The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) Read Free Page A

alien’s dead body to the edge of the prison yard. There, that alien was also tossed into the molten sea.
    Vere didn’t look away from her work when the Gthothch collapsed or when the alien was being whipped. All around her, the same thing was happening to every prisoner. That was why she didn’t look anywhere except three feet in front of her.
    Leaning forward, both hands placed firmly against the wood beam in front of her, she planted one foot, inched the other foot forward, then pushed as hard as she could. The thick wood beam she was pushing moved forward slightly.
    The beam extended three body lengths from a metal cylinder that stuck out of the ground. Across from her, the other half of the same long wooden beam extended out another three body lengths. There, a hulking sun-colored alien, with flesh that looked as if it were simmering and ready to catch fire, pushed the other half of the beam. Together, Vere and the alien were responsible for ensuring the beam kept moving circles all day.
    The alien, known as an Ignus Moris, was rumored to be the only creature anywhere in the galaxy that could survive being thrown into the Cauldron’s lava fields. It was also whispered that the guards’ vibro whips would smoke and disintegrate if they touched the alien’s smoldering flesh.
    Either because this one alien was impervious to the two punishments most commonly dealt out at the prison, or because he had done something specifically to earn Mowbray’s wrath, the Ignus Moris was stationed at the Circle of Sorrow, across from Vere.
    The Circle was considered the most grueling and senseless of all of the tasks carried out on the prison grounds. Each inmate pushed the wood beam in a circle until they could no longer perform the task. When they couldn’t carry out their duty anymore, they were dropped into the lava. Many inmates couldn’t budge the wood beam at all, let alone after being exposed to Terror-Dhome’s intense heat for hours or days or weeks. No one knew if the Circle’s motion propelled some kind of hidden internal mechanism that actually benefited the prison. Most, Vere included, suspected it did nothing except kill the people who were tasked with pushing it. This was one of many psychological tricks devised to destroy the spirit of prisoners who eventually came to realize that their mindless feats of endurance had no value whatsoever. At least a prisoner moving stones saw a stack of rocks where there was previously nothing. All Vere and the Ignus Moris had was an endless circle that sapped their strength each time they pushed with all of their might.
    All around the prison yard, there were dozens of guards torturing and tormenting hundreds of prisoners. To discourage a mass riot—after all, the prisoners vastly outnumbered the guards—an additional deterrence was added. The monster of the Cauldrons stalked the prison yard, killing anyone and everyone who caught his attention. Without the threat of being burned alive or of the pain of a vibro whip, something had to keep the Ignus Moris in line, and Balor, the monster, did that.
    The monster’s skin changed colors depending on the time of day. Early in the morning it was a pale yellow, the color of granules on a beach. As the day progressed, the monster’s skin turned darker and darker. By dusk, Balor’s skin was the color of the black rocks that the nearby miners excavated for minerals. The beast was as tall as a Llyushin fighter stood up on its end. So tall was it that it was known to accidently step on and crush prisoners who were working near its feet. Its hands, like its lone eye, were disproportionately large. Although Vere had never gotten close enough to it to be sure, she estimated her entire body could fit in one of the monster’s palms. If that happened and the monster made a fist, she would be pulverized. This was not a tale told by prisoners to scare the others, it was something Vere had actually seen with her own eyes. During her first week at