Private Tales Where Even the Stones Scream

[Shrike]

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The leaking rainwater of the evening storm mixed with the ocean's spray and seeped through the cold, cruel rocks of Cerak At'Thul, down through the lower dungeons. This tepid, salt-poisoned water collected in puddles. One such puddle sat in her cell, near her bedroll and some straw - the only kindness afforded her, if it could even be called that.

Here, in one of the deepest parts of the ancient fortress, there were no windows. No slits in the wall. No skylights. Nothing to admit light, or to judge the passing of time.

Nothing but the drip, drip, drip of water to note a passing storm. And the roar of cracking thunder, heard even through so much sorcerous stone. Ah. The stone. Black as pitch and offending to the eye to look at for too long. The whole fortress was made from it. Those in the town said it was cursed by the builders, that it drove men mad.

Perhaps it did.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Utter darkness gripped the cells, broken only by the approach of torch light when the gaoler came to feed her - that horned schemer, Gwyddion.

In the past innumerable hours, or maybe days, two other prisoners had once sat in cells of their own nearby. Company at least. Before they'd been taken away by Gwyddion, through the door. They'd never returned, but their distant screaming had echoed, even through the stones.

The door at the end of the hall groaned opened with a squeal and torch light flooded the cell block - empty but for her, Keres.

The approaching footsteps were not the clip of Gwyddion's cloven feet upon the stone, but leather boots. The blinding light of the torch grew closer, until a tall, hooded figure stood outside the bars to her cell, the torch in one of his hands. Locks of long, white hair spilled out from beneath his hood, but his jaw was clean shaven - skin a dark gray.

"Well, Spy," came a thin, cold voice, sharp as a dagger's razored tip, "will you confess?"

The same question Gwyddion had asked her, every time he brought food. They thought she'd come to their island with the rest, to spy on the Black Bay's Wardens.

Outside, waves broke against the cliffs of Cerak, beneath a fortress of black stone that made eyes water and ache just to look upon.

 

[Keres]

Keres had stopped trying to tell time. The cells swallowed it whole. No sun, no moon, no thin sliver of sky to mark an hour. Darkness lay over her so thick she could not see her own hands held an inch from her face, and so she'd taken to keeping her eyes closed.

That fucking drip though. The sound had a rhythm that wanted to reorder her mind into something small and obedient. If the putrid water and the darkness and the occasional sounds of thunder and screaming were not enough to fray her, then the dead were. Their breath was everywhere, whispered words curling through the seams in the stone until she felt them crawl under her skin.

She curled into herself, knees to chest, arms over ears. Shut up, shut up, shut up. The whispering rose and braided into a roar in her skull and she pressed harder, as if pressure could clamp their voices down. It didn’t help. It never did. She couldn't hear herself think. But then, what was there to think about? She was stuck here in this stinking void, waiting for her turn to die, and nobody but the wardens and the dead knew she was here..

Then, the voices hushed as steps grew closer. Her throat worked around a hunger that was more a physical hollowness than an appetite. She imagined bread, fresh and warm for a foolish second, and then the dream curdled into the reality of the mouldy rations she was usually left with.

When torchlight finally spilled down the corridor it stabbed at her eyes. She blinked them open, squinting, raising a hand automatically to shield her face from that burning glare. The light made the shadows snap into sudden, ugly clarity of iron bars, wet straw, a hooded figure framed in flame and smoke.

Another voice. Same question. Same slow, practiced hunger behind the words. She pushed herself upright with a groan, straw rasping under her, nails clicking against the stone as she steadied.

“Apparently,” she said irritably, “the truth is not what you people want to hear, and honestly, the routine is growing weary. If death is the quickest way of getting out of this godforsaken pit then yes, I confess - I’m a spy.” Her laugh was mirthless with exhaustion. “Though exactly what I’d be spying on is beyond me. This is the most boring place I’ve ever had the misfortune of finding myself, and the standard of hospitality is severely fucking lacking.”

She let the words hang, the defiance trembling at the edges. Her eyes narrowed, still dazzled by the torch as she held up her wrists to the figure. "Lets be done with it.”

 

[Shrike]

The figure cocked his head and from within the hood's shadows came the glint of eyes reflecting the torchlight. He seemed to ponder her answer.

"...Boring," the word skated from his lips as though a vile utterance, an affront to his ears.

Of all the hateful wails and pitiful sobs, when last had he and his been called... boring? A ploy to draw his ire.

Gwyddion was right. She had a tenacity, this one. Such defiance. The barest twitch of his lips in a smile's pale specter.

"You, of all people, should know death is no release from these ancient stones. Can you hear them? The whispers?"

His hand caressed one of the stone blocks forming the edge of her cell, its surface an oily pitch to the eye. Then his attention returned to her, his fingers contorting in a summoning gesture.

In her cell, the pooling shadows crept forward in tendrils of deepest midnight, curling around her calves and up around her arms, their touch the chill of pre-dawn fog. They pulled her toward the bars of the cell, with a hideous, insistent strength like the ocean's tidal force, drawing her to press up against those unyielding bars of old wrought iron, where her captor might see her better.

The torchlight flickered and crackled, pitch smoke mixing with the other lingering smells of mildew and rot.

"Look at you, wretched thing," the words crooned from his lips, almost tender, "Perhaps I shall grant your wish, if you cooperate. For whom do you spy? Prince Tulok? Or that lich from the north, perhaps?"

Keres

 

[Keres]

Her jaw clenched until it ached when he spoke of the whispers. Gods, he had no idea. If only he had to hear them the way she did; unceasing, clawing, begging. If there was one mercy, it was that she could not see them in the darkness.

When the shadows coiled up her legs, she hissed softly between her teeth. They weren’t just cold, they felt like a violation. Slick, oily things, as though night itself had been given form and poured over her skin. Every inch they crept made her flesh crawl, her stomach churn. They dragged her with a strength she could not resist, her body jerked forward like a marionette without strings until her ribs pressed flush to the iron bars. The chill of them needling deep into her bones.

The powerlessness burned more than the cold. It was a brand against her pride, a reminder of her shackles, of every moment since she’d woken on the ashen sand of this fucking island. She wanted to thrash, to spit, to claw, but she swallowed it down.

Blinking against the torchlight, her eyes adjusted enough to catch the outline of his hooded face, the gleam of those eyes. Her own dark gaze glistened in the light, catching fire like amber, but she held them steady on him. She would not give him the pleasure of seeing her afraid.

“Me?” Her voice rasped, dry with thirst yet sharp as ever. “Oh, I spy for myself. Made something of a hobby of it, really.” A sly smile pulled at the corner of her cracked lips. “Turns out there’s not much else to do in this charming little shithole of yours.”

Her tone carried that same reckless defiance, though every nerve under her skin screamed at the shadows’ touch.

 

[Shrike]

"You're just as brazen as he said," the hooded figure whispered, almost to himself. So few on this island dared to speak to him thus. Perhaps she would not either, if she knew who he was, or perhaps her hate would be redoubled. Again, that ghost of a smile in the merest twitches of sallow muscle, as if they could recall the memory of one, but had forgotten how to form it.

He stuck the torch in a wall sconce, then wrapped his fingers around her jaw as the shadows pressed her to the bars. A ruby-eyed gaze surveyed her, studying acutely, as if he might augur to her soul and extract her essence with mere examination.

"Good."

Did it pain him to admit how truly her words truck home? Only she did not realize... it was the foolish town of Cerak that was such a banal blight, always troubling him with uprisings and chaos. Spend a hundred years in a place and you see more than your fair share. Yet he still had not uncovered the mysteries of this fortress. That is what she did not yet understand... unless, of course, that was her purpose here. Sent to uncover the citadel's secrets.

"I will enjoy breaking you," he said simply.

A gesture of his hand and the magical lock on the cell twisted with a clunk of metal, then he pulled open the door. It groaned open, protesting its disuse, and a glimmer of freedom might appear, but for the shadows holding her fast. He watched her with a slightly bored expression, expecting the thrashing and protests and gnashing of teeth that always accompanied these moments.

The shadows gripped her tightly as the hooded figure retrieved a set of manacles from the wall and clicked them into place around her wrists, then he led her by the chain down the hallway toward that door. The one at the end of the hall. The one that led to salvation or to screams, or perhaps both.

"Come. What is it you call yourself, slave?"

Keres

 

[Keres]

Keres's jaw was a stone wall. His fingers curled around her chin and she met that ruby glare dead on, every instinct screaming to look away, to tremble, to beg, but she did not. She had seen worse, felt worse, and if this was the end she would not give him the theatre of her fear.

Breaking her? The word scraped at some raw place inside her and she forced down the shudder that tried to crawl her spine. Her hands trembled only a fraction as the shadows released their hold, and the bite of iron at her wrists was a lesser torment than the things that had lived in her head for nights on end. She was almost grateful for the tangible weight of metal; real, predictable, infuriatingly simple.

“Break me?” she said, voice hoarse from thirst and cold and too many sleepless nights. “For what? I already confessed to whatever tidy accusation you lot prefer.” She lifted her chin. There would be no thrashing. No theatrics. She would not give him that satisfaction.

She let him lead her, the chain clinking a small, bitter music, and offered him a sneer of dark sarcasm “I call myself royally fucked. What about you?” she muttered, because names were useless here and titles were trinkets, and because if she couldn’t wound his pride, she’d at least shove a barb where she could.

 

[Shrike]

A wry, rasping laugh slid from his throat the way an edged sword whispers when drawn from its sheath.

"Such a clever tongue."

He pulled on the chain and it rattled, dragging her forward to follow him down the hallway. They reached the far door and he pulled it open, revealing another hallway lit intermittently by more torches in wall sconces.

The only sound in the hallway was the crackle of the torches, the footfall of his leather boots and the slapping of her bare feet upon the stone, the rattle of the chains... and the whispers in the walls.

"There is a bird on this island. A small thing," he glanced back at her, "Like you. No great war hawk or swooping sea eagle. But it impales its prey on the tines of thorn trees. Leaves them there to dry in the sun, a stocked larder. And a warning. It's called the shrike."

The hooded figure came to a stop in front of a simple wooden door.

"That is what you may call me. Shrike."

A push and the door opened. A coppery tang smote the senses and an orange glow spilled out into the hallway.

"You give me half-truths and the bite of a caustic wit. A passing amusement," he jerked harshly on the chain, drawing her into the room after him. "But the doldrums approach."

The light came from a basin of heated coals standing high in one corner of the room. Best to look there and not down. Not around. Not at the walls lined with sharp and jagged instruments. Not at the twin tables and their straps and the slick of scarlet still wet, pooling beneath one, dripping toward a drain in the floor to drip, drip, drip.

The door swung shut behind her and Shrike looked down upon her, he must have been north of six feet, taller than even many orcs.

"Your winds have died and you've no oars with which to row," he remarked somberly, "Paddle with your wit. We will see how far it gets you before it turns to screams."

Somewhere through the stones, the crack of distant thunder.

"Or start anew and tell me your story as you believe it."

Keres