Lisa Smedman - Heirs of Prophecy

Before he could pluck it from the crow’s tail, the door leading to the cells crashed open, and light flooded into the room. The crow, startled by the noise, flew up toward the ceiling. Cursing his ill luck, Leifander wrenched around to look at the door, ready to pummel the wizard’s feet with the manacle around his wrist in one last, futile act of defiance.

He stopped short, fist raised, gaping at what he saw. Two humans, both of them strangers. One was a dark-haired male, wearing a chain-mail shirt stretched across broad shoulders and a scarf that hid much of his face. The other was female, almost as slender as an elf, all but a few wisps of her amber-colored hair bound up in a bright red scarf. Both wore high boots that were splattered with mud and stank of sewage. The woman held a silver dagger that glowed with a bluish light reminiscent of moonlight but bright enough that it made Leifander wince. The man-who seemed to be shying away from the dagger’s light, as if it pained him-held a set of keys in one hand and a sword that dripped with blood in the other.

“Leifander!” the woman cried. “You’re alive.”

Leifander wondered how this woman knew his name. For a confused moment, he thought that the wizard must have told her, but by the way the pair looked nervously around the room, it was clear they didn’t belong there.

The man strode into the room and kicked at the rats, which scuttled away through the open door. He bent and began trying keys in the lock that held Leifander’s wrist to the bolt in the floor. The woman, meanwhile, kneeled at Leifander’s feet. He saw her wince, then swallow, as if bile had risen in her throat. His foot throbbed all the harder, as he realized how terrible his wounds must be. He shuddered when her fingers brushed his lacerated flesh.

“Be still,” the woman said. “We’re here to help you.”

She began to pray.

It was a strange prayer, spoken mostly in the human tongue, but with the odd word of poorly pronounced Elvish mixed in. Leifander heard her invoke the name of the human goddess Sune, then blinked in surprise as Hanali Celanil’s name followed.

The man fumbled with the keys, trying to find one that fit the manacle on Leifander’s wrist.

“What’s wrong with your fingers?” he asked, poking at the lock.

For a moment, Leifander wondered what he was talking about-it was his foot that was injured. Then he realized what the human meant.

“They’re tattoos,” he said through gritted teeth.

The man at last found the right key, and the wrist manacle sprung open. Leifander painfully sat up, rubbing his chafed wrist, then gestured at his ankles.

“The other manacles,” he said. “They should open with the same key.”

Above them, the crow continued to wing its way in a tight circle around the tiny room. The unnatural brightness of the dagger was frightening it. More than once, it swerved away from the glowing blade, narrowly avoiding crashing into a wall or the ceiling.

Down by Leifander’s ankle, the woman was still praying. She’d set the glowing dagger down. Its light was gradually dimming as it lay untended on the cold stone floor. A ruddy red glow, however, was replacing it. The glow seemed to be flowing from the hand that was touching Leifander’s savaged foot, and with it came a warmth that numbed the agony of the lacerations like a draught of bitterberry wine. An instant later, his foot felt whole again. Looking down, he saw that his wounds had fully closed. The only reminder of the injuries the rats had inflicted was a faint tingling.

The woman looked up, an expectant expression on her face. Realizing what is was she wanted, Leifander whispered his thanks. Her companion, meanwhile, fumbled open the manacle around one of Leifander’s ankles.

As Leifander withdrew his foot, his woodland-keen hearing picked up the sound of footsteps approaching from behind the closed door.

“Someone’s coming,” he hissed. “Be quick.”

Forcing himself up into a half squat on his freed foot-the second manacle was still tight around the ankle of the foot the woman had just healed-Leifander strained to reach the crow, but as it swooped down to meet him, it got in the way of the human, blocking his view of the manacle lock. The human swatted at the crow, backhanding it away from him.

“No!” Leifander cried, as the crow was sent tumbling.

An instant later the creature gave up and flew back up into the ventilation pipe and disappeared. Cursing, Leifander staggered to his feet as soon as the second manacle fell away from his ankle. He turned toward the two newcomers. However bold they might have been in this rescue attempt, they’d just cost him what might have been his only chance to reclaim his magic. With the crow gone, he’d be forced to rely on the two humans.

“Come on,” the woman whispered, picking up her magic dagger again. “There’s a way out, back through the cells. The guard’s station-the jakes. We can use them to reach the sewers.”

She slipped out of the room and hurried down the hallway between the cells. Leifander ran after her, jumping nimbly over the body of the guard his male rescuer must have killed, which lay in a spreading pool of blood, and skirting a second body without a mark on it that had probably been felled by the cleric’s magic. The male paused just long enough to close the door behind them, then brought up the rear, his sword ready.

The woman led them through the maze of hallways to a small room with a filth-crusted hole in the floor. From the darkness below that opening came a terrible stench. The two humans exchanged glances, and some unspoken communication passed between them. The man kneeled, hooked his arm through the hole, and levered up the flooring stone into which the hole had been cut, creating a larger opening. With a nod, the female sat down and slipped through it, feet first. Leifander heard a splashing noise, and a muffled word, and the light from her dagger flared up through the opening like a beacon.

The man stood guard with his sword, staring back up the hallway, and motioned urgently toward the hole.

“You next,” he ordered. “It’s only a short drop.”

Leifander took one look back down the hallway-he could hear shouts of alarm coming from the room in which the wizard had interrogated him-and made up his mind. Shivering, he forced down his fear of tight, dark spaces and concentrated on the magical blue light filling the space below the opening in the floor. Grimacing at the filth, he sat on the lip of the hole, then slid in, feet-first.

He landed with a splash in knee-deep sewage and was immediately overwhelmed by a smell that made him gag. The walls were close and tight on either side, barely wider than his shoulders, and the curved ceiling was just a handspan above his head. He felt crushed by the weight of stone around him, unable to breathe. Dizzy, short of breath-unable to move. The woman yanked him aside, and an instant later her larger companion wedged himself down through the hole. He splashed into the sewage beside them, bending at the waist to keep his head from banging the ceiling. His sword scraped against the stone wall as he turned. He reached up and dragged the flooring stone back into place, sealing them inside the tunnel.

The shouts coming from above grew louder and were joined by the sound of running footsteps. The woman whispered something, and the light from her dagger blinked out.

Somehow the darkness made the walls seem even tighter, more confining, than they had before. Leifander’s breath came quick and fast as he felt the stone all around him, walling him in on every side. Putting a hand on the wall beside him in an effort to steady himself didn’t help-it only reminded him how close the walls were. Head spinning, stomach heaving, he fought for air and found none. Bright sparkles floated before his eyes.