“Get up, boy,” said a female voice, and Aldric realised a third person was with the guards. He craned his neck and caught sight of a smaller figure, cloaked and hooded and carrying a lantern in one slender hand.
“What are you going to do to me?” Aldric quavered in reply. The cloaked figure gave a slight nod, and the female guard smiled coldly and kicked him in the ribs. He groaned in pain and began to scramble up as quickly as his chains would allow, but the bearded man seized him by the hair and literally dragged him to his feet. They each took one of his arms, and bustled him out of the cell without a great deal of apparent effort. Even the woman clearly outmatched him in raw physical strength, and they both seemed well versed in bringing their muscle to bear on reluctant captives.
Only when Aldric was out of the cell did the woman in the corridor slowly draw back her hood. Aldric was not really surprised to see the pallid features of Queen Arctis, but he swallowed and quickly lowered his gaze when he met her dark, implacable eyes. Her expression was no gentler than it had been on the battlefield, when she had accepted his surrender.
“What am I going to do to you?” she repeated with a bleak smile. “Surely you don’t want me to spoil the surprise.”
“I beg you not to mock me, Your Majesty. If you’re going to hurt me, could you please get it over with as quickly as possible?”
She reached towards him with her free hand, and he tried to flinch away, but she only caressed his forehead with gentle fingertips. “I promise you that tonight’s proceedings will be not be quick, Prince Aldric. Not in the least. But if you are eager to see them begin, I’m only too happy to oblige.”
He opened his mouth to stammer that she could do as she wished, which of course was obvious, but the Queen had already turned on her heel. “Bring him,” she said coldly, and started off towards the corner of the prison-house that lay diagonally opposite the entrance. That was precisely where Aldric, on his first night in Castle Kaylar, had found a rough-hewn stairway leading downwards into darkness.
His legs would hardly carry him as the guards marched him implacably towards the stair, but they seemed perfectly capable of holding him up and dragging his feet across the floor in any case. Queen Arctis led the way down without a moment’s hesitation, and Aldric followed between the guards with a shiver of dread. At the bottom of the stairs was a small open space, hardly even a room, sealed off by a heavy iron grating from what lay beyond. Aldric gaped in astonishment and revulsion when he saw a tiny woman, scarcely higher than his own waist but with a voluptuous figure that meant she could hardly be a child, standing against the grating as if bound to it. Her arms were stretched above her head, her face twisted into a grimace of agony. The little woman’s skin had a peculiar yellow-grey colour in the light of the Queen’s lantern, and her features were almost inhumanly coarse and bestial. She wore a garment of sackcloth not so different from Aldric’s own, but perched atop her head was a red and green cap with two long tassels that ended in little bronze bells. She was like an apparition from some sinister tale told to frighten children.
As the guards led Aldric to the foot of the stair, the tiny creature suddenly laughed and capered forward, obviously never having been bound at all. She put one hand on her cap and used the other to flip herself into the air, spinning heels-over-head with an ape-like agility and landing on her feet directly in front of Aldric. The bells on her tassels tinkled merrily.
“So here’s the young woodcock who tried to feather a nest that wasn’t his,” she chortled, “and found that it made a trap he couldn’t fly out of. He’s pinioned and plucked, and utterly fucked.” She laughed again and grabbed his crotch, reaching casually under the hem of his smock. “A woodcock indeed,” she reported, “and not a woodhen, even if he’s almost pretty enough.” She tightened her grip, twisting and tugging, until Aldric moaned in pain.
“Enough,” said the Queen firmly, though with a smile of amusement. The ugly little woman laughed, bared her teeth at Aldric, and released his balls only to punch him hard in the belly. He groaned, and would have doubled over if the guards had not been holding him. The dwarfish thing was far stronger than she looked.
“Enough, I said,” Arctis repeated with a sharper edge in her voice. “Don’t spoil my fun. Aldric, permit me to introduce Huralda, my court jester and honorary gatekeeper for the evening. She claims descent from goblin-folk, and I can well believe it.”
“So tender a bird,” Huralda mused, pinching his thigh. However, her touch this time was gentle enough that the Queen did not bother to reprimand her.
Aldric looked down at her with mingled wariness and contempt. “Are you going to hand me over to this thing to be tortured, Your Majesty?”
Huralda gave a deep, reedy laugh, and reached around behind him to knead his buttock with her strong fingers. He squirmed in the grip of the guards, feeling the menacing prick of her nails. “It takes a low and cunning thing,” she chanted, “to tickle a prince and make him sing. It was his own suggestion, Your Majesty. Hand him over, hand him over.” She spun suddenly away from Aldric and flung herself at Arctis’ feet with her hands uplifted in supplication.
“Away with you,” laughed Arctis, kicking lightly at her jester. “I mean to tickle this morsel of a prince myself, as I’ve already told you more than once. Get up and unlock the gate.”
“Thank your lucky stars, little woodcock,” Huralda leered, and moved with alacrity to unfasten the three great padlocks holding fast the chains that kept the grating shut. Aldric had carried out a cursory exploration of what lay beyond the grating on the night that he and Eldred had taken the castle, and the next day he had ordered it sealed with the chains and padlocks in one of his first acts as Master of Kaylar. Now Huralda had apparently got her hands on the keys, which Aldric had left in the care of those who watched over the prison-house. He had never thought that he would be the first prisoner whose descent into pain and darkness that hateful gateway opened to accommodate, but that was precisely what was happening. Huralda pulled the grating wide open with an awful shriek of tortured metal, and the Queen stepped immediately through with her lantern. Huralda laughed and clutched at her own body through her shapeless garment as she watched the guards march Aldric through sideways, the woman pulling him by one arm from in front while the man pushed him from behind. Aldric dragged his heels as best he could, and when he was on the threshold of the gate he struggled and tried to twist free of the guards in a fit of panic. The male guard chuckled and drove his knee expertly into Aldric’s thigh, while the woman shifted her grip on his arm and suddenly seemed to be exerting a pressure that threatened to wrench his shoulder out of his socket. Aldric moaned and immediately gave over, allowing himself to be led deeper into the subterranean dungeons of Castle Kaylar. He walked between his captors as steadily as the clenching pain in his thigh muscles would allow, and after a moment the female guard eased her hold on him.
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