course, flaring into bright glows when he tried to force it.
The lord constable struggled with it, cords of muscle standing proud in his neck and wrists, then in a hoarse spitting of curses, he flung himself away and rushed across the room.
In one corner behind his desk, he clawed open a hitherto-hidden secret door and was gone.
Arclath turned to Amarune and murmured, “Now.”
Obediently she bowed her head so he could comb through her hair to find the tiny chain around the base of her left ear, recover the lockpick dangling from it, and free them both from their manacles.
Arclath looked down at Rune to see if she was ready to rise-and discovered she was already past him and vaulting the desk to get to the lord constable’s secret door.
The passage they found themselves in was narrow and many-branched, obviously running through the hearts of various thick stone partition walls, but Rune kept turning right, to a blind end that of course had a large, easily felt catch in it, that opened a door and plunged them out into a long, wide passage.
A guard stood tensely at his post, looking away from them down the passage. Obviously staring after where the lord constable had just gone.
“Must catch up to Farland,” Arclath told the man brightly, as the Dragon’s head snapped around and his halberd swung out. Rune had already ducked under it and was racing on. “Lord Constable’s orders!”
The Dragon stared back at him for a moment, then nodded and pulled his halberd aside. The heir of House Delcastle ducked his head and devoted himself to running hard, to catch up to his lady and to stay with her.
The passage was longer than it looked, the torches few and dim, the black-painted cell doors many, unnumbered, and more or less identical. Arclath and Amarune were halfway down it before they saw Farland, grimly staring down at something they couldn’t see.
There was a cross passage before they got to him, then another. Farland turned to watch them pelt the last little stretch up to him. His sword was drawn, but he didn’t lift it to menace them.
The lord constable stood at the end of the passage. Two stairs descended from either side of the passage just before the open gate he was standing at-a stout gate door of metal bars as thick around as Arclath’s wrists. Beyond that gate the passage ended at a precipitous flight of stone steps that descended down into darkness. There was a dank, rotting smell in the air.
“How did you get free?” Farland grunted, as they arrived beside him. He was out of breath, probably from rushing down that long flight of steps and then clambering back up them.
“You should believe
Farland pointed down the main flight of stairs. They were of unadorned stone, unforgivingly hard, and very steep. Fresh blood glistened on some steps.
It was a long, long way down, and they could only just make out a huddled form far down it.
“Pushed,” Rune guessed grimly. “By someone he was surprised to see.”
Farland nodded, face dark. “He’s dead. Another murder. But by someone who was waiting for him to arrive here, or someone he was just a bit too rude to?” His upper lip lifted in a mirthless smile. “Which could be any one of our noble guests.”
“Would any of your noble guests have a key to this gate?” Arclath asked.
Farland shook his head silently.
“It’s almost always closed and locked, isn’t it?”
Maintaining silence, the Lord Constable shifted from shaking his head to nodding it.
Which was when they all heard fast, light panting coming from one of the side stairs, coming closer. Farland’s sword came up, and he strode to block the head of that stair. The climber was alone, and ascending fast. It was one of the two lesser wizards of war, his cloak clutched around him like a well-dressed matron hastening through a downpour. He came to an abrupt halt when he saw the lord constable barring his way.
After they’d stared at each other in mutual silence for a long moment, the Crown mage said urgently, “I
Farland stepped back two paces and grimly pointed down the main stair.
The war wizard gave him a troubled look, then went to head of the stair, keeping an eye out for the lord constable rushing forward to give him a push, and cautiously peered down the long flight.
Then he backed away, blinking in astonishment.
No exclamation. No prayer. Nothing at all.
“So where were you,” Farland barked, loud and sudden, “when your superior was being shoved down a killing-fall flight of stairs?”
The Crown mage’s face was calm, and his answer prompt. “Checking the ways in and out, as he’d ordered me to. I rushed back here to report that the kitchen door-that offers access to the midden heap-stands open and unguarded. There’s no one in the kitchens.”
Farland exploded in a stream of heartfelt curses.
In the midst of it, he didn’t fail to notice something shifting shape-the wizard’s hand, he’d thought it must be-under the clasped cloak. Viciously he slashed the edge of the cloak aside with his sword. The hands, always try for a wizard’s hands, unless you’ve a bow and can use it well enough to send a shaft into his mouth or throat …
“Try magic on me, would you?” he roared, starting the backswing that would slice hand and fingers and whatever foul magic they were readying with them.
He’d been going to go right on bellowing warmer pleasantries, but stopped with a startled gasp.
The mage’s revealed hand was a grey and scaly ball of tentacles, seven or more writhing, wormlike things that curled and quested in all directions.
The war wizard spun away from Farland’s slicing steel-but not before everyone saw the tentacles beginning to change. Erupting and blooming into toadstool-headed growths of slimy brown …
With a groan of disgust, Farland snatched a mace from his belt to try to smash the monster down.
A spell came flashing out of nowhere to send it spinning from his numbed fingers.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The last of the three newly arrived wizards of war stood at the head of the other side stair. The last sparkling lights of his spell winked out, one by one, as they drifted away from his raised hands.
“Even for lord constables,” he told Farland, “there are penalties for killing wizards of war. Imbrult means you no menace. What you saw is the curse he lives with daily, not any sort of attack.”
The lord constable regarded him for a long, measuring moment, then turned to look more closely at the wizard with the tentacles-or whatever they now were.
“A magical curse,” Wizard of War Imbrult Longclaws explained quietly, holding forth his left hand. At the moment, it looked like a misshapen root dug up from a garden … a lump that was rapidly growing long, spiky hair. “Afflicting only my left hand. It changes continually. All manner of scaled, tentacled, or fungilike forms. Even after years, the forms it conjures still surprise me from time to time.”
“A spell-cursed war wizard? I’ve never heard of such a thing! Why don’t you have Ganrahast or one of the other senior mages rid you of it?”
“The curse holds far worse magics in check,” Longclaws said patiently; he’d evidently had to give this explanation many times. “Hanging spells we know too little about to dare tampering-but we know enough about to leave them alone. Unleashed, they’d harm far more than just one Crown mage.”
Farland looked from one war wizard to the other again, then said curtly, “My apologies, saer mages. We share more than one problem.”
He waved down the stair. “This one is the freshest, and the most pressing. Well?”
The mage who’d spell-struck the lord constable’s mace away-a tall, slab-faced man-joined Farland at the
