Tris pulled his hands away, leaving only a half-healed scar on Rialla's leg, saying, "That's the best I can do and still leave you enough energy to get out of bed."
Experimentally, Rialla got up and flexed her knees to put some strain on her thigh muscles. The leg hurt, but it held under her weight. She flashed a quick smile at Tris and turned to Marri. "What do you know about the tower? How is it set up? How many guards are there, and where are they?"
Marri looked for a minute at Rialla's leg; the angry red scar was invisible behind the tunic that hung to her calves. "Laeth is being held in the top of the tower." She closed her eyes, as if it would help her envision the tower more clearly. "There are four floors on the tower. The lowest level is underground and contains only weapons and supplies that are not being used. There is usually a guard at the stairs that lead down to the weapons room. Besides him on the main floor there are two or three others. The next floor up is where they question the prisoners. They don't always station a guard there, but with a prisoner in the tower there are sure to be several."
Tris grunted and turned to Rialla. "If I get Laeth out of the tower and back here, can you get your horses? You'll need them to get away."
"What do you mean, 'If I get Laeth out'? You aren't planning to do this all yourself, I hope. Laeth and I can buy horses here, or at the next village. I'll come with you," stated Rialla.
The healer shook his head. "It will be easier for me to get Laeth out by myself. That healing has tired you more than you apparently yet realize. If Laeth and I have to run ahead of the chase, you won't have the stamina to make it.
"The horses are necessary," he continued. "There are none to spare in the village. Even if there were, Lord Jarroh is not the most reasonable of men and likely would hold the owners responsible even if you steal the beasts. If you try to make it on foot to Riverfall, which is the closest village, the guards will overtake you before you have traveled half a league. The horses are probably going to be more difficult to get out than Laeth is—at least he can climb over the wall."
Rialla frowned at him. "Why are you doing this?"
The healer gave her an enigmatic smile and replied, "If you wish to, you can ascribe it to a hearty dislike of both Lord Jarroh and Lord Winterseine. Given a chance to annoy either or both, I'll take a little danger in exchange."
Rialla had the feeling that it was the best answer she was going to get.
"What can I do?" Marri asked.
"Just what you have done," replied Tris. "If someone sees you out and about tonight, you'll be held responsible for Laeth's escape. That is a crime that holds the death penalty as well, even for nobility. If you would like, you can wait here and see him off, then I'll get you back in with no one the wiser."
She looked mutinous but finally nodded her head. Rialla suspected that it was the knowledge that she would be more of a liability than an asset and not any ideas of self-preservation that made Marri agree.
"Do you have any weapons here?" Rialla asked. "The only thing that I brought with me from Sianim was a knife, and that is in Laeth's rooms in the hold."
"Anything my lady desires," he answered grandly as he walked to the flatboard wall.
He touched it gently, and a section moved in just far enough that he could slide it on hidden tracks behind the rest of the wall, revealing a small closet. A packing trunk occupied most of the floor, but the rest of the closet was dedicated to weaponry, most of it projectile weapons.
Rialla shot Tris a look under her eyebrows. "It looks like a poacher's dream come true. I always thought healers were law-abiding citizens."
He shrugged. "I haven't always been a healer. Poaching has become a favored hobby of late. Most of this is useless for combat, but there should be a knife or two and I think that there might even be a sword."
There was a sword, heavier than Rialla was used to wielding, but it would work. She had to borrow one of Tris's belts so she could wear the sword sheathed. She struggled with the braided leather before finally wrapping it twice around her waist. The sheath was too high for an easy draw, but she couldn't afford to be too particular.
She also borrowed a dark-colored tunic and trousers since her slave's garb was too light-colored to skulk around in effectively. Although everything was too big, a few lengths of rope tied here and there, as well as Tris's belt, made the outfit workable.
Tris took a wicked-looking staff, as tall as he and studded at both ends with metal points, and pulled the door back into place. Even knowing that it was there, Rialla couldn't detect any sign of the door once it was closed.
Rialla followed Tris out the door, leaving Marri alone in the bedroom.
The workshop was as busy as the bedroom was spartan. Large windows were cut into the three outer walls, letting in the dim light of the waning moon. All of the wall space not devoted to windows was covered with shelves of various sizes, which were in turn stacked with neatly labeled clay and wooden containers. So many bundles of plants hung from the ceiling that it looked like a jungle, and Tris had to bend his head to avoid the flora.
Once out the door, Tris motioned her behind the cottage where the woods began.
"There's a path to the hold through here," he explained shortly.
Rialla concentrated on her footing until they reached the better surface of the path. "How are you going to get Laeth out?"
"Subtlety and a bit of magic," he replied. "Have you thought about the horses?"
Rialla nodded. "I'll get them out through the herald's gate."
"Without alerting the guards?" he asked.
She smiled at him. "You do your part, let me worry about mine."
They quit speaking then. Rialla wished she had taken the time to find where their horses were in the stables, but she'd been too intent on maintaining the appearance of a slave.
They reached the wall of the hold before she was ready. It loomed high over their heads, more of Karsten's improvements. Rialla ran her hands over the freshly cut pale blocks of stone, fingering the edges. The wall was meant to keep back armies, but it was unfinished. Small gaps between the stones made the wall as easy to climb as a ladder. Rialla raised her hands and got a firm grip in preparation to climb.
"Wait," said Tris in a soft voice that wouldn't carry to anyone who happened to be on the other side of the wall. "Your red hair makes you too identifiable. Stay a moment, and I'll take care of it."
She released her hold on the wall and took a step nearer to the healer. He touched her hair lightly and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he looked closely at her and then nodded. Rialla pulled a strand of her hair to where she could see it, then let the dark-colored mane fall back to her shoulder.
"Illusion," he said. "Simple, but it will hold for the night."
Rialla nodded, and began again to climb; Tris chose another section of wall and did the same. On top Rialla noted that the catwalks that were meant to run the entire length of the wall hadn't yet been built here—making the descent a simple climb down the inner side of the wall.
Once on the ground they were much safer. Although it was still too early in the morning for much activity, it would be easy enough to come up with a reason for legitimate occupants of the castle to be wandering around in the darkness.
"I'll get the horses and meet you at your home," suggested Rialla softly.
Tris nodded, and replied in a voice as quiet as hers, "That is as good a place as any. If I'm not back before dawn, take the woman and go to Sianim. Luck be with you, dancer." He turned toward the tower.
"And with you"—she wasn't sure why she added the next word—"shapechanger."
He stopped in his tracks, spinning to look at her. For an instant she saw a glimpse of something… wilder in his face. But it was only for an instant, and then he was scowling at her with laughing eyes. "You know so much of shapechangers you can name me so on such short acquaintance?"
Rialla shrugged and said easily, "The woman who taught me how to play Steal the Dragon is rumored to be a shapechanger. She c
alls it Taefil Ma Deogh." Rialla knew that she couldn't twist her tongue around the syllables so that they sounded correctly, but she thought that Tris would get the point. "She's never said that she was a shapeshifter, but she's never denied it either. I've also been around human mages long enough to know that healing is not something that human magic works well on."
"I am not a human wizard," he acknowledged. "Nor am I a shapechanger, though my people are distant kin. Taefil Ma Deogh is a very old game, and well known amongst us."
"What are you then?" she asked.
Again he shook his head. "Nothing that you would know. We have been too few for too long. If we live through this night, perhaps I'll tell you about my people."
Rialla turned on her heel and began stalking in the general direction of the stables, murmuring to herself, "If that man makes one more cryptic remark, he may not live through this night."
She decided she would look more suspicious if she tried to sneak around, so she strode boldly past the makeshift pens that had been erected to house the animals of the lesser nobles. There was a pair of guards making their rounds, but they paid her little heed.
By the time she reached the main stable, she was perspiring from fear and vowing never to do anything other than train horses again. Before she entered, she drew a deep breath.
Horses were empathic themselves. If she walked in feeling fear, it was bound to cause an uproar in a stable full of warhorses. Rialla closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath of horse- and hay-scented air, trying to pretend she was in one of the barns at Sianim.
Rialla knew the general layout of the stables from her earlier visit. There were stalls along both outer walls and small loose pens in the center. The tack was set in the middle of the aisle between the stalls and the pens, far enough away from either that the horses couldn't nibble at the sweat-salted leather. Rialla suspected the pens were where she'd find their horses, since generally the stalls would be assigned to the hold animals.
The stable was dark inside, and Rialla waited just inside the door, hoping her eyes would adjust to the darkness. A few of the horses nearest to her began shifting as they noticed her unfamiliar presence. Carefully she extended her empathic touch to them, reassuring them that she meant them no harm.
When her vision had gotten as adjusted as it was going to, Rialla stepped forward cautiously until she rested her hand on the top bar of the inner pen. The horses were only darker shadows in the night. Rialla counted on her empathy to help her find the right animals. Rialla had herself trained Laeth's gelding, Stoutheart, though not the mare she'd ridden here. She could have taken the first horses she came to, but both of the Sianim animals were conditioned and of high quality.
Most of the horses ignored her, resting comfortably in the clean straw bed. An aged gray mare walked with Rialla the length of her pen, hoping for an apple. Rialla rubbed the mare's cheekbone where it itched and silently apologized for coming without a treat.
Her horses were in a pen near the end of the barn. The mare stood in a three-footed doze, but Stoutheart whickered softly in greeting. By touch Rialla located saddles and bridles, then readied the horses while they were still in their pen.
Leading the horses out quietly required Rialla to send out a constant reassuring babble to all of the horses they passed, and she released a sigh of relief when she finally made it out of the building.
There was only one way to get horses out of the hold. The main entrance was kept shut and barred at night, but on the other side of the gatehouse was the herald's gate. The gate was actually a narrow tunnel through the base of the wall, designed to allow the passage of messengers when the main gates were closed. Heavy metal doors, locked and barred, were set into the wall at either end of the tunnel.
Rialla was able to lead the horses unseen along the wall, due more to luck than any skill on her part. When they neared the gatehouse, Rialla extended her senses and found each of the guards on duty there and on the nearby wall. If they had been alert and ready for trouble, she would have had to find another way; but they were bored and drowsy. It only took a nudge to send them over into a sound sleep.
She yawned herself before leaving the horses waiting while she searched the guards until she found a large ring of keys.
Rialla opened the first door and continued through the tunnel to open the outside door as well; it would be easier to convince the horses to enter the tunnel if they could see the light on the other side. As she stepped into the tunnel, she noticed that the floor was covered with a metal grating suspended over the ground by a pair of heavy wooden beams. Getting the horses across it was going to be quite a feat of persuasion—and loud in the bargain.
The mare put her front feet into the opening, but backed up quickly at the strange sound of her metal-shod hooves on the grating. The whites of her eyes gleamed in the darkness and her ears were flattened with displeasure. Even with Rialla's gift, the mare wouldn't budge.
Sending soothing thoughts, Rialla backed the mare away and tied her reins high on her neck so that she wouldn't trip on them. Though the mare wasn't trained for a verbal command to stay, as the gelding was, her instincts would keep her near the other horse.
Rialla had tried the mare first because she was smaller. Even throwing the stirrups across the back of the saddle to reduce the gelding's width, she was afraid that the bigger horse's barrel was going to rub the sides of the tunnel all of the way through.
When Rialla led Stoutheart to the mouth of the tunnel, he dropped his nose and blew a puff of air at the strange floor. Using her empathy and soft coaxing sounds to encourage him, she took a step back, tugging once on the rein and then relaxing the pressure.
The gelding put a foot tentatively on the metal floor, flattening his ears at the odd sound as well as the slight flexing of the grate. But Rialla had trained him, and he trusted her to know what would hurt him and what was safe. Deciding that the floor was going to hold his weight, he followed her almost placidly. When he reached the far side, he found a small patch of grass and began to eat.
She commanded him to stay, and started back to the tunnel. Before she reached the opening, the mare bolted through, clanking and snorting, anxious to rejoin her companion.
The open door was sure to send searchers out as soon as the guards woke up enough to notice it. If she closed it and got out over the wall, it could be dawn before anyone realized that Laeth was gone. There was work currently being done on the wall here as well, and the scaffolding on the outside would offer an easy enough method for exiting the hold.
Rialla slipped back through the tunnel, locking the doors behind her. She tucked the key ring back into the guard's pocket and started over the wall.
Unlike the part of the wall that she'd crossed to get into the hold, here there was a newly built, though obviously temporary, catwalk. The guard who slept on the newly constructed stone stairway shifted uneasily as Rialla started up the stairs. He was a veteran, and not one to sleep on duty no matter how tedious. She turned back to the base of the stairs and reinforced her suggestion to give her time to get over the wall before he woke up.
Just as she lowered her protective barriers to project sleep onto the guards again, someone nearby died in an unpleasant, terrifying manner. Rialla tried to shut it out, but was unable to stop before she'd projected what she'd felt. She heard the guards cry out with their comrade's death throes. So much for escaping unnoticed.
She would have sworn if there had been time for it.
The first guard who saw her and attacked was inexperienced, and slowed her only minimally as she staggered for the stairway, and left him to wake up with a headache in the morning.
Before she could gain the stairway, where the veteran soldier waited patiently, two more guards came out of the gatehouse. They moved apart to flank her, one quickly climbing the first few stairs to gain the advantage of height. She ran directly at the one on the stairs, then quickly changed direction, ducking under the stroke the other guard had intended for her b
ack.
Failing to find the anticipated target for his sword, he lurched forward, trying desperately to regain his balance. Using a neat backhand, Rialla hit him on the head with the pommel of her sword and flashed a bright smile as she turned to face the second guard, still standing on the third stair.
He had obviously expected an easy victory and stood peering at the still, silent shadow of his associate. He quickly shifted his attention to Rialla and began to descend. Before he could close with her, she set him on his backside by sweeping his feet out from under him with the flat of her blade. She didn't have to knock him out— he did it himself. Breathing harshly, Rialla ran up several steps to face the warrior who waited for her there.
The first three men had been inexperienced, and unaware of what they were facing. This man had watched her take out his comrades and knew that she was Sianim-trained—it didn't take Rialla long to discover that he was too.
He was good, but she was better, just not enough better that she could get behind him and knock him unconscious. Several times she could have wounded him fatally, but she couldn't force herself to take the opening and end it. Not because she was overly squeamish, but because she remembered what it felt like to kill a man when her empathy was barely functional. She had no intention of killing when her gift was working well.
If she killed this one, there was a fair probability that the act would kill her too. She already had a thundering headache thanks to the three prone forms strewn behind her.
The guard knew as well as she did that she was the better swordsman, and she could feel him thinking of the fate that would fall to his family if he died. His young wife had just given birth to their first child. The widow of a guardsman would have no one to care for her, and he worried.
She might be the better swordsman, but he was stronger than she was and she was beginning to feel a deep weariness—perhaps the effect of Tris's healing, as he had warned. If she did not finish this fight soon, she might not win it.
Her face grim with concentration, she began to force the guard backward up the stairs. While she fought, she reached out lightly and touched the presence that she knew to be Tris—later she would wonder why she found him easier than Laeth.
Steal the Dragon Page 10
