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"My lord prince." It was Druyus, the priest. The candlelight shone on the man’s gleaming bald head, as if he had polished his scalp. He wore the short white robe of Helios, sandals, and too much jewelry on every finger, wrist, earlobe and ankle. He was on his knees as Soran turned toward him, and he continued into the full prostration, though it was unnecessary for one of his rank. He was making a great show of loyalty and respect, as if he hoped it would earn him favor.
Soran had no love for the man. He could have given him leave to rise, but he was annoyed enough to leave him where he was. "What do you want, priest? I have better things to do tonight than listen to the business of the inquisitor."
"Yet, this remains my business," Druyus said, against the black marble floor.
"All right. But be brief," Soran said tersely. The priest was too good in his work, and much too keen. He worked with the captives who refused to speak, and he had become an expert in the trade.
"The man remains silent," Druyus said breathlessly, no doubt feeling the press of the floor against his ribs. "I fear my lord Azhtoc will be angered by my worthless efforts. I thought, if you were to speak to the man, my lord -- the prince of Vayal -- he would see reason."
"I doubt it," Soran growled. "I’ll give you one moment, Druyus, one moment only. I’m thick with the salt of the sea. I want to bathe and eat, but my father will be waiting for me by now, and I remind you that this is my evening, not his and not yours."
"Your coming of age," Druyus purred against the marble.
"Oh, get up, for the love of heaven," Soran snapped, and stepped back to give the man space to scramble inelegantly back to his feet. He would think twice about making a great display in future. "I do my own work, Druyus. I hunt the creatures, bring them down and haul them here. You want me to do your work also?"
The priest knew he was unwelcome, and bowed back-snappingly low. "Come this way, my lord. I have him secure, in the lower vaults."
The city of Vayal was honeycombed with vaults. Below palace and marketplace, temple and artisans’s shops, the chambers were two and three deep, hewn out of the rock by Zehefti slaves long before Mahanmec Azhtoc’s time. When the Old Kingdom fell, those who did not bend their stiff necks to the new priest-king found themselves swiftly shackled. Their labor built the new city of Vayal. It was said that the mortar of its stones had been mixed with their blood, and Soran believed it.
It was months since he had ventured into the lower vaults, and given the choice he would never be there. Too much pain, too much anguish, made the air sodden, made the rock itself ache, as if it could recall the lives and deaths of all the Zeheftimen who entered in here, but did not leave. When Soran was very young, the hunters brought the creatures in every month, but lately there were fewer, always fewer. In a single generation they had grown scarce, and in another generation, Soran thought, there would be none at all.
The darkness was thick, suffocating. Druyus went ahead, down the stairs which coiled about one massive pillar in the foundations of the palace. Two levels down, he plucked a torch out of a sconce to light the way, and the dense darkness took on a subtle reek. Soran had never known what it was. It might have been bitter herbs and embalming salts and blood, but he fancied it was fear, so heavy on the air that one could smell it.
The lower chambers were all but deserted. A single cell was occupied, at the end of the long, wide passage that bisected the palace’s ancient foundations. A guard’s face turned toward Druyus, and as the man saw Soran he went to his knees. "Up," Soran told him, before he could begin to prostrate. "Up on your feet, man. Just open the door."
The keys were as ancient as the locks. A pivot turned with rat-like squeals of protest, and Druyus stepped aside to let Soran go ahead. The cell was bright in the light of several lamps, and he recognized the prisoner.
The last creature he had brought in was a man of thirty years or so, virile and healthy -- or so Soran remembered him. He was naked, strapped to a chair in the middle of the cell; and at first glance, Soran was sure he was dead.
He looked old, after six weeks in this pit. His head lolled on his chest, his hair was unkempt, and he wore the scars of too many hours spent at Druyus’s tender mercies. Soran lifted the young Zeheftiman’s chin and looked into the dull eyes. No pulse beat in the throat or temples. With a curious gentleness, Soran let the man’s head fall back to his chest, and swung on Druys.
"You’ve killed him priest." As Druyus had killed so many before. Soran’s voice shook with a mix of rage and contempt.
"He was alive when I left him to seek you, my lord," the priest blustered. He knew he was balanced on a knife’s edge. A word from Soran, and it could be Druyus feeding the city’s ravens in the morning. "I swear --"
"I’ve no desire to hear it." Soran straightened and snatched up a lamp. "You can make your excuses to Mahanmec Azhtoc, not to me, and if he decrees that the vultures will have your testicles for supper, I believe I'll hand feed them. It’s time you were punished. Past time. Get out of my way."
It would be far less than Druyus deserved, and Soran still shook with anger as he took the stairs two at a time, climbing back to the inner courtyards, where the last steel-blue twilight and the first white-gold stars were a canopy over palace, temple and city.
The Zeheftimen had to be brought in. It was the law, laid down by Helios himself, out of the mouth of the oracle Leto. They must be questioned for what they knew, for the safety of Vayal, the future of the empire. But nowhere in Helios’s law did it state that the creatures of Zeheft must die; and nowhere did Helios say they should be murdered.
But Druyus enjoyed the work, and Azhtoc let him have it, though there were other methods, much gentler ways to get the truth, before the creatures were taken west into exile, where the terrible magic of the Zehefti witchkind could do no more harm.
Shuffling sounds and panting on the steps behind and below told him the priest was behind him, and on a whim Soran rasped over her shoulder, "Come with me, priest. You’ll tell Azhtoc what you’ve done, and let the priest-king of Vayal, my father, decide what will become of you."
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