The Rival (63 page)

His guards lunged for her.

"Stop!" Rugad yelled.  His adam's apple bobbed against the tip.  It hurt.  "You can't touch her."

They stopped. 

His gaze met hers.  Her eyes were almost clear.  She didn't even look frightened.

"You don't know what you're playing with, girl," he said.

"I do know."  She smiled.  "I just don't care."

SEVENTY-FIVE

They hadn't gone far when the tunnel widened.  A stench that Con couldn't quite identify filled the air.  Ancient piss, a bit of decay and something else.

"Ach," Servis said.  "Smells like death."

Con shuddered.  It did.  But the smell was faint, as if it had been there a long, long time.  Somehow Servis got ahead of him.  He was pleased to have the guard's broad back and muscular arms facing whatever was ahead.

Servis held the torch high.  "Walls're different," he said.

Con took a step closer.  They weren't walls.  They were open.  Iron.  Cells.

"We must be on the palace grounds," he said.

"Aye," Servis said, his voice warm with amusement.  "We were on em when ye found me."

Con ignored that.  He reached out, touched a bar. The metal was rusted.  Flakes came off on his fingers.  "No," he said.  "I mean we must be close to the palace.  This is a dungeon."

"I dinna think we had such places on the Isle," Servis said.

Then where, Con wanted to ask, had you heard of them?  But he didn't.  Even though Servis was bright, he lacked Con's education, and it had been the only sore point between them when they had met the year before. 

"We had some near the palace," Con said.  "And I thought they were lost long ago."

"Na lost," Servis said, "but na used."

"Right now, anyway." Con shuddered.  He didn't know what the Fey did.  Did they take prisoners?  Or did they slaughter everyone who got in their way?

Maybe it wouldn't matter.  Maybe the guards were doing fine above.  Maybe the Fey were being driven back. 

He hoped so.

"Is this how you came?"

"Na," Servis said.  "We dinna come through the palace.  We passed that door long ago."

Con licked his lips.  So it was on him and his memory of the map.  He didn't really want to take it out here.  He didn't want to stay in this place any longer than he had to.

"Well, let's keep going," he said.  "And the first doorway we see, we take."

"N what do we do when we reach the palace?" Servis asked.

"Find the King," Con said, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

He doubted it would be.  He didn't know what would happen next. 

The dungeon widened, and the cells continued down their own narrow passageways.  The stench was stronger up close.

"Mouse," Servis said.

Con hoped so.  He didn't think King Nicholas used this place, and he didn't want to find out otherwise.  They kept going through the wide corridor.  Some of the cells had straw in them, probably once used as pallets.  A few had chains hanging from the walls. 

Servis gaped at it all.  "I dinna know," he said.  "It seems a cruel place, and odd ta leave it empty."

"Who would the King have put in here now?"

"Fey."

"Twenty years ago, maybe," Con said, "but it didn't work out that way."

"Na, it dinna." 

They were silent for a moment.  If King Nicholas had acted against the Fey instead of marrying into them, perhaps everything would be different now.  Perhaps the Fey would have been too frightened to attack.

But Con had no real idea.  He hadn't even been born when the Fey invaded Blue Isle.  They were so much a fact of his life that he couldn't imagine Blue Isle without them.

The door was on his right, so encrusted in dirt and cobwebs that he almost didn't see it.

"Wait."  He stopped, peered at it, and then realized that the door was solid, made of oak, and had no bars.  He shoved on it, gingerly.  Grime fell on his hand, and he shook it off.  The door slid open with a creak.

Servis stuck the torch inside.  The corridor was different than the others.  It appeared older, like the corridors in the Tabernacle, and the stones placed to form a careful box.  Bits of straw and fur lined the floor, and droppings covered the surface.  Spiderwebs hung in great arcs from the walls and ceilings.

Clearly no one had been in here in a long, long time.

"This is it, I think," Con said.

"Check," Servis said.  For the first time since they had started on this mission, he seemed nervous.

Con pulled out the map and they both studied it.  From the drawing, it appeared that they were in the oldest part of the palace, and the corridor would take them up to the main floor.

They glanced at each other.  This was the moment to back out if either of them were going to do so.  The silence was palpable.  Then Servis let go of his end of the map. The parchment flapped, and Con rolled it up, replacing it in his robe.

Little men, facing death, for a Charge and a matter of honor.  As Servis said, they would be the only ones who knew.  But then, they were the only ones who needed to.

Servis led the way, one hand outstretched to wipe away cobwebs, the other holding the torch as close as possible so nothing ahead of them caught fire.  

The corridor went straight for what seemed like forever, then it veered upward.  They turned a corner and found tiny steps, worn thin with time and use, that wound through a narrow part of the wall. 

Con took the torch from Servis.  This was Con's Charge, and his problem. Servis could follow if he wanted, but there was no sense in leading.

Con braced one hand on the wall and held the torch with the other.  The steps curved around, winding in a circle as they went up, a construction so ancient that only one part of the Tabernacle had it.  Then the stairs dead-ended into a stone wall.

Behind it, voices spoke Fey.

Con glanced at Servis.  His face looked yellow in the torchlight.  The space that they were standing in was so small that they were almost on top of each other.

"Stairs dinna dead-end," Servis whispered.

"They do if no one uses them any more," Con said.  "If someone built a wall to cover the entrance to the dungeon."

"Na," Servis said.  "The wall's on the map.  There must be a way ta open it."

Con felt the stone with his fingers.  He didn't like the Fey voices.  If they were loud enough to hear through stone, then there was a lot of them. 

The mortar between the stones was crumbling.  He felt nothing else.

Finally Servis had had enough.  "Step back," he said.

Con did. 

Servis pushed against the wall with his shoulder.  Then he braced one foot against the far wall, and pushed with all his weight.  The stone grated.  Dirt and mortar rained on him, almost putting out the torch.

The grating sounded explosive in the small space.  Con heard no more Fey voices.  He imagined the Fey standing outside, watching the wall open, waiting with all their weapons for someone to emerge. 

His throat was dry and tasted of dust. 

They couldn't stop now.  They had to go through.  No matter what they found on the other side.

Sweat ran down Servis's face, cutting lines in the dirt.  The stone wall moved slowly.  If there were Fey outside, they had plenty of warning.  Finally the wall had shifted enough that both men could fit through.

Con put a hand on Servis's arm.  "Me first," he said.

Servis didn't argue.  He stepped aside, and Con slipped through the narrow opening.

Into an empty room.  The voices were down a hallway, as if they had moved on.  Sweat prickled on his back.  He motioned for Servis to follow.

The room was large, almost as large as the Sanctuary.  Tables were scattered on the stone floor.  One had been knocked awry by their entrance.  Swords and other weapons covered the wall that they had entered.  There were imprints of swords on many of the stones, as if there had been weapons there too, but they had been removed.

"Close it," Con said.

"But then we canna get back."

"There are others down there.  The Fey don't need to find them."

Servis stared at him a moment, the realization dawning on his face.  He had known that they were on a suicide mission, but apparently, he had kept the option of escape open.  It wasn't open any longer.  He pushed the wall closed with his shoulder.  The grating sound seemed smaller here.  Con could understand why the Fey hadn't heard it.

Then Servis grabbed two knives off the wall.  He stuck one in his belt, next to the sword and the other knife.  Then he handed one to Con.

Con stared at it a moment.  There were Fey here, and he had to find the King. 

But Con had had no training with weapons.  A knife meant that the Fey had gotten too close.  He handed the knife back to Servis.

Servis opened his mouth, but Con shushed him.

Instead, Con took a sword off the wall.  The sword didn't dislodge easily  —  it had clearly been there a long, long time.  But it appealed to him.  It looked like one of the decorative swords in the Tabernacle.  The metal was thin and finely crafted, and unlike anything he'd ever seen before.  It was also clean.  No rust touched it, unlike most of the other weapons nearby.

Servis was looking down the passageway.  "Tis a lot a Fey."

"I have holy water," Con said, not looking.  He didn't want to know.  He didn't have a lot of holy water. 

"I hope tis enough," Servis said.

"Me, too," Con said.

They were armed, they were ready, and now they had to find the King.  Con had no idea where to go now that they were inside.

"Ye'd think they'd put em in the dungeon.  Mayhap they ain't found yet," Servis said, obviously understanding what Con was thinking.

"Then they'd be upstairs, wouldn't they?" Con said.

"Aye," Servis said. 

Con turned.  There had to be stairs all over the palace.  He started toward the other doors when he heard a grunt.

He whirled.  Servis was on his knees, the tip of a sword protruding from his stomach.  Six Fey stood behind him.  They were tall and thin, and looked nothing like the Fey that Con had grown up with.  They all had proud expressions on their upswept features. 

Con took out his holy water and pulled off the cork.  His hand was shaking.

The Fey directly behind Servis laughed and pulled his sword from Servis's back.  Servis grabbed his stomach and toppled forward.

"Oh, look," the Fey said in heavily accented Islander, "the little one has water."

"I'm scared," said another.

With a mumbled apology to the Holy One, Con tossed the holy water at them.  They didn't back away like he expected.  It hit the first Fey in the face and ran down his chin.  He waited a moment, then wiped the holy water off.

"It doesn't work, little man," the Fey said.  His gaze narrowed.  "And now you have a choice.  You can surrender to us, or we can kill you.  Only I promise that it won't be as quick as your friend's death.  I have some Foot Soldiers here who've been killing too quickly for their personal taste.  They've been longing to take their time.  I'll let them take it with you."

He had only a moment, and he didn't know what to do.  He had his Charge, but it seemed like a lost cause now.

"Remember … the King … " Servis murmured, and then his mouth filled with blood.  He gurgled, and died.

"You'll have to kill me," Con said, and held up his sword in a futile attempt to fight them off.

SEVENTY-SIX

The hay scratched his face, and made him want to sneeze.  Gift crouched in the hay bale, Leen beside him.  Sweat poured off him.  He had never been so hot, filthy and uncomfortable in all of his life.

The little Red Cap had found the hay, and then instructed them to hide in the center bail.  Gift was unaccustomed to taking orders from Red Caps, particularly fugitive ones.  It both surprised and worried him that the Cap was intelligent.  He had never thought of them as having much personality before.  This one had personality, brains, and a willingness to kill anything that got in his way.  Gift only associated that willingness to kill with Foot Soldiers.  The fact that this Cap had it made him reassess all he had learned in Shadowlands.

They had been in the bale a long time now, and the Cap promised them that they'd have to be in it at least until dark.  Darkness was a relative thing.  Gift could feel the sunlight beating down on the bales, and the hay itself glowed in the sun.  But it was dark enough inside for him to sleep.   He wanted to catch up on the sleep he had missed, but the heat was making it impossible.

The heat, and the odd noises that had started a few moments ago.

The field had been full of noises. The corn stalks groaned in the warmth.  They rustled in the slight wind, and so did the hay.  But as time passed, Gift got used to those sounds.  It was the new ones that bothered him.

Crunching sounds.  The sounds of breaking leaves.

Leen reached over and grabbed his hand.  Perhaps it was the farmer, inspecting his crop. 

Perhaps.

But it sounded like there were too many feet for that. 

He held Leen's hand tightly so that she didn't move.  They hadn't expected Fey arrival on the ground.  Perhaps his great-grandfather decided to search every farm, every place that Gift could hide.

In that case, the old man was even more desperate than Gift thought.

The footsteps sounded closer.  They were soft, more impressions than steps.  It was almost as if he could hear the dirt packing under someone's weight.

Then the sounds stopped.

The hair on the back of Gift's neck stood on end.  Leen started to move her hand away, and Gift gripped it even tighter.  Someone was out there, near the hay stack, watching.

Waiting.

Gift held his breath.  His heart was pounding, his fingers trembling.  He was sweating so bad the people outside could probably smell him.  His mouth was parched. What he wouldn't do for a drink.

Then he heard crunching on the far side of the hay bale.  The strands around him shook.  They were digging inside.  He guessed it was probably too vain a hope to think that they wouldn't find him.