Agent of the Dragon

“What do you mean you heard rats?” Armina’s voice was sharp.

“If it’s not rats, there’s something else scratching at the wall.” Mieryth had found Armina in her office. “I know we don’t have a rat problem here.” She put some surprise into her voice. “In fact, I’ve never seen any sign of rats. Isn’t that unusual in a manor this large?”

Armina’s lips compressed to a thin line. “It is. And there still shouldn’t be.” She stood. “Come. I want to see this for myself.” Armina set a fast pace.

They both heard scratching as soon as they entered Mieryth’s room. Mieryth winced at the look in Armina’s eyes. From deep inside, Mieryth felt Rhysa’s sudden caution. She let Rhysa surface.

Rhysa watched Armina approach the wall, and the overlay rippled as Armina reached through the wall with her mind.

Armina hissed and stepped away from the wall. “There’s a room back there. I don’t like this.” Armina looked at Rhysa. “Can you do without your room for a while? I want this resolved before Camyrn returns.”

Rhysa nodded. “Shouldn’t be a problem.” She grinned. “Maybe you’ll find the ghost.”

“Maybe.”

It took two men with heavy sledgehammers to open the wall into the original room. When the pieces of stone and mortar fell away, Rhysa saw very little through the fanged opening. The pool of light from her room seemed squeezed once it got past the portal.

Armina ordered someone to bring several lanterns and a couple of torches. Rhysa desperately wanted to go into the beckoning darkness, but Mieryth would never go first, much less alone. When someone returned with the requested lanterns and torches, Armina took a lantern, lit it, and stepped through the hole. Rhysa lit a torch and followed.

The room beyond wasn’t as dusty or ruined as Rhysa expected. The flagstone floor was polished smooth and the tightly constructed masonry walls had no obvious chinks. The ceiling still firmly held an iron chandelier. Opposite the hole through which they’d come was an iron door.

Rhysa saw Armina examining the door; she felt ripples in the overlay as Armina did something with the door.

She stepped next to the castellan, who had opened the door a crack. Rhysa took a careful breath, and hid a smirk when she heard Armina do the same. The air smelled musty and stale, but not bad the way air did in some tombs. Apparently satisfied, Armina opened the door the rest of the way.

The door opened on a passage barely wide enough to fit two people shoulder to shoulder. The steady light of Armina’s lantern illuminating the hall provided a gentle contrast to the savage flickering of Rhysa’s torch. Rhysa trailed Armina by several feet as they proceeded, the pristine nature of the outer room continuing down the corridor.

They must have gone thirty feet before encountering another door. This door was wood rather than iron. Armina tried the latch. Unlocked. The door squeaked faintly as it opened for the first time in centuries. So far, Rhysa was very impressed with whoever the architect and overseer were. Their work had lasted this long with almost no deterioration.

The light of Armina’s lantern revealed a large, roughly circular room. A glint from above revealed a chandelier; and judging by the rainbow spots of reflected light on the wall, it had crystal reflectors. Rhysa saw the humanoid shadows of candelabras at intervals along the wall.

“Careful.” As soft as she made it, Armina’s voice was shockingly loud. “There’s a sunken area in the middle.” A pause. “Ah. Stairs. The sunken area was planned. I’d thought I’d found the first flaw in construction.”

The sunken area took up most of the room, only a walkway ten feet wide lay at the level of the corridor. Rhysa made her way to the center of the sunken area, and looked around in wonder at a sybaritic paradise. The area was filled with couches, divans, loveseats, floor cushions, and throw pillows. The furniture was high quality and solidly built, and the floor was covered by thick carpet.

“As amazing as the existence of this room is,” murmured Armina, “what I find truly interesting is the utter lack of decay.”

Rhysa touched a pillow and realized Armina was right. Instead of a brittle fabric shell, the pillow was still soft to the touch and gave slightly at the pressure of her fingers. She shook her head and dismissed the mystery for a later time; she had something else she needed to figure out: how to get to the Lord’s chambers without Armina noticing.

She walked around the central area as Armina examined the furniture more closely. In addition to the door they’d come through, Rhysa counted five doors: four were made of wood, the fifth was iron. She decided to try the door to the immediate left of the entrance, wincing as the door complained loudly at being opened. Beyond it was a small hallway or entry chamber, and another wooden door. This door emitted only a small squeal.

The room was large enough to comfortably hold ten people. Against the far wall was a raised platform shrouded with a gauzy veil. Several floor cushions were spread around, and it took Rhysa a few seconds to realize they were placed in deliberate rows parallel to the platform. She made her way between the cushions to the platform. Standing next to it, it came up to the middle of her thigh. She brushed the veils aside, and it became apparent what this room was.

A thin cushion covered the entirety of the stage. There were a couple of shaped pillows against the back wall. To the left and right of the stage, she saw racks of--toys. Lovers, up to a quartet, would find the space comfortable. Pillows, props, and towels were near enough to be easily reached. The gauze could be placed in layers for an illusion of privacy. A single layer would hide nothing, yet would give the impression of viewing through curtains. Layers could be added to reduce the people on stage to vague shapes seen only in silhouette. There was a lushness to the whole setup that gave her an interesting sensation behind her belly reminding her of her two weeks with Venusia. Rhysa turned her back on the stage and left the room.

In the large circular room, Rhysa didn’t see Armina. The iron door was still closed, so she decided to investigate the room to the immediate right of the entrance.

This door opened without a sound. As with the previous room, this one had a small entry chamber. The lush furnishings mirrored the first room she’d examined: pillows, stage, gauze veils. There was something subtly wrong, however--something dark.

The pillows were all in neat rows, the carpet clear, the veils drawn across the stage. She looked at the veils and realized that, unlike the other display room, all the veils had been drawn. She couldn’t tell what, if anything, lay behind them. She walked cautiously to the stage, the air dead on her skin, a hint of age-sterilized decay in her nose. In the flickering torchlight, she saw the bottom of the veil curtain was discolored where it touched the stage and up to a half inch above.

Rhysa drew aside the curtain of veils. The whole stage was covered with dried blood. In the middle of the stage, stomach down, lay a mostly decayed skeleton. The head was turned away from Rhysa, its arms splayed above the head, as if the person had collapsed while supporting himself on his arms.

Dyram stepped out of the back wall. “I see you found my body.” Rhysa nodded, but couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say. “Any other surprises?”

“No.”

“What’s behind the iron door?”

“I think it goes down to the...um...darker pleasure chambers.”

“You’re not sure?”

Dyram shrugged a little self-consciously. “It’s not my favorite place to be. I haven’t been there in at least a century, but if I remember right, that’s where the passage from the Lord’s chambers comes out.”

“Do you know where?”

He shook his head. “I never used it, myself. I only know about it from rumors. It’ll be in one of the side rooms, though.”

“So it’s set up like this one? A main room and private and semi-private chambers?”

“I think so. It would make sense.”

“I’d better go. Armina might investigate what’s taking me so long and find us talking.” Rhysa paused. “I’m going to have to tell her about this room, though. It would look suspicious if I didn’t mention a stage covered in blood.”

Armina was just exiting the hall of rooms she’d been investigating. They met in the center of the sunken area. “Mieryth, did you find anything interesting?”

Rhysa drew a deep, shaky breath as Mieryth would have. “Depends on what you call ‘interesting.’ The two rooms I looked at were some kind of private theater. There was a stage with gauze curtains in each one, and neat rows of pillows on the floor.”

Armina’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. Rhysa rushed on as if wanting to get the worst over. “In one of them the stage is covered in dried blood.” She went on over Armina’s surprised exclamation. “There’s a skeleton in the middle of the stage.” She shuddered. “It was horribly decayed.”

“I’d imagine so. Would you like to stay here?”

“I’ll look in that last wooden door. I don’t want to just sit here to think about what was on that stage.”

Armina nodded sympathetically. “Good idea. Keeping busy helps.” Rhysa watched Armina enter the second display room. The door she’d selected squealed, and opened on a hallway. Doors on either side of the hall opened on rooms containing large beds and refreshment stands holding several glasses. Each room was large enough to fit up to five comfortably. On the whole, fairly uninteresting except for the pictures they painted in Rhysa’s imagination. She began to lose herself to what her mind was painting, but a shift in the magical overlay recalled her.

Dyram drifted through the side wall of the room she was in. “She’s actually being fairly respectful.” Surprise filled his voice. “I hadn’t expected that. She’s cleaning the mess, right now.”

“Ah. I felt the magic. How much longer is she likely to be?”

“Not long, I should think.”

Rhysa nodded. “I’ll wait for her out there.”

Armina didn’t take long to come out. “Nasty bit of work.” Her voice was calm, but in the steady light of the lantern she held, her eyes were wide.

“What do you think happened?”

“I couldn’t say. Murder, probably.”

“What is this place?” Rhysa hated pretending not to know.

“A brothel. If the other theater you checked was anything like what I just cleaned up, they were probably some kind of display room for the girls. What about the other door you looked at?”

“Private rooms for groups of up to five.”

“Well. Let’s investigate the last door. I expect the office to be there.” Armina led the way to the iron door. She examined the handle carefully before trying it. “Unlocked. I’d have expected the office to be locked.”

The door opened onto a set of stairs leading downward. Another metal door glinted at them from the bottom of the stairs. As with the corridor they’d entered through, the stairway was wide enough to fit side by side if they didn’t mind their shoulders pressed together. Rhysa let Armina take the lead again.

The door at the bottom swung open soundlessly when Armina turned the knob. A chill caressed Rhysa’s spine as the door opened fully. Armina’s faint voice was sick and slightly awed. “My god.”

The room resembled the room upstairs, except it was square rather than round. Rising from the center of the sunken area was a wooden structure resembling a large “X” with places for chains on each of the arms. Three iron doors led from the main chamber. Glints of metal gleamed from the sunken area around the wood structure. There was no carpet here. Everything seemed intentionally angular and harsh. Rhysa stepped through the door, and realized the glints in the center were shackles and floor anchors.

She made her voice dry. “I’m assuming this is not the office.”

Armina snorted and shook herself out of her daze. “No.” She glanced at the doors. “You take the left, I’ll take the right.” She strode to the door in the right hand wall without waiting for a response.

Rhysa sighed. This room wasn’t so bad...assuming the participants were willing. She very much feared what she might find in the side rooms. She turned towards the door in the left hand wall. From behind her, she heard the squeal of hinges as Armina opened her door. Rhysa walked to her assigned door feeling an odd mixture of defiance and reluctance. The handle turned easily, but opening the door sent another squeal of protesting hinges echoing in the chamber.

Rhysa stepped through the door and onto the set of a production of Tortuous Love. A cross, like the one in the main room, stood in a frame in the middle of this room. A glance showed the frame could tilt the cross from vertical to horizontal. There was a pommel horse to one side, and racks of whips and lashes, rods and switches lined the walls. A reflection of her torchlight caught her attention.

“Dear god.” She felt sick. The flensing knife hung in a slot obviously created for the purpose. She knew some took pleasure in pain, their own and others’, but this seemed too close to actual torture. She looked at the wooden cross a little more closely and saw the dark stains of aged blood. “Far too much like torture.”

“That’s why I haven’t been down here for more than a century. I didn’t like contemplating people actually enjoyed being subjected to this.” Dyram stepped from the wall.

“I don’t blame you.” She glanced around and sighed. “Let’s get this room searched.” She began in a corner and examined the floor, wall, and ceiling for clues.

Dyram laughed suddenly. At Rhysa’s quizzical, and slightly alarmed, look, he quieted to a chuckle. “I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me until now.” To Rhysa’s immense frustration, he disappeared into a wall without another word. Exasperated, she turned back to her meticulous combing for signs of a secret door.

She’d progressed perhaps ten feet when Dyram returned. “I found the passage.”

She spun to look at him. “How--of course.” She mentally kicked herself. He’d simply walked around the perimeter of the room until he ran into the passage itself. “I guess being a ghost does have its advantages.”

He snorted. “You’re just mad because you didn’t think of it.”

She shrugged, unrepentant. “If you’re so clever, how does it open?”

“That’s your job.”

She rolled her eyes, but had to agree. “Anything mechanical like levers or pulleys?”

“Not that I saw; but I can’t actually see through stone.”

“So where does the passage come out?”

Dyram pointed to a rack containing several types of lashes. She went to the rack and began removing the lashes; she hoped one of them would be a disguised lever. It didn’t take long. “Of course not,” she murmured as she removed the last lash, “That would be too easy.”

Abruptly, she realized how long she’d been in this room. She turned to Dyram. “Where’s Armina?” He gave her a startled look and moved quickly to the wall next to the iron door.

Before he reached it, though, Rhysa felt a spiked surge in the overlay. Then the silence was obliterated by a terrified scream, and as suddenly returned--more deathly than before. Dyram and Rhysa exchanged startled glances, then rushed towards the door. The ghost simply floated through, but Rhysa had to take a couple of seconds to open the door.

When she got the door open, she froze as lead seemed to fill her stomach. Armina lay crumpled in the open door of the third room. Crouching over her was the translucent figure of a woman. The woman leaned over Armina’s inert form. To Rhysa’s horror, the woman open her mouth wide--and it continued to open, distorting the woman’s face.

“Lenora.” The voice was choked. Rhysa whipped her head to the side. Dyram was on hands and knees, as if he’d collapsed. He had one hand extended towards the woman--whether beseeching his mistress or just to touch her, Rhysa couldn’t say.

At the sound of the name, the woman stopped and her mouth snapped shut. Her figure filled out into a very pretty young woman. With agonizing slowness, her head turned to the translucent man. “Dyram?” Her voice was soft and Rhysa’s heart clenched at the longing in it. The woman’s hair was the same amber color Rhysa had used for her disguise. Her body was lush enough to tantalize. Her vaguely triangular face mirrored the longing in her voice. Then she saw Rhysa.

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