Dragon Tree (26 page)

A particularly
low, ragged moan left Amie’s ears scalding and she took a step
back, intent upon sneaking out before she was caught spying. But
she was neither quick enough nor quiet enough, for a soft scraping
of her leather soles on the stone floor made enough noise to bring
Marak’s head jerking up and around.

Quicker than
Amie would have thought possible, he was away from the table and
across the room. The point of a dagger was thrust beneath her
throat, the sharp bite of the blade forcing her back against the
door and slamming it shut in the same motion.

A split second
and a soft curse later, he recognized the face beneath the
servant's cap.

“Amaranth?
What, by all the sons of Allah, are you doing here?”

She tried to
swallow, but the pressure of the cold steel on her throat prevented
it. With another curse, Marak moved it to one side and jabbed the
tip angrily into the wooden plank of the door.

“Be thankful I
did not slit your throat and ask the question afterward.”

“I... I could
not bear to be alone any longer. I know Lord Tamberlane ordered me
to remain in the solar...”

“For good
reason. You should not be wandering the halls of the castle on your
own.”

Amie thought
of the guardsman and grew even paler against the shadows.

“What?” Marak
frowned. “What is it?”

“In the great
hall. I saw one of Odo’s men. I recognized him from a scar over his
eye... here,” she said, tracing a finger across her brow. “It
causes the eye to be always half closed.”

Although the
question seemed redundant in light of the fact that Amaranth was
standing before him and not being dragged to the gates, Marak
asked, “Did he recognize you?”

She shook her
head. “I think not. He was as startled as I was to be caught
skulking around in the hall.”

“A man with a
scar over his eye,” Marak murmured, nodding. “We shall find him in
the morning and introduce him to the cold waters of the lake. Put
him from your mind, now and concentrate on what is before you.”

At the sound
of his words, and the order implied therein, Marak took a
self-conscious step back. The light from the two candles made his
body glow like white marble, drawing attention to the lean
musculature of his chest and arms, the tautness of his belly and
thighs, and the impressive display of manhood that as yet stood
straight out from his body, gleaming wet with proof that the
woman’s cries had not been feigned.

Another soft
sound made both Marak and Amie glance to the shadows behind him,
where Inaya was in the process of covering her nudity beneath the
voluminous folds of silk that she wore. She was not quite fast
enough to conceal the swollen shape of her belly or the fact she
was several months along with child.

Marak studied
Amie’s face for a moment, then turned and held his hand out to
Inaya, saying something to her in their shared language. After only
the smallest hesitation, the Saracen woman came forward and slipped
her fingers into his, allowing him to draw her with the utmost
gentleness into the protective circle of his arm.

“I resisted
her beauty as long as I could,” he said softly. “But the heart is
not often willing to listen to the head, is it?”

Amie’s
embarrassment could not have been more acute had she stumbled upon
Tamberlane naked and tumescent.

An
astonishingly vivid image of that very thing flooded her mind and
kept her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth for another full
minute while Marak fetched his robes and covered himself.

“Certes,” she
said when her speech was recovered, “I would not have intruded had
I held the smallest inclination—”

Marak waved
her apology into silence.

“In truth, you
have likely saved us from Tamberlane’s wrath, for we were to have
fetched you from your solar an hour or more ago. Doubtless he will
be stomping his way through that same door at any moment, expecting
us to be ready and waiting. To that end, we have procured new
clothing for you to wear. Your imitation of a squire was so
convincing, we thought we would uphold it—for safety’s sake—until
you reach the convent. Have you any objections to this?”

Amie shook her
head. “No, none.”

“Good. Inaya
will help you dress,” he said, heading toward the door.

As if struck
by a sudden thought, he stopped and retraced his steps to where
Inaya was standing. He tucked a hand under her chin and tipped her
head up, smiling into her dark eyes for a long moment before
kissing her unabashedly full on the mouth.

“My desire for
you,” he murmured, “is and always shall be as pure as the tears of
a lover in thrall.”

Inaya closed
her eyes briefly and smiled. Marak gave her another small peck then
walked out the door, pulling it closed behind him.

With the smile
still on her lips, Inaya brought forth a bundle of clothing from
somewhere in the shadows and beckoned Amie forward. Inside the
bundle were woolen hose, a belt with points and eyelets for keeping
them secure, a heavy woolen shirt, a second tunic and leather
jerkin, and finally a jaunty blue Phrygian cap with a pointed crown
and a narrow brim that hugged her cheeks and ended below her
chin.

Apart from the
hastily borrowed leggings and shirt Marak had taken from the stable
boy, Amie had never worn men’s garments before and some were
curious enough to win a small frown as Inaya helped her dress. The
eyelet belt with it’s forty leather points was a mystery until
Inaya was finished tying the last thong through a corresponding
loop at the top of each leg of the hose to hold the wool smooth and
tight to her limbs. Last were leather-soled shoes held on by leg
bandages that were wrapped around the calf and criss-crossed from
knee to ankle.

The bundle
itself had been wrapped in a plain gray cloak woven thick enough to
keep out all but the heaviest rain and dampness.

When she was
finished, bade to turn slowly around, and inspected by the
narrowed, dark eyes, the door was opened again and Marak subjected
her to his own scrutiny. He adjusted the elfish cap so that all of
her hair was tucked inside then nodded approvingly.

"One last
thing," he said and produced a belt with a shortsword, which he
strapped around her waist. He also gave her two daggers and showed
her where to conceal them on her body. One had a six inch blade and
would be used for eating, the other had a nine inch blade and was
tucked carefully into the top of the leg wrappings.

“Shall
we?”

Amie followed
him out onto the dark landing and down the stairs, the cloak
flaring out behind her like batwings. At the bottom, instead of
turning right toward the great hall, they turned left and, after
Marak paused to light a small, shielded stub of a candle for each
of them, he stepped behind a screen that appeared to be covering
little more than a shallow niche in the stone wall. He probed a
moment with his long, slender fingers, then pushed on one of the
blocks, sliding it back with a low scraping sound to expose an
opening just wide enough and tall enough to duck through to a
secret passage on the other side.

Amie's belly
fluttered with apprehension. Once again she was escaping into the
darkness of the night, leaving what had come to represent safety
and protection to venture into the unknown. There would be no
turning back, nowhere to look but straight ahead to a cloistered
life of silence and prayer. She'd had no regrets leaving Belmane
Castle, but even though her time here had been brief, there would
be many regrets.

After she and
Inaya stepped through the portal, Marak leaned his weight against
the stone to push it back into place. Amie held her candle stub
high, gazing at the long and narrow passage that smelled of a
century of decay and damp, and was completely devoid of sound but
for their own breaths and heartbeats. What looked at first like a
haze of dust turned out to be draped blankets of cobwebs spun thick
as clouds above their heads.

Marak took the
lead, following the curve of the tower, walking into the blackness
ahead. His strides were long and sure and Amie stayed close,
keeping her hand cupped around the sputtering flame and praying the
light did not go out. She had no love of small, dark places and
wondered, in the utter silence, how far a scream would carry within
these stone walls. Visions of being trapped, sealed in a silent
tomb flooded her mind and kept her feet scuffling in the dust in an
effort to remain apace.

They walked
for what must have been the entire circumference of the tower
before Marak stopped again and
signaled
for caution. Ahead were steps that led
steeply down into the disappearing gloom and the flame on Amie's
candle shivered in a draft that swept up from somewhere below.
Something tickled Amie’s neck and she batted anxiously at a
trailing strand of sticky cobweb.

Marak
exchanged her candle for a lantern he had taken from a niche in the
wall. He used Amie's stub to light the wick and quickly dropped the
sheet of horn into place to protect and steady the flame. He lit a
second one for Inaya then blew out the candle.

“Come,” he
said. “Stay close on my heels and watch where you place your feet
for the blocks are crumbled in places.

The whisper
barely carried beyond her ears and Amie nodded. By holding her
lantern over her head, she could better distinguish the rough-hewn
walls and steep stairs that started to descend down, down, always
keeping to a circular direction. The air became progressively
cooler, damper, the smell of stone and rot and wet earth was nearly
overpowering. The walls oozed moisture and the constant dripping
grew louder with every passing moment.

If not for
Marak’s shoulders ahead of her and Inaya’s nimble footsteps behind
her, Amie might well have faltered and run back the way they
came.

The passage
took a sharp turn to the right and suddenly grew wider. The air was
so cold there was gooseflesh on Amie’s arms despite the bulky
layers of clothing, and it was obvious they had left the castle
behind, for they were in a tunnel of sorts now, with bare earth
underfoot and naturally honeycombed rock forming the walls and
ceiling. Marak’s pace increased noticeably as if Amaranth was not
the only one glad to put the stifling closeness of the access
passage behind her.

“The island,
indeed the lake bed itself and the hills hereabout are riddled with
these catacombs and caves,” Marak explained. “The original owner of
Taniere must have discovered them when laying the foundation and
decided to make clever use of them both as a defense and a means of
smuggling people or foodstuffs in and out of the castle in the
event of a siege. There are,” he added, pausing at a junction where
the tunnel split off in three directions, “dozens of arteries
leading off each passage and if one did not know which branch to
take, he could wander aimlessly for days without finding the way
out.”

If that was
meant to be reassuring, it failed miserably as did the flame inside
Inaya's lantern when she stumbled and dropped it on the ground.
Amie picked it up and helped her to relight it, and as the two
wicks flared together, the shadows were lifted enough for them to
see two pairs of glowing red eyes staring at them from just inside
the mouth of an adjoining tunnel.

Amie screamed
and jumped back. Inaya hissed and shrilled something in her own
language and shrank against the far wall of the tunnel.

Marak spun
around and came running back. He had drawn a sword from beneath his
robes, but lowered it almost right away.

Tamberlane’s
two wolfhounds, Maude and Hugo, came bounding out of the tunnel and
ran off, leaving Marak cursing in their wake.

“Bloody
hounds. As lacking in good sense as their master.” He resheathed
his sword and turned, resuming his long strides into the darkness
ahead. Amie and Inaya exchanged weak smiles, then followed after
him.

After two more
turns, and just when Amie was about to forsake any hope of seeing
the sky again, they saw a faint bloom of light ahead. It grew
brighter as their pace quickened and soon the blurred glow turned
into bright yellow blots from a dozen pitch-soaked torches. They
flickered in a circle around a large natural chamber formed in the
rock. Standing in the center, clad in mail with their swords
buckled about their waists, were Tamberlane and two other knights.
Roland was present, as were two foresters wearing hunters green
leggings, tunics, and brown leather jerkins. Each carried a quiver
full of arrows slung over one shoulder, a longbow over the other.
The two dogs were there, tongues hanging out, but most amazing of
all was the sight of several horses stomping warily from one foot
to the next, their eyes rounded, nostrils flared, ears moving
constantly to follow every sound.

“How on
earth...?”

Marak followed
Amie’s gaze to the nervous beasts. “You recall the wooden floor in
the stable?”

Amie nodded
slowly. The water she spilled had dripped through the planks,
something she had not given much thought to at the time.

"It can be
raised to give access to the catacombs from there."

Tamberlane had
turned at the sound of their voices. At first he frowned, for he
did not see Amie, but then his eyes widened as he recognized the
face beneath the Phrygian cap. He took in every small detail: the
bulky layers of shirt and tunic that concealed the shape of her
breasts, the plain brown hose and the rounds of bandaging that
thickened her calves.

“You make a
fine squire,” he murmured, nodding with approval.

As compliments
went, it was hardly the fodder for a romantic sonnet, but coming
from such stern lips, it sent a flush of warmth all the way down to
her toes.