Upon This World of Stone (The Paladin Trilogy Book 2)
Page 19
But there was no blood.
The final guard was backing away, his ax ready, still bellowing for support that was answered only by the echoes. Adella launched herself forward, literally throwing herself to the ground beside him, offering him a target he couldn’t miss, but even as he pivoted to finish off this foolish opponent, the silver sword slashed upward, impaling him. He fell forward, and Adella scurried forward beneath him and pulled the sword free as she went to avoid being pinned beneath her victim.
There was a thick red fluid on the blade of the silver sword, the heart-blood of the dead barbarian, and as Shannon stared, the blood bubbled and steamed and soaked into the gleaming metal. Adella turned to look at her, and Shannon was horrified to see red light gleaming in the woman’s eyes.
“Come,” Adella said curtly, and Shannon was momentarily startled that she no longer whispered. “The doors are just ahead.”
Reluctantly, Shannon followed again as Adella hurried down the corridor to a heavy door of solid iron, the bottom scarred with thick rust, the thing looking like it hadn’t been opened in a century.
“Might one of the guards have the keys?” Shannon asked helpfully, but Adella ignored her. The woman placed the point of the silver sword against the keyhole, and there was a flash of red power that momentarily seemed to encase the entire area. The door actually opened a tiny sliver, but then the red light vanished, and the door stopped, barely ajar.
“Blood and death!” Adella cursed in exasperation as she seized the ringbolt. “Grab hold!”
Shannon took part of the ring, and together, they pulled the door open a few more inches.
“That’s enough,” Adella announced as she dropped the ring and squeezed her way through the gap, Shannon right behind.
The short corridor beyond was completely dark, but Adella produced a small stick of some kind that illuminated the area with a silvery light and showed three iron-bound doors, one to the left, one to the right, and one straight ahead. Shannon’s eyes widened at the sight. She knew exactly where they were.
“This is part of the image from the mirror!” she said, her voice tight with excitement. “The prisoners are to the right!”
Adella was already at the right-hand door, the silver sword sheathed, a pair of small metal tools in her hand. Shannon barely had time to notice she was working on the keyhole when there came a solid click.
“See to the prisoners,” Adella snapped as she headed for the left door. “Get them ready to move.”
Shannon rushed to the door as Adella went to attend to the one on the left, and with a hard grunt, she pulled it open. It was wood only bound with iron and was not nearly as heavy as the massive thing that guarded the outer corridor. Inside, there were two small candles lit, showing a large, low room, and as she peered in, eyes started to peer back at her.
“We are here to rescue you!” she announced, and she was greeted with cries of relief and joy. Figures were coming forward now, emerging from the shadows, women, a few children, all of them moving with the stiffness of long confinement.
“Who are you?” an older woman demanded.
“Where are the soldiers?” another woman asked anxiously.
“What general is in charge?”
She took a breath and said, “My name is Shannon, and there are no soldiers, at least not inside the castle. A cavalry contingent from many of your lands is raiding the outer walls and drawing off the Northings to give us a chance to rescue you. You must all understand. Brave men are dying even as we speak to buy us a few precious minutes, so we must hurry!”
“We do not know you, girl,” another older woman said, wearing the remains of an emerald green dress with staunch dignity. “How are we to be sure you are to be believed?”
Before she could answer, a young woman pushed past and headed for the open door, saying, “I don’t care if she’s a Northing serving wench, any place is better than here!”
Shannon reached out and caught the woman’s arm to keep her from walking right out the door. “We can’t go out the usual way. The goblins and Northings still control the castle. There is another passage we must use. A secret passage.”
“You speak of the Lord’s Way?” the first woman asked, her voice a whisper, and she glanced around to see if others were listening. “How know you of this?”
Shannon’s slender patience came to an end. “There is no time for secrets or questions! We have bare minutes before the Northings return and the doors slam shut on you forever! The Silver Horde is moving on Jalan’s Drift even now, and they have left scant troops behind to guard your lands. You are the real chains that bind your people and hold them all hostage! Make it to freedom, and all the plains will rise against the invaders!”
There was a stirring now as comprehension sank it, their peril and their hope suddenly clear to all.
“Belina, start to gather the children,” the first woman ordered the young woman Shannon had stopped. “Thellin, you must see to Sir Robert. Madam Overia, may I ask you to attend to the Lady Sellma?”
There was a resulting burst of activities, as people scattered to attend to their assignments, and the woman paused to nod to Shannon. “My name is Lady Huntley, and I am…or…was the Mother of Lord Jameson, Duke of Nargosia.”
“I am sorry for your loss, My Lady,” Shannon said with a small bow. “Hopefully, we will soon find vengeance for your son. My I ask how many hostages there are?”
“Well, let me see now,” the woman said as she turned to look over the room. “We have the Lady Sellma, her daughter and grandchildren for Kargos, and we have…”
Five minutes later, Shannon went in search of Adella, and she found the other door unlocked and several of the heavy chests opened within. She peered in cautiously, and she was stunned to see Adella busily shoveling the contents of a chest into a small bag no larger than a coin purse. The woman poured at least twenty times more than the bag could possibly hold, and Shannon quickly stepped back out of sight as she realized that such knowledge could be very dangerous.
She went back into the hostages’ room, and none too soon. Only seconds later, Adella came in, looked briefly about, and asked, “How many?”
“Twenty one hostages total,” Shannon replied. “Seven children, including one babe in arms, six girls under the age of twenty, five women under the age of sixty who can travel well enough on their own.”
“And the other three?”
Shannon took a deep breath. “A girl of eighteen named Alphellia who has a leg wound and cannot walk. A blind man, Sir Robert de Clay, who is near fifty but still otherwise hale and healthy. And the Lady Sellma of Kargos. She has taken to her bed and will not rise.”
“The blind man is not a problem,” Adella said shortly. “Show me the wounded girl.”
Shannon led the way off to the side where a young girl in a tattered blue dress lay on a filthy mattress. The girl was blonde and frail, and she let out a small scream when Adella lifted her skirt without asking permission. There was a soiled bandage on the one leg, and Adella produced a knife and cut the thing off with a single swipe.
She peered close, sniffed at it, then produced a small pouch and proceeded to sprinkle a white powder on the wound.
“You’re lucky, girl. Damned lucky,” she said as she swiftly put a splint and a fresh bandage on the leg. “The wound had already begun to fester, and a day or two more and it would have gone poisonous. Then you would have lost the leg, if not your life. As it is, you should be able to hobble by with the aid of this splint and a crutch.”
“I…I can’t walk!” the girl exclaimed weakly. “Not with my leg in such…”
Adella reached around and seized the breast of the blue dress, dragging the girl to a sitting position.
“You either walk or you die,” she said softly. “There may be pain at first, but the medicine is starting to work already. In an hour you’ll be limping right along, and in two hours you won’t even remember the leg’s injured. Now get to your feet.”
&nb
sp; Shannon began to offer the girl a hand, but Adella knocked it aside. “Now let us pay our respects to the Lady Sellma.”
Shannon pointed to a spot beside one of the candles where a frail looking woman lay in a white night dress. She watched them both as they approached.
“I fear I will be a burden to you,” the old woman said simply. “I cannot make it even to the door on my own, let alone far beyond.”
Before Adella could say a word, the young woman named Belina stepped between them, her eyes wide with alarm but her jaw set firm. “We shall care for our grandmother.”
“And who shall care for you?” asked Adella with icy calm.
“There are four of us between the ages of fourteen and twenty,” she answered. “Our grandmother is a slight woman, and we can drag her easily in her sheet. We will not be the slowest in this group, I do assure you.”
The two locked eyes for a long moment, taking the measure of each other, and Shannon broke the impasse by injecting, “The Lady Huntley is part of the ruling House of Nargosia. She says she knows how to open the Lord’s Way.”
Slowly, Adella dragged her eyes away from the girl and asked, “Where is this renowned lady?”
Two minutes later, and the hostages began to file out the door, carrying the minimum possessions they needed. But instead of turning left towards the iron door, they turned right, down the short corridor to the now open door at the end. As they left the room of their captivity, Adella was filling small canvas sacks from the chests of the treasure room and handing them out to all but the most infirm.
“Consider this your ransom money,” she announced. “None of them are heavy, but all of them are valuable. You can carry them out, or leave the wealth for the Northings.”
The blind man, Sir Robert de Clay, paused when he received his sack and asked, “Have you more? I can carry easily four times this weight.”
Adella handed over a single additional sack. “Only one for now. You may have more than gold to carry before our race is done.”
Shannon went into the far room with the Lady Huntley ahead of the rest. It was also a large, low room that appeared to be an armory of some kind, though it had clearly been stripped of its contents by the invaders at the storming of the castle. The Lady led the way to the far wall where a large sword rack was embedded in the stone.
“Three stones in this wall must all be pushed at the same time,” she explained as she looked over the blocks. “My husband showed me the passage only once many years ago. Here. I am sure this stone is one of them.”
She indicated a block directly below the left corner of the embedded rack, but as expected, it resisted her feeble pushes.
“Do you have any idea which may be the other two?” Shannon asked not able to avoid staring at the dozens of blocks in the wall.
“Well, I believe one is close to chest height somewhere there to the right,” she said dubiously. “The other is overhead. I remember thinking low, medium, and high. My husband said the entrance was designed so no single person could use it on their own. I suspect that was to keep sneak thieves or cowards from escaping this way.”
Shannon studied the stones to the right, but she could find no difference between them. She tried to see if any displayed nicks or signs of wear that might betray their purpose, but there was nothing, nothing at all.
“Stand clear.”
She turned to find Adella standing with the silver sword drawn and ready. Shannon hurriedly stepped aside, and Adella put the gleaming blade against the stone Lady Huntley had indicated was the first. She rubbed it against the rock actually grinding a little of it, and then she stepped to the right and began the same process against each of those stones.
After the third try, she stopped and looked back at Shannon. “This one is the second key. Now get on your knees, so I can reach the upper stones.”
Without hesitation, she did as she was bid, and Adella stepped on her back, repeating the same procedure with the overhead stones. It seemed to take longer this time, and the woman moved from Shannon’s butt to her shoulders several times before finally announcing success.
“Together now!” Adella ordered, and two women went quickly to the other blocks, throwing their weight against them. A moment of resistance, a moment of doubt, and then all three slid inwards together! When they came to a stop, the entire sword rack slowly swung backwards to reveal a secret corridor that seemed to slant slightly upwards into the darkness. Adella jumped off Shannon’s aching back into the passage, holding up the small light stick before her.
“Come on,” she announced. “Move and move fast. The goblins will have the ass of the last one in!”
*
Jhan was moving at a slow trot across the grassland, one eye cocked on the intimidating mass of Nargost Castle, though there were no guards in sight for him to judge the distance. They had all rushed to the gates, the gates that he had broken, the gates he had destroyed with a single cast of the wand.
“Easy, easy, easy,” he said to himself, both to keep his pace steady and to restrain the exaltation that wanted to burst right out of his chest. Perhaps he had the wizard’s skills after all, perhaps he was destined to wield magics like Malcolm and control a mighty fortress like Llan Praetor. He even began to wonder how they would have fared if it had been he and not Adella at the tiller of the wind boat.
The wand itself was now no more than a charred little stump like a stick from a campfire; the power that had thrown down the gates had also destroyed the wand, and Jhan was fairly sure Adella had rigged the thing to explode in one final ultimate discharge of power. But secretly, he couldn’t suppress the feeling that it had been his hand that had sent forth the lightning, his hand that had blown down the gates, his hand that had survived the destruction that Adella had prepared for him.
“Easy,” he said again, and he looked hard at the castle. Even at this range, he could hear the sound of fighting at the gate in the front wall, and a sting of doubt came back. Yes, he had thrown down the gates, yes, he had drawn every Northing and rock goblin to the main courtyard and cleared the path for Adella and Shannon, but he was now fearing for the fate of Zarif and his men. Had they all ridden through the gates directly into the courtyard? And could any of them hope to survive once the defenders had manned the walls and begun peppering them with arrows? He remembered the arrows launched at him from extreme range when he had begun casting, how two of them would have struck true had it not been for the protection provided by Adella. How many would miss their targets when the range was barely a dozen paces?
He kept up his pace, nearing the end of the castle, and he began to scan the ground ahead for signs of these Gatestones as they were called. Shouldn’t be hard to find on this flat plain, he thought.
It proved harder than he expected. He had walked so far that the castle’s walls were out of sight, only the towers peeping over the low ridge, and he had found nothing. He swung to his left, parallel to the castle’s walls, but the plains were unrelenting in their smoothness. Finally, he came around a tiny rise, and there, a few hundred paces away were perhaps a dozen boulders piled together, tuffs of prairie grass growing on nearly all of them.
He hurried over and first began looking for a trail leading away, but the grass was clean and untrampled and showed no sign that a large party had passed. Then he poked around the stones for a few minutes to see if he could spot some opening or perhaps a disguised door, but he quickly gave up. He sat down on the stones and looked back at the castle, wondering what to do if a party of Northings should sudden appear over the crest of the ridge.
If they see me, I shall have to run, he decided. But what if they don’t see me? Should I try to hide here among the rocks? Or might that give the entrance away? Maybe I should…
Something grabbed his leg, some creature reaching out from the rocks, an iron and hungry vice around his ankle pulling him downward!
“Uh! Uh! Uh!” he cried trying to kick at the thing with his other foot and hitting only rock.
The iron grip lessened and finally released him, and Jhan swung cautiously around to peek down into the crevice.
“Adella?” he asked.
“No, it’s the Demon Himself come to claim your useless hide,” Adella snarled back. “Can you see any type of lever or release mechanism out there that might move these rocks?”
“Nothing. I’ve been already looking, and if it’s here, it’s more than I can find.”
“There’s a shock,” she answered. “Look for a stick, a small stone, perhaps even an outcropping from one of the boulders.”
He looked again, then shrugged helplessly. “I’m telling you there’s nothing.”
“Alright then, stand clear.”
He had barely taken a single step back when a silver sword blade thrust upwards out of the crevice and began knocking steadily against the smallest rock in place. A dozen small blows, then a dozen more, the endurance of the arm wielding the sword impressive, and suddenly, the small boulder simply vanished, falling out of sight. The next moment, Adella squeezed her way out of the narrow opening and rushed to peer over the highest stone back towards the castle.
“Nothing in sight. Not Northing or horseman.” She frowned down at Jhan as she thoughtfully chewed her lip. Finally, she said, “See if you can fit down into that hole.”
“Me? There? Why?”
“These stones appear to truly block the tunnel exit, which will make it the devil’s own work to get these hostages through. We’ll let the Northings search for us during the day, and we’ll come out at night. With any luck, they’ll run off in the wrong direction and buy us the time we need.”
Reluctantly, Jhan began working himself into the narrow gap, and there were hands down in the tunnel that helped to pull and wiggle him along.
“I…I think I’m stuck,” he announced at last, the stone hugging his chest. An instant later, Adella’s hands came crushing down on either of his shoulders, and he shot down into the darkness below.