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Rebirth 3

FIRST TIME

Dusk Peterson

The year 355, the seventh month.
 

One of the great mysteries facing historians studying the history of the Eternal Dungeon is understanding what triggered the madness of the dungeon's first High Seeker. By Layle Smith's own testimony, his "dreamings" (whose exact nature we will never know) had been occurring since the time he first arrived at the Eternal Dungeon. Yet his madness occurred eighteen years later, when he was thirty-six. What caused the High Seeker to lose control of himself?

Most historians trace the trigger point to six months before the crisis of the madness, when "the harm done to a Seeker" as a result of following the High Seeker's orders – which all the contemporary witnesses agree was the primary cause of the madness – evidently occurred. Yet historians who have examined carefully the surviving letters of the High Seeker disagree. They believe that the seeds of Layle Smith's madness were planted in the previous year . . .

—Psychologists with Whips: A History of the Eternal Dungeon.
 

CHAPTER ONE

Layle Smith drew his head back from where it had been resting upon Elsdon Taylor's shoulder. The young man was still wearing the red-trimmed black hood of a Seeker-in-Training, but with the face-cloth pulled back; he smiled. Layle took a deep breath. He was still shaking from the words Elsdon had spoken a short time before – not only at what those words had told him about himself, but also at the depth of love it must have taken Elsdon to speak them.

Layle was the High Seeker; he ought to be able to penetrate behind this wall of love to find the fear that must still lie behind it. Yet try as he might, nothing he saw before him – lips smiling, eyes joyful, body calm – would reveal to him that fear. The fear remained within Elsdon; there could be no doubt of that, given the youth's background and the mind-sick manner in which Layle had initially handled Elsdon's declarations of love. Yet Elsdon seemed to have succeeded, by sheer force of his will, in driving back that fear and imprisoning it so that it could not be of harm.

Just as Layle had imprisoned his own dark desire seventeen years before. And now Elsdon had opened the cell where that desire lay bound.

Layle had never been more frightened in his life.

The young Seeker, unaware of the full cause of the shaking he must be feeling within his arms, placed his right hand behind Layle's hooded head and drew the High Seeker forward. Layle had only one moment to wonder again at how the youth who had shown such diffidence upon his arrival at the Eternal Dungeon could be so forceful in matters of love; then he felt Elsdon's lips upon his, warm and moist.

He let himself be drawn into the other Seeker's embrace. A book dropped from Layle's hand onto the floor. It was the Eternal Dungeon's Code of Seeking, which Elsdon had handed him a short time before. Many of the words in that oft-revised book were Layle's own: bindings he had placed upon himself years before, in one of his periodic efforts to prevent himself, and anyone like himself, from harming the prisoners. Even that, Elsdon had recognized – he had seen, in the Code's harsh indictment of abusive Seekers, Layle's own indictment of what he might become.

Of what he was. That was how he had thought of it these past seventeen years – he had thought of himself as an abuser, a rapist, a corrupt torturer who inflicted pain purely for his own enjoyment. Except for two brief falls – which he had quickly confessed – he had not yet committed such crimes in the Eternal Dungeon, but he had held no doubt in his mind that he would do so in the end. The germs of destruction lay within him; he was a sadist.

Yet Elsdon – who had more reason than any other man in the dungeon to hate and fear sadists – was holding Layle in his arms. Layle released his breath slowly and relaxed into the kiss.

The mouth was soft and tasted sweet. He could feel the desire begin to course through him, and he tightened his grip. A whimper came from the mouth he was probing, and he drew back, but only to view for himself the results of his kiss.

The prisoner stood bound and bloody against the wall, his skin mutilated in dozens of places by the blades and brands that Layle had used upon him. His hands were tied high above him, and he stood upon his toes, his feet barely reaching the ground. He was naked, of course, and Layle allowed his hand to trail down to the youth's groin. The prisoner's eyes widened, and the fear in them grew deeper . . .

With a shudder and a gasp, Layle broke free of the dreaming and of Elsdon, whirling round to face the corner.

He felt Elsdon's hand on his shoulder, firm as it pulled him back. Layle tried to look away from his new love-mate. In his memory, he still held the image of Elsdon bound and tortured.

"Layle," Elsdon said softly, "don't be this way. I told you: I give you permission to use me in your dreamings. You're not really hurting me – it's only images."

"Elsdon," he whispered, "you have no idea what I hold within me—"

"So reveal yourself to me. Would it help if you told me what you saw?"

"No!" His reply was swift and instinctive. He knew it for cowardice, but two-quarters of an hour before, he had been sitting by himself in this bedroom, contemplating the coming decades of loneliness and shame. He could not bear to risk losing the love Elsdon had showered upon him.

Elsdon was silent a while. At last he said, "All right. Later, when you're ready. For now . . . Layle, what can I do to convince you that what you experience and what you give me are two different things? All I felt in that kiss was tenderness and warmth. If you experienced something different, it was beyond my sight."

Hope stabbed at him, painful in its intensity. During his first, terrifying occasion of kissing Elsdon, two days before, he had managed to hide from the young Seeker the existence of his own dark dreamings. Could he do so again? Could he share his bed with Elsdon in such a manner that Elsdon felt only love coming from him, not seeing the reality behind that love?

"If I should fail . . ."

Unexpectedly, Elsdon laughed. "Layle, sometimes I think that, virgin though I am, I know far more than you do about these matters. Of course you will make a mistake sooner or later. Do you remember the first day I was brought here as a prisoner? You thought I had deliberately lied to you and you had me beaten, in accordance with the Code's prescribed treatment for prisoners who lie to their Seekers. You were wrong to think I was deliberately lying, but I survived your error. All of your prisoners have survived the errors you've made over the years. It will be the same here; any mistakes you make won't destroy me. What we have between us is too strong for that."

Layle stared at Elsdon, trying to see the bound prisoner, the diffident youth, the Seeker-in-Training . . . all the weaknesses and frailties he had assumed drew him to Elsdon. What he saw before him was a man stronger than himself in matters of love, capable of enduring more than a decade of bindings and beatings from an abusive father, and then entering the bedroom of a man he knew to be a sadist, and offering his body and soul.

There was no frailty here, yet Layle could feel that his own desire had not waned. Something was occurring that he had not expected. Elsdon was not the prisoner – Layle was. Layle was not the man conducting the searching – Elsdon was. Layle had fallen in love with a man gentle enough to be imagined as a terrified prisoner, but strong enough to accept the dangers of sharing the bed of a sadist.

Elsdon reached forward and brushed back the hair from his eyes. "Trust me," he said softly.

Layle closed his eyes and nodded his head. He felt Elsdon's lips touch his cheek. Then the young Seeker said, "Love, I don't want to probe into the privacy of your life before the Eternal Dungeon, but it would help if I was sure . . . You do know what we're about to do, don't you? Because truly, I never got beyond kisses with the girls at school. . . ."

It was another point at which he knew he should be honest; he should tell Elsdon the truth of where his dreamings came from. He imagined himself doing so, and his heart cowered back. He opened his eyes and smiled at Elsdon, saying, "I know our path well enough that we won't have to stop to ask others for directions."

Elsdon's eyes searched his face for a moment, as though sensing that more lay behind the answer than had been spoken, but he was still new to his art. The young Seeker nodded after a moment and leaned forward to kiss him.

Layle allowed himself to be kissed, but his mind was elsewhere. When Elsdon surfaced a minute later, Layle said, "My dear . . . did your father ever speak to you when he was hurting you?"

A darkness passed over Elsdon's face, like the shadows that clustered in the cavern holding the Eternal Dungeon. "Not really. Whenever he first started to bind me, he'd be chatting about my schoolwork or something like that, but he'd fall silent soon afterwards, and he'd say little until he was through. Why? Are you worried about whether you should speak to me while we're making love?"

"I'm wondering whether your father gave you any orders."

"Oh." Elsdon's voice was quiet; Layle could see that he understood. "No, he didn't, Layle, truly." He smiled, adding, "The only people I associate with order-giving are my old schoolmasters, and I was quite happy at school. Following orders wouldn't spark any painful memories for me."

Layle felt himself growing more tense, and he struggled to make himself understood. "Elsdon, when you kiss me, your reality is here, in what you do. That's where your desire comes from. But when I kiss you, my reality is outside this room, in my dreamings . . ."

Elsdon touched his palm against Layle's cheek. "Your reality is here, in your love for me. But I understand what you're saying: you need something to happen here that connects with your dreamings. Otherwise, nothing that happens between us will raise your desire."

"If it would be too hard for you . . . The first time we kissed, I didn't try to do anything like this . . ."

"And you were completely disconnected from me. I felt that, and I knew that something was wrong." Elsdon smiled and took Layle's hands in his. "Love, I want part of you to be here, with me. If giving me orders helps to keep you halfway in this world, I'll be happy to obey you."

The very word "obey" sent a flame of desire through him so keen that it was a moment before he could speak. Then he said, his voice more husky, "If I should do anything that makes you uncomfortable—"

"I'll tell you. Or more likely, you'll sense it. Stop worrying, love."

Layle put his arm around Elsdon's waist. Though his desire was beginning to draw him away, he was not so far gone that he had forgotten Elsdon's fear of binding and restriction. He kept his arm light upon Elsdon's waist, as though Elsdon were a prisoner who had been so hard tortured that he might fall to pieces at any strong touch.

He took a step forward to stand chest-to-chest with the young Seeker. He could feel now the warm hardness under Elsdon's trousers, and he wondered that Elsdon could maintain his desire through such a conversation as they had just held. Tightening his grip slightly, he said in a low voice, "I want you to do as I tell you. If you begin to be hurt or disturbed by what I'm doing, you're to say so, but otherwise you're to remain silent. Do you understand?"

Elsdon nodded, apparently undisturbed by Layle's peremptory tone. Schoolmasters, thought Layle. In what followed, he must try to act as much as possible like a schoolmaster. Certainly he must not do anything that would seem fatherly.

He had been working in his profession for twenty years, yet he had never done anything as difficult as this: to try to shape his own dreamings in such a way that they did not call up another man's dark memories. He was trying to imagine abuse at the same time he was trying to keep his love-mate from remembering abuse; he could have cried at the absurdity of it. What the bloody blades was Elsdon doing here? Why couldn't the youth have fallen in love with a kind, gentle love-mate who would have given him what he needed to heal from his father's woundings?

He was strongly tempted to set his own dreamings aside and concentrate his mind solely on giving Elsdon pleasure. But it would be a very naive virgin indeed who failed to notice that his partner felt no desire, and Elsdon was not the sort of man to take without giving. That was one of the things that bound them.

Layle's desire lay within the cell; the door stood open, unlocked by Elsdon, but the desire remained chained to the wall. Layle took a deep breath and brought his hammer down in the first strike to break the chain.

"Disclothe yourself," he said in a deep voice.

Elsdon, his smile gone, stepped back, not moving his gaze from Layle. The bedroom was small; the young Seeker's few steps brought him up against the bed. Elsdon's hand moved to the knot-fastenings of his shirt, and then paused. With a muted smile, he reached up and removed his hood.

Though Layle was by now well familiar with Elsdon's face, this was the first time he had seen Elsdon bareheaded in three months. Since his trial, Elsdon had worn the hood indicating that he was in training as a Seeker, though in fact his training had begun only two days before, when he walked into Rack Room A. Layle turned his mind away from that memory with the reflex of long training. Then, on second consideration, he turned back toward the memory. The image of the prisoner he quickly erased; he had always taken great care never to use the image of any real person in his dreamings, frustrating though that was. Now, as the hammer continued to chip away at the chain, he placed Elsdon upon the rack.

Before him, in this world that he had not yet left, the young Seeker had finished stripping himself. He stood straight and slim, his body pale in the manner of a rich man's son who has spent most of his life indoors; his skin was unmarred by any mark. Even the whip-mark that Layle's junior night guard had given him when he first arrived at the Eternal Dungeon had faded from his arm.

Layle knew that the other side of Elsdon looked very different; he resisted the impulse to turn Elsdon to look. Instead he said, his voice still deep, "Come here and kneel."

Elsdon walked forward slowly, his gaze still locked with Layle's. He knelt at the High Seeker's feet with simple grace, though Layle guessed that this high-born man had never knelt to anyone in his life. Layle reached up to pull down the face-cloth of his own hood.

And stopped as his hand touched the cloth. There had been the barest intake of breath from Elsdon. The young Seeker opened his mouth slightly, then closed it.

"You said you'd tell me," Layle reminded him quietly. "Don't hesitate next time."

Elsdon nodded, and Layle let his hand drop. His heart was beating hard; Elsdon could not have known the fateful decision he had just made. Through all these years, with deliberate care, Layle had always set his dreamings in the Yclau royal dungeon – not in its present life as the Eternal Dungeon, but in its previous life, before the earliest version of the Code of Seeking had been born five generations before. Those days before the Code had been a time of barbarity, when the torturers of the Yclau queendom had been permitted great leeway in their dealings with prisoners.

But even then there had been restraints upon them. One of the traditions always practiced by Yclau torturers – now called Seekers in a day when torture had become a secondary method of dealing with prisoners rather than the primary one – was that the torturer hid his face from the prisoner. If a torturer derived pleasure from his work – and in those barbaric years most of the men working in this dungeon had been sadists – the prisoner would not have to endure the sight of the torturer's gleeful face.

This was a common tradition among torturers everywhere. In only one country in the world were prisoners forced to look upon the naked faces of their torturers: in Vovim, where Layle had received his training.

Layle stood motionless, trying to force his heartbeat down to a reasonable level. It had always been difficult for him, in his dreamings, to imagine kissing prisoners; he had had to lift his face-cloth briefly to reveal only the mouth. But he had considered that a price worth paying, rather than place his dreamings in Vovim, where no limits were placed upon the torturers, provided that the confession was obtained. And now Elsdon, for whom a lowered face-cloth brought back memories of his imprisonment within the Eternal Dungeon, wanted Layle to keep his face-cloth up. Sweet blood, this was going to be too dangerous . . .

It was too late. The hammer fell again, and the chain was severed.

Before him, the youth continued to kneel, his face turned up. He was quite simply the most beautiful young man Layle had seen in his years of working in the dungeon: ivory skin framed by golden-brown locks, eyes the shade of the dark blue of evening, lips deep red like a wound . . . Layle let his fingers trail over the lips, and he felt the youth tremble under him. He smiled.

"You know what I want," he said in an uncompromising tone.

"No . . ." The prisoner's voice was breathless. "Please don't make me do that. I'll do anything else that would please you. . . ."

Layle raised his eyebrows. "Such as lie on the rack? I assure you, it would give me great pleasure indeed to hear your joints pop out of their sockets."

The youth's face held such horror and sickness that Layle nearly laughed. He gestured toward his clothes, and after a moment the prisoner reached forward his shaking hands and undid the flap of Layle's trousers. He was nearly hit in the nose by Layle's shaft, which tumbled out eagerly, happy to be freed from confinement. The youth gave a yelp and drew back. Layle laughed and forced the prisoner's head forward again.

"Kiss them," he said in the voice of a strict schoolmaster issuing orders to his pupil.

The youth, innocent as he was, seemed momentarily puzzled by the plural of this instruction. Then his gaze fell slightly, and he swallowed.

"Please . . ." he whispered.

Layle let his hand tighten on the hair, and he heard the youth gasp. "The rack," he said in his deepest voice. "Or this. Make your choice."

His hands shaking again, the youth reached forward and pulled the shaft up out of the way; then he put forward his mouth. Layle smiled as he felt the youth's trembling lips touch him. There was in fact no choice; the prisoner would end up on the rack in the end. But the prisoner didn't know that.

The youth silently followed his instructions, using first his lips and then his tongue, working his way upward. Layle watched him, allowing his gaze to linger upon the prisoner's half-naked body, still shrouded by the tattered remains of his clothes. Layle had received a great deal of pleasure from tugging and tearing at those clothes, teasing at the youth's fear, moving his hands up and down the slender body but never trying to move the youth's hands, which had instinctively flown to protect the most vulnerable part of the body.

Now the youth's hands were following Layle's orders, tentatively stroking the softness between his legs as the youth's tongue worked its way higher. When the prisoner reached the tip he hesitated, looking up at his torturer.

Layle smiled back at him. Pleasure was coursing through his body now, and he knew that even greater pleasure lay ahead. He said, speaking the words he knew the youth feared, "I want it in your mouth, whore."

The youth looked at the object in front of him, as though trying to judge whether it was possible to fit it into the container proposed. In a quavering voice, he said, "How do I . . . ?"

It was always a delight to rape virgins; they were forced to reveal their ignorance in the most humiliating manner possible. Layle made the youth voice his question in the plainest terms possible; then he patiently supplied the youth with the answer. He went further in his instruction than he needed to; the youth began to struggle not to cry as he was told what to do when the shaft drove far into him. In reality, Layle had no intention of going that far. Yet. It was always amusing to let prisoners think that they had been reprieved from the worst, so that their hopes would rise, only to be battered down at a later point.

Besides, Layle admitted to himself, he had a certain gentleness within himself which did not quite fit the image that the master who was training him held of him, of the perfect Vovimian torturer who would teach the other torturers how to break prisoners in the most merciless manner possible. Part of him yearned for something beyond that. . . .

Dimly, within his dreamings, Layle was aware that he had travelled past imaginings to memory. He closed his eyes momentarily, worried that the prisoner now sliding his lips onto Layle's shaft had taken on a different face. But when he looked down, the prisoner was the same beautiful young man as before.

The youth was beginning to cry now, and his tears added to Layle's desire. Layle had been resting his hand lightly against the back of the youth's head until now, preferring to watch the prisoner degrade himself of his own will, but now his hand tightened upon the head. The youth whimpered . . .

And immediately Layle was drawing back, away from the youth, away from the dreaming, back into the cell of the High Seeker of the Eternal Dungeon.

Below him, the youth had his head bowed. Layle knelt down and placed his hand tentatively upon Elsdon's. His love-mate responded by leaning forward.

Layle embraced him, keeping his touch light. Elsdon was not shaking – that was a mercy, showing that Layle had not thrust the youth too far into his own memories. The young Seeker's body was tense, though. Layle inwardly cursed himself as he kissed Elsdon's hair and murmured, "I'm sorry."

"It's all right." Elsdon's voice was blessedly calm. "I was fine as long as you were just holding my head – it felt as though you were cradling it. But when you began to push . . . It was only a featherweight push. Next time I'll know that I can break free, and I won't be scared."

"There won't be a next time," said Layle, his voice muffled in Elsdon's hair. "Elsdon, this is madness. You've never gone beyond kisses, and I have you on your knees, servicing me as though you were a whore. Sweet blood, I can't keep from hurting you—"

Elsdon laughed and extracted himself easily from Layle's arms. "Love, do you have any idea what it's been like for me in bed these past three months, lying awake thinking of you? Even with my limited knowledge, I took us far beyond what we just did. Do you realize what pleasure it gives me to finally be able to touch you rather than myself?"

Layle reached forward to brush his fingers across Elsdon's lips, which had grown red and swollen with desire. Elsdon leaned into the caress, wrapping his lips around Layle's thumb and then sucking it suddenly into his mouth, as though taking a prisoner. He grinned around the thumb, but Layle's sober mood remained. Carefully removing his thumb, he said, "Be truthful. Did my orders upset you?"

Elsdon laughed again. "How could they? 'Kiss them.' 'Lick it.' Layle, those weren't orders; those were permissions for me to do what I wanted." He looked more carefully at Layle, and his expression grew more serious. He said quietly, "Did you speak more to me in your dreamings than you did aloud?"

"Yes." His throat constricted around the word.

"What did you say?"

Layle looked down at his hands; they were clenched into fists. He forced himself to relax but did not look up.

Elsdon sighed as he shifted to sit on the floor. "Love, can't you at least give me a hint of what you're dreaming?"

After a minute Layle said, "When you opened my trousers . . ."

"And nearly got hit in the nose, and we both laughed. Yes?"

Layle raised his eyes to where his love-mate was smiling. "In the dreaming, you didn't laugh."

The smile faded. After a moment Elsdon reached forward and drew Layle into his embrace. Layle shifted so that his back was against Elsdon's chest. He felt Elsdon nuzzle his neck through the hood-cloth.

"All right," Elsdon said after a while. "I can see why this must be hard for you. But truly, Layle, you're doing a wonderful job of translating your dreamings into lovemaking. I wouldn't have guessed if you hadn't told me. Your voice is patient, your touch gentle, your expression affectionate. Am I really supplying anything to your dreamings, or is your mind completely off in another world, leaving your body here to function by whatever commands you've left it?"

Layle shook his head. "My dear, it's hard to describe. I feel as though I've entered into something akin to madness. Of course the dreamings have been with me for years, and they've seemed so real to me that they've frightened me sometimes. I spoke to Mr. Bergsen about them when I first began to have the dreamings, soon after I arrived at this dungeon, and he said that I have the same sort of power as a small child, to place myself within the imaginary. He thought that power might do me good in my work, since it would allow me to enter more deeply into whatever life-tales the prisoners told me. But this . . ."

He turned within Elsdon's arms to look back at the other Seeker. Beyond Elsdon lay the familiar surroundings of the bedroom Layle had occupied since being appointed High Seeker. Aside from a cupboard that held the chamber-pot, there was little in the room: a night-table, a clothes-chest, lamps, and a bed. The bed, in accordance with his seniority, was designed for two. No one had yet used it besides himself.

"You're there in the dreamings," he said slowly. "And you're yourself, but you're a self that's never existed. You're what you might have become if your father had broken your spirit entirely. Only I'm the one doing the breaking—"

He stopped, realizing, too late, that he had evoked the man who must be barred from this room. He felt the tremble go through Elsdon's body, and he turned swiftly, pulling Elsdon into his arms. He kissed the young Seeker's head and said softly, "We're finished. No more of this."

"No." Elsdon's voice was not that of a youth protesting an elder's decision; rather, it was that of a Seeker disagreeing with a colleague. "Layle, you don't understand . . . I didn't understand until a short while ago, when you began. I once thought that the way for me to heal was for me to go to bed with someone who was utterly unlike my father. That's why I was so horrified to learn of your likeness to him. But now I realize that I need someone who is like my father: someone who shares my father's pleasure at pain, but who uses that pleasure only to bring gentle delight to those he loves. That's the only way I'll be able to reconcile the mixture of love and hatred I feel for my father – to recognize that he was not an evil man for feeling pleasure at pain but for inflicting that pain."

Layle was silent, his mouth resting upon Elsdon's hair. Then he said in a muffled voice, "During my early years in the Eternal Dungeon, before I realized the unlikelihood of this happening, I held hope that I could find another Seeker who enjoyed having pain inflicted upon him, so that I could rouse both our desires that way. I came to believe even that would be wrong."

Elsdon shook his head. "That's different from what I'm talking about; you know that. You wouldn't hurt anyone purely for the sake of your own pleasure; everything you've done in your life shows that."

Again he felt the piercing pain of his conscience; he should speak now, he knew. He imagined himself saying, "Let me tell you what I was dreaming, and let me explain which parts of it were drawn from memory. . . ." He closed his eyes, his throat tightening.

"You were talking about your dreamings," said Elsdon.

It took him a full minute to speak. Elsdon remained quiet in his arms during that time, warm and solid. Sweet blood, he hadn't touched a naked body in seventeen years, and never had he touched anyone this way. The highest hopes of his youth had not imagined such joy for him. How could he chance losing this? Especially since few other people in this place knew the full truth. He had told only the Queen, and the Queen had not considered it necessary for most others to know the facts of his past. If she did not consider it necessary . . .

"The words you speak in the dreaming are my own imagining," Layle said as he let his fingers trace their way across Elsdon's face, "but some of your gestures and touchings are what you are doing here, and some of how I speak to you and touch you are from this world. I combine that world and this—"

"Like a painter combining colors. Yes, I see." Elsdon nibbled at Layle's hand for a moment before saying, "Does that make it harder for you or easier?"

"In terms of desire, it makes it easier. I've never had a dreaming before that aroused me so strongly. In terms of my conscience . . . I don't know. Elsdon, I'm still having difficulty with the idea that even allowing you into this bedroom is right. But you say that it helps you."

"Yes." Elsdon's voice was soft. "It does. It's as though you're cutting the bindings around me slowly, rope by rope. I know that you have the ability to do what my father did to me, and instead you give me love. Layle, I can't tell you what a difference that makes to me."

"Well, then . . ." Layle bent his head, trying to think. "Next time we should talk first about what we're going to do—"

"Next time!" Elsdon squirmed around in Layle's arms. "High Seeker, you must be mocking! You're not going to leave me like this!"

Layle craned his neck to look, wondering whether what he saw was another dreaming. "Bloody blades," he said weakly. "The vitality of youth. Have you been that way the whole time we've been talking?"

Elsdon laughed. "Well, up or down, depending on whether we were talking about my father. But I don't lose hope. At least, that part of me doesn't."

"Ah. Well." Layle looked down at his lap. He had left his youth behind, as the evidence showed. "I'm sure I can manage to work my way back. This time, though, I do the kneeling."

"Layle, you couldn't possibly—"

"Yes, I can," he said, leaning forward to silence Elsdon with a kiss. "I've been dreaming for seventeen years. Believe me, I can find a dreaming for any position we choose."
 

CHAPTER TWO

A quarter of an hour later – after he and Elsdon had debated engineering problems with the same gravity that Layle usually reserved for determining how the layout of the Inner Dungeon should be altered for the prisoners' comfort – Elsdon was standing on two stools. This was something of an achievement, given the lowness of the bedroom ceiling. Elsdon was only able to manage it by leaning forward, keeping his balance by placing his hands behind him onto the man-high head of the bed, which had been pulled out from the wall to provide this support. At Layle's suggestion, Elsdon had folded one of his hands over the other.

The stools were far enough apart to allow room under Elsdon's groin for a man. Layle, examining their spacing critically, said, "Try moving your legs further apart."

Elsdon did so, saying, "Layle, I hope you don't have in mind anything involving a feather, because I'm on the point of dying of laughter."

Layle smiled up at him, saying, "The man who trained me said that intricate positions always look peculiar to the uneducated eye. He said that this applied to both sex and torture."

"I'm not going to ask what the connection is here." Elsdon peered down toward the floor, his hair falling into his eyes. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Just what you're doing. Are you getting cramped?"

"Not at all. You look as though you're in a less comfortable position."

"No," Layle said softly from where he knelt between the stools, his back upright. "I'm not in this position in the dreaming."

There was no reply. He turned his attention to the thighs that were parted as though the space between them was a mountain-peak. The golden hair on them shone bright against the ivory skin; he reached out and trailed his finger softly over the hair. From above came a moan that caused his heart to beat faster. He trickled his fingers lightly through the hair, taking care not to tickle, though the moans assured him that there was little danger of laughter now. Reaching higher, he touched the front of the thighs, where the flesh remained mangled from the scrape of the claw.

The moans turned into a weak scream. He stepped back, savoring the sight before him. His master had always said that the positions he found for his prisoners were more creative than that of a high-class courtesan.

The position the youth was in was simple enough and would have been unlikely to cause stares from any of the other torturers who happened to wander in. He lingered on that thought a moment, wondering whether he should invite his master to join him in his pleasure, but he decided that he didn't have time enough for that. This was the third day of torture, and the prisoner was growing weak.

The confession – ostensibly the real reason for this searching – had been obtained a short time before, when he had pulled the youth up by the pulley. He hadn't even needed to add weights to the feet or to drop the prisoner with a jerk, so the prisoner's arm sockets remained intact. At least, he thought they did; taking a second look at where the youth hung, with his arms bound behind his back to the pulley, Layle had some doubts. He hoped that the youth's body was still whole. Despite what he had said to the prisoner earlier, he actually disliked mutilated bodies, and he had only cut into the youth's delicate flesh with the claw because his master had ordered him to. He disliked a great many things his master had him do. Some day he would leave this place and . . .

He shook his head, aware that he was perilously close again to his memories, and returned his attention to the prisoner. Though there were no weights upon the prisoner's feet, each leg had been bound separately and pulled apart so that there was space enough for Layle to walk beneath the legs, provided he ducked his head a bit. It was an interesting position: arms parallel to the ground, torso dangling at an angle from the arms, the legs pulled into a V shape . . .

Above him, he could hear that the youth had returned to his hoarse crying. "Please," the prisoner whispered. "Oh please, oh please, oh please. Letmedieletmedieletmedie—"

"Certainly not," said Layle coolly. "I wouldn't think of releasing you from your pain until I'd given you your pleasure, slattern." He reached up and tore the last of the youth's clothes from his body.

What he saw pleased him. The youth was already hard – severe pain could sometimes do that. He trailed his hand over the shaft and heard the youth give a weak whimper. The prisoner had been fearing this moment for three days, but now that it had finally occurred, he barely had enough consciousness left to appreciate it.

That was something of a disappointment. Layle frowned, then decided to take the matter one step at a time. He mustn't put this position to waste. He ducked his head and began nibbling his way slowly under and over and around the delectable meal before him.

The whimpers above were growing stronger; his own desire waxed enough that he took hold of himself, then quickly released himself. Patience, he thought. If he went too swiftly, he'd have nothing left over for the next stage. He must hold himself back.

The prisoner exerted no such control over himself. He was beginning to thrash in the air now – quite an achievement, given his position. Layle hoped the youth wouldn't move in such a way that those shoulders were dislocated after all. He took hold of the mauled thighs, causing the youth to scream. At the moment of his screaming, his shaft began to pulse in Layle's mouth. Only brothel-boys allowed themselves to become the receptacles for men's seed; Layle stepped back hastily, using his hand to bring matters to completion.

He looked up. The prisoner was hanging limp as a corpse. This was unfortunate; the image might be more than metaphorical. He gave the youth's leg a tug and was gratified to hear a groan. Good. The next thing to do was to bring the prisoner down from where he was.

Layle did so slowly, first untying the legs, then gently moving the pulley wheel until the prisoner's feet touched the floor. The youth was still limp; he seemed not to notice that he was on the ground again. Layle frowned once more; he had no interest in raping an unconscious body. He decided that a change of tactics was in order.

He moved forward and wrapped one arm around the youth's waist while his free hand released the wrists from the pulley. As the constrained arms sprang free, the youth gave a loud groan and began to sob again.

"Shhh." Layle carefully helped the youth down onto the cold floor; the youth ended up on his stomach, his arms too limp to move. He was still crying. Layle sat down beside him and stroked his hair. "Shh, my dear, it's all right. It's all over now."

"Don't hurt me," the youth sobbed.

It was touching. Despite himself, Layle found himself reaching down to kiss the prisoner's hair. The hair was filthy, of course. Layle let his hand trail over the skin that was clotted with dried sweat and blood as he said in a soothing voice, "I told you, it's all over. I have your confession. You won't be tortured any more."

The youth had kept his eyelids clamped shut during this exchange. Now he raised them, and Layle could see that his eyes were awash with tears. "Are you going to kill me?" he whispered.

There was fear in his voice. Layle had seen this many times before. One moment a prisoner would be screaming for death; the next moment the prisoner would see death coming and would start screaming for life.

"Of course not," Layle said softly, smiling at the youth. "I'm a torturer, not an executioner. And in any case . . ." He let his hands trail over the body again. "I'm tempted to pretend I found that you were innocent. You're far too beautiful to face the executioner."

The youth lay motionless. Tears still spilled out of his eyes, but his gaze was filled with uncertainty. Finally he whispered, "I am innocent. I only said I was guilty so that you would stop the torture."

"Yes, I can see that now." He was able to make his voice sound convincing. For all he knew, the youth might be telling the truth. Whether a prisoner was guilty or innocent was of no importance to Vovim's King; the King wanted confessions, and that was what the Vovimian torturers supplied him with. It had always stung at Layle's sense of professionalism; he instinctively felt that he wasn't doing his best work in this kingdom. He had heard rumors that matters were handled differently in Yclau . . .

He had to look away a moment to steady himself. When he looked back, the youth was still where he had been, lying on his stomach. His back was deeply gouged from the beatings Layle had given him, especially upon his backside. Layle felt himself grow painfully hard at the sight. He trailed his hand over one of the runnels in the flesh, saying, "Does this hurt?"

"No." The youth's lie was brave; he was screwing up his face in his effort not to cry out.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." The youth's voice was choked.

"Tell me if I hurt you," Layle said softly. "I just want to check your injuries." He leaned over, as though to inspect the body, and began to bring his weight down upon the youth.

The youth screamed. Layle rolled off him immediately. He had not moved so fast since the day he had ordered a guard to take a prisoner up to level one on the machine, and the prisoner's agonized scream had alerted him to the fact that something was seriously the matter with the rack – the prisoner was being torn apart as he watched.

On that occasion, Layle had raced as far as the wheel, wrenching it back down to free the prisoner from his torment. Now he moved a smaller space, rolling to the side of the bed.

He hardly dared move after that. He hardly dared breathe. Elsdon was as he had left him, on his stomach on the bed, shuddering like a prisoner who has just endured a hard whipping. After a minute more, during which Layle wondered whether the best thing he could do for the youth would be to borrow a guard's dagger and slit his own throat, Layle finally asked in a low voice, "Shall I call the healer?"

Elsdon shook his head. Tears were beginning to streak down his face. "Hold me, please," he said in a choked voice.

Carefully, delicately, Layle sat up and pulled Elsdon into his arms. The other man burrowed his face into Layle's chest, his mouth moving in an instinctive kiss. Layle softly stroked the young Seeker, taking care not to stray near the deep gouges in his backside where Elsdon's father had once beat him.

Elsdon's breath began to steady; the tears stopped dripping onto Layle's chest. At least he could do that much for his love-mate, Layle thought, looking down at the youth. Like a torturer who comforts his victim after the torment.

The pain that accompanied that thought was so great that a groan escaped his throat. Elsdon lifted his head instantly. His gaze flicked over Layle's face, and then he said in a shaky voice, "It's not your fault."

Of course those would be the first words he spoke. He'd probably spoken those words to his father. Layle turned his head away, wishing that his face-cloth was lowered to hide his expression from the Seeker he held.

Elsdon turned round in his arms, taking hold of his shoulders. "Layle, stop! I tell you, it's not your fault!"

"Then whose is it?" So great was his self-loathing now that it transformed itself into anger. "Did a rat run over your back? Or did your father wander in? Or perhaps you made the mistake of going to bed with a foreign torturer!"

Elsdon stared at him blankly; then comprehension entered his eyes. "Oh," he said softly, reaching his hand out to brush back the hair from Layle's forehead. "That's what this is about? Layle, whatever you did in your youth is over. You were not at fault for that either."

"Not at fault." The words were bitter in his mouth.

"Of course not. You followed the orders you were given at whichever of our queendom's lesser prison you worked at – Blackstone Prison, wasn't it called? I don't suppose you even knew that the Code of Seeking existed. In that respect, you might just as well have been one of those barbarian Vovimian torturers. But for love of the Code, Layle, it wasn't that bad. You were following the civilized laws of Yclau, not tearing prisoners apart without mercy like the Vovimians do. Whatever mistakes you made at your old position, you weren't a brute. And for the past seventeen years you've worked in a dungeon where every Seeker is willing to suffer for the sake of the prisoners. The past is dead." He leaned forward and kissed Layle.

For a guilty prisoner to be able to forgive himself, the fifth revision of the Code of Seeking read, he must first confess to his guilt. Layle had written those words himself. Time after time he had seen how confession of a crime refreshed the spirit of a prisoner and made it possible for him to face with strength and courage the consequences of his crime. It had happened to Elsdon; it would happen to Layle too if he confessed to Elsdon now.

But the price of that confession would be Elsdon's pain. Perhaps it would have been possible to tell Elsdon before the first kiss, but in preparation for his training, Elsdon had read the books about Vovimian methods of torture. If Layle confessed, Elsdon would immediately realize what the High Seeker had been doing here – would know that Layle had been taking his past evils and attempting to recreate them in the present through Elsdon's body and soul. And what would that do to Elsdon, who screamed in fear when Layle did nothing more than lie atop him?

Layle struggled to bring himself back under control. Elsdon was the one doing the comforting, which was absurd. He placed his hand over Elsdon's and said quietly, "My dear, it was worth the effort, but we can see that this won't work. The pain in you lies too deep; we must find other ways to heal it. And you must believe me when I say that simply having you in my arms is enough joy to last me till my death. I don't need anything more."

Elsdon gave a heavy sigh. "Layle, I don't doubt that. You know the same is true for me. But you're not listening to me – I'm telling you, you're not at fault. What happened was an accident; it wouldn't have happened if I'd been prepared."

"For me to have touched you where your father beat you—"

"No, it wasn't that. You asked me beforehand whether it hurt me when you touched me there – you asked me twice. It wasn't my backside being touched that made me afraid. It was your weight. I've never had anyone atop me before; I didn't know that it would feel so much like being bound."

Layle let his hands stroke Elsdon's arms for a long while before he looked up and said, "My error – my grievous error. When you lay down on your stomach afterwards and looked back at me, smiling, I thought you wanted—"

"It was what I wanted. It was in all my dreamings about us. But I hadn't known the details of how it would work; I hadn't been sure which angle you would be approaching me from." He cocked his head, and a smile crept onto his face. "You said you had a dreaming for every position. Do you have a position for every dreaming?"

Layle drew in a vast lungful of air. "Elsdon, this is madness."

"So you keep saying. Shall we be mad together?"

Layle did not smile. Elsdon sighed and placed his arms around Layle, saying, "I heard a story about a malfunctioning rack that a prisoner was rescued from only by the quick reflexes of the High Seeker. Is that true?"

"There have been several malfunctioning racks since my arrival at the Eternal Dungeon. They always seem to break when I come near them."

"And this prisoner – he must have been frightened."

"Very much so. I'd told him the truth, that Yclau racks were designed to increase tension and fear, but that the rack would not cause him permanent injury. And then I placed him on a rack that acted as though it had been made in Vovim."

"But he wasn't permanently injured."

"No, thankfully."

Elsdon cocked his head again. "So I suppose you gave up searching him then. After all, you'd badly frightened him and might have caused him grave harm. The obvious thing to do would have been to abandon the searching and let him sort out his problems by less dangerous methods."

There was a moment of silence, and then Layle began to curse under his breath. Elsdon smiled.
 

CHAPTER THREE

An hour's delay ensued; the first three-quarters of the hour was for the argument, while the fourth quarter was for another engineering discussion. The latter was all the more heated for Layle's lingering uncertainty, but they finally reached the moment when Elsdon was lying on his back on a cushioned bench in the sitting room.

The bench had been too low initially. Layle cast a dubious look at the books raising the bench's height and said, "I don't like this. I have visions of you tumbling, bench and all, once we get vigorous."

"That's not my worry," said Elsdon, waving his legs in the air. "What am I supposed to do with these? I'll get tired holding them up like this."

"You can rest them on my shoulders in a short while," Layle assured him.

Elsdon gave a hoot of laughter and nearly rolled off the narrow bench. "Layle, I couldn't possibly! Not on my first time; I'd die laughing."

"Well," said Layle, looking down at the books on torture methodology that supported the bench, "I refuse to make love to a corpse, so I suppose we need to find another solution."

It took another engineering consultation before two chests were pulled up to the right and left of where Layle stood, at the end of the bench. Elsdon placed his feet experimentally upon the cushions piled upon the chests, then nodded. "This will work," he declared.

"As though you have any idea whether it would work, inexperienced one." Layle ran a critical eye over the arrangement before nodding his approval. "We'll probably have to make adjustments once we start, but I think we're ready n— Oh, bloody blades!" He darted off in the direction of the kitchen, leaving Elsdon to watch his departure with bemusement.

Two-quarters of an hour later, the apartment looked as though it had been pillaged by the Vovimians. Baskets in the kitchen had been upturned and sorted through, objects had been flung from chests, and shelves had been swept clean of their belongings. Layle stood in the middle of the sitting room, running his hands through the hair under the back of his hood and casting frantic looks at every corner of the room. He glanced unenthusiastically toward the door leading to the corridors of the outer dungeon, but even there lay no hope: it was past midnight, so the only dungeon dwellers who were still awake were the Seekers and guards who were busy on the night shift.

Elsdon, who had been watching with increasing curiosity, asked, "Can't we proceed without whatever it is?"

Layle shook his head. "This is your first time; I can't take the chance. Bloody blades!" He shouted the words to the ceiling, heedless of waking nearby dungeon dwellers. "I can't believe this is happening. Look at this place!"

He cast his arms wide, and Elsdon obediently looked about at the chaos that Layle had created. "I have the most well-equipped quarters in the dungeon," Layle said in a tight voice. "I have dozens of examples of antique torture devices in my chests. I have hundreds of books on my shelves describing how to break prisoners. And I have . . . no . . . bloody . . . oil."

"Oil?" said Elsdon with interest. "Is that what you're looking for? It's in my pocket."

Layle turned his head to look at the Seeker-in-Training, who was sitting quietly upon the bench. "What?" the High Seeker said weakly.

Elsdon smiled and pointed toward the bedroom, where clothes lay scattered around the chest Layle had emptied there.

It took a minute for Layle to locate Elsdon's trousers amidst the wrack upon the ground; then he spent another minute contemplating what he had found. Finally he walked over to the bedroom doorway and leaned against the doorpost, holding up the vial of violet liquid.

"Young virgin," he said in the level voice he usually reserved for especially difficult prisoners, "would you mind telling me why you are carrying around a vial of lovemaking lubricant?"

Elsdon's smile turned to a grin. "It's for you, of course. I've been carrying it since the day you first admitted you loved me. I forgot to remove it from my pocket when I got angry at you." He hesitated as Layle held the vial up toward the lamplight. "Is it all right? Garrett gave it to me. It's the kind he uses with his love-mate."

Layle looked back at Elsdon. "It will do very well indeed. And I think you've just completed the first part of your training, which is to be sure that you always have the proper equipment at hand before you start your work."

He walked over and set the vial carefully down upon one of the chests before him. Elsdon was already lying on his back by the time Layle reached him. Though the youth was trying to remain sober, a smile kept creeping through. Layle examined Elsdon's face for a moment more, and then, through long experience in reading prisoners' faces, said in a matter-of-fact tone, "Frightened?"

Elsdon's smile didn't waver. "A bit."

Layle retreated around the chests and came over to kneel next to the youth. "Don't be," he said softly. "I won't hurt you." He reached out to touch the golden-brown locks.

The youth turned his head to look at Layle. He was breathing hard – this was hardly surprising, given that he was lying upon his back. Layle wondered briefly whether he should have positioned the youth on his stomach, but the claw had damaged the front of the thighs too much for that. He let his hand trickle down the prisoner's cheek.

He saw the fear deepen within the youth's eyes, and he quickly withdrew his hand. "I'm sorry," he said.

The youth's expression remained fearful, but his eyes had grown uncertain again.

"Not about the torture," Layle clarified. "That was my duty. But about the rest of it. The truth is, when they brought you in originally, my first thought was, 'This is the most beautiful young man in the world.' I'm afraid I lost control of myself after that."

There was a silence, but for the heavy breath of the youth and the sound of screams and pleading in nearby cells. Then the prisoner whispered, "You think I'm beautiful?"

"Of course you are," said Layle, stroking the youth's forehead in what he hoped was a nonthreatening manner. "Hasn't anyone ever told you that?"

The youth was silent a moment before saying, "A boy in school said I was. I thought he was joking."

"You have a beautiful face, a beautiful body . . . and a beautiful soul to match them."

The youth bit his lip. "My backside isn't beautiful any more," he said.

"That is part of your beautiful soul. It's a visible mark of your courage."

The prisoner continued to stare at him, his eyes wide with eagerness to believe that the words were true. Layle leaned forward to kiss the prisoner lightly upon the forehead, closing his eyes at a momentary stab of pain within him. All of this loving talk came far too easily to him, easier even than his talk of "whore" and "slattern." This gentleness touched too closely to a hope that he had been forced to imprison two years before, when he had discovered the limitations on what he could be.

He had just turned sixteen when his master, to celebrate the completion of his first year as one of the King's Torturers, had taken him on a trip into town – a sign of his master's faith in him, for while trusted members of the dungeon such as his master were sometimes allowed a few hours away from the dungeon that was their life-long home, apprentices almost never were. In Layle's case, though, the thought of fleeing the dungeon had never occurred to him. Why should he leave the perfect place of employment?

And so his master had taken him to a brothel. Layle was not anywhere near to a virgin by that point, of course – his training as a torturer had been thorough – but he was still curious to know what lovemaking was like, and how it differed from rape.

He did not learn that night, nor on any of the nights that followed as he stubbornly and systematically made his way through all the women's brothels in town, then through all the boys' brothels. He had even gone so far as to take the trouble to court a well-born young woman, so that he could seduce her into his bed.

And everywhere he had met with failure. Even the seduction of the young woman had not raised his desire; there was something about her freedom, her lack of binding, that made his body rebel. He wondered sometimes if he had been born this way, or if his life would have been different if he hadn't taken up torturing at such a young age. Perhaps the first year at his career had set his sexuality, like mortar turning hard.

His master, whose sympathy had extended so far as to buy Layle a night with a high-class courtesan, had finally patted him on the shoulder and said, "Well, my dear, we can't always have what we want in life. But I can promise you this: you'll never lack for sexual partners in this profession."

Of course this had been true, and Layle had tried to set his mind back to the prisoners who provided him with an endless round of bodily delights. But his mind, it turned out, was less satisfied, and part of it continued to cry out for more, though he had ruthlessly imprisoned this part of him so that it would not damage his work.

Now he found himself sighing, but the reality of what he was couldn't be changed. It was sweet to be able to kiss the prisoner softly and feel the other youth's fingers curl trustfully around his, but he could do this all night and his body would not respond. So he allowed his gaze to wander over to the marks of what he had done to the prisoner.

He could see clearly the body, for it was lying now upon the rack. He had not bothered to strap down the youth, for the prisoner remained too weak to fight him. Besides, he wanted the youth to have the illusion of being free. There were few signs of torture on the front of the body; that had been a deliberate decision by Layle, reflecting his distaste of mutilation. But the body was limp and unresisting, just as it should be. The legs were spread apart, with a gap between them that the rack mirrored. The lower half of Vovimian racks were designed to provide access between the legs of prisoners, though it took slower-minded prisoners a while to figure out why.

Certainly this prisoner showed no sign of curiosity as to why Layle had laid him upon the cold metal of the rack rather than onto one of the nearby wooden tables. Layle leaned over to kiss the fingers curled loosely around his, saying, "I know I was wrong to take you the way I did, by force. But I couldn't think of any other way to do it. I knew that someone as beautiful as you wouldn't be interested in someone like me."

He dared not look at the youth now; he had never trained himself to school the expression on his face, since he had not wanted to hide his feelings from any of the prisoners, except at moments such as this. After a few seconds he heard the youth whisper, "It might have been different . . . if we . . ."

"If we'd met differently?" Layle kissed the fingers again. "It's generous of you to say that, but I know you're just being kind to me. You're so beautiful; you could have anyone you choose. You certainly wouldn't want to give your love to a vile, ugly torturer."

"You're not ugly." The reply was so swift that Layle had to cover his mouth to hide his smile. More hesitantly, the prisoner said, "You said you'd arrange for my release. If we met again . . ."

Layle shook his head. "I'm not permitted to leave this dungeon. It's part of the rules here – it's supposed to help us feel empathy with the prisoners." This was the first story he had heard about the Eternal Dungeon. Since that time, a year ago, he had been collecting all the information he could about Yclau's odd dungeon. He set that thought aside; it increased his uneasiness. "We'll never meet again after tonight. I'm sorry about that, for my sake. But you're better off not knowing someone like me." He let his cheek rest upon the prisoner's hand, feeling again the pain at his awareness that this type of talk came so easily to him. If his life had been different . . .

Next to him, the youth continued to give hard, labored breaths. Then he said in a small voice, "You could make love to me now."

Layle's breath hissed in with triumph; he hoped it sounded like surprise. He took the chance and turned his head – it was dark in the rack room, which was lit only by the branding fire. "My dear, you're far too generous," he said honestly. "But even if I didn't know that you were making this offer out of charity to me, it's just not possible. Your wounds are too deep. I'd only increase your pain."

"No, truly, you wouldn't." He could hear the mixture of fear and growing eagerness in the youth's voice. "It would . . . it would help with my healing. Having you give me love rather than pain."

He bowed his head, as though trying to hold back from temptation. The youth's voice rose another notch. "Please . . . If nothing else, it would take my mind off the pain."

"If you're sure," he said softly.

"Yes." The prisoner's voice wavered, but Layle pretended not to notice. He leaned over and kissed the youth lightly, this time on the lips.

"I'll be gentle, I promise," he told the prisoner. "I won't hurt you again."

A look of anxiety travelled onto the prisoner's face – he had obviously not thought about this aspect of the matter – but Layle leaned forward and kissed him once more, this time deeply, though slowly. He had a precise sense of timing as a torturer; it was one of the things that caused his master to have high hopes for him. Now his eyes were turned toward the other end of the prisoner's body, awaiting the signal he needed that he should begin.

The signal came. He pulled back with a sigh and said, "By the torture-god of hell, you're too much for me. I can't believe that you're letting me do this."

The faintest of smiles travelled onto the youth's face. "This is my first time," he confided.

"Then I'll take special care." He rose slowly, using unhurried movements to contrast with his earlier abrupt gestures. He did not want anything about what he did to remind the prisoner of the youth who had tortured him before.

Yet.

He hesitated when picking up the vial he had set aside on the rack, but the prisoner – obviously not the most quick-witted person to have passed through Vovim's Hidden Dungeon – showed no signs of curiosity as to why such an item was waiting. Layle carefully spread the oil over both his hands; his refusal to dry-rape prisoners with instruments of torture had earned him much good-natured ribbing from the other torturers. Then he set to work on the rising flesh before him.

He had hoped that the prisoner would associate his earlier rape only with Layle's mouth, not with his hands, and this appeared to be the case. He could hear the youth's breath increasing, and soon the moans began. Layle, wishing yet again that he could raise his own desire in so simple a manner, turned his mind away from the present scene, toward the near past and the near future. He did so lightly, concentrating the greater part of attention on what he was doing. That was another thing which marked him off from the other torturers – his willingness to pull back from his desires when they came into conflict with his work. His master, in a moment of utter honesty, had once told him that Layle's skills were such that he was wasted on his present work.

He knew this to be the case; he knew this all too well to be the case. What had once been the height of his joy – that he should work in this dungeon that shifted from hiding place to hiding place – had become stale to him. But when he thought of the alternative – to work at one of the foreign dungeons where he would be forever restricted and confined by senseless regulations – he knew that the only place for him was here, in Blackstone Prison, as Vovim's Hidden Dungeon was called in its current incarnation. Only here could he show true creativity.

His mind, all this while, had not strayed from the prisoner. Responding to the signals he was being given, he let his left hand wander down. His index finger began to push gently.

Immediately he felt the tension in the youth's body, and he paused. "Shh," he said. "I told you, it won't hurt, not unless you remain tense. You must try to relax."

"All right," the youth whispered.

The prisoner was obviously trying his best, but he could not fully obey the order he had been given. A moment later he flinched, and Layle quickly withdrew his finger. "You're not ready," he said quietly. "It's all right, some people need more time than others to prepare themselves for this. You need to wait till you're a bit older."

"But I want the first time to be tonight!" the youth protested. "I want you to make love to me!"

He had to close his eyes against the strange mixture of feelings: desire arising from sadistic triumph, as well as pain arising from sorrow that none of what was taking place was real. He was not doing as good a job of controlling himself with this prisoner as he usually did; he had noticed that since the first day. His mind kept wandering away to other matters . . .

He continued to stroke the youth slowly, saying, "There will be others. Don't set your heart too much on one person; you might end up being betrayed someday."

"I can relax," the youth whispered. "Please. Try again."

He proceeded carefully, timing his hands' work with the same precision he used when timing how long to keep a prisoner on each level of the rack. Even so, he mistimed the youth's eagerness, and there was an unfortunate pausing point at which he wondered whether he would have to reveal this seduction for the rape it was. But the youth insisted that he wanted to continue, and the youth's body – amazingly resilient after three days of torture – chimed in its opinion on the matter. Layle started again, taking greater care this time to keep the youth's state of desire low at the beginning.

His own state of desire was something of a problem. It would have helped, he decided, if he had bound the prisoner, but he did not want to change course at this point. "I want to hold your hand," he said softly. "Do you think you could take care of this part of the matter for me?"

He held no expectation that the youth's arms were yet strong enough to be lifted, but once again the prisoner's body defied his prognosis, and the youth's hand closed in upon where Layle's had been working. Layle let his right hand drift down to where the youth's free hand lay limp upon the rack. He placed his hand gently over the youth's, then carefully, unobtrusively worked his way up until his hand was encircling the prisoner's wrist. The youth, concentrating on what Layle was doing with his left hand, failed to notice.

Layle let his hand tighten suddenly on the wrist, as though he had been hit by a wave of desire, and the youth, in a quite satisfactory manner, began to writhe with passion, his body pinned down on one side by Layle's grip. Layle allowed himself to linger upon the image of the trapped prisoner for a while; finally he was ready.

The youth was too. Layle encountered no troubles until he was full in, at which point the youth gave a surprised yelp and jerked on the rack.

"Did I hurt you?" Layle asked gently, feeling himself throb at the thought.

"No, it feels good! Is it supposed to feel that way?"

He stared at the youth, momentarily disconcerted. "Didn't you expect to enjoy this?"

"Not that way. I didn't think it would feel nice when you were inside."

"But then . . ." His mind was awhirl; he had not encountered anything like this before. "Why did you let me do this?"

The youth smiled at him shyly. "I knew you'd enjoy it. I was looking forward to that."

The pain washed over him at once, crashing in great waves against him, over and over. He felt his grip tighten upon the youth. He struggled to break free of what he was feeling, but he only encountered worse: turning away in his mind, he saw suddenly the hope he had imprisoned. It was unshackled and looked upon him with grave eyes. The escaped prisoner held up a black book and said softly, "A torturer must be willing to suffer for the prisoners."

He knew the words. He had read them three days ago, shortly before the youth's arrival, when he had finally succeeded in obtaining a black-market copy of the Eternal Dungeon's Code of Seeking.

He had read the book all through the night, sometimes laughing at the absurdity of what he read, sometimes feeling his heart thump as though he had encountered an unexpected danger. It was like reading about a dungeon where the torturers had gone mad. None of the rules made sense; none of the regulations were designed to help a torturer deprive and degrade and destroy a prisoner.

Break a prisoner, yes. The word "breaking" was used in the book, and methods of torture – albeit extremely limited – were described in the Code of Seeking. Yet even here the obvious was turned topsy-turvy: the object of breaking was not to destroy the prisoner, but to give him rebirth. It was an image strange to him, for he had lived all his life in a land where the hell-god tortured his prisoners for eternity. Here in this book was a dungeon that claimed to be eternal, yet claimed that a time came when the prisoners' pain was transformed into joy.

For three days he had been trying to still his mind, to keep his thoughts focussed on his work. And now the hope he had imprisoned stood before him, waiting.

The youth was waiting too. He was beginning to show concern that Layle had been silent for so long. In an automatic manner, Layle picked up the youth's hand and kissed it. "I'm glad I can give you pleasure," he said in a low voice. "There's no one who deserves it more."

The youth's smile increased. He was evidently losing all awareness of the pain that must still be coursing through him. Layle let his hands wander over the youth's body, carefully avoiding the points of damage as he increased the youth's arousal. It would not be long now, for either of them. Layle's rhythm increased, and his breath grew hard. He closed his eyes, striving to push back his own pain and the hope that had brought it. His work, he thought; he must concentrate his mind on his work, and on the final duty he must fulfill with this prisoner.

His hands wandered higher. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the youth was aware of the touching and was smiling from it, his expression now dazed from the passion travelling through him. Layle could feel the passion spreading in waves of shivers through the youth's body. Layle's heartbeat increased; the surge of the upcoming wave of desire began to build within him. His hands crept higher and touched the youth's neck.

He knew the exact moment at which the youth realized the betrayal. It came as it always did, with a sudden break in the prisoner's smile, as though a mirror had been shattered. There was a moment during which the youth looked stunned, as though he had been hit on the head. Layle's hands tightened upon the youth's neck, waiting for the scream.

It did not come. Instead, the youth's expression cleared. He looked upon Layle with the eyes of Layle's gentle hope, and he said quietly, "Don't do this."

In the next moment, the wave hit Layle. His hands tightened, through long custom, upon the soft flesh of the neck; he heard the prisoner's breathing stop and the body begin to flail in a useless attempt to escape death. He had no time to wonder whether the youth would use his hands to try to push his executioner back. Wave after wave hit Layle, the pleasure drowning him.

And then suddenly it was gone – every drop of pleasure disappeared. He cried out, his body continuing to pound the youth as though it had not noticed the loss. He felt someone grip him, and he knew without having to look that it was the prisoner, who had escaped.

He heard the hope he had striven to keep captive say softly, "You will not do this. You will leave this place and go to Yclau. There you will ask for sanctuary and request to work in the Eternal Dungeon. You will give up all that you have here: your freedom, your independence, your rapes. Never again will you spend your passion on a prisoner; that is forever gone from your life. Never again will you torture a prisoner to bring pleasure to yourself. Instead, you will take your skills and use them to bring rebirth to others. You will suffer for the prisoners."

His cry of agony filled the cell. He felt his hands slip from the youth's neck, and in the next moment he heard the youth's hard rasping as he struggled his way back to breath and life. Layle was sobbing now, his desire waning for what he now knew would be the last time. Any passion he had in the future would be an act of solitude. He would be alone forever, giving to the prisoners and taking nothing in return. His dark desire was imprisoned.

Within him, he heard the echo of its screams of rage.

Shaking now, barely able to stand on his feet, he caught hold of the youth and heard the young man's intake of breath. Barely aware of what he was doing, he scooped the youth into his arms. The youth was limp, unresisting. Layle carried him into the next room, then laid him down. The youth's eyes were open now, looking up at him. Still shaking, Layle lay down beside the youth and put his arms around him.

"I love you," he said in a broken voice. "I love you, I love you."

"Shhh." The voice was soothing. "Shh, it's all right; it's all over now. Put your head on my shoulder."

He complied with the youth's order, trying to steady himself. Part of him knew that this was the moment at which he should be the one doing the comforting. That had always been his way when around others, but somehow he seldom managed to take this role when he was with Elsdon.

"You're shaking," Elsdon whispered as he cradled Layle. "Are you always this way afterwards? Or did something hurt you in the dreaming?"

"Yes," said Layle, his hand tightening upon Elsdon's. "Something hurt me a great deal. There was a breaking."

Elsdon's breath drew in sharply. Layle felt the blood under the young Seeker's skin pump harder. "Was there a transformation?"

Layle nodded. He was still struggling to break free of the shaking.

He told Elsdon as much as he dared of the final moments of the dreaming – not of the rape, which would never have been countenanced in any Yclau prison, but of the willingness to abuse. Even if Elsdon thought Layle had been remembering his last days at an Yclau prison, the tale made sense. Elsdon was silent a while, then said, "The youth in your dreaming . . ."

He could trust Elsdon to center in upon the greatest danger. "No," he said. "The youth in my dreaming was you. I wasn't dreaming of someone else's pain. I was with a prisoner at the time I made the decision to leave the prison I worked at before, but he was an older man. I arranged afterwards for him to be released. The dreaming had nothing in it of him; everything of the youth that wasn't my own imagining was you."

"How much of me?" Elsdon asked softly. His body was still languorous from the lovemaking as he held Layle in his arms.

"Very little at first. Your looks . . . your gestures . . . It was when you began to speak to me that things changed in the dreaming."

"I'm sorry," said Elsdon. "I'd forgotten your instruction to remain silent."

Layle shook his head. They were still lying together on the bed; outside the cell, the corridors were quiet in the hour before dawn. No dawn would be seen in this underground world. The only light in this room came from the lamps, which had burned low and were casting a soft light onto Elsdon's face.

"You always know what I need better than I do," Layle said. "Earlier in the dreaming, something had been struggling to break through – the part of me that felt revulsion at what I was doing. It couldn't get through; I kept pushing it back. But when you started to speak . . . It was as though this world began to break through more and more. First we talked about your beauty, and then we had that conversation when you insisted that you could relax enough for me to continue, and then you said you had done this for the sake of my enjoyment. And that was the moment at which the breaking occurred." He closed his eyes and shivered, feeling the echo of the pain touch him.

Elsdon's hands stroked him, steadying him. "It was a hard breaking?" he said quietly.

"Yes," Layle replied in a low voice. "Very hard. It had to be, to break me out of what I had made myself into. I remember that, though I'd pushed away the memory of the pain after all these years. If you'll talk to some of the older Seekers, they'll tell you how I was when I first arrived here – 'like a prisoner who was kept on the rack for too long,' one of them said. . . . Well, you know. It hasn't been so long since it happened to you."

Elsdon kissed Layle's brow lightly and shifted his position so that he was lying beside the other man. "Was there anything more of me in the dreaming?"

He nodded. "The voice. The voice of the part of me that broke free at that moment and demanded that I transform myself. It was all symbolic in the dreaming, of course. In reality, I remember making those decisions, but I didn't put them into words. But in the dreaming, you were the one who spoke the words. You bound me at the same moment you freed me."

Elsdon trailed his hand softly over Layle's chest, his lids lowered in concentration at what Layle was saying. It was a Seeker's look. The first time Layle had seen it in a young prisoner he was searching, he had known what Elsdon could be if he was willing to break himself. Now Elsdon said, as he continued the delicate job of binding Layle's wounds, "This never happened in your dreamings before?"

"Never. Always before, the dreamings had ended with the dea— With the darkest part of my desire. And with that darkness would come intense pleasure, but when the pleasure was over I'd feel filthy, as though I had been rolling in my own waste. This time, the pleasure was taken away from me, but afterwards . . . Well, again, you know. You remember what it was like."

Elsdon nodded. "I wish you could have both," he said quietly. "The pleasure at the moment and the joy afterwards. But if you must choose, I'd rather that you have the joy."

Elsdon was silent a while, his ivory skin pale against Layle's skin, which had started dark from his Vovimian blood and had been darkened further in his youth by prolonged nearness to the branding fires. Elsdon curled one of Layle's chest hairs around his finger, then raised his head to look at the High Seeker. "Did you know this would happen?"

"I didn't know what would happen." Layle lifted Elsdon's hand and kissed it. "I was so terribly afraid when we began this, my dear. For years I've succeeded in keeping my dark desire imprisoned, using it to rouse me in my dreamings but never allowing it to touch the real world. When I connected it back to reality, through you . . . I half expected to lose everything. Myself, you, everything in this dungeon I care about—"

Elsdon put his hands lightly over Layle's lips. "It's part of the breaking," he reminded the High Seeker. "It's the most dangerous part, where you risk all for the sake of an unknown good. I thought I would be executed when my breaking occurred. I thought I would lose everything. Instead I gained everything."

"Yet most prisoners are executed," Layle murmured. "The danger of loss is so great. I was so close to it; if you hadn't transformed me in the dream . . . Elsdon, I can't tell you how that dream would have ended if you hadn't transformed me. But it went too far. If failure had come, and the darkness had been let loose on this world, it would have been too much."

Elsdon moved suddenly, leaning over to scoop something from the floor. He laid the black book into Layle's hands. "I don't need to say anything," he said. "It's all here – some of the words are your own. You know it's true. You just need to believe it."

Layle looked down at the Code of Seeking and gave a half-smile. "Bloody blades," he said. "Who's the Seeker-in-Training here, and who's the High Seeker? Are you going to be assigning me prisoners next? Or pointing out the errors I made in this?"

"That's next week," Elsdon said, putting aside the book with a smile.

Layle looked over at the young Seeker; then he groaned. Elsdon turned swiftly back. "What's wrong?"

"Me," Layle said, staring up at the ceiling. "This bloody fool you're lying next to. It's your first time, and here I am, droning on about myself." He turned onto his side and took Elsdon's hand. "How was it for you, my dear, while I was undergoing this wondrous rebirth? I know there was passion – was there pleasure also? And joy?"

Elsdon's gaze wandered up to the ceiling; his smile faded away. "Well," he said quietly, "I admit that I had high expectations beforehand. You know what virgins are like – they hope for the impossible." He turned his head away.

Layle felt fear cut into him. He ignored it, ruthlessly thrusting it away as he would when healing a crying prisoner. He touched Elsdon's cheek, trying to push the face gently back. "Elsdon, what is it? Did I hurt you?"

Elsdon turned his head. He was grinning. "My expectations were too low, it seems. Could we do it again?"

For a moment Layle stared at the youth; then he attacked Elsdon, with hands and teeth and torso. Too late, he remembered the dangers of doing this, but Elsdon was already hooting with glee, laughing as Layle tickled him and nibbled him.

A pounding from the wall adjoining the cell next door finally halted their tumbling play. The neighboring Seeker – in the usual placid manner of dungeon dwellers – had endured a full shift's worth of groans, sobs, and screams, but a chorus of laughter had proved to be the breaking point. Layle and Elsdon collapsed into a pile full of chuckles and spent the next few minutes alternately shushing each other and smothering their chortles upon each other's bodies.

"You," said Layle presently, "are a most unyouthful youth in all matters except the body. You'll have to give this decrepit High Seeker a short space in which to recover himself before we begin another four-hour session."

Elsdon stared at him, his eyes widening with astonishment. "But Layle! We haven't done the best part of my dreamings yet!"

Layle sighed, looking up at the ceiling. Finding no help there, he stared back down at Elsdon. "All right," he said in a level voice. "What part of your dreamings did we miss?"

Elsdon's expression transformed into a quiet smile. "The part where we fall asleep in each other's arms."

The lamps grew dimmer, drawing to their rest. Layle leaned forward and kissed Elsdon's hair lightly as he reached up to remove his own hood. "I can do that. I can do that through a thousand breakings and a thousand rebirths."

He pulled the bedcover over them both.

Deep within Layle Smith, the torturer who dwelt there watched the sleeping High Seeker. He rubbed the spot on his wrists where his chains had been shattered, and he smiled.

It was always amusing to let prisoners think that they had been reprieved from the worst, so that their hopes would rise, only to be battered down at a later point. For now, Layle Smith could be allowed to think that he had transformed his evil desire into good. But his dishonesty with his love-mate had kept the evil alive within him. By the time it occurred to the High Seeker that he must tell Elsdon Taylor who he truly was, the evil would be strong enough to begin imprisoning the man who had imprisoned the torturer all these years. And then the torturer's pleasure would return.

. . . They believe that the seeds of Layle Smith's madness were planted in the previous year, though we may never know what the cause was of that planting.

The strongest evidence for this theory lies in a letter written by Layle Smith. Because the letter exists in fragmentary form, until recently historians have been uncertain as to the letter's date or its meaning. But several scholars have recently advanced the theory that the "evil" referred to in the letter was Layle Smith's approaching madness, and that the letter therefore dates from the early weeks of his illness, before he lost all control of himself.

The letter reads as follows:

"This evil arose out of the greatest good that ever came into my life, which for the past year has brought me joy and peace I never thought to have. I was taught by my old master that good ultimately transforms itself into evil, and it is tempting to think that this is the case here – that I am being destroyed, not by the darkness that had been imprisoned within me for so long, but by the gentle hope that persuaded me to loose the darkness and set it free from its bonds.

"Yet I must hold to the belief which all of us Seekers live by, that evil ultimately transforms itself into good if one continues to battle for that transformation. I grow weaker by the day, and it is hard to hold to this belief. Yet I retain hope that, with the help of those I love, I will show that the Code of Seeking is right and that the torturer I once was is wrong."

—Psychologists with Whips: A History of the Eternal Dungeon.
 
 

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This text, or a variation on it, was originally published at duskpeterson.com as part of the series The Eternal Dungeon. Copyright © 2002-2009 Dusk Peterson. June 2010 edition. Some rights reserved. The text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0). You may freely print, post, e-mail, share, or otherwise distribute the text for noncommercial purposes, provided that you include this paragraph. The author's policies on derivative works and fan works are available online (duskpeterson.com/copyright.htm).