The Doktor's Spyglass

Chapter 20.2

Thijis followed him out through the great hall and down the same staircase he'd ascended after waking. They passed the bank of cells where he'd slept, following the stone hallway deeper into the lower levels of the castle. He noticed that the floor began to slope downward, almost too gradually to notice, but he was certain by the time they reached the reinforced door at the end of it that they'd descended a good twenty feet or more.

"What did you mean when you said you'd been watching me?" asked Thijis, as Kantaris produced a large key and unlocked the door.

"Exactly what I said," said the old man, engaging what appeared to be a truly massive steel lock with a heavy click. "I've been watching you. Studying your movements. You've proven a useful agent, Mr. Thijis." The door swung open on well oiled hinges, revealing a landing and more stairs.

"Then I'll be sure to send you a bill," snapped Thijis. That the man was deliberately avoiding answering his questions was obvious, but the fact that he was so blithe about it had begun to chafe.

Kantaris took the stairs confidently, apparently unmoved by Thijis' annoyance. He moved with the quickness and agility of a man half his age. Irik, still sore and, if he were honest, a little disoriented from his fall and subsequent strange waking, had trouble keeping up with him as he flowed down the stairs. The staircase was built from the same dressed stone as the rest of the castle, but after two full turns about the spiral it became clear that they had descended into the stone of the mountain itself. Who had built this castle? Who would go to the trouble of delving such a dungeon in this place? If Castle Lorck was located where the stories said it was, it had never been an inhabited area. It was mountains and cliffs and the Inner Sea, two dozen miles or more from the point of Oridos.

Which brought to mind another question: what had Kantaris been doing out by the Oridosi cliffs in the first place? How had he found him, and how had he brought him back here? He wasn't thinking straight, that much was clear.

He was out of breath when he caught up to Kantaris, who had already unlocked an identical, heavy oaken door at the bottom of the staircase. He replaced the large key in his coat pocket and gestured Thijis inside. Irik passed him with a glare, unable to keep the growing impatience from his face. The only reason he wasn't sure this man had drawn him down here to murder him was because Kantaris had already had ample opportunity to do so. Or maybe he just likes his victims awake and conscious for the event.

Tolvaj's men had taken his pistol, and even his pocket knife was lost to the sea. More importantly, Kantaris looked more than able to handle himself, despite his age, and size like that mattered, even if a man didn't know how to use it. Kantaris looked like he did. Thijis didn't like his chances if it came to a fight with this man. Then let your tongue do the work, as always. Stop bitching and wasting time.

"Why don't you tell me why I'm down here, Kantaris," said Irik, scanning the chamber he'd just entered. It seemed to be a storeroom of some kind: secure-looking cabinets higher than his head lined two walls. They were solid oak, footed and strapped in iron, with heavy hinges and forged handles made to last for centuries. The walls across from him were bare but for a series of iron hooks and two work tables. The walls themselves were the raw rock of the mountain, ground smooth by some ancient hands. Between the tables was yet another door, just as imposing as the first two.

When Kantaris didn't respond, Irik took a deep breath, and forced himself to acknowledge the thing he'd been avoiding thinking about. "There's no way I could have survived that fall," he said flatly.