Pelassar was nowhere in evidence at the point where Kessarin had expected him and his thirty men to be. The scout had anticipated hearing the sounds of bone dice clacking off the stone floor, of rough laughter echoing down the pass, and the glow of lanterns and torches illuminating the way unnecessarily for a hundred yards or more.
But there had been no need to slow his pace or cloak his lantern. Surprisingly, Pelassar had moved on. The scout raised his eyebrows and did the same.
Kessarin was a fit man and his pace ate up the pass. At a roughly estimated hour in, his caution slowed him to a fast walk. His lantern, hooded all the way, was pared to a thin strip of light which he shone either at the ground directly in front of him or the wall either side, never directly ahead.
His breathing was controlled and his ears tuned to hear the merest sound but all he picked up was the dripping of water somewhere far away. On it went for perhaps another half an hour, the silence supreme, the light nowhere and no sign at all of Pelassar and his men. It was then that he smelt the blood. Not a strong scent but there all the same, drifting on the breath of a breeze that meandered along the pass.
Kessarin stopped immediately, lantern slide pushed all the way across, darkness complete. He pressed himself against the left-hand wall, thinking. This was an area he knew little of, particularly with no light. He had a vague memory of an opening out to both sides and above but, in truth, couldn’t be sure. He was skilled in the feel of the rock at either end but, in the middle, his knowledge was slight. There hadn’t been time.
He listened closely. Still no sound of Pelassar and his men. No echo of footsteps along the rock walls, no change in the air told of imminent meeting and, straining his eyes along with his ears, no light pushed at the blackness. Just that faint taste of blood. There one breath, gone the next.
Kessarin was, by nature, a calm individual but the silence and the dark were moving in on him. Sounds he knew could not be there whispered in his ear. The cry of a child, the lowing of cattle. All distant, the tricks the mountains above played. He shook his head and forced himself to focus. He had two choices.
He could either report back the silence and the hint of blood in the air or he could move on, knowing Tessaya would be growing impatient, and find out whether his fears were justified.
Actually, it was quite simple. To find favour, he had to go on and hope that Tessaya’s anger would subside as he heard Kessarin’s report. He looked again into the darkness. Here, deep in the pass, no natural light would ever penetrate. He couldn’t even see the wall with his nose touching it. Here, even the slightest chink of light would push back the blackness like a beacon fire. Up ahead then, he could be sure, there was no one.
He moved back the slot of the hooded lantern, aware that the limited air within the glass would soon be gone if he didn’t expose an airhole. The sound was loud in the silence, like pushing open a rusted iron door. Kessarin allowed himself a smile.
With his left hand brushing the wall, he moved forward again, carefully, the light down and to his right, illuminating a slight incline in the passageway. A couple of paces further on, he stepped in a patch of stickiness that slicked across the floor.
He stopped to look, knowing it was blood, and then they simply melted out of the darkness ahead, a pale light gently illuminating their nightmare masks. One grabbed his neck with astonishing swiftness. He dropped the lantern, which shattered on the hard stone floor. He tried to speak but no sound came, his arms thrashing uselessly, his eyes staring wildly, taking in the sea of blank faces which parted to let through a tall man with black hair. Behind him floated a glowing sphere. The face came close.
‘Very good,’ he said. ‘You almost had us believing you weren’t there. Almost. Now, you are alone, I take it?’
Kessarin, terrified, managed to nod his head, jaw against the gauntlet of the silent masked man.
‘As I thought.’ His head turned away. ‘Is it full dark outside?’
Another nod.
‘Good. Cil, we have work.’
The hand around Kessarin’s throat tightened and all his dreams of glory fled into the darkness from which he would never return.
The only question that remained was the reception at Understone but the captured scout removed some of the uncertainty. Styliann considered that Tessaya would want to wait for the scout’s report before deciding how heavily to arm his defence. At this stage, Tessaya still had no genuine cause to believe that the Lord of the Mount’s non-appearance was anything other than irritating delay.
Styliann and his Protectors moved quickly, the LightGlobe faint but significant, providing light enough to see a few paces all round. That, combined with the innate sense of the enthralled warriors, was quite enough. In less than two hours, they were approaching the eastern end of the pass. Stopping perhaps four hundred yards from the entrance and hidden by a series of outcrops and shallow bends, Styliann assigned his LightGlobe to Cil, dismounted and cast a CloakedWalk on himself. He could have selected a Protector as the spell’s target but the nuances of the Cloak made its retention far more difficult than a LightGlobe or ShadowWings.
‘Stay here,’ he ordered. ‘They will not see me.’ Styliann disappeared from their view, his hand trailing the left-hand wall, a dull luminescence taking the totality from the darkness. He walked briskly, his eyes adjusting to the increasing light that filtered along the passage. It was, he guessed, around four hours from dawn. Night was full outside but, in comparison to the black of the pass, the sky was bright. Inside it was chill and damp and Styliann was glad of his cloak.
There were no obvious signs of build-up at the entrance to the pass but a guard of eight or so sat around a fire just outside. Styliann pitied them. The Xeteskian storm would see them to their graves before they knew it had broken.
He continued walking slowly forward, coming to within a dozen paces of the guards where he crouched behind a slide of rock caused by the spell his own mages, organised by Dystran, had cast to massacre so many Wesmen. The scent of death would remain in the pass forever.
None of the guard was facing into the pass, which Styliann found a little strange. Over-confidence caused carelessness. He looked beyond them to what he could see of Understone itself. Darrick’s defences had been considerably strengthened and watch-towers sprang from eight places that Styliann could count. His view was partially obscured by the slope down to the base of the gates Tessaya had constructed but the glow of further fires told of more guards outside the town.
Understone was quiet. The Wesmen slept while above the sky was clear and the air was still and cool. He wouldn’t get a better opportunity. Styliann, again cloaked by magic, slipped back to join the Protectors.
Understone’s night was uneasy. Tessaya stalked the quiet streets, for once unsure of himself. Kessarin was among the best, the duty Captain had assured him of this. He would find the guard and report back but, if he had to travel the entire pass, he would not return until early morning, shortly before dawn.
But the situation was patently wrong. How could the delay be so great that Styliann still had not appeared? And if this was so, why had no word been sent? Never indecisive, Tessaya found himself torn. His senses screamed at him to wake every man and destroy the cursed mage the moment he appeared in the east. But his tactical brain begged him to play it softly and patiently. To wait for Styliann’s arrival and greet him with open arms. Let him place himself exactly where Tessaya wanted him.