Dungeons

The dungeons of the palace were vast. They were spacious. They had grown over the generations, downward, outward, and inward. 

They held forgotten prisoners and forgotten treasures. Forgotten or discarded. Sometimes both. 

The early kings had made more use of the dungeons, filling them up with enemies of the crown and enemies of the people, often the same people, though it depended on the nature of the crown and the people and their relationship. 

Eventually, one of the kings said he couldn't bear the sounds of the cries from the dungeons below, though no one else could hear them and the dungeon guards reported a quiet night. 

In the morning the king ordered jails be built around the realm and sent the people's prisoners there. The crown's he exiled or executed. The tradition continued and the palace dungeons fell out of use, the cells reserved for enemies of the crown too dangerous to exile and too beloved to execute. 

Over time the various workers in the palace began to settle in the dungeons, especially as the projects in the palace grew. 

By the time of Good King Razz there were certainly more people living in the dungeons of the palace than in the chambers above ground. They scurried from below ground to above and around, using passageways in the walls to appear as needed for their various functions in making the palace operate. 

In the dungeons was where Ryheza and Zejja's other lover lived, though he didn't have a function above ground in the palace. Such people existed too.

Zejja first brought Ryheza down to the dungeons on an occasion when King Razzasbel had been out consolidating new villages. 

Some of Ryheza's people had ended up down there too, which she found when she visited with Zejja. 

She thought about the dungeons a lot when she returned to the palace chambers, and found reasons to make her way back to the dungeons and passageways in the walls that made the visits discreet.

It was there that she met one of the prisoners that had been in the dungeon the longest, the Queen Mother Nita's younger brother, who thought everyone had forgotten about him, even his sister. 

Ryheza asked her husband the King once about the dungeons. He told her he didn't like to send anyone there, and didn't like to think about it. He thought his father might have left some prisoners down there but told her he didn't know. 

Good King Razz thought the dwellers in the dungeons were parasites. They outnumber the rats, the King told his Queen, and he dreamed one day of drowning them all. 

It concerned Ryheza, but not so much. The King dreamed many dreams, but he really didn't do a lot.