on breathing regularly. Al, flanked by two of his men carrying pitchers of water and trays of sandwiches, strode briskly into the room. I looked at Garth, saw his eyes take on life at the possibility that at least one of his arms would be freed to allow him to eat and drink. I was happy to see that was not going to be the case. The two Black Flame soldiers fed us. We ate and drank sparingly; by now, all of us were stained with our own urine, and we didn't wish to make matters worse.
'I have a message for you, Countess,' Al announced cheerfully. 'John Sinclair wants you to know that he loves you very much.'
'You're a liar!' Jan snapped.
'Well, it's true those weren't his exact words during our telephone conversation, but I'm sure that thought was in his mind. Why else bother to call?'
'No!'
'Yes. He promised to be here shortly after dawn to give himself up in exchange for letting you all go. I told him you would all be released after we had him in custody. He agreed. Of course, as you pointed out, he knows better; he's planning to join you in death, which I really find quite touching. But he has no idea what we have in store for him. Before you die, Countess, you will see John Sinclair as a thoroughly broken man begging us to kill him. He will be asked to kill you all with his bare hands, and he will do it. Now, why don't you all try to get some rest? Sleep well.'
So we waited some more. Clouds had covered the moon, cutting down on the light coming in through the windows. That was just fine with me, because it would further hinder any secret watcher from seeing what it was Veil and I were trying to do.
Garth's low voice rumbled in the night. 'Mongo, you awake?'
'Oh, yeah. Keep it down, because we don't know if anyone's listening.'
There was a pause, and then Garth spoke in an even lower voice. 'I still have the little item Insolers here used on you; it's wrapped around my wrist, outside my shirt cuff. I was hoping to use it to introduce Al to his head, but now I'm thinking I may never get the chance. Maybe if we can hobble our chairs back-to-back, you or Veil can get it off my wrist and we'll see if it can cut rope.'
'They'd be sure to hear the chairs scraping on the floor, and I'm not sure it would work anyway. But not to worry. Veil, how are you doing over there?'
'I'm doing,' Veil replied in a matching soft whisper, purposely slurring his words slightly so as to make them even harder to hear and understand. 'What about you?'
'Ten minutes, maybe less. Are we coordinated?'
'I'm about a half hour behind you. Considering the fact that I'm supposed to be your teacher, and you always hated to practice this, I find your newfound speed and skill rather embarrassing.'
'Well, they paid a lot more attention to you.'
'Jesus Christ,' Garth said in astonishment. 'Are you two-?'
'Right on,' Insolers said in a low voice, sounding at once excited and slightly amused. Neither Harper nor Jan spoke, but I could feel their eyes on me.
Garth obediently fell silent-for a few moments. When he spoke again, it was in an appropriate whisper, and he slurred his words as Veil had done. 'Mongo, are you guys really. . uh, doing you know what? How?'
'This really doesn't seem like the appropriate time or place to discuss it, Garth. However, suffice it to say that if you hadn't always been such a pisshead when it came to the martial arts, calling just about anything you heard a ninja bullshit story, I might have told you about
'My hero,' Harper whispered, and then giggled softly.
'We don't know how many of them there are, or where they are. We have to assume most of them are watching the perimeter of the castle and grounds waiting for John Sinclair to show up. We need to find a fast and simple way to get out of here. If we can get away from here, we may be in a position to intercept your man, or at least show some kind of signal that we've escaped. Any ideas?'
'We must get down to the lower level,' Jan whispered. 'There's a labyrinth to the west, and if we can get to-'
Suddenly, all of the lights came on, momentarily blinding me. I closed my eyes, fighting back the panic that welled in me. I was very close to slipping the last knot in the ropes that bound my wrists, and there had to be a considerable length of loose rope beneath my chair and behind me. If Al or one of his men saw the rope, they would know what was happening. We'd all be checked. Veil and I would be rebound, probably this time with thin wire, and there was no way we were going to get out of that ever, much less before dawn. I brought my legs together as far as I could, hoping to partially block any sight lines to the floor under my chair. Then I began frantically picking up the loose rope with my fingers, pushing the coils under my buttocks.
I slowly opened my eyes. Al and three Black Flame soldiers I hadn't seen before were standing at the opposite end of the huge library. Al was staring at us intently. I stared back, trying to look nonchalant, desperately hoping that no loose rope was visible on the floor around Veil or me, and that what I was feeling didn't show on my face. It was a very bad time for our captors to come and check on us. I glanced at Veil, who was blinking and yawning, as if he had just been aroused from sleep. There was no rope on the floor beneath Veil or behind his chair.
Apparently satisfied that we were where we were supposed to be, Al raised the walkie-talkie he was carrying to his mouth, pressed the Send button on the side, and spoke rapidly in Japanese. When he released the button, he was answered by static. He repeated the action, with the same result. If I'd had to hazard a guess as to what it all meant, I'd have ventured the opinion that our youthful leader had lost communication with one or more of his men. He was, for sure, not looking as bouncy as he had earlier in the evening. He cursed in English, then threw the walkie-talkie against one of the bookcases lining the wall to his left. He signaled to his men, who fanned out. Two of the men pointed their weapons at the entrances to the library, while the third nervously aimed his up at the balcony ringing the second level.
'Oh, my God,' Jan said with a sharp intake of breath. 'He's here! Chant's already here!'
That might be true, and all well and good, but the problem was that we were already, still, there too. And Al was showing disturbing signs of being more than a bit perturbed at the whole situation. If John Sinclair had indeed somehow managed to penetrate the ring of Black Flame soldiers and had entered the castle in order to rescue us, the fact of the matter was that his timing was as bad as Al's. The rope I had spent hours untying from my wrists was a painful lump under my buttocks and in the small of my back. I wondered if the Japanese had an expression concerning frying pans and fire.
As his men continued to slowly circle, sweeping the area around and above them with their automatic weapons, Al abruptly strode the rest of the way across the library, stopped in front of Harper and Jan. He reached into the back pocket of his black linen slacks, removed what appeared to be an ornately carved, rectangular box of enameled wood. He gripped both ends of the box, pulled. There was a soft, ominous clicking sound; the box separated to become the handles of two shiny, triangular-shaped knives. He raised his hands, placing the tip of one blade an inch or so from Harper's left eye, the other an equally small distance from Jan's right eye.
'Sinclair!' Al shouted, his voice echoing in the huge library. 'I hope you can hear me, because if you can't, each of these women is going to lose an eye for nothing! We'll talk! Show yourself!'
The odds for the six of us surviving this business, which had seemed fairly good only a minute or two before, were now rapidly diminishing; the chances that one dwarf, however well motivated, could overwhelm one man with two knives and three men with automatic weapons were nonexistent. Any move whatsoever on my part now would be the ultimate fool's play and would undoubtedly obliterate any lingering chances we might have for survival. As horrible as it was, having an eyeball punctured by the tip of a knife was preferable to dying. And he was going to take their eyes, any moment now. Even if I hadn't felt it in my bones, Al had already provided not only ample proof that he was not a man to bluff, but clear evidence that he enjoyed such things. However, without question, the only thing to do was to sit tight, let him stick the eyes, and then hope the men would leave for a while so that Veil and I could continue going about our business of engineering our escape.
On the other hand.
Al might be wrong about Sinclair being in the castle. Whether or not Sinclair was in our midst, Al wasn't going
