Mickey Reichert - The legend of Nightfall

“Go!"

She went, and the duke’s attention locked on the approaching prince. "Stand where you are!"

Edward stopped, halfway across the chamber.

“Who are you, young man?"

Prince Edward bowed respectfully. “Prince Edward Nargol of Alyndar, sir."

The title barely seemed to impress the duke. "What were you doing in my daughter’s bedroom.”

"Talking, sir." Edward glanced over at Willafrida who had skittered to the center of her bed, clutching a pillow to her chest.

"Talking‘?" the duke repeated. "Talking! You sneak into my daughter’s locked bedroom like some common assassin and have the nerve to tell me you were talking?"

"We were talking," Edward said again, not entirely certain of the answer the duke wanted or, more likely, expected.

"Prince or other, no man despoils my daughter’s body and reputation. My physician can determine whether you’ve seduced my daughter and ruined her for decent marriage. But first, I will give you a chance to state your intentions."

Humiliation turned Edward’s cheeks red. He knew some relief as well. He had done nothing wrong or disrespectful to the duchess-heir, and surely the physician’s examination would reveal that.

The duke went straight to the point. "Prince Edward, do you plan to marry my daughter?"

"Marry her?" Edward repeated, trying to make sense of the words. "Marry Willafrida?"

"Do you plan to marry my daughter?"

Edward replied honestly. "Well, no, sir."

The duke’s face darkened to purple. He gestured to his guards. "Take him away and lock him up." He turned on his heel and strode from the room as the guards advanced.

Edward did not resist.

The booming voice of the Duke of Schiz and the wail of the oath-bond aroused Nightfall from a half-doze. He scrambled up the ladder, watching in stunned silence while the duke’s guardsmen arrested his prince for no more reason than entering his daughter’s bedroom. The situation made no sense to Nightfall. His mother’s nightly strings of bedtime clients had ill-prepared him for considering the mere act of being found in a woman’s sleeping chamber a crime serious enough to deserve jailing. Yet Edward’s quiet acceptance of his punishment suggested guilt.

Nightfall waited only until the guardsmen closed the door behind themselves and Edward. He listened for the sounds of returning footsteps and heard nothing over the ear-filling clamor of the oath-bond. Finally, he slithered through the window and to the side of Willafrida’s bed, resisting the urge to clutch his stomach in agony. The oath-bond felt like a burning knife, twisting through his guts. "Where’s your dungeon?"

Willafrida stiffened, obviously not noticing the intruder until he spoke. “Our dungeon? It’s deep. Below the ground floor. But why?"

Nightfall suspected he might have only a few moments before the duke returned to confront his daughter alone. He stumbled from the room, batting the door without bothering to see if it fully closed. Willafrida could handle that. He had graver matters to attend.

"Sudian, wait." Willafrida’s desperate whisper chased him down the corridor, but Nightfall dared not stop. Movement toward the goal of rescuing Edward dimmed the oath-bond’s alarm enough to let him function. If he turned back, he felt certain it would overwhelm him, driving him to twitch and writhe until it robbed him of soul as well as vigor. Finding the hallway empty, he charged toward a corner tower at random. He hit the door running, scarcely managing to trip the latch as he did so. The panel slammed open, crashing into a waiting guardsman so hard it sent him tumbling down the stairs, armor ringing against stone.

Nightfall cursed his lack of caution and his luck. Obviously, the guard had not expected trouble from the second story and so had positioned himself to block the exit from an intruder coming from below. Seeing no merit to trying to find another stairway now, Nightfall pounded down the steps, the oath-bond seething. On the next landing, he found the fallen guard sprawled, another crouched at his side. Glad for the distraction, Nightfall charged past, leaping down the stone stairway into the gloom below.

The conscious guard shouted. "Hey! You there!" He changed his tactic to a warning to those below. "Intruder headed down! Enemy on the stairs!"

Nightfall landed with his usual cat lightness, the oath-bond too persistent to allow him to use his talent to further soften the fall. He crouched, assessing the scene at a glance. Two guards blocked the pathway between two sets of three cells flush with the wall. The cages’ barred sides rose into roofs that ended five hands’ lengths from the stone ceiling that served as the floor to the level above. After the last pair of cells, the pathway ended and shorter branchways headed off in each direction, in turn ending at the walls. Only one figure occupied a cell, the farthest one on the right. Nightfall did not pause long enough to conclusively identify the prisoner. He raced down the walk.

In response to their companions’ warning, the two guards in the dungeon rushed forward. Nightfall darted through the gap between them. Both grabbed for him at once. One missed cleanly. The other caught a grip on his cloak. Arching his shoulders, Nightfall let the fabric slip free and continued running. Behind him, he could hear the guards calling strategies that seemed obvious. They would prove far more hunched and ready for his escape than they had been for his sudden entrance. Nightfall did not care. The closer he got to the prisoner he felt certain was Edward Nargol, the more the pain faded. He skidded around the corner, peering through the bars.

Grimy hands clenched the steel, and sad, dark eyes peered back at Nightfall through the gaps. A man with limp, brown hair and an openmouthed expression shy several teeth seemed as surprised to see Nightfall as the squire to find a stranger where his master should stand. The oath-bond’s threat intensified with abrupt and suffocating intensity. For a moment, Nightfall froze, fighting back the pain enough to function. He glanced back around to the main pathway. Four guards swept it in two groups of two, moving with readied caution. Shortly, they would trap him against the wall.

Damn. Nightfall scarcely dared to believe he had cornered himself for an unknown hoodlum. He watched, calm, as the sentries came toward him. Nightfall still carried the last of his throwing daggers in addition to three others he had been given in Alyndar. Pain drove him to hurl himself upon the guards en masse, to bite, claw, and stab in a wild frenzy until they killed him. Nightfall delved deeper to the more familiar and personal part of his brain and the cold pocket of calculation he drew upon in times of desperation.

The guards turned the corner. Nightfall took a careful, backward step, aware one more would press his back to the wall. To his right, the farthest wall of the dungeon hemmed him. To his left, the bars of the prisoner’s cage loomed. He saw only one other route, a small and desperate possibility he could not ignore. As the guards charged him, Nightfall scrambled up the bars. He flung himself up and over the cell roofs, skittering from cage to cage in a dashing crawl.

"Hey!" a guard shouted. "Get him." Their footsteps pounded a wild cadence in pursuit. Nightfall leapt from the last cell, hit the floor running, and sprinted back up the tower steps. Heavy footfalls resounded through the turret, seeming to come from all directions at once. Lowering his head, Nightfall jumped over the moaning guard on the first landing, whipped up to the second floor, and caught the door handle. He ripped open the panel and raced through the corridor. The oath-bond tore and hammered at him.

This time, he found a young maid in his path. He swerved as he ran past, but his shoulder struck her, jolting her to her knees. She let out a short scream that impressed the need to work swiftly. Catching the latch to Willafrida’s room, he tripped it and pushed. The door slammed open, revealing the duchess-heir sitting alone on her bed. Nightfall closed the door. "He wasn’t there."