Blood from Stone
The Room
-/-
The room was dull and small, swathed in shadows as the only torchlight hung high on the wall. So high it would require a very tall ladder to set and tend to it.
There was no ladder in the room.
With no housing nor chimney to shield or direct it, the torchlight's flames flickered incessantly, swaying back and forth, occasionally appearing to drip lines of light down through the air.
No matter where he stood, d'Artagnan felt his gaze drawn up to it. Up to the dripping lines of light.
Up to the swaying source of shifting shadows.
After a few hours of pacing, he found he had a crick in his neck.
-/-
The room was cold.
There were no windows he could see in the space, no gaps or chimneys, yet the vague howl of blowing wind continued to seep down to him from the blank, dark area of the ceiling. And a high ceiling it must have been. High enough to remain cloaked in darkness, higher than the range of illumination the tall-set torchlight was capable of.
D'Artagnan stared and stared, peering upwards, but could find no hint of the room's final roof.
For all his looking, the space beyond the lamp's reach of light presented him with nothing but a void of darkness and occasional moan of wind.
-/-
The room had a narrow table, four chairs, and an empty tin plate with a tall cup placed next to it.
When d'Artagnan sat, every single one of the four chairs wobbled at the slightest shift of his torso, no matter where he moved them to or how he adjusted them on the uneven floor.
When he hitched his hip to the table so as to rest his body there instead, it, too, refused to provide stillness. The cup wobbled as he leaned. The plate rattled gracelessly as it rocked. His muscles tensed at the imbalance and thereafter refused to loosen. Even after he'd stood up and away from the roughened wood.
Eventually, he returned to the wall for his support—arms folded, hands tucked up to his armpits, eyes drifting up, and up, to the flickering lamplight, again, and again.
And again.
When thirst began to settle into his throat, he reached absently for the cup on the table, before remembering that it was empty, coming around to that realization only after feeling its near weightlessness in his palm.
He set it down.
Scuffing his boots over the mortared floor as an alternative for his focus, he paced the small space, again, until that lack of occupation numbed the acuity of his senses and he found himself reaching for the cup once more.
After the third time, he turned the cup all the way over and balanced the plate on top of it—as a reminder to himself not to reach for it—then stepped gingerly away from the whole setup so as to not bump the rickety table and accidentally topple the arrangement.
Forgoing another attempt at the wobbly chairs, he leant his back to the wall and rubbed the crick in his neck—closing his eyes and bending his head down to keep himself from staring at the lamp.
Behind his eyelids, however, he discovered the glow of it remained, flaring before his eyes as though he still stared at it.
A trick of the darkness that made it slow to fade.
-/-
The room echoed—like a long hollowed corridor, or tunnel, or cave—gathering faint snatches of sound from the spaces without it and dispersing them through the room like the voices of ghosts.
Partially formed ghosts.
Like dismembered spirits, each with half their tongue cut out.
When he heard remnants of familiar voices bleeding down to him through the whispers, he thought—probably—it was his mind playing tricks on him.
He blamed it on his preoccupation with the crick in his neck.
And the lamp.
When he heard the distinct hiss of his name and looked upward for the source, the crick in his neck jumped in spasm. He clamped his fingers to it as a flare of lamplight crawled up the wall, cresting the brick at the highest point yet to his observation.
Still, it revealed him nothing.
Digging fingers into his cramped muscle, he closed his eyes and listened to the phantom sounds, trying to pick them apart, bartering with his mind around the illusion of their familiarity.
He swallowed tightly and tried not to think their names, but their names came regardless: Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.
The ceiling gap howled again at him and from somewhere far away, he thought he heard the sound of angry dogs. Their barks dragged down to him by the wind.
Angry dogs and rumbling thunder.
Angry dogs in an angry storm.
Pursing his mouth to keep from grinding his teeth, he bent one knee up, tucked the flat of his boot into the stone he leaned against, and looked down at the uneven ground.
As he did, the void above him bayed warningly and crackled anew, bringing to bare more thunder and wind, and he thought, somewhere—out there—it must be raining.
Fleetingly, he allowed himself wonder—were his friends out there, with it? Or somewhere in here, with him?
As the gale died down, he heard his name whispered, distortedly, in the wind, and thought it better, again, if he did not think of them at all.
-/-
tbc