Promises of Glory

“There’s beauty in cruelty, if you just look.”

-The Sin Eater

She found the basement entrance rather quickly. The thing stuck out like a sore thumb. While all the property was pretty and kept up with, the cellar entrance was old, broken down. Almost in shambles. She reached for one of the handles and pulled. The cellar door creaked open, Rhode sucked in a breath of fresh air before she started her descent. The rotten floorboards trembled under her weight. She closed the door behind her, covering her tracks. In all her time in this house, she had yet to even hear about a cellar.

She lit the first torch she found with matches she had taken to keeping in her pocket after a mentor had told her to always be prepared. She lit every torch she found there after. It was dark down here and the dark was something she was not a fan of.

The room she entered first smelled like mold and rotting food. Which was probably what was happening she judged by the seemingly endless shelves of food, boxes, and random objects. She stayed to the main aisle, the one that went right down the middle of the room.

She was just about to pass a shelf with the same disinterest she looked at all the shelves with, when something on her left yanked her attention. It appeared that a door had been blended in with the wall and if it weren’t for her sharp vision, she’d have missed it.

She took a careful step towards it, and it seemed to be the only door in the room. Her calloused hand brushed against the tattered wood. A splinter wedged its way into her palm. She hissed at the pain, stepping away into the light to get a better look. Gingerly, she tugged out the splinter. A small droplet of blood splattered itself against the ground. Rhode clenched her fist and started back at the door, this time going straight for the handle. She tugged and the door quivered, but it did not open.

“Boil me,” she muttered angrily. She tugged again to no avail.

She pulled back, running a hand through her hair, there had to be something to open this door. Rhode tried bashing into the door with her body, running and smashing her shoulder into the wood. But that didn’t work. She tried picking the lock, but there was the big problem of no lock on the door.

“This door is either rusted shut or spelled closed,” she mumbled.

The air seemed to still, a gasp coming from the other side of the door shook Rhode. The cellar door creaked open, she immediately fled to a different isle.

Alys and a maid came marching down the stairs, their footsteps light as feathers. It was like all the dust in the room was pushed back by her presence, an immaculate existence that even dirt couldn’t dirty.

Rhode held her breath.

Her grandmother whispered something in the old language, then the door creaked, shuttered, and swung open. Rhode mouthed the sounds to herself, in an effort not to forget them.

The door swung shut behind her and the maid, the girl approached cautiously, pushing her ear to the door.

A snarl startled her, causing her to jump. The wood beneath her ear quivered, but made no other sign of her presence. “Where did you hide it?” It was her grandmother, a tone she’d never heard the motherly figure use. A demand. “I know you stole it.”

A pause, then, “I didn’t steal anything. It wasn’t yours to begin with.”

Alys cackled, her voice thick with an emotion Rhode couldn’t put her finger on. “I think we both know it’s rightfully mine.”

“Rightfully no one’s.”

“Whip her.”

A scream, a cry, silence.

Again Alys spoke, “Again.”

This time there was only a grunt. “I will give you nothing. The paper is not yours. It will never be yours.”

“Again.”

More cries, gulping sounds. Rhode wondered what was going on in there.

“I will make sure you won’t even be able to stand when I’m through with you.”

A laughed sounded, Rhode blinked. “Even your own daughter ran from you, after you killed her child. Everyone knows about it. About the evil woman that lives in the castle on the hill, how she drove her children away, some to suicide.”

A growl, “Again, again, again.” Alys sounded like a child that wasn’t getting her way.

The screaming continued as Alys ordered whipping after whipping, torture after torture. Everything ranging from needle prodding to crucifixion. Sometimes both at the same time, sometimes a mixture of all sorts of different things.

It seemed liked hours went by as Rhode held her ear to the door. She couldn’t connect the woman she had come to know with this one. They didn’t add up at all.

Then she remembered the evil smile she had seen at Livinus’ party, the woman under the hood that stole her away. Maybe her grandmother really, truly, was this evil.

“You’ll regret not handing it over. I have all the time in the world to test out the vicious things I have in mind.”

A pause, an audible gulp, then, “I’m not afraid of you.”

Rhode remembered the gardener, his warning. She supposed this was the side that no one wanted to be on. She feared the day she herself got on that bad side. Rhode thought whoever was behind that door should be afraid.

The girl stood and walked to the end of the long hallway, the very back of the room, hiding behind the shelves. She didn’t need to hear anymore to know exactly what kind of person her grandmother was. She did know that she couldn’t wait for Livinus to come and rescue her. This was something she’d have to do on her own.

Rhode ducked as the door creaked, Alys spelled the door shut again, locking it with a key she hadn’t seen before. She waits for a long time before exiting the cellar.

Her first stop was the library, she took the winding staircase in the main hall. Everything she did had to be more careful than before. She couldn’t let Alys know that she was planning an escape, or that she’d ever found the cellar.

She stood before the large double doors to the library. Gazing up she wondered why everything seemed to larger than it had to be. As Rhode entered the room she thought back to Livinus’ library, the many weeks they spent in it, lazing around (at least she did while Livinus studied book after book). Her heart thrummed in her chest, humming faster and faster. She clutched her chest, falling over.

There was a crash but Rhode wasn’t paying attention to the things going on around her. All she could understand was the pain in her chest, the tears on her cheeks. For a moment she thought she say a boy standing above her. She tried to call out for Livinus, but she noticed it wasn’t him. No. this boy looked eerily like her, his burnt wheat hair and the light blue eyes that gazed coldly at her.

The doors opened again, Rhode was vaguely aware of a maid rushing to her side. The boy held a finger to his lips. It seemed like the maid couldn’t even tell he was there.

Rhode closed her eyes with that thought on her mind, and everything fell away from her.