Andrea Höst - Voice of the Lost

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.

The woman was perhaps forty. She stood very upright in the centre of the room, arms folded. The room was obviously a cell, despite its luxuries, but the woman’s stance was as imperious as an Empress in her throne room.