by Lucia Ashta
When we got closer, Dolpheus slowed his pace. When we arrived at the tapestry, he stopped. From the back of the tapestry, the side no one was supposed to see, messy threads and knots arranged themselves into a pattern completely different than its front. I thought that the tapestry probably displayed the image of a landscape, but I couldn’t be certain.
I moved next to Dolpheus. Through the tapestry, we listened for a long minute, listening for any hint of a sound that would warn of danger.
“I don’t hear anything,” he whispered.
“Neither do I.” I pulled one side of the tapestry open just one digit. It was enough to see down the hall I’d used for my escape. “All clear,” I said.
Dolpheus did the same with his side of the tapestry. From there, he was able to see down the hallway that the two guards had been coming down when Aletox led my escape. This was the hall we would have to take to retrieve my sword. “Empty.”
Our eyes met. He was ready. I was ready. I pulled Kai’s sword out from my shirt, missing the unique sound that my sword made when I unsheathed it.
Dolpheus drew his sword from its sheath with that sound that I associated with battle. I found myself longing for it, for my own sword. Dolpheus was right. I had the opportunity to retrieve it, and the risks weren’t any greater than any we’d taken before.
We looked at each other one last time. I nodded. He nodded.
He retraced our steps just far enough to leave the torch leaning upright against the wall where its burning odor and smoke wouldn’t trail beneath the tapestry into the hallway we were about to enter, revealing the secret tunnel system. When he returned, he signaled his readiness another time. “In and out,” he said.
“In and out,” I agreed. I pulled the tapestry back, looked to all sides, and stepped out. Dolpheus was half a step behind me.
Eighteen
Ordinarily, prudence would have dictated that we wait in the tunnel, safely hidden behind the tapestry, until we heard the guards make their rounds of the prison area. With the information Kai had given us, we knew that two guards would walk down the hallway we’d just entered, back and forth, once every half hour or so. The cautious approach would have us wait until we heard the guards pass the first time, wait until they checked the prison area, and again wait until they left, down the long enclosed hallway. We would then know that we’d have approximately thirty minutes before they occupied the passage again.
But we didn’t have the time for prudence. (Frankly, we didn’t possess the temperament for it either.) Lila would almost certainly return before us if we took the most conservative—and safest—course. We could take any guards whose path we crossed, especially if we came upon them in numbers no greater than two. We wouldn’t have to kill them, just temporarily incapacitate them, so there was no need to hold back. Both Dolpheus and I were skilled at disabling our opponents without causing them serious injury. There were many ways to remove an adversary that impeded our goal.
As soon as Dolpheus entered the hallway, he pressed his back against mine, sword drawn in front of him as mine was. He faced the hall that led toward the prisons; I faced the long hallway that led away from them.
“Clear,” I whispered. He did the same. He turned, took his place by my side, and kept moving. Together, we took long, fast strides that were as silent as any men our size could make them. Our boots were well worn and reliable, their treads specially crafted with silence and agility in mind. Whenever I saw someone wearing boots like ours, I took note of him—once, it was a her—chances were high that he made clandestine operations of a serious nature his business. Only a skilled artisan could craft boots such as ours; no petty thief could afford them. Every detail of a person told me something about him, even though I always began my study of anyone at the eyes.
The hallway was even longer than I’d imagined it from Kai’s description. It was no wider than the height of an average man. But knowledge that we could be caught in it at any moment made the walls feel tight against us. The corridor drew out, seemingly endless rows of dark gray stone, looming ahead of us like the destination of a dream I could never quite reach even after a night of trying.
We picked up the pace, ears fully alert to any sound that might come from behind us. All was silent except for the padding of our footsteps.
“This hallway is fucking eternal,” Dolpheus muttered under his breath, so softly that I wouldn’t have understood his words if I hadn’t been thinking precisely the same thing.
Finally, however, we reached its end. We slowed. We took careful steps to the edge of the hallway. Dolpheus peeked around the side to the left, I did so to the right. Then our eyes met. We nodded. All clear.
We took a right, just as Kai had directed us, through a hall much wider and much shorter than the one from which we’d just emerged. I breathed easier even though we were no safer. We reached the door at the end of the hall quickly. It was a heavy wooden door, and it was closed.
I put my left hand on its handle, my right gripped my sword. I exchanged a look with Dolpheus. He kept watch behind us. I stared straight ahead. We waited long enough to listen for any sound that might be coming from the other side of this door. When there was nothing, I looked over my shoulder to him. He nodded.
I drew in a quick breath and pulled the door toward me only enough to look through it. I peered through the sliver the open door allowed but saw nothing but dimness. I pulled the door open farther. Still nothing. I drew the door open all the way, and Dolpheus followed me into another narrow corridor.
Two torches glowed from their sconces along the wall, but the hallway was otherwise empty. We tore through it, safe in the knowledge that the door at the end of the hall and the one Dolpheus had drawn closed behind us would muffle our progress.
In less than half a minute, we reached the other door. Again, we listened before opening. Just as before, we drew the door open in cracks, even more cautious this time, aware that this door was all that separated us from the guards’ quarters. At this time of night, we would almost certainly encounter some guards milling about their personal rooms. We’d been lucky so far, but it was unlikely that our luck would extend so far as to allow us to enter the guards’ quarters without being sighted.
I exchanged a significant look with Dolpheus. This was the time when we would have to fight. This was when speed and efficiency at putting down anyone that stood in our way was most important. This was where we would encounter the bulk of the guards. If any of them were able to squawk out an alarm before we could silence him, the entire entourage of guards would be roused to face us.
Yet complete silence filtered through the heavy wooden door. I pulled it open slowly, examining what awaited as I opened the door further. Finally, I pulled the door open enough for us to slip through it.
Once inside, the path was clear. All around I could feel the disconcerting stillness that clung uneasily to an area normally bustling with noise and activity. We stood in a wide open hall that felt entirely too empty. The hall was more of a room than a hall, a transition into the spaces that followed it. At the end of the room, another anonymous wooden door stood closed on the right. This would be the quarters of the captain of the guard. To the left, an open archway led to what should be the living quarters of the captain’s favored guards.
There was no conversation, no clinking of mugs, no scraping of chairs against the flagstones of the floor, no laughter, no snoring. None of the sounds of life carried from either end of the room. Nothing echoed out to where we stood. I gave Dolpheus a sidelong look. He looked as befuddled as I was.
I advanced toward the captain’s office. I put my ear to the door. The captain could still be in there, reading quietly, or doing something less honorable than reading, something clandestine. But only more silence filled an ear that didn’t expect it.
Another time, I placed my left hand on a door handle and pulled it open in small increments. Once again, the way was clear. I slipped through the door and Dolpheus followed, closing t
he door behind him without contributing sound to the density of silence that enveloped us.
Now was the time for even more speed of action. Here was where we were at our most vulnerable. This was where the danger was greatest. If someone were to find us here, we’d be trapped, forced to fight to reopen the path through which we’d come.
Right away, I spotted my sword and my two knives. They were laying across the captain’s desk as if he’d spread them out for me, knowing I was coming to claim them, and he wanted to make the process expedient. Suspicion detonated within me and rang as loudly as a bell. This was too easy. Things that were too easy made me very wary. Life was never this easy. It never had been, in all of my four hundred and forty three years of life on Planet Origins.
I didn’t pause to share my concern with Dolpheus. He’d be feeling it too. He stood watch at the door, right next to it, listening for any indication that the ease of our entry had come to an end. His hand clamped around the hilt of his sword. He held his body in the deceptively relaxed stance of a superior warrior.
I placed Kai’s sword on the desk, next to mine, and reached for my belt, conveniently right next to my weapons. I buckled it on in seconds, loaded my knives into their sheaths, slid Kai’s sword into the sheath tailored for my sword—it fit, though not well—and I took my sword into my hand. It felt good. I was surprised at how relieved I was to have it back in my possession.
I didn’t bother to look around the room. I had what we’d come for. Immediately, I rejoined Dolpheus, who pulled the door open right away. There had been no indications that the tranquility of the room beyond the door had changed. We raced through the open vestibule, paused just moments at the door at its end before going through it. We nearly ran through the closed, narrow hallway. We passed through the door at its end, into the wide hall. It, too, was clear. We continued at a brisk pace, stopped only to peer into the long, narrow corridor that led to the prisons before we turned left into it.
We walked down the long, dim, eternal corridor as fast as two men could while trying to be quiet. The narrow space between its walls was stifling. I longed to reach its end. Soon enough, faster than on our way in, we did reach the end. The tapestry was indeed of a landscape though I didn’t pause to examine which idyllic scenery it portrayed. I pulled the heavy weaving to the side, flagged Dolpheus inside it ahead of me. He didn’t take the time he normally would have to protest going before me. I ducked beneath the tapestry a moment later and stopped to breathe only once the tapestry hung limply behind us, as dead and quiet as the rest of the palace had been.
Not even sounds of the other prisoners, whom I’d heard when I was confined to my cell, had reached us. Nothing. As if the entire palace were filled with the dead or their ghosts, here far below the walls of glass that made the royal palace seem as if it floated. These were the palace’s heavy bulwarks. This was the gritty part of the palace, where the courtiers never visited, unless they found themselves the unfortunate victims of turning tides or impulsive action—theirs or those of others—as I had.
Immediately, I moved to the torch Dolpheus left against the wall and led the way out of there. We still had a long way to go back through the tunnel.
Dolpheus was right behind me. “That was too easy,” he said, once we’d put the tapestry far enough behind us that our voices couldn’t carry through its fabric.
“Far too easy,” I agreed. Even though everything we’d seen and heard suggested our safety, we moved through the tunnel carved out of the earth as fast as we could, as if the threat of danger were racing us down its length. “I don’t feel right about it.”
“Neither do I. Where was everybody? How could that have been so simple? No guards on duty anywhere? No guards off duty anywhere either, not even in their living quarters?” He shook his head behind me. “Something is off. That can’t be.”
“I know.” I considered something that had been nagging me the whole time we’d been on this mission. “Do you think it could be a trap? Though I can’t imagine how.”
“I thought of that. But if it were a trap, wouldn’t they have sprung it when we were in the captain’s office? We were cornered then. That would have been the best time to attempt to take us down.”
I noted that Dolpheus said that they would have attempted to take us down, not that they would have succeeded. His confidence was warranted. We had a decent chance of escaping the captain’s office, even if the whole of the guard had come at us while we were cornered in there. We were that good, and he knew it. His confidence was borne from a lifetime of dedication, a dedication that had begun when we were just boys.
“Could it still be a trap? Could we be walking into one now? We can’t be certain that we can trust Lila or Kai,” I said.
“I guess we could, but it would be just as easy to try to catch us in the palace, not at the end of the tunnel. And you said that no one but Kai knows of the tunnels. Although I imagine there must be others that do.”
“But none of the other guards seemed to. When I escaped, only Kai chased me into the tunnel, and he didn’t tell anyone where he was going. He has as great an interest in keeping the tunnels private as we.”
Even though the tunnel was long, we’d probably already traversed a quarter of it. Still, there were no signs of anyone in our pursuit. At this rate, we’d likely return before Lila.
Lila. “Wait. Do you think I could’ve done the mind merge with the King’s memories without the crystalline particle circuitry cables or whatever they’re called? Kind of like you did when you absorbed Lord Dingaling’s body imagery as your own? Could I not have accessed the King’s memories through that space of stillness, just as you accessed Dingaling’s body image? I didn’t think of it until now.”
“You’re suggesting that Lila used the necessity of the mind merge cables as a diversion for some nefarious purpose of her own?”
“Yeah. What do you think?”
“Hmmm. I think she might be capable of it. Maybe. But she’s had other opportunities to turn on us, and she didn’t. When she escaped the fishing cabin and came to find me at the palace, she could have gone anywhere else, but she didn’t.”
“She might have been coming to the palace to turn us in instead of to find you.”
“Hunh. I guess she could have. Maybe. Though when we ran into each other, she seemed like she’d genuinely been looking for me. I believed her.” Dolpheus was a good judge of character. His impression of Lila’s reactions held value.
“She hasn’t really given me reason to doubt her lately, other than her previous obvious instability and the fact that she began as our captive. She could easily resent us for that.”
“But I don’t think she does.” Dolpheus was right on my heels, both of us anxious to put an end to this mission and its accompanying unease. “I think she has the mentality that the ends justify the means. I think she would’ve done the same to us if roles were reversed; she might’ve done worse.”
“She’s a she-dragon. I don’t trust she-dragons, on principle.”
“But it looks like we have no better choice than to trust her. The current circumstances are somewhat… limiting.”
“She’s the only one that can access the palace right now to get the mind merge cables,” I said. “Assuming that we actually need them.”
“Right. But if we do, she’s the only way to get to Ilara.”
I sighed. “Right.” I wasn’t used to having to trust people. The trust Dolpheus and I shared had taken many years to build, its foundation was as solid as the palace’s. Even more solid, actually, since we were walking through a tunnel burrowed into the palace’s base. “And I have to trust this she-dragon in a mind merge, where I’m sure she could do me harm if she wanted to.”
“Shit. I hadn’t thought of that. A mind merge is serious business.”
“It is.” I remembered how intense it had been when I did it with the King. It had taken me a long time to recover from it. I was probably still recovering from it since I hadn’t had th
e chance to take it easy since then. “I hope I won’t be as weakened from the process as I was last time.”
“I hope so too,” my friend said, with compassion. “Maybe it’ll be easier this time since you’ll be the one probing into someone else’s memories, instead of your own mind being probed. And there might be some kind of difference with going into another person’s memories independently of his brain. You’ll be exploring the contents of one of those vials, not the King’s actual mind.”
“How sinister did Lila’s kit of darkness look? Jeesh. When she pulled it out.”
“Oh, I know. It was creepy. Who knows what she has in there? Now that I think about it,” Dolpheus continued, “better that we get on her good side. I wouldn’t want to become the contents of one of those black vials.”
“And this is the woman to whom I have to entrust my brain, the brain I’ll still need after she’s through with me?”
“Yeah… Fuckadoo.”
I couldn’t have said it better. I was either fucked, or I wasn’t. I had little say in the matter, far too little given that my life, and Ilara’s, depended on my safety.
Halfway through the tunnel now, I kept walking just as fast, anxious to find out which of the two alternatives it would be. After the mind merge, perhaps control of my fate would finally be restored to me. I was done having to put my life in the hands of those that might not deserve it or might not treat it with the respect that my life—and most life—deserved.
Would I discover the secret to my beloved’s whereabouts, somewhere in this vast universe? Or would Lila damage my mind and force me to remain trapped within it forever, doomed to travel a warped maze from which there was no exit before the relief of death?
This endless day would provide me with the answer. I hastened to find out which it would be.