The work proceeded slowly and quietly, the wizard freezing in place whenever a Traldian soldier came too close. The knife was sharp and sliced through the rope's woven fibres with little effort, but just when he was thinking that the worst was over he pulled the knife at slightly the wrong angle, making the rope slide against the side of the wardrobe with a loud rasping noise. The enemy soldiers jumped up in alarm, reaching for their weapons, and Jerry and Lirenna cast their sleep spells over Thomas’s shoulders, making several of them collapse unconscious.
The other soldiers started in shock, wondering what terrible new weapon the Konnens had found, but then some of them got themselves under control and shot a volley of arrows at the airlock. Thomas dodged back behind the wardrobe, forgetting his shield spell in his fear, but the spell worked anyway and the enemy soldiers were even more alarmed to see their arrows striking nothing but empty air. Jerry, meanwhile, snatched the knife from his hand and finished cutting through the rope.
The three wizards then pushed together and the section of barricade collapsed with a loud clatter which, together with the shouts of the defenders, roused the entire enemy camp, bringing dozens of enemy soldiers out into the corridor-street. More arrows came flying at them, bouncing off the shield spell, and as soon as the enemy soldiers came within range of their sleep spells Thomas and Jerry sent another eight of them into spell induced unconsciousness.
Jerry and Lirenna, having used up their meagre supply of magic, then retreated back into the airlock, but were pushed roughly aside by dozens of Konnen soldiers running through to take advantage of the momentary gap in the enemy’s defences. Thomas remained at the forefront of the fighting for a few moments longer, though, while a pair of Konnen soldiers sheltered behind his magical shield and shot arrow after arrow at the defenders, but after about fifteen minutes he felt the spell begin to fade and he edged his way back.
At that moment, though, a Traldian soldier appeared from out of nowhere, rising up with a scream of fury to swing a huge broadsword in a mighty arc, chopping the Konnen soldier beside him almost in half. Thomas was sprayed with blood and staggered backwards in terror as the Traldian freed his sword and prepared to do it again, this time at him. The other Konnen soldier tried to come around to cover him, all the soldiers having been ordered to protect the wizards at any cost, but Thomas’s foot slipped in the puddles of gore and he fell heavily to the ground, taking the Konnen soldier with him.
The fall saved him from the Traldian’s first attack and he felt the huge broadsword whistling an inch past his ear. The huge sword’s momentum carried it on, completing its wide arc before the Traldian could get it under control again, and during the brief respite Thomas searched frantically among his pockets for a small stick with a piece of cobweb wrapped around it. The soldier raised his sword, ready to bring it savagely and mercilessly down on Thomas’s sprawling form, and the wizard was just barely able to point the stick and cast the spell in time.
Long strands of sticky web shot from the pointing stick, wrapping themselves around the soldier and entangling him helplessly. Thomas scrambled back to his feet, slipping and sliding in the pool of blood and getting it all over himself, feeling elated as the enemy soldier fell to the ground, struggling futilely as the webs contracted and tightened.
He backed away from the frantically struggling Traldian soldier, wanting to be back in the airlock before the webs dried up and crumbled away, but a Konnen soldier stepped forward and, before Thomas could stop him, he ran the Traldian through with his sword.
Thomas was astonished and outraged, and ran forward to grab him by the arm before he could strike again. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “You said you’d take them prisoner!”
“This is war!” replied the soldier angrily. “Now get back to your friends!”
He then ran forward to join his fellows, who'd formed a solid wall across the corridor street and were slowly pushing the Traldians back, leaving the occasional bloody corpse on the ground. The Traldians who’d been knocked out by the sleep spells were beginning to come round, but Thomas was relieved to see Konnen soldiers disarming them, tying their hands and leading them away. Lord Basil was keeping his promise, and the Konnen who’d killed the web bound Traldian must have been a rogue, disobeying orders. He strode back through the airlock, intent on reporting it to Sejanus.
Lirenna screamed when she saw him, and Thomas realised for the first time that he was covered, almost head to foot, in drying blood. “It’s all right, it’s not mine,” he said as the demi shae grabbed him and ran her hands all over his body, checking for injuries. “I’m fine.”
“You scared me!” accused the demi shae, hugging him in relief and unmindful of the blood thereby sticking to her own clothes. “Don’t do that to me again!”
Thomas looked around for Sejanus and saw him about twenty yards away, emerging from his command post. The General was delighted as he listened to the battle reports, and hardly seemed to notice as Thomas reported the atrocity in an angry voice.
“He will be disciplined,” he said absent mindedly, and then waved a hand dismissively as a Captain came back through the airlock and marched over to them, saluting smartly.
“Sir, the enemy have retreated to a fall back position, another barricade positioned thirty yards back from the airlocks. We'll get through it, but the enemy are already bringing in reinforcements. Things'll be getting bloody up there before long."
“Doesn't matter,” said the General, smiling with pleasure. “They’ll concentrate their forces here, so next time we’ll hit them at another airlock. We’ll wear them down, reduce their army a few men at a time.” He then turned to the three wizards. “You’ve done well. Now go back to the mansion. Rest and recover. A messenger will come for you tomorrow morning for the next push, so make sure you’ve got your spells ready.” He then turned and went back into his command post, leaving the three wizards alone and unattended in the middle of the corridor street.
“Well, looks like we’ve got the run of the city now,” said Jerry with a sigh. “The Konnen half of it, anyway. So what do we do now?”
“First, get a change of clothes," replied Thomas, looking down at himself. "Then take a look around. Get to know the layout of the city better. You never know when we might get a better chance. Sejanus implied that there are ways out of this city, into the tunnels of the old mines, and I’d like to find them. If we can free Shaun and Matt, that may be our way out of here.”
☆☆☆
An hour later, freshly washed and with clean clothes on, they spent the rest of the day wandering around the four segments of the city controlled by House Konnen, following each of the four concentric corridors all the way from the front line with the Traldians to the still intact airlocks sealing off the dead segment once ruled by House Laxu. They also went all the way down each of the radial corridors from the sealed off park caverns to the mansions, but no matter which way they went they found only hundreds of small homes inhabited by the common folk, all of whom served the noble families in some way or another. They found no hint of any way beyond the circle of the city. Eventually, as the glowing globes of marble hanging from the ceiling grew dimmer signaling the approach of evening, they returned to the Konnen mansion and were let in by the guards on duty.
The three wizards and Diana were delighted and relieved to see each other safe and sound again, but the wizards were angered to learn that the gentle cleric of Caroli had been forced to channel the power of Caroli up to and beyond the point of exhaustion, only being allowed to rest when she'd literally collapsed across one of the injured soldiers. She'd awoken a couple of hours later in one of the beds of the infirmary, her head still pounding from the morning's prayers, but she'd made herself get up and explore the mansion again in case there was some room or corner they'd missed earlier. She'd discovering nothing more than the others, though. If there was indeed some way out of the city, it had to be in one of the forbidden areas, guarded by grim faced soldiers who barred their way with evil laughs of derision.
They all slept together in the same room again that night, feeling safer that way, but were all lying wide awake, turning their troubles over and over in their minds, when the maid brought them their breakfasts the next morning. When she returned an hour later to collect their plates, on which most of their food remained, barely touched, she explained, amidst numerous fearful apologies, that despite their use of the washbasins in their own rooms both the night before and that morning, several family members they’d met in the corridors had complained of their smell.
The questers, who were convinced that they were all quite clean, having thoroughly washed off all the accumulated grime of their journey through the Underworld, had long since stopped noticing the smells of each others' bodies, but the fanatically clean Konnen nobles, being used to a more 'civilized' lifestyle, could smell them coming from the other end of the corridor. The questers had to be split up again, therefore, Jerry and Thomas being taken to one bathroom and Lirenna and Diana to another, where they were undressed, thoroughly washed and rubbed down with a variety of oils, one for each and every part of the body. Afterwards they all smelled like an explosion in a perfume shop, but their noses grew tired of it as fast as they had their earlier reek of stale sweat and the family members they met in the corridors stopped holding perfumed hankeys to their faces whenever they went by, even managing a cordial greeting now and then. It made them feel awful when they thought again of Shaun and Matthew who were, undoubtedly, beginning to develop a fragrance all their own by now.
“That was awkward,” said Jerry when they were all reunited. “We had to take off our amulets with our clothes. We tried to stay as close to them as possible, but even so I’m not sure we were protected by them all the time.”
“Us too,” replied Diana. “There’s no way we can avoid it, though, or they’ll become suspicious. We’ll just have to trust to luck. Have faith in the Gods. Try to stay as close to them as possible and pray that his Lordship doesn’t try to read our minds while we’re without them.”
They then returned to their rooms, where a group of guards brought the wizards their spellbooks and stood close guard over them while they read their spells. Thomas ran his hands lovingly across the leather binding and examined every page to reassure himself that it was undamaged. He tried to tell himself that it was wrong to be so attached to a mere collection of paper sheets. It could be replaced, although at great cost and effort, if they ever found a way back to Tharia. When the guards took it back, though, they had to virtually prise it out of his hands and the wizard stared achingly after it as they marched off along the corridor, taking the precious books back to the treasure room.
A few minutes later, another group of guards took them down to the dungeons for their daily visit with Shaun and Matthew, and this time they let them stay for an hour during which the cleric and the wizards told the soldiers all that had happened the day before.
"We had an interesting day as well," said Shaun. "A small spider crawled all the way up that wall and then climbed down again."
"The beetle," said Matthew. "Tell them about the beetle."
"Oh yes," said his older brother. "I almost forgot. There was this beetle. It went that way." He pointed into a neighbouring cell. "Oh yes, never a dull moment in the dungeons." Then he relented, seeing the pain in Diana's eyes. "I'm sorry," he said, squeezing her hands. "But you've got no idea how the time drags. It seems like years since you were last here."
"We'll get you out of here," promised the cleric. "I swear it, in the name of the..."
"No!" snapped Shaun, reaching out to grasp her by the arms. "Don't swear in the name of the Gods! Please, Di! Promise me you won't! What if the opportunity to escape comes and you can't take advantage of it because you swore to take us with you? Please, Di! If you love us, don't swear to rescue us."
The cleric nodded reluctantly, but they could all see in her eyes that she might as well have sworn, because there was no way she was going to leave without them. No way in hell, and when she left with the wizards at the end of their hour the soldiers were left feeling twice as miserable as they had before.
Then it was time for the wizards to go back into battle, and once again Diana was led away to the infirmary to heal more soldiers. As the wizards were leaving the mansion, though, going down the wide flight of steps to the floor of the forecourt, they saw a commotion taking place in the centre of the plaza. A crowd had gathered around a group of soldiers who were hanging the body of a dead guard from a framework of wooden poles set in holes in the floor clearly intended for this purpose.
He’d been savagely beaten. Almost every inch of skin that showed through his guard's underclothes was bruised, torn and bleeding, and blood dripped down from his dangling feet to make a puddle on the polished stone floor. It seemed that he’d been cruelly tortured for some time before being mercifully killed, and murmurs of apprehension and fear went through the crowd as the soldiers finished their work and stepped back. Thomas gathered that this sort of thing happened quite regularly, and wondered that the common folk didn’t rise up and put an end to it. Lord Basil's ring of ESP, he realised. He would know who the ringleaders were before they'd even done anything.
Lirenna rounded furiously on the soldiers. “What’s the meaning of this?” she demanded. “What did he do?”
“Treason,” replied the soldier. “Plotted to assassinate Lord Basil. Never thought it of him, though. He was one of his most trusted men. Just goes to show, you never can tell.”
Thomas was glad that Diana wasn’t here to see this, she would have exploded at this atrocity, with who knew what consequences for the rest of them. It was all he could do to try to calm the demi shae down while at the same time trying to suppress his own outrage and horror. No civilized people did this, not even to traitors. At that moment, though, Lirenna happened to look at the dead guard’s face and the outrage she’d been feeling was swept away by a tidal wave of horror as she recognised him. “Oh no, by all the merciful Gods, no!” she whispered. “It’s Duncan!”
“Duncan?” said Jerry fearfully and, looking up, the other two wizards realised that she was right. It was the guard she’d enchanted and told to help them.
“You knew him?” asked the soldier suspiciously, and Thomas heard the unspoken question in his voice. You were friends with this traitor?
“No, we’ve only just arrived here, don’t forget,” said Thomas hurriedly. “We met him, though, and he was kind to us.”
“Kind to you?” laughed another soldier. “That one was never kind to anyone. That’s why Lord Basil trusted him so much.”
“I wonder if we could spend a few moments alone with him?” asked Lirenna. “To pay our respects.”
The soldiers glanced at each other, and then the one who’d spoken first shrugged. “Why not?” he said. “Don’t be too long, though. Sejanus doesn’t like being kept waiting.”
The soldiers retreated a few feet, and the three wizards went right up to the dead guard. “How could this have happened?” asked Jerry in perplexity. “He wasn’t going to assassinate Lord Basil, and all his Lordship had to do was read his mind with that ring of his to know it.”
“He couldn’t read his mind,” pointed out Lirenna. “He was wearing an Amulet of Mind Protection, remember? If Lord Basil had tried to read his mind, he’d only have read what he expected to find there.”
A fist of ice squeezed the pit of Thomas’s stomach as an awful suspicion came to him. “That Lord Basil character,” he said in a trembling voice. “Would you call him paranoid?”
“Probably,” replied Jerry. “He probably suspects everyone around him of...” He suddenly gave a start as the truth came to him as well. “He reads everyone’s mind as a matter of routine,” he said, “because he suspects everyone of plotting against him.”
“So when he read Duncan’s mind,” continued Thomas, “the amulet made sure that he found exactly what he expected to find.”
“No!” screamed Lirenna as horror mounted upon horror. “You mean that we killed him? That I...”
“No!” said Thomas, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her. “It wasn’t our fault! It wasn’t your fault! It was the system here that killed him. Lord Basil with his paranoia and his cruelty and his brutality. It was their fault, not ours. Their fault. Do you understand?”
Slowly the demi shae stopped shaking and nodded, but the tears still flowed freely from her eyes. “We must still accept our share of the blame, though,” she said. “If we hadn’t used him to our own ends, he’d still be alive now. We can’t get away from that.”
“Hey,” said Jerry in sudden alarm. “If he reads our minds, he’s going to read treachery there, too. He must think we’re plotting to kill him too.”
“Probably,” agreed Thomas, “but we’re prisoners, virtual slaves, so it’d be perfectly natural for us to want to kill him. We’re not trusted servants, like he was. I don’t think we’re in any danger from that direction.”
“We’ve got a bigger problem than that,” said Lirenna, who’d wiped away her tears and was now looking a little better, although her face was still a mask of terrible guilt. “He’s still wearing his amulet, I can see the chain around his neck. It’s safe for the time being, but eventually they’ll take him down, prepare him for burial or whatever they do to their dead, which almost certainly involves taking off the rest of his clothes..."
“And they’ll discover the amulet,” agreed Thomas. “They’ll wonder where he got it, put two and two together...” He looked up at the dead guard. “We’ve got to get it back somehow, but how?”
“Leave it to me,” said the demi shae.
She went over to the group of soldiers, still waiting patiently a short distance away. “It’s the custom among our people to show respect to the dead by kissing their eyes," she said. "Is it alright if I do that?”
Several of the guards winced with disgust. “He’s a dirty traitor,” said one of the others. “He deserves no respect.”
The Captain gave his permission, though, so she went back to the wooden framework and climbed up it until her face was level with Duncan’s. She looked at his broken, bloody face for a long time, her tears beginning to flow again, and then put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him gently, first on one eye, then the other. “I’m sorry, Duncan,” she said softly. “We never meant for this to happen. Please forgive me.” She then kissed him on the forehead and ran a hand gently through his blood matted hair before climbing carefully back down to the ground.
The soldiers then decided that they’d wasted enough time and urged them away down the corridor street towards the battlefront.
“Did you get it?” asked Thomas softly.
Lirenna opened the fingers of her left hand a little to show him the amulet clenched there.
“Good, well done,” said the wizard. “We’ll give it to Shaun and Matt the next time we see them.”
The demi shae nodded slightly, and they said nothing more until they arrived at the airlocks.