A flight of stone steps ran steeply downwards, and then they came to a series of narrow tunnels blocked at intervals by gates of iron bars and grim looking guards. Soon they came to a straight length of tunnel with prison cells on either side and each of the questers was pushed into their own cell, the door slammed shut behind them. The Captain then told them to back up to the doors and put their wrists through so that they could be freed, Jerry and Lirenna being released with a quick slash of a knife through the leather laces tying them. Then the soldiers left, leaving just a couple of guards to keep an eye on them.

     Thomas looked at the deep, angry red grooves left in his wrists, and looked across the corridor to see Lirenna doing the same, occasionally rubbing them to try and get the circulation back. “Well, so much for the direct approach,” he said gloomily. “Now what?”

     “Now we wait,” replied Diana. “They’ll soon realise we’re not spies. They'll probably be all ashamed and apologetic and treat us really nicely to make it up to us."

     “You hope,” said Matthew. “Not that it matters. We can’t really do anything else at the moment.”

     “Do you still think it was a good idea to stop me using spells in self defence?” Thomas asked Lirenna. “Look where it’s got us.”

     “You can’t fight a whole city,” replied the demi shae. “If we’d tried to fight, we might all be dead by now instead of just prisoners.”

     Thomas was still scared and angry, but knew in his heart that she was right and he nodded slowly. He looked over at Jerry, who’d tied a hanky at the corners and was wearing it on his head. He looked ridiculous, but he seemed much happier now and his usual cheerfulness was returning fast.

     “Don’t worry,” he said. “Did you see the way they were looking at Lenny and me? They’ve obviously never seen a nome or a shae before, which means there aren’t any up here, and that proves we’re from Tharia. Therefore we can’t be spies.”

     “You’re being logical,” pointed out Shaun gloomily, “and most people don’t think logically. In fact, many people have a deep mistrust of people who think logically.”

     “Who could they possibly be at war with up here?” asked Thomas, anxious to change the subject. “I mean, this is Kronos, a dead moon! There’s nobody else up here!”

     “We don’t know that,” replied Jerry. “Given that it’s possible to survive on Kronos with the aid of magic, there could be any number of communities up here, all refugees who fled from some social upheaval or other. In fact, all the moons could be inhabited.”

     “They mentioned people called Traldians,” mused Lirenna, “but are they human, members of some other Tharian race, or creatures unlike anything we’ve ever seen before who live only on the moon?”

     “If they think we’re Traldian spies, then the Traldians must be human, or at least fairly human looking, mustn’t they?” ventured Matthew uncertainly.

     “I wonder what they’re going to do with us?” said Thomas gloomily.

     “Don’t think about it,” advised Diana. “Look, this time yesterday, we were trapped in a steel prison, faced with the prospect of a slow, lingering death. Now we’re back in civilization, of a sort, and in a situation that offers endless opportunities if we can take advantage of them. Our situation has improved immeasurably.”

     Maybe, thought Thomas, but it’s still a pretty lousy situation. He couldn’t bear the thought that he’d been separated from his spellbook, his most precious possession. He felt a great numbing fear at the thought of thick, grubby fingers flicking through it, creasing the pages and leaving smudgy fingerprints all over it before idly tossing it into a corner to be kicked around and chewed by rats. He knew the fear was irrational. Anyone who even glanced at it would recognise it as a spellbook and spellbooks were much too valuable to be mistreated, but the fact that it was out of his sight and protection gave his imagination free reign to work overtime. The fact that they’d taken their Holy Rings of Courage as well didn’t help, and meant that he was close to feeling real panic for the first time since being given them by the PriestKing of Samnia. That seemed a thousand years ago now.

     Time passed. It was impossible to say how much in the timeless dungeon, but it was several hours at least and the questers slumped miserably against the rear stone walls of their cells with their arms around their knees, waiting for something to happen. Eventually the soldiers returned, opened Shaun’s cell and pulled him out. One soldier held his arms behind his back while another manacled him, and then the same was done to Matthew, and when they'd finished the two men were led away down the tunnel.

     “Hey!” called out Diana. “Where are you taking them?”

     “Shut up!” shouted the Captain. “Your turn will come soon enough.”

     “Don’t worry about us,” called back Shaun. “We’ll be...”

     “Shut up!” repeated the Captain, hitting him hard with a baton. They heard his cry of pain, and then there was only their footsteps echoing from the cold stone as they were led away, followed a few moments later by the sound of a metal barred door creaking open and closing with a clang. Diana pressed up against the bars of her cell, staring down the tunnel in the direction they’d gone and trembling in fear for her brothers. She remained there for a long time, ignoring the wizards as they tried to comfort and reassure her. Then she returned to sit against the damp rear wall, her hands clasped together above her breastbone where her silver caroli flower had hung, now absent for the first time since she'd been accepted by the Lady of Healing. She sobbed prayer after prayer to Caroli, begging Her to look after Shaun and Matthew, and seeing her Thomas’s fear for himself was forgotten, to be replaced by a burning anger towards those who could subject the gentle, caring young woman to such suffering.

     More time passed. It seemed like an eternity in the dark, damp and deafeningly silent dungeon, but it was probably not more than another hour or so before the soldiers returned to get the rest of them, as promised. They were taken out of their cells one at a time and manacled, including Jerry and Lirenna for whom they’d found smaller manacles, much too small to fit an adult human. There was only one possible use for them in a purely human society and the others felt a new horror as the implications sank in. May the Gods protect us! thought Diana. We’re in the hands of people who manacle children!

     They were taken through tunnels and corridors that were blocked by doors at intervals with thuggish looking guards slouched on duty. At the end was a larger door behind which came sounds of pain; moaning, sobbing and the occasional scream. Thomas guessed what lay beyond before it opened. He looked at Lirenna, and prayed silently and desperately to whatever Gods might happen to be listening.

     It was a torture chamber, of course, and contained about a dozen naked men of all ages attached to various pieces of equipment and receiving the attentions of grimy, sweat sheened torturers who were clearly enjoying their work. Thomas doubted that the torture chamber was normally this busy, not twelve people all being tortured at once. This is all being put on for our benefit, he thought. To scare us. They want something from us, and this is a demonstration of what lies in store for us if we refuse. He looked at Lirenna again, and knew he’d do whatever they wanted him to do. Anything at all.

     There was a large open area in the middle of the room where half a dozen other soldiers were waiting, and as they were led in Thomas saw with horror that one of them was Lokus, the one who’d molested Lirenna during their walk from the dead park cavern. He leered at her as they were forced to their knees and chained by their necks to iron rings set in the floor, and then the soldiers who’d brought them in turned and left, closing and locking the door behind them.

     The questers looked around the room with numb horror, and suddenly Diana cried out when she saw that two of the torture victims were Shaun and Matthew. They didn’t seem to have been harmed yet, there were no visible wounds on their bodies, but they’d been chained to vertical racks which held their arms up over their heads and a pair of eager looking torturers stood beside the wheels that would stretch them, impatiently awaiting their orders to begin. Nearby, a pair of red hot pokers were warming up in a glowing brazier.

     “Shaun! Matt!” screamed the cleric. She tried to stand and the chain holding her neck jangled as she pulled it tight. She collapsed back to her knees. “What have they done to you?”

     “Nothing yet,” called back Shaun. “Don’t worry about us, we’re... oof!”

     His voice was cut off abruptly as a torturer punched him hard in the stomach. “I told you to shut your mouths,” he shouted. “Another word from either of you and I’ll cut out your tongues.”

     “This is insane!” cried Thomas in terror. “We haven’t done anything!”

     “I know,” said a new voice behind them, “but you will. You will do a great deal.”

     They turned their heads and shuffled around on their knees to see who it was. Another man had appeared from somewhere. Not a soldier but a nobleman by the look of him, dressed in expensive clothes in the classic Agglemonian style. A costume familiar all across Amafryka and famous for its association with Imperial might and splendour. The man was tall, well over six feet, and wore a pair of large diamond earrings so heavy that over many years they'd stretched his earlobes to twice their normal length. It was a style of jewelry that had been popular among the noble classes during the so called second enlightenment, a period late in the Empire's history that had turned out to be tragically misnamed. On his left hand he wore a thin gold ring that glittered in the torchlight.

     “My name is Lord Basil Konnen,” he said, “and I am your master. You will save your friends a great deal of pain if you accept that fact straight away. They will thank you for showing some common sense.” He swept his hand to indicate Shaun and Matthew.

     “What do you want from us?” asked Diana, tears still running from her eyes.

     “As you may have guessed, we are at war,” replied the nobleman, “and although the outcome is not in doubt, it is distracting me from other, more important business so I would like it to be over as soon as possible. Your arrival, therefore, is a very welcome windfall.” He held up his left hand, showing them the gold ring. “This is a Ring of ESP,” he said, “and while you were sitting in my dungeons I used it to read all your minds, so that I now know everything there is to know about you. Everything. I know that you, my dear, are a cleric of Caroli, the Healer, which will make you useful for healing those of my men who’ve been wounded in battle, and I know that the rest of you are wizards, which will make you very useful in the battle itself. Most important of all, though, is that your two friends over there are merely soldiers with no special talents, and that you care for them a great deal, which makes them very useful to me as a way of keeping the rest of you under control. I can’t harm any of you four, you’re much too valuable, but any disobedience from any of you will result in your friends being punished. Severely. Do you understand?”

     They nodded helplessly. “But if you’ve read our minds,” said Thomas, “you must know that we’re very junior wizards, barely more than apprentices. We have very little power compared to older wizards.”

     “I know that,” replied Lord Basil, “but in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. There are no other wizards on or in Kronos, so you give me a decisive edge over my enemies. In fact I’m glad you’re not more powerful, because then you’d be too dangerous for me to risk letting you live. I have the best of all possible worlds in you. You’re powerful enough to be useful to me, but weak enough for me to control you.”

     “We’ll need our spellbooks,” pointed out Jerry. “We’ll need to re-read our spells from time to time.”

     “They are my spellbooks now,” said the nobleman. “Everything you possessed now belongs to me, as you yourselves belong to me. However, I will let you borrow my spellbooks anytime you need them.”

     “No!” said Lirenna, finally finding the courage to speak. “We won’t do it! We won’t kill anyone who isn’t our enemy! We’ve killed before, it’s true, but only in self defence. We won’t harm anyone who’ve never done us any harm and who aren’t threatening us. Do whatever you want to us, or to Shaun and Matt, I know they feel the same way, but you won’t turn us into murderers.”

     “Damn right!” agreed Matthew, speaking quickly before the torturer could silence him. “Don’t Aaargh!”

     Diana was nodding as well, and Thomas and Jerry glanced at each other, trying to decide how brave they were. If the nobleman had threatened them personally, that would have been one thing, but if their defiance caused harm to their friends…

     They looked up at Shaun, who saw their dilemma. “Don’t do it!" he cried. "We can take anything they do to us!”

     “Gag them!” shouted Lord Basil in fury, and the torturers stuffed dirty, bloodsoaked rags into the soldiers’ mouths. The damage had been done, though, and the nobleman knew that the questers would never kill for him. His ring of ESP told him that they meant what they said, and so did his innate sense of human judgement; the ability possessed by all great leaders that told them exactly how far their subjects could be pushed. Trying to force them to kill for him would be futile, he knew, and would only result in his destroying this wonderful windfall. Evil though he was, therefore, he demonstrated his leadership qualities by swallowing his pride and backing down a step.

     “It won’t be necessary for you to kill anyone,” he said. “You have spells that can disable without killing, such as by tangling them in cobwebs or sending them to sleep, allowing us to take them prisoner. We’ll use them to bargain for our men, taken prisoner by the enemy.”

     The look on their faces told him that they were desperately eager to believe this, since it enabled them to avoid the awful choice between their honour and Shaun and Matthew’s lives. From his long experience at ruling people, of subtly controlling their choices and actions, he knew that they wouldn’t examine his words too closely in case they saw through them. Subconsciously, they might have a very good idea what would happen to the prisoners once they were out of their sight, but under no circumstances would it be allowed to rise into their conscious awareness, which was where they kept all their moral scruples. The subconscious was much more selfish, much more mercenary, and Lord Basil laughed to himself as he contemplated it. Anyone who understood how the subconscious mind worked could manipulate people as easily as pieces on a klann board.

     The questers looked at each other, thinking about it but not, Lord Basil knew, too deeply. “All right,” said Lirenna at last, very softly and with her head bowed so that her dark hair fell around her face. “We’ll do whatever you want.”

     “Good,” said Lord Basil, smiling in triumph. He’d been forced to back down in front of his men, though, and that could not be allowed to go unpunished. He had to regain face. “I’ll give you twenty four hours to recover and prepare yourselves for battle, and I’ll give you the finest rooms in the mansion, as befits such important members of my household. First, though, I want to give you a demonstration of what will happen to your friends if you decide not to come back once I turn you loose.”

     He strode over to Shaun and Matthew and spoke to the torturers. “The cleric can heal minor burns and small wounds, but be careful not to cause any major injuries.”

     “No, wait!” cried Diana in terror. “We said we’d do whatever you want!”

     “I know,” snarled the nobleman. “I just want to make sure you don’t change your minds.”

     He nodded to the torturers, who picked up a red hot poker each, holding them with thick wads of cloth. Diana and the three wizards screamed and pleaded, tearing their wrists to shreds trying to get out of the manacles, but they were helpless to stop the torturers as they went to work.