Gerik shared every one of those doubts, and was not looking forward to spending an unknown time where he would have to keep those doubts even out of his thoughts, let alone off his lips.
He tried to console himself that if Fustiar valued him primarily for his knowledge of the secrets of Istar’s rulers, he would be hurrying down the mountain soon after he arrived. He could not help thinking, however, that Fustiar might be disposed to send him much farther than the camp on the shore.
It was a dry night for the Crater Gulf, so the path upward was only slippery, not half awash, let alone a stream in full spate. The four chained captives had fallen only twice, and the two sailors guarding them had lashed them only once.
Gerik had no duties toward the prisoners or their guards. He was going up with the party merely because no one walked the path up to Fustiar’s tower at night alone, and a wise man had company even by day.
The air grew cooler as they climbed out of the thickest jungle. Now the trees did not quite meet overhead, and Gerik saw a few stars. One of them blazed down across the sky, an omen, but of what, he could not be sure.
A little higher, and the open sky showed the constellations of Mishakal and Zeboim. The Istarian told himself that it was only his imagination, but the eyes of Zeboim seemed to be open and gazing intently downward. Was Takhisis’s sea-gripping daughter taking an interest in Fustiar’s work on behalf of the Dark Queen?
Now the path leveled out, and walls loomed ahead. Everyone called Fustiar’s abode his “tower,” but in fact it was a half ruined castle, which in its youth must have been as large as the citadel of a good-sized city. That youth was also so far in the past that no one knew who had built it, when, or why.
The tales hadn’t exaggerated its size, however. The one tower still standing rose eighty feet, and the half-ruined great hall was at least half that. The hall had been roughly patched with green timber and leaf thatch, and a stairway, also new and roughly built, rose up the outside of the tower.
These signs of human handiwork reassured Ginfrayson a trifle. At least Fustiar hadn’t conjured up a horde of ogres to build himself a palace, or chosen to levitate himself up and down from his tower whenever the whim took him. Perhaps all he was good for was simple tricks, fit to impress the ignorant, but quite incapable of doing real harm to a man hard to deceive or frighten.…
A scream struck Gerik’s ears like an iron bar. No human throat, and no animal commonly known in nature, ever uttered that scream. (Although the animals and plants of the Crater Gulf still held surprises for pirates who had lived there ten years, let alone for newcomers like Ginfrayson). The ancient stones held the echoes and tossed them back and forth like a couple of hearty children with a ball.
There was nothing childish in that cry either. It spoke of ages beyond human knowledge or even human imagining, stretching back to the earliest time of the gods themselves, when Paladine and Takhisis were allies instead of sworn foes.
It spoke, indeed, of much that would have been chilling to think about on a sunny day in a crowded city square. High on a wilderness mountain, far from anyone to talk to, with night hiding both friends and foes, Ginfrayson found it the most terrifying sound he had ever heard in his life.
He also found that it reminded him of the cry he’d heard the night before, piercing the rainstorm just after he had left Synsaga’s hut. And that wasn’t even the first time he had heard a cry like that, now that he thought of it, and it was always high or far off-as though what made it wished to hide from human eyes.
At this point he realized that the four prisoners were cowering on the ground or looking about them wildly. The guards looked as if they wished to do the same, had they not feared a panic-stricken flight by their charges. Ginfrayson forced his mind to receive messages from his eyes, and in due course they found a small gate with a bell-pull beside it.
At least Gerik hoped it was a bell-pull. He realized as he approached the wall that his hand was shaking. If that scream came again in answer to his pull …
For all that he had to pull five times before the bell rang, when it did, it was an almost cheery and quite ordinary, brazen tinkling. The little gate opened on well-oiled hinges, and a stocky man wearing only a loincloth and a collar of brass links set with cheap glass beads stood in the way He looked not only human, but like a slave whose master wants to impress visitors without having the money or knowledge of how to do so.
Used to the real and wisely chosen splendors of House Encuintras, Gerik wanted to laugh, but held himself back from that particular folly.
“You come in. These stay out,” the man said, pointing at Gerik and the guards, respectively. The prisoners apparently didn’t exist. He sounded as if he had learned Common late and even then only a few words, though Gerik could not place his accent.
He could recognize an order when he heard one. The guards stepped back as Gerik drew’ his sword. Then he fumbled with his free hand in his purse. He didn’t know if the sailors were paid extra for guard duty, but, by Majere, they deserved a little something for not noticing that he was frightened!
The sailors took the money and scurried down the path with a speed that Gerik envied. He wondered how long it would be before he descended the path, at any pace. Then he raised his sword and motioned toward the door. The prisoners stumbled forward. Under the almost reptilian eye of the mage’s man, Gerik followed, and the man pulled the gate shut behind them.
The clank of the lock was a sound only a trifle less agreeable than the nightmare scream.
Inside, darkness and stenches were Gerik’s first impressions of the mage’s lair. The darkness gradually receded as his eyes adjusted, and he saw mounds of earth, patches of weeds and grass and other patches regular enough to be gardens, flagstones, and bits and pieces of inner walls. Some of those walls had been built of stones higher than a man and longer than two or three.
Whoever built this castle, Gerik concluded, had a quarry near at hand, unlimited slaves, or some arts more potent and less pleasant to think about than either. His pleasure at the thought of living here, perhaps among magic-twisted ghosts, shrank even further.
“Ah, welcome,” a slurred voice said, apparently from all directions at once. Gerik did not jump or brandish his sword. He merely tried to glare back, also in all directions at once.
The voice’s owner gave in to raucous, jeering laughter. Then he appeared out of the shadows by one wall.
“Unchain them,” he said, motioning with his hand. That brought two more men out of the darkness, enough like the first one that they might have been cousins. However, they had no ears, and when they opened their mouths, one could see that they had no tongues.
What else they might be missing, Gerik did not care to think. But they had swords and daggers at their belts, spears slung across their backs, and heavy keys in their hands that made quick work of the prisoners’ shackles.
While the newcomers were at work, Gerik examined the man he presumed was Fustiar. There was no reason mages had to look like anything in particular, and it was dark besides. Yet he had the distinct impression of a village drunkard, the sort who will work just enough to keep himself in wine, but not enough to buy baths or decent clothes. The mage’s robe showed holes and patches. If it had once been light-colored, dirt and wine stains had long since darkened it.
Fustiar took a stumbling step forward-and one of the prisoners took a long leap backward. He nearly fell, but kept his feet under him. In a moment, he was running for the far end of the castle, where the wall over a long stretch was tumbled into climbable ruins.
Gerik wished for a bow, knew he couldn’t hit the tower with it in this darkness, and began to run. He’d covered about five steps when Fustiar raised both hands, shouted one word that Gerik had never heard (it sounded vaguely obscene), then added other words Gerik heard all too clearly.