Raieve pursed her lips. 'The only thing you could offer me is guaranteed transport back to Avalon when this is finished and the arms that I came here to purchase. Then I might accept.'
'I can probably guarantee your return to Avalon, but beyond that I make no promises,' said Mauritane.
'You can promise to do your level best. I would accept that.' She glared at him.
'I've watched you since your arrival here,' said Mauritane. 'I believe you can be of great value to me. I'll do what I can to help you when our task is complete, but it may not be possible.'
'You said it yourself,' she said. 'The alternative is dying here. I don't hate your queen enough to punish myself for spite. You have my word; I will fight by your side. I'll take what you can offer.'
'I'm pleased,' said Mauritane. 'Perhaps when this is done you will not think so badly of us.'
'I hardly see how it matters either way,' she said.
Mauritane started to say something else but stopped. 'Fine. The guard at the door will take you for provisions. Move quickly; we leave in an hour.'
Mauritane watched her leave, feeling the curve of her legs with his eyes as she left. He forced himself to remember his wife, the Lady Anne, and put Raieve out of his mind for the moment.
He opened his mouth to speak to Silverdun and heard the scream again, even louder this time, definitely from the south. Could it be one of the Edani? They usually had lower voices and did not often allow their young to be taken captive. Raieve was one of four female inmates. The other three were locked in their cells on the other side of the prison.
'I'll be right back,' said Mauritane. Silverdun nodded wearily, reviewing the list of provisions for the fourth time in an hour.
He picked up one of the guards at the door. 'Where are we going, sir?' the guard said.
'Do you hear that sound?' said Mauritane. The girl's cries were insistent, pleading. Mauritane wondered for a moment that a woman's cries of pleasure and pain could sound so similar. Raieve's face flashed unbidden across his mind. He frowned.
'I don't hear anything,' said the guard.
'Come with me,' Mauritane said.
They passed from the North Tower into the main yard, where a trio from the night watch warmed their hands in the guardhouse. Snow continued to fall in its angled sweep, casting irregular diagonal lines across the faces of the guards.
'No!' the girl's voice cried. The sound emanated from the South Tower.
'Come,' said Mauritane, taking his guard by the shoulder. 'Don't you hear this?' They approached the tower's interior gate. Here, the wind caught the falling snow in an updraft and it swirled in tight ovals in the portico.
'Can you unlock this door?' said Mauritane.
'Um, sir, we're not to go in there. Only Jem Alan goes to monitor the sealamps.'
'Do you have the rune or don't you?'
'Yes, but…'
'But nothing!' Mauritane gripped the guard at both shoulders. 'Did Jem Alan tell you to give me full run of the place, or didn't he?'
'Uh, yes, but…'
'But nothing! Don't say `but' again. You have your orders. Open the door.'
Cowering, the guard took a set of runes from his belt and fitted one into the enormous metal door's latch with a shaky hand.
'I'll wait here,' he said.
'Fine.' Mauritane took a torch from the inside wall and lit it from the grate that burned there.
The door opened onto a wide hall with a curved stairway on the left, or east, side and a number of doors on the north wall. A dusty iron chandelier hung overhead, its candles burnt to tiny stumps, blackened and sooty. Besides the torch, the only other illumination was the dim green witchlight from irregularly placed globes along the stairwell. Their light glimmered on the damp gray stones of the walls.
'No! No! Father, help me!' It was the girl's voice again, coming from above. Mauritane leapt for the stairs, noticing the curious antiquity of the girl's accent, similar to that of the oldest men and women in his village, those who'd been raised centuries before his own time.
Darting up the stairs, Mauritane reflected that it could not have been possible for the girl's voice, not much louder now than it had been in Jem Alan's office, to have been audible at all from the North Tower. He grew more wary with each step, and by the time he reached the first landing, he was walking, his blade drawn and held at the ready.
At the first landing, the spellturning of the structure became noticeable. The stairs above were faintly doubled, one set of steps was superimposed on the other, as though seen through thick glass. From the landing, a pair of boardedup doors let onto the second floor, their locks rusted and worn with age.
'Father! Somebody! Help me!' The girl's cries became shrieks, still coming from farther up the stairs. Mauritane began to run again, taking the stairs two at a time, his eyes moving in every direction for potential threats. He stopped again at the second landing and listened again. The shrieks were muffled here, but they were not from above this time. Two more doors faced Mauritane, identical to the ones below. They, too, were boarded up, though Mauritane could see that the boards on the nearer one were fairly loose. Pulling a dagger, he wedged the blade beneath the board and strained against it, feeling the homemade nails slowly give way.
Mauritane's muscles hummed from the exertion, and it felt strangely good to be in action again, regardless of the circumstances. His face reddening, he pried first one board, then another from the door and examined the lock. It was a simple keyed affair, one easily picked with the tools he'd liberated from the prison armory. As he knelt, the screams grew more and more muffled and eventually faded.
'Damn,' he said, finally managing the lock. The door swung open with effort, hanging from hinges that were nearly rusted shut. The passage beyond was dark, but there was a light some distance away. Before Mauritane's eyes, the light became two lights, then four, then eight, then one light again, depending on how he turned his head. It was a disorienting sensation.
He stepped lightly over the transom and into chaos. The floor gave way beneath him and he stumbled forward to right himself, only to discover that he was suddenly sitting up on the frame of the door through which he'd just passed. When he'd crossed into the hallway, his sense of direction had pinwheeled backward over his head in a quarter circle, so now the wall had become the floor, and the floor was now the wall in front of him. The light source was now above his head.
Mauritane began to feel queasy. Looking back through the doorway, he saw the stairway exactly where it had been, only now the stairs appeared to be sideways, their steps clinging to the wall beneath him.
'Salutations,' said a voice above him. Mauritane jumped and looked up. Standing on the ceiling was a man in ancient costume, wearing a long white wig and a frock coat that hung upwards to fall at his feet.
'I am the Prince Crete Sulace, Lord of Twin Birch Torn,' said the man, speaking in an ancient dialect Mauritane struggled to comprehend. 'And you are trespassing in my home.'
Chapter 6
Mauritane attempted to stand, but the room shifted again around him, and he landed at the other man's feet, his thigh resting painfully on his sword hilt.
'Perhaps I should leave the way I came,' said Mauritane.
'That would be unwise,' said the man, drawing his rapier and holding the point to Mauritane's neck. 'You are an intruder in my home and I intend to know your business before I have you flogged.'
Mauritane sat up slowly, feeling the pressure at his neck give a bit. 'If you are indeed the Prince Crere Sulace,' said Mauritane, speaking in Elvish, 'then I am more surprised than you. For your home has been a prison these many years and you have been thought dead for centuries.'
'Centuries! You are mad!' said the man. 'Perhaps you are better off on a Foolship than in my dungeon.' He
