In the box was a key of a sort, a strange, curving key that looked like it was made of bone, like a large rib.
She slipped the key into an inner pocket of her shirt, closed the box, put it back in its velvet pouch, and resealed it in the reliquary. Then she went back to her search.
The chest at the foot of the king’s bed gave her the greatest effort. The traps were so devious she could not wait to put some variations of them to use back home in Yarim. When she finally was able to spring the lock, she opened the lid, only to have a dank wind slap her across the face. Esten blinked in surprise; she was staring down a long passageway of rough-hewn steps. Where it led to, she had no way of fathoming.
Sandy! Get up, you lazy sinner!”
Shaene pounded on the door again; the noise of the barracks was so ever-present that Omet had no doubt grown used to it. Why the boy insisted on bunking with the soldiers in the ascetic quarters was beyond Shaene’s understanding; the ambassadorial suite to which he had been assigned was far more comfortable, though certainly not opulent. If one was to be forced to live, as a result of an ill-thought-out contract, in the land of the Firbolg, one might at least opt for the most comfortable accommodations available.
Hearing no reply again, Shaene turned to Rhur.
“Maybe he’s ill,” he said the to the Bolg artisan.
Rhur grasped the door handle, expecting to find it locked; Omet was fanatical about locking his door of late, ever since Theophila came to the mountain. To his surprise, and that of Shaene, it opened easily.
The stench of illness hung in the tiny windowless room.
“Gods!” Shaene cried. “Omet?” He and Rhur hurried into the room; in two steps they were at the young man’s bedside.
Omet’s eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. His skin was the color of the stone walls around them, except for his cheeks, in the center of which two bright spots of fever burned, hot as the fires of the forge.
“Get a healer!” Shaene screeched, the sweat of fear springing from his skin, leaving his hands trembling. Rhur disappeared; Shaene stumbled to the bedside table and, with shaking hands, poured water from the face-washing basin atop it onto the towel that was folding neatly next to it. He hurried back to Omet’s bedside and laid the wet cloth gently over the boy’s forehead; the towel turned quickly warm.
Shaene clutched the hot, limp hand atop the covers and began to rotely chant the prayers he could recall from youth, from the last time he had sat vigil by a young man’s beside. In the earliest days of his apprenticeship his old brother Siyeth had contracted scarlet fever, had wasted and died in his bed before Shaene’s eyes; the sights and smells never left his memory.
From what he could remember of Siyeth’s death, Omet looked worse.
He had no comprehension of how much time was passing now. Rhur returned with Krinsel, the midwife, who was the chief of the Bolg healers, and several of her assistants; they had ministered frantically to Omet, only to see him edge closer to death.
“Come on, lad, come on,” Shaene muttered, patting the young man’s forearm impotently. He turned to Krinsel, who shook her head, then to Rhur, who watched, as always, stone-faced, but with eyes that held deep worry.
Suddenly Shaene sat up straighter, as if struck.
“Rhur—the tower! We can take him to the tower!”
The Firbolg artisan’s brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Do you recall the wheel? Sandy said that the tower and the wheel worked together for healing, I think.”
Rhur shook his head. “We know not how it be used, Shaene,” he said quietly in the common tongue tinged with the harsh accent of the Bolg.
“It can’t come to harm, though, can it? We’ll put him below the glass ceiling and set up the wheel.” Desperation rose in Shaene’s voice. “We can’t just stand here while he burns to death from fever!” He gestured toward the healers. “Send them to the journeymen, the apprentices, and tell them to get take the wooden cover off the dome. You and I can make a litter out of his cot, and carry him.”
Krinsel and Rhur exchanged a silent glance, then a few words in their native tongue, and finally a nod.
Shaene exhaled deeply. “All right, then.” He patted Omet’s arm again. “Hold on, boy. Perhaps all your efforts are about to be repaid.”
56
Esten stared down into the dark passageway, struggling to decide what to do.
Something of grave import must lie at the bottom of this tunnel, she thought, patting the pocket of her shirt where the key was concealed. There is nothing in the king’s bedchamber itself that requires the level of guard he has posted, or the concealment of the door, or the traps. Any thief stealing his way into this place would be bitterly disappointed.
And yet there was a passageway hidden at the foot of the king’s own bed, a sign that when he was in the mountain, he himself was the last line of its defense.
It was tempting, difficult to resist.
And yet Esten’s time in the mountain had taught her that such passageways could go on for days, could misdirect, lead into other twisting hallways, designed to confuse, to cause the traveler to lose his way. It was possibly a journey for which she was not prepared. She just did not have the time to risk it.
A prickle ran over her skin, a shiver that she cursed, because it denoted a weakness in her she could not abide. The tunnel recalled the one she had been digging in Yarim beneath Entudenin, or, more accurately, her slave boys had been. While she was not averse to going to check their work, to correct their direction, there was a limit to the length of time she was comfortable remaining underground.
Living within the mountains of Ylorc had been difficult, but it was a difficulty she could abide. Esten was accustomed to back alleys, to dark buildings, to sewers beneath city streets, to the shadows in which all of her people lurked, hidden, waiting for the time to emerge, then blend quickly back into the darkness again. The tunnels, passageways, and rooms of Ylorc reminded her more of those alleys, those sewers; they had been built for men, after all, in the Cymrian era.
But this tunnel was different. If she was going to traverse it, she would need supplies and light.
She shut the chest and carefully reset the traps, meticulously following the order in which they had been originally laid.
Esten slipped out of the secret door and closed the entrance, when a great shadow appeared at the end of the hallway.
She glanced up, started, to see a giant there, a brutish man seven and a half feet tall, a cache of hilts and weapon handles jutting from a bandolier across his back. His skin was the color of old bruises; his horsehide-brown hair and beard dripped with rivulets of rainwater.
And his broad, tusked face was wreathed in a horrific scowl.
“ ’Oo are you?” he demanded, his thunderous voice echoing off the basalt hallway. “And what are you doing ’ere?”
Esten’s mind, finely honed from years of nefarious trade and knife’s-edge situations, focused quickly. She folded her arms across her chest and scowled back.
“My name is Theophila, Grunthor,” she said, taking a calculated risk that there could only be one fitting the description the Bolg king had given her. “And I am here because I sleep here now.”
The ferocious anger melted into a look of shock that resolved into mere surprise, dimming finally into embarrassment.
“Oi do beg yer pardon, miss,” the giant Sergeant said sheepishly, running an enormous paw through his dripping hair. “ ’Is Majesty did mention you to me, o’ course. I just didn’t realize you were, er—
“Knobbing him?” she said playfully, relaxing her stance visibly so as to mask the motion of drawing her blade. “Good. He promised to be discreet.”
Grunthor cleared his throat awkwardly.