Mind of the Magic (Arhel Book 3)

by Holly Lisle

  Eventually the pain changed in quality—while her fingers still throbbed and her wrists burned, the leaden, tingling sensation left. At last she could move her fingers and pick objects up, though her grasp was still weak.

  She managed then to untie the rope around her ankles. That done, she rubbed the life back into her feet. Once she was able to move around the cellar, she made an inventory of the room. The walls were stone, the ceiling framed timber, the floor packed dirt. The room’s contents consisted of the chamber pot on which she’d earlier hit her head, broken frames for two small beds, both lacking mattresses, and a long, high-backed settle with a missing seat. The settle’s storage compartment was empty. The single door was locked—and it was sturdy, built of thick boards bound with metal. It opened out, so that she could not even work the hingepins free.

  She saw no sense in calling for help—help would not come, though trouble certainly would. Her weapons were gone so she couldn’t hope to fight her way to freedom, even if she could lure the innkeeper into the room with her. Her newfound brother might try to rescue her—but if he couldn’t manage a rescue, she certainly couldn’t hope for a ransom. There was nothing Bytoris could do to meet Thirk’s demands. Gyels… well, Gyels was missing.

  She sat down on the frame of one of the beds and rested her chin in her hands. She hadn’t given Gyels much thought at all, other than to consider how best to turn down his advances without angering him.

  But Gyels deserved consideration. How had he simply walked up to the guard and been admitted to the city? He wasn’t a Bontonard. He’d said he was from Forst—and Forst and Bonton were bitterest enemies. He’d shown no identification. He’d said a word or two to the main guard at the gate and had gone in. She couldn’t credit it to the guards’ disorganization, or to the First Folk attack that had ended only moments before; those same guards had been only too willing to turn Edrouss and her away moments later.

  Other strangenesses began to occur to her as she considered. Gyels had claimed Thirk used the magic of the chalice against him—yet Thirk was desperately trying to catch whomever had Arhel’s magic. Gyels had tracked Thirk at an incredible pace across often rocky terrain, in darkness—he’d never backtracked, had never asked for help, had never expressed dismay or complained of the difficulty of tracking under such nearly impossible conditions. He’d goaded them on with fear of what Thirk would do with the chalice—and yet Thirk, in the cellar, had said the chalice was nothing. And Thirk insisted that he’d followed them through the mountains.

  What if he had?

  Every time Faia had felt a surge of magical energy, it had come from in front of the travelers. If Thirk had been behind them, that left only Gyels in front.

  Which meant that Gyels either was, or had, the source of the magic.

  Her stomach twisted. She had been right to distrust him, and wrong to let her fears of Thirk and his madness distract her from the evil that sat in front of her own eyes. Gyels had acted nothing like Witte; Faia had let the dissimilarities lull her into complacence. But what better way could Witte have found to win her trust than to “die,” and let her rescue him yet again, disguised in another form? How he must have enjoyed his tricks at her expense—and seeing her drawn to him.

  Thank the Lady she hadn’t bedded him.

  Out. She needed a way out—fast Thirk wasn’t the real problem after all, though Thirk would kill her when his plans didn’t work out as he wished. Witte the Mocker was the problem and the real danger to Arhel—and Faia could only imagine what terrors he would cause if she didn’t find a way to stop him.

  She sat on the edge of one of the bedframes, frowning down into darkness, trying to think of a workable escape plan.

  One of Faljon’s sayings came to mind: “An innkeeper’s heart / is deep as his pockets.” She got up and paced in the blackness; her feet had learned the shape of the room well enough to let her walk without constant stumbling. She wondered—could the innkeep’s greed be her path to freedom?

  Thirk had accused her of stealing—and said he’d not yet found the things she’d stolen. He’d convinced the keep she was a looter. If she could convince the innkeep that she’d hidden some great treasure away, and that she alone knew where to find it… and that he could have half if he let her go, she might win her freedom. The keep was not an honest man.

  She leaned against the cool stone wall and considered further—and she began to see the problems innate in the idea. At very best, the innkeep would want to go with her to be sure she didn’t run away. At worst, he’d want her to tell him where this treasure was hidden, with her freedom as the prize if he found it. But she wouldn’t trust him to go alone any more than he would trust her. So, assuming she could talk him into it, she would have to find some way to escape him in the streets.

  No. He’d bind her to him in some manner, no doubt, so that she couldn’t run. She had nothing with which to bribe him, nothing with which to fight him, no way to coerce him to set her free. And of course there was no treasure—because she wasn’t a looter. If she led him to nothing, he’d simply give her back to Thirk, or have her taken to the city square and hanged as the thief he believed her to be.

  She wanted her magic back. If she were able to reach the Lady’s power, she would have some way to fight.

  She sighed, and sat down on the broken bedframe again.

  Arhel’s survival depended on her and on what she had discovered—she held the lives of her daughter and her friends, and uncounted thousands of innocent people prisoner with her. She had to get out.

  She stood again, desperate, and tugged at the stones that formed the cellar wall. They were mortared in place. If she had something to dig with and a hundred years, she could probably dig a tunnel through the dirt floor, under the wall, and… where? Out beneath a street? Faia had little time—rapidly becoming even less—and she dared not fail. Not if she ever wanted to see her daughter again.

  She went back to pacing. She was sure her feet would wear a furrow in the dirt floor—when suddenly she lost track of her place in the room, and stumbled over one of the two bedframes. “Damnall,” she snarled, and shoved the second frame against the first. She heaved and hoisted until she’d stacked them one on top of the other—she wanted clear room to walk and think.

  She leaned against the bedframes when she’d finished, breathing hard. Footsteps rattled the floorboards over her head, then moved on. She looked up. Someone had walked overhead earlier—but there was no regular traffic in the place above her head. She nibbled on her lower lip, then shook the bedframes gently. They didn’t wobble too badly.

  Stacked as they were, they formed a platform that rose as high as her lower chest. If she lifted the settle onto the top of that platform, and laid it across the unbroken part of the upper bedframe, she would have a stable bit of homemade scaffolding that would allow her to sit comfortably just below the ceiling.

  She grinned, and put thought to action.

  She heard laughter and raised voices and snatches of drunken song above; the noise wasn’t coming from directly overhead though, but from a distance away. Certainly one room away, and perhaps two. Only rarely did footsteps pass directly above her now, and those always occurred in pairs, walking in quickly and lightly, and out slowly and with difficulty.

  She guessed the innkeep stored his beer kegs in the room above, or something else heavy that only required infrequent replacement. If she were right, that would work well for her—it was nice to think something worked in her favor. If she could pry loose a few of the floorboards and climb into the beer-room, she could hide there until the inn’s tavern closed, and its denizens slithered home. Provided, of course, she could keep out of the way of the bartenders.

  Then, of course, she’d have to find Edrouss Delmuirie and Bytoris—and she’d have to figure out a way to fight Witte and a way to save Arhel,

  She would have laughed at her plans had she been someone else looking on as she worked. Potential disasters and failures perched one on to
p of the other, waiting to topple onto her. She didn’t let them stop her, though. The only way she would be certain to fail was if she didn’t act—and if she acted, one step at a time, she believed she could conquer anything… even a malicious god.

  One step at a time.

  Freedom came first.

  Chapter 27

  SHE prized the nails of the third floorboard up, and stopped. She’d made the opening wide enough.

  Thank the Lady for loud drunks. She’d dropped things and crashed and thumped enough to keep her heart constantly racing like a mouse in a boxtrap—but the drunks thumped and thundered and fought and sang—and covered the worst of her blunders. She tried to save her noisiest work for the tavern patrons’ off-key renditions of The Old Roxal Doxie—they, in turn, had obliged her by singing all the verses.

  Faia decided she would think kinder things about that song in the future.

  She sat on the top of the settle and tied the ends of the two ropes together, then looped the resulting longer rope over the ceiling beam that lay beneath her escape hatch. She knotted that firmly, then climbed down her stacked furniture and pushed things back to their places as best she could. She tamped the dirt floor down as smoothly as she could manage while working by feel. She hoped she’d covered all her marks, though she had no way of telling. Then she shinnied up the rope—a painful process—and squirmed her way through to the next floor between the loosened boards.

  She muttered curses on Thirk’s head for stealing her boots—she could have used the heel of one to hammer the floorboard nails back into place. Instead, she had to pocket the nails; she didn’t want them lying around to point out how she’d gotten free. She wanted to leave as much confusion and mistrust in her wake as she could.

  She found herself, as she’d deduced, in a room stacked floor to ceiling with beer barrels, cheap wine, and bagged potatoes. She stole two potatoes and one of the wine bottles and retired behind the kegs to wait for quiet.

  Quiet wasn’t what she got, though.

  She’d devoured only half of the first potato when the door creaked open, and two people crept into the room and shoved the door shut.

  “Are you sure they will not be in here for anything?” a boy’s voice asked.

  “Beer keg’s full, and closing is within the hour. No one will bother us.” A girl’s voice, both confident and sly.

  “What about your da?”

  The girl laughed softly. “What about him?”

  “He’ll kill us both if he catches us.”

  “No. Only you,” the girl said, then laughed again. Faia, huddled against the back wall, raised an eyebrow. For all the girl’s laughter, Faia thought her words might not have been a joke. Poor foolish boy. On the other side of the beer kegs, clothes rustled softly to the ground.

  “Marray, don’t joke. Do you not think we should hide behind the kegs?”

  Faia felt her heart rise into her throat—she nearly choked on her potato. No, she thought. You don’t want to hide behind the kegs.

  “We can if you want,” the girl said. The tone of her voice implied that she considered this option one for craven cowards, however.

  Faia heard the rustle of cloth again; then the boy said, “I think we’d better. I don’t want your da to walk in and see us.”

  Marray huffed; then Faia heard the girl’s bare feet pad across the floor, followed by the boy’s heavier footsteps. Coming my way, she thought. She rose and listened, trying to guess which side of the kegs they were going to walk around so she could slip around the other side.

  They went around the right, and she kept the barrels between them and went left, so that she found herself standing beside the two wine racks. She moved between those—she was hidden from the young lovers, but not well hidden at all from anyone who might come through the door.

  The sounds of wet kisses and quiet little moans began to emanate from behind the kegs. Faia glowered in the lovers’ direction—it had been long and longer since she had played “plow the field” with anyone. The little giggles and increasingly frantic thumping left her feeling even lonelier than she had before. She scowled at every gasp and whispered commentary.

  “Oh… do that again!” The voice high and feminine and breathy.

  “I am.”

  “Harder.”

  “I am.”

  “Oh, Joetz! Give me everything!”

  “I am.” A tinge of masculine annoyance then.

  Thump. Thump. Squeal. Squeak.

  “Ow, ow, ow! Your elbow is on my hair!”

  Grumpily, “Well there’s no place I can put them they won’t be—it’s all over the floor.”

  “I thought you liked my hair.”

  Sigh. “I do. I just don’t have anyplace for my elbows.”

  “Then roll over, and I will too.”

  Thump, thump.

  “Watch, your knees!” This from Joetz, and in a panicky voice.

  The thumping resumed, and Faia closed her eyes and sighed quietly. She missed that—but she had come to realize she did not just want any man. She wanted one man, who would stay with her and… and love her. She had not wanted love when she was younger—she had wanted friendship and variety. Entertainment. Fun. She smiled slowly, listening to the young people on the other side of the barrels.

  Let’s be honest. Then I wanted sex, but not a bondmate. Life has changed me. Now I want a companion and a friend, someone I can count on. I want to wake up with the same man every morning, though I never did before. I will only be happy with that now.

  When she closed her eyes, she saw a face—the plain, honest, caring face of an ordinary young man. Edrouss Delmuirie. She surprised herself—Delmuirie was not the sort of man who made women stop and stare. He was friendly and kind and willing to work to please—rather like a dog. She liked him enough to think that someone like him might be the person she was looking for. Perhaps handsomer, though.

  The noises behind the kegs grew louder. Faia sat and rested her chin in her cupped hands and tried to pretend she heard nothing. She closed her eyes—she was weary, and her head was beginning to hurt again from where Thirk had hit her. She wanted to sleep, but she didn’t dare.

  Without warning, the door flew open, and two big men tromped into the room. Faia dug her fingers into the palms of her hands—her muscles went rigid. She prayed they would not look her way, and she could imagine the two youngsters behind the kegs were praying the same thing. The activity had stopped completely at the sound of the door slamming into the wall; Faia imagined Marray and Joetz crouched behind the kegs, round-eyed and sure the world was about to end. If her own situation had not been so desperate, she would have found some humor in theirs.

  “He wants another of the dark brown, too,” one of the men said.

  “I wish he had to carry ‘em. Thought he was goin’ to close up.”

  “Said with that party what came in, he won’t close ‘til sunrise if they keep payin’.”

  “Just our luck.” They picked up a cask between them and began to lug it out of the room.

  The faintest of giggles drifted out from behind the kegs.

  Both men stopped.

  “Did you hear anything?” the first asked.

  “Yah. Back of the kegs.”

  The bartenders settled their keg on the floor.

  Faia’s heart rose to her throat, and she cursed both the young lovers in her thoughts. They were going to have to move if they wanted to stay hidden—and the only place they could move would be the place she already occupied. She looked around the room for someplace else to hide—the only remaining possible cover was directly behind the open door. She rocked to her feet silently, and began to edge toward it, as both men walked across the open floor to the false wall of kegs.

  As she slipped behind the door, she saw the first shadow move around the far edge of the keg wall, followed by a second. The youngsters kept the barrier between them and their pursuers. Their naked skin seemed almost to glow in the tiny bit of light that seeped
into the beer vault from the outer room. They edged between the two racks of wine, and crouched down, occupying the spot where she’d hidden an instant before.

  They are not laughing now, Faia thought. None of us are laughing now.

  “Anything?” the first man asked.

  “I don’t see anything, but I swear on Haddar’s head I heard something.”

  “So did I. It was probably the cat.”

  “Didn’t sound like no cat to me.”

  A thoughtful pause followed. “No. It didn’t.” Both men walked along the back of the keg wall; Faia could see the tops of their heads as tiny patches of moving darkness along the uneven row of kegs. The kids eyed each other, then moved out of their hiding place, crept within touching distance of Faia, and scooted across the little puddle of light to the far wall.

  She saw their plan. They hoped to circle around and duck behind the kegs again as the two barkeeps came back out.

  Faia was going to be right in line of sight of those selfsame barkeeps—and unlike the kids, those two would be looking for someone, and so would probably catch her as she hid. She tried frantically to think of some diversion—

  And then one of the kids stepped hard on one of the boards she’d loosened in her escape from the basement. One end of it flew up, then the board fell back into place with a slam as the kid lifted his foot. The sound seemed as loud as an explosion in the tense, forced quiet of the room. One barkeep came flying around the end of the kegs in front of her, but looking toward the noise, while the other doubled back and charged straight into them. The girl shrieked, “He tricked me!” The boy yelled, “I never!”

  And the innkeep thundered into the keg room and roared, “Where in the sixteen blue hells of Fargorn is my bedamned beer?!” before he saw what his barkeeps had caught—his naked daughter and her equally naked swain.

  The innkeep bellowed. Both kids howled.

  Faia muttered, “Seize the moment” and slipped through the door, through the line of drunks that began trickling back to find out what all the excitement was about, and out into the cool, smoke-filled night air.