Denman stood in the secret of the crypt, a room atthe heart of the mountain, the place where legends hid. How deep had they gone?At first there had been stairs, but then they had reached a deeper part of thecrypt where the corridors twisted and turned, the floor pitched ever downward.Time and distance had lost all meaning in the breast of the world. How long hadit taken them to carve this place, the monks working in silence to protecttheir treasure? Hundreds of years? A thousand?
The room was simple and small, as the order'saesthetics demanded, filled by Denman and the nine men that he had brought totake the abbey's secrets. Wait, one was missing. He looked at his men, brutalpieces of humanity, covered in dirt, mud and blood. The boy wasn't there.Denman shrugged. He would find his way down eventually.
The walls of the room were blue-gray, stone blocksstacked one on top of the other without the benefit of mortar, the weight ofthe mountain providing the only glue that was needed. The only other featuresof the room were an alcove with two thick, tallow candles in cheap tin holdersand an ancient oak table.
The smoke from his men's torches hung in the air,creating a stinging miasma that stung his eyes. Brenley Denman squatted next tothe monk and used his weathered hand to raise the monk's head by his chin. Helooked into the monk's eyes, and instead of the fear that he expected to see,there was something else.
"What is this? Defiance?" he asked, amusedby the monk's bravado. Denman stood and kicked the monk in the mouth with hisboot, a shit-covered piece of leather that was harder than his heart; teeth andblood decorated the stones.
"Where is it?" he asked the monk. There wasno answer. Denman had expected none. Say what you will about the Lord'sterrestrial servants, but they were loyal... which made everything moredifficult... more exhilarating. Denman was a man that loved a challenge.
He handed his torch to one of his men, a broken-facedsimpleton whose only gifts were strength and the ability to do what he wastold. Denman knew that he would need both hands to make the monk sing hissecrets.
"Hand me the Tearmaker," he said to anotherof his men. Radan, built like a rat with stubby arms and powerful legs, reachedto his belt and produced a knife, skinny and flexible, designed not so much formurder as it was for removing savory meat from skin and fat. It made excellentwork of fish, and it would most likely prove delightfully deft at making atight-lipped monk break his vows.
As he reached out to take the proffered knife fromhis man, the monk scrambled to his feet and dove for the alcove. Before theycould stop him, the monk grasped both of the candle sticks and yanked on them.The candlesticks rose into the air. Rusted, metal chains were affixed to theirbases, and they clanked against the surrounding stone of the alcove as the monkpulled on them.
The distant sound of stones grinding upon stonesreverberated throughout the crypt. Somewhere, something was moving. Denmanglared at the monk. The robed figure dropped the candlesticks and turned toface them. With his head cast downward, he reached into the folds of his robeand produced a rosary. He folded his hands and began to pray, beads movingthrough his fingers, his lips moving without making sound.
The crypt shook as an unseen weight clattered throughthe halls of the crypt. Dust fell from the ceiling, hanging in the air, buoyedupwards by the tumbling smoke of their torches.
"What have you done?" Denman asked.
The monk did not respond. Instead, he reached intothe hanging sleeve of one of his robes and produced a small stone thimble,roughly-made and ancient. It was shiny and black, the type of black that seemedto steal the light from the room. The monk put it up to his mouth, hesitatedfor a second and then swallowed it, grimacing in pain as the object slid downhis throat.
In the hallway behind them, the grinding had stopped.The crypt was silent, but for the guttering of the torches and their ownbreathing. "Go see what happened," he said to the oaf and the rat.The other men followed them, leaving Denman alone with the monk and hisunceasing, silent supplications to the Lord above.
Denman forced the monk onto the oak table. He offeredlittle resistance. With Tearmaker in his hand, Denman began to carve the skinlovingly off of the monk's fingers. First, he carved a circle around the man'sfingers, then a line. With the edge of his knife, he prodded a corner of theskin up, and then, grasping tightly, he ripped the skin away from the muscleand bone, dropping the wet flesh onto the ground. He did this to each finger,one by one. Sweat stood out on Denman's brow, and the monk had yet to scream.He hadn't so much as gasped or hissed in pain. He was turning out to be morework than he was worth. Except for the blood pulsing from his skinned fingers,he appeared to be asleep, his eyes softly closed.
"Where is it, you bastard?" There was noresponse but for the bleeding.
Denman pulled the monk's robe up around his waist. Itwas a quick jump, but he was eager to be done with the man on the table.Usually, he would take his time with a challenge like the monk, savoring thesensation of skin ripping from muscle and bone, but he could feel the weight ofthe mountain about him, its walls shrinking with every minute. Sweat coveredhis body, and the monk's calm demeanor was unnerving.
Radan rounded the corner at a run, his body drippingwith sweat and panic on his face. He skidded to a stop, his boots grinding dustinto the blue stones. "We're sealed in here," he said.
Denman looked at the monk lying on the table. Hishand gripped Tearmaker tight. "What have you done?" The monk laythere, his eyes closed, a look of peace on his face. "What have youdone!" he screamed, jabbing the knife into the monk's ribs. Then Denmansaw the monk's hands. Where before his index
