Morgan eased himself gingerly over on one side facing out from the wall into the blackness. He didn’t hurt as much as he had the first few days; the aches and pains of his beating were beginning to heal. He was lucky nothing had been broken—lucky, in fact, that he was still alive.
Or not so lucky, he amended his assessment, depending on how you looked at it. His luck, it appeared, had run out. He thought momentarily of Par and Coll and regretted that he would not be able to go to them, to look after them as he had promised he would. What would become of them without him? What had happened to them in his absence? He wondered if Damson Rhee had hidden them after their escape from the Pit of Tyrsis. He wondered if Padishar Creel had found out where they were.
He wondered a thousand things, and there were no answers to be found for any of them.
Mostly he wondered how much longer he would be kept alive.
He rolled onto his back again, thinking of how different things might have been for him. In another age he would have been a Prince of Leah and one day ruled his homeland. But the Federation had put an end to the monarchy more than two hundred years ago, and today his family ruled nothing. He closed his eyes, trying to dispel any thoughts of might-have-beens and would-have-beens, finding no comfort there. He remained hopeful, his spirit intact despite all that had happened, the resiliency that had seen him through so much still in evidence. He did not intend to give up. There was always a way.
He just wished he could discover what it was.
He dozed for a bit, lost in a flow of imaginings that jumbled together in a wash of faces and voices, teasing him with their disjointed, false connectings, lies of things that never were and could never be.
He drifted into sleep.
Then a hand came down over his mouth, cutting off his exclamation of surprise. A second hand pinned him to the floor. He struggled, but the grip that held him was unbreakable.
“Quiet, now,” a voice whispered in his ear. “Hush.”
Morgan went still. A hawk-faced man in a Federation uniform was bent over him, peering into his eyes intently. The hands released, and the man sat back. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and laugh lines wreathed his narrow face.
“Who are you?” Morgan asked softly.
“Someone who can get you free of this place if you’re smart enough to do as I say, Morgan Leah.”
“You know my name?”
The laugh lines deepened. “A lucky guess. Actually, I stumbled in here by chance. Can you show me the way out again?”
Morgan stared at him, a tall, gaunt fellow who had the look of a man who knew what he was about. The smile he wore seemed wired in place and there was nothing friendly about it, Morgan shoved his blanket aside and came to his feet, noticing the way the other backed off as he did so, always keeping the same amount of space between them. Cautious, thought Morgan, like a cat.
“Are you with the Movement?” he asked the man.
“I’m with myself. Put this on.”
He tossed Morgan some clothing. When the Highlander examined it, he found he was holding a Federation uniform. The stranger disappeared back into the dark for a moment, then reemerged carrying something bulky over one shoulder. He deposited his burden on the pallet with a grunt. Morgan started as he realized it was a body. The stranger picked up the discarded blanket and draped it over the dead men to make it look as if he were sleeping.
“It will take them longer this way to discover you’re missing,” he whispered with that unnerving smile.
Morgan turned away and dressed as quickly as he could. The other man beckoned impatiently when he was finished and together they slipped out through the open cell door.
The corridor without was narrow and empty. Lamplight brightened the darkness only marginally. Morgan had seen nothing of the prisons when they brought him in, still unconscious from his beating, and he was immediately lost. He trailed after the stranger watchfully, following the passageway as it burrowed through the stone block walls past rows of cell doors identical to his own, all locked and barred. They encountered no one.
When they reached the first watch station, it was deserted as well. There appeared to be no one on duty. The stranger moved quickly to the corridor beyond, but Morgan caught a glint of metal blades through a half-open door to one side. He slowed, peering in. Racks of weapons lined the walls of a small room. He suddenly remembered the Sword of Leah. He did not want to leave without it.
“Wait a minute!” he whispered to the man ahead.
The stranger turned. Quickly Morgan pushed at the door. It gave reluctantly, dragging against something. Morgan shoved until there was enough space to get through. Inside, wedged against the back of the door, was another dead man. Morgan swallowed against what he was feeling and forced himself to search the racks for the Sword of Leah.
He found it almost immediately, still in its makeshift sheath, hung on a nail behind a brace of pikes. He strapped the weapon on hurriedly, grabbed a broadsword as well, and went out again.
The stranger was waiting. “No more delays,” he said pointedly. “The shift change comes just after sunrise. It’s almost that now.”
Morgan nodded. They went down a second corridor, a back set of stairs supported by timbers that creaked and groaned as they descended, and out through a courtyard. The stranger knew exactly where he was going. There were no guards until they reached a post just inside the walls and even then they were not challenged. They passed through the gates and out of the prison just as the first faint tinges of light began to appear on the horizon.
The stranger took Morgan down the roadway a short distance, then into a barn through a backdoor where the shadows were so thick the Highlander had to feel his way. Inside, the stranger lit a lamp. Digging under a pile of empty feed sacks, he produced a change of clothing for each of them, woods garb, indistinguishable from what most Eastland laborers wore. They changed wordlessly, then stuffed the discarded Federation uniforms back beneath the sacks.
The stranger motioned Morgan after him and they went out again into the first light of the new day.
“A Highlander, are you?” the stranger asked abruptly as they walked eastward through the waking village.
Morgan nodded.
“Morgan Leah. Last name the same as the country. Your family ruled the Highlands once, didn’t they?”
“Yes,” Morgan answered. His companion seemed more relaxed now, his long strides slow and easy, though his eyes never stopped moving. “But the monarchy hasn’t existed for many years.”
They took a narrow bridge across a sewage-fouled tributary of the Silver River. An old woman passed them carrying a small child. Both looked hungry. Morgan glanced over at them. The stranger did not.
“My name is Pe Ell,” he said. He did not offer his hand.
“Where are we going?” Morgan asked him.
The corners of the other’s mouth tugged upward slightly. “You’ll see.” Then he added, “To meet the lady who sent me to rescue you.”
Morgan thought at once of Granny Elise and Auntie Jilt. But how would they know someone like Pe Ell? The man had already said he was not a part of the Free-born Movement; it seemed unlikely that he was allied with the Dwarf Resistance either. Pe Ell, Morgan thought, was with exactly who he had said he was with—himself.
But who then was the lady on whose behalf he had come?
They passed down lanes that wound through the Dwarf cottages and shacks at the edge of Culhaven, crumbling stone and wood slat structures falling down around the heads of whose who lived within. Morgan could hear the sluggish flow of the Silver River grow nearer. The houses separated as the trees thickened and soon there were few to be seen. Dwarves at work in their yards and gardens looked up at them suspiciously. If Pe Ell noticed, he gave no sign.