John Flanagan - The sorcerer of the North

"I know that, Crowley!" he said crisply. He looked at Horace again. "It may all be nothing. Crowley may be right. But I don't want to take chances. I'd like to know that you're on your way. If we hear from them in the meantime, we can always send a messenger to recall you."

Horace regarded the small gray-haired Ranger with some warmth. Halt was more worried than he might otherwise have been because it was Will who was up there in the snow-covered northern fief, Horace realized. No matter how many years passed, a part of Halt would always see Will as his young apprentice. He moved toward the Ranger.

"Don't worry, Halt," he said quietly. "I'll see that he's all right." Halt's eyes showed his gratitude. "Thanks, Horace."

"That's Hawken," Crowley put in, deciding it was time to get on with the business at hand. "Better get used to it."

Horace frowned at him, not understanding.

"That's your new identity," Crowley told him. "It's a secret mission and we can hardly have the most famous young knight in Araluen turning up in Norgate Fief. You'll go as Sir Hawken and you'll be a free lance. Better get your shield painted accordingly."

Horace nodded. "So I'll provide the muscle and let Will and Alyss do all the thinking?" he said cheerfully.

Halt regarded him seriously, with a slight shake of his head. "Don't sell yourself short, Horace," he said. "You're a good thinker. You're steady and you're practical. Sometimes we devious Rangers and Couriers need that sort of thinking to keep us on track."

Horace was surprised by the statement. Nobody had ever called him a good thinker before.

"Thanks for that, Halt," he said. Then his smile broke out again. "I can't convince you to come with me? Be like old times in Gallica."

This time, Halt smiled as he shook his head again. "There's already one Ranger in Macindaw," he said. "For anything short of a full-scale invasion, one is usually enough."

The wind had picked up and the sleet was blowing harder into their faces. Kicker grumbled a complaint, tossing his head, and Horace leaned forward to pat the battlehorse's neck.

"Not much farther to go, Kicker," he said. "Just give me a few more kilometers. Will needs us."

"Alyss!" The blond girl sat up, startled, at the whispered sound of her name. She swung around in the chair to see Will's face at the barred window, the familiar, irrepressible grin lighting up his features.

She rose quickly. The chair toppled backward as she did so and she only just caught it in time and stopped it from clattering to the floor. Then she crossed quickly to the window.

"Will? My God! How did you get here?"

She looked out at the dizzying drop below him and realized he was perched on the narrow, ice-covered ledge with no other sign of support. She recoiled a half step, her head swimming. Alyss would face most dangers without flinching but she had a terrible head for heights. The sight of the dark drop below the window filled her with dread. Will was fumbling beneath his cloak now and beginning to thread the end of a long rope through the bars.

"I'm here to get you out," he told her. "Just hold tight for a few minutes."

She looked anxiously over her shoulder at the door as he continued to feed the rope through into the room, uncoiling it from beneath his cloak. Her mouth went dry as she realized what Will had in mind.

"You want me to climb down there?" she said, pointing fearfully at the drop below him. He grinned reassuringly.

"It's easy," he told her. "And I'll be here to help you."

"Will, I can't!" she said, her voice breaking. "I can't bear heights. I'll fall. I'll freeze up. I can't do it!"

Will stopped for a moment, contemplating. He knew that there were people who were terrified of heights. Personally, he couldn't understand it. All his life he had been totally at ease scaling trees, cliffs, castle walls. But he realized that such a fear could be totally debilitating. He frowned briefly, then smiled.

"No problem," he said. "I'll tie the rope around your waist and lower you down from here."

The last coil of the rope was free now and it fell onto the pile beneath the window.

Then Alyss realized that her fear of heights was immaterial. There was no way out through those bars-unless Will planned to file through them, a task that would take far too long. She looked fearfully at the door again. Keren said he would be back in an hour or so. How long had she been slumped at the table? Did "an hour or so" mean half an hour? Forty minutes? He could be on his way now,

"You have to get out of here," she said, a new purpose in her voice. "Keren could come back at any minute."

"Then he'll wish he hadn't," Will said, his grin fading. "Have you figured out what he's up to?" he asked. He figured that the best way to stop her from worrying about the climb was to distract her. Alyss shook her head impatiently as he fumbled about behind his back, producing a small leather-covered bottle from beneath his cloak. He handled it very gingerly as he laid it on the windowsill, she noticed.

"You have to go!" she told him. "We don't have time. He's coming back to question me again."

Will stopped what he was doing. "Again?" he said. "Has he hurt you?" His voice was cold. If Keren had harmed her, he was a dead man. But she shook her head once more.

"No. He hasn't hurt me. But he has this strange stone…" Her voice trailed off. She didn't want to tell him how close she had come to betraying his real identity.

"A stone?" he repeated, puzzled.

She nodded. "A blue gemstone. It… somehow… makes me say whatever he wants me to. Will, I nearly told him you're a Ranger!" she blurted out. "I couldn't stop myself. It just… makes you answer questions. It's uncanny."

Will frowned thoughtfully. A memory stirred of his first night in the castle dining hall, when Keren's followers reacted so enthusiastically to his suggestion that Will should perform another song. Perhaps the usurper had been dabbling in mind control for some time.

He pushed the thought aside. Drawing his saxe knife, he began to chip away the mortar at the base of the middle bar to form a well for the acid. There were four bars in all and he thought if he removed the middle two it would create a large enough space for his purposes. He could climb into the room and tie the rope around Alyss's waist, using one of the remaining bars to give him purchase as he lowered her to the ground. Once that was done, he'd tie the rope off and go down it himself.

"Well," he said, "no harm done there. If Buttle's here he's probably guessed who I am anyway." He smiled to try to lighten her mood, but he could see she was upset by what she saw as her own weakness.

"He could only suspect it," she said miserably. "He couldn't be sure. But somehow he nearly got me to tell him."

"It sounds as if Keren has been our sorcerer all along," Will said thoughtfully. Alyss looked at him, puzzled.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"He's the one behind Lord Syron's mystery illness. And he's managed to poison Orman as well. That's why I had to get him out of here. Now you tell me he has some mysterious way of making you answer his questions. Keren has used the old legend, and the stories about Malkallam, as a smokescreen for his own treachery. He wants to take over the castle-although how he plans to keep it once word gets out is beyond me."

"He's done a deal with the Scotti," she said. Earlier, she had made the accusation against Keren as a wild stab in the dark. His answer had confirmed her suspicions.

"The Scotti?" he said. He thought for a moment. If the Scotti had control of Castle Macindaw, their path into Araluen would be secure. They could raid the surrounding countryside with impunity, even stage a full-scale invasion. Small as it was, Macindaw was a vital key to Araluen's northern security. "Then we've really got to stop him!"