The Savage

Part 2: Chapter Nine: Rory

The Queen Mother came demanding to see Brenn shortly after Llewellyn had left. The guards quickly followed after that. They hadn't sent the Inquisitioners. Rory supposed he should be grateful for that but it was difficult, in the dark.

Inside the cell it was darkness itself. Impossible to see his hand in front of his face. Without the light of day time quickly lost meaning, but Rory refused to allow the senseless black of his cell to loosen his grip on reality. His jailer brought water and a stale roll of rye bread once a day. In an effort to keep track of how long he had been there, Rory used the hinge of the shackle around his ankle to scrape a line into the rock wall of his cell. One line for each meal. It took time to carve it out, so this also gave him a job which helped the boredom. He found solace in caressing his marks on the wall with his fingertips. It was these groves that told him it was his fourteenth day in the gloom when another prisoner arrived.

Rory crouched, knees against his chest, two fingers pressed to the pulse of his neck. Listening to the sound of dripping water that echoed through the dungeon. He had heard it since he arrived and it had been consistent. He knew his heart beat sixty-three times each minute. So he counted and in a minute he heard the drip thirty-seven times. Somehow having another way to measure his time made him feel as if he still had some semblance of control. A clamoring came from down the passage and he saw the glow of a torch coming down the passage way towards his dark room. The visitors, as there were clearly more than one, made their way arduously into the cell just beyond his.

"Get on your feet, old man. Stop making us drag you." Rory heard the jailer growl.

A whimper was the only response.

The rusty metal on metal sound of the hinges screeched, piercing the stillness of the dungeon. It set Rory's teeth on edge. The new prisoner grunted as he hit the hard floor of the cell next to Rory's. The deafening boom of the door slamming shut echoed through the blackness, drowning out the sound of the receding jailer and his compatriot. Once again swallowed in gloom, Rory crawled to the wall he now shared with another person and pressed his ear to it. He could hear the soft sobs of a man.

"Hello?" Rory called through the rock.

The sobbing paused.

"Who are you?" Rory queried.

But his new companion simply went back to his tears.

Rory found that the incessant sound of the other man's blubbering made time move much, much slower. Two meals came and went and still the man's relentless whimpers echoed the darkness.

"For the love of the AllMother, you must stop!" Rory burst out on the third night, "You will drive us both mad."

"I welcome madness." sniffed the other man.

"Well, I don't!" Rory snapped

"I'm going to die here." The man moaned helplessly.

"You don't know that." Rory replied, more as a reassurance to himself than his new jail mate.

"Of course I do. We are here to be forgotten." he sobbed.

Rory's mouth dried, "Well, then may our Gods welcome us with open arms." He croaked.

"My god will not welcome me. I have taken innocent lives. I will pass beyond his sight and into the waiting arms of Marwolaeth. Even now I can feel her eye on me." The man replied sorrowfully.

Marwolaeth was the Daearian goddess of death, the counterpart of the Unnamed God. She was the representation of evil in their faith. With the body of a woman and three heads, each of snakes and one eye between them. She was hideous and frightening.