YOU MUST BE brave, Nessa, I told myself. If ever you needed courage, you need it now – for your own sake but most of all for your sisters’!
I had been locked in a small oblong room without a window. There was the stub of a candle impaled upon a rusty spike protruding from the wall, and by its flickering light I examined my surroundings.
My heart sank in dismay for, in truth, this was nothing more than a cell; there was no furniture – just a heap of dirty straw in the far corner.
I could see dark stains on the stone walls, as if some liquid had been splashed there, and I feared it might be blood. I shivered and looked more closely, and immediately felt heat radiating from the wall. At least I wouldn’t be cold. That was a small comfort.
A hole in the floor with a rusty metal lid served to meet the needs of bodily functions; and there was a pitcher of water but no food.
For a moment, as I took stock of my surroundings, I felt despair, but that was quickly replaced by anger.
Why should my life be over before it had properly begun?
The deep sorrow that I had experienced at the sudden death of my father had transformed itself into a permanent ache of loss. I loved him, but I was so angry. Had he not thought of my feelings? What had he said in his letter?
Had it ever proved necessary, I would have sacrificed myself for you. Now you must sacrifice yourself for your younger sisters.
How presumptuous of him to command me to sacrifice myself for my sisters! How easy it was for him to say that! That sacrifice had never been demanded of him. He was now dead and free of this awful world. My pain was only just starting. I would become a slave of these beasts. I would never have a family of my own – no husband and children for me.
I checked the door, but there was no handle on the inside and I’d heard the key turn in the lock. There was no way out of the cell. I began to cry softly, but it was not self-pity that replaced my anger; I wept for my sisters – poor Bryony would be terrified, confined in a cell like this alone.
How quickly we’d fallen from relative happiness to this state of misery. Our mother had died giving birth to Bryony, but since that sad day Father had done his very best, providing for us and bravely trading with the Kobalos beast – Slither, he called it – to keep it at bay. We’d had little contact with the nearby village and other farms, but enough to know of the beast’s reign of terror and to realize that we had been spared the fear and suffering that others in the neighbourhood had endured.
I thought I could hear Bryony crying out in the next cell, but when I placed my ear to the wall there was only silence.
I called out her name as loudly as I could – and then a second time. After each attempt I listened carefully with my ear against the wall. But there was no reply that I could hear.
After a while my candle guttered out, plunging me into darkness, and again I thought of Bryony. No doubt her candle would do the same and she’d be terrified. She had always been afraid of the dark.
Eventually I fell asleep, but was suddenly awoken by the sound of a key turning in the lock. The door groaned on its hinges and slowly opened, filling the cell with yellow light.
I fully expected to see Slither, and I tensed, preparing myself for whatever happened next. However, it was a young woman, who was standing in the open doorway brandishing a torch and beckoning me with her other arm.
She was the first human, apart from my sisters, that I had seen since leaving the farm. ‘Oh, thank you!’ I cried. ‘My sisters—’ But my smile of relief froze on my face when I saw the fierce expression in her eyes. She was not here as a friend.
Her bare arms were covered in scars. Some were a livid red and quite recent. Four other women stood behind her; two of them had multiple scars on their cheeks. Why should that be? Did they fight amongst themselves? I wondered. Three were carrying cudgels; the fourth brandished a whip. They were all quite young, but their eyes were full of anger, and their faces were very pale, as if they’d never seen sunlight.
I rose to my feet. The woman beckoned again and, when I hesitated, entered the cell, seized my forearm and dragged me roughly towards the door. I screamed out and tried to resist, but she was too strong.
Where were they taking me? I couldn’t allow myself to be separated from my sisters. ‘Susan! Bryony!’ I yelled.
Outside, both arms were twisted up behind my back and I was forced up the steep flight of stone steps until, right at the very top, we came to a doorway. The women thrust me through it violently, making me lose my balance and sprawl onto the floor, which was smooth and warm to the touch. It was clad with ornate tiles, each depicting some exotic creature that could only have come from the artist’s imagination. It was hot and humid within, the air full of steam, but ahead, as I got up onto my knees, I saw a huge bath sunk into the floor.
Once they’d pushed me inside, the women retreated back down the steps, first locking the door behind them. I climbed to my feet and stood with trembling legs, wondering what was going to happen next. Why had I been brought here?
Peering through the steam, I saw a narrow bridge leading over the bath to the foot of a great rusty iron door on the other side. Then I heard someone cry out in pain. That door filled me with foreboding. What lay beyond it?
My trembling became more violent and my heart sank, for it had sounded like Susan. Surely it couldn’t be her? I hadn’t heard a thing from my room. But when the cry came again, I was certain. What was happening to her? Someone was hurting her. The women must have dragged her up here too.
But why, when the beast had promised to protect us? Father had always claimed that he was a creature of his word – that he believed in what he called ‘trade’ and always honoured what he had promised. If that was so, how could he allow this to happen? Or could it be that he had lied – that he was the one inflicting the pain?
I walked along the edge of the bath. Then I halted and, for the first time, noticed the black coat on the hook behind the door and, beneath it, resting against the wall, the belt and the sabre that had once belonged to my father. Was Slither now on the other side of that door, hurting Susan?
I had to do something. My eyes skittered hither and thither, along the length of the room, looking anywhere but at the door. All at once I saw something dark in the bath close to the wall on my left. What was it? It looked like some dark furry animal floating face-down in the water.
The creature looked far too small to be the beast who called himself Slither – it was hardly a quarter of his bulk – but I remembered that my father had once told me how, by using dark magic, a haizda mage could change his size. Peeping through the curtains when he visited our farm, I had also seen some evidence of this, for the beast had indeed seemed to vary in size from day to day. I also remembered the huge eye that I had glimpsed through the chink in the curtain when Slither had visited the house after my father’s death. I had assumed that it was the work of my own imagination, inspired by terror. But what if it really had been the beast? Could he really make himself that big? If so, he could surely also shrink.