“Noldrun?” Rockfist exclaimed, surprised. “He’s no mage. How did he get in without setting off the alarms, let alone back out again? Never mind, we’ll sort that out later. We’ve got to get to the Caretaker’s rooms, and quickly! He says there’s an exit there we can use to get past the guards.”
So the old dwarf had a secret bolt hole. Well, not so secret, now. No doubt he was furious at having to reveal its existence, especially to them. But Rockfist’s words had confirmed what she’d already guessed when she’d first heard the bells: It wasn’t just the Fire Teams responding, because Rockfist hadn’t set off the alarm. Her attacker had, when he’d teleported out of the Tombs, taking two of its sacrosanct documents with him. Accordingly, once the Fire Teams cleared the building, the guards would swarm in, looking in every crack and crevice to find the intruder, not knowing that he was already long gone.
The old dwarf, leaning heavily on a carved ebony walking stick, ushered them through a door behind his desk and into his small suite of rooms. They passed through a cozy sitting area and into the Caretaker’s bedroom. A darkwood wardrobe stood against one wall, and Sabira headed for it, assuming that’s where the entrance to the tunnel would be.
“In here,” the Caretaker snapped, motioning for her and Rockfist to follow him into the tiny bathroom, which boasted a clawfoot tub and a privy. He tapped one of the claws with the end of his stick and the entire bath swung silently outward to reveal a set of steps leading down into darkness.
“Follow the wall. Lights will appear in front of you after you’ve walked about a hundred feet, and they’ll disappear behind you after you’ve passed. You will want to go as quietly as possible—the guards will be listening for movement within the earth, in case the intruder got in that way. The tunnel ends in an alley behind the Sharpsword’s Bordello. If anyone sees you leaving, they’ll just assume you were too cheap to pay for a room.”
Sabira nodded her thanks and headed down the stairs, but the Caretaker wasn’t quite finished.
“And as for you, barrister,” he said, spitting out Rockfist’s title like it was poison, “we are more than even. And I’m revoking your privileges here. I don’t ever want to see you here again—either of you.”
“Don’t worry,” Sabira said, grabbing Rockfist by the arm and pulling him down the stairs after her before he could protest. “You won’t.”
Then the bathtub pivoted back into place above them, and they were left to find their way, at least for the moment, in total darkness.
And as Sabira began feeling her way blindly down the tunnel, she hoped it wasn’t some sort of divine metaphor for the state of Aggar’s case thus far, or a portent for its future.
Kiruk’s caravan turned out to be his private covered earth sled, and Sabira its only passenger. Piloted by a dragonmarked member of House Orien, the land barge carved its way through Krona Pass and down to Lake Home in a little under a day and a half. However, it took Sabira another full day—and a letter of credit Kiruk had given her before she left—to convince a Lyrandar skipper to take her up to Frostmantle in his soarwood galleon, and to do the entire four-hundred-and-fifty-mile trip in one day. But this was the Holds, and coin was king, even to non-dwarves. Promising a price she hoped Kiruk wouldn’t take out of her hide, Sabira and the skipper came to an agreement and she arrived safely at the docks downslope of Frostmantle on the afternoon of Far, three days after she’d left Krona Peak.
Mountainheart had been there ahead of her and left word for her to meet him at the Tankard whenever she arrived. A popular but pricy inn located in the upper levels of Frostmantle, the Tankard was known for its high-quality spirits, including her own personal favorite, the eponymous Frostmantle Fire. It was also one of the many places in the underground city where Aggar kept rooms to hide out in when he needed to escape from the pressures of being Kiruk’s son.
If Sabira had to hazard a bet, she’d place good money on it also being the destination for a teleportation spell linked to one of the Silver Concordian rings Mountainheart had stolen from his uncle. That was the only way he could have come all the way from Vulyar and still beaten her to Frostmantle.
With all of his extra time, Mountainheart had apparently also arranged for a horse to be readied for her when she arrived. As she waited for the hostler to saddle up a thick-coated bay, Sabira listened to the rush of the river behind her and tried not to think of the last time she’d stood on the banks of this waterway, when she’d been at the safehouse with Aggar and Leoned.
When Ned had been taken from her.
When she’d left him to be taken, a little niggling voice in the back of her mind whispered, but she suppressed it with an impatient stamp of her foot.
Where was that damned hostler, anyway?
Finally the dwarf led her borrowed mount out of the dockside stables, and she took the placid creature’s reins with a nod of thanks. She hoped the hostler wasn’t looking for more than that, as she had precious little coin left in her pouch. Hopefully she could find Nightshard’s accomplice quickly and wrap this mission up before the bag went completely slack. Though it wasn’t just money that had her itching for this to be over; while she’d been happily absent from Vulyar for seven years, her brief return there had ignited a spark of homesickness she thought she’d extinguished long ago. She found herself wanting to return, though she also found she didn’t want to examine the reasons why too closely.
Sabira shook the thought away along with a few drops of the light summer rain that was beginning to fall. If it lasted, the soft drizzle would eventually turn to feathery flakes the higher up she went, even at this time of year.
She put a boot in the stirrup and swung up into the saddle, pulling up the hood of Kiruk’s cloak against the rain. Then, with a sharp flick of the reins, she headed through the small cluster of buildings that huddled around the docks and out into the greensward beyond.
The approach to Frostmantle was an unusual one. Consisting of a wide cobbled path just big enough for two carts abreast, it led up into the foothills of the Ironroot Mountains. The path then seemingly dead-ended at the northern face of the mountain also known as Frostmantle, at the base of a sheer cliff, in between two huge piles of boulders. Nearer to the escarpment, however, it became clear that the rock face was not an actual cliff but rather a pair of massive gates deliberately designed to blend in with their surroundings. Likewise, the boulders were in fact guardhouses.
Whereas Krona Peak had been carved out of the side of a mountain, Frostmantle was the mountain. Back when the Holds were originally settled, the ancient Tordannons had either chosen or been ceded—depending on which clan was telling the story—land that included some of the highest peaks in the Ironroot range. And it was the tallest of those peaks, and the closest to the Mirror River, which the clan chief had selected for his seat of power. But rather than build upon or excavate their city out of the mountain’s flanks, as the ancient Mroranons had done, the Tordannons had chosen instead to hollow the mountain out and live within it. Aside from the fortified main entrance, the only thing distinguishing Frostmantle from the peaks on either side of it was its summit, which housed the Tordannon palace, Frostspire, and had been carved on all four sides with the likenesses of the clan’s greatest heroes.
When Sabira had been here before, the stone gates had been shut tight in response to the threat posed by Nightshard, and travel in and out of the city had been closely monitored. During those dark days, the job of lighting the city, from highest reach to lowest, had fallen to the ubiquitous everbright lanterns that floated through its many byways and tunnels like gigantic, slumbering fireflies. But now, with the gates flung open wide, the early afternoon sunlight spilled onto the main thoroughfare and, through a clever system of thousands of hidden mirrors, filled the underground city with the soft light of the sun’s rays, if not with its warmth.