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had seen many winters in a land where summer was unknown, the material
appeared to cling to his flesh as though it formed an exterior layer of skin;
a squat frame, the head seeming too large and heavy for the shoulders, the
legs short and bowed. The features were barely visible beneath a matted growth
of jet black hair and beard, the eyes small and bright and missing nothing,
flicking over Sabat. 'Come, follow me for your time here is short, unlike
mine.'
Sabat followed the keeper of the castle inside, saw bare walls that ran with
moisture, the furniture fashioned out of felled timber. A dismal edifice in
which there was no comfort, footsteps echoing eerily, and if you listened hard
enough you could hear a constant moaning; either it was the wind howling
through the battlements or else the souls of the damned crying in torment from
the dungeons below.
The guide plucked a lighted torch from a bracket in the wall and began to
descend a flight of uneven stone steps, Sabat was aware of the damp cold, an
aroma like rotting flesh coming up to meet them. Down and still down, then
along passages with earth floors that intersected, an underground maze where
the stench was stronger, the screams louder.
Finally they came to a heavy wooden door and the bearded man lifted the latch,
swung it back on rope hinges.
'See, Sabat, (he dungeon of the damned where the sentences are for eternity!'
Sabat recoiled at the scene which the flickering flame revealed. A dungeon
prison that seemed to go on and on into the black shadows, naked emaciated
bodies that hung by their arms from staples embedded in the walls, the faces
depicting eternal torment, mouths shaped into perpetual cries of terror. Old
and young, a motley assortment, rats scurrying away from the light, disturbed
at their feast of living flesh; bloated like the vultures in the desert, those
in the foreground shadows masticating as they watched, impatient to return and
feed again.
'Follow me.'
Sabat obeyed because he had no choice, close on the heels of his companion
along a line of squirming bodies, their breath cold and fetid. A chorus of
curses that vibrated on the brain as Quentin did when he sensed an evil ally.
'That is the one!'
The gaoler had picked up a whip from somewhere, a wooden handled instrument of
chastisement, its lashes knotted at the ends, and held it out to Sabat. 'This
is why you have been summoned here!'
Sabat stared, recognised the bloodstained, tear-streaked features of a woman
who had once been beautiful although it was difficult to imagine her so.
Blonde hair that had turned to white, breasts that were no longer full, and
sagged like empty pouches. A leg that was twisted and useless, the ankle bone
rattling against its iron. Only the eyes were the same, an unmistakable blue
and still trying to dominate with a power that was long spent. Catriona
Lealan! Lilith! It was she, rotting in a hell where there was no fire to warm,
a Hades whose inmates were condemned forever to the Stygian blackness and the
rats.
'You expressed a wish to lash her,' the gaoler's tones were emotionless, 'and
for that reason you were summoned.'
Sabat winced and wished that somehow he could rekindle that hatred for
Catriona Lealan that had once burned fiercely within him. But he could not.
Nor compassion. It was just a job that had to be done and he had been chosen.
And that was why he would do it.
He nodded, raised the whip, tried not to look into those eyes. Then the
dungeons resounded with the tearing of flesh and the screams of a soul in
agony. For Lilith who was fashioned out of mud and filth had been returned to
that place of darkness where even the evil powers themselves feared to
venture. Filth to filth for eternity.
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