One thing he immediately noticed was the thickness of the outer walls. They might be plastered and lime washed a nice white colour, but they were three feet thick – and all of it solid stone. The windows were also remarkably small and covered with heavy iron bars. And the doors he had just passed through were the only way in and out. There would be no quick escape through out of this building if he needed one.
Thorm padded across the black and white tiled floor and around the side of the massive counter to the hallway beyond. And even though he had taken precautions, he was still amazed that he could do that without anyone screaming out that there was a lion in the building. Though as he made his way around the building, it seemed that no one was in. He spotted one man lying on the floor in one of the offices, but that was it. Everywhere else was silent.
That pleased him. He had expected to find a few people in the building. The Inquisitors never slept so they claimed, which was why there were a few lamps burning in some of the offices even if the foyer had been dark and the front doors locked. They undoubtedly had keys so they could come and go at all hours.
These offices though weren't his destination. They were all too small and too plain. He was seeking the office of the Royal Enforcer. And while he didn't know exactly where that was, he was sure it had to be far larger and grander than these small offices. After all the Inquisitors were basically thieves, and thieves loved to show off their wealth. And Lord Aston was the biggest thief of them all.
According to all the stories he'd heard over the years, the Royal Enforcer supposedly kept a massive safe or vault in it that was filled with all the treasures his inquisitors had seized. Many claimed that the vault was crammed full of gold and silver pieces. That it was practically bursting at the seams with the treasures looted from the prisoners brought here. Thorm had no idea if that was true and he didn't particularly care. Gold was of no use to him. He only cared that it was here that wizards were first brought when they were captured. The King would not have wizards who were still hostile to him brought to the Palace of the Sun.
So they were brought here, drugged, searched and locked away until they were no threat. And presumably it was here that their important treasures would be brought. He assumed, that that included enchanted wares and the books of magic the inquisitors might have seized after hunting and capturing a wizard. He just had to hope that they weren't simply destroyed. Or carried over the wall to the Palace of the Sun once their owners were quiet.
Slowly he circled the entire ground floor, following the giant hallway as it wove around the central chamber of the Office of the Inquisition, and looked in every office he could find. But he found nothing that looked like his target. He found desks and chairs aplenty. A lot of lamps too – some of which were lit even though no one was at their desk, sleeping or otherwise – probably because there were only tiny windows and not much light reached the heart of the building. The lamps he guessed would be lit all the time.
The big square chamber that was the centre of the building had at least a dozen desks where the officers could sit and work. The outer officers lodged between the hallway and the outer wall served a lot of different purposes. Some were simple offices for the more important members of the Inquisition. Others served different purposes. He found several almost empty rooms with railings against walls with manacles hanging from them. He assumed they were for the prisoners who were waiting to be interrogated. And all of them were made of cold steel. Proof that they were for wizards. He even found a couple of bath-chambers and storage rooms. But he found nothing that looked like the office of Lord Aston.
That left the other floors. But when he reached the foot of the stairs he hesitated. Should he go up or down?
He was certain the Royal Enforcer's office would be upstairs. The man was important. He would want a window with a view at the least. And the safe was supposed to be either next to his office or in it according to the tales. But at the same time, other stories had talked about vaults. And the one thing he had learned from his time in the sewers, was that vaults were usually underground. It was more secure. The problem was that there were so many different stories. He didn't know which to believe.
In the end he decided that he should begin his search downstairs, and he padded quietly down the first flight of stairs. But then he had to stop on the landing half way down as he heard voices. Two men, talking quietly. Apparently the spell of sleeping wind had not penetrated to the basement. But then there were no windows there that could be opened even a crack.
Still two men he could handle, he decided. It had to be easier than all the trolls and hunting parties he had fought in the last few weeks. But, his heart was beating a little faster than it should as he crept down the second flight of stairs to the floor and then peeked around the corner.
He spotted the men immediately. They were seated on opposite sides of a desk in the middle of the chamber and drinking from a flask. Behind them was a massive iron door which he assumed they were guarding. Thorm immediately guessed what was behind the door when he saw that it had a small barred window in it. That sort of door was only used in one place. It led to a dungeon and behind it he would find cells and prisoners. These prisoners he guessed were those awaiting trial. He guessed that before their trial the inquisitors spent some time with them, torturing the prisoners for information. If the prisoners even reached their trials. Many wouldn't.
The sight of the door to the dungeon angered Thorm. He had seen what the prisoners he had released from the city dungeon had been like. He had seen how badly they had been mistreated. Even if some of them were actually criminals, they should not have been so badly abused. As Zara said, the righteous did not choose revenge and crippling people, torturing them and then starving them or beating them to death could be little else. This he feared, would be worse than what he had seen before. In fact much worse. Because no one had escaped this place to talk about it. Why else would he never have heard of this private dungeon?
Thorm decided he had to do something about it.
But what he would do, didn't require magic. He didn't need his spells. There were just two of them, sitting at their heavy oak desk, slowly drinking themselves into a stupor. And he was a lion, whether he liked it or not. He kept forgetting that.
Thorm braced himself and then charged down the hallway at the two men. The man who was facing him saw Thorm emerge from the shadows of the hallway at the bottom of the stairs and leap into the light of their guard chamber. He opened his mouth to yell. But he was far too late! Thorm had crossed the chamber and was on top of the man even as he tried to cry out a warning. Hooking his claw into the man's shoulder Thorm flicked him out of his seat and across the chamber into the far wall. Then he turned and did the same to the second man who still had his back to him.
Both of them crashed into the walls with solid sounding thumps before falling to the ground. They didn’t get up again.
Were they dead? Thorm didn't know. He had hit them hard and he was sure that bones had to have been broken. But whether they were dead was another matter. Still, he couldn’t worry about that. He had come to rescue the prisoners. Without thinking he used his spell of unlocking on the dungeon’s great iron door and all those beyond it. Soon after that he heard dozens of clicks, and knew that once more the spell had done its job. Seeing the main door open a little Thorm stepped back into the hallway and then retreated up the stairs to the ground floor and then half way up the next set of stairs to the landing between the ground and the first floor. Then he made himself comfortable and waited. What followed had to be the prisoner's doing.
It took time before he saw the first of the prisoners appear on the basement landing a few flights below him. A man dressed in rags and covered in dried blood. He was clearly injured. Maybe badly. It was hard to tell from where he was watching. But as soon as the man saw the stairs leading up to the ground floor he limped up them. Others soon followed.
Soon there was a steady stream of escaping prisoners fleeing the dungeon. Men and women – sometimes alone, sometimes in their twos and threes – walked, limped or were carried up the stairs to the ground floor. Once there, they veered for the front door and hurried out. All of them showed signs of having been tortured. The sight only enraged Thorm further.
A few prisoners looked up the staircase to the next level, perhaps thinking they had another flight of stairs to climb before they reached safety. But once they saw him sitting there on the landing just above, staring back at them, they stopped. A couple seemed to freeze in terror. In the darkness a green eyed lion was probably a terrifying sight. None though tried to climb any further once they saw him, choosing instead to back away and flee as best they could.
Thorm studied them closely but none of his family were among the prisoners. That disappointed him. But it would have been unlikely that they would have been in the private dungeon. But still he had to have hope. It was all he had left. Of course if they had been there, they would have surely been in just as terrible shape as the rest. So maybe, he thought, it was best that they weren't here. He just had to hope that their absence meant that they were still alive somewhere and continuing to evade the King’s men.
Ten minutes later the escape ended. The trickle of escaping prisoners had come to an end, and he wandered back down the stairs to the basement to see what had been left behind.
The first thing he noticed was that the two guards were now definitely dead. The knives sticking out of each of their chests attested to that. Thorm suspected they deserved their fate. He didn't spare them any further thought and pushed his way through the iron door and into the dungeon beyond.
As he'd suspected it was as much a torture chamber as a dungeon. But it was much larger than he'd expected. The cells were arranged in rows along both sides of two hallways, and he counted thirty of them, all of them with their doors wide open. There were no prisoners who were still alive in them. There were however a lot of bodies lying on the floors in some of them.
He should have expected that. And he'd seen dead men before. It was what he found at the far end of those hallways that troubled him. It had been made into a torture chamber and had been well equipped. Two racks had been set up. They looked well used and he imagined multiple prisoners had been stretched out on them until their bodies broke. There were also dozens of other pieces of equipment lying around the cell that he suspected did even more terrible things to human bodies. The walls were covered with whips, chains, maces and callipers. Things for pulling out nails and breaking individual bones. Collars with spikes that could be screwed into the flesh of the wearer. And a small guillotine for chopping off pieces of people. The floor was stained with the blood of the many victims who had suffered in the room over the years. And worst of all his wizard sight showed him so much of that chamber and its implements of torture illuminated by terror.
It was barbaric! Unfortunately it was also what Thorm had expected.
After checking the bodies in the cells just to make sure none still breathed – no one should be left behind in this place – and hunting through the cupboards and cabinets for any personal effects like books of spells, Thorm said a short silent prayer to the Seven Sisters, hoping that they would cleanse this place. Then he left, determined never to return.
Thorm went back up the stairs to the ground floor and from there up to the first floor. Again he found more bodies. But these bodies belonged to soldiers and inquisitors and they were merely sleeping. His spell had evidently penetrated here, evidenced by the fact that they had all slept through the escape. Thorm noticed that most of the windows were lifted up an inch or so to let in fresh air. And why wouldn't they be? The windows were barred and it was the first floor. No one was getting in or out through them.
He found the Royal Enforcer's office easily enough too. It was at the front of the building, with three large windows looking down over the front yard and the street beyond. Surprisingly none of the windows were barred. Lord Aston could have broken out through them any time he'd wanted to. But of course he didn't need to.
It was the size of the room and its furnishings that that told Thorm that this office belonged to the Royal Enforcer. It had thick tapestries on the walls and rugs on the floor. There was a massive roll top desk at one end of the room and a button leather couch at the other. The shelves were covered with books and expensive looking ornaments. There was even a table covered with expensive cut glass bottles filled with even more expensive drinks. The man might be a monster but it seemed that he also valued the finer things.
After a careful search Thorm found no evidence of any safe in it be it in the wall or under the floor. And he checked behind paintings and under rugs. But just beside the Royal Enforcer’s office he discovered a vault. It had a huge iron door in a huge iron frame that had been built into the stone walls. Looking closer at it Thorm noticed that it had some sort of combination dial. The proudest achievement of the locksmith's art. Without knowing the numbers no one would be able to open the vault.
No one except a wizard that was. Because his spell of unlocking worked just as well on this door with its combination lock as it did on doors locked with keys. Thorm watched as the dial spun wildly back and forth while the tumblers clicked into place, thinking this was going surprisingly well, before the huge handle suddenly turned and the door swung open.
“Shite!” Thorm had to suddenly leap aside with all the speed he had as a blast of fire leapt out of the open door at him! Even so he wasn't quite quick enough. He got singed.
There was a dragon in the vault! But even as he bounced off the opposite wall in pain and disbelief he put that aside as he readied himself for what was coming. Then he took to his feet and ran. He scrambled for the end of the hallway and safety with all the speed he had.
It was a dragon! That thought just kept running through his head as he ran. A bloody great dragon! Except of course that it was too small to be a dragon he realised as he took the first corner. It was some sort of smaller, fire breathing monster. Still, its size didn’t seem to matter when it came to its deadliness he realised as it charged down the hallway after him, sending out great plumes of smoke and fire. Fire was fire and he didn't want to be caught by it.
Luckily he wasn't. He heard the whoosh as its flames hit the wall behind him, but knew he was safe for a few seconds. Fire couldn't turn corners.
Thorm sprinted down the next hallway as fast as a lion could, all the time imagining that the creature was about to roast him alive, and then turned left once again at the end knowing only a sense of relief that he wasn't burning. It didn't matter that he bounced off the wall. Only that he wasn't on fire. Then he took the next section of the hallway just as quickly. He only slowed down right at the end of it when he dared to take a look behind him to see how close the dragon was.
