"He lives," Elminster said tersely, kneeling by the sprawled, blackened body on the stair. Quarrels stood out from it like needles in a chatelaine's pincushion. The high constable lay in his blood amid a litter of chains, fallen Wolves, and odd weapons. "He'll want healing, even to see the moon this night."
"Then give it to him," said Sharantyr in a voice that trembled with fresh rage. "While I do what he was trying to."
Elminster turned. "And that is?" he asked mildly.
Sharantyr's face was bleak. "Destroy every Zhent still in this dale." Zhents had done this to a brave man who still wore their chains, just as Zhents had chained her, too, and… She thrust away those memories with a shudder, letting her rage build into the fire she'd need to slay as ruthlessly as she'd need to. As ruthlessly as they always did.
She found she was trembling, and that Elminster had noticed it and had begun to frown, so she drew in a deep breath and tried to assume a nonchalant manner. Hefting her long sword, she surveyed the notches and scrapes in its steel critically and added, "One of them owes me a new sword, too."
"Still feeling old and worn out?" Elminster asked her pointedly, slipping the ring of regeneration onto one of Irreph Mulmar's fingers and closing the limp, hairy hand of the high constable over it.
Sharantyr laughed harshly. "No. Not anymore." She turned away, whipped her sword through the air thrice, stretched like a great cat, and turned back to him. "Wish me luck, Old Mage," she said in a voice like silk falling onto waiting steel. "I've Wolves to hunt."
Elminster smiled. "All of Tymora's luck upon thee, and more. Take with thee all that Mystra and I have no need for." He rose hastily, smile fading, and reached out his hand to her. Wondering, Sharantyr laid her hand in his.
The Old Mage gently drew her to him. His lips were soft on her cheek.
"Take care, lass," he said roughly, "for I find more and more that I do not want to lose thee."
Sharantyr stared at him for a moment, openmouthed, then whirled about and raced away across the forecourt.
Elminster watched her go, shook his head slightly, and sat down on the step above Irreph, wand in hand, to guard the high constable of the High Dale. There are less steady jobs.
Sharantyr ran past the astonished women of the dale, who were clutching a variety of weapons and looking nervously at shuttered windows high above them, dark arrow-slit windows uncomfortably nearer, and closed doors. She gave them one hawklike, searching glance and ran on without breaking stride, drawn sword gleaming.
Ylyndaera stared after her and said urgently, "All of you, follow her! Come!"
Sharantyr ran hard, hair streaming, across the muddy courtyard toward a shadow in a back corner where the men had been earlier… men who were not there now. They must have found a way in. She would find it too.
Behind straw heaped up for the horses, Sharantyr found a pile of fresh stones. Then she saw the hole their removal had opened in the wall. Here the others had gone in. Here, guarded or not, she would follow.
She halted, breathing heavily from her run, and looked all around warily. Seeing no foe, she crouched to peer into the gloom, extended her blade, and followed it into darkness.
Her throat was suddenly very dry. She'd climbed into unknown dark places a time or six, aye, but always in the company of others-usually the merry, mighty Knights of Myth Drannor. With them, as they hewed down dragons and wizards alike while trading jests and insults, it was all too easy to feel invulnerable. But now… She crept onward, hoping no enemy archer or mage waited at the other end of this tunnel.
The strong smell of deep, damp earth rose around her with a faint, clinging odor of decay. Thankfully, there were no charnel or beast smells. This was no lair or bone pit, and the way ahead was short.
The tunnel opened out into a small, round room. Smooth-sided chutes-smaller, tubelike tunnels-opened into it on all sides and from above. The higher they went, the narrower they became. This was familiar, somehow. It resembled something she'd-of course! This was a privy pit, and the tunnels above-disused, by the lack of strong smell or dung underfoot-led to garderobes or cruder jakes in the castle above. But where had those dalesmen gone?
Two tunnels looked large enough to comfortably crawl in. The one to the left must lead toward the turret and the room they'd heard Stormcloak elect himself lord in. The one to the right went to the kitchens, great hall, guest rooms, and audience chambers.
Near the great hall, there'd probably be too many people about, and it would be too large to furnish easy cover against a crossbow. Moreover, there were-or at least recently had been-Wolves in the other direction. Lots of them. She peered down both tunnels but could find nothing distinctive about either, and no marks to show which way the men had gone.
She shrugged. Left, then. Sharantyr climbed into the tunnel, slid along uncomfortably on her knuckles for a time, thought about what a target her backside must make for anyone shooting a crossbow down this tunnel, and carefully sheathed her sword. Empty-handed, she could travel at twice the speed and found it far easier to be quiet. She went on, groping in deepening darkness, as the tunnel rose, met with smaller side tubes, and grew a little smaller.
Well, she was in the castle, but how to get out of this dark, close tunnel? Something small and four-footed scampered momentarily across her way. A rat, no doubt. Sharantyr started to wish she could see.
What if she met with something larger and hungrier, or a trap of some sort? She wouldn't even see it in the darkness.
She forced that thought down, concentrating instead on the sure knowledge that the chute carried waste down from somewhere, and so she must inevitably reach that origin.
Sharantyr hoped someone's backside wouldn't be covering it when she did. She could almost hear the sly voice of the thief Torm, her sometime tormentor in the Knights, making that snide observation. She smiled to herself and climbed on.
Then, very suddenly, her hands found a hard stone wall. She felt upward and discovered that her tunnel had ended in a shaft a little taller than she was, with some sort of grating as its ceiling. She drew her sword and probed carefully, searching for a trap. Her sword point pierced something yielding-cloth-and a stream of tiny pellets hissed down in a trickle past her face. She held out her hand to catch some of the grains and brought it to her nose. Rice! She had cut into a bag of rice.
Sharantyr probed carefully, tracing the outlines of the grating. Then she sheathed her blade, took a deep breath, crouched, and sprang up high, hands outstretched.
One hand smashed into a sack, scrabbled, and found a grip around a bar. The other smashed hard and painfully into metal. She gritted her teeth and hung by one hand for what seemed a long time, nursing throbbing fingers and shaking them in hopes nothing was broken.
Then she reached up, got a grip on the grating with her hurt hand, and started tugging and bouncing up and down. Her hand throbbed with every move, but the grating shifted slightly, lifting with her movements. She continued, as hard as she could, but the rice bags above held the grating down, and at last she had to admit defeat.
Sharantyr dropped again, drew her blade, and attacked the rice above her, stabbing again and again as hissing rice ran down into her hair, her bodice, and even through sliced and torn spots in her leathers.
She went on stabbing and jabbing until she could feel no weight on the grating above, then carefully worked the empty bags aside with her sword through the grate.
It was dark and cool in the chamber above. Very faint light filtered down to her. Sharantyr leapt up again.