"Ah. Good idea," the deeper voice said, as two pairs of boots scraped stone right above Iskarra's head. A moment later, two streams of urine came hissing and spattering down through the grating, wetting the wall not far from her.
"I thought they'd never get him tied. Fought like a stabtentacles, he did."
"He's only half-tied now! What they did in the end was tie the three lorn wrapped around his arms to each other, with his arms somewhere inside the bundle, so to speak. I wonder if he'll manage to strangle any of them before we get back to the wizard."
"Ho, now there's something worth betting on," the nasty-voiced Dark Helm observed as he started back the way he'd come.
Iskarra lay there in the darkness, wondering how long she should wait before getting back up into the passage again. If Garfist was alive, she had to find where they were taking him.
To a wizard. He was probably doomed anyway.
"But we doomed must stick together," she whispered to herself in the darkness, and got to her feet again.
The smell of what the Dark Helms had done reminded her that it was high time she relieved herself, too. She squatted right next to their wet, to keep the rest of the basin dry.
If the Falcon flew high, she and Garfist might soon need it again.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“We turn aside here," Deldragon murmured, absently stroking his flaxen mustache, his eyes very blue in the glow of his sword. "I'm going to open a door, and I need you both to be very, very quiet. Step carefully, and put out a hand to touch my back as we move forward. Things are going to be dark."
The velduke quelled the faint magical sword-glow that had been giving them light enough to see by, and Rod and Taeauna heard the faintest of metallic scrapings as he lifted a metal rod out of a hasp, and swung wide a door they could barely see.
Beyond it, light was streaming up out of a stout iron grating in the stone floor of a room. The velduke approached cautiously; the radiance below was growing stronger, moving in the cellar level below them, to the sound of boots tramping from Rod's right toward his left, the light of a lantern moving with them. Taeauna reached her hand back for Rod, took hold of his arm, and towed him gently in a wide circle around the grating, keeping well back from it, so they were looking down through it at an angle, rather than standing at its edge peering down.
Rod looked, and saw.
A long, narrow cellar passage stretched straight as an arrow below, passing beneath the grating. There were doors in its walls here and there, and striding along it, right underneath him and heading steadily on down the passage, were twenty or thirty Dark Helms, carrying a large, securely tied bundle in their midst.
The bundle looked like a large, burly-limbed human with three or four lorn wrapped around him that had been lashed together into one helpless mass. Helpless, but squirming. Rod was sure he'd seen something straining to move within all those bindings. The light was coming from lanterns carried by the Dark Helms, and was already lessening, moving away from the grating.
"Toward the well," the velduke murmured. His voice was barely more than a whisper, and every bit as grim as an old gravedigger Rod had once talked to, who'd been burying his old wartime buddies, one after another, as their times ran out.
"So is there a way down, hereabouts?" Taeauna asked just as quietly, her slender but strong arms reaching out to tow Rod and Deldragon close together, so they could whisper and clearly be heard. "Or do we rush along on this level, try to get ahead of them, and descend somewhere closer to the well?"
"We can either go about three chambers that way, and down a staircase that'll let us travel parallel to the Helms," Deldragon replied, "or, yes, we…"
He stiffened, broke off, and stared down through the grating. Rod and Taeauna turned, did the same, and found themselves looking down at a lone woman; skeleton-thin and not young, yet somehow alluring. She was skulking along as silently as possible, staring ahead as if she knew full well she was following the now-vanished Dark Helms.
She was looking all around as she came, too, peering alertly everywhere. She didn't miss noticing the grating, and gave it a long, steady stare, just as if she could see the three people standing motionless in the dark room above her, their heads close together.
Then she moved on, out of their view, and Deldragon was shaking his head in amazement and towing Rod and Taeauna on across the room to a door on its far wall.
When they were through it and he'd closed it behind them, the velduke caused his sword to glow again, and over its faint, ghostly light told them, "That woman; I met her years ago, in a Stormar port, and never thought to see her here. She'll be up to no good, however she came to be inside my walls. I'm going to follow her."
"This is your home, Darendarr, and your fight," Taeauna murmured. "We're with you. Yet tell us more of yon woman. 'Years ago,' you said; you're sure this is the same person?"
"That face is not one I could mistake, and she has the same bag-of-bones build, the same gait; that lilt of the hips that tells you you're seeing a woman and not a young and thin lad. No, I'm sure. That's Rosera, or so she called herself then."
"Then?" Rod asked eagerly, more than intrigued.
Deldragon gave him a wry smile. "Once upon a time, I was a young rake, wandering around the Stormar ports and farther afield, in part because my father told me in no uncertain terms, with the aid of a bull whip, what he'd do to me if I drank and wenched my way across Galath. I was in Hrathlar, I think it was, when I saw this Rosera."
Taeauna grinned. "Saw her how, Darendarr? Come, we're not of Bowrock; there's no need to be coy before our ears."
The velduke sighed as he opened a door into the next chamber, this one full of barrels, and led the way across it to another door. "Well, let's just say she was dancing on tables in a dockfront tavern then, and so slender and supple a pleasure-lass was she that she could travel around a bed full of half-drunken men so swiftly and with such ease that I thought she must be using magic. She was agile enough a little later to squeeze out a tiny window with all their purses while they slept, avoiding the bedchamber's barred and guarded door."
"This 'they' included you, didn't it?" Taeauna teased.
"Of course," Deldragon sighed, "but there's no need at all to spread this tale about. I heard much more about her in Hrathlar, after that, back in those days. Suffice it to say that she's the sort that's always up to something, making a living by sly means. So if she's here, now, it bodes ill for Bowrock. Not to mention that I dislike my cellars being full of unwanted guests I did not greet, nor welcomed, nor had even saw entering my home. Come!"
He opened the door into another dark room, threaded his way down it through a maze of stacked pots and tables of dust-covered carvings and tools, and down a stair, his blade glowing faintly and eerily in the gloom.
"I don't want to shout and chase her, mind," he warned. "I want to follow her and see where she leads us. And 1 doubt not but that means we'll have to be exceedingly, glorkingly quiet, unless she's gone deaf down the years since I saw her."
"She left quite an impression," the Aumrarr purred. "Was she that good?"
The velduke turned to regard her, held up his blade so its glow shone on his face and she could see him rolling his eyes, and sighed heavily. Then, without a word, he turned away to thrust open the door at the bottom of the stairs, and led them out into another passage.
"How blasted big is this keep?" Rod whispered to Taeauna, who gave him a wide, understanding grin by way of reply.