Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 156907 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 785(@200wpm)___ 628(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156907 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 785(@200wpm)___ 628(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
“This is true,” Lena returned. “But something has occurred.” She looked amongst her two fellow witches as well, saying, “You both must have felt it.”
Rebecca shook her head.
“I felt something,” Nandra told her. “Though I did not know what it was. Do you?”
“The sorcerer who rouses the Beast, his energy is gone,” Lena said.
Rebecca, for one, had not felt that.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Can we be sure about anything we sense, see or feel through our craft?” Lena asked as answer. “But there is a great change, and it has naught to do with the fact that there have been less orderly quakes. The Beast is not gone, he is not asleep, he is…pacified. But he is the Beast. He has awakened. So he will not be pacified for long.”
“I do not like the sound of that,” Nandra muttered.
“I urge you, my sisters, in this time of despair, to hold on to hope,” Lena said. “Much swifter than I ever would imagined with these four, I feel their power building. This means we must protect them at all costs.”
“At all costs,” Nandra agreed.
Rebecca thought of what was happening in her home.
So when she repeated, “At all costs,” her words were full of sorrow.
As were the expressions of her sisters.
83
The Down
Prince True
Crittich Keep, Notting Thicket
WODELL
The roads to Crittich Keep were lined with deathly silent Dellish citizens.
And not a one of them appeared surprised that Prince True rode his steed Majesty at a breakneck pace along the cobbles, his mantle flying out behind him, his face set in stone.
Though there were a goodly number of them who were astonished at just how brightly his eyes were glowing green.
But True was of no mind to the silent masses that lined the streets.
Only one thing was on his mind.
And this was why he’d thrown his leg over Majesty’s rump to dismount before his horse even came to a full halt.
The instant he was on his feet outside the prison, he tossed his reins to a waiting guard who had to catch a still-moving Majesty and pull him back before he was yanked off his own feet.
True did not watch this.
His lieutenants Luther and Wallace—who had also dismounted on the fly—shadowing him, True stalked under the raised portcullis and through the high, double-wide, stone-arched door. A door that sat dead center in the long one-story section that separated the two tall, stark towers constructed of three-feet wide blocks of black Airenzian stone.
He was unsurprised that Aramus, Cassius and Mars awaited him just inside.
He was surprised that Frey Drakkar and Apollo Ulfr of Lunwyn were with them.
It was Aramus who approached first, his eyes moving over True’s face, and thus his lips knew only to ask, “Which one do you want first?”
“Carrington,” True gritted, prowling toward the inner hall without breaking stride, his mantle flashing behind him.
The men all formed a phalanx after him as True took a right turn in the hall.
He headed to where the prisoners of means were kept in spacious cells with cots with down mattresses, small tables with chairs, smaller irons for heating, with three square meals a day and views of the city from its thin windows.
The administration offices for the constabularies of all Wodell and their penal systems were also on the lower floors of that tower in the six-story keep.
To the left was where the commoners were sent. The cells smaller, filled with more than one man (or woman), with naught but blankets, no heating irons, chairs, mattresses or tables.
And the upper cells had views of the city’s dump, cess-swamp, and the shanty village filled with vagrants, uncommitted lunatics, hopeless addicts of ashesh and koekah and other varied disenfranchised elements.
This would change, this separation of criminals.
Soon.
But not now.
Now was the time for something else.
“Where are the others?” True asked, his mantle caressing the corner at the winding stairwell as he swept into it to ascend.
“Down,” Cassius answered.
True was unsurprised at this as well.
For it was as he’d ordered.
The Down was where the worst offenders were kept. Convicted murderers, rapists, and the abusers of the elderly, women and children were locked there in small cells with no light. Communication between prisoners or with guards was forbidden and only the barest necessities for survival were offered for as long as their sentence lasted, or their life ended, whichever came first.
If they survived, they were released into the Shanty, one class of the varied disenfranchised who existed there.
The Down was also where the ancient torture chambers were.
They’d been closed four generations ago after a public outcry became a riot that saw a goodly amount of the city burned, a larger amount looted, and Birchlire Castle had been in danger of both. This, after two young men, neither of them even twenty, were tortured to death for a crime it was eventually proved they did not commit. It was simply the fact that the lord of the manor didn’t like them. Therefore, he’d accused them of a rape that one of his own vassals had committed.