by Guy Antibes
Jack wanted to make eye contact with Tanner, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off the man. He couldn’t make any sort of a distraction, since the assassin would take advantage of it. He sighed as the man took the first step toward Lark. Jack gathered in what little power he could in a split second and shot a wizard bolt into the man’s shoulder. The sword meant to take out Lark clattered the floor.
Two more of the various lords’ guards drew their weapons, but none attacked Lark.
Tanner moved to protect Lark, while Helen looked at the guards as she rushed behind the prince.
One of the lords stood up and raised his hands. “I didn’t know about this, truly!”
The way the man said it didn’t ring genuine to Jack, so he didn’t believe him. “Don’t let him get close to Lark,” Jack said, but before he could get around the table, the same man whipped a wand from within his jacket. Before the lord could aim at Lark, Helen jumped in front of the prince. The bolt hit her in the side. As she crumpled to the floor, Jack aimed his wand and shot and killed the lord with a strong bolt.
By the time Jack reached the other side of the table, the disguise had disappeared from the lord’s face. A Black Finger had infiltrated the meeting. Jack went to the injured guard and held his wrist, but nothing happened.
“You are a Sparrow?” Jack asked.
The man shook his head.
“He looks more like a Kadellian,” one of the lords said.
Jack asked them to stand while he tested them all for disguises. The dead lord was the only one.
“We will take care of him,” an older lord said. “I am afraid my old friend, Lord Hardiwell might have been killed.” The lord looked at the dead assassin.
“Be careful finding out,” Jack said. “Have you made your decisions? The prince should be taken back.”
“Use my carriage,” Hardiwell’s friend said. “Prince Larkin shouldn’t be on the streets, not after this. I will find a ride home.”
“I will be in touch with Lady Maltwill,” Jorey said. “Talk to your friends to make sure they aren’t imposters.”
That brought a lot of nods from the lords.
Helen was in pain, but she got to her feet and made it to a chair. Jorey tried to help her, but she shook her head.
“We will be going then,” Lark said, rising from his seat and assisting Helen outside. Jorey knew the right carriage, and they were soon off, avoiding the worst conflagrations in the streets. Helen seemed to be feeling worse, even though Jorey worked on her for the entire ride, when they pulled up in the back alley they used to leave the embassy.
They helped her into the embassy. Jack watched the carriage clatter away and mentioned to Tanner that their presence might make the back of the embassy a weak point.
“We will have a talk with the ambassador,” Tanner said, but when they walked through the posterior gate, they discovered the back gardens of the embassy were filled with uniformed men. After checking their identities, Corandian soldiers helped them take Helen to the embassy back entrance.
Helen was met at the door, with Jorey assisting her on one side and Lark on the other. She might have been killed, thought Jack. But then they were all exposed until the insurrection was over. Helen was taken to a room on the main floor. Lark left her with Jorey and joined them to walk downstairs to their quarters in the basement.
“That was quick thinking, Jack,” Lark said. “I continue to say thank you for your actions.” He grunted. “I am continually amazed that Fasher Tempest had Ralinn and I guide you and give you some protection until we got to Gameton, but it is you who have saved us, time and again.”
“Helen stopped the wizard bolt. I was too late,” Jack said.
“You stopped the next one,” Lark said. “I need to talk to my sister.”
They followed the prince downstairs. Corina and Ralinn were talking in the princess’s quarters when Lark told them of the meeting and the assassination attempt.
Ralinn looked at Jack. “Is it time?”
Jack nodded. “Are you ready?”
They both nodded. “Then let’s enter the temple.”
Jack made sure they both wore the thick leather vests that the Morakans had gifted Ralinn and Helen. He donned his helmet and nodded to them. When they reached the main floor, Jorey waited for them.
“Helen will be fine. The bolt was partially stopped by her leather breastplate. She will need to rest,” the grand wizard said.
“We are heading into the temple,” Ralinn said. “Let us hope we don’t immediately return.”
“But you must return, all three of you,” Jorey said.
They stepped out of the embassy and looked at the temple. A line of Sparrow soldiers two-deep blocked the entrance to the temple stairs.
“What should we do?” Ralinn asked.
“Test them,” Jack said. “Maybe we can talk our way through.”
Jack took the lead and walked right up to the soldiers. “Will you let me pass?” he said.
“No!” a voice cried from the entrance to the temple. “I know those two women, and they are not to sully Eldora’s temple.”
Corina narrowed her eyes. “Just who is doing the sullying, Wessa! You were a snake ten years ago when I visited, and you haven’t changed.”
“Anyone who lets them in will die where they stand,” Wessa said.
Jack pulled his sword, but the soldiers close to him did the same. He still couldn’t use the sword any better than the men he faced. “We are leaving,” he said. “I don’t want you poking me in the back,” Jack said to save some face.
They retreated to the embassy. Ralinn had tears in her eyes, but Corina was furious.
“It is time to end this,” she said, stalking down the stairs.
Ralinn watched her go and took a deep breath. “That is how I should act,” she said and grabbed onto Jack’s hand. “We need to fulfill Eldora’s errand.”
Jack was absolutely sure the time had come.
Chapter Thirty-Three
~
S till armored, the three of them walked down the stairs to the disused tunnel. Jack teleported the women, one at a time, into the storage room under the temple.
“No Sparrows here,” he said.
They reviewed the strategy they had worked on together. First, they had to confirm which basement level they were on. The farther down, the better, in Jack’s opinion. He inched open the door and let Ralinn look around. She beckoned them out of the storage room.
Jack made a long scratch in the door. “Should we need to retreat.” He didn’t know what would happen when he used the bone. It could mean the end of him, but it would save a lot of lives, if whatever Eldora had planned saved Gameton from warfare.
They turned a corner, and Ralinn smiled. “We are on the second level. There is a laundry down here. We can find robes.” She looked up at Jack. “Not one for you, I’m afraid.”
“I am devastated I can’t wear one,” Jack said with a grin. “Maybe there are guard tabards or something.”
Ralinn brightened. “Maybe.” She squeezed his hand. “We can’t be seen touching down here.”
“Okay,” Corina said. She pulled down Jack and kissed him on the cheek. “Maybe my last kiss,” she said.
Ralinn grinned. “Me last,” she said, but she kissed him on the lips. Jack pulled her to him for one last one, and they parted. “Corina and I will walk together, and you follow at a respectable distance.”
Jack just about laughed. “What is respectable?”
“You keeping your mouth shut,” Corina said. “That is respectable.”
He urged them on and walked two paces behind with his hand on the pommel of his sword. Jack was thoroughly turned around when they reached the laundry. The room was empty, so they were able to find what they needed, including a too-small tabard for Jack to wear over his cuirass, but he put the thing on anyway. It had a fish device similar to the one the king wore around his neck.
Ralinn turned right and proceeded until she
came to an intersection. “I don’t know which way to go from here.”
“I do,” Corina said. “I don’t get easily turned around.”
Jack kept his mouth shut, since he was more lost than the princess. He kept following until they spotted three sisters talking at the next intersection. Jack thought he recognized Parena Castle, the woman who tutored Ralinn.
The woman turned, and her hand went to her mouth. Jack heard Ralinn gasp as she noticed Parena’s black fingertips. Jack ran past his two companions and tackled all three. He held onto Parena’s neck and pushed the clean spell into her with his power and the trigger word. She relaxed under his grasp. He then cleaned the two young priestesses.
Ralinn and Corina grabbed the arms of the other two women.
“Did Jack have to do that?” Parena asked.
“Would you rather he hadn’t?” Ralinn said.
“I do. You don’t have to worry about these two. I was scolding them for not minding me.” Parena let out a large sigh. She looked at Jack. “What did you do?”
“I don’t know many spells, but I know one for removing the Black Finger conversion taint. I guess the ring didn’t protect you.”
“It protected me well enough. This is soot from the fireplace in my rooms. I appreciate your work, but it wasn’t necessary,” Parena said. She took a cloth from her robes and wiped the soot from her fingers before brushing off her robes. “He is very protective.”
“He is,” Ralinn said.
“Wonderful, then I know why you cling to him, Ralinn,” she said. “No one asked me about our conversation and the protection from the ring allowed me to lie to the Black Finger sisters. You are here to get to the sanctuary?”
Jack nodded.
“I don’t know the way, but I can let you know if someone is coming. Would that be useful?”’
“Anything would be useful,” Jack said.
“Your veil,” Parena said, looking at Jack. “No veils are allowed down here.”
Jack removed it.
“Your kiss marks are gone!” she said.
“No. It is makeup. I had to go to a meeting this morning. Forgive me if I don’t rub it off,” Jack said.
“Better hidden than in plain sight,” Parena said.
The two priestesses looked confused. Parena raised her eyebrows and said, “Don’t tell anyone what we discussed. The two priestesses are friends of Eldora.”
Corina pulled back the sleeve of her robe and showed them Eldora’s kiss. “I am blessed, and Jack is my bodyguard.”
“I am a former sister,” Ralinn said, “contemplating returning to the temple.”
Parena coughed. “Leave us. I have something to show them.” She waited for the two women to disappear. “We will need to move quickly. They are new, so I don’t trust them.”
Corina looked around. “I think I know where I am. This way.” She led them down a corridor to a door. “Stairway,” she said.
Jack could see her hold her breath when she opened the door. She might not be quite as confident as she looked, but when the door opened, they peered into the darkness of a staircase leading down.
Corina went first, followed by Ralinn and Parena, with Jack in the back, producing a bright torch to light their way. They descended one level and then another.
“Didn’t you say there were four levels?” Jack asked when they reached the bottom. There were no more stairs.
“The Temple has four basements,” Corina said. “The sanctuary is deeper.”
Parena looked at Ralinn. “She knows where it is?”
Ralinn nodded. “That is why she is here.”
They walked into a dark hallway.
“Can you find a place to stay?” Corina said. “If one of your two sisters is sympathetic to Wessa, they will be sure to get down to this level.”
“I can do that,” Parena said. They passed an alcove. “I will be in here. Don’t be too long, since I will have to stand in the dark.”
“A little light is probably fine until you hear footsteps. You two should see if you can still communicate,” Jack said. He knew he wouldn’t want to be standing in an empty basement in the dark. The thought gave him the shivers.
“This way,” Corina said, lighting her own torch that floated just above her head. They reached a place where the passageway turned to the left. “I think this is the big secret.” She slipped to her right and disappeared.
“What happened?” Ralinn said.
Corina poked her head out. It seemed to come from the wall. “A slit in the wall. You can’t see it unless you know where it is,” she said.
Ralinn followed her and giggled when she made it through the little jog.
Jack wasn’t so fast. “I don’t fit through this,” he said. He looked through the jog in the wall at them. “To come all this way.” He sighed, defeated. “What will we do?” he asked.
Ralinn put her hands to her face and looked at Jack in shock.
“Take off that metal shell around your chest,” Corina said.
“What?” Jack said. He dropped his shoulders. “Yes, mother,” he said.
Corina gave him a sharp look. “Don’t call me mother, just do it.”
Jack slipped off the tabard and then the cuirass. He unbuckled the front and the back and slipped through, snatching his armor behind him. “I think I have demonstrated that I think like anyone else my age.”
“I made it through,” Ralinn said.
Jack bit his tongue. “I know. It is made for a priestess.” That was as far as he would go. This was no time to make up some joke.
Corina looked excited. “We have a long narrow stairway to negotiate,” she said.
“I will see how Parena is holding up,” Ralinn said. She shut her eyes and moved her head. Her eyes popped open with a look of triumph in them. “We can communicate!”
“There are some traps before you reach the sanctuary. It is one of the reasons trying to enter is forbidden,” Corina said, “but I don’t know what they are. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. We will have to brave them. If you want to stay here or go back with Parena, now is the time,” Jack said.
“You didn’t bring me all this way to have me fail you,” Corina said.
Jack shook his head. “I wouldn’t have been able to find this place on my own.”
“Nor I,” Ralinn said.
“If you are going to stay with me, then let’s not talk, we have to move on,” Jack said.
He lit a brilliant torch and looked down the stairs. They kept going and going.
“It is a long way, and there isn’t a railing,” Ralinn said.
“The sooner we get down, the better,” Jack said.
He started down. They reached the bottom without incident. There were a few rooms behind a row of doors, but everything was covered in dust. Jack looked down at the pavement. It went from stone pavement to common cobblestones. The change in flooring had to mean something, Jack thought.
“Be careful,” he said as he stepped onto the paving.
He heard a low rumble and hurried back. The center of the hallway disappeared. Jack sent a torch down in the hole and saw wooden spikes sticking up. The cobblestones had fallen between them. Jack looked at death staring him in the face.
“I can’t believe Eldora would do something like that!” he said.
“She didn’t,” Corina said. “An archpriestess secured the sanctuary, or so I was told.”
“I don’t know if that makes me feel better,” Ralinn said, shivering.
“At least there is enough room to walk along the edges,” Jack said.
On the other side of the cobbles, the stone pavement started again, but this time threads were hanging down from the ceiling, like single spider webs.
“We can burn those,” Jack said. He took his sword out and pointed it at the pathway before he gathered power and shot out a very modest flame. Jack was more comfortable using Takia’s fire to burn through cobwebs and spiders than people.
The fla
me swept onward, not enough to burn wood, but it was sufficient to ignite the threads. As they burned, bolts from ancient crossbows shot back and forth across the room. Corina smiled and moved on ahead.
Jack made a move to stop her, but before he could another bolt launched from the wall and struck her in the arm, pinning it to her chest. She gasped and staggered back to where they were.
“I can’t continue,” she said gasping through the pain.
“I can take out the arrow, but you will need me to care for you,” Ralinn said.
Jack swept Corina into his arms and sidestepped his way back toward the rooms.
“Choose one, quickly,” He said, still holding onto the woman.
Ralinn found one with a table covered with a cloth. “This one,” she said carefully taking off the covering. She removed her robe and rolled it up for Corina’s head. “You can go on without me?” she said.
“I can’t leave her alone. If somebody is coming, shout and then move back into the room,” Jack said. He picked up Corina’s free hand. “Ralinn can apply healing, you know. I tend to do just the opposite.” He looked at Ralinn. “Shall I remove the arrow?”
She nodded.
“Bite on this,” Jack said to Corina, taking off his knife sheath and putting it in her mouth. He took off his tabard and tossed it to Ralinn. In case you need more cloth.”
He took a deep breath and removed the bolt. Luckily, it didn’t have a barbed head. He didn’t say another word other than, “I will be back to fetch you both.”
Jack turned and faced the thread room. Corina had passed by one of the few on the side that didn’t burn. He had to be more careful than that. He slipped through that corridor and faced another cobbled space. He pulled off his helmet and rolled it on the rock floor.
Knee high flames shot up all along the floor. Jack rubbed his chin and wondered how he would solve that. If he had a lot of tables, he could walk on those, but he looked back into the darkness and didn’t see anything that would work in the time that he had. What could he do? He looked at his hands but couldn’t find how they could help him. Jack could always teleport, but he didn’t have the confidence of appearing in the right place on the other side. He knew so few other spells, but then his eyes slid down to his bracers. A thick coating of ice might work. He couldn’t think of another alternative.
