CHAPTER 11
I bit my tongue and continued to listen. Never had liked the looks of that girl, way too smarmy.
“She may seem nothing to you, but I have watched your Tarvik. He looks at her with great longing which is more than he has ever done with you.”
“You're mad! Want her when he is promised to me? Why should he?”
“Why indeed? She requested this audience with him. He did not send for her. What does she plot?” Ober sounded more as though she was thinking aloud than talking to her daughter.
“Does Kovat long for her, too?”
Ober's low laugh was not pleasant. “Not that way, you stupid girl. Something else. I remember his obsession with the Daughter because of her magic. I wonder. Could this one also possess magic?”
“She cannot be powerful or Kovat would have taken her with him to defeat the warlords of Thunder.”
To hear their words was scary enough, but it was nothing compared to waiting in the dark passage after their voices died away. What were they doing? Had they turned to stare at the hanging rug that separated us? Did some movement of the air in the cold passageway stir the hanging? Or had they gone to their warm beds while I was freezing?
Or was Ober quietly opening the door to her room and instructing her guards to go outside the castle to grab me when I stepped out of the secret door?
I waited for what seemed to me half the night, shivering in the folds of my cloak. When my patience ran out, I touched the backing of the rug. As it moved slightly, a dim edge of light framed it.
An oil lamp burned in their room. Leaning my head through the wall opening so my ear pressed against the rug, I listened. Somebody was moving around. There. A footstep. A scrape. Was that a bowl or mug scraping on a tabletop?
How bright was the room?
Should I push the rug aside or would they see it move?
If I hadn't been so positive the lives of Tarvik, myself, and maybe Nance, too, depended on my knowledge of Ober's plans, I would have felt my way out of the passage and run back to the temple.
Instead, I moved the carpet aside the width of a pinch at a time, the wool backing catching on my fingers, pausing after each move to listen for the sound of an indrawn breath. While I waited, I almost wished someone would scream. Then I could let go and take off out of there and forget the whole dumb idea of playing spy.
Nobody screamed. My last move brought the edge of the rug a finger width past the edge of the opening and I blinked at the light. Set for flight, I peered through. In the lamp glow at the table the two women bent over an assortment of crockery, their attention fixed on what they did. The wall that separated us was in deep shadow.
Ober dropped a pinch of powder into a bowl. After carefully opening a small container, she let some liquid drip on the powder. It flared. The room filled with yellow smoke that looked like the smoke created by the magician of Thunder. That trick hadn't impressed Kovat or Tarvik. How did she intend to use it?
With a fingertip she drew a triangle on the tabletop. If she touched it with anything other than her finger, I couldn't see what she used. A red glowing line followed her touch. In the center of the triangle she placed a bowl filled with a dark powder. Making odd hand motions above it, she mumbled a chant. Then she took a part of the powder and measured it into a shiny object she held in her palm.
When she stepped back from the table and reached toward Alakar, I saw what the object was. Ober had put the powder into a small ornamental locket that hung on a chain. Slipping the chain over her daughter's head, she arranged it carefully around her neck. The little locket hung like a jewel, shining against the dark fabric of Alakar's robe.
“It is done,” Ober said.
“Are you sure it will work?” Alakar asked.
“I know my part well enough if you remember yours.”
“I wish we were rid of them both now,” Alakar said.
“What use would that be? Until we receive word of Kovat's death, we cannot proceed. Time enough then to wed and rule, my girl.”
I strained so hard to catch their words it was a miracle they didn't feel my presence and hear my heart banging away. They also didn't continue their discussion. Instead, the conversation turned to the usual, empty chatter about jewels and robes. I waited, shivering and silent, until they blew out the lamp, before I let the rug slide back into place.
Receive word of Kovat's death?
After the dim light of the room, the passageway was thick blackness. I felt my way along the wall until I reached its end.
A pressure on the spot above the door where Tarvik had touched the rock accomplished nothing.
I touched it again, to the side, then above, then below. Had he tricked me? Had he raised his hand to mislead me, then touched some other stone, the stage magician thing of watch my right hand so you won't see what my left hand is doing? I had barely been able to see what he did. But why would he try to mislead me? Had he guessed I would return this night? Was I an idiot to believe anything he told me? Was he waiting now in his room to hand me over to Ober's guards?
Frantic, I felt around the rock's edge, searching for the latch stone. I could stay here until daytime when Ober and Alakar left their room and then, if I hadn't frozen to death, I could climb through their wall opening. But where would that get me? Guards must constantly patrol the corridor beyond their door.
Or I could return to Tarvik and tell him what I had overheard. And how would I explain why I'd decided to spy on his aunt and cousin? He said he trusted me, which could be useful, and, wow, would my turning up now put paid to that idea.
My fingers touched a smaller stone, set slightly deeper in the wall, and almost at the point I had thought Tarvik touched. I pressed it. The door opened.
So he had not tricked me and my suspicions were unfair. Not much consolation there. It meant Tarvik really did trust me more than I trusted him, which put me in the unpleasant position of knowing I did have an obligation to help him. Hate being obligated, because in my experience, being in some guy's debt is never a good thing.
Tyrant Trouble Page 11
