Warning Pen and the Ard Rhys after they had reentered Paranor would do no good. The trap would be sprung by then, and they would be prisoners. She could try to help them, but she knew she lacked the kind of magic that could break them free. Whatever she was going to do, she had to do it before they attempted their return.
Which meant that she couldn’t afford to wait since she didn’t know how long she had. Which meant that she had to do something soon.
But what?
The only real magic she possessed was the Elfstones. But if she used them, she would give herself away in a heartbeat. She would be captured anew, and Shadea a’Ru and her allies would simply rebuild the triagenel. Besides, the Elfstones could only serve two purposes—to discover what was hidden and to defend against enemy magic. Neither usage seemed right for what was needed.
She leaned back against the passage wall, thinking. She was still thinking when she heard a noise in the darkness behind her. The hair at the back of her neck prickled and her throat tightened in fear.
Someone was coming.
TWENTY-FIVE
Willing herself to disappear, Khyber pressed back against the rough wall of the darkened passage. She had nowhere to run or to hide, nowhere at all to go. She was trapped, and unless whoever or whatever approached changed direction quickly, she would be caught out. She tried to remember how far back down the passage diverged, but she couldn’t. The sounds continued to advance toward her. There was no mistaking the inevitable.
She reached into her tunic and brought out the Elfstones. If Shadea or one of the other Druids had found her, she would have to fight. If magic was used, the Elfstones would give her some protection.
Then a shadowy form appeared from out of the gloom, squat and heavy, too small to be anything other than a Gnome or a Dwarf. One of the Hunters she had feared would come searching, she thought in despair. The Elfstones would do her no good against him. She would have to rely on the long knife she had used to cauterize her wound. She tucked the Stones away swiftly and brought it out.
Not a dozen feet away, the approaching figure paused. Two more figures, cloaked and hooded and much larger than the first, appeared as well. Dizziness washed through her, triggered by the sudden surge of adrenaline that the new threat brought. She could not fight all three. She did not think she could fight one. She was weak and feverish and holding herself together through sheer determination.
Could she use magic to mask her presence? It was a possibility, and she grasped at it as she would a lifeline. Using magic was dangerous, but she was all out of choices.
She brought up her hands in front of her and was beginning to conjure a masking spell when a familiar voice said, “Khyber Elessedil, is that you?”
She was so astonished that she stopped what she was doing and stared at the speaker, realizing as she did so that the light from the triagenel magic was giving him a clear view of her silhouette. “Tagwen?” she whispered in disbelief.
He hurried forward, knelt in front of her, and took her hands in his own. “Shades, Elven girl! We didn’t know what had become of you! I must say, I thought the worst more than once. But here you are.” He reached out impulsively and hugged her. “Look, I’ve brought help!” He gestured to the two figures that had joined him. “These are Pen’s parents, Bek and Rue.”
The older couple knelt as well, and whispered greetings were quickly exchanged in the greenish cast of the magic’s light. “How did you find me?” Khyber asked.
“By accident,” Bek said, keeping his voice low. “We came looking for my sister’s sleeping chamber so that we would be here when she and Pen came through the Forbidding.”
Quickly, he explained how Rue and he had escaped the Druids and the Keep more than a week earlier, then flown north aboard Swift Sure in search of Pen and his companions, not realizing that Pen was already a prisoner. After finding Tagwen and the others at Stridegate and learning what had become of their son, they had flown back again, determined to rescue him.
“Is Kermadec with you?” she asked excitedly.
“Somewhere in the Keep with Atalan and a few others,” Tagwen answered. “The rest of the Trolls of Taupo Rough are following us. They might not be more than a day out. Then we’ll see how Shadea and those other weasels handle things.”
“We’ll need their help,” Khyber said. She explained what had befallen after her successful attempt at freeing Pen and helping him to enter the Forbidding. “But Shadea and her allies have constructed a triagenel in the sleeping chamber. If we can’t disable it in some way, it will trap Pen and the Ard Rhys the moment they come back through the Forbidding. I’ve been trying to think of something to do, but I haven’t had much luck.”
Rue Meridian, who had been listening silently in the background, moved forward and put her hand on Khyber’s forehead. “You’re burning up, Khyber. We have to do something about that or we’re going to lose you.” She glanced at the seams of greenish light leaking from the secret door and said, “Let’s move you back down the passageway a little.”
Khyber was too weak to put up much of a protest. She allowed herself to be stretched out on the passage floor while Rue opened her soiled tunic and began working on the wound. From a sealed pouch, she produced a salve. She spread it on the wound, then rebound the wound with fresh cloth from her own pack. Rue’s fingers were cool and soft, and Khyber closed her eyes in momentary relief. The pain began to lessen and the ache subsided.
“Drink this,” Rue ordered.
She gave Khyber a bitter-tasting liquid and some water to wash it down. Khyber drank it all, after telling her, “I haven’t had anything to eat or drink in a long time.”
“You need better care than we can give you here,” Rue replied, holding Khyber’s face in her hands and looking into her eyes. “You have some infection in you; that wound needs to be reopened and cleaned out. But that will have to wait.”
She looked at Bek. “That’s the best I can do for her right now.”
Her husband nodded. “Tell me about the triagenel, Khyber.”
She did so, sitting up again and explaining how it worked. “I still have the Elfstones, but I don’t know how I can use them to help.”
Bek thought a moment. “Is the strength of the triagenel uniform? Is it the same everywhere or does it vary from strand to strand?”
“There will be some variation in the strands. The building of each by the three magic users necessarily involves some ebb and flow.” She hesitated. “At least, that was what Uncle Ahren told me. The more skilled the users, the more uniform the magic. But even with the most accomplished users, there would be weaknesses.”
“Ahren would have known.” Bek looked toward the concealed door and the thin shafts of green light leaking through the cracks. “How is the triagenel attached? Your description makes it seem like a net. Does it hang from the ceiling?”
Khyber nodded. “It does. It is gathered at the corners of the room so that when the magic is triggered, it collapses about its victims and seals them away. It happens very fast, too fast for anyone to avoid, even if they are warned immediately.”
“What triggers the magic?”
“What do you mean?”
“What does it take to cause the triagenel to collapse?”
“A human presence in the room. Any human presence.”
“But not the presence of another magic?”
She hesitated. “What are you thinking?”
Bek leaned forward slightly, brow furrowed. “What if you and I were to weaken a few of the strands that make up the triagenel? Would that give a magic user as powerful as my sister a way of breaking through the net once it collapsed on her?”
Khyber hesitated, thinking. “I don’t think the triagenel can heal itself, so yes, I suppose if enough strands were weakened, a captive could break free. But how in the world are you going to do that, Bek? If you go into that room, the magic will be triggered and the triagenel will collapse on you.”
“I’m not talking
about going into the room. What I want to try requires using two different forms of magic, one yours, one mine. That’s why I asked if the presence of another magic would trigger its release. Will it?”
She considered the question, and then shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think only the presence of a flesh-and-blood body will do that.”
“Then this might work. We don’t need much of our own magic to get the job done, and if we’re lucky, we won’t be detected. The magic of the triagenel is pretty strong, you said?” She nodded. “Then perhaps it will help mask our own.”
“What are you thinking about doing?” Rue said as Tagwen pressed close.
Bek sat back on his heels. “What if Khyber were to use the Elfstones to search out weaknesses in the triagenel? The Elfstones are seeking-stones; they should be able to do that. If she can pinpoint, oh, maybe a dozen, I think I can use the wishsong to weaken them further—enough so that any sort of force applied to them after the net collapses will break them apart.”
Rue shook her head doubtfully. “That’s very delicate work, isn’t it? If you weaken even one of those strands too much, it will break through before you want it to. If that happens, won’t Shadea detect it? In fact, won’t she detect any kind of interference with the triagenel?”
Seeing the possibilities, Khyber leaned forward. “Maybe not. Yes, if Bek breaks one of the strands, that creates a flaw in the netting and anyone looking for it will know right away. But a weakening might not be detected so easily; over time the net erodes anyway. The magic slowly fails and the triagenel has to be rebuilt. So an erosion of the sort Bek is suggesting probably wouldn’t draw attention.”
The four looked at each other. “Is there another way?” Tagwen asked bluntly.
No one said anything. They all knew the answer.
The Dwarf grunted. “You better get started.”
Much farther down and deeper into the bowels of the Keep, Kermadec and his Trolls crept through the passageways of the lower levels, following the cautious lead of Trefen Morys and Bellizen. Seeking to reach Paranor’s north walls, they had worked their way steadily upward from the furnace chamber. Kermadec’s plan was to get close enough to the outermost of those walls that he could take control of one of the smaller gates, one that would not be heavily manned.
Kermadec knew something that neither Shadea nor her Gnome Hunters knew. There were too many gates for all of them to be guarded all the time, and many of the smaller gates had been permanently sealed over the years to prevent a surprise breach. But the Maturen had unsealed one of them long ago to give the Ard Rhys a means of leaving the castle secretly without having to go all the way down to the furnace chamber and the tunnels below. When he visited, she slipped from the Keep through that gate, to the meeting places outside Paranor’s walls they had prearranged over the years.
That unsealed lesser gate was their best chance of breaching Paranor’s defenses. It was small, nothing more than a single door. It would not permit a massive rush, but if enough Trolls sneaked through before they were discovered, they could mass within the walls and take one of the main gates. In Kermadec’s view, that was how Paranor would fall.
But reaching the north wall undetected, not to mention the gate in question, would have been difficult for any one person, let alone ten. It had become clear early on that some sort of search was under way within the Keep. Twice they had narrowly avoided being discovered, the first time because they had heard the search party approaching and doubled back to another corridor and the second because they were warier after the first.
So they were proceeding much more cautiously, keeping to seldom-used passageways and back stairs, tactics that were slowing them down considerably. It had taken them several hours to get that far, what with hiding and doubling back, and it was beginning to look as if even getting to where they wanted to go was in doubt.
But Trefen Morys seemed to know his way about Paranor even better than Kermadec, and under his guidance they worked their way forward, slowly getting closer.
Then, just when it seemed they would make it safely through the search parties, they slipped from a side corridor into a main passageway and ran right into one. A group of five Gnome Hunters rounded a corner right in front of them and came to an uncertain stop. Trefen Morys tried to bluff their way past, hailing the Gnomes, pretending that everything was as it should be. But the Gnomes were on guard, and they knew that Trolls were forbidden entry into the Keep. Before Kermadec or the other Trolls could stop them, the Gnomes had given the alarm.
Atalan was on top of them quickly, and three were dead before they could defend themselves. The remaining two fled, and Kermadec called his brother back so that they could do the same.
“Where can we go?” he shouted at Trefen Morys as they ran down the corridor toward a stairway leading up.
They rounded the corner of the stairway and were immediately in a second fight, this one with a much larger party. The Gnomes drove the Trolls and the young Druids backwards into the corridor, calling for reinforcements as they did so. Bigger and stronger, and with a great deal more to lose, the Trolls fought back and, after a concerted rush, broke through the Gnome crush and charged up the stairway to the next floor.
“Keep going!” Trefen Morys shouted, pointing to the next set of stairs. “Two more floors!”
They did as he directed, rushing ahead heedlessly, trusting that he knew what he was doing. At the top of the third set of stairs, he reached out and grabbed Kermadec’s arm, pointing to a wide set of double doors.
“In there!”
The entire party rushed into a cavernous meeting room filled with chairs and tables stacked all about, the ceiling high and dark with shadows, the room brightened only by a pair of narrow windows on their left.
The young Druid went straight to the windows and released the catch on the nearest. “Go outside,” he told them as they rushed up to him. His breath came in short gasps, and there was blood on one arm. “Follow the ledge to the third set of windows. Inside the room beyond, you will find a door that opens onto a narrow stairway. It leads directly down two flights to the base of the north wall. You will know where your gate is once you get there.”
“You’re not coming with us?” Kermadec asked, realizing what the young Druid had decided.
Trefen Morys shook his head. “We’re of no further use to you, Bellizen and I. We’re not fighters; we’ll just hold you back. Maybe we can do something from up here. Another distraction, perhaps.” He stretched out his hand. “Don’t fail us, Kermadec. Don’t fail our mistress. She isn’t the monster they try to make her seem. She has done much good with the order. We need her back.”
The Maturen gripped his hand tightly. “Get out of this room, Trefen. If they find you somewhere else, they might think you are just another pair of Druids.”
“They’re coming,” Bellizen hissed from where she kept watch at the door.
“Keep safe,” Trefen Morys said. He released the big Troll’s hand and hurried over to stand next to her.
Kermadec climbed through the window without another word, the other Trolls following, and disappeared onto the ledge.
With Rue Meridian and Tagwen keeping watch from just down the darkened passageway, Bek Ohmsford and Khyber Elessedil placed themselves, one on each side of the hidden door, keeping clear of the greenish glow that seeped from the sleeping chamber, staying back from the opening itself. They were going to have to use their magic in entirely new ways. Bek, in particular, was going to test himself as he never had. The wishsong was a powerful magic, and he had never spent much time trying to master it. Now he was going to attempt something that even a practiced user would have thought twice about.
But he had no choice if he wanted to save his sister and his son. “Are you ready?” he asked the Elven girl.
She nodded, and he released the catch that held the door in place. The door swung slowly toward her.
Beyond, the sleeping chamber was bathed in a deep greenish glow. A
complex webbing was strung all across the ceiling, thousands of strands of magic carefully joined together, the whole of it secured at the corners and center.
Placing herself to one side, staying carefully out of the magic’s steady glow as it flooded the passageway, Khyber brought out the Elfstones. Cradling them in the palm of her hand, she stared at the triagenel, concentrating on what she wanted revealed. She had never seen a triagenel; she had only heard about them. So it was difficult for her to know exactly what to look for. She relied on the Elfstones to respond to her need, and they did. Within seconds, they flared to life, their blue glow spreading all through the chamber, bathing the triagenel in a new brightness. At perhaps twenty-five or thirty places, the webbing burned faintly crimson, mostly where the strands connected to one another.
“Those red spots are the weaknesses,” Khyber whispered.
Bek took a long moment to study them, and then whispered back, “Good work, Khyber. Now hold the Elfstone magic steady.”
He called up the wishsong in a soft, barely audible hum. Building it slowly, he honed it to a cutting edge, a trick he had learned twenty years earlier from Grianne. When he had the edge sharp enough, he eased it up to the ceiling to where the brightest of the crimson spots could be found and began to cut. He was slow and careful, weakening each strand just a little at a time. Relying on his magic to give him a sense of its strength, he would cut the strand as deeply as he felt he could, and then move on to the next. The process took him a little longer each time, his concentration faltering; his strength was still not back after the injuries suffered in the escape from Paranor two weeks earlier.
“Hurry,” Khyber whispered, the word evidence that her own efforts were beginning to fail.
He continued until he had cut into ten strands. It was tedious, demanding work. His eyes watered and his body cramped, but it was his mind that screamed for release. Still, he was afraid to stop, afraid that starting up again would be too dangerous, that it risked discovery through the sheer repetitiveness of the magical activity. Too much of anything would be noticed in a place like Paranor, especially with the scrye waters able to detect any usage of magic at all.