Sweat trickled down her neck, and she worried that she wouldn't have the stamina to do what she was going to try. The guard reached the top step, and stumbled when he reached for a higher step that wasn't there.
He caught himself quickly, but his stumbling gave Rialla a chance to press home her advantage, until both of them were on the battlement. The wooden boards of the walk creaked underfoot. If they fought too long, someone would look over and see them.
She waited anxiously for Tris to leave the hold, aware that her thigh was beginning to show definite signs of weakening. Her sword arm ached with the force of the guard's blows. He was starting to believe that he might face another day, though he was puzzled that she hadn't finished him when he stumbled over the nonexistent step.
The wall was crenelated to allow archers to fire through the low sections and dodge back behind the higher merlon. Though the top of the wall was well over Rialla's head, the crenels were only hip high. When she knew that Tris, hopefully towing Laeth behind him, was safely out of the castle, she feinted. The guard drew back, giving her the room she needed to jump onto the crenel wall and, in a step, over the other side, landing some distance below, on the slanted platform of the scaffolding.
She slid and stumbled to the ground and called Stoutheart to her by focusing her gift. Only when she was mounted and heading for the cover of the woods did she look to see if the guardsman had followed her leap. Seeing no one, she assumed that he had realized that his heavy mail shirt would hamper his leap, and had retreated to sound a warning.
The clear tones of the alarm bells followed her into the woods.
Chapter Five
After Rialla left for the stables, Tris made his way carefully through the courtyard, taking advantage of each bit of cover as if he were stalking game in the forest. He was too well known at Westhold to strike out boldly as Rialla had, but stealth was second nature to him, and his progress was only minimally slower than hers. He was amused to discover that he was enjoying the challenge of this adventure as much as a boy half his age.
The tallest structure at Westhold, the tower stood midway between the hold wall and the keep, overshadowing the squat structure of the nearby guardhouse. It was half again as high as the great wall. Although the tower was older than any other structure in the keep, having been part of the main building of the original fortress, the ancient stones still rested squarely where they had been placed.
He was crouched in the shadow of the guardhouse when the sound of men's voices caused Tris to freeze where he was. He kept his breathing shallow and his body still against the rough-finished wooden wall as three guardsmen passed close to him. Too close for Tris, who wrinkled his nose at the sour smell. He waited until they were safely inside their living quarters before he moved from the darkness and crossed the short open area that separated the tower from the guardhouse.
There was no door into the tower, only a wide opening onto the main floor. One guard stood just inside the door, staring at the night. He was a young man, with the nervous air of a green recruit. His hand rested on the wooden hilt of his sword, clasping and unclasping slowly.
Tris called to his magic, humming under his breath to lend power to his summons. When the magic came, he pulled it around him in a curtain of silence and shadows. He slipped cautiously between the guard and the edge of the aperture.
The inner room of the tower was cramped and bare; the high ceilings made it appear almost empty. It was lit by a number of slow-burning torches that sent shadows dancing against the gray stone walls.
In the center of the room was a circular stone pillar with another doorless entrance, through which Tris could see a narrow, winding stair reaching upward. Just past the central stairway, a man, obviously more experienced than his fellow guardsman, sat on the floor, leaning against the banister of a descending staircase. Patiently he ran a stone in small circles against the edge of a knife blade.
Tris followed the wall, moving slowly to put the stone of the wide pillar between himself and the older guard. He froze motionless when the man looked up and stared directly at him, some instinct alerting him that the atmosphere of the room had changed.
"Nar!" called the younger guard. "There's something outside."
The veteran sighed, laying aside his honing stone. He rolled lightly to his feet and walked without hurry to the younger man's post. Tris took advantage of the guard's distraction to sprint across the room and into the safety of the enclosure that housed the central stair.
The surface of the staircase was worn unevenly, and he was glad of his soft-bottomed shoes that allowed him to feel his way. The twisted stone steps and the enclosing stone walls made Tris, who preferred wood to stone and open air to either, feel uneasily confined.
As the ceilings were high, it took two revolutions of the stairs before another doorless aperture opened into the second floor. From what Tris could see of it, the dimly lit chamber seemed to be a duplicate of the one below. Faint light entered the room from window slits near the ceiling, but most of the light seemed to be coming from a small oil lamp.
A guard sat at his ease on a bench placed near the outer wall. He was carving a small piece of wood by the lamplight. The lamp itself sat on the arm of a chair equipped with thick leather straps. The room was littered with devices of various sorts needed for "persuasion."
Tris continued up the stairs, which narrowed until there was less than a hand span between Tris's shoulders and the stone wall. The last light from the rooms below faded until even Tris's acute night vision ceased to be of service and he climbed by feel alone.
The stairway ended with a trapdoor set into the wooden floor of the upper level, which Tris discovered by slamming his head into it. His spell was sufficient to absorb the noise, but it didn't help the knot on his head. He felt around the edges of the door with his hands until he found the simple wooden latch and released it, catching the door before it hit his head a second time.
Climbing the last few stairs, Tris arrived in a very small circular room. He stepped onto the floor and pulled the trapdoor shut behind him. There was a latch on the upper side as well, though this one was made so a strong pull from below would break it.
Satisfied that the door was securely closed, Tris divested himself of both shadows and silence and called a magelight to allow him to see.
Four oaken doors, heavily barred and framed with iron, stood at regular intervals in the wall of the room. He opened his mouth to call out, but shut it before a sound escaped.
There was no reason to assume that Laeth was the only one imprisoned in the tower. The less noise that he made finding the Darranian the better off they would be.
Tris moved to the first door and set his forehead against the wood. Stone was cold and dead to him, but wood was like an old friend. When he asked, the oak gave up its secrets to him, allowing him to descry what lay hidden behind the door.
The first room was empty, and Tris moved on to the next. As he lifted his hand, the magic in the cool metal reached out to him. A human mage had ensorcelled the locks; no green mage could have done such a thing with iron.
The magic was so foreign to Tris that he couldn't even discern its nature. He could tell that the magician hadn't tainted the oak with his spell. Laying his forehead against the old wood, he "looked" inside.
If it wasn't Laeth, it was someone of his height and weight wearing the clothes of a noble. He was shackled hand and foot. He must have put up quite a fight, judging from the care someone had taken that he not be able to move more than a finger.
Tris placed his open hand on the door and sang softly in his own language. With a soft, sighing sound, as if it were very tired, the wood disintegrated into a pile of sawdust, leaving both the lock and the metal structure that had framed the door intact.
Laeth looked up at the light too quickly, and had to duck his head into his shoulder to wipe his eyes free of the light-induced tears.
For all that Laeth was a useless Darranian noble chained hand a
nd foot, he was still a trained warrior. Tris had dealt with enough predators in his life to know that they were at their most defensive when they were trapped. It would, he decided, be wise to wait until Laeth knew that he was a friend before attempting to remove the bindings.
Laeth opened his eyes cautiously, took in the missing door and the magelight hovering behind, and came to the wrong conclusion.
"I'm surprised that even the Spymaster of Sianim found out about my imprisonment so quickly," said Laeth in a soft voice that wouldn't carry far.
"As far as I know, he didn't," replied Tris as quietly, pulling the hovering light source around until Laeth could see him clearly.
The Darranian's eyes widened as he realized, for the first time, who had come to his rescue. Before he could say anything, there was a loud crashing noise from the floors below.
Tris froze, noticing that Laeth held himself still as well. They waited, but no further sound reached them.
Finally Tris stepped over the sawdust and into the cell, his magelight following closely. He propped his staff against a convenient wall and crouched beside the battered Darranian to examine the chains more closely.
As was usual for such objects, they were made of low-grade iron. Iron and its refined cousin were exceedingly resistant to natural magic. Given enough time, the healer might have been able to destroy them with his magic, but time was a scarce resource.
Tris pulled a ring of keys out of his belt pouch and found one that worked on the wrist cuffs.
One night, not long after Tris had come to Tallonwood, a man had knocked on his door in the middle of the night, obviously suffering from a severe beating. He stayed with Tris for two days before leaving as suddenly as he had come. Tris found the set of keys on his worktable the morning after the man left, set out obviously as a payment. When the word came that a notorious thief had escaped his imprisonment at Westhold, Tris had not been surprised.
The set of skeleton keys had proven to be useful several times since then, and he carried them with him more often than not.
The shackles had been overly tight, restricting the circulation to Laeth's hands and feet. While Laeth worked at returning the feeling to his limbs, Tris looked him over carefully. There were a few abrasions and bruises, especially where the rough metal had cut into his wrists and ankles, but the worst of it seemed to be the swelling.
Tris reached for Laeth's hands. Instead of rubbing them, as Laeth had been attempting to do, he held them gently and began to heal the abused tissue.
The Darranian jerked his hands back and stared at them—probably, thought Tris with some amusement, because he'd never seen them glow before.
"What…" Laeth visibly caught himself. The less talking that they did the better; there would be time for that later, if they made it through the night alive. The Darranian gave Tris a frustrated look, then held out his hands again.
Tris worked on Laeth's hands and feet. The healing wasn't as complete as it could have been; Laeth was still having problems moving with any ease. Bruises and stiffness were difficult, and they had already taken too long.
By levering a shoulder under Laeth's arm, Tris managed to get the Darranian through the doorway. He balanced Laeth against the wall, went back for his staff and then touched the sawdust with a finger, and concentrated.
Slowly, the dust shimmered yellow and restructured itself. Like a living creature, it slithered up the iron frame that had reinforced the wooden edges, until a saffron curtain hung where the door had been. There was a snap, as if someone clicked his fingers, and the oak door stood as solid as ever. If a guard came up to look, he would have to open the door to notice that Laeth was gone.
Tris dismissed the magelight and opened the trapdoor again. The tower was quiet below them.
The healer had to help Laeth down the first few steps. Between the heavy staff and the heavier Darranian, negotiating the narrow, dark stairway was awkward work. As soon as the noble seemed steadier, Tris pushed in front.
After they had descended six stairs, Tris gestured for Laeth to wait, and continued down alone. He intended to deal with the guard on the second story himself, leaving only the two on the bottom. As he stepped carefully down the stairs, he noticed that the room was different.
The oil lamp was no longer burning. Faint moonlight from the three windows high in the side of the tower allowed Tris a clear view of the empty bench where the guard had been. The rest of the room was lost in darkness.
He had hoped that he could take on the guards separately and minimize the risk of an outcry, but the guard who had been here had left. He would have to get Laeth and—
He had taken a step back toward the stairs when something caught his attention.
He held very still, listening for the faint noise that instinct told him would come. Something bumped into a piece of furniture, pushing it a short distance across the floor. Tris dropped to a low crouch, hoping he'd escaped detection. His new position allowed him to see under the table and past it to the source of the noise that had first alerted him.
A square of pale light from one of the windows illuminated a pair of rough boots—boots that moved limply forward and back, scuffing the floor lightly. It had been this sound that he'd heard first.
A small gust of wind from the window brought with it the peculiar rotting smell of the swamp and the sweet smell of fresh blood. It appeared that another swamp creature was loose in Westhold: someone wanted to make sure that Laeth didn't miss his appointment with death.
Balanced in a kneeling position, with eyes slitted so they wouldn't glisten in the faint light, Tris waited. The guard's body shifted suddenly across the floor as the killer changed its hold, and the healer got a clear view of what he faced.
Someone had told him once that many creatures of the swamp were things created by one of the old human wizards—the ones who had very nearly destroyed the world with their uncontrolled use of magic. The creature that suckled the neck of the dead man certainly had unnatural origins; Tris could sense a wrongness in her that a natural animal, be it ever so vicious, had never inspired.
From a distance she would appear to be a voluptuous naked woman. Tris was close enough to see the pointed ears, the flesh-colored gills on her neck, and that her long, silky hair grew from her back as much as her head.
The inch-long nails on her hands and bare feet were retractable, sliding in and out as she ate. Her eyes were closed as she concentrated on her meal.
Something around her neck was starting to glow purple; the light grew stronger even as Tris noted it. It was a collar of some sort, and she reached up to bat at it without taking her mouth from her prey.
As the glow intensified, she growled and hissed, jerking back from the body, a bead of blood trickling from the corner of her mouth like a teardrop. She tore at the collar, but it held firm.
To Tris's surreptitious examination, the collar reeked of human magic. If he had to guess, he would have bet gold that the collar contained some geas that forced her to find Laeth and kill him.
Sullenly she left the body and started toward the stairway, not noticing Tris frozen motionless only a length away. He would have let her go if it hadn't been for Laeth—weakened, unarmed, and waiting on the stairs.
When she passed him, Tris rose to his feet and held his staff at ready in one hand. He would wait as long as he could before attacking. The more he knew about her, the better chance he would have.
Tris saw her stiffen as she caught sight of Laeth, seated on the stair and momentarily unaware of the drama that was taking place. She hissed. Tris couldn't see Laeth, but he heard the sounds of the Darranian backing up the stairs quickly.
She made a soft barking sound that might have been a laugh before unleashing her magic. The wordless call that she sang was potent enough that even outside the focus of her magic, the healer could feel the pull.
As Laeth stumbled down the stairs, she backed away before him, leading him into the room with the rest of this night's meal. She was i
ntent on her prey, and didn't notice the healer sinking back into the shadows on one side of her, aided by his own magic.
Laeth took two steps forward, then stopped. He pulled his hands slowly to his ears. She increased the intensity of the summoning, making the tones evocative of sex and need. Sweat beaded on the Darranian's skin as he fought to stay where he was.
Enough, thought Tris, and struck at the side of her head with the metal-strewn end of his staff. It was a blow that would have killed any human, and it knocked her across the room and into an assortment of tables and implements whose purpose was lost to the dark. She returned to her feet in a silent, powerful rush.
Remembering Laeth's earlier reaction, Tris closed his eyes momentarily and called a brilliant flash of magelight, just long enough to blind her, and took two quick steps to one side. She hit the table next to him, reducing it to kindling, and he swung again with his staff, connecting with her shoulder.
She seemed less hampered by the darkness than he was, so he recalled the magelight at a bearable level.
Her fangs were impressive but thin and sharp, more suited to opening the neck of her prey than fighting. Her eyes were slitted, like a cat's, telling Tris that she was indeed more comfortable in the dark room than she would have been in the light. He'd hurt her; one arm hung limply at her side and blood from her head blinded her right eye.
The hard, slick floor bothered her; he could see her testing it warily with each step. He had just come to the conclusion that he held the advantage in this fight, when she threw something at him with her good hand.
He raised his oak staff, and it caught the spell, absorbing most of it; the remainder flung him against a wall.
The creature laughed, and she sounded like a young girl. She drew her hand back again, but stopped mid-gesture. She looked surprised, and blood trickled out of her mouth. She coughed once before falling face forward. Laeth stepped out of the shadows behind her, holding a bloodstained metal bar with a sharp point. Tris assumed that it was something the guards used for torturing prisoners.
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