Voice of the Lost

CHAPTER SEVEN

They scuttled around the base of the hill, keeping to the edge of the trees until Ileaha pointed out a cave, unremarkable among the dozens surrounding it. After scanning the area thoroughly, Cor-Ibis turned his attention to the castle above.

"That turret overlooks this area," he noted. "And, unless I am mistaken, it is currently manned. Cross only on my signal, and quickly."

Medair stared upwards, trying to make out the occupants of the squat tower which projected from the southern wall of the castle. A flash of light reflected from some moving object and Medair found herself utterly certain that she would encounter Estarion’s special operative, Captain Vorclase, in Falcon Black. It was he who watched from the turret. She was so confused by this unexpected moment of foresight that she reacted slowly to Cor-Ibis' signal and lagged behind as they crossed. Cor-Ibis questioned her with a touch to her arm, but she shook her head, unwilling to try and communicate such a baseless premonition.

After about forty paces straight in, they needed a mageglow to show the way. Medair then counted another twenty steps before Ileaha indicated a particular side passage. It quickly became obvious that the cave had been widened and smoothed by something other than Farak’s decree and by the time they had reached the gate – a series of thick black bars set well into the stone – the walls, ceiling and floor were all even and regular, formed and shaped.

"From here in, stay alert for traps and trips," Cor-Ibis said, running a finger around the keyhole. "Slow progress, but we cannot expect an entrance to the castle to be guarded only by one grid of metal." The lock clicked open and he slowly opened the gate. Medair wondered at the frown which followed, and touched his arm, questioning him in the same fashion he had used. An excuse for a moment’s contact, she admitted to herself. He shook his head almost absently, and she guessed that some new concern was troubling him.

The way she and Cor-Ibis were behaving toward each other, as if they had reached some settled accord during her storm of tears, was more than troubling her. She should not allow herself this, not unless she truly believed that she could keep to her resolve.

The enormity of that question was not something she could resolve while trying to invade an enemy castle. The middle of an assassination attempt, and she was focusing on the wrong things. Stopping Estarion, preventing a second wave of wild magic, was the first priority.

"I cannot sense any enchantment in the immediate area," Islantar said, stepping through the gate while Cor-Ibis' attention was on Medair. "But how do we discover snares set without magic?"

"With our eyes," Ileaha said, catching the Kierash’s arm before he took another step and indicating the faint outline of a square in the centre of the passage.

"We will need more light, to catch such subtleties," Cor-Ibis said, turning from Medair to make a short sharp gesture. A further two mageglows burst into existence. He looked at his hand strangely, then walked forward. "If you will lead the way, Ileaha, while Kierash Islantar and I concentrate on our senses?"

"Of course, 'Lukar," Ileaha said, prowling forward. Medair saw the young warrior check, as the two pasts in her mind collided again, but then she continued to glide smoothly down the passageway.

They had not moved more than thirty paces past the gate when Cor-Ibis told Ileaha to hold her position.

"A detect," Islantar said, and Cor-Ibis nodded.

"Nothing to impede us," the Keridahl said. "Merely to inform those above of intruders. It will take some little time for me to disable it without alerting Falcon Black."

Without further ado he lost himself in the opening series of gestures for most common spells. After watching him for a short while, Medair belatedly remembered to share around her supplies. They sat down to eat and wait, all lost in their own thoughts. Islantar was watching her and she wondered if he was not convinced by her assurance that she had no intention of suiciding. That way out now seemed a very pointless thing to do, even if she were no longer a proud Imperial herald, walking confidently down a clear and just path.

"Go through," Cor-Ibis said, the picture of concentration. He waited until they had travelled some distance further before following. Medair’s arcane strength was too limited to allow her to sense the detect, but the power must be costing Cor-Ibis to blind it was enough to make her worry about mages in the castle above.

"The tunnel slopes up," Kel ar Haedrin said, but no-one answered. The quiet was unnerving and Cor-Ibis' plan, necessarily vague in the face of so many unknowns, now seemed wholly inadequate. They were outnumbered, even if the patrol and the guards in the blockhouses were all that remained of Estarion’s forces. And Vorclase.

Recalling that strange premonition, Medair grew ever more uneasy. Who had said that all the rules had changed? And were still changing. Ileaha had been within the shield wall when the Conflagration had swept over them, but wild magic had found and changed her. Medair didn’t want to be reshaped into a different person, even if that person’s life was a more pleasant one.

Could she have already been reshaped, less drastically? Where had that certainty come from? She’d never felt so sure of anything in her life as she was of the fact that Vorclase waited in Falcon Black, but she had absolutely no foundation on which to ground her belief. It seemed far more logical for Vorclase to have perished outside Athere with the rest of Estarion’s forces.

"Light ahead," Kel ar Haedrin said, after they had ascended almost two full circles, climbing the hill from the inside. Cor-Ibis immediately extinguished two of the mageglows and sent the last darting into one of his sleeves.

"Probably a set light," he said, after they had all had the opportunity to study the faint, steady glow creeping around the curve of the passage. "Kel ar Haedrin, if you would go ahead?"

Kel ar Haedrin nodded and slipped away, keeping as close as possible to the inner wall. There were no cries of alarm, and very quickly she was back.

"Another gate, Keridahl. A stair is beyond, and other gates. But no guard. I did not go close enough to sense if there is a trip."

"Very well. Stay here."

He took the remaining mageglow with him, leaving them in darkness. Medair took the jewelled ring from her satchel and summoned another glow.

"Another trip," Cor-Ibis said, voice floating back to them. He was quicker this time, and soon they stood clustered around the base of a stair streaked with moisture. Water dripped from cracks and crevices in the ceiling and there were several other gates, all firmly locked.

Beside two of them were bins which contained a collection of grains and root vegetables. Picking out a withered parsnip, Ileaha moved towards one of the gates, then stopped.

"This seems to lead to the predator which hunted last night," she said, eyeing dark stains on the ground. "The blood traces are old."

"Not recently fed," murmured Kel ar Haedrin, as Ileaha moved to the next gate and peered into the darkness beyond.

"Nothing moving," Ileaha said, tossing the parsnip through the bars so that it lay just within the strips of light cast by their mageglows. She tugged at the bars, and found them firmly seated. "If these were unlocked, escape this way will be difficult."

Cor-Ibis examined the lock to the predator cave, then said a word beneath his breath and watched it melt into uselessness. He repeated the process with the next lock but left the gates which did not obviously lead to an animal lair. Then he sent Kel ar Haedrin and Ileaha on their way up the stairs. Islantar was corralled in the centre of the group, as protected as possible.

The stair doubled back on itself repeatedly, the narrow steps worn and slippery. Medair was last in line, keeping nervously close to the kaschen immediately in front of her. She did not like the darkness nipping at her heels, and directed the mageglow she had summoned to trail rather than lead her.

Just as she reached the first landing, a whining growl, high and vicious, rose out of the dark. Kaschen las Cormar immediately drew his sword and moved to Medair’s side.

"It isn’t the hunting cry," Medair said, not sounding nearly as confident as she would like. "It must be able to smell us, but not get out of its cage."

The kaschen looked up the stair to Cor-Ibis, who nodded once and gestured for them to move on. Medair decided she should take this as a sign that he trusted her judgment. That mattered to her. She wished she could keep her thoughts from the silent question he posed. Far, far too many things had happened in the last day, and until she had a chance to sit down and decide how to feel about it all her heart would continue to trip and stumble and demand she give it thought. And yet the long wait at each obstacle gave her imagination too much opportunity to play with less pleasant futures than one which featured Illukar las Cor-Ibis.

Without doubt all Decia would want her dead, and here she was at its heart, giving them further reason to hate. Off to kill a king because the possible consequences of not doing so were unthinkable. Always, instead of the best, she found herself struggling to make the least-worst decision.

They travelled four flights of slippery steps, then stopped. Medair was too far back to see the problem, and guessed that the extended delay meant they’d encountered another door or trap. Faintly, she could sense magic at work and took a step back to give those above her room to move.

The wait was a long one, and involved several whispered discussions. Finally, there was a too-loud click, then the stair was bathed in the light of day rather than mageglows. Swift movement, and a jingling thud, told Medair the door had been guarded, and that guard had been dispatched.

Then they were moving up and out into a brightly-lit corridor. Squinting as her eyes adjusted to sunlight, Medair looked back at the heavily-bound door through which she had just passed, then to either side. Ileaha was a short distance to her right, standing over the body of a guard.

"Find a place to put him," Cor-Ibis ordered, surveying the corridor. The guard had been running toward a junction further to the right. To the left was a flight of stairs, and a window.

"Medair, do you have anything I can bind him with?" Ileaha asked, dragging the man toward the cave stair.

Faintly relieved to discover Ileaha hadn’t simply killed him, Medair helped tie the guard’s hands and feet and gagged him with an old kerchief. "You won’t be able to do that with everyone we meet," she commented, as they closed the door on the figure lying uncomfortably on the damp stair.

Ileaha nodded. "I’ve always preferred not to kill by stealth, if the level of risk allows other options," she said, signalling Kel ar Haedrin with three precise hand gestures. It was obviously a command. With an ambiguous shift of expression Kel ar Haedrin obeyed, moving silently to the corner of the junction and peering around it with the aid of a tiny mirror.

"There will be barracks and cells on this level, 'Lukar," Ileaha went on, clipped and assured. "But Estarion might choose to keep a prize like Avahn closer, in the interrogation chambers mentioned in your report on Falcon Black. I would recommend the stair rather than venturing among the barracks."

"Estarion is the one we must reach first," Cor-Ibis said, accepting without comment the role Ileaha now played. "With our companions so recently captured, there is every chance we will find him with them."

Ileaha’s assurance had dropped away, two pasts warring behind her eyes, but she nodded and firmed her jaw beneath Cor-Ibis' steady gaze. "The interrogation room is two levels above us. You – your report spoke of the area being heavily guarded, but outside the most frequented areas of the castle."

"Then lead us, and quickly. If we can achieve our object before being discovered, we have more chance of winning free alive."

"Keridahl." Kel ar Haedrin had rejoined them, frowning. "There is something you should see."

Both Cor-Ibis and Ileaha followed Kel ar Haedrin back to the corner, used the mirror to spy without being seen, then returned.

"They are working on the equipment of one of the metal giants we faced on the wall," Cor-Ibis said. "Bolting the mail together. It is almost complete."

"They are called skensai," Ileaha said, with equal calm. She had apparently come to some internal resolution about her role, enough to explain what Cor-Ibis should know in this remade world. "It takes a life sacrifice to animate one, but the casting is within the power of even a minor adept willing to risk an exacting spell. Our best estimate of Estarion’s abilities gives him the power to create at least three skensai in a single day, provided he has at his disposal both suitable vessels and the souls to fuel them."

"Life sacrifice?" Islantar murmured. "This I cannot like. Not when our companions are in Estarion’s power."

"No." Cor-Ibis imbued the word with a world of meaning. They didn’t linger, mounting the stair as soon as it had been cleared of any suspicion of enchantment and climbing the two flights without hindrance.

The stairs opened onto a long, empty corridor which continued around a corner to their right. There was a single door opposite. Ileaha immediately crossed to it and pressed her ear to the fine-grained wood. She signalled that it was clear and, when Cor-Ibis made no objection, opened the door.

"Perhaps not an ideal haven," Ileaha said, surveying the long, panelled room dominated by a highly polished table. There were windows to the left, another door opposite and an archway to their right. Neither secluded nor defensible.

"Keep moving," Cor-Ibis told them, indicating the opposite door, rather than the archway. They hurried across, keeping an eye on the arch as they circled the table. Distantly, Medair could hear a man and woman’s voices, rising and falling in conversation. It sounded as if the speakers were at the bottom of the stair she could see through the arch. It only needed a single person to see them and call for help, to make their task infinitely more difficult.

They came out into another corridor, this time with two young women half-heartedly mopping the floor, their faces streaked with tears. Ileaha and Kel ar Haedrin moved in blurred unison, each taking a struggling armful before either maid had a chance to so much as squeak. Only a mop, clattering to the ground, spoiled the silence of the manoeuvre.

"More rope," Ileaha said imperatively, controlling the struggles of her captive with ease.

While the maids were bound and gagged, Islantar investigated the nearest doors and finally opened the end-most onto an empty bedroom. They stowed the maids and continued quickly down the corridor. At this rate, Medair reflected, they would be discovered by the trail of trussed castle inhabitants left in their wake.

"This must be it," Kel ar Haedrin murmured, using her mirror to look beyond the corner at the end of the corridor. "Doors barred from the outside, and one of them guarded. The guard is some thirty, forty paces from us. The corridor widens to the left further on – I cannot see what lies there."

"The invisibility ring," Medair suggested. Cor-Ibis nodded.

"We are painfully exposed here," Islantar whispered, glancing back toward the dining room after handing Ileaha the ring.

"If we are discovered, we can push further in and attempt to barricade," Ileaha replied, almost too softly for Medair to hear. "Retreat down those stairs will gain us little, and being hunted through those woods, having the countryside raised against us, would be close to suicide."

She put on the ring and faded, while they waited, watching forward and back, without even a hint of a footstep to mark her departure, or progress.

The pause stretched, and they balanced on a knife-edge. Any Decian entering the corridor behind them would see them while still out of immediate reach, and the guard around the corner was too far to risk trying to rush. They could cast Sleep at him instead, but it was not a quiet magic, and still Ileaha did not make her move. All they could do was listen to the man shift wearily, scratching at some itch. They could not even look at him for fear of being seen in return; only Kel ar Haedrin was able to watch.

A distant noise, like paper falling to the floor, came, but Kel ar Haedrin shook her head. Medair silently counted to ten to keep herself still, and on nine heard the unmistakable sound of a body falling to the ground, and Ileaha’s voice, saying softly: "Clear."

When Medair rounded the corner, Ileaha was carefully cleaning a small knife, and the figure at her feet was as still as Jedda las Theomain had been. And Jedda was another thing Medair needed to consider, when circumstances gave her time to focus her thoughts. She should not forget that she was not necessarily safe among Ibisians.

A glance down the corridor showed an open area, a station for the guards who watched over the interrogation rooms. One booted foot was all that was visible to suggest another crumpled figure. The work of a Velvet Sword.

Kel ar Haedrin was already working on the bar of the door. In a matter of moments they had it open. The room beyond was small, and lushly overwhelmed by a cushioned bed, rugs, a soft chair. It was a prison with all the accoutrements of the bedchamber of a noblewoman, including the noblewoman.