by Guy Antibes
“The Bloodstone is lost,” Shiro said.
Lotto shook his head. “Hidden, but not lost.” He didn’t know if Sally or Unca possessed it at the moment. “I imagine that the Emperor carries the Purestone?”
“Purestone, no longer. It became the Darkstone at the time of the cursing of Ayrtan. Because of that we all call him the Dark Lord.”
Lotto thought of Daryaku as the Dark Lord for a different reason. “We can speak of this later. You will help me?”
Shiro nodded with his hands placed just so on his knees. His actions seemed measured and formal. The Ropponi culture was built on formalities, so he had read.
“You know my goal was to disable the Ropponi wizards.”
“No need. The Happlyans have treated my people as offal. We will take care of Happly’s wizards and then the rest of the army camped outside of the city. My forces are mostly comprised of sorcerers, but there are some without power. All of them are proficient with military weapons.”
Lotto knew the feeling of demeaning treatment, thinking of the traitor, Lifton. “Then I intend on entering Happly Keep from the east and make my way to a building that adjoins the castle. I have a spell that will turn mortar into sand so we can silently get into the keep and essentially go through stone walls, a brick at a time.”
“Good. I don’t know of such a soundless spell. I would probably go crash! Boom!” Shiro clapped his hands together and laughed with his entire face. His Bessethian was somewhat limited, but Lotto had warmed up to the man. He seemed to be older than Lotto, but not nearly as old as Lessa or Mander. He had detected the sadness in his self-imposed exile and it came through strongly while their minds were linked, but he could trust him.
“Then go back. When our army attacks, disable the Happlyan soldiers. Can you heat up their weapons?”
Shiro chuckled. “We have our own ways. Don’t worry. Just don’t have your men shoot arrows at us. We will be dressed as I am. Red robes and uniform jackets for my wizards. We call ourselves the Red Rose.” He got to his feet and walked into the woods, leaving Lotto sitting on the ground wondering if he dreamed it all up, but the fire remained glowing and he knew that Shiro had just significantly increased his chances of success.
Lotto crept back to the man on watch and told him that he had returned. “Sorry, it took longer than I thought.”
The watchman just laughed and waved Lotto through.
In the morning, he sent a message to Lessa describing his meeting with Shiro. Lotto’s biggest worry had just been eliminated. Now he could concentrate on saving the princess. Tomorrow night he’d lie in a pool of his own blood, or he’d be pummeled with Restella’s angry thoughts. Feeling her frustration with him would be a blessed event. Then the both of them would speed north to Beckondale to expose the traitors.
~~~
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
~
THE GUARD THREW IN A BLANKET as night darkened the cell. No lights for her. She wished she had a shred of Fessano’s magical power. She always enjoyed watching Fessano lighting candles with his spells when she was a girl. Before deciding to spend the darkness sleeping, she checked on Lotto. The link shouted out his southern location. Lotto closed in with his men! She finally held out some hope. If the man, Shiro, spoke the truth and hadn’t visited her as a taunt from the Duke of Happly, then she might find a way out of this mess.
A different guard roused her from her sleep in the morning and set a tray in front of her and threw a dress on the floor. “Put this on. The duke will receive you this evening.”
The duke! Restella spit towards the closing door. She looked up at the window and wondered how awful the day would be. The duke had often referred to her as his concubine on their way to Happly Keep. She had just discounted the talk as boasting, but she looked at the deep red silk dress that sat in a wad next to her. The boasts might not be so idle, after all.
She shivered in the dim cell and drew the blanket around her. The only hope lay in Lotto, but a siege to take Happly Keep could take weeks, even if Lessa had found Lotto. What help could they expect from the Ropponi wizards? Shiro, the mysterious? She lifted her chin trying to concentrate on confidence, but it began to quiver and she began to weep.
~
Since Happly Keep had no city walls, but was surrounded by a maze of houses and shops. Lotto looked at his copy of the map, memorizing the way to the street where he would find his entryway into the castle. He traced the route that Lessa would take. There were towers spaced on all of the main streets, but, if the map had been accurately drawn, and the Gensler rangers swore that they had done a masterful job, then they found a path avoiding the towers by taking a spiraling route on four parallel paths from the south to the north. Lotto could only hope that no one had designed the streets to create a trap. The Gensler scouts and Lotto intended to invade the keep and rescue Restella before Lessa attacked.
He discounted Shiro’s help in the actual fighting but he had to count on him to neutralize the other battle wizards. If not, many would die this evening while they invaded the city at sunset.
Lotto and Morio walked into the city, not furtively creeping from alley to doorway, but conversing like the two friends they were. The other four, also in pairs came in through different entry points. Clearly, no one guarded this side of the city. To the north, the few soldiers remaining of the Valetan army sat behind a hastily made stockade surrounded by the camp of the Happlyan army. Such an oversight seemed like feckless arrogance. Silver should know better, but then Lotto had no idea who made the decisions in this mad war.
A few vendors had just set up their carts to sell their wares, early in the morning in near-empty marketplaces. A woman sold the sausages and bread that Lotto and Morio ate, paid for with Gensleran coinage. The chain mail peeking from their shirts and Lotto’s staff should have been enough to show that these men were part of the army. Lessa told him that most of Happly’s army dressed no better than they did now. Lotto thought of the mercenaries he had seen in Heartwell’s inn.
Morio had no problem acting the part of a bravo. Lotto cringed from time to time as they passed cowed city-dwellers. While moving closer to the city center, they avoided the towers, walking through the myriad alleys and short narrow streets. A group of men dressed like themselves walked across a larger street in front of them.
“You there!” one of them said from fifty feet away. Lotto gripped his battle staff and tensed up.
Another cried out, “What have you found?”
Morio laughed and took another bite of his sausage. “An open vendor five or six streets that way,” he said with his mouth full, holding up his food. Lotto followed suit and tried to grin. It wasn’t very easy under the circumstances.
“Thanks!” a few of them said as they changed direction and walked right past them going back the way Lotto and Morio had come.
Lotto noticed the way they were dressed and smiled. “We look just like them.”
Morio leaned over and sniffed at Lotto. “Smell like them, too!” Both of them laughed partly for effect and partly because the encounter had been so absurd.
They took their time, just as they planned, and they soon walked the street of houses built next to the castle wall. These had no rear yards since the owners used the keep’s wall itself as the back part of their homes.
“Morio!” The words were spoken softly from within an alley. Pillo, Nark, Anton and Creeden leaned against either side of the alley walls.
“Did you find a likely house?” Lotto said.
“Two blocks down. There is a shuttered bakery shop. The baker is probably on the other side of town baking bread for the army.”
Lotto and Morio continued on and found the bakery. They entered a side yard, littered with supplies and used as a trade entrance. Lotto fiddled with the lock and soon let the other five inside. Now to find the back. A few climbed the stairs to the third floor attic and Lotto went by himself into the basement. They had a choice of four walls.
“I say do
the bottom,” Creeden said as they found some very stale bread, but used it along with a couple bottles of wine that Lotto discovered in the basement to eat. It looked like the bakery hadn’t been used in a number of days. The fires were out in the ovens.
“How do you make a wall?” Morio said.
“You build a base…” Creeden’s squeezed his eyes shut as he realized he gave the wrong answer. “The bottom of the wall is likelier to be a lot thicker.”
Morio grabbed Creeden’s ear and pulled. “Right you are.”
Lotto smiled and headed up the attic. “You’ll have to take the stones away. We might fill up this room and make the floor collapse,” he said as he spread his hands on the wall.
Mortar flowed down like water, pooling at Lotto’s feet. He tried to work on one stone at a time, so they wouldn’t deal with broken toes from rocks falling out of the wall.
The morning turned into afternoon and by the time Lessa would be ready to invade, Lotto could see threads of light through the last little bit of the tunnel he had made, now looking at a thin wall of dressed light stone. That kind of facing would only be used in habitable spaces, so at least they had access and then he began to expand vertically to find a floor or ceiling.
The height of the wall was waist high, but Lotto opened up the little cavern so they wouldn’t have to crawl through. The castle wall had been eight feet thick. Blocks of stone sat on all four levels of the bakery. The time had just about come to invade the castle.
When they entered, they would head down to the dungeons. Shiro’s directions were sketchy at best. The Ropponi wizards had been confined to the eastern area, but Shiro had said that Restella’s cell had been in the southeast. Hopefully they’d be above it.
“Are you ready?” The men’s faces no longer held mirth as they checked their weapons. Lotto closed his fist around the battle staff and finished the last destruction of mortar. He braced his back on the wall and pushed. Stone bricks tumbled on the wooden floor and Lotto jumped into a library filled with books. Large half-round windows ten feet above them provided natural illumination. The others climbed up into the uninhabited room.
“Throw the stones back in and move one of the bookshelves in front. We may need to keep that hole for an escape route,” Lotto said and while the scouts covered up their work, Lotto looked frantically for plans to the inside of the castle. He walked around the corner of shelving and saw diamond shaped shelves, hopefully holding rolled up maps.
Nark and he began to go through them when he poked Lotto in the ribs. “Here.” Nark held a roll of maps. He flipped through them showing the plans of the castle floor by floor from the bottom to the top.
Lotto called the men over. “What can we do with this?”
They all gazed down at the maps. Lotto found where Shiro had described his path to Restella’s cell. It matched up. He went through the maps. Just down the corridor outside of the keep’s library, where they stood, a small circular stairway wound up and down to all the levels. They could navigate through the castle without taking a step on the three major staircases.
“Where are the duke’s quarters?” Morio asked.
Pillo flipped the pages. “Up one level and to the north.” They were on the east side of the keep and Lotto frantically memorized different routes he could take. He’d make sure the Duke would pay once he found Restella.
“Can we do anything to the gate?” Morio said as they concentrated on the other side of the keep.
“Two of us need to go there first,” Lotto said. “If we can get unimpeded access to this room,” Lotto pointed to a room above the gates, “where the chains go over the gears, and jam them, then nothing will be able to stop Lessa.”
“Then I’ll take Anton and Creeden and rescue Restella,” Morio said. Lotto was about to contradict his friend and then he remembered the link. In the haste of the escape, he couldn’t risk touching her.
“Let’s see if she’s there.” The link activated immediately. Restella was… Lotto looked down at the map. “She’s in the duke’s quarters. We have to get her now! Morio, do what you can at the gate. Pillo come with me.”
Lotto grabbed his battle staff and opened the door to the corridor. A few guards were casually talking as they ambled towards the circular staircase and Lotto ducked back in.
“There are two guards about at the staircase. Help us attack them, and then get to the gate.” He looked at the windows and saw a darkening sky. “We have no time. Lessa might now be running throught the city’s streets.”
He grabbed Pillo’s shirt as they exited the library. Lotto refused to turn around, even after the guards ran up to challenge him. Pillo turned after they heard the sounds of a scuffle and then clapped his hands together. “My brothers do such nice work.” He grinned.
Lotto didn’t feel like grinning. He could only think of one reason why Restella now stood in the duke’s chambers.
~~~
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
~
THE WANING AFTERNOON SUN BEGAN TO SHINE in her window. Restella figured on one more hour of daylight. The guard had said ‘evening’. They would come for her soon. She paced in the room and exercised as well as she could with her hands bound. Perhaps she could fight the man off, but sorely missed the Moonstone sword at her waist. She looked for anything that could be a weapon in her cell and found nothing of use, unless a short straw shaft would do anything.
A guard came and cut the bonds at her wrists so she could put the dress on. The stupid man stood at the door leering at her. She went into a corner out of his sight and changed clothes. A fabric belt cinched up the front, so she tucked a few long pieces of the thickest straw into the belt. What could she do with something not quite as stiff as a stick? Her makeshift weapons didn’t give her any additional confidence, but they might be useful. She wondered where Lotto might be and tapped into the link. He was above her somewhere, maybe even in the castle or close by. She couldn’t tell, but having him close fueled her hope.
Sitting on the stone bench, she fidgeted with her hands and wondered what she could have done differently. The only thing she discovered was how frustrated she could become. Silver had positioned her this way and that way. His guidance had helped her become a credible commander, and she still felt that she possessed leadership skills, but her two biggest failures were at his hand and that is where she had failed to understand that she had to make her own decisions and not rely on blind faith alone.
She shook her head, discounting that thought. Blind faith gave one hope and courage when there might be no other source and every decision carried risk and the threat of failure. She had never thought of the risk of poor advice and she vowed never to… what was she thinking? Her death might await her in the duke’s chambers. She faced torture, perhaps with Silver to look on, gloating about her fecklessness.
She didn’t fear death, but the emotions of her perilous position began to overcome her and unbidden tears began again and dripped on the dark red silk. She couldn’t rely on Lotto to be her strength. She’d have to rely on her own, as she always had done.
The door opened and two guards entered. One carried black silken cords. “I see that we didn’t have to dress you. Our misfortune.” The other guard sighed and they both laughed at the taunt. “One for your wrists and another for your ankles,”
The guard bent over and hobbled her tying her ankles about a foot and a half apart. The wrists were bound tightly together. The man tied admirable knots, Restella admitted. They yanked her outside into the corridor and one led while the other followed.
Castle-dwellers stared as the tiny procession made their way through the keep. The sun’s final rays lit up their path, casting ominous shadows along the keep’s cold stone floors. Not quite evening, Restella thought, as she tried to blank her mind. Up they went until they were on the third level above the castle’s ground floor. Silver stood outside of a door. Lotto was somewhere back the way she came, but she couldn’t pinpoint where. Could he be in the keep?
“So it’s time for a meeting with the duke. He’ll hardly talk strategy,” Silver said. Restella looked into his eyes and didn’t see the gloating she expected, but refused to respond. She merely looked the other way.
“The duke commanded me to stand guard. He thinks it’s an honor, but I think it’s a punishment. I didn’t want you to end up this way,” Silver said.
“Is that an apology? If it is, you’re a little late.” Restella said, her face still turned away and then she thought of her strength and looked at Silver. “Thank you for helping me at the beginning. It’s too bad your tutoring comes at such a high price to me.” She felt anger overtake her and she wanted to say more, but the door opened.
“My little sweetness,” Duke Happly said, holding her chin. “Say goodbye to your old friend. You won’t be the same woman that leaves my chamber.” He yanked on the bindings and pulled her into his chambers. She couldn’t gather her feet underneath her and she fell to the floor. “Before I subjugate your father, I will subjugate your father’s daughter.”
Restella wanted to run the man through. Here was all of the gloating malevolence she had thought Silver might have done in front of her. The duke, powerfully built, still stood shorter than Restella. She rose from the floor and put her hands to her belt.
“I have the Moonstone.” The duke looked on a bench by the window where the sword still lay in its scabbard. “I’m sure you would like to feel it in your hands, but that won’t do for now. There are other things I want to touch.”
She had no difficulty following what the duke meant. He came closer and put his hands on her shoulders. She grabbed two straws and jammed them into the duke’s nostrils. Blood came out along with the straws as the man actually whimpered in pain. Restella stood resolute, but the duke wound his right shoulder back and slammed his fist into her own nose before she could dodge the blow. Her face exploded with pain and she shouted out Lotto’s name, surprising herself despite it all, for the brief moment before blackness came.