Dragon Stones (27 page)

He grimaced.  "That was brutally said."

"I mean no offense.  I cannot control my answers."

In the distance, a horn blast shattered the morning quiet; she looked around nervously as a second horn sounded, this one much closer.  The merchant raised his gaze to the castle.  "The alarums," he murmured.  "You say you have escaped just this morning?"

"Yes," she said.  "
Please
.  They will be coming for me."

"
Perhaps we can exchange services, then," he said.  "I will take you aboard, and you will advise me on a few matters.  Is that agreeable?"

"Yes, but I have no herbs or powders," she said.  "I am unlikely to be able to enter a trance without them."

"You seem determined to scuttle your chances of getting passage on my boat, or any other.  Come.  We can work out the particulars later."

As he led her along the dock toward his laden vessel, she said:  "I may be able to scrape some materials together at the Crosswaters," she said, "depending on how badly damaged it is.  Is it prediction that you want?"

He shook his head.  "Information."

"About what?"

"My oldest son," he said.  "I've never been sure he's really mine.  He's just a lad, but he's this tall!"  He stretched to his tiptoes and raised his arms as far as they would go.

"Have you considered asking the boy's mother?"

"She died of fever when he was a toddler."

"And this is worth bringing me on your ship?"

"Yes.  I have a … a growth, you see.  On my neck."  He rubbed the back of his head.  "The doctors say they can do nothing for it.  I would know, before I die, if I will be leaving my business to blood kin."

Tolaria frowned.  She didn't much like this request, but it was unlikely that she would find anyone who would give her passage without demanding some other service, one she would find even less appealing; and she had already told the little man far too much about her business.  "Very well," she said.

"I will show you to a room below deck where you can wait until we depart.  There will be an inspection before we leave; you will want to be out of sight during that, I think."

She nodded.

"My name is Talbrett.  What did you say yours was?"

"Tolaria."

"Well, Tolaria, let us hope you are wrong, and that we find the Crosswaters sound and intact, eh?"

"We won't," she said.

CHAPTER TEN

As Adaran had expected, the manacle around his right wrist proved much harder to remove than the one around his left.  By the time he finally got free of it, his right hand was scraped raw, dripping blood freely to the floor.  Dim shapes scurried about his feet; he had the most appalling idea that they were licking his blood off the dirty stones.

Ignoring the rats or mice or whatever they were, he went to work on the irons that held his ankles.  Without tools, this would be even more difficult than freeing his hands; he could not do much to alter the shape of his feet or the width of his ankles.  Instead he felt around in the dark, in the vain hope that he might locate something carelessly left in the cell—a bit of wire, perhaps, or a fragment of bone, or even, if he were very lucky, one of his missing lock-picks.  He found nothing but moldy straw and filth.

Suddenly the door banged open, revealing the twisted fellow who had accompanied Orioke earlier.  He stood there and gawked for a moment at what Adaran was doing, then came in and shut the cell door behind him.  "Well, well," he said. "Look at you.  Half free already."

Adaran sighed and sat on the cold, wet floor.  "If it weren't for these leg irons, I would have been gone by now."

"Perhaps.  Orioke said that you were liable to escape, and so here I am to check on you."  Qalor crouched down, just out of reach of a lunge, and examined Adaran's injured hands.  "Tsk.  Look at what you've done."  He indicated a fresh, bloody bandage on his shoulder, and another on his upper arm.  "As you can see, I am also willing to mutilate myself for my work."

"Your … work?"

"Alchemy.  I was not always like this, you know.  The chemicals, the potions, the fumes.  They take a toll."

"Surely it's not an alchemist's job to check on prisoners."

"Of course not.  But discretion is important and my quarters are nearby, so Orioke gave the responsibility to me."

"You take orders from Orioke?"

"No, no.  He made a suggestion, and I agreed to it."  Then:  "I don't suppose you've seen the wizard since we were all here together earlier?"

After a moment, Adaran said:  "Might I have a drink?"

"That's your price for answering, eh?  A drink?"

"Yes."

"Very well."  Qalor stood, raised up his torch, and exited the cell, not bothering to shut the door.  He soon returned, carrying a leaky wooden bucket in which dark liquid sloshed.  The alchemist put the bucket on the floor and, using his foot, slid it over in front of Adaran.  He put his face into it and slurped greedily.  The water was fresh and cold, as if served directly from the river; Adaran drained it as far as he could, until his lips no longer reached the surface.  Then he picked it up and poured what was left over his head, rinsing away some of the sweat and grime that crusted his face.  He contemplated hurling the empty bucket at Qalor, but decided against it.  Unless he got very lucky, the best he could  hope for was to injure the man, which would surely invite reprisal.  Instead he set it down and pushed it away; as if having read his thoughts, Qalor snatched it and moved it out of reach.

"Well?" the alchemist said.

"What?"

"The wizard.  Has he been here?"

"No."

Qalor grunted.  "He seems to have gone missing.  I thought perhaps he may have visited you again."

"No one's visited me except the rats."

"Rats?"

"Big as horses," Adaran said.  "They fled when you brought the torch in."

Qalor stared at him.  "Rats," he murmured, "big as horses."

Adaran suffered a sudden vision of Dunshandrin's soldiers charging into battle, mounted on gigantic rodents.

The alchemist pointed a gnarled finger at him and seemed about to speak; but then he apparently changed his mind, picked up the bucket, and left the cell instead, this time shutting and barring the door.  His footsteps and the light of his torch retreated up the hallway, then faded.

Qalor hadn't even bothered to manacle his wrists again.  Perhaps he believed that Adaran couldn't possibly work his feet free; or maybe he had become distracted by the idea of growing gargantuan rats.  Adaran went back to work on his leg irons and found, to his great surprise, that they had come unlocked on their own; all he needed to do was slip the pins and they opened, setting him free.  He quickly scrambled away, lest they should change their minds and snap shut again; then he picked one up and examined it.  There didn't appear to be anything wrong with it.  He checked the dangling manacles, and found that they, too, were now unlocked and easily opened.  He looked at them mournfully, then at his scraped up hands, and sighed.

No wonder Orioke had been so sure that he would escape.

He heard a sound from the cell door, a faint sliding noise that he recognized as the bolt opening; but he saw no one outside his cell.  Still, he went and to the door and gave it a push.  It creaked outward, showing him a short, empty hallway leading off to the right, opening into a larger chamber that appeared deserted.

This was such an obvious setup that Adaran almost felt insulted.  The wizard had to be behind this; he had either come down here invisibly and spoken some magic words to free him, or else he had cast a spell earlier with a delayed effect.  But what possible reason could Orioke have for bringing him back here, imprisoning him, and then setting him free?  It was not for Adaran's own benefit, he was sure of that much; but did he really want to stay in the dungeon until someone learned of his presence and finished the execution that Dosen had botched?

He crept into the dim corridor.  It had been carved out of the bedrock, the surrounding stone forming an impenetrable wall; there would be no chiseling away at the mortar in this prison.  Only the ceiling was man-made, damp bricks formed into an arched roof, supported by buttresses running into the floor.  His cell was near the end of the tunnel, which sloped downward to the left before ending at a blank wall.  In the other direction, it opened onto a large room, probably a guard station.

Adaran slunk along the tunnel, passing a number of other cells, all unoccupied; apparently he was the only prisoner at the moment.  This could mean that Dunshandrin was unusually liberal, or that he preferred to have people killed rather than jailed.  Adaran was fairly certain he knew which.

He paused in the shadows at the mouth of the tunnel, flattening himself against the wall as he peered out at the room beyond.  A single lantern, the flame turned low, provided dim illumination.  He saw a central table where men would take their meals, a hand-operated pump with the spout still dripping, a partially screened latrine, and another screen with two cots behind it.  The table was bare, the cots unmade; he could smell the latrine, but the odor did not seem particularly fresh.  Perhaps the dungeon was left unguarded when there were no prisoners; and Qalor had implied that Adaran's presence in the castle was a secret, hadn't he?  In any event it seemed that there was no one here to stop him.  He stole across the guardroom to the stairs that ascended from the far left corner.  They rose into darkness.  He took them carefully; the stone was slick, he still felt a bit lightheaded, and a misstep would mean a nasty tumble.  Eventually he reached a landing, where another lantern hung from a hook and provided just enough light to see a door in the wall to his right; the stairs continued upward.

He tried the door and found it unlocked.  Pushing it open, he peered into a small, odoriferous room lit by dim, globed lanterns.  A mass of clay pipes hung from the ceiling, running into another room off to the right; liquid dripped from the joints in the pipes, collecting in noisome puddles on the floor, leading him to deduce that this was some sort of sewage disposal system.  The setup looked frightfully clever, but a cesspool was of little interest at the moment.  Besides, he had a feeling that the way out was up the stairs.  He closed the door and continued climbing, eventually emerging into a castle corridor, blundering out right in front of a pair of guards.  They were engaged in a heated discussion about a missing prisoner—a woman, from the sound of it, and an important one—and they didn't look his way as he slipped by.

This corridor led him to another, well-traveled by castle denizens going about their business.  They walked back and forth, paying no attention to the ratty, bloodied apparition in their midst; it began to occur to Adaran that something beyond his inarguable ability to melt into the shadows was at work here.  He fell into step behind a chambermaid as she hurried along on some errand or other, and started whistling.  This elicited no response.  He began to sing, loudly and off-key.

Nothing.  It was as if he wasn't even there.

Suddenly he stopped.  They had just passed a corridor to his right that looked particularly inviting; he felt sure that the way out was in that direction.

Abandoning the maid, Adaran pivoted on his heel and hurried into the royal wing of the castle.

Talbrett guided Tolaria up the gangplank and steered her to the left, toward a stairway that led below.  Most of the crew was busy securing supplies and making ready for departure, but she did draw a few odd looks; she pulled Orioke's hood closer and looked at the deck, trying to cover her face.  "Don't be afraid," Talbrett said, not turning.  "Even if Dunshandrin's soldiers question them, my men won't say they saw you."

"How can you be sure?"

He looked back at her.  "Because they're my men."

They descended the steps into the interior of the boat.  The stairwell was close, dim, and narrow; the air smelled of damp and mildew.  They entered a corridor that was little wider than the stairs, and even darker; a single skylight, crusted with grime, let in little daylight.  She saw three pocket doors to the left, and several hammocks hanging from the hull to the right.  The hallway ended in another set of steps that led down into the hold.

Talbrett took her to the last door on the left and slid it to the left, revealing a space inside that would scarcely have held the trunk she'd brought with her to Dunshandrin's castle.  Inside she saw a hammock with a tiny chest beneath it, a single porthole to the outside, and little else.

"I apologize for the cramped quarters," Talbrett said.  "Not what an oracle is accustomed to, I'm sure."

"Lately I've been accustomed to being imprisoned."  Tolaria stepped into the room, turned in a little circle.  There was room to do that, barely, if she kept her feet close together.  "This will do perfectly well.  Thank you."

Talbrett nodded.  "Good.  Now, I expect the inspectors will be along soon, as we plan to sail within the hour.  Stay in here until we're underway."

"All right."

The merchant stepped back and closed the door, leaving her alone in the tiny cabin.  The door had a bolt on this side and she turned it, feeling a strange joy in being able to do so, to control who would come and go from her quarters, even if those quarters were the size of an oxcart.  She went to the small porthole.  Like the other glass surfaces she had seen, this one was filthy, streaked with dried river water and dirt and bird droppings, but she could still make out the pier and the lower third of the gangplank.  As she watched, a squat figure disembarked from the vessel, stepping off onto the pier.  That would be Talbrett, she thought, waiting for the inspector.