Letting out a high-pitched scream, the jailer clutched at his face. As the club fell to the floor, Bradan grabbed it, smashing it as hard as he could on the jailer's head. He hit again and again until the jailer lay prone with his skull smashed and his blood soaking into the filthy straw. Mice ran toward the body, fearless in this abode of suffering.
Melcorka watched with a look of wonderment in her eyes. 'Why did you do that?'
'Come on, Mel, I'm getting you out of here.' Circumstances had taken control. Bradan had not intended to kill the jailer and rescue Melcorka. He had intended making sure she was safe and later persuading Dhraji to release her.
'Where are we going?' Melcorka asked.
'I have no idea.' Bradan knew he had probably only extended Melcorka's life for a few moments, or at most a couple of hours, while forfeiting his own, for Dhraji and Bhim would both wish him dead now. Kneeling beside Melcorka, he examined her chains. He had hoped for a simple catch, but they were securely locked. Bradan cursed in frustration when a quick check of the jailer found nothing. Where would the jailer keep his keys? Presumably in that chamber from where he obtained the club.
'I'll be back in a minute, Mel,' Bradan promised, adding a foolish, 'don't go away' as he lifted his still-spluttering torch and ran into the dark.
Disorientated in the vast, echoing chambers, Bradan tried a few wrong doors before he saw the black-and-white shimmer hovering outside a familiar entrance and he arrived at the jailer's abode. Luckily, the door was open; he pushed in and stopped. He had expected a bare place of horror. Instead, he entered a room where tapestries decorated the walls, and a statue of Shiva stood on a small altar. A kitten purred on a silken cushion while a brass kettle sat in the corner. More important was the bunch of keys that hung from a hook beside a short whip and a bunch of aromatic flowers.
Grabbing the keys, Bradan ran back outside, with the torchlight pushing back the horrors of the darkness. Melcorka was sitting beside the body of the jailer, with the black-and-white shimmer a few yards away.
'The man's hurt,' Melcorka said. 'He was a nice man. He brought me food.'
'Let's get you out of here.' One by one, Bradan tried the keys until there was a sharp click and the shackles around Melcorka's ankles sprang open.
She giggled and lifted her legs in the air. 'Look!'
Bradan nodded. 'You'll feel strange with that weight off your ankles. It will take time to get used to it again.' He tried the same key with the lock around her wrists, swore softly when it did not fit and tried another, glancing over his shoulder at every sound. I asked too many people where the dungeons were. Dhraji will have no difficulty tracing me.
'Got it!' The key clicked in the lock and the manacles around Melcorka's wrists sprang open. 'Can you stand?'
Melcorka rubbed her wrists and ankles. 'Yes.' She swayed on her feet. 'I can't walk,' she said.
'I'll carry you.' After weeks of little food, Melcorka was as light and weak as a child. Bradan slipped her over his shoulder and stepped out of the dungeon. He heard the rattle of chains from the dungeons all around him, swore and placed Melcorka on the ground again. 'Don't run away,' he said. 'I won't be long.' The more prisoners that were loose, the more difficult it would be for Dhraji and Bhim to round them all up.
Lifting the keys, Bradan tried three before he found one to fit the nearest lock. The first prisoner within the dungeon cringed away when his door opened and stared in astonishment as Bradan unlocked his chains. The second man was a slight, dark-skinned youth with huge eyes and a body so thin that Bradan could count each one of his ribs.
'Thank you,' the youth said softly, rubbing at his ankles. Bradan saw the tracks of tears down his filthy face.
'Here,' Bradan threw him the key. 'Free the rest.' Returning to Melcorka, he balanced her over his left shoulder, lifted his now sadly depleted torch and hurried for the entrance.
'Wait!' The slender youth had already freed another man and passed on the key. 'Not that way!'
Bradan hesitated. 'Is there another way?'
'Yes, if you can swim. Can you swim?'
'I can swim.' Bradan glanced at Melcorka. 'Mel can't, in her condition.'
'Then you'll have to leave her,' the youth said.
'Never.' Bradan was aware of that shapeless black-and-white mass hovering at the periphery of his vision. 'I'll carry her, wherever it is.'
'She'll slow us down.' The youth's voice rose, as if in panic.
'Lead on,' Bradan said. 'Melcorka and I stay together.'
Glancing at Melcorka, the youth scurried in the opposite direction to the door. He hesitated at the heavily barred door to a cell that was apart from the others. 'We could free Dhraji,' he said.
Bradan stared at him. 'What do you mean, free her? She's the last person I want down here.'
'Dhraji is in there. We could free her. The woman, the thing taking her place, is not the real Dhraji.' The youth was babbling, looking all around in case Thiruzha guards flooded in to arrest him. 'She is a demon, a rakshasa, which has taken Dhraji's place. The real Dhraji is in there,' he indicated the door again. 'The rakshasas can only take somebody's shape and face as long as that person is alive.'
Bradan fought the rush of horror that threatened to overcome him. He had been living with a demon for weeks, a rakshasa, as these people called it. In a flash of insight, Bradan thought of the multi-armed monster that appeared when Dhraji had fallen into the water. Dhraji had vanished, the monster had
