The White Robe (42 page)

“Then it must be a renegade like that Sadrin, if he still lives, or perhaps even Jonderill.”

The High Master shook his head. “No. Sadrin is certainly dead by now and you saw for yourself that Jonderill doesn’t have that sort of power.”

“Then what should we do?”

“We do nothing but wait to see if Federa speaks of this again, and watch out for corruption or other signs of the prophesy being fulfilled. Vorgret should be warned of this too, so that he can take what action he thinks fit to protect himself, Essenland and the Enclave.”

“What of the other kings, should we not warn them too?”

Razarin shrugged. “We are not the keepers of the six kingdoms, they must look to themselves. No, I shall suggest to Vorgret that he disposes of Sadrin, if he has not already done so, and arranges for Jonderill to be slain. That will protect the magic from their corruption. He will also need to keep a close watch on his fellow rulers for signs of avarice. As long as the six kingdoms exist and the Enclave stands, the goddess’s words will remain unfulfilled and we will be safe.”

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Rescue and Reprieve

Now that she was so close to her goal, Tarraquin wasn’t sure if this was a good idea or not. Bringing an army seemed so much more sensible now that she had seen the fortress, and the five of them seemed so woefully inadequate for the task ahead. When she had stormed out of the receiving room in Tarmin, she had been full of righteous indignation and determination, but now, all she felt was concern and trepidation.

Perhaps her councillors had been right when they said a man would be better on the throne than a woman. A king wouldn’t have left his crown in the keeping of another to rush off and save a friend, or if he did, he would have taken his army with him. A man wouldn’t have let his emotions and the smooth tongue of a foreign mercenary captain persuade him to set off alone on such a hopeless quest. There was no doubt about it, she had been a fool.

Actually, she was twice a fool, for she should have turned back at the end of the first day’s ride when she realised just how difficult this was going to be, but there was her pride, and her emotions were still running high. It had surprised her at how soft she had become being a queen and living in the palace. As a rebel leader she had been used to living in woodland encampments, and whilst most of them had permanent shelters and basic furnishings, there had been days when the camp was no more than an open fire, her shelter the tree’s canopy, and her bed the hard ground.

The same could be said for the time she had spent on horseback. She was the adopted daughter of the High Lord of Leersland, keeper of the country’s magnificent horse herds. As a child she had spent more time on horseback than on her own two feet, but that too had been before she’d become a queen. After the first day of hard riding, Shendar had to lift her out of the saddle and carry her to the fire, and it was several days before she was able to do that simple task for herself. That was another problem. Being a queen she had become used to Birrit and Sheevar waiting on her, and although she hadn’t wanted their assistance, she had come to rely on them to arrange her clothes and care for her appearance. She looked down at her dusty riding dress stained with mud, and wished they were here with her now.

It had been a truly uncomfortable journey and not just because of the hard riding or lack of amenities. Her two personal guards were surly and silent, and whilst they never showed her any disrespect, they made it plain that guarding a woman, even a queen, was not something they wanted to be doing. They were, after all, Malingar’s mercenaries, and the more time she spent under their disdainful eyes, the more she wondered about Malingar’s motives in choosing them. Her other companions had tried harder to please her, but Shendar was like a man waiting for the headman’s axe to fall, and Killian, who had joined them two days earlier, was scared of his own shadow. She supposed he had every right to be scared, having spent most of the last moon cycle in the shadow of the high walls of the fortress, and under the eye of its stone monsters and metal raptors.

Her first view of the place had been so frightening that her horse had tried to bolt, and if she hadn’t been such a skilled rider it would have been half way back to Leersland before she could have stopped it. Shendar had described to them the place where Jarrul was being held, and in particular, the fearsome stone monsters which lined the top of the high walls, and the savage raptors which perched either side of the huge metal gates. She had been prepared for the sight, although her imagination had underestimated the size of the creatures. What she hadn’t been prepared for was one of the raptors launching itself into the air and skimming the open ground between the edge of the woodlands, where they hid, and the fortress wall. It flew over the far side of the woods and returned with a large wild forest grunter in its talons, which it dropped somewhere behind the wall before taking up its position again.

In the two days they had been in Killian’s woodland camp, she had returned to the high walls three times, and whilst neither of the raptors had swooped down again, the stone monsters on top of the walls had shifted position. Apart from that, the place seemed deserted and nothing moved, not even the sky flyers overhead. However, as they couldn’t see over the walls, and the view from the forest edge through the bars of the gate was very restricted, it didn’t mean that there was no one inside.

Before deciding what should be done she had sent Shendar to the nearest village to find out what they knew of the strange place, but the information had been of little use. They knew that the fortress had once been a hunting lodge and that it had belonged to King Hormand, but it was now the dwelling of some sort of beast. Tarraquin had dismissed the information as superstitious nonsense. Nobody ventured close enough to see inside any more, which wasn’t too surprising.

She had asked each of her small force how they thought they should get into the place, but that hadn’t been helpful either. Malingar’s men had just shrugged. Killian suggested that they went back to Leersland, and Shendar said that he would do whatever she commanded him to do. So she had decided what should be done, and now waited at the edge of the woods for the intense darkness that happens just before dawn to hide them. She studied the sky and then peered across the cleared land to the fortress wall, which was almost lost in the gloom. There was no moon and it was about as dark as it was going to get.

Shendar shifted uneasily beside her, his breathing quick and shallow. A long rope was looped over his shoulder and arm. “My lady, I don’t like this.”

She turned in the darkness to his whispered voice. “Are you a coward, Shendar?”

“No, My Lady, just terribly afraid.”

She nodded her head. “So am I.”

Tarraquin gave the soldier an encouraging smile in the darkness, which he couldn’t see, and ran towards the wall. They had picked a spot where the ground looked fairly flat and smooth, and was not directly beneath any of the stone monsters. From the forest edge it hadn’t looked that far but by the time she was half way across the clearing, she was breathing hard and her heart was pounding, although more through fear than effort. Shendar ran beside her with an intense look of concentration on his face as he studied the ground for potholes and obstacles. The rope slapped against his side like the sound of flapping sky flyer wings and his sword rattled with each stride. She looked up to the top of the wall to see if anything had heard their approach, but if it had, nothing had moved.

When they reached the wall they both pressed themselves against the solid stone and waited for their breathing to quieten down. In the distance, the edge of the forest was just a dark smudge, and not even the sound of rustling leaves could be heard. Shendar touched her lightly on the arm giving her the signal that he was ready to move again, and together, pressed tightly against the wall, they set off in the direction of the metal gates. They had studied this section carefully and had been grateful that whoever had constructed the fortress’s defences had decided against a moat or a defensive ditch full of spikes. Instead the ground rose up slightly as if the wall had burst out of the earth. It made clinging to the wall difficult but not impossible.

The stone pillar, on which the gates hung, jutted out from the wall by the length of two hand spans, and for a moment, they huddled in its shadow, whilst above them the sound of metal rasping against stone made their hearts race. When, whatever it was that had made the sound had settled, Tarraquin eased herself around the corner of the pillar to where the hinges of the huge metal gates were buried deep into the stone.

The gates were twice her height and were made up of metal bars the thickness of her wrist, held together within a thick metal frame. The top of each vertical bar ended in a sharp spike like a spear tip. It had been their intention to throw the rope over one of them, climb up the rope and let themselves down the other side. Close up she could see that the gates were higher than she had estimated and that the rope wasn’t long enough. Clearly her plan was not going to work, and one look at Shendar’s face confirmed her suspicions.

They had come a long way and had chanced everything on this attempt, so she wasn’t going to give up that easily. Cautiously she stepped across the front of the gates, feeling for the horizontal bars that gave the gates their strength in the hope that the gates could be climbed without the assistance of the rope. On the other side of the gates it was dark and nothing moved. She tried to make out if there were buildings inside the compound, and for a moment, she thought she heard someone cough, but then everything was once again swallowed by the blackness and silence.

Hardly breathing in case she disturbed the guarding raptors, she reached the centre bars where the two gates met. Two rings, embedded in solid metal plates, hung down either side of the frame, and between them, she could just see the bolt which held the two gates together. Cautiously she took hold of the ring on the left hand side of the gate in both hands and twisted it, but the ring resisted her pressure and nothing moved. She gave Shendar a quick glance, as he stood behind her staring upwards into the darkness to where the raptors sat, and took the other ring in both hands and twisted it to the right. For a moment the ring resisted her pressure, and then, with a slight grating noise, the bolt slid to one side and the gate swung slowly open.

Tarraquin gave a small squeak of surprise and dropped the ring with a loud clang, but still nothing moved. Stepping cautiously forward she passed through the gate and into the darkness beyond, expecting to be challenged at any moment, but everything remained silent. As she turned to wave Shendar forward, her heart missed a beat as the gates closed slowly behind her, leaving Shendar stranded on the other side. He stepped forward to push the gates open, but she held up her hand to stop him. There was something going on here which she didn’t understand, but if the gate had let her in and had then shut itself behind her, she was almost certain that Shendar was not meant to enter.

The space in front of her was dark, threatening and uninviting, so she moved carefully to the right until her back was pressed hard up against the wall. As with the outside of the wall, the ground had been pushed up slightly, but she managed to creep along the edge keeping her fingers in contact with the cold stone. When another wall loomed up out of the darkness, she realised that she had reached a corner and turned to follow the new wall along, hoping that somewhere in front of her, she would find some clue to where Jarrul was being held.

The stone of the wall was cold and rough and full of sharp crystals. Tarraquin caught her finger on one and gave a small yelp as the sharp stone drew blood. She put the injured finger into her mouth to stop the bleeding and remained absolutely still, certain that she had heard a sound just ahead of her. When she was sure she had been mistaken, she put her hand back on the wall and realised with shock that she could see what her hand was touching. She looked up and cursed under her breath; the sky above was still dark but to the east it was turning to a steely grey, and the silhouette of the stone monsters could clearly be seen crouching on the top of the wall.

Keeping as close to the wall as possible, she increased her pace forward until another wall, running at right angles to the one she had been following, loomed up in front of her. At the base of the wall where the angles met, there was a large metal cage, and in the cage was a man sitting on the floor in one corner, with his knees pulled up to his chest and his head resting on his arms.

Shendar had also seen the colour of the sky change and he uttered a curse under his breath wishing he was far away from where he was now. He had always been a good guardsman, steady and conscientious, the sort of guardsman who could be relied upon to turn up sober, and on time, and stand to attention outside any door until the end of his duty. He wasn’t a soldier though, and had always been happy to let others volunteer for the exciting duties, particularly if fighting was involved. It wasn’t that he was a coward; it was just that he wasn’t particularly brave or decisive.

Now he watched the sky growing lighter, and the empty space on the other side of the gate, where the queen had disappeared from view, with growing anxiety. He wanted to run, but he couldn’t leave her to die, so when the first rays of the sun tipped over a distant hill he made a decision and moved. If she could go through the gate then so could he. Without waiting any longer he ran forward and grabbed the iron rings and pushed with all his strength. Behind him there was the sound of grating metal, and he turned with his arms raised over his head to protect himself, but only had time to let out one piercing scream before the raptor’s talons sunk into his chest and back, and lifted him off the ground.