Jerry and Diana returned to the reading room to find that Thomas had dropped off to sleep in one of the comfy armchairs. He jerked awake as they entered, and all three of them saw Lirenna sitting on the floor in the corner, staring blankly up at the ceiling.
“Lenny!” cried Thomas in alarm, running over to sit beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. “Lenny, are you all right?”
The demi shae turned her head to look at him, and he breathed a sigh of relief as she slowly came back to life. “I was just wondering,” she said softly, trying but failing to focus on his face. “I was just wondering how much rock there is between us and the surface. You said about a hundred yards, didn’t you Tom?”
Thomas could have bitten his tongue off. He hugged her tighter and looked around to where the others were gathering around close. “I shouldn’t have fallen asleep,” he said, his voice heavy with guilt. “I was so tired… Everything that's happened… We mustn’t leave her alone again, not even for a moment.”
“I’m all right,” replied Lirenna, however, getting back to her feet. “This isn’t my favourite place, but I’ll be all right. What’s that you’ve got there?”
Diana and Jerry showed them the travel rations and the demi shae tried a bit, nibbling the corner of one of the biscuits. “It’s horrible!” she said, screwing her face up in disgust. “It’s like trying to eat ashes.”
“Maybe so, but it’ll keep us alive in the caverns,” replied Thomas. “We were lucky to find it.”
They then settled down to await Parkus’s return, Thomas sat next to Lirenna and chatted to her continually, keeping her cheered up, while Jerry and Diana played klann on a board they found in the corner of the room; a huge board two feet across with all the pieces made of silver and gold. They played half heartedly, neither of them having their minds fully on the game, and they were more relieved than disappointed when they heard the trundling of a laundry trolley coming down the corridor towards them. A moment later the door opened and Parkus entered, followed by a maid pushing the trolley.
“I had a bit of luck,” he said, looking both ways down the corridor and closing the door behind him. “This is Willa. I found her collecting the laundry and managed to persuade her to help us."
"My brother was tortured to death," said the maid, her eyes hard and angry. "Treason, they said. I've been looking for a way to get back at the Konnens for a long time."
Parkus fished around among the dirty bedsheets and pillowcases and pulled out their backpacks one at a time. “I managed to get all your belongings, so you can decide for yourselves how much you think you can smuggle past the guards.”
Thomas was delighted, and pulled out his spellbook, running his hands lovingly over it. This book was his life, and he wasn’t going to be parted from it ever again. “We can put all the important stuff in one backpack, and you can carry it for us,” he said. “Do you think the guards will be suspicious to see you carrying one of our backpacks?”
“Possibly,” replied Parkus, “but I’ll think of something plausible. I’ll bluff it out. I brought something else as well.”
He fished around in the trolley again, this time reaching all the way down to the bottom, and pulled out two swords. Beautiful weapons whose hilts and scabbards were covered with jewels and one of whose blades, when he drew it, was covered with a tracery of fine gold threads. That tracery wouldn’t survive five minutes on an ordinary sword used in an ordinary battle. It would get scratched off in no time, so the swords had to be either purely ornamental, perhaps ceremonial, not intended ever to be used in an actual battle, or...
Thomas took one of them and examined it closely. The blade was high quality steel, so sharp that it drew blood from his thumb even though he’d touched it as lightly as he possibly could. No ceremonial sword was that sharp. Most ordinary swords weren’t that sharp. “What do you think?” he asked, passing it to Jerry.
The tiny nome laid it carefully on the carpet and cast a reveal spell on it. The blade shone with a soft light, telling them that it was magical, as Thomas had suspected, but the gold tracery shone so brightly that they could hardly bear to look at it. “By the Gods!” he said in astonishment. “Is the other one the same?”
“No, it’s different,” replied Parkus, removing it from its scabbard. It was indeed different, being longer and more slender and with words in some foreign language engraved on the blade, but it was also jeweled on its hilt and scabbard, that being the reason it had been in the treasure room instead of in use in the war. It was also glowing in response to the reveal spell.
“Two magic swords,” breathed Jerry in delight. “Shaun and Matt’ll be overjoyed! We’ve got to find some way to get them to them.”
“I don’t see how,” replied Lirenna. “The guards might just be persuaded to let Parkus take a backpack through, if he comes up with a good reason, but they’re not going to let us just stroll through with a couple of swords. Even if they don’t know they’re magical, which would explain why such powerful weapons were just sitting unused in the treasure room, a sword is still a sword, and no matter how stupid the guards are, they’re not that stupid.”
They measured them against the backpack, thinking they could hide them inside, but they were too long. “It’s no good,” said Thomas in disappointment. “We’ll just have to leave them behind. It was a nice idea, Parkus, but there’s no way we can do it. Hopefully we won’t need weapons, anyway. Hopefully, we’ll just be able to slip away into the caverns and lose ourselves before they know we’re gone.”
The others nodded in glum agreement, so they spent the next ten minutes sorting out all the things they’d need most and cramming it all into one backpack. Then they put everything else back into the laundry trolley and told Willa to take it away and lose it somewhere. Parkus then picked up the backpack and looked out the door to make sure the coast was clear. There was no-one in sight, so he and the four Tharians crept out, heading back towards the dungeons, while the maid went in the other direction, pushing the trolley ahead of her.
At precisely that moment, however, a door ahead of the maid opened and Lord Basil, Sejanus and four other senior officers stepped out into the corridor. The maid came to a sudden halt, guilt and fear all over her face, and Lord Basil and the officers stared at the scene in front of them in surprise. Parkus and the Tharians, hearing the opening of the door, looked back to see what was going on and froze in horror when they saw who it was, all of them thinking the same thing. Lord Basil's ring!
☆☆☆
The Tharians knew that there would be no bluffing their way out this time. Parkus wasn't wearing an Amulet of Mind Protection, and it would be his mind that Lord Basil would read first, to find out what a dungeon guard was doing in the mansion. Lirenna's fear was greater than that of the others, though, because she knew of a danger the others were unaware of.
Trying to read the mind of an enchanted person ran the risk of undoing the enchantment. An amulet would have protected him from this danger but they hadn't thought to give him one. The size of the mistake they'd made paralysed her with terror. At any moment, Parkus would be released from the spell he was under and would be furious at what she'd done to him.
"Tom!" she gasped, glancing back at the enchanted guard. "The ring! It'll..."
The rest of her words were washed away by Willa's cry of terror, though, as she saw the Konnens and the Tharians facing each other in the corridor like the sheriffs and the outlaws in a wild west shoot out. Thomas and Jerry reached for their spell components while the Konnens reached for their weapons and Willa ran, shrieking, back into the reading room, leaving the trolley in the middle of the corridor.
Willa's shriek made Lirenna spin around in a pure reflex, and before she could turn to face the guard again his hand clamped hard over her mouth and pulled her back, behind the others. She clawed at his hand, trying to pull it away from her face so she could breathe and scream but it was hopeless and then she felt the point of a knife pressing into her back.
“First you, witch," he whispered. "First you, and then the rest of them. Do you know how long it takes to die from a knife wound in the lower back? We call it a slow kill, and you deserve every second of it. Now die, witch!”
Lirenna struggled harder than ever, her eyes screaming above his hand, but it was useless. She felt the knife slide into her flesh as the guard gave a long sigh of satisfaction. It was cold. As cold as ice, and then the strength left her body along with a hot gush of blood as the knife was pulled free again. Her last hope was that the others would hear her body falling and turn to see what had happened, but they were busy casting their spells as the Konnens charged towards them.
Parkus held her up as she sagged, the last of her strength leaving her body. She felt hot blood pouring down her back and legs. Her hands fell away to dangle by her sides, leaving the guard's hand in ownership of her face, and then the guard lowered her gently to the cold tiles. The man's hand left her face and she could breathe again, but the soft sigh as she drew air into her lungs was drowned out by the sound of the Konnens falling unconscious to the ground as the spells hit them.
By a supreme effort of willpower she forced her eyes to remain open for a moment longer and she saw Parkus drawing his sword, slowly and quietly. He would kill Thomas and Jerry with the same swing, she saw. A downwards stroke. First the taller human and then the shorter nome. She tried to lift her head from the cold, hard floor. Tried to make a sound. Any tiny sound to send a warning. The effort was too much for her, though and she passed out with a soft sigh. Her last conscious thought was that it was a pity. They could really have been something together. Now they would never know.