stairs. He vanished down them.
In her hurry, Dart’s left boot slipped on a bit of black ice on the top step. She tumbled into a headlong fall-but Brant caught her around the waist and righted her back onto her feet. She hung a moment in his arms.
“Are you all right?”
Despite the cold, Dart felt her face warm. “Yes…sorry…”
Brant released her and led the way down the stairs to a low, wide door. He hauled the door open for her. Pupp had already passed through it in his haste to escape the snow.
“It’s not far from here,” Dart said, sliding past him. She kept her eyes from his, lest they betray her. She pushed into the dim hallway.
The heat inside stifled after the icy storm.
She headed to a cross passage and turned left. Already the barking and bawling of the Citadel’s stalking hounds reached them-as did the smell of wet dog and soiled hay. The entrance to the houndskeep lay only a few steps farther down the hall. The door was a gated grate of iron.
Dart stepped up to it.
Beyond stretched a cross-hatching of low passages, lit by torches, carved out of the stone that underlay Tashijan. It was said that the kennels here were once the dungeons of the original keep, before the coming of the gods, during the barbarous time of human kings.
Dart had a hard time imagining such a dungeon. Each carved niche barely held room enough for a pair of hounds, long-legged though they might be.
As they stopped before the gate, their arrival did not go unnoticed.
“’Bout time you got your hairy arse down here!” The keeper turned from a slop bucket. He was naked to the waist and appeared half bear himself with a back and chest covered in a pelt of curly hair. In some cruel trick of nature, though, his head was bald, his pate shining with sweat. “Like I have time to sit a couple wild whelpings-”
His eyes finally took note of who stood at his door.
He threw his hands in the air.
“Off with you…no time for gapers…’nough problems of mine own.” He waved them off.
“Good ser,” Brant said loudly, “I’ve come to inquire about two loam-giants, represented by Oldenbrook.”
His words only deepened the scowl on the keeper’s face, but he tromped over to them and swung open the door. “So you heard then, have you?”
Brant walked through with a frown. “Heard what?”
The answer came from down the passage. “Ock! Master Brant!”
A broad form pushed out of a side passage, hunkered from the low ceiling into an awkward crouch. It was one of the loam-giants Dart had spotted with Brant earlier. He approached, almost knuckling on the hay-strewn floor. A few hounds howled at him as he passed, unaccustomed to such giants down here.
“I just sent word up a mite ago. Did you jump from a window to get down here so fast?”
Dart didn’t know the giant, but she still read the deep unease in the man’s manner.
“Malthumalbaen,” Brant said, “what’s happened? I’ve heard no word. I’ve only chanced to come down here to see how the whelpings are settled for the night. One of Tashijan’s pages was kind enough to escort me.” He nodded to Dart.
The giant shook his thick-necked head. “Disaster, ser. Bad as they come.”
“The wolf cubbies?”
Malthumalbaen lowered his head and his voice. “Gone, ser.”
“Dead?” Worry etched his words, but anger narrowed his eyes.
“No, ser. Thank the gods for that good bit of Grace. You’d best come see. Dral is still trying to salvage the matter.”
“And it weren’t no fault of mine,” the keeper groused and called after them as they headed down the passage. “Just so it’s clear to one and all! If’n you had let me know you had wild whelpings, I could have better prepared.”
Malthumalbaen let out a long sigh and grumbled under his breath. Still it had to be loud enough to reach the keeper’s ears. “Gave us a place near the back. Ill-kept, it was, with nary a torch to see much by.”
The loam-giant turned the corner and led them down the cross passage.
Dart glanced to the small cells on either side, where tawny-furred forms lay curled at the back, two to a cage, piled almost atop each other for warmth. She noted an eye or two peek open as they passed, wary and watchful. A few others, younger and more exuberant, stalked back and forth in the front of their cages, hackles half-raised in warning. In the dimness, their eyes shown with a bit of Grace. Air and loam, she had been told. It gave the hounds especially keen noses and ears.
Then down near the end of the hall, a form lay splayed on the floor, as if dead or brought low by a blow. But the figure stirred at their approach, struggling, it seemed, with something out of sight. A growl of curses accompanied the effort.
“Dral!” the first giant called out. “Look what I found! Master Brant himself!”
The other giant, redheaded like the first, rolled to his side. Dart saw his arm was jammed down a hole at the base of the wall. He fought to pull his limb out. “Got myself stuck.”
Malthumalbaen went to his aid. It took a moment of yanking, twisting, and cursing to finally free the snared giant. Once that was accomplished, the one called Dral rolled to his seat, cradling his head in plain misery.
Pupp had sidled past the loam-giant and sniffed around the opening. Since stone blocked Pupp as surely as any other, the opening proved too small for even him to nose much deeper.
Malthumalbaen narrated their story. “We were just getting ’em outta that skaggin’ crate. They looked near on death themselves, all wet with their own piss. Scared to a lick, they were.”
He lifted an arm and pointed to a cage door that hung crooked on one hinge, the other broken. “We were just shutting them up, when off it comes.”
“I should have been more careful,” Dral moaned.
“Them little ones, they were out like arrows. We tried to snatch ’em back up, but down that rat hole they both went. Like they knew where they were going.” The giant shook his head. “Don’t even know where it goes.”
“I tried to see if I could reach them,” Dral added, then shrugged and covered the top of his head with his hands.
“The blame is not yours,” Brant said.
Dart had been so busy listening to the giants and watching wide-eyed, that only now did she note how dark Brant’s face had become. Looking into his eyes, she could almost smell the burn of brimstone off him. But he kept his fury locked inside him. His words to the giants were gentle and firm.
“I should never have brought them here,” he added to himself. He bent a knee to study the hole. It was cut smoothly into the back wall and plainly canted down at a steep angle. “Do you know where this leads?”
“We asked the keeper. All he knew is that when they swamped out the keeps here, they washed everything down that rat hole.”
“Into the sewers?”
Malthumalbaen shrugged. “Keeper seemed not to think so. Says his houndskeep is older than all of Tashijan. Before they plumbed and dug sewers for this place.”
Brant stood up. He held a fist tight to his side.
“But the keeper called for some help. They should-”
The entire houndskeep suddenly erupted with howls and baying barks, drowning out the giant’s words. Loud snatches of cursing accompanied the cacophony.
“That must be him,” the giant said.
Brant headed down the passage toward the commotion. He held off both giants with a raised palm and Dart with a stern look of worry.
Still, Dart trailed him. She kept a few steps back, fearing she might be recognized.
Brant reached the corner and peered around.
Dart noticed him flinch in shock. As the hounds continued to howl, curiosity overcame fear of discovery. She moved behind Brant and stared down the passage.
