“There is Solanthus, Neraka,” she said, pointing. “That tall building there on your left is—”
“My name is not Neraka. My name is Gerard uth Mondar. What are you called?” he asked, adding in a muttered undertone, “besides godawful?”
“I heard that!” she sang out. She glanced at him over her shoulder. “My name is Odila Windlass.”
“Windlass. Isn’t that some sort of mechanical device on board a ship?”
“It is,” she replied. “My people are seafaring.”
“Pirates, no doubt,” he remarked caustically.
“Your wit is as small and shriveled as certain other parts of you, Neraka,” she returned, grinning at his embarrasment.
They had reached the road by now, and their pace increased. Gerard had ample opportunity to study her as she walked alongside him, leading the horse and the pack mule. She was tall, considerably taller than he was, with a shapely, muscular build. She did not have the dark skin of the seafaring Ergothians. Her skin was the color of polished mahogany, indicating a blending of races somewhere in her past.
Her hair was long, falling in two braids to her waist. He had never seen such black hair, blue-black, like a crow’s wing. Her brows were thick, her face square-jawed. Her lips were her best feature, being full, heart-shaped, crimson, and prone to laughter, as she had already proven.
Gerard would not concede that she had any good features. He had little use for women, considering them conniving, sneaking, and mercenary. Of the women he distrusted and disliked most, he decided that dark-haired, dark-complexioned female Knights who laughed at him ranked at the top of his list.
Odila continued to talk, pointing out the sights of Solanthus on the theory that he would get to see little of the city from his cell in the dungeons. Gerard ignored her. He went over in his mind what he was going to say to the Knights’ Council, how best to portray the admittedly sinister-looking circumstances of his arrival. He rehearsed the eloquent words he would use to present the plight of the beleaguered elves. He hoped against hope that someone would know him. He was forced to concede that in the irritating female’s place, he would not have believed him either. He had been a dolt for forgetting that pack.
Recalling the desperate situation of the elves, he wondered what they were doing, how they were faring. He thought back to Marshal Medan, Laurana, and Gilthas, and he forgot himself and his own troubles in his earnest concern for those who had come to be his friends. So lost in thought was he that he rode along without paying attention to his surroundings and was astonished to look up and realize that night had fallen while they were on the road and that they had reached the outer walls of Solanthus.
Gerard had heard that Solanthus was the best fortified city in all of Ansalon, even surpassing the lord city of Palanthas. Now, gazing up at the immense walls, black against the stars, walls that were only the outer ring of defenses, he could well believe it.
An outer curtain wall surrounded the city. The wall consisted of several layers of stone packed with sand, slathered over with mud and then covered with more stone. On the other side of the curtain wall was a moat. Gates in several locations pierced the curtain wall. Large drawbridges led over the moat. Beyond the moat was yet another wall, this one lined with murder holes and slits for archers. Large kettles that could be filled with boiling oil were positioned at intervals. On the other side of this wall, trees and bushes had been planted so that any enemy succeeding in taking this wall would not be able to leap down into the city unimpeded. Beyond that lay the streets of the city and its buildings, the vast majority of which were also constructed of stone.
Even at this late hour, people stood at the gatehouse waiting to enter the city. Each person was stopped and questioned by the gatehouse guards. Lady Odila was well known to the guards and did not have to stand in line, but was passed through with merry jests about her fine “catch” and the success of her hunting.
Gerard bore the jokes and crude comments in dignified silence. Odila kept up the mirth until one guard, at the last post, shouted, “I see you had to hog-tie this man to keep him, Lady Odila.”
Odila’s smile slipped. The green leaf eyes glittered emerald. She turned and gave the guard a look that caused him to flush red, sent him hastening back into the guardhouse.
“Dolt,” she muttered. She tossed her black braids, affected to laugh, but Gerard could see that the verbal arrow had struck something vital in her, drawn blood.
Odila led the horse among the crowds in the city streets. People stared at Gerard curiously. When they saw the emblem on his chest, they jeered and spoke loudly of the executioner’s blood-tipped axe.
A slight flutter of doubt caused Gerard a moment’s unease, almost a moment’s panic. What if he could not convince them of the truth? What if they did not believe him? He pictured himself being led to the block, protesting his innocence. The black bag being drawn over his head, the heavy hand pressing his head down on the bloodstained block. The final moments of terror waiting for the axe to fall.
Gerard shuddered. The images he conjured up were so vivid that he broke out into a cold sweat. Berating himself for giving way to his imagination, he forced himself to concentrate on the here and now. He had presumed, for some reason, that Lady Odila would take him immediately before the Knights’ Council. Instead, she led the horse down a dark and narrow alley. At the end stood an enormous stone building.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“The prison house,” said Lady Odila.
Gerard was amazed. He had been so focused on speaking to the Knights’ Council that the idea that she should take him anywhere else had never occurred to him.
“Why are you bringing me here?” he demanded.
“You have two guesses, Neraka. The first—we’re attending a cotillion. You are going to be my dancing partner, and we’re going to drink wine and make love to each other all night. Either that”— she smiled sweetly—
“or you’re going to lock you up in a cell.”
She ordered the horse to halt. Torches burned on the walls. Firelight glowed yellow from a square, barred window. Guards, hearing her approach, came running to relieve her of her prisoner. The warden emerged, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. They’d obviously interrupted his dinner.
“Given a choice,” said Gerard acidly, “I’ll take the cell.”
“I’m glad,” Odila said, with a fond pat on his leg. “I would so hate to see you disappointed. Now, alas, I must leave you, Sweet Neraka. I am on duty. Don’t pine away, missing me.”
“Please, Lady Odila,” said Gerard, “if you can be serious for once, there must be someone here who knows the name uth Mondar. Ask around for me. Will you do that much?”
Lady Odila regarded him for a moment with quiet intensity. “It might prove amusing, at that.” She turned away to speak to the warden. Gerard had the feeling he had made an impression on her, but whether good or bad, whether she would do what he had asked or not, he could not tell. Before she left, Lady Odila gave a concise account of all of Gerard’s crimes—how she’d seen him fly in on a blue dragon, how he had landed far outside the city, and how the dragon had taken pains to hide himself in a cave. The warden regarded Gerard with a baleful eye and said that he had an especially strong cell located in the basement that was tailor-made for blue dragonriders.