The shortest route to the storage room lay through the kitchens, and as they stepped inside, Isa found herself slowing down, amazed at the stillness.
“Do you ever remember finding the kitchens with no a soul in them? No even one person to tend the fires?”
Jamie shook his head, tugging at her hand again. “It’s as the MacDowylt ordered. Hurry, before they finish and return.”
As he said, there was no time to linger.
Isa snatched up a lantern hanging by the fireplace and lit it before heading back into the tiny cubby where they’d find the entrance to the storage room. Together they lifted the heavy wooden door and climbed down into the dark.
She paused at the bottom of the steps, trying to get her bearings. It had been well over twenty years since she’d been down here.
“This is no place for a wee lass to be playing,” her grandfather had said when he’d found her peering into the black abyss of the dungeon. If you fall into the pit, you’ll be stuck until someone comes down and hears you calling. It’s too deep for even a grown man to climb out.”
She’d done as he asked and left this place at the time, more because of the forbidding black depths she’d seen and the hideous smell rising up through the bars of the metal grate.
The smell. That was the key.
“Sniff the air, Jamie. We look for a stench something like a garderobe.
“I ken what you search for, Isa. It’s over here.” Jamie ran into the dark, away from the glow of her lantern, his awkward limp exaggerated by the shadows. “Look,” he called excitedly. “I’ve found it here but I canna move the barrel that blocks it.”
Following the sound of his voice, she reached the spot and set her lantern on a nearby crate.
“Bollocks,” she muttered, putting her shoulder against the large barrel. What was she going to do now?
God, but he hated dark little holes.
Robert tried to lick his lips, but his tongue felt glued to the roof of his mouth, sticky and heavy. Lack of food and water were making themselves felt. That and the ever-worsening wound in his side.
He should have eaten last night instead of wandering out to stare off into the night. Ah, but that had led to Isa coming out to find him, and for the night they’d shared he’d gladly starve to death.
No! He was a long way from starving. He’d done without food for far longer periods of time. Food and water. He wasn’t about to give up now.
He needed to stand, to move around through the black. That should convince him his cell was larger than it seemed.
Using the rough stone wall for support, he dragged himself to his feet while holding his chest, panting as he did so. He moved slowly, one heavy step after another, finding no corners. That told him he was either in a space so enormous he’d not yet traversed one wall or, more likely, he was in a round hole.
From the feel of the wall, this place had been hewn directly from the rock, giving even more credence to the round hole theory. In spite of that, he knew there had to be openings of some sort in here somewhere. He’d heard the scurried scratching of small animals. Rats, likely. Filthy, disgusting, disease-carrying rats.
“At least I’ve no call to fash myself over that,” he muttered, continuing to follow the wall around. From the burn and swelling in his old wound, he knew it wouldn’t be diseased rats that would bring about his death. No, he could thank the Faerie Magic for the fate awaiting him. A fate he didn’t intend to give in to until he’d found a way out of this place and delivered Isa safely into the care of his family.
More scratching, a scraping from somewhere in the dark. Cocking his head to the side, he listened intently, but heard nothing more. The silence pounded at his ears, and he felt as if the walls were pressing in on him.
Had to keep moving. Had to keep up the pretense of more room than he knew what to do with.
The dark confined space had obviously disoriented his brain. It had sounded as if the noise came from the ceiling, but rats didn’t live on the ceiling. That was impossible.
Unless he were already hallucinating. Or his cell mates were bats.
Or Faeries.
And where were the damned Fae when he really needed them? “No a fucking Faerie to be found down here,” he yelled into the darkness, stumbling to one knee with the effort.
As if in answer to his angry call, a pale yellow light seemed to flicker into the darkness, from above, directly ahead of him.
Now wouldn’t that be just his luck? To piss off some wandering Faerie.
As if there were anything left they could do to him.
