"Zill?" I questioned as we made our way down a narrow spiraling staircase whose steps were bone-white slabs mottled with with numerical symbols, and a railing made from linked stone hands into the deepest recesses of the palace. The name sounded vaguely familiar. "I am afraid I don't understand. Zill is that desolate region of territory beyond the chasm, the one that borders this very palace. The Impasse, I believe it is called."
"Yes," the chancellor said. "Zill, a land of stinking marshes, poisonous jungle and muddy plains. No one goes there. The Impasse makes that impossible. None that we know of have ever crossed it. It's too wide, too deep. No one lays claim to Zill. No one wants it. It's completely worthless and unsurveyed by any citizen of Orania. There are no surveys of the land, and there won't be in the foreseeable future."
"Then why do you call him by that title?" I asked.
"An old tradition," he told me, his voice sounding more hollow with every step we took down the spiral of worn stone steps, and the air was cooler the lower we went. I wrapped my coat tighter around me. The chancellor seemed unaffected by the chill. "The least favorite member of the royal family is awarded that particular appellation. A private joke that goes back generations."
"Why this sudden change?" I asked.
"To be honest I was going to tell you after you had met him – after I had seen for myself if you were up to the job," he said. "And it is a secret, not anything that we would like the peasantry to know just yet. But seeing as you have some royal blood in your veins, I think it would be alright that you knew. The king has chosen a wife."
"Ah," I said. "I understand why that would cause someone to rethink family ties."
"The king wants his long-isolated brother present to witness the marriage ceremony," the chancellor said. "He insisted that his brother be socialized so that he does not cause undue upset or embarrassment."
"The king's brother," I queried. "To what extent has he been educated? For instance can he read? I ask because it will help me determine what I am to teach him."
The chancellor tilted his head as though remembering. "Yes, I believe that he can read, and perhaps he can count his fingers and toes."
"Does he have a name? A proper name, not simply a title," I asked.
"If he did at any point," the chancellor said. "Then I was never made aware of it. He has always been 'Duke' or 'my brother,' when his majesty spoke of him. You are free to ask the king if you so desire."
As we descended the steps leading down into the lower levels, the chancellor eagerly explained the palace's different levels and layout. I felt then that perhaps he would have made a better historian than an administrator to a mighty and disorganized kingdom. He excitedly explained how the palace was anchored by thirteen subterranean floors, nearly half a mile of solid spiraling space that been literally corkscrewed into the mountain by some process that had been lost to history and did not adhere to any known architectural technique. The levels consisted of a vast network of passageways, crypts, waterways, hidden doors, prison blocks - all categorically dark and dank, and completely at odds with the riotous splendor above.
On a stone platform with a waist-high metal railing standing twenty feet over a concourse of roaring water, the chancellor and I passed through the reservoir that served as the palace's primary water source – all full of tanks that resembled enormous arcane glass beakers fitted with heater coils and pipes ornamented with large clock faces wrapped around their circumferences. I asked the chancellor to what purpose did the clocks serve, to which he replied that none knew, and the reservoir automatically heated, or cooled, or cycled upon demand, and had done so faithfully without maintenance for as long as the palace had been occupied.
After we had crossed the reservoir we came to an intersection of corridors, where in some areas, roots of great plants had wound themselves through the foundation stones, and twisted around themselves. I would pause to stare into gaps and catch glimpses of strange things, a shine in the darkness like the gleam of exposed gems, colonies of luminescent fungi, and areas where the complete ancient skeletons of thunder-beasts were imbedded and seemingly melded into the stone walls. In some places it looked as though the hallways were either carved from the very rock, or - impossibly - the very rock was trying to reclaim the hallways. At ends of corridors we passed not just dripstone formations but strange geological oddities, each unique in a skewed way.
Finally we stopped at a double-bolted steel door at the end of the labyrinthine passageways. Wordlessly, the chancellor handed me the lantern, and opened the door using the key. The heavy door groaned on its hinges, stirring up clouds of dust and a faint stench, a mixture of body odor, dirt and the dulled scent of waste.
I entered.
Unlike most rooms in the palace, this room was stiflingly close, as if it has not been opened in a
hundred years.
The cell was almost completely dark, the only source of light the faint glow emanating from a single window set in a far wall – a narrow opening from which a sliver of thin sunlight pierced it. Entering, I walked beneath the ray, and I squinted up, still amazed by the abundance of natural light that the palace enjoyed. To have the sunlight come in, I thought, this cell must be close to the edge of the mountain's surface.
And as I wondered why someone would make such a tiny window at all in the palace, I then noticed the window's shape. It wasn't oval like a viewing portal, nor was it square like those of the house of my estate. The window was an unusual shape, a design that I hadn't seen before anywhere else in the palace: a crescent moon-shape, facing to the right.
As my eyes accustomed themselves to the dismal gloom, I could just make out a bare wooden cot-bed against the left-hand wall with a filthy cloth as its only covering, a sideboard, a free-standing cupboard, a tiny table, a writing bureau and chair. There was no other furniture; not even a rug for the stone floor. No lamps, no other light source except for the crescent window.
At the time it made no sense to me. Was the inmate of this cell left to live out his or her life below the glittering splendor of the greatest of palaces with no regard to their personal hygiene, or the slightest diversion to keep their mind occupied? Was there no opportunity for mental or physical exercise?
This was cruelty. This was wickedness and perversity and an inconsolable way to treat a prisoner, no matter what crime they had committed or how dangerous they might be.
I then noticed that the chancellor had not followed me into that cell. I called out to him, but received no answer. I head only the dull pad of footsteps receding into the distance, as I heard the chancellor make his way back up the stairs.
It appeared that I had been left alone, only for that illusion to be shattered when I heard a low scuffling coming from one of the room's corners.
I was not alone. Not alone at all. Had never been alone since I had entered.
From one of the corners, a tall figure loomed. It had been there all along.
It was there and then, trapped alone in that filthy cell that I first encountered the Duke.