As a Seeker (The Eternal Dungeon: Rebirth #5)

"'You thought I had gone mad. Well, I haven't. Not yet.'"

If the High Seeker wants something, no power in life or death will hold him from taking it. What he wants now has brought danger to the Eternal Dungeon.

As the Eternal Dungeon's head torturer slowly spirals into the darkness within his mind, two men strive to bring Layle Smith back. One is the High Seeker's love-mate, using all his gifts of gentle stubbornness to keep Layle alive. The other is Layle Smith's second-in-command, Weldon Chapman, who must find a way to breach the wall between himself and the High Seeker. He must also find a way to end his resentment against the love-mate who took the place of Weldon at Layle's side.

This suspenseful novelette (miniature novel) can be read on its own or as the fifth story in the "Rebirth" volume of The Eternal Dungeon, an award-winning speculative fiction series set in a nineteenth-century prison where the psychologists wield whips. Friendship, family, gay love, and rebellion are intertwining plotlines in the series.

EXCERPT

"I apologize, Mr. Chapman." The High Seeker's voice was abnormally deep; it was the voice he usually reserved for prisoners he was breaking. "I am sorry to have left you so abruptly. I'm sure you understand, though, that it was in the best interests of the dungeon for me to do so."

"Layle, that's folly!" Abandoning the fruit bowl to a table nearby, Elsdon dropped to his knees and took hold of the High Seeker's hands. "If you won't listen to me, listen to Mr. Bergsen! He says that you're endangering yourself by continuing to retreat further into your dreamings."

"Better that I should be endangered than that the other inhabitants of the dungeon should be." Layle's voice was crisp as he fixed Elsdon with his cool gaze. "And you of all people should know how great that danger is."

Elsdon opened his mouth, then pressed his lips tight together in a thin line, like a father whose anger has grown so great that he dare not continue scolding his child. After an awkward pause, the High Seeker said, "I'm rather tired. Mr. Chapman, if you will excuse me . . ."

"No need for you to ask permission to depart, sir," Weldon replied. "This is your home."

He hoped that Layle would take the hint. He had always found Layle's insistence upon formality to be oppressive. Layle was the sole Seeker who, when locked in a room filled only with fellow Seekers whom he had known for nearly twenty years, would not raise his face-cloth. Now, listening to Layle address him in formal language only seconds after he had linked eyes with Elsdon in the most intimate manner, Weldon thanked the fates that he had not been born with violence in his soul. He doubted he could have resisted the impulse to use it by now.

Which led to more unpleasant thoughts. He watched as the High Seeker silently disappeared into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him; then Weldon turned his attention to Elsdon. The junior Seeker rose to his feet with torpid movements. Taking the bowl of fruit over to the counter, he slid onto the stool there and buried his face in his hands.

Weldon came up behind him and placed his hand upon Elsdon's back, but when the junior Seeker raised his head, Weldon could think of nothing to say but, "You should sleep too."

Elsdon gave a half-smile. "I was just trying to decide whether it would be worth my effort to prepare some food for myself."

"Let me." Weldon allowed his voice to reveal his relief at finally having a task to do, and Elsdon laughed. He had all the energy of youth, the ability to spring back from weariness and tackle a problem anew. Examining Elsdon out of the corner of his eye, Weldon decided that matters must have reached a crisis indeed if Elsdon was welcoming assistance from him.

Bread lay on the counter. Weldon reached for it, saying, "Where do you keep your knives?"

"You'll have to tear it with your hands. We don't have any knives."

Weldon stopped abruptly in the midst of taking hold of the bread. He looked over at Elsdon, who was reaching for a metal wine bottle. "Is that necessary?" he asked the junior Seeker quietly.

"No. But he thinks it is. He made me get rid of anything here that he might use as a weapon."

Weldon sighed and let the bread drop from his hands. Pulling himself onto the second stool, he leaned onto the counter with his arms and contemplated the lines at the corners of Elsdon's eyes. He had no memory of those lines being there upon the young man's arrival at the Eternal Dungeon.

"Elsdon," he said, "how did this all start? During the time you and the High Seeker have been together, he has seemed more at peace than I have ever seen him before. Why now, of all times?"

Elsdon, trying to pull the cork from the bottle without assistance from a corkscrew, bit his lip before saying, "It started after I returned from Vovim."

Weldon was silent a moment before taking the bottle from Elsdon. "I can imagine that learning of Layle's past was a shock for you. It was a shock for all of us, when he announced the truth upon his return—"

Elsdon shook his head. "It wasn't that. I was shocked, yes, but nothing I learned in Vovim changed my belief that I'd chosen the right man for my love-mate. The change was in Layle."

Weldon reached toward the cups – they were all made of unbreakable pewter, he noticed – and occupied himself with pouring the wine as Elsdon said, "Layle sent me to Vovim, knowing that I would be tortured there. He did it for the sake of the prisoners in Vovim, and he rightly knew that I would have agreed to the mission if I'd known in full what I was facing. That in itself wasn't the trouble. The trouble was that he hadn't told me before I left about his past, and when I learned from my torturer that Layle had gleefully abused prisoners when he was a young torturer in Vovim . . . When my torturer tried to persuade me that Layle had sent me to Vovim in order to murder me . . . All of this made my suffering twice as hard as it should have been."

"Did you tell him this?" Weldon asked, the wine forgotten. Like Elsdon, he was keeping his voice exceedingly low.

Elsdon gave something resembling a laugh. "Does one ever have to tell the High Seeker anything important? He knows, and this knowledge is what has been driving him to retreat from the real world. He has convinced himself that the harm he did me is only the first step in a campaign of destruction that he will inflict upon every inhabitant of this dungeon."

Weldon fingered the wine bottle for a minute before asking, "Do you believe he is a danger?"

Elsdon raised his gaze from the counter. "Do you?"

Weldon did not have to think before shaking his head. "He has been a Seeker for nearly twenty years, and in all that time he has broken from his duties only twice – both times under circumstances that anyone could forgive. If he hasn't lived out his dark past during all these years, I see no reason why he should do so now."

"Tell him that," Elsdon said, rubbing his palms across his face. "He won't listen to me."

"At least he has sense enough to keep you by his side."

"He has tried to send me away." Elsdon's voice was grim. Weldon felt incongruous laughter rise in his chest as he imagined the High Seeker attempting to throw out of his cell this stubborn young man. One might as well try to lift all the rocks of the cavern in which the Eternal Dungeon was housed.

He held back his smile and said, "Elsdon, these dreamings . . ."

"He has always had them, ever since he left Vovim as a young man. It's his mind's way of finding a substitute for the deeds he committed there."

"I'd guessed that. Nobody has ever known in detail what the High Seeker's dreamings are, but since they happen most often when he is torturing prisoners, it's easy enough to guess their dark nature. But now . . . Elsdon, the High Seeker has never before allowed his dreamings to interfere with his work, nor has he needed another person to call him back to this world. In the past, his spells of unawareness lasted no more than the space of a breath or two, and then he would draw back from his dreamings of his own will. That he should have to take healing leave because his dreamings have become so frequent . . ."

Elsdon did not look up from where he sat, hunched over the counter. "If you asked Layle, he would say that he asked the Codifier to suspend him from his duties because he believes that he can no longer control his actions. He believes he is in danger of torturing and raping and murdering every person in the Eternal Dungeon."

"That's what the High Seeker says. And the dungeon healer?"

"Mr. Bergsen says what I say: Layle's only danger is that he is retreating more and more into the dungeon of his dreamings. He is losing his mind, Weldon."

Elsdon's voice ended in a choke. Weldon laid his hand upon the junior Seeker's arm. After a long while he said, "He has you. That's the best guarantee that he won't leave us altogether."

"He has me only half the day. The other half I spend with my prisoner, or doing work connected with my prisoner." Elsdon raised his head and took a deep breath. "I'm planning to ask the Codifier to relieve me of my duties to my prisoner."

Weldon felt a chill enter him. He tried to ignore it for the moment, saying, "I thought your searching of the prisoner was going well."

"I think it is. I know that Layle will be angry with me – he assigned the prisoner to me because he thought I was the best Seeker for the job. But Weldon, I can't let Layle slip further into his dreamings. If putting my prisoner aside can help him . . ."

The chill increased. Weldon reached for the cheese on the counter and said, "Elsdon – did Layle ever tell you how it was that our friendship ended?"

Elsdon was silent a long moment, and then, with the devastating directness that he had shown in his training as a Seeker, he replied, "No. Nor how your love-bond ended."

Weldon swallowed back his next words. He stared down at the cup, dark with wine and with his memories.