Michael Sullivan: The Crown conspiracy

Alric and the others waited. Count Pickering and Mauvin stared at the prince in terror and tried to persuade him to come away from the gate. Nothing happened for several tense moments as the prince and his bodyguards sat outside waiting, staring up at the parapets. From inside they heard the sounds of fighting.

A shout came from atop the walls of the city. "The prince! Open the gate! Let him in! It's the prince!" More shouts, a scream, and then suddenly the massive gate split open, and the great doors pulled back. Inside was a mass of confusion as uniformed guards fought a horde of citizens dressed up like tinkers wearing makeshift armor or stolen helms.

Alric did not pause. He spurred his mount and drove into the crowd. Mauvin, Count Pickering, Sir Ecton, and Marshal Garret struggled to form a personal defense for their king, but there was little need. At the sight of him, the defenders laid down their weapons. Word that the prince was alive spread, and those who saw him charging toward the castle, brandishing his father's sword roared with cheers.

– 8 -Royce heard the horn wail as he stood trapped on the steps of the tower. "Sounds like a fight outside," Magnus mentioned. "I wonder who will win?" The dwarf scratched his beard. "For that matter, I wonder who is fighting?"

"You don't take much interest in your employer's business, do you?" Royce said studying the walls. When he tried to tap a spike into a seam, it broke like an eggshell. The dwarf was telling the truth about that.

"Only if it is necessary for the job. By the way, I wouldn't do that again. You were lucky you didn't hit a binding thread."

Royce cursed under his breath. "If you want to be helpful, why not just tell me how to get up and back?"

"Who said I was trying to be helpful?" The dwarf grinned at him wickedly. "I just spent half a year on this project. I don't want you to topple the whole thing in the first few minutes. I want to savor the moment."

"Are all dwarves this morbid?"

"Think of it as having built a sandcastle and wanting the pleasure of seeing it fall to a wave. I am on the edge of my toes waiting to see exactly how and when it will finally collapse. Will it be a misstep, a loss of balance, or something amazing and unexpected?"

Royce drew his dagger and held it by the blade for the dwarf to see. "Are you aware I could put this through your throat where you stand?"

It was a false threat, as he would not dare throw away such a vital tool at this moment. Still he expected a reaction of fear, or at least a mocking laugh. Instead, the dwarf did neither. He glared at the dagger his eyes wide.

"Where did you get that blade?"

Royce rolled his eyes in disbelief. "I'm a little busy here. If you don't mind." He resumed his study of the steps. He observed the way they curved up and around the central trunk of the tower, how the steps above formed the ceiling to the ones below. He looked up ahead and then behind him.

"The step I am on doesn't collapse if I am on it," Royce said to himself, but loud enough for the dwarf to hear. "It only falls if I step on the next one."

"Yes, quite ingenious, isn't it. As you might imagine, I'm quite proud of my work. I originally designed it to be an instrument of Arista's death. Braga hired me to set it up to look like an accident. A decrepit old tower in the royal residence collapses, and the poor princess is crushed in the process. Unfortunately, after Alric escaped, he changed his mind and decided to have her executed instead. I thought I would never get to see the fruits of all my hard work, but then you came along. How nice of you."

"All traps have weaknesses," Royce said. He looked ahead at the steps and smiled suddenly. Crouching he leapt forward not one, but two steps. The step in the middle slipped from its position and fell, but the original step he started from remained. "With no following step," Royce observed, "that step is now secure from breaking, isn't it?"

"Very clever," the dwarf replied, clearly disappointed.

Royce continued to leap two steps at a time until he moved around the circle out of sight of the dwarf. As he did, Magnus shouted, "It'll do you no good. The gap at the bottom is much too far for you to jump. You are still trapped!"

– 9 -Arista was still crouched on her bed when she heard someone outside her door. It was probably that dreadful little dwarf or Braga himself coming to take her to the trial. She could hear a scraping and an occasional thud. She remembered too late that she had not resealed the door with her gemlock. As she moved toward the door, it swung open. To her surprise, it was neither Braga nor the dwarf. Instead, there in the doorway was one of the thieves from the dungeon.

"Princess," was all Royce said entering with a respectful though brief nod in her direction. He quickly moved passed her and seemed to be looking for something, his eyes roamed over the walls and ceiling of her bedroom.

"You? What are you doing here? Is Alric alive?"

"Alric's fine," Royce said as he moved about the room. He looked out the windows and examined the material of the drapes. "Well, that's not going to work."

"Why are you here? How…did you get here? Did you see Esrahaddon? What did he say to Alric?"

"I'm a bit busy just now, Your Highness."

"Busy? Doing what?"

"Saving you, but I'll admit, I'm not doing very well at the moment." Without asking permission, Royce opened her wardrobe and began sifting through her clothes. Then he rifled through her dresser drawers.

"What do you want with my clothes?"

"I'm trying to figure a way out of here. I suspect this tower is going to collapse in a few minutes, and if we don't get out soon, we'll die."

"I see," she said simply. "Why can't we just go down the stairs?" She got up and crept to the doorway. "Sweet Maribor!" she cried as she saw every other step missing.

"We can leap those but the last six or seven steps at the bottom are totally gone. It's too far to jump to the corridor. I was hoping maybe we could jump out the window to the moat, but that looks like instant death."

"Oh," was all she could utter. A scream was growing in her and she covered her mouth with her hand, holding it back. "You're right. You're not doing very well."

Royce looked under her bed and then stood up. "Wait a minute, you're a sorceress, aren't you? Esrahaddon taught you magic. Can you get us down? Levitate us, or turn us into birds or something?"

Arista smiled awkwardly. "I was never able to learn much from Esrahaddon and certainly not self-levitation."

"Can you levitate a board or stone we could jump to?"

Arista shook her head.

"And the bird thing?"

"Even if I could, which I can't, we'd stay birds because I couldn't turn us back after changing now could I?"

"So, magic is out," Royce said and began pulling the feather stuffed mattress off Arista's bed revealing the rope net beneath it. "Okay, then help me untie your bed."

"The rope isn't long enough to reach the bottom of the tower," Arista told him.

"It doesn't have to be," he replied, pulling the rope through the holes in the bed frame.

The tower shuddered, and dust cascaded from the rafters. Arista held her breath for a moment, her heart pounding in anticipation of a sudden plummet, but the tower steadied itself once more.

"Clearly we are running out of time." Royce coiled the length of rope over his shoulder and headed toward the door.

Arista paused only a moment to look back at the dressing table and the brushes her father gave her and then moved to what remained of the stairs.

"You're going to have to jump down. The steps that are still there should be very sturdy and it should be easier than jumping up. Just be sure you don't over jump, but if you do, I'll try to catch you." With that, he sprang down two steps so gracefully that she felt embarrassed for her own lack of confidence.