The Mists of Sorrow: The Morcyth Saga Book Seven (57 page)

Sure that everyone’s attention is averted,
Jiron removes the arrow from the statue and unties the rope. He’s
just taking a firm hold of it when he feels the rope grow taut as
someone down below pulls on it. Jiron gives the rope two quick tugs
to let them know he’s ready, then braces himself.

He receives two quick answering tugs before
someone begins climbing up. In a moment Aleya appears and he offers
her a hand which she takes. He then pulls her the rest of the way
up onto the wall.

The first thing she notices are the fires
burning throughout the city. “What do they think they’re doing?”
she asks.

“I don’t care as long as the rest of the
guards are looking away from us,” he says. Gesturing to the guard
she killed with her bow, he adds, “Grab his crossbow and make like
you are him walking the wall.”

Nodding, she says, “Right.” Then moves over
toward the dead guard.

Another two pulls announces Miko’s turn up
the rope. He has a much more difficult time at it than Aleya had,
but after a few tense moments, he makes it. Jiron has him pretend
to be the other guard that should be up here instead of dead down
below.

He sets himself for hauling up Brother
Willim while Miko moves further down the wall. When the rope jerks
twice, he begins hauling him up. Pulling up a person is much more
strenuous than holding while they climb. When he figures he has
pulled Brother Willim up about half the distance, the rope suddenly
vibrates. Sensing there may be trouble, he calls for Miko and
together they rapidly pull it up.

As the end of the rope reaches the top, they
find Brother Willim holding on with one hand to the loop where his
foot should be. In the other hand he’s gripping his staff. “What
happened?” Miko asks as they haul him the rest of the way up.

“My staff slipped,” he admits somewhat
embarrassed. “When I moved to catch it, my foot slipped out of the
loop. I almost didn’t catch hold of it in time.”

Miko grins and says, “That would have hurt
when you hit the ground.”

Nodding, Brother Willim sits on the wall and
tries to calm his trembling nerves.

Jiron coils the rope in his hands as he
looks over the wall and into the courtyard below. There are still
few guards upon the grounds down there but none in close proximity
to the section of wall they’re on. A check toward those upon the
walls finds them still staring at the fire burning in the city. So
far, none of the guards have yet to notice that something is going
on.

“Aleya,” he says and when he has her
attention waves for her to come over to him. “There are three
guards down below,” he tells her and then shows them to her. One is
on the far side and is just moving beyond the Keep’s wall, another
is walking across the middle of the courtyard, while the third is
closer and moving their way.

“Take out the man coming our way,” he
says.

“You got it.” Removing an arrow from her
quiver, she places it to string and aims at the approaching man.
When she’s sure she’s got him, the arrow is released. Flying true,
it strikes the man in the chest and knocks him backward to the
ground.

“Miko!” Jiron says as he begins lowering the
rope over the side of the wall to the courtyard below. “Get down
there fast and get that guard out of sight.” When the rope is
played out and he has a firm grip, Miko begins to rappel down the
other side. As soon as he’s down, he says to Aleya, “You’re
next.”

Nodding, she takes the rope and descends to
the ground below.

Once she’s down, he turns to Brother Willim
and asks, “Can you make it down by yourself?”

He holds up his staff and says, “Not holding
this I can’t.”

Jiron gives him an annoyed look and shakes
his head. Then he grabs the staff and throws it over the side. “Now
can you?”

Brother Willim looks over the side and
watches his staff as it lands on the ground below. Turning back to
Jiron he nods, “I think so.”

“Then please hurry,” he says. “Our luck
won’t last forever.”

“Right,” he says. Taking the rope, he begins
to work his way down. When he reaches the halfway point, he loses
his grip and begins sliding down. By the time he hits the bottom,
he has a good case of rope burn on both of his hands. Praying to
Asran, he uses his magic to heal the burns.

“Stop!” exclaims Aleya.

The urgency of her cry breaks his
concentration and the spell stops. “What?” he asks.

“You were glowing like a candle,” she
explains. Looking around, she’s relieved to discover no one noticed
his magical aura.

“Sorry,” he says. “Forgot about that.”

Jiron lands on the ground next to him and
whips the rope back up where it dislodges from the place he had
secured it. As it falls to the ground, he begins coiling it back
around his middle. He had seen the green glow surrounding the
priest but had been too far away to alert him.

Miko joins them and brings Brother Willim
his staff. “Here you go,” he says as he hands it to him.

“Thank you,” he replies. He takes the staff
gingerly as his hands still throbs with pain.

“If you need to heal yourself,” Jiron says,
“Best to wait until we get inside.”

“And how are we to do that?” he asks.
“Through the front door?”

“Actually, that is exactly what I intend for
us to do,” he says. “Currently, the courtyard here is free of
guards. One’s around back and will reappear soon. The other one
just disappeared in through the main entrance, which as you’ll
notice remains open. If we hurry, we might be able to make it.”

“No guts no glory?” Miko asks with a
grin.

Jiron nods with an answering grin. He
recognizes another one of James’ expressions. “Let’s go.” Running
swiftly they cross the courtyard, taking advantage of what shadowy
areas there are. No cry ensues by the time they reach the area
before the Keep’s gate. Doubling their speed, they race through the
entrance.

“So, you’re awake are you?”

James cracks open his eyes to see who it is
that’s talking to him and the light in the room stabs his eyes like
a red hot knife. He moans and tries to rub them but can’t. His mind
at first is unable to figure out why, but then comes to the
realization that his wrists are manacled above his head to the wall
behind him. Squinting so as to allow only a very minimal amount of
light through to his eyes, he tries to see what’s going on.

“Everyone else was fooled by that stunt you
pulled in Cyst,” the oddly familiar voice says. “But I knew it
couldn’t be true. I knew you would end up here. So I came and
waited for you to show. I didn’t expect my efforts to yield results
so quickly.”

Smack!

His eyes somewhat adjust to the light in the
room and he’s now able to tell that the voice is not addressing
him. Rather, the man is talking to someone else who is tied to a
chair in the center of the room. The man in the chair is facing
away from where James is sitting on the floor thus he’s unable to
get a good look at who it is.

He slowly moves his head to scan the room.
The others who had been in the common room with him at the inn are
sitting in a row against the same wall as he is. Each is manacled
to the wall in the same manner. Over on a table against the wall he
sees their belongings haphazardly stacked, it doesn’t look as if
anyone’s taken the time to search through them yet.

Returning his attention to Perrilin, for
that is whom he finally realizes is sitting in the chair being
interrogated, he sees the man interrogating him strike him again
across the face. In his drugged state, it’s hard for his mind to
function properly and it takes him a bit, but he begins to
recognize the man interrogating Perrilin. He’s seen him before.

With a scar running along the side of his
face across one eye, it would be hard for James to ever forget him.
Korgan, or as James better knows him, Ol’ One Eye. The man from
whom he rescued Perrilin when he had him in a farmhouse outside of
Cardri. The man who aided the Empire by poisoning the guards in
charge of the gates in the City of Light. A powerful agent of Lord
Cytok. To be here in his hands bodes ill for James and the others.
He has little love for the man. In fact he’s one of the few people
he’s met that he wouldn’t feel any qualms about killing.

Smack!

Korgan strikes Perrilin across the face
again and then gazes at him for a second. Moving in close to
Perrilin’s face, he lifts one eyelid and examines the eye beneath.
“Damn!” he curses. Then he says something in the northern tongue to
one of the three guards there in the room with him. Abruptly
turning about, he exits through the door behind him.

James feigns unconsciousness as he works in
his mind what exactly is going on. From what he overheard Korgan
say, he came here for Perrilin. The fact that James happens to be
here as well could possibly have eluded him for the moment. James
fervently hopes that he will continue to remain ignorant of it.

The last thing he remembers is eating and
drinking back at the inn as they listened to the bard play. From
his brief scan to the others sitting there on the wall with him, he
doesn’t think that they have all the others. But which ones are
here he can’t tell. He did see Scar and Potbelly for sure, maybe
Reilin too. For all their sakes he prays that Miko and Jiron have
yet to be taken. If those two are still at large, then they stand a
good chance of getting out of this.

In the meantime, he keeps his eyes closed
and hopes the effects of the drug wears off sometime soon.

“Now where?” whispers Aleya. Miko just
shrugs.

After entering the keep, they’ve been
searching the halls for the way to the dungeons below. Three guards
and two servants lie dead behind them, hidden in closets, under
beds, etc. They had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at
the wrong time when the four intruders happened by.

Now the corridor they’ve been following ends
at a meeting hall where a dozen tables are placed about the room.
One of the larger tables has four men standing around it looking at
a map laid out across its top. Two are soldiers, commanders by the
looks of them, and two civilians. The men are talking earnestly to
each other.

Jiron moves back from the end of the
corridor where he had been spying on the men. Joining the others,
he has them move into what seems to be an unused storage room.
There he relates to the others what he saw. “We’ll never find the
way down in time,” he says.

“You should never have killed those
servants,” states Brother Willim.

Jiron gives him an annoyed look and says,
“If they had spoken our language, I wouldn’t have. We need to find
someone with whom we can talk.”

Suddenly from the room where the four men
are looking over the map, they hear raised voices. Jiron moves to
the storage room’s door and peers out to try to see what’s going
on. Unable to ascertain anything, he turns back to the others and
says, “I better check this out.”

“Be careful,” Aleya tells him.

With a nod to her, he exits from the room
and hurries to the end of the corridor. One of the voices within
the room has grown agitated and is beginning to yell. Moving to the
end, Jiron peers into the room. A fifth man has entered the room
and is yelling at the other four. His face is set in an angry
expression as is the others whom he’s yelling at.

“I know you,” Jiron whispers when he sees
the face of the new arrival. “Ol’ One Eye Miko called you,” he says
to himself. He’ll know where James is located. In fact, he’s likely
to be the one doing the interrogating. Jiron grins at this stroke
of good fortune.

The men argue for another several minutes
before a soldier hurries in through another doorway. The talking
comes to a halt as the five men turn their attention to the new
arrival. He delivers what is most likely a quick report then
waits.

The older of the two soldiers says something
to the other one who then follows the soldier from the room. The
remaining soldier then turns back to face Ol’ One Eye. He says
something to him in a calm voice that’s straining to be anything
but. Then Ol’ One Eye’s single remaining eye narrows and his lips
press together hard when the soldier finishes speaking. Turning on
his heel, Ol’ One Eye stalks off across the room and exits through
a side door.

Jiron looks at the door and knows that has
to be the way to where James and the others are being held.
Glancing back to the soldier and the two civilians, he sees the two
civilians begin to leave through the door which the soldier had
come through earlier. Once they’ve left, Jiron rushes back to the
others.

“I think we may have a break,” he says once
back in the storage room. Then he briefly tells them what
transpired. Miko gasps when he hears that Ol’ One Eye is back in
the picture.

“He’ll kill James!” he blurts out.

Jiron looks at him and asks, “Have you felt
any murders or deaths since we entered the keep?”

Looking surprised, Miko shakes his head,
“No.”

“Then they’re still alive,” he states. “If
we hurry they may remain so.” He then jerks his head in the
direction of the meeting room and says, “There’s one man still in
the room between us and the door Ol’ One Eye took. If we take the
soldier out fast, we can follow Ol’ One Eye right to James.”

“Then let’s hurry,” urges Miko.

“Aleya,” he says, “take him out with your
bow, it’ll be quicker.”

“No problem,” she assures him. Moving to
join him, she pulls an arrow from her quiver and places it to
string. Keeping the string relaxed until it’s time, she hurries
along beside him. Behind them come Miko and Brother Willim.

At the end of the corridor, Jiron motions
for the other two to wait back a ways while he and Aleya proceed.
He creeps to the end of the hallway and peers into the room. The
soldier remains alone in the room. Turning back to Aleya, he
indicates the room and nods. Moving out of her way, he allows her
to move into position.