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Rebirth 4

IN TRAINING

Dusk Peterson

The year 356, the fourth month.
 

It is commonly understood by historians that facts which may seem obvious to other societies and times are often obscure to people living in a particular society and time. No doubt this is as true of our own society as it has been of others, which is why the study of history provides a powerful lesson in the danger of accepting the ethical values of one's culture without due examination.

An example of this human failure to recognize societal evils can be found in the fifth revision of the Eternal Dungeon's Code of Seeking. The revision's author, Layle Smith, was without doubt the most foresightful man to hold the title of High Seeker – a man who was able to recognize certain abusive patterns in the handling of criminals in his time, and who could suggest new methods for bringing about justice.

Yet any modern reader of the fifth revision – particularly those of us who work in psychology and owe so much to this pioneering volume on methods of character reform – will recognize that, by introducing new methods to correct past abuses, Layle Smith and his contemporaries opened the door for new abuses – abuses that, in their own way, were just as terrible as those that had taken place before.

History provides such a dark record of humans' blindness that it is refreshing to be able to report that many of the abuses which became possible following the publication of the fifth revision were accounted for and corrected in the sixth revision, which was published two decades later. Unfortunately, we no longer possess the name of the sixth revision's insightful author, nor do we know what events shaped his views. . . .

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

CHAPTER ONE

"What do you want me to do?"

The two men stood in the bedroom. It was morning, but the lamps in the windowless chamber flickered low, for this was the time of rest for them both – the time when their night duties ended and their pleasure began. A signal of this fact could be found in their hoods, which lay, not upon their heads as at all other times, but together in a pile next to the bed.

Layle reached out and smoothed down Elsdon's hair before saying in a low voice, "What do you wish to do?"

Elsdon shook his head. "Love, we've been through this before. What you can enjoy is much narrower than what I can enjoy. It's for you to choose what takes place."

Layle pulled back a stray hair from his love-mate's eyes with a soft stroke of the thumb. "And if I should choose wrong?"

Elsdon laughed. "Layle, you're the High Seeker! If you can guess from the posture of a prisoner you've just met whether you should give him five lashes or ten, you can certainly tell if I dislike something you do."

The High Seeker gave a faint smile but did not respond for a moment, either in word or gesture. His only concession to the informality of the moment, thus far, had been the removal of his hood. He, like the younger man, remained fully clothed in the black uniform of a Seeker.

After a long moment, he leaned over and kissed his love-mate's lips lightly. "I'd like you to take off your clothes, Elsdon."

The hint of a dimple appeared in Elsdon's cheek. "I think I can handle that difficult task. And?"

"Lie down on the bed, on your back. Stay passive, as though you were weary with sleep. Keep your eyes closed, and don't try to respond to anything I do."

Elsdon nodded as though he had just received a new piece of training in his work, then stepped back, his hand already rising to the fastenings on his shirt. Layle watched him strip, moving nothing but his dark green eyes, which slid over Elsdon's body like warm air. Feeling himself begin to shiver with pleasure, Elsdon quickly lay down upon the bed, placing his head on the pillow and closing his eyes.

Moments passed. Faintly through the walls came the sound of people walking through the underground corridors of the Eternal Dungeon, making their way between work and the small living quarters allotted to them. Elsdon, sharing the spacious living quarters of the High Seeker, was luckier than most – in many ways, he thought to himself. A smile crossed his lips.

A light footfall sounded beside him. Involuntarily, Elsdon opened his eyes. Layle was standing beside the bed now. His shirt and his trouser flap were unfastened, but other than that he remained fully clothed – indeed, he had placed his hood back onto his head. Elsdon's gaze began to slide away from the hood, but he remembered in time that Layle could read him too well, and he forced himself to look back. The hood fell like black water down to the shoulders. The face-cloth was raised.

Seeing that, Elsdon felt warmth go through him. It would be much easier for Layle, he knew, if the cloth were down, but the High Seeker knew that it would be correspondingly more difficult for Elsdon to see him in the full uniform of an on-duty Seeker. As always, Layle put the best interests of his prisoner first.

The High Seeker reached forward and tugged at the pillow under Elsdon's head. Forgetting for a moment the instruction to remain limp, Elsdon raised his head, but Layle simply lifted his love-mate's back slightly, pushing the pillow down so that it was under Elsdon's shoulders and neck. Elsdon lay back, his neck now arched so that his head pointed backwards, toward the bars at the head of the bed. He reached up with both hands and took hold of one of the bars, pressing his wrists together as though they were attached to one another. "Shall I position myself like this?" he asked.

"If you wish." Layle's voice had grown colorless, as it often did when he was at his work.

"You could tie me with your belt—"

"No!"

Elsdon had been staring at the bars of the bed. With effort, he lifted his head high enough to be able to see the High Seeker. Layle reached out and brushed the hair back from his eyes, saying gently, "My dear, I know you better than you know yourself. If I were to restrain you in any way – whether with bindings or with a blindfold – it would bring back the memories, and you would suffer. Please cease making that offer to me. —And please cease talking," he added as Elsdon opened his mouth. "It makes it difficult for me to concentrate."

"I'm sorry." Elsdon sank back against the pillow, his neck arching once more. He could see nothing more than the bars. He closed his eyes.

Presently he felt a weight upon him, pressing him down. A momentary spark of panic ate at him; then he forced himself to relax. If he showed the slightest sign of reluctance, Layle would withdraw, as he had done in the past. That fact in itself served to throw back Elsdon's fear, as did the knowledge that he remained free to move his limbs at any moment. Layle did indeed know him; that was what made this dangerous exercise safe.

Layle's body pressed heavier upon him as the High Seeker leaned forward to kiss him. Without preliminary, Layle thrust his tongue into Elsdon's mouth. The soft brush of the High Seeker's hood stroked Elsdon's face. He did his best to remain still, despite this and the plunging tongue.

The tongue withdrew; Layle lifted himself somewhat off Elsdon's body. Then, unexpected in its softness, his lips touched the hollow of Elsdon's neck.

Elsdon drew his breath in sharply as his back arched. Then he froze, wondering whether he had destroyed the illusion that Layle was building. He had not; he felt Layle's response immediately, in the form of hardness pressing against his loins. His own desire correspondingly grew, and he allowed himself to moan when the next kiss came, even though it was on a distinctly prosaic part of his body, his left shoulder.

The next kiss was on the right shoulder, but before Elsdon's desire could wane, Layle's lips journeyed down to the soft skin near the pit of his arm. Elsdon writhed a moment. He felt Layle's hand clasp him hard, pushing him back down onto the bed. There was a moment of uncertainty while his mind strove to decide how to react to this; then he felt Layle's lips upon his left armpit, and the matter was settled.

He tensed slightly, guessing where the next kiss would come, but Layle made no immediate attack upon his nipples. Instead he kissed the skin above the nipples, teasing at the hair there with his teeth, and thrusting his tongue out once more to probe at the skin. His mouth began to suck, pulling the skin toward him. Then the weight lifted abruptly off Elsdon.

A moment later Elsdon felt his legs being separated. Before he had time to worry about what this signified, he felt Layle's mouth upon his thighs, kissing and licking and sucking above each knee. The mouth wandered again, this time into the hollow created by his parted legs, onto the softness of the inner thighs. The top of Layle's hood brushed him higher up. He emitted a whimper.

As though in response, Layle's head retreated. A moment later, the weight lowered down upon him again, carefully slow, and then – with a frustrating avoidance of where Elsdon wanted them most – Layle's lips touched just beneath his nipples.

Layle's mouth proceeded that way for some time, circling its way around the goal in such an agonizingly slow manner that, when the groin was finally reached, Elsdon could not contain himself for long. He cried out, lashing beneath Layle as though he were a leaf being tossed in a storm. Dimly he hoped that he was not destroying the moment for Layle.

It appeared not. When he reached out his hands to the High Seeker, he discovered there was nothing left for him to do except to take Layle into his arms. His love-mate was trembling, as he always did after these sessions. Elsdon spent several minutes soothing him with his hands, as though he were holding a frightened child.

When Layle's shaking finally ceased, Elsdon kissed the top of his head and said, "What were you thinking?"

He felt Layle stiffen, but the High Seeker did not respond. He remained where he was, his head resting upon Elsdon's shoulder, his hand clasped tight around Elsdon's hand.

Elsdon sighed and pulled back, forcing Layle to raise his head. Layle's eyes looked dazed, as though he were a prisoner who had just received a hard beating. It took a moment before his gaze focussed itself.

"Love," Elsdon said firmly, "this won't do. Whatever nightmares you have within you, they can't be as bad as the nightmares I'm beginning to imagine because you won't tell me your dreamings. Nothing you tell me could hurt me as much as you think . . . unless you have taken to dreaming you're my father."

At that, Layle's expression cleared. He leaned forward to kiss Elsdon's lips. "No," he said. "Never that, I promise you."

"Then tell me. You've shared everything else with me; why not this?"

The High Seeker was silent a moment, then pulled off his hood, tossing it onto the floor next to Elsdon's hood. "Not everything. There are aspects of me we've never discussed."

Elsdon waited, but Layle did not speak further, so Elsdon finally said, "Where was I, on the rack?"

The High Seeker's eyes closed, and he gave out a heavy sigh. He removed his hand from Elsdon's. After a moment he opened his eyes and began to speak, keeping his gaze upon the other Seeker. Elsdon recognized the look; it was the scrutiny Layle reserved for prisoners when he was having them beaten.

"You were on the rack," he said quietly. "Already stretched – you were up to level eight. You were beginning to gasp from the constriction of your chest and your consequent difficulty in breathing. You were naked; I was standing at the head of the rack, half-dressed. I leaned forward and began to lick and suck your wounds – the black marks left upon you by the hot poker I had used on you earlier. You moaned as I tortured you with my tongue, but you had reached the point of breaking, and you were too weary to respond in any other manner. I licked all of your wounds, increasing the pain throughout your body. Then I thrust myself into you – first forcing myself into your mouth, so deep that you choked and lost all ability to breathe. I held myself against you for a time that way, watching you begin to strangle from lack of air. Then, when I was satisfied, I withdrew and went to the other end of the rack. I thrust myself into you once more, and this time the pain was so great that you began to scream. You continued screaming as I pounded you over and over, my excitement heightened by the evidence of your agony—"

He stopped abruptly. Elsdon knew why; he could feel the pressure building from Layle's groin. He pretended not to notice, though. After a while he asked, "How did you enter me?"

"In the mouth and—"

"No, I mean how? If I was lying on the rack, my face would have been pointed toward the ceiling – unless you took the trouble to place a pillow under my neck. I suppose you could take me if I was lying flat, but it would be awkward – racks aren't designed to hold two bodies at once. And I can't imagine how you would gain entrance to me at the other end of the rack – unless you turned me over first?"

Layle's expression, by the time he finished this speech, was such a wonder that Elsdon burst out laughing. Reaching forward with his hand, he pushed back the High Seeker's hair from his eyes. "Well, what did you expect me to say, Layle? 'By all the rules of the Code, I'm in bed with a sadist! What a terrible revelation!' You didn't tell me anything I don't already know."

"Knowing that I have these dreamings is one thing," Layle said in a tight voice. "Hearing how I'm imagining you is quite another."

Elsdon gave a half-smile. "Well, I'll confess I'm glad I didn't know at the time; I can't think of anything that would have been more effective at dampening my desire. But hearing it now . . . Would you like to know what I was thinking while you were dreaming all this?"

The hood covered Layle's face once more. Not the cloth hood lying abandoned upon the floor, though. This was a hood that Elsdon had seen many times since Layle first raised his face-cloth to him: a mask that wiped all expression from the High Seeker's eyes and mouth. Layle nodded, a slight jerk of the head.

"I dreamt I was bound to my old bed," Elsdon softly.

He kept his eyes fixed upon Layle, but no expression entered into Layle's eyes. Only the tendons in his neck grew more pronounced.

"I was bound and I was gagged; my throat was raw from screaming all night," Elsdon said, still softly, as though to an animal that might bolt unexpectedly. "I had been struggling for hours to escape, and my wrists and ankles were bleeding. Then I heard a soft step nearby, and I knew that it was my father, come to check upon me – come to receive what mind-sick pleasure he always received from seeing me in pain. He lifted my blindfold, and I saw that it was you."

Still no change came to Layle's face, though his eyes were veiled with liquid light now.

"And then," said Elsdon, taking Layle's hand, "you cut my bonds, and helped me to sit up, and washed and dressed my wounds. You fed me honey to heal the soreness in my throat, and afterwards you placed your cloak around me and held me in your warmth until I had finished crying, and felt at peace."

Layle's eyes closed, but not in time to prevent the loss of one of the tears that had been veiling his eyes. It slipped between his lashes and trailed its way around the curve of his high cheekbone. He said in a voice that was muffled, "How can you trust me so?"

"Because you've given me every reason to trust you," Elsdon replied, his thumb stroking the back of Layle's hand. "You've always been honest with me, Layle, and I know I'm safe with you. You'd never do anything that would hurt me—"

He stopped; Layle had abruptly turned and flung himself off the bed.

The bedroom shared by the High Seeker and his Seeker-in-Training was commodious by the Eternal Dungeon's standards, which meant that it was hardly larger than a water closet. The three strides Layle had taken from the bed had brought him up against the wall, undecorated but for the lamp sputtering above him. He was still for a moment; then, without looking Elsdon's way, he reached up toward the lamp.

Elsdon, whose own quickness of movement could not match Layle's, made his way out of bed and came to stand behind the High Seeker. "Layle, what is it?" he asked quietly. "You're upset about more than our conversation. You've been this way all day, since you came back from seeing the Queen. Did you receive ill news from her?"

Layle finished quenching the dying flame with his fingers. Without turning his head, he said, "Another ambassador to Vovim has been lost."

Elsdon uttered a soft oath under his breath. "He has been imprisoned by the Vovimians?"

"The Queen assumes so. As on the previous occasion, the King of Vovim expressed astonishment that our ambassador did not reach the palace, and he attributed the ambassador's loss to outlaws who roam the barren battlefield on both sides of the border. He has promised to send soldiers to search for our ambassador—"

"Who will find nothing, because the ambassador lies chained in the King's custody." Elsdon momentarily pressed his fists hard against his eyes, as though to wipe away the images in his mind. "The King begged us to send an ambassador to negotiate a peace between our two countries – he begged us twice. Is he mad?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Layle turned finally. Even in the dimness of the remaining light in the room, the tension in his muscles stood out stark. "A sane ruler we could bargain with. But Vovim's King is quite capable of begging us sincerely to send an ambassador one month, and then deciding the next month that our ambassador is a threat to his land and must be eliminated."

Elsdon shook his head slowly, like a man awakening from a nightmare. "Vovim has lost more in this war than Yclau has; east Vovim has been torn to rags by our border defenses. Why do the Vovimian people permit a madman to rule them?"

"Because it would be dangerous to oppose him. Besides" – the High Seeker's voice grew dry – "by Vovimian standards, he is one of the better rulers they have had."

"Barbarians!" Elsdon spat out the word, as though it were venom poisoning his mouth. Then, catching a slight change in Layle's expression, he added, "You called them that yourself, when I asked you about them last year."

"As I recall, we were discussing the King's Torturers." Layle stepped past Elsdon and bent to retrieve his hood from the floor. "Most of the people of Vovim are certainly ignorant in matters known by other countries of the world, but they are not uncultured. The Vovimian language, for example, is so complex that it cannot be fully mastered by anyone except a native."

"I ought to have remembered that," Elsdon said ruefully as Layle adjusted his hood upon his head, leaving his face-cloth lifted. "I had headaches enough trying to learn it."

"I've seen your school records: you received top marks in that subject, and I've no doubt you could make yourself easily understood to a Vovimian. But it would be wrong to underestimate the Vovimians. If nothing else, their Hidden Dungeon is the only dungeon in the world that comes close to rivalling the Eternal Dungeon in its success in breaking prisoners."

Elsdon was silent for a minute. He was watching Layle smooth down the cloth hiding the sides and back of his head, and he was wondering at the meaning of this gesture. Though popular rumor held it that Seekers slept in their hoods, even Layle, wedded though he was to formality, had never gone that far. Ordinarily, at this time of day, he and Elsdon would be lying bareheaded in their bed, preparing to sleep, but now the High Seeker was fastening his shirt and reaching for his belt.

To fill the silence, Elsdon said, "Do you think that's where the ambassadors have been sent? To the Hidden Dungeon?"

"That was the question our Queen asked me after the first ambassador was captured. I told her it was likely; the King wouldn't bother to hand a prisoner over to a lesser prison if he believed the man to be guilty of high crimes. Only the King's Torturers are qualified to handle prisoners in such cases. I advised the Queen to send spies to Vovim to learn what they could."

"They evidently didn't learn enough." Elsdon's voice was tinged with bitterness. "Otherwise, the Queen wouldn't have sent a second ambassador."

Layle stepped toward the bedroom door. "The Queen has a keen mind. It's often hard to say why she acts as she does."

"Well," said Elsdon, catching up with Layle, "at least she has learned her lesson now. We won't lose any more ambassadors to the barbar— To the Vovimians."

Layle glanced back at Elsdon. He said nothing.

Elsdon felt winded, as though he had been thrust to a high level on the rack. He cried, "Layle, no! You can't mean that the Queen is sending another ambassador to Vovim."

"The alternative is more war," Layle said quietly, "and neither of our countries can afford that. If sending a third ambassador could make it possible to save thousands of lives, the Queen considers it worth the gamble."

"Sweet blood," Elsdon swore softly, "I pity the poor man she sends next. —Unless I was wrong about the King's Torturers as well? Is the Hidden Dungeon less barbaric than I'd thought?"

Layle had paused in front of the bookshelves lining the sitting room. Elsdon saw that he was looking at the spines of the books on foreign prisons and dungeons. After a space of time, the High Seeker said in a very soft voice, "The Hidden Dungeon is without a doubt home to the most barbaric, merciless, and depraved torturers in the world."

Elsdon, standing by the door that led to the inner dungeon, was silent a moment. Then he said, "I thought that about the Eternal Dungeon too, until I came here."

"Whatever nightmares you imagined about the Seekers would pale in comparison to what the King's Torturers are like. In every other dungeon of the world, even the least civilized, restraints are placed upon the torturers – primitive rules by the standards of the Code of Seeking, but rules nonetheless. In Vovim's Hidden Dungeon, no such rules exist. The torturers are simply ordered to obtain confessions. The more thorough the confession, the greater their reward. No reward is given if the torturer reports that the prisoner is innocent; on the contrary, such a torturer risks finding himself executed alongside the prisoner. Once the men of conscience have been weeded out from among the King's Torturers, you can imagine what sort of men are left to search the prisoners." Layle turned. In his hand was an open book, and upon its pages lay drawings of dozens of instruments of torture. The heading below the illustration read, "A partial collection of Vovimian instruments."

Elsdon lifted his gaze from the page and emitted a long sigh. "And our ambassadors lie in those men's hands. Can't the Queen send soldiers to rescue them? She has sent raiders over the border before."

"It would help if she knew where to send them." Layle's voice turned dry once more.

Elsdon bit his lip. "Vovim's dungeon really is hidden, then? How could it remain so, after all these centuries?"

"It has not always been hidden." Layle let the book drop from his hand onto a table nearby. It hit the table with a thud, nearly obscuring the slim black volume below it. "At one time, Vovim's dungeon was as easy to find as its many prisons. Elsdon, if you woke from your sleep and found that our dungeon was filled with dozens of Yclau folk who had fought their way past the daggers and whips of our guards to raid the dungeon and rescue their relations – even the relations who had committed crimes against them – what would you conclude?"

"That our treatment of prisoners was so terrible that even the victims of our prisoners would brave death to save the prisoners from us." Elsdon's voice was quiet.

Layle nodded without shifting his eyes from Elsdon. "Twenty years ago, Vovim's dungeon underwent such a raid; many guards and a number of torturers and their apprentices and journeymen were killed by the raiders. The King was not pleased. Afterwards, he took measures to ensure that this would not happen again. Tell me, what is the distinguishing feature of Vovim's lesser prisons?"

Elsdon suddenly became aware, as he had not been before, that he was naked. He wished desperately that he had followed Layle's lead and at least put his hood back on. It was clear from Layle's tone that, in his usual abrupt manner, he had switched from treating Elsdon as his love-mate to treating him as a Seeker-in-Training. Stiffening himself, and trying not to think what an absurd figure he must appear to be, Elsdon said, "They can't be distinguished from one another. All of the prisons have an identical layout and identical equipment."

Layle nodded, in the same manner as he always did when Elsdon correctly recited back his lessons. "That is a reflection of Vovim's culture, which values conformity over independence of mind. Can you remember any other important fact about Vovimian prisons?"

Elsdon had to think a while before he replied, "Except for the keeper of each prison, Vovimian prison workers don't receive permanent assignments. They are constantly transferred from prison to prison, lest they become too attached to any long-term prisoners."

"That provided the King with the solution he needed," said Layle. "Following the advice that one of his senior torturers gave him, he hid his dungeon where it could not be found. Every few months, during one of the periodic transfers, all of the workers of one of the lesser dungeons are replaced by new workers. These new workers are, as it happens, the King's Torturers, but neither the prison's long-term prisoners nor anyone from the surrounding town and countryside are aware of this fact. Only the keeper of the prison knows, and if he should tell anyone that his prison has become the Hidden Dungeon, he knows well that his life will be short. And so the King's Torturers are able to do their work on any prisoners the King sends them, unmolested by the prisoners' relations, who have no idea where their kinfolk have been sent. After a few months, another transfer takes place, the prison that has been the Hidden Dungeon returns to its old purpose, and the Hidden Dungeon finds a new home."

"And so the ambassadors could be anywhere in Vovim's hundreds of prisons," Elsdon concluded.

Layle's gaze remained fastened on the book of torture upon the table – or perhaps it was on the black volume that lay at the bottom of the pile. "I told the Queen that I thought there was little hope that the first ambassador was still alive after all this time, and the second is likely to be dead before her soldiers can reach him. Even the slowest of the King's Torturers takes no more than three weeks to finish his job, and the second ambassador disappeared a fortnight ago. What I've been able to tell her of the Hidden Dungeon has concerned her, though – that, and the information she has obtained from the upcoming prison conference."

Elsdon's eyes widened at this statement. "The Queen is interested in prison reform?"

Layle lifted his gaze then and gave a faint smile. "She is a native of Yclau. The prison reform movement began in this country – in this very dungeon – and our Code continues to pave the path for other dungeons and lesser prisons. If, as we hope, the United Order of Prisons decides next month to adopt the Code of Seeking as its standard by which to reform each country's prison manuals—"

"Then Yclau will have more power over other lands. Of course." Elsdon passed his hand over his forehead. Thoughts of political manipulation always strained him, and he was only able to follow Layle this far because he had spent the past year witnessing the High Seeker's deft maneuvers to avoid being trapped in the political schemes that wound their devious way around anyone with his power. "So," said Elsdon slowly, "the Queen wants prison reform extended, not only to the member countries of the United Order of Prisons, but even to Vovim, because that will allow our queendom to have more power over the Vovimians. That may help to bring us victory in the war with Vovim."

"And will bring more humane conditions to the Vovimian prisoners," Layle said quietly. "The Queen is not unmindful of that aspect of the matter; it has been in her thoughts for many years. But this is a particularly apt time for her to pursue the subject. Vovim's King, though he will not allow his prison workers to join the United Order of Prisons, has agreed to host next month's international prison conference, in hopes of convincing the world that Vovim is a civilized country."

"So the Queen will use the two ambassadors' abductions as an excuse to have her third ambassador demand reform in the Vovimian prisons. Yes, I see." Elsdon decided that Layle was right: the Queen was too keen-minded a woman to second-guess. He stared at the black volume under Layle's fingers for a moment. Then his head jerked up.

"But, Layle," he said breathlessly, "if the ambassador is to speak to Vovim's King about prison reform, he must know something on the subject."

Layle said nothing. His expression was so featureless that his face-cloth might as well have been in place.

Elsdon felt a shiver rustle the hairs on his skin, and he knew that it was not due to the fact that he was standing naked in a cave that kept a year-round autumn cool. He had grown used to the climate easily, having been raised in a household where he was not permitted a fire in his bedroom. The chill came from the look in Layle's eyes.

"You're the new ambassador," Elsdon said flatly.

Layle's eyes remained as cool as before. "No. You are."

Elsdon felt the air hit the back of his throat; he released it more slowly. Over the pounding of his heart, he said, in as light a manner as he could manage, "So when do I leave?"

Layle's eyes closed. His hand gripped convulsively the black cover of the Code of Seeking; so tight was his grip that the book threatened to bend under his grasp.

Elsdon moved forward quickly and laid his hand upon Layle's. "Love," he said softly, "there's nothing to worry about. I know that the Queen wouldn't have thought to choose me, a Seeker-in-Training. You must have recommended me to her. And I know that you wouldn't send me or any other Seeker unless it was safe. You'd go yourself."

Layle pulled himself back slowly from Elsdon's touch. For a moment more he stared down at the copy of the Code; then that too he released. His gaze rose to Elsdon's.

"I volunteered to go," he said in a rigid voice. "The Queen would not permit me."

Elsdon paused before saying, "I can see that she couldn't spare her High Seeker—"

"She would spare her own heir if need called for it. She will not send me to Vovim because, eighteen years ago, a sentence of death was placed against me there when I fled for refuge to Yclau, thus breaking my oath of loyalty as the King's Torturer."

His mother had been a gentle-born Yclau woman who had held the misfortune to live in west Yclau during the years when Vovimian raiders spilled over the border most frequently. She was nineteen when the spoilers took her town, killing the inhabitants and bringing back with them the riches of the town: coins and jewels and young women.

She was luckier than most. Her rapist did not share her with the other soldiers, and when a truce was called the following year, he did not abandon her in the wasteland of the battlefield but instead took her home with him, going so far as to install her in a small cottage he owned near his house. He visited her there at intervals, until he died from lingering wounds in the fourth year of the truce.

The soldier's widow promptly threw the young Yclau woman out of the cottage, leaving her with barely the clothes on her back. Many miles of foot travel lay between that town in east Vovim to the Yclau village she had come from, and the young woman had no kin left to welcome her home. Apparently, though, she gave no thought to returning to Yclau, for by that time she had given birth to a mixed-blood child.

The boy soon lost all memory of his father. Thanks to his mother, he spoke flawless Yclau, but thanks in part to his father, he spoke equally flawless Vovimian. He grew up thinking of himself as Vovimian while he played among the children of his east Vovimian town, acquiring their ways of thought.

When he was ten his mother died, worn down by the struggle of working to keep herself and her son alive. Her last words were instructions to her son on how to reach the Yclau border safely, but he paid no heed. Instead, he took the path that many Vovimian orphans did: he joined a band of street children.

The children kept themselves alive through petty thefts. Their newest recruit impressed them early on with his daring and resolution in such raids. But the time came – perhaps inevitably – when he and the other members of the band quarrelled over how severe their measures should be in conducting the thefts. He was thrown out of the band at age twelve and forced to make his own way in the world until, three years later, one of the King's Torturers took interest in him and decided to make the boy his apprentice.
 

CHAPTER TWO

Sunlight poured down upon Elsdon. Standing still, he lifted his face to it, drinking in the rays filtered through the crystalline ceiling.

He wondered sometimes where the crystal rock lay in the lighted world above. In a secluded courtyard of the royal palace that sprawled over the Eternal Dungeon? In an alleyway of the surrounding city, unnoticed except by prowling cats? He had amused himself one day by lying on the floor and watching the ceiling while guards and Seekers patiently stepped over the newest and youngest Seeker imprisoned in the Eternal Dungeon.

No darkness had passed over the lighted crystal except for the broad darkness of cloud; no footsteps had marred the passage of light. All day Elsdon had lain there, napping sometimes, as this was his time of sleep. Whenever he woke, he would watch the light with a fixed gaze, seeing how its intensity changed as the hours passed and the sun shifted in the sky.

The sun itself he never saw; nor would he ever see it again. Or so he had thought.

A shadow touched him, and he turned to see Mr. Sobel leaning over the chair where the High Seeker sat, in order to hand Layle a sealed letter. Elsdon had just time enough to see that the seal upon the letter was of royal gold; then Layle slipped the letter into the inner pocket of his shirt and asked, "Are you ready for the conference?"

Mr. Sobel flicked a glance at Elsdon. "The Queen has briefed me on what will be expected of me. Though I imagine that, when I arrive in Vovim, I'll spend most of my time answering questions from other delegates on what it's like to work under the most famous torturer in the world. . . . Unless, perhaps, they have met you already?"

"I doubt it." Layle lifted his drink and slid the cup's straw under the face-cloth of his hood. He sipped from it before saying, "I've had a look at the list of delegates, and none of their names are familiar. None of those prison workers have made consultation visits to the Eternal Dungeon. For that very reason, though, you're likely to endure a great deal of scrutiny. I suggest that you keep your mouth closed and devote your time to listening. You'll learn more that way."

Mr. Sobel nodded. His hand touched lightly the coiled whip at his hip as he flicked another glance at Elsdon. Watching the guard take his leave, Elsdon thought to himself that Mr. Sobel had probably already learned a great deal during his eighteen years working with Layle. And indeed, in the next moments, Mr. Sobel began to make his way to the other guards and Seekers who were standing or relaxing in chairs near to Layle and Elsdon. The men nodded in response to whatever quiet comment Mr. Sobel made, and within a few minutes, all of the chairs near Layle and Elsdon had been emptied, permitting Layle to engage in private conversation while enjoying the rare luxury of feeling warm sunlight on his body.

Elsdon glanced about the room, at the tables and chairs and the bar stand where a guard took his turn giving out drinks. No outer dungeon workers were here today. They were rarely seen here in any case, since only guards and Seekers were normally permitted in this common room. Indeed, the room had been designed primarily for the Seekers alone, since they were the only people in the dungeon who were otherwise deprived of sunlight.

"Blackstone," said Elsdon abruptly.

Layle, sipping at his drink again, raised his eyebrows; Elsdon could barely see the movement through the eye-holes in the High Seeker's hood.

"That's where your records stated you came from," Elsdon explained. "They said you'd been transferred from duties at Blackstone Prison."

"Ah, yes, I'd forgotten." Layle laid the drink down upon the wood of the common-room table, marked with the stains of dozens of Seekers' cups. "That was the name of the prison where the Hidden Dungeon was housed when I left it. As it happens, there are several prisons in Yclau named Blackstone as well. Nobody has ever bothered to ask me which one I worked at."

He kept his voice low as he spoke. Elsdon found himself twisting his neck to look at the nearest group of guards, who were taking no notice of the conversation. Turning his head took Layle out of his vision; Elsdon's own hood, he had discovered, was as effective a barrier to sight as blinders on a horse. It made it easier for him to understand why Layle had developed the habit of keeping his eyes fixed upon whomever he was speaking to.

Looking back at the High Seeker, he said quietly, "No one else knows?"

"The Queen knows," Layle replied, leaning back in his seat, "and her Secretary, and the Codifier and Mr. Bergsen. My predecessor to this title knew, before his death."

"But no one else knows the full truth about you."

"No one in Yclau." Layle made the faintest of pressures upon the final word. He spoke the words in Yclau perfectly; his accent was that of a high-born gentleman from west Yclau.

After a moment, the High Seeker leaned forward and said, "You don't appear surprised."

"I suppose I'm not," Elsdon replied slowly. "It provides the answer to a mystery that had puzzled me. You told me when we first met last year that you had worked as a torturer for twenty years. You're always exact in your statements, yet I learned later that you'd only worked in the Eternal Dungeon since you were eighteen. That left three years unaccounted for, and I found it hard to believe that any lesser prison would train a fifteen-year-old in torture."

"Vovimian apprenticeships begin much earlier," Layle replied. "Some of the boys I worked with in the Hidden Dungeon were younger than I."

"Yes, I understand."

During the silence that followed, cups clanked as the barman cleared them away from tables. The room was beginning to empty. Seekers and guards from the night shift were drifting back to their rooms for bed, while the day guards and Seekers were already at their work.

Layle said softly, "Do you?"

Elsdon nodded. "I do now. I always wondered that about you – how you'd become a sadist. I knew how it was that I became a murderer: my father molded me into that form through his abuse. Not that that was any excuse for what I did, but I could not have developed the temptation to murder if it hadn't been for my father. Now I know what it was that made you the way you are. The King's Torturers took you when you were still young and impressionable. They corrupted you into an instrument of evil—"

He stopped; Layle had risen to his feet and was staring toward the door of the Seekers' common room. Elsdon looked over to it quickly, but no one stood there. He turned his gaze back to the High Seeker, who was staring blindly forth.

After a while Layle said, "I was not a passive instrument."

"No more than I was blameless in the murder of my sister. I know that, Layle; I understand that you believe you have wrongdoings to atone for. You told me that long ago, that you had undertaken deeds at your last workplace which you regretted. But, love, you showed me that I couldn't hold the full guilt of my sister's murder. If my father hadn't instilled violent feelings within me, I would never have been tempted into acting on those feelings. You mustn't let yourself be weighed down by needless guilt, High Seeker. That's a lesson you taught me."

Layle, standing in sunlight and staring into darkness, made no reply. Elsdon sighed and tried once more. "Love, I called you a sadist, but you're a sadist in your dreamings only. You've never allowed yourself to dwell in private pleasure on a real prisoner's pain—"

"Some of my dreamings are based on my memories of the Hidden Dungeon."

It was a shock that beat hard through Elsdon's body. A minute passed before he could catch his breath, and during all that long minute, Layle continued to stare blankly forth into space. Some of the Seekers and guards in the room were beginning to notice. Elsdon saw that a number of them were muttering to each other, with evident uneasiness in their postures.

Finally, Elsdon said, "I wished you'd told me before, Layle. I didn't know you were carrying that guilt upon you. I can see how it would have happened, though. If the Vovimian torturers are as terrible as you say, some of them must have tortured for the sake of pleasure, and you being young as you were, that must have impressed itself upon you at the time. It would be hard for you now to think back at such times without remembering the pleasure the King's Torturers felt, and that would lead to— Well. All I'm trying to say is that this is in the past. You've been reborn since then, love; you've lived a different life since you came to the Eternal Dungeon. You've never allowed yourself to receive pleasure from a prisoner's pain since you became a Seeker, not unless your pleasure could in some way benefit the prisoner. So please, don't allow the darkness of your past to overwhelm the light of what you have become."

Still Layle did not speak. The mutterings were growing louder now. Elsdon could see that the barman was talking with one of the senior Seekers, evidently consulting him over how to quell the disruption. Elsdon wondered whether he ought to speak of this to Layle.

Then the High Seeker turned away abruptly. As the mutterings died into silence, he said quietly, "This isn't the proper place for us to talk." Without looking again at Elsdon, he strode toward the door.

A path opened for him as he walked forward. No one spoke to him.

They ended up in the rack room. Elsdon wasn't particularly surprised; Layle had brought him here on many occasions during his nine months of training. Elsdon suspected that was an exercise in self-control for the High Seeker, since it was in this room that the High Seeker had first let Elsdon guess Layle's love for him.

Elsdon knew why it had happened here, of course. He glanced at the High Seeker, but Layle's thoughts seemed to be focussed on his work. He had flipped up his face-cloth once the door was closed and was frowning as he tugged at the great wheel at the head of the rack.

"Bloody controls," he said. "I don't know why we bother to use precise machinery if it's going to break down half the time we're using it. We might as well revert back to using Vovimian-style racks."

Elsdon tried to remember what the difference was, but he was distracted by the sight of Layle going down on his knees before the rack, as though in obeisance to an altar of worship. After a moment, Elsdon realized that the High Seeker was examining the rack's gears.

"May the torture-god of hell rack forever the idiot who designed this—"

Layle had the most colorful collection of oaths of anyone whom Elsdon had ever met. It had never occurred to Elsdon to wonder why. The High Seeker prostrated himself in the dirt, rolled onto his back, and pulled himself into the shallow space between the floor and the rack.

"Take it up one-quarter for me." Layle's voice emerged hollow from his hiding place.

Elsdon stepped forward and spent a moment checking that the locking mechanism was off before he gently tugged the wheel over the great notch that normally held it in check. The wheel spun forward without any urging on his part, its complex system of gears and weights compelling it to spin until it was locked. The straps at the top of the rack twitched.

A moment later, Elsdon felt the soft tug at his hands that told him he had reached the first quarter of the first of ten marks. He held the wheel in place and pushed in the locking mechanism, but when he released the wheel he found that it had somehow slipped out of the lock. It drifted forward, making the straps dance on the rack until he had jerked the wheel back down to its starting place, past the notch.

More oaths emerged from under the rack; he guessed that Layle must be invoking every god in Vovim to his cause. Elsdon felt a ball grow suddenly hard in his chest. "Layle," he said, "do you believe in rebirth?"

Layle emerged from under the rack, his hood askew. He pulled himself into a sitting position, took off the hood, and spent a moment wiping the dust from it before saying, "Yes, of course. Why do you ask?"

"I wasn't sure. Vovimians don't believe in rebirth. . . ."

Layle placed the hood on his head, checked a moment that the face-cloth was still clipped out of the way, then rose and matched his gaze to Elsdon's. "I am Yclau," he said softly. "By right of the Queen's mercy to me and by my own choice, if not by birth."

"Does that mean you no longer believe in the gods of Vovim?"

A quirk of a smile appeared at the edge of Layle's mouth. "Let's just say that, when the torture-god calls me to his hell-dungeon to pay for what I have done in this life, I plan to dispute his right to my soul. . . . Will you take a look underneath this monstrosity that dares to call itself a machine, and tell me whether my eyes deceive themselves?"

Elsdon squirmed his way under the rack. Coughing against the dust in the darkness there, he said, "You couldn't have raped me, you know."

A silence followed. "What are you saying?" Layle asked.

"In your dreaming. You couldn't have raped me from the head of the rack. The wheel's in the way."

He heard what might have been a choke from Layle, and might merely have been a wry laugh. Elsdon's thoughts had wandered away to the gears he felt under his fingers. After a moment, he cried, "Bloody blades!"

"It's as bad as I thought, then?"

"Whichever blacksmith fixed this last time unhooked the gear to the locking mechanism! If you take the wheel up, it can't lock. The wheel will just keep spinning till it reaches ten."

"It will spin higher than that," Layle said grimly. "These racks are designed to go up to thirty."

"Thirty!" Startled, Elsdon pushed himself out from under the rack and peered up at the High Seeker from the floor. "But I thought the racks here only went up to the tenth level. They're dangerous enough at that level."

"We only take the racks up to ten. But the locking mechanism is produced to a uniform design, so that it can be sold to a variety of countries. The torturers in the Hidden Dungeon need a locking mechanism that will still be of use when they place the prisoner at level thirty."

Elsdon stood up, wiped his dusty hands on his trousers, and pulled his hood free of the tangle it had made in the back of his head. He said, "A prisoner would be torn asunder if he were raised to so high a level."

"Yes."

The High Seeker said nothing more. Elsdon forced a humorless smile onto his face and said, "Are you telling me this to warn me of what the King's Torturers are like? Or to try to scare me from going on this mission?"

"The former. We both know that you wouldn't need to be raised to level thirty to break in the hands of a torturer."

Elsdon looked past Layle, beyond the wheel to where the straps lay limp upon the bed of the rack. He felt a shiver go through him, and he nodded.

He raised his eyes to Layle at last and said, "If you're looking for someone to withhold secrets under torture, I'm the worst person you could have selected for this mission."

Layle shook his head. "If the Queen wanted you to keep secrets, she would never have chosen you. Your mission is a simple one: to show the Vovimians the difference between barbaric care of prisoners and humane care of prisoners."

"By introducing them to the Code of Seeking, you mean?" Elsdon looked over to the bench at the back of the room. It held a slim black volume, as did the benches in all of the rack rooms – a visible reminder to the Seekers and guards who worked here of who their true master was.

"Well," Elsdon said, "I have the Code memorized – more than memorized. I'm not an eloquent speaker, though."

"You won't need to be, with the King," said Layle in a dry manner. "When you enter his presence, he'll either decide that you're the savior of his people or that you're a tool of the torture-god. Either way, he won't care how well you give your speech."

"And if he should decide I'm a villain and send me to his torturers? Do I tell them about the Code?" Elsdon tried to speak lightly, but he could feel his muscles knotting.

Layle's hands slid onto Elsdon's shoulders. Elsdon's breath hissed in with surprise. The High Seeker rarely touched him outside of their living cell; most certainly he had taken care never to touch Elsdon in this place. Elsdon knew why.

"If the worst should come, and you should be placed in the unmerciful hands of the King's Torturers," Layle said softly, "I know, without any doubt at all, that your presence there will transform the Hidden Dungeon. Perhaps not as far as all of us in Yclau would like, but I believe that your suffering will make a difference to the prisoners in Vovim. Otherwise, I would not send you there."

Elsdon could not speak for a time. Then he said, in a voice that trembled too much for his liking, "If I manage to persuade the Vovimians to reform their prisons . . . will you be willing to complete my training and let me become a true Seeker?"

Layle's hands fell from Elsdon's shoulders. The High Seeker took a step backwards. "You could have finished your training by now, if you'd wished."

Elsdon forced himself to laugh. "You mean, if I'd been willing to finish my training under Mr. Chapman. Layle, you're the only person in the Eternal Dungeon who doesn't understand why I chose to wait till you were returned to your duties before undertaking the final weeks of my training. Everyone else here knows that you're giving me the best training I could receive."

Layle said nothing. Instead, he turned and began playing with the wheel control.

Elsdon said, "I thought at first that you wouldn't end my training because you didn't think I could do well on the final part . . . the torture."

Layle shook his head without looking up. "All that's asked of you for that final training is that you be willing to endure whatever pain any of your prisoners might have to endure. Whether you do so well or ill is of no matter. It is the willingness that matters."

"If that's so, then why won't you take this from me?" Elsdon's hand rose to the red strip of cloth lining the edge of his hood, marking him as a Seeker-in-Training. "What is it that makes me ill-qualified to be a true Seeker?"

Layle reached under the wheel, adjusted something, and said, "Innocence."

Elsdon gave an incredulous laugh. "You think I'm still innocent? After all I've been through?"

Layle sighed and leaned his left arm upon the wheel. The fingers of his right hand travelled down to stroke the controls. "Elsdon, in certain ways you arrived in this dungeon with less innocence than most of the men and women who walk through the gates above. Thanks to your father, you knew evil to its depths. But you are still inclined to trust too much—"

"Because I trust you, you mean." Elsdon strove to push back the impatience in his voice. "Layle, that's not going to change, no matter how long you train me."

"I'm not asking you to utterly distrust your prisoners, but simply to be aware of their limitations: to know how much evil they are capable of committing, and to take that into account in your searching. If you ask more of your prisoner than he or she can give, the results are likely to be bitter for you both. You have no idea how, in the past hour of our conversation, you have revealed yourself to be entirely unsuited to take on the full responsibilities of a Seeker."

It came like a blow across Elsdon's face. He had to close his eyes a moment before opening them and saying, with throat tight, "So teach me. That's your job."

Layle's hand slid up to cover his face. Then his hand fell, his shoulders straightened, and he turned. "I am not a god," he said. "I cannot be sure of what will happen to you in Vovim. Are you certain that you wish to undertake this mission?"

"I took an oath to help the prisoners," Elsdon said softly. "Even if they're Vovimian prisoners, I think the oath still binds me."

He could not tell, from Layle's expression, whether he had said the right thing. To break the awkward silence, he added, "Besides, what Seeker wouldn't welcome the chance to visit the lighted world for a while?"

Layle raised his eyebrows, and another thought came home to Elsdon. "My death sentence," he said. "It's still active. The magistrates won't invoke it, if you release me from here for this mission?"

Layle shook his head. "When the Magisterial Guild agreed to allow you to train to be a Seeker, they knew that your duties might require you, on a rare occasion, to re-enter the lighted world. The Queen has already suspended your sentence for the interval of this mission."

"Oh." Elsdon could guess that was Layle's doing. He felt, as he often did, that he was miles behind the High Seeker in a path that Layle had long since trail-blazed. He struggled in his mind for a more intelligent question to ask. "Is there anything you can tell me about the Hidden Dungeon that would be of help to me?"

Layle appeared to worry at the question, like a hound tearing at a bone. Then he said, "The King's Torturers are prisoners."

Elsdon waited to see whether Layle would add anything to this obvious statement. At last he said, "Yes?"

"Greater prisoners than we are. Seekers are eternally confined to the dungeon, but by our own choice; even you exercised some choice in the matter. The King's Torturers have no choice. They are simply told that they will be torturers, and they know that if they fail to satisfy the King with their work, then they will be swept away in one of the periodic 'cleansings' the King undertakes upon the Hidden Dungeon every few years. New rules – such as the Code could be – mean nothing to the torturers except that those rules provide new excuses by which the King might execute them. These are men who have no incentive to change their work conditions, and every incentive to continue in the traditions of breaking that have worked for them in the past. Don't underestimate the amount of opposition to reform that you will find amongst the Vovimian torturers."

Elsdon nodded, but he found himself saying, "I can't imagine how even the most hardened torturer could fail to be moved by what he read in the Code of Seeking."

"You'd be surprised," said Layle, his dry manner returning, but within his voice was a new note. He glanced, seemingly involuntarily, toward the black volume at the other end of the room.

Elsdon found himself standing by the volume before he knew he had stirred. He picked up the book, brushing his hand over the soft leather and the worn edges of the pages. Opening the book carefully, he flipped to the page he wanted, and read aloud, "'It is necessary that a guilty prisoner should be broken and that the prisoner should be made to acknowledge his fault. But after the breaking must come the healing, so that the prisoner may be made to see how, in whatever time he has left in his life, he can transform what was evil into good. Any man who can accomplish this task may be rightly termed a true Seeker, for he has learned the path by which to seek men's souls, and to prepare them for rebirth.'" Elsdon raised his head. Smiling at Layle, he said, "That's my favorite passage. You wrote it; it only appears in the fifth revision of the Code."

Layle came forward slowly and took the book into his hands. He held it a minute, looking down at the neat green print on the page, then said in a low voice, "Ordinary men ensure their immortality by begetting and raising children. Those of us who are Seekers, and who have taken vows that bar us from marriage, must find another way to be remembered. Perhaps it is vanity on my part, but I would like to think that, when the history of the Eternal Dungeon is finally written, I will receive a sentence or two because my name appears on the title page of this book." He glanced at Elsdon and then looked quickly down at the book again, saying, "My own favorite passage is a sentence that I didn't write; it was there from the beginning. 'A Seeker must be willing to suffer for the prisoners.'"

Elsdon had not laid his hand aside when Layle took the book. He allowed his palm to move forward and cover Layle's hand. "You helped shape that sentence," he said softly. "The word used in the original version of the Code was 'torturer.'"

Layle turned his gaze slowly toward Elsdon again. At sight of his eyes, Elsdon felt his breath hitch within his throat. The High Seeker's eyes had turned glassy, like that of a horse which is sickly or blind. His pupils were wide, moving slightly at the sight of something beyond this room. His hand turned slack under Elsdon's palm.

Layle dropped the Code.

Elsdon caught the book before it reached the floor. In the same moment, the High Seeker began to blink. Elsdon turned his face away before Layle should see his expression. He had witnessed this look in Layle's eyes many times during the twelve months he had known the High Seeker – more times, probably, than any other person in the dungeon. Apart from the dungeon healer and the Codifier, Elsdon alone knew what it was that Layle saw in those moments of unseeing which so unnerved the other inhabitants of the dungeon.

Such was Layle's dark reputation that the other inhabitants no doubt imagined that their High Seeker was relishing visions of unimaginable horrors, dwelling with delight upon thoughts of prisoners screaming hopelessly for mercy.

Elsdon only wished this weren't the case. Setting the book aside, he tried to remember all that usually accompanied that look, when Layle and he were alone together: the gentle touches, the loving caresses. It was easy enough for Elsdon to think of such things when lying upon a soft mattress and pillow.

Not when standing next to an instrument of torture. He turned back to Layle, who, in his usual manner, was pretending that the moment of dreaming had not occurred.

"If you have need of help while you're in Vovim, send word to Mr. Sobel at the prison conference," the High Seeker said. "I'll be too far away for you to reach me in an emergency, but the conference is being held near the King's palace, and Mr. Sobel may be able to offer you advice. Oh, and you'd best adjust your sleep schedule – you'll be awake during the daytime from now on. I've arranged for you to meet with the Queen this afternoon; then you'll sleep in the palace overnight. Your carriage to Vovim leaves at dawn tomorrow."

After a moment, Elsdon realized that Seekers should not gape. He said, "So soon? I thought . . . Well, I can spend the rest of this morning with you, at least."

"No. I have to see the Codifier about having this rack mended, before we should have need of it. We'll talk when you return."

Layle had turned away and was about to walk to the door when Elsdon caught hold of him. For a moment it appeared that the High Seeker would jerk himself away from his subordinate's grasp. Then he allowed himself to be pulled forward into Elsdon's arms and into Elsdon's kiss.

When Elsdon finally drew back, he found that Layle's eyes were closed. The High Seeker's jaw muscles were tightened, as though in pain. His lips moved soundlessly.

"Layle?"

The High Seeker's eyes opened. For a moment it appeared that he would speak the words he had mouthed. Then he said, in the same formal voice as before, "We'll talk when you return."

He walked away, before Elsdon could gather his wits to remind his love-mate that his return was by no means certain.

The High Seeker had reached the door and was pulling down the face-cloth of his hood when Elsdon cried, "Layle!"

The High Seeker turned. He was too far from the single lamp in the room for Elsdon to be able to read the expression in his eyes, but his posture had returned to the formality with which he held himself through most of his waking hours. He waited in silence.

"You'll be remembered by future generations for more than your revision of the Code," Elsdon said. "You know what they say: What men are is more important than what men do."

The High Seeker stepped back. His hand found the latch to the door without seeking it. He said, in a voice so soft that it barely reached Elsdon, "Oh, I hope not. I have prayed for two decades that those words are not true."

And then he was gone.
 

CHAPTER THREE

Three weeks later, as Elsdon Taylor stood shivering in a cell of the Hidden Dungeon, he found himself regretting that he had not seen the sun.

He had seen little at all since his final talk with Layle. His meeting with the Queen had been brief; she had done no more than to tell him to follow whatever orders the High Seeker had given him. Before the sun rose the next day, Elsdon had been placed within a carriage with drawn shades, seated between two of the Queen's finest bodyguards.

He wondered what had happened to those bodyguards, and to the carriage driver; then he decided that he did not want to know. The attack on the carriage had occurred while he was asleep, worn out by the long journey in which he had not been permitted to leave the carriage even to sleep or refresh himself. It was like living in a cramped cell, and it had taken all of Elsdon's resolve to remember that he held the high honor of being an ambassador for the Queen of Yclau. He was not a prisoner, he had told himself. He must remember that, and refrain from screaming.

He lost his resolve the night of the attack. He remembered little except his own shrieks as he was blindfolded and bound. Then his attackers dealt with his screams by knocking him on the head, and when he awoke, sick and dizzy, he was here in this cell.

The King of Vovim, it seemed, had made his judgment of the new ambassador without even seeing him.

Pressing his folded arms against his chest in an attempt to stop his shivering, Elsdon wished he had been permitted to keep his own clothes. It was not merely that the thin, sleeveless prison uniform he had been given was colder than his old Seeker's uniform. He missed his hood. He would have given anything to have worn the cloth that hid the expressions on his all-too-revealing face.

He stole another glance at the man before him, wondering whether he would respond favorably to a description of the Code of Seeking. Elsdon doubted it. The man was built like an ogre: broad chest, muscle-bound arms and legs, hands that looked as though they cracked prisoners' bones daily. The dagger sheathed at his hip seemed superfluous. To complete the effect of barbarity, his face was covered with a mass of hair that trailed down to the center of his chest. Elsdon had seen beards on prisoners – depriving male prisoners of a barber was one of the ways in which Seekers made the prisoners feel vulnerable – but he had never met anyone who willingly adopted such a savage appearance.

The torturer's voice was surprisingly mild when he finally spoke. "Well," he said, "this is a pleasant change. I've never broken a Seeker before."

Elsdon felt his shivering increase. He clutched his arms harder to his chest. "I'm innocent of any crime."

At this announcement, the Vovimian smiled. He had high cheekbones, such as Elsdon was accustomed to associating with Layle, and his eyes were bright and merry. "Try reciting to me the Vovimian alphabet next," he suggested. "Or a nursery rhyme. I might find that to be more of a lesson."

Elsdon took a deep breath in an effort to steady his heartbeat. "If you know that I'm innocent, why are you searching me?"

The torturer clucked his tongue as he placed his hand lightly against the rough-hewn stone of the cell wall. "If you tell anyone here that I hold such a sentiment, I'll call you a liar and have you racked. However, if you would care for a suggestion . . . I think you should delve deeply into your soul and find a crime you have committed. It would save you a lot of pain."

There was a silence as Elsdon reviewed in his mind all that Layle had told him of this place. Then he said in a stiff voice, "May I at least know what crime I have been accused of?"

"Conspiracy to assassinate the King. The two assassins your Queen previously sent confessed their crime to me. They've been dealt with." His abrupt gesture left no doubt as to what sort of dealing they had received. "All that remains is for you to offer your confession – to this crime, or to a lesser crime. If I were you, I'd confess to a lesser crime. That would save you the humiliation of a public trial."

"Public trial?" Elsdon's heart leapt like an eager puppy.

The torturer sighed. "I forgot that you were Yclau. You can put out of your mind any thoughts of rescue, young Seeker; 'public trial' does not mean here what it means at home. It means that a few, selectively chosen friends of the King will be permitted to hear the charges placed against you and will also be permitted to mock you at length. Then they will have the delight of laughing as you are bound to four horses of the royal stables which are commanded to charge in opposite directions, tearing your body apart. Or tear what's left of you apart, after I'm through with you. So you may prefer to confess to a lesser crime. Just be sure that it's a capital crime," he added, as if as an afterthought. "The King won't be satisfied with anything less than your death."

"You're gracious," said Elsdon.

The torturer smiled, saying nothing. Instead, he backhanded Elsdon to the floor.

The torturer's hands were covered with gloves made of finely linked chain-mail, as though he were a cavalry soldier. For a moment Elsdon lay motionless on the floor, feeling tears leak out of his eyes. He tried to move his jaw, which felt as though it had been wrenched away from the rest of his skull. Then he slowly pulled himself to his feet.

The torturer was still smiling by the time Elsdon returned to his previous position. "Sarcasm from prisoners isn't rewarded in the Hidden Dungeon," the man said, in the same mild voice as before. "Best to remember that."

"I wasn't being sarcastic," Elsdon mumbled around the burning sensation in his cheek.

The torturer raised his eyebrows, stepped forward, and grabbed Elsdon's hair, jerking his head back. Elsdon was filled suddenly with a white-hot flame he had not felt for many months. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate his mind on thoughts of his work, as Layle had taught him to do in such circumstances.

"You want to try to kill me," the torturer remarked reflectively.

"Yes," said Elsdon softly. "But I won't try."

"Wise of you. I have a full repertoire of ways to make your death unpleasant." The torturer released his hair and stepped back, saying, "So, you were being polite to me before. I don't often get prisoners who thank me for my suggestions."

"It's part of my training." Having pushed the flame of his murderous rage back into the cool darkness where it usually lurked, Elsdon felt safe enough to open his eyes. "We're taught as Seekers to show respect for others."

"To torture with kindness?" The Vovimian's smile turned to a grin. "I ought to have expected that, given who your High Seeker is. . . . Well, my dear, have you thought of any naughty deeds that you wish to confess to me?"

"No, sir. I have committed no crime against your King or your people." Elsdon's voice was quiet.

"No need for the 'sir'; we're not in the Eternal Dungeon here. Take off your clothes. All of them."

Elsdon was still gaping at him when the mailed hand smashed into his other cheek. He could not keep himself from crying out this time as he fell to the floor. He was tempted to stay there, but a kick in his ribs a moment later convinced him otherwise. Quickly he rolled away, stumbled to his feet, and began pulling off his clothes with shaking hands.

He could not find the courage to look at the torturer as he did so. It had been difficult enough looking at his bare face until now. Somewhere, he supposed, he had read that Vovimian torturers still held to the ancient barbaric custom of appearing naked-faced to their prisoners, but since no Seeker would strip his prisoner of his dignity by such unprofessional behavior, Elsdon had forgotten to prepare himself for this. He found himself wondering with dread what new expression the torturer's face would hold when he looked up next.

To his surprise, though, the torturer's expression was bland when he finished stripping himself. "Good," the torturer said. "Now kneel."

After a moment's hesitation, Elsdon did so. The floor in this cell was covered with straw, which in turn was covered with slimy substances that Elsdon did not care to think long about. There was no privy in this place; the cell's stench had kept him awake the first night.

The stone floor under his shins sent chills biting up to his loins. He bit his lip and kept his head bowed, guessing this was the effect the torturer desired. Light and shadows criss-crossed the straw, falling from the barred window over the closed door.

"Interesting," mused the torturer, nudging Elsdon's stomach experimentally with his boot-toe. "I wouldn't have thought that a Seeker would be so easy to break."

It would be safer, Elsdon knew, to remain silent, but he heard himself ask, "If I'm not to call you 'sir,' what shall I call you?"

"'Master' will do."

His head jerked up at that. The torturer stood smiling over him, his face half-lit by the light from the corridor. "Not quite broken, are we?" the torturer said. "I thought not. . . . If it will ease your pride in any way, 'master' is my title. All torturers of the Hidden Dungeon receive that title once they have finished their journeyman years. Tell me, why are you kneeling if you don't consider me your master?"

"What is your name?"

The boot that had been nudging him moved forward so swiftly that Elsdon was bent over and retching more slime onto the floor before he knew what had happened. The torturer waited until he was through vomiting before pulling him to his feet by his hair. "My name is not one I share with the filth I search," he said, his voice finally losing its mildness. "Now, answer my question."

Elsdon had to take several gulps of air before his stomach would settle down enough to be cooperative. "We're taught to respect others in the Eternal Dungeon, master, and to follow the rules of the dungeon. If the rule here is that I must kneel to you, then I will do so."

A quirk of a smile appeared on the master torturer's face. He released Elsdon's hair and said, "The rule here is that you will do as I tell you, when I tell you – and if you obey me, I may not hurt you."

"May not?" Elsdon said swiftly.

"May not . . . or may, if it suits my fancy. This is the Hidden Dungeon, young Seeker."

"Yes, I see," Elsdon said, with such bemusement that the master chuckled.

"Take a minute to get your breath back," he advised. "And think again as to whether you want to give your confession. You'll give it in the end, you know. It would be wiser for you to confess now."

Elsdon – trying to decide whether to rub his hand against his burning right cheek, his bleeding left cheek, or his aching stomach – thought to himself that there was no greater test to a man's courage than to place him in a dungeon filled with ropes and chains and racks and tell him, "Lie, or suffer pain."

He knew the measure of his own courage. He knew, as well as Layle did, exactly how long it would be before he broke. And so, in the manner of a man who faces the inevitable, he wondered whether a quick death wouldn't be preferable to a lingering one.

It had taken him only one night – a night spent shuddering in the corner of his cold cell – to conclude that he had reached the time of his death. He had thought through every possible alternative: that the Queen had sent spies to track his carriage, that he would find a way to send a message of help to Mr. Sobel, that Layle had disguised himself as the carriage driver and was even now finding a way to rescue him from the Hidden Dungeon. Each contemplation had ended with grim knowledge of the most likely truth: that he was alone in a dungeon whose location was hidden from the Yclau, and that he would die here. The High Seeker, after all, had made no promise that Elsdon would be rescued if he were arrested. All that Layle had promised was that Elsdon possessed the power to bring about change in the Hidden Dungeon.

Which left Elsdon with the responsibility to stay alive until he had done all he could to accomplish his mission. Taking a deep breath, he said, "If I were to confess to a crime, I would be implicating, not only myself, but also the Queen, who sent me here. That I should die an unjust death I can accept, but I am not the sort of man who would smear the reputation of the ruler to whom I owe loyalty."

"My dear," the torturer said in the patient voice of a man struggling to instruct an obstinate child, "by the time I'm through with you, you would smear the reputation of your own love-mate. . . . Are you cold, by the way?"

Elsdon was in fact chilled to the bone, both outside and inside; he guessed that his shaking must be obvious by now. He nodded.

"We'll have to warm you up." With that, the master turned to the door, knocked on it, and spoke briefly to the guard who opened the door. When the door was closed again and the master had turned back, he held in his hand a long piece of black metal.

Elsdon, staring at it, felt his knees outdo the other parts of his body in their shaking. He took several rapid breaths in an attempt to clear the dizziness in his mind. The metal was black all through – no hint of any other color. That was important. This could not be as bad as it looked.

"No white-hot pokers today?" he said, his voice squeaking through his attempt at levity.

The master smiled. "Not today. If you'd been assigned to another torturer, matters would have proceeded more quickly; you'd likely be on the rack by now. But I'm in favor of the slower, steadier method. I find that my prisoners are less inclined to die suddenly on me, and are more likely to offer creative confessions. The King likes creative confessions." He glanced at the tip of the poker, held his hand a finger's breath from it, and then nodded, satisfied. "Well, my dear, do I need to tie you for this?"

Elsdon's knees very nearly gave way at that moment. He shook his head quickly, wishing again that he had a hood to hide his expression.

The master, though, interpreted his look as last-minute jitters. "Good," he said in a soothing voice, as though comforting a young man about to undergo a difficult task. "I prefer cooperation on the part of my prisoners. It allows me to concentrate on my work rather than worry as to whether the prisoner is about to strangle himself in his chains. Against the wall, please."

Elsdon had a moment to reflect, as he walked toward the wall, that the Vovimian torturer, for all his apparent contempt of Yclau politeness, was showing very little inclination to fulfill Elsdon's visions of Vovimian barbarism. Not uncultured, whispered Layle's voice in Elsdon's ear, and Elsdon grasped at the voice, trying to imagine to himself that this was nothing more than another session in bed with the High Seeker.

He placed his body flat against the wall of the cell, and regretted it immediately as the cold dragged its fangs across his back. It was too late to shift, though; the master had moved forward and was standing in front of him, the poker poised before Elsdon's chest.

"Now," said the master, all amusement emptied from his face, "what was your mission in Vovim?"

"To serve as an ambassador for the Queen of Yclau, discussing peace terms with the King of—"

His sentence ended in a gasp as the master lightly touched his shoulder with the poker, as though he were knighting him with a sword. Elsdon closed his eyes and tried to concentrate his thoughts on his ragged breath.

Breathe, he told himself. Keep breathing. Think about your breathing. The pain will pass. The torture will end. Breathe. Think about your lessons in school tomorrow. . . .

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" said the master, mildness returned to his voice. "No worse than burning your finger on a tea-kettle. Or a hundred tea-kettles – it all depends on when I stop. Let's just try again, shall we? What was your mission in Vovim?"

"To enquire after the fate of the previous ambassadors, and to express the Queen's displeasure—"

He ended on his knees this time, trying to retch out the bile from his empty stomach.

This wasn't going to work. His old lessons of concentration during pain weren't going to work, because his old reassurances were no longer true. His father would not tire of abusing him; he would not be let free to go to school and undertake his ordinary activities for a week or two before the torture began again. This pain would not end. It would go on and on until he was broken.

Or until he brought transformation to the Hidden Dungeon. I believe that your suffering will make a difference to the prisoners in Vovim, the High Seeker had told him. I would not send you there otherwise. Layle had trusted him enough to recommend him for this crucial mission. He could not betray Layle's trust in him.

He clawed his way up the stones, barely noticing their icy teeth, till he had reached his feet again. The master raised his eyebrows and gave him a swift, assessing look. "You've been tortured before," he commented. "I suppose that's part of your training in the Eternal Dungeon?"

"Yes, master." He saw no reason to state who had given him his original training.

"What a waste of time. The job of a torturer is to give pain, not receive it. Are you ready?" He lifted his poker.

"No," Elsdon whispered.

The master chuckled. "They all say that. What was your mission in Vovim?"

Elsdon shut his eyes, tensed his muscles, and said, "To tell your King about the Code of Seeking."

He heard a step and flinched; then he heard the door creak open. He turned in time to see that the master was saying something through the crack of the door. The door closed again, and he heard the sound of voices as the guards outside moved further down in the corridor.

The master waited until their voices had disappeared before saying, "That was for your sake, my dear. The confession you just made would be likely to see you roped between those royal horses I mentioned before."

Elsdon stared at him a moment before saying, "Thank you."

The master's smile deepened. "Not at all. I have my soft moments – particularly toward polite young men. I prefer to see that their deaths aren't messy."

Elsdon felt himself begin to shake again and realized that the sweat on his body was turning to ice. "I don't suppose," he said in a quivering voice, "that I could persuade you to ensure that my death doesn't take place at all."

The master's smile gentled. "My dear," he said quietly, "if you know anything about the Hidden Dungeon, then you know the consequences for me of such an action. I trust that you don't need me to answer your question?"

Elsdon shook his head slowly. The master stepped forward, his poker raised once more, and said, "I must admit, I didn't expect you to become that creative in your confession."

"Is it a crime, then, to mention the Code of Seeking here?"

"Well, the King doesn't care for the Eternal Dungeon. Nor does he care for Seekers, for that matter. He particularly doesn't care for your High Seeker; the King has an old grievance with him. Why your Queen was so foolish as to send a Seeker as her ambassador is beyond my powers of reason."

Elsdon, keeping his eye on the head of the poker, said, "Because only a Seeker could explain in full about the Code. Our Code is a powerful set of rules for dungeon workers. It allows us to break more prisoners than the King's Torturers—"

He stopped, his voice swallowed up by the sound of the master laughing. Still holding the poker in his mailed hand, the torturer wiped his eyes with his elbow-length sleeve.

"My dear," he said, still gasping from the laughter, "I think that you had better go back to telling me nursery rhymes. I'm likely to learn more from them."

Elsdon said stiffly, "You may think that you know what the Seekers do. But if you could read the Code—"

"Read it?" The master reached behind his back, and Elsdon went rigid, wondering what instrument he was reaching for. But all that emerged from behind his back was a book. A slim book, bound in black leather, with gold letters stamped upon its face.

"Which parts of it do you advise I read?" the master said, his voice liquid with amusement. "The part about when to wear one's hood? Or the part about which titles you may use to address the prisoners? Or perhaps I should read the part about how true Seekers bring rebirth to their prisoners."

Elsdon stared at the Vovimian letters spelling out the title he had seen a hundred times in his sleep. "Where did you get this?" he whispered.

"From your High Seeker, of course. He sent copies to all of us here, care of our King. The King was amused enough that he gave them to us so that we could read aloud the funniest bits before burning the volumes. Your High Seeker sent me two copies of the book, though, one under my own name and one under the name of my brother. He was always clever, Layle Smith. And he knew that I liked a humorous book to fall asleep to."

Elsdon could not raise his gaze from the golden letters of the volume. The pages of the book were well-worn, evidence that the book had been in the master's possession for quite some time. Time enough for Layle to forget? How could he forget sending the Code of Seeking to every torturer in the Hidden Dungeon?

"Ah, I see." The master drew the volume back and placed it behind his back; this time Elsdon noticed the shift in fabric as the torturer hid the book under his shirt. "Your High Seeker didn't tell you about this, did he? He let you think that you were being sent here in order to reveal the great secret of the Code to us."

Elsdon looked up and said in a voice that tried to be steady, "What makes you think that?"

"Because I know your High Seeker, my dear. That's how he always worked. I can't tell you how many times he lured a prisoner into trusting him, into believing that his torturer was his friend . . . and then, just when the prisoner was most relaxed, your High Seeker would betray him into death." The master stared at his poker contemplatively as he said, "The odd thing is that I always suspected that his offers of friendship were as sincere as his sentences of death. He was the sort of person who was quite capable of loving that which he murdered. He was a dangerous boy; most of the masters here were convinced he'd enter into madness one day." Raising his poker, the master said, "So, I will pretend that you did not confess to a crime that I have already permitted myself to forget. That requires a third and fourth punishment." He laid the poker onto the soft skin of Elsdon's armpits.

When Elsdon's whimpers had ended, the master said, "Try to squirm less next time, my dear – I'll be aiming toward your nipples next."

"Not on them," gasped Elsdon. "Above."

The master paused with the poker poised over Elsdon's chest. "Are you giving me orders? I wouldn't suggest you do that again." He laid the poker on his chosen targets, a finger's breadth above Elsdon's nipples.

Elsdon was sobbing when the master pulled him off the floor. "Lesson learned, I assume," the master said cheerfully. "Let's return to business."

Elsdon shook his head, struggling through the fog of pain to remember his Vovimian vocabulary. "Not . . . not ordering you. Telling you. Above the nipples . . . then above my knees . . . then between my legs . . . then below my nipples . . ."

The master raised his eyebrows, but waited until the poker had met its next two targets before saying, "You provide the most interesting commentary to torture, young Seeker. How do you know my usual procedure? Every torturer here has his own method."

Elsdon, scrabbling at the stones in his attempt to stay upright, did not reply. The master shifted his poker until it was level with Elsdon's groin and said mildly, "I've always considered it a wise policy to answer any question asked by a man holding an instrument of torture."

Elsdon tried to swallow the sobs in his throat. "I learned that from the High Seeker. I'm in training under him."

"Ah, I see." The master's poker shifted back down to Elsdon's legs. "And how is Layle these days? Still having wet dreams about the prisoners he racks?"

Elsdon closed his eyes, trying to cling to the darkness there. "You claim to know him?"

"Know him? Of course I know him. Who do you think trained him?" His knee nudged at Elsdon as he said, "Legs apart, my dear. And I suggest that you hold onto the chain above you. This is going to sting a bit."

When he was ten his mother died, and he took the path that many Vovimian orphans did: he joined a band of street children. It was there that he first showed his talent for torture.

Torture was not the usual practice of the street-toughened band; the children were accustomed to keeping themselves alive by stealing food and money at the marketplace. But the local soldiers had become more vigilant at the marketplace in recent months, sending offenders off for short spells in the local lesser prison. And so the band's leader made the daring suggestion that they should begin raiding houses at night. No one could decide, though, whether it would be possible to find the goods they needed before the householders awoke.

At this point, the band's most accomplished thief spoke up. He refused to tell his plan beforehand, saying only that this was too dangerous a mission on which to bring the band's female members. The boy was well-respected by the other children, since he had a talent for creeping through the shadows on festival nights and plucking people's purses in places where any other child would have been blinded by the darkness. And so the children agreed to follow his plan.

That night, in a house at the edge of town, a miser who lived alone was overpowered in his sleep, blindfolded, and bound. He was then tortured for information on where his treasure was kept.

The youngest boy in the band was sobbing by the time that the band's best thief took his small dagger and cut the miser's throat, having finally obtained the information he needed. The rest of the boys tried to maintain a stoic appearance, but all of them were sickened. The leader, quickly assessing that the others' sentiments matched his own, refused to allow the young torturer to plunder the miser's hiding place. Afterwards, he vetoed the idea of repeating this form of theft in the future.

What followed was a power struggle between the leader and the best thief in the band. The young torturer might have won the struggle if the other boys had not witnessed what had taken place in the miser's house. The boy was thrown out of the band at age twelve and forced to make his own way in the world.

One month later, in the same town, a merchant was overpowered in his sleep, blindfolded, and bound. This particular merchant had no desire to hold out under torture. He immediately told where his small savings lay and was left bound, gagged, and alive by his attacker. Of his attacker's appearance the merchant could say nothing except that the man had spoken in a whisper and was powerful in body.

The local soldiers made a connection between this episode and a murder that had taken place four weeks before, but did not pursue the matter far. The merchant's savings had been small, and he was not an influential enough member of the community to make a full-blown search worthwhile. As for the miser, he had been much-hated, and since none of his goods had been stolen, it was generally reckoned that an old enemy had killed him.

Four months after the merchant's mishap, the torture and murder of another man took place in a town nearby. This time the merchant's goods were stolen. The local soldiers, consulting with soldiers in the original town, made a connection with the earlier crimes, but again the merchant was not an influential enough member of the community that his murder would excite interest.

For the next three years, the thefts continued at sporadic intervals, the only noteworthy aspect of them being that, in every case where the merchant immediately told the true location of his goods or said truthfully that he had no valuables stored in the house, he was allowed to live. Somehow the thief had a talent for knowing when his victim was telling the truth. As time went on, more and more merchants opted for the policy of storing their valuables elsewhere or immediately confessing to the thief, rather than run the risk of dying slowly and painfully.

The Merchants' Guild eventually complained to the King that the local soldiers were not showing enough interest in the thefts. The King seemed disinclined to pursue the matter until, in the third spring of the thefts, the most spectacular crime of all took place.

The nature of this was such that the authorities could no longer ignore the thefts. A massive search was set out for the criminal, coordinated by the King's soldiers, but the soldiers' quest was frustrated by the fact that no living victim had seen the thief or heard more than his whisper. All that was known was that he must have been a powerfully built man; all the victims agreed about that.

It was at this point that the boy who had cried at the thief's first torture came forward. He had kept his mouth shut for three years, as had the other children of the band, bound by the unwritten street code that forbade bands from snitching about their members, or even former members. But the latest theft had been accomplished in such a heinous manner that the band members had agreed that they could no longer remain silent. The youngest boy was picked for the mission of going to the soldiers, as he had an innocent face that would overcome doubts.

All this, the master torturer learned several days later, first from the King's soldiers, and then from the mouth of a fifteen-year-old boy screaming his confession from the rack.

The master's first acquaintance with his prisoner had come through the arrest records, and what he read there confirmed his long-held belief that the torturers of the Eternal Dungeon were fools. Their hope in prisoners' rebirth seemed to be based on the belief that prisoners' evil nature was shaped by the people around them: that if the prisoners met the right people, their natures could be shaped back to their original goodness.

The master considered this theory to be muck. In his experience, most people who did evil had been evil from the day they were born. This boy was a clear example. His early childhood had been no harder than that of many other children, and his time in the band had been, by the witness of the children and of those who had seen the boy during those years, a relatively pleasant period. There was no reason the boy should have turned to criminal torture – unless he was a boy born to do evil until someone stopped him by strangling him.

The master was thinking this on the first day, as he walked through the door to the rack room, where the King's soldiers had chained the prisoner, guessing that his time in the Vovimian dungeon would be short. There the master found a tall, scrawny boy whose eyes were wide as he stared around at the instruments of torture on the wall.

They were not wide with fear.

"What is that? How is it used?" asked the boy without preliminary, pointing as best he could with his chained hands. The master, amused, told him the answer as the boy listened, his eyes shining. Questions poured out of him: What effects did the instrument have on prisoners? How long could it be used? What the best way of using it? What was the instrument's advantages and disadvantages over the other instruments in the room?

The master spent a few minutes answering the boy's questions and then suggested, in a mild voice, that the only proper way to understand the instrument was to see it in use.

Any theories he might have held that the boy was a masochist disappeared as the boy's olive skin paled to white. The boy hesitated barely a second, though, before nodding, and the eagerness had not left his eyes.

What followed was the strangest torture session the master had ever undertaken. Much of what occurred was familiar to him: the creaking of the instrument, the smell of burning flesh, the screams. But between screams, the boy would gasp out questions about the instrument's use, and the torturer would answer.

They proceeded this way for three days, slowly making their way through a few of the dozens of instruments in the room. By the third evening, the master's experience told him that it was time for the rack, and it was here that the boy gave his confession. His confession matched certain details of the crimes that had never been publicized – not that the master had held any doubt for three days that he was searching the right boy.

The boy knew by now, of course, what followed a confession; that had been one of his questions. As the master stood at the head of the rack and laid his hands upon the boy's throat, the boy flinched. But his eyes did not turn from the walls where the instruments that remained unused hung shiny and bloodless. In the boy's eyes was regret.

The master then took the action that, in years after, he would identify as the most foolish moment of his life: he smuggled the boy back to his own room and filled out a form stating that the confessed criminal had been executed and his body delivered to the mortuary.

There was some fuss after that, as the mortuary had no record of such a body's delivery. The master's record was clean, though, and the High Master of the Vovimian dungeon was willing to back him.

Two months later, the master brought forward a boy with the beginnings of a beard and announced that this boy was his nephew, who had been sent by his parents to be apprenticed to the master. If the High Master noticed that the boy held a striking resemblance to a missing corpse, he was wise enough to hold his tongue. The master was one of the more accomplished torturers in the dungeon; the High Master could ill afford to lose him to the royal execution horses. And if the master preferred to put a criminal to good use rather than waste him into death, the High Master apparently had no difficulty with this course of action.

And so the boy became an apprentice torturer in what would one day be known as the Hidden Dungeon. And all who met him remarked on the fact that his most noteworthy feature was the excitement in his eyes whenever he stood in the same room as an instrument of torture.
 

CHAPTER FOUR

"His real name isn't Layle Smith, of course," said the master torturer. "I named him Layle after a brother of mine who had died in the wars against Yclau, and I told the boy that he could choose a new last name for himself." The master looked up from where he had been trimming his nails with his dagger and held his nails up to the light contemplatively. "I always thought that his choice showed a surprising lack of imagination."

Elsdon, shivering on the floor under the blanket that had been his only defense against the cold on the previous night – the master had taken away his clothes – made no reply.

"Other than that, he was the most imaginative apprentice I ever trained – the most skilled as well. Am I right in remembering that Seekers aren't allowed to use instruments of torture themselves? That they have to accomplish their torture by way of their guards?" He waited till Elsdon nodded, then said, "A pity. The boy was a genius with the whip; I've never seen anyone who could control a line like he could. I had one prisoner who fainted dead away just from watching Layle whip a post. . . . By the end of his first year, I was allowing the boy to work independently. He could break half the prisoners I let him try his hand at. By the end of the second year, he was breaking three-quarters of his prisoners. He was especially good with female prisoners. I hear it's boys these days?"

It took Elsdon a moment to untangle the meaning of this sentence; then he replied coldly, "He has a male love-mate, if that's what you mean."

"So that particular rumor is true. Odd. He could never manage that when he was a boy – lovemaking, I mean. It just didn't seem to be in his nature. I felt sorry for the boy, I'll admit. He tried so hard and failed every time. . . . I remember the night I spiked his dinner with silver pot-herb." He noticed Elsdon's expression and smiled. "It's part of the standard training for our apprentices. At the right dosage, silver loosens the tongue, making the person confess to his deepest desires. If the apprentice has any secret thoughts of betraying the King, such plots should reveal themselves under silver." The master tossed his dagger in the air and caught it easily as it fell. "That whole night, from dusk till dawn, Layle talked about the love-mate he planned to have one day. How he would care for her, how he would protect her, how he would lay everything he had at her feet and give her the full depths of his heart. . . . That was when I first guessed that he was an idealist and knew that I should have strangled him on the night of his racking."

The words were spoken without passion; no strong emotion appeared in the master's face. Elsdon struggled his way up onto one elbow. Ignoring the pain stabbing his torso and legs, he asked, "Why do you hate Mr. Smith?"

"Hate him?" The master raised his eyebrows at Elsdon, his eyes widened with surprise. "My dear, my entire problem is that I loved him too much. I knew he was a peril, and I didn't act against him, as I should have."

"He was your love-mate, then?" Elsdon felt a heaviness in his chest and tried to convince himself that it came from jealousy.

The master gave a bark of laughter. "Love-mate? I'd sooner mate with a shark. Layle Smith is dangerous, my dear; if you haven't figured that out by now, trust me on this. No, if I needed a word to describe what Layle was to me, I'd have to say 'son.' He was my heir, the apprentice every master dreams of, the boy who would take all that I taught him and go on to accomplish great deeds. And one day I awoke to find that Layle had taken all that I'd taught him and had fled to the Eternal Dungeon with it."

His voice was as bitter as death. Elsdon lowered himself slowly to the floor again, saying breathlessly, "So why do you hate the Eternal Dungeon?"

The master glanced at the door, where the sound of the guards chatting could be heard faintly. Then he said carefully, "You Seekers consider the King's Torturers to be barbarians, I've heard. Tell me, under what circumstances do you torture your prisoners?"

"Only if they break the Co—" He caught himself in time, and added quickly, "The rules of the dungeon. We're not permitted to torture them otherwise."

"Under what rules can they be tortured?"

"If they fail to show respect to us – the same respect that we're required to show toward them. And if they lie to us."

"So," said the master, sliding his fingers over the flat of his blade, "if you ask them whether they committed the crime they're accused to have committed, and they say no, then you can torture them if you think they're lying."

After a small space of silence, Elsdon said, "We usually don't take so direct a route. Our job isn't merely to obtain confessions—"

"—it's to make the criminals regret having committed their crimes. Yes." The master glanced again at the door before saying, "Suppose . . . This is only a supposing, but suppose that I took it into my head to overturn the governance of a certain exalted personage, in the hopes of bringing an end to this overly lengthy war between my kingdom and your queendom. Would I be an evil man?"

Elsdon played with the straw under his fingers for a moment before saying, "I suppose in the eyes of many Vovimians—"

"But in my own eyes and the eyes of other men around the world, perhaps not? Now, suppose that the Hidden Dungeon was run under the same rules as the Eternal Dungeon. My torturer's job would be, not only to obtain a confession, but to convince me that I did wrong. After several weeks of searching he succeeded in his task; due to my 'rebirth' I received a pardon and was released into freedom. I then spent the rest of my life admonishing all the young people who came under my influence against the evils of trying to revolt against that exalted personage. Wouldn't that be a wondrous accomplishment on the part of my torturer?"

Elsdon was silent. The straw had crumpled under the pressure of his fingers and was drifting as dust to the floor. He pulled his blanket closer to his body.

"When your master was a boy," the torturer said, looking down upon Elsdon with a grave expression, "I told him what I tell all my apprentices: Never forget that what we do is evil. It is not nice, it is not pretty, and it is not at all admirable. It is necessary in order to keep the King's peace. But never see our work as anything other than the barbarism it is. Never idealize it."

The master's grip had tightened upon his dagger hilt. The muscles in his arms stood out in relief, and his eyes were dark under the lamplight from the corridor. He said, in a voice barely above a whisper, "He listened to me. He appeared to understand and agree. And then he fled to the Eternal Dungeon – to that place where torturers go beyond the necessary breaking of the body and take delight in breaking men's souls, forcing prisoners to hold beliefs that tear asunder their consciences. He went to that place, and he didn't merely follow orders there. He began to give orders, to make it even more likely that the prisoners there would have their have souls bent and bloodied and reshaped out of all recognition. He taught others, like yourself, how to commit the greatest atrocities mankind has ever known, and he taught you to call what you did goodness." The master's fist upon the dagger began to shake. "And you ask me why I believe I should have strangled him when he was fifteen. I would have spared him this shamelessness – I would have spared the world from what he has become."

Elsdon said nothing; the pain in his chest had robbed him of all speech. He ducked his head and stared down at the filthy straw, its golden sheen hidden by the brown muck lying upon it. Then he felt a shadow fall over him, and he jerked his head up.

The master was on one knee beside him. In his hand was the dagger, and Elsdon felt his breath stop abruptly. But the master merely said in a soft voice, "You Seekers take what is ugly and place a varnish of beauty upon it, making it seem as though the ugly is beautiful. We who work in the Hidden Dungeon have never shown such dishonesty; we say plainly that what we do is ugly. Necessary, but ugly. Do you still believe that you are the masters, and we are nothing more than ignorant apprentices?"

Elsdon looked down at the straw, let the slime there coat his fingers for a moment, then shook his head.

He felt the master touch his shoulder softly. Then the Vovimian rose and said in a brisk voice, "Well, enough chit-chat. How was your night?"

Elsdon turned his eyes upward to the man looming over him. Swallowing through the hardness in his throat, he said, "The music was a pleasant surprise, but I found the screaming to be disharmonious with it. Though the periodic cursing had a certain primitive charm to it."

The master stared at him a moment, then gave a roar of laughter. "A prisoner who jests with his torturer. It's been a long time since I've had one of those."

Elsdon gathered himself up onto his elbow again and said, "Truly, I'm curious about the music. It seemed to be coming through the wall behind me; do you have a music hall there?"

He felt his stomach clench as he saw the master's eyes grow merrier. He could guess that the torturer knew the reason for his question. Rather than turn aside the question, though, the master said, "That music? It was the King's irony."

Elsdon stared blankly at him, and the master laughed again. "Tell me, young Seeker: Where do you think would be an appropriate place for a prison reform conference?"

Elsdon rolled onto his back, gritting his teeth against the lash of pain that accompanied any movement of his body now. He stared at the wall, saying, "In the Hidden Dungeon?"

"Well, a space aways from it. The lesser prison we're housed in at the moment is part of a complex of buildings next to the royal forests where hunting takes place. The prison conference is being held in one of the other buildings. The King thought it would be amusing to hold such a conference within a cannonball's shot of the very dungeon that the delegates would most like to reform."

Elsdon said nothing. He continued to stare at the wall, his breath rapid.

"You could try screaming," the torturer suggested. "Or shouting your name, or the name of the Yclau delegate. I'm told that these walls are so thick that the sound of a hundred delegates singing at the top of their lungs comes through the walls as nothing more than a faint bit of music – and vice versa. But you can try if you like."

After a moment, Elsdon shook his head. If the screams he had heard during the week he had been imprisoned here hadn't sent every delegate at the conference running to investigate, no sound that he could produce would accomplish any rescue. He found himself wondering whether the master had been instructed to tell him about the conference's location, as an additional form of torture.

"Is Vovim taking part in the conference?" he asked, his gaze still on the wall.

"Oh, yes," said the master. "We don't have a formal delegation, but our King is there today, telling the conference members about the King's mercy."

"It must be a short talk."

The words were out of his mouth before he could recall them. He was not particularly surprised when his statement was followed by a kick in the side. He rolled over toward the wall, moaning, as the master said calmly, "You want to watch that your wit doesn't lead you down the wrong paths, my dear. The King's mercy is a term for one of our customs here in the dungeon. In cases where a high-ranked prisoner confesses to treason, but the King decides to show him mercy, he is spared the shame of a public trial and public execution. Instead, his torturer offers him a dagger. The prisoner accepts the dagger with the phrase, 'I regret.' Note the wording. The phrase is short for 'I regret my deed,' of course, but we don't require the prisoner to say that. If he wants to think of himself as saying, 'I regret having been caught,' or 'I regret that I can't murder the lot of you,' then he's permitted such thoughts. That's the difference between the Hidden Dungeon and the Eternal Dungeon, you see: we break prisoners, but we leave them with the dignity of keeping their consciences intact."

"And then the prisoner kills himself with the dagger." Elsdon gasped the words as he rolled round to face the master. He had only just found the strength to hold back his moans.

"A quick death, far preferable to the shame he'd undergo in public. I don't suppose your High Seeker told you about that. He's as accomplished as his predecessors at editing the truth to make the King's Torturers appear to be villains." The master glanced down at Elsdon. "Well, my dear, you have a talent for making me do the talking rather than doing the talking yourself. I suspect that you have a certain skill as a Seeker. Get up, please."

The blade in his voice left no room for argument. Elsdon pushed aside the blanket, pulled himself into a sitting position, and tried to rise. A moment later he was sitting again, trying to muffle his screams into his knees.

The master appeared unimpressed. "My dear, you were only half a day in the leg-locks, and I spent most of that time answering your questions rather than increasing the pressure. You're not crippled." He reached down, grabbed Elsdon's hand, and pulled him to his feet.

Elsdon's screams finally subsided to sobbing. He pushed his face against the wall, trying to adjust himself to the pain radiating up from his legs. He knew as well as the master did that he was not crippled. He had spent the previous morning calculating how far the master could go with his poker before the burns began to destroy his body, and then had spent the afternoon calculating how high a pressure would split the bones in his lower legs. His only comfort had been that the leg-locks came in pairs – one for each leg – rather than binding his legs together. It was a small comfort.

Now, the knowledge that the master had only given him a relatively low dosage of torture on the previous day did not seem to help. All he could think of was what a higher dosage would feel like.

When he turned his head, he saw that the master's gaze had slid down to his backside, and he felt his stomach lurch. The master moved forward and placed his hand firmly upon Elsdon's buttocks, feeling them for a moment.

"Hmm," he said. "I didn't examine these as closely as I should have yesterday. Just turn your back to the light, please."

Elsdon did so, feeling himself begin to shake again as the master's fingers traced their way across the flesh there.

"I take back what I said about your training as a Seeker being a waste of time," the master said. "This is quite impressive. Did you receive this all in one session, or over a period of time?"

"Over a period of time," Elsdon whispered, closing his eyes against the feel of the master's hands, tracing the runnels left by the striking of his father's belt.

"I should have guessed. Well, my dear, I think you're ready for the rack."

He whirled around, unable to hide the dismay that streamed out from his heart. "I thought . . . I thought you proceeded slowly."

"Normally I do. But normally I don't have prisoners who chat with me while they're being tortured. I'd begun to suspect that you were different from the others. Now I know why. You've been through prolonged torture before; none of this small fiddle-faddle I've been putting you through is likely to have any effect on you. No, my dear, I'm afraid I must skip the preliminaries and proceed to the harder part of your ordeal."

Elsdon opened his mouth, but the master cut him off by saying, "My dear, when you reach the rack room and see the instruments there, you'll realize that I'm continuing to be soft toward you; there are worse instruments I could use on you. Don't be difficult, or you may tempt me to hang you from the pulley."

Elsdon envisioned that, and felt a shudder run through him. He looked over in the direction of the outer wall of his cell. It was silent now.

The door squeaked as it opened. Looking over, he saw that the master was holding it wide open. "Come along, my dear," the torturer said. "The King is awaiting your confession. We mustn't dilly-dally."

Elsdon looked past the master to the guards, who were both watching him. One looked amused, while the other was frankly running his eyes over Elsdon's body.

Elsdon fought a sudden urge to hide his genitals with his hands. He asked, in what he hoped was a dignified manner, "May I bring my blanket?"

The master smiled. "My dear, you have just asked whether you may cover your nakedness, rather than have me parade you stripped in front of dozens of strangers. Need I tell you the answer?"

Elsdon shook his head slowly. He said in a low voice, "Your answer is that I'm in the Hidden Dungeon."

The master chuckled. "I suspected from the start that you were a quick learner." And he held out his arm until Elsdon came forward.

The corridor of the Hidden Dungeon was warmer. It was also decorated like a palace.

They passed rooms where guards and torturers clustered, standing by man-high fireplaces that threw out light far brighter than the oil lamps bracketed to the walls. At first Elsdon thought that the gilded carvings upon the mantelpieces were his imagination. Then he began to pass tapestries, woven bright green and red and blue, depicting long-ago battles and strange beasts. Beyond the tapestried walls were pillars marking an arch over the corridor. As Elsdon passed through the arch, he saw that the pillars were delicately carved with capitals of oak leaves and acorns. The arch itself was painted with the night sky, each star carefully picked out in gold-leaf.

Elsdon, struggling to move forward with the help of the master's strong arm around him, found himself wondering whether this was in fact the royal palace of Vovim. But the mother-of-pearl shelves under the chandelier near the arch held human skulls, and the door that they passed next – apparently a main door to the outside world – was flanked by men in the distinctive red uniform of the King's soldiers, watching with narrowed eyes all who passed down the corridor, whether they be prisoner or torturer. Their bayonets were pointed outward, and they appeared prepared to bar the door against every inhabitant of this place.

This impression was confirmed as Elsdon and the master passed under another archway and found themselves witness to a small confrontation: at a second door leading to the outside world, one of the King's soldiers had a boy pinned at bayonet-point to the opposite wall. From the satisfied look of the second soldier, Elsdon gathered that the boy had been caught trying to sneak out.

The master made a grumbling noise in his throat, then said to the soldier, in his usual mild manner, "That's my apprentice. I'll take care of this."

The soldier glared at the master for a moment – apparently he was unaccustomed to taking orders from the inhabitants of the dungeon – but the master continued to stare blandly at him, and presently the soldier gave a sharp nod and released the boy.

The master promptly reached down, grasped the boy by his hair, and pulled both him and Elsdon beyond the next arch, past the sight of the soldiers. Then he released the boy and raised his hand.

The boy cringed back against the wall, but the master's blow landed lightly on his head, producing no more than a surprised yelp from the boy. "Don't try it again," advised the torturer, "or I'll tell your master."

Relief shook across the boy's face. He grinned and raced away. The master glanced at Elsdon and shrugged. "The High Master's apprentice," he explained. "I told you I'm soft." Then he took a firmer grip on Elsdon and began to pull him stumbling forward again.

Elsdon found that he was craning his neck to see the wall-reliefs they were passing: quaint carvings of tiny mice running from cats with claws outstretched. After a while he looked over at the master, only to discover that the torturer was smiling at him. "Not quite what you're used to, is it?" he said. "I've seen etchings of the Eternal Dungeon – all those plain, featureless walls. I'd go mad if I had to work in a place like that."

"Are all the lesser prisons like this, then?" Elsdon asked breathlessly, trying to concentrate his mind on the master's words rather than on the blades of pain rising through his legs. "I thought I'd read somewhere that the lesser prisons in Vovim were dungeons."

The master snorted. "And I suppose you think we harvest our fields with scythes rather than combines. The lesser prisons stopped being housed in dungeons centuries ago. The old dungeons are all closed up; no Vovimian torturer works in such a place. Unlike the Seekers, who house themselves with the bats." He gave another grin and then, without warning, kicked open a door.

The door kicked back, slamming into the master's face. Cursing, the master propped Elsdon up against the doorpost – carved with knights doing battle with dragons for the sake of fair maidens – and pushed the door open more cautiously.

A hook, the size of a man's head, swung forward, nearly stunning the master. The master roared and pushed aside the hook, opening the door wide. "That hell-bound apprentice of mine!" he said. "When will he learn to clean up after himself? He'll be lucky if I don't use this pulley on him when I see him next. Come inside," he added to Elsdon, returning to his mild manner.

Elsdon took a last look at the corridor, but all that he could see was another heavily guarded door, with the King's soldiers scrutinizing him carefully. Taking a deep breath, he limped inside the room.

The master closed the door with a heavy thud and waited till Elsdon was several steps inside before letting go of the great hook. It swung to and fro from the ceiling, its chains clinking. The master moved over to the side of the room, saying, "Thirteen years old, and he has the brains of a three-year-old. If the High Master walked in and smashed his face on the pulley, that boy would be on the rack before suppertime. But no, because he has me to scold him, he pays no heed. . . ."

As he spoke, the master walked over to the side of the room. Lifting a weight from the ground, he placed it on a stack holding similar weights, which were attached to the chain. The hook immediately rose into the air, pulled back by the counterweights, as the master continued to grumble.

Elsdon barely noticed. He was standing motionless, staring at the great, iron table that sparkled under lamplight in the middle of the room.

". . . should throw him back on the streets, where he belongs, and let him fight the rats for his food. I ought to know better than to choose my apprentices on the basis of their earnest expressions rather than— Ah." The master had caught sight of Elsdon finally. Coming over to stand by Elsdon, he said softly, "Well?"

"Sweet blood," whispered Elsdon. "Sweet, sweet blood."

The master smiled. "She's beautiful, isn't she? We call her the Butterfly."

Elsdon walked slowly forward, the pain in his legs forgotten. It had taken a moment for his mind to take in the fact that this was a rack, for it was shaped like no rack he had ever seen. Whereas Yclau racks were a simple rectangle, with the straps at the head and bottom of the rack bed, this rack consisted of two equal-sided triangles that overlapped at their points. Where the points overlapped was a short, narrow rectangle – the body of the butterfly.

The rack was all of iron, but it was not smooth iron. The face of the iron had been turned into a relief of a butterfly: the triangles were delicately feathered like wings, while the narrow rectangle was molded into the shape, not of a butterfly's body, but of a woman, bare-breasted, with only a wisp of cloth to hide her genitals. Her arms were raised to form the far edge of the wings, and her legs were likewise spread wide.

Elsdon reached out and touched the iron, running his fingers over the delicate pattern of the feathers. "Are they all like this?" he asked in a hushed voice.

"Vovimian racks? Oh, each one is different. This is a land of artists, my dear. We have more of them than we know what to do with, and an artist who obtains a commission to decorate a prison considers himself a lucky man. Racks are the oldest form of Vovimian prison decoration; this one is four centuries old, though it has been re-incised every few decades and its machinery updated."

"Not uncultured," murmured Elsdon. "That's what the High Seeker said about Vovim."

"It's good of him to remember." The master's voice was dry. "As a boy, Layle had a passion for the arts: theater-goings, etchings, literature . . . I always wondered how he could bear to live in a place like Yclau. Mind you, you produce decent machinery," the master added politely. "We import our locking mechanisms from Yclau."

Elsdon moved forward to look. The wheel was the only part of the rack that resembled that which he knew. Though it was made of iron and incised with curling lines, it was much the same size and shape as the wheel of an Yclau rack. It was placed on one side of the rack rather than at the head, and Elsdon bent over it to look at the controls below. Yes, there was the same rust-red locking mechanism, though it was attached, not to one wheel control, but to four.

He looked up at the master, who was hovering nearby. "The four straps can be separately operated?"

The master nodded. "If desired. It's sometimes helpful to strap the torso down and keep one set of limbs loose, so that the prisoner can realize fully how much he has been stretched. If he— What are you doing?" The master's voice turned sharp as Elsdon ducked down.

Elsdon's voice emerged hollow from underneath the rack. "It's a maze down here! How does this all work?"

Half an hour later, Elsdon was still sitting under the rack, his legs folded within his arms, listening as the master traced aloud the gears and weights, far beyond the complexity of any Yclau rack. His bottom had grown cold. Unlike in Yclau, the racks here were not hollow at the base; rather, they rested on a solid iron foundation, and the workings were placed between the foundation and the groin-high bed. Elsdon had slid down in order to keep his head from bumping against the bed above. The master was more comfortably seated outside the rack, on the neatly-swept stone floor.

"Well, my dear," he said, as Elsdon gathered breath to ask another question, "I have no doubts now that you're Layle's journeyman."

"What do you mean?" asked Elsdon. His eye was on the head of the butterfly, which he could see from its back, and he was thinking that he should ask the master why the head was hinged.

"It's been twenty years – no, twenty-one – since I last had a conversation like this. Enjoyable as it is to relive old days, though, I think it's time that we proceeded to the next stage. I trust that you share Layle's talent for asking questions between your screams."

Elsdon's chest grew suddenly tight. He allowed the master to pull him out from under the rack and onto his feet, but when the torturer gestured toward the bed of the rack, Elsdon said, "Look, you don't— You needn't—"

The master sighed. "Do you want me to call the guards to hold you down?" he asked gently.

Elsdon bit his lip and shook his head. He took a breath, and then another breath, and then he pulled himself up onto the rack.

The iron was cold against his skin. He lay down carefully upon the naked butterfly-woman, spreading his arms in imitation of her gesture. So far successful. He should think about the butterfly – think of it flying free in the air.

He felt the strap touch his wrist and flinched away. The master's hand grasped his wrist immediately, dragging it back into place. "Don't be difficult, my dear," the master said. "The more you struggle, the harder I'm going to have to tighten these at the start."

The chain holding the strap was still loose. He tried to remember that. He was lying in bed, wearing some rather odd shirt-cuffs – no, he was flying free in the air . . .

The master finished binding the fourth strap around his left ankle; none of the straps were cushioned, as they would have been in Yclau. Before Elsdon had time to decide whether this made matters better or worse, he heard the familiar clink of the wheel turning past the initial notch. At once, the strap-chains went taut.

He screamed.

He managed to swallow the scream into light sobs and heavy pants. Next to him the master said, "Well, that's a gratifying response. I was beginning to think that there wasn't any instrument here that could frighten you. Now, then . . . No, wait. My head is wandered off to pasture this morning; I've skipped a step." He moved back to the head of the rack, and a moment later a piece of cloth fell over Elsdon's eyes, cutting off light.

Elsdon's sobs deepened. "Sweet blood," he said in a choked voice. "Sweet, sweet blood."

The master chuckled lightly as he finished tying the blindfold. "You'd be better off praying to the torture-god; he's the one most likely to hear you in this place. Now, I think we'll start you at level eight."

"Why eight?" Elsdon asked through teeth that were beginning to chatter.

"No particular reason. It's my favorite number."

There was a whirring sound, and then Elsdon could not breathe. His chest refused to rise – something was holding it down, the same thing that was wrenching his arms and legs out of their sockets. He opened his mouth in an attempt to scream, and then became aware that the feel of the straps had lessened. He was at so high a level now that his wrists and ankles were beginning to numb. A little bit higher, and he wouldn't be able to feel the bindings at all. Just a little bit higher . . .

"Excuse me?" The master spoke close to Elsdon's ear. The torturer had evidently leaned over the rack. "Did I hear you say that you want me to take you higher?"

Elsdon made no reply. He was still trying to figure out the trick to making his chest rise. "I wonder," said the master in a musing voice. Then, with terrifying suddenness, the wheel whirled again, the chains grew less taut, and Elsdon could feel the full force of the bindings.

He could not stop his screams this time. The best he could do was turn them into high-pitched moans. "Interesting," the master said above him. "Why do I have the feeling that if I took you off the rack and bound you hand-to-foot, I'd get the same effect?"

"I'll tell you anything," Elsdon sobbed. "Anything at all."

"Of course you will, my dear – just hold that thought. There's another duty left for me to do."

Elsdon heard him step to the head of the rack again. There was a click, and then Elsdon's head was yanked back, falling as the hinged head of the butterfly-woman was released backwards. He was left barely able to swallow or breathe, with his face pointed straight back.

He heard the rustle of cloth, and all his sobs were stilled momentarily by a great silence that seemed to extend through his whole body. He said, in a toneless voice, "You're going to rape me."

"How clever of you to guess, my dear; most of my prisoners aren't as quick-witted as you. . . . But I forgot. You were trained by Layle."

"Yes," said Elsdon. "He trained me for this." And then the rest of his words were swallowed by a scream that never emerged from his throat, for in the next moment his mouth was stopped up.
 

CHAPTER FIVE

The Hidden Dungeon was still. Somewhere in a cell nearby, a prisoner sobbed – a familiar refrain that had lulled Elsdon to sleep on many a night in the Eternal Dungeon. Elsewhere, the voice of one of the King's soldiers sharply challenged a master who had ventured too near an exit. The chain links of the pulley grated against one another, stirred by some unseen force.

Other than that, the room was silent. Elsdon had long ago lost the power to scream.

He was still bound, and he could feel the bindings, but the bite of the straps came to him as though from a distance. Clearer to him was the ache from the wounds on his torso that had been reopened by the master's tongue and teeth, the continued ache from his legs, and the blood trickling through his throat. He swallowed, and felt again the raw flesh silently scream from the contact.

It was worse on the other end. He turned his eyes toward the master, who had lifted his blindfold before stepping away from the rack. The torturer was in the process of buttoning his shirt. He did not look like a man who had gleefully finished his much-loved playtime. Rather, his face held the weariness of an elderly laborer who has completed one more dreary duty and is looking forward to the end of his workday.

The master's work was not yet finished, Elsdon knew. He tried to remember what crime he had confessed to, but the thought slipped from his mind, like drops of water through an hour-clock. He swallowed again, tasting the bitterness of the blood.

"Layle will kill you for this."

The master glanced over at him upon his whisper. "You mean, for raping his journeyman? Well, I admit that, under ordinary circumstances, I'd be offering up thanksgivings to the gods that Layle is barred by his death sentence from entering Vovim. Given what you told me yesterday, though, I'm inclined to guess that he sent you to me as a gift. He was always a generous boy."

He did not smile as he spoke. Again Elsdon was left with the impression of a man who had undertaken disagreeable work and was glad it was over. A more striking contrast with the High Seeker could not have existed.

"You're quiet, young Seeker," the master commented, smoothing down his sleeves. "I'd have expected you to ask by now whether this is something I teach my apprentices."

"I don't need to," Elsdon whispered through the mangled flesh of his throat.

"No, I suppose you don't. You're Layle's journeyman; he'd have told you this much about himself, if he told you nothing else. Mind you, I didn't have to give the boy much training. He'd already taught himself most of what he needed to know, during that final theft of his." The master bowed his head to look at the cuffs he was fastening above his elbows. "A pity he chose the virgin daughter of the head of the Merchants' Guild for his self-training. He might have gotten away with it otherwise."

Elsdon's chest rose and lowered, struggling to make do with what little air came through the swollen throat, which was still bent in a curve. Elsdon closed his eyes, then opened them again as he heard the master step nearer. His heart began to beat hard, even though his mind reacted to the coming event with nothing but numbness.

"Now, my dear," said the master, "I may be a bit slow at times, but I'm not quite as poor at searching as you may have come to believe. I haven't failed to notice that you appear to be more interested in hearing about my old apprentice's life than about your own fate. Nor have I failed to notice that you just now referred to your master by his first name. Given the Eternal Dungeon's obsession with formality, I can't imagine that journeymen are normally permitted to address their masters in such a manner. What special link do you have with your High Seeker?"

Elsdon, his head flopped down like that of a corpse, said nothing.

The master reached over and picked up the discarded blindfold from the rack. "My dear, I could bind other parts of you if I wished."

A sob swelled within Elsdon's chest, racking his whole body. "No," he whispered. "Not him. I won't betray him. No!"

The last would have been a scream, had his throat permitted it. For a moment there was silence. Then sharp blades entered Elsdon's neck and head.

When his vision cleared, he was lying flat once more, his head held upright by the head of the butterfly-woman. The master was staring down at him with intense eyes.

"May the torture-god of hell rack me for eternity," the master said slowly. "I should have guessed. You're Layle's love-mate."

Elsdon's throat closed in on him. He waited. Then he saw the master move swiftly to the strap binding his right wrist and yank it open.

The second strap was torn open. Elsdon made an enquiring noise that resembled a whimper. The master glanced his way but did not pause as he freed Elsdon.

"My dear," he said, "I may just have proven myself the slowest-witted torturer in all of Vovim, but one thing I do know: Layle Smith wouldn't send his love-mate into danger without arranging a way for him to be rescued. And I do not wish to be in the same room as you when that rescue arrives."

The pulley-chain clanked, three razor-teethed instruments fell from the wall, and an empty bucket tipped over. Elsdon felt the vibrations of the crash outside the room, travelling faintly through the iron rack. The great blow of sound was accompanied by shouts and more crashes, fainter, far away down the corridor.

The master, who had just pulled away the fourth strap, stood motionless at the foot of the rack, his head turned toward the door. Then he said quietly, "Too late, it seems."

His gaze turned toward Elsdon, lying limp on the rack. Their eyes met.

"Kill me," Elsdon whispered. He wasn't sure whether his words were a question or a plea.

"Not here, my dear." There was a measured calmness about the master, even as his body grew frantic with action. "If you are found here in the condition you're in – whether dead or alive – then the raiders won't rest content until they find your torturer. I need to get you out of here and hidden before I make my escape."

As he spoke, he went over to the pulley and stretched its chain back to the rack. After attaching the hook to the wheel, he ran to the pulley controls and heaved three counterweights onto the controls. The pulley-chain went taut, but the rack remained motionless, weighed down by its heavy iron.

The master returned to the rack. "Do I need to gag you?" he asked Elsdon softly.

The words were too familiar; Elsdon felt his body grow cold. "No," he whispered. "I can't scream."

"A small blessing. Let's see whether the gods will give me more." With one swift movement, he raised Elsdon in his arms, which brought every wound in Elsdon's body into a shrill plea for attention. Elsdon's scream emerged as a rattling of the throat.

The master deposited him on a bench nearby, then took up a position on the side of the rack opposite the wheel. With a grunt, he pushed.

The rack moved slowly, persuaded forward by the weights on the pulley and the great bulk of the master. It screeched its way across the stone floor, but Elsdon doubted that anyone heard it; the Hidden Dungeon was now filled with shouts and screams and crashes. The sounds still came from the far end of the prison.

He turned his eyes toward where the rack had been, and then looked again. There, in the midst of the stone floor, was a hole. A rectangular hole, with steps leading down it. No light emerged from below.

"There," the master said with a sigh. "That should hold the siege for a while." He left the rack pushed up against the door, came over to Elsdon, scooped him up into his arms, and then, as though in afterthought, hooked a lamp with the fingers of his left hand. He started down the steps.

Elsdon was only faintly aware of the coldness increasing, and with it the musty smell of still air and wet rock. Every step the master took sent a jolt through his body like a hard whiplash. He was sobbing now, which caused his throat to burn. He knew vaguely that they were in a place curving with great stone arches that met each other at cross-angles. The walls held doorways, and the master hurried through one of these. This brought them into another room with massive arches and multiple doorways. Again the master made his choice. The sounds of the hunt were growing fainter.

Elsdon lost track of the number of doorways they passed through. He was aware only of the pain that weighed down his body, like stones crushing a prisoner. He could not breathe now, and dimly he wondered how long it would be before his lungs gave up the chore of trying to work.

Then came the sound of shattered glass; the muted light that had surrounded them died abruptly. The master gave a muffled curse. He knelt down and laid Elsdon on the floor.

One of the pieces of shattered lamp-glass cut into Elsdon's back. It made no impression on him. The sudden stillness of movement was like a warm blanket to his body. Air began to enter his lungs. He lay motionless.

He felt the master's hand on his throat, feeling his pulse. The master grunted, though whether with pleasure or displeasure Elsdon could not tell. It was the only sound in this place, other than the dripping water. They had long since outrun the shouts and crashes in the prison above.

The dripping water reminded Elsdon of something important, something vitally important. "Thirsty," he whispered.

He heard the master sigh, and then withdraw. Elsdon waited, not knowing whether he would return and too dull of mind to care. Then he felt a hand touch his mouth; it was covered with wetness. He licked at the water eagerly.

As though Elsdon had asked a question, the master said, "I told you that the old dungeons were closed up. The lesser prisons were built on top of their predecessors. When I was a boy, I and the other boys of our town would explore the dungeon beneath our town's lesser prison. There was always a way in that curious children could find. The soldiers didn't try to stop us, because they knew that there was no path connecting the old dungeons with the new lesser prisons. All of us believed that."

His hand went up to touch Elsdon's hair. He had taken off his mailed glove in order to bring Elsdon the water; Elsdon felt the rough callous of his thumb stroke the place where Elsdon's hairline met the brow.

The master continued, "When Layle suggested that I send a letter to the King, advising him to hide the Hidden Dungeon within the lesser prisons, I thought Layle was doing nothing more than seeking to bring the King's favor upon me. He was that type of boy: he kept his thoughts and his schemes to himself.

"Two years later, he went into the rack room of one of the lesser prisons where we were housed. He told me that he was going to clean the equipment there, and he asked me to check on him in three hours' time. I thought nothing of it; the boy always had an obsession for seeing that his equipment was in working order. But when I arrived at the rack room, I discovered that – by means only the gods know – Layle had managed to push back the rack far enough that he could wriggle down the hole underneath it. The hole that he must have known existed in every rack room in every lesser prison of Vovim. I don't know how he determined this; perhaps an artist who was decorating a prison discovered the secret when he re-incised a rack, and told Layle. At any rate, that was the night of Layle's escape from the Hidden Dungeon.

"Well, I put the rack back in place, and when the boy was found to be missing, I denied knowing where he had been that night. Of course, all this was before I learned that he planned to take refuge in the Eternal Dungeon."

His thumb finished stroking Elsdon's temple; it journeyed down Elsdon's cheek. The other hand, still wearing its glove of mail, did the same. "Now, my dear," said the master, his voice softly echoing in the emptiness, "I'm afraid that this is where we must part."

Elsdon whispered, "You remind me of my father."

The master's fingers paused at Elsdon's jawline. After a moment, he said, "From the tone of your voice, I gather that isn't a compliment. I'm sorry, my dear. I would like to take you with me, but once those raiders break through to the rack room, the hunt will continue down here. I need to be safely within the King's palace before they reach me, and that's too far to run with you in my arms. And if I were to leave you here alive . . . Well, I would have to answer to the King for that. I have no choice."

"You have a choice," Elsdon whispered. "Layle's choice."

The thumb stroked the underside of Elsdon's jaw. "To try to flee Vovim, you mean? To try to break over the border, to make a new life in a foreign land, to hope that I could find suitable work there? Yes, Layle advised me to do that, in our last conversation together. My dear, I think you know by now that my old apprentice is a far cleverer man that I am. I might add that he is also far braver." His thumb travelled further down, to the hollow in Elsdon's throat. "This won't take long, my dear. Don't be afraid."

Elsdon felt the thumb begin to press down, cutting off what little air remained in his throat. He could not move. He managed to choke out a single word: "Sun."

The thumb withdrew. "Sun?" The master waited, but Elsdon made no reply; he was still trying to gulp in air.

"You want me to do this in sunlight?" the master asked. Elsdon managed to nod his head slightly. The thumb ran up to his brow, pushing his hair back from his eyes.

After a moment, the master said, "I suppose I can do that much for you – a final gift to Layle Smith. Not that he's likely to appreciate this gift, any more than he appreciated the others I gave him." His hands fell away from Elsdon's face and slid under his back and knees.

Cold air, blackness, the sound of footsteps echoing against stone, curses whenever the master walked into a wall. The master's hands, groping as he tried to find his way at the same time that he held Elsdon in his arms. Dripping water. Then faint light.

He heard the master sigh as he hurried forward with swifter strides. They began to walk up steps, and Elsdon, already half-unconscious from the jolting journey, moaned into the master's chest.

Warm air. A breeze. No sound of footsteps. Whispering. After a moment, Elsdon identified the whispering as coming from rustling leaves.

He opened his eyes. Above him was the moon, piercing the purple-black sheet of the sky with its cold light. The whispers were emerging from straight ahead, but he could not see the leaves on the trees of the royal forest. The shadows were too black.

He felt another sob rack him. It had seemed such a small thing to ask, that he should see the sun again. He tried to remind himself that he was an ambassador, a Seeker, a grown man who should face his end with courage. But his body quivered with sobs, as though he were a child.

"Shh." The master, who still held him cradled in his arms, knelt down on one knee and braced Elsdon's body with that knee. His free, naked hand rose to Elsdon's cheek. "Look again," he said softly.

Elsdon looked. He was vaguely aware that behind the master, to the right of Elsdon, was the massive bulk of a hillside, under which they must have passed. Beyond it must be the lesser prison and the building where the prison conference met. To the left of him was more forest, its whispering trees easier to see than the trees ahead. And behind Elsdon . . .

He tilted his head back. Behind him was the sun, a deep red, just disappearing under the horizon.

He felt his breath emerge from him in a sigh. The land here was rolling hillsides, punctuated by roads and villages. The sun was setting in a valley created by two adjoining hills; it sent shadows the color of bruises over the Vovimian countryside. In the villages, street-lamps had already been lit for the night. They twinkled under the golden-red light of the dusk.

Elsdon felt the thumb move to his throat, but he did not turn his eyes away from the sun. It had slipped further down now; only a thin line like blood separated the day from the night. The thumb pressed down.

Darkness covered the land, striking away the light with a crack like thunder.

In most of the lands of the world, men and women had found the secret to immortal life. In those lands, the dead lived on forever, taken away to paradises in the sky or hell-dungeons in the earth. There they would remain as they had been in the world of the living, never changing, always the same.

It was said that one such immortal, living in paradise, could not bear this life. Seeking to escape from the tyranny of endless changelessness, he sought the secret to death. After many centuries, he found the secret and let out the blood of his immortal life. "Sweet blood," he was said to have whispered, as he watched his immortality seep onto the blade he had used. "Sweet, sweet blood."

What followed then he could not have expected; nor did he ever know what took place. But the immortals who watched him knew, and they saw how his blood gathered itself and was transformed in the world into new life. As a tree falls in the forest, and is covered in earth, and then changes its form to bring forth new vegetation, so too had this dying immortal learned the secret to rebirth.

Elsdon opened his eyes. He was filled with fear, because he could remember who he was. That could mean only one thing: that he had been judged unworthy of rebirth and was therefore being held in the afterdeath prison where unrepentant men and women must be made to recognize their crimes before they are released into rebirth. He wondered whether he would be given a Seeker.

Then his vision cleared, and he saw an arm raised above him. A thin line of blood was cut into it, running diagonally from the wrist to the elbow. Beyond the arm was its owner, the master. His head was turned to look behind him.

Standing behind the master, with his body moonlit against the black forest, was a man with a whip. He was clean-shaven and bareheaded, dressed in the grey uniform of a guard of the Eternal Dungeon. On his shirt, clear in the moonlight, was woven a single word: "Sobel."

The master's hand slid under Elsdon's knees, and he rose slowly to his feet, holding Elsdon tight against his chest. The man with the whip said, his voice as cold as the dungeon air, "Let Mr. Taylor go, Master Aeden. You can't use him as a shield."

"My dear," the master said in a mild voice, "if you're as skilled with that whip as you used to be – and you have just proven that you are – then I well know that I can't use him as a hostage. But I assume that you don't wish for me to drop your love-mate on his head."

After a moment, Layle made a sharp gesture with his whip handle, and the master torturer knelt and carefully laid Elsdon down upon the wet grass. He spent a moment stripping himself of his shirt and laying it over Elsdon; then he rose slowly to his feet.

Layle gestured again. The master cautiously unsheathed his dagger and dropped it to the ground. At a third gesture, he moved slowly away from Elsdon and the dagger, toward the side. He kept his gaze fixed upon Layle, and Elsdon realized why in the next moment as Layle's whip, with the same crack as before, blurred forward and lashed the air immediately next to Master Aeden's face, stopping him from moving any further.

Master Aeden's chest heaved, and he took a deep breath. Otherwise, he stood motionless. He and Layle were facing each other now, not looking toward Elsdon, who could not move from where he lay, near the hole leading into the hill.

Through that hole, of a sudden, came sounds: faint shouts that began to grow louder. Master Aeden turned his head toward the old dungeon, and as he did so, Elsdon saw the line of blood upon his cheek, where the lash had landed.

"You seem to have been accompanied by friends," the master torturer commented to Layle calmly as he looked back. "Moreover, you found the Hidden Dungeon quickly. May I assume that you had assistance?"

In as cool and formal a voice as he used when searching prisoners, the High Seeker said, "The King was distressed to learn from the United Order of Prisons that, unbeknownst to him, someone in his kingdom had been kidnapping the Yclau ambassadors and delivering them to the Hidden Dungeon. He gave the delegates of the United Order of Prisons permission to visit the Hidden Dungeon and discover for themselves what the fate of the ambassadors had been, and to arrest all those responsible for the imprisonment of the ambassadors."

Master Aeden gave a humorless chuckle. "And my old friends wonder how I've become so cynical over the years. So it's to be another cleansing – but this one coordinated by the Yclau. It's a shame that the King doesn't realize how much power he's giving up in his attempt to impress the world by his cooperation with the United Order."

Layle said nothing. His gaze had not moved from the master torturer, even to look at Elsdon. To Elsdon, Layle seemed naked and vulnerable without his hood, but the High Seeker's hand continued to grip lightly the whip handle, while hanging from his belt was a guard's dagger.

"And the fate of those judged responsible for the imprisonment of the ambassadors?" Master Aeden asked, his voice filled with nothing other than politeness.

"They will be questioned, under the rules of the Code of Seeking, and will receive a fair trial." Layle's Vovimian held the thick accent of east Vovim. There was no trace of an Yclau accent in his speech, even when he spoke the Yclau word "seeking."

Master Aeden snorted. "I see. Another clever way for Yclau to demonstrate her power. And you, I take it, are to be her instrument of warfare. You will try to force your prisoners to state their regret for what they did – their regret for having followed the orders of their King – and if they refuse to do so, you will give them the humiliation of a public trial and public execution." The master torturer's voice growled low, like a threatened dog. "I thought I taught you better."

Again Layle was silent, but he took a step forward. His hand moved to his hip, and he slipped the dagger from its sheath before holding it forth, hilt first.

"Ah." Master Aeden's voice emerged as a sigh. "Perhaps my lessons weren't wasted after all. Thank you." He reached forth his hand.

Layle pulled the dagger back, out of Master Aeden's reach, but he did not sheathe it. He waited.

A smile played at the master torturer's lips. He bowed his head briefly and said, with mock formality, "I regret." Then he reached forward and took the dagger offered to him again.

"Why do I have the feeling," Master Aeden said, "that you arranged this whole exercise simply in order to hear me say those words?"

There was silence again, but for the shouts, which were closer now. Elsdon, who had tossed off the shirt in his struggle to rise, was trying to speak over the shouts. All he could manage was to whisper Layle's name. He knew that the High Seeker must be able to hear him, but Layle did not look his way.

Master Aeden flicked a glance at Elsdon, then held the dagger up in the moonlight, running his naked hand over the blade in apparent appreciation. Elsdon saw again the whip-mark along the underside of his arm, and into Elsdon's mind came images of what had brought the three of them together in this moment.

Layle discovering that the entrance to the rack room was barred and guessing what that meant. Layle rushing from the prison and racing his way round the hill, through the shadowed royal forest. Layle aiming his whip in the bleak dusk toward the target of Master Aeden's arm, in order to force him to jerk back his killing hand from Elsdon's throat. To accomplish this, Layle had to bring the whip under the arm without marking Elsdon's nearby chest. He had been aiming for a target only a finger's breadth in width. He had done this in the dim light of dusk.

Master Aeden lowered the blade and smiled at Layle. "May I have a final embrace?"

"No." Layle's voice remained cold. "I don't trust you."

Master Aeden's smile deepened. "My lessons definitely weren't wasted. Well, my dear, you have a clever journeyman; I don't suppose you'll be wise enough to pay attention to his advice. You're too much like me." He turned the dagger in his hand.

Layle waited until the body had stopped twitching before he let his whip fall to the ground. He turned his eyes slowly toward Elsdon, and for a moment he did nothing except look at his love-mate, his green eyes running over Elsdon's battered body like the warm breeze. Elsdon did not need to lower his gaze to Layle's groin to know what he would see there.

Layle walked slowly forward. He knelt on the grass next to Elsdon and the dagger and waited, saying nothing. His eyes were fixed upon Elsdon's face.

"You knew this would happen to me," Elsdon whispered.

"Yes."

With his last remaining strength, Elsdon stretched out his hand and took hold of the dagger.

Layle did not move as Elsdon grasped the blade that the High Seeker had so carefully arranged to be within his love-mate's reach. Elsdon gazed a moment at the honed dagger. It was still warm from Master Aeden's hand. Then he slid the blade over to Layle and offered his hand to the Seeker. "Thank you for completing my training," he whispered.

Layle did not take Elsdon's hand. He bowed his head and remained in that position, motionless, until the hunting party broke out from the dungeon and rushed over to help the Yclau delegate carry his Seeker to safety.
 

CHAPTER SIX

"It had to be a Seeker," Elsdon said. "I can see that."

They were in the High Seeker's sitting room, in the late afternoon hours preceding the start of Layle's shift. Elsdon, patched up and clucked over by the Eternal Dungeon's healer, was still on healing leave. He sat curled up within an armchair, watching Layle as the High Seeker drizzled honey onto fruit, the only nourishment that Elsdon's stomach was yet able to tolerate.

"Seekers are the only men in the queendom who are oath-bound to suffer for the sake of prisoners," Elsdon continued, his hand reaching up to touch the red-bordered cloth of his hood. "All of this was done for the sake of Vovim's prisoners, present and future. The Queen couldn't have asked anyone but a Seeker to undergo torture for the sake of the prisoners."

"It had to be a Seeker," Layle agreed. "But it didn't have to be you." He cursed softly as the fruit knife slipped, biting into his thumb.

Elsdon took the fruit Layle offered to him on a plate, but did not eat it. "Of course it had to be me," he said. "I'm a Seeker-in-Training; I would have had to undergo torture in any case. And I needed an experience like this to strip away my innocence. I needed to see how evil can disguise itself as good." He stopped then, but Layle said nothing, so Elsdon added, "If you'd asked any of the true Seekers to do this, it would have been unnecessary suffering for them. And I'd been your prisoner, and before that I'd been in the hands of my father. You knew that I was capable of surviving prolonged torture."

"In many ways that made you the least qualified man to go." Layle had retreated to the food-serving area. He had remained seated beside the carriage driver during Elsdon's slow journey back from Vovim, and since their arrival home to the Eternal Dungeon he had kept at a distance from Elsdon, as a Seeker keeps his distance from his prisoner. "An inexperienced Seeker . . . A former prisoner who had only recently undergone searching . . . A young man who had been abused for many years, and who is still not fully healed from that abuse . . ."

Elsdon sighed, putting the fruit onto the table nearby. "Layle, you act as though what mattered most was my own welfare. We know that's not the case. What mattered most was whether I was the Seeker who could help the prisoners. The prisoners' best interests come first."

"I wasn't honest with you about what you would be facing." Layle's voice was stiff.

Elsdon gave a sharp laugh. "No, thank every rule in the Code that you weren't! I would have told Master Aeden everything to keep him from binding me."

Layle stared down at the knife in his hand. After a moment he said, "I thought it unlikely that it would go that far. The spies that the Queen sent to keep track of the second ambassador lost him shortly before he reached the Hidden Dungeon, but they were able to learn that both ambassadors had been placed in my old master's hands. Master Aeden proceeds slowly with prisoners; that's his normal style. I didn't think it likely that he'd place you on the rack or bind you in any other way before we rescued you."

"Did you hope it wasn't likely," Elsdon asked quietly, "or did you hope that it would happen?"

Layle's hand closed convulsively on the knife. Once again blood began to trickle, but the High Seeker appeared not to notice. For a moment he stared down at the knife blankly; then he carefully laid the knife aside and walked past Elsdon into the bedroom. He shut the door behind him.

It took a moment for Elsdon to shrug off the blanket Layle had placed over his shoulders and wrench himself out of the chair. Every small movement he made still hurt. Wincing, he walked to the bedroom door and opened it. Layle was standing in the corner of the bedroom, in the tiny space between the wall and the table next to the bed. He had been staring down at the black-bound book on the table, but as Elsdon entered, he turned his head toward the wall, as though in response to an anticipated blow.

"Layle," Elsdon said, his voice breathless from the pain of walking, "this isn't about me, is it? This is about you. About what I learned of you in Vovim. About what you wouldn't tell me."

Layle looked back at Elsdon. The High Seeker's face was half-hidden by his hood. He said nothing.

Elsdon walked forward until he was within arm's reach of Layle. "You wouldn't tell me the truth before," he said. "Answer me honestly now."

"I will." Layle's voice was low. He had turned his gaze away from Elsdon and was staring again at the black book.

"The day before I left, when we were in bed together here . . . You wore your face-cloth up then. That was because you were imagining you were in Vovim, wasn't it?"

Layle's throat moved as he swallowed. "Yes."

"You were dreaming of what you thought would happen to me in Vovim, and you were imagining yourself being the one doing it."

A second swallow; this time the reply was lower. "Yes."

"And while we were separated – did you pleasure yourself?"

"Yes."

"And when you did, you thought about what was happening to me in Vovim."

"Yes." Layle's voice could barely be heard now.

Elsdon took a step forward, so that he was nearly abreast Layle, but he did not touch the High Seeker. He said, in a voice as low as Layle's had been, "You miss Vovim, don't you? You miss being able to rape prisoners."

A pause, then a whisper: "Yes."

"And the next time we go to bed—"

"No!"

Elsdon stepped back as Layle whirled to face him. The High Seeker's face was incised with deep lines of emotion. "No," he said in a hoarse voice. "I'll never do that to you again, Elsdon. Mr. Taylor. I'd already made that decision before you left. I knew that you'd learn what I am from my master; I knew— If ever the day comes, many years from now, when you have healed enough from this that you can forgive me, and are willing to honor me again with your friendship— But not more than that. I swear, I don't hope for more than that from you."

Elsdon sighed. "Layle, what are you going to do, stop thinking about sex for the rest of your life? Whether you're with me the next time you think of sex or whether you're alone by yourself, I know what image is going to come into your mind. I know that what I suffered under Master Aeden will give you pleasure."

Layle was still a moment. Then he turned slowly and pressed his body against the corner of the room, as though seeking to escape. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry. I should never have taken you as my love-mate. I don't know what I can do to—" His voice broke off.

Esldon looked at the huddled figure, his own dull pain forgotten as he put his effort into reading the signals that Layle's body sent him. After a while he said, "Master Aeden was a wise man."

Layle made no reply.

"He showed me important things about the Eternal Dungeon," Elsdon added. "Things I hadn't known before."

"I'm sure the Codifier will welcome hearing what you learned." Layle's voice was low.

"Yes, I plan to speak to him about what I learned. Among other things, Master Aeden made me realize that the Code of Seeking contains a number of flaws that could increase the suffering of the prisoners. That's more true of the fifth revision than of previous revisions."

Layle looked down at the black book on the table; his hand went out to touch it. "So," he said hollowly, "even this I have tainted. I might have guessed." With one swift movement he shoved the book from the table; then he collapsed to his knees in the corner, his face buried within his hands.

Elsdon looked at the book, which lay face-down upon the floor. He picked walked over, picked it up, carefully dusted off the cover, and returned to where he had stood before. Groaning with the effort, he went down upon one knee so that his head was level with Layle's.

The High Seeker did not look up; he was collapsed into himself, blind of all sight. Elsdon said quietly, "You were wrong not to tell me everything about yourself. You should have been honest with me and offered me the choice of whether to remain with you."

"Yes." Layle's voice came choked.

Elsdon paused a moment, looking at the crumpled figure before him. Then he said, "Master Aeden talked about the dishonesty of Seekers. He said that we take what is ugly and place a varnish of beauty upon it, making it seem as though the ugly is beautiful."

"Yes." Layle's voice, still muffled by his hands, sounded now as though he were being strangled. "I know that's what I've done. I'm evil all through, and I've tried to pretend there is beauty within me. What I've done to you— And the prisoners here; I must have made them suffer too—"

He raised his face. It was shining from the tears. "What shall I do?" he whispered. "I don't trust myself even in this, to decide how to save the world from my vile destruction. . . ."

Elsdon fingered the gold lettering upon the black book before he said, in a level voice, "I guessed what you were while your master was raping me. Would you like to know what I was thinking then?"

Layle's hands clutched at his trousers, but he gave a slight nod, and this time he did not turn away. He kept his gaze fixed upon Elsdon, as the prisoners of the Eternal Dungeon are instructed to look upon their Seeker when they are tortured.

"I thought to myself, 'If I survive this, then I will go back to the Eternal Dungeon and tell Layle what has happened, and he will receive pleasure from hearing how I suffered. And then he will take that pleasure and turn it into an act of love between us, and my healing will begin.'"

Layle was motionless. Even his chest had ceased to rise and fall. Elsdon reached out and placed the Code of Seeking in his hands.

"Master Aeden was a wise man," he told Layle, "but he was wrong about this. He was a good man who chose to work within an evil system. He sullied his golden soul. But you . . . When you transformed me from a murderer into a man whose life is dedicated to using his violent impulses to help others, that wasn't a varnish. That was true ugliness turning to true beauty. You did the same to yourself when you made the decision to leave Vovim, though the deepest parts of you continue to ache from that decision. Your dreamings call you to a life of rape and senseless pain – yet every day you walk into the cells here and devote your life to helping prisoners transform themselves away from evil. That is true beauty. You are true beauty."

Layle continued to stare for a moment before his eyes dropped to the book. His thumb, crusted with black blood from the cutting, traced its way over the golden words upon the cover. Elsdon, watching him, stood up; then he gasped, and for a moment his world spun. He began to fall – and then he felt Layle's hand at his elbow, steadying him.

The tears had dried upon Layle's face. He placed the book back on the table. For a moment more the High Seeker's gaze travelled over Elsdon's face. Then Layle reached forward and took the hood from Elsdon's head.

"It is necessary that a guilty prisoner should be broken," he said in a colorless voice, "and that the prisoner should be made to acknowledge his fault. But after the breaking must come the healing, so that the prisoner may be made to see how, in whatever time he has left in his life, he can transform what was evil into good."

As he spoke, the High Seeker ripped from the bottom of Elsdon's hood the red stripe that marked Elsdon as a Seeker-in-Training. Tossing the red cloth aside, Layle placed the hood upon Elsdon's head once more: a black hood, the hood of a true Seeker.

Elsdon let out his breath slowly. "Thank you, High Seeker," he said quietly.

Layle took Elsdon's hand in his and brought the back of it up to his lips. His head remained bowed over the hand as he said, his voice tight once more, "When the history of the Eternal Dungeon is written, I will have been forgotten. It is you they will remember."

Elsdon smiled as he freed his hand and raised it to Layle's face. His fingers pushed back Layle's hair from his eyes as he said, "We can't be separated."

Then he drew Layle forward to his kiss.

. . . Unfortunately, we no longer possess the name of the sixth revision's insightful author, nor do we know what events shaped his views. Internal evidence, however, in the form of certain phrases that match passages in Layle Smith's unpublished letters, suggest that the author was a Seeker who had at some time worked in close consultation with the first High Seeker.

By reading the sixth revision with a careful eye, we can learn much about its author. He was evidently a man of great loyalty and generosity, who wished to give Layle Smith full credit for what he had accomplished. Yet he was also a man of forceful character and independence of mind, who was not afraid to depart from his master's work where he believed it to be in error. Indeed, despite the loss of all other information on the sixth revision's author, we know nearly as much about him as we do about Layle Smith.

It is said that what men are is more important than what men do. Yet perhaps it is the case that what men do ultimately determines what men are.

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

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