Sunset of Lantonne (20 page)

Before Therec could move, the man was on him, having moved faster than Therec could follow. With strength he had never felt in a human, the man slammed Therec into the wall, tightening his gloved hands around Therec’s neck.

“When you die, no one will find the king in time,” continued the man. “Who will even know to look down here? The usurper will scream for weeks as a result of your failure to protect him.”

The vice-like fingers tightened, and Therec began to black out. He struggled, but could not budge the man at all. Within seconds, he began to slip down the wall.

Ilarra lay on the damp floor, barely awake as she tried unsuccessfully to ignore the pounding on one side of her forehead and the acute pains throbbing across most of her body from the offhand blows the soldiers had given her on the way back to the prison. It had become routine enough that she no longer wondered where she was when she woke. In fact, she rarely thought of anything beyond the past.

The first few days in the prison had been a blur after a soldier had slammed her head against the doorframe by “accident” after mentioning that one of his friends had died in the attack by Altis. She knew days had passed as she drifted in and out of consciousness, but specifics were difficult to cling to until she had recovered. She thought she remembered there having been someone with her, but since fully waking, she had always been alone in the cell. Given that it had been quite some time since then, she had mostly put that thought aside.

Since she had managed to heal somewhat with time, Ilarra had continued to suffer from constant dizziness from her previous untreated injuries. The wound on her head had festered and made it difficult to think. Even once her fever had finally broken after a week or two, the dank cell had left her ill with no real way to tell time’s passing. The worse her fever got, the harder it was to choke down the sparse meals, which in turn made her even more sick.

The one thing Ilarra could use to measure the days was the arrival of those meals, though she was confident that the guards often forgot one or both in a given day.

Every so often, the men guarding her would throw open the door and rush inside to grab her before she could even sit up. They would drag her through the dungeon tunnels to a room where another group of men would shout questions at her about Altis and its plans. After she had convinced them that she did not know the answers or they had decided that the shouting had gone on long enough, she would be taken back to her cell for several more days, forgotten by the world.

At first, Ilarra had held out hope that the guards would eventually either bring her to a proper trial or release her with a warning once they knew she was no agent of Altis. Much of that hope had died when she heard the guard through the door talking about how a prisoner must have murdered one of the magisters, as they had found the body of a man named Kinet stuffed into a closet within the dungeon. If her relatively mild attack on the soldiers had warranted her time in the dungeon, them not knowing who had killed a magister would ensure that every prisoner remained where they were until they figured it out.

Once a month or more had passed, Ilarra had learned to do what the other prisoners did. She lay on the dank floor and waited to freeze or starve to death, or the day when she was released. Anything else was a waste of effort.

A scuffing noise on the stone floor outside made Ilarra open her eyes, wondering if it was already time for the servants to bring the slop that they called food. Time really had no meaning anymore, though her stomach grumbled more than usual, indicating that a meal had been skipped.

Ilarra pulled herself off the damp floor, watching as her long hair peeled wetly from the mold that grew on each stone. A thin layer of frost covered the grime of the room’s walls and floor, where the humidity of the deep cell had begun to freeze in the chill night air. Her bare feet sat in a shallow puddle of icy water, but after so long in the cell, she barely noticed. She had kicked off her sandals days earlier, as they had served no real purpose while lying still and did nothing to warm her feet.

Ilarra pushed herself into a sitting position and tried to keep her back straight so as to avoid putting any extra strain on her sore body. Even so, she whimpered softly as she got herself upright, feeling blood trickling down her cheek from her latest injury caused by the guards that escorted her to the interrogators. She had attempted to tend to the cut, but it refused to close properly in the dank cell, making her wonder how long it would be before infection had set in. If she were lucky, this wound might be the one that killed her, finally freeing her from the frost-covered cell.

Crawling toward the cell’s door—only barely visible in the dim light that trickled through the small grating at the far end of the room—Ilarra had to fumble on the floor to find the bowl that would normally hold gruel, bread, or some old fruits. Her fingers finally found it, and as she touched it, squeaks erupted from within and light feet darted over her hands, making Ilarra flinch. Soon, the horde of mice was gone, along with most of whatever had once been in the bowl.

Ilarra lay down where she was, too tired to drag herself anywhere else in the small cell. Not that it mattered to her. One chill stone was as good as another. At least if she rested near the door, she might beat the mice to her next meal. Each day, she had gotten slower at that, giving the vermin more of a feast.

A faint click nearby startled Ilarra and she looked around, wondering if the rats were back. It took her a moment to realize that the sound came from the door itself. She scrambled out of the way as the thick wooden door swung inwards, nearly slamming into her. The metal food bowl tumbled loudly away as the door crashed into the wall.

This was unprecedented. From what she had been told, her cell door would only open once a week for the guards to throw a bucket of cold water on her. That was her “bath,” they had told her during the last visit, though she got the impression some of the guards just found it entertaining to show up at random times of the night to dump icy water on sleeping prisoners.

Despite days of wishing she could see another person, Ilarra scrambled to the far side of the room, cowering with her hands over her face as the door finished opening. She buried her face in the remains of her skirt at her knees, waiting for the half-frozen water to hit her. Deep down, she prayed that the guards had come to kill her and put an end to the isolation.

Ilarra waited in the fetal position she assumed each time the door opened, ever since the first time she had been beaten by a guard. No sound or sign of the newcomer’s intentions came, and she slowly uncurled, wincing in the bright light that came from a torch or lantern. Keeping one hand just above her eyes, she adjusted gradually, finally making out a humanoid shape near the door, holding a lantern in its left hand.

“Please…release me,” she croaked, watching the person stand perfectly still. “Please.”

A second shape came stumbling toward her, pushed by a larger that dwarfed it. “I don’t think he’ll let me kill you,” the smaller man told her, his childlike face slowly coming into focus. A halfling, she guessed based on his size, unless the king had begun using human children in his prisons. “Don’t get me wrong…I’d be happy to help you along. Might even attend the funeral. You should see me cry. It’s really believable. Almost got a job as a mourner a few years ago.”

Ilarra stared in confusion at the small man, even as the larger man smacked him across the back of the head.

“Fine, fine,” the little man exclaimed testily. “I’ll pop the manacles, but it’s your life from here to the gate.”

Sitting up in surprise, Ilarra squinted to try to make out the two men in the room with her. The foremost, the small man, was indeed a halfling. He was a little more than waist-high to Ilarra, with a human childlike appearance that made it difficult to guess at his real age. Unlike the guards she had seen previously, this man wore clothing far more expensive than any she would have expected in the lower levels of the keep.

Behind the halfling stood a giant of a man who filled the lit doorway. Even half-blind in the light, Ilarra would have recognized his profile. Few men of any species were tall enough to fill the doorway, let alone had a silhouette that included furry pointed ears and a tail that wagged between his legs.

“Raeln,” she whispered happily, settling back against the wall. “You’re alive.”

The halfling man started to say something but was struck again on the back of his head.

“Fine!” the little man exclaimed, pulling a small key out of his shirt pocket. “Keep doing that and you owe me dinner and a drink, you oaf. I don’t really appreciate getting slapped by strangers. A lovely lady maybe, but that is one thing you are not…”

Raeln grabbed the key and then kicked the halfling aside, sending the man tumbling into a corner of the room. Though Ilarra could see little in the way of injuries, the halfling acted as though he had been killed, flopping onto his back and lying with his face toward the wall and his mouth slightly ajar. Every so often, Ilarra saw him peek out of the corner of his eye.

With a growl at the fallen halfling, Raeln stepped close to Ilarra, letting her clearly see his face. She had almost forgotten the patterning of his fur, and in that moment, he was the most handsome man she had ever met, especially holding the key to her escape. Even the gash on his head had healed into a thin pink line in the time they had been apart, making him look all the more like her hero. That was when she noticed that blood trickled from his wet nose and his clothing—a servant’s, she realized—was torn and battered as though he had gone through a fight.

Reaching up, Ilarra caught Raeln around the neck and hugged him furiously while he unlocked the manacles that held her ankles. Slowly, he pried her off of him, then pointed at her sandals, abandoned in a corner of the dank cell. He was in a hurry.

Grabbing her sandals as Raeln stepped back into the hallway, Ilarra limped after him barefoot. She was not about to concern herself with shoes when she had rotted in a cell for weeks. Even the rough stones as she passed into the hall felt far better than the slick surface of the old cell, though her legs shook with the unfamiliar effort of trying to keep up with Raeln’s stride.

Raeln led her a short distance from the cell, stopping her briefly near a darker section of the hall where several chairs sat against the wall.

Looking around, Ilarra realized that there were bodies on the floor. Four men lay in contorted positions in the darker shadows, clearly placed where they would be most difficult to see. All of them wore heavy armor and blue sashes that marked them as soldiers in the employ of the city.

“Did you do this?” Ilarra asked, bending to examine one of the men.

Raeln snorted as his reply, instead focusing on the three passages of the T-shaped hallway. He finally began to move toward the right, then backed up into Ilarra as the echo of footfalls in that direction alerted her to the approach of more than one person.

Shoving her back into the darker hall that led toward the injured guards and the cell where Ilarra had been held, Raeln stepped into the intersection. His gruff and ever-ready demeanor faded away instantly, his shoulders sinking as he mimicked the timid mannerisms of the servants in the keep. He waited like that with Ilarra hiding along the wall out of sight as the footsteps neared.

“You don’t belong down here between meals,” a man’s voice called out. “If we need a servant to clean up, we’ll call for you. Get your fuzzy ass out of here.”

Peeking around the corner, Ilarra saw that there were two soldiers bearing a limp-hanging man between them. Like Raeln, the unconscious man was a wolf wildling, though he was no larger than the humans that flanked him. If they were bringing him this way, Ilarra had to assume he was captured as an Altisian, but his clothing was hand-sewn, giving her no indication that he was allied with either government. Partially-dried blood in thin whip-lines covered what Ilarra could see of the man’s shoulders and back as he slumped forward in the arms of his captors.

“You need to move, servant,” the soldier who had spoken said more firmly, putting a hand to his weapon. “Clear the hall, or you go in a cell with this one…at least until we hang him tomorrow.”

Raeln cocked his head very slightly, giving Ilarra a sidelong glance. She knew that look all too well. He intended to do something he felt was rash, but wanted to give her a chance to forbid him.