Rizla knew she was heading for a killing room. The thought didn’t bother her.  She’d been in killing rooms before, had participated in killings, and was curious to see what the Elymas had devised. The Precious Orb hadn’t been able to give either her or Suga a clear picture, it had only shown blood and stone. 

She followed the Earth Skyll down two sets of stairs, half hoping the lummox would lose his balance and tumble to the bottom. His limp infuriated her. She wanted to hear cracking bones. 

         Finally, unable to bear his scrape and drag, she pushed past him, her feet flying down the stairs until she reached the last step. She waited in silence, trying to control her thoughts. Is he in health? The Tu’el had asked, is he deformed in any way?  Odd time to think of her son, but she did. The memory was infuriating. 

Rizla was standing in a cavernous room made of stone and lit with the same sconces as those in the Great Hall, but these were placed only on the left of the room. The right was in complete darkness. She sensed it was vast, probably running the length and width of the castle. 

         Finally, he stood beside her, limping and panting. 

“And now?” she said. 

          “Follow the lights,” he wheezed. 

         Again, she walked ahead, stopping only when she came to an iron-studded door; the brightness of a hundred candles seeped through the cracks in the wood.  The lights picked up the reddish-brown stains that, it appeared, had refused to fade no matter how fiercely they were scrubbed.

      She was pulling the drop pin from the lock when she stopped, smelling blood. She’d been smelling it since the first landing, that sweet, metallic scent of a hundred battlefields, but the blood inside this room smelled different. 

Old.

         What had Elymas drawn from? 

         Suddenly, he was beside her, wheezing from exertion. 

         He rasped, “My workroom.” 

         “No longer,” Rizla said. Hatred emanated from him, a force so strong she could feel it push against her back. She laughed. Then, she lifted the latch, allowing the door to swing open.

         And stopped laughing.

         She stood motionless in surprise. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d experienced surprise, or any emotion for that matter, but the scene was such that . . . two vats full of congealed blood over which were hung hooks. Bodies had hung from the latter, draining, for fingers were still caught, while candles of all sorts were set on benches or on overturned pots in an effort to keep the vats warm. The walls were lined with lit candles and a circle of ceiling candles overhung the vats, about a foot away from the hooks.