Once on the ground they were much safer. Although it was still too early in the morning for much activity, it would be easy enough to come up with a reason for legitimate occupants of the castle to be wandering around in the darkness.
“I’ll get the horses and meet you at your home,” suggested Rialla softly.
Tris nodded, and replied in a voice as quiet as hers, “That is as good a place as any. If I’m not back before dawn, take the woman and go to Sianim. Luck be with you, dancer.” He turned toward the tower.
“And with you”—she wasn’t sure why she added the next word—“shapechanger.”
He stopped in his tracks, spinning to look at her. For an instant she saw a glimpse of something… wilder in his face. But it was only for an instant, and then he was scowling at her with laughing eyes. “You know so much of shapechangers you can name me so on such short acquaintance?”
Rialla shrugged and said easily, “The woman who taught me how to play Steal the Dragon is rumored to be a shapechanger. She calls it Taefil Ma Deogh.” Rialla knew that she couldn’t twist her tongue around the syllables so that they sounded correctly, but she thought that Tris would get the point. “She’s never said that she was a shapeshifter, but she’s never denied it either. I’ve also been around human mages long enough to know that healing is not something that human magic works well on.”
“I am not a human wizard,” he acknowledged. “Nor am I a shapechanger, though my people are distant kin. Taefil Ma Deogh is a very old game, and well known amongst us.”
“What are you then?” she asked.
Again he shook his head. “Nothing that you would know. We have been too few for too long. If we live through this night, perhaps I’ll tell you about my people.”
Rialla turned on her heel and began stalking in the general direction of the stables, murmuring to herself, “If that man makes one more cryptic remark, he may not live through this night.”
She decided she would look more suspicious if she tried to sneak around, so she strode boldly past the makeshift pens that had been erected to house the animals of the lesser nobles. There was a pair of guards making their rounds, but they paid her little heed.
By the time she reached the main stable, she was perspiring from fear and vowing never to do anything other than train horses again. Before she entered, she drew a deep breath.
Horses were empathic themselves. If she walked in feeling fear, it was bound to cause an uproar in a stable full of warhorses. Rialla closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath of horse- and hay-scented air, trying to pretend she was in one of the barns at Sianim.
Rialla knew the general layout of the stables from her earlier visit. There were stalls along both outer walls and small loose pens in the center. The tack was set in the middle of the aisle between the stalls and the pens, far enough away from either that the horses couldn’t nibble at the sweat-salted leather. Rialla suspected the pens were where she’d find their horses, since generally the stalls would be assigned to the hold animals.
The stable was dark inside, and Rialla waited just inside the door, hoping her eyes would adjust to the darkness. A few of the horses nearest to her began shifting as they noticed her unfamiliar presence. Carefully she extended her empathic touch to them, reassuring them that she meant them no harm.
When her vision had gotten as adjusted as it was going to, Rialla stepped forward cautiously until she rested her hand on the top bar of the inner pen. The horses were only darker shadows in the night. Rialla counted on her empathy to help her find the right animals. Rialla had herself trained Laeth’s gelding, Stoutheart, though not the mare she’d ridden here. She could have taken the first horses she came to, but both of the Sianim animals were conditioned and of high quality.
Most of the horses ignored her, resting comfortably in the clean straw bed. An aged gray mare walked with Rialla the length of her pen, hoping for an apple. Rialla rubbed the mare’s cheekbone where it itched and silently apologized for coming without a treat.
Her horses were in a pen near the end of the barn. The mare stood in a three-footed doze, but Stoutheart whickered softly in greeting. By touch Rialla located saddles and bridles, then readied the horses while they were still in their pen.
Leading the horses out quietly required Rialla to send out a constant reassuring babble to all of the horses they passed, and she released a sigh of relief when she finally made it out of the building.
There was only one way to get horses out of the hold. The main entrance was kept shut and barred at night, but on the other side of the gatehouse was the herald’s gate. The gate was actually a narrow tunnel through the base of the wall, designed to allow the passage of messengers when the main gates were closed. Heavy metal doors, locked and barred, were set into the wall at either end of the tunnel.
Rialla was able to lead the horses unseen along the wall, due more to luck than any skill on her part. When they neared the gatehouse, Rialla extended her senses and found each of the guards on duty there and on the nearby wall. If they had been alert and ready for trouble, she would have had to find another way; but they were bored and drowsy. It only took a nudge to send them over into a sound sleep.
She yawned herself before leaving the horses waiting while she searched the guards until she found a large ring of keys.
Rialla opened the first door and continued through the tunnel to open the outside door as well; it would be easier to convince the horses to enter the tunnel if they could see the light on the other side. As she stepped into the tunnel, she noticed that the floor was covered with a metal grating suspended over the ground by a pair of heavy wooden beams. Getting the horses across it was going to be quite a feat of persuasion—and loud in the bargain.
The mare put her front feet into the opening, but backed up quickly at the strange sound of her metal-shod hooves on the grating. The whites of her eyes gleamed in the darkness and her ears were flattened with displeasure. Even with Rialla’s gift, the mare wouldn’t budge.
Sending soothing thoughts, Rialla backed the mare away and tied her reins high on her neck so that she wouldn’t trip on them. Though the mare wasn’t trained for a verbal command to stay, as the gelding was, her instincts would keep her near the other horse.
Rialla had tried the mare first because she was smaller. Even throwing the stirrups across the back of the saddle to reduce the gelding’s width, she was afraid that the bigger horse’s barrel was going to rub the sides of the tunnel all of the way through.
When Rialla led Stoutheart to the mouth of the tunnel, he dropped his nose and blew a puff of air at the strange floor. Using her empathy and soft coaxing sounds to encourage him, she took a step back, tugging once on the rein and then relaxing the pressure.
The gelding put a foot tentatively on the metal floor, flattening his ears at the odd sound as well as the slight flexing of the grate. But Rialla had trained him, and he trusted her to know what would hurt him and what was safe. Deciding that the floor was going to hold his weight, he followed her almost placidly. When he reached the far side, he found a small patch of grass and began to eat.
She commanded him to stay, and started back to the tunnel. Before she reached the opening, the mare bolted through, clanking and snorting, anxious to rejoin her companion.
The open door was sure to send searchers out as soon as the guards woke up enough to notice it. If she closed it and got out over the wall, it could be dawn before anyone realized that Laeth was gone. There was work currently being done on the wall here as well, and the scaffolding on the outside would offer an easy enough method for exiting the hold.