“Don’t worry; these fellows won’t wake for an hour or more, as long as we don’t rouse them.”
“ Wouldn’t want to be in their shoes tomorrow,” Caede observed.
“Tuorel’s likely to hang them for dereliction of duty.” At the far end of the room, they found the stairs leading up to the castle proper. The stableman halted and peered up the steps, looking and listening to see if anyone was coming down.
“Where do we go from here?” Thendiere asked. “The postern, over the battlements, out the gatehouse?”
“The gates will be guarded,” Daeric said, thinking. Suddenly, an idea struck Daeric, and he smiled. “Ah, I know! I almost forgot it was there! Make for the keep.”
The other men exchanged puzzled glances. The walls there were sheer stone, overlooking a hundred-foot drop. After a moment, Tiery laughed softly. “The secret stairs! I haven’t set foot there in forty years!”
The Mhor nodded to Caede. “To the keep, if you please.
Let’s not get caught here talking about it.”
The stableman sprang up the stairs, taking them two at a time as he hurried up into the gloomy passageway. The rest followed him, moving more slowly. Both Thendiere and the Mhor were weakened from their imprisonment and rough treatment, and Tiery’s age was quickly wearing him out. The halls were dark, with lanterns burning at long intervals, just barely close enough to dispel the shadows that lay between them, and the silence was ominous. The familiar chambers and passages seemed filled with menace, as if Shieldhaven itself, not the soldiers of Ghoere, had become their enemy.
They skirted the great hall by following a passage that ran near the castle’s outer walls, past a long gallery of low stone arches filled with foodstuffs, water, and arms. Upon entering the keep’s lower floors, they turned into one of the tower’s turrets and followed a winding stair up.
At the next floor, they came to an ironbound wooden door that led into the keep’s outermost passages. This floor of the tower was one level beneath the royal quarters, and contained chambers used by advisors and courtiers in times of peace. Across the hall stood a door leading into a unused archer’s gallery. “Into the gallery,” Daeric instructed Caede.
At that moment, one of the doors opened in the hall behind them, and a battle-scarred old captain emerged. He took one glance at the Mhoriens and immediately backpedalled.
“Guards! Guards! To the keep!” he bellowed.
Hans rushed forward, swinging a small hand axe, but the fellow twisted out of the way and caught Hans’s weapon hand. The fletcher and the captain struggled over the axe, while the captain continued to shout for help.
“Damn the luck!” swore Daeric. “Caede, help Hans! Tiery and Thendiere, follow me!” He stepped forward and threw open the door, racing into the arc her’s gallery. Behind him, he heard the captain’s cries suddenly cut short as Caede ran him through while his arms were pinned by Hans. But doors were slamming open throughout the keep, and men were shouting and running, filling the air with the clatter of mail and heavy footsteps.
The gallery was a long, narrow room with four wide, shuttered embrasures overlooking the fortress’s outer walls. It served as a simple storeroom in times of peace. The Mhor ran forward, looking for the concealed stair. If he remembered correctly, there was a trapdoor hidden in the floor of an archer’s perch. He searched quickly, conscious of the fortress waking around him. Behind him, the two servants slammed the door of the room shut and set their shoulders against it.
“Hurry, my lord!” called Caede. “There’s a squad of guards right behind us!”
Thendiere looked ahead, toward the gallery’s opposite door. “They’ll be around to try the other door in a moment. Whatever you’re looking for, you’d better find it soon.”
Daeric dropped to his knees, searching for the hidden iron ring that he knew was there. He groped in the darkness for an agonizing eternity before he felt the cold metal. “I’ve got it!”
He started to lift the trapdoor, but a voice spoke in the shadows: “My apologies, my lord Mhor, but I cannot permit you to escape. You are far too valuable to me.” From a black shadow at the far end of the room, a figure suddenly rose, somehow emerging from the darkness, like a man standing up from a shallow stream. Strange wisps and streamers of shadow ran down Bannier’s dark cloak, and he stepped forward with a sinister smile. “Did you think I would trust your safekeeping to nothing more than fools with swords?” he said. “I thought it wise to place wards upon your cells in case something like this happened.”
The Mhor slowly stood, raising the sword he’d taken fro m the guard. “Bannier. I should have guessed you’d look after your prize.” The shouting and rush of footsteps now surrounded them, as Ghoere’s soldiers moved to surround them.
In a matter of minutes they’d force the doors open. Daeric had to neutralize the wizard, and quickly, or they were all lost.
Bannier knew it, too. He quickly raised his hands and opened his mouth to speak a spell. But before he voiced more than a syllable of his incantation, Thendiere roared and threw his heavy cane at the wizard. The cane turned once in the air before striking Bannier’s outstretched arms, breaking his concentration and the spell. Thendiere threw himself on the gaunt wizard, tackling him on the stone floor. Bannier slammed into the stone flags with a grunt of surprise.
At the other end of the hall, the door flew open, and Ghoerans poured into the room, swarming over Caede and Hans.
The two servants valiantly held their ground for a moment before they were overcome. With a mighty effort, Daeric heaved the trapdoor open, revealing a dark shaft leading straight down into the wall. Rusted iron rungs marked the ladder to the hidden door. Daeric barked at Thendiere.
“Come on! We’ve not a moment to lose!”
The prince was still struggling with the wizard. Even as Daeric watched, Bannier freed a hand. The wizard shouted an unrecognizable word, and an aura of crackling blue energy formed around his fist. Seizing Thendiere by the shoulder, Bannier punched him awkwardly in the side of the neck, a weak and glancing blow – but the blue energy detonated with an actinic flare of light and a sharp crack! that left the Mhor’s ears ringing. By the time the glare faded from his eyes, Bannier was rising from Thendiere’s twitching body.
“Not again, you bastard,” Daeric breathed. He rose to his feet. Behind him, the Ghoeran guardsmen closed in carefully, but Daeric didn’t spare them a glance. Hot tears of rage flowed down his cheeks, as his mind dissolved in white-hot fury. “Not again!”
Screaming like an animal, he threw himself at Bannier and caught the wizard by the neck. His powerful rush carried the two halfway through an embrasure in the wall, battering open the wooden shutters. The guards clutched at his back, his legs, trying to restrain him.
With all the strength he had left, Daeric kicked and turned, deliberately hurling himself over the edge. With his hands locked around Bannier’s throat, he dragged the wizard with him. The world spun crazily as they twisted, stars and walls flying past, but Daeric saw nothing but Bannier’s face gagging for air. The ground rushed toward them, wind roaring in Daeric’s ears as he fell spinning to the white snow and black rock hundreds of feet below. In the last moment of his life Daeric felt the wizard’s body change, melting through his fingers like black ink as the shadows took him, and then the Mhor struck and bounced from the brutal rocks of Shieldhaven, his body tumbling into the dark forests below.
Aesele, I’m here – and the darkness came for him, too.
At that moment, Gaelin was standing by the banks of the Stonebyrn, gazing over the river. He peered through the fog, trying to make out what was happening on the other side by the landing of Norbank, but the Stonebyrn was a good four or five hundred yards wide at this point, and even Erin’s elven-sight couldn’t pierce the gray mists. The guards nervously talked and jested in low voices as they tended to their mounts or oiled their arms and armor. Something in the set of Gaelin’s shoulders must have warned everyone he desired privacy, for his companions stayed clear of him.