“Just be patient a moment!” Slanter had produced a ring of iron keys from beneath the cloak and was trying each key in turn in the shackles that bound the Valeman. “Confounded things don’t fit the lock… ah-ha—this one!”
The locks on the wrist and ankle-bindings clicked sharply and the chains fell away. “Slanter,” Jair gripped the Gnome’s arm’as Slanter stripped away the jailer’s ragged cloak and tossed it aside. “How on earth did you ever manage to find me?”
“No real trick to that, boy!” the Gnome snorted, rubbing at the other’s bruised wrists to restore the circulation. “I told you I was the best tracker you’d ever met! Weather didn’t help much, of course—washed out half the signs, turned the whole of the forestland to muck. But we picked up the lizard’s tracks right outside the tunnels and knew he’d bring you here, whatever his intentions. Cells in Dun Fee Aran are always for sale to anyone with the right price and no questions asked. People in them for sale the same way. Lock you away until you’re bones, unless…”
“Talk about it later, Gnome,” Garet Jax cut him short. “You.” He jabbed sharply at the Mwellret. “You walk ahead—keep everyone away from us. No one is to stop us; no one is to question us. If they do…”
“Leavess me here, little peopless!” the creature hissed.
“Yes, leave him,” Slanter agreed, his face wrinkling in distaste. “You can’t trust the lizards.”
But Garet Jax shook his head. “He goes. Foraker thinks we can use him.”
Jair started. “Foraker is here, too!”
But Slanter was already propelling him toward the cell door, spitting in open disdain at the Mwellret as he walked past. “He’ll do us no good, Weapons Master,” he insisted. “Remember, I warned you.”
They were in the hallway beyond then, crouched in the shadows and the silence, Slanter at the Valeman’s elbow as Garet Jax brought Stythys through the door. The Weapons Master paused for a moment, listened, then shoved Stythys before him as they started back down the darkened corridor. A torch burned in ‘a wall rack ahead of them; when they reached it, Slanter snatched the brand away and assumed the lead.
“Black pit, this place!” he growled softly, picking his way through the gloom.
“Slanter!” Jair whispered urgently. “Is Elb Foraker here, too?”
The Gnome glanced at him briefly and nodded. “The Dwarf, the Elf and the Borderman as well. Said we’d started this journey together and that’s how we’d finish it.” He shook his head ruefully. “Guess we’re all mad.”
They slipped back through the labyrinth passageways of the prisons, the Gnome and the Valeman leading and the Weapons Master a step behind with his sword pressed close against the back of the Mwellret. They hastened through blackness, silence, and the stench of death and rot, passing the closed and rusted doors of the prison cells and working their way back into the light of day. Gradually, the gloom began to recede as slivers of daylight, gray and hazy, brightened the passages ahead. The sound of rain reached their ears, and a small, sweet breath of clean air brushed past them.
Then once again the massive, ironbound doors of the building entrance appeared before them, closed and barred. Wind and rain blew against them in sharp gusts, drumming against the wood. Slanter tossed aside the torch and hastened ahead to peer through the watch slot for what waited without. Jair joined him, gratefully breathing in the fresh air that slipped through.
“I never thought to see you again,” he whispered to the Gnome. “Not any of you.”
Slanter kept his eyes on the slot. “You have the luck, all right.”
“I thought no one was left to come for me. I thought you dead.”
“Hardly,” the Gnome growled. “After I lost you in the tunnels and couldn’t figure out what had become of you, I went on through to the cliffs north above Capaal. Tunnel ended there. I knew if the others were alive, they’d come through just as I had, because that was what the Weapons Master’s plans had called for. So I waited. Sure enough, they found each other, then found me. And then we came after you.”
Jair stared at the Gnome. “Slanter, you could have left me—left them too. No one would have known. You were free.”
The Gnome shrugged, discomfort reflecting in his blocky face. “Was I?” He shook his head disdainfully. “Never stopped to think about it.”
Garet Jax had reached them now, prodding Stythys before him. “Still raining?” he asked Slanter.
The Gnome nodded. “Still raining.”
The Weapons Master sheathed the slender sword in one fluid motion and a long knife appeared in its place. He pushed Stythys up against the corridor wall, his lean face hard. A head taller than Garet Jax when first surprised by him in Jair’s cell, Stythys had shrunk down again, coiled like a snake within his robes. Green eyes glittered evilly at the Southlander, cold and unblinking.
“Leavess me, little peopless,” he whined once more.
Garet Jax shook his head. “Once outside, walk close to me, Mwellret. Don’t try to move away. Don’t play games. Cloaked and hooded, we shouldn’t be recognized. The rain will keep most away, but if anyone comes close, you turn them. Remember, it wouldn’t take much to persuade me to cut your throat.”
He said it softly, almost gently, and there was a chilling silence. The Mwellret’s eyes narrowed into slits.
“Havess the magicss!” he hissed angrily. “Needss nothing from me! Leavess me!”
Garret Jax brought the point of the long knife tight against the other’s scaled throat. “You go.”
Cloaks wrapped close about them, they pulled open the heavy wooden doors of the darkened prison and stepped out into the light. Rain fell in blinding sheets from gray, clouded skies, blown against the fortress walls by the wind. Heads bent against its force, the four started across the muddied yard toward the battlements that lay immediately north. Scattered knots of Gnome Hunters passed them by without slowing, anxious only to get in out of the weather. On the watchtowers, sentries huddled in the shelter of stonework nooks and bays, miserable with the cold and damp. No one cared anything about the little party that crossed below. No one even gave them a second glance.
Slanter took the lead as the north battlements drew near, guiding them past small lakes of surface water and mudholes to where a pair of iron-grated doors closed away a small court. They pushed through the doors and crossed quickly to a covered entry that led into a squat stone-and-timber watchtower. Wordlessly, the Gnome unlatched the shadowed wooden door and led the way inside.
An anteway lay within, brightened by the light of torches jammed into holders on either side of the door. Brushing the water from their cloaks, they paused momentarily while Slanter moved to the edge of a darkened corridor leading left beneath the battlement. After peering into the gloom, the Gnome beckoned for them to follow. Garet Jax snatched one of the torches from its bracket, handed it to Jair, and motioned him after Slanter.
A narrow hall opened before them, lined with doors that stretched into the darkness ahead.
“Storerooms,” Slanter informed Jair, winking.
They stepped into the hall. Slanter slipped cautiously ahead; at the third door, he stopped and knocked softly.
“It’s us,” he whispered into the latch.
The latch released with a snap, the door swung wide, and Elb Foraker, Helt, and Edain Elessedil appeared. Smiles creasing their battered faces, they surrounded Jair and gripped his hand warmly.
“Are you all right, Jair?” the Elven Prince asked at once, his own face bruised and cut so badly that the Valeman was immediately afraid for him. The Elf saw his concern and dismissed it with a shrug. “Just a few scratches. I found an escape passage, but it opened on a thorn bush. Nothing that won’t quickly heal. But you—are you truly all right?”
“I’m fine now, Edain.” Jair hugged him impulsively.