Arthur Daigle's Blog - Posts Tagged "guards"

Magistrate Cassium snarled as his carriage hit another bump. He hated long rides through the country. No one properly maintained the roads in these boondock parts of Skitherin Kingdom. Add that to the risk of travel, where bandits and monsters preyed on those daring to use seldom traveled roads, and this was turning into a miserable trip. Another bump forced Cassium against the carriage door. “You witless clod, are you aiming for every hole in the road?”

“Sorry, sir,” the driver called back. “There are too many to miss.”

“Try harder!” Cassium grumbled and tried to get comfortable. The carriage was on loan from the Ministry of Obedience, and they’d spared every possible expense. No cushions on the seat, no lock on the doors, why, they’d even issued him two old gelded horses to pull it. It was infuriating, and he’d seen the effort the ministry went to satisfy higher-ranking magistrates.

Cassium had been with the ministry for five years, laboring constantly to enforce order among the halfwits and criminals who seemed to make up three quarters of Skitherin’s population. Still young and healthy despite several attempts on his life, Cassium had attracted the attention of his betters. Those well connected slobs placed as much of their work as possible onto his shoulders. It had surprised them when he’d submitted the request for this assignment. Horrors, they’d have to do their own work until he got back! But the dark haired Cassium had persisted until they gave in, likely just to avoid having to listen to him make sense again.

It was wrong how he was treated. He was smart, more intelligent than his so-called superiors, yet he’d remained in the same post for five years. No promotions, no citations, no awards, not even a new crimson and gold uniform. This one was fraying at the cuffs. Cassium had the highest conviction rate in the ministry, in no small part because he was one of the few magistrates to actually hold court. He didn’t take bribes, a rarity, and he’d led four punitive expeditions. He deserved respect and received none.

Bang! The carriage hit another pothole, this one big enough that the wheels on the right side went entirely into the air. For a second Cassium feared the carriage would tip over, but it landed with another jarring bang. “Stop!”

“Sir, I—”

“Stop!” The carriage came to a halt amid a forest of thin trees. Cassium exited the carriage and waited while his driver climbed down. He waved for his private servant to come down as well. The two men wore the black and tan of lesser servants in the ministry. Cassium took a short weighted rod from inside his flowing robes and struck the driver across the face. He pointed at his servant and ordered, “Drive, and if that happens again you forfeit this month’s pay.”

“Yes, sir,” the servant said. Both men climbed back onto the carriage while Cassium returned inside it.

This wretched trip did have a few things in its favor. The first was good weather. Rains could have turned the dirt road into impassable mud and left him stranded for days or even weeks. The second advantage was it gave Cassium time to read. He’d bought new books about magic and needed time to study them. Actual spell books were illegal for anyone but state sanctioned wizards, but he was smart. Books like the leather bound tome currently in his hands had hints, snippets of information he could glean out. He had two more books like this one with him and ten more at home, and if he studied hard enough he was sure he could grasp the basics of magic.

That still might not be enough to earn a promotion, but if Cassium’s suspicions were correct, this journey could be just what he needed to guarantee one.

Hours dragged by. Cassium had been traveling like this for three days, going through towns, then fields and finally these wastes. The soil was thin and infertile, supporting only pine trees that were harvested once every fifty years. The last harvest had been ten years ago, so the trees were small and the view unimpressive.

His books proved equally unimpressive. Most repeated what he’d read elsewhere. Other parts were outright lies. The authors kept alluding to a connection between goblins and circles. Balderdash! He’d overseen the destruction of two goblin settlements, each more garbage dump than village. There had been no circles in their hovels or graffiti. Burning those vile bases of indecency was an honor diminished by the goblins fleeing ahead of his guards, and the fact that the horrid places had smelled like dung heaps. One of these days he’d have to take a goblin alive and see if there was anything to this circle business.

“It’s a disgrace,” he muttered as he read. “Harpies, mimics, even goblins are born with magic. Men have to earn it.”

That was the most infuriating fact he’d learned from his books. Gutter trash races like harpies and goblins had natural magic. Harpies used magic to fly and had their potent screams. Goblins were so stupid and insane that they could warp space, assuming there were enough of them together. But men, no, men had to struggle and strive and fight to get what those unworthy curs had from birth!

“We’re almost there, sir,” his servant called out.

Cassium closed his books on magic and put them in a backpack, careful to hide them among his pile of legal books and documents. It was unlikely anyone would dare to inspect a magistrate’s possessions, but he took no chances someone might steal them. He looked out the window and frowned at the sight. The dirt road ended at a cluster of brick buildings. Most were small, single family dwellings, but there was a storehouse and the reason for his coming, a surprisingly small building that was entrance to The Pit.

The carriage came to a halt and Cassium got out. He found guards on duty, older men who’d served Skitherim for decades. To his amazement he also saw women and children by the houses. Even more appalling, two goblins scampered around the edge of the crude settlement. The men here had once been soldiers, and should be able to keep their homes clean of such vermin.

“The Pit, the last home for the kingdom’s worst offenders. You wouldn’t think so many people were here just by looking at it,” his servant said. The driver kept quiet, mindful of the blow he’d taken earlier.

“People?” Cassium asked derisively. “There are no people here. Eight hundred convicts are stored in The Pit, never to see the light of day.”

“My idiot father wasted twenty years working here when they were still quarrying limestone,” the servant said. “He said the quarry went down a hundred feet before they capped it and turned it into a prison. I’ve heard men would rather die than be sent to The Pit.”

“What convicts want is of no importance,” Cassium declared. Armed guards marched over to meet him and take charge of his carriage.

Cassium’s servant bit his lip at the sight of the men approaching and whispered, “Tread carefully, sir. If you’re right then we have no friends here and are far from help.”

“The law bends for no one!” Cassium snapped. His servant looked down and the armed men hesitated at the magistrate’s harsh tone. Cassium took out the weighted rod again and shoved it under his servant’s chin, forcing the man’s head up until he had to look Cassium in the eyes. More softly he said, “I have endured much getting here, and I will not risk the reward I am owed because you lack a backbone. I will get what I deserve.”

“A dung heap and a shovel?” a high-pitched voice asked in the distance. Cassium spun around to see the goblin that had shouted the question. “A smack upside the head? Come on, let me know if I’m getting close.”

Cassium would have gladly chased the pest down, but he had bigger fish to fry. The fool in charge of this foul hole in the ground came soon after his men, his hand outstretched.

“Magistrate Cassium, welcome to The Pit,” the older man said. “I am—”

“Warden Vastile Jast, formerly a company commander, yes, I know who you are,” Cassium interrupted. He despised time wasting formalities and made no effort to shake the warden’s hand. “You and your men were judged too old for battle and transferred to this post. It was thought you could handle the responsibilities of managing The Pit, an assumption I have reason to doubt.”

Warden Jast took the insults in stride. He was in his fifties, still strong but showing his age with gray hair and wrinkles around his eyes. The man wore chain armor as if he expected battle, and was armed with a sword and mace. Jast also wore a single badge of honor, a leather neckband with a glittering crimson triangle, the point aimed down. That crystalline triangle was proof of valor in battle and rarely given. Cassium was surprised the warden hadn’t pawned it for drinking money.

“Allow me to offer you and your servants the pleasures of my home, limited as they are,” Jast continued. He waved to one of the larger houses and asked, “If I may escort you?”

Cassium pointed his weighted rod at the nearby children. “Warden Jast, this is a military post. Explain why civilians are present.”

“My men and I took an oath of loyalty when we were conscripted. We did not take an oath of chastity. Many of us married and had children after we were taken off active duty.”

Strictly speaking the warden was correct. His men had the right to take wives, and so long as family members stayed out of The Pit there was no breach of the law. But it was walking a fine line, and Cassium had seen too many men skirt the law until they openly broke it. This was a mark against the warden.

“Lead the way,” Cassium said.

Jast took him to a larger building made of limestone blocks. It wasn’t an odd choice of material given that this had once been a quarry. Inside, the building was a plain office with the associated paperwork, furniture and wasted space. The warden offered Cassium a chair and then sat behind a desk. Cassium’s servants stood alongside two of the warden’s guards.

“I hope you will forgive the lack of proper amenities for someone of your rank,” Jast said. “Our funding is limited and leaves little room for luxuries. Normally that isn’t a problem. This is the first time a magistrate ever visited The Pit.”

“Before today there was no reason to,” Cassium retorted. He took papers from his backpack and laid them out across the desk. “Warden Jast, forty-three days ago I ordered a prisoner in your custody sent to my court. Instead I was told he had died. A second order for a different prisoner ten days later received an identical reply.”

“That is correct.”

Cassium brought out more papers. “Two criminals in your custody died, and that’s all you have to say?”

“Men die, magistrate. They die in battle, from sickness, from old age and sometimes for no reason at all.”

Pointing at the papers, Cassium said, “I found twelve requests for prisoner transfers from The Pit in the three years since you were assigned here. All of them were told that the prisoner had died. Every time the same answer, warden! I find that highly suspicious.”

Cassium expected Jast to lie or beg. To his shock, the man had no reaction, just a bland acceptance of the situation. “Magistrate, I’m sure you send a great many men to prison, but I doubt you’ve spent much time in one. The Pit is the largest prison in Skitherin Kingdom. We are at full capacity with eight hundred prisoners, and we receive fifty more a month. Those new inmates take the place of those who die.”

“You lose fifty a month?” Cassium demanded. “How?”

“Most are in poor shape when they arrive,” Jast replied. “They’ve been beaten until they confessed, chained for weeks or months in other jails, and generally had the life squeezed out of them. When they come here it’s as defeated men with no hope or reason to live. Men in that situation die, and faster than you’d think possible.”

Furious, Cassium jabbed a finger at the papers. “You are responsible for those men, warden. You are paid a stipend to provide them with food and clothing.”

“Ah yes, that.” Jast took three small copper coins from his desk and held them up. “I’m sent three plebs per week per prisoner. Do you know how little food that buys? Or clothing? Obtaining medicine for the sick is totally out of the question.”

Cassium hesitated. “Why do you need medicine?”

“Because one of your fellow magistrates sent me a prisoner infected with red eyes plague.”

“That’s not a fatal disease!”

“It is when it strikes men who are poorly fed and were savagely beaten during their arrest and interrogations.” Jast spoke as if this were common knowledge. Betraying neither fear or anger, he explained, “Once he arrived, the illness swept through the prison. We lost two hundred men that month and another hundred the following month. It was just enough to ease overcrowding.”

“You idiot!” Cassium stood up and pounded on the desk. “I needed those men to build a case against an entire village guilty of treason!”

“I read the files on the men you asked for. They owned land a nobleman wanted, that’s all. I daresay the treasonous village owns more land that nobleman has his eye on. Those prisoners were guilty of being too weak to defend themselves, nothing more.”

Outraged, Cassium yelled, “They were guilty because I said they were guilty! I won’t have a worn out foot soldier question my rulings!”

Jast fixed his eyes on Cassium, his expression and tone of voice showing only minor irritation. “I served this kingdom for decades, long enough to know that the best and brightest get nothing. Those prisoners, me, you, we’re not from noble families. It doesn’t matter what we do. The metal around my neck is called Blood for the Throne. I earned it killing a chimera singlehanded. I should have been made a castle garrison commander. I should have been made a general. Instead, after decades of loyal service and bravery, of facing death time and again, my reward is to spend the rest of my life watching men weaken and die while being powerless to save them.”

Standing up, Jast said, “And you, sir, are no different. The name Cassium carries great weight among the prisoners. Grown men weep at the sound of your name. One in every ten men here owes their presence to your rulings. Yet for all that, you are Magistrate Cassium, not Chief Magistrate Cassium, not Lord Justice Cassium. You have gotten as far as your low birth will allow, and you shall go no higher.”

The warden’s words broke through the thick layer of arrogance around the magistrate’s heart. Unfortunately the only thing beneath that arrogance was a deep vein of self-pity.

“I could have been a wizard,” Cassium said. “I’m smart. I have money to afford lessons. I could have served with distinction in the army or the court. Instead that privilege goes to sycophantic bumblers from minor noble families.”

“The army needs more wizards,” Jast replied. “I lost count how many times we requested a wizard’s assistance and were told none could be spared. Magistrate, one thing I’ve learned from my time here is that we are all prisoners. Some of us just have larger cells.”

Cassium scowled. He didn’t like being reminded of how far he could have risen, and any suggestion that he was equal to this dolt was insulting. That was a second mark against the warden.

There was another reason why he was angry. Cassium had expected to find a grand conspiracy at The Pit. Either the warden was refusing to produce prisoners for reasons unknown or he no longer had those prisoners. Cassium had suspected the warden was selling them to slavers. But if the men had simply died then the magistrate had come all this way and antagonized his superiors to authorize the journey for nothing. The damage to his reputation would be staggering if he returned home empty handed!

Desperate, Cassium said. “I want to see the bodies.”

Jast shrugged. “Dead prisoners are cremated so their graves don’t become rallying points for discontented elements in the kingdom. It’s official policy. The best I can do is show you ash heaps that haven’t blown away yet.”

Cassium grew suspicious. No living prisoners, no graves when they died, it was too tidy. “Then show me prisoners who are still alive. You have eight hundred of them.”

“Sir, I—”

“I had red eyes plague ten years ago and am thus immune to it, so if you still have sick inmates they can’t infect me. I want to see your inmates today, and if I am not satisfied with what I find, then one of your subordinates will take your place.”

Jast looked unbothered by the threat. “I don’t bring prisoners up except for transferring them to another jail or to a courthouse. Taking them out of their cells gives them an opportunity to escape, and desperate men take any chance they can get. If you want to speak with the prisoners then you’ll have to come with me down below and see them in their cells.”

“So be it.”

Cassium followed the warden, with his servant, driver and the two guards following them. They left the warden’s office and headed for the entrance to The Pit. It wasn’t much to look at, a small stone building without windows and a thick oak bar across the door. Guards stood at those doors and opened them when the warden ordered. A blast of fetid air shot out when the doors opened, a mix of rot, dung and countless unwashed bodies. The two guards following Jast took lanterns and lit them before going inside ahead of the others.

“Uh, sir,” Cassium’s servant began. Both his servant and driver looked nervous as they stared into the yawning entrance to the worst prison in the kingdom. “It’s just, the odor, sir. Peasants smell bad enough when they’re allowed a monthly bath. Surely the driver can handle your needs without my presence.”

The driver backed up. “Wait a minute! I was assigned the job of getting you here. You’re his servant, not me.”

Both men were engaged in Skitherin’s favorite sport of passing the buck, when Cassium lost his temper and ended the matter. “I’m going in and you’re both going with me.”

Inside was a spiral staircase just wide enough for one man to walk on at a time. It went down, deep into the earth where men had once removed countless tons of stone for building projects across the kingdom. The walls were dirty and the air stank. Echoing voices called out from far below, but they were too faint to understand.

Cassium looked down the staircase. “How many guards are below?”

“There are eight floors, with five armed guards at the entrance to each floor,” Jast explained. “New prisoners are the ones most likely to try escaping, so they’re sent to the bottom level. They’re also the ones best able to answer your questions.”

Cassium checked the notes in his backpack and pulled out a single page. “Here, prisoner Alec Roarmass, convicted of conspiring against the throne. He was sent to you fifteen days ago.”

“Yes, the smuggler,” Jast said in a resigned tone. “How does smuggling winter clothes into the kingdom qualify as conspiring against the throne?”

“He was selling to known radicals,” Cassium said hotly. “Is he still alive, or is this another of your convenient casualties?”

“He lives and he complains constantly,” Jast answered. “I’ll take you to him.”

With that Jast led them into The Pit. Jast had been right when he suggested that Cassium had rarely been in a prison. The magistrate found the experience unnerving. Loud random sounds, the stench, the humidity in the air, it was hideous. Fluids dripped down the brickwork, and squirming things wiggled across the floor. There was no light except from the guards’ lanterns. Cell doors were made of stone and sealed tight, with only a small window letting in air. When Cassium looked into one of the cells, he could only see the dim outline of a wretch huddled in a corner. By the look of him he’d be another of the warden’s failures before long.

“Mercy,” a voice called out. “Mercy, please.”

“Ignore him,” Jast said.

Cassium rolled his eyes. “I plan to. You stated the loss rate of prisoners earlier. What is their average lifespan once they arrive?”

“It depends on their age and condition. Most live three to nine months. A few last much longer, many much shorter. I’ve seen healthy men live only a few weeks while ones I was sure would die lasted a year. A man’s willpower matters more here than physical strength.”

They reached another staircase going deeper. Confused, Cassium asked, “Why is there such a distance between stairs, and why do they only go down one floor?”

“It’s a security feature,” Jast replied. “If there is a breakout, prisoners can’t go straight up to the surface. They have to travel across every floor to reach the next set of stairs, where they’ll find more guards and more locked doors. No one escaped The Pit before I was posted here. No one has since my arrival. No one ever will.”

They’d just begun descending the second flight of stairs when Cassium saw something run across the floor. It was too small to be a man, and when it giggled he knew what he was dealing with.

“There’s a goblin down here! Jast, you let a goblin sneak into the jail!”

Jast showed the same bland disinterest to this news as he did all else. “What do you expect? Goblins are everywhere. One hid in the carts bringing food to the inmates and escaped into the prison.”

“And you didn’t kill him?” Cassium sputtered.

“If he wants to live here, I’m willing to let him.” The warden actually smiled when he said, “He’s been down here nine months, healthy as could be, eating God only knows what. Goblins are real survivors. Floods, fires, avalanches, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, wars, none of it seems to bother them. It makes me wonder if the day will come where goblins are all that’s left in the world.”

That asinine comment was the third and final mark against the warden. Regardless of what he found, Cassium decided that the moment he got home he would recommend Jast be removed from his post and executed on the grounds that the man was too deranged to carry out his work. The guards had served with him too long to accept a new leader and would have to go as well. Fortunately, there were plenty of poor men desperate enough to take the job.

“You may be willing to put up with that monster’s presence, but I won’t.” Cassium drew a dagger from his backpack and went after the goblin. The little thing wore rancid leather clothes and had bone spikes running down his back. The goblin giggled and gibbered as he ran from Cassium.

“Do you want to see the prisoner or not?” Jast asked. Neither he nor his guards made any move to join the chase.

Cassium ignored him and went after the goblin. “I will not leave this wretch alive in what is supposed to be a jail for the kingdom’s most dangerous criminals! It shocks me that you tolerate such a breach of the law!”

It took a few seconds, but Cassium caught up with the goblin. He threw his dagger at the monster’s back, confident that he’d hit and kill the pest.

The dagger should have pieced the verminous goblin, but instead the already foul air became even darker and mustier before the weapon vanished. The goblin laughed and escaped. A second later the dagger reappeared and struck the wall.

“You tried to hit the floor and missed, high pockets!” the goblin laughed as it fled into the darkness. “I bet your aim in the bathroom is no better!”

“That’s why I wasn’t chasing him,” Jast said as he walked over. He picked up the dagger and handed it to Cassium. “I’ve campaigned for decades and seen things you haven’t. Goblins can warp space. It’s not something they do often, and they usually can’t control it, but when their lives are in danger they can make the strangest things happen…like making a dagger disappear.”

“Magic from birth, given to a creature too stupid to appreciate it.” Cassium spat in disgust. He’d read about goblins and their ability to warp space, and seeing it in person was disorientating. How could such an idiot make things disappear, or if the stories were true make things appear from nowhere? His books spent a little time on the subject when they weren’t babbling about goblins and circles. Angry, Cassium said, “The prisoner.”

“This way.”

Jast led them ever deeper into The Pit. Each level had the same dispirited prisoners languishing in their cells. Cassium had no pity for them, but dead men couldn’t be called to testify against coconspirators, nor could their lives be used as bargaining chips to ensure their relatives obey orders. Now that he thought about it, Skitherin Kingdom could be in danger if word got out that so many convicts had died. Their families could revolt. There, that was sufficient legal justification to get rid of the warden.

Not all the sick prisoners had died, for these hallways were filled with the sound of coughing. Cassium’s servant covered his mouth with his sleeve. His driver merely shrugged and said, “Better you than me.”

Cassium scowled at those words. ‘Better you than me,’ nearly qualified as Skitherin’s national motto. Too many men looked the other way when crime happened or the consequences fell, provided it didn’t affect them or the few people they loved. There was no loyalty to the throne, no desire to serve, and no attempt to take responsibility, just a craven willingness to ignore everything that doesn’t personally affect them. The Ministry of Obedience had spent decades trying to beat that flaw out of the citizenry, and failed.

“How much further?” Cassium demanded.

“We’ll reach your prisoner in another ten minutes,” Jast assured him.

They went ever deeper into the ground, floor after floor. They’d just reached the fifth floor when there was a tapping from a nearby cell, then a bang! Bang! Bang! Cassium went for his dagger as his servant and driver got behind the guards escorting them.

“That one still has some fight left in him,” Jast said casually. “I thought he’d give up after a few weeks, but he keeps trying to break down the door. It reminds me of something that happened during the False Land War. You remember when…oh, yes, you wouldn’t have been born yet. There was a small castle, one of the nameless ones on the border that were built long ago, then abandoned and repaired a hundred times over the years. A wizard named Dark Cloth lived there and was attacking caravans and villages.”

“Dark Cloth?” Cassium asked. He didn’t try to hide his contempt.

“He picked the name, not me. He’d fixed the gates so well we couldn’t breach them even with a battering ram. We tried for days, hammering just like that fellow in the cell. I thought we’d have to starve the wizard out, months and months of siege costing who knows how much money and lives. Turned out we didn’t have to.”

“He surrendered?” Cassium’s servant asked. Cassium snarled at the man, silencing him.

“His castle came down around him. My men and I were happy enough but couldn’t figure out the cause until we saw goblin tunnels in the wreckage. Dark Cloth had destroyed a village known for making cheese, one the goblins frequently snuck into to steal a wheel or two. They didn’t appreciate the damage done to their cheese supply, and made their displeasure known in a very dramatic and permanent fashion.”

“Goblins did what you couldn’t with a company of men, and you’re actually speaking of it?” Cassium marveled at the warden’s stupidity. How could Jast have remained in his post for so long if he’d openly admit to such a humiliating event?

Jast stepped into a pool of foul brown liquid, splashing Cassium’s robes with it. “It was an eye opening experience. I learned not to discount the small and meek that day, regardless of how little others might think of them.”

Every step in the prison was worse than the one before it. The ceiling dripped with condensation until it seemed to rain on them. The stench actually got worse, like rotting meat blended with spoiled milk. Random sounds increased in both frequency and volume. Nerve wracking as it was, the fact that the guards and warden didn’t seem to even notice the foul conditions made matters even worse.

Cassium was fast losing his temper with the warden and his degenerate prison. His servant looked like he was seconds away from panicking from their ghastly surroundings. His driver, a useless fool to begin with, kept trying to hide behind Cassium.

Once they descended to the next level, they found the floor slick with water fouled by liquid waste. More of the stuff dripped off the ceiling and down the walls, enough to ruin Cassium’s robes beyond all use. “What madness is this? Is this a prison or a sewer?”

“It’s rained often this month and raised the water table,” Jast told him as he continued marching, splashing through the mess. “Lower levels of The Pit can flood, so we have bilge pumps like those aboard ships to pump water out of the prison. Healthier inmates handle that task.”

Cassium’s servant blurted out, “They serve the very prison that holds them?”

That would have earned him a strike across the face, except Cassium wanted to hear the answer. Jast walked by more cells with moaning prisoners, saying, “They cooperate once they learn that the alternative to manning the pumps is drowning.”

“Warden,” Cassium began.

“Almost there.”

“Warden, there is another goblin! There, right there in front of you!”

Goblins as a rule were small, ugly, weak and stupid, and this one had doubled down on ugly. The goblin trying to hide in a corner had long, filthy hair, like a mane going down to his waist. His raggedy clothes were so dirty they were black. His arms were longer than his legs, so when he ran he actually galloped on all fours like an animal.

“Oh, him.” The warden kept walking like it was nothing. “He’s been here longer than I have. I call him Mouse.”

“This will not do!” Cassium marched in front of the warden and pressed a finger against the man’s chest. “Having even one goblin in a prison is unheard of, and you’ve allowed two of the vermin to take up residence. You, sir, have failed in the most basic duty of a warden.”

“He’s clearly never dealt with goblins before,” Jast told one of his guards. “Magistrate, it happens all the time. Goblins are crazy. There’s no making sense of what they do. Put a goblin in prison and he’ll break out the same day. Try to keep him out of the prison and he’ll stop at nothing to get in. I’ll wager a year’s pay that you’ll find goblins hiding in every prison in Skitherin.”

“No one breaks into prison!” Cassium yelled.

Mouse the goblin raised his hand. “I did.”

“I have had enough!” Cassium yelled before drawing his dagger and throwing it. The goblin made a break for it. He didn’t have to. The air around him turned musty and dark before live earwigs rained down and a tree stump appeared from nowhere. The dagger hit the stump, sparing the fleeing goblin.

“I already told you it’s not worth attacking them,” Jast said. “How many more times do you need to see the same thing?”

Cassium gritted his teeth and prepared to let loose a string of insults and obscenities the likes of which the world had never heard, when suddenly his eyes opened wide and his jaw dropped. “I’ve already seen a goblin warp space twice. Even once should have been impossible.”

With that he seized a lantern from one of Jast’s guards and set it on the floor. Quickly he opened his backpack and took out the books he had on magic. He flipped through them, reading by the lantern’s meager light as he looked for and then found sections on goblins.

“Magistrate, what’s this about?” Jast asked.

“Shut up.” Cassium checked one book and then another until he found what he was looking for. This was one of those rare and happy instances where his books agreed with one another, besides that circle nonsense. He stood up and pointed one of the books at Jast as if it were a weapon.

“Goblins warp space through their combined stupidity and insanity. Combined, warden. It takes many goblins to warp space even once. To do it twice, and in a short period of time, demands the presence of large numbers of goblins. The Pit doesn’t have two goblins in it. There must be dozens of them!”

Jast smirked. “Try thousands. Tally ho!”

Cell doors around them burst open to release waves of filthy, stinking, hooting goblins. They ran past Jast and his guards before swarming the magistrate, his servant and driver. Cassium tried to fight back while his men tried to flee. They were overwhelmed and pulled screaming to the floor. More goblins stole the magistrate’s backpack and ate most of his possessions.

Cassium struggled in vain as the goblins jeered at him. Jast walked up to the magistrate and frowned. “You just couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

“What have you done?” Cassium demanded.

“I give you credit for not being afraid, and you figured out some of what’s going on here,” Jast said. “I don’t give you credit for anything else. Like I said before, your name carried a lot of weight here. The prisoners told me stories about you. They received beatings, whippings and every sort of insult in your court, but never justice.”

“How dare you!”

“He dares very easily,” a goblin replied. This one was small, barely two and a half feet tall. Spear bald, the goblin wore ratty clothes and had yellowish skin and a perpetual grin. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Innit, and I speak for these goblins.”

Cassium looked at Jast and then Innit. “You, you’re in league with them!”

“I am,” Jast admitted.

The goblins dragged Cassium and his men further into the prison while Jast, his guards and Innit walked alongside. More goblins ran in from elsewhere in the prison to laugh and jeer their prisoners, their numbers growing by the minute. Innit kept smiling and explained, “We learned of this wonderful place years ago quite by accident, and hurried over at once. Breaking in was hard but worth it. It’s warm in the winter, protected from outside attack, and almost no one comes here. Dark, dank, smelly, why, I can’t say enough good things about it.”

Jast continued, “I didn’t know what to expect when I was assigned this post. Three days speaking with inmates proved this was a place of horrors. So many people were here for the crime of having what men in power wanted.”

Furious, Cassium demanded, “What did you expect them to say? The truth?”

“I spoke with enough people outside the prison to learn that the inmates weren’t lying. Not one man in ten was truly guilty, and even the real criminals didn’t deserve this.” Jast walked on in silence for a moment. “But there was nothing I could do. Their land was confiscated, so they couldn’t go home. They were convicted felons, so they couldn’t settle elsewhere in Skitherin without being caught and executed. I couldn’t safely smuggle them out of the kingdom when we’re so far from the border.”

“A most unfortunate situation,” Innit agreed. “My people were in a bind, since we couldn’t move in with so many humans already present. That’s when we made this.”

Jast opened a cell door to reveal a circle made of bricks on the floor. It was ten feet across, and each brick had a different symbol carved into it. Cassium realized in horror that this must be the circle his books kept babbling about.

“You’ll have to explain this,” Jast told Innit. “I’ve never understood the thing.”

“It’s a goblin gate,” Innit said. “There are a thousand of them all over the world, hidden away in quiet, isolated places. Each one is made with twenty bricks connecting them to twenty other gates, and each of those is connected to twenty more. Goblin gates are powered by stupidity and craziness, which goblins have in surplus. Once we step on a gate, it can take us anywhere.

“We tunneled into an empty cell and built a goblin gate, then told the prisoners we were taking over and they would have to go.” Innit’s smile was briefly replaced with by a look of utter puzzlement. “I can’t explain why they left without a fight. Many seemed quite cheerful to lose their home, actually giddy.”

“I didn’t know what was happening until a third of the prisoners were gone,” Jast admitted. He kneeled down next to Cassium and looked sad. “I’d been here for months and couldn’t do anything for these poor souls, and then goblins gave me the answer.”

“You let the rest of your prisoners escape?” Cassium yelled.

“I escorted them to the gate and sent them through,” Jast replied. “They deserved better, but this was the best I could do. Wherever they went, there’s at least a chance they can build a new life. It was easy to keep secret since no one came here except more prisoners. When officials in the Ministry of Obedience asked for a prisoner, I said the man was dead. It worked for three years until you showed up.”

“And you keep the money sent to feed them!” Cassium struggled to break free, but the filthy mob of goblins holding him was too strong.

Jast shrugged. “Three plebs a week for eight hundred prisoners comes out to only twenty-four hundred plebs. It keeps my men and their families fed better than the wages we’re paid. But the money doesn’t matter. This is justice, magistrate, real justice, the kind people don’t get in Skitherin anymore, if they ever did.”

“I’m still trying to grasp this ‘justice’ concept,” Innit confessed. The air in the goblin gate grew momentarily darker, and there was a whoosh as five goblins appeared inside it. “Ah, more friends.”

One of the five new goblins walked out of the gate and blinked. “Where are we?”

Innit shook the newcomer’s hands. “You’re home.”

The goblin smiled. “Home. I’ve always wanted to go there.”

“That’s been going on for three years,” Jast said. His earlier ambivalence was gone, replaced with a tone of satisfaction. “Prisoners come and are set free the same day. More goblins stream in through the gate or tunnels they’ve dug into the prison.”

“What of the men I saw in the cells?” Cassium demanded. It was a testament to his self-confidence that he expected answers even after being taken captive.

Giggling goblins brought in a straw dummy wearing ragged clothes. It was smeared with dirt and had an animal pelt for a wig. Up close it was obvious what it was, but in the cells’ poor lighting such dummies had been convincing. One goblin stuck his hand into the dummy’s head and raised it, saying, “Mercy! Mercy, please!”

“No, stupid, you’re suppose to cough like you’re sick,” another goblin scolded him. “I’m supposed to make the dummies beg.”

“Sorry, I keep forgetting my lines,” the first goblin said.

Innit shrugged. “We’ll work it out in rehearsal. Magistrate Cassium, allow me to correct you on one point. You called this place The Pit, a rather bland and totally unoriginal name. My fellow goblins and I rechristened it as Goblinopolis. There is already one Goblin City in The Kingdom of the Goblins. Now there is a second. We are thousands strong here, and both our numbers and Goblinopolis grows each day as we bring in new residents and carve new tunnels and homes from the limestone.”

“The Pit, excuse me, Goblinopolis, is a third bigger than when I was first assigned here,” Jast added. He looked so sincere when he asked, “Can you believe that one of the greatest horrors of our world could be made into a place of refuge, into a home?”

“You, you’re mad,” Cassium said. “Totally insane. These, these creatures, they’ve infected your mind somehow. You have to know this won’t work. You can’t kill me! My superiors will search for me and learn what you’ve done if I don’t return.”

“When you don’t return, magistrate.” Jast grabbed Cassium and pulled him to his feet. His guards grabbed Cassium’s driver and servant. “Every man within fifty miles is loyal to me. Tomorrow I’ll send word to the capital that my men found your carriage overturned and burned, the horses and occupants missing. It’s tragic, but isolated roads like these are infested with bandits and monsters. If you were from a noble house your superiors would work day and night to find you, but a commoner, trying to rise above his station? No, magistrate, they’ll write you off as a loss, one easily replaced.”

Jast threw Cassium into the goblin gate, and his men threw Cassium’s servant and driver on top of him. Jast scowled and said, “I don’t know where this will take you, but there’s a good chance you’ll arrive in a place settled by prisoners you sent here. They’ll be most interested to see you. Mouse, if you’ll do the honors?”

“Whoo hoo!” Mouse the goblin ran on all fours and jumped onto the goblin gate, where he provided the stupidity and craziness necessary to power it. Cassium screamed as the air around him darkened and blurred before he and his men were sent a thousand miles away, where a hundred men bearing scars and whip marks never fully healed were indeed very interested to see him.