and continued on to the farthest wall. There, he began a careful inspection of the stones, looking for some sign of a door.
He found it far too easily and it opened as if it had not been latched. He held the torch out and tried to see some length into the passage, but it curved too soon. Though Shaul was far from a coward, too much responsibility rested on his shoulders for him to make an unwise move. He closed the door and retreated.
Upstairs, he hastily doubled the number of Sundell guards outside Baron Peto's room and placed two inside, then woke the rest of the Sundell force. Two men were stationed at the nursery door. Four were given orders to patrol outside Ilsabet's chambers to be certain she did not leave. AH but six of the rest were sent to guard the castle doors.
The last, armed with pickaxes as well as swords, went with Shaul to the dungeons. As he suspected, the guardhouse door was shut. He heard laughter, smelled smoke and ale. Shaul and his men made their way past it easily. Well down the passage, Shaul stopped.
'Stay here,' he whispered to three of his men. 'Yell a warning if anyone tries to get past you.'
He continued on with the remaining three guards. The passage doorway lay open and waiting. Shaul lit a fresh torch and stepped inside.
They followed the passage as it wound slowly upward. With no knowledge of the spyholes and hidden doorways into the various rooms, Shaul passed them all by, ending finally at the door leading into Jorani's secret tower room. With the room no more than an extension of the passage, its entrance was more obvious, and just as obviously barred from inside.
'Should we break it in?' one of the guards asked.
Shaul had lost all sense of direction. The passage had curled upward, but only after a number of twists on the lower levels. They could be in Jorani's north tower or in the nearby smaller one that held the guardhouse above the main fork of the river. 'Do it,' he said.
While Shaul held the torch, the two largest guards beat on the door. Its old wood splintered under their combined attack until they were able to reach inside and lift the bar. A few more minutes of work and the rest of the door's planks fell away.
'Should we go in?' one of them asked.
As the man held the torch inside the room, Shaul peered past him. He recognized the room immediately. Vials sat uncorked on the table. One had overturned, its tarry liquid seeping into the pages of the book open beside it. It seemed as if Jorani had hastily abandoned the space to the spiders. Webbing was everywhere and a dozen dead rats lay rotting on the floor.
Though Shaul recalled the Kislovan lord's warning, he was curious about what it held. Til go in,' he said.
The passage was no wider than the door. The soldier pulled the torch out of the room and moved sideways to let Shaul past him. As he did, the webbing stuck to the torch brushed his face. 'Damned spiders,' he swore. They were his last words.
Before Shaul could pass him, the soldier pitched against the opposite wall, dead before he hit the ground.
The second guard caught the torch as it fell. 'What in the name…' he began, then fell backward.
Only Shaul's quick step back kept him from being burned or poisoned. He stared down at the torch flame, almost extinguished from the slime on the floor, glowing in the dead man's open eyes.
'Back away,' Shaul said to the remaining guard. 'Don't touch them. Try not to even touch the wall.'
Easier said than done. At the first turn they lost all light, and by the time they reached the dungeons, they were coated with so much muck from countless falls that Shaul's own sentries challenged him as he approached.
'Where are the others?' someone asked.
'Poisoned. Don't touch us,' he said, as if someone might want to. 'Get us both a change of clothes and meet us outside.'
He and the surviving guard went up the stairs and out the door that led to the river. There they stripped off their filthy clothing, kicked off their boots, and let the river carry it all where it would.
They worked quickly, without benefit of light, though even the brightest lamp wouldn't throw much light through the dense fog.
'What are we going to do now?' the guard asked.
Though he knew exactly what they would do, Shaul didn't answer. He didn't want the word to travel through the castle until he was ready, but tomorrow what remained of Sundell forces would retreat from Kislova. If he had any say, they'd never return.
In the passage they'd abandoned, the dead men lay, fresh meat for the tiny, lethal creature that dwelt in Jorani's abandoned room. It crawled over the nearest body until it reached the soft flesh of the neck, then began to eat. It feasted through the night then abandoned the room that had held it for so long and began its slow descent through the passage.
At dawn, Shaul roused the guards. He sent some of them to the stable to saddle the horses and assemble the team for Peto's carriage. Others were sent to Peto's room to ready him for the journey. 'Be sure to tell him why you're there,' Shaul said. 'He hears. He understands. I'm certain of it.'
Orders given, he went himself to the nursery to claim SundeH's heir, but found Ilsabet sitting beside an empty cradle. She stood when Shaul entered and bowed as if he were in charge. 'The thief has come for the child. I'm sorry to report that the child is gone.'
'Where have you taken him?'
'Someplace safe. Someplace where you'll never find him. Now I want every Sundell soldier out of Nimbus Castle, immediately.'
'I will not leave without the baron.'
'Then the baron's child will die.'
'You'll tell me where he is,' Shaul demanded, advancing on her.
She held up a glass vial. 'Don't come any closer. I'll snap this and die before I confess anything to you.'
'I'll search for him.'
'Will you? If I hadn't left one of the doors to my labyrinth of passages open, you never would have found it. How long can an infant live without milk? Without water?'
All argument left him. 'I'll do it. I'll order the soldiers gone, but I want to stay.'
She laughed. Once he thought the sound beautiful, but now its coldness cut through him like a frigid wind. 'In this barbaric land, so far away from your beloved wife? Very well, Lieutenant. Every lord needs one faithful servant, even a lord as helpless as my husband. Write a message to whomever now rules Sundell. Tell him if they think to invade, their precious baron and his heir will die. Tell them Kislova is mine, as it was my father's before me.'
With no choice but to obey, Shaul went and wrote the letter. The fog parted as the riders left, then closed behind them. Shaul watched them go until they vanished into the swirling vapor.
The fog did not dissipate in the warmth of the afternoon, but lay dense and foreboding around Nimbus Castle. It seemed to have intelligence of its own, for shifting patterns took on shapes-of the dead, and of creatures never seen in these lands. Soldiers spoke of seeing their loved ones in it. Shaul himself had seen his wife, so real that he wanted to run to the vision and embrace it. He knew if he did, he would leave this place as had so many of the servants, or the Kislovan guards who had abandoned their posts to vanish in the dense darkness of the night.
For the first time in the memories of even the oldest Kislovans, the fog was not confined to the valley around the castle. In the days that followed the Sun-dell retreat, its long arms reached out through the streets of Pirie, through the hills above it, across the fields to the east and west. Even the dry land of Tygelt felt the fog's damp touch.
To the south at Argentine, Jorani stood on his bedroom balcony and watched it move across the land. He was not by nature superstitious, but he hadn't received any letters from the castle in over a week.
He knew what that meant, and what the fog meant.
