“We are somewhere near the keep’s back wall,” Chane whispered, opening his hand slightly to let the crystal’s light escape. “And some opening to the outside, from what I hear.”
Osha nodded. The area was cold and appeared deserted. He noticed old cobwebs above in the corner where one wall met the ceiling. This passage must not be a main path used in the keep. At his best guess, they were facing northward, and possibly the passage led out of the keep’s north side.
Chane crept onward until they reached where the passage continued ahead but also had a branch to the left, likely leading toward the keep’s front. He stalled there and closed his hand on the crystal, and as he put that hand behind his back and retreated one step, Osha was forced to retreat as well.
When the undead flattened against the passage’s left wall, Osha shifted to the right side to do the same. Ahead and beyond the left-side passage, where the main passage they followed continued straight, a small light glowed faintly. It was not large enough for a torch or lantern, and did not flicker, either.
Osha slowly shifted forward along the wall. His people could see better in the dark than humans could, but without a moon or stars in an open sky, that was not enough illumination to tell where that light came from ... and then it vanished.
Osha froze.
The light reappeared and had moved, perhaps farther along the passage’s far half. He heard soft scrapes of footsteps down there, and then something poked his shoulder.
Osha slapped at the contact and quickly reached behind his back for his dagger, and then he heard a soft hiss. Chane leaned close enough for Osha to see his scowl.
Chane looked down to where his fist holding the crystal was now beside his rearward hip. With his other hand, he pointed at his fist and then toward that other light.
Osha looked along the passage in the dark.
He did know how Chane had made the connection. Only three other people that they knew of in the keep might have a sage’s crystal. Had Wynn slipped out to go searching for something on her own before they had? No, the majay-hì would have never tolerated that, and Nikolas Columsarn doing so seemed as unlikely.
That left only the elderly counselor, the young sage’s father. Then again, Chane had acquired a crystal, so ...
Osha waved Chane back and then slid forward along the wall until he could peek down the side passage.
It appeared to run all the way to the keep’s front. There were two doors and at least one archway that he could see along the length. He held his breath and slipped across that passage, and flattened himself at the far corner where the hallway met the one he had left. Before he could peer around that corner, the undead slipped across and flattened beside him.
Chane quickly raised his fist; the crystal’s light made it glow faintly. He held up two fingers on his other hand and pointed toward the corner.
Osha scowled, but he would not ask how Chane knew there were two people near that other light. He peeked around the corner with one eye, and, indeed, he made out two shadowy figures. Both were muted in form by bulky cloaks and hoods. When the shorter one turned slightly, a soft light appeared in the hand of the other one and illuminated an elderly face inside a hood.
Jausiff held out some strange metal object in his hand.
Osha could not make out the other person’s face, but from the height alone it might be Aupsha—as she was taller than Jausiff and claimed to be his servant. The elder sage appeared to be studying the floor, and when he turned up the passage, Osha lost sight of what the sage was doing. The other figure turned as well in following the old man, and the pair slowly continued onward, stopping every few steps. In another dozen of their paces, Osha noticed something more.
At the passage’s far end was a door with some sort of small opening at head height. Perhaps it had small bars across it, but Osha knew that was from where the sound of the waves came. The door had to lead out to the northern side of the keep’s courtyard. And, more, the right side of the passage’s end near that door was too dark compared to the walls of the passage.
There was a turn or archway there, though the layout made no sense if the passage ran along the keep’s rear wall.
What would the old sage be doing here, studying the passage’s floor step by step?
Osha heard other steps more clearly, and quickly turned the other way to find Chane staring down the side passage. Those footfalls were hard and rhythmic, at least three pairs, perhaps four.
Light began to grow in the archway down the side passage.
A gusting breeze suddenly rushed out of the main passage, and in curling around the intersection’s corner, it whipped Osha’s loose hair.
Instinct and old training took hold, and Osha slipped around the corner. He barely had time to note that all light in the main passage, all the way to the far door, was gone. Osha planted one foot against the passage’s far wall as he pushed against the near wall, and he hand-and-foot-walked up both walls to hide against the passage’s ceiling.
At those sounds of footfalls down the side passage, Chane was caught between ducking back the way he and Osha had come or trying to catch whoever was down the main passage’s far end. He barely heard more than felt a sudden movement of air behind him, and when he turned ...
Osha was gone.
Chane ducked around the near corner. Even with his senses still fully widened, he saw no one in the passage all the way to where it ended at a heavy wooden door with iron fixtures and a barred sentry window. There was no sign of the two living beings he had smelled ... or of Osha.
He heard that those other footfalls had already entered the side passage.
Hoping to slip outside and hide until whatever guards came and went, Chane ran to the passage’s end door. It was not only bolted within by a heavy bar—the bar itself was fixed in place by a padlock.
Where was Osha, let alone anyone else who had been in this passage?
Chane quickly peered out through the door’s small barred sentry window and saw no one outside between the grounds’ outer wall and the barracks off to the left. When he turned, there was an archway to the door’s right side. Stepping through there and down two steps to a landing revealed only another short flight of stairs, parallel to the passage, that ended at another heavy door. He checked it and found it locked. He was trapped with nowhere to go.
Chane returned to the passage’s end and the door leading outside.
He could smell Osha, though perhaps that lingered from the elf’s passing. A vulgar dwarven word came to mind—yiannû-billê—heard once from Ore-Locks addressing a pompous Lhoin’na shé’ith who had gotten in their way.
Where had Osha, that gangly, interloping “bush-baby,” gone to now?
Three keep guards rounded the far corner in the passage. The one in the lead held an opened oil lantern. All three stopped at the sight of Chane.
Fighting his way out of this would do no good and only get Wynn thrown out of the keep.
“Forgive me,” Chane said, forcing modesty. “I seem to have taken a wrong turn. Could you direct me to the privy?”
Hidden in the dark against the passage’s high ceiling, Osha watched as Chane was marched off. He waited until the sound of footsteps and any semblance of light faded completely.
Only then did Osha drop softly to the floor. He believed he could still make it back to the guest quarters on his own, but instead, he soft-stepped to the passage’s end and the door.
Neither Chane nor the guards had found anyone else here, but the old sage and the tall companion had to have gone somewhere. Most likely, judging by the sudden breeze, they had slipped out the door. Yet that was not possible. He would have heard any attempt to open the heavy iron lock with a key. And, likewise, he looked through the right-side archway and down a short flight of steps to another door. Since the undead had quickly returned to the main passage, then that lower door must be locked as well.