Queen of Sorcery

It was dark, but it was not silent. Chains clinked in a nearby cell, and someone was moaning. Further off, there was insane laughter, a meaningless cackle repeated over and over again without pause, endlessly rattling in the dark. Someone screamed, a piercing, shocking sound, and then again. Garion cringed back against the slimy stones of the wall, his imagination immediately manufacturing tortures to account for the agony in those screams.

Time in such a place was nonexistent, and so there was no way to know how long he had huddled in his cell, alone and afraid, before he began to hear a faint metallic scraping and clinking that seemed to come from the door itself. He scrambled away, stumbling across the uneven floor of his cell to the far wall.

"Go away!" he cried.

"Keep your voice down!" Silk whispered from the far side of the door.

"Is that you, Silk?" Garion almost sobbed with relief.

"Who were you expecting?"

"How did you get loose?"

"Don't talk so much," Silk said from between clenched teeth. "Accursed rust!" he swore. Then he grunted, and there was a grating click from the door. "There!" The cell door creaked open, and the dim light from torches somewhere filtered in. "Come along," Silk whispered. "We have to hurry."

Garion almost ran from the cell. Aunt Pol was waiting a few steps down the gloomy stone corridor. Without a word, Garion went to her. She looked at him gravely for a moment and then put her arms about him. They did not speak.

Silk was working on another door, his face gleaming with perspiration. The lock clicked, and the door creaked open. Hettar stepped out. "What took you so long?" he asked Silk.

"Rust!" Silk snapped in a low voice. "I'd like to flog all the jailers in this place for letting the locks get into this condition."

"Do you suppose we could hurry a bit?" Barak suggested over his shoulder from where he stood guard.

"Do you want to do this?" Silk demanded.

"Just move along as quickly as you can," Aunt Pol said. "We don't have the time for bickerin just now." She removed her blue cloak over one arm.

Silk grunted sourly and moved on to the next door.

"Is all this oratory actually necessary?" Mister Wolf, the last to be released, asked crisply as he stepped out of his cell. "You've all been babbling like a flock of geese out here."

"Prince Kheldar felt need to make observations about the condition of the locks," Mandorallen said lightly.

Silk scowled at him and led the way toward the end of the corridor where the torches fumed greasy onto the blackened ceiling.

"Have a care," Mandorallen whispered urgently. "There's a guard."

A bearded man in a dirty leather jerkin sat on the floor with his back against the wall of the corridor, snoring.

"Can we get past without waking him up?" Durnik breathed.

"He isn't going to wake up for several hours," Barak said grimly. The large purple swelling on the side of the guard's face immediately explained.

"Dost think there might be others?" Mandorallen asked, flexing his hands.

"There were a few," Barak said. "They're sleeping too."

"Let's get out of here, then," Wolf suggested.

"We'll take Y'diss with us, won't we?" Aunt Pol asked.

"What for?"

"I'd like to talk with him," she said. "At great length."

"It would be a waste of time," Wolf said. "Salmissra's involved herself in this affair. That's all we really need to know. Her motives don't really interest me all that much. Let's just get out of here as quietly as we can."

They crept past the snoring guard, turned a corner and moved softly down another corridor.

"Did he die?" a voice, shockingly loud, asked from behind a barred door that emitted a smoky red light.

"No," another voice said, "only fainted. You pulled too hard on the lever. You have to keep the pressure steady. Otherwise they faint, and you have to start over."

"This is a lot harder than I thought," the first voice complained.

"You're doing fine," the second voice said. "The rack's always tricky. Just remember to keep a steady pressure and not to jerk the lever. They usually die if you pull their arms out of the sockets."

Aunt Pol's face went rigid, and her eyes blazed briefly. She made a small gesture and whispered something. A brief, hushed sound murmured in Garion's mind.

"You know," the first voice said rather faintly, "suddenly I don't feel so good."

"Now that you mention it, I don't either," the second voice agreed. "Did that meat we had for supper taste all right to you?"

"It seemed all right." There was a long pause. "I really don't feel good at all."

They tiptoed past the barred door, and Garion carefully avoided looking in. At the end of the corridor was a stout oak door bound with iron. Silk ran his fingers around the handle. "It's locked from the outside," he said.

"Someone's coming," Hettar warned.

There was the tramp of heavy feet on the stone stairs beyond the door, the murmur of voices and a harsh laugh.

Wolf turned quickly to the door of a nearby cell. He touched his fingers to the rusty iron lock, and it clicked smoothly. "In here," he whispered. They all crowded into the cell, and Wolf pulled the door shut behind them.

"When we've got some leisure, I'll want to talk to you about that," Silk said.

"You were having such a good time with the locks that I didn't want to interfere." Wolf smiled blandly. "Now listen. We're going to have to deal with these men before they find out that our cells are empty and rouse the whole house."

"We can do that," Barak said confidently. They waited.

"They're opening the door," Durnik whispered.

"How many are there?" Mandorallen asked.

"I can't tell."

"Eight," Aunt Pol said firmly.

"All right," Barak decided. "We'll let them pass and then jump on them from behind. A scream or two won't matter much in a place like this, but let's put them down quickly."

They waited tensely in the darkness of the cell.

"Y'diss says it doesn't matter if some of them die under the questioning," one of the men outside said. "The only ones wee have to keep alive are the old man, the woman, and the boy."

"Let's kill the big one with the red whiskers then," other suggested. "He looks like he might be troublesome, and he's probably too stupid to know anything useful."