Page 5

Karl stayed on the very edges of the paths where he wouldn’t leave footprints in the soft dirt of the beds, straining his ears for any hint that he had been spotted.

He stuck to the perimeter of the garden, where a wall would have stood had there been one, rather than going through the center where he would be more exposed.

Moonlight revealed a massive patio on the other side of the garden, attached to what he assumed was the back of the palace.

Or the side of the palace. The building was huge and sprawling, as large as it had appeared back in the harbor, so there was no real way to tell what portion of the building Karl was adjacent to.

The garden had to be nearly a mile long, as it took him a good twenty minutes to traverse it.

The patio was long gone by the time Karl reached the end where the wall appeared again.

The nine-foot-high wall continued along the perimeter of the palace grounds as if it hadn’t had a massive hole in it.

However, this time he found more than neatly manicured paths.

Perpendicular to the big wall was a second, waist-high wall that went from the outer wall all the way to the palace, cutting the palace grounds in half.

Every twenty to thirty feet Karl found spaces in the wall that looked like doorways.

Karl crept closer, curiosity winning over caution, but tensed on the balls of his feet to run just in case.

At the first of the doorways, he crouched by the wall, trying to stay in the shadows, and peeked around the wall to take a look.

Karl swallowed back a horrified gasp when he saw what was on the other side.

Each doorway led to a downward staircase allowing entry into a small amphitheater.

Aside from the stairs, all the rest of the perimeter space was comprised of stone benches for seating.

A flat space filled the bottom. The entire amphitheater was approximately a third of the size of the coliseums throughout Namin, spaces Queen Carmillian was slowly turning into theaters and playhouses, rather than fighting rings full of blood and death.

The Yarokian version was a thousand times worse.

At the bottom, where everyone spectating could see, a table stood with chains for wrists and ankles at the head and foot, and a wheel attached to those chains to stretch the body in cruel torture.

This was a terrible torture chamber with seats for over a hundred people to spectate.

Karl swallowed back his disgust and moved to the next amphitheater.

The best victims of torture were prisoners, so he had to be near the dungeon and the courtyard where Queen Carmillian said Ama was being kept.

The second amphitheater was completely empty, not even a torture apparatus at the bottom.

The third had a cold firepit with a rack full of metal implements, and the fourth, another long table with chains, except this time without the wheel.

He had no idea what it was used for, but he really, really didn’t want to know either.

Swallowing bile, this time from everything he had seen rather than his own pervasive stench, Karl moved on to the fifth, and thankfully last, amphitheater.

This time, he found a whipping cross only, unlike the others, it was occupied by a body hanging from ropes.

A glance at what was left of the poor man left hanging there was all Karl needed to learn why the scent-based Yarokian trackers hadn’t noticed him sneaking onto the palace grounds.

It turned out, masking his own scent with rot had been an excellent idea, because the absolute, putrid stench of rotting death emanating from inside that amphitheater was a thousand times worse than anything Karl’s magic could ever conjure up.

If he hadn’t already been partially nose-blind thanks to his own smell, Karl definitely would have thrown up.

As it was, he had to plug his nose and breathe shallowly through his mouth to prevent that.

Even breathing was vile, the air viscus and heavy as if the stench gave off a physical miasma.

Karl had to continue on with his search.

He could only hope a fresh breeze would blow when he returned to the garden.

Yet at the same time, he dreaded what he might find next.

He looked around for some way to go around the amphitheaters and continue his way around the garden, or better yet, into the dungeons where this Ama was likely being held.

He squinted through the gloom and shadows, trying to see around the bottom of the amphitheater, searching for a doorway.

This amphitheater was closest to the palace wall, so if there was a doorway, it was most likely to be in this one.

Karl couldn’t be sure, but he thought he might see an outline to the right of where the body hung.

Which meant, unfortunately, he had to go down there where the smell was likely to be unbearable.

Still, seeing the dead body left to hang there was all the evidence Karl needed to convince him that saving Ama from a similar repugnant fate was essential.

Karl had worked with the Tovalian military for a little over two years.

Before that he was a street urchin and thief.

Death wasn’t a stranger for him, nor was seeing dead bodies.

Yet, he still hesitated at the top of the stairs, trying not to shudder at the idea of getting closer to that hanging form.

Whatever the Yarokai had done to the poor person to leave his corpse in such a disgusting state wasn’t something Karl really wanted to see up close.

He finally steeled his nerve and placed his foot on the top step to head down when the body’s head suddenly turned to rest the opposite cheek against the wooden cross.

The rotting corpse was somehow still alive!

Karl’s feet dashed down the stairs before his brain fully engaged.

He slid his belt knife free to cut the ropes holding the body to the cross when he reached the bottom but paused in shock as he took in what was left of the body’s back.

The flesh looked melted where it wasn’t grossly swollen and leaking some sort of dark-colored pus in even lines across the body, from shoulders down to upper thighs.

Karl unfortunately knew of two ways to achieve the melted result he was looking at, poison being the easiest. The problem with that assessment was any poison strong enough to literally melt flesh would have spread outward from those original lines and started melting the entire body, too, and Karl didn’t see any evidence of that here.

That meant the other method Karl knew of to create this result had to have been used instead—assassin’s magic.

One of the first magic lessons Karl had ever learned when he was still a street kid was that pain caused by red magic could only be soothed by red magic.

No other healing could fix the damage unique to assassin’s magic.

Admittedly, the majority of the time the victim of red magic was dead, so using power to fix it was irrelevant at that point.

This victim, however, was still breathing, his chest rising and falling very, very slowly, hitching as if each movement hurt—which it probably did.

Which meant in this case, Karl could do something to help.

The man’s dark eyes were open and looking at Karl when Karl approached, shining feverishly as they reflected the moonlight.

“I didn’t tell. They’re safe. I didn’t tell.” The voice was reedy and cracked, a mere whisper as if it was taking all the strength he could muster just to get those words out.

“Let me help,” Karl whispered back.

His hand glowed red as Karl called on his magic.

He showed the glow to the man, whose eyes widened in surprise.

Karl moved to the man’s back, holding his hand over the mess of melted flesh, pus, exposed bone and muscle, and swollen pustules.

Karl didn’t touch, unwilling to cause the man any additional pain, instead, directing his magic in a steady flow from a few centimeters above the mess.

The wounds didn’t want to heal, resisting his magic as the red flowed over the man’s back.

Whoever had caused this hurt originally had really strong powers and was definitely highly trained in using it to hurt.

Karl was also highly trained, but not with the same terrible intention.

He gritted his teeth and bore down, forcing his magic to overcome all resistance.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the worst of the pus started to shrink and some of the exposed bone began to vanish beneath renewed muscle and skin.

“Hide.” The voice was a little stronger, but still a faint whisper. Karl lessened his focus on his magic to listen, then heard what the man must have—a tuneless whistle slowly coming closer. “A guard’s coming on their rounds,” the man added.