Then, nothing.
19
Mershayn
Mershayn opened his eyes to darkness. He wondered for a moment if the blow to the back of his head had blinded him. The seconds rolled by. His ears focused on a steady drip of water somewhere. Slowly, a vague outline of bars became apparent. So he could still see. He was simply in a dark place. He let out a sigh of relief and thanked the gods for that much good fortune.
Then the rage came, like a pail of hot water pouring onto his head. Rage at himself.
He should have killed Sym when he had the chance. One second was all it would have taken. He had disobeyed the first rule of swordsmanship: the enemy means to kill you. When you have the advantage, do not hesitate. Strike hard and strike sure. He’d gotten bound up in his head, and it had cost him.
Still, he wasn’t dead.
He reached up and gingerly felt the lump just behind his ear. Whoever had struck him knew exactly where to hit.
He slowly rose to his feet and went to the bars. Why hadn’t Sym just killed him? The answer had to be that this was part of some plan. But Collus would note Mershayn’s absence almost immediately; he’d come looking for him.
He rubbed his temples. He had a difficult enough time second-guessing Sym’s deviousness without a throbbing headache. Sym never did anything that didn’t serve his own purposes. If Mershayn was still alive, it was good for Sym somehow. How did Mershayn decipher what that was and stop that plan?
Well, he could kill himself. That would certainly undo any leverage his life might give to Sym.
His bitter laugh echoed in the cell.
Yes. That’s a good idea.
Perhaps it would have been a better idea to have done it before Vullieth discovered Mershayn was bedding his wife.
He looked around as best as he was able in the black cell. There was nothing in it. No rocks or bowls or anything from which to make a weapon. “I wish I could kill myself,” he muttered.
A quiet voice came out of the darkness. “Such a dark wish, lord of Bendeller.”
Mershayn spun around and tripped over the uneven rock floor. He stumbled and slammed back against the wall.
“Where are you?” he whispered hoarsely.
“Right in front of you.”
He strained to see, but all he could make out were the slight silhouettes of the bars. Then, a white face appeared from the inky blackness, as if floating. Two white hands appeared, fingers wrapping around the iron rods that separated them. They were as pale as snow.
“Ari’cyiane?” he asked incredulously.
“No,” the woman said.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Silasa.”
“How did you get in here? Who sent you?”
“A friend.”
Mershayn had a difficult time tracking her in the darkness. Her hands vanished and reappeared several times as she worked at the lock. She wore a black cowl, and when she turned, her face vanished.
The click of metal on metal drew his attention, then the rusty lock screeched and gave way with a clunk.
She opened the door.
“Follow me.”
“I can’t see,” he replied, squinting and moving forward with a hand out in front of him, questing for obstructions.
Strong, slender fingers closed over his. They were cold.
A shiver ran up Mershayn’s spine. “Who are you?”
“I’m good in the dark,” she said, leading him down the corridor. Mershayn stumbled along behind her. He could see torchlight ahead, illuminating the musty stone walls from somewhere around the corner. The cowled woman in front of him began to come clearer. She was dressed all in black, with a long, thick black braid of hair that trailed out of her cowl.
She let go of his hand, motioning him to stay put. She crept up to the corner and around.
She must be a thief of some kind, to move so quietly. Who do I know who’s friendly with thieves?
She returned, and this time he could see her from the front. Her black skirt swished as she appeared around the corner. She motioned him to follow.
What kind of a thief wore a skirt? And...
He froze, looking at her eyes. They were white, save a thin circle of black that told where the irises of her eyes ought to have begun.
She cocked her head, waiting to see if he would say anything. His mouth hung open.
With a wry smile, she put a finger against her lips, then turned and vanished into the dark in front of him.
He hurried to keep up, using all of his prowess to stay silent, but compared to her, he was a clumsy oaf. She made no sound, but his boots scraped lightly on the stone floor, sounding loud in his ears. He rounded the corner as quickly as he could without sounding like a galloping herd of horses.
There were three torches burning in sconces on the walls, and he shielded his eyes from the harsh light.
“You can speak again,” the woman said. “We’re safe for now.”
“Who are you?” he asked. She wasn’t normal. Was she one of the Wave-altered, escaped from some prison down here where they were being quarantined?
He looked around the room. It was a guard room. A table in the center of the room held two plates of half-eaten food and a scattered game of bones. One guard lay prone on the floor half under the table. The second guard looked as though he had fallen asleep in his chair while playing.
“Are they—” Mershayn began.
“Yes,” she interrupted him, lifting a ring of keys from the wall and unlocking the huge wooden door on the far side of the room. She pulled it open as though it were made of paper.
“Did you—”
“Yes,” she said. “Come, Mershayn.”
“How do you know me?” He suddenly wondered if he was safer back in that black hole of a cell than he was with this woman.
She stopped by the door and turned to face him. He glanced at the body of the seated guard. The dead man had a short sword. He could reach it with one lunge.
She followed his gaze. Her lips curved in a brief smile. “I’m not your enemy, Lord Mershayn,” she said.
“Are you one of the Wave-altered?”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Changed by The Wave?”
“No.”
“Then what are you?” he asked.
“Take it.” She nodded at the sword. “You may need it before this night is done.”
Mershayn went to the man, unbuckled the belt, and pulled the sword away. The man showed no signs of a fight, and no signs of violence except maybe a broken wrist. What had killed him? Certainly not a sword or dagger.
He belted the sword around his waist, drew it, tested the balance, then sheathed it again. He felt much better.
“Come,” she said. “Let us try to be away before they change the guard.”
“Silasa?” he said, testing out the name. “That’s what you said, yes? Silasa?”
“That’s right.”
“I want to know...something.”
She waited, the large cowl covering the top half of her face, keeping those eerie white eyes in shadow.
He swallowed. “How did you... How did you kill them?”
“Does it matter?”
He couldn’t say why he asked her that, but some instinct deep within him screamed to know. Why were there no marks upon their bodies? It made his skin crawl.
“No,” he said. “I guess not.”
“Then come,” she said, and disappeared through the doorway.
Mershayn kept up with her as she climbed the stairs, though only barely. She moved with a speed that made him feel slow and clumsy.
Where was she from—?
Suddenly, she pulled him into a darkened alcove and wrapped him in the shadow of her cloak. Long moments crawled past, and he listened intently. Just as he was about to ask her what was happening, he heard the footsteps. Seconds later, three guards descended the stairs past them. She waited until they had gone, then slid silently into the hallway again.
When Mershayn made his first inspection of Teni’sia, he had explored the entire castle. He had visited the cells where lawbreakers were held, but he’d never seen these carved dungeons. He shuddered at the thought that others had been locked down there with him, and he just hadn’t heard them. How extensive was it? How many cells?
They climbed and climbed. The staircase began like a dried-up riverbed, rough and artless, twisting to the left sometimes and then switching back upon itself and twisting right. Soon, it smoothed out and became a spiral staircase leading ever upward and to the right. Mershayn could barely see anything. Sometimes Silasa even disappeared from his view. But she always returned, a ghost with a white face, silent and eerie.
He trailed his fingers against the rock and was happy to note when the rough stone became mortar and blocks. His fingers eventually fumbled across a door, but Silasa did not stop and he let it go by. If he survived this adventure, he was coming back here to find out exactly what this place was.
They passed several more doors, and finally Silasa opened one of them. They passed through, and she closed it quietly behind him. A lone torch spread its orange light onto the walls. At the far end, a staircase climbed upward and disappeared into the gloom. The passageway looked more conventional than the rough-hewn walls of the spiral staircase or the solid rock of the cave-like jails. There were two thick doors on each side of the passage. This was the castle proper, or at least very close. It frustrated him that he still didn’t recognize it. How many secret passages were there in Teni’sia?
“Where are—?”
Her cold hand pressed quickly and firmly over his mouth, like cold iron wrapped in thin leather.
One of the doors opened. A robed and hooded figure stepped out and turned, facing back the way he’d come. A strange voice followed him. It was the oddest voice Mershayn had ever heard. It filled the hallway as though it was oozing out from the walls, down from the ceiling, up from the floor. It sank into Mershayn’s flesh like fish hooks. Soft and compelling, it spoke to the hooded man.
“Then the coup has begun,” the voice said. He sounded young, but his manner of speaking reminded Mershayn of his grandfather. “Sym is tragically lacking in patience. But one cannot expect too much from such a man.”
“Yes, my master,” the hooded man replied in a toneless voice.
“Still, it will serve. A few more weeks, and the nobles would have thrown that spineless boy from the royal balcony. Now there will be fighting. Go then. Convey my displeasure to Lord Sym and make him understand that I will not tolerate more of this recklessness. Tell him I do not make plans so that he might abandon them at a whim.”
“Yes, my master.”
“And allow him to know my mind concerning what must be done next.”
“Yes, my master.”
The door closed and the hooded figure turned. He walked up the stairway and disappeared into the darkness.
Silasa slowly withdrew her cold hand and turned a fierce look upon him. She pressed her long, white finger to her lips. She motioned him to stay, and she moved back to the door where they’d come from, rather than the hallway where the hooded man had left.
He started to follow, but she pointed a silent finger at him and gave one emphatic shake of her head. He froze. On those same silent feet, she crossed the distance to him. He stifled a gasp as she lifted him in her arms like a baby and took him through the door.
She set him down, closed the door. The sudden absence of the torchlight plunged the stairway into darkness. He couldn’t see her. He took a clumsy step backward, scuffing the rock step. He held his clammy palms in front of himself as if to ward her off, but she caught him, hands like steel tongs. Her cold lips brushed his ear.
“Not a sound.” She spoke so softly that he could barely hear her. “If you make a sound, we become the playthings of a monster. I can move faster than you can, and silently, so I will carry you until we are safe. Do not struggle. I will be quick.”
Without another word, she scooped him off his feet, turned and lunged up the stairwell as if she could fly.
20
Mershayn
Silasa opened the door and closed it behind them. She set Mershayn on his feet.
He backed a step away from her. “By the gods, what are you?” he managed to say, staring at her in the torchlight. She wasn’t human. She couldn’t be. No one was that strong.
The corners of her lips turned down.
“How can you simply pick me up as though I weigh nothing?” he said. “How can you leap ten steps at a time? Why are you not out of breath?”
“You are safe now. That is all that is important—”
“I believe I have a right to know.”
“Do you? And what gives you this right? That I opened the door to your cage, led you out of the dungeons? That I hid you from the guards? Or was it when I saved you from an undead threadweaver and carried you here? Which of my actions entitles you to an explanation of ‘what’ I am?”
“I—I am the Royal Arms Inspector for Teni’sia.” He fumbled with the words, trying to find some authority. “It is my responsibility to—”
“You are the bastard brother of a king who is losing his kingdom.”
“But you’re not human,” he blurted.
“And you are an uncouth ingrate,” she said sternly.
“I—I—” he stuttered. His heart was beating so fast. This had to be some kind of dream. He squinched his eyes shut and held up one hand. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, trying to gain some control of his whirling thoughts. “I apologize. Please... It is only that I...I am far afield here. Too many things have happened. I don’t understand what is going on.”
“If you will listen, I will tell you what you need to know. There isn’t much time. We are safe here, but only for the moment. Those guards we passed in the stairway were coming to kill you. By now, they have discovered your absence and are on their way to report to their master, and he will hasten his timetable.”
“Their master?”
“Grendis Sym is making his bid for the throne of Teni’sia. He has powerful allies, and he will succeed. If he finds you, he will kill you, and I have been asked to make sure that you live. You must flee.”
“Flee? And where is my brother?”
“Sym has sent assassins to deal with the king.”
“No!”
“Quiet,” she whispered harshly. “There is nothing you can do about that, but you must survive. There are many battles to this war. There will be other fields upon which to fight and you must choose yours better than you chose this one.”
“I didn’t choose anything,” he said.
“Exactly so. That must change, or you’ll lose more than your half-brother.”
“I have to get him out.”
“It is too late for that.”
“It’s never too late.” He ran toward the staircase at the far end of the hall.
“Mershayn, wait!”
He turned at the base of the staircase, feeling the waste of every second. “Come with me,” he beseeched her. “Please help me.”
“I have helped you as much as I dare.”
“Just once more, and I will ask nothing more of you.”
She shook her head. “I was instructed to lead you out. I was specifically told to do nothing more than that, even if you chose to go after your brother.”
“What? By whom?”
“Will you come?” she pressed.
“Not without Collus.”
“Mershayn—”
“Help me!”
“No.”
He turned and ran up the staircase, left the supernatural woman below in the flickering torchlight.
Rage drove him forward. The hallway extended into the darkness on his left and on his right. H
e stopped and looked both ways, thinking. He knew this place. He had been here before. The kitchens. He sprinted to the right. After a hundred paces, he opened a door on his left and ran down the next hallway, then opened the door at the end of it.
The heat of the room washed over him. Two women stood around a large pot upon an iron stove. A wide, walled fire pit dominated the center of the room. A stout man turned an entire spitted deer around and around. He stopped when Mershayn entered the room.
The two women stared at him.
“M’lord Mershayn,” one of them said hastily and ducked into a courtesy. The woman beside her quickly followed suit. The cook at the pit looked at them, looked at Mershayn, then dropped to a knee.
It suddenly occurred to Mershayn that he had no plan. If he rushed headlong into an assassination attempt, he might only add his body to the count. He needed an ally, but who could he trust? If he had been swept under the rug so easily, who would come to his aid? Certainly he could trust none of the nobles. The only ones he was certain would block Sym’s plot were either sick, dead, or had just discovered Mershayn having an affair with his wife.
He cursed himself again. He had made no friends here. A few times he had thrown the bones with the guardsmen, but any of them could be in league with Sym. He had caroused incognito in a few taverns down in the city below, but there was no help to be found there.
“M’lord,” the woman who had identified him said. “Is there aught we might do for ye?”
He realized then that he had been standing there for some time while they kept their obeisance.
“My apologies,” he said, waving a hand. “Please continue with your duties. I was merely lost in thought.” He jogged across the room and through the far door.
He knew where he was now, and he kept to the back ways, rising higher and higher through the castle. If he could have no allies, he must somehow obtain the element of surprise. In this, he had two advantages. First, he was free, and no one was likely to know that for the next several minutes. The dungeon guards who would find their fellows dead would certainly not be able to climb those stairs as fast as Silasa had. They were ten minutes away from reporting to Sym, at best. That meant Mershayn had at least fifteen minutes before Sym could mobilize anything against him. Second, he knew of the assassination attempt. It was happening right now, or very soon. Together, these two things might be enough.
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