Secrets at the Keep (Kingdom of Denall Book 2) (17 page)

Pentra silently nodded while trying to hold back tears. She saw in his eyes that what he was saying now was true. “Good,” he responded. He turned to the guard who held Dirt, “Take him back to the dungeon, withhold his food for three days.”

“Yes sir,” the guard responded. He opened the back door to go.

“Please don’t,” Pentra pleaded. “I’ll do anything. I’ll take his place.”

Omer smiled wickedly and simply waved the guards away as he returned to his chair. As they dragged Dirt back to the dungeon Omer continued. “Self-sacrifice is too easy. You need to learn that when you attack me, it will hurt those you care about. The day you tried to kill me, I made an important decision,” he declared. He shuffled some papers around on his desk for a moment before raising his eyes to her again, a terrible look of pleasure showing on his face. “The village of Hess is going to be taught a lesson they will never forget. At first I had thought to burn it to the ground, but my late captain of the guard there had an unfortunate lack of resolve and considered his task sufficiently completed after having only burned the storage building.”

“He did?!” Pentra was unable to restrain the comment, she was so relieved to hear that the damage hadn’t been more severe.

“Don’t worry, my dear,” Omer gave her a wicked smile. “He won’t be disobeying my orders ever again. He was executed as soon as he returned with such disappointing news. However, his failure did leave me with an even better solution to my slave problem. It seems their little community needs to be taken down a few notches.”

Pentra did not like where this was going one bit. Before she was able to stop herself she cried out, “Why do you even care? Why do you even need to keep these slaves? I know you’ve found a way to give enhanced gifts to people. Scar, Maven, maybe more. Why don’t you just make yourself a few magicians and pay them to complete the same work?”

Omer threw back his head and laughed. She wasn’t sure what was happening, but it seemed it was a very funny joke to him. He looked down at Bendar and patted him on the back as if it was some kind of inside joke, but Bendar once again had a far away, sad look in his eyes. “You don’t have any idea what you’re asking for,” he said when his laughter stopped. “We don’t create new gifts from the air, we take them from one person and give them to another.” He grinned wickedly. “That’s why I am sending three hundred slaves with a caravan of supplies to the east. They will be marching to their death, and their gifts will be given to others.”

Pentra fought back tears. The village would be left decimated. How many fathers would been sent to sacrifice their lives for this despicable plan? Fighting to keep her composure, knowing that Omer would see tears as a sign of weakness and press further she asked, “Who? Who will be taking the gifts?”

Omer sat down with a satisfied look on his face. “My dear daughter,” he began in a sickly sweet voice. “I need to keep the kingdom safe for future trading. I’ve made a deal with a very powerful man so I can have my very own army. My men will make the strongarms from the eastern mountains look like children.” Then, with a razor sharp glare he added, “And I will sacrifice all of your slave friends to have this army.”

Pentra raised her hand to cover her mouth, “What have you done?”

“The important question for you is what
will
I do if you don’t behave appropriately while you are in my keep,” he responded with a growl. “If you make any move against me, I will kill twenty slaves. If you run away, I will kill ten per day until you return, or until they are all dead. Do you understand?”

“Omer,” Trinac spoke as he approached. “She has a special bond with the servant girl who first helped her get cleaned up. They exchanged a hand squeeze in the hall before they separated.”

Omer turned toward Pentra. “I’m so happy that you are reuniting with your friends so quickly. What is the servant girl’s name?” He looked at Pentra, expecting a response. She stood silently. “You said you’d do anything. Prove it. I’ll allow this slave to eat if you give me the name.”

Pentra stood for a moment, not sure how to react. He could easily find out who waited on her; this was not about Brooklyn. It was a demonstration of Trinac’s observance, and a test for her where she had no leverage. “Brooklyn,” she responded. “Her name is Brooklyn. She was one of my servants when I lived here. She was happy that I was alive and that I had returned to the safety of your keep.” She hoped that this response would save Brooklyn any repercussions.

Omer scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Guard, you can feed the slave. Now take him away.” As the guard escorted Dirt from the room, Omer turned and looked at Pentra with a penetrating stare. “I keep my promises,” he threatened. “You will never speak to Brooklyn again, or I will send her to the dungeon, and I will make you witness what we do to her. Do you understand?”

Pentra nodded her head. This meeting was getting worse and worse. She had been freed from the dungeon, but she was now in a prison she could never escape. A prison built on threats against those she cared about. She needed to keep her distance from everyone in this keep.

“Good,” he said as he clapped his hands together. “Now that we have come to an understanding, I have some things I need you to do while you are here. First, I need my loyal daughter to go to a banquet, and tell the guests all about her love for me.” Pentra almost gagged at the thought, but in the years she had been gone from the keep, she had lived as a thief and a shadow, and had become used to lying. This was something she could do until she figured out her next move. “Some vicious rumors are spreading about me that could impact my businesses here in Denall, I need you to help the merchants and nobles see that I support and am loyal to those who are close to me. Now that you have returned from your studies on the Isle of Sephra, you are naturally eager to bring all honor to the Barony of Luc. If you have any troubles remembering the topics of study you have mastered in the three years since you left home, you can apply to Trinac here to assist you. ”

Pentra nodded again. She knew there was a reason for her being released from the dungeon. Her father viewed people as objects, and now that he had a use for her, he would use her. “Yes father,” she responded with a bow of her head.

“Remember to smile,” he said with a gesture of his hand by his mouth. “You’re happy to be safely home again. Have fun at the banquet.”

Kaz rolled over on the cot next to the fireplace and clenched his teeth against the pain of his cracked ribs and arrow wound. He sat up slowly, stretching out the pain in his abdomen. The throbbing was getting better, but after a night of inactivity it was always the worst. He rolled off the cot and put his feet onto the oval rug that covered most of the planks of the wooden floor. He was pleasantly surprised by the warmth of the rug. When standing, he pulled and straightened the blankets so that it looked neat, then he started looking around.

It was the first morning since coming to this small cottage that Kire was nowhere in sight when he woke up. He was happy that he was able to move around more easily than when he first arrived, but he ached severely.

Each day Kaz had been in the small house, Kire had asked him to look around carefully. Kaz hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary, and Kire seemed disappointed. Despite the older man not being there, Kaz looked carefully around the small cabin, trying to take in all the details. In the room with the fireplace, Kaz noticed that there were no decorations on the rough-hewn log walls. The ladder-backed chairs in the room where he slept were made of wood with no padded seats. The empty fireplace didn’t stand out as being anything special.

Not seeing anything out of the ordinary for a house that was occupied by a single man, Kaz moved to the kitchen area. There was a small counter made of a flat piece of stone, and a wooden table in the center of the room. The table had one chair, which was not normal, but under the circumstances it was expected. Kaz was beginning to get frustrated with this mind game. He forgot about looking for details and simply went outside to use the outhouse.

Much to his annoyance, the outhouse was up a hill, some distance from the house. It was the first time he had made the trip on his own, but with no sign of anyone to help, he took a long stick he found lying near the front entrance, and leaned on it as he walked up to the outhouse. When he was there he turned around and noticed again that from that vantage the house looked invisible. The sod roof blended in with the ground and the weathered wood walls matched the colors of the surrounding woods.

On his way back to the house he saw a small, cultivated square that stood behind the home.
Where is all the food from this garden?
Going back inside, he went to the kitchen and saw that there was absolutely no food in the house. Kaz remembered eating, but didn’t recall where Kire got the food, or how he prepared it. Kaz checked the small closet, but it was completely empty. Thinking that there must be a root cellar, Kaz went outside and walked around the house. It was a rectangle; three unbroken log walls and one side with a door and two small windows. There was no sign of a cellar.

Kaz went back into the house and knocked on the bedroom door. He tried to open it, but it was barred shut. “Kire,” he called out. “Where are you?” Silence was his only answer. He could almost see Kire in the bedroom waiting patiently for Kaz to ask him the right question. If he was going to figure out the mystery of this little house, he needed to do it using his head.

Kaz slowly made his way across the room and stretched out on the cot. The physical exertion of walking to the outhouse and back had left him drained of energy and needing some rest. While lying on the cot he looked carefully around the room again. The inside of the house was about four yards from the front door to the back wall and about five yards from the fireplace to the far side of the kitchen. He started saying out loud the things he saw, the things that were missing or abnormal, but he felt like he was overlooking something so big and obvious that he should have seen it the second he had walked in the house on the first night. This was not his kind of game. He wished he had Bendar here. Bendar would have this all figured out.

Thinking of Bendar gave Kaz an idea. Bendar had once told him of a method that was used to find hidden rooms of homes. When tax collectors would come, sometimes people hid some livestock or asset so that they would pay less in taxes. The tax collectors were trained to look outside the houses for any irregularities in the walls that would mean changes in the floor plan. Kaz thought back to his trip around the house. It looked exactly the same on the inside as it did on the outside: a rectangle about four yards wide and five yards long, all straight sides, no windows or openings except on the front wall that had the door and two windows; one into the kitchen, one into the room with the fireplace.

As Kaz was running though the room layout one more time, he made a connection. There was no chimney. The house had a fireplace, but no chimney. Kaz summoned the strength to roll onto his side and stand up. He wanted to conduct an experiment. He went outside, gathered some kindling, and went to the fireplace where he knelt down and began to build a fire. When he started to strike a flint, Kire's door opened and he emerged with a smile.

“That won't be necessary,” he said, as if giving Kaz credit for passing a test. “Come with me.” He motioned, and Kaz followed to the back door that opened to a flight of stone stairs going into the ground.

At the bottom of the staircase Kaz looked around the room in amazement. It was an underground library. The room was dry and warm, lit clearly by candles and lanterns that were hung from the walls and sitting on desks. There was also a window that let in some natural light, but Kaz could not see where the light was from. The room extended in all directions. There were walls filled with scrolls, papers, and books. In one section, Kaz could see vast shelves filled with food that was in long term storage.

“How long would you have waited for me to figure out that there was no chimney?” Kaz asked.

“I think you would have noticed other things before too long. The layout of the house gives no space for a back room, yet there is a door for one. The house was warm with no fire. There is no food to be found on the main level, and no well in the immediate vicinity. There is a hollow sound when you walk on the floorboards. Despite the fact that I regularly talk about things that I have read recently, there is not a single book in the entire house. You know I hunt and trap, but there are no supplies by the door…”

“Thanks, I think I get the point,” Kaz said, now completely deflated.

“Don't feel too bad. It has taken others much longer to find that anything is wrong.”

“You've had other people here?” Kaz was surprised by the idea; it seemed such a solitary place.

“Yes I have. I have brought people here, and like you I have seen something special in each person I have found. I want to teach you how to see.”

Kaz was taken aback at this statement, and pointing to his left eye marks he corrected the old man, “Don't you mean you want to teach me how to smell?” Kaz asked, making reference to Kire's mark.

“No my friend, I don't.” Then he clarified, “I want to teach you how to see the truth; how to look at a room and see what is wrong, how to read a passage and sift out the lies, how to lay out a plan and see its weaknesses and strengths. I want to teach you how to face problems and see the solutions.”

“That sounds like a great thing for an intellect to learn,” Kaz said skeptically. “But here’s the thing, I’m not an intellect. I don’t like reading long passages of prophecies, it’s just not interesting to me, like it is for Bendar.”

“Just think about what I’m saying for a moment,” Kire said seeming somewhat exasperated that Kaz didn’t get excited about the idea of reading books. “If you develop a talent it can become a strength. Even weaknesses can become strengths if you work at it. Imagine the power of a visor who can see the physical around them, and discern what he cannot see physically.”

“Wow,” Kaz said in shock, “For someone with the gift of smelling, you sound a lot like Bendar. I really appreciate your offer,” he continued, “but I need to get back to Omer's Keep as soon as I'm healthy. I can't leave my friends behind.”

“That is your choice of course. You will be healthy and ready to travel in about a month. Stay here until then and maybe you'll change your mind.”

Thinking this through Kaz answered. “A month? You are going to let me stay here for a month? How can I ever repay you?”

Kire smiled. “I'll think of something.”