I WAS DRAGGED from my second slumber by the sound of something being scraped across metal grates. My eyes bolted open and the first thing I felt was soft. Someone had lifted me back onto the sofa and tucked a blanket around me. The noise erupted again before I had the chance to think and I peered down at the floor. Ric lay sprawled in a heap, his mouth hung open as his snores filled the room. I would have laughed but my cackle lodged itself in my throat.
Further across the room the light had eased through the glass doors and illuminated mostly everything, though a blanket of cloud still covered the sky. In the chair next to mine Ethan sat slumped to one side, his chest rising and falling gently in his sleep. His chin was tucked into the cloak he wore as if he’d been out already. The raven-dark hair seemed so silken I expected it would slip through my fingers with ease, and I had to resist the temptation to act upon my urge. Instead I stood from the sofa, minding Ric’s unconscious body, and folded the blanket under his head with a gentleness even I was impressed with. He stirred but submitted to the extra level of comfort.
The door shut behind me with a muffled creak and I started toward the staircase. I stopped, however, at the sight of another door I’d not really noticed before. It was old, much like the rest of the house, and the cold, metal borders twisted around the hinges, reinforcing the strength of its joints. .Its wood was a little bit splintered at the base but it was no weaker than the heavy piece of timber appeared to be. I turned the handle and opened the door with one enormous push.
Inside, the staircase was dark. The only source of light seemed to be coming from a lamp burning below, illuminating the beginning of another stone corridor. Cautiously, I made my way down the stairs, feeling out each step with one foot after the other. The place gave me a funny feeling: it was close and murky. It was hard to breathe, but I pushed on, ignoring the weight my locket had suddenly gained.
As I reached the floor below I noted a series of rooms that didn’t really make sense. The first was clearly a bedroom with nothing more than a bed, dresser and a small bookcase. There were no windows or hints of daylight, but then, I was underground judging by the length of the staircase. The doors leading into the rooms, however, were different – they were strengthened with metal at their weakest points as though someone was afraid of something getting in…or something getting out.
The other rooms were emptier. I guessed they would once have been prison cells for whatever lord the house belonged to. What a lord would need an underground full of cells for, I didn’t know. It all seemed very innocent now they’d been converted; until I entered the second room on the right.
It was so entirely unexpected at that moment that I had to walk out and enter again, as though closing and reopening the door would switch it into a bedroom. There were no chairs around the large table in the middle and the walls were adorned with weapons of every variety. Some of them, I couldn’t even tell what they were supposed to be for. Hacking? Dismembering? Disembowelling? I didn’t really want to think about it. Chests sat proudly at the far end of the room, each of which held three locks. I tried without success to open one and eyed one of the blunter looking axes hanging next to me on the wall. It would have been easy. Just one swift swing and—
Don’t you dare. Thankfully my conscience kicked in.
I ran my finger around the intricate carvings engraved on the top and sides of the metal, and instead turned my attention back to the weapons surrounding me. Some were spiked; some were curved in illogical ways; some had handles made of metal or bone or marble or wood; some were as long as a warhorse; some were as small as a tailor’s pins. They were fascinating and frightening.
On the table next to me a large sheet of paper sprawled across the old wood, its edges aged and pinned to the surface. From what I could make out it was a map of some sort, illustrating the land up until a large body of water and highlighting several areas with red stamps. Vremia, it said at the top. In the centre a small knife had been stabbed through a place called ‘Carrandell’. A crude temple crown was drawn next to the town name, similar to the one I’d seen before through the library window. Something caught in my chest. I’d studied maps in Wetherdon after Father started disappearing. It seemed logical at the time that if I could remember the world around me I’d be able to track where my father had been, but if we were anywhere near the marker…I recognised nothing. The thought danced around my mind in alarm until I pushed it away. Panic wouldn’t help.
As I exited the room movement caught my eye. A large tapestry hung on the far wall. I’d noticed it before; it seemed innocent enough despite its odd placement in a dank basement, and I moved closer to inspect it. It was a mess of colour. If I unfocused my eyes shapes emerged from the display, but nothing really made sense. Whatever the shapes represented they looked deranged in the way they grouped together. At the very top of the hanging, I guessed, could be either the sun or the moon; though it was red. Around the rest of it, much of the surrounding pasture was awash with oranges, yellows and blues.
Then…that movement again. A section near the bottom corner stirred ever so slightly. I waited to see if it happened once more and dropped to my knees when the tapestry sighed. A small breeze washed across my hand and I got up, sliding my fingers behind the thick canvas. The tapestry came away easily and behind it stood another door. Except this one was different. The whole structure was made of iron. But stranger still, as well as a keyhole, it locked from the outside with two strongly-welded bolts. Why would they have need for such a thing? With a quick look behind me I pulled the bolts up and across and stepped into the room.
Only, it was not a room. It was an actual prison cell. Similar to the ones they had in the Enforcer’s base in Wetherdon, it had strong chains fixed to the walls, two for the wrists and two for the ankles. Thick, metal bars ran from the ceiling to the floor in a semicircle around the wall fastenings, leaving just enough space to take a few steps in either direction. A thin scattering of straw layered the cobbled floor but there was no bed, no chair, not even a cushion. On the slanted floor a grate sat above a darkened pit. I didn’t want to think what they would need a runoff for, and tried to ignore the stains between the floor slabs.
I dared to step further into the room, cautiously swinging the bars open. My fingers traced the open circles of the shackles but the texture was gritty. On the inside of the cuffs seemed to be years’ worth of dried blood and hair, and the wall surrounding the bolted plates had been scratched and gouged by something. Inside the grooves of the deepest scratches I saw distinctive red lines stained into the porous grey stone that someone couldn’t scrub away. I inched closer and ran my own fingernails along the ruts. There were five that were slightly wider than my fingers, but the nail marks were not human. Human nails were soft in terms of rigidity but those – those-