Gil scrambled to her feet and ran to gather Tir from where he huddled, shrieking, by the wall. He appeared to be unhurt. Then a wild-haired madwoman with blood trickling from her cut lip tore him from Gil's arms and crumpled slowly to the floor, clutching him to her breast.
'Aide,' Gil whispered, putting her arms about the girl, 'he's okay, he's fine. Are you all right?'
The dark, tangled head nodded, and somebody grabbed Gil roughly by the arm. 'What is it?' Alwir demanded, his face drained of blood. Behind him, his troopers came milling into the corridor, not all of them dressed, but all of them armed. Stiarth was there, the smell of woman still on him, hurriedly wrapping himself in a night robe, his dignity much impaired.
'Snelgrin,' Gil said shortly. 'He's mad.'
'Who?' the Imperial Nephew demanded.
'The man who was outside that night has gone mad,' Gil explained breathlessly, as Alwir went to his knees to gather his sobbing sister into his arms. He made no attempt to lift her, only held her as she clung to him in storms of hysterics.
'But why?'
'Because...' Gil began, and stopped, her mind leaping to other things. Scarcely aware that she spoke aloud, she said, 'He's gone to open the gates.'
'What?'
But she had turned and was fleeing down the black corridors like a madwoman.
How well does Snelgrin know the ways of the Keep? she wondered, dodging blindly through the tangled mazes that weeks of investigation had made as familiar to her as the freeways of home. Will he risk cutting through the Aisle to save time? Will Melantrys be able to stop him at the gate? How mad is Snelgrin? Is he ahead of me, she wondered, or behind me now?
There was no time to think. She ducked through an empty cell that she knew had a ladder down to the Aisle, heedless of her horror of heights or her knowledge that the wood of the thing was several hundred years old and crumbling with dry rot. It's the closest, she told herself grimly, and the most you can do is break your leg on the floor.
The wood crunched faintly in her grip, and the ladder swayed drunkenly under her weight. The Aisle was a void of air around and below her, through which she could faintly hear voices calling, feet running, and the thin, distant cries of a terrified child. Training had improved her reflexes; when the rung cracked under her foot, she automatically jumped clear, landing lightly and turning, listening to the darkness.
No footfalls. No panic flight. Torches burned by the gates, but there was no sign of the captain of the watch. Had she run to join the hunt? Gil wondered. God help us, she'd be right to do so. The idea of a homicidal madman wandering the labyrinths of the Keep was almost as terrifying as the thought of the Dark breeding there. If he went up instead of down, he could live for years on the fifth level without anyone seeing him at all.
Except his victims, Gil thought.
Yet she was certain he had not gone up. From where she stood now by the Church doors, she could see the gates, tiny and infinitely distant in their flickering halo of torchlight. Not quite knowing why, she broke into a run again.
She was halfway up the Aisle when she saw him. He must have learned the mazes of the Keep well, for he slipped from a doorway to the right of the gates, his face still gouted and sticky with his wounds. She could see that he still had his hatchet and now carried a heavy axe as well. Crouching like an animal, he twisted the locking rings and pulled on the inner doors. They opened easily on their soundless hinges. He pushed them fully wide, shoved something under the right-hand door, and swung the axe. Metal clanged on metal.
My God, he's wedging it open!
Gil shouted, an incoherent animal sound of fury, and threw herself those last hundred feet.
Snelgrin looked up, his body still bent. Sparks flew from the iron as he drove the last few blows at the wedge. Gil had a confused vision of his face, the expression all the more terrifying because of its oddness, as if a being without facial muscles were trying to counterfeit expression. Drool slobbered from the slack mouth. The man uttered a wheezing grunt and turned to plunge back into the pitch-darkness of the gate tunnel moments before Gil reached him.
Can it see in the dark? she wondered as she sprinted up the steps and hurled
herself into the darkness at his heels. But with the inner gate wedged open, there was time for neither speculation nor delay.
She knew where the locking rings were on the outer gates, and her hands grabbed flesh there. She'd felt his strength before, and now in the utter blackness it was terrifying, overwhelming. Hands ripped at her, pushing and tearing; she felt the axe scrape her leg as she scrambled to catch hold of his arms and body. She was yelling, shouting wildly in the darkness, praying the other Guards would show up before she was overpowered. The heavy body thrashed against hers, breath rasping hoarsely in her ears, the stink of his unwashed jerkin filling her nostrils. For a moment, they were locked in unequal combat; then she felt herself falling; the breath was driven from her, and an avalanche of flaming stars seemed to roar before her eyes. As if those blinding constellations actually gave light, she could see Snelgrin's face twitching, piglike, above her own, the eyes popping with surprise. There was an arrow driven through his Adam's apple. He choked, pawed at it, and made soundless gobbling motions, sweat gleaming on his face. He staggered a step or two to maul at the locking mechanisms of the shut outer gates, and another arrow appeared as if by magic through his temple as he turned his head.
Ten points for somebody, Gil thought and fainted.
Everyone in the Keep seemed to be around her when she came to. The roaring of voices was like the sea in a narrow place, pouring through the bare bones of her aching skull. The torchlight was blinding. She shut her eyes again and tried to turn her face away.
A wet towel was laid over her forehead. Annoyed, Gil tried to strike it aside, and a bony hand grasped her wrist. 'Easy, child,' the paper-dry voice of Bishop Govannin whispered. Gil tried to rise, rolled over, and promptly vomited. The hard hands caught her shoulders and steadied her without a word.
'What happened?' Gil asked when she finally could speak. Her head felt light, her body ached. Her face, she found, was covered with the scratches from Snelgrin's fingernails where he'd clawed her. She hadn't even felt that during the fight.
'Snelgrin is dead.' The skeletal fingers pushed aside the clammy straggle of hair from Gil's forehead. 'As we all would be by this time, had you not followed him.'
Beyond the Bishop's grave, narrow face, Maia of Thran swam into being in the torchlight, his longbow still strung in his crippled hand. 'Snel vanished through the gates just as I emerged from the Church,' he said. 'I was afraid I would not get in range in time.'
'Yeah, so was I. ' Gil looked around. It wasn't everyone in the Keep, just most of them, who crowded around her. All the watches of the Guards were there, it seemed, with most of the Red Monks, Alwir's whole private army, and most of Maia's. Melantrys' face was cut, and a lump the size of a walnut was forming on her left temple. Stiarth of Alketch now wore a kind of flowered sarong, and Alwir had his velvet cloak over his nightshirt, looking rather crumpled and human in his bare feet with their well-kept toenails. And apparently three-quarters of the men, women, and children of the Keep had all turned out in nightshirts if they had them and scantly draped in bedding if they didn't. Gil saw Tad, Bendle Stooft's rotund widow, and
Winna with her yellow hair hanging in plaits over her back. And all were talking.
Janus came back from the gate. Caldern and Bok the carpenter were still trying to hammer the wedge free with a counterwedge driven in from the other side. Snelgrin's body had been hauled out of the passage. His face lay where the torchlight could fall on it, but its expression was nothing human. Gil turned away, feeling she would be sick again.