The Royal Thief

Chapter Fifty-six: To Be a Guardian part 1

Apparently I've been on wattpad for one year now... or so my profile says. I would do something special to celebrate but I didn't have enough warning, so I guess I'll do something for the one-year anniversary of TRT instead (coming up surprisingly soon). Maybe another short story or something.

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"Why now?" I demanded as Tobias strode down the stairs. We were heading very deep in the castle-- in fact, it looked like he was heading to the dungeons. "Why do we have to do this now?"

"Because I should have done it years ago." He reached the bottom of the narrow, coiling stairs and chose a key from his belt, then wrenched it in the rusty lock of the door. "Somehow something always got in the way, but it is clear I cannot allow this to go on. Whatever Eyro has been teaching you must be put to rest-- you must be taught the consequences. You must learn what it means to be the Thief-- to be a Guardian."

"If you're so scared of what Jaden's teaching me, why did you hire him in the first place?" I spat at his back as he disappeared into the damp darkness. 

He turned back for half a moment, and the look on his face was almost angry. No, definitely angry, but I didn't think at me in particular. But whatever he was going to say, he didn't.

He lit the half-burned torch beside the door and held it up. The door lead straight into the honey-combed maze of the dungeons and the reddish light flickered over dusty corners and half-walls, the corroding bars of empty cells. We were in the back of the maze, then.

"Come," he said, and strode into the maze, the green hem of his robe skimming the silty grit of the floor with a swoosh. I followed more out of curiosity than any inclination to take his orders, and only when he looked back sharply to see if I was there did I realize I had automatically begun walking in utter silence, no footsteps or accidental sounds, the musty darkness instinctively bringing out Jaden's lessons. And I continued to walk silently, because I could tell from the stiff arch of his back that it bothered him to be in almost complete blackness with someone he could not see or hear. 

I could have sworn I felt the sheaths of my knives and daggers slide coolly against my skin, but there were layers of cloth between my skin and my weapons. I must have imagined it. I shivered anyway.

We walked deeper into the maze than I had ever been before, though Tobias never once faltered in his choices of which turns to take. What he did do often was look over his shoulder, half as though to reassure himself I was there, half as though wishing I wasn't. Finally, we reached what I realized was the far wall of the dungeons. The very end. 

There were three doors set in the wall, incongruous for their utter normalness in the very deepest, darkest reaches of a place where there should have been no doors without chains and padlocks. These had only simple locks. I suppose their location was protection enough for whatever lay inside.

"Well?" 

For the first time, Tobias hesitated, looking between two of the doors. "I have a few things to... show you. I suppose... we start here." He unlocked the first door.

"What is this place?" I asked nearly before I'd had even a moment to look around. It was a square, musty room with mage lamps set in sconces on the walls, faded and flickering with age, casting a yellowish pallor over the wooden shelves that filled the room, as tall as the ceiling. I would have thought it was a library, but it wasn't books that filled the wide, tall ledges. I wasn't entirely sure what they were, for every object seemed to be a different size and shape, and in the bare light everything was only masses of shadow in different shades and thicknesses. 

"It's a memory chamber."

I frowned and looked around for any burial beds, but there wasn't room for anything so wide between the shelves. "For who?"