"You can rot in this cell forever, if you refuse to talk," said Rhoshamandes. "I have no compunction about starving you till you dry up like a husk, like this being was dried up, this Garekyn Zweck Brovotkin when they found him in the Siberian ice."
Derek shut his eyes tight. And if Garekyn had survived in the ice, then Welf and Kapetria had surely survived in the ice. But bury the thought deep inside you, in that chamber they cannot reach with their conniving, larcenous powers.
Rhoshamandes slapped the computer-printed picture with the back of his hand and then let the paper float to the floor.
"You know what this is, you stubborn little miscreant! You've discovered Benji Mahmoud's broadcasts! This is a printout from his website. You know what that is, too."
Derek tried not to look at it, tried not to look at the bold and handsome face of his beloved brother Garekyn, staring out from the computer-generated portrait with the very same expression Derek had seen on his face countless times. Patience, curiosity, love. A smiling man with skin as dark as Derek's and as Rhoshamandes had thundered: "The very same black hair with the same telltale gold streak! Do you deny it? Look at it. This is another one of you! How many of you are there out there, and what are you!"
Earlier that evening, when they had first come for him,
Roland had discovered the iPod on its charger behind the refrigerator and ground it to fragments and dust in his hand. But not before tapping its screen for all sorts of intelligence as to what Derek had been listening to, and berating the humiliated Arion as a traitor under his roof.
"Old programs," Arion had pleaded in his defense. "Just old archived programs. I gave it to him as a diversion, that's all."
And all had been forgiven, it seemed, before they'd spirited Derek away and to this horrid place on the edge of the European world.
"Rhosh, please, be gentle with the boy," said the woman Allesandra. What a commanding manner she had for one so obsequious to this monster. She was as tall as Rhoshamandes was, and her face a portrait of compassion carved in stone. Her long thick hair seemed the perfect color of dust, and her skin was the color of waxen lilies. Demons, all of you.
Garekyn, Kapetria, help me. Give me the strength to hold out for your coming. Give me the strength to betray nothing.
"He is no boy!" roared Rhoshamandes. "And he's going to tell me what he knows, and he's going to give me something to take to them so that they will have to recognize me and what they've done to me! He's going to talk or I will chop him to pieces!"
The creature stopped in his tracks. It was as if his own words had given him an idea. Oh, brilliant! Derek held his breath. Had the monster taken those words from Derek's own thoughts? Chop him to pieces, it had been the very thing Derek dreamed of doing to these monsters. Rhoshamandes turned and marched out of the dungeon chamber leaving the others puzzled.
Allesandra took this moment to plead with Derek. "Derek, poor Derek, give him the intelligence he demands," she said earnestly. Her demeanor was almost regal. "Why do you hold out? To what purpose? All he asks is for your knowledge so that he might take it to the Prince, bargain with the Prince for a place at the table!" She stood over Derek reproving him as if he were a child. "This Garekyn. You know him. We all saw your reaction to this news. You know the man in the picture. Now he is loose and a threat to our kind. And you can explain to us what he is, and what you are. What do you have to gain by keeping this back?"
Rhoshamandes had returned and in his hands he held a large ax with a long thick wooden handle.
Derek was terrified. It was the kind of ax Derek had seen in hotels and other public buildings, usually residing in a glass case against a wall, an ax to be used in case of fire, an ax that could chop through plaster and wood with its mighty head and its cunning sharp edge.
"Yea gods, you can't be serious!" said Arion. "Rhosh, put the thing away, I beg you." He was the smallest of the evil tribe, and looked so wholly human as he stood there, in his simple leather coat and jeans. "Rhosh, I cannot be a party to such cruelty!"
"And who are you to question Rhoshamandes?" asked the cold unmoving Roland. "And to think I sheltered you, gave you comfort."
"Don't fight with one another," said Allesandra. She turned to Derek again.
"Derek, give us the simple answers to the obvious questions. If you have listened to Benjamin's broadcasts, you know we are many, and you know what power we have. Now confide in us, and give us all that you know so that we might present it to the Prince."
"Stay out of this," said the king of demons to all of them, as he held his treasured ax.
Derek turned his head to the side. "I'll tell you nothing," he cried suddenly. "You hold me here against any law in this world." His words came out in sobs. "You keep me your prisoner year on end and you drink my blood as if it belongs to you! I loathe you and detest you. And you, cruel one, the whole tribe despises you and is it any wonder? And you think you can make me an ally?" He tried to stop himself, but he couldn't. "Some night, I'll get even with you for all this, some night, I will have you as a prisoner and you will be at my mercy! Some night you will pay for all you have done to me! Some night I'll get to your Prince and tell him all that you did to me! Some night I'll tell your whole world!"
Rhoshamandes laughed.
"You're doing yourself no good at all, Derek," said Roland with his usual icy condescension. "Simply tell us what you know of this Garekyn."
"This ax is sharp," said Rhoshamandes. Derek was too frightened suddenly to make a sound. He went over the promise of the Parents again in his mind, that if pain was too much for him to bear, he would lose consciousness. And then what? Awake to a world in which he was a butchered fragment of his former self? And would he live on if this demon did hack him limb from limb, even severing his head from his trunk? He gasped and wiped frantically at his eyes.
"Someone cut off my left arm not very long ago," said Rhoshamandes, "and the effect of that blow was amazing. There is nothing quite like seeing your own limb hacked off."
"Yes, it drove you mad!" said Allesandra. "It robbed you of all hope and optimism! Now put that tool aside. You will not harm this boy. What would you gain by doing that? You've gone about this all in the wrong way."
"Don't harm him any further," said Arion. "Can't you bargain with the Prince by offering to bring the boy himself?"
"No, I need more than that! As soon as they know about the boy, they'll come in such numbers that we can't defeat them, and they'll take the boy!"
"Why not try it, Rhosh?" asked Roland. "I've given him to you for whatever you wish. Tell them what you have here, a living specimen of the same ilk as the one that escaped. And that we will bring this creature to them at the Chateau if they will guarantee your complete exoneration, if they will welcome you into the Court on terms of full equality."