Linsha stared at the glow of faint light from the lamp left burning at the foot of the stairs. Her hands felt numb from the ropes around her wrists. Slowly she took a deep breath and forced her tears away. Self-pity was weakness. Tears were a waste of time. She still had about eighteen hours until the hanging. Anything could change in that length of time. With her self-pity, she added her fear and all thoughts of the feeling of a rope around her neck, the fall, the crushing force at her throat. She balled these together and locked them out of her mind. She had to concentrate on other matters, such as easing the pain in her head, calming her breathing, and focusing on escape. She would not go easily to that rushed sentence without knowing the truth.
She lay down on the slab on her side. Her fingers moved clumsily but they could move, and she put them to work on the knots of her bindings. Beneath her filthy tunic, the two dragon scales on their chain slipped down to rest against her breast. Their shape and feel gave her comfort and strengthened her resolve. Iyesta needed help, and Linsha was not going to let the overlord down.
Out of the Night-Dark Prison
12
An hour before sunset, a ragged-looking figure in a broad-brimmed hat walked up the road to the Solamnic stables. He was leading two horses. The grooms, who had seen him before, welcomed him and the horses he led.
“ ’Ere two of yours,” he said with a lopsided grin. “Figured it might be worth a bit to git ’em back.”
The grooms were quite willing to give the old beggar a few coppers for returning the animals, since one of the bedraggled looking horses was Sir Morrec’s own mount Four of the horses from the escort had found their way back, and now two more had been returned. The only ones still missing were Linsha’s desert horse and a gelding.
“I found them out in the Rough,” the beggar said, meaning the edge of the grasslands north of the city.
While the stablehands groomed and fed the horses, they were not loath to chat with the old man who sat on the edge of a water trough and listened to their chatter. He quickly learned what he needed, and after a while, he nodded his thanks and limped down the hill toward Mirage.
* * * * *
Eight hours after Sir Hugh left Linsha in her cell, she collapsed back on the wall by the slab bed and nearly gave in to the despair that pounded against her resolve. Less than ten hours left and she was no closer to freeing her hands than she was hours ago. She had managed to squeeze her arms around her legs so her hands were in front of her, but her arms were aching, her wrists were rubbed bloody, her hands were so swollen she could not move them, and the knots remained stubbornly tied. The rope, made from the tough hemp grown in the marshes along the Blood Bay, was barely frayed from the constant rubbing she had tried on the edge of the slab bed.
Linsha closed her eyes, ignoring the pain, and tried to rest for a minute or two. She must have slept a little, for the next thing she knew, an unexpected noise jerked her awake. She peered muzzily at the door of the cell and saw it swing open. Sir Hugh and another Knight she couldn’t see well walked into the cell. Maybe Sir Hugh had finally remembered that paper he promised.
Linsha forced herself to sit upright. “Water,” she croaked.
“Untie her,” the strange Knight demanded. He shifted slightly behind Sir Hugh, and Linsha saw the faint glint of a short sword in his hand. Her eyes flew to his face. He wore the daily work tunic of the Solamnic Knights and a light cloak, but even in the dim light she would have recognized those features anywhere.
Sir Hugh approached her, the planes of his face wary and tense. He looked at her wrists and the rope, winced, then shook his head. “You’ll have to cut it,” he said.
The other Knight swiftly slid the blade of a dagger between Linsha’s wrists and cut the ropes. She gasped as the ropes fell away and the blood throbbed through her wrists and fingers.
Sir Hugh backed away from the Knight.
The strange Knight turned swiftly, the short sword raised to strike.
Linsha moved quickly, too. She threw herself on the Knight’s arm, deflecting the weapon from its intended victim. “Don’t kill him,” she demanded. “It’s not his doing.”
Sir Hugh had not moved to evade the Knight or fight back. He held up his hands in a gesture of conciliation. “Take her and go. The guards on the walls will soon grow suspicious if they do not see the sentries posted at the inner gate.”
“Bring the others down here,” the strange Knight called up the corridor.
Footsteps hurried down the stairs and four Solamnics appeared, carrying a fifth. Two of the Knights unceremoniously dumped the recumbent man on the slab, shoved their two companions into the cell, and blocked the doorway with their swords.
“You,” the stranger said, pointed to a Knight closest in size to Linsha. “Give her your tunic.”
Linsha pulled hers off with clumsy fingers and put the man’s plainer and cleaner tunic on. Her three rescuers backed out of the door, opening a way for her to leave the small stone penal cell.
She turned once and said to Sir Hugh, “Thank you. Your willingness to believe in the possibility of my innocence is not misplaced.”
He watched her with shadowed eyes and said nothing.
The stranger ushered her out and, after locking the cell door behind her, led the small group up the stairs and through the guardroom. This late at night, only the Knights on duty were awake, so the room in the tower was nearly empty. Two men who had not fared so well when the intruders entered, lay close to the door. They were quickly moved out of sight from casual view.
“They’re not dead,” the leader reassured Linsha when he saw the look of pained dismay on her face.
At the door, he held her back and placed a light helm over her head to hide her tell-tale curls. “We brought an extra man with us,” he explained. “So four arrived and four will leave.”
Linsha settled the helm carefully over her bruised face. “The man you had to carry down?” It wasn’t much of guess.
“Yes, but he is a gift to your circle.”
One of the other “Knights” chuckled. “He’s a spy from the Knights of Neraka we caught a few days ago. Sent by Beryl. We thought your Knights should have him.”
In the brighter light from the oil lamps around the room, Linsha finally recognized the other two men as well. Legionnaires, all three of them. “Lanther,” she said to the leader, “Why are you doing this? Does Falaius know?”
“He didn’t want to know. Something about Solamnic jurisdiction.” The tall Legionnaire opened the door wide so the light spilled out into the darkness. “We’re not out of here yet,” he cautioned the others, “so keep quiet and move fast.”
Linsha picked up a light cloak from a hook on the wall and threw it over her shoulders to help disguise her shape. “How did you get in here?” she asked softly.
“We told the gate warden we had messages for the Senior Knight from the elves outside Silvanesti. We have delivered our message, and we are leaving. Now.”
As he said the word, he stepped out the door and strode to a post where four horses stood hitched. Linsha came behind without hesitation, followed closely behind by the other two. Silently, with stern purpose, they mounted and rode through the outer ward to the castle’s main gate. A small postern door had been placed on the right side of the stout iron bound gates. It had already been closed and locked again for the night, but a sentry came quickly at their approach.
“You’re not staying the night?” he said in some surprise. “It is a long way back to Silvanesti without rest.”
“Our commander told us to return as quickly as possible,” Lanther said, adding just the right amount of world-weary disgust in his tone.
The sentry shrugged. Holding his torch in one hand, he began to turn the lock in the postern door.
Linsha glanced surreptitiously around the outer ward. From her position near the main gate, she could see the stony ramparts of the inner wall and through the tower gateway into the inner ward. A block of light shone in the
darkness at the base of the gate tower and went out as quickly. Linsha stiffened. Someone had just walked into the guardroom.
Lanther and the two Legionnaires had not noticed, for their attention was fixed on the sentry, who was taking an inordinate amount of time unlocking the postern. Any moment the unconscious Knights in the guardroom would be discovered, or Sir Hugh and his men would give an alarm.
Linsha strained to listen, her body taut as a bowstring. Her horse, sensing her tension, tossed his head and sidled nervously into the horse beside him, who jumped forward into Lanther’s mount. In that brief moment of jostling horses, Lanther glanced back, and Linsha caught his eye and jerked her head toward the inner tower.
In that moment the click of the lock came loud and very welcome. The sentry began to pull the gate open. A distant, muffled shout sounded from the inner ward. The sentry paused, the gate half-open. Lanther snatched the moment of surprise. With a muffled oath, he wrenched the gate open and kicked his horse into a full canter, knocking the sentry aside as he went by.
Shouts echoed from wall to wall; a horn blew an alarm from the inner keep. Linsha knew all too well the skill of the archers who manned the high parapets and the tower vantage points. Like a plainsman, she ducked low over her restive horse’s neck and sent him leaping through the gate after Lanther. The other two men followed suit. Spread out in a line, the four riders spurred their horses out from the shadow of the great wall and down the road into the dark, out of range of the powerful Solamnic bows.
Linsha heard the sharp snap of several bows and the thrum of speeding arrows, but the shafts missed the last horse by several lengths. The surprise had been complete enough that the four escapees were out of range before the archers could find their targets. Linsha lifted her head into the wind and grinned in pure relief.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a silhouette, a ghastly shape on the hillside, showing black against the stars—the gallows, nearly complete and waiting for morning. It could continue to wait, Linsha thought. Let Sir Remmik find some other use for it. She was away.
* * * * *
Hogan Bight, Lord Governor of the port city of Sanction, stalked down the long corridor toward his suite of rooms. He walked the gait of a man pushed beyond endurance, and at every step, he slapped his thigh with his gauntlet in the manner of someone whose mind was on matters both infuriating and far distant. His eyes straight ahead, he paid no attention to the bodyguards who worriedly followed him along the marble-tiled floor.
For a day that had begun in such promise and hope, yesterday had ended in despair. Sanction should have been free by this time. It should have been celebrating. Instead, the inhabitants of the city were burying their dead, treating their wounded, and wondering what had happened. The victory they had planned for so long was snatched out of their hands, and there wasn’t a thing Lord Bight, the Solamnic Knights, or the townspeople had been able to do about it. The plan had failed.
Lord Bight still was not certain how it had failed. The Knights of Neraka had been routed! They fled the battlefield in a state of total panic. But something—or someone—had turned them back, and only by the grace of the moats of lava and the fury of the defenders of Sanction had they been thrown back at the very walls of the city.
Now everything was as it was before. The siege still continued; the enemy still camped at the gates. He still needed the Solamnics to bring men and supplies.
Lord Bight cracked a glove against his thigh again. Gods, how he hated the Knights of Neraka. This was his city. He had rebuilt it almost from the ground up. He had given Sanction his devotion, his wisdom, his time, and his strength. Yet the Knights were determined to get it hack, and they were crumbling it out of his grasp a little hit every day.
Yawning, he reached his apartment and slammed the door in the faces of his guards. Let them stand their posts out there tonight. Just let an intruder or assassin dare enter his room. He would welcome something to vent his rage upon. Striding into the front room, he stopped, his arms akimbo.
“Out!” he bellowed.
His two servants bowed once and cleared the rooms. They knew better than to argue when their lord was in this mood.
Lord Bight found himself alone at last. He stretched to work some of the stiffness out of his aching muscles, then one by one he shed his bloody, smoke-stained garments and kicked them in a pile. He would give anything for a swim in the bay, but it was too late—or too early—for that. It would be dawn soon and he would be needed in the city. He would have to settle for a bath in the garden bath house.
Something banged against one of the leaded windows.
Instantly alert, Lord Bight snatched his long dagger and placed himself out of sight of the window. The noise came again—a muffled thumping followed by an owl’s shrill call of distress.
Lord Bight leaped for the window, a curse on his tongue. The dagger clanged to the floor. He yanked open the leaded frame and threw out his arms to catch the bedraggled bird that flopped through the casement. He recognized the owl immediately, for she had been in this room before.
“Varia!” he said in astonishment. “What are you doing here? Where is Linsha?”
The owl tried to stand upright and failed. Her leg and one wing were bloody and torn; her body was so thin he could feel her bones beneath the feathers. She looked up at him, her dark eyes huge.
“We need Crucible,” she rasped.
The Dragonlord’s Palace
13
The four riders reached the base of the hill, and the three Legionnaires continued to urge their horses along the road toward Mirage and the Legion headquarters. Only Linsha turned her horse to the right on the path she often took to Iyesta’s lair.
Lanther almost missed her departure. He glanced back to be sure everyone had survived unscathed and saw the tail of Linsha’s horse disappearing into the darkness of another path. Reining his mount to a stop, he waved on the other two, wheeled his horse around, and galloped after her.
He rode hard, pushing his mount on the uneven, night-dark trail, and caught up with her near the crumbling foundations where the road crossed the remains of the old city wall.
“Where are you going in such a hurry?” he yelled over the pounding hooves.
A look of irritation flashed over Linsha’s face. Although she was deeply indebted to Lanther and his men and greatly relieved that she was free, she had hoped to slip away in the darkness for just an hour or two without curious eyes and questions she could not answer.
“I’m going to Iyesta’s lair,” she said tersely.
“She’s not there. She has not been seen since the storm.”
“I know. But I can’t believe she has left. I want to go look around.”
“Now?” he sounded surprised and dubious. “Wouldn’t daylight be better?”
Daylight wouldn’t matter where she wanted to go, but she didn’t want to tell him that. Instead she slowed her horse to a trot and said as patiently as she could, “Sir Remmik will have the circle out in arms looking for me before too long. He won’t let this go.”
“We have a few hiding places you can use.”
“I know. I accept your hospitality. I just have to do this first.”
He heard the urgency in her voice and accepted her decision. “Fair enough. I’ll go with you. The militia is camped all over the grounds, keeping watch on the dragonlord’s lair and treasure until she returns.”
Linsha felt a pang of uneasiness. “Shouldn’t they be out preparing the city’s defenses? I heard there is a strange fleet near the city.”
“We’ve heard that as well, and we have scouts out to watch for its approach. The militia is doing what it can.”
She frowned. He certainly sounded casual about all of this. Everything she had heard in the Citadel had sounded dire. Was it possible Sir Remmik had exaggerated the situation to help grease her conviction through the council? She desperately wanted to believe this gathering disaster was being inflated out of proportion—that Iyesta h
ad left on business of her own and would soon return, that the fleet was not hostile and would pass Mirage by, that Thunder was playing at overlord and would stay on his side of the river, and that the storm damage would be easily repaired and the Missing City would return to normal. But things rarely turned out so neatly. What she really wanted was facts, hard fresh news from a source she could rely on. She wanted Varia. Where was the owl?
She made no more comment hut held her words until they reached the dragon’s lair. She had to admit the militia was vigilant in protecting Iyesta’s lair. Sentries stopped them in three different places before they reached the courtyard in front of the throne room.
A dense darkness filled the old ruins, for no torches or campfires were allowed to burn, and the pale moon had already set an hour before. The crowd of people hoping to see Iyesta had given up and returned to their homes, leaving the dragon’s guards and the militia to keep their fretful vigil.
Linsha halted her horse and glanced around to get her bearings. She could already see the lair was empty; however, there were one or two other places she wanted to check that might not have been carefully examined.
“Stay and do not move,” spoke a voice at Linsha’s right. “There are a dozen weapons aimed at you right now.”
Linsha raised her hands to show they were empty. Lanther did likewise.
“Mariana?” she called softly. “I know your voice.”
“Lady Linsha?” The reply was immediate and filled with surprise. “We thought you—” The words broke off as if the speaker reassessed the possibilities. “Lower your weapons,” she ordered her silent guards. “I will talk to them.”
A form, lean and lithe, took shape out of the night and came to stand by Linsha’s stirrup. Mariana Brown-stem was a friend, as well as a half-elf and a captain of the dragonlord’s militia. She gave Linsha a feral grin. “If Lanther is with you, then I am guessing the Solamnics have lost their prey.”
[Linsha 01] - City of the Lost Page 13
