A soft scraping of leather boots on stone sounded from the cell entry and the Gnome jailer appeared from the corridor beyond. Head lowered into shadow, the hooded form passed silently through the open doorway into the room. Stythys turned at the other’s approach, cold eyes glittering with displeasure.
«Ssent not for little peopless,” the Mwellret muttered darkly, and the scaled hands motioned the Gnome away.
But the jailer paid no heed. Mute and unresponsive, he shuffled past the lizard creature as if he had not seen him and came directly toward Jair. Head still lowered, hands tucked deep into the folds of the ragged cloak, the Gnome slipped wraithlike through the dark. Jair watched his approach with mingled surprise and uncertainty. As the little man came closer, the Valeman shrank back in repulsion against the stone of the cell wall, the iron of his chains clanking as he raised his hands defensively.
«Sstand away, little peopless!» Stythys rasped, angry now, and his scaled body drew itself up menacingly.
But the Gnome jailer had already reached Jair, a hunched and voiceless thing as he stood before the Valeman. Slowly the cowled head lifted.
Jair’s eyes went wide. The Gnome in the ragged cloak and hood was not the jailer!
«Need a little help, boy?» Slanter whispered.
Then a black–clad form leaped from the shadowed corridor without, and the slender blade of a long sword pressed up against the throat of an astonished Stythys, forcing him back against the cell wall.
«Not a sound from you,” Garet Jax warned. «Not a twitch. Either, and you’ll be dead before you finish!»
«Garet, you’re alive!» Jair exclaimed in disbelief.
«Alive and well,” the other replied, but the hard gray eyes never moved from the Mwellret. «Hurry and set the Valeman free, Gnome.»
«Just be patient a moment!» Slanter had produced a ring of iron keys from beneath the cloak and was trying each key in turn in the shackles that bound the Valeman. «Confounded things don’t fit the lock… ah–ha — this one!»
The locks on the wrist and ankle–bindings clicked sharply and the chains fell away. «Slanter,” Jair gripped the Gnome’s arm’as Slanter stripped away the jailer’s ragged cloak and tossed it aside. «How on earth did you ever manage to find me?»
«No real trick to that, boy!» the Gnome snorted, rubbing at the other’s bruised wrists to restore the circulation. «I told you I was the best tracker you’d ever met! Weather didn’t help much, of course — washed out half the signs, turned the whole of the forestland to muck. But we picked up the lizard’s tracks right outside the tunnels and knew he’d bring you here, whatever his intentions. Cells in Dun Fee Aran are always for sale to anyone with the right price and no questions asked. People in them for sale the same way. Lock you away until you’re bones, unless…»
«Talk about it later, Gnome,” Garet Jax cut him short. «You.» He jabbed sharply at the Mwellret. «You walk ahead — keep everyone away from us. No one is to stop us; no one is to question us. If they do…»
«Leavess me here, little peopless!» the creature hissed.
«Yes, leave him,” Slanter agreed, his face wrinkling in distaste. «You can’t trust the lizards.»
But Garet Jax shook his head. «He goes. Foraker thinks we can use him.»
Jair started. «Foraker is here, too!»
But Slanter was already propelling him toward the cell door, spitting in open disdain at the Mwellret as he walked past. «He’ll do us no good, Weapons Master,” he insisted. «Remember, I warned you.»
They were in the hallway beyond then, crouched in the shadows and the silence, Slanter at the Valeman’s elbow as Garet Jax brought Stythys through the door. The Weapons Master paused for a moment, listened, then shoved Stythys before him as they started back down the darkened corridor. A torch burned in ‘a wall rack ahead of them; when they reached it, Slanter snatched the brand away and assumed the lead.
«Black pit, this place!» he growled softly, picking his way through the gloom.
«Slanter!» Jair whispered urgently. «Is Elb Foraker here, too?»
The Gnome glanced at him briefly and nodded. «The Dwarf, the Elf and the Borderman as well. Said we’d started this journey together and that’s how we’d finish it.» He shook his head ruefully. «Guess we’re all mad.»
They slipped back through the labyrinth passageways of the prisons, the Gnome and the Valeman leading and the Weapons Master a step behind with his sword pressed close against the back of the Mwellret. They hastened through blackness, silence, and the stench of death and rot, passing the closed and rusted doors of the prison cells and working their way back into the light of day. Gradually, the gloom began to recede as slivers of daylight, gray and hazy, brightened the passages ahead. The sound of rain reached their ears, and a small, sweet breath of clean air brushed past them.
Then once again the massive, ironbound doors of the building entrance appeared before them, closed and barred. Wind and rain blew against them in sharp gusts, drumming against the wood. Slanter tossed aside the torch and hastened ahead to peer through the watch slot for what waited without. Jair joined him, gratefully breathing in the fresh air that slipped through.
«I never thought to see you again,” he whispered to the Gnome. «Not any of you.»
Slanter kept his eyes on the slot. «You have the luck, all right.»
«I thought no one was left to come for me. I thought you dead.»
«Hardly,” the Gnome growled. «After I lost you in the tunnels and couldn’t figure out what had become of you, I went on through to the cliffs north above Capaal. Tunnel ended there. I knew if the others were alive, they’d come through just as I had, because that was what the Weapons Master’s plans had called for. So I waited. Sure enough, they found each other, then found me. And then we came after you.»
Jair stared at the Gnome. «Slanter, you could have left me — left them too. No one would have known. You were free.»
The Gnome shrugged, discomfort reflecting in his blocky face. «Was I?» He shook his head disdainfully. «Never stopped to think about it.»
Garet Jax had reached them now, prodding Stythys before him. «Still raining?» he asked Slanter.
The Gnome nodded. «Still raining.»
The Weapons Master sheathed the slender sword in one fluid motion and a long knife appeared in its place. He pushed Stythys up against the corridor wall, his lean face hard. A head taller than Garet Jax when first surprised by him in Jair’s cell, Stythys had shrunk down again, coiled like a snake within his robes. Green eyes glittered evilly at the Southlander, cold and unblinking.
«Leavess me, little peopless,” he whined once more.
Garet Jax shook his head. «Once outside, walk close to me, Mwellret. Don’t try to move away. Don’t play games. Cloaked and hooded, we shouldn’t be recognized. The rain will keep most away, but if anyone comes close, you turn them. Remember, it wouldn’t take much to persuade me to cut your throat.»
He said it softly, almost gently, and there was a chilling silence. The Mwellret’s eyes narrowed into slits.
«Havess the magicss!» he hissed angrily. «Needss nothing from me! Leavess me!»
Garret Jax brought the point of the long knife tight against the other’s scaled throat. «You go.»
Cloaks wrapped close about them, they pulled open the heavy wooden doors of the darkened prison and stepped out into the light. Rain fell in blinding sheets from gray, clouded skies, blown against the fortress walls by the wind. Heads bent against its force, the four started across the muddied yard toward the battlements that lay immediately north. Scattered knots of Gnome Hunters passed them by without slowing, anxious only to get in out of the weather. On the watchtowers, sentries huddled in the shelter of stonework nooks and bays, miserable with the cold and damp. No one cared anything about the little party that crossed below. No one even gave them a second glance.