“Cease whining, you brainless, spineless worm!” Pendral shouted. “Spare my men, would you? Why, pray? I have hundreds more! No . . .” He pointed a pudgy finger, like a be-jeweled sausage, at the cowering man. “Admit it—thoughts of your men were farthest from your mind. It was your own skin you were considering. You were afraid to go near the Mage-folk haunts, so you stood by and let that accursed whoreson of a thief take my jewels and lose them in the bowels of the earth!” By now Pendral was positively screaming with rage. Veins stood out on his neck and forehead. His eyes bulged and a shower of spittle sprayed from his lips into the face of the quaking Commander.
Abruptly, the High Lord fell ominously silent. Rasvald felt his guts loosen as Pendral turned his bloodshot gaze on him. “You,” he said with deadly softness.
“You were with this pile of ordure, were you not, when he lost the thief?”
The Coadjutant’s tongue fused to the roof of his mouth. He prayed the floor would open up and swallow him—any fate was belter than encountering Lord Pendral in his wrath.
“Well?” the High Lord barked. “Have you lost your wits, or just your tongue?—If you don’t wish to use it, I will have it cut out for you.”
Rasvald gulped. “Lord, I—yes, I was with the Commander when he called off the dogs. But it wasn’t my idea, my Lord. I spoke out against it. I told him it was stupid ...”
The Guard-Commander drew in his breath in a sharp gasp at such barefaced treachery. “Why, you backstabbing, lying bastard!” he shouted. “It’s not true, he never . ..”
“It makes no difference.” Pendral spoke loudly enough to drown the man’s protests. “You,” he pointed at Rasvald. “As of now, you’re promoted to Guard-Commander. Be silent,” he cut off the former Coadjutant’s babbled attempt at thanks. “I’ll tell you when you can speak. These are your orders.”
He began to tick off points on his fingers. “First, you will nominate a new second-in-command to take charge of a house-to-house search of the entire city. Second, take this piece of trash outside and kill him. Yourself.”
The Guard-Commander threw himself to the polished floor. “Mercy, Lord—mercy!” he wailed.
“Guards!” The High Lord snapped his fingers and two burly figures left their post by the door. One of them seized the former Commander from behind, while the other hit him several times in the face and the belly. Without a word, they dragged him away, choking and dripping blood from his nose and mouth.—Pendral sighed. “I keep telling them and telling them not to get blood on my floor,” he muttered peevishly, “but do they ever listen? Now, where was I?”
His eyes, like two saw-edged daggers, impaled Rasvald once more. “Oh yes. Once you’ve finished with the prisoner, take as many men as you think you’ll need, and get down into those sewers.”
“What, now, Lord? At night?” Rasvald quavered.
“Of course now!” Pendral’s malevolent gaze narrowed. “And don’t come back without my jewels and that misbegotten turd who stole them, or you’ll be buried in the same grave as your commanding officer.”
It was as well that Grince had learned caution. Just within the entrance of the chamber was another step leading down into the room itself, but this time, his groping feet felt the edge and he negotiated it safely. Taking a moment to steady himself in the darkness, he set off to his right, feeling his way along the wall like a blind man.
To the thief’s dismay, the room seemed to be covered from floor to ceiling with nothing but books, stacked on shelves that stretched as far and high as he could reach. But surely there must be a candle or maybe a lamp somewhere nearby—or what was the point of all this? No one could read in the dark.—Grimly, he continued his search. He had no choice if he wanted to get out of this dreadful place. Once, his fumbling hands dislodged a pile of volumes that cascaded down on his head, adding to his bruises. Grince cursed aloud, and the sound of his voice unnervingly loud and harsh, shattered the silence of the chamber.
A sliver of ice ran down Grince’s spine. There couldn’t possibly be anyone—or thing—in the room to hear him, yet suddenly he was sure that he was not alone.—Though he told himself not to be ridiculous, the feeling would not subside. He remained huddled on the floor in the midst of the pile of fallen volumes, not daring to get up and move, even toward the door, for fear of what he might run into in the darkness. Long minutes passed while he waited, trying to breathe silently and straining his ears for the slightest sound of movement in the chamber. Eventually, it occurred to him that he was being foolish. There was nothing there—of course there wasn’t. And even if someone was in the room with him, he didn’t need a candle to see them—he had been sitting in the midst of the solution all the time. Grince rummaged in his pocket for flint and striker; then, picking up the nearest book, he began to tear out the pages one by one.
A spark caught on the fourth or fifth attempt, and a thread of acrid smoke drifted up, making the thief’s eyes water. He blew on the smoldering spot of red until at last a tiny flame snaked its way up into the pile of crumpled pages, where it blossomed like an opening flower. Grince’s heavy sigh of relief made the flames move out then in, as though the fire itself were breathing. He began to feel warmth on his hands and face. As the hungry fire took hold, amber light began to consume the darkness, spreading out toward the edges of the room. Quickly, Grince crumpled fresh pages to throw on the flames. Until he could work out a way to make it portable, he needed to keep his light source going. Paper alone would burn too fast for his needs, but if he could find some wood in the chamber—a chair, perhaps, that he might break up, or even a shelf—he might be able to fashion some rough torches that would suffice to light his way home.
This must be one of the larger chambers. The light of his little fire was not enough to illuminate the comers or the shadowy alcoves set here and there along the nearest wall. The smoke didn’t help the visibility, either. It was rolling upward now in choking clouds that stung his eyes and closed his throat against the suffocating fumes. Flinging another handful of pages on to the flames, Grince got up hastily and moved away from the fire, heading away from the door toward the far right-hand corner of the chamber. When he reached the first alcove, he stepped into its shadows, narrowing his eyes in an attempt to make out details in the gloom. As another page of his makeshift bonfire caught and flared, the shadows fell back to reveal a towering figure with coldly glittering eyes. There was someone in the alcove!
Grince screamed. He wanted to run, but all power of movement had left him. He crumpled to his knees. Behind him, the shadows encroached once more as his fire began to die, but even in the gloom, Grince kept his face tilted to look upward. He was utterly transfixed by the hypnotic gaze of those glittering blue eyes.
As they waited at the foot of the tower, Shia saw Khanu’s eyes glow bright with reflected moonlight as he turned to her. “I wish Aurian would hurry,” he said. “She’s taking so long, I’m getting worried. And what’s the mystery? What can have happened to poor Anvar?”
“I wish I knew—I don’t understand half of what Aurian told me,” Shia admitted,
“I don’t trust this place—and I don’t trust this human she’s found, who can take over another’s body,” she added darkly.
“You don’t trust any humans apart from our own,” Khanu pointed out, “and neither do I. I don’t like this city place, either—it’s unnatural. Dangerous.—I wish we were back in the mountains.”