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Carrying the tiny lamp, she went to her chests. She could not go in long skirts and mantles. At thebottom of her chest was an old riding cloak, woven of thick heavy fabric from the valley and lined withfur; it was not rich enough to rouse greed in anyone she passed, but it was warm and durable. There wasan old and shabby pair of her brother’s riding breeches, patched with leather, which she had worn forriding about the estate; it was a wiser choice than her own long, loose riding mantle. She added a knittedblouse, a long, thick, lined tunic, socks knitted from the spun fur of the forge folk, and her fur boots. Shemade a small parcel of a change of linen and some small trinkets, which she might sell or barter for helpon the way. Finally she braided her hair and tied it into a woolen cap. This done, she put out the lampand went to the balcony again. Until this moment, the actual preparation for the journey had obscured thereally basic fact: exactly
 
how
 
was she to get out of the castle?

There were secret passages. She knew some of them. There was one, for instance, leading from thewine cellars near the old dungeon. The only thing necessary was to get into the wine cellar so that shecould get into the secret passage. Perfectly simple. And what would her guards be doing while shedescended the stairs and went into the wine cellar, conveniently managing to leave them outside? Drinking wine? That might be fine, if she could get them drunk enough, but they would certainly besuspicious at anything she offered them, on guard for a trick.

Another exit from the castle—calling it secret was a mere technicality, a way of saying that it had beenunused for years and nobody bothered guarding it any more—was the passageway that led down intothe cliffs and the abandoned forges where, in an earlier day of Darkover, the dark, stunted mountainpeople had worshipped the fires that lit their forges. There they had made the ancient swords and thestrangely propertied artifacts which those who had never seen them used, called magical. The fires andforges had been silent for centuries, the little people withdrawn into the deeper hills; the Storns had comelong after they were gone. As a child Melitta, with her brothers and sister, had explored the caves andabandoned dwellings of the forge folk. But they and all their magic, were gone. Their poor and scatteredremnants now dwelt in villages near Storn, and they had been captured and driven along with the farmfolk; they were more helpless than Melitta herself.

She looked over the balcony again, her mouth curving in what might have been a smile in better days.
 
Ineed wings
 
, she thought.
 
My guards are too much afraid of Brynat to molest me here; while I stayin this room, they will stay outside in that hallway, and swear to him that I am inside here. Ishould have managed these things better; I should have spent my childhood in a room with one ofthe secret passages. I can think of a dozen ways to get out of the castle
 
—
 
but I have to get out ofthis room first, and I can’t think of a way to do that
 
.

A faint glimmer of light wavering beneath her showed her that, on a lower floor and some rooms away, Allira moved in the Royal Suite. She thought, despairingly,
 
Storn should have wakened Allira. There isthe old hidden way from the Royal Suite, down into the cliff people’s village. Allira could simplywait till Brynat was sleeping, and slip away
 
…

Mad schemes spun in her mind. She had access to her sister; the guards would follow her to the doorsof the Royal Suite but not follow her inside; could she manage to get in there and find the old entrance tothe passage? At what hour could they be safe from Brynat’s intrusion? Could she count on Allira to trickhim, drug him, even hold him in talk or in sensual play while she, Melitta, slipped past?

I dare not depend on Allira
, she thought with something like despair.
 
She would not betray me, but

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she would not have courage to help me, or risk angering Brynat, either
 
.

If I went down to her rooms, with the gurads following me
—
 
how long could I count on beingalone with her before they summoned Brynat, or grew suspicious when I did not return? And if Ivanished from her rooms
—
 
they would tear her to pieces, to find out what way I had gone, and Iwould be pursued before the sun was well up. That’s no help
.

But the thought persisted. It might very well be her only chance. It was, of course, to risk everything onone throw; if Brynat returned while she was with Allira, something might rouse his suspicions and shewould be consigned to securer custody. For all she knew, her guards had orders to report to Brynat ifshe and her sister spoke together for more than a few minutes.

But if no one knew I was with Allira?

How could she get to Allira’s room unseen?

The old Darkovans had mastered the secrets of such things. The magic electrical net which protected Storn’s trance was only one of the powers with which Melitta was familiar—but none of them were ofuse to her now. There were magical cloaks which threw a veil of illusion around the wearer and let themwalk unseen, by bending the light, but if Storn had ever owned one, Melitta did not know where it was,or how to use it. She could slip up to the Sunrise Tower, if she could get there, and pull the magical birdplumage over her head, and fly out and away from the castle—but only in illusion. What she saw wouldbe real enough—Storn, she knew, had watched the battle that way—but her body would lie in trance inthe Tower, and sooner or later, she would be drawn back to it. That was not the kind of escape whichwould do any good.
 
I need wings
 
, she thought again.
 
If I could fly right off this balcony and downinto that same Royal Suite where Brynat has taken Allira
 
…

She stopped in mid-thought, grimly. She had no wings. Thinking about them was no good. But she hadtwo sturdy arms, two sturdy legs, ten strong fingers and she had been trained since childhood in rockclimbing.

She went to the edge of the balcony, fantasies and plans vanishing in a cold, realistic assessment of theproblem. She could not fly down to the Royal Suite. But, with strength, caution, and good luck, it wasremotely possible that she could
 
climb
 
down to it.

She leaned over, fighting a sudden surge of dizziness. A hundred feet of rough, sheared stone fell awayinto a chasm below. But the castle wall was not sheer, not smooth. Centuries ago, it had been built ofrough stone, the very bones of the mountain, hewn in great lumps and cemented into place with ancienttools which would have blunted too swiftly if the stone had had to be smoothed. A wealth of windowledges, archer’s slits, balconies, outside stairways and projections lumped and ridged the gray sides ofthe old castle.

When I was a child
, she thought,
 
Storn and I used to climb everywhere. I was whipped once forfrightening our nurse out of her senses by climbing to a third-level balcony and making faces ather from the arbor. I taught Edric to climb on the balconies down lower. I’ve never climbed thishigh
 
—
 
I was afraid of falling. But this part of the castle should be as climbable as the lower part
.

She knew that if she fell she would be broken on the crags far below.
 
But why should I fall from twohundred feet in the air, if I could manage not to fall from fifteen feet
 
?

You never thought about that because it wouldn’t have mattered if you did fall from fifteen feet
,

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her common sense told her, but she hushed the voice, packed up the thought into a tiny box, shoved it into the back of her mind and left it there.
 
And suppose I do get killed
 
, she told herself defiantly.
 
Edric didn’t mind risking being killed in the siege, or if he did mind, he risked it anyway. I took bow and arrow myself, and I could have been shot or knifed down on the ramparts. If I was willing to die then, in the hope of defending Storn Heights, then why should I hesitate to take the same sort of risk now? If I get killed, I get killed, and at least I won’t have to worry about Brynat’s rabble lining up to take turns raping me
 
.

It wasn’t exactly a comforting thought, but she decided that she could make it do for the moment. Shehesitated only a moment, her hands on the railing. Off went the fur-lined gloves; she thrust them deep intothe pockets of Edric’s breeches. She buttoned the cloak back and tied it into the smallest possiblecompass at her waist, hoping it would not catch on a projection of stone. Finally she slipped off herboots, standing shivering on the stone balcony, and tied them together by their laces round her neck. Ifthe thongs caught on a stone she might strangle, but without boots she would be helpless in the snow, andher trained weather sense told her that the snow could not be very long delayed. Then, without givingherself time to think she swung herself up and over the edge of the balcony, sat there for a moment takingthe exact bearings of the room and balcony she wanted—forty feet below her and almost a hundred feetaway to the left—and slipped down, lodging her stockinged feet in a crevice of the stone, finding ahandhold to spread-eagle herself against the rough wall.

The crevices between the stone seemed smaller than when she had climbed about on them as a child,and she had to move by feel on the cold stone. Her feet ached with the cold before she had moved fiveyards, and she felt first one, then another of her nails split back and break as she clutched the dark, roughstone. The moonlight was pale and fitful, and twice a white streak that she took for a crevice in thepaleness turned out to be a crumbling, evil-smelling bird-dropping. But Melitta clung like a limpet to eachcrevice, never moving more than one hand or one foot until she was securely anchored, in some newhold.

Evanda be praised
, she thought grimly,
 
that I’m strong and tough from riding! If I were a girl to sitover my sewing, I’d drop off in two yards
 
! Even strong as she was, she felt every muscle tremblingwith cold and tension. She felt, also, that in the pale moonlight, she must be clearly visible against the sideof the castle, a target for an arrow from any sentry who happened to look up on his rounds. Once shefroze, whimpering as a small light and a fragment of voice, blown on the wind, came round the corner,and she knew one of Brynat’s soldiers on some business below passed beneath her. Melitta shut hereyes and prayed he would not look up. He did not; he went on singing drunkenly and, almost exactlybeneath her, a hundred feet below, and on the narrow path between the castle and the cliffs, opened thefly of his breeches and urinated into the abyss. She held herself taut, trembling against hysterical laughter. After what seemed an hour he stooped, picked up his lantern, shrugged his clothes into place andstumbled on his way again. Melitta thought she had forgotten how to breathe, but she managed it again,and forced her taut fingers, gripping at a stone, to move again toward the lighted balcony below.

Inch by slow inch—a finger, a toe, a cold yard at a time—the girl crept like an ant down the wall. Once,her heart flipped over and stopped as a pebble encrusted in cement broke away under her fingers, andshe heard it slide away and ricochet off a projection beneath her, rebound with what sounded like gunfireoff the rocks below, and finally clatter into the darkness. Every muscle tight, she held her breath forminutes, sure that the sound would bring soldiers running, but when she opened her eyes again, the castlestill lay bathed in the empty light of the setting moons and she still clung to the wall in her comfortingsolitude.

The moonlight had dimmed considerably past the shoulder of the mountains, and thick mists werebeginning to rise below, when at last her feet touched the stone of the balcony and she let go and slid,

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dropped down on the stone railing, and crouched there, just breathing in deep gasps of relief. When she could move again, she slipped her hands into her gloves, her feet into the fur-lined boots, and wrapped herself tightly in the cloak, grabbing it tight to lessen her shivering.

The first hurdle was passed. But now she must get inside and attract Allira’s attention without running therisk that Brynat would see. She had come too far to be stopped now!

She crept like a small shaking ghost across the stone balcony and pressed her face against the veinedcolored glass, joined with strips of metal, which closed the double doors of the balcony. The doors werebolted inside and lined with heavy thick curtains of tapestry, and Melitta had a sudden hysterical pictureof herself perched out there like a bird for days, uselessly rapping like a bird at the glass, unheard, untilsomebody looked up and saw her there.

She also feared that it might be Brynat who drew aside those curtains and looked straight out into her

eyes.

She tried to force herself to approach the window, but the picture of Brynat’s fierce face was socompelling that she literally could not make herself raise her hand. She
 
knew
 
he was behind that tapestry. She sank down, nerveless and shaking, and waited, her mind spinning.

Storn, Storn, you came to me before, help me now! Brother, brother! Gods of the mountains,what shall I do
? She begged and commanded her weak limbs to move, but she kept on crouching there,frozen and motionless, for what seemed like hours. Finally, slowly, her frozen body and brain began towork again, and she began to think.