with the sounds of street vendors hawking their wares. The skies had cleared since yesterday, and a trickle of meltwater dripped off the long icicles that hung from the grate. The clouds were breaking up. Larajin could see the full moon in one of the patches of blue sky.
They passed under the grate and turned down a side tunnel, then down another. Tal's splashes were uneven now, and Larajin paused to wait for him. When he caught up to her again, his face looked gaunt. Then she saw it was only a growth of beard, giving his normally clean-shaven face a shadowed appearance. Odd, that it had grown so quickly. He was sweating, despite the fact that the air in the tunnel was cold enough for Larajin to see her breath.
'Are you all right, Tal?' she asked.
'How close are we?' he asked.
Larajin studied the tunnel. They'd reached a point where it was reinforced; the high stone walls surrounding the Hunting Garden must have been directly above. 'Almost there,' she answered.
Tal nodded and waved Larajin on.
She continued up the tunnel for a few paces more but paused when she saw a pair of small bright eyes glinting at her out of the darkness ahead. After a moment, their owner scurried into view along one of the raised ledges: a large brown rat.
Larajin stepped to the opposite side of the tunnel to let it pass. She froze in mid-step as it crawled into the light. That was no ordinary rat. It fumbled along the ledge, crawling with one front leg that was a feathered wing and another covered in thick white fur. Its rear legs clicked against the brickwork like tiny hooves. Its face…
Larajin raised the lantern. 'By all that's unholy, Tal, you won't believe this,' she said in a trembling whisper. 'This rat has a human face.'
In that same moment, Tal-who once more was well back of the lantern light-turned and fled. His feet splashed rapid echoes around the corner the tunnel.
'Tal!' Larajin shouted. 'Where are you going?'
She turned to follow Tal-and the movement of her swinging lantern illuminated dozens of pairs of eyes, up on the ledge. The tunnel filled with the whispering, clicking, dragging sound of dozens of malformed legs scurrying. With soft splashes, the rats began dropping from the ledge. They swam toward Larajin, their malformed bodies leaving rippling wakes through the murky water.
One of the rats clawed its way up Larajin's leg. She felt a sharp, stinging pain in her thigh and the hot trickle of blood. She slapped at the writhing creature, knocking it from her, then felt another rat land on her shoulder. It had the beak of a bird and pecked her ear. Screaming, she whirled around, only to lose her grip on the lantern. It plunged into the sewage, and the light snuffed out with a loud, hot hiss.
Larajin could feel rats everywhere on her now. Their teeth tore into her skin; their feet plucked like human hands at the fabric of her shirt. She slapped at them furiously, knocking more than one off her body, but others replaced them. One twined itself into her hair.
Larajin turned and ran. Though the tunnel was in near-total darkness, she knew every step of this sewer. Her eyes were keener than most, especially in dim light-she could just make out the dim reddish-brown blurs of the rats that covered her body. She turned right, then left, back the way they'd come, shedding rats with each step. Several still clung to her, rending her flesh with their teeth.
Praying she wouldn't slip and plunge face-first into the sewage and be eaten alive by rats as she floundered helplessly in the stink, Larajin ran on. She nearly cried when at last she saw the patch of light looming ahead. When she was under it she jumped-and her flailing hands snapped off one of the icicles. She caught it on the way down, landed miraculously on her feet, and used the pick-sharp icicle to stab at the half dozen rats that still clung to her body.
She punctured her own skin by accident once, and after killing just two of the rats, the icicle broke. She leaped again-missed and splashed down into the sewage-then leaped a third time and managed to snap off another icicle. Holding it with cold-numbed fingers, she continued stabbing furiously. One by one the rats dropped from her and either floated or swam away.
Larajin stood panting in the barred patch of sunlight. A dead rat with the lolling, forked tongue of a snake floated in the water at her feet. Above the grate, carts rumbled past, their drivers oblivious to the battle that had just taken place in the sewer below.
Now that it was over, Larajin's shoulders began to shake. She found herself crying: not so much at her near brush with death but at the fact that Tal had abandoned her when she needed him most.
At first, Larajin didn't realize that anyone was in the library. The crackling of flames in the fireplace muffled the slight creak of leather, and the high back and wings of the armchair hid the person sitting there. She dusted the shelves, too distracted by her thoughts to replace the elder master's books in exactly the same order, even though she knew she'd catch a tongue-lashing from Mister Cale later for her carelessness. The books were all the same to her: musty, leather-bound tomes filled with stories about folks long dead. Elven folk. After being accosted by the wild elf yesterday, elves were the last thing Larajin wanted to think about.
It was only when she moved closer to the fire to dust the chessboard and collect the empty wine goblets from the table beside it that she smelled a faint hint of sewage that wasn't quite masked by the smell of soap. She peered around the edge of the wing chair and saw the very person she'd been looking for all afternoon: Tal.
He was staring into the fire with troubled eyes. His broad hands were knotted together in front of his face, his chin resting upon them. His face was clean shaven, and he'd changed into fresh clothes.
Larajin rapped the duster down against the table. A pawn toppled over and rolled across the chessboard, then clattered onto the stone floor.
Tal looked up, noticing Larajin for the first time. A series of emotions crossed his face: surprise, relief, guilt. He sprang to his feet and reached out to pull her into one of his bear hugs, but Larajin jerked back. Her leg struck the table, knocking the rest of the chess pieces over. She didn't even stop to worry about the fact that she'd just demolished a game in progress-another contest of wits between the Mister Cale and the elder master. Mister Cale's wrath seemed inconsequential, now.
'Larajin, I-' Tal lowered his arms. 'Thank the gods you're all right. Those rats-'
'Why did you run away?' Larajin asked. She wanted to rage at him, to smack her hands against his broad chest and tell him how terrified she'd been and say that she'd nearly been killed. She'd suffered nearly a dozen bites, and though they were only superficial wounds, they stung.
'I had to leave,' Tal said. A desperate look crept into his eyes. 'I couldn't take the chance that… I might have…'
Larajin sat down on the table beside the jumbled chess pieces. Now that she was face to face with Tal, the hurt inside her was as chill and sharp as the point of the icicle she'd used to kill the rats. Wordlessly, she pulled up the hem of her skirt to show him the bites on her leg. The skin around the bandages was puffed and red.
'Did you get them treated?' Tal asked, concern in his eyes. 'Rats are diseased creatures. Their bites-'
'You know how to use a knife,' Larajin said. 'You're one of Master Ferrick's top pupils. If you'd stayed to protect me, I wouldn't have any bites. I just want to know why you ran, Tal. Why?'
Tal sagged into the armchair with a heavy sigh. He stared at the bandage on Larajin's wrist. This time, when he reached out for her, Larajin let him take her hand. For a long moment, they sat in silence, listening to the crackle of the fire as something warred with itself in Tal's troubled eyes.
'Larajin,' he said, leaning closer. 'There's something I must tell you about myself. I'm-'
The door to the library opened at just that moment. Master Thamalon the Elder strode into the room, then stopped as he saw Larajin and Tal seated by the fire. Dark eyebrows drew together as his penetrating eyes took in Larajin's hand in Tal's. Startled, Larajin jerked her hand away and hurriedly pushed the skirt of her servant's uniform back over her knee. The elder master's eyes narrowed. When Larajin realized what he must be thinking, her face flushed.
As Tal stood to face his father, Larajin bowed her head and began nervously setting the chess pieces back on the board. They kept falling over, and soon black and white were jumbled together.
Tal read his father's stern look instantly. 'Father, I can explain. Larajin was… We-'
'Tal, I want a word with you,' the elder master said. He used his quiet voice, the one he'd always employed when Larajin and Tal were just children, romping through the halls together and running headlong into dignitaries and guests.
