The Breaking (The Eternal Dungeon), Page 2

CHAPTER TWO

  “Seekers!” grumbled Mr. Bergsen. “They should all be hamstrung and thrown to the Vovimians.”

  Elsdon, startled, craned his head to look back at the healer, who was rubbing ointment onto his back. “Excuse me?” he said tentatively.

  “Cruelty is bad enough. Cruelty that covers itself as kindness is beyond bearing. Look at that!” He pointed at Elsdon’s back.

  Elsdon tried to look and failed. He said, yet more hesitantly, “It doesn’t hurt very much, actually.”

  “Ah, they have you mind-twisted already. ‘Just a light whipping, Mr. Taylor. It won’t hurt you in the least.’ That’s what you were told, wasn’t it?”

  “No,” Elsdon replied truthfully. “Mr. Smith told me it would hurt.”

  “In the very moment that he told you he was showing you mercy, no doubt. Humph.” The healer reached over and scooped up a gob of ointment. “Bad enough that they should tear apart the bodies of prisoners, but they insist on finding justifications for what they do. ‘The Code allows us to punish prisoners if they break the rules placed upon them.’ I wish I could find every copy of their Code of Seeking and burn them all to cinders. Turn a bit, please; the lash marks carry round to your side.”

  Turning and raising his arms out of the way, Elsdon said, “If you hate the Seekers so much, why do you work for them?”

  “You don’t think I work for those bloodletters, do you? I work for the Codifier – not that that’s much of an improvement, I’ll admit. But at least I can prevent the Seekers from torturing prisoners whose health won’t stand for that sort of treatment. When those deaf-and-dumb Seekers listen to me, that is.” He swept the ointment on with broad strokes of the hand as Elsdon bit his lip against the sting.

  “Take your case,” said Mr. Bergsen, his eyes attentive on his work. “I received your medical records late last night, with a polite note from Mr. Smith requesting immediate approval of you for possible torture. Note how he phrased that: ‘approval,’ as though the idea of my disapproving of torture wouldn’t cross his mind. So I sent him back a message saying that, as far as your body’s health was concerned, you weren’t likely to die of heart failure if you were tortured, but that if he had any concern for your mind’s health, he should take a more careful look at your records.” The healer snorted. “I should have spelled matters out at a level a two-year-old could understand. —Right, strip off the remainder of your clothes, please.”

  Elsdon stared at the healer, his heart suddenly painful in its throbbing.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” the healer said with irritability. “You don’t have anything underneath that I haven’t seen before. Do you think I’ve practiced the healing arts for thirty years without encountering the wicked ways of the world?”

  Elsdon whispered, “Mr. Smith . . .”

  “You insult me. You insult the entire Guild of Healers. Do you really think I would pass on to a third person what I learn from a medical inspection? Come, I don’t have much time. I have to check on the progress of a prisoner who was racked yesterday.”

  Elsdon glanced at the door. The first thing the healer had done upon his entrance was cover the door’s watch-hole with a bit of chewing-gum, apparently undisturbed by the prospect that the guards would object. Slowly Elsdon stripped himself; then, at the healer’s gesture, he lay stomach-down upon the cool mattress of the bed-shelf. His face was blazing hot as he buried it in his arms.

  “Hmm.” The healer touched him lightly, causing Elsdon to flinch. Then Mr. Bergsen said, “Nasty, nasty. As bad as I’ve ever seen. No marks across the kidney, though. Someone’s been careful of your life, if not your health. . . . Very well, you may clothe yourself again.”

  Elsdon did so; he was shaking by the time he finished fumbling his fingers around the knots in his shirt. The healer was busy packing up his bag. He left the ointment on the bed-shelf, saying, “Spread that on when it hurts again. Your upper back will be healed within a day or two; Mr. Smith does at least know how to order his guards to keep a beating light.”

  “If I’m beaten harder . . .” Elsdon ventured to say.

  “Won’t happen. When I heard what a fool the High Seeker had made of himself, I went into his office and tore up every torture request the Record-keeper had sent me. Then I flung the scraps of paper into Mr. Smith’s face.”

  Elsdon found that, unexpectedly, he was having to bite his lip to keep from laughing. There was a suggestion of a twitch at the healer’s lips as he added, “After he’d apologized to me, I grudgingly agreed to approve the torture of the other prisoners. But not in your case. Let the High Seeker go practice his sadistic pleasures on other young men.” He stood up, strode over to the door, and rapped on it, waiting for it to open.

  Elsdon, standing next to the bed-shelf, looked down at the ointment. He picked it up and was contemplating it when he heard Mr. Bergsen cough from the open doorway.

  “It’s not poisonous,” the healer said as he peeled the gum off the watch-hole, “so it won’t do you any good to eat it. I’m sorry; there are limits to what I can do for prisoners.” And then he swept away, his voice high in indignation at the guards who helped the Seekers in their bloody work.

  o—o—o

  “Hoi!”

  Elsdon had been screwing and unscrewing the ointment jar as though he were a schoolmaster demonstrating the principle of eternal rebirth. Startled out of his thoughts, he looked up from where he sat, at the far end of the cell, with his back warmed by the fiery wall. Mr. Sobel was standing in the cell, with the door closed behind him. He held up a yellow ball for Elsdon’s view.

  “Would you like this?” he asked.

  Elsdon stared at the apple before saying hesitantly, “I’ve already been fed.”

  “Yes, I know, but I was given two in my dinner by mistake, and I thought you’d like the other one.” He pulled a second apple from his pocket, tossing the first to Elsdon.

  Elsdon caught it in an automatic manner, staring past the fruit to the guard. Mr. Sobel was as old as Elsdon’s father, in his forties, but in manner of speech and gesture he seemed much the same as Elsdon’s age-mates. He was tossing the other apple up and down in his hand now, saying, “May I sit?”

  Too late, Elsdon wondered whether the rules he had been given earlier applied to guards as well. He nodded mutely, and Mr. Sobel came forward and sat down in front of him, within arm’s reach. In an easy manner, he slid his dagger from its sheath and began using it to cut his apple.

  After a moment, Elsdon said, “Are you allowed to be in here like this?”

  “Not when I’m on duty,” the guard replied, stretching his legs out to the side. “Bloody blades, it’s good to be sitting again. I don’t know what kind of madness muddled me into taking up work that requires me to stand for half the clock-hours of the day.”

  “Mr. Bergsen doesn’t seem to like his work here either,” Elsdon commented. “I always thought of the Eternal Dungeon as being a place whose gates were clogged with thousands of prison workers, demanding to be let in.”

  Mr. Sobel snorted as the juice from the cut apple trickled over his fingers. “That’s an apt image. We get scores of requests for employment here every year. Every guard and torturer in the world seems to have made it his aim to work here, for at least a short while.”

  “So it’s hard to choose among them?”

  “Oh, it’s easy to choose among them. Almost none of them would be able to withstand the weight placed upon them here. —Look, do you need this to cut that?” He held out his dagger, hilt-first, to Elsdon.

  Elsdon felt his breath freeze in his chest as he stared down at the blade. After a moment he shook his head quickly and took a bite of his apple. He nearly choked on the bile that was rising to fill his throat.

  The guard appeared uninterested in the aftermath of whatever test he had set. He was concentrating on wiping his dagger clean of juice with a handkerchief he had pulled from his pocket. “We had a foreign torturer come to demonstrate his skills here last
year,” he said. “A man who was the most famed torturer in his land; it was said that no prisoner could hold out against him. After seeing his technique, everyone here agreed that he was virtually matchless in his skills. He was nearly as skilled as the High Seeker.”

  Elsdon managed to swallow the apple and the bile. “So you hired him?”

  “No, we sent him on his way. He could break a prisoner, but he was willing to do so for any reason. The goal of the breaking was of no interest to him. He wasn’t the sort of man who would ever be able to understand the reasons why we do the work here that we do.”

  Elsdon slowly stroked the smooth skin of the apple, barely aware that the fruit was in his lap. “So why do you do this work?”

  For a moment it seemed that Mr. Sobel would not reply. His gaze had drifted away, as though he were seeing something beyond the cell. Then he said, “Do you believe in eternal rebirth?”

  “Of course,” responded Elsdon with surprise. “Who doesn’t?”

  Mr. Sobel shrugged. “The Vovimians don’t.”

  “They’re barbarians.”

  “Well, then. If a person commits a terrible crime, and no one ever requires him to confess his crime and pay his debt in whatever manner he can . . . When he finally dies, do you believe that he’ll be reborn?”

  The silence extended for a long time. From where he sat, Elsdon could hear the faint rumble of flames behind him. He pulled away from the wall, feeling the bond of sweat joining back and shirt. “That’s why this is called the Eternal Dungeon? Because you help prisoners to continue in eternal rebirth?”

  The guard nodded without speaking.

  Elsdon said, “I thought— I’d thought it was named that because no one who is imprisoned here ever leaves here.”

  Without warning, the guard gave a short laugh. “Well, there’s a dust-speck of truth to that, I suppose. But for the most part, this isn’t a dungeon for long-term imprisonment. It’s a dungeon for searching men and women who have been accused of death-sentence crimes.”

  “No, I meant . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Oh.” The guard’s expression turned grave. “You tell that rumor to any Seeker, and he’ll be hard pressed to hide his fury. Seekers consider it a terrible failure if a prisoner dies while being searched. Our job is to ascertain whether the prisoner has committed a crime, and then to hand him over to the magistrates afterwards.”

  “So most of the dungeon’s prisoners go free?”

  He tried to hide the eagerness in his voice, but must not have succeeded, for the look of pity on Mr. Sobel’s face was plain. “No,” the guard said quietly. “Most prisoners are executed on the magistrates’ orders for their crimes.”

  Metal squeaked at the other end of the cell. The door opened a short space, and the day guard who had brought Elsdon his dinner poked his head inside. “Mr. Aaron wants to see you,” he told Mr. Sobel. “He sent a message about a report you haven’t submitted yet.”

  Mr. Sobel groaned as he rose to his feet. “Sometimes,” he said, “I think we would break more prisoners by handing them over to the Record-keeper and having him badger them to submit their confessions.” He tossed his half-finished apple into Elsdon’s lap, saying, “I’ll see you this evening. Don’t worry; you’ll find that matters have changed with the High Seeker.” Then he was gone, before Elsdon could ask him what he meant.

  o—o—o

  But he was right. Late that evening, as Elsdon stood in front of his black-hooded Seeker, unable to hide the wave of trembling that racked his body, he heard Mr. Smith say, “I wish to apologize, Mr. Taylor.”

  “Sir?” His voice came out no louder than a mouse’s.

  “I made a grave error yesterday – two errors, in fact, but the first was the gravest. When you told me that you loved your father, I believed that you were deliberately lying to me.”

  Elsdon waited, but the High Seeker said no more, so finally Elsdon replied in a low voice, “I do love him. I don’t know why you think I don’t.”

  “You did not deliberately lie to me, Mr. Taylor; I can see that now. I am sorry for my misjudgment of you. I assure you I will take care that I do not misjudge you again.”

  Elsdon found that he was having a hard time keeping his gaze focussed upon the High Seeker’s intense eyes. He waited with taut muscles for the searching to begin again.

  “Tell me about your school, Mr. Taylor.”

  “Sir?” He supposed that, by this time, he should stop sounding startled at every remark the hooded man made.

  “I would like to know about your school. Tell me what it looks like.” And though his posture did not relax, Mr. Smith steadied himself with his hand against the wall, as though he had come to the cell for no purpose other than to hear how architects designed school-halls these days.

  o—o—o

  “He doesn’t ask me anything that might have to do with me committing a crime,” Elsdon said. “All he talks about is my schooldays: what my schoolwork was like, whether I had good times with my age-mates, and so on.”

  “He hasn’t asked you about your family at all?” said Mr. Sobel, leaning over to scoop up the gravy from his dinner plate.

  “Only indirectly. He asked me why, when I left school, I didn’t go looking for work.”

  Carefully licking gravy from his spoon, Mr. Sobel said, “I’d wondered that too. When I came of age, I couldn’t have been more eager to leave home. I wanted to prove my worth among other men.”

  “Oh.” Elsdon’s face grew warm. He leaned forward and stared at the remains of his own dinner. “Well, you’ve seen what I’m like.”

  “Yes?” The guard’s voice held nothing more than mild curiosity.

  “I’m not— That is, I couldn’t hope to compete among other men. Not the way I am. I was grateful that my father was willing to pay me for taking care of his household. He was more generous than I deserved.”

  Ironware scraped against pottery as Mr. Sobel made another searching for any remaining gravy. “I don’t understand,” the guard said. “I saw your school records; you had high marks. Why do you think you wouldn’t do well in a job?”

  Elsdon swallowed around the painful hardness growing in his throat. “My school-marks were deceptive. The essence of what I am— My family always knew the truth.”

  “I thought you told Mr. Smith that your sister had a high opinion of you.”

  Elsdon’s gaze flew up toward the guard, who was lapping away at his iron spoon. For a moment, Elsdon almost spoke; then he closed his mouth quickly.

  The guard gave a soft chuckle. “He doesn’t talk to me about your sessions. It was in the first-day searching report he filed with the Record-keeper. The High Seeker is as much a prisoner of documentwork as the rest of us.”

  Elsdon nodded. His face had grown warm again. Reaching down to toy with his spoon – the only ironware permitted to prisoners – he said, “Sara was always generous too. But my father – he knows the truth about me.”

  Even as he spoke, he knew he had gone too far, and he tensed. But when he looked up again, he was surprised to see a faint expression of distress upon the guard’s face, as though he had committed a social breach.

  “I shouldn’t be asking you questions about your family,” Mr. Sobel said. “It comes too close to searching, and the Code won’t allow guards to search prisoners. It just seems odd to me, that you’d feel you were unqualified for work other than supervising your father’s household. Did you tell Mr. Smith all this?”

  “Yes, of course. And then he asked me what types of work the other boys at my school chose. His questions don’t make any sense.”

  The guard shrugged, scraping at his dish. “He often doesn’t make sense to me either. If you were to ask any prison worker in the world which man was most skilled at the art of searching prisoners, they wouldn’t hesitate to say, ‘Layle Smith.’ But if you were to ask anyone how the High Seeker does his work . . . After seventeen years, I’ve given up trying to understand the questions he asks prisoners.�
�

  “That’s how long you’ve been with Mr. Smith?” As he spoke, Elsdon leaned back against the fiery wall. They were on the floor again, as they had been for the past three mornings, this being the period when they shared dinnertime. Sitting on the floor allowed Mr. Sobel to stretch out his tired legs.

  The guard nodded. “I’ve been with him since his arrival at the Eternal Dungeon. He was transferred here from another prison, but of course he had to be retrained, as all of us do. He was taught by the old High Seeker – the High Torturer, he was called back in those days. I was guard for the High Torturer; after the training period I asked permission to serve as guard to Mr. Smith.”

  “That didn’t anger the High Torturer? —You can have my gravy, by the way.”

  “Are you sure?” Mr. Sobel waited for Elsdon’s nod before reaching over to take the plate. He sighed, saying, “Stealing food from a prisoner. I hope the Codifier never finds out about this. . . . No, the High Torturer was pleased when I asked for the transfer. He knew – we all knew – that Mr. Smith would be the one to succeed him, and the High Torturer wanted an experienced guard to help Mr. Smith learn the ways of the Eternal Dungeon.” Mr. Sobel leaned forward and scraped the gravy from Elsdon’s plate. “Not that I’ve ever done much besides stand around, dropping my jaw in awe. —Bloody blades, no, don’t give me your apple too. I don’t mind falling into the hands of the Codifier, but if Mr. Smith should learn I’m taking food from you . . .”

  “Oh, but maybe it would help you to be Mr. Smith’s prisoner.” Elsdon gave a small smile. “Good experience for a guard, don’t you think?”

  Mr. Sobel shuddered visibly. “No, thank you. I’d prefer to be put on the rack by any of the other Seekers rather than endure five minutes being searched by the High Seeker.”

  “But you must know him well if you’ve been his guard for seventeen years. Are you friends with him?”

  Mr. Sobel suddenly seemed to lose interest in his food. Abandoning the last of the gravy, he pushed the plate back and shook his head silently.

  Elsdon contemplated his bowed head for a moment before saying, “I suppose it wouldn’t be professional for the two of you to form a friendship.”

  The guard shook his head slowly. “No, it’s not that. I . . .” He looked up. There was a tension to his expression that Elsdon had never seen before, even in the moments after Elsdon had attacked the guard.

  “If you had a very great darkness in you,” Mr. Sobel said carefully, “a darkness so deep that it would frighten even those who worked in the bloodiest professions . . . Would you be able to share yourself with someone who had never experienced such darkness?”

  Elsdon wanted to sever his gaze then, but the strain in Mr. Sobel’s face would not permit him to do so. He said softly, “I’ve seen that in Mr. Smith.”

  The guard shook his head. “You haven’t,” he said firmly. “Truly, you’ve seen only the surface of the High Seeker so far. This other part of him . . . I don’t know how deep it goes, but it only begins to show itself when he’s with the worst prisoners, the ones he must rack. He uses it as a way to frighten them into confessing.”

  “And you’ve seen this.” Elsdon’s voice remained soft.

  Mr. Sobel let out his breath slowly. “Yes. I attend him in the rack room. Afterwards— It affects me almost as much as it does the prisoners, and I know Mr. Smith senses that. It’s little wonder he doesn’t want to share more of himself with me when we’re in our leisure hours.”

  “Perhaps he’s afraid to.” Even as he spoke, Elsdon realized how absurd his words were. He was not surprised when a faint smile drifted onto the lips of the guard.

  But all that Mr. Sobel said was, “You’re odd.”

  Elsdon bit his lip, making no response.

  “Not odd in a bad way,” the guard added hastily. “It’s just that here you are, a prisoner in the Eternal Dungeon . . . and yet, every time we meet, somehow we always end up talking about my troubles.”

  “Perhaps I’m just trying to deflect the conversation from me.”

  “Maybe. I suppose the High Seeker would be able to know that.”

  Elsdon shifted uneasily, playing with the ironware once more. “What I said before about Mr. Smith . . . Don’t pay any care to me; I always get things in a muddle. I’m sure that when Mr. Smith is with his friends— What is it?”

  He could not have said what made him sure that some great discovery had been made, for Mr. Sobel had neither spoken nor moved. Only his expression changed slightly, and this was quickly hidden as the guard got onto his knees and began to collect the plates.

  Watching him, Elsdon said slowly, “Mr. Smith doesn’t have any friends.”

  The guard looked up finally. Distress lay upon his face. “Look,” he said, “we shouldn’t be talking about the High Seeker like this. It isn’t right.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Elsdon quickly. “I’m invading his privacy, and yours.”

  “I don’t mind talking to you about my life, but . . .” Mr. Sobel uttered a soft curse and rose, abandoning the plates. He thumped his fist against the fiery wall, then stared at the flames for a moment before giving Elsdon a rueful smile. “Now you see why I’m not qualified to be a Seeker. Mr. Smith would never have let you trail-blaze the conversation like that.”

  “I’m sorry,” repeated Elsdon, his voice falling back into hesitancy.

  “Oh, I don’t mind, usually. It’s a weight off me from other times, when I must be the one giving prisoners orders.”

  Elsdon watched the guard as he strode back and forth across the tiny confines of the cell, stopping occasionally to stand like a stork and shake the cramps from his loose leg. Through the door came the muted sounds of morning-time. It still disconcerted Elsdon to have his evening meal at dawn, though only the changing of guard shifts could have told him how much time had passed in this sunless place.

  “You spoke earlier of a weight placed on guards and Seekers,” Elsdon said. “What did you mean by that?”

  “I meant the Code.” Then, seeing Elsdon’s blank look, Mr. Sobel added, “The Code of Seeking – it’s our rule book. Our code of ethics. Our philosophy. . . . I’m not sure how to describe it. It tells why we are different from the other dungeons and prisons of the world, and what rules we must follow to assist the prisoners.”

  “To assist them in confessing, you mean?” Elsdon said slowly.

  “Oh, more than that.” Mr. Sobel stopped a moment and chewed on his thumb, his brows drawn low in concentration, then nodded at a thought. “Here’s what I mean. The Code says that if a guard observes any unusual behavior in a prisoner, he must report it to a Seeker.”

  “What sort of unusual behavior?”

  “Anything at all. For example, when Mr. Urman sliced you with his whip, you barely reacted. I didn’t notice this, because my eyes were closed from the knock on the head you’d given me. But that lack of reaction was unusual. Mr. Urman should have reported that to Mr. Smith when the High Seeker arrived at your cell. If he had, Mr. Smith would have known that you had experienced severe pain in the past and would have taken that into account when deciding whether to have you beaten.”

  Elsdon pulled his legs up against his chest and said nothing.

  “Some guards think the rule about reporting unusual behavior is foolish, but you’ve seen for yourself what can happen if it’s not followed,” continued Mr. Sobel. “The Code chains guards and Seekers with all sorts of rules like that, for the sake of the prisoners.”

  “So that’s the only weight upon you? The Code?”

  Mr. Sobel stopped in mid-stride and looked over at Elsdon, huddled against the wall. The guard cocked his head as he said, “What other weight do you have in mind?”

  “I don’t know.” Elsdon stared down at the tips of his calf shoes. “Any sort of weight. I should think it would be hard being a guard – having to hurt prisoners, to frighten them . . .”

  Mr. Sobel gave a sharp laugh. “Bloody blades, I can’t believe we’re having t
his conversation. Yes, you’re right about that – at least, it’s hard for me. But if you want to know the worst weight . . . It’s not being sure.”

  “Not being sure?” Elsdon lifted his head.

  “About the prisoners who are executed. Sometimes I’m not sure whether they really were guilty, or whether they just told us what they thought we wanted to hear. I wake up sweat-soaked in bed sometimes, thinking about that.”

  The guard’s eyes were lowered now, his body still. He was silent for a long moment as Elsdon watched him, his own tension forgotten. Finally Elsdon said, “Is that the greatest weight upon the High Seeker too?”

  The guard looked up. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Why don’t you ask him?”