“Oh come on, Bael, this is a great day. We’ve been searching for this creature for twenty-four years, ever since-”
“It killed my mother, yes, I know. But my father always said-”
“Don’t you want to come see it? Face it?” Albhar’s expression was sly. “We need it alive for the rest of the week, but you can rough it up as much as you’d like.”
“Sure,” Bael said, attention diverted effectively. “I could do with beating the shit out of something.”
“Well then. Just as long as it’s left alive.”
Behind Albhar, his men cheered. The old man grinned with a glint in his eye Bael had never seen before. But he didn’t care. Here was a chance to vent his anger, his misery, his pain.
“I’m going to make that thing suffer,” he said, and Albhar smiled.
By the time he arrived in Vyiskagrad, Bael’s thoughts had turned from the shapeshifter’s suffering to his own.
His ribs and back ached like the devil, so he’d decided not to fly to Vyiskagrad. It took three days to get to the First Bridge to Asiatica, and then a further day and a half to cross the vastly hot, empty deserts of ?gyptus to the Vyiskagradian border and the Vyishka mountains. The constant sway and jolt of the carriage sent pulses of pain through his body.
He’d never much liked the castle in the mountains, huddled like a vulture above precipitous drops and vicious peaks. Perpetually cold and icy, it never seemed to be touched by sunlight. The dark gray stones loomed above the high, twisting pass, along which he now rode on a hired mount. To either side of the narrow shoulder of rock that was the castle’s only approach by land was a gorge several hundred feet deep on one side, and so low on the other that the bottom couldn’t even be seen. The distant roar of rushing water gave the only clue that it didn’t drop into infinity.
Bael rode on, his back and his ribs aching. He’d twinned with Var, the better to heal, but despite the disciplines his father had tried again and again to teach him, he’d never been any good at conquering pain. His father had insisted it was all in his head. Bael was pretty sure it was mostly in his ribs and his back.
His head ached too. He put it down to the altitude and the days of uncomfortable traveling. Anger still throbbed dully through him, a background pain he wasn’t fully rid of, but it wasn’t the bright, burning flame it had been a couple days ago.
He rode into the courtyard, his headache worsening, and dismounted from the horse. As ever, despite the forbidding cold, the courtyard was full of people but to Bael it looked horribly bleak. The mountains loomed behind the castle, itself a hulking, dark gray brute of a building. The tallest tower stood out against the bruised yellow sky and Bael tried to summon some enthusiasm for beating the shit out of the shapeshifter within, but all he really wanted was a hot bath and a soft bed.
And a warm woman. He’d sampled the female company at every inn along the way, but not one of the girls he’d tried had solicited a reaction from him. Anger, tiredness and alcohol were hell on a man’s libido.
“Bael!” cried Albhar as he strode into the high, dark Great Hall. Overhead, the dusty remains of tapestries fluttered in the constant howling draught. Bael wondered if the place had always been so dismal, or if it just seemed so because of his mood. “You took your time! I thought you’d miss the moon tonight and we’d have to wait a month!”
“You could’ve proceeded without me,” Bael pointed out, and Albhar’s smile shifted just the tiniest fraction.
“Oh no, of course not. Culmination of your father’s life work. Couldn’t do it without you. Do you want to see the creature? It’s truly pathetic. Hardly eaten a thing in days. I think it’s sulking. Hideous thing- it’s all infected where the dogs bit it on the shoulder, stinks like hell.”
“You know what, I’m really knackered,” Bael said. “Think I’ll just-”
“No, boy, come and see it. Don’t you want your revenge?”
Personally, Bael wanted to sleep more than he wanted revenge, but he didn’t expect Albhar would appreciate that. Besides, the men were crowding ’round, excitement evident on their faces. They wanted to see more blood spilled.
“Just keep it alive,” Albhar reminded him as they ascended the many, many stairs to the top of the tower.
“Yeah. I might go for a nap first,” Bael said. “You know, so I can have a proper go at it.”
“Have two goes,” Albhar said, a vicious, excited light in his eyes at the prospect. Bael realized the old man really wanted to see the creature suffer, and he wasn’t sure that want was entirely motivated by revenge. This shapeshifter business was bringing out a malicious side to his former mentor he hadn’t seen before.
“Here,” said Albhar eventually, gesturing to a thick oak door so old and heavy it had the consistency of granite. There was a small hatch in it, opening inward, stained with the remains of many slimy meals. “Here’s your shapeshifter.”
He opened the door and Bael peered through the gloom. At first he didn’t see the creature lying on the floor, naked and gray with cold and malnutrition. The cell was icy cold and stank of many things he didn’t want to name, not least the infection in the creature’s hideously swollen shoulder.
“Starved and frozen, sir, just as you said,” sniggered one of the guards.
“Yeah,” Bael said, now appalled at what his offhanded words had led to.
The figure was female, huddled in the shadows with its back to the wall, arms wrapped around itself. A tangle of dark hair obscured its face. “Are you sure it’s a shapeshifter? It looks like an ordinary woman to me.” An ordinary, badly injured, half-starved woman.
“Oh yes,” Albhar said. “I saw it change myself. It’s been netted though, it can’t change now.”
“Netted?”
“A containment spell. It won’t manifest claws or anything. Can’t escape. It’ll be quite defenseless against a beating.”
Bael rounded on him to demand what sort of man Albhar thought he was to enjoy beating such a pathetic, defenseless creature, when the creature itself stirred.
And looked at him with silver eyes.
Kett had spent most of the first day in the cell loudly cursing Bael. Not a word of his conversation with his mentor had escaped her. He’d ordered her into the cell, he’d ordered her to freeze and starve, and when he finally turned up she’d planned to beat so many kinds of hell out of him that theologians would have a field day naming them all.
She’d spent the second day cursing him somewhat more quietly, her throat burning dry. Some time after sunup, the serving hatch halfway up the thick door opened inward to a ninety-degree angle and a ladle shot in. It tipped a few ounces of grayish gruel onto the hatch. A second ladle tipped water after it. Then the hatch snapped shut, leaving Kett with no more sustenance than she could scrape off the ancient, stained wood.
She spent the third day waiting with the wooden bowls she’d found stacked in the corner of the small cell, but when the hatch fell open she moved too fast for her battered body and dropped the bowls, crying out in agony as her crippled leg gave way.
On the fourth day, she couldn’t manage to lift the bowls up to the hatch when it opened. Her shoulder throbbed incessantly where the dog’s teeth had ripped into it. Red streaks shot down her arm, under her skin. Her tongue swollen in her mouth, she huddled by the door, lapping up what drips she could manage.
By the fifth day, she couldn’t even lift her head that far. Barely able to find a single part of her body that didn’t throb with agony, she lay on the floor and waited for death to claim her.
