Sorcerer of the North (30 page)

"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!"

"That's right!" Alyss said, a new sense of urgency in her tone. "That's why you've got to get out of here now! Go to Norgate and raise the alarm. Bring back an army to stop him!"

Will was concentrating on the strange leather flask, the tip of is tongue poked out between his front teeth as he carefully removed the stopper. He looked up at her briefly and shook his head.

"Not without you," he said. Very carefully, he poured a small amount of the liquid from the bottle into the depression he had gouged around the base of the iron bar. The liquid fumed as it hit the stone and iron, melting some of the ice around the depression as it did so. The cloud of pungent fumes that rose set Will coughing. He tried to smother the sound, with limited success. Alyss moved back a pace or two, covering her nostrils with a corner of her sleeve.

"What is that stuff?" she said.

"It's acid. Very nasty stuff indeed. Malcolm said it would burn through these bars in a few seconds." He frowned. The bar still seemed solid. "Or maybe he said minutes," he amended. He restoppered the bottle and moved to the next bar, using his saxe once more to dig a retaining well at the base.

"We'll leave that for now and do the next one. While I'm doing that, you might tie that rope off to one of the other bars."

She did as he asked. But she was still thinking over something he had said.

"Who's Malcolm?" she asked. He looked up at her and smiled.

"That's Malkallam's real name. He's actually quite a nice fellow when you get to know him."

"Which you have, of course," she said dryly. It was so like the Alyss of old that his smile widened.

"I'll tell you all about it later. Just give me a minute, this is the tricky part."

He had the acid bottle again and was pouring liquid into the shallow well he had dug in the stone and mortar. Again, a cloud of bitter fumes billowed up, followed by a smell like burning rust. He paused, lips pursed in concentration, and watched the result. As before, the acid seemed to be taking longer than it should. He tested the first bar and felt a little movement. It was working then—but nowhere near as quickly as he had been led to expect. He considered pouring more acid in, then discarded the idea. It would only spill across the windowsill and that was something he felt they should avoid.

There was nothing they could do but wait. He replaced the stopper and handed the leather bottle through the bars to her.

"Here. Put this somewhere," he told her. He had no wish to do another climb with that stuff in his pocket. Absently, she placed the bottle on its side on top of the deep stone lintel above the window.

"What beats me," he continued, trying to keep her mind off the climb ahead of her, "is where that damned John Buttle sprang from? By now he should be with the wolfship on Skorghijl."

"The wolfship got into trouble," Alyss answered. Buttle had boasted about it when he had first recognized her, before Keren had her brought to this tower room. "They were caught in a storm. It drove them west and they hit a reef off the coast. She was badly holed and they barely made it to shore. They ran up the River Oosel to hide out for the winter—but when they thought the ship was sinking, they untied Buttle, so he'd have a chance."

"I take it he repaid that act of kindness in his usual form?" Will said, and she nodded.

"They were exhausted when they made it to the Oosel. He killed two of the guards and escaped. He came here purely by chance."

"And found he fit in perfectly," Will said. She nodded.

"It's funny," Will continued, "how people like Buttle and Keren seem to find one anoth—"

He stopped in mid-sentence as she held up a hand. He looked at her curiously, seeing the blood drain from her face. She had heard the door to the outer room open and close, and the sound of voices as Keren spoke to the guards outside.

"It's Keren!" she whispered urgently. "Will, you've got to get out of here! Go now!"

She bundled up the rope and shoved it through the bars, letting it fall to the flagstones far below. Will tugged desperately at the first bar. It moved farther now but it was still too solid to remove.

"Go!" Alyss repeated desperately. "If he finds you out there, he'll kill us both."

Reluctantly, Will conceded that she was right. Trapped on this narrow ledge, he couldn't hope to fight Keren and the guards. And at least if he were free, he'd have another chance to rescue Alyss.

There was a burst of laughter from the anteroom outside. Alyss's eyes widened as she heard the key turn in the lock. Will knew he would have to leave, but there was one thing more he had to tell her.

"Alyss," he said, and she looked at him in a fever of agitation. "If he questions you, tell him anything he wants to know. It can't do us any harm now. Just answer his questions."

She couldn't reveal his plans, he thought bitterly, because he didn't have a plan. But there was no sense in her suffering to conceal facts that Keren had probably guessed already.

"All right!" she said.

"Promise me," he insisted. "Nothing you can tell him will harm me."

Alyss was on the verge of panic but she knew he wouldn't go until she had promised.

"I promise! I'll tell him everything! But go! Now!"

He was busy looping the rope between his legs, up his back and over his right shoulder.

He tugged on his gloves and seized the tied-off end of the rope with his left hand about half a meter above his head, using his right to belay the loose end against his hip.

Alyss's stomach heaved as Will let himself plunge backward into space, controlling his fall with the loop of rope running around his body, fending off from the wall with his feet.

"I'll come back for you," he called softly. He began moving slowly down the wall. The temptation was to get to the bottom as quickly as possible, but he knew that rapid movement was more likely to attract the attention of the sentries on the ramparts.

Hurriedly, she moved away from the window, pulling the curtain across it before she did. She had to stop Keren from noticing the rope for as long as possible. If Will were caught halfway down that drop, he was as good as dead.

Alyss had barely made it to the table when the door opened and Keren entered. As he locked the door behind him, she took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down, using all her willpower to face him with a look of utter contempt.

"Well, I'm back again," Keren said. He smiled cheerfully at her, ignoring the icy stare she turned on him. Then he frowned, his nose wrinkling as he sniffed the air.

"Good God, what's that dreadful smell? Have you been burning something?"

Alyss thought quickly. She had grown accustomed to the pungent fumes from the acid but they were obviously still in evidence. Keren's question gave her an idea, however. She drew herself up to her full height and looked at him disdainfully.