The fog cleared as he went limp, his cavernous eyes filled with hatred. “He knows who you are,” he hissed, his hands clutching the fatal wound in his breast. Then he crumpled around his death like a spider, and grew still.
“Idgit,” Rhinne muttered, breathing heavily. She staggered to her feet and kicked the corpse in the side to release her rage.
Her fight had gone unnoticed, but she dared not leave that to chance. She considered the corpse at her feet. An oborom priest. Her heart missed a beat as it settled into her mind what she had just done.
Wulfgar had taught her that a warrior must stay strong despite pain. Rhinne took a deep breath. Right. Pain would wait.
Holding her belly and shaking her head to clear the haze, she retrieved her sword and sheathed it. Her knife protruded from the priest’s breast. She yanked it out, wiped it off with shaking hands and returned it to her thigh.
Her amulet lay on the floor by the wall. She limped over and picked it up, studied it briefly for a moment with a blank mind, and then tied it back around her neck. The frost-sea weight of it had vanished.
At the far end of the hall, the door to the library stood partly open. Golden light cast a beam on the floor. Strange, she hadn’t expected the place to be lit. She plucked the priest’s knife from the floor where she had kicked it. Holding it as if it might infect her with something, she dropped it on his chest. She folded his cloak around him to avoid leaving a bloody trail on the floor. Then she grasped the leather fold at his neck and pulled. The pain in her back nearly gagged her.
One good thing about the library of Tromblast was that it didn’t get many visitors.
She pulled the body in spurts of strength that gave way quickly. Her heart raced and sweat dripped down her temple. She kept moving. When she drew near, she dropped the body, then entered the chamber and moved around the rows, dormers and alcoves to find a remote place. She glanced at a window. It was still dark out. Relieved, she returned to the hall. This escapade would get more complicated once the sun rose.
As she inhaled the pleasing scent of books, she remembered her original mission. You will find it in a library. Rhinne couldn’t imagine anything less likely, now.
She got the priest through the door and hauled him into a far corner, beneath a section of books about plants that grew on Tromb. Another deep breath. Stay focused. Rhinne wrestled the priest into position, blocked him from view with a reading chair, and hurried for the door. She limped down the hall, breathing heavily, then stopped as she reached the mess of blood where the priest had fallen. She looked down at herself and swore. She had enough blood on her hands without soiling her clothing too.
She returned to the library. With a creep on her spine, she half expected to find the priest gone when she reached the alcove. He was still there. She divested him of his cloak and returned to the hall, mopped up the blood as best she could, and returned to the library. As she tossed the cloak over the priest’s body, she hesitated.
The book. After going through all this trouble, she might as well see about it. Starting with the row hiding the priest, she began hunting through the volumes, every row, high and low, for the book she had seen in her dream. But it was not in plain sight, and she didn’t have time to keep searching. She blew out the lamp burning on a table in the center of the room. As she swept into the hall, she heard the warrior’s voice, whispering softly.
You must leave Tromb.
If the warning hadn’t meant anything before, it did now.
Wicked Smiths
Rhinne drew her cloak around her as she hurried from the scene of a crime for which the oborom would surely put her to death, if they caught her. As she headed for the nearest stairwell, she arranged the torn fabric at her neck and overlapped her cloak to hide the gap. Yanking the hood over her face, she headed for the lowest level of the East Tower.
She had to find Wulfgar. Her closest friend, he had taught her to make a stand and know the fire within. He had given her confidence in a realm gone mad. She wrapped her arms over her bruised belly as she felt the priest’s fist driving into it. There were things she hadn’t told Wulfgar. Too many things. It would mean war if he knew them, and her confidence wasn’t strong enough to feel worthy of that.
In the storage vault beneath the kitchens in the East Tower complex was an entrance to the under-rim, a passageway just beneath the level of the Commons, the great hall of Tromblast. It went all the way around the center of the keep, encircling it, and provided the fastest and most direct way to the South Tower, where Wulfgar’s room was.
There were only four entrances to the under-rim, one beneath each of Tromblast’s towers. Rhinne hadn’t gone into the under-rim since the winter solstice, when her father had made it forbidden. She recalled the first time she had tried to approach one of the entrances after the injunction, and found a guard there. She could still hear his caustic laughter, as he mocked her.
Shortly after that, Ragnvald had put new latch mechanisms on the under-rim doors, ghastly iron things that opened from the outside only, thereby trapping anyone who managed to get into the rim without authorization. Rhinne had heard a rumor that the oborom guards used a code to let each other out. No telling what that was.
Getting into the under-rim required a different key for each door. A fortnight past, Rhinne had stolen the key to the eastern entrance. She had followed the guard from the kitchen—the same man who had laughed at her—and spied him storing the key on a hook in a nearby guardroom. She hadn’t seen the man since.
She walked into the kitchen, keeping her pace leisurely but deliberate. Dawn was near, and smoke and steam filled the air; the cooks would be too busy to bother with someone flitting through the murk. The smell of bread sighed deliciously in her lungs, reminding her of hunger.
She kept near the wall until she reached a wide archway that led to the storerooms. She crept down the shallow steps and slipped between a tall stack of crates to avoid being seen by the kitchen lad scooping barley from the stone bin in the center of the vault.
She had hidden her key behind a broken stone in the wall. She fetched it and crept around the back of the vault towards the far side, where empty boxes and barrels were stored. After a long winter, there were many of these, piled high to the oak beams in the ceiling, several rows wide. She skirted around until she found an opening that offered a view of the under-rim door. A black-cloaked guard stood there, gazing from beneath a dull gray helmet with a thorny branch on the front. His hand rested on his sword hilt.
Rhinne withdrew and gathered herself to think. She was in enough trouble without getting into a skirmish with an oborom watcher.
Then she heard voices.
The rhythmic swooshing sounds of barley stopped, replaced by a familiar male voice speaking in short, sharp tones. Rhinne’s heart bled cold as the boy fearfully responded, “Aye, milord...no milord...”
Rhinne crept up the aisle as close as she dared, then peeked around to glimpse the entrance to the vault. Mid-way down the steps stood a lean man in black, pale face set like stone, auburn hair pulled back tightly and dark eyes flicking around like an eagle’s gaze searching for prey.
Deep within Rhinne’s body, thorns twined like snakes. Dore. Her eldest brother, Sentinel of the West and Ragnvald’s most powerful supporter, Dore often disappeared for days, only to emerge with small eyes sensitive to light, his clothes stinking of mold and darkness. Rhinne had even spotted him on the beach one night, standing on the rocks outside the North Cave, uttering words in the same tongue the priest had used.
He was an oborom warlock.
Winter help me, she thought, withdrawing as silently as a moth. It would go ill for her indeed if Dore caught her in here, armed, with blood on her hands and a key to the under-rim door! Did he know about the priest? Perhaps not. But why else would he be down here at this hour?
Through the rush of blood in her ears, Rhinne tried to listen to what he said. He barked something aloud; a name perhaps, then she heard a clinking noise
. The guard strode across the floor. She drew back. After he passed, she peered around just in time to see him hurry with Dore up the steps and into the kitchen.
Blessed fortune! Rhinne fled down the narrow aisle and across the back of the vault, keeping her step as light as possible to avoid being heard by the youth, who had resumed his work. When she reached the door, she looked once over her shoulder...
The lad stood there in mid-scoop, staring at her across the distance with his mouth half open.
Make a break for it...or trust a boy? Rhinne slowly lifted her finger and laid it over her lips. Please, she asked with her eyes.
The lad looked furtively over his shoulder at the entrance, empty in the mist. Then he swung around and nodded.
Flashing a smile, Rhinne pulled out her key and unlocked the door. She was through in an instant, closing the door behind her like the lid of a tomb.
Her relief faded quickly. Now she was trapped in here, with not much of a plan for how to get the guard on the south door to open it. Another problem was that the south door was in the smithy, in an adjoining armory. Not a good place to be discovered.
An even worse thought was that Dore would put out an alert and all the under-rim doors would be set with a trap. They hadn’t bothered to change the lock on the east door after she had stolen the key. Perhaps they sought to snare whoever had taken it.
Rhinne hurried along, feeling the wall. In the tumult of her troubled thoughts, she almost passed by the south door, marked by a faint line of light on the floor’s edge. She smelled the forge. The air had warmed; the smithy chimneys were part of a natural formation in the island rock on the southern side of Tromblast. She stopped, her heart thumping so loudly in the deep silence she feared it could be heard on the other side of the door.
A code. Scowling, she drew her knife, flipped it around and struck the door with the pommel, in pattern. Someone trapped wouldn’t make such a sound. Neither would a guard, she assumed, but it might be intriguing enough to open the door and find out.
For a moment, nothing happened. Rhinne repeated her lyrical knock, tap, tap, tap-tap-tap. She paused again, and this time, faintly, someone moved on the other side: a scrape, a step. Several moments passed before he inserted his key into the lock.
Rhinne withdrew into the shadows just far enough to remain mysterious and also to determine if others occupied the room beyond. The latch turned and the door creaked open. Golden light flooded the corridor, blinding her. The bulk of the watcher blocked the opening.
Before he spoke or removed his key from the lock, Rhinne jumped forward, grabbed the clasp at this throat and swiftly pulled him into the corridor, slamming her knee into his groin. He went down with a choke.
This might have been simple. But Rhinne’s hurts put her badly off balance. The watcher hooked his fingers into the wraps on her leg and buckled her knees. Still holding her knife, Rhinne twisted around, slashing out. The guard rolled out of the way and got up, his face contorted with wrath. Rhinne tried for the door again; his arm closed with iron force around her throat. She spun her knife and thrust it back hard, with little effect: his mail turned it.
Something went berserk inside of her. In an eruption of strength, she slammed her fist up into his face, gaining a moment to escape his grasp and turn around. She hit him again with the pommel of her knife, knocking him into the wall. In an instant, she slipped through the door and closed it behind her. She leaned against it, breathing heavily, dizzy with pain—and suddenly aware.
Three blades were leveled at her breast.
No one said anything. The men holding her at sword-point were smiths, not oborom. But they were not boys and clearly didn’t intend to help her.
Carefully, keeping eye contact, she turned her knife flat and held it out. Just then, the watcher slammed something into the door at her back, causing her to jump. Her knife fell to the floor. One of her captors retrieved it.
Rhinne’s hotheaded instincts goaded her to fight her way out of this, but the more rational part of her—the one Wulfgar had taught her to listen to—didn’t trust her skills against three smiths who spent their time testing the weight and swing of swords. She also had to consider being hurt.
The one who had taken her knife motioned her with the tip of his blade for the rest of her weapons. He looked familiar, with red hair and sky-blue eyes. Rhinne removed her sword. Even if she had the strength, her heart was not into fighting these men.
She should have killed the oborom guard, however. She calculated how long it would take him to reach the next door and return with more men. Not long.
“Princess,” one of the smiths said. He was tall, thickly built, with black curly hair streaked with gray. He mocked her with the title. “Explain yourself.”
I’m a fool who should have stayed in bed, she thought. “I don’t have to explain anything to you. Let me pass.”
He twisted his lips and sucked something through his teeth. “You’re coming with us.”
The third man said, “We’ll be rewarded. North Born in the under-rim? Ay, good one.”
Rhinne laughed, flat as a pan. “The only thing the oborom will reward you with is enlistment. Better you release me and keep your hands clean.”
“She’s right,” said the red-haired smith, holding her weapons in his free arm.
“If we let her go, we’ll be hung,” the tall smith returned, casting him a spiky glance.
“Consider this,” Rhinne said, studying the dark shapes of weapons and tools stacked neatly around the room. “While I regret not killing that watcher, he’s alive and I doubt he’ll tell the priests I got past him. They respond badly to incompetence.” She returned her gaze to the men before her. The brown-haired one shifted on his feet. “If I were to tell them that you lot helped me get out of the under-rim, do you think the watcher would stand up for you?” She lifted her brow and smiled prettily.
The tall one stared, as if sizing up her resolve. The other two exchanged uneasy glances.
They all turned at the sound of a slamming door. Someone shouted a command. Rhinne reached behind her back and swiftly retrieved the watcher’s key from the lock, and pocketed it.
The tall smith waved his sword at her. “Into the rim.”
Rhinne stepped out of the way. “It’s locked. He took the key.”
“Into the caves, then.”
“Are you mad?” breathed the blue-eyed man.
“She can hide there temporarily.”
There was no time for argument. The smiths threaded through the weapons stores towards the far door with Rhinne following close. She started as the blue-eyed smith stopped suddenly in front of her, and then returned her weapons. He didn’t wait as she put them on, but continued after his companions.
Rhinne hadn’t known there was an entrance to the caves down here, and she didn’t like this idea. But it was better than being trapped in the under-rim. Footsteps echoed on the stairs at the far end of the smithy. The smiths ran past benches, sword racks, walls of hammers and implements until they came near the forge. The blue-eyed man grabbed a shovel, jammed it into the furnace and slung a heaping scoop of glowing coals into a slack tub, causing steam to hiss and billow into the air. “We’ll stall them,” he said. “Go.”
The tall smith grabbed Rhinne’s arm and hurried her into the shadows on the far end of the forge. An arched opening fell off into steep, narrow stairs. The smith said, “Down there. Door at the bottom.”
The stairwell was a lightless pit. “How far down?”
When she looked at him for an answer, he had gone. Driven by the sounds of soldiers flooding the smithy, she descended the steps for what felt like a long time, since she had to keep her sword outstretched to avoid hitting the door unaware. She had begun to think there was no door when her blade finally struck something. As she wrenched it free, her foot slipped off the last step, twisting her ankle and sending her sprawling to the floor. She swore a rugged curse as she pushed herself up.
Sheathing her blade, R
hinne felt around the stone and cobwebs for the contours of the door. It was heavily barred. Gritting her teeth against the pain in her body, she removed the bar and pushed the door open. A musty, cold draft enveloped her.
The underground was darker than the stairwell. Leaving the door ajar, she stiffly lowered her body against the wall by the opening. She drew her blade and placed it into the crack, not wanting to be isolated down here on one side of a closed door through which she couldn’t hear what was coming. She closed her eyes. In the dark, she felt like the only warm breathing thing alive.
The amulet at her throat grew cold.
As she sat there, Rhinne considered the shortcomings of this plan. The smiths wouldn’t get away with pretending that nothing had happened. They were not on her side; they had only agreed to this for fear of a worse thing. Unless they were extraordinarily good liars, they would be hauled in for questioning, in which case Rhinne would be sneaking up those stairs to fight off an oborom watch.
Unless the oborom came down after her. A dreadful thought.
Just then, something moved on the other side of the door, in the stairwell. She stiffened and grabbed the hilt of her blade. Soft steps sounded on the stairs, slowly, carefully, as if the person were trying to be quiet. One person. Rhinne relaxed a little, thinking one of the smiths had come to fetch her.
She stood up, bringing her blade with her and holding it towards the crack. The person didn’t say anything, and Rhinne didn’t dare to call out. The breathing presence drew near, paused, and then yanked the door shut. Rhinne dropped her sword in a panic and reached for the handle to open it, but before she could get leverage on it, the bar dropped in place with a thud.
In a blaze of terror she started to shout, scream, pound on the door, anything—but then held it. The last thing she needed was to draw attention down here. After a moment, she calmed herself, alone in the close, silent darkness of the underground.
She couldn’t believe this. How could she have been so stupid? Even if she could get through the door, she didn’t dare go back up there; the smithy would be flooded with Dore’s men. Who else besides one of the smiths would lock her down here? The oborom would have come in after her. Her stomach turned. Wulfgar would be up and on his way to the yards by now. The sun would rise, cast its beautiful light on everything and she would be trapped in the black bowels of Tromblast with the rats and the warlocks.
The Riven God Page 2
