Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Down they went, spiraling and turning, ever deeper. Richard felt as if they were being swallowed down the gullet of some great stone beast. As long as Six was taking him, though, he was content to be swallowed. At lower levels, in a dank corridor, the men led her into a gloomy place. Hay was scattered over the slimy floor. Water echoed as it dripped in the distance.

"Here is the place you requested," a guard told her.

The heavy door squealed in rusty protest as he pulled it open. Inside, on a small table, he lit a candle with the torch.

"Your room for the night," Six told Richard. "It will be light soon. I will be back, then."

"Yes, Mistress," he said.

She leaned toward him a little, a thin smile slitting her bloodless face. "If I know the queen, she will want to begin immediately. She's quite impatient, to say nothing of being impulsive. She will no doubt bring the big men with whips. I expect that before the morning is over she will have the flesh torn from your back."

Richard stared. He couldn't make his mind grasp it all. "Mistress?"

"The queen is not only vicious, but vindictive. You are going to be the object of her venom. But not to worry; I still need you alive. You may suffer excruciating agony, but you will live."

She turned with a billowing flourish and swept out the door, a shadow swallowed into the darkness. Men funneled out the door after her. The door banged closed. Richard heard the lock click home. Before he knew it, he was suddenly standing alone in a stone room, deserted, forsaken, forgotten.

In the silence, terror began to seep into his bones. Why would a queen want to hurt him? What did Six need him alive for?

Richard blinked. As the moments passed, he felt his mind working to understand. It felt as if the farther away Six went, the better he could think.

After the torches were gone, it was a while before his eyes adjusted to the light of a single candle. He looked around at the stone room. There was only a chair and a table. The floor was stone. The walls were stone. The ceiling had heavy beams.

It hit him like a thunderclap.

Denna.

This was the room where he had been taken when he had first been captured by Denna. He recognized the table. He remembered Denna sitting in that very chair. He looked up and there, right where he remembered it being, he saw the iron peg.

His wrists had been in iron manacles. Denna had hung the chain holding them together over that iron peg. He had hung from it as Denna tortured him with her Agiel. Horrifying images of the night Denna had broken him flashed through his mind. The night she had thought she had broken him, anyway. He had partitioned his mind. But he remembered the things she had done to him that night.

And he remembered what had prompted her to such violence.

He had been hanging there when Princess Violet had come in to watch. The princess had decided that she wanted to participate, to join in his torture. Denna gave the little monster her Agiel and showed her how to use it on him.

Richard remembered Violet bragging about how she was going to have Kahlan raped, tortured, and finally killed.

Richard had kicked Violet hard enough to shatter her jaw and sever her tongue.

This was that room.

Richard leaned back against the stone wall and slid down to sit and rest. He needed to think, to figure it out, to understand what was going on.

He was leaning against his pack, so he pulled it off and set it in his lap. A thought struck him and he looked through the pack, pushing his war-wizard outfit and gold cape aside until he found the book Baraccus had left for him. He thumbed through the pages. They were still blank. If only he hadn't lost his gift, he would have been able to read the book. If he knew how to use his ability he would have been able to save himself. If only.

He suddenly had a thought. He couldn't let them find this book. Six had the gift. Some form of it, anyway. He couldn't let her see this. Baraccus had hidden it for three thousand years. It was meant for no eyes but his. He couldn't fail such a trust. He couldn't let anyone know about this book.

He got up and paced around the room, searching for any place he could hide the book. There was no place. It was a simple stone room. There were no cubbyholes, no niches, no loose stones. There was nowhere to hide anything.

As Richard stood in the center of the room, thinking, he looked up and saw the iron peg. He moved through the room, inspecting the beams. There was one beam, running parallel to one wall, without much room between the beam and the wall. The beam, like most in the ceiling, had long cracks from when the freshly cut beam had been hewn and then dried. An idea struck him.

He immediately pulled the chair over and climbed up on top of it. It wasn't high enough. He pushed the chair out of the way and dragged over the table. After stepping from the chair to the top of the table, he at last was able to reach the iron peg. He wiggled it, but it was stuck tight. He needed that iron peg if he was to hide the book.