Renegade Wizards (18 page)

“Down,” Par-Salian said, exasperated, “we must go
down.”

“Sometimes you have to go up to go back down,” Ladonna suggested cheerfully.

Par-Salian grumbled something under his breath that Tythonnia couldn’t hear, but Ladonna’s smile widened.

The stairs opened into a small corridor that ended at a wall. A quick examination by Ladonna, however, and a touch of her light fingers, revealed a latch. The brick-faced door swung open into a dining room. It was a large chamber with a great table running along the room’s spine and dark chandeliers above. The places were all set, the silverware reflecting Tythonnia’s dagger torch, the goblets filled with some dark drink, and the plates stacked with potatoes and rice and a generous carving of boar meat. Seven doors lined
the sides of the room while opposite the secret passage lay a wide corridor.

Dust and spiderwebs and shadows encrusted the room, save for the table, which appeared freshly cleaned and served, except … no smell came from the food and no warmth graced the room. The three exchanged glances, knowing full well the scent of magic when they encountered it.

“It’s like it’s waiting to be lived in again,” Tythonnia said.

“Everything’s preserved until needed,” Par-Salian said. “Papers, the food … the important things protected until this is again a home.”

“If it’s ever a home again, don’t you mean?” Ladonna asked.

Par-Salian shrugged. “I hope so,” he said. “Reopening this place could mean a return of … hope. Or some such thing.”

“A return of the gods?” Ladonna said with a laugh. “You didn’t strike me as a believer.”

“They still bless us with magic,” Tythonnia said. “Their constellations are where they’re supposed to be in the sky. Why shouldn’t they come back?”

“Maybe because they withdrew the healing arts, dropped a mountain on our heads, and then left us with all the tools to murder each other,” Ladonna replied. “If you ask me, they’re waiting for us to kill each other so they can start anew. The gods can be as petty and as angry and as shortsighted as any of us. The only difference is they have the patience to do it for much longer.”

Par-Salian shook his head at Ladonna’s glib response, but he also grew quiet.

“Keep looking,” Tythonnia said quietly. “We need to get out of here.”

They traveled down the wide corridor, looking into the barrack rooms with their empty cots and chests, into sealed
chambers off the dining hall that once served as officers’ quarters. Par-Salian was adamant that nothing be touched or violated, but every time they passed a closed chest or lockbox or bureau, Tythonnia could see Ladonna struggling not to look. She thrived on mystery, and it was killing her to curb her curiosity.

Finally, they found another passage off one of the doors in the dining room, a corridor that opened into a large chamber. It was a railed balcony ledge surrounding a wide flight of stairs that led to the floor below.

“Finally,” Par-Salian said, but before he could leave the corridor, Tythonnia stopped him with a gentle hand on his shoulders. She nodded to the head of the stairs. The room was nearly octagonal, except for one side where the wall jutted out like a peninsula, and arrow slits along it faced the stairwell.

“It’s a strangle point,” Ladonna said. “I read about these … rooms where archers could slow and even halt an enemies’ advance.”

“That’s why this chamber is open,” Par-Salian whispered. “Do you think anyone is inside that room?”

“No,” Ladonna said, “I don’t think they had time yet. But I don’t know for certain.”

“I have an idea,” Tythonnia said. She closed her eyes and imagined herself melting, her identity protean. A dozen ideals sprang to mind, people she wished to be … all women. She focused on the knights they saw outside.

“Perubahan saya,”
she whispered. The magic overtook her body like long trickles of cold water down her dry skin. She suppressed a shiver.

“Wonderful,” Par-Salian exclaimed with a smile.

Even Ladonna nodded in appreciation. Tythonnia quickly studied her arms and body; she was covered in chain mail and a blue tabard with a sword stitched down its front. The illusion held no weight, but for all appearances, she was a female Solamnic.

Tythonnia entered the hall and walked directly toward the strangle point chamber. It bristled with arrow slits, and she tried not to show any fear. In the strongest voice she could muster, she demanded, “Have you seen them yet? Report!”

There was no answer, and she was easily within arrow-shot of anyone inside.

“Who’s in there?” Tythonnia demanded. Again, there came no answer. She hazarded a glance through one of the arrow slits, but the interior of the chamber was dark. She examined the surrounding doors, pulling them open to discover a small chamber and brick-lined walls behind two of the false iron doors. In one of the side rooms, however, was a staircase that wound its way up. After a quick study, she felt reasonably certain the area was empty. She motioned the others over.

“Down the stairs,” Par-Salian advised them, but Ladonna shook her head.

“Not yet. I read in the accounts of the tower that where one found false doors, one could find secret doors as well. The tower has two layers to it. What an invader might see and what a defender sees. Are you following?”

“Yes I understand, but—”

“Let her finish,” Tythonnia said. “She knows this place better than we do.”

Ladonna nodded gratefully. “The route of the invader is meant to confound and trap them. The route of the defender will be more direct. We are currently in a maze meant for the
invader.”

Par-Salian blushed and nodded. “You’re right, of course. Find the secret door, and we find our escape. If there is one,” he added as a warning.

“Just search,” she advised.

The three of them drifted to different parts of the chamber, each of them feeling along walls. They pushed exposed bricks, tugged at sconces, and leaned against sections of wall.
Her illusory skin shed, it was Tythonnia who discovered the incongruity along the peninsula wall covered in arrow slits. One panel of slits didn’t go all the way through. They were there for show.

Tythonnia jabbed each hole with her lit dagger until finally, she was met with a bit of give. The click of the door mechanism seemed to fill the chamber, and drew her companions to her. The door into the stranglehold point opened, and the three entered the brick-lined room with its archer alcoves. Par-Salian quietly squeezed Tythonnia on the shoulder, and she tried not to blush at the silent praise.

The stranglehold room opened up into an octagonal chamber with a thirty-foot square pit in the center. There were four archways, including the one they entered through, each located along the chamber’s cardinal point. Three archways opened into strangle point rooms, while the fourth exited onto the tower’s exterior ledge. Unfortunately, they were still fifty feet below the outside battlement, meaning any rampart guard could spot them if they stood in the archway.

The pit in the center of the chamber was a supply shaft for the tower’s defenders, with a series of ropes, winches, and pulleys extending down its length. A wood platform rested on the temple floor a hundred feet below, with ropes tethered at its four corners. Each floor below and above them had an opening where the platform might stop, though there was a good fifty feet between them.

Directly above them, however, were a handful of floating shapes, half gauze and half human, in advanced states of decay. They appeared to be drifting aimlessly. Par-Salian quietly motioned Ladonna and Tythonnia back, away from the lip of the shaft and out of sight.

“See? I told you this place was haunted,” Ladonna said in a low voice.

“We can try our luck with the outside ledge,” Par-Salian said, “though at this point, I can’t tell which direction we’re facing.”

Tythonnia glanced outside and said, “North. Toward Palanthas. There’s also the stairs we saw earlier, one going up and the other—”

“No, no,” Par-Salian said with a shudder. “I don’t wish to press our luck with the tower. No more stairs. No more maze. It’s the pit or outside.”

“Then we have three problems,” Tythonnia replied. “The first is getting down. The second is unlocking one of the giant steel gates that surround the courtyard. And the third is escaping on horses we no longer have … though I could conjure a horse.”

“Really?” Ladonna asked with a bemused eyebrow raised.

Tythonnia shrugged. “Well, you know—‘once a rider’,” she said. “It’s a trick all riders learn. But I’d need to study my spellbook to summon horses for all three of us. I’d have to conjure well enough for them to last half a day’s travel at least. Enough to get away from here.”

Par-Salian nibbled on his thumb a bit before nodding. “Very well. We can’t escape until dark as it is. That gives us some time to prepare. Tythonnia, study your spells. Ladonna, the spell you used to open the gold door, will it work on the steel doors?”

“No,” she said. “I’m afraid we’ll have to open it by hand. But how do we get down?”

“Feather fall,” Par-Salian said. “I have the very spell. It’ll carry our weight, but not the distance. We’ll have to jump twice: from one level to the next and then down again.”

Ladonna and Tythonnia exchanged glances. If the plan sounded a bit dubious, Par-Salian’s worried expression robbed them of their remaining courage. But for now they said nothing. Instead, they retreated into the strangle-point
chamber behind them, pulled out their spellbooks, and began studying the necessary incantations.

The studying was done in a few hours, while there was still sun to stretch light across the four horizons. Par-Salian was the first to fall asleep, leaving an anxious Tythonnia and introspective Ladonna to sit there, brooding while their compatriot snored.

Tythonnia’s nerves played with her patience and imagination. Was the pass beyond filled with knights waiting for them to emerge? Why were the renegade hunters after them? And were there more of them? She glanced at Ladonna, who also looked preoccupied by her own thoughts.

“What did you mean by ‘once a thief’?” she asked Ladonna.

Ladonna looked at her and smiled at some faint memory. “I’ve had a colorful past,” she admitted playfully. “There is no secret in that, even if I keep the details to myself. But my mistress, Arianna, she once told me to start thinking like a wizard. But once you live as a thief, it’s hard not to keep thinking like one.”

“I know the sentiment,” Tythonnia said. “My spells kind of reflect my upbringing, as a farm girl.”

“And your desire to misdirect … hide in plain sight, hmm?” Ladonna said.

Tythonnia decided not to argue a point that was likely truer than she wanted to admit. She was tired of her rivalry with Ladonna. “Maybe,” she admitted.

“Par-Salian’s more the straight arrow type,” Ladonna said with a quiet chuckle. She nodded toward the white wizard and whispered, “Funny that he’s attracted to me.”

A smirk graced Tythonnia’s lips and she nodded. “I’ve noticed. You two should marry, a Black and White Robe together … have some nice gray-robed babies.”

Ladonna laughed aloud and rushed her hand over her mouth, but Par-Salian remained fast asleep. “I envy your ability with them,” Ladonna whispered in a gentler tone than Tythonnia had heard from her, “with illusions. Arianna was never good at them, so I never learned them with any real skill. When we have more time, maybe you can teach me?”

“A Black Robe learning from a Red Robe?”

“One wizard of High Sorcery to another,” Ladonna amended.

Tythonnia nodded. “I’d be happy to.”

Ladonna smiled. “Now hush and get some sleep. We’ve got a hard night ahead of us.”

Tythonnia felt calmer, more ready to face the evening. She lay on her back, her arm tucked behind her head, waiting for sleep to overcome her. And just when she thought she’d never fall asleep, she finally did.

It began quietly, in the darkness of the evening, with no light save the glitter of stars and the stare of the red moon. They understood their role, each of them, and the only words spoken were the kind that electrified the skin, words of power that unlocked the hidden mechanisms of the world, words of magic.