Kadolan was hurled aside and almost fell as Darad spun around the jamb, slammed the door wide, and vanished into the dark interior. She heard a bonecracking thump and a muffled cry. She followed, through the entrance, into a small, dark chamber. There was a chair in one corner, stairs opposite, a body on the floor, and a dark giant standing over it, topped by a gap-tooth wolfish grin.
“Good so far!” Darad rumbled. “Shut the door. Right. You stay close now!”
“Wait!”
A body on the floor! She had killed a man.
Where was the good in that, to offset the obvious evil? The thought was appalling, and even worse was the certainty that she could not halt what she had started, and more bloodshed must follow. Ignoring her command to wait, the warrior went leaping up the stairs, sword in hand.
“Stop!” she cried, and hurried after him. She heard crashes and a shriek that became a ghastly bubbling noise as she emerged into another room. Light streamed through a barred window onto three bodies and Darad gloating over them. Killer and floor and furniture were splattered with brilliant red. She had never seen so much blood.
This was a talent for fighting magnified to genius by a word of power.
One of the men on the floor began to groan, and move. Darad casually chopped off his head.
Kadolan spun away from the sight, thrusting knuckles into her mouth to stifle a rising scream. The room began to sway, but she was granted no time for hysterics or fainting. The door flew open and a brownclad man burst in and stopped, staring down aghast at the slaughter. Darad crossed the room in a blur, grabbed the newcomer by his tunic, hauling him forward and slamming him back against the stonework . . . once . . . twice. Then he dropped him.
They listened. Silence.
The jotunn leered at Kadolan’s expression. “Only djinns!” he said, sheathing his bloody sword. “Come here. You listen good.”
He stopped and raised the man he had stunned, pushed him against the wall again, and this time held him there with no visible effort. He slapped his victim’s face a few times to rouse him, then pulled the man’s own dagger from his belt and held the point before his eyes.
“You know where the faun is?”
The guard was barely more than a boy, one of the family men. He sported a pink mustache, but his beardless cheeks had turned a sickly pale mauve. His turban had fallen off, loosing torrents of ginger curls, and all the knives and swords and blades hung on his person were going to do him no good at all. He made some incoherent gibbering noises.
The point of the dagger went into his left nostril. Ruby eyes bulged and his neck seemed to stretch. “You know where the faun is? Else you no good to me, djinn.”
“Yethir.”
“Tell me how to go there.”
“Ug . . . ug . . .”
“Tell or die!”
“Go right. Second left. Right. Downstairs all the way.”
“That’s all?”
“Yethir!” Suddenly he screamed: “I swear it!”
“Good!” Darad cut his throat and dropped him. He said, “Come, lady, shut the door,” and shot out into the hallway.
Kade reeled after him, closing the door. Darad was already only a fading drumbeat of footsteps, and he apparently did not need her assistance with the simple directions.
He met only one more man on the way. Kade heard an oath, but by the time she turned the corner, the wide corridor was empty. She hurried along the trail of blood, wondering if Darad was taking the corpse to use as a shield, or if he was just expecting to hide evidence. Many of the stains must be dribbles from Darad himself, for he had bathed in it.
Left . . . right . . . She came to a dark opening, access to a spiral stair. Faint muffled thumps of boots came from below. She ran on to the next corner and stretched on tiptoe to remove a lamp from its hook. Then she came back to explore the stairs.
They were narrow and uneven and tricky, the only handhold a thick rope hanging by the newel, winding down into the unknown. She was grateful for it, though, thinking that a broken leg now would not help the cause at all. Darad must be far ahead of her, committing Gods-knew what sort of atrocities on her behalf. Shadows danced for her lamp. She almost tripped on a body, and lost more time clambering by it to continue her descent. It was probably the one Darad had been dragging.
She emerged into a dark and extremely fetid cellar, and the feeble lamp showed nothing but floor anywhere. She listened and heard nothing but a faint dripping . . . only water, hopefully . . . and an echoing hollowness that suggested a large space. Then she thought to examine the floor and found a few spots of blood. Of course they led to another opening, another stair, right by the one she had just left. Even Darad had found that.
The second stair was narrower and steeper, and carved from solid rock. There was no rope to cling to, either. Up in the real world, night had ended. Here it never would, but her lamp was already guttering and its supply of oil might be timed to run out just after dawn. The air was indescribably thick and fetid. She shivered convulsively, and she would have fled anywhere in the world had she been able to think how to go about it. Five men dead already! Somehow the jotunn’s command to follow seemed to be the only option open to her, and her feet continued to obey without any further instructions from her.
Then a monster reared up out of the dark in front of her—pale eyes glaring in a blood-covered ogrish face . . . white canine teeth like fangs . . . Great scarlet hands reached for her, snatched her lantern away, and extinguished it. Shocked and blinded, she overbalanced and would most certainly have fallen had the giant not taken her bodily in those gory hands. He carried her as he backed down to the foot of the steps.
Breathless and giddy, Kadolan found herself in a bare room like a cave, its rock-carved roof low enough to be oppressive even for her, while Darad was forced to stoop. She saw no furniture, only some ominous chains heaped in one corner and corroded staples set into the walls. Somewhere she could hear voices.
There were a few doors set in the side walls, all closed and very likely hiding nothing but empty cells. Even for a dungeon this place had a very unused feel to it.
The end wall, facing the stair, held two doorways, side by side. One door was open, showing the cell beyond it utter black and presumably empty; but the other door was closed, and light was streaming from a barred grille in that closed door. This was horribly reminiscent of a chapel, the bright window and the dark. But the voices also were coming from the illuminated cell.
The air was nauseating. She wondered how anyone could stand it, and was glad she could not identify all the mingled stenches. Yet she thought she registered a slight breeze, and of course this sewer would become a deathtrap very soon if it had no ventilation at all.
Untroubled by heat or stink or religious symbolism,
Darad was standing, listening, and literally scratching his head. Beyond the door dice rattled, and some men laughed. Master Rap must be in there. Azak had ordered that the prisoner was to be guarded at all times.
Perhaps Azak had also given orders that the prisoner was to be killed at the first sign of a rescue attempt. Most certainly the door would be bolted on the inside. It would not be opened to strangers, nor without this empty space being inspected through the grille. Those were obvious precautions.
There seemed to be at least four or five men in there. How many could one jotunn killer handle at a time? How could the intruders persuade the defenders to open the door? How long before someone found the shambles upstairs and the guards arrived in force?
Kade leaned weakly against the wall and wondered why she had ever expected to outwit Azak at his own game. The sultans of Arakkaran had been practicing this sort of iniquity for centuries; he had probably imbibed a skill for it with his mother’s milk.
Darad turned to glance at her, and she could just see the hideous expression on his bloody face. He had drawn his sword again and didn’t know what to do with it. She was in command.
“Andor,” she whispered.
There was a pause, and then the man holding the sword was Andor. He almost dropped it, and the point struck the floor with a clink that sounded terrifyingly loud. Andor staggered, then recovered. He had not been heard; the gaming and laughter continued.