Lanval turned up his hands, but then Camille exclaimed, “A note!” She rushed to her rucksack, tossing aside the things Lanval had so carefully repacked. “I can leave a note in his food, mayhap in his porridge. Then, no matter how Dre’ela is drugging him, he can be on the alert for such and avoid it.”
A frown crossed Lanval’s face. “You must be careful in what you say, for should the guards or Dre’ela or Olot or Te’e-foon discover your note, it must not let them know aught.”
“Can they even read, Lanval?”
“I don’t know, my lady, but we must assume that they can.”
Camille nodded and sat awhile, then finally penned:
Every bird is wary in what it drinks and eats, especially a tiny brown sparrow sitting in a tree, scruffy little soul just like…?C?
Camille then frowned and said, “Ah, but I know how the Bear eats, and he is likely to gobble this note down should I place it in his food. We must find another way.”
She looked at Lanval, but he shrugged.
And then Camille said, “I know! I’ll scent it with something I am certain does not exist in that castle.”
“What is that, my lady?’
“Soap!” said Camille, and she rummaged through her rucksack and drew out the last of the Summerwood Manor soap she yet had, now nought but a chip. As she rubbed it across the vellum, she said, “We’ll slip it under the porridge bowl, where the Bear will surely scent it.” She paused and looked at Lanval. “Oh, my, but there is this: will Alain know of the note if the Bear does find it?”
“I believe so, Ma’amselle, for once he said that when he is a man he remembers all the Bear has done, though when he is the Bear at times he has trouble holding on to his Humanity. Or so the prince did say.”
“Good,” declared Camille, folding the vellum over and over, then dripping candle wax along the edges to seal the ink against liquid; “Just in case,” said Camille.
Then she rubbed more soap over the outside. “Surely the Bear will scent this.”
“But what if he does not?” asked Lanval. “What will you do if on morrow night you find the prince asleep?”
“If this fails, then when I return tomorrow night I will slip out and hide nigh the cove till day comes on the land, and then set a signal fire to call Kolor and the Dwarves and Big Jack. I had hoped to avoid combat, but we may have no other choice.”
Lanval shook his head and sighed.
“What?” asked Camille.
“My lady, I think it will take a miracle for any to invade that stronghold.”
A bolt of fear shot through Camille’s chest, but she said, “Then let us pray it does not come to that.”
As Camille followed Dre’ela up the stairs, she heard a peculiar chanting. Ere coming to the top, Dre’ela paused and pushed out a hand to hold Camille back, and they waited. When the chanting ceased, the chamumi went on, Camille following. At the landing, Camille saw down the corridor and just disappearing ’round a corner a blot of darkness streaming tatters and tendrils, like a ragged shadow moving away, and it seemed to Camille she heard muttering in the tattered shadow’s wake. It reminded Camille of something or someone, and just as they reached the Goblin-guarded door, she remembered the ragged silhouette that had flown across the face of the moon the night the Goblins had come to Summerwood Manor, the night Lord Kelmot and the Lynx Riders had slain them all. Too, it was the night the Goblins had slaughtered two of the black swans, and the rest had flown away. Yet what might that streaming black thing have been, or the one that had vanished ’round the corner, Camille could not say.
Dre’ela motioned the guards to open the door, and then she turned to Camille and held out a hand. “I’ll have my wedding gift now.”
Camille reached into her pocket and pulled out the cord and the shuttle. “Chamumi Dre’ela, have you my shiny?”
Dre’ela’s eyes widened with greed at the sight of the golden shuttle, and she hurriedly gave Camille another score of Troll-gold nuggets and snatched the shuttle and cord from Camille and rushed in to stand before the mirror. Camille slipped past her and into Alain’s bedchamber. The prince lay on the bed, one hand tightly clutched and held to his chest.
Rushing to his side, “Alain, Alain, my love,” whispered Camille, “ ’tis-” But there was no response, though the prince did breathe. Camille shook him, yet he lay slack. Then Camille opened his fist, and therein was the note Lanval had hidden under the porridge bowl that very morn. He found it and read it and knew I was here, and he was waiting for me. But then, somehow, he could not avoid being drugged.. or, wait! Bespelled! That was what the chanting was about. Someone bespelled my love with sleep. Oh, what am I going to-?
“See my pretty?” croaked Dre’ela.
Camille tucked the note into her pocket and then, hoping that Dre’ela would not see the tears running down her face, she turned and gape-mouth grinned and held up a nugget and said, “Shiny.”
Dre’ela stood in the doorway, her golden-shuttle necklace gleaming in the candlelight next to the golden spool.
“It wasn’t a drug,” said Camille weeping, “but a spell instead. He had the note. He had the note. Yet it will do us no good.”
“There, there,” murmured Lanval, as he held her and stroked her hair. “It will be all right. It will be all right.”
Camille pushed herself away. “How can you say that, Lanval? Tomorrow is the very last day, the very last day of all.” She snatched up the stave and shoved it toward Lanval. “See!” A hairline-thin crescent was all that was left on the dark disk.
“My lady, you said yourself, you will signal the Dwarves.”
“But, Lanval, it was you who said it would take a miracle for any to invade that stronghold.”
Silence fell between them, but finally Lanval said, “I see no other choice. You must slip out to the cove and set the signal fire. And even though I would rather be at your side, I must stay behind to be in the citadel then, so that I can try to open the gates and let them in.”
Camille’s eyes lighted with a bit of hope. “If you can get the gates open, then there is a way to invade after all.”
Lanval took up matches and candles and handed them to Camille. “They took the oil, yet use these to start a fire with dry branches, and when it is well burning then cast green ones on. That should raise a plume for the Dwarves to see.”
Camille nodded and packed her rucksack. She took up the cane and slid it through the loops, then fetched sleeping Scruff and put him in the high breast pocket. “Ready,” she said at last.
“When the next patrol passes,” said Lanval. He blew out the candle and went to the window and raised the blind and peered into the darkness beyond. Long he looked, and then he gasped.
“What is it?” asked Camille, making her way through the darkness to his side.
“Across the street,” he whispered. “On the roof.”
Camille stared through the darkness, and finally in the starlight she made out the silhouettes of three or four Goblins atop the low building opposite.
Lanval said, “No doubt they are Dre’ela’s guards, waiting to follow you wherever you might go to fetch items of true gold.”
“Can we not provide a diversion, something to draw them away?” whispered Camille.
Lanval hissed, “I could do so, but then who would open the gates?”
Camille sighed. “Let us wait, for mayhap they will go away after a while, or even fall asleep.”
Long did they wait, yet the Goblins remained alert. Finally Camille said, “Mayhap we can set this house afire and in the confusion I can slip away.-Oh, but no. Wait. If we set the house afire, then the Dwarves will think it the signal, and come entirely too soon.”
Plan after plan they examined, rejecting them all. The only one which seemed to have a chance of succeeding was to place against one wall all the wood they could gather, including the furniture, and setting a candle among tinder such that when it burned down far enough it would start a fire… sometime after they were in the citadel proper, they hoped.
And so it was they closed the blind again and broke apart the table and chairs and bed and the drawers in
