The Way Below

Agorn pointed with the hand Gondafrey had released. “Below the servants’ rooms. That passage.”

Rishi followed the gesture to the far side of the foyer. Then he set his staff beside the left-hand door and knelt by the first fallen monk.

Both men he had struck were breathing. One stirred beneath his touch; the other lay slack, blood running from his mouth beneath the mask. Rishi removed it and turned him onto his side. Across the room, Grim lifted his weight from the woman he had fought and checked her breath.

“This room is empty,” Gondafrey called from the doorway. She had pushed Agorn back into the chamber from which he had emerged.

Together they brought the fallen inside. The window overlooked the arrival circle across the purple void. Rishi settled the unconscious men apart while Gondafrey bound their wrists and ankles. The monk who had surrendered sat where Rishi directed him and offered his hands for the cord.

Maeril kept her wand on the scarred mage until Grim had removed the woman’s spell pouch and Gondafrey had bound and gagged her. Only then did Maeril release the enchantment. Gondafrey caught the mage as her knees gave and lowered her beside the wall.

All six remained alive. A pile of confiscated blades and spell foci lay outside the door.

Rishi cleaned and dressed the cut along his flank, then bound his thigh. The pressure steadied his leg enough to rise. It would have to do.

Grim held out the throwing knife, hilt first. His other hand pressed against his ribs.

Rishi took it and slid it back into its sheath. Gondafrey stood beside the doorway with Agorn’s rapier.

“Give him that,” Rishi said. “He needs a proper weapon.”

Grim looked at him. “Is this a moral test?”

“It is a better blade.”

The orc accepted the rapier. He tested its weight, then crouched beside Agorn and drew a dagger from beneath the bard’s belt before binding his hands.

“That one is ornamental,” Agorn said.

Grim put it through his own belt. “Then you can admire it from there.”

He took the rapier’s sheath from Agorn’s belt and fastened it beside the dagger.

Maeril stopped in front of the seated prisoner. “Lysaerra Harlowe. Is she below too?”

Agorn glanced at the cloth Grim was preparing for his gag. “I never knew her name.”

“Tell us about the woman you saw.” Rishi lowered himself beside him.

Agorn’s eyes followed the blood soaking into the edge of Rishi’s robe before returning to his face. “A prisoner. Dark hair. They brought her through the quarters, and he took her down himself.”

“The man, or his copy?” Maeril asked.

“The man. The copy stayed upstairs with us. Manshoon was asking about old streets and survey lines. She kept telling him she could not remember.”

Rishi waited.

Agorn looked toward the passage. “He said there was a wound where the memory should be. He wanted to know what shape it had.”

Maeril’s staff shifted against the stone. “How far below?”

“Through the quarters, down the stair at the back. I do not go into his rooms.”

Duhlark drifted toward the open passage.

Rishi watched him go, then turned back to Agorn. “You stay here. We will send the Order.”

He checked the last bonds while Grim secured the gag. Maeril put the binding wand away and took up her staff. Rishi retrieved his own from beside the door. When Gondafrey came out, he closed it on the prisoners.

Beyond the foyer, the short passage opened into sleeping quarters. Blankets lay thrown back on narrow beds. A lamp still burned beside a half-filled cup.

At the far side, an open stair descended out of the lamplight. Duhlark waited above its first step, casting green light down the wall.

Rishi tightened his grip on his staff and went to the stair.