He was somewhat surprised when she shook her head, cutting him off.
“No, the axe is near. The axe is coming to us!”
“Did your vision explain how the axe is traveling?” he asked, more tartly than he intended.
She didn’t seem to notice his skeptical tone. “Someone is bearing it. Mostly he keeps it masked, or I would sense it more strongly, but twice now he has used it, pulled the cover away from it. I could hear it calling to me, full of promise, crying for vengeance. It is the will of Gonnas, my lord!”
This conversation was getting more disturbing with each utterance. “What about the elf? Did you dream about the Elven Messenger?”
That, of course, was his great nightmare, that he would again be tormented by the creature who had been behind his problems for eight years. It was the elf who had taken the axe, who had led the Arktos across the sea to Brackenrock, and it was he who had drawn the king on his last, fateful adventure to Dracoheim. Although there was no evidence, he had hoped the elf was dead.
Stariz shook her head. “No, I saw no suggestion of any specific person. I think we are safe in the knowledge that he was killed in the explosion of the Golden Orb.”
“Yes … he must be dead, and that woman, too, the chieftain of Brackenrock, but then who else has the talisman of our god? Who is bringing the Axe of Gonnas to Winterheim?”
“That is what I intend to find out. I shall go to the temple again in the morning. There I will pray to the Willful One and hope that he favors me with illumination. My lord husband, I am convinced that this is a real opportunity. Trust me, the axe is nearby!”
“I trust you,” he said, lying. “Let me know as soon as you learn anything else.”
“Certainly, Sire, I will,” she replied, bowing her head meekly.
“Very well. Now, I intend to retire early tonight,” he said, pushing back his chair, rising to make his escape. It was only then that he remembered the subject raised by Captain Verra, a matter that could benefit from his wife’s unique skills. “One more thing, my queen?”
“Yes, Lord King?” Stariz waited expectantly.
“Have your contacts reported any rumblings about unrest among the slaves-more than the usual, I mean? Do you have any indications of a possible uprising?”
“I cannot say that any such reports have come to my attention, not in the immediate past,” she replied. “Of course, there were those treacherous smiths I discovered in the foundry last fall, but we put them to death at the Sturmfrost feast, you recall. Why do you ask this? Have you heard a rumor?”
“Just something from one of the grenadiers-a good officer. He said that there was some unusual activity in the Nobles’ Marketplace, and he wondered about some of the slaves there.”
“Interesting. It is a place where the humans mingle with little supervision,” Stariz said. “I agree, it’s a potentially dangerous situation. I will look into the matter at once.”
“I knew you would,” said the king, content that the issue was in capable hands. He exited the dining room with a bounce in his step, ready to get a good night’s rest.
After the way Thraid had been working him, Gonnas knew, he needed it.
Strongwind waited until everyone in the apartment was asleep. Brinda, the last to retire, had blown out her lamp a half hour earlier, and he could hear the measured breathing coming from behind the curtain where she and her husband shared a pallet. Slowly, quietly, the Highlander rose to his feet and padded out of the slave quarters into the great room. He pulled the outer curtain closed over the slaves’ alcove, and ignited a small oil lamp.
Next he pressed his ear to Thraid’s door, satisfied to hear the sonorous snores that meant his mistress was drowsing deeply. He was relieved that she had demanded a drink after her bath and that he had had the foresight to make it very strong. He hoped she was sleeping very soundly.
Finally, he looked around, wondering where to start his search for the secret door. He ruled out the walls of the kitchen, since they fronted the courtyard. Likewise Thraid’s bed chamber-one wall of which abutted the street outside.
One possibility was the great room, another was a wall of the social parlor, and a third was the storeroom. All of these abutted the bedrock of the mountainside and could provide cover for a hidden passage.
He started in the great room, holding the light close to the wall, grateful that the furnishings were still spare and that nearly the whole stone surface was bare. He spent a long time going back and forth, probing with his fingers, studying each irregularity, looking for some evidence of a crack, a breach, any kind of opening. After a half hour he was forced to conclude that the surface was solid stone.
Next he moved into the storeroom, pulling the door shut behind him, then turning the lamp wick up to its full height. He repeated the inspection on the two walls of the chamber that allowed possible connection to the city’s mountainous bedrock and once again failed to find any indication of a concealed passage. After refilling his lamp from the barrel in this chamber, he turned to the small parlor.
The parlor had three walls joining other rooms of the apartment but one surface adjacent to the mountain. Once again he pulled the door shut behind him and turned up the lamp to full brightness. The room was unfurnished and-in his estimate-hardly ever used. His attention was immediately drawn to the bearskin hanging on the wall, the only decoration of any kind in here.
As soon as he pulled the pelt aside, he knew he had found his secret panel. The outline of a door was faint, but he could clearly see a deep crack.
The portal seemed securely set in its frame, but he knew there had to be a way to open it. He turned his attention to the small alcoves set in the wall, perches for the lamps that were a feature of every house and every room in this subterranean city. There were two of them here, each with an iron bracket mounted in place. He reached into the alcove closest to the door, took hold of the bracket, and gave it a twist.
Immediately he heard a rumble of grinding stone, and with a touch to the bearskin he felt the wall behind the pelt sliding away from him. After a few seconds the sound, which was too faint-he hoped-to rouse any of the sleepers, ceased. Pulling the skin to the side again, he observed a narrow hallway revealed, extending only a couple of steps before it became a steep, narrow stairway leading up.
Quickly Strongwind adjusted the bearskin then turned the bracket to slide the door closed again. He was certain the route led all the way to the top of Winterheim, to the Royal Level, possibly the king’s own apartments. He didn’t know yet how he would take advantage of his discovery, but he doused his lamp and went to bed on his own pallet feeling that he had learned something very important, something that would prove to be quite useful indeed.
14
Kerrick limped past a row of dead humans, the bodies arranged by the survivors with as much dignity as they could manage. The elf was sore, badly bruised in many places on his body, but he could not ask Dinekki for help. Her precious store of healing magic was expended on those with broken bones or ghastly wounds, and in this way she saved the lives of a score of valiant warriors before she collapsed from utter exhaustion.
“How many more are hurt badly?” asked Kerrick, looking first to Moreen, who shook her head, still trembling from the aftereffects of the fight. Next he turned to Bruni, who was carefully re-wrapping the Axe of Gonnas, handling the artifact with great, even reverent, respect.
“A few bruises,” the big woman said, moving her left arm through a stiff circle. “Nothing’s broken, though.”
Other warriors were moving around, bandaging wounds, collecting scattered arrows. The humans had quickly realized that those who had fallen into the chasm were utterly lost, the bodies beyond retrieval.
The survivors of the war party had all filed into the cavern. All of the ogres had been slain and their bodies dumped into the crevasse, but the cost of victory was dire. Some thirty-five humans had lost their lives in the frantic fight. Three more were terribly wounded, unable to walk, and though it broke their hearts the others knew they could only leave them behind to die. Each of the three had declined the shaman’s healing magic, knowing that it
