Nodding, Brother Willim sits on the wall and tries to calm his trembling nerves.
Jiron coils the rope in his hands as he looks over the wall and into the courtyard below. There are still few guards upon the grounds down there but none in close proximity to the section of wall they’re on. A check toward those upon the walls finds them still staring at the fire burning in the city. So far, none of the guards have yet to notice that something is going on.
“Aleya,” he says and when he has her attention waves for her to come over to him. “There are three guards down below,” he tells her and then shows them to her. One is on the far side and is just moving beyond the Keep’s wall, another is walking across the middle of the courtyard, while the third is closer and moving their way.
“Take out the man coming our way,” he says.
“You got it.” Removing an arrow from her quiver, she places it to string and aims at the approaching man. When she’s sure she’s got him, the arrow is released. Flying true, it strikes the man in the chest and knocks him backward to the ground.
“Miko!” Jiron says as he begins lowering the rope over the side of the wall to the courtyard below. “Get down there fast and get that guard out of sight.” When the rope is played out and he has a firm grip, Miko begins to rappel down the other side. As soon as he’s down, he says to Aleya, “You’re next.”
Nodding, she takes the rope and descends to the ground below.
Once she’s down, he turns to Brother Willim and asks, “Can you make it down by yourself?”
He holds up his staff and says, “Not holding this I can’t.”
Jiron gives him an annoyed look and shakes his head. Then he grabs the staff and throws it over the side. “Now can you?”
Brother Willim looks over the side and watches his staff as it lands on the ground below. Turning back to Jiron he nods, “I think so.”
“Then please hurry,” he says. “Our luck won’t last forever.”
“Right,” he says. Taking the rope, he begins to work his way down. When he reaches the halfway point, he loses his grip and begins sliding down. By the time he hits the bottom, he has a good case of rope burn on both of his hands. Praying to Asran, he uses his magic to heal the burns.
“Stop!” exclaims Aleya.
The urgency of her cry breaks his concentration and the spell stops. “What?” he asks.
“You were glowing like a candle,” she explains. Looking around, she’s relieved to discover no one noticed his magical aura.
“Sorry,” he says. “Forgot about that.”
Jiron lands on the ground next to him and whips the rope back up where it dislodges from the place he had secured it. As it falls to the ground, he begins coiling it back around his middle. He had seen the green glow surrounding the priest but had been too far away to alert him.
Miko joins them and brings Brother Willim his staff. “Here you go,” he says as he hands it to him.
“Thank you,” he replies. He takes the staff gingerly as his hands still throbs with pain.
“If you need to heal yourself,” Jiron says, “Best to wait until we get inside.”
“And how are we to do that?” he asks. “Through the front door?”
“Actually, that is exactly what I intend for us to do,” he says. “Currently, the courtyard here is free of guards. One’s around back and will reappear soon. The other one just disappeared in through the main entrance, which as you’ll notice remains open. If we hurry, we might be able to make it.”
“No guts no glory?” Miko asks with a grin.
Jiron nods with an answering grin. He recognizes another one of James’ expressions. “Let’s go.” Running swiftly they cross the courtyard, taking advantage of what shadowy areas there are. No cry ensues by the time they reach the area before the Keep’s gate. Doubling their speed, they race through the entrance.
Chapter Thirty Two
“So, you’re awake are you?”
James cracks open his eyes to see who it is that’s talking to him and the light in the room stabs his eyes like a red hot knife. He moans and tries to rub them but can’t. His mind at first is unable to figure out why, but then comes to the realization that his wrists are manacled above his head to the wall behind him. Squinting so as to allow only a very minimal amount of light through to his eyes, he tries to see what’s going on.
“Everyone else was fooled by that stunt you pulled in Cyst,” the oddly familiar voice says. “But I knew it couldn’t be true. I knew you would end up here. So I came and waited for you to show. I didn’t expect my efforts to yield results so quickly.”
Smack!
His eyes somewhat adjust to the light in the room and he’s now able to tell that the voice is not addressing him. Rather, the man is talking to someone else who is tied to a chair in the center of the room. The man in the chair is facing away from where James is sitting on the floor thus he’s unable to get a good look at who it is.
He slowly moves his head to scan the room. The others who had been in the common room with him at the inn are sitting in a row against the same wall as he is. Each is manacled to the wall in the same manner. Over on a table against the wall he sees their belongings haphazardly stacked, it doesn’t look as if anyone’s taken the time to search through them yet.
Returning his attention to Perrilin, for that is whom he finally realizes is sitting in the chair being interrogated, he sees the man interrogating him strike him again across the face. In his drugged state, it’s hard for his mind to function properly and it takes him a bit, but he begins to recognize the man interrogating Perrilin. He’s seen him before.
With a scar running along the side of his face across one eye, it would be hard for James to ever forget him. Korgan, or as James better knows him, Ol’ One Eye. The man from whom he rescued Perrilin when he had him in a farmhouse outside of Cardri. The man who aided the Empire by poisoning the guards in charge of the gates in the City of Light. A powerful agent of Lord Cytok. To be here in his hands bodes ill for James and the others. He has little love for the man. In fact he’s one of the few people he’s met that he wouldn’t feel any qualms about killing.
Smack!
Korgan strikes Perrilin across the face again and then gazes at him for a second. Moving in close to Perrilin’s face, he lifts one eyelid and examines the eye beneath. “Damn!” he curses. Then he says something in the northern tongue to one of the three guards there in the room with him. Abruptly turning about, he exits through the door behind him.
James feigns unconsciousness as he works in his mind what exactly is going on. From what he overheard Korgan say, he came here for Perrilin. The fact that James happens to be here as well could possibly have eluded him for the moment. James fervently hopes that he will continue to remain ignorant of it.
The last thing he remembers is eating and drinking back at the inn as they listened to the bard play. From his brief scan to the others sitting there on the wall with him, he doesn’t think that they have all the others. But which ones are here he can’t tell. He did see Scar and Potbelly for sure, maybe Reilin too. For all their sakes he prays that Miko and Jiron have yet to be taken. If those two are still at large, then they stand a good chance of getting out of this.
In the meantime, he keeps his eyes closed and hopes the effects of the drug wears off sometime soon.
“Now where?” whispers Aleya. Miko just shrugs.
After entering the keep, they’ve been searching the halls for the way to the dungeons below. Three guards and two servants lie dead behind them, hidden in closets, under beds, etc. They had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the four intruders happened by.
Now the corridor they’ve been following ends at a meeting hall where a dozen tables are placed about the room. One of the larger tables has four men standing around it looking at a map laid out across its top. Two are soldiers, commanders by the looks of them, and two civilians. The men are talking earnestly to each other.
Jiron moves back from the end of the corridor where he had been spying on the men. Joining the others, he has them move into what seems to be an unused storage room. There he relates to the others what he saw. “We’ll
