Dragon Stones (48 page)

He would certainly not be expecting an invasion from this avenue.

Climbing over the barrier, she let herself slide down along the hot, rough bricks, into the darkness below.

Pyodor Ponn moved along the low, foul tunnel that he'd found on the other side of the vertical gate.  The walls were of rough stone, the floor lined with smooth bricks; the passageway sloped sharply upward.  Bent nearly double, he slipped and stumbled his way to the top, falling once when his foot turned on something soft and slick.  He was grateful that he couldn't see what it was.  Soon he hauled himself into a cylindrical basin with a slanted floor, perhaps five feet deep and of similar diameter.  He spotted a corroded ladder, which he used to climb out of the cesspool, narrowly avoiding being splattered by the noisome discharge from one of perhaps a dozen dark, crusted openings in the ceiling.

The ladder led to a ledge that ran around the basin.  He took a quick look around.  The flickering light came from a single lantern, hung on a hook beside a heavy-looking door.  A can of lamp oil sat on the floor beneath it, right next to a thin, ragged girl who was staring at him in frank astonishment.  Startled, Ponn said:  "Please don't be afraid.  I won't hurt you."

"You came out of the pit."

"Yes.  I climbed up the cliff."  Ponn moved closer to her.  He had been doused in sewage, he had crawled through the drainage chute of a cesspool, but still, he imagined he must be cleaner than this apparition.  Her clothes were stained and torn, her skin sallow and filthy; she was skeleton-thin and her hair, which looked as if it had once been pale blonde, was caked with grime and sludge equal to the dirtiest chamberpot a guest had ever left at Ponn's inn.

"Nobody can climb the cliff," she said.  "Are you a spirit?"

"No.  I'm here looking for a friend."

"A friend?"

"Yes."

"You won't find any friends here," she said in a vague sort of way, leaving it unclear if she meant the room, the castle, or perhaps the world in general.

"Who
are
you?" he said.

"No one."  The girl looked away as a splash of something unmentionable drooled out of the ceiling and into the basin.

"You must have a name."

"Wyst," the girl said, so softly he could hardly hear.

"Why are you here, Wyst?"

"I watch the pit," she said.  "When it gets too full or smells too bad, I raise the gate so it drains."

"You opened the gate just now?"

She nodded.

"How does it work?  Can you show me?"

Wyst shrugged and stood, moving toward an iron crank set into the wall not far from where she sat.  She didn't have so much as a mat to lay on; she must sleep right on the cold, hard floor, like an ill-favored dog.  Ponn noticed a manacle at her ankle, attached to a length of chain that ran to an iron ring in the floor near the lantern.  "Wait.  Are you a prisoner?"

The girl stopped, looked at him over her shoulder.  Her eyes, shadowy in the torchlight, showed no emotion.  "I live down here.  I used to live upstairs, but I'm being punished."

"For what?"

She bit her lip, turned away.  "This is how it works," she said.  "You turn the crank this way, and the gate goes up."

"Wyst—"

"You slide this latch over and the crank can't turn, so the gate stays open.  You slide it back and then you can close the gate.  It's so simple that even I can do it."

"Wyst, do they bring you food?"

"A little.  Sometimes food comes down the chutes.  I eat that when I get hungry, if I can reach it."

"And water?  What do you drink?"

She didn't answer, didn't look at him.  It was as if she were trying to pretend he didn't exist; or maybe it was the other way around, and she was trying to will
herself
out of existence.  "What about this?" he said, indicating the door.  "Is it locked?  Are there guards on the other side?"

"I don't know if it's locked," she said.  "I don't think there are guards.  There's nothing here that needs guarding."

"Have you tried to open it?"

The girl shook her head, went back to her spot.  The chain dragged along behind her, whispering across the rough surface.  "I can't leave," she said.  "I'm being punished."

"You can't live like this for very long," Ponn said.  "Look at you.  You're starving.  How long have you been here?"

She didn't answer.

"I can help you escape."

"That would only make things worse."

Ponn wondered how Wyst thought her situation might possibly get worse.  Perhaps she was afraid they would shorten her chain.  She settled back down onto the floor and looked away; it seemed that, as far as she was concerned, he was already gone, or had never been there in the first place.  He put his hand on the door, tried the handle.  It turned reluctantly, as if it didn't get much use, but it wasn't locked.  He opened the door a crack and peered out into another room, poorly lit by another lantern.  The ceiling hid behind a tangle of clay pipes, running into the chamber where Wyst sat; a number of them leaked at the joints, spattering the floor with unpleasant fluids.

Ponn glanced back at Wyst.  She sat staring straight ahead, waiting for the cesspool to fill up again with effluent from the upper corridors whence she had been banished.  He didn't know what she was being punished for, and it occurred to him that she might seek to mitigate her sentence by reporting that a man had entered the castle via the sewer; but even if she wanted to tell someone, how would she?  She was alone down here, chained to the floor.  Until her minders came to check on her, a most evidently rare occurrence, she would have no one to talk to.  Besides, from their brief conversation, he really couldn't see her raising a hue and cry for the guards.  She'd likely sit there and say nothing as they left her a piece of moldy bread and a cup of scummy water.

If he came back this way, Ponn thought, he was going to rescue that girl, whether she wanted him to or not.

As the dumbwaiter descended rapidly, accompanied by a wheezing noise and an unnerving shudder, Diasa cast dark thoughts toward her T'Sian.  If the dragon kept up this sort of behavior, it was likely to get at least one of them killed, and Diasa was quite sure she knew which of them that would be.

Before long her downward motion slowed, as if the box had been caught by a gently yielding hand; shortly it hissed to a stop behind a closed door with a small, round, dirty window.  Through it, she could discern a cramped chamber that looked like a crude dining room.  It contained a square wooden table and a single chair, but no other furnishings or adornments.  Evidently Qalor dined alone.

She couldn't figure out how to open the door—there was no handle on this side, and she couldn't achieve any sort of grip on it—so she gave it one hard, double-legged kick, then another.  The entire thing popped off, clattering to the floor.  She slipped out after it and pulled her sword, but no one came to investigate.  Judging by the din emanating from a door to her left, no one would have heard it falling anyway.

Diasa went to the noisy door, listening to the sounds from beyond: Roaring fires, hissing steam, clanking machinery.  What was going on in there?  She opened the door a crack and peered inside, but saw only a sitting room containing a high-backed wooden bench and a low table covered with sheets of parchment.  The noises seemed to come from a door in the sitting room, ajar, to the left of the one she had opened.  To her right, a larger door looked like it might lead out of Qalor's rooms; another, smaller portal stood opposite her, perhaps leading into a bedchamber.  If his other furniture signified, Qalor probably slept on a board, using a stone as a pillow.

She entered the sitting room, slipping quickly past the open door, stopping before the larger one.  It had slots for a bar; assuming the kitchen staff would tell the soldiers what she and T'Sian had been after, they could expect unwelcome visitors to be arriving shortly.  She quickly located the bar underneath the settle and shoved it into place, turning the latch to lock it down.  That would delay the guards for a while.

That done, she went to the table and began sifting through the heap of scrolls.  Most were drawings, diagrams of strange machinery and devices, as well as anatomical sketches of various sorts of animals.  She found one that bore a schematic of a boxlike device, with two chambers containing crudely colored red and blue crystals and a third chamber underneath those two that appeared to contain some sort of liquid.  Interesting.  She dropped that one and moved on to others beneath it, finding drawings of giant eagles and a pattern for saddles to fit them, a map of Barbareth, what looked like a design of the castle's drainage system.

Now she came to a layer of older documents, the vellum brittle and discolored.  She frowned, fingering the broken wax seal on one of them.  Much of it was missing, but unless she was quite mistaken, this scroll belonged to the library at Flaurent.  She glanced at the noisy door, then quickly flipped through the remaining scrolls, finding many more that had come from the college, most written in a runic language that she didn't understand.  Some were illustrated, including an extremely detailed drawing of a dragon not unlike T'Sian in her true form, and beneath it a a stout man, with arrows connecting the two, measurements, copious notes in spidery, unreadable script.  She found herself wishing she had shown a bit more interest when her mother had tried to teach her ancient languages.

How had Flaurent's scrolls gotten into Qalor's possession?  She didn't think they had raided the library during their attack on Flaurent, so it must have been stolen earlier.  Why hadn't anyone noticed the theft and reported it?  Or perhaps they had, and for some reason, Damona had chosen not to pursue the matter.  Well, nothing could be done about it now; she was hardly in a position to take the papers, and even if she did, there was no college to return them to.  She would just have to add this to Dunshandrin's hefty list of crimes.  Leaving the parchments, she drew her sword and then kicked open the door to the laboratory.  T'Sian was already inside, Qalor lying prone at her feet, up on one elbow, his other arm raised defensively in front of his face.  Behind him, a table lay on its side, smashed glassware and steaming liquid spread across the floor.  Diasa hoped those rising vapors weren't poisonous; she knew what sort of chemicals alchemists used.

Seeing her in the doorway, weapon drawn, Qalor looked momentarily hopeful.  "Save me!" he cried.  "She came out of the fireplace!  She's mad!"

T'Sian looked at her, her head swiveling on her neck, just like a reptile's.  "There you are," she said.  "I had begun to wonder where the dumbwaiter had taken you."

"I was doing some reconnaissance," Diasa said.

"Well, Qalor and I were just having a chat."  Then, to the alchemist:  "This is not one of your guards.  She is with me."

"I thought
you
were with
me
," Diasa said.

"Well," the dragon said, "now you know better."

Diasa moved into the room and gave the cavernous laboratory a cursory examination.  The place was crammed with tables and shelves, which were in turn full of jugs and bottles and decanters, boxes and bags, loose stones, dried plants, pickled animal parts floating in jars of yellow fluid.  She saw evaporative bins, wooden vats and barrels, copper tubing, glass tanks.  By comparison, Flaurent's small alchemical shop was little more than a country kitchen.  Turning to the dragon, she said:  "Have you secured the room?"

T'Sian gave her a blank look.  Of course she hadn't bothered to look for other entrances, to anticipate the direction from which Dunshandrin's guards might attack; her strategy was to charge in and destroy everything in sight.  Diasa moved into the room, inspecting it, memorizing the layout.  "Qalor, how many doors are there?" she said.

"Just one."

"The one in the sitting room?"

"Yes."

"Where does it go?"

"Stairs.  To the cesspool."

"You come and go through the cesspool?"

"I often have … things to dispose of.  And after the fire, wise Lord Dunshandrin decreed that my laboratory be separated from the rest of the castle.  They bricked up the main entrance, there."  He pointed toward a large archway, sealed by massive blocks of stone that were a different color from those that constituted the walls.  "Now the stairs are the only way in."

"You nearly burned down the castle?" T'Sian said.  "A pity you did not succeed."

"Yes, yes," Qalor said, a whining, eager dog.  "A pity."

Diasa returned to the dragon and her captive.  "He seems to be telling the truth.  If there's another way in, I don't see it."

"Of course.  I would not lie to you."

"I like this man," T'Sian said, looking pleased.  "He is easily intimidated."

The room beyond the cesspool had two doors, one on the left, the other on the right.  Ponn hesitated, then went left and listened at the portal.  Silence.  He went to the door on the right and listened at that one as well.  He heard faint noises, banging and clattering, like an army of small blacksmiths hammering away at cheap armor.  He opened the door a crack, revealing a dark, damp, narrow flight of stairs leading upward.  He went back and took the oil lamp, then returned to the staircase and made the short climb to the top, where he found a landing and another door.  The sounds were louder up here.  He gently pushed the door but it hardly moved.  Barred on the other side, he thought.  Rather than try to force it, which would be noisy and futile, he returned to the pipe room and opened the other door.  This revealed an intermediate landing in yet another flight of stairs, from which he could go either up or down.  Ponn thought for a moment.  What could possibly be below the level of the cesspool?