From the Introduction: Only a handful of coal braziers bath this sinister room in reddish light. While the center of the room is dominated by the circle of braziers and the stretching rack they surround, the featureless stone walls are lined by rusty old iron maidens and equally rusty iron cages. All these make it very clear what the room is used for. And neither cages, nor the rack or the iron maidens offer people brought into this room for questioning any promise of safety or release, no matter if they answer the question posed to them fast or not.