R. Salvatore - Echoes of the Fourth Magic

Though her brightened form was blurred to him through the tears that had welled in his eyes, Del could see that Brielle stood at peace, grimly satisfied. Weakened by confusion and despair, he stumbled down to the road toward Mountaingate.

Soon he broke into a dead run.

“It is finished,” Reinheiser declared triumphantly. He held up a small splinter of wood notched into an angular design on one end.

“Wonderful.” Mitchell scowled, pacing back and forth, his eyes darting anxiously about like some cornered animal. The long wait had played badly on Mitchell, eating at him. During the day, the pair had found no chance at all of getting out of the valley, for Ryell, or one of his cronies, seemed always about, watching their every move. And at night the pair remained locked in their rooms. Mitchell’s mood seemed particularly surly this night, Reinheiser noted, and he knew why: earlier that same day, the captain had seen DelGiudice escorted from the mountains to freedom. “Well, what is it?”

“A key to our door, of course,” Reinheiser answered, smiling widely.

At first the answer didn’t seem to register with the distracted man, but then his face blanched and he spun toward Reinheiser. “Where the hell did you get that?”

Reinheiser laughed casually. “Did you really think that a locked door could defeat me? Come now, Captain, you must show me more respect.”

“But how?”

“I formed a mental image of the guard’s key and merely copied it,” he answered, matter-of-factly-though in truth, even Reinheiser wondered how that picture of the key had come so clear in his mind.

“It won’t do us any good anyway,” Mitchell grumbled, clutching stubbornly to his negative attitude. “There are guards outside the door. We’d never make it out of the house, let alone the valley.”

“Do not worry, Captain. There are plans to take care of them, I believe.”

“Will you quit talking in riddles?”

“Not yet,” Reinheiser said with a laugh. “Consider it just a call in the night.” His voice trailed away mysteriously. “Patience, my friend, patience. We cannot leave yet. There are arrangements to be made and you have much to learn.”

“What are you talking about?” Mitchell demanded.

“About the arrangements, I am not, as yet, sure,” Reinheiser explained. “But I can tell you with certainty that you must do as I say when we are before the court of Ungden if you wish to attain the lofty goals you desire.”

Mitchell scowled, but Reinheiser could be even more stubborn than the big man. The physicist had learned a great deal about Ungden from his talks with Ardaz, and he knew that one wrong word from the captain when they stood before that merciless ruler would cost them both their lives.

So Reinheiser held firm, took the upper hand, and forced the concessions. In the end, Mitchell had no choice but to agree to Reinheiser’s demands. Above the fact that Reinheiser had the key and that only he could read his map to get through the secret passes out of Illuma, the physicist made it quite clear that he had some plan brewing to take care of the guards.

On Reinheiser’s insistence, they got right to work, spending the rest of that night and most of the next morning rehearsing scenarios and questions they might encounter at the court in Pallendara. Reinheiser went over the same questions repeatedly, stubbornly, forcing Mitchell not only to provide the correct answers, but also to show the proper, subservient demeanor.

And whenever the captain slipped, even a bit, the physicist got in his face, poking him and scowling at him.

Mitchell didn’t like it, not one bit.

And as they progressed, the wait became even more trying for Mitchell. Now that he had found some direction and purpose to this adventure, he desperately wanted to get on with his grand plans.

When their rehearsals at last reached a point satisfactory to the physicist, Reinheiser asked not to be disturbed and spent entire days in calm meditation, making the passing hours seem even longer. Mitchell reasoned that the physicist was finalizing their plans for escape and knew he should leave him alone, but his patience was worn away and he constantly peppered Reinheiser with the redundant “When?”

On a dark and windy night two long days later, the captain finally got his answer.

A few stars peeked through breaks in the black clouds that rushed overhead. Arien’s ancient house creaked and moaned against the swirling gusts, and the single candle in the room flickered from the drafts. Reinheiser sat motionless, trying to block out the snores of his sleeping companion and attain the relaxed state of his meditative trance: a difficult task, even for Reinheiser’s disciplined mind, for the man was agitated, as close to the edge of his control as he had ever been.

Then a soundless call beckoned to him. In both fear and excitement, he rose and crossed the room to the captain, his shadow dancing in the unsteady light like some monster in the blurred background of a nightmare. “Come, Captain,” he whispered, “tonight we are called to leave.”

Groggy and not quite comprehending, Mitchell climbed to his feet and began pulling on his clothes while Reinheiser gathered together a torch and two small packs he had stashed under his bed. A trace of mist seeped in from under the door and hung about the floor. Indeed, a ground fog shrouded the entire valley, a very strange mist that had floated in suddenly, a few minutes before.

“Hurry, Captain,” Reinheiser encouraged. He slid his key in the lock-it fit perfectly, as he knew it would-and opened the door a crack to view the hallway. Satisfied, he swung the door wide and pushed the still lethargic captain out into the hall.

Mitchell perked up immediately, shattered from his sleepiness by the staring face of an elven guard. He raised his arms to defend against an unexpected assault, but the guard made no motion toward him. In fact, the elf made no movement at all, not to blink or even to breathe! A few feet away, another guard stood rigid in the same comatose state.

“What?” the astounded captain gawked, turning, as always, to Reinheiser for answers.

Understanding that the favorable situation wouldn’t hold for long, Reinheiser cut Mitchell’s questions off before they could really begin. “Do not ask about things that are beyond your comprehension,” he replied with a pretense of authority, as if he was an intricate part of these strange events. But in truth, the physicist’s understanding of all of this was no greater than Mitchell’s-only Reinheiser had known of the stasis before he opened the door.

Mitchell nodded and pushed Reinheiser ahead. “I’ll just take this one’s sword,” he said, grinning.

“No!” Reinheiser scolded, and once again he wondered if the benefits of keeping Mitchell around outweighed the aggravations of the captain’s endless stupidity. He accepted with a resigned sigh that, as always, he would have to lead the captain by the hand to get them through. “Take nothing, disturb nothing. If we are fortunate, they won’t know that we are gone until the morning. Now, quickly, let us be on our way. We have only a few minutes to get out of the valley.”

They hurried down the hallways and out of Arien’s house, passing several elves as they darted across the misty city, a couple out for a midnight walk and three dancing in a small clearing. But these, too, were held in time, frozen in mid-step and mid-pirouette.

Soon the two men were deep inside the maze of tunnels, straining their eyes in the torchlight to read Reinheiser’s map and counting their steps and the side passages. The eerie mist flew from the valley then, as silently and swiftly as it had come, and the unwitting elves resumed their guarding and walking and dancing as if nothing had happened.