‘I wanted a way to keep to myself and yet be found if someone with the wit and talent needed to find me. Had you gone prowling the Hall, asking questions on any number of worlds, well, you would have encountered difficulty.’
‘I was warned of your assassins,’ she countered.
‘Who told you?’
‘It was the gossip of the day at Honest John’s.’
Pug said, ‘The next time I hire someone for a quiet undertaking, I think I will avoid the Inn.
‘Who directed you to Mustafa’s?’
Boldar Blood.’
‘When you left Mustafa, I went ahead to the mountains to wait for you. The simple trick of telling you to go somewhere else was my last trick.’ He smiled. ‘Had you not proved so agreeable a guest, I would have disposed of you up on those cold peaks so as to be as far from Stardock as possible when the Pantathians noticed the display.’
Miranda gave him a sour expression. ‘Lacks subtlety.’
Perhaps, but time grows short and I have much work to do while I wait for Calis and Nakor.’
‘Can I be of help? Boldar Blood is waiting for me in an inn in LaMut if he can be of service.’
‘For now, send word to him to wait; let the mercenary enjoy Tabert’s girls and ale,’ said Pug. ‘As for you, there are any number of tasks around here that I could use help with, if you don’t mind.’
I won’t cook,’ she said, ‘or mend your smallclothes.’
Pug laughed. He was genuinely amused. ‘My, that’s the first good laugh I’ve had in a long time.’ He shook his head. ‘Hardly. I can get all the dinner and laundry I require on Sorcerer’s Isle. I inform Gathis, and when all is ready, I transport food in and linens out.
‘No, I need you to start digging through a large part of a very old library, looking for clues.’
‘Clues to what?’ asked Miranda, now obviously intrigued.
‘Clues to where we may have to go to find someone if the need arises.’
Cocking her head to one side, as if she already knew the answer, she said, ‘Looking for whom?’
Pug said, ‘If Calis brings me the news I fear most of all, we’re going to have to find the only being I know of who can counter the sort of magic we’ll face. We’re going to have to try to once again locate Macros the Black.’
Calis signaled.
Silently the men behind him halted in place and raised hands to warn the others farther down the line to stop. Since entering the tunnel two days before, they had adopted silent travel. All communication was done by hand gestures and noise was kept to a minimum.
While every man in Calis’s company had been trained in such practices, the clansmen under Hatonis and the mercenaries hired by Praji had been a noisy bunch at first. They had learned quickly, however, and no longer needed constant reminders to keep silent.
Of the one hundred and eleven men who had left the rendezvous – the sixty-six men in Calis’s command and the forty-five with Greylock, Praji, Vaja, and Hatonis – seventy-one had survived the clash with the Saaur above.
‘Above’ was how they now thought of the Plain of Djams. The tunnel had moved continuously down until Nakor estimated they were close to a quarter mile below the surface. At camp the night before he had whispered to Erik that someone had once badly wanted to trade on the plains above to have built such a long and deep passage; either that, or they had wanted their front door a very long, defensible distance from their home.
The tunnel had been a uniform size, varying only with an occasional outcropping of stone that was easier to move around than to dig through. Except for those minor deviations, the tunnel was a uniform seven feet in height, ten feet wide, and apparently endless.
At several points along the way larger areas had been dug out that might have served for rest areas or places to store provisions, but their original use could only be guessed at by those now passing.
Calis turned back to where Luis waited and motioned for him to come forward. Erik wondered at the choice until he saw Calis draw a dagger from his belt.
Beyond the Captain lay another opening, but Erik had the impression this was more than another widening in the tunnel. He sensed air movement and wondered if they had reached some portion of the abandoned underground city Praji had told of. He knew it was not possible that they had come far enough to enter the particular one Praji spoke of down in the south, but perhaps there was another such place up here, in the mountains.
Calis and Luis vanished into the gloom. The single torch was at the center of the column, and the light barely reached either end. Erik did not know how Calis did it; his vision must be inhuman, for the faint light that reached the head of the line barely gave Erik enough illumination to see de Loungville’s back as he crouched, waiting. Erik hugged himself, for it was cold in the passage. All the men were chilled, but they endured it in silence.
Since losing Foster, de Loungville had been delegating tasks equally to Biggo and Erik that usually fell to the corporal. Erik was uncertain if this was any endorsement of his ability or simply a question of proximity; they were the two men de Loungville was most likely to find at his back when he turned around.
A few moments later, Calis and Luis returned, and Calis spoke in a hushed whisper, while Luis returned to his normal place in line. ‘It’s a large gallery, and we’re entering through a passage that empties into a ledge leading both downward and up – it’s wide enough for three men to walk abreast, but there is no railing and it’s a long way down, so pass the word that when we move out everyone should be cautious of the edge. I’m going to explore. You rest here for a half hour, and if I’m not back, that means follow the upward path.’
De Loungville nodded and motioned for rest. Those behind him passed along the silent instruction and the men sat where they were. Erik shifted around until he found a relatively comfortable position resting against the cold stone, while the others did likewise.
He heard a faint scraping sound and realized de Loungville was counting knots in a thong. It was an old trick, moving your fingers along a piece of rope, twine, or leather, silently reciting a fixed ditty, one that had been practiced over and over until it was almost as exact as sand falling in a glass. De Loungville would move his fingers down a knot each time he finished the rhyme; when he reached the end of the thong, ten minutes would have passed. When he had used the thong three times, the half hour would be up.
Erik closed his eyes. He couldn’t sleep, but he could relax as much as possible. Without thought he put his hands on his aching legs and felt them grow warm with the healing power he had learned from Nakor. As the rest of his body was chilled by the cold rocks, it was a welcome sensation.
Erik wondered how the rest of the villagers in Weanat were doing, and what would become of them when the Emerald Queen’s army reached that area. There were so many invaders there was no chance they could lie low in the woods until they left. That host would strip the land of everything edible for five miles on both sides of the river. The only hope those villagers had would be to go up into the mountains and hide in the high valleys. Perhaps Kirzon and his people would help them. Erik doubted it; they would have barely enough food for the winter for themselves.
Then he wondered what his mother was doing. He had no idea what time it was back home—he didn’t really know what time it was above; he thought it was midday. That probably meant it was the middle of the night back in Ravensburg. She was most likely asleep in her little room at the inn. Erik wondered if she knew he still lived. Her last news of him might have been that he had been condemned to die. Given the secrecy surrounding