Aric had to believe that Corlan had been taken as well, because Corlan’s trail and the families came together, before the point at which they found the soldiers’ bodies.
Where the trail led across rocky patches, or wind had scoured it so clean that not only Sellis could find it, Aric had to rely on his pebble and bowl of water. That led unfailingly to where the trail again became clear, and showed him that, although she remained a captive, she yet lived.
As long as she lived, Aric would rescue her.
If she died, he would kill every raider in the fort, or die trying.
The others were with him. In the first warm blush of morning, he had explained what the pebble had shown him the night before.
“What are we waiting for?” Myrana asked.
“It’ll take us out of our way,” Aric said. “Away from Nibenay. If Kadya reaches the city first—”
“We’ve had plenty of delays,” Sellis said. “Do we know she’s not already there?”
“She wasn’t when Corlan left it, but that’s the last we know.”
“Then we might rush there for naught, while your friends suffer at the hands of those damnable raiders.”
“That’s true.”
“Even when we get to Nibenay,” Amoni added, “we might not be able to do anything.”
“Also true,” Aric said.
“And you said this woman, your friend’s grandmother, works preserving magic.”
“That’s what Rieve said.”
“Well, we’ll need sorcerers on our side, if we hope to best Kadya with magic, right?”
“Yes.”
Myrana saw where Amoni was leading, and picked up the thread. “So we help them first. Then we all go to Nibenay together and deal with this templar and her demon friend.”
“I don’t know that they’ll want to go back to Nibenay,” Aric reminded them. “They were anxious to put distance between themselves and the city.”
“If we rescue them, and we tell them what’s at stake?” Sellis asked. “Surely they’ll take the chance.”
Not everyone’s a hero, Aric was about to say. But the words tangled on his tongue. If he spoke them, he would be calling himself and his friends heroes, and he didn’t think of them that way. He only thought they were trying to do what needed to be done—that they really didn’t have a choice in the matter.
Then again, perhaps that’s what all heroes thought.
At any rate, he didn’t want to give the thought voice, for fear of sounding ridiculously self-important. “Let’s go, then. After my friends, even if the trail leads to the raiders’ fort itself.”
It did.
The fort butted up against a rocky cliff, its walls built from the same dark rock, so they didn’t see it until they were almost upon it. Guards had been posted up on the cliff, and more on towers abutting the walls. The companions halted when they realized they’d found it, themselves ducking behind some good-sized rocks so they wouldn’t be seen.
“How we going to get in there?” Mazzax asked. “Knock on gates?”
“I think we’ll have to be sneakier than that,” Amoni said.
“Sneaky is good,” Aric agreed. “But we don’t even know where inside that fort they’re holding Rieve and her family. There aren’t nearly enough of us to simply invade the fort and find them.”
“But we’re us,” Ruhm said.
“Yes, Ruhm, we are,” Aric said. “We’ve been lucky so far. Maybe more than just lucky, maybe we’re actually good at this sort of thing. But six against however many raiders are in there … the odds aren’t with us.”
“Fewer now than there were before,” Myrana pointed out.
“That’ll work in our favor.” Aric stole another glance at the fort, wishing he could see through its walls.
But he could! In a way, at least. “Hold on, perhaps we can get a view of the inside after all.” He took pebble and bowl from his pouch, poured some water in, dropped the pebble into the water. By now it was routine. The pebble slid immediately across the bottom to a point nearest the fort. Aric waited until the pebble’s surface had grown cloudy, then he took it from the water and held it toward the sun.
Rieve was inside a building. The mark on her face had faded, leaving only a faint bruise. The rope was no longer around her neck. But she was unhappy. Worry ridged her brow, tugged down the corners of her mouth. Aric wanted to tell her to have faith, that he was on his way, but she couldn’t hear him, and even if she could, he didn’t know that they would be able to successfully breach the fort’s walls.
As he watched, she paced before a barred window. Aric brought the stone closer to his eye, looking for anything visible beyond the window. He saw a building with a patch of orange lichen on one wall, in a shape that reminded him of a dragon’s wing. Past that he saw the cliff that loomed behind the fort.
“They’re near the back,” he said. “Close to the cliffs. Beside the building they’re in is another one, with lichen on it forming a shape almost like a scalloped wing.”
“You see all that in the rock?” Mazzax asked.
“Yes, it’s clear as day.”
“Some rock,” Ruhm said.
“It is that.” Aric dried it on his shirt and put it away, then drank the water from the bowl. No sense in wasting water. “Now all we need to do is figure out how to get into the back of the fort.”
“I might have an idea about that,” Sellis said. “It’ll take some doing …”
Sellis and Myrana walked toward the fort’s front gate. They went slow, Myrana’s bad leg apparently giving her a great deal of trouble. At least, that was the effect she was going for. The truth was, these last weeks had been hard on her, and her leg was in considerable pain much of the time, so it wasn’t hard to fake.
The guards atop the cliff shouted an alarm. From that point on, the guards in the towers watched them. She couldn’t imagine they were an interesting sight. Had she been alone, they might not even have bothered keeping an eye on her. But because she was with a man who was obviously a warrior, with twin swords jutting out above his shoulders, they didn’t dare not watch.
When they were within hailing distance, one of the tower guards did just that. “You’d best turn around!” she called. “We’ve no interest in visitors here, nor patience for ‘em!”
“We have business,” Sellis replied, and kept walking. Slowly. Keeping pace with Myrana, who struggled more with every step.
“What sort of business?” the guard demanded.
“The profitable sort,” Sellis said.
The guard kept asking questions, and Sellis kept answering them with statements that only led to yet more questions. All the time, they grew nearer, and kept the attention of the tower guards and cliff guards riveted. Who are these people? they must have wondered. Where did they come from? And on foot? Are they mad?
Sellis continued to evade giving any direct answers until they stood directly outside the front gate. “We’ve come to buy your prisoners,” he said then.
“We have no prisoners,” a guard said.
“I think you do.” Sellis took off a bag that had been slung to his back this whole time, and opened its top. The gold inside it fairly glowed in the sunlight.
Of course, the bag didn’t exist, and neither did the gold. They were both magical illusions Sellis had created.
But the raiders didn’t know that. Any who had become disenchanted with the spectacle of their approach were once more riveted to the scene.
“You have four men and three women, of a noble family,” Sellis said. “You’re holding them for ransom, presumably. We’ve come to pay that ransom.”
“What’s to keep us from killing you, taking your gold, and keeping the captives?”