Wardragon (17 page)

Finally, Zimak forced himself onto hands and knees and began crawling along the tunnel. Aloud, he apologised to Ethella for all the bad things he had thought. Maybe she really did like him after all.

Zimak rested briefly, but before he could go on his eyelids sagged and he fell asleep. He woke two hours later, ravenously hungry and thirstier than before. He allowed himself a small chunk of dried meat and a swig from his leather-bound canteen, and felt a little refreshed. Rested and fed, he continued along the tunnel to a spot where he could stand. Here the walls were cut smoothly and shaped.

The light from Ethella’s pendant still burned brightly, and he realised he had something else to thank her for. He had been taking it for granted. Perhaps he would go back and free her from the lake, after all. Maybe he would marry her, if she would have him. Wait a minute.
Marry
? He felt a pang of anxiety. The idea of marrying normally made him glance around for the nearest window, wonder which horse to steal, or estimate the distance to the nearest border. But this time he felt an odd kind of pleasure, even a thrill, at the idea of wedding Ethella and settling down somewhere. Why, even the thought of raising a brood of brats wasn’t as terrifying as it usually was. On the other hand, they would be Daretor’s brats. That wasn’t such a nice thought. It was as if Ethella would be sleeping with Daretor instead of him. With a fierceness he couldn’t control, Zimak wanted his own body back. Wanted it badly. But gah! What was he thinking? He must be ill, he decided. A brain fever. He laughed aloud at himself. Zimak, the Great Burglar of Q’zar, marry? Never!

Daretor was lashed to a heavy but ornate chair in a room that looked out on mountain peaks. Amid the peaks, a storm was brewing. Lightning flashed, and dull rumbles of thunder echoed across the sky. These peaks were the edge of the Dragonfrost, bordering the north of that high, cold plateau. Daretor had travelled through them long before the return of the dragons, with an archmage called Jabez Thull. That was the journey that had led him to Jelindel.

A voice brought his head around. Obsol sat at a nearby table, cramming food into his puffy face at a rate that could not have been good for the digestion. The mechantman had one lazy eye which stared down at his bulbous nose.

‘You’re awake,’ Obsol commented. ‘I presume you are hungry?’

Daretor thought at first not to answer but he saw no point in it. He nodded.

Obsol made a gesture and two lackeys came forward and dragged Daretor’s chair screeching to the table. Obsol winced at the noise. ‘Idiots! Lift the chair. Lift it!’

They hoisted the chair but since it was already in position, they could do little more than set it back down again. Obsol scowled at them. ‘Get out!’

The lackeys exited hurriedly. Clearly, Obsol was short of temper.

‘I understand you’re a man of honour, Daretor,’ said Obsol. ‘If you give me your word to submit to being re-tied, I will free one arm so that you may eat.’

Daretor allowed a pause, then said, ‘You have my word.’

‘Good.’ Obsol leaned over and untied Daretor’s left arm. Since he was right-handed, Daretor had no doubt that this was a deliberate and added precaution.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

Obsol pushed a plate piled high with food at Daretor. He ate, now discovering he was ravenous. After a while, having finished most of what was on the plate, he pushed it away and accepted a tankard of light-coloured ale.

‘Why have you brought me here?’ Daretor asked at last.

Obsol smiled. ‘Not my idea, I can tell you. Our master wished that you be detained and that certain information be extracted from you.’

‘Information?’ Daretor exclaimed. ‘I might have given it freely had you asked.’

‘Or not,’ Obsol said. ‘I want to hear everything you know about the dragonriders of the Tower Inviolate and, in particular, the dragon known as the Sacred One.’

‘And who is your master?’

‘Why, the Preceptor, of course. Not directly, understand. I am merely a captain.’ Obsol popped a piece of fruit into his mouth and chewed it. ‘Will you tell me what we want to know?’

‘Some of what you ask is common knowledge and that I will share with you. As for knowing anything of a special or secret nature, I think you have chosen poorly. The Sacred One is as much a mystery to me as to you. Nor have the dragon folk invested me with their secrets.’

‘I can readily believe that. But do you not know the layout of the Tower better than anyone else, save your two closest companions?’

‘I have memories of it, but I was not there long.’

‘You also know the whereabouts of the Sacred One.’

‘I know where he was when I last saw him.’

‘Indeed. Still, it is likely that you know things about the dragon folk and their methods. You may not realise what would be of importance to, let us say –’

‘A would-be attacker?’

Obsol smiled but said nothing. He drank some wine and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his robe. ‘Our intentions must, for the time being, remain secret. I am sure you understand. Now to work. We have the means to extract the information we want. I give you
my
word on this, though I will not be offended in the least if you do not take it. Not only do we have the, ah, methods, we also have some very persuasive experts in the employment of them. Disgusting folk, truth be told. Their methods make me ill, but where would we be without them?’

Daretor felt his bowels lurch, just slightly. ‘Farvenu,’ he muttered.

Obsol, looking a shade paler, nodded unhappily. ‘Quite so,’ he said. ‘Not my favourite allies, but one must accept hired help where one finds it.’ He paused to lick his bloated lips, still unsettled, as if some personal memory of the Farvenu disquieted him. ‘So to work, as I said. What can we expect from you, Daretor? Immediate and generous admissions of all pertinent information, or a quite sordid and unpleasant interlude at the end of which the same generous admission will occur in any case? Which is it to be?’

‘I cannot betray my friends.’

‘Of course you can’t. They would hardly be friends if you did. However …’ He knitted his fingers and looked for a moment like a marketplace accountor. ‘However, that brings us to the nastiness I just mentioned. You must believe me when I say I abhor such methods, but alas it is not for me to make policy, I merely implement it. I do ask your forgiveness for what you are about to endure.’

He paused for a moment, as if he truly expected Daretor to absolve him for ordering his torture. Daretor remained silent.

‘I expected no more, I assure you I didn’t. Guards!’

The lackeys reappeared. ‘Please conduct my esteemed guest to the chamber where our visitor waits.’ They moved to comply. ‘And you will treat this man with respect, you hear me? He is a great and honourable warrior and is renowned for it, whereas you two blockheads are known only for your idiocy.’ To Daretor he said, ‘Farewell, my friend. I am afraid we will not meet again. I heartily wish you a speedy passage from this world but I fear yours shall be a lingering journey. My final advice, and I fully expect you to ignore it, is to tell that
thing
in there everything you possibly can. And more besides.’

Daretor was conducted from the room, down a long narrow passage, and into another chamber. Here he was forced onto a metal table that had small channels etched in its surface; these led to pipes which emptied into buckets. Daretor’s wrists and ankles were locked in place with metal clamps. Another was snapped around his throat and fastened in place. He could not move and could barely turn his head, which was somehow more frightening, especially when – after the merchantmen had scurried from the room – a door opened behind him and something large and heavy stepped inside. Its breathing was stentorian, and the stone chamber amplified it. When the thing moved closer, Daretor heard a leathery scraping noise on the flagstones and guessed it was made by the trailing wings of a Farvenu. Then the smell hit him and he fought back a moment of nauseous panic, remembering the time on Farvane when he, Jelindel and Zimak, had fought them.

Its voice, when it spoke, was basso profundo, and seemed to vibrate inside Daretor’s head: ‘The rat folk of this hole tell me you have seen the grandeur of my birth world. They say you fought and defeated several of my brethren. Be this true, traveller?’

Daretor was surprised at the Farvenu’s excellent Q’zaran, but he ignored this, weighing up the question instead. How would this creature regard the fact that he had killed other Farvenu? Daretor knew they were a warrior race, and had great respect for physical courage and strength, but he could not predict its reaction. Perhaps it would kill him in a fit of fury if he admitted to it. And maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

‘I have seen the beauty of your world,’ he replied, ‘and I have slain several of your folk in mortal combat. And I will slay you, too.’ Mere bravado, of course, but something – an idea – flashed into his brain. Something to do with Jelindel …

The creature stepped into view and Daretor got another shock. He had forgotten the effect the creatures’ blood-red leathery skin, horned skull, barbed tail and bat-like wings had on all those who first saw them. Jelindel had told him that every world has a deep memory of a fearsome horned daemon or devil, something that haunts its collective dreams, and that the Farvenu were responsible for that terror that dwells in the night of every sentient being’s soul.

His sharp intake of breath pleased the creature, which abruptly leant close to his face so he could see its flared nostrils expanding and contracting with each breath. ‘You are worthy,’ the Farvenu said, ‘unlike the rodents that scurry through this sewer of theirs. I will kill you as I would one of my brethren. It will be an honourable death.’

The Farvenu straightened, went to the far side of the room, and brought back a tray of instruments whose shape and design made Daretor swallow dryly. He was a brave man, and had ample courage in battle, but to be a passive victim of torture was very nearly more than he could bear. He knew what all knew: every warrior, no matter how brave and strong and enduring, could be turned into a sodden mewling mass of agony. It was stupid to try and fool himself into thinking otherwise.

The Farvenu picked up a sharp serrated blade, such as surgeons used for amputations.

‘The first cut must be simple,’ the Farvenu intoned, as if it were repeating the rituals of some manual of torture. ‘The flesh must be respected … the transfiguring pain channelled …’

The creature ripped open Daretor’s tunic and stabbed the short blade into his chest. As it lengthened the incision, Daretor gasped, then the screaming began.

Zimak made good time.

The tunnel was high enough to let him walk upright, albeit cautiously. The sleep had done him the world of good, and he felt as if he had boundless energy. The air was a little stale, but it was cool and oddly refreshing. He estimated that the distance to Argentia was two miles at most, yet he marvelled that generations of miners had hewn out these passages so deep in the earth, like an army of industrious ants.

If Ethella was right, and she had been so far, this tunnel – with a few more turnings – would lead him directly beneath the walls of the town. From there he should be able to make his way to the surface through an old disused shaft. After that, his much vaunted skills as thief, burglar and fast-talker must do the rest.

He continued on for another hour. There were cave-ins that he was forced to climb over or dig through, and at one point the floor had dropped away into a raw chasm. The remains of a bridge clung to one side.

‘So, this is why the tunnel isn’t guarded,’ Zimak murmured to himself.

The chasm was too wide to jump, and he no longer had his rope. Zimak spent another hour in a hair-raising and painstaking side-shuffle, inching his way along a ledge that was barely deep enough for the toes of his boots to gain a purchase. His fingers became scratched and bled as he felt for handholds in the rough, rocky surface of the tunnel wall.

He made it across the chasm and rested for several minutes, during which he again cursed Daretor’s clumsy body, before continuing doggedly on.

Reaching a junction, he took the right-hand fork which sloped down at a steep angle. This made sense, as the tunnel he had started in had to be at least five hundred feet above Argentia.

Zimak followed this new tunnel till he came to what looked like a dead end but he did not lose heart. Ethella had told him to search under the dust of the floor until he found a metal trapdoor. He pulled this up with much creaking of rusted metal, and found himself gazing down into a proper miner’s tunnel, the kind with wooden rails on which to push carts filled with ore-rich rock. Thick dust coated the rails so he assumed that either the Argentian mine was no longer worked, or he was in a worked-out section. How fortunate for him that those miners of years gone by had happened upon Ethella and regaled her with their mining activities. He supposed that, being stuck in a pond for thousands of years, you’d listen to just about anything.

Zimak quickly dropped down into the larger tunnel. By his rough estimate he was now below Argentian street-level and a few hundred yards outside the walls. He followed the new tunnel and came to an intersection where he turned left into an even larger tunnel. There were two lines of wooden cart tracks here, indicating it was a main artery of the mine. He followed this till it dead-ended at a wooden cage attached to thick ropes which vanished up into darkness. Zimak knew that somewhere high above there would be an immense windlass, around which the ropes would be wound to raise the cage to the surface, or to a higher level of the mine.

Of course there was no one to operate the windlass, which had probably been disused for long years. There was, however, a series of metal ladder rungs set in the wall behind the cage. These also disappeared up into darkness. Hoping that he wasn’t too far from the surface, Zimak started to climb.

Before long his arms ached almost as badly as when he had hung from the rope in the ventilation shaft. His fingers, flayed from the ordeal of crossing the chasm, started to bleed again, making his grip on the rungs even more difficult. Evidently Zimak was not the first person to have problems with the climb, however. Every hundred feet there were resting platforms, and he took full advantage of these. At last he reached what he believed to be the top of the shaft. Here there was a large area scooped out of the shaft’s side, like the mouth of a new tunnel. It went back some thirty feet, at which point there was a wide set of wooden stairs that stretched beyond the range of his pendant light. He mounted these cautiously, testing them for strength. They creaked, but held. He must be careful now for he had no idea what he might find above. Nor was he sure of what time of day it was. He had planned to emerge at night, then spend some time reconnoitring.