Tris followed the wall, moving slowly to put the stone of the wide pillar between himself and the older guard. He froze motionless when the man looked up and stared directly at him, some instinct alerting him that the atmosphere of the room had changed.
“Nar!” called the younger guard. “There’s something outside.”
The veteran sighed, laying aside his honing stone. He rolled lightly to his feet and walked without hurry to the younger man’s post. Tris took advantage of the guard’s distraction to sprint across the room and into the safety of the enclosure that housed the central stair.
The surface of the staircase was worn unevenly, and he was glad of his soft-bottomed shoes that allowed him to feel his way. The twisted stone steps and the enclosing stone walls made Tris, who preferred wood to stone and open air to either, feel uneasily confined.
As the ceilings were high, it took two revolutions of the stairs before another doorless aperture opened into the second floor. From what Tris could see of it, the dimly lit chamber seemed to be a duplicate of the one below. Faint light entered the room from window slits near the ceiling, but most of the light seemed to be coming from a small oil lamp.
A guard sat at his ease on a bench placed near the outer wall. He was carving a small piece of wood by the lamplight. The lamp itself sat on the arm of a chair equipped with thick leather straps. The room was littered with devices of various sorts needed for “persuasion.”
Tris continued up the stairs, which narrowed until there was less than a hand span between Tris’s shoulders and the stone wall. The last light from the rooms below faded until even Tris’s acute night vision ceased to be of service and he climbed by feel alone.
The stairway ended with a trapdoor set into the wooden floor of the upper level, which Tris discovered by slamming his head into it. His spell was sufficient to absorb the noise, but it didn’t help the knot on his head. He felt around the edges of the door with his hands until he found the simple wooden latch and released it, catching the door before it hit his head a second time.
Climbing the last few stairs, Tris arrived in a very small circular room. He stepped onto the floor and pulled the trapdoor shut behind him. There was a latch on the upper side as well, though this one was made so a strong pull from below would break it.
Satisfied that the door was securely closed, Tris divested himself of both shadows and silence and called a magelight to allow him to see.
Four oaken doors, heavily barred and framed with iron, stood at regular intervals in the wall of the room. He opened his mouth to call out, but shut it before a sound escaped.
There was no reason to assume that Laeth was the only one imprisoned in the tower. The less noise that he made finding the Darranian the better off they would be.
Tris moved to the first door and set his forehead against the wood. Stone was cold and dead to him, but wood was like an old friend. When he asked, the oak gave up its secrets to him, allowing him to descry what lay hidden behind the door.
The first room was empty, and Tris moved on to the next. As he lifted his hand, the magic in the cool metal reached out to him. A human mage had ensorcelled the locks; no green mage could have done such a thing with iron.
The magic was so foreign to Tris that he couldn’t even discern its nature. He could tell that the magician hadn’t tainted the oak with his spell. Laying his forehead against the old wood, he “looked” inside.
If it wasn’t Laeth, it was someone of his height and weight wearing the clothes of a noble. He was shackled hand and foot. He must have put up quite a fight, judging from the care someone had taken that he not be able to move more than a finger.
Tris placed his open hand on the door and sang softly in his own language. With a soft, sighing sound, as if it were very tired, the wood disintegrated into a pile of sawdust, leaving both the lock and the metal structure that had framed the door intact.
Laeth looked up at the light too quickly, and had to duck his head into his shoulder to wipe his eyes free of the light-induced tears.
For all that Laeth was a useless Darranian noble chained hand and foot, he was still a trained warrior. Tris had dealt with enough predators in his life to know that they were at their most defensive when they were trapped. It would, he decided, be wise to wait until Laeth knew that he was a friend before attempting to remove the bindings.
Laeth opened his eyes cautiously, took in the missing door and the magelight hovering behind, and came to the wrong conclusion.
“I’m surprised that even the Spymaster of Sianim found out about my imprisonment so quickly,” said Laeth in a soft voice that wouldn’t carry far.
“As far as I know, he didn’t,” replied Tris as quietly, pulling the hovering light source around until Laeth could see him clearly.
The Darranian’s eyes widened as he realized, for the first time, who had come to his rescue. Before he could say anything, there was a loud crashing noise from the floors below.
Tris froze, noticing that Laeth held himself still as well. They waited, but no further sound reached them.
Finally Tris stepped over the sawdust and into the cell, his magelight following closely. He propped his staff against a convenient wall and crouched beside the battered Darranian to examine the chains more closely.
As was usual for such objects, they were made of low-grade iron. Iron and its refined cousin were exceedingly resistant to natural magic. Given enough time, the healer might have been able to destroy them with his magic, but time was a scarce resource.
Tris pulled a ring of keys out of his belt pouch and found one that worked on the wrist cuffs.
One night, not long after Tris had come to Tallonwood, a man had knocked on his door in the middle of the night, obviously suffering from a severe beating. He stayed with Tris for two days before leaving as suddenly as he had come. Tris found the set of keys on his worktable the morning after the man left, set out obviously as a payment. When the word came that a notorious thief had escaped his imprisonment at Westhold, Tris had not been surprised.
The set of skeleton keys had proven to be useful several times since then, and he carried them with him more often than not.
The shackles had been overly tight, restricting the circulation to Laeth’s hands and feet. While Laeth worked at returning the feeling to his limbs, Tris looked him over carefully. There were a few abrasions and bruises, especially where the rough metal had cut into his wrists and ankles, but the worst of it seemed to be the swelling.
Tris reached for Laeth’s hands. Instead of rubbing them, as Laeth had been attempting to do, he held them gently and began to heal the abused tissue.
The Darranian jerked his hands back and stared at them—probably, thought Tris with some amusement, because he’d never seen them glow before.
“What…” Laeth visibly caught himself. The less talking that they did the better; there would be time for that later, if they made it through the night alive. The Darranian gave Tris a frustrated look, then held out his hands again.
Tris worked on Laeth’s hands and feet. The healing wasn’t as complete as it could have been; Laeth was still having problems moving with any ease. Bruises and stiffness were difficult, and they had already taken too long.
By levering a shoulder under Laeth’s arm, Tris managed to get the Darranian through the doorway. He balanced Laeth against the wall, went back for his staff and then touched the sawdust with a finger, and concentrated.
Slowly, the dust shimmered yellow and restructured itself. Like a living creature, it slithered up the iron frame that had reinforced the wooden edges, until a saffron curtain hung where the door had been. There was a snap, as if someone clicked his fingers, and the oak door stood as solid as ever. If a guard came up to look, he would have to open the door to notice that Laeth was gone.
Tris dismissed the magelight and opened the trapdoor again. The tower was quiet below them.