Palin took several deep breaths and glanced down at his arm. The left sleeve of his light brown robe was dark with blood. Ripping off the other sleeve, the sorcerer quickly wrapped it around his wound, then moved toward a door— the only one on this level There was a small window set into it, through which he could see two Sivaks.
They were the largest of the draconians created by Takhisis, made from stolen silver dragon eggs and bred to follow the Dark Queen’s evil directions. One of the Sivaks had an almost emaciated silvery-scaly body. His beady black eyes were downcast and his lizardlike snout pointed at the floor. His head hung in shame as the other Sivak, a larger, more robust creature seated behind a hulking wooden desk, berated him. Palin guessed that the larger Sivak was Lord Sivaan, the administrator of this entire gruesome facility. The skinny one was undoubtedly a minion of the officer.
Palm took a deep breath, and threw open the door. Lord Sivaan stood up from behind his desk, knocking his chair to the ground. Palin raised his unwounded arm and sent a jagged stream of flame into the Sivak’s broad chest and out the other side. He turned to find the emaciated Sivak slinking toward the door. Palin paused for a second, pitying the creature, and the Sivak turned to hurl a dagger at the sorcerer. Palin released another burst. The hot light passed through the Sivak’s chest in an instant. The dagger clattered to the floor, and the Sivak crumpled after it
Palin, weak from the exertion and the wound on his arm, stumbled out of the room, closing the door behind him.
The corridor was empty. Palin stopped for a moment, steadying himself by leaning against the wall. He knew that a Sivak killed by a human assumed the appearance of his slayer — announcing the identity of the murderer to all those who found the body. The corpses inside the office would hold Palin’s appearance for several days. There was no way around it, the effect being part of the enchantment Takhisis had breathed into them at their birth. The Dark Queen had wanted to know who killed her children.
Palin headed down the stairs quickly. His chest felt tight, his throat dry, and his wounded arm throbbed. The knight he had pushed down the steps was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.
Rig moved down the corridor quiet and quick like a cat. A lone, guttering torch provided just enough light for him to see where he was going. The mariner’s skin itched terribly from the blue paint, but he resisted the urge to scratch it off.
The air was hot and fetid and it carried the stench of sweat and urine. He turned a corner and saw a row of cell doors and another brute guard. This brute was massive, with tree trunk legs and thick, bulging arms. He was easily more than seven feet tall, and the sword at his side looked impossibly big and long.
The brute tilted his head and looked at Rig as the mariner’s grip tightened on his dagger’s pommel. He spoke a few words the mariner couldn’t understand. The big brute’s brow furrowed. The mariner shrugged and grinned, giving up on the charade and drawing out his dagger.
The brute charged forward in that instant, finally realizing Rig wasn’t one of his kinsmen. The dagger flew from the mariner’s fingers, and the blade sank into the big man’s chest. Still the brute kept coming, and Rig pulled himself up against the corridor wall as the blue-skinned giant rushed past him.
Not even bothering to remove the dagger lodged in his chest, the brute turned and came back at Rig.
The two fought intensely, large blue blurs against the background of black sand walls. Rig eventually backed off a bit, deciding he was simply going to have to wear out the wounded brute. He dodged and ducked, thrust and withdrew, until the brute finally grew dizzy from the loss of blood and fell dead, face forward on the floor. Rig knelt and quickly found a ring of keys on the dead man.
Rig stepped toward the closest cell door, opened it, and shuddered as a nauseating stench wafted out. The cell had no sanitary considerations. Excrement lined one wall, and a half-dozen elves huddled in the rest of the space better suited for two or three. They were gaunt and expressionless, eyes staring unblinking from sunken sockets. Their clothes were filthy, stained with sweat and urine, and their skin was covered with grime. A couple of the elves who were pressed together on the sole cot in the room looked like corpses. Rig stared at them and finally noted the faint rising and falling of their chests.
He swallowed hard. “Let’s get out of here.” He motioned them out of the cell, but they held their position, continuing to stare blankly at him. “Look, I’m not here to haul you off and turn you into spawn.” He rubbed at a spot on his arm until the blue paint came off and revealed dark skin beneath. Then he instantly realized that proved nothing — he had no idea what color the brutes were beneath their paint. “I’m here to rescue you. Palin Majere, Feril, and… .”
“Majere?” The faint male voice came from the direction of the cot. An elf with long, matted hair and a facial scar shakily stood up. “The sorcerer?”
“He’s outside. We’ve got to hurry,” Rig said. He motioned again, and this time the elves followed him, slowly shuffling out into the corridor. The mariner hurriedly unlatched the other doors.
One cell contained only women. Another contained more than twenty men who must have been fairly new arrivals because they appeared a little healthier and moved more quickly. One room contained a sole occupant — an elderly man madly clutching a small clay tablet to which he mumbled. Rig had to pick him up off the cot and carry him out into the corridor with the rest of the prisoners.
The mariner continued to free the captives, working rapidly and continually watching the hallway for fear that more brutes might come around the corner. “Leave us alone!” he heard from behind one cell door. He opened it and cringed when he saw a few women and more than a dozen girls and boys. The knights had kidnapped children, too. There were wooden bowls on the floor, filled with a pasty gruel that crawled with insects. It was the first sign the mariner had seen that the people were even being fed. The women stared at him defiantly and placed themselves in front of the youths.
“We’ll not go willingly!” one spat at the mariner. She clenched her bony fist and waved it at him.
“It’s all right” said the elf who had recognized the name Majere. “We’re being freed.”
The woman glared at the blue mariner skeptically, until the elf with matted hair reassured her and tugged her gently from the cell, the others following. Rig busied himself with freeing the rest of the prisoners.
Corpses were stacked like cordwood in the two cells farthest down the corridor. Rig guessed from the various states of decay that some had been dead less than a day, while others had been moldering here for weeks.
“Any more cells?” Rig asked the pathetic-looking throng.
The matted-haired man nodded back toward the way Rig had come. “I understand there are a few more cells upstairs. But they would be guarded, too.”
The mariner drew his cutlass and edged past the group of prisoners.
Palin rushed down the last few steps and leapt at the knight. The air rushed from the man’s lungs with a muffled “whoof,” as the sorcerer knocked off his helmet, grabbed a fistful of dark brown hair, pulled the man’s head back and flashed the dagger against his throat. He paused for an instant when he looked into the man’s eyes. “Steel Brightblade?” the sorcerer whispered.
“The water!” the sorcerer heard someone outside yell.
The knight used the distraction to push Palin off him, but the young man’s movements were clumsy and slow. Palin drove the dagger into the knight’s chest, between a gap in the armor plates, and the man’s mouth opened in a scream. The sorcerer thrust the blade in again, and the scream died as blood gurgled from the knight’s mouth.