Kethril (23 page)

The decision of which way to go was a
difficult one to make. He could only see about twenty feet in
either direction and not very well. His belongings had remained on
the table in the guardroom when he was taken to the cell, so he
didn’t know where they would be. He did remember an iron door to
his right when he was stripping in the guardroom though. Tathan
decided to try the passage to the right in the hopes that he would
be able to find his equipment even though it was doubtful he could
be
that
lucky.

While walking, he kept his eyes on the
walls, floor and ceiling to look for any sort of traps. Tathan
realized that if the secret door still functioned, there would be a
good chance that a trap would work too. The side passage extended
about three hundred feet before stopping at another passage
parallel to the first.

Tathan turned to the right again after
looking each way for at least a minute. It was never good to rush
into unknown territory. The new passage was the same as the rest.
The air quality wasn’t the best so he took shallow breaths.

Counting paces was vital in thievery and he
had been doing so ever since leaving the grand court the day
before. When he had taken enough steps to be at approximately the
same distance as the guardroom, the light of his stick revealed
another secret door on the right wall. It would be across from
where the iron door was in the guardroom. There was no way anybody
could ever be so lucky and Tathan didn’t trust it. When things like
that happened, it usually meant the universe was going to get even
later on.

The mechanism to open the door was the same
height as the last one. Many of the rogues Tathan had known were
short and could fit into tiny spaces. Tathan’s height worked
against him in some cases, but he always had the last laugh when it
came to reaching things. He put his hand on the stone that would
open the door, extinguished the green light and waited. A minute
went by before his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

At first the door didn’t look like it was
going to work and Tathan knew his luck had run out. But with a
couple of jerks, it pushed through the moss on the floor til it was
open half as far as the last one. Tathan stood at the opening with
his sword forward, ready to attack anyone in the room.

There was just a tiny crack of light around
the edges of the iron door across the room to see by. Even though
he was sure that no one was in the room, Tathan held still until he
was certain no one would enter.

Green light shone in the room after he said
the trigger word to activate the stick. An old table was in front
of the secret entrance and he ducked under it to get inside just as
the door started to jerk closed. It was a small, square storage
room used to keep prisoner belongings. Finding his things was easy
because they were the only belongings there.

The jacket softly glowed in the stick’s
light. Mother Tree hadn’t told them at the time, but the light also
showed when something was magical. The glow was always the same dim
light no matter how powerful, but the knowledge that something was
magical was useful to a thief. The one magical item that didn’t
glow was Lightdrinker. The sword was more powerful than the stick
and even if it hadn’t been, it ate light and wasn’t about to lose
any by glowing.

Even though he was worried about someone
coming in, Tathan took the time to strip and put on his own
clothes. If he did get into a fight, the jacket would help keep him
from getting hurt. Before putting on the shoes, he used the prison
shirt to wipe moss off the bottoms of his feet. An unlocked box
held all his jewelry and he put that back on. He would use the ring
of invisibility the first time it was necessary. A brief search of
the pockets showed that nothing had been disturbed. It was
extraordinary that guards would leave all of his personal effects.
He wondered what the king had told them to keep them in line.

Tathan re-buckled the sword belt around his
waist and picked the stick up off the table. Looking at the floor,
he saw his footprints. Another set of footprints led from the iron
door to the table and back, but the rest of it was dusty. Tathan
got the impression that this jail hadn’t been used in decades.
There was no way short of magic to cover his tracks so he did the
next best thing and spent the next three minutes making tracks
everywhere. He swept dust off the tables and floors with his prison
shirt and pants to further help obscure things. By the time he was
finished, there was no telling who had been where.

The light revealed the trigger stone near
the ceiling. He pushed it and ducked under the table and back into
the secret passage, bringing his prison clothes with him. Tathan
paused to decide which way to go. Finding the princess would be
difficult because he didn’t know where she would be. His best guess
was that she would be in one of the newer sections of the
castle.

He decided to continue up the passage. The
guards had brought him from that direction and the newer sections
of the castle would be that way. The green light of Tathan’s
magical stick disappeared down the dark, moss-filled passage.

Anilyia woke when a hand covered her mouth
and weight pressed against her body, pinning her to the bed. Panic
flooded her heart. A sinister voice close to her ear said, “Don’t
make a sound, Princess.” Sheets were pulled back and she was
dragged from the bed.

She bit the fingers over her mouth and
kicked out. Her self-defense training as a princess hadn’t helped
her the first time, but Tathan had taught her a few extra tricks
along the way. “Ow!” the man whose hand she bit exclaimed. She took
a breath to scream, but someone rammed a cloth into her mouth. More
hands grabbed her and held her tight. Anilyia tried to struggle but
she couldn’t overcome the strength of her kidnappers.

A hand slapped her cheek hard, leaving spots
in her vision. Dim light from a few candles around the room
glistened in a masked man’s cruel eyes as he grabbed her chin.
“This can go bad, or this can go worse, your decision,” he
threatened in a raspy voice.

She stared at him, wide-eyed in fear.
Neither of those was a good option and she hoped someone would show
up to give her a third. The man stepped back and raised his hand to
slap her again. One of the men holding her grabbed the back of her
neck to prevent her from ducking the blow.

The man about to slap her jerked forward and
the tip of a sword appeared through the front of his chest before
pulling out, leaving the man to fall backwards.

Anilyia saw that a masked man had fallen
just inside the entrance to the sitting room of the suite. A dark
stain underneath his body indicated blood. Another kidnapper looked
to see what had happened to his boss. Then he literally lost his
head.

It flew off his neck to hit the wall behind,
knocking over one of the lit candles. The candle might have caught
something on fire had it not been doused with spurting blood from
the neck of the body that fell right after. Anilyia tried to
scream, but the cloth in her mouth muffled it.

A knifepoint was at her neck. “I don’t know
what’s happening, but I’ll kill her,” one of the men said in a
voice pitched high with fear. Anilyia froze. The edge was cutting
and she could feel blood trickling down her neck.

Then it was pulled away from her neck and
the man grunted. He fell with a gurgling sigh, blood pouring from a
wound in his ribs. Anilyia stumbled and fell on his body as the
other man released her and ran hard to the door. The runner only
got a few steps before tripping and clutching at his left leg. When
he saw his cut hamstring, he began screaming. The scream turned
into a gurgle when a long gash appeared along the front of his
neck. The man’s eyes widened through the eye slits of the mask
before he died.

Anilyia moved back to the bed in abject
terror, waiting for the invisible death she was certain would come.
Then Tathan appeared, wiping blood from his sword on the body of
the leader. Anilyia screamed in surprise, only to realize that the
cloth was still in her mouth, muffling the sound. After taking it
out, she inhaled to scream properly.

Tathan dashed over and covered Anilyia’s
mouth. She glared at him for muting her. He took the hand away. “I
know you want to scream, but if you do, the guards will come and
take me back to jail.”

“No. They won’t. You are now my bodyguard
and if the king tries to send you back to jail, I’ll use every
ounce of power at my command to make him suffer.” Anilyia put a
finger in front of his face. “Don’t. You. Move.” She punctuated
each word by poking him in the nose.

Tathan stood still as Anilyia took the
deepest breath of her life and emitted a piercing sound that
battered the eardrums. Tathan put hands over his ears in direct
violation of the order not to move.

When she was finished, Anilyia huffed in
anger. Her fists were balled at her side and she ground her teeth
in anger. From now on,
she
was in charge. Tathan would do
what
she
wanted. King Cranwer would do what
she
wanted. Everyone else would do what
she
wanted. The only
flaw in her plan was that she wasn’t sure
what
she wanted,
but decided to make it up as she went.

Just when Anilyia thought she was going to
have to scream again, two guards came rushing into her room with
their swords drawn. They saw the bodies, they saw the princess in
her blood-covered nightgown and they saw Tathan who still had his
ears covered. It was obvious that assessing the situation was well
above their pay grade, so they stood there stupidly, waiting for
someone to give them a command.

“You’re a bit late, don’t you think?”
Anilyia shooed them off. “Well? Go on. Get more guards, preferably
high ranking ones.” The looked at each other, at the bodies, at
Tathan, at the princess, finally at each other again before turning
and running out to get more guards . . . preferably high ranking
ones.

A minute later, they returned with
high-ranking guards in the form of the captain of the Royal Guard
and two of his lieutenants. A wizard showed up in addition to a few
other guards, making it too crowded to move within the room.

The captain waved everyone out. “Give me
some room, you idiots!” All the idiots except for the wizard, the
two lieutenants and a tough looking sergeant moved into the sitting
room. The wizard spoke a few words, made some gestures and lit all
the candles in the chandelier and the rest of the room with the
exception of the one soaked in blood. The captain put his hands on
his hips, looked at Tathan and the princess and asked, “What in the
. . .” he remembered he was in the presence of a princess, “. . .
world happened here?”

Anilyia waved her hand at the dead bodies.
“These men dragged me from my bed, gagged me with a nasty cloth and
slapped me in the face.” She pointed at Tathan. “This man killed
them and rescued me. That’s what happened.”

The captain looked at the dead bodies,
looked at Tathan, looked at the wizard who shrugged in response,
looked at the lieutenants who didn’t even rank high enough to shrug
and then looked at the princess. “The king is on his way.”

“I thought he might be,” Anilyia responded
dryly.

They stood there in uncomfortable silence,
glancing at anything other than the princess. After a moment, the
captain turned his gaze to Tathan. “Aren’t you supposed to be in
jail?”

Anilyia answered before Tathan could. “And
he still rescued me when your men should have. I can’t wait to hear
how you explain
that
to your king.” The captain’s eyes
flashed in anger, but that anger died instantly when he saw the
fury in the eyes of the princess. He looked down at his feet in
shame.

“Let me in!” a booming voice rang out. King
Cranwer appeared at the doorway. His royal cloak covered a blue
nightrobe, his crown was still turned to the side and the scepters
were, as ever, in his hands. Stepping over the first dead body, he
moved between the captain and wizard. All the men saluted him.
“Captain, why are there dead bodies in Princess Anilyia’s
chambers?” he asked with a smile that didn’t hide the gravity
behind his eyes.

The captain opened his mouth to answer, but
no sound came out. Anilyia spoke for him. “These men dragged me out
of bed, gagged me with a putrid cloth and slapped me when I
struggled. Then Tathan killed them, rescuing me yet again.” She
stepped over the nearest body and directly in front of the king.
“I’m not happy with you.”

King Cranwer gulped audibly.

“I don’t know how your men managed to let
these . . . kidnappers into my room, but if anything had happened
to me it would have sent my father into a rage. Are you aware of
how vindictive he is?”

“Yes. His reputation is well known,” the
king admitted. He didn’t look happy with the way he was being
spoken to.

Anilyia didn’t think it wise to threaten him
any more than the subtle hint she had just lain at his feet. She
switched tactics to keep him off guard. “I like you and your
daughters. You’ve all been wonderful to me.”

The king’s head jerked back in surprise. “We
. . . we like you too, very much so.” He frowned in suspicion. King
Cranwer might be a touch crazy -all kings were- but he wasn’t a
fool.

“I’m leaving now and I’m taking Tathan of
the Shadows with me,” Anilyia declared. “I don’t care why you
arrested him or how he escaped, but he’s obviously the only one
capable of keeping me safe.” She gestured to the dead bodies.

The king looked at the bodies and nodded. He
narrowed his eyes when his gaze crossed the captain’s, who took a
turn at gulping audibly.

Anilyia spoke once more. “I’m going to
Chirelle’s suite to take a bath and clean the blood off of me.” She
held her arms out to show the spatter across her face, arms and
nightgown. “I want my things packed and horses readied for Tathan
and I. Before leaving, I want to be informed of whatever your men
find out about my attackers so that I know who my enemy is this
time.” She drew herself up to full height and said. “As Princess of
Mayncal, I demand these things.” Anilyia lowered her chin and
placed a hand on the king’s arm. “As a friend, I ask them of
you.”