“If I have a fresh mount, I can make it by midnight, sir.”
“Well enough. You know what you have seen. Report it to your Sergeant. And take him this message from me.” Imfry drew toward him a writing sheet, the small ink holder, and the pen. As he had before at the conclusion of such interviews, he wrote a few lines, dipped his finger tip in ink to impress beneath his signature.
“Mattine!” he called and as the forester appeared in the doorway, “a fresh mount for this guardsman.”
“To be sure, m’lord.”
When the man was gone, Imfry stared into the fire. Roane stirred, unable any longer to bear the silence in the room, the circling of her own thoughts.
“You say there is a way into Urkermark besides the gates?”
“It was meant to be a bolt hole out. Our history has never been without its wars and alarms, dynastic struggles. The games in which we were the pieces have often been bloody ones. I wonder who took satisfaction from that? The machines could not. But were the results somehow known to those devils who fostered them upon us?” He looked at her as if he wanted an answer.
“At first they must have been. There would be no other reason for experimenting. But the Psychocrats have been dead a long time.”
“The machines have only been dead for days and look what is upon us now. I wish I knew why it seems to affect some more than others. At any rate, the Queen is our first concern. It could well be that Reddick has set himself up as king. Which leaves two possible fates for Ludorica—either she died with the destruction of the crown, or else she is held captive to back Reddick’s intrigues. In either case he must not be allowed to—” Imfry fell silent again, his face repelling Roane. That there was a strong bond between him and the Queen, Roane had known from the first. And if the Queen was dead-She gave a sigh, wondering if she herself would ever be free of her burden of guilt. It seemed that as soft as that sound was, it was enough to arouse him from his dire thoughts, and when he turned to her there was a faint relaxation about his mouth. “Rest, mlady, while you can.” He nodded at a door to an inner chamber. “We may have precious little time in which to do so.
Yet it was morning when the inn maid drew aside the curtains to let in a pale sunshine.
“M’lady.” She curtsied when she saw Roane watching her sleepily. “The Colonel says you must be on your way soon. But there is hot water for washing, and these also.” She pointed to folded clothing on a chair. “They are not what a fine lady wears, being of my own seaming, but the Colonel says they will do.”
“But I cannot take your clothes,” Roane objected, even though she shrank from drawing on again the stained and sweated garments in which she had lived for days.
“Oh, mlady, the Colonel has given me that which will buy me twice what he selected from those I showed him. And much finerl But these are new, and there is a rain cloak to wear.”
Roane bathed, thankful for the water and the soap, which smelled of sweet herbs. She put on one of the divided riding skirts and the tight bodice jacket, both of green-blue, but lacking the bright braid and embroidery she had seen before. There was a gray cloak, lined in green-blue, with an attached hood. Roane tried to order her hair. It had grown from the close crop and had now reached a length difficult to keep in order, straying about her face. She was still tugging at it as she went out into the other room, where the maid was putting a platter of food on the table.
“Please, m’lady, the Colonel asks that you make what speed you can.”
“Surely.” Roane found that for the first time in days she was really hungry. Though she ate as fast as she could, she left a well-cleaned plate behind her.
The maid ushered Roane down the stairs. There were many men in the common room, most of them eating in a hurried fashion, calling for refills of tankards. Most of their faces were strange but Mattine waved to her from the doorway and they quickly made room for her to pass.
Imfry stood by a duocorn, critically surveying a second mount. As Roane came up he gave her a quick greeting and then indicated that animal.
“She is warranted sound and steady-going, and we shall not have to use her for long, but she is a sorry-looking beast.”
The mare was, Roane had to admit, a scrawny being, with a very ragged, rough mane at the root of her stubbed horns and only a wisp of a tail. Also she bawled a protest as the Colonel swung Roane into the saddle on her bony back, where she held on with a grim determination to last out the trip.
They rode out at the head of a troop which had been even further augmented during the night hours. “We make for Urkermark?” Roane asked. “Yes, but by the hidden way.”
So they turned aside from the highway onto the second lane feeding into it. And a little farther on they leaped their mounts over the way hedges, and crossed open fields, where hoofs cut into crop planting, trampling half-ripened grain. It seemed that Imfry was taking the straightest line possible to his goal.
They veered to the west, seeming to Roane’s mind to be heading directly away from their goal. But that brought them at about noon to the bank of a river and along that they angled back east, following the course of the flow as a guide. Not far along they came to one of those bridges with a small triangular tower as a part of its structure.
There they dismounted. Imfry and the Sergeant, plus two guardsmen, went to the tower. The men produced iron bars and set to work pounding in and breaking loose the blocks below the offering slit.
A block of masonry crumbled only too readily under that assault and they dragged the stones out of the way. With the same bars they swept the floor within. Coins spun into the air, fell into the grass, but the workers paid no attention.
Now the sun shone on the dusty floor, making plain a groove in the stone. Sergeant Wuldon worked the tip of a lever into the depression, under a small bar of stone set across it. He put his full strength on the lever, the men and the Colonel joining in his effort. There was a harsh grating, and the stone moved com-plainingly. Once it was up the two blocks on either side were released and drawn out in turn.
A short time later Roane found herself descending a steep ladder of stone, lit by the glow of lanterns held by those who went before. Then she faced a long passage walled and buttressed with stone slabs.
The way was dark and there was an unpleasant smell of damp. But also there was now and then a very welcome whiff of fresher air, as if a ventilating system existed. There was only room for two to walk abreast, so their company was strung out, Imfry and Mattine at the head, Roane with the Sergeant, and the remainder of the troop behind.
For the most part their path was level and Roane thought that the making of such a way had been a formidable task. She was beginning to wonder if it did run for leagues clear to Urkermark when they were faced by a new series of steep steps, down which they went to a yet deeper level. Here there were no signs of man’s building, but rather a series of cuts and caves, opening one into another, some large beyond the reach of lantern light.
Imfry went boldly on as if he knew the way well, though by all indications it must have been a long time since any had passed on this hidden road. He paused at last to consult his direction disk.
“Turn right here—” He signaled with the lantern. They were in one of the wider caves and the men were bunching up behind them.
Imfry went more slowly now, he and Mattine holding higher the lanterns they carried. And at length these revealed another stair, down which moisture dripped from where it gathered in great beads on the stone.
Roane climbed warily, fearing the slipperiness of the stone and the steepness of the steps. They ended in a stone passage fronting a fourth flight of stairs. The steps were enclosed on one side with wooden paneling, hung with thick spider webs heavy with the dust of years. Up and up, though Imfry went slowly, and apparently counting as he went, as if some tally of the steps was a key he needed.