Firebrand

She gave him an aggravated look and hurried along with her burden as best she could. Zachary did not tarry, for the guard with the spiked cudgel watched him closely. Too closely. He followed Lorilie up the passage, nodding to others as they headed back down with empty baskets.

Lorilie, Rhovan. Think. And then it came to him. Lorilie Dorran, the leader of the Anti-Monarchy Society. Of course. She and her followers had inhabited the area around the Lone Forest, perhaps planning to create their own community free of the tyranny of kings, like many of the other border folk. At one time she’d been very active trying to turn his people against him. She had retreated north after his brother’s coup attempt, and little had been heard from the Anti-Monarchists since then. How, he wondered, would Lorilie react if she found out who he was? It was a diverting thought as he emerged into sunshine and dumped his basket of rocks.

That night during supper, Lorilie invited him to sit with her group. Binning, though uninvited but now seemingly attached to him, came, too. The others grudgingly made space for him. Zachary, considering his earlier revelation about who Lorilie was, was both amused and intrigued to be so favored.

She quietly asked how each person was faring. Pitkin nodded toward Zachary. “Thanks to Dav here, I probably avoided a caning.”

“Good,” Lorilie said, “we must help one another to stay strong, take care of one another, because no one else is going to. The imperialists will work us to death. Those of us who survive the dig? When it’s done, we’ll be put to use at some other slave labor, or be slaughtered outright.” She spoke as a leader, one who naturally exuded charisma. It was no wonder she had been the head of the Anti-Monarchy Society.

“King might send soldiers,” Pitkin said. “Before I was captured, he’d led skirmishes against Second Empire on the border.”

Lorilie gave him a long look, but she did not lash out at him. “Even if the king’s forces assault this place, what do you think our captors would do to us?”

Zachary knew the answer, and so did the others. Now that he was aware of the captives, he could formulate a plan that might prevent their slaughter. That was, if he were free and leading the assault against Second Empire. Since he, too, was a captive, the notion was not going to get very far.

“I take it,” he said, “there have been escape attempts.”

The others nodded. “They do not end well,” Lorilie said. “The few who have tried were quickly captured and flogged by the Nyssa woman in front of us as an example of what will happen to any of us who would try. There are many guards who watch us. In the unlikely event someone got by them, there are traps set out in the woods.”

“What can you tell me about this place?” Zachary asked. “I’ve seen very little beyond the great hall of the keep, this building, and the excavation. And does anyone know what Grandmother is trying to dig up?”

No one knew the answer to the last, but they offered what they could about the layout of the keep and its grounds. He would have to try to escape eventually, once he regained his full strength, and the more he knew about Second Empire’s base, the better chance he had of navigating his way out. And when he was out? He would have inside knowledge of it for when he returned with a force to destroy it.

THE BRAWLER

The passage pitched sharply downward, which added to the strenuous work of removing debris. Zachary still had no idea what it was Grandmother sought underground, but though they uncovered no more entrances to burial chambers, more glyphs appeared on the walls. He could not pause to examine them closely with the guards watching, so what he got were fleeting glimpses, impressions of figures and symbols that gave him a sense of foreboding. He saw Westrion, wings spread, and his raptor’s countenance fierce, and Salvistar rearing. There were few other gods depicted, but several skeletal figures being faced down by a mounted knight carrying a lance. The horse looked as though it, too, could be Salvistar, but the knight was not Westrion.

The atmosphere of the passage was oppressive, and he was always relieved to reach the sunshine without when he made the trip to dump his basket, but he’d have to turn around and reenter the gloom. In the downward shaft, the sensation of oppression intensified. Those who labored with him, and even the guards, seemed to feel it, too, if their grim expressions were any indication.

It did not help that he worried about what was happening back home, how Estora and their children fared. How did she govern in his stead? He tried to remind himself that she had good counselors to help her, not least of all, Laren, who had advised him longest. Did they search for him, or did they assume he was dead? He couldn’t even imagine where they’d begin . . . As a captive of Second Empire, he felt helpless, unable to do anything about these great concerns.

At midday, work halted, much to Zachary’s surprise, but apparently no one else’s. They were led through the gap in the curtain wall and into the great hall of the keep where they were instructed to sit on the floor. Zachary looked, but neither Grandmother nor Immerez were anywhere in sight.

“What’s going on?” he asked Binning.

“Once a week they talk to us about their god, offer us a chance to convert or be damned for all eternity. Mostly they damn us.”

Ah, Zachary thought. The one god of Arcosia. He had nothing against any god. It was those who would push their particular set of beliefs on others that he detested. Maybe a sermon would take his mind off his concerns about his wife and realm.

Guards stationed themselves around the chamber, and an older man in robes shambled out and stood in front of them. He gazed down his beaky nose at them like an angry gull. Zachary thought this task might have been under the purview of Grandmother as spiritual leader, but she was nowhere to be seen. The lay priest, known as Elder Smurn, ranted against the heathen gods that the Sacoridians venerated.