Part 20 (1/2)

'Don't let him near! Keep the girl inside until I know more. I must consult the other great ones and tell them of this.'

Stranger groaned. 'Why? Why involve yourself?'

'They will learn of it in time. They always do. And they will call it betrayal and complicity, and hunt me down.'

Dyan's long tail reached around behind her and gently stroked her back. She fended away its touch. 'No! None of that. If you return for me soon I will know your promises have worth. Don't look at me that way! I would rather be held in that foul prison again than feel the pain you did to me. I must go back soon. If you have any more promises, give them now.'

'First tell me do the human casters sense me? I have been nearby more than once.'

'No. Something at the tower prevents it. It is the water I think: many enchantments are about it. But if you are with no woman does your Parent not know of you now?'

Eric backed away till he was beyond earshot of Stranger's voice and the deep music of the dragon's. When he came out of the trees Loup was at the tower window, scouting around so frantically it looked like he was having a seizure. After much waving Eric caught his attention. 'Where'd she go?' Loup called down.

'In the woods,' he answered.

'If she's run off, I'll have your skin for a jacket, you and the giant both.'

'I'm here,' said Stranger, stepping through the trees and waving at Loup. She had erased any sign from her face that she'd been weeping. She smiled at Eric.

'We'd better head back,' he said casually. 'I think we've broken the rules to let you outside.'

'All for a good cause,' she said, smiling as though at a private joke.

'Oh?'

She showed the handful of stones she'd collected.

As he set his foot into the waves, he saw a person standing in that s.p.a.ce beneath the tower where there was a whirlpool. It was a man waist-deep in the water, tall and bald, with eyes bent on Eric intently.

Having just seen a dragon in the woods, this should hardly have been a disconcerting sight in comparison, yet an odd feeling came over him, as though he had for a long while now been watched by this man, unseen. 'Do you see him?' he said to Stranger.

'Hmm?' She was looking back at the woods where the dragon had been.

The man was gone. 'Never mind.'

As they neared the tower base, a gust of wind blew from that s.p.a.ce. He fancied he heard words spoken within it, just a whisper: Take the girl to Shadow.

'Which girl?' he called. Stranger looked at him curiously. From the wind there came no answer.

3.

In the afternoon Siel called to the tower's top floor Eric, Loup and Far Gaze. They went up the rickety wooden stairs to a little platform overlooking the room, level with the tower's uppermost window. The groundman cowered over near the beds, desperate to escape but unwilling to go down the steps where lurked the half-giant, who held a particular terror for him. The candle brightness of his eyes had gone out. 'His name is Tii,' said Siel.

'Why is he so afraid of Gorb?' said Eric.

She shrugged. 'Big people are bad, so very big must be very bad. He's also angry at me for making Shadow bring him back here. He feels I tricked him. I certainly didn't ask his permission.'

'He owes you his life. I don't care about his complaints,' said Far Gaze, pacing. He still wore the sheet he'd wrapped about himself. His face was dark with stubble and his eyes intense, as though staring at Aziel's sleeping body had carved on it permanently the way he watched her.

Said Siel, 'Tii told me everything he knows, on the condition that we release him. Being ”up” is making him sick. He says he will fade altogether if he doesn't get back belowground soon. I don't know if that's true or not. He has renounced friends.h.i.+p with me, though that might have just been heated words.'

'Tell him he's free,' said Far Gaze irritably. 'You're very lucky,' he called across the room. 'I could extract many things from you, information being just one.'

'Please don't threaten him.'

'I hate the little s.h.i.+ts. Is that all? Goodbye.' Far Gaze rushed back downstairs, the white sheet billowing behind him to reveal a hairy backside.

Siel climbed down, spoke to Tii and a.s.sured him Gorb had no evil plans. He embraced her s.h.i.+ns then dashed down the steps, diving into the whirlpool. He sank like a rock.

'Is there a cave down there?' said Siel.

'Aye,' said Loup. 'What did the small one tell you? Don't you mind our wolf, I'll see he learns anything important.'

'Groundman slaves have built a highway, beneath the deepest mines. Tii was not one of those slaves, but once he met some who'd escaped. The highway leads from a vast underground realm near the castle, near the Entry Point, all the way to World's End. He says that far, far belowground, the Wall was already cracked. Well before anything Anfen or the Arch did.'

'What caused the break?' said Loup.

'Something on the far side. It was not the castle's doing. There is no knowing how long the crack was there. One day, in the deepest mine, at the very southern point of World's End, slave miners overpowered a guard and escaped. There was nowhere for them to flee but down. They were not heard from again. It was a.s.sumed they starved or fell to their deaths, or maybe stumbled their way through the deep mazes to freedom. But a few days later, something returned to the mine from the deeps, and attacked. All the slaves were killed. A few overseers found their way back to the castle, with a very strange tale to tell.

'The Arch Mage heard the reports and sent a team to explore. Far below the ground, there was a chamber of stone, the size of this room. It had a sliding stone door with runes on it as though cults had used it long ago. Even the groundmen did not understand the runes, and they are masters of language. Holes were gouged into the floor around it and, inside it, the light was a deep glowing red. And one wall of it was the Wall, light blue, just as it was above the ground. A long crack had been made in it.

'Tii says that any who went into that stone chamber were warped and perverted by the poisons which poured through the crack from time to time. When people are shut in there, from outside you can hear strange sounds. The bad airs come through from Levaal South in gusts, like something's irregular breath.

'The Arch had the chamber expanded. He sent more people inside it to be changed into Tormentors, and studied how to handle them. He pondered their uses, and knew they could help him win the war against the Free Cities, which back then was in doubt. He ordered the underground highway built, deep as possible, so he could transport the creatures in secrecy.' She looked at Eric. 'Tii says that there is a big store of Tormentors being kept near the castle. Near the Entry Point. Can you guess why, Pilgrim?'

Eric nodded. He did not voice his thoughts: that Tormentors would not last long under machine-gun fire. But then, he didn't know how Earth would handle magic beings used against it, and he did not enjoy the thought of the creatures pouring in waves through streets he'd lived in.

Far Gaze came up the stairs. He said, 'Shadow has returned.'

Everyone rushed to the window. Shadow was indeed at the water's edge, silent and motionless.

Eric had not told Far Gaze yet what he had seen in the woods, nor what the voice on the breeze had instructed him to do. He took the mage aside. 'Keep Stranger here, and keep her away from the windows.'

'What do you intend, Pilgrim?'

'Just trust me, OK?' He went downstairs. Stranger sat by the window with the drake. 'Far Gaze wants you up there,' he said.

She sighed and stood. 'I feel for you, Eric: now you have three mages to deal with.'