From time to time on the way down, she had stopped and cracked open the door on her lantern to be sure of her surroundings and where she was. Each time, as soon as she got her bearings, she quickly closed the lantern door. With the danger of spies in and about Aydindril, the Home Guard was on the lookout for any suspicious activity. She didn’t want any patrolling soldiers to spot her and come to see who she was and what she was doing.
As she panted, catching her breath, a few fat, cold drops of rain splattered against her head and shoulders. She hoped it didn’t start coming down in earnest. Her breath back, she started running again.
Before long, as she entered the city, the reflected light off the clouds was enough for her to make out the road and the buildings to the sides. A little farther into the city the street narrowed because it passed between buildings that were shops on the first floor, with living space above. They were all dark.
It was still quite a distance to Merritt’s house, so, head down, she ignored her burning leg muscles and drove herself on at a quick pace. When she heard some odd noises up ahead, she stopped cold and looked up.
Ahead in the darkness, still off a ways on the narrow street, she saw a group of men coming toward her. They weren’t carrying any lamps, so it was hard to tell how many there were, but the bunch of them looked to be a goodly number. She stared with wide eyes, trying to tell who they were.
And then, as they passed a shop with candlelight coming from a window, she saw the glint of light off swords at their hips. Several men had upright pikes.
They were soldiers, probably a patrol of the Home Guard. There looked to be maybe eight or ten of them.
Before the patrol saw her, Magda quickly ducked into the alleyway to her left. She ran a map of the city through her head and realized that, rather than following the route she’d been planning on taking, she could actually take a shortcut to Merritt’s house and probably save some time, as well as stay out of sight from the patrol. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before. She guessed that she was so drained of strength that it kept her from thinking straight. She reminded herself that her survival depended on thinking clearly.
She hurried up the alley, trying to put distance between her and the end of the alley where the soldiers would pass by. She knew that patrols sometimes took gifted with them to sense people who might be hiding. When she heard them approaching the intersection where she had gone into the alley, she slipped into the narrow space between two buildings to hide. She held the lantern behind her in case there was any crack in the metal door that might be spotted if one of the soldiers looked her way.
Magda peeked out with one eye. She could see them, off in the distance, as they passed by the end of the alley. It was hard to tell, but she was pretty sure that she was right, that there were eight to ten of them. She hadn’t thought that patrols were typically that large.
She saw, then, that one of the men in their midst appeared to be restrained with some kind of device around his neck with a bar in front. It looked like maybe his wrists were manacled to the end of the bar.
That explained the number of men. They had taken someone into custody. Soldiers typically took a larger contingent when they went to apprehend a criminal. She supposed that it was easier to catch a man in his bed than to try to run him down in the day.
Once the soldiers and their prisoner had gone past the alley, Magda cautiously emerged from her hiding place and checked in all directions for any sign of other soldiers. When she saw nothing and everything was dead quiet, she rushed off up the alley. She trotted to cover ground as quickly as possible. She didn’t think she had it in her to run anymore. At least the brief sprinkle had stopped, but she worried that the clouds still threatened rain.
When she reached a cross street with a two-story brick building that she remembered, she squinted in the darkness across the road. She saw a sign hanging over a door. It was the right size, but she couldn’t tell if it had a blue pig painted on it. Around the corner, though, she could see the narrow street following rolling, uneven ground. It was the right place. She turned up the street toward Merritt’s house.
When she at last saw a forked plum tree in the front of the little porch, she let out a sigh, thankful to have found the place so quickly in the dark. Light came from the window to the side of the house, so she knew that Merritt was still up working.
She knocked just loud enough that she thought he would hear her but the neighbors wouldn’t. She hoped that dogs didn’t start barking and rouse people.
When Merritt didn’t answer the door, she knocked a little harder. When she knocked harder, the door swung in a little. It wasn’t latched.
“Merritt?” she called out in a quiet voice. “Merritt?”
She thought that maybe he was out back, so she slipped inside. She pushed the door closed behind her as she looked around. She didn’t see him. A few lanterns were lit in the room, but Merritt wasn’t there.
She went to the back, looking out, but it was pitch black. She went to a dark doorway and opened the metal cover on her lantern, throwing light into the dark bedroom. The bed was empty. She couldn’t imagine where he could be.
On the way back through the house, weaving her way through the assortment of objects lying about all over the floor, she froze in midstride. In front of the table with the red velvet cloth, the chair was lying on its side.
The Sword of Truth, in its sheath, still hanging from the back of the chair, lay on the floor.
Magda righted the chair. She stood staring at the sword.
Merritt wouldn’t leave the sword. He had never left it before, and he certainly wouldn’t leave it since completing its transition into the key to the boxes of Orden.
And then she saw a small piece of green cloth snagged on one of the metal objects standing nearby. It was the same wool material and the exact same green color as the tunics worn by the soldiers of the prosecutor’s office. The same soldiers in green tunics who were guarding her apartment. The same soldiers in green tunics who had brutalized Tilly. The same soldiers in green tunics that were Lothain’s private army.
She remembered, then, the soldiers with a prisoner she had seen only a short time before. They were headed toward the Keep.
It was too much to be a coincidence.
Magda pulled off her black cloak and threw it on the table. She slipped the baldric over her head, laying it on her right shoulder, placing the scabbard with the sword at her left hip. Once it was securely in place, she put her cloak back on, hiding the sword, and headed for the door.
In her mind, she swiftly plotted a variety of routes through the city. All the times when she had been a young girl, running with friends through the city, were paying off as she considered the fastest way to intercept the soldiers.
She needed to get out ahead of them and cut them off.
She wondered briefly what she thought she was going to do to make them release Merritt.
As she ran out the door of his house, she knew only that she had to get Merritt away from those big soldiers in those green tunics.
Chapter 84
Magda raced down dirt alleyways, jumped fences, and cut through yards, taking a diagonal course through the city rather than take the easier but longer route along the streets. In places along the way, she dashed down the narrow spaces between buildings. Once, she encountered an impassable barrier of stacked junk at the end and had to retrace her steps, going around the other side, only to be stopped by a tall fence. She managed to pull herself up and over the fence so that she didn’t have to find another route.
As she ran past houses, dogs in the yards charged toward her, barking and snapping. Fortunately, the ones she encountered were tied on ropes, or inside, and couldn’t get to her. Their barking made other dogs nearby bark, though. Soon, it seemed that half the dogs in the city were all barking. Here and there Magda saw lamplight brighten in windows as wicks were turned up.
She knew that if the soldiers heard the sounds of dogs b
arking coming ever closer to them, they would get suspicious.
Magda stopped just shy of an intersection and leaned back against the short stone wall for a moment, gulping air and catching her breath while still out of sight of the street. She opened the door on her lantern a crack and carefully peeked around the corner. She had been running with such abandon that she wasn’t sure of exactly where she was.
As she held the lantern out around the corner, light fell on closely spaced buildings that she recognized. Signs hanging out front advertised several small businesses: a cobbler; a seamstress; and a carpenter’s shop. Just up the street to the right, she knew that there would be a road coming down off the lower parts of the mountain that intersected the street.
That was the one road she needed. It made a loop past a few homes and a number of storehouses that held grains and dry goods. A little higher up, the side road reconnected back with the main road going up to the Keep.
Without taking time to finish catching her breath, Magda shut the door on her lantern and raced off up the street. If she got there too late, she had no chance. Without pause, when she reached it, she took the road that angled off up the hill and curved up along the skirt of the mountain. She could just see the lights of the Keep high above.
It was harder running uphill. Her legs burned from the effort. She feared that they might give out at any moment, but she knew that she dared not slow. If she didn’t get out in front of those men before they made it up to the Keep, she knew that she wouldn’t have a chance. If they got past her, she’d likely never be able to find where they took Merritt.
The Keep was immense. There were places all over the Keep where they could hide him. For all Magda knew, they might take him to an obscure room like the one where they had taken Tilly. There were thousands of rooms in the Keep. She would never be able to find him. And if they took him to the prosecutor’s offices, with his private army headquartered there, she would never get in.
In all likelihood, though, they would take him down to the dungeons where Naja had been. Magda didn’t think that she would have a chance to make it in there again. After the two dungeon guards had been killed, not only would the men down there be on alert, they would probably double or triple the guard.
The smell of pines and fir trees got stronger the higher up the road she ran. Magda could at last hear a small brook off in the darkness. She knew the brook and where it was located above the buildings. Finally out of the city, she found herself running past the dark shapes of towering trees.
Abruptly, she came to the intersection with the main road up to the Keep. Magda was terrified that they might have already passed by. She feared being too late.
As she stood in the center of the intersection gulping air and catching her breath, trying in vain to see in the darkness, she heard voices in the distance. They were deep voices interspersed with fragments of laughter. She was relieved that they were coming from down lower on the road, in the direction of the city.
Magda rushed up the road, toward the Keep, around a sharp bend to a spot were the road narrowed. She wanted a place that wasn’t open to the sides so that the men couldn’t spread out and easily get around her. The voices were getting closer.
She found a place that looked about as good a spot for her purpose as she was liable to find on short order. Besides, she didn’t have any time to spare. She set the lantern down in the center of the road, placing it so that the closed door aimed in the direction of the approaching men.
Magda didn’t want to consider the wisdom of her hasty plan too carefully because it was the only plan she had. She could think of no other idea, and besides, there simply was no time left. She had no choice but to try.
If it didn’t work, she would likely die. If she didn’t try, they were all going to die anyway.
She crouched behind the lantern, waiting. Her hammering heart was making her rock on the balls of her feet.
She briefly thought that she must be crazy to think it would work. She had no choice. Either it worked, or they were all dead anyway.
She could hear the sound of gravel crunching under the boots of the men coming her way as they rounded the bend a short distance down the hill. They weren’t talking any longer. She couldn’t see them. Only the sound of their boots told her where they were.
When she judged that the group of men was as close as she dared let them get to her, she threw open the door of the lantern. Light fell across about a dozen startled faces. They blinked in the sudden light. They weren’t the Home Guard. They wore the green tunics of Lothain’s private army, as she had expected.
Magda stood and backed a few steps behind the lantern so that she would be in darkness and the men wouldn’t be able to see her.
In the lantern light, when a couple of the big men spread out defensively, she spotted Merritt in their midst.
He had an iron collar around his neck, with a short iron bar coming out from the front of it. His hands were shackled to the end of the iron bar. His ankles were hobbled with a length of chain short enough to prevent him from running.
Blood ran down the side of his face. He looked groggy.
Magda focused her rage. It didn’t take an effort.
“You are surrounded,” she said in a loud, clear, commanding voice. “Let the prisoner go or you will all die.”
One of the men stepped forward. In the light coming from the open door of her lantern, she could see that he was not a soldier. He wore simple robes. She could see the deep scowl twisting his features. Even though it was dark, she thought that she could see the gift in his eyes.
When he lifted his hand and fire ignited in the air above his palm, Magda knew.
It was a wizard.
“Magda Searus?” he said. “Magda Searus, is that you?”
Chapter 85
The man in the robes was not half a dozen strides from her. Magda had seen him before. He worked in the lower regions of the Keep. She didn’t know the wizard’s name, but he knew hers. Most likely because when she had been with Baraccus he had stopped briefly to talk to the man a few times, as he had talked to a number of wizards. A lot of people knew her because she was Baraccus’s wife and they saw her with him, but she hadn’t known the names of all those people he spoke to.
“Let him go and your lives will be spared,” she said. “You are surrounded. Do as I say or you will all die. I’ll not warn you again.”
Worried, the soldiers peered around into the darkness.
There was a brief moment of silence, and then the grim-faced wizard spoke.
“I sense no one but you,” he said in a surly voice. “You are all alone out here. There is no one with you.”
In the lantern light she could see the soldiers grin.
Almost without thought, Magda slipped her hand inside her cloak, tightly wrapping her fingers around the hilt of the sword. The word Truth pressed into her palm. Through that connection, she could feel something stir and seem to come alive. It seemed to be coming neither from the sword nor from her, but came alive through that connection.
She felt the promise of something powerful and merciless in the connection.
Without warning, the wizard flicked his hand toward her. In the lantern light Magda could see the air waver.
The bolt of power just missed, flicking her hair as she dove aside and drew the sword.
The clear ring of its blade filled the night air with a haunting threat of violence.
With the blade freed, Magda felt a storm of power surge from the hilt and up through her. As it inundated her, it made her flesh tingle and took her breath.
Exquisite rage thundered through every fiber of her being.
The men all drew weapons.
The wizard, angry that he had missed, pulled his arms back to conjure yet more magic. He looked more annoyed than angry that she had not fallen to his first strike. She knew that this time he would not be so timid in what he called forth.
A roiling ball of fire ignited in his palm. The l
iquid flames rolled and burned with a sinister bluish light.
Indeed, he did not intend to take any more chances. He was intending to loose wizard’s fire against her.
Magda knew that she had to act fast or she would die. The sword reacted instantly to her intent, unleashing a surge of fury through her that charged her muscles.
Even as the wizard was cocking his arm back, Magda was already flying toward the man, closing the distance, trying to get to him before he was able to send the deadly fire toward her. As she ran, the blade swept around with lightning speed, whistling through the air.
Her glare was locked on the wizard’s murderous scowl. She was only dimly aware of the sword’s tremendous momentum. She knew only that it felt right. It felt good. She guided its track through her intent as the blade made its way inexorably toward where her eyes were fixed.
She wanted this man dead. She focused all her rage at everything that had happened into her need to end this traitor’s life.
It seemed to take forever to close the distance.
She could see the wizard frantically working with both hands to expand the wizard’s fire between his palms, to make it more deadly and ready to kill. She could see the indignation in his eyes that she would dare to come at him.
She intended far more than merely to come at him.
For both of them, it was a race to kill or be killed.
The blade won the race. With a loud crack it intercepted the side of the wizard’s skull.
Fragments of bone and gore filled the night. In the lantern’s light she could see the cloud of blood and brain matter explode away from where most of his head had been only an instant before. Only the base of his skull and his jaw remained. A trail of blood followed the arc of the blade.