Lightning's Daughter

11

They waited for three days in the wool merchant’s warehouse, a wait that quickly became difficult. The stuffy confines between the wall and the bales reeked of lanoline, and the narrow, enclosed space was like a prison to the roving plains people. They could not talk or move around during the day for fear of attracting attention.

At night they had to stay within the confines of the warehouse. Sengi brought them food and water, told them what news he knew, and gave them what he could to make them comfortable, but he could do little to ease their anxiety and restlessness.

Khan’di sent a message saying he was safe and still working on his plans. However, he could not come himself. Gabria worried about him and about all of her companions. The tension was wearing everyone thin.

She was particularly worried about Piers. The old healer spent most of his time drinking Sengi’s wine and speaking to no one. He sat against the wall, his eyes staring at a place far away and his body sagging with the sadness of his memories.

For his sake, Gabria prayed that their wait would soon end.

On the evening of the third day Khan’di finally returned, soon after the last laborer had left the warehouse. He brought with him a map of the palace and an old, ragged man wearing only a goatskin tunic and rough leggings.

Once again the travelers stared at Khan’di when he came into their hiding place. His rich court robes were gone, replaced by a shin of chain mail, leather pants, greaves of steel, and a bright blue surcoat embroidered with his dolphin emblem. His normally controlled features were alive with anticipation. He held out his arms and cried, “Tonight, we go to war!’”

The travelers gathered around him, everybody talking and asking questions at once. Piers rose from his place at the wall and came to join them.

“Please! I will explain,” Khan’di called over the noise as he waved them to silence. Concisely, he told Gabria and the warriors of his plan to attack the palace and free Branth from the Fon’s clutches. When he was finished, they stared at each other and then at him in shock at the sheer audacity of his plan.

“Are you serious?” Gabria asked.

“Absolutely. The pieces have all fallen into place.”

“You are relying on a great many pieces,” Piers remarked dryly.

Khan’di’s eyes blazed. “This plan will not fail.”

“Can you trust him?” Athlone demanded, pointing to the old man who had been standing silently through the discussion.

“He is a hillman from one of the ancient tribes that live in the Redstone Hills. He has given his word that what he knows is true and that he will lead you where you need to go. He will die before he breaks his vow,” Khan’di replied.

Athlone rubbed his chin. “Fair enough.” He paused. “Will you give us your vow, as well?”

The nobleman locked eyes with the chieftain. “I swear to you before my god,” Khan’di said, “and upon the honor of my family, I will raise the people and create the biggest riot this city has ever seen.”

The chieftain studied Khan’di’s face and was satisfied with what he saw. Gravely he responded, “Then I swear before our gods that we will follow your plan and do our best to find Branth.”

“And kill him if you have to,” Khan’di added. “Do not leave him in the Fon’s hands.”

Athlone nodded. “Agreed.”

“What about the Fon?” Gabria asked.

“If all goes well, you won’t have to worry about her. She’ll be too busy fighting an uprising.”

Piers looked dubious. He was the only one who completely understood the risks Khan’di was taking by trying to bring a city like Pra Desh into an armed revolt. “Are you so certain the army will mutiny?”

Khan’di slapped the hilt of the sword hanging at his belt. “Enough will. The Fon’s regulars won’t, but the mass of the army is conscripted and they want no part of a war with the other kingdoms.”

Piers shook his head. “My old friend, your audacity is astounding. Elaja be with you this night.”

“And you, Healer.” Khan’di looked around at them all. “Tomorrow we will meet again. Until then, good luck, my friends.” He started to leave, then turned and squeezed Gabria’s arm. “Thank you, Sorceress,” he murmured.

When he was gone, the clanspeople gathered their weapons and their gear. They packed everything they did not need and stacked the bundles by the wall.

Piers exchanged his long healer’s robe for a tunic and a pair of Athlone’s woolen pants. He strapped his healer’s bag to his belt. He was standing, staring at the floor when Gabria touched his arm. He nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Are you all right?” she asked, for his face was sickly pale. He seemed to have aged ten years the past three days.

The healer licked his dry lips. “I never thought I’d go back there. To the palace. Did I tell you my daughter died in that dungeon?”

Gabria’s heart went out to him. “You only told me the Fon had killed her.”

“Tortured her,” he corrected bitterly.

“We have Khan’di’s map. You don’t have to go.”

Abruptly Piers’s head snapped up. “Yes, I do, for both our sakes. Besides, a guide works better than a map.”

“I am glad you think so, too,” she said with relief and gratitude.

“What about Tam and Treader?” Sayyed asked. “Do we leave them with Sengi?”

The words were barely out of his mouth when Treader started barking madly. Tam sprang forward and wrapped her arms around the Turk’s waist. Gabria, Athlone, and Sayyed clamped their hands over their ears to stifle the racket, but they could not silence Treader’s frantic pleas ringing in their heads.

“He’s trying to tell us that Tam is terrified to be left alone,” Gabria cried over the barking.

A strange, sympathetic look came over Sayyed’s face, and he bent down to pry Tam from his side. The girl transferred her grip to his neck, and he lifted her easily, whispering something in her ear. Treader’s barking immediately stopped; the big dog’s tail wagged. Sayyed glanced at Athlone and shrugged. “When I was small, I did not like to be alone either. I’ll keep her with me.”

The chief agreed, and Tam shyly smiled her thanks.

When they were ready to go, Athlone signaled to the hillman to lead the way. The old man could not speak their language or even the polyglot language of the wharves and streets. He merely grunted and loped out of the warehouse, expecting the others to follow.

The moment the travelers stepped out of the warehouse, they sensed something was different in the warm spring night. The city seemed to crackle with the tension of a coming storm.

A strange brightness from thousands of torches glowed in the market streets and guild houses. An angry murmur was heard in the distance—the blending of thousands of feet marching on stone, the shout of angry voices, and the clash of weapons. On the hill above the warehouses, horns blared from the barracks and the palace.

The company had to hurry to keep up with their guide. Although he was old enough to be Athlone’s grandfather, the hillman was as wiry and agile as a mountain goat. He led them down into the dark maze of warehouses, wharves, and custom houses. Several times the travelers had to press back into the shadows as groups of shouting, angry people, brandishing knives, pikes, or homemade weapons, marched past.

Khan’di’s uprising had begun.

Before long, however, the noise and activity were left behind. The hillman led his charges out of the harbor district and up into the hills behind the old city wall.

Gabria glanced up as they hurried through the darkness and was surprised to see the sky was clouding over. Lightning flickered far out over the sea. She hesitated. A strange feeling teased the edges of her senses, but whatever it was, it was too faint for her to recognize. Putting the feeling aside, she hurried after Athlone.

The hillman was leading Gabria and her companions up the southern end of the Redstone Hills, a place where the steep slopes were weathered by harsh seas. Deep gullies slashed down between the hills, and rock-strewn crags reared up over the stony vales. Not many people came up into the hills, for the inhospitable slopes made traveling difficult. Only the ancient tribes lived in the rugged lands, raising their half-wild goats, unimpressed by the vast city that lay at their feet. And only the hill tribes knew the extensive honeycomb of caves and passages that riddled the heart of the hills.

The night was completely dark by the time the party came to a narrow ravine about half a league behind the city wall. Clouds had totally obscured the moon and stars; the only illumination came from the distant lightning and from the torches and fires in the city below. The travelers turned to look back at Pra Desh and were surprised to see rivers of torchlight flowing up the streets toward the old city. The mobs were on their way to storm the gates.

Gabria knew the success of this part of Khan’di’s plan depended on the Fon’s army; if enough men mutinied, the gates could be seized and held open, and the citizen mob would spend their rage against the palace. It was too difficult to see what was happening around the barracks and walls, but it seemed obvious from the noise and the blowing horns that there was a great commotion going on. Gabria could only pray that Khan’di’s plot was proceeding as hoped before she followed her companions down into the night-dark ravine.

They stumbled along the rocky bottom for a time before the hillman came to a stop in front of a huge fallen boulder. The massive piece of granite was half-buried in the side of the ravine and camouflaged with brush and rock debris. Without a word, he began to pull the brush away to reveal a narrow, black hole behind the boulder. Quick as a squirrel, he darted in, leaving the others standing outside.

“Is this it?” Gabria asked suspiciously.

The old man poked his head out and waved angrily for them to follow him. One at a time, the warriors, Gabria, and Treader squeezed through the hole. Tam kept her hand glued to Sayyed’s, but she followed without a complaint or a whimper into the pitch-black cave.

The party crowded together. The cave was barely high enough to allow them to stand upright and so lightless they could not see the walls, the floor, or each other’s faces. No one dared to take a step.

Suddenly a tiny light flared in the back of the cave, where the hillman crouched over his flint and steel. To everyone’s relief, he lit several rush torches and passed them on to the men, then he gestured again and vanished into the darkness.

“I think I’d rather be back in the warehouse,” Bregan said, staring up at the low-hanging ceiling.

Athlone gripped the warrior’s arm as he started after the old man. “So would I,” he said. “So would I.”

In single file, with Athlone in front and Bregan bringing up the rear, the party followed its silent guide down into the depths of the earth.

Not far away, in a small, dark room beneath the palace, the Fon stood with her back against a wall, watching Branth through narrowed eyes. She was not certain he was ready to attempt the spell again. She would have preferred to wait a few more days to summon the gorthling and launch her army at Portane, but only a short time ago she had received word that a mob had risen in the streets and was marching toward the palace. The army, the soldiers she herself had levied, had betrayed her and opened the city gates to the rabble.

She gritted her teeth, and a snarl of hatred twisted her thin mouth. Oh, heads will roll for this treason! The streets will run with the blood of traitors, she swore to herself. Already the mob and the rebellious factions of the army were fighting the guards still loyal to her. The battle raged in the streets near the palace, too close for complacency.

The Fon slammed her palm against the wall. It was that damned Khan’di Kadoa’s doing. She could sense his hand in this treachery. She should have disposed of that conniving vermin before this, but he had the support of the powerful merchant guilds and she had not been ready to face them in an outright confrontation.

Well, after this night the Kadoa family would cease to exist and the merchant guilds would come groveling. This night she would have her gorthling.

In front of her, Branth leaned over the big, leather-bound tome on the table and emotionlessly recited the words of the spell. An aura of power was building around him. Even the Fon could see the faint greenish glow. Yet the man seemed unaware of anything but the book and the small golden cage on the table before him.

His voice intoned unceasingly through the long, complicated spell. In the light of the small lamp the Fon could see a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and a faint trembling begin to shake his frame. Then, to her delight, a tiny pinhole of light appeared, hovering in the center of the cage. She knew from reading the book that the pinhole was an opening to the immortal world of gods, dreams, and powers unlimited. Slowly Branth straightened and began the second part of the spell: to widen the door and call a gorthling out of his realm.

The Fon watched impatiently. She wanted to rip the hole wider with her own hands and snatch the gorthling into her domain, but she had learned enough to know the evil creatures were dangerous and had to be handled with care and cunning. She curbed her frustration and watched as the hole began to open bit by bit. When the hole was a handspan wide, Branth suddenly stopped.

“What’s the matter, you fool?” hissed the Fon. “Go on!”

Branth appeared to struggle within himself, ready to say something. His mouth worked, and his hands tightened into fists. “No,” he groaned between clenched teeth. “Not this.”

The Fon stepped forward, her eyes blazing. “Do it!” she screeched.

The exiled chief blanched. The days of drugs and mind control slowly destroyed the feeble vestiges of his will. Like a living corpse, he turned back to the tome and the cage.

As he resumed the spell, the green aura grew brighter. The magic about him increased, widening the hole of light in the cage. The light grew so dazzling that the Fon had to shield her eyes.

She blinked once before she saw it.

A small, wizened face peered through the hole. The Fon held her breath. Branth had lost control of the creature at the same point during his previous attempt at the spell. This time, however, he did not fail. He chanted the incantation, slowly drawing the gorthling out of his world and into the cage.

The creature came cautiously. He climbed out of the hole one limb at a time and finally crouched, snarling, in the corner of the cage. Branth said a command, and the hole of light snapped shut.

The Fon’s eyes took a moment to adjust to the faint light, then she stared in horrified fascination at the thing in the golden cage. The gorthling resembled a small, incredibly ancient monkey with long, twisted limbs and the face of a mummified child. The Fon suppressed a shudder as the creature turned his inhuman eyes toward her. Before he could look her in the eyes, she turned away and snapped to Branth, “Put the collar on the thing.”

This was the most dangerous part of the spell, for the sorcerer had to put a collar of gold on the gorthling in order to properly control him. However, the tome stated in no uncertain terms that the gorthling could not be touched by human hands. The Fon did not know why, and she did not want to find out.

Branth reached for a long-handled clamp and the golden collar. He had practiced many times with the clamp upon various small animals; he was now quite deft at snapping the collar around creatures in the cage. But neither he nor the Fon had counted on the cunning and agility of the gorthling.

He zipped around the small cage, avoiding the collar and Branth’s best efforts with ease. Time and again the sorcerer almost had the collar about his neck only to have the gorthling slip away. The Fon grew wild with frustration. “Collar the thing!” she screamed.

At that moment, the collar dropped off the clamp and fell to the cage floor by the edge of the bars. Branth, his consciousness numbed by the Fon’s poisons, simply reacted. He stuck his fingers through the bars to retrieve the collar.

“No!” the Fon shrieked.

Even as she sprang to grab the man’s arm, the gorthling pounced on Branth’s fingers and sank his teeth into the man’s skin. Branth howled in agony and tried to yank his hand through the bars, but the gorthling clung to his fingers, ripping off chunks of flesh and gulping them down.

The taste of blood drove the creature into a frenzy. He screeched and clawed and tore Branth’s hand to shreds. The man writhed and screamed so violently, the Fon could not get near to help him.

All at once, the gorthling fell quiet. The Fon stepped back, her eyes wide in dread, for the creature was beginning to grow. His body pulsed with a lurid red light and blood dripped from his mouth. In just a moment he was as big as the cage.

Appalled, the Fon backed to the door, leaving Branth to his doom. She hoped the creature would remain confined in the cage, yet even as her hands fumbled for the latch, the gorthling burst the bars of the gilded prison. Branth and the Fon froze.

Still clinging to the sorcerer’s bloody hand, the gorthling turned his eyes on the Fon. Across the room, the Fon caught his gaze and was drawn into the black depths of his eyes. She found herself gazing into an evil she never knew existed, an evil so powerful and destructive it swallowed her rational thought and emptied her mind of everything but total terror.

Her shriek filled the small room. Somewhere in the shreds of her consciousness a tiny spark of self-survival remained and guided her hand to the door latch. The gorthling reached his clawed hand for the oil lamp on the table. Instantly he flung the lamp at the woman as she wrenched the door open with a desperate heave and fled screaming down the corridor.

The oil lamp smashed against the wooden door, its oil bursting into flames on the wood and running in fiery rivulets down to the floor. The gorthling curled his lips in malicious glee, then he turned his eyes to Branth.

The clansman had not moved. His face was racked in fear and pain; his hand and lower arm were in bloody shreds. Still he could not force himself to move against the horror of the gorthling.

The creature stopped growing the moment he burst out of the cage, and now he crouched like a big cat on the table, clutching Branth’s arm. “Where did you learn your spell, Sorcerer?” the gorthling rasped.

Branth shook violently at the sound of the dry, vicious voice. He gasped an answer and pointed to the book on the table.

The gorthling looked. “The Book of Matrah? No wonder you failed.” He cackled. “Who are you?”

The sorcerer forced himself to answer, “Lord. . . Branth of Clan Geldring.”

“A clansman. You would be. Only clansmen have ever called for my kind.” He sank his claws deeper into Branth’s arm. “Where are we?”

Branth whimpered. “A palace. In Pra Desh.”

“You are not in your own land. Why is that, little chieftain?”

“I was exiled.”

“Oh ho!” the gorthling sneered. “Your people have banished you. How sad. Perhaps I shall change that. It might be interesting to visit your clans.” He laughed, the sound as bitter and raw as acid.

The creature’s laugh was more than Branth could bear. He collapsed to his knees, sobbing and shrieking for mercy.

“Mercy!” the gorthling screeched. “I know nothing of mercy. But I know that you, little chieftain, are mine!”

Without warning, the creature sprang for Branth’s face. The man fell over backward onto the stone floor, gibbering in terror and clawing at the thing on his head. The beast clung with grim determination. Smoke swirled about them, and the gorthling’s eyes blazed in the light of the fire.

The gorthling’s body began to pulse again with a lurid red glow. The being forced Branth’s mouth open. The Geldring shrieked one last time in despair before he fell deathly still. Inch by inch the gorthling worked his way into Branth’s mouth. The creature looked out once from between the chieftain’s teeth and chuckled with satisfaction, then the man’s mouth snapped shut and the gorthling disappeared from sight.

The room was quiet except for the crackle of the fire on the burning door. The fire had spread across the floor and now touched the pile of straw on Branth’s pallet. The flames leaped higher. Smoke swirled out into the corridor.

Within Branth’s body, the gorthling began his metamorphosis. Swiftly the creature melded his form into the sorcerer’s body, joining his life to Branth’s heart, muscle, and bone in a symbiosis that could be broken only by death. Once the union was complete, the gorthling had total control of the man’s body and brain.

In the process, Branth’s soul was destroyed. The gorthling stripped his victim’s mind of all thoughts, memories, and dreams and inserted his own cunning and intelligence. As Branth’s brain was emptied, the gorthling retained a very superficial knowledge of the chief’s memories and emotions.

One emotion in particular caught the gorthling’s interest: hatred. There was a vestige of a very powerful hatred and resentment for one particular magic-wielder. Unfortunately, the gorthling could not clearly understand the jumbled human memory. Perhaps in time he would learn the identity of that magic-wielder. For now the gorthling had other things to think about.

Branth’s body flinched and jerked upright. The gorthling opened his eyes. Branth’s normal arrogant gaze was gone, consumed with his mind and soul. In its place was a glint of inhuman evil.

The gorthling stood up, slowly testing the muscles of the new form he had invaded. Other than the injured hand, which the gorthling could heal over time, the body was basically fit and healthy. The creature grinned. In his normal shape, the gorthling had no power of his own, only the ability to enhance other forms of power. However, once he tasted blood, he was able to inhabit a mortal body and add his powers to the new host’s own abilities. This body had potential, especially with its inherent ability to wield magic. A great deal of damage could be done to this world before anyone became aware of his true identity.

First, though, the gorthling had to find out more about the people who lived here. In the immortal world beyond the realm of the dead, he had been distantly aware of this world and the human beings who trampled the earth. He had noted the course of their history in a faint, disinterested fashion, paying only slightly more attention to the clanspeople who had the unique ability to wield magic—a talent granted to them by Valorian, the Hero-Warrior and rumored half-human son of the goddess, Amara. Only a magic-wielder could have called the gorthling to the mortal world, and only a magic-wielder could sent him back. If he was going to stay here in this big, powerful body, he would have to find all of the clan sorcerers and destroy them. Particularly the one that caused his host, Branth, such hatred. That magic-wielder had piqued the gorthling’s curiosity.

Something crashed behind the gorthling, causing him to whirl around. The wooden door was lying on the floor, consumed in flames. The gorthling looked around at the spreading fire. Usually fire did not bother him, but this body did not like it; the creature coughed and drew back from the heat.

Then he remembered the woman. She had been standing by the door and had seen him arrive. She knew what he was. There was no other option; he would have to find her. Gleefully snatching a torch stub from a bracket on the wall, the creature lit it. Branth’s ruined hand was painful, but the gorthling had experienced worse pain before. He grabbed the Book of Matrah from the table, darted past the burning door, and sprang out into the corridor.

A staircase lay ahead. Laughing aloud, he ran up the stairs and through the corridors of the lower palace levels, setting fire to everything that would burn.

“Oh, gods,” Gabria gasped. “Did you hear that?”

At the sound of her voice, the party stopped dead in the black tunnel. They had lost track of how long they’d been stumbling, crawling, climbing, and scrambling after the old man through the endless maze of crevices, tunnels, and caverns. The cold, damp blackness was wearing on them all.

They looked around nervously.

“Hear what?” Piers whispered.

They remained frozen, their ears straining through the impenetrable darkness. The old man looked back impatiently.

Gabria clamped her hands over her mouth to stifle a scream as a wave of terror engulfed her. She sagged back against Piers, trembling and light-headed. She heard Tam begin to whimper.

Sayyed and Athlone said together, “What was that?”

“What was what?” Bregan said too loudly.

Gabria felt her heart thudding in her chest. She was breathing heavily from the shock, but the unknown terror was subsiding as quickly as it had come. “I don’t know. Something happened. Close by. Something horrible.”

The chieftain held up the wavering torch. “Did you hear a sound just then, Sayyed?”

The Turic shifted nervously. “I sensed it rather than heard it. It was hideous!” He bent down to reassure them and to hide the tremor of fear in his face.

Gabria drew herself up and tried to shake off the terrible remnants of her horror. “Athlone, we’d better hurry. I think that may have been Branth.”

The party went on, faster now, driven by the urgency of Gabria’s fear. The old man led them through another narrow passage, around a rock fall, under a Stone ceiling so low they had to crawl on their hands and knees, and into a tiny, rough chamber that seemed hardly more than a wide crack in the earth.

The hillman said several incomprehensible words and pointed to the back of the cave, then he turned and disappeared into the darkness before anyone realized what he was doing.

“Wait!” Athlone yelled, springing after him, but the man had already ducked down another crack and was gone.

“By Surgart’s sword, I’m going to strangle that little rat if he left us lost down here,” Athlone cursed. He strode to the back of the chamber to the spot the hillman had indicated and found another slender fissure on the rock wall. Carefully he squeezed through. There was a long moment of silence before his voice came back to the others.

“Come this way.”

Gabria and the others pushed through the narrow crack, came around some boulders, and found themselves in what seemed to be an enormous cavern. They could not see very much of the lightless space, for their feeble torchlight was swallowed by the towering blackness. A cold silence surrounded them. With great care they edged out across the floor. Only Piers remained frozen to his place, his eyes staring sadly into the dark.

Although she did not have a torch, Gabria walked forward a pace to see what she could discover. Her shin abruptly slammed into a very sharp rock. “This is ridiculous,” she snapped. Raising her hand, she called out a command and a ball of bright light formed over her head.

Every man there jumped like a stung horse.

“Good gods, Gabria,” Athlone yelled. “Don’t startle us like that!” The four Khulinin warriors stared at the light and at Gabria in mixed disbelief and alarm. She looked back at them apologetically. She regretted being so precipitous with her spell, but the frustration of near-blindness and the pain in her leg drove her to act without thinking of what anyone’s reaction might be. They were not used to her sorcery, and the sudden ball of light had been a shock.

Bregan finally shook his grizzled head and tossed his torch to the ground. “Have you got any more of those lights, Lady Gabria?”

Her smile to him was dazzling, and in just a few moments four balls of light hung in the air over the men’s’ heads. Their glow revealed the details of the entire cavern.

Their first impressions had been right; the cavern was huge. As they looked around, it became obvious that, while most of the cavern was natural, a great deal of human labor had been spent smoothing the floors and enlarging the walls. Some unnatural features had been added, too: cages, stocks, chains on the walls, a huge wheeled rack, a forge, and several other unidentifiable machines—all thankfully empty.

“Gods,” Athlone shuddered. “It’s a torture room.”

Without warning, Piers gave a grief-stricken moan and ran forward. In the center of the cavern was a hole, and the healer stumbled to the very edge. He fell to his knees and leaned precariously over the rim.

“Oh, Diana,” he groaned.

“Piers!” Gabria cried. She ran to him and tried to draw him away. The hole appalled her. It was a smooth-sided pit that fell away into a terrifying blackness. A faint, putrid odor rose from the unseen bottom.

“She’s down there,” the healer said, his voice sinking in despair. “The Fon’s executioner took great delight in telling me. Diana wouldn’t confess to poisoning the old Fon—even when they tortured her. They condemned her anyway and threw her down there. My poor Diana.” He leaned against Gabria, covered his face with his hands, and wept. “All these years,” Piers cried. “All these years. I never truly believed she was dead . . . until I saw this pit.”

Gabria finally understood. So many things he had said and done fell into place: his flight from Pra Desh, his refusal to talk about his family or his past, his abiding sadness. She knew how he felt. For the healer, looking into the pit must have been like standing on top of a burial mound and saying goodbye to those buried there. She held onto her friend and let him cry.

“There’s nothing down there anymore,” she said softly. “Diana is gone.”

He wept until the worst of his grief had waned, then he was quiet for a very long time, his gaze lost in the depths of the pit. Gabria could hear the others moving around and searching the cavern for an exit, but she stayed with Piers while he faced the phantoms of his past.

When at last he wiped his eyes on his sleeve and stood up, Gabria knew his grief was under control. The slow, painful process of healing his old wounds had finally begun.

“Was this why you went back to Corin Treld?” he asked, offering her his hand.

She nodded, took his hand, and rose to her feet. “The dead must lie in peace.”

“And so they will,” Piers answered wearily. Then he added, “Now, let’s seek the living. I would still like to face the Fon.”

“Do you know the way out?” she asked.

“Yes. I was here years ago as a healer, but I’ve never had to stay in this place of torment.”

Piers led her around the pit and headed for a wall where a rack of tools and instruments hung. The others followed. He found the door latch, which was cleverly hidden in the stone, and pulled the rack aside to reveal the door. They filed out, with Gabria’s lights bobbing overhead, and found a staircase leading up to the next level. When the last warrior left the torture chamber, Piers looked once more into the black cavern and gently shut the door.

The party went upstairs to the prison level and paused to wait for Piers to take the lead. The travelers stared about them in horror. There were two corridors, one on either side of the stairs, lined with lightless stone cells. The walls were wet with moisture, and the floors were ankle deep in muck and excrement. The smell was horrible.

The noise was even worse. The sight of the lights had excited the prisoners, and they screamed and cried and shouted behind their bars in a hideous cacophony of misery and fear.

Surprisingly, there were no guards.

Piers slowed as he came up the stairs, and his eyes widened. “I know some of those people,” he exclaimed. “They don’t belong here!”

Secen started toward a door, but Athlone stopped him. “Not now. We don’t have time.”

They hurried on, leaving the dungeon and its tormented prisoners behind, and ran up to the next level. Khan’di’s map did not include the deep underground levels of the palace, only the Fon’s wing, where Branth was supposed to be. The party had to rely on Piers’s eleven-year-old memories of the extensive storerooms, wine cellars, and cold storage rooms underneath the main floors.

The healer was surprised by how much he remembered. Released of his grief, his memories flowed out as clear and sharp as yesterday’s hours. He was able to lead his companions up through the levels to a corridor just below the Fon’s wing of the palace.

Khan’di had told them that, according to spies, Branth was being held in one of the Fon’s personal storerooms. The healer took his companions through a large room full of vats and up a winding staircase. At the top, a solid oak door blocked their way. Piers reached for the door handle, but Treader began barking furiously and shoved himself between Piers and the door.

“Piers, be careful!” Gabria cried. “Treader says there’s fire.”

The healer looked skeptical, but he stood back from the stout oak door and very carefully opened it just a crack. A dark cloud of smoke billowed out, and the voracious roar of a fire out of control sounded clearly through the slight opening. Piers slammed the door shut.

“By the gods, what happened?” Athlone exclaimed.

Piers glanced around worriedly. “I don’t know, but we’ll have to go another way.”

The travelers raced down the stairs and through the storage - room. From there they took a different corridor, one that led up the main stairs to the palace’s banquet hall. There they stopped and gazed about them in frightened astonishment. A few torches were still burning in the sconces on the walls of the ornate room, giving off enough light so the parry could see the expanse of the entire hall.

The banquet hall was in the central block of the palace along with the waiting rooms, the Fon’s throne room, and audience chamber. To the north was the Fon’s wing of private apartments, chambers, and servants’ quarters. Already the fire from below was spreading through the first floor of that wing.

It was eating through the timbers and the north wall of the banquet hall. As it climbed to the floor of the second story, the blaze consumed everything in its path. Even as the travelers came to a stop and Gabria banished her lights, the banquet hall was filling with smoke. A muted roaring echoed through the room.

Palace guards, servants, and courtiers ran back and forth, carrying items out of the Fon’s wing; some were running in panic, others screamed or yelled orders. No one seemed to be doing anything to control the fire, and no one paid attention to the clanspeople in the hall.

“Lord!” Keth called. “Look at this.” He was standing in a deep embrasure looking out a rare glassed window.

Athlone and the others joined him and crowded into the space. They followed Keth’s gaze out to the high wall that encircled the palace. The Fon’s guards were struggling to keep the mob from the massive wooden gate that blocked the entrance. But while the travelers watched the gate was forced open by a well-disciplined troop of men who pushed through and attacked the guards. A huge group of people flooded through the breached gate behind them. A roar of triumph rose outside, then the mob came to a stunned halt. A pale flash of lightning illuminated the hundreds of faces staring at the burning wing of the palace.

Thunder and a distant crash reverberated through the building. The smoke grew thicker.

Gabria turned back to the dim, smoky hall. A boy rushed by her carrying an armload of jeweled goblets. The sorceress coughed and stared through the open double doors into the Fon’s wing, where the dancing red and yellow glow of fire revealed more and more people fleeing with the Fon’s valuables.

Athlone drew back from the window. “Where is the Fon in all of this madness?” he yelled above the noise.

“And where is Branth?” Gabria shouted.