Mason was the first to step forward, putting his hand on top of hers. Logan, Archer, and Norabel took the cue to step in as well, and soon all of their hands were bound together. The look in Ashlin’s eyes sent a fire through Norabel, and she realized that she was just as excited about this as everybody else. Her parents and her grandfather would be proud of what they were doing. She was an important part of the Harbinger team, and she felt strong for once in her life, connecting her hand with theirs.
Then Ashlin took her hand away, the group was breaking up, and Norabel’s strength went slipping away as quickly as that. She was reminded of what she really was. She was a Jotham, the victim of a leacher; she was a delicate thread in danger of breaking. Even though the job was tomorrow night, and it promised the chance to be rid of Fletcher for at least a little while, she was still afraid. One night with him could be a lifetime.
Norabel did not move as Logan and Archer took off for the village. She stood still with eyes glazed, staring into the fire that had been lit at the corner of the meadow.
“You should get going to the stronghold,” Mason advised her. “We still need vital information.”
He stomped out the small fire with his boot, and she watched with a sinking heart as the embers died, leaving nothing more than a black pile of dust on the earth.
“Mason,” she said, taking a few cautious steps towards him. “I really need to talk to you.” Even though she asked the question, she knew what his answer would be. It was almost as if she was torturing herself, asking him one last time for the sole purpose of affirming his disinterest in her.
“I can’t,” Mason said, avoiding her gaze and going over to where Ashlin stood. “Ashlin and I have a lot of work to do. And I promised her we would practice sword-fighting.”
Norabel nodded to the ground, telling herself that she had expected nothing less. But her fear told her not to give up yet.
“It’s important,” she said, taking a single step towards them.
Ashlin, who had been holding onto Mason’s hand, took it away, saying, “Mason, you can…”
“No,” Mason said, reaching out for her hand once more and keeping her tightly to his side. “Stay.” Then he looked to Norabel, asking, “Can’t this wait until after the job? We’re really busy.”
He gave Ashlin a nudge, and they started walking towards the path that led back to the village.
“There’s this leacher,” she called out after them, speaking to their backs. “His name’s Fletcher.”
“Yeah,” Mason said, waving his hand in dismissal. “We’ll deal with it after the job. Good night, Norabel.”
As they were walking, Ashlin turned around and gave her an apologetic wave. “Good luck tonight,” she offered.
Norabel bit down hard on her lip as she watched them leave. Their shadows were disappearing in the fast approaching night, shrinking into small, dark blue specters behind them. An angry wind blew through the narrow canyon as she walked back to the village, and for a moment she wondered if it wasn’t the sound of her guardian, yelling at her for not having tried harder to speak with Mason. But what more could she do? How could she earn Mason’s help when he seemed to treat her as though she was the enemy?
When Norabel reached the stronghold later that night, she circled around the courtyard until she had a straight line of vision to the water grate on the north side. There were guards marching around the perimeter, carrying torches, but there was a gap of about thirty seconds in between. Since there were no other torches lit, it was easy to see them coming because the approaching light acted as a warning.
Without trying to think of the consequences should she be caught, she waited until one of the guards had just left, and then sprinted across the courtyard to the grate. She found the opening that Mason had made and grabbed onto the metal bars above, sliding her feet in first. She had gotten herself halfway through when she saw the faint light of a torch reaching around the corner of the castle closest to her. Trying not to panic, she hurried to push herself in deeper, the coppery scent of musty dirt and metal filling her nose as she pressed her head inside the narrow gap.
Her head just came through into the water tunnel when the officer finally rounded the corner. She stayed still, knowing that she would draw attention to herself if she tried to move around. Luckily the man was looking the other way, watching the streets to the north instead of the castle to the south. When she could no longer hear his footsteps, she turned from the water grate and started to walk down the narrow tunnel.
The light from the outside lasted no more than a few feet into it, and she found herself placing her hands on either side of the stone walls to steady herself as she walked blindly ahead. The water tunnel soon began to slope downward, and she had to move slowly in order to keep her footing.
She inched forward for another minute until she walked into an old chain. Stopping, she felt around for her surroundings. It seemed as if the water tunnel continued on, but that there was a chute directly above her. It had probably worked as a well once, and the chain most likely connected to a water bucket.
She tilted her head to look up into the water chute, but not one beam of light shown down from the castle above. Reaching down into a small pouch at her waist, she grabbed a tiny pinch of Snapper. She had only brought a small handful of it with her, and needed to make it last. Raising her arm in the air, she snapped her fingers, and a small spark sprang out, lighting up the tunnel for a brief moment.
That one spark told her exactly what she needed to know. There was a wooden slab covering up the stone chimney a few feet above her head. She jumped up and tried to push it open, but it wouldn’t budge. Grabbing ahold of one of the stones that was jutting out of the wall, she lifted herself up so that she could grab onto the lip that lied between the stone and the wood.
Feeling around, she discovered where the problem was. A metal locked had been installed on one side, keeping it bolted in place. Norabel slowly lowered herself back to the ground and reached for the pouch around her waist once more. She undid the strings that tied it to her dress, and then lifted herself up again. She poured a little of the Snapper around the rim near the lock, and then stuffed the rest of the pouch in the area directly underneath it. Taking one pinch of the Snapper in her hands, she lit the pouch and quickly dropped down to the bottom of the tunnel, backing up a few feet and plugging her ears.
A moment later, she heard the sound of sizzling, and then a loud bang followed after. She stayed hidden further back in the tunnel, waiting to hear the sounds of anyone coming to investigate. When all was silent, she carefully crouched back over to the stone chimney. Looking up, she saw a small hole in the wood. It didn’t look like much, but when she pushed on it, the wooden slab gave way.
Carefully inching it over to the side, she got her footing on the rocks and hoisted herself up so she could poke her head out. Looking around, she saw that she was in an underground corridor of some kind. There were no torches or candles on the walls. In fact, there was nothing in the room, except for the stone well she was still inside of, and a single door at the end of the hall. The only light in the corridor came from a small, narrow hole that had been cut out of the stone at the very top of the wall, just above ground level. The moonlight streaming in from this window was the only thing allowing her to see.
Moving slowly, Norabel hoisted herself up and out of the hole. She had to take a minute to regain her breath, for she had placed a little too much strain on her lungs. When she felt she was ready again, she went to the wooden slab and placed it back over the well, just in case someone should come down to check on it.
By her feet, she found the metal lock that she had blown off. Bending down to pick it up, she saw that it looked perfectly normal except for a hair-line crack in the thin metal. She clicked it closed and it stayed that way. Then, giving it a little tug, it came open again. An idea struck her that she might use this lock to her advantage. She thought back to what she had seen the night before in the kitchens.
There was a north-facing door that had been bolted up with a chain, as if no one used that entrance anymore. She remembered there was also a ring of keys hanging on the wall not too far away. If she could make her way to the kitchens, she could replace the lock on the door with the busted one, giving everyone the illusion that the door was locked up nice and tight, when it would really just come open with a little shove.
Pocketing the metal lock, she started to move forward in the corridor. Testing the door that stood at the end, she breathed a sigh of relief when it turned in her hand. A crack of torchlight came through the entrance, and she stopped and listened for any sound. Hearing none, she poked her head through.
She now found herself in a hallway that had many doors on either side, and several torches lighting the way. Thinking back to what the guys had told her, she figured that this was probably part of their barracks. She just hoped that it was too early in the night for them to be returning back here.
Holding her breath, she stepped out into the hallway and softly closed the door behind her. Then, racing ahead, she came to a turn in the corridor. The hallway branched out in several more directions, probably leading towards more barracks, but one of them led to a stairwell that ran up and out of the underground portion of the castle.
Norabel felt a pang of pity for the men that had to sleep down here. Sleeping underground was like sleeping in a dungeon. In fact, she wouldn’t have been surprised if that’s what it had been before they turned them into barracks.
Going up the stairwell, she came to another door. She was even more hesitant to open this one, for no doubt it would lead her into the main portion of the castle where anyone could see her. Sure, she had walked around up there perfectly fine yesterday, but things would be different if she was found without an officer escorting her.
However, opening up the door, she was a little surprised to see that there was a short room in front of her, with four steps leading up to another doorway. Stepping inside, she looked to this new entrance in front of her. Why would they make a separate segment just for this, she wondered. Why not make the stairs reach all the way up to this second door? Unless this room was more than just another stairwell.
There were two Pax banners draped down both walls of the stairwell, and Norabel pushed one of them off to the side to see if anything was hidden underneath. She ran her palms across the stone, searching for any cracks or depressions in the wall, but found none. Turning to the other banner, she pushed it aside as well. At once she noticed an engraving that had been chiseled into the wall. It read: Rodion, Lord of Breccan.
Norabel recognized the name. Rodion had been the ruler of Breccan fifty years ago. It was his son that was killed when Amias took over the kingdom and enforced his peace. It was probably why the Pax had decided to cover the wall with their flags.
But why engrave this in the wall here? Wasn’t there another place in the castle where past lords and heroes could be remembered? Of course, Amias would have probably destroyed something like that, but it still left the problem of why this was here.
Searching her brain, she knew that her grandfather must have told her a story that would help illuminate the matter. She thought about every Jotham story she was ever told, every legend and myth and hero’s poem. Suddenly something sparked in her mind. It was a verse to a song that her grandfather used to sing. It went:
And though they all in battle fall,
They keep the wall through every call.
It was a song of remembrance about the lords and kings of Galerance past. Norabel had never understood that line, and she never had the chance to ask her grandfather about it. She knew that every call referred to shifts on a watch. First call was at nightfall and second call was at midnight. Yet, it didn’t make sense to her that people as important as lords and kings would be assigned to watch the walls. That was usually given to foot soldiers. But what if the song wasn’t referring to the actual walls around the village? What if it referred to the walls of the castle?
They keep the wall through every call.
Could it mean that they were buried there—in the wall?
She carefully spread her hands out along the stones, smoothing her palms over it to feel every bump. At the edge of one of the stones, she noticed a small crack. She blew on it, and a more visible line appeared. There was definitely something behind there. Looking around her, she tried to find anything that might help her to pry it open. There was a torch mounted on the wall, and she reached up for it, hoping to use it for leverage.
Dropping it on the floor, she snuffed out the flame so that the metal spires on the top were easily accessible. Then she jammed the edges of it into the crack in the wall, trying to force it open. The wall didn’t budge, so she reached up for the torch’s wall mount to give her more support to push off of. The second she grabbed ahold of the mount, it came down a few inches, catching her off guard. At first she thought she might have broken it, but looking back to the wall, she saw that it had opened a few inches. The torch mount must have acted as the door’s handle.
Throwing her whole body into it, she tried to push the stone door open further. It didn’t want to move easily, but she was able to open it just wide enough so that she could fit through. Before going inside, she took the torch that she had snuffed out and lit it again with the one on the opposite wall. Slipping inside, she let the Pax banner cover the doorway behind her, hopefully drawing any attention away from her secret passage.
When she squeezed herself inside, she found she was in an extremely narrow passage way that sloped upwards in a long arch. Even for a person as small as her, she found that she would have to walk sideways in order to get by.
Waving her torch, she found something else. There was a tall metal box embedded into the wall. But not a box, more like a coffin. It was simply adorned, but bore Rodion’s name on the top. Looking further down the narrow passage, she noticed that there was another one of these boxes jutting out of the wall a few yards ahead.
Suddenly Norabel’s head felt wobbly, and her legs grew weak. She was walking inside of a tomb! All of the dead lords of Breccan must have been buried inside these very walls!
Walking ahead, she had the urge to cover her nose and mouth, though she knew that there would be no smell coming from their bodies anymore. Still, it was eerie walking among them, trying to squeeze past their coffins. She at least tried to take comfort in the fact that, if all these men were still alive, they would have been on her side, trying to fight the Pax.
Up ahead in the passage, the ground began to slope even more steeply upwards. Norabel had to press her back to the wall as she walked in order to stay upright. She reached another coffin and was sliding around it to the other side, when she heard voices through the wall. She froze, recognizing the commanding voice of Chief Auberon.
“You’re early,” he spoke.
She could hear another voice reply, but it was too soft to make out the words.
“So Lorcan wasn’t lying when he said you were the best horseman in Breccan.”
There was silence.
“Well done,” Auberon said. “You did good, Hunter.”
Norabel stopped breathing. Her heart began to stammer and her head felt weak. Hunter was behind these walls! That’s all her mind could comprehend. It didn’t matter that Auberon believed him to have done well in something, and that this “something” was surely bad news for her and her Harbinger team. When she heard his name, she suddenly realized how much she had missed him. It was a strange sort of revelation that hit her. She imagined it was like having your hearing taken away and then forgetting you could ever hear in the first place until you heard a beautiful song years later, and it hurt to realize what you had been missing this whole time.
She tried to quiet her thoughts and the blood racing through her ears as the voices began to speak again.
“You look tired,” Auberon said.
Norabel pressed her ear to the stone wall and could barely make out Hunter’s gentle, yet we
ary voice admit, “I’ve been riding since before sun-up. I didn’t like to stop for too long.”
“You have a reason for wanting to get back so quickly?”
There was silence. Then someone spoke. She could not tell what was being said, only that it was Hunter’s voice that said it.
Auberon’s smooth chuckle slipped through the walls. “Why don’t you go and hit the pub then? You certainly deserve it.”
More silence. She thought she heard Hunter leave, and a part of her wanted to get out of there and follow him to the pub, but she had a job to do. She needed to find Auberon’s living quarters. She figured, by the direction she had been travelling, that she was in the eastern portion of the castle. And, judging by the interaction she just overheard, she was probably standing in front of a meeting room of some kind.
Going further along the passage, she reasoned that she would hit Auberon’s rooms eventually. Since he was the chief, the highest ranking official in the castle, then he would have been given the same rooms as an old Lord would have. If that was the case, then there might be some sort of entrance linking this secret passage with those rooms in case of emergency.
She inched further up through the walls in the hopes of finding it, and didn’t have to go too far before she spotted something up ahead. There was a dim beam of light coming in through the stone. It wasn’t blue like moonlight, but instead orange like that of a flame. She walked up to it cautiously and saw that there was an irregular shaped hole cut into the stone, almost like the grooves had been cut out for two fingers to slip inside. Norabel pressed her eye to the hole and looked through. On the other side of the wall there appeared to be a closet. She could make out the shapes of two shirts hanging on either side of the hole, and in front of her the closet doors were opened a crack, letting in the outside candlelight.
Sticking her two fingers inside the hole, she felt the stone slab give way, quietly sliding into the closet, perhaps on a pair of stone rollers. Bending down, she placed her torch on the ground of the stone passageway and slipped inside the closet. She was about to open the doors up wider, when suddenly she heard a lock turn.
Chasing Shadows (Saving Galerance, Book 1) Page 22