Jalia Prevails (Book 5)

by John Booth

  “Pompous old idiot,” Jalia muttered from deep within her cloak. She was beginning to wonder if she was going to die of boredom before he got around to showing them the coin.

  Rak led the party from the gate to the courtyard, making a point of describing the Keeper’s Palace in great detail. They were led along a path that passed across a neatly mown lawn to a squat building positioned at the center. Behind this squat building, the royal gardens were resplendent with summer blooms.

  About thirty feet from the building, a stone circle cut its way through the lawn. It was made from a single piece of polished red stone unlike anything Jalia had seen before. Within the stone, thin ribbons of gold weaved their way between what looked like mottled red canyons, though the stones surface was completely flat.

  “Beware if you are Fairie,” Rak said as he walked over the circle. Jalia grimaced and followed behind, stumbling into the people in front as she became suddenly lightheaded. She recovered immediately and the people in front of her glared at her, convinced she was trying to be funny.

  Rak led them into the first level room, passing two guards who saluted him. Jalia sized up the men and saw that what she had been told was no lie. These men were experienced and fully alert. They were well armed and wearing armor strong enough to block a crossbow bolt fired at point blank range. Whatever his other faults, the Keeper was doing a good job of protecting the coin.

  Inside the first room, they passed a third and fourth guard. These two were not wearing armor, but they were equally well armed and looked every bit as dangerous as the men outside. Tib must be paying well to have obtained the services of such men.

  They were led down a narrow spiral stone staircase to the lower level. Jalia marveled at the thickness of the white stone as they descended through it. It was remarkably bright below as the crystal pipes brought amazing amounts of sunlight into the labyrinth.

  “The surfaces of the pipes on the outside of the vault are cleaned and polished each day by the Keeper’s men,” Rak told them. “I want to you split into two groups when we reach the bottom, alternate people going left and right down the corridors. Do not fear, my friends, both groups will meet again at the next doorway.”

  There were two guards stationed at the outermost square. Each positioned at the first turn of the corridor where they could see both the doorway the group had come through and one of the remaining corridors. In such confined quarters, one man skilled with a sword could defend the passage with ease.

  Apparently, there were only six guards on duty as they saw no more on their journey. Jalia believed that one man at the top or bottom of the spiral staircase could stop anybody entering or leaving all on his own. The protection provided for this vault was impressive.

  When they reached the inner vault, they found a wooden door. Rak took a silver key from his pocket and unlocked it grandly.

  “Please move right around the room when you go in. The Coin sits on a glass mount, which itself sits on a stone plinth. You can walk right around the plinth to see the Coin from all sides. Now marvel at the wonder and mystery that is the Five Gem Coin!”

  Rak opened the door, which swung inwards soundlessly. As soon as the door opened, a pale red light could be seen inside the room. The group shuffled into the room and Rak shut the door behind them, blocking out the light from the crystal pipes.

  The room was bathed in a red light shining out from an object high up at the exact center of the room. The stone plinth was four feet high and six feet wide while the glass mount took the coin two feet higher than that.

  Five tiny blinding points of red light made the coin difficult to see. Enough light bounced from the walls for the visitors to make out the shape of the coin. Jalia put a hand in front of her face to try to block out the light from the rubies so she could see the rest of the coin. It appeared to be engraved in fine detail that was impossible to make out. The coin itself was less than two inches across.

  The visitors shuffled around the room, determined to see the coin from all angles. After ten minutes of viewing, Rak opened the door revealing the much brighter piped in daylight in the corridor.

  “If you would like to leave the room in an orderly manner,” he requested.

  The visitors filed out of the room. As the last of them left, Rak stood on his tiptoes to ensure the room was empty. Satisfied that all had gone, he locked the door behind him.

  Jalia stood from where she had been lying on the floor behind the plinth. She was wondering what had possessed her to do something so insane. Now, she had only moments to steal the coin, unlock the door and get back to the others before she was missed. It was vital she made it back to them before they reached the guards on the outer square. If she wasn’t back by then the guards would be suspicious and search her.

  Jumping onto the plinth and removing the coin from its glass setting took Jalia only a few seconds. As she jumped down to the floor, she admired the coin up close. The brightness of the rubies made it difficult to see, but she could feel the engraving on it with her fingers and she couldn’t wait to see the coin in sunlight.

  She ran to the door and examined the lock using the light from the coin. She was an expert locksmith and knew she could open it. She felt for the special lock-picking tool she kept in her boot. As she took the tool out of her boot, one of her fingers touched a ruby and she yelled as it burnt her. Cursing, she dropped both the coin and the lock pick. The coin rolled around the plinth and clattered to a halt out of sight. Hurrying to get to it, she banged her head on the side of the plinth.

  Jalia fought for control of her body. The need to hurry screamed at her, but she knew that haste would be her undoing. She crept around the plinth on all fours and picked up the coin with her handkerchief. A quick test showed that that was all that was needed to stop the gems from burning her. Then she turned and painstakingly walked back to where she had dropped her lock pick. It was nowhere to be seen.

  Jalia stopped, closed her eyes, and concentrated on steady breathing. Then she opened them and ran her fingers across surface of the floor. The pick could not have rolled far. It had to be somewhere in the room. Though she searched carefully, she could not find it.

  “You have to be somewhere in here,” she told the room. “You can’t hide from me forever.”

  Her eyes scanned the floor and she saw nothing. She stared at the door in frustration and then inspiration struck her.

  “Under the damned door,” she shouted, oblivious to the possibility that someone might hear her.

  Jalia put the side of her head onto the floor and used the coin to light underneath the door. There was her lock pick, hidden only a half of an inch under the door. She reached for her knife to retrieve the pick and swore. Her knives were back on the Steam Dragon.

  Jalia’s time sense told her that only three minutes had passed since the door closed, though it seemed like a lifetime. There was still time to make good her escape, if she could get the pick back.

  Jalia reached onto the plinth and removed the glass mount. She walked to the far side of the plinth and dropped the mount onto the floor where it smashed into a thousand pieces. It took her a few moments to find a glass shard of the right shape and length. Running back to the door she carefully pulled the pick back into the room.

  Oblivious of cut fingers, her training took over and the door was open in seconds. It was still less than four minutes since Rak had locked the door. It might still be possible to get back to the group. Putting the coin in her pocket, Jalia ran as if her life depended on it, which as a matter of plain fact, it did. She bounced off the wall at the corners and pulled herself through the doorways to gain more speed.

  She reached the outer corridors and there was still no sign of the group. She dropped to the floor and poked her head around the final bend to where the guards were stationed. Rak disappeared out of sight as she looked and the guard turned to watch the corridor. Jalia pulled her head back out of sight.

  ‘Ten seconds too slow, she thought in angui
sh. ‘Now I’m trapped and there is no way out of this tomb.’

  9. Death Comes Calling

  Tib Prentice, Keeper of the Five Gem Coin, was furious. Word had just reached him that he was no longer welcome at any of the gentlemen’s clubs in town. Tib cursed his own judgment in allowing Jalia to play, it never occurred to him to curse his decision to cheat.

  A word to a servant brought the Captain of the Palace Guard to his Day Room.

  “How may I be of service, my lord,” Captain Gregor asked.

  Captain Gregor was a young ambitious man who saw his long term future in the city of Slarn. Once he completed his five year term in Wegnar, he was sure that he would be able to gain employment with one of the royal families. All he had to do was avoid making any significant mistake and his future was assured.

  “We are going to mount a raid on the Steam Dragon early tomorrow morning just before dawn,” Tib informed him.

  “Yes sir, what is the mission?” Gregor winced at what he was being asked to do. As far as the Boat Company was concerned, the Steam Dragon was sovereign territory and they would react badly to any invasion. However, he knew better than to mention that to the Keeper.

  “We are going to capture Jalia al’Dare and Daniel al’Degar and put them to the sword,” Tib said softly. “I want ten of your best men, six swordsmen and four bowmen. We will catch them while they are asleep and if they resist in any way you will kill them. If they choose not to resist, we will take them onto the dock, make them kneel and I shall cut their heads off. Is that understood?”

  “Yes sir! May I ask what they have done to deserve this punishment, sir?”

  “They live, Captain Gregor. That is more than enough.”

  Jalia knew she had been waiting in the coin room for over nine hours. Despite the lack of visual clues, Jalia’s perception of time was exceptional. During that time, she had been creating and rejecting plans to escape and had not even come close to thinking of anything that might work.

  Whoever built this vault and scheduled the guards’ movements had known that there were only two weaknesses to vault security. One was the front door and the other was an attack from within. The outer door was protected by two guards whose role was to ensure that the guards inside the upper level room could never be taken by surprise. Even if the front door was breached, the bottom of the spiral staircase could be defended against an army by one man and there were always two men waiting in the space below.

  The other weakness to the vault was the route Jalia had used. The vault was open to the public and conceivably one or more people could get into the vault and steal the coin before trying to fight their way out. That was why there were guards stationed at each of the routes out. Their purpose was not to defend those points, it was to allow them to get word back to top of the spiral staircase and warn the guards above. They could keep anyone down in the vault trapped until help arrived.

  The guards stood at the corners of two corridors and could see sixty feet of corridor that Jalia would have to traverse. Sixty feet without any cover at all. In daylight, the crystal pipes would make that impossible, at night it was still close to suicidal. Because the guards could see each other and only had to run thirty feet to the spiral staircase, the chances of Jalia taking them out without the alarm being raised were close to zero.

  If she had a crossbow or even a workable throwing knife she might have stood a chance, but the red stone circle prevented anybody from bringing weapons to the vault. Jalia suspected that even if you brought in the parts of a weapon the magic would still react. Her experience of magic had taught her just how aware magic acted; it was almost as if magic was alive.

  The dilemma she faced was simple, if she waited until dawn, she was dead and if she attacked either guard before dawn, she was dead. No matter how often she went over it that was always the outcome.

  As Jalia tried to solve her impossible problem in the vault, Daniel arrived back at the Steam Dragon with his donkeys and horses. It was already dark and he had eaten an evening meal with Hala and Nin in the dining room some two hours before. There was an uncomfortable itch in his mind that told him that Jalia was in some kind of trouble. He had first got that feeling the night before, but Jalia had sworn to him that everything was all right. Then she stormed off in a huff over Cara being with him and he hadn’t seen her since.

  Daniel did not worry often about Jalia. She was the most capable person he knew and capable of being, by far, the most ruthless person in Jalon. Normally he worried about the people she encountered rather than her. He left the horses in the hold still saddled and went back to their cabin to look for clues to her whereabouts.

  Hala had gone with Nin after the evening meal. Daniel had some suspicions about what they were getting up to, but on the whole, he considered such activity healthy, provided it was what they both wanted. The fact that Jalia had given Hala Gintel tea removed the worst fear.

  Daniel searched the cabin from top to bottom. He even removed the paneling that could be removed. He had no idea what he was looking for, but it was the only place he had to look. Searching the town for Jalia might do more harm than good, as it would alert the authorities she was up to something.

  After fruitless hours of searching, he gave up. He sat down on Jalia’s bunk and tried to think of what to do next. He lay down on Jalia bunk and put his hands behind his head. The mattress was too lumpy for him to get comfortable enough to think. In fact, if was absurdly lumpy. Daniel got up and lifted the mattress.

  As soon as Daniel saw Jalia’s sword and knives, he knew she had gone after the Five Gem Coin. Jalia never left her weapons behind. He remembered Nin’s words at breakfast, how Jalia had reacted, and he knew he was right. Daniel had no idea why Jalia wanted the coin, but he was certain that was what she was trying to steal.

  Daniel thought it through in grinding detail. It was nearly midnight. The public were allowed in to see the Coin at noon. At most, that visit would have taken Jalia two hours. The coin was most vulnerable to an attempt to steal it during the visits and Jalia would have known that. If she had succeeded in stealing the coin, she would be back at the Steam Dragon by now.

  That left three possibilities. Jalia had stolen the coin, but could not get back to the boat because of guards searching the town for her. She had been captured or killed by the guards during an attempt to steal the coin, or lastly, she was unable to escape the vault and was trapped there. With anybody other than Jalia, there might be a hundred other possibilities, but Daniel knew his woman and precisely what she was capable of.

  There was a simple way for Daniel to eliminate two of the possibilities. He left the room at a run.

  “What do you want?” Captain Toren shouted belligerently at Daniel. Daniel had been pounding at his door for the last ten minutes. Gil Toren needed to sleep, as he had to take the Steam Dragon out of port at first light. It was as tricky getting out of Wegnar as it was getting it in and he needed the rest.

  “Was they any trouble in Wegnar today?” Daniel asked. The captain of a ship like this had to keep himself informed of trouble in the ports he visited or he wouldn’t be a captain very long.

  “This is about your woman, Jalia?” Toren asked, though it wasn’t really a question. When Daniel nodded, the Captain put on a robe and walked with Daniel to the bridge.

  Hal Patin was the officer on duty. He snapped to attention at the sight of his Captain walking onto the bridge.

  “Is there a problem, Captain?” Hal asked. He looked at Daniel with some concern.

  “You tell us, Bosun,” the Captain asked. “Is there trouble in Wegnar tonight?”

  “Not that I know of, Captain; though there has been a whisper concerning the Keeper. It is rumored he is readying a force of men for a raid.”

  “That will probably be against one of the gentlemen’s clubs,” Captain Toren said dismissively. “After what your female did last night they have banned him and he is probably about to exact his revenge.”

  “Jalia failed
to mention any problem last night,” Daniel said calmly. It was not how he felt. If he managed to save Jalia’s hide tonight, he planned to tan it afterwards.

  Hal laughed. “She was probably embarrassed because the club kept her money. It was wonderful. She beat the Keeper at Fade and proved to everybody that he had been cheating. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving man. I wish I had been there to see it.”

  Captain Toren nodded in agreement. “You haven’t met the Keeper of Wegnar have you?”

  Daniel shook his head.

  “In that you are most fortunate, because he is not a man you would want for a friend, or an enemy. Everybody in Wegnar will be pleased at what Jalia has done to him, even, I suspect, his own wife.”

  “But there has been no excitement or fuss this afternoon?” Daniel pressed.

  “Not before I went to bed at nine tonight,” Captain Toren responded. “Hal, have you heard anything?”

  “Nothing, Captain. The lookouts would be able to spot any trouble and then there are our other sources.” Hal said no more in front of Daniel as Boat Company secrets had to remain Boat Company secrets.

  “I thank you for your time and I apologize for waking you, Captain.” Daniel began to walk away.

  “Put her on a leash in future,” Hal shouted after him.

  “A leash will be the least of it,” Daniel muttered under his breath.

  “Do you want me to do it faster or slower?” Hala asked as Nin face screwed up in a grimace. She never did get an answer as the door to Nin’s cabin flew open and Daniel ran in.

  Hala blushed so hard at being caught she felt she was going to faint. Nin pulled the bed sheet over his body and tried to get his breath back. Daniel’s timing had been most unfortunate.

  Hala pulled her hand from under the sheets. Daniel ignored her and sat on the side of Nin’s bunk.

  “Nin, I need your help to save Jalia. She is in trouble. I need you to tell me everything about the vault the Five Gem Coin is in. Every single detail is important. How is the vault laid out and how is it guarded?”