Tempered

"Damn the witches. Can't they wait?" Tosair swiped at his too-long bangs. Their constant tickle on his nose only added to his frustration. "I've finally gotten this pin open."

"Waiting isn't their forte." The captain's voice was gruff from disuse. The guards had been under strict orders: no conversation allowed in the tower room. Despite having an actual message to deliver, the older man found speaking to his charge an odd and uncomfortable task.

"That's just great. I spend the last--how long?--just cooling my heels up here, waiting on those hags, looking for something to do to pass the goddamned time and, now, when I finally feel like I've gotten somewhere--"

"I'm not unsympathetic to your plight, my lord." The guard flicked his eyes toward the young man, who sat cross-legged on a low metal cot. "But you knew what to expect."

"Did I?"

The guard only jerked his head in the direction of the door.

Tosair sighed and dropped the granite shard he'd been using to dismantle his miserable excuse of a bed. Although he'd long passed his seventeenth birthday, he'd spent the last year in this rotten tower like a child in the nursery, playing with pretend toys while waiting for the grown-ups to fetch him. He had no alternative but to acquiesce.

"Let's go," he said. "But don't touch anything." He gestured to the lone cot and the chip of rock he'd pried from the misfit corner of his small room. "I've got everything right where I want it."

The guard allowed Tosair to pass through the doorway and watched him descend the narrow twist of staircase. He pulled the door shut behind him but did not lock it.

 There was no point to it now. The boy would not be coming back.

Deep below in the windowless keep, the witches waited. Each step trudged down the narrow staircase took him closer to them.

Witches, Tosair thought. Wackos is more like it. How'd I get roped into this?

When he'd agreed to spending time in contemplation of his approaching manhood, Tosair imagined far different conditions. A month in the summer hunting lodges, perhaps, with a full complement of servants and a host of visiting maidens shuttled up from the lower duchy. Maybe a few hours of religious retreat to give him respite from their charms.

Not this--a year of solitary confinement high above the outpost barracks. Not even bird song pierced the silence outside the window of his tower, too far above the thinning woods that cloaked the witches' well.

The long stairwell spiraled deep below the earth, ending abruptly in a narrow chamber. Dead leaves littered the floor, crunching beneath their feet. A rusty gate, not unlike a dungeon’s door, blocked a dim hallway. The guard produced a large key and, with both hands, twisted the lock open. It yielded with a gritty scrape that echoed into the darkness beyond.

The air was thick and warm and coated Tosair’s mouth. He wrinkled his nose in revulsion and hesitated at the doorway. Did he hear something skitter against the stone?

The guard marched forward into the passage, herding Tosair before him. Twenty paces, thirty now, each step with hands held up in front of him as if he feared something would spring upon him. He remained unmolested, however, except for the occasional cobweb across his face.

Another door, this one of uneven stone with an iron handle, blocked the end of the hall. The guard pulled it open and stood to the side, a slight sweep of his hand to usher Tosair through. The room was blacker than the moonless nights he’d spent in his tower room. He looked a question at the guard who only stared past him. He’d be no help.