Free Dark Labyrinth 1 by Kevin J. Anderson

limp body tumble down the steep path, the world was peaceful for a time. A few moments of blessed silence. Then the wind picked up again.
    He fled toward the valley. When the shepherd reached Ingolstadt and left his sheep in the market pen, he passed an old woman sitting in front of her candle shop. She coughed incessantly, hacking, wheezing; she spat a mouthful of phlegm into the gutter and started coughing again. The sound was like hammers pounding on his nerves. The old woman breathed and coughed and wheezed and coughed and breathed —until he knew he had to silence her as well.
    She stood on creaking legs and tottered into the dimness of her shop, still coughing and coughing. Without hesitation, the shepherd stalked after her. She turned, no doubt thinking him a customer, and before she could speak, before she could cough again, he wrapped his callused hands around her thin throat. His muscles were strong, and he clamped down harder and harder until her struggles stopped, and the silence came back.
    When he reeled outside again, the streets of Ingolstadt were a storm of people, a constant din, far too much noise . He had to escape back to the high mountain meadows, but before he could run from the square, a town crier began to bellow at the top of his lungs, announcing a tax that old Baron Frankenstein had imposed. The crier’s words broke through the air like cannon shot.
    The shepherd wanted to scream for silence. He needed the crier’s mouth to stop opening and closing, to stop spewing words. Unable to control himself, the shepherd threw himself upon the man, shutting off the breath and the voice. It took four grown men from the astonished crowd to pull him away. The crier squawked and gasped, but his throat was so damaged he could no longer speak.
    After the strangler was dragged before the magistrate, he was convicted of killing the old candle-shop woman and his brother Stefan, whose body had been found by another shepherd. In addition, several children around Ingolstadt had disappeared over the years, and (since he was in custody) he was accused of killing them as well, though he denied that. He did not, however, deny the rest.
    While the shepherd sat in his cell, the mocking wind stole through chinks in the wall and laughed at him. One blustery night, he watched the Baron’s son, Victor Frankenstein, come to talk to the jowly jailer. From where he huddled sullenly in his cell, he could overhear the conversation. Victor had an edginess and a calculating intelligence. “I am here on behalf of several medical students from the University. We are woefully short of cadavers for dissection.”
    When the jailer’s breathing quickened, it set the strangler’s teeth on edge. Victor looked at the pot-bellied and splotchy-skinned jailer; distaste was clear on his face, as if he dismissed him as a potential specimen. “If we are to become physicians, we must have material with which to practice.” He indicated the miserable prisoner. “This madman is penniless and without family. He will be hung tomorrow. I would like to purchase his body afterward. At present, I have a particular need for a pair of hands and a set of lungs.”
    The jailer pretended to be offended. “That’s highly illegal, sir!”
    “But quite commonly done—as you well know.” Victor pulled out a pouch of gold coins. “Perhaps this will salve your conscience?”
    The jailer looked at the coins, looked at the Baron’s son, then sneered at the strangler in his cell. “Done.” Victor’s breathing was calm with satisfaction. Outside, the wind scraped past the walls. It never stopped. . . .
    The following day, when the shepherd was brought to the gibbet in the town square, he heard the mob shouting, breathing .
    As the rough noose tightened around his neck, the strangler realized that the loudest sound that had haunted him all his life came from air passing through his own throat from his own lungs. Every waking moment he had forced to listen