The Cursed Blood, стр. 78
That’s what the cloth draped cart sounded like that the hooded, whistling one slowly rolled forward with. I breathlessly watched him lumber, hunched over back into view as I swayed from the chains. Vile, slimy water dripped on my face from somewhere high above where I dangled, swayed, and gasped for breath. When he finally came to a halt he wordlessly, with hair raising theatricality, drew back the cloth.
To my horror I found I couldn’t take my eyes off what he uncovered. The sickeningly dark stained canvas tool roll tied and set on the cart’s top shelf next to a neatly folded leather apron sent fresh thrills of spine shivering terror through me as I hung there helplessly. The hooded figure carefully unfurled and shook out the apron and carefully secured it about his neck and waist, then stared up at me.
All I could see was the black, Darkling eyes from the eyeholes of the hood as he almost lovingly patted the bundle on the cart. As, without taking his eyes off me, he untied the leather thongs securing it closed. Then carefully, section by section, very slowly and purposefully, he unrolled the well-used canvas tool roll, and with a sadistically ritualistic and methodical calm, exposed the cold, vicious tools of his trade.
I remember whimpering and my guts clenching when I saw the sharp, hooked, serrated, unforgiving, and pointy implements of very medieval torture. All lovingly oiled and sharpened to evil purposes that he revealed, section by section as he unfolded it. Running his fingers over each tenderly as he stared up at me unblinkingly. Something hungry, cruel, and angry sparkled in his glitteringly black eyes.
“Shall we then?” Sir Becket sneered as with the ear curdling scrape of metal on stone he dragged a stepping ladder behind me and peered up at me in a way that made my skin crawl. “Oh, this is going to be such fun,” he promised with a cackle as his hooded executioner/torturer selected a hooked blade and ran his dirty thumb over the keen edge experimentally as he continued his unblinking stare.
He climbed the ladder behind me as I struggled and screamed and yelled in a voice that wasn’t my own as his boots slowly and deliberately rang off the metal ladder rungs. There was a tearing sound and my flesh was assailed by a sickly chill as my clothes fell away, the constant slimy foul-smelling drip from above sending icy cold water down that riveted through my hair and dripped chillingly on my flesh.
I screamed, I felt shame and fear all at once, and then I both heard and felt the crack of the whip, and my back felt as though a dragon had run its claw across my back and sliced me open. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again, and again it landed.
I went from screaming to dog like yelps to moans, then to whimpers, then to numb blackness. All I could hear was the cruel resounding CRACK of the whip and Sir Becket’s perverse laughter as the woman coldly went about her work with frosty malice in her black eyes.
I awoke nauseated and in searing pain, still dangling from the ceiling by my wrists and being dripped on, the chains creaking and groaning as I slowly drifted in and out of reality. The eerily glowing arcane rune stamped into the iron manacles about my wrists felt like they had rubbed my skin raw and bloody seemingly to the very bone even as they sapped at me in a way that left me tired, drained, immobile, and disoriented.
I eventually became aware that I wasn’t alone as I dangled there in misery. That somewhere in the torchlit dungeon something was watching me. “This pains me, little one.” The voice of the pointy hooded man with the staff emanated from the shadows in a harsh scratchy rasp.
The crystal atop his staff burst to life, bathing the room in low pulsating purple light as he stepped rasping into view. I squinted down at him in terror but couldn’t even gasp or cry. I could only just hang there and stare down at him.
“This is tragic.” He towed a pile of what looked like the ragged remains of a purple dress that lay beneath me in a heap amid the filth, then stared up at me with tears on his face. “Why will you not tell us what I need to know? Why do you insist on this barbarity? Why do you protect this boy? It is ever so inconvenient? He has power that threatens everything. Why do you ignore this? Why do you defy me when I’ve been so kind and gentle in raising you?” He glared up at me from the shadows of his tall pointy hood and shook his head with such dejection and sadness.
“You, who should have been murdered in your crib by my brothers had I not seen your beauty and value and taken action to secret you away. You, who have been as a daughter to me…” Of course, I was unable to speak, and now totally confused until it hit me. They had her—I was too late to save her, and now I was suffering along with her, likely due to our magically curse linked blood.
The man’s expression, at least that which I could see, deadened, and he stared, his thin bloodless lips pressed into a grim line as he studied me/her swaying in ruin from the dungeon ceiling. I felt a swelling of hate then, a loathing and rage that burned hot but impotent as the manacles responded and sent pain searing through me.
He tapped the pointed butt of his staff in frustration and anger on the stone floor, where it sparked violently. Then with an angry hiss he turned on heel and raspingly vanished back into the shadows. Seconds