He stared down in horror at his sodden garments, and then scowled at Kade. ”Now you know how it feels to have Darad’s memories.”
“How do we get in there?” she responded urgently. Time was desperately short. There was a trail of blood, there were bodies . . . there was certainly no time to wonder how they were ever going to get out. Andor belched and wiped his mouth with his free hand, pulling a face. He blinked at the solitary square of light. “Haven’t the foggiesh,” he whispered.
“Can you talk them into opening the door?”
“How many?”
“At least four.”
He shook his head, and swayed. “Too many. Just one, maybe. But they’ll cluster near the door for a sshtrnger—stranger. Beshides, ‘m not at my best today. Take too long.”
He blinked fondly at Kadolan and smiled a sheepish grin that called up all her mother instincts to understand and forgive.
She suppressed them. “Then call Doctor Sagorn and see if he has any bright ideas.”
“At least he’s sober,” Andor agreed solemnly, and vanished with a final circumspect hiccup.
Sagorn snapped, “Come!” Moving awkwardly, as if trying to avoid the touch of wet cloth, he led the way across the cave and ducked into the empty cell. Kadolan followed, wishing she was going to the light, not the dark—to the Good, not the Evil. Even she almost had to duck for the low doorway. The place was rank, a kennel, and the putrid, ammoniacal stench told her what it was being used for. But it was dark, and they could not be seen from the grille.
“How do we get in there?” she repeated. “Or separate them?”
“I don’t know! Warfare is not my skill. I think we just wait and trust our luck. Be quiet and let me think.” Kade stood and trembled, and knew that she was doing no useful thinking at all. All those deaths to save one man! And likely two more deaths would follow when she and her varying companion were discovered. It was terribly wrong. She had sinned dreadfully. She was serving the Evil.
A clatter of metal from the other door sent more icy tremors through her. Hinges creaked. Sagorn grunted and pulled her back, away from the faint gray rectangle of the doorway. Then the man holding her arm was Darad again.
“Have one for me, too, Arg!” a voice called, and there was laughter.
“You hold your own, Kuth!” a clearer voice shouted, out in the dark antechamber. The hinge creaked as the man closed the door behind him. “I couldn’t handle anything that size!”
There was another chorus of laughter and shouted agreements from Kuth. The door slammed and the bolt scraped. Arg brought no lantern, so there was only one place he could be going.
His shape darkened the entrance. He stopped and spread his feet. Darad waited until he was in full stream before he moved. Kade had already closed her eyes. When she opened them, the giant was dragging the body away from the doorway.
And was Sagorn again.
He stared down at the latest corpse. “That was unexpected,” he muttered.
“Does it help?”
“I can’t see how, except that it feels like luck. Two people with words of power ought to be twice as lucky, I’d think,” he muttered. “And right now anything would help . . . Ah !” He released a long sigh of inspiration.
“What—” Kadolan said.
“Just watch. Here!” He pulled a dagger from his belt—a dagger that might still be warm from cutting a boy’s throat. “Even Darad may need assistance this time.”
The handle was sticky. Kade accepted it reluctantly, unable to conceive that she would ever bring herself to use it. She opened her mouth to say so, and discovered she was facing yet another man—a shorter one, but not Thinal. Pale jotunn hair shone in the darkness. She should have recognized him, but she guessed first. “Jalon?”
As Andor had, the minstrel looked down at his bloodstained clothes and he shuddered even harder. His teeth chattered briefly. She knew Master Jalon to be a gentle, sensitive person, a dreamer. Never a killer.
“Why you?” she demanded. She could not take very much more of this. No more at all! She chewed knuckles again, fighting down a crazy urge to scream. She was a princess and at least half jotunn and she must behave accordingly. But perspiration was pouring from her, and the foul air was making her head thump, and she had never done anything more violent in her life than fly a hawk.
Inos! She was doing this for Inos! The thought seemed to steady her.
But Jalon also was teetering on the brink of panic. His teeth clattered again briefly, ending with a click as he clenched his jaw. Then he began to whimper. ”I can’t! He’s crazy! Impossible!”
Kadolan had no idea what plan Sagorn’s brilliance had devised. She knew only that a hundred family men would be pouring down those stairs any minute. There was just no time! She tried the argument that had worked so miraculously on Thinal.
“Please, Master Jalon! Try! For Rap’s sake?” The whimpering stopped in a gulp.
“Yes. For Rap! You’re right!” The minstrel brought himself under control with an effort that Kadolan heard more than saw. He put his head out of the doorway, cleared his throat quietly, and then shouted. She almost dropped her dagger from shock.
“Hey! Kuth! Look at this!”
It was a Zarkian accent. It was the voice of the dead man. It was perfect mimicry.
A muffled query . . . then a clearer one, as someone inside came to the grille. ”Who’s that?”
Jalon moved back a step. “It’s Arg, stupid. Who else would it be? Come and see this, for Gods’ sake.”
“See what?” The unseen Kuth was suspicious.
A lesser artist might have overdone it; Jalon knew when to stop. He went away, by becoming Darad, who crouched low, sword at the ready.
The bolt scraped. The hinges groaned. Kuth put his turbaned head out. ”Come on, Arg—you know the rules. Five in here always. You want me to go see something, then you gotta come here and—”
Darad went. Gritting her teeth and brandishing her dagger, Kadolan followed—out one door, in at the other, and don’t fall over the corpse, into the painful brilliance of the lamplit cell. The heat and stench struck her like a flood of boiling sewage, the stink of men and oil smoke, and excrement, and also a sweet rank rottenness that was worst of all.
The gamblers had been sitting on a rug at the far end of the room. Three were still scrambling to their feet, drawing their swords. Another had perhaps been already upright, for he was charging forward as Kade came in, and she saw Darad’s blade twist into his belly. It didn’t kill him, but the sound he made showed that it hurt. And right in front of Kade, where she must be careful not to trip over it, was . . .
That was where the awful smell was coming from. Naked, spread out like a chained butterfly, swollen, twisted, blackened flesh rotting alive . . . Could he possibly be still alive? Mercifully unconscious, of course.
Then she saw that Darad was backing. The cellar was just wide enough for three men abreast, and three men were what he faced. They all had scimitars. Two had drawn daggers also. They stepped over their screaming, writhing companion and continued to advance in line abreast. They were all stooping because of the low headroom, and Darad’s size was a handicap now.
In the romances Kadolan had read in her younger days, more action-related than those she preferred in her maturity, heroes were always taking on three or four villains at once. They held one off with a sword, another with a chair, and likely put the rest out of the fight with a kick. Rap had used chairs against Darad.
There were no chairs in this cell. There was a rug, with some cushions, and there were two dying men on the floor, one of them fastened there. And one swordsman could not handle three unless he took them by surprise.
Kadolan remembered that she was carrying a dagger. A dagger was very little use against a sword, and Darad was back almost as far as Rap, with nowhere else to go. She changed her grip, stepped to the left, and threw the dagger with all her strength at the man on that side. She would never have gotten in a second blow with it, anyway.
Even if the family men had registered that she had a blade, they might not have guessed that she would throw it, or could do so under that roof. At that range she could not miss, and yet she almost did. The blade struck the man’s shoulder and fell, but it distracted him, which was all the assistance Darad needed. He battered the center man’s sword aside, feinted at the Right-hand face, lunged before Center could restore his guard, slitting his sword arm from wrist to elbow. Then he parried Right-hand’s attack and riposted with a cut across the face. The wounds gave his opponents pause. Left-hand was still clutching his shoulder; Darad ran a sword into his heart and then took him by the belt. As the other two lunged simultaneously, he used the body as a shield against Center, while he parried Right-hand with his blade. Then he threw the body at Center and riposted under Right-hand’s guard. The rest was just a matter of tidying loose ends.