“… unless you’re suggesting he was killed to cover up this business with the hot springs, and every murder since then has simply been an effort to divert attention from it?”
More determined now than ever to get to Frostmantle, Sabira hurriedly sketched the basics of the map out in her borrowed notebook. She glanced quickly at the other maps in Darkore’s report to see if Goldglove had embellished any more of them, but didn’t find anything. So she set the booklet aside and picked up the thicker volume written by Deepspring.
Again, Goldglove left his trail for her to follow, this time dog-earing the page he’d been interested in. Sabira opened to it quickly.
It was a map of Noldrunhold and the holds bordering it, showing the boundaries of various mining claims and the owners of each. The names of the Mountainheart and Deepspring families were written in bold black print, while the Stoneblood name was a faded gray, as were the other, smaller family names inside Noldrunhold itself and most of those along the border in the surrounding holds, as well. A note at the bottom of the map revealed that the black print was for families with active mines, while the gray print was for those whose mines had either been tapped out or were no longer in service.
Glancing at her sketch, Sabira judged that the straight line Goldglove had drawn went through both the Mountainheart and Deepspring claims. Were their continuing mining operations somehow connected to the unnatural fissure?
Sabira jotted down a few notes and was about to close the book when a diagram on the facing page caught her eye.
It was an abbreviated genealogy for the Stoneblood family, used to trace the pedigree of their mining claim. It showed that Gunnett—the last of the Stoneblood line—currently held the rights to the claim, which had come to her from her mother and from her grandmother before that. There were also two symbols not defined in the text, a circle circumscribing an x beside Gunnett’s mother’s name and two unequal circles separated by a vertical line next to Gunnett’s.
Sabira was about to sketch out the family tree when she heard a soft noise behind her, like a slippered footfall on plush carpet or the whisper of a cloak hem against a table. On her guard instantly, Sabira reached for her shard axe and turned.
Just in time to see a gray-cloaked figure bringing a massive book down on her head. As the book slammed into her temple and the room exploded into a shower of stars, Sabira got the briefest look at the top half of her attacker’s hooded face. Black eyes glared out at her malevolently from a pale face as the room spun around her. She had time to wonder fuzzily what Hrun Noldrun was doing in the Tombs, and then the opal-encrusted floor was rushing up at her and she knew no more.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sabira awoke moments later to the awful sound of bells reverberating through the vast stone halls. Her attacker was nowhere to be seen. Neither were the documents she’d been examining nor the notebook she’d been writing in.
Before she had time to wonder what the Caretaker was going to have to say about that, another sound echoed through the room, louder and more sinister than that of the bells.
Stone grinding against stone.
Sabira looked toward the entrance to see a granite slab descending to fill the archway.
Of course. If there really was a fire, they’d want to seal off all the rooms to keep it from spreading. And they’d want to extinguish it as quickly as possible, in a way that would preserve the documents from harm. And that meant …
There. Beneath the strident bells and the teeth-jarring scrape of stone. A faint hissing coming from the ceiling, where Sabira could just make out several small vents.
The air was being sucked from the room.
If she didn’t get out now, she’d be trapped here, and she would suffocate long before the Fire Teams made it down to this level and found her.
Shaking the vestiges of stars from her eyes, Sabira jumped up and raced toward the entryway, her booted feet pounding heedlessly across a fortune’s worth of opals.
Though the slab had at first seemed to be dropping slowly, either she had misjudged or it was moving faster the farther down it slid, for it already filled three quarters of the archway before she cleared the final bookshelf. Lengthening her stride, Sabira hurtled forward, throwing herself to the floor at the last moment and rolling underneath the heavy slab just before it crashed into place with a thunderous echo, magnified a hundredfold throughout every level of the Tombs.
She lay there panting for half a heartbeat, then sat up, only to realize that the hem of her cloak—of Kiruk’s cloak—was caught beneath the massive stone.
Freeing the cloak would take time she just didn’t have, but if she left it, not only would it confirm that there had been an intruder but it could very well lead the authorities right to Aggar’s door. Or worse, to his father’s. That was all she needed: two Tordannons to defend.
With an impatient sigh, she used the sharp edge of her urgrosh’s axe to saw away at the fabric, wincing at having to utilize such a fine blade for such a pedestrian task. She cut as close to the slab as she could; with any luck, the scrap of gray would go unnoticed by anyone investigating the commotion. At the very least, the small bit of wool should be harder to analyze than the entire cloak would be, and might make the process of identifying its owner take longer.
Whether it would be long enough remained to be seen, and she couldn’t worry about it now. She had to get out of here.
Freed from the grasp of the slab, Sabira leaped to her feet. Then she was on the run, headed for the leftmost staircase as fast as she could go.
She didn’t worry about stealth at this point; her rhythmic footsteps would not be heard over the sound of the bells. But once she got to the landing between staircases, she hugged the crest-adorned wall, worried she might be seen by someone leaning over the balcony on one of the higher levels. Once she’d cleared the landing, she took the stairs two at a time until she reached the part of the spiral that hung, open, over the stairwell. There, she paused. She would have no cover here. Anyone looking down from above would be able to see her.
She peered upward, trying vainly to determine if there was any activity at the topmost balcony, but the distance was simply too great. She could see nothing.
Well, she thought, when in doubt, do it quick and hope you don’t get caught.
She dashed up the stairs to the Noldrun landing and back into the covered portion of the staircase. As she reached the next open segment of stairway, she paused again, scanning the higher balconies, which remained blessedly deserted.
She repeated this process six more times, and then, in between the Droranath and Doldarun levels, she finally saw movement at the ground floor balcony. A lone figure stood peering down. It took her a moment to realize it was Rockfist.
She stepped out of hiding and waved up at him cautiously.
“Hurry!” the barrister called down once he’d spotted her. “They’ll be here any moment!”
Now that she no longer had to worry about being observed, Sabira covered the distance in half the time, though she was perspiring lightly and breathing hard when she reached Rockfist’s side.
“What happened? How did you set off the alarms?”
“I didn’t,” Sabira said, bristling at the barrister’s accusing tone. She pointed to the bruise already forming on the side of her face. “The guy who gave me this did. I think it might have been … Hrun Noldrun?”
Though she was hardly certain of that. It could have been anyone; all she’d actually seen had been black eyes, a gray cloak, and a really heavy book. Host, she thought to herself. Now I sound just like Kiruk.