[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
matter how careful she was, sooner or later she would make a mistake.
Either way, she might be done in by her wound, which burned like fire. If she didn t bleed to death, she
ran a good risk of infection. Her compress was already soaked through, sticking to her clothing and flesh
both.
She closed her eyes against her dilemma, trying to think it through. She would stay, she decided finally.
Getting safely out of the Keep risked as much as trying to remain hidden inside. There was no guarantee
of any help no matter which way she went. She might as well stay where she could do some good.
How much time did she have? How long before Pen and the Ard Rhys would come back into Paranor?
It couldn t happen too quickly, he would have to find her first, and they would have to make their way
back to the point of entry. But did time pass in the world of the Forbidding at the same speed it did in the
Four Lands? What if the Ard Rhys was still at the place where she had entered, and Pen found her right
away? It was possible they might come back much more quickly than she imagined.
She exhaled sharply. Too many questions, and there were no answers to any of them. She would have
to do the best she could and hope that was enough.
With both hands grasping the catwalk guardrail, she pulled herself to her feet. She tottered for a
moment, leaned against the railing for support, and waited for her head to clear. She was still hanging
there when she remembered the Elfstones. In the heat of the struggle, she had forgotten them. Her throat
tightened. Traunt Rowan had given them to one of the Gnome Hunters, but which one? What if it was the
one she had pushed into the furnace pit? Fighting back against the burn of her fear, she pushed away
from the railing and staggered back around the catwalk toward the tunnel through which she had entered.
She passed the blackened husk of the third Gnome, turning her face away, trying not to look at him. She
could not bring herself to begin her search there.
Instead, she retraced her steps and went back into the darkened passageway until she found the first of
the remaining two. In the near darkness, she searched him thoroughly, but she did not find the Stones.
Her heart sank. Taking his long knife from his belt so that she would have a weapon, she groped her way
over to the second man.Please, she prayed, her fingers rummaging frantically through his clothing. This
time she found what she was looking for. A surge of relief washed through her as she shoved the pouch
into her tunic. Whatever else happened, she could not afford to lose the talismans.
Retrieving one of the torches she had extinguished earlier, she used her magic to relight it, and then
started back up the passageway toward the Keep. If she encountered anyone at this point, she knew she
was in trouble. There was no place for her to hide and she was too weak to fight. She moved ahead at a
steady but painfully slow pace, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, conscious that her
strength was slowing ebbing away. She knew she would have to treat her injury soon if she was to keep
going, but she could not afford to stop and do so until she was someplace safe.
At some point, she lost her way, but she pushed on anyway. Eventually, she reached a confluence of
tunnels, brightly lit with the smokeless torches the Druids favored in the Keep proper, and she cast her
own aside. A stairway led upward, and she hesitated. She wasn t ready to go back into Paranor s upper
regions just yet. Instead, she took one of the passageways leading off the hub. After passing several
doors that were locked, she found one that wasn t and slipped inside.
A pair of smokeless torches cast a dim glow over a vaulted ceiling and stone-block walls. She was in a
storage room jammed high with casks of ale and wine, the oaken barrels ironbound and tipped on their
sides in huge cradles. A carpet of dust lay over everything; the air was thick with it. The room had clearly
not been entered in a long time. She found that she could not lock the door from the inside, but she did
not think she had the strength to look for another. If no one had been here recently, her odds were pretty
good that no one would come soon. She worked her way to the back of the room, into the deep
shadows where she could not be seen by anyone entering, and collapsed on a wooden pallet used for
storing barrel staves.
She closed her eyes, wanting badly to sleep. But she knew if she did, she might not wake up again. She
needed to stop the bleeding. Her healing skills were rudimentary, but Ahren had given her a few basic
lessons. She knew she had to cauterize the wound. It would have been better if she were outside the
Keep where she could gather some healing herbs and leaves, but there was no help for it. She would
have to make do with magic and luck alone. She knew it was going to be painful. She was not brave, and
she did not want to do this. But she had no choice if she wanted to go on.
She stripped off her tunic and pulled away the compress, then drew a little of the wine from one of the
barrels and used it to wash the wound. The wine burned, and she clenched her teeth. It was a start, but it
wasn t enough. For the healing process to begin, she had to close the wound all the way. She sat back
down on the pallet and summoned a small magic that would help to numb the area around the wound,
applying the dancing bits of colored light with her fingertips in gentle strokes. When the pain began to
lessen, she brought out the long knife she had taken from the Gnome Hunter and used her
magic-conjured fire to heat the tip of the blade until it glowed.
Then she bit down on a small piece of wood she found in a pile of scraps, summoned an image of Ahren
and Emberen and better times to distract her, and laid the flat of the knife against the wound.
The pain was enormous. Trying not to and failing, she screamed into the wood, into the silence, smelling
her flesh as it burned and seared. She did not lose consciousness, although she thought it might have been
better if she had. When she could stand it no longer, she took the knife away, tears streaming down her
cheeks, fire coursing through her body. She summoned more of the numbing magic and applied it with
small strokes to the cauterized area. It took her a long time to make a difference, but finally the pain
decreased.
She looked down at her side and then quickly away again. At least the wound was closed and the
bleeding stopped. She had done what she could.
She pulled her tunic back on, wrapped herself in her cloak, and lay down to sleep, the knife gripped
tightly in one hand.
Bek stood at the controls ofSwift Sure, easing the airship down the line of the Charnals toward the
Dragons Teeth and Paranor. The sky was hazy and gray, the midday sun blocked by storm clouds that
were building into thunderheads. He watched the approaching weather mostly out of habit, his thoughts
were elsewhere. On the deck below the pilot box, Trefen Morys and Bellizen sat together, heads bent
close as they conversed. Kermadec, his brother Atalan, and a handful of other Rock Trolls were
scattered about the aft decking, wrapped in blankets and asleep. Tagwen was belowdecks, fighting
airsickness yet again, apparently unable to come to terms with flight motion even with help from Rue,
who had given him herbs and a drink to calm his stomach. Some people were like that, no matter how
hard they tried or how hard others tried for them, they simply couldn t make the adjustment.
He glanced over his shoulder. Somewhere behind them, perhaps half a day out, the balance of Taupo
Rough s Rock Trolls followed aboard the huge flat transports that Trolls favored for conveying their
armies to a place of battle. Slow and cumbersome, they rarely got more than a few hundred feet off the
ground. But Kermadec had insisted they would reach Paranor in time to be of help. His job, and the job
of the small company he had brought with him, was to get inside the Keep and secure at least one of the
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]