‘Yes, I know, but there’s no cover. There’s nothing between here and the castle but open lawn. We’d better stick to the shadows. If we go around on the other side of Interior, we’ll be able to go through the grounds of the Foreign Ministry. It’s only about fifty yards from there to the drawbridge of the castle.’
‘What if the drawbridge has been raised?’
‘We’ll worry about that when we get there, Gahennas. But we have to get into the gardens around the Foreign Ministry first.’
‘Let’s go then, ladies,’ Liatris said abruptly. ‘We’re not accomplishing anything by standing around talking. Let’s go find out what we’re up against.’
‘Back here,’ Talen whispered to them, coming out of a narrow alleyway. ‘The palace wall runs back to the place where it joins the outer fortifications at the end of this alley. The right angle where the two walls meet is perfect for climbing.’
‘Will you need this?’ Mirtai asked, holding her grappling hook out to him.
‘No. I can make it to the top without it, and we’d better not risk having some sentry up there hear the hook banging on the stones.’ He led them back along the alley to the cul-de-sac where the palace wall butted up against the imposing fortifications separating the compound from the rest of the city.
‘How high would you say it is?’ Kalten asked, squinting upward. It was strange to see Kalten’s face again after all the weeks it had been disguised. Sparhawk tentatively touched his own face and immediately recognized the familiar contours of his broken nose.
‘Thirty feet or so,’ Bevier replied softly to Kalten’s question.
Mirtai was examining the angle formed by the joining of the two walls. ‘This won’t be very difficult,’ she whispered.
‘The whole structure’s poorly designed,’ Bevier agreed critically.
‘I’ll go up first,’ Talen said.
‘Don’t do anything foolish up there,’ Mirtai cautioned.
‘Trust me.’ He set his foot up on one of the protruding stones of the outer wall and reached for a hand-hold on the palace wall. He went up quickly.
‘We’ll check for sentries when we get up there,’ Mirtai quietly told the others. ‘Then we’ll drop a rope down to you.’ She reached up and began to follow the young thief up the angle between the two walls.
Bevier leaned back and looked upward. ‘The moon’s all the way up now,’ he said.
‘Thinkest thou that it might reveal us?’ Xanetia asked him.
‘No, Anarae. We’ll be climbing the north side of the tower, so we’ll be in shadow the whole way to the top.’
They waited tensely, craning their necks to watch the climbers creeping upward.
‘Somebody’s coming!’ Kalten hissed. ‘Up there—along the battlements!’
The climbers stopped, pulling back into the shadows of the sharp angle between the two walls.
‘He’s got a torch,’ Kalten whispered. ‘If he holds it out over those battlements—’ he left it hanging.
Sparhawk held his breath.
‘It’s all right now,’ Bevier said. ‘He’s going back.’
‘We might want to deal with him when we get up there,’ Kalten noted.
‘Not if we can avoid it,’ Sparhawk disagreed. ‘We don’t want somebody else to come looking for him.’
Talen had reached the battlements. He clung to the rough stones for a moment, listening. Then he slipped over the top and out of sight. After several interminable moments, Mirtai followed him. Sparhawk and the others waited in the darkness. Then Mirtai’s rope came slithering down the wall.
‘Let’s go,’ Sparhawk said tensely. ‘One at a time.’
The building-blocks were of rough, square-fractured basalt, and they protruded unevenly from the walls, making climbing much simpler than it appeared. Sparhawk didn’t even bother to use the rope. He reached the top and clambered over the battlements. ‘Do the sentries have any kind of set routine up here?’ he asked Mirtai.
‘It seems that each one has his own section of wall,’ she replied. ‘The one at this end doesn’t walk very fast. I’m guessing, but I’d say that it’ll be a quarter of an hour before he comes back.’
‘Is there any place where we can take cover before then?’
‘There’s a door in that first tower,’ Talen said, pointing at the squat structure rising at the end of the parapet. ‘It opens onto a stairwell.’
‘Have you taken a look at the back wall yet?’
Talen nodded. ‘There’s no parapet along that side, but there’s a ledge a couple of feet wide where the outer wall joins the back of the palace. We’ll be able to make our way along that until we get on that central tower. Then we get to start climbing.’
‘Does the sentry look back there when he reaches this end of the parapet?’
‘He didn’t last time,’ Mirtai said.
‘Let’s look at that stairwell, then,’ Sparhawk decided. ‘As soon as the others are up, we’ll hide in there until the sentry reaches this end and starts back. That should give us a half-hour to crawl along that ledge to the central tower. Even if he looks around the corner next time, we should be out of the range of his torch by then.’
‘He’s right on top of these things, isn’t he?’ Talen said gaily to Mirtai.
‘What is this boy’s problem?’ Sparhawk demanded of the golden giantess.
‘There’s a certain kind of excitement involved in this, Dorlin’,’ Mirtai replied. ‘It sets the blood to pounding.’
‘Dorlin’?’
‘Professional joke, Sparhawk. You probably wouldn’t understand.’
Vanion’s scouts had returned about sunset to report contact with Kring to the south and Queen Betuana’s Atans to the north. The ring of steel around the Forbidden Mountains was drawing inexorably tighter. The moon was rising over the desert when Betuana and Engessa came running in from Vanion’s right flank and Kring and Tikume rode in from the left.
‘Tynian-Knight will be along soon, Vanion-Preceptor,’ Engessa reported. ‘He and Ulath-Knight have spoken with Bergsten-Priest on their right. Ulath-Knight has remained with the Trolls to try to prevent incidents.’
‘Incidents?’ Sephrenia asked.
‘The Trolls are hungry. Ulath-Knight gave them a regiment of the Klael-beasts to eat, but the flavor did not please the Trolls. Ulath-Knight tried to apologize, but I am not sure if the Trolls understood.’
‘Have you seen Berit and Khalad yet, friend Vanion?’ Kring asked.
‘No, but Aphrael said that they’re just ahead of us. Her cousin guided them to the spot where that hidden gate’s supposed to be.’
‘If they know where the gate is, we could go on in,’ Betuana suggested.
‘We’d better wait, dear,’ Sephrenia replied. ‘Aphrael will let me know as soon as Sparhawk rescues Ehlana and Alcan.’
Tynian came riding across the vast open graveyard. ‘Bergsten’s in place,’ he reported, swinging down out of his saddle. He looked at Itagne. ‘I have a message for you, your Excellency.’
‘Oh? From whom?’
‘Atana Maris is with Bergsten. She wants to talk with you.’
Itagne’s eyes widened. ‘What’s she doing here?’ he exclaimed.
‘She said that your letters must have gone astray. Not a single one of them reached her. You did write to her, didn’t you, your Excellency?’
‘Well—I was intending to.’ Itagne looked slightly embarrassed. ‘Something always seemed to come up, though.’
‘I’m sure she’ll understand.’ Tynian’s face was blandly expressionless. ‘Anyway, after she handed the city of Cynestra over to Bergsten, she decided to come looking for you.’
Itagne’s expression was slightly worried. ‘I hadn’t counted on that,’ he confessed.
‘What’s this?’ Betuana asked curiously.
‘Ambassador Itagne and Atana Maris became good friends while he was in Cynestra, your Majesty,’ Sephrenia explained. ‘Very good friends, actually.’
‘Ah,’ Betuana said. ‘It’s a little unusual, but it’s not unheard of, and Maris has always been an impulsive girl.’ Although the Atan Queen still wore deep mourning, she seemed to have abandoned her ritual silence. ‘A word of advice, Itagne-Ambassador, if you’d care to hear it.’