He covered Lorryn with the towels, draped (so Lorryn hoped) to cover him completely, then hurried to answer the pounding.
'I'm coming, I'm coming!' he shouted, as the light moved out of the room—Lorryn guessed that he was taking the lantern with him.
The door slammed against the wall as soon as Bryce opened it, and whoever it was stormed into the outer room. 'Who'd you let in, just now?' the harsh voice demanded. 'Somebody with a wound, maybe? Or something else he doesn't want the Master to know about?' The man's tone turned raspy and dangerous. 'You remember what happened the last time you played that little game, Bryce. This time they might not let you keep that hand—'
'If you must know,' the physiker replied testily, 'I wasn't letting anyone in, I was letting—her—out. One of the wine-girls from the Silver Rose. She has—ah—a slight infection of a personal nature.' Lorryn had to admire the way the man coughed and flustered, as if he were embarrassed. 'I was—ah—treating her—ah—as a favor, you might say.'
The other man remained silent for a moment, then broke into a gale of laughter. 'She, huh? A personal problem? You sly old dog, I didn't think you had it in you! Or have you got somethin' in those leaves of yours to get it in you?'
Bryce coughed again, and the man laughed even harder. 'Next time, you ask the Master before you go treating personal problems. Otherwise I just might bust in here before you've let her out so I can get some of mat fun for myself.'
The door slammed again, and the heavy boot-steps retreated.
The light returned, and Bryce pulled the towels off him. 'You'll have to go out the rooftop now,' the man said, his face white in the dim light of the lamp that trembled in his hand. 'He'll be watching the front. I hope you can climb—come, I'll get you out and you'll have to take care of yourself from there—'
He was babbling with fear, a fear that made him literally sick, and the images in his mind told Lorryn why he was so afraid. Lorryn swallowed his own nausea and kept his mouth shut.
He couldn't get out of there quickly enough—even if it meant a harrowing climb across the roofs. Anything was better than being in the same room with a man with those memories in his mind…
Sheyrena dressed carefully in a purposefully soiled and torn gown, one she had prepared herself for this ruse. It had to look as if she had trekked across the wilderness in it. and not willingly, either. Instead of shoes, though, she wore a pair of worn-out old boots that could have belonged to Lorryn, with rags stuffed into the toes to make them fit. No shoes she owned would have survived the trip she was going to de scribe to Lord Tylar, and she would claim to have stolen the boots from Lorryn.
She and Mero had worked out every detail of her story, from the point where Lorryn talked her into coming for a morning walk with him to the point where she escaped from him, stealing his boots both to protect her own feet and prevent him from following her, and traveled alone, back along the route he had taken. Inside her gown, sewn into the body of her petticoat, she had two sets of the iron jewelry, one for herself, and one for her mother.
Myre would become, in this tale, Lorryn's willing accomplice and his contact with the wizards. Why not? It would certainly account for her presence in the boat, for a third figure had surely been seen, and it would also account for her absence after she fell out of it. That would also be why Lorryn had not gone straight to the wizards, but had wandered around on his own—without her, he had no guide. Anything that anyone overheard in that brief period between the moment when the pursuers had sighted the boat and the moment when it flew out of sight that might indicate that Rena had been encouraging Lorryn could easily be attributed instead to Myre.
'Are you ready?' Lorryn asked. She nodded, unable to force herself to speak. Mero was lying down with his eyes closed; that was because Lorryn was going to take all of his magic power and most of his own to send her straight to the border of Lord Tylar's land. The transportation spell, as modified by the wizards and taught to Mero, then taught by Mero to Lorryn, was not as 'noisy' as the version Shana had used. The trick was that the person actually casting the spell had to remain behind, and the 'noise' remained with him. In a big city such as this one, where there were hundreds, even thousands of spells being cast each day, another burst of magical 'noise' would not be noticed.
Mero was actually better at this than Lorryn, but it was Lorryn who knew where Rena had to go, so it was Lorryn who must cast the spell, and it would take its direction from his mind.
As soon as Mero recovered, he would journey by more conventional means to Lord Tylar's estate, where he would wait for Rena and Lady Viridina with horses and supplies. Lorryn had insisted on that part of the plan, knowing that Mero would fret himself to pieces—and be all but useless—if he was not somewhere nearby, where he could help at need. It would be dangerous for him, certainly, but no more dangerous than remaining here with only half of his mind on keeping himself hidden from those searching for halfbloods.
'Take a deep breath and close your eyes,' Lorryn said, and Rena obeyed him. She sensed power gathering around her, twisting and turning as Lorryn sent it through the amber globe in his hand as Mero had taught him, twisting and turning around her.
Then there came a flash of light so bright that she saw it through her closed eyelids.
Then, nothing.
No sound, no light, no air, no floor—she was falling, falling, she was going to fall forever! Her stomach churned as it had when Kalamadea had hit what he called an 'air pocket' and plummeted three times his own length before he got back under control. She thought she screamed, but she couldn't hear herself; thought she stretched out her hands, but she couldn't even feel her own body!
Then, with no warning, she was there, feet planted firmly in the grass beside a tall, golden-yellow wall. She stood in the middle of a bare-earth bridle path, with grass on either side of it, in a place she knew as well as she knew her own room. She and Lorryn had been here a hundred times on their rides—there was the apple tree they always used to shade them in the summer when they stopped for a picnic meal, the grass beneath it long and rank, as if no one had tended it in some time. The leaves on the tree were just turning, a reminder that she and Lorryn had escaped in the spring, and now it was already fall.
She had forgotten how far it was to the gate from here—and she was afoot, not riding, wearing boots that were far too big for her, even with rags stuffed in the toes and more rags wrapped around her feet. She shivered as a cool autumn breeze cut through her ragged dress, and the iron jewelry felt very heavy around her waist.
Well, here I am.
And she wasn't going to get anything done by standing there.
With a tiny sigh, she trudged up the path. With luck, she might meet with some of the guards and save herself some blisters.
But no guards appeared—of course, they never show up when you really want them to—and her feet were sore enough to give ample evidence to the truth of her story when at last she reached the gate. She didn't think they were blistered, but if she got away with this, the very first thing she was going to do would be to have a good hot bath and a foot-rub!
The gate loomed much larger than she remembered it, but then again, her memory now was colored by living in the wilderness and in the tents of the Iron People. Many buildings seemed large now, compared to the tents. Made all of bronze, it boomed hollowly when she rapped on it timidly.
The gate swung open on her second knock, revealing a half-dozen fully armed guards behind it. Elven guards, not human, which said more than any words how Lorryn's escape had affected Lord Tylar. He no longer trusted anything important to human slaves, it seemed.
She clasped her hands before her, looked down at the ground, and said in a tired voice that did not need any acting, 'Please, could I speak with my father, Lord Tylar?'
'Your what?' began one of the guards, as another laughed—but a third cursed and shut the other two up.
'By the Ancestors,' he swore, 'It's her! Sheyrena!'
She hadn't really hoped for gentle treatment—not until they knew she was fully of elven blood, anyway—but she hadn't quite expected to be bound hand and foot and slung facedown over a horse's back. She hadn't expected to be galloped up to the door of the manor, with the jewelry digging painfully into her skin, and her upset stomach being jounced worse than any dragon-flight had jostled it.
That, coming on top of the effect of the transportation spell, was just too much. When the guards reached the front door of the manor and manhandled her down off her perch, she threw up on the boots of the nearest.
She took small comfort in the fact that it was the one who had insisted on carrying her in that undignified
