With both hands Jebra raked her hair back from her face. "After they all rushed off it fell still and quiet in the dungeon. I remained pressed to the back of my cell, the hem of my dress stuffed in my mouth, trying to keep from making a sound that would betray me as I shook and wept uncontrollably. My nostrils were filled with the terrible smell of blood and other things. Funny how after a time your nose has a way of becoming dulled to smells that at first made you sick.

"Still, I couldn't stop trembling — not after I hearing all the ghastly things that had been done to those women. I was terrified that I would be discovered and receive the same treatment. As I hid in the cell, afraid to come out, afraid to make a sound, I could understand how Cyrilla had gone mad under such mistreatment.

"All the time I could hear the sounds from above, the sounds of battle still raging, the sounds of pain and horror, the screams of the dying. I could smell oily smoke. It seemed like the battle, the killing, would go on forever. The women lying out beyond my open cell door, though, did not make any sound at all. I knew why. I knew that they were beyond any concerns of this world. I prayed that they were now in the tender comforting arms of the good spirits.

"I was exhausted from my constant state of fright, but I could not sleep — dared not sleep. The night wore on and eventually I saw light coming down the stairwell; the iron doors to the dungeon were no longer there to shut out the world above. Still, I dared not go out. I dared not move. I stayed where I was all day, until the room fell pitch black again with night. The rampage and looting above continued without abatement. What had begun as a battle had turned into a drunken celebration of victory. Dawn did not bring any quiet from above.

"I knew that I couldn't remain where I was; the stench of the dead women was becoming unbearable, as was the thought of being down there in the dark hole among the rotting corpses of people I knew. Yet such was my fear of what waited above that I stayed where I was that day and then again the entire night.

"I was so thirsty, so hungry, that I began to see goblets of water on the floor beside loaves of bread. I could smell the warm bread only a few feet away. But when I reached for them they were not there.

"I don't remember exactly when it was, but there came a time when I so ached for an end to the constant paralyzing dread that I came to accept and almost welcome my end. I knew all too well what was in store for me, but I reasoned that the agony of my terror would at last be over. I so wanted it to be over. I knew that I would have to endure suffering, humiliation, and pain, but I also knew that, just like the women who lay dead not far from me, it would eventually end and I would no longer have to suffer.

"So, I finally dared to step out of the darkness of my cell. The first thing I saw was Elizabeth's dead eyes staring right at me, as if she were looking over, waiting for me to emerge, so that I could see what had been done to her. Her expression seemed a silent plea for me to testify on behalf of justice. But there was no one to testify to, no justice to be had, just my silent witness of her forlorn end.

"The sight of her, along with the other women, drove me back in.

Seeing the nature of the tortures they had been subjected to, I was finally able to connect those atrocities with my memories of their screams. It set me to weeping uncontrollably. I cowered in terror, imagining myself subjected to such things.

"And then, overwhelmed by a fit of blind panic, I covered my nose with the hem of my dress against the terrible smell and ran through the tangle of twisted, naked limbs and bodies. I bolted up the stairs, not knowing what I was running toward, only knowing what I was running from. All the way as I ran I prayed for the mercy of a quick death.

"It was a shock to see the palace again. It had been a beautiful place, the painstaking renovations after the previous attack a few years back having only recently been completed. Now it was beyond being a wreck. It was impossible for me to understand why men would take the effort to break things the way they had, that they could find joy in such tedious acts of destruction. Grand doors were ripped off their hinges and broken to bits. Marble pillars had been toppled. Parts of shattered furniture lay scattered about. The floors were fairly covered with the litter of pieces of other once grand things: shards of beautifully glazed pottery; fragments of little ears and noses and tiny fingers from porcelain figurines; splintered wooden scraps showing a bit of a once carefully carved and gilded surface; flattened tables; art that had been torn to shreds or the faces in paintings ground threadbare under heavy boots. The windows were all broken out, drapes pulled down and trampled, statues defaced or broken, walls bashed in in places, covered with blood in others, elaborate rooms defecated in, the feces used to write vile words on the walls along with oaths of death to the Order's northern oppressors.

"Soldiers were everywhere, pawing through the residue left behind by yet other soldiers, picking over the dead, looting anything they could carry off, smashing elegant decorations out of sheer contempt, joking as they stood in lines outside rooms waiting their turn at the women captives. As I stumbled in a daze through the wreckage of the palace, I kept expecting to be grabbed and dragged off to one of those rooms. I knew that there was no avoiding my fate.

"I had never seen the likes of these men. These were men who inspired unbridled terror. Great, hulking, unwashed men in scarred and bloodstained leather armor. Most of them were covered in chains and belts and studded straps. Many had their heads shaved, making them look all the more muscled and menacing. Others glared out from beneath mats of long, tangled strands of greasy hair. They all looked savage and hardly human. Their faces were blackened with the grimy soot of fires and streaked through with sweat. Their language was loud, coarse, and boldly vile.

"Seeing such men stalking through the grand pastel pink or blue rooms seemed almost comical, but there was nothing amusing about the bloody axes at their belts, their swords greasy with gore, or the flails, knives, and iron-spiked cudgels hanging at hand around their waists.

"But it was their eyes that stopped you in your tracks. All had the kind of eyes that had not just become comfortable with the messy craft of butchery… but had taken a lustful liking to it. All looked upon every living thing they saw with a single evaluation: is this something to be killed? But their eyes had an even crueler cast when they took in any of the women captives being passed from hand to hand. That look was enough to stop a woman's breath, if not her heart.

"These were men who had abandoned any pretense at civilized manner. They did not bargain or barter the way normal men did. They took whatever they wanted, and even fought each other over the most insignificant plunder. They crushed and destroyed and killed on whim without consequence or conscience. These were men beyond the realm of civilized morality. These were savage brutes turned loose among the innocent."