things that would help those using the passages to know where they were.
For instance, at the bottom of the stairwell leading to the storeroom, there had been three small circular holes carved into the wall. Other places held other markers: an engraving of a horse, a torch sconce turned upside down, as well as other series of holes, each containing a different number. He would pass two such before reaching where he planned to make his escape.
First he came to an engraved skull at a convergence of three passages. There he turned and followed the one branching to his left. This passage was the longest unbroken stretch he had yet come across. Following it, he came to another junction. First there were steps leading down, and then three feet further on, another passage branched off to the right. Passing by the stairwell, he followed the passage to the right.
This passage only went ten feet before turning ninety degrees to the right. After the turn, the passage went another five feet before coming to an abrupt end. There on the left side of the passage was the second marker. It was a raised relief of a small dagger.
When he had first encountered this dead end, he had thought it strange for it to be here. Figuring there to be more to it than just a plain wall, he searched for a hidden catch. He discovered that pressing on the raised relief of the dagger caused the wall at the end of the passage to slide open to the left.
On the other side of the wall were more of the secret passages. Why someone felt the need to put in a semi-hidden trigger in such a place didn’t make any sense to Bart. During his earlier exploration of the passages on the other side of the secret door, he had found them to be the same as all the others he’d gone through. Thoughts of finding a hidden cache of treasure or something special had crossed his mind from time to time, but he didn’t have such luck.
Moving to his right, he followed the passage beyond the secret door past the backsides of two secret exits. One led into a storeroom which was currently being utilized, and the other opened behind a drapery hanging in an alcove. After the alcove exit, the passage made several sharp turns before the third exit came into view.
Beyond this one was a small servant’s room, one of two belonging to a larger suite of rooms. When he explored it earlier, he found it to be unoccupied. The central room of the suite had two windows looking out on the parade grounds between the castle and the walls. Two reasons made this the ideal place for him to leave the labyrinth of secret passages. One was the fact that the windows were situated far from the main entrance and thus his egress from them was unlikely to be noticed. And two, they were directly across from the stables. He needed a long piece of rope to make it over the wall to the other side, and the stables were the most likely place where he would be able to find one.
Coming up to the exit, he placed his ear against the door and listened. When all he heard was silence, he lifted the latch and slowly opened the door. The doorway itself was quite narrow, barely two feet in width. Once he had it opened a crack, he peered through and saw that the room remained dark and empty. Pushing the door open wider, he passed through to the other side and then closed it behind him.
Bart moved from the servant’s room to the main, central room where those who were using this suite would meet and visit with guests. He entered and immediately went to the fireplace. Though it had been cleaned after the last occupant, there was still enough soot attached to the sides and up inside the flue for what he planned to do.
Using a cloth from his pack, he rubbed it along the inner sides of the fireplace. Then once the cloth was darkened with soot, he began rubbing it onto his exposed skin. This way, light wouldn’t be reflected off of his pale skin and give him away.
Once he had applied the soot to face, neck, arms, and hands, he returned the cloth back to his pack and crossed over to the window. A cool breeze blew through the cracks of the shutter. Bart swung open the shutter and looked down. It was far enough to the ground below that he risked a broken leg if he were to simply freefall the distance.
But he had planned for that. Moving away from the window, he crossed over to the main bedroom of the suite. There, the bed was still covered in sheets and quilts. Bart put his pack on a bedside table and then commenced pulling the covers off. The quilts he tossed aside.
He took the one sheet and began ripping it into long strips, each about six inches wide. Once he had eighteen identical strips, he started braiding them together into strands of three. When he was done, he had six, seven foot long braided sections lying before him on the bed. He tied their ends together until he had a makeshift rope, roughly twenty feet in length. Not nearly long enough to reach to the ground, he set the rope aside and commenced on the bottom sheet. Together they wouldn’t reach all the way to the ground, but at least it should bring him close enough so he could drop the rest of the way without injury.
Once he had the second rope completed and tied to the first, he coiled the entire length of makeshift rope and brought it out to the central room. There he tossed it onto a chair before returning back into the bedroom. Against one wall was a heavy dresser. He dragged the dresser out into the central room and placed it beneath the window. Once it was against the wall, he retrieved the rope and secured it to the dresser. When he was sure the rope was tied well and unlikely to come undone, he climbed up onto the dresser and looked outside.
Three guards were currently standing in the courtyard below. Two were off to the right, and another to the left. The two to the right were talking to each other, and the one to the left was currently looking the other way. Atop the outer wall across from where he looked from the window, walked a lone archer. It was difficult to determine which way he was facing. After a moment’s scrutiny, Bart figured he was looking out into the city. Now was his chance.
With a quick glance to the left and right to make sure the guards hadn’t changed position, he dropped the rope out the window. He gave it a few firm tugs to make sure it would hold his weight. Then going feet first, he was out the window and descending quickly down the rope.
He moved as fast as he could as it was only a matter of time, minutes or even seconds, before he and his makeshift rope would be discovered. Upon reaching the end of his rope, he glanced to the three guards to see if he’d been discovered. All three still hadn’t realized what he was doing.
Then bracing himself for the fall, he let go of the rope.
“I can’t believe we haven’t found him yet!” stated the River Man in anger. For hours his men have scoured every hall, room, and nook all to no avail. It was as if the man had vanished.
“There’s no way he could have escaped my lord,” his sub-captain assured him. With the Captain of the River Man’s guards still in pursuit of the group who had fled earlier that day, he was now in charge of the guards. When the River Man turned angry eyes to his sub-captain, the man added, “Every avenue of escape is being watched. We have men stationed at both ends of the waterway beneath the castle. Guards are in every hallway and every possible exit is being watched.”
“He may be waiting for us to grow lax before trying to escape,” Lord Hurrin suggested. Lord Hurrin was one of the River Man’s most devoted followers. In fact, if it wasn’t for Lord Hurrin, the River Man would never have been named Warlord after his father and brother had been killed.
“Perhaps,” stated the Warlord of the Orack Tribe. Turning to the magic user, he demanded, and not for the first time, “Can’t you find him?”
“You know as well as I do that I can’t simply find someone whom I have never met,” he replied. “Magic doesn’t work that way.”
The River Man glowered at the three of them.
“But when I do,” the magic user stated, “rest assured that he won’t get away again.”
The River Man glared at the magic user. “He never should have gotten away the first time,” he said. He and the magic user had never been fond of one another. Having been his father’s magic user before him, Geffen had been around to see him grow up. He tended to think of him more as a boy than his lord. And that attitude rankled the Warlord of the Orack Tribe.
The magic user turned a deaf ear to the lord and instead, concentrated on the purplish ball resting upon his palm. Not a hint of magic did it detect.
“I trust this won’t interfere with our plans?” Lord Hurrin asked.
The River Man shook his hands. “It shouldn’t,” he replied. “Whatever mischief this intruder had been up to, I think we discovered him in time.”
“Excellent,” the lord said with a nod.
Just then one of the River Man’s servants entered the room. Giving a deep bow, the servant then came forward and held forth a scroll. “A messenger just arrived my lord,” said the servant. The River Man nodded to Lord
