The Horse Stealer shrugged and slipped through the opening. He drew the gate gently closed behind him, gritting his teeth once more as hinges squeaked, but he didn’t latch it. The latch mechanism was too damned noisy for that; besides, he might be in a hurry when he came back this way.
Few windows were lit, and most of those that were glowed only dimly. Either the baron’s servants were expected to get along with poor illumination, or else most of them had gone to bed, leaving only night lights behind them. Bahzell reminded himself to assume it was the former-which, given the state of the grounds, seemed likely, anyway-and turned to the one wing whose many-paned windows gleamed brightly. He worked his way silently along the wall towards it, hugging the shadows, and his keen ears were cocked for any noise while his eyes swept back and forth.
He reached the well-lit wing and allowed himself a sigh of relief, but the truly hard part was just beginning. He couldn’t go about peering through windows to find what he sought. Leaving aside what it would do to his night vision, he’d silhouette himself against them. Even the baron’s men might notice a seven-and-a-half-foot hradani under those circumstances, which meant he had to get inside and take his chances on who he met.
The ground-floor windows were little more than slits, precisely to make life difficult for intruders, but the second-floor windows were wider. Of course, they were also closed, and half of them were shuttered as well, but Bahzell picked a glass-paned door that was neither lit nor shuttered. It gave onto a small balcony, and he wondered fleetingly how comforting a prayer might have been just now for a man with any use for gods as he sheathed his dagger and jumped up to catch a balustrade that would have been beyond the reach of any human.
He worked his hands up the carved stone uprights and grunted as he got a knee over the balcony’s lip and rolled over the railing. It was awkward in mail, especially with his sword on his back, and he made far more noise than he liked, but no one raised a shout of alarm.
He flattened against the wall beside the door, waiting a moment to be sure no one had seen him, then tried the latch. It was locked, of course, and the crack between it and its frame was too narrow to get his dagger through. He muttered a quiet malediction, tugged off his gloves, and dug his dagger point into the soft lead that sealed the pane beside the latch in place.
It was nerve-wracking work, yet he made himself work slowly. His hands were cold, but his fingers needed their ungloved nimbleness, and he bared his teeth as the first diamond-shaped pane fell into his palm. He laid it aside and went back to work, and an adjoining pane came away quickly. With both of them out and the supporting lattice between them cut, he could reach through to grip the next pane from both sides, and within five minutes he had a gap large enough to get his entire forearm through.
He examined the latch by touch and found the deadbolt. The door popped obediently open, and he slipped inside and drew it shut once more.
The smell of leather and ink told him he was in a library. Light gleamed under a door across from him, and he picked his careful way towards it, skirting the half-seen tables and chairs which furnished the room.
The door was unlocked. He eased it open a tiny crack and peered out on a hallway as richly furnished as the outer keep was poorly maintained. No one was visible in the only direction he could see, but there was a mirror on the facing wall, and he froze instantly, holding the door exactly where it was.
The guardsman in the hall was unarmored, but he wore a broadsword at his side as he stood with his back to a closed door at the end of the passage, and he looked far more alert than the gate guard had been.
The Horse Stealer mouthed another silent curse, then paused. A guard implied something-or someone-to guard. It was remotely possible Zarantha was behind that door; if she wasn’t, then the sentry was likely there to protect the baron’s own privacy, and-
His thoughts chopped off, and his lips drew back in a snarl as a high, shrill scream echoed through the thick door. His muscles twitched, but he made himself stand a moment longer. If that was the baron, and if the baron was a wizard, there was but one way to face him. The thought sickened Bahzell, yet it was the only way-he’d known that before ever setting out tonight.
He drew a deep breath, stepped back from the door, closed his eyes, and reached deliberately deep within himself.
He felt the bright, instant flare, the shock of a barrier going down, a door opening . . . a monster rousing. Jaw muscles lumped and sweat dotted his forehead, but he fought the monster. He’d never attempted anything quite like this, for he’d been afraid to. The Rage was too potent. He dared not free it often, lest it grow too terrible to control, and that had always precluded experiments. Yet tonight he needed it, and he let it wake but slowly, rationing out the chain of his will link by single link, strangling the need to roar his challenge as the fierce exultation swept through him.
The massive hradani trembled with the physical echo of the struggle against his demon. Beads of sweat merged into a solid sheet, breath hissed between his teeth in sharp, sibilant spits of air, and a guttural sound-too soft to be a snarl yet too savage to be anything else-shivered in his throat. It was a slow, agonizing process, this controlled waking of the Rage, but he fought his way through it, clinging to the purpose which had brought him here, and then, suddenly, his shoulders relaxed and his eyes flared open once more.
They were different, those eyes. Both brighter and darker, hard as polished stone, and his lips drew back as another shriek of pain floated down the corridor.
The Rage boiled within him like fixed, focused purpose, and he sheathed his dagger and flexed his fingers, then toed the library door open.
He made no move to step through it as it swung gently, silently wide. His thoughts were crystal clear, gilded in the Rage’s fire yet colder than ice, and he simply stood watching in the mirror as the guard at the head of the hall looked up. The sentry frowned and opened his mouth, but another scream-more desperate than the others-came through the door at his back, and he grimaced.
Not the time for a prudent guard to be disturbing his master, Bahzell thought through the glitter of the Rage, and his ears flattened as the sentry drew his sword and started down the hall. He was better than the gate guard had been, and his head turned in slow, small arcs, as if he sensed some unseen danger. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to raise the alarm over no more than a door that had opened of itself. Perhaps, he thought, the baron had failed to close it securely and some gust of wind through the library windows had pushed it open. Unlikely though that seemed, it was far more likely than that someone had crept past all the outer guards, scaled to a second-floor room undetected, and then opened the door without even stepping through it!
Yet even as his mind sought some harmless reason, his sword was out and his eyes were wary. He reached the door and stood listening, unaware Bahzell could see him in the mirror. He reached out and gripped the door in his free hand, drawing it further back to step around it, and as the door moved, Bahzell, too, reached out. His long arm darted around the door with the blinding, pitiless speed of the Rage. He ignored the sentry’s sword; his hand went for the other man’s throat like a striking serpent.
The guard’s eyes flared in panic. He sucked in air to shout even as he tried to leap back, but that enormous hand didn’t encircle his neck. It gripped the front of his throat between thumb and fisted fingers, and his stillborn shout died in an agonized gurgle as Bahzell twisted his hand. A trachea crushed, ripped, tore, and then the Horse Stealer stepped out into the hall, and his other hand caught the guard’s sword hand as the strangling sentry tried frantically to strike at him.