Chapter 6 - Feed Him to the Pit

I’d been chilling in the dungeon for what felt like forever, long enough to make your ass go numb and your back cramp in places you didn’t know could cramp. The guards who finally came to the cell for me had meaty hands and breath that stank of week-old ale. They manhandled me through a heavy oak door that creaked like it was auditioning for a haunted house.

“Easy on the merchandise,” I muttered as one of them twisted my arm behind my back. He responded by shoving me harder. Some people can’t take criticism.

The chamber they dragged me into was fucking massive. Somebody had hollowed out half the mountain to throw a party for people with terrible taste. Guttering torches lined the walls, spitting and hissing. Red candles, hundreds of them, dotted the space, their flames jumping and throwing shadows that twitched across the walls. The tapestries hanging around the room were a real mood killer, all grim scenes of torture and sacrifice that made me want to puke.

But the thing they’d set up in the middle of all that made my balls try to climb back up inside me.

A young woman lay spread-eagled on a horizontal board, her limbs secured with thick leather straps that bit into her skin. What was left of her clothes had been torn away down to her hips. Her chest was bare, criss-crossed with fresh knife marks that wept dark blood. A pool of it had formed on the floor beside the board, thick and shiny in the flickering light. I’d seen plenty of naked women and liked every one of them, but this one only turned my stomach.

I thought about the women in the dungeon, the blonde girl who’d asked if I was from Oakhaven and the older ones who wouldn’t even look at me. Was this what waited for them?

My throat went dry. “Shit,” I whispered. The guard to my right cuffed me across the ear.

“Quiet,” he growled.

On a raised dais near the woman stood Malkor himself, the guy I was supposed to kill. Great. He’d put on rings since our last chat, enough of them to cost more than everything I’d ever owned, and his outfit screamed that he was compensating for something. In his left hand he held that crooked staff with the shriveled heart on top.

Behind him, on display as trophies, were what I assumed were the failed rogues who’d come before me. They hung in twisted, restrained poses, their mouths stretched open in screams that had stopped making noise. I couldn’t tell if they were dead or wishing they were. Either way, I had no intention of joining their little gallery.

“My, my. Look who’s back,” Malkor said.

He kept his eyes on a small bowl of red wax as he spoke, dipping a finger in and letting it drip onto the woman’s exposed nipples. She whimpered, the sound echoing in the vast chamber, but didn’t scream. Either she was too far gone or she had the pain tolerance of a fucking saint.

“The last one at least made it to my private chambers before being caught,” Malkor continued, his voice a raspy purr I wanted to scrub off my ears. “Though I suppose that’s why his intestines now decorate my eastern wall.” He gestured lazily toward one of the tapestries, and my stomach lurched. On a second look, the dark red pattern on that one was the guy’s guts, stretched across the wall in loops.

As Malkor continued to drip wax, he began a low incantation. The words were in some ugly language that made my ears hurt and my teeth ache. Each syllable buzzed against the stone walls. The pool beside the board bubbled.

“Wrong inflection, you pretentious hack!” A loud, grating voice cut through the chanting from somewhere beside the dais. “It’s ‘vex-NAR,’ not ‘VEX-nar.’ Amateur hour! I swear, you still butcher the pronunciation like a virgin at his first orgy.”

I looked toward the voice. The massive book rested on a stone pedestal near the dais, its single eye swiveling toward me. It narrowed and crinkled at the corners. That fucking book was the reason I’d gotten caught in the first place, and it looked happy to see me again.

“You again? The skinny thief with more balls than brains? At least this one’s got a nice ass. The last one looked like he’d been sitting on a waffle iron.”

The grimoire vibrated as it spoke, brass corners scraping against the pedestal’s surface.

Malkor broke off the chant and glared at the book. “Silence, you wretched tome. Your commentary is neither required nor appreciated.”

“Oh, I’m SORRY,” the book shot back, its eye rolling dramatically. “Did I interrupt your big scary warlock moment? Should I sit here and be impressed while you mispronounce basic sacrificial rites? Back in MY day, the thirteen Blood Emperors could at least get the fundamentals right!”

I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from snorting. If I wasn’t potentially minutes away from becoming part of the decor, I might have enjoyed watching a warlock get bitched out by his own book.

The woman on the table moaned again, drawing Malkor’s attention back to his work. He smiled down at her and resumed his chanting, this time with the correct inflection, judging by the lack of commentary from the grimoire.

My heart was racing, and not in the fun way it did when I was about to get laid or steal something valuable. I glanced around for escape routes, same as I did in every place I wasn’t supposed to be.

“I can hear you thinking from here, boy,” Malkor said without looking up from his ritual. “Calculating your odds? Planning your escape? They all do. It’s tedious.”

“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” I replied, figuring if I was going to die, I might as well die with my mouth intact. “Nice place you’ve got here, though. Love what you’ve done with the, uh...” I gestured vaguely at the hanging rogues, “...everything.”

The grimoire let out a bark of laughter. “This one’s got spirit! Usually they’re pissing themselves by now. That noble’s son last winter made his own little puddle right where Skinny’s standing.”

Malkor smiled with just his lips. “Spirit is meaningless. The spirited ones bleed as easily as the cowards.” He turned to face me fully. “Though I do admire your attempt at bravado. It will make breaking you all the more satisfying.”

He waved his hand, and the chanting stopped, though the words kept buzzing in the stone for a second after. The air thickened, turned sour, the kind of stench you could taste on the back of your tongue. The woman stopped moving entirely, her chest barely rising and falling. The blood beside her crawled up the side of the table on its own. I swallowed hard to keep from gagging. Blood was bad enough when it stayed put.

“Now then,” Malkor said, stepping down from his dais and taking his sweet time about it. His skin had pinked up from paper-white, and the lines around his mouth had eased. Whatever he’d pulled out of that woman, it looked good on him. “What shall we do with you, Samuel Thornwood?”

He leaned in to sniff at my neck and wrinkled his nose. I’d scraped things off my boots that got warmer looks. “Another fool who thought he could steal from me.” He made an idle gesture with one ring-laden hand. “Disarm him.”

The guards were rough. One kept his iron grip on my arms while another patted me down hard enough to bruise.

“At least buy me dinner first,” I protested as their hands dug into my pockets and belt pouches.

Out came my prized set of lockpicks, masterwork tools I’d saved for months to buy from that shady dwarf in Ashbourne. They clattered to the stone floor. Next they found the small knife I kept in my boot and the garrote wire hidden in my belt.

“Now the armor,” Malkor commanded.

One guard grabbed the collar of my leather jerkin and yanked. The laces at the sides strained and then snapped, and I winced at the sound more than the rough handling. That jerkin had saved my life more than once. They tore at the bracers next, yanking them off with enough force to leave red marks on my forearms.

Worst of all, a guard grabbed my enchanted brooch, the one Ashara let me keep after my final test. A useful trinket, she’d called it, especially if one likes running around naked. I could still hear her voice, that low, clipped tone she used when she was trying not to show she was proud. The guard ripped it free, the pin tearing a hole in my cloak, and tossed it aside. Another one yanked the cloak off my shoulders.

I got so pissed my face went hot. That brooch was mine. She’d given it to me. And these assholes had chucked it on the floor next to a pool of somebody’s blood.

“Ashara always did have excellent taste in trinkets,” Malkor commented, his crimson eyes fixed on me. “If not in apprentices.”

I stared at him. He smelled like expensive incense layered over rot.

He knew Ashara. He knew my Ashara. He knew her name and the brooch she gave me, and he knew enough to throw both in my face. My hands balled into fists behind my back. Ashara had helped send me here, and she’d never once mentioned him. “What do you know about her?” My voice came out low and hard, and for once I didn’t have a joke ready. The guards must have felt me tense because they squeezed tighter.

Malkor smiled, and it was the worst thing I’d seen in a room full of terrible things. “More than you, boy. Far more than you.”

The grimoire cackled from its pedestal. “Oh ho! The condemned man has stopped making jokes! Much more entertaining than the last fellow.”

Stripped down to my thin undershirt and trousers, I had goosebumps all over from the chill of the chamber, and the wounds I’d picked up sneaking in throbbed again without the leather over them.

I’d been watching the guards since they started stripping me, looking for openings and gaps in their formation. The problem was, these guys kept their spacing tight and always had one pair of eyes on me.

Still, I was going to make them work for it.

When one guard leaned in close to check my collar for hidden weapons, I headbutted him as hard as I could. The crack of impact sent pain shooting through my skull, but it was worth it to hear his howl of surprise. His grip loosened enough for me to wrench one arm free and jab the one on my right in the gut, under the edge of his armor.

I actually thought I had a chance. I spun away from their grasp, dropping into the low stance Mistress Ashara had drilled into me. I snatched up my boot knife from where they’d tossed it by my feet.

“Predictable,” Malkor sighed, not even bothering to step back.

I lunged at the nearest guard, but my grip was wrong and my angle was worse. He parried with his armored forearm, the hit jarring my arm to the elbow. Before I could recover, another one tackled me from the side, driving me to the floor so hard it knocked the wind from my lungs.

The knife skidded away, spinning across the polished stone until it came to rest at Malkor’s feet. He looked down at it with mild amusement. Even my own knife was on his side.

More guards piled on me, rough hands grabbing my arms and legs, pinning me down. I was already exhausted from hours in the dungeon and fighting that glowing net before that. I was flailing and I knew it. “Fuck,” I gasped as a brutal twist of my arm sent a jolt of pain through my shoulder. “You guys ever consider a different line of work? Flower arranging, maybe?” The joke slipped out on its own. My head was still back on Malkor saying Ashara’s name.

A burly guard with a nasty scar across his nose grabbed my wrist and yanked me upright, the motion so sudden it made me dizzy. He dragged me toward the far side of the chamber, away from the ritual table where the woman lay motionless.

That was when I saw the pit, back where the candlelight didn’t reach.

Circular and about ten feet across, it gaped in the floor like an open mouth, its edges lined with what looked like teeth. A foul smell of rot came up out of it, with a sharper stink under it that had my nostrils burning and my eyes watering.

“Oh shit.” My legs went weak, that rubbery feeling you get when your body figures out what’s happening before your brain catches up. I dug my heels into the floor, and the guard dragged me along anyway. On the way he scooped up Ashara’s brooch and flicked it over the edge ahead of me, the asshole. “Wait, wait! Can’t we talk about this? I’m sure we can come to some arrangement!”

Malkor turned away, his interest in me apparently exhausted. “Feed him to the Pit,” he said.

I guess I’d expected the ritual table and the knife, the whole sacrificial thing. But Malkor didn’t even glance at me as he passed the bound woman, one hand trailing possessively over her shoulder. “She is my offering. You are refuse.”

The grimoire let out a delighted cackle. “The Pit! Excellent choice! It’s been AGES since we’ve had a proper feeding. The last one barely made a mouthful.”

“Mouthful?” I repeated, my voice rising an octave. “What the fuck is a...”

The guards pushed, and I was falling, my stomach shooting up into my throat as the pit’s darkness swallowed me.