'Wow,' Vharem said, looking at Renaer and then the vial. 'Who knew healing draughts tasted like clover honey, mint, and zzar all in one?'
'Don'tget used to them,' Renaer said. 'They're more expensive than your usual bar tab for a tenday.'
'Didn't you need that for whoever was down here?' Vharem asked as Renaer helped him to his feet. 'Help her get back on her feet?'
'I've one left,' Renaer said. 'Besides, you needed it more. I don't want to lose another friend tonight.' Renaer opened his mouth to say more, and then simply hugged Vharem and asked, 'Elra? Meloon? Find anything?'
'Look at the marks on the floor,' Meloon said. 'It's weird that the blasts stay in the doorway and never slip inside the door. They're also not wooden doors, see?' Meloon shrugged toward the farthest doorway Vharem had approached, and the wooden door was now a prison door of metal bars and naught else.
Laraelra's concentration showed her the world she loved-the world of magic. She looked at Renaer, her eyes filled with a sea of stars, then she looked intently at the corridor, the doors, and the floor. 'I'm seeing magic all around here. The-remnants of the spells Vharem triggered match. the auras on those two other doors.' She pointed at the doors they had all run past, one on each side of the passageway. 'I'm also seeing some lingering but powerful magic. I think it's an illusion of some kind. It's dotting around here, as if it's-'
'Footprints?' Renaer asked.
'Exactly,' she replied, snapping her fingers. 'You're right, Renaer. Whoever's posing as the Blackstaff only wears his shape. If nothing else, I think he's gone, as the trail heads up the passage and turns.'
'Help me!' A voice cried through the first left-hand door.
Laraelra snapped her head in the door's direction, her concentration shattered. She held up her hand and waved everyone away from the door, then tossed some pebbles at the door. The illusory door exploded with flaming fury, but no one stood in its path. Renaer and Vharem found it was a locked wooden door, just like it seemed. The pair kicked it twice before the lock broke and the door swung inward, scraping against the stone floor.
Inside the room, a young woman lay spread-eagled and strapped to a table, blades and other torture implements on the tables around her. Her long red hair matted on the table or to her head with sweat and blood. The gown she wore was reduced to tattered rags, and her feet were visibly injured within iron boots with ankle screws. She saw her three saviors at the door and whimpered, 'Please! Get me out of here before he comes back!'
Vharem and Renaer rushed forward, pulling at the blood-soaked leather straps and unscrewing the iron boots. Laraelra wove a minor magic to repair the woman's tattered gown. The woman gasped, 'Don't know what they wanted, but they kept hitting me! And my feet! Oh blessed Ilmater, my feet!' She wailed as Laraelra and Vharem removed the boots, but her black-and-blue flesh hardly resembled feet at all, given how many bones were shattered in them.
Vharem asked, 'What's your name?'
'Charrar,' she replied. 'I'm a dancer at the Ten Bells on Brondar's Way.'
'What did they want with you?' Laraelra asked.
'I don't know!' Charrar said, but whimpered slightly when Vharem picked her up off the table. 'They just kept hurting me, and the Blackstaff just stood there smiling!'
Laraelra started to ask, When did they bring you here? but stopped herself. Something didn't smell right here, though the stench of blood was real enough.
Renaer reached into his belt pouch and said, 'I've got something that may help.'
'Hang on, Renaer,' Laraelra said, resting her hand on his forearm and another over the cork-stoppered ceramic tube he held. 'Wait, in case someone has lethal injuries, hmm?' She looked around the room and asked, 'Where's Meloon?'
A loud, piercing scream came from out in the hall, and Meloon stuck his head in the room to say, 'Elra, come look over here. I hear the screaming, but there's nothing here. It's really irritating… and repetitive.'
Laraelra walked to the doorway, but as she passed Renaer, she arched her eyebrows at him, her back to Charrar. His eyes widened, but he nodded.
Laraelra exited that room and breathed deeply, then coughed. I don't know what's worse, she thought, the smell of blood in there or of singed Vharem out here.
She crossed the corridor where Meloon stood, angry. 'I ran down that way while you checked the room. That bastard sealed off the corridor leading out of here with stone. I couldn't find a door, even though I saw scratches where a door scraped the floor for years.'
'That's probably an illusion of a solid wall,' Laraelra said, 'if not a conjured wall itself.'
'Did I mention how much I hate illusions?'
'So which room again?' Laraelra asked. As if on'cue, the scream pierced the air again. Obviously coming from the room on the far right. 'You're right. Really irritating.' She shared a smirk with Meloon as they approached the room, and Laraelra concentrated, summoning her ability to see magic. The prison-bar door stood partially open from Vharem's disturbing it, and Laraelra looked at the threshold. 'There's an illusion set right inside the door.' She tapped her toe lightly on the blue-gray puddle of magic, and the screams ended abruptly. Her eyes widened, and she peered intently at the far corner of the room. 'This room is clean. No other magic in play that I can see.'
'Are you sure?' Meloon asked. He tried to push past her and look in the room himself. He had to stoop, since the doorway was low, and bumped into Laraelra as she turned to leave, knocking her off balance.
She tumbled into the room and said, 'Watch it, you-' and fell flat on her back, banging her hip and an elbow. However, before the pain ended her spell, she saw a large gray-silver field of magic above the door. 'Meloon- there!'
'What?' Meloon reached down to help her up, and a blood drop plopped onto his outstretched arm. He turned and looked up, just inside the doorway, but he saw nothing. Another blood drop appeared out of thin air and fell onto his shoulder.
'Something's hidden there,' Laraelra said, then pointed. 'Look at those iron rings in the walls. See if there's a hammock up there. I think it's been made invisible, and it's hiding something inside it.'
Meloon poked upward with his left hand. He felt rough cloth and something heavier above that. He pushed harder and heard a low moan. Meloon started feeling around the edges of the invisible cloth, as the woman inside moaned in a foreign language.
'You know what she's saying?' he asked. He found an edge to the invisible cloth. He pulled it open, finding a bloodied and dirtied dark-skinned woman with very short black hair and multiple wounds all over her body. Her eyes were open and staring, but instead of regular pupils, her eyes were dark orbs filled with crackles of red energy. 'Whoa.'
'Renaer?' Laraelra yelled out into the corridor. 'We've got another one here! And she needs help more than Charrar! Hurry!'
Laraelra wanted a closer look at the woman, but if she was right about this, they were in a far worse game than they knew.
Meloon stretched the invisible fabric of the hammock out of the way and rolled the wounded woman down into his arms. As she moved, a chorus of voices-men's and women's both- screamed in pain.
'Sehlne preserve her, she definitely needs this more,' Renaer said, as he arrived to see the dagger protruding from the woman's stomach. 'Hold her, Meloon.'
Renaer held her head up, poured the potion into her mouth, and pulled the dagger free. Her body spasmed in reaction to the pain, but the belly wound closed up, as did the lesser wounds on her face and body. She began breathing easier, and her eyes flickered open briefly, but they remained storm-clouded orbs of black. Renaer looked up at Meloon, who just shrugged, but Laraelra pressed in behind them.
'Don't you recognize her?' she asked.
Renaer nodded, but the others shook their heads.
'That's Vajra Safahr-the Blackstaffs lover!' Laraelra said. She didn't want to say more until she knew for certain, but she had the nagging suspicion that Ten-Rings and his associate were trying to steal the power of the Blackstaff-and she wondered how long the illusion-wearer had posed as Samark. Her thoughts were interrupted by Vharem carrying Charrar out into the hall toward them.
'He tortured her too?' Charrar said. 'I heard others being tortured down here, but not her.' She clung to Vharem, who minded not one bit, and then said, 'Get me out of here before he comes back again!'
'Good idea,' Renaer said, and he took Vajra into his arms. 'Meloon, Elra, see if there's any other way out.
