I didn’t want to look. I had to. Heart thundering, breath coming fast, I crept to the door and peered in.
The inside of the cell was dimly lit with the same blue glow as the corridors. I let my eyes adjust to the light until I could see the entire cell. The room was a cavity chopped into the glacier. The floor was crusted with waste. There were five Forged ones inside, and nothing else. Four of them had taken positions in defensible corners, backs to the walls. Hest, weakened with injuries, sprawled on the floor in the centre of the cell. Plainly none of the Forged ones dared venture forth to attack him, for that would leave their own backs exposed. The three strangers in the cell were Outislanders, starved and scarred and dressed in rags. Their captors had stripped Hest and Riddle of their heavy fur coats, but even so, they were better off than the others. They still had their boots. I quested toward them desperately with the Wit, willing with all my might that I feel something from them. But there was nothing. They crouched, staring with brutish animosity at one another, less than animals. Their connection to the world and society had been stripped from them.
I sagged away from the door, sitting down flat on the icy floor. Misery and sickness flooded through me. Evil memories I had thought long banished clawed at me with scabby fingers. I do not think the Fool could have understood the depth of my horror. He could not feel their absence of connection as I could.
‘Is there nothing we can do for them?’ he asked softly.
A smile like blight came to my face. I clenched my teeth, refusing to feel the emotions that threatened me. I would not think about this too deeply. I had already thought this through, long ago, and I knew all the final answers. No sense in agonizing my way through lessons I had already learned. I spoke flatly. ‘I could kill them. Maybe. There are four of them on their feet, and though three of them look starved and weak, I’ve known Forged ones to pack up and fight together. For a time, until there were spoils to claim. I don’t know if I could kill them all before they pulled me down. Riddle’s a good fighter. And he’s still healthy.’
‘But … Riddle and Hest?’ He pleaded with me.
He should have known better. ‘Fool. That isn’t Riddle or Hest. Their bodies are there, and all the things they knew are there. But that’s all. They no longer care about anything or anyone. The only things they’ll consider are their own physical appetites. Would Riddle let Hest lie there on the floor, injured and unguarded? No. That isn’t Riddle. Not any more.’
‘But … we have to do something!’ His whisper was agonized.
I sighed. ‘If we open that door, I have to kill them. They’ll make me, unless I’m willing to let them kill me.’
‘Then we have no choice?’
I smiled bitterly. ‘There are always choices. But sometimes there are no good ones. I kill them, or they kill us. Or we walk away.’
For a long time, the Fool stood silent. Then he turned away from the cell door and walked slowly away. I followed him.
The ice corridors began to show more signs of use. The floor looked trodden and grubby, the icy walls scarred. We passed more dungeons, identical to the first. I peered into each one we passed, sick with horror, but we did not speak of the people we glimpsed inside them. The ones with the woman and the girl in them were the most heart-rending for me. The floor of those cells had a layer of straw on it and there were pallets in each corner. Evidently the lives of these captives were to be prolonged. It seemed a crueller fate than Riddle, Hest and their companions endured. Death would not be swift for the men, but cold ate a man just as steadily as starvation did. They would not suffer long. From the length of the woman’s unkempt hair and filthy nails, she had been in there for a long time. Huddled in a filthy bear rug, she crouched in the corner, staring at the wall. In the next cell, a girl of about seven picked at scabs on her ankles. Her eyes flicked once to meet mine as I stared through the crack in the door. The only emotion they showed me was wariness.
Eventually, the corridor of dungeons came to an end. The hall grew wider, and the pale light globes were spaced more frequently. The passageway had been carved rather than chopped out of the ice, and there were grace notes of frozen beauty in the arched walls. The floor was clean and sprinkled with sand for traction. It seemed older to me, as if it had been built to accommodate a greater flow of people, but we had still not glimpsed a soul.
Then we came to a junction that offered us three choices. The main corridor continued before us. To our left, a wide passage descended in shallow steps that wound down and out of sight. To our right, a stairway was cut in the ice, and led steeply upwards. Both looked older and far more worn than the path we had been following. The Fool and I halted and exchanged glances.
From the opening on our left, my ears caught a faint shushing sound. It came at distant but regular intervals. I cupped my ear to it. After a short time, the Fool whispered, ‘It sounds as if something huge is breathing down there.’
I widened my nostrils and drew in a deep breath. What I smelled inspired me with hope even as it made the sound instantly recognizable. ‘No. It’s waves, it’s the sea. This way leads to a beach. Come on.’
His face lit like a man suddenly reprieved. ‘Yes!’ he prayed, and hastened down the broad, wide steps. I followed him and catching his shoulder, moved him to the inside curve of the steps. ‘Stay by the wall,’ I instructed him in a low voice. ‘If we hear someone coming up, it will give us that one moment to surprise them.’ Our only weapon, his belt-knife, was already in my hand.
We were already weary, with no idea of how long we’d been exploring the ice maze. The steps were shallow and maddeningly irregular. They were gouged, too, as if heavy objects were often dragged up or down them. As we went deeper, the sea smell came stronger, and the air grew damper. The steps became more slippery, and soon we were negotiating our way down ice steps sheened with water. Someone had thrown sand on them, but it had melted unevenly into the surface, leaving knobs of glistening and slippery ice when least expected. We were forced to go more slowly. Soon the walls were gleaming with slow water, and drops fell from overhead. The smell of the water grew stronger, but the light did not vary from the witchglow of blue that suffused us.
Then we reached the pitted bottom step and saw the futility of our hope. Beyond the ice was a slope of worn black stone that gave onto a beach of black sand. Several metal pegs were driven into it, as if small boats were sometimes moored there. Waves shushed in and out over it, lapping relentlessly higher. And overhead in the cavern, barely visible in the blue glow of the last of the pale globes, was a high ceiling of glistening ice.