The healer had to help Laeth down the first few steps. Between the heavy staff and the heavier Darranian, negotiating the narrow, dark stairway was awkward work. As soon as the noble seemed steadier, Tris pushed in front.
After they had descended six stairs, Tris gestured for Laeth to wait, and continued down alone. He intended to deal with the guard on the second story himself, leaving only the two on the bottom. As he stepped carefully down the stairs, he noticed that the room was different.
The oil lamp was no longer burning. Faint moonlight from the three windows high in the side of the tower allowed Tris a clear view of the empty bench where the guard had been. The rest of the room was lost in darkness.
He had hoped that he could take on the guards separately and minimize the risk of an outcry, but the guard who had been here had left. He would have to get Laeth and—
He had taken a step back toward the stairs when something caught his attention.
He held very still, listening for the faint noise that instinct told him would come. Something bumped into a piece of furniture, pushing it a short distance across the floor. Tris dropped to a low crouch, hoping he’d escaped detection. His new position allowed him to see under the table and past it to the source of the noise that had first alerted him.
A square of pale light from one of the windows illuminated a pair of rough boots—boots that moved limply forward and back, scuffing the floor lightly. It had been this sound that he’d heard first.
A small gust of wind from the window brought with it the peculiar rotting smell of the swamp and the sweet smell of fresh blood. It appeared that another swamp creature was loose in Westhold: someone wanted to make sure that Laeth didn’t miss his appointment with death.
Balanced in a kneeling position, with eyes slitted so they wouldn’t glisten in the faint light, Tris waited. The guard’s body shifted suddenly across the floor as the killer changed its hold, and the healer got a clear view of what he faced.
Someone had told him once that many creatures of the swamp were things created by one of the old human wizards—the ones who had very nearly destroyed the world with their uncontrolled use of magic. The creature that suckled the neck of the dead man certainly had unnatural origins; Tris could sense a wrongness in her that a natural animal, be it ever so vicious, had never inspired.
From a distance she would appear to be a voluptuous naked woman. Tris was close enough to see the pointed ears, the flesh-colored gills on her neck, and that her long, silky hair grew from her back as much as her head.
The inch-long nails on her hands and bare feet were retractable, sliding in and out as she ate. Her eyes were closed as she concentrated on her meal.
Something around her neck was starting to glow purple; the light grew stronger even as Tris noted it. It was a collar of some sort, and she reached up to bat at it without taking her mouth from her prey.
As the glow intensified, she growled and hissed, jerking back from the body, a bead of blood trickling from the corner of her mouth like a teardrop. She tore at the collar, but it held firm.
To Tris’s surreptitious examination, the collar reeked of human magic. If he had to guess, he would have bet gold that the collar contained some geas that forced her to find Laeth and kill him.
Sullenly she left the body and started toward the stairway, not noticing Tris frozen motionless only a length away. He would have let her go if it hadn’t been for Laeth—weakened, unarmed, and waiting on the stairs.
When she passed him, Tris rose to his feet and held his staff at ready in one hand. He would wait as long as he could before attacking. The more he knew about her, the better chance he would have.
Tris saw her stiffen as she caught sight of Laeth, seated on the stair and momentarily unaware of the drama that was taking place. She hissed. Tris couldn’t see Laeth, but he heard the sounds of the Darranian backing up the stairs quickly.
She made a soft barking sound that might have been a laugh before unleashing her magic. The wordless call that she sang was potent enough that even outside the focus of her magic, the healer could feel the pull.
As Laeth stumbled down the stairs, she backed away before him, leading him into the room with the rest of this night’s meal. She was intent on her prey, and didn’t notice the healer sinking back into the shadows on one side of her, aided by his own magic.
Laeth took two steps forward, then stopped. He pulled his hands slowly to his ears. She increased the intensity of the summoning, making the tones evocative of sex and need. Sweat beaded on the Darranian’s skin as he fought to stay where he was.
Enough, thought Tris, and struck at the side of her head with the metal-strewn end of his staff. It was a blow that would have killed any human, and it knocked her across the room and into an assortment of tables and implements whose purpose was lost to the dark. She returned to her feet in a silent, powerful rush.
Remembering Laeth’s earlier reaction, Tris closed his eyes momentarily and called a brilliant flash of magelight, just long enough to blind her, and took two quick steps to one side. She hit the table next to him, reducing it to kindling, and he swung again with his staff, connecting with her shoulder.
She seemed less hampered by the darkness than he was, so he recalled the magelight at a bearable level.
Her fangs were impressive but thin and sharp, more suited to opening the neck of her prey than fighting. Her eyes were slitted, like a cat’s, telling Tris that she was indeed more comfortable in the dark room than she would have been in the light. He’d hurt her; one arm hung limply at her side and blood from her head blinded her right eye.
The hard, slick floor bothered her; he could see her testing it warily with each step. He had just come to the conclusion that he held the advantage in this fight, when she threw something at him with her good hand.
He raised his oak staff, and it caught the spell, absorbing most of it; the remainder flung him against a wall.
The creature laughed, and she sounded like a young girl. She drew her hand back again, but stopped mid-gesture. She looked surprised, and blood trickled out of her mouth. She coughed once before falling face forward. Laeth stepped out of the shadows behind her, holding a bloodstained metal bar with a sharp point. Tris assumed that it was something the guards used for torturing prisoners.
Laeth looked at the dead creature and said, “I don’t suppose that we have to worry about any more guards.”
Tris shook his head. “Not unless we’ve made enough noise to wake the men in the guardhouse. We’d better get moving.” Laeth nodded in agreement and followed, walking only a little stiffly.
On the first floor they found the bodies of the other two guards lying near the entrance. Tris stepped around them and into the darkness, with Laeth behind him.
The healer led Laeth to the outer wall of the keep, near the place where he and Rialla had entered. Laeth climbed the wall slowly, but without incident. Tris waited until the Darranian had reached the top before securing his staff and following him up and over.
They had reached the protective cover of the forest when the alarm bells began to sound. Laeth hesitated, and Tris grabbed his arm and pulled him deeper into the forest. Laeth waited for explanations until they were immersed in the heart of the woods. Then he stopped and leaned against a convenient tree to rest.
“My thanks for your timely intervention, healer,” he said, with a wary look. “You’ll have to excuse me for wondering why you did it.”
Tris shrugged and made himself at home on a fallen log. “Do you believe in prophecy?”
“What?” Laeth asked.
“I was given a riddle… a path to follow that might lead to something necessary to me.”
“This riddle requires that you risk your life for someone that you have shown every sign of disliking? A man, moreover, who is being held for killing the Lord of the Hold?” questioned Laeth incredulously.