Chapter 5 #2
Most poems about love don’t involve eating doves. Vorik passed an intersection lit with a lantern and sensed that he wasn’t alone. Syla? No, there was someone else nearby. Someone quiet and deadly and dangerous. One of his people? A more talented Royal Protector than he’d run into so far?
Those are poems written by humans for humans, Agrevlari said.
Try shove. Or above. Do you know where Jhiton is?
Or Temur or Frandal? Vorik added, naming the other riders who’d come along on the dragon ship, though it was possible the stormers who’d sneaked into the tunnels to set explosives and try to reach the shielder had arrived in another vessel or swum in unnoticed from beyond the barrier.
I may be able to work with above. You would have to speak with Ozlemar about your brother’s location.
You can’t check with him? Vorik passed quickly through the lantern light at the intersection, not wanting whoever lurked nearby to spot him. I don’t have any way to reach out telepathically.
Ozlemar is currently irked with me. The approach of Wreylith will remind him of that.
Moving slowly since he heard troops in the tunnel now, in addition to the other threat he’d sensed, Vorik turned toward the shielder chamber.
His toe brushed against rubble on the floor.
A lot of rubble. He caught the scent of spent black powder in the air.
The gardeners may have sealed this tunnel, but his people had blown it open.
Lanterns came into view ahead, several castle troops heading straight toward him. He eased near the wall so that his silhouette wouldn’t be visible in front of the light of the lantern of the intersection behind him.
“They’re down here,” one man snarled. “We’ll find them.”
How had Syla and Fel evaded the troops? Or had Syla seen them but commanded them to let her continue on her own? Vorik hadn’t yet figured out how in charge she was. The general hadn’t bowed to her, but the staff had. And, of course, her bodyguard remained faithful.
Vorik started to back away, but two stormers stepped into the lit intersection behind him. The soldiers spotted them, one barking an order to charge.
Caught in the middle, Vorik would have to reveal himself, joining his side. Or…
He glanced up at the arched ceiling, then sprang, twisting in the air as he thrust his legs and hands out. His boots caught one side of the wall as his fingers pressed into the other. He spider-walked himself up into the shadows as the soldiers ran past underneath him.
Clangs sounded as they engaged with the stormers.
Vorik’s people were outnumbered, and he debated dropping down to join them, evening the odds by attacking the soldiers from behind, but a feminine gasp sounded in the distance.
More clangs followed it, originating in the same place.
The shielder chamber lay in that direction.
Vorik scooted farther along the ceiling to get away from the skirmish, then dropped and ran toward where the gasp had come from.
He rounded a bend, where a couple of lanterns on the walls had been lit, and glimpsed a chamber at the far end of the tunnel.
From his previous trip, he knew that it was one of several below the castle that held sarcophagi and that the hidden passageway opened from a side wall before the tunnel reached the chamber.
That passageway stood open, silver light similar to moonlight flowing out.
The sounds of a fight, metal striking metal—or maybe gargoyle-bone blade—came from beyond the secret door, but someone already lay crumpled on the ground.
Sandaled feet and the hem of a dress stuck out of the passageway. The person wasn’t moving.
“Syla?” Vorik whispered, fear and concern surging through him.
What had she been wearing on her feet? He didn’t remember. He’d looked her up and down but had been distracted by the curves of her body and hadn’t paid attention to her footwear. She had been wearing a dress.
Forgetting to be quiet and wary, that other threats were in the tunnels, Vorik sprinted toward the fallen woman. He doubted Jhiton would have killed her, not while they needed her moon-mark, but one of his subordinates, not realizing her value, might have made that mistake.
He’d almost reached the hidden passageway when someone in black leather strode out of the burial chamber at the end of the tunnel. Jhiton. Two riders walked behind him, all three men with swords drawn as they strode with determination toward the hidden doorway.
Vorik slowed, confused about where they’d come from. That burial chamber was a dead-end, wasn’t it?
Only when shadows moved behind Jhiton and the other two men—Lieutenants Garblon and Hix—did Vorik spot a hole that had been blown into the wall between two tombs. That was how his people had gotten into the tunnel system this time.
Though Vorik was still confused, because his sense of direction promised they weren’t anywhere near the bluff, he didn’t have time to ask about the excavation.
Face set with determination, Jhiton didn’t hesitate when he spotted Vorik.
With his twin swords in hand, he strode straight into the tunnel and toward the shielder chamber.