CHAPTER EIGHT
AT DUNGEON’S HEART
I always imagined dungeons as cold places, with fetid water dripping on fungus-slimy walls. The dungeons of Timmuzz are not like that. The halls where I walked were of a delicate coral color, dry and warm, and well-lighted with rundal-oil lamps that cleanly scented the air. And though they were below ground, in the belly-soil of the island of Nyshphal, the corridors were wide and the cells as adequate as any cage can be.
I found Kreeg pacing his adequate room like a spear-maddened ghyre. I hadn’t needed to kill anyone to find him. That didn’t mean I hadn’t hurt a few. The dark robes of a Sevarian monk had served me well as a disguise. I’d entered the keep unopposed, and because the monks commonly minister to the prisoners I’d been able to surprise what few guards I’d encountered on my way into the gaol. Those guards were now bound and gagged and resting uncomfortably in various hiding places. I didn’t think they would soon be found, but still imagined that getting out of the dungeons would be tougher than getting in, even though I now had a set of keys dangling in one hand.
Kreeg’s glare was enough to fell a stugah when I opened his cell door and stepped through.
“I need no priest,” he growled. But when I pushed back my cowl and he saw my face, he rushed forward and bear-hugged me.
“I won’t have to kill the Emperor after all,” he crowed, squeezing me even harder.
“No you won’t, I said, gasping. “Seeing as how you are killing me for him.”
He blinked, then quickly released me and stepped back. “I am sorry, Ruenn,” he murmured.
I only laughed and slapped his shoulder. Then I handed him the weapons I’d taken for him—a short-sword and the four-foot ironwood stave that is sometimes used on recalcitrant prisoners. None of the guards I’d knocked out had worn armor big enough for the massive ex-slave, though I’d found a steel cuirass for myself that I wore beneath the robes.
As we turned toward the door of the cell, Kreeg stopped me again, with a hand on my arm.
“I am also sorry...Ruenn. That I was not there when they came to arrest you. That Vlih dog. Rhandh. It was a trap.”
I met his gaze. My eyes went hot. “I know,” I said grimly. “But Rhandh was only doing what he was ordered. Our betrayal was not his.”
Kreeg nodded. He had apologized to me—though truly there had been no need—and now his straight-furrow mind was already turning itself toward the next concern in his life.
“We get out. But how?”
“I have an idea. But first we fetch Diken Graye. And Valyan after. Graye is the best chance of finding my brother,” I added.
I had wondered if even Kreeg would protest the idea of taking along Diken Graye. But he trusted me and followed without comment as we exited his cell and turned down the corridor toward the central core of the dungeons. After all, I’d led him deeper into dungeons before and gotten him out. I prayed I would again.
The underground prisons of Timmuzz are shaped vaguely like a wagon wheel; the interrogation chambers where Diken Graye would be held were at the hub. With lamps growing fewer and the smell of the corridors growing steadily more rank, we reached those chambers in a few dhaurin (minutes). In a few more we found that which we sought.
Diken Graye sat alone in a stone cell, unharmed, apparently untouched. The key to his door of iron bars hung on the wall, and I had no suspicions of it being too easy until sudden torches flared up behind us. I had just reached to take the key, but now I stopped and turned, my skin grown clammy with sweat beneath my robes.
Immediately outside of Graye’s cell was a circular room about fifteen feet across. It contained a heavy, scarred table and several chairs. Three sets of steps led down to it. We had come down one set. Kuurus Jystral, brother to Rannon, had just come down another with a dozen of his personal guard before him. These wore black tunics with silver snake-and-lightning piping on the sleeves. A few carried torches; the rest bore crossbows that were locked and loaded. All of them held the bite of violence in their eyes.
I heard Diken Graye rise from his cot behind us but did not turn my gaze from Kuurus. Rannon’s younger brother was slighter than I, less than six feet tall and probably weighing no more than a hundred and eighty pounds. His hair hung longer than mine—past the shoulders in artificial curls—and was as glossy dark as his sister’s. His eyes were blue in a handsome face. There were those who called him “pretty,” though not where he could hear.
Seldom had Kuurus and I spoken. I did not think he liked me much, though I did not know why. Now he smirked with a curve of lips that were almost too generous to be those of a human male.
“Amazing,” he said. “My father is such a brilliant man but he did not think to look for you here. And my sister.... Well, my sister is blinded. ’Tis fortunate that I am not so easily beguiled.”
“Aye,” I said, smiling.
Kuurus frowned, wondering, perhaps, why I did not look afraid or angry, why I smiled. I did so because his words had told me much of interest, not least of which was that only he and his twelve men knew where we were.
I glanced at Kreeg. His sword was held in his left hand; in the right he idly spun the ironwood stave. My own blade twitched in my fist and I took a step forward and spread my arms.
“Kill me, Kuurus,” I said. “That’s the only way you’ll stop me.” I started walking toward him.
Muscles went tight in the arms of Kuurus’s men. Fingers quivered suddenly on crossbow triggers. Pupils dilated. Then Kuurus was shouting at his guards not to fire. He knew, as I knew, that it was not quite yet acceptable to shoot me down like a dog or a wurstid. He wanted to capture me. He needed to capture me.
“Free me!” Diken Graye was shouting from behind his bars. I had no time.
There came the putting away of crossbows, the drawing of swords. At dungeon’s heart would stand thirteen men against two. But the thirteen could not come at the two all at once. Kreeg took the left side of the room, I the right. The ex-slave kept the table between himself and the guards; I stalked forward openly.
The attack came. I kicked a chair into two of my foes, sent them down in a tangle, followed that with a blazing lunge that cut a man to the bone of his shoulder. His sword clattered to the floor as he fell back. The stench of blood shocked the room.
I heard Kreeg’s staff crack on flesh, heard an aborted scream. Then the mad heat took me. The anger had roiled in my belly ever since the word treason had been mentioned beside my name. I released it now.
A sword stabbed toward me. I slapped it aside with a bare hand against the flat of it, slashed my own blade down across the man’s face. He vented a shriek that spumed with crimson. I ducked another sword, spun and lashed out with a foot. Nyshphalians have never invented spurs but the heels of their boots are often adorned with spiked buckles that serve much the same purpose. My buckles acted as weapons now as my swinging leg ripped one man’s feet from under him in a spray of wet red. I came around with my sword whickering out to cut another man across the wrist, sending his weapon flying, making him back away in fear.
Kreeg wielded a vicious cudgel, keeping his short-sword as a defense and backup. He’d put two foes out of the fight, was engaged with two more. Others were blocked by the oaken dining board. One man jumped on top of the table near me, hoping to leap down behind us. I kicked the table’s claw-footed leg, jarred the man into a fall. He landed on hands and knees and I hammered him to blackness with the hilt of my sword.
Six of Kuurus’s men were out of the fight, in the space of moments, and neither Kreeg nor I had been touched. We’d killed none of them, for they were Rannon’s people and I still loved her, but they were no good to their prince now. I heard Kuurus screaming at his men to take us, his voice growing shriller as I skipped about, my sword flaming, parrying, riposting. I shouted at him.
“You’re next, Kuurus!”
A guard lu
nged at me, tripped over the body of his friend, and I cut him across the neck just deep enough to let him know how easily he could have been dead. The man dropped his weapon and grabbed for his throat. He rolled away from me and I shouted at Rannon’s brother again.
“That’s seven, Kuurus! How many more do you have?”
The prince panicked, forgetting that he needed to capture us, in terror now for his life. I saw it come over his face and cursed myself as a fool for pushing too hard.
“Kill them!” Kuurus shrieked. “Shoot them! Kill them!”
Two of his men backed away, reaching for their crossbows. It was my turn to enjoy fear. Kreeg was hard pressed by a massive fellow who hacked madly at his defenses. Another pair of enemies stood between me and the crossbowmen. I attacked those two, cutting left and right, driving my foes back with a sustained flurry.
It wasn’t going to be enough.
Already, the two disengaged guards had drawn their crossbows. I heard the mechanisms lock as they chambered their bolts, the sound like a rusted snarl.
“Watch out!” I shouted desperately at Kreeg, as I wished for a shield and raised my sword for one slim chance at blocking a flashing quarrel.
“Tell them to hold!” a voice boomed, cutting through the murk of violence. “Tell them to hold, Prince Kuurus. Or I will kill you.”
Everyone stilled. Fingers locked on crossbow triggers, or on the hilts of swords and staves. We all glanced up. Valyan stood there, the gleaming point of his rapier pressed against the pale throat of Kuurus Jystral.
“Do as he says,” Kuurus growled, his eyes seething...and scared.
“And have them put down their weapons,” I added.
Kuurus nodded, and the clack of steel on stone that followed made a pleasing music.
I met Valyan’s gaze. His skin looked sallow beneath its normal emerald tint, and he wore bandages like another set of clothes. But his eyes smoked with threat and the point of his rapier did not waver.
“Thanks, old friend,” I said.
“I came as soon as I heard what happened,” he replied. “They overlooked me in the infirmary and I came here, knowing how unlikely it was that you’d allow anything to thwart your plans.”
I only nodded as I bent and picked up a crossbow. Valyan understood me well.
Kreeg opened the cell for Diken Graye and we herded Kuurus and his dozen guards into the room as Graye left it. None of them were wounded so badly that their bleeding could not be patched with strips of torn clothing.
I slammed the cell door; Kreeg locked it. Kuurus grabbed the bars of the small window, stabbed me with blue eyes.
“You’ve destroyed yourself here,” he sneered.
I shrugged and turned away. Diken Graye armed himself with a sword and crossbow. I well remembered his skill with the latter and did not tell him nay. We might have need of his skills. He followed Kreeg and Valyan and myself as we left the interrogation chamber and started up the steps away from the dungeon.
Behind us, I heard Kuurus ranting. “Traitor! Bastard! I’ll kill you! You’re finished, Maclang!”
None of it hurt except the last.
“Rannon will hate you for this!” he shouted.
CHAPTER NINE
A MORNING OF WINGS
“Should we gag them, at least?” Diken Graye asked, speaking of Prince Kuurus and the men we’d left locked in Graye’s cell when we’d freed him. “Do you not worry that they’ll be heard?”
I said nothing as I strode on.
Graye continued with his questions. “So our escape will be swift? How? A flyer?”
“Those will be watched,” I snapped.
“Saddle birds then? How far is it to the stables?”
“We’re not going to the stables,” I said.
There was a building on the palace grounds, of course, where both land and air mounts were normally kept. But we weren’t going there.
I knew that Diken Graye must have glanced at Valyan and Kreeg then, seeking confirmation that the man they followed was mad. I didn’t think he would get what he wanted. The Emerald Llurn and the ex-fighting slave only rushed to keep up with me as we fled up the stairs from the dungeons into the keep proper.
Graye grabbed my arm and dragged me around. His face was flushed.
“Then tell me where we are going,” he demanded.
With both hands, I took him by the collar of the leather vest he wore and smashed him back against the stone wall, jarring him brutally.
“I don’t like you!” I snapped. “I dragged you free of that stinking cell to help me find my brother. Perhaps another of my family who might be with him. But I don’t like you. Never touch me again!”
Graye’s eyes lit with inner flares and I waited for him to lash out at me. I would have welcomed it. But after a moment he looked down and the tension broke in both of us—mine more slowly than his. I released him with a half shove and turned to hurry onward, my anger fading under the flying spurs of time.
At each corner of the main keep there wound a set of narrow granite stairs that reached from the wine cellars to the roof. Few ever used those steps to move from floor to floor, preferring the magnificent bone and glass staircases in the center of the castle. It was mostly guards who took the danker stairwells, or children at play on the steps as if they were city walls to storm. Now, we followed one of those musty ways, four tough men with honed blades ready.
Diken Graye had wondered why we did not head for the stables, where saddle birds could be found that might allow us a chance at freedom. What he didn’t know was that not all the Emperor’s birds were kept in the stables. On the roof of the keep there were half a dozen at least—of a species known as sabrun. These are slender, thin-boned, sleek, and over short distances they can outpace any other saddle bird in the sky, even the swift and savage kryll. Their weight carrying capacity is limited, but then, critical messages from the Emperor do not generally weigh much in the physical sense.
When I had first heard of the sabrun messenger corps it put me in mind of the pony express on my own world. There were the same devil-may-care relay riders, and the way stations where exhausted mounts could be replaced with fresh. The major difference, other than the medium through which the messages were carried, was that the sabrun corps served only the purposes of the emperor.
I well recalled how, in childhood, I would wish that I had lived in the time of the pony express. It seemed I was about to have that experience after all. In a way. We were going to steal four of the sabrun. I thought they might be overlooked by the searchers who hunted us.
We reached the roof. Deep overhead, the sky was still raven-dark, though a thick mist curled around us that was tinted with the promise of morning. I had not realized how much time had passed while we were in the dungeons. In a few dhaurin the city’s life would stir and our chances of escape would lessen.
We started quickly forward through the clinging fog, feeling the cool wet of it spiderweb our skins, and in a dozen paces the outbuilding that housed the sabrun loomed ghost-like from its surroundings. There were no sentries here. Not on this side of the building. We found them in front of the gridded door that faced the outside wall of the keep. There were three guards and two bird riders. The latter were marked by the variety of hooks and straps that decorated their clothing—for fastening them to their mounts amid the wild currents of the air.
All five men were armed, but they didn’t look ready for a fight. Even if they had been told of the traitor Ruenn’s escape, they clearly didn’t expect him to come here. I sent Valyan and Kreeg around the back way to come up behind them, then stepped out from the corner and strolled casually in their direction. I still wore my monkish robes, and the men straightened their backs when they saw me. One dropped the rolled jitter grass that he was smoking and ground it out under a heel. Religion is a powerful thing.
I stopped a
dozen feet from the men, just as they began to show agitation, and proclaimed in a loud voice: “The Lord God Sevarian’s servants require the use of your mounts, good warriors.”
“What?” a guard asked. They all blinked, then looked at each other in confusion.
“I want your birds,” I explained.
“But—But—Phrer,” one sputtered. “We cannot grant such a request.”
“You don’t understand,” I said, drawing a crossbow from under my robes. “I’m not asking.”
The five of them gaped, too stunned for the moment to even reach for a weapon. By the time they remembered steel, Valyan and Kreeg had stolen up and cocked their crossbows loudly just behind them.
“Don’t,” I snapped at the two who started to turn. And they all stood quietly while they were disarmed and bound against the wall.
In another few moments, with the mist pearling all around us in the coming dawn, we had opened the sabrun mews and led out the birds. They were balky about being awakened, and fluffed steel-gray feathers at us while glaring from violet eyes. But they were well trained and did not threaten to use their beaks or black talons against us.
Two of the birds were already saddled and Diken and Valyan saddled two more, moving swiftly in the vague grayness. Still, I chafed at the delay. It was barely a handful of minutes before the bell of the fifth dhaur would call the morning. Then the sun would pour over the horizon and the light would grow swiftly. The flyers of the day patrols would lift and we would certainly be seen. And even the swiftest sabrun cannot outrun a flyer.
Then the birds were ready and the last problem we had to solve was upon us; I had never ridden a saddle bird before. Graye and Valyan were experts. Even Kreeg had experience. It is something most Taleran warriors and nobles do at one time or another.
Valyan gave me three minutes of instruction. “There are four reins,” he explained. “Left, right. Up, down.”
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