Andrew Hartley - Act of Will

But then she was calling me to climb down after her, and I had other things to worry about. I’m not fond of climbing; factor in a howling wind and a rain-slicked rope, and you might understand why it took me three hellish minutes to inch down to the shuttered window where Renthrette was waiting for me. Then she was muttering about my incompetence and pulling me in with the kind of rough, physical manhandling that always sounds like it should be exciting, but is usually just embarrassing.

Inside was exactly what we had expected: one of two large dormitories identical to the cavalry barracks below. The room was deserted, but there were footlockers full of red-flighted arrows and scarlet cloaks hanging from racks around the walls. At one end of the room was a heavy door. I felt we’d seen enough, but Renthrette tried it anyway.

Behind it was a stone staircase.

We inched down the stairs. They went not to the ground floor, but to a familiar round chamber in the basement, its floor glowing with the soft, white luminescence of the Ugokan caves and the Iruni stone circle. I stood on the steps and looked at it, as if I had seen it only in nightmares before. There was, thank God, no sign of the raiders, but the place alone gave me the creeps. Renthrette felt it too. She gazed wide-eyed at the room and then looked back to me. “It’s just as you described it,” she said.

“You didn’t believe me?” I asked, momentarily incredulous.

“Of course I did,” she said, “but, you know. You’re the storyteller, right? I thought perhaps you had embroidered it a little. Made it more dramatic.”

“You want drama?” I said petulantly. “Try filling the place with raiders. That part was true too.”

She gave me a slightly pained look. “Right,” she said. “Sorry.”

All I wanted to do right now was get out of this awful place: not just the room, or the secret barracks, but the castle itself. For once, she seemed to agree. We retraced our steps, climbed back up the rope to the roof, and returned to our rooms, badly rattled but apparently undetected.

It was difficult to decide where our discovery left us, other than with the sense that we should have thought of this weeks ago. There had been clues that we had managed to miss completely, like the fact that we’d been served conspicuously watered ale while the bar was piled high with beer barrels for its less public inhabitants. Or the prohibitively expensive horses at the huge ranch by the river, which was obviously just a big stable for the raiders who were on the ale over at Count Arlest’s House of Hell. What was more difficult to figure out was what we were supposed to do with our discovery.

One thing we did learn, for what it was worth, was that although the long corridors did have concealed doors into the raiders’ quarters, the raiders themselves almost certainly never used them. The raiders moved between their barracks and the great circular chamber in the basement, which could put them anywhere in the area. They could come and go without ever setting foot in a public area inside or outside the keep. It was tough to swallow the idea that the servants, the regular army, the count, his pale wife, and the rest of the castle were unaware of the presence of two hundred armed men, but it was possible.

“Well, now we know,” said Renthrette with a satisfied smile, as if she’d figured it all out for herself. This annoyed me, as it had been my flash of genius, but it was typical of Renthrette and Garnet. You only make progress by doing things. Ideas are worthless. What really moves things along is hefting your ax at somebody or swinging from the walls like some lesser primate. I might as well give up on the smooth, witty banter and just toss her a piece of fruit from time to time.

But not everything was falling neatly into place. The attack on Arlest, which we’d witnessed when we first arrived, was a round peg for our square holes. I was tempted to see the count as innocent and the attack as genuine, while Renthrette thought they were all guilty as hell and the attack had been purely for our benefit. That men had died in the course of laying this false trail only convinced her of its spuriousness.

I considered the spectral army that had ravaged the region 250 years ago. After the dust had settled, three new capital cities had been built, and one of them had been Adsine. The keep was as old as the town. Someone had known what that opaline rock could be used for and they had built it into the basement of the fortress. Had those who had lived here ever since forgotten about the spectral army, or had they always known what that stone could do, and Arlest (or whoever was responsible) was merely the first to use it since? And if so, why now?

As ever, the more I learned, the less I understood. The only thing I knew for certain was that we had to get out, and we had to do so quickly and without rousing suspicion. I figured we should just fill our saddlebags and take a couple of fast horses. Renthrette argued that the contents of the wagon were too potentially useful in what might yet transpire.

Right. We needed that wagon like we needed cobras in our underwear. I told her it was slow and obvious. She said we weren’t supposed to look like we were running away and that if we did, no matter how fast our horses were, they would get us. I suspected they would “get us” Whatever we did, but she was sick of hearing me say that, so I shut up and let her play party leader, grudgingly grateful for her not pointing out that I could no more handle a fast horse than I could beat my arms and fly back to Cresdon.

It was a curious thing, but considering that we’d solved the main part of the mystery, I couldn’t help feeling that it made little difference. After all, knowing where the raiders came from didn’t make them disappear. What were we supposed to do, shout “We know where you live!” and figure they’d go away out of sheer embarrassment?

Renthrette was all business, only interested in the job at hand. Whatever minuscule spark there had been between us had given up the ghost as soon as adventuring had reared its ironclad head. Her face was all steely again and she had gone back to double-checking our equipment and polishing her sword. I was just an extra, a walk-on who announces the arrival of the mad duke and then goes off into the wings and is forgotten. In my plays I’d always tried to give my walk-ons a bit of something special: some pithy philosophy or wry political humor. I got Enter Messenger. Messenger gives letter to the warrior queen. Exit Messenger . Renthrette had her script memorized and was ready to hold center stage for a good while to come.

Then, while I was laboriously pursuing this metaphor through my head and she was carefully checking the links of her mail shirt one by one, she said, “You’d better think up something to tell the count so that he won’t suspect anything.”

Great. So she’s in control but I have to think us out of this fortress.

“Such as?” I said testily.

“You’re the storyteller,” she answered, without looking up.

I thought through all the lies that had helped me out of tight corners before: the sudden death of an aged aunt, the news that my house was on fire or that my wife had just had twins. I was a good liar and could deliver all the usual one-liners with a straight face: “What a delightful baby,” “You can count on me,” “I only play cards for fun,” “I wouldn’t dream of such a thing, Officer,” and of course, “Your wife ? I had no idea. ” Still, this time my back was really up against the wall and the old chestnuts wouldn’t help. As a rule, however, I don’t worry about plausibility when I lie, I just state the case and adamantly say that it is so until the opposition begins to waver and confesses that he was too drunk to recall, exactly. I went to think amongst the ancient volumes of the tiny library on the second floor.