The Sorcerer of the North

39

Alyss had barely made it to the table when the door opened and Keren entered. As he locked the door behind him, she took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down, using all her willpower to face him with a look of utter contempt.

"Well, I'm back again," Keren said. He smiled cheerfully at her, ignoring the icy stare she turned on him. Then he frowned, his nose wrinkling as he sniffed the air.

"Good God, what's that dreadful smell? Have you been burning something?"

Alyss thought quickly. She had grown accustomed to the pungent fumes from the acid but they were obviously still in evidence. Keren's question gave her an idea, however. She drew herself up to her full height and looked at him disdainfully.

"Some documents of mine," she said. "I thought it best if you didn't learn what was in them."

Keren regarded her thoughtfully. "Is that right?" he said, a little less cheerfully than before. "I suppose I should have searched you earlier. That's what I get for being a gentleman-you try to deceive me." He reached into the pouch at his belt. "But you seem to forget that my little blue friend here can make you tell me everything that was in them."

Alyss's heart beat faster as he produced the blue stone. In spite of all she knew about it, she felt an almost overpowering compulsion to look at it. She wrenched her eyes away from it with a supreme effort.

"You seem to forget," she said, mimicking his sardonic tone, "that the last time, I managed to break its hold on me."

Keren sat in one of chairs, crossing one leg over the other while he tossed the blue stone casually in his hand. He smiled in genuine amusement.

"True," he told her, "but I did tell you that the second time would be much easier?"

Alyss turned her back on him and walked toward the door, ensuring that his gaze was directed well away from the curtained window. She wasn't sure, but she thought she could hear an occasional creak from the rope tied there.

"Your cheap sorcery doesn't impress me," she said. "It's all tricks and delusions and I know how to counter them."

Keren nodded indulgently at her. "I'm sure you could," he said, "if it was, in fact, sorcery. But this is something altogether different. This is mesmerism-a form of mind domination. The stone is merely a focus point for your mind. It relaxes you and helps me control you."

Alyss laughed scornfully, although she was deeply worried by what he had just told her. She was way out of her depth here, she realized. But she had to play the game out to give Will more time.

"And now that you've told me, I'll make sure I resist the temptation to relax," she said. Keren shook his head.

"Normally, you could do that. If you know the purpose of the stone, you can resist it. But you've already been entrapped. And that initial control creates something called 'post-hypnotic suggestion.' "

Alyss rolled her eyes in derision. "How absolutely terrifying," she said. But a worm of fear was eating away inside her. Keren was altogether too confident, and the one thing she had learned about him was that he didn't make empty boasts.

"Not terrifying. Just useful," he said, in an eminently reasonable tone. "You see, while you're hypnotized, I can plant a suggestion in your inner mind that will allow me to bring you instantly under my control again. All I have to do is go back to the subject we were last discussing."

"I'm sure it was quite boring," she said sarcastically. But the fear was growing with each word he spoke. He continued to smile at her. He admired her courage and her fighting spirit. But then, he thought, he could afford to admire it because he could mesmerize her again in an instant. He held the stone up before her. She quickly turned her face away.

"No, no, no," he said smoothly. "You have to look at the stone." She kept her eyes averted and a threatening edge crept into his voice. "I can have my men force you to do it if you refuse. But you will do it."

Reluctantly, she allowed her gaze to return to the stone. So blue. So deep. So beautiful.

Keren's voice seemed to come from a long way away. It was deep and soothing now. There was no threat in it.

"Just relax, Alyss. Relax and breathe deeply. That's the way. Good girl. Isn't this a much more pleasant way to behave?"

"Yes," she said dreamily. "Much more pleasant."

"Now, as I recall," his voice went on, seeming to fill her consciousness. "We were talking about your friend Will the last time."

"Will is a Ranger," she said. Deep within her mind there was a sense that she had said something wrong. Something she should have kept secret. For a moment, she felt a vague sense of revulsion at her craven behavior.

"Of course he is. We knew that anyway," said the soothing voice, and she felt a little better. If he knew, there was no harm in her telling. "But now I'm interested in those documents you burned. Tell me about them."

"There were no documents," she said. Again, on another level, her mind struggled to regain control. Her words were flat and unemotional and she couldn't stop herself as she realized she was revealing the most dangerous secret of all. "It was the acid you could smell."

His smile disappeared and a small frown took its place. He didn't understand…

"Acid? What acid?" he asked her quickly.

"Will put acid on the bars," Alyss said. Inside, her mind was screaming: Shut up! For God's sake, shut up! Will needs time to get away, you weak coward! Then, horrified, she heard herself saying the last few words.

"Will needs time to get away."

Comprehension dawned on Keren's face as she said it. He hurled himself out of the chair. All signs of the relaxed, casual attitude he had assumed were now dispelled as the chair crashed to the floor behind him. He reached the window in two long paces and tore the heavy curtain to one side.

The fumes were much stronger now as the acid continued to eat through the iron of the bars. Thin spirals of smoke rose from the bases of the two center bars, which he could see were surrounded by small pools of liquid. The acid, formerly clear, was now a rusty brown color as it destroyed the iron. Keren grasped the right-hand bar and tugged at it, breaking through the last threads of iron that held it in place. His eyes narrowed and he turned back toward Alyss.

"Where has he gone?" he demanded. Logic told him that Barton could not have escaped out of the window, although how he had made it into the room in the first place puzzled him.

It didn't occur to him that Will had never been inside the room itself. And, his eyes drawn by the fuming pools of acid around the two middle bars, he hadn't noticed the rope tied around the extreme left-hand bar.

There was no answer from Alyss. Overcome by the conflicting strain in her mind, she had collapsed in a faint as he erupted from his chair. She lay crumpled on the floor beside his overturned chair. Cursing quietly, he started toward her. He'd get the answer, he promised himself, if he had to beat it out of her. Then he stopped as he heard a slight creaking sound from the window. He spun back and this time he saw the loop of rope around the bottom of the bar. He dashed forward, cursing again as he leaned on the windowsill and burned his hand on a splash of acid. The rope was taut, the fibers creaking as it moved slightly with the weight of something-or someone-on the end.

In a second, Keren had his dagger out, reaching through the bars to saw at the taut rope, feeling the strands give way under the knife. He thought of summoning the guards outside Alyss's cell, then realized there were others closer to hand. He shouted at the top of his lungs to the sentries on the wall.

"Guards! Guards! Intruder in the castle! Intruder in the keep! Stop him!"

Far below, Will heard the shouts, felt the faint vibration on the rope as Keren sawed away with his knife. Knowing he had only seconds, he released his feet, letting them drop below him so that he swung in against the wall. Desperately, he scrabbled with his right hand for a handhold, finally finding a deep crevice between two of the granite blocks. Then he released his grip with the left hand and sought another vantage point. He had no sooner done so than the severed rope came tumbling down past him, coiling on the flagstones below like a giant serpent.

He was still seven meters from the bottom of the tower and he could hear the confused cries of the sentries on the ramparts behind him as they tried to make sense of Keren's words. He scrambled recklessly down, tearing skin and nails as he went, ripping the thick hose over his knees against the rough stone of the wall. With three meters to go, he let himself drop, landing like a cat, letting ankles and knees flex to take the shock. All around him, confused shouts were echoing as the sentries called to one another, trying to make out what was happening.

Four meters away, the door into the keep tower flew open and a sergeant, armed with a halberd-a combined ax and spear set on a long handle-dashed out, looking from left to right to see what was going on. Before the man noticed him, Will dashed the cowl back on his hood and stepped out into the half-light, pointing at the tangled pile of rope.

"He came this way!" he shouted. "After him! He's heading for the stables!"

It was only natural for the sergeant to react to the peremptory tone of command. In the confusion of the moment, the last thing he considered was that the person barking orders at him might be the very intruder he was looking for. He moved in the direction Will had indicated. As he came closer, he lost the advantage of his long-handled weapon, as Will intended.

Too late, he recognized the young face of the jongleur who had escaped the day before.

"Just a minute," he said, "you're-" Even before he finished the sentence, he lunged clumsily with the halberd. Will's saxe knife was in his hand and he deflected the heavy ax head to one side. Grabbing the sergeant's arm, turning and crouching in one movement, he threw him over his shoulder to the flagstones of the courtyard. The sergeant's head slammed into the hard stone. His helmet rolled to one side and he lay stunned.

Will grabbed the helmet and the long, heavy weapon. Then he paused to cut a length of rope from the pile before heading for the stairs. Far above in the tower, he could hear Keren shouting as he saw him running. Will started shouting too,, partly to drown him out and partly to add to the confusion.

"They're in the keep!" he yelled. "Hundreds of them! All guards assemble at the gatehouse!"

He pounded up the stairs to the battlements, continuing to shout a string of contradictory orders, directing men to the gatehouse, the keep and the north tower, clapping the sergeant's heavy iron helmet onto his own head as he went. Confusion was his best ally, he knew. That and the fact that he knew everyone he saw was an enemy, whereas the castle guards would have to identify each new person as they saw them.

He emerged onto the rampart of the south wall, by the battlements. There were three sentries running toward him, the western tower door behind him. The men paused as they saw him. He gestured wildly toward the wall behind them.

"Get down, you fools! They've got archers!" he yelled. Since they didn't expect an enemy to warn them of imminent danger, the three men obeyed instantly, dropping flat to the ground, expecting the hiss and thud of arrows any second.

Will turned and dashed into the tower, slamming the door behind him. There was a large barrel nearby and he rolled it against the door before exiting through the other side to the west battlements. There were more men running and shouting at the far end, but here it was relatively quiet, although he could hear footsteps pounding down the internal stairs from the tower battlements. Deftly, he looped the rope over the halberd staff in a series of half hitches, then wedged the halberd between two of the crenellations, letting the free end of the rope fall outside the wall.

Holding the rope, he dropped over the edge, walking backward down the rough stone. He came to the end of the rope before he reached the ground. Looking around, he saw that he had less than two meters to fall and dropped the rest of the way. This time, he didn't land so easily, hitting the uneven ground and toppling onto his side, cracking his knee against a sharp rock.

"I'm going to have to use longer ropes," he muttered. Then, reasoning that any pursuit would come to this side of the tower, he backtracked, limping around the base of the tower to the southern wall, staying close to the rough stone and remaining in the deep shadow of the tower and the wall itself. Once there, he let go a piercing whistle-a short, high-pitched sound that ascended one tone.

Above him, there was the sound of shouting and running feet. Orders and counterorders were being yelled. He could no longer hear Keren's voice, and he guessed that the renegade knight was pounding down the stairway from the top of the keep to take control of the hunt. Let him pound, he thought grimly. He whistled again. Nobody in the castle seemed to notice the sound in all the confusion. But one hundred and fifty meters away, just beyond a slight rise, keener ears were listening.

Will was about to whistle again when he heard the faint drumming of hoofbeats. It was a gait he recognized easily-Tug's short-legged, churning gallop.

He saw the little horse top the rise and start toward the castle, heading slightly to the right of where Will was concealed. He whistled again and Tug corrected, swinging to run down straight to him.

Abandoning any attempt at concealment, Will now sprinted away from the castle. He heard more shouts behind him, but whether he had been discovered or whether it was just part of the ongoing confusion he had no idea. Nor did he have any desire to stop and find out.

Tug slid to a stiff-legged halt beside him, ears back, teeth bared as he neighed a greeting. Will didn't bother to mount. He grabbed hold of the pommel with both hands as the little horse spun about in his tracks.

"Go!" he urged. "Go! Go! Go!"

Now he could hear shouts from the ramparts and he knew he had been sighted. But unless anybody had a crossbow ready and was capable of hitting a fast-moving target in the half-light, he knew he was safe. Tug gathered and launched himself away from the castle, reaching a full gallop within half a dozen strides. Knees drawn up to clear the ground, Will hung from the saddle for a few meters, then, judging his moment and his horse's speed and gait, he let his feet touch the ground, using the impact and the momentum to swing up into the saddle. Tug shook his head in approval.

"Good boy," Will told him, leaning low over his neck to pat him. Without breaking stride, Tug neighed briefly. There was a note of condemnation in the sound.

I thought I told you to stay out of trouble.

"Don't be a nag," Will said. Tug very rightly ignored him. They crested the rise and Will saw the dim figures of Xander and Malcolm waiting for him. He checked Tug with a twitch of the reins.

"What happened?" Xander asked. Will shook his head.

"I saw her. Spoke to her. But Keren arrived before I could get her out, damn him."

"So what do you plan to do now?" said Malcolm.

"Now, we head back to the forest," Will said, giving in to the inevitable.

Xander looked at him curiously. The young Ranger seemed to be admitting defeat, but there was a note of grim determination in his voice. Xander knew that this matter was a long way from finished.

"What then?" he asked.

Will turned to face him. The deep cowl of his cloak hid the top part of his face in shadow. Xander could see only the mouth and the determined set of his jaw.

"Then," he said, "I'm getting Alyss out of your damned castle-if I have to take it apart stone by stone to do it."