My Black Beast (8 page)

He sat up. Not easily, but he got it done. The
motion must have been curious to the guards as one looked to the
other and Lowell could hear their voices. It wasn’t
sealed.

“
Hey!” He struggled to get enough
volume but it caught the attention of both the guards. “Where is
this? Where is Marka?”

One said words but not words he could
understand and so he slumped in defeat and then rolled over onto
his good side. He was exhausted and he might as well sleep. He
couldn’t actually get himself to sleep, but at least it was
something to do. There was a slab with a flat mattress maybe twenty
feet away but he couldn’t be bothered. The floor was fine. What was
the difference? He was probably going to get executed to these
people’s weird demon meat god or something. Maybe the floor would
at least make him tougher to chew.

Chapter 8

The deep, warm hum
of the stone door
brought Lowell back from the edge of an uncomfortable sleep. The
idea of moving to sit up sounded painful and impractical so he just
shifted his head. First through the door was a guard carrying a
simple wooden chair. The color was striking in a world that had
only been stone from the moment he’d stepped in. Behind the guard
was the old man from before and then another guard.

The chair was placed on the floor a few feet
from the doorway. The old man made his way around and sat,
adjusting his robes as he did, before motioning for the guards to
leave him. Lowell hadn’t paid the man’s clothes much mind before.
Robes of a heavy linen make that ran in a gradient of deep blue to
dark grey at the bottom. The bottom was frayed where it had dragged
the ground for a time but otherwise it looked plush and
comfortable.

“
I have the name Degoed and the
title of Elder Werra. I would make apologies for any, eh…
roughness.”

His accent was strange, like a French person
trying to speak English with a German accent. The voice itself was
slow and gave the impression that he didn’t tend to speak without
giving considerable thought to his words.

“
Can you sit?”

Lowell wasn’t sure if this was meant to be a
command or a question raised out of concern. The guards all seemed
to pay close attention to the old man which spoke to his station.
It took effort, but sitting was achieved. Lowell rubbed a hand over
the area, lamenting how resting seemed to have given his body
permission to make things hurt worse somehow.

“
I again say, I make many
apologies. Violentness is not our way.”

The old man did what Lowell thought was surely
meant to be a kind smile but it still seemed
disingenuous.

“
Please, though, I would know what
to call you?”

“
Lowell.”

Talking hurt. Everything hurt. Laying on the
concrete was stupid. He was stupid. The old guy was stupid. That
stupid glass up there was stupid. This totally wasn’t a
tantrum.

“
Yes. Good. Lowell—” He’s not
pronouncing it right. “— you have made for us a bad time. You
cannot be put to fault, I think. Not so much. More Marka. She is
trouble.”

“
Because she brought me here? It’s
not her fault. I followed her down so don’t do anything to her. I’m
to blame.” He pointed to his chest. “I followed her.”

The old man sat in silence for a short while,
processing the unfamiliar words and then spoke again.

“
No. There is difficultness with
your understanding of us. Marka is Brant. She must go with her
Brant so the other may come.”

“
The other?” He thought hard. “You
mean the boy?”

“
Boy! Yes! Brista. Is Brista. Of
his Brant. Marka must go with her Brant.”

The words all meant nothing but Lowell guessed
there was some group that Marka must have been a part of. He’d
already assumed as much from the tattoos but the old man at least
gave some broken context to the idea.

“
And where is her
Brant?”

The old man turned the words over for a long
time but did not answer.

“
Well?”

“
Gone.”

Lowell narrowed his eyes. Gone? What the fuck
kind of answer was that? Did he mean dead? The old man
continued.

“
She must also go.”

He fucking did mean dead. This son of a bitch.
Lowell lurched forward and swung an arm but the pain caught him and
dropped him harmlessly on the floor five feet away from the Elder
Werra.

“
Maybe you also go.”

Lowell looked up and caught the hint of a
smirk on the old bastard’s face. The door hummed again and slid
open. The guards returned, the old man stood, and they all left in
the little row they had come in, chair included.

The room turned quiet again except for the
occasional faint sound through the slit that let light into the
cell. Lowell wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. Whatever
kind of magic these people were made of, he wasn’t, so opening the
door was a no go. The wall was made of stone or at least an
impressive facsimile. That ruled out punching his way out even
without the injury. He rolled from his stomach back onto his good
side. His skin had flushed hot in the fit of anger and the cool
stone was nice against it. He sighed, pulling a hand up to grab at
the locket through his shirt.

The floor got uncomfortable after a while so
he rolled to his back, hoping for some comfort. It didn’t much
help. The pain was a low ebb and he bore with it for what must have
been a few hours. The unchanging light made it hard to tell
anything about the passing of time and the soft white of the cell
made his brain feel like it was slowly melting.

At some point amidst Lowell’s slow descent
toward human goo, the hum returned. He thought maybe he was
imagining it at first until the light shifted at the bottom of his
vision. He moved as best as he could manage to stand up properly.
Maybe there was a chance. He hadn’t seen an overabundance of
guards.

The door was mid swing and Lowell took a step
to meet it. His intentions fell flat as the opening door revealed
only a slight girl in maybe her early 20s. She was dressed in a
thin light grey robe with long sleeves and a red stripe down one
side of the garment proper. He took a step back.

“
Uh, hi?”

She hadn’t looked up until he said something
and when she did she seemed almost startled as though she had half
expected the room to be empty. She said a single word in the
language he didn’t know and bowed her head. Behind her was a cart
that she turned to pull into the room. It was really more of a
dinner tray than a cart and it was made of flimsy wood with a thin
stone top.

He failed to get a good look at what was on
the cart as she stepped toward him, the door closing behind her.
She pointed to the bed and said some words he didn’t understand.
When he just stared back at her, the expression she wore grew more
apprehensive. She said the words again, more softly, and pointed
meekly at the bed.

There wasn’t a great reason to give this girl
a hard time so he moved over to the bed and sat down on it. Somehow
it was less comfortable than the floor. The mattress was rough and
scratchy and may as well have not been there for all the padding it
offered.

The girl followed him over and reached out
gingerly toward his arm. She touched him lightly, almost like she
was prodding a pile of jello to see if it was set. When her hand
failed to catch fire, she moved it back and grabbed his wrist to
turn it over. For the life of him, Lowell couldn’t understand her
confusion. She was human by every visual indicator. Maybe she had
magic goo in her blood or something, but everything was in the
right spot at least.

By now he had assumed she was a nurse of some
kind and at least that was looking like a better deal than whatever
the old gremlin had planned behind that shit-eating smirk. She
checked his arm and head, pressing until he complained. His head
was still bruised but mostly better. The features of the world
stayed put, anyway.

She moved to bring the tiny table over to
where he was sitting and he could see now that it had bandages and
a few vials full of clear liquids. She pointed at his shirt and
then motioned over her head.

“
I don’t…”

She stopped sharply at the sound of his voice
and seemed to panic a bit. She thought a moment and pointed to his
shirt then lifted slightly on the middle of her robes.

“
Oh, right, right. No gowns to
wear, though?”

He waited for a response for some reason and
all he got was a confused, awkward smile.

“
Right.”

Pulling the shirt over his head was an
exercise in self-torture that he wasn’t keen on repeating. He
managed to get it off of everything except one of his arms and
that’s where he gave up, slouching and breathing heavily. All of it
hurt and he was beginning to wonder why the hell he was going along
with this. She was probably here to poison him, right? Those vials
were probably poison. Maybe they wouldn’t work, though. Maybe
they’d give him super magic powers like Marka had.

He was leaning back on his arms, shirtless,
trying to avoid the pain in his ribs to no avail. The girl stared
at his chest intently and put a hand out to touch it. Maybe she was
intrigued by the locket? He watched her quietly, not sure if this
was part of the whole thing. Her hand landed lightly on his chest
and the softness of her cool fingers wasn’t unwelcome. When her
other hand rose to her chest in a light clutched ball, he began to
feel like this maybe wasn’t part of the checkup.

“
This, uh… thank you
but…”

Her eyes widened as she caught herself. Rather
than pull her hand back she pushed it forward and Lowell let out a
yelp of pain. That was when she pulled back, repeating what sounded
like apologies over and over as she shuffled over the things on her
cart.

The push had shifted something and Lowell
clutched at his side trying to unfuck his insides. The girl’s face
straightened with determination, though Lowell wouldn’t have
noticed, and she moved his hands away. He didn’t have any strength
to protest and again the cool touch of her hand was on him. She
place a hand firmly on his side and another on the shoulder above
it. A warmth began to bubble inside around the spot. It was almost
pleasant beneath the waves of hurt. But the warmth kept growing. It
was nearly hot now. The girl was repeating the words that had
sounded like an apology as the heat began to feel like it was
cooking him inside. That was a loud crackling noise. He couldn’t
hold it anymore. He screamed but the girl didn’t move her hands. It
felt like hours but he knew it couldn’t have been more than a few
seconds. The heat began to dim and the pain followed. He could feel
her hands again now, cooler than before and just as soft. He was
exhausted and thankful and confused. Mostly thankful. The pain was
gone. The girl pulled back and turned to her tray, trying her best
not to look at him. She grabbed the bandages, wrapped them around
his chest as quickly as she could manage, and then reached for one
of the vials. She broke the tip and poured the contents onto the
bandage where he had been healed. The area instantly numbed. She
grabbed the table and started to turn.

“
Wait!”

Lowell put a hand on her wrist and she froze,
still looking away.

“
Thank you. I don’t know if they’re
going to kill me or what but thank you.”

She turned to look at him and seemed to get
what he was saying.

“
Please. Do you know where they
took Marka?”

“
Marka?!”

She pulled away from him and hurried toward
the door, shouting up at the guards as she did. The door opened and
shut and she was gone. Though he felt better, the pain was still
fresh in Lowell’s mind. He pulled his shirt back over his head and
decided to have a look around. As it turned out, that was an
absolute waste of time. And not very much time, even. There were no
secret cubby holes to speak of. The bed was a raised slab, the
walls were all blank white and lit in such a way that it made it
genuinely difficult to get a sense of depth except when looking up
at the enclosed watch station.

Honestly, the room was starting to annoy him
now that his energy was back and his life wasn’t just a series of
stabbing pains and aimless anger. It was boring and if he was going
to die at least they could put him on top of the big spire thing
and make him jump off or something more visually
appealing.

He paced around for what had to have been
hours, tried some pushups, and eventually wound up on the
mattress-like bag of… maybe sand? He hadn’t really noticed before
but the stuffing was noisy and never missed an opportunity to
amplify the noise of any sound he made. He ended up back on the
floor. He could probably have pulled the mattress off of the raised
platform but it didn’t make much sense to bother.

The door slid partially open and a bowl was
placed inside. It had shut long before Lowell made his way to the
bowl. A half dozen medium-sized chunks of deep brown meat in a
brown sort of soupy stew. A two pronged fork was stuck into a piece
of the meat. Lowell paced around and poked at the food. It didn’t
smell of much at all and there was no discernable spice in the
stock. He pulled up the piece of meat to inspect it more closely.
It hadn’t been seared. The odd darkness was just the color of the
muscle.