The Staff of the Winds (The Wizard of South Corner Book 1)

by Meighan, William

  Visibility was so poor, that Marian almost stumbled right into the first soldier that she saw. The man was passing across the inner opening from Marian’s left to her right, and only failed to see Marian because he was holding the collar of his jacket up around his throat and keeping his head down in an attempt to keep the wind, which seemed to be blowing in all directions at once, from blowing the snow down his freezing neck. As a consequence, he failed to notice Marian who was just exiting the tunnel from the gate even though he passed her by no more than a few feet.

  Marian’s heart was in her throat, and she almost froze in her tracks, startled by the near disaster. It took a real effort of will to recover and pass quickly and silently behind the guard as he continued by, rather to run screaming back out the gate. Trying to maintain a straight path, Marian hurried directly across the square away from the gate. She nearly fell when her foot hit a timber of an old, collapsed, well cover that was hidden under the blanket of heavy snow. She side stepped around it and, in a panic, hurried on until she came upon a narrow alleyway that she ducked into. The “blizzard” had been gradually subsiding as she got further onto the castle grounds, and as Owen had presumably moved further away from the castle, and although it was still snowing heavily, visibility was improving and Marian thought that she had better find a place to hide as soon as possible. The tracks that she was leaving behind her were still being obliterated by the whirling, dry snow, but soon only the elements natural processes would serve to hide them, and by first light, any obvious traces of her passage would undoubtedly lead to her swift capture.

  At the end of the alley, Marian could just discern a tall stone building looming above her across a narrow street. She hurried up its granite steps, and passed through a doorless entry into a large empty room. There was a staircase that she could just make out in the dark, so she took it up to the next floor where she found a small windowless room, or perhaps a large closet, that was protected from the weather. There was a partially open wooden door, sagging on its leather hinges that had survived the ages. Marian began to open the door enough so that she could pass through, but the hinges disintegrated as soon as she began to move it and the door twisted and almost fell out of her cold hands. She cursed quietly, but managed to catch the door before it fell to the stone floor. She stifled another curse as a bottom corner swung around and smacked her in the shin. Probably no one would have heard it, unless she had been unfortunate enough to choose a building that was being occupied by the few soldiers still bivouacked in the castle town, but the thought had definitely gotten her heart pumping again. Marian entered the room, and propped the door in the doorway in as natural a manner as she could devise in the dark. Exhausted, she unpacked her damp bedroll, and rolled herself up in it in the furthest corner from the doorway, and almost immediately fell asleep.

  The sun was well up from the horizon when Marian awoke cold and stiff the next morning. Her shoulder and hip both ached from sleeping on the hard, cold floor, and there was a dark bruise where the door had caught her the night before. There was a wedge of diffuse sunlight coming through the crack where the old wooden door leaned precariously against its jam, and at first she did not know where she was. Her heart raced and she sat up with a start as memory of her circumstances came to her. She suddenly remembered that she was in a building somewhere within the walls of Carraghlaoch, but it had been dark and late into the night when she got there. She had no idea whether she was alone in this building, or perhaps in the panic of the moment the previous night had stumbled into the very building used by the invading soldiers as a barracks.

  Trying to be as quiet as she could, Marian disentangled herself from the wet blankets that seemed to want to hold her in their clutches and rose to her feet. Peering through the crack in the doorway, she could see no signs of life in the dimly lit corridor, and holding her breath, straining to listen, heard no sounds of habitation. The ancient building felt completely deserted.

  Cautiously, and as quietly as she could, Marian eased the door aside and peeked down the hallway in each direction. There was nothing in sight but the empty stone walls, the stairway she had climbed in the dark, which continued up one more level, and the entries to two other rooms in each direction on this floor.

  Marian removed the boots that she had been too exhausted to take off the night before so that she could move more quietly, and set out to explore. The stone was cold below her wet socks, and she silently cursed herself when she looked down and realized that she was leaving obvious wet footprints in the dry dust that coated the floor. Seeing no help for it, and becoming more and more confident that she was alone, Marian continued her tour.

  The first room that Marian chose to explore had been a bedroom. Its window faced to the north, and the wooden shutters that had once been used to seal out the weather lay in pieces on the floor. Heavy drapes had once hung there as well, the remnants of which lay in tatters, covered with a light dusting of snow from the previous night’s storm. The only remaining furnishings in the room were a broken chair and a heavy bed frame that had collapsed over time. On the wall above the bed was the clear outline of where a large painting, or perhaps a small tapestry had once hung, but no other sign of this former decoration remained. There was no indication that anyone had been in this room since the town had been abandoned centuries before.

  Staying well back from the window opening, so that she remained in the relative dark of the room, she tried to get a better idea of just where she was in the town. The clouds had thinned with the arrival of the new day, and visibility was excellent. Unfortunately, from this room about all that she could see were the buildings that faced her across the narrow street. Water was dripping from the southern exposure of those rooftops as the previous night’s snow already began to melt in the bright morning light.

  Gaining confidence, Marian continued her explorations and discovered that each of the rooms on this floor was much like the first. At the end of the hall on the east side of the building, she discovered a narrow, spiral staircase, perhaps once used by the servants who had maintained this household. Certain now that she was alone and facing no immediate threat, Marian climbed the wide stone stairway up to the next level, which was the top floor of the building. The roof had collapsed in some places, and water was beginning to drip from holes that had worn away in the ceiling. From this level, she discovered a window that allowed her a better view to the north over the roof of the building across the street. From here, she could see most of the main gate and part of the square that lay inside it, along with a portion of the city wall and the stable that was built against it. Just coming into her view, was a soldier pacing along the top of that wall.

  Marian quickly drew back from the opening, but soon realized that the soldier’s attention was directed solely to the land outside the wall. Apparently, thanks to the snow storm and Owen’s augmentation the previous night, her entry into Carraghlaoch had so far gone undetected.

  It was now the third day since Marian entered Carraghlaoch, leaving her brother Owen to follow Sarah and her captors over the bridge spanning the Wizard’s Moat, and she was no closer to finding and freeing the captives that might still be held here than she had been before she gained entry to the castle. She’d been effectively imprisoned in the first building she’d entered throughout the first day, waiting for the early season snow outside to melt. Now that it had been reduced to scattered patches of slush, she was more free to move about without leaving obvious tracks, but with soldiers in the town she still had to be extremely cautious. This morning, she had finally determined which building they were using as their barracks. It fronted on the square near the front gate, and she had relocated her base of operations to another abandoned building that gave her a view over the rooftops of that side of the square. If she could just get an idea of their movements, she was sure that she could figure out where any prisoners were being held. In the meantime, she was as trapped as they were without Owen’s help in getting back out of the main
gate.

  Marian was running out of food, and was down to drinking melt water wherever she could find small pools of it. It wasn’t the cleanest, but it was all that she had. She lived in fear of being seen foraging for even that meager moisture, but her thirst forced her to leave her base early each morning to find it. She was most vulnerable then, because the walls of the fortress looked down on the streets of the town, as did the soldiers still patrolling those walls.

  Marian finally got a good look at the young woman who was hauling water for the soldiers, it was Edith Taurson, a village girl of Owen’s age. Marian only saw her three times, each time going to the drawbridge over the river with a full chamber pot and an empty bucket on a long rope, and returning with an empty chamber pot and a bucket full of water. Each time she was accompanied by a soldier, and Edith looked thoroughly beaten down, eyes on the ground, looking as though she was trying to draw as little attention to herself as possible. She wore a soldier’s coat when outside, but her tattered shift and bare feet could be seen below it. Other than those brief trips, Edith was kept out of sight in the same building the soldiers were using.

  After two more days of watching, she was able to observe that each day about noon a soldier would accompany Edith down a wide street deeper into the fortress. From her vantage, Marian could not see where they went, the buildings were generally close, and she really could not see very much of the town from either her old base or her new. She would have had to have been on the wall near the main gate to get a clear line of sight down that street, and that, of course, was out of the question. The observation did, however, raise her hopes. Edith labored with a heavy bucket and a small bundle wrapped in cloth going in, but only the bucket and the empty cloth coming back.

  Before dawn of the next day, Marian packed up her bedroll and her other meager belongs, and set out to explore, working her way down side streets that ran parallel to the street she had seen Edith and the soldier use. Those ways gave her a little more concealment from the walls, being much more narrow, less straight, and overhung in some places by the buildings that lined them. Still, she occasionally had to crouch and scurry across openings once she had determined that there were no soldiers on the sections of wall that were in line with those openings. It was slow, tense going, but Marian began to get glimpses of a building, taller and more massive than any of the others she had seen, looming ahead. Its upper reaches were already in the rising sun as it became more and more light in the winding narrow streets below. Surely that daunting structure was the inner keep of Carraghlaoch, and if there were a dungeon in the fortress, and Owen had told her that there was, then it must be somewhere below that massive pile of stone.

  The sun was fully up by the time that Marian reached the open area across from the keep. There were no windows and no doors at street level on this side of the keep; only arrow slits that began at about ten feet above the ground. Keeping to the shadows and out of sight of the fortress walls as much as possible, Marian painstakingly worked her way toward the wide road that she’d seen Edith and the soldier use. Her winding path had taken her to a different side of the keep and she had to use alleys and narrow roads back from the open space circling the keep to remain out of sight. Finally, she had a sight of what must be the main entrance. It was blocked by a massive portcullis made of beams that were as thick as her waist, and strapped with iron. It was doubtful that heavy structure could have been lifted since it fell into place many years ago. Above it were crenellated battlements that commanded the entire square that fronted this side of the building.

  Working her way closer, Marian was able to see a much smaller opening, perhaps a sally port, whose iron-strapped door hung open into utter darkness. This was undoubtedly the entrance that the soldiers were using. The question was, could she get to it without being seen. She would have to cross the small square into which the broad road from the main gate entered, and would be clearly visible to anyone down that road, or on that section of the wall, and that was the section of wall that was most patrolled.

  Marian cowered in a doorway of a building across the square from her objective, trying to gather her courage for the crossing. For the time that it would take to cross, she would be terribly exposed and vulnerable. If they saw her, they would surely catch her, and then what. Edith Taurson looked bruised and beaten. Was there any question of what she suffered at the hands of the five or six soldiers that still occupied Carraghlaoch? After so many weeks, how eager would those same soldiers be to have another young, female prisoner in their power? Would Marian survive them? Would she want to? Unable to control her imagination, the images it produced almost overwhelmed her, and Marian decide then and there that she would use her knife to deprive them of their sport by killing herself before she could be captured.

  With that decision, Marian’s resolve slowly returned to her and she rose back to her feet and sidled up to the corner of the building so that she could look down the street toward the main gate. Carefully, she peeked around but quickly jerked back as she saw the patrolling soldier walking the wall over the gate. Taking a few deep breaths, she looked again, just one eye past the corner of the building and watched the soldier continue down the wall until he was finally past the point at which he could see down that street.

  Her heart in her throat, afraid to move but fearing to wait any longer, Marian bolted across the square toward the sally port of the castle keep. When she reached it, she practically dove into the dark entrance, nearly slamming into a wall that she had not been able to see from outside. Barely eight feet inside of the door, the entrance split off in two directions, to the right toward the main portcullis, and to the left into a dark hallway. Marian careened off of the wall, and quickly ducked to the left. There she stood panting, leaning against the cold stone, trying to regain control. Slowly, she looked back around the corner and out the door. She could see down the wide street, and was relieved to see that there was no one standing there shouting and pointing in her direction. To make sure, she stood there for several long minutes watching. The guard on the wall, walked back into sight, and even looked in her direction a couple of times, but made no sign that he had seen her mad dash. He could not possibly see her now, in the dark passage way behind the sally port.

  When the guard had made his circuit and was once again out of sight, Marian breathed a sigh of relief and took stock of her surroundings. There was an old torch just inside the doorway, stuffed down into a narrow stone box, a snuff box she assumed, and she could still faintly smell the acrid smoke that the burning pitch of it must have produced. This must be the place. Examining the floor, it seemed to her that there were signs of recent traffic into the darkness to the left; not so much to the right towards the portcullis.

  Marian quietly walked down the dark hallway, suddenly aware of the noise she must have made with her clumsy entrance to the keep, and hoping that there was nobody down this hallway who might have heard it. The hall took a right turn about twenty feet from the entrance, and the light from the entrance did little to show her the way from there. Marian did not dare to go back and retrieve the torch at the door, so proceeded around the corner, keeping her left hand sliding against the wall on that side. In her right, she held her heavy work knife just in case. If she blundered into anyone in the dark, she at least wanted to get in one good slash before she was forced to turn her knife on herself.

  Marian almost tumbled forward when there was suddenly nothing beneath her next forward step. She was brought up with a jar and bit her tongue when her foot fell to the first step of a stone stairway that wound down to the lower levels of the ancient keep. If she had fallen on these stone stairs, she could have easily broken her neck, or worse, knocked herself unconscious to lie there in the dark until a soldier came along to find her defenseless.

  Heart racing again, Marian waited until the adrenaline surge had passed, then carefully, feeling for each step, worked her way down the circling stairs. After a dozen steps or so, she came to a landing. A hallway b
ranched off from there, but the steps also continued down. Marian had no clue as to which way to go. The dungeons would be at the bottom beneath the keep, wouldn’t they? But was this the stairway that led to them, or must she go down the hall to another set of stairs? Feeling around in the total darkness, her hand bumped into a torch held in a wall sconce. With no other choice, she took off her pack and felt around in one of the pockets for her tinder box. Working by feel in the dark, she removed the torch from its holder and managed to get it lit. It smoked and sputtered but produced so much light that she was initially blinded after her time in the total darkness.

  Once her eyes had recovered, Marian was able to see that there were no foot prints in the dust of the hallway that split off at this level. What prints there were, went down deeper into the depths. Hoping that there was no one on guard below who might see her light, Marian stowed her tinder box, re-shouldered her pack and proceeded down the stairs. Her footing was much more assured now that she could actually see where to place her feet, and despite the increased danger of being exposed, the thought that she was no longer in danger of stepping off an edge into a long drop to a stone landing was a considerable relief. She had not been aware until now just how tense she had been out of fear of that possibility.