“So we go up?”
“We go up.”
“Micum! Come here!”
Snapping awake, Micum groped for the lightstone under his pillow. The room—Seregil’s old apprentice chamber—was empty, but Nysander’s anxious voice seemed to hang on the air.
Pulling on his breeches, Micum hurried down the corridor to the wizard’s bedchamber. Nysander was dressed already in his old traveling coat and breeches; his face was dark with concern.
Micum felt a sudden coldness in his innards. “What’s happened?”
“We must go at once!” Nysander replied, throwing on his cloak. “They are in some terrible danger, or were—I pray Illior it was a premonition and not a seeing vision.”
“Of what?” demanded Micum. “What did you see, Nysander?”
Nysander’s hands shook as he yanked his cloak strings closed. “Falling. I felt them falling. And I heard them scream.”
Seregil and Alec crept up the northeast tower stairs to the second floor of the keep and found the door unbarred, though there were brackets set on both sides of the jamb. Covering their lights, they took a cautious peek at what lay beyond.
It was dark here, but there was the feel of open space around them. From somewhere nearby came the buzz and rumble of assorted snores, though it was difficult to judge exactly where the sleepers might be. As their eyes adjusted, they could make out a dim light faintly illuminating a broad archway in a far wall. The acrid smell of a forge, mingled with the tang of metal and oil, suggested that the room was an armory or smithy.
Seregil found Alec’s wrist and squeezed it, silently directing him to follow the wall to their left.
This direction proved fruitless, however. There was a door into the ruined tower, but a heavy forge had been set up in front of it. Returning to the other tower, they made their way up to the top floor.
At the top of the stairs they inched the door open and saw a long corridor. Some distance away, a night lamp hung at what appeared to be a juncture with another corridor. By its light they could see that the walls were richly frescoed in the latest style, and that the floors were inset with polished mosaics. Somewhere behind one of the many carved doors that lined the corridor lay their enemy.
Stealing up to the night lamp, they found that this upper story was laid out in four quarters, divided by two diagonal corridors that ran between opposing towers. The corridors looked very much alike, including the doors, frescoes, and patterned floor. Three, including the one they’d come up, ended at tower doors. At the end of the southeast, however, the wall was covered from floor to ceiling with a large tapestry.
As hoped, the hanging concealed another door to the ruined tower and this one had been fitted with a heavy lock. Signing for Alec to hold back the tapestry and keep watch, Seregil began a careful inspection. The ornate mechanism was tarnished, but it smelled of oil, as did the heavy door hinges. Running a finger over the lower hinge, Seregil sniffed at it, then held it under Alec’s nose. The boy grinned, understanding at once; why maintain the door to a ruined tower so carefully?
The lock was swiftly dealt with, and cold night air struck their faces as the door swung out onto a moonlit rampart. The square, flat surface they stood had been repaired, but the southern and eastern parapets had been left in ruins. The paving flags sent an aching chill up through their bare feet and ankles.
The wind moaned through the broken stonework, whipping their hair across their faces as they edged over to the remains of the southern parapet. The keep backed directly onto the cliffs; from where they stood, there was a sheer drop into the shadowed river gorge below.
“Caught in a high place again,” Alec whispered nervously, hanging back.
“Not caught yet. Here’s what we want,” said Seregil, poking around in the shadows under the north wall, where the glow of his lightstone revealed another door. Scarred and weathered as it was, it, too, had a stout lock and hinges in excellent repair. Beyond it, a curving staircase spiraled down into darkness.
Seregil felt a familiar tightness in his belly as he peered down. “This place is dangerous—I can feel it. Draw your dagger and watch your footing. Keep count of the steps, too, in case we lose our lights.”
The steps here were smooth but narrow underfoot, reminding Seregil of those leading down to the Oracle’s chamber beneath the Temple of Illior. The curve of the smoothly dressed walls sliced away the view fifteen feet below at any point. Rusty iron sconces set into the stone at regular intervals held thick tallow candles, but these were dusty. The whole place had an abandoned, disused smell.
Counting softly to himself, Seregil moved down the steps with a wary eye out for trouble. Fifty-three steps down, something caught his eye and he held up a warning hand. A length of blackened bowstring had been fixed tautly across the next step a little above ankle height.
“That could give you a nasty fall,” Alec muttered, peering over his shoulder.
“Worse than that, maybe,” replied Seregil, squinting into the shadows below. Taking off his cloak, he shook it wide and cast it out in front of him. It floated down a few feet, then caught on what appeared to be another string stretched at an angle across the stairwell. Examining it, they found it to be instead a thin, rigid blade.
Seregil tested the edge of it with a thumbnail. “Fall just right and this could take your head off, or an arm.”
They found three more pitfalls of similar design as they continued down. Then, rounding a final turn, they came to the top of the rubble pile blocking the first entrance.
“This doesn’t make any sense!” Alec exclaimed in frustration. “We must have missed something.”
“We found exactly what we were meant to find,” Seregil muttered, heading back up the stairs. “It’s another diversion, too obvious and too dangerous. It does prove one thing, though; this tower is in perfect repair. They’re hiding something here for certain.”
Toiling back up the stairs, they came out again on the rampart.
“We have to work fast now,” Seregil warned, glancing up at the stars, which had wheeled noticeably to the west already.
“What if the real way in isn’t here?”
“That’s a distinct possibility.” Seregil ran a hand back through his hair. “Still, everything we’ve found so far tells me that this is the place. Look around, check every stone. You start there, at that corner. I’ll begin here. Look for uneven stones, listen for hollow spots, anything. We’re running out of time.”
Shielding his light, Alec crossed back to the ruined wall while Seregil remained in the shadows near the door.
• • •
Despite Seregil’s confidence, Alec renewed his search with little expectation of success. The mortar was sound, the stones solidly set together. Crossing back and forth, he checked and double-checked his section without finding anything new, and all the while the moon sank lower.
He was crossing to the northern parapet when his bare foot struck a slight declivity he hadn’t noticed before. If he’d had his boots on he’d have missed it entirely, but the loose grittiness beneath his chilled toes felt distinctly different from the surrounding flagstones. Dropping to his knees, he found what appeared to be a patch of sand slightly larger than the palm of his hand.
“Seregil, come here, quick!”
With Seregil hunkered down beside him, Alec scooped out the sand and uncovered a square niche sunk into the stone. At the bottom lay a large bronze ring fastened loosely to a staple. It was large enough for him to get a good grip and he pulled up hard, expecting the resistance of a heavy slab. Instead, an irregular section of thin flags lifted easily, revealing the square wooden trap door fastened to their underside. Holding their lights down, they found a square shaft, with a wooden ladder leading down to yet another door.
“Well done!” Seregil whispered. Descending the ladder, they pulled the door closed over them.
The door at the base of the ladder had no lock, just a curved latch, green with age. In his excitement, Alec r
eached for it but Seregil caught his hand before he could touch it.
“Wait!” Seregil hissed. Pulling a bit of twine from his pouch, he tied a noose in the end of it and looped it over the handle, then stood back and pulled. As the handle lifted, there was an audible click.
Four long needles sprang out, spaced so that at least one would be certain to pierce the hand of an unwary trespasser. Their tips were darkened with a resinous substance. As the door swung open Seregil released the handle, and the needles retracted like the claws of a cat.
“Never trust anything that looks easy,” Seregil warned, giving Alec a reproving look.
From here, a steep wooden staircase followed the square shape of the tower walls down in a series of landings and right-angle turns.
“Of course! A double staircase,” muttered Seregil, taking the lead again with dagger drawn. “One would have been for the servants, this one a secret escape route for the nobles in case of attack.”
“Then we can get out this way, without having to go back through the keep again?”
“We’ll see,” Seregil replied doubtfully. “It may have been blocked off to keep anyone from wandering in from outside.”
Unlike the other stairways, this one was wooden, constructed of thick oak that probably dated from the original construction of the keep. Seregil tested each step as he put his weight on it, yet they seemed sound enough.
There were no trip wires here, no blades. Knowing better than to let their guard down, however, they grew increasingly vigilant, anticipating something more devious in the offing.
This stairway had been used recently and often. The dust that had settled over everything was much thinner at the center of each step and showed footprints on the landings. The tallow candles in the wall sconces smelled of recent burning. There were also spots of finer wax on the stairs, which spoke of someone carrying a taper with them as they descended. Some of the spots were dull with dust, others still shiny and fragrant of beeswax.
“How far down do you think we are?” asked Alec, pausing for a moment to catch his breath. They’d been going up and down stairs for hours, and his legs were feeling the strain.
“We must be past the second floor by now, maybe near the first,” replied Seregil, coming to yet another landing. “This is all taking a lot longer than I’d—”
Suddenly the landing floor seemed to fly up in Alec’s face. Frozen on the stairs, he watched in helpless amazement as the wooden platform pivoted on diagonally opposing corners, its underside now standing vertically in front of him to reveal a sheer-sided pit of some kind below. A loose board fell free, tumbling into the blackness without a sound.
O Illior, Seregil! The words hammered in Alec’s throat as he stared, horrorstruck, into the gaping shaft at his feet. But no sound came out. It had all happened too quickly. His whole body went numb and cold. First the avalanche and now—
“Alec!” The hoarse, panicky cry came from somewhere beyond the uptilted floor.
“Seregil! You didn’t fall!”
“But I’m about to. Do something, anything! Hurry!”
A sickening sense of futility engulfed Alec. The upper corner of the platform was several feet beyond his reach. If he jumped at it, it would tilt back and crush him against the side of the shaft, probably shaking Seregil loose from whatever precarious hold he had managed on his side. If only he had a rope—something long enough to snag the upper corner and pull it down—
“Alec!”
Ripping off his cloak, Alec gathered the hem of it in one hand and tossed the other end at the upthrust corner, hoping to catch it with the hood. It fell mere inches short of the mark.
“Damn it to hell!” Alec could hear Seregil’s labored breathing a few short, impossible yards away. Looking wildly around, his eye fell on the rusty sconce set into the wall above the lowermost step.
Without a second thought he grasped it with his right hand and leaned as far out over the pit as his reach allowed, cloak ready in his left for another cast.
He was already overbalanced beyond recovery when the sconce gave beneath his hand. He heard the evil grate of metal against stone as he lurched forward a few inches more over the edge.
He hung a moment, breath dead in his throat, waiting for the final pin or screw or brace to pull free.
It didn’t.
It might, if he moved.
Or it might not. He wouldn’t know until he tried.
His choices were pretty limited; make a move now or wait to fall when his grip gave out.
“Alec—?”
With sweat pouring down his face and sides, he willed himself to make one last, crucial try with the cloak. Tossing it up with his left hand, he caught the upper corner of the platform with the edge of the hood and felt it hold. Miraculously, the iron sconce held, too, at least for the moment.
Pulling down on the cloak, he dragged the corner of the platform down with every ounce of strength he could muster. Its weight, together with Seregil’s—still clinging somehow to its other side—was almost more than he could manage, but slowly, slowly, it tilted back toward level. As it came down he managed to move his left hand up, gripping the fabric in his teeth as he transferred his hold. This process gave him enough leverage to gradually pull himself backward and out of the way of the descending edge. At last he was able to grasp the platform and push.
As the upper side of it came into view, he found Seregil huddled there, grasping the handle of his dagger with both hands. Somehow, even as he’d felt the floor go out from under him, he’d managed to drive the tip of the blade in far enough between two of the floorboards to hold his slight weight as he hung from it.
“Throw me the end of your cloak,” he croaked, white and shaken. “It’s bound to tip down when I come your way. Can you hang on to me if I drop again?”
“Wait a second.” Holding the edge of the platform with one hand, Alec undid his belt with the other and worked the end of it back through the buckle. Securing the loop around his wrist, he flapped the loose end out to Seregil. “Get a good hold on this. I can manage this better than the cloak.”
Wedging the dagger more firmly, Seregil gripped the end of the belt and began inching his way toward Alec.
The platform tilted down ominously as he shifted his weight, but Alec hauled him quickly to safety on the stairs.
“Bilairy’s Balls!” Seregil gasped, collapsing at his feet.
“And Guts!” Alec leaned shakily against the wall. “This candle thing I had hold of nearly came loose! I can’t believe it didn’t.”
Upon closer inspection, however, he found that it hadn’t come loose at all. It was still fixed solidly to a rod that ran back into the wall. When he pushed up, it slid smoothly back into place.
“Look at this,” he exclaimed, perplexed.
Getting to his feet, Seregil examined the mechanism. Pushing the sconce upright, he drew his sword and pushed on the edge of the platform. It tilted with precipitous ease. When the sconce was pulled down, however, it remained solidly level. They soon discovered two heavy pins that slid in and out of the wall below the platform to hold it steady when the sconce was down.
“Ingenious,” Seregil said with genuine admiration. “When Kassarie comes down she pulls this and leaves it fixed. On the way back up she resets the trap. That loose board that fell out must have been some sort of brace that held it in place until I got halfway across. It’s more dangerous that way, since there was no chance to jump back.”
“How did you ever manage to get your knife set in time?” Alec asked wonderingly.
Seregil shook his head. “I don’t even remember doing it.”
Moving with redoubled care, they continued down. After a few more turns, the walls of the stairwell changed from masonry to solid stone and they knew they were below ground level. Reaching the bottom at last, they found a short, level corridor leading to a door.
Seregil bent to inspect the lock. “It looks safe enough. You better do it, though. My hands are still
shaking!”
Alec knelt and took out his tools. Selecting a hook, he grinned up at Seregil. “After all this trouble, let’s hope this isn’t just the wine cellar!”
40
FLIGHT
The door swung open with a protesting whine of hinges.
Thrusting in his lightstone, Alec tensed with a hiss of surprise.
“What is it?” whispered Seregil, grasping his sword hilt as he moved to look in.
The light was not bright enough to fully illuminate the room, but they could make out the figure of a person seated in an ornate chair against the far wall. There was no movement or outcry, and stepping closer, they saw that it was the withered corpse of a man.
He was nobly dressed in clothing of antique design. A heavy golden torque hung at his shrunken throat, and several rings glinted on the bony fingers resting on the arms of the chair. His thick, dark hair had retained its living gloss and hung in disconcerting contrast against the sunken cheeks.
“Uven ari nobis!” Seregil exclaimed softly, bending close with his light.
Alec did not understand the words but recognized the reverent tone with which they were spoken. Fighting down his instinctive revulsion, he looked more closely at the corpse’s face, noting the fine bones of the skull beneath their thin covering of desiccated skin, the high, prominent cheekbones, the large, sunken sockets where eyes had been.
“Illior’s Light! Seregil, this can’t be—”
“It is,” Seregil replied grimly. “Or was. Lord Corruth, the lost consort of Idrilain the First. These rings prove it. See this?” He indicated the one on the corpse’s right hand; it was set with a lozenge of banded carnelian deeply incised with the Dragon of Skala. “It’s a Consort’s Seal. And this other, the silver with the red stone? Finest Aurënfaie work. This was Corruth í Glamien Yanari Meringil Bôkthersa.”
“Your kinsman.”
“I never knew him, though I’d often hoped—” Seregil touched one of the hands. “The skin’s hard and hollow as the shell of a dried gourd. Someone took great care to preserve him.”