Thick as Thieves (19 page)

“Reannry—”

“You would be of little help. You don’t know the castle like I do and,” she cast another look at Madd, and Vorgell followed suit, his heart thumping with understanding, “you won’t leave him. I haven’t known you long, Vorgell of Scur, but I know that. You fought so hard to save him.”

He could not argue. Madd would only hamper any effort he made… but he would not leave him, not even in a place he hoped would remain safe, not now that he had found him again. “You will rejoin us?” he insisted, because her answer would decide the thing.

Reannry nodded. “Yes. Of course. I will not be so long. It’s just I cannot come with you, not until I am sure about Gilli.” Standing on tiptoe, she placed her lips to his cheek. Her mouth teased his skin, her tongue pressing there softly. “You taste like magic, more than any man I’ve ever met. I think you may have just gifted me with more, enough to save my sister if she is here. Go,” she said. “The tunnel leads to a place that is wholesome, full of life. It will speed Maddog’s healing.”

Would it? Vorgell didn’t think she would deceive him. “May the wolves of my father’s gods guard your way, witch.”

After first sitting on the floor, he eased his legs over the edge and dropped down into the passage with Madd still in his arms. He looked up one last time. “It’s dark,” he said.

“Touch the walls.”

Vorgell pressed the fingers of his free left hand to a wooden plank. Glowing points blossomed at his fingertips and raced in luminous trails to lace the sides of the passage with trellises of light. Reannry laughed. “There’s magic in you, man of Scur. Follow the life threads to safety.” With that, she moved the floorboards back into place, sealing him and Madd into darkness.

Chapter 14

T
HE
tunnel smelled of moist earth and growing things but was in good repair, braced by sound timbers and secured by trimmed, sturdy roots sent down from mature trees. If Vorgell was any judge of such things, he had cleared the castle wall and now walked beneath the woods.

Madd might not weigh so much, but he weighed enough that Vorgell could not carry him all day. As it was, he had to walk bending over. He found a place where the tunnel widened and witch light filigreed the roof and walls with ghostly fans. He had just shifted Madd in his arms, seeking to find ease, when the young man screamed. Garments flew as Madd twisted wildly in his grasp. Naked and wild-eyed, making sounds like an animal, Madd clawed at Vorgell’s face and arms. No longer under a sleep spell, Madd fought like a thing possessed.

“Stop, Madd! Stop! It’s me!” Vorgell wrestled the crazed, naked young witch, shoving him against the dirt and roots of the passage wall until he could wrap him in his arms. Using the cloak of shadows—which, though invisible, had substance—he enfolded Madd’s thrashing limbs and pulled his friend’s trapped body tightly to his. Madd’s heart thumped through the fabric like a struggling bird. “It’s me, Madd. It’s Vorgell. You remember me, now, don’t you?” He kept his voice low and soothing. He’d seen men this way after the horrors of battle. “It’s Vorgell. I came back for you.”

The witch light had begun to fade. It never lasted for long. Because of the cloak, he saw only Madd’s head, flung back and showing dark eyes like holes in a pale face so distorted with fear it looked barely human. “You’re safe, little mage,” he murmured. “I’m here now. The fiends are banished, and you’re out of the castle. You’re with me.”

“No, no….” The rasp of Madd’s voice, torn from screaming, turned the words raw.

He tucked Madd’s head under his chin and twined his fingers in a tangle of hair, holding him close and still. “You’re safe… I have you. I have you now, love.”

He held Madd as he would a child, speaking low and murmuring promises until Madd slumped, sobbing and unresisting, against him. With soft words and kisses to his friend’s hair, he eased his hold and together they sank to the floor. There he pulled Madd into his arms. He caressed Madd’s shoulders and back through the cloak as the glowing walls dimmed further and a deep twilight settled over them.

“Aw, Madd. I thought I’d lost you. But I came back. I came back for you… and I found you, didn’t I? The baron’s dead, and the wizard too. Hush… we’re safe, both of us… I carried you out. It’s just us now, you and me.” He didn’t know what he would do if Madd had lost his mind to those creatures. That fear chilled him to the bone.

Now he wished Reannry had not killed the baron so he might have skewered the villain himself. Then he would at least have that pleasure to revisit. Instead, all he had now was the wet heat of Madd’s tears and his own memory of the horror that caused them. He kissed Madd’s hair again, and his lips lingered there while he searched for the trace of Madd’s smell beneath the stink of blood and fear.

His movement gave Madd freedom to wrench free of the cloak.

“Vorgell?”

He closed his eyes in relief as Madd’s hand found his face, cupped his cheek, and ran through his beard. “Is it really you?” his friend whispered. Illumination in the tunnel had waned to less than starlight, and when Vorgell opened his eyes again, all he could see of Madd was a pale smudge in the dark and the gleam of wet eyes.

“It’s me, Madd. I’m here. Just like I said.”

“Oh, gods… Vorgell? Vorgell, it’s you? It’s you! Oh, gods, I….” Madd flung both arms around Vorgell’s neck and held on to him as if he’d found the only tree still standing tall in a flood.

Vorgell hugged his friend as tightly as he dared. He did not know for certain what hurts Madd might have sustained at the hands of the baron or the wizard and his creatures. He shivered at the soft pressure of Madd’s mouth on his beard, tear-wetted kisses of reborn hope.

“You’re really here. I saw you run—”

“I did run. I did what you told me. It was the right thing; they would have taken me too. But I wasn’t going to leave you.”
I would never leave you.

“You damn crazy oaf. Now I know for a fact you have gruel for brains.” Despite the harsh words, or because of them, Madd was sounding better.

“Maybe so, when it comes to you.” He decided Madd could stand to hear more good news. “You don’t have the collar anymore. I found the egg and… and I put the basilisk back inside the way you told me.”

“The collar’s gone?” Madd raised his hands to his neck, groping for the wicked device. Finding it not there, he gasped and white teeth flashed through his smile. “Oh, gods… gods, I won’t miss that fucking thing!” His forehead dropped heavily to Vorgell’s chest, and he drew shuddering breaths of relief. The darkness made him impossible to see clearly.

“Hold on,” Vorgell said. He spat on his fingers then reached behind to touch the tunnel wall. He grinned as the roots and fungus all around them both brightened to a soft glowing green. “See? I learned a new trick.”

“It’s life light.” Madd sagged against him. He looked familiar again. “We’re underground. Where the hells are—”

“A tunnel. There’s a safe place further on.”

“This doesn’t make sense—”

It probably didn’t to a man who could barely grasp his escape from the clutches of fiends. Madd hadn’t fully come back to reason. There was wildness in him, desperation born of having been hunted and hurt. Vorgell made to rise.

“Let me get on my feet, and I’ll carry you.”

“No, I… for the love of… I’m naked. I can’t go anywhere like this! Where are my clothes?”

Madd fought free of Vorgell’s cradling arms and scrabbled toward something pale and clearly a piece of clothing. His arms jerked as he twisted his body, fighting to untangle the thing.

“You don’t need those now, not yet,” Vorgell counseled. “We’ll bring them with us.”

“No, Vorgell, you don’t understand—”

“I understand the light will fade again and soon. It doesn’t last long. We’ll clean you up and—”

“I can’t even see you as it is. And… and I want my clothes!”

Madd was teetering on some edge removed from reason. Vorgell would risk the wizard’s fiends again before he would risk tipping him over. Madd clearly meant to get dressed. In his weakness, he was having trouble slipping the shirt over his head. He fought with the fabric and was getting more frustrated by the moment.

“All right, here… let me help you.” Vorgell removed the cloak of shadows and tied it securely to the weapon belt, hoping he could keep track of the thing. It would be best if Madd could see him clearly. He then grabbed Madd’s shirt by its fine linen collar and guided his friend’s arms into the sleeves before tugging the hem over the tense curve of young witch’s back, hiding the pale skin bearing the scores and bruises of fiendish claws. The movement awoke a few pained winces but no complaints of serious hurt. A minute later Madd was wearing breeches again and had calmed enough to allow Vorgell to put on his socks.

“I haven’t said thank you, have I?”

“Not yet,” Vorgell acknowledged. He covered Madd’s pale, cold foot and worked the wool stocking up over his calf. “You’ll get around to it.”

“I can’t believe I’m not dead. I’m not even sure—”

“That you’re alive? Be sure.”

“No, about you. I’m not sure you’re really here. I mean, I’m underground and—”

“And the baron would not have bothered to bury you. Or look at it this way… it could be worse. Some people burn their dead, and what if you woke up then and I was with you?”

Madd managed a weak laugh. “Guess we’d both be dead.” Naked emotion haunted his eyes as he turned them up to Vorgell’s. “Thank you, Vorgell. I don’t know what you did to vanquish them, or how you saved me, but you risked your big dumb self. If I really am alive, it’s because I owe you a life.”

Vorgell smiled. It was the closest Madd had ever come to being in thrall to him. Of his own thralldom, he was more certain. “And you own mine already. I would have been sold to wizards had you not bitten me on the lip and broken us out. You know how I feel about you. I’ve never made a secret of that.” Having finished with the socks, he grabbed Madd’s boots and, one by one, tugged them onto the injured man’s feet. “There you go. You are fit to appear among civilized men.”

He got to his feet and then bent down to swing the now fully dressed young man back into his arms. It felt good to be holding him close again. “I will carry you now. Don’t fight me unless you enjoy the taste of defeat.”

“I hate defeat,” Madd said. He slid his right arm over Vorgell’s shoulder and relaxed against him, content to be carried. “I’m so tired, Vorgell. Those things… I think they drained me.”

M
ADD
woke to the sound of knocking. Knocking? He was warm, his cheek filmed with sweat and sticking to something that smelled like leather and, beneath it, a musky warm scent that enveloped him like wool. He emerged further from dreams and realized he was being braced against another man’s body.
Vorgell
, he remembered. Vorgell had found him… he was safe, no longer in the hands of fiends. One of the arms holding him shifted and more rapping ensued. He opened his eyes to life light and the sight of Vorgell trying to rap on a plank of wood.

“Oh, for… put me down,” he demanded, pushing his legs in that direction. He could stand now. He was sure of it. Vorgell released his lower body, though he kept an arm firmly around Madd’s shoulders, helping him to remain upright.

“It’s a door.” Vorgell rapped again.

“I can see that.”

The door looked ordinary enough. It might have graced a well-tended cottage save that it was underground and soft green light feathered every crack and bit of fungus on its frame. Madd couldn’t see a latch, however, just a recessed lock and a square of latticework that probably concealed a peephole so whoever was inside could look out. Though Vorgell had politely knocked, no one had yet answered, which was best as far as Madd was concerned.

“I suppose you could just kick it in with your incredible brawn,” he suggested.

“No need. I think this will work better.” Vorgell plucked a brooch from his tunic. It was an unusual piece, made of gold and good sized, with a ring that looked only a little smaller than the faintly glowing lock plate. First turning the brooch so its embellishments faced outward, Vorgell touched it to the door. Something within the lock snicked, and the door opened by swinging toward them.

Vorgell entered first, pulling Madd along. Soon enough, Madd saw what they had found. How under the Sun had the barbarian located a sanctuary? Only witchkin knew where they were hidden—make that only witchkin associated with a Circle. Madd had never heard so much as rumor of this one, and he’d lived in the neighborhood of the damned baron and his castle for a good part of his life.

It stung to realize his Gran had probably known and not seen fit to tell him.

The sanctuary was no mere hole. Golden light spilled down from a latticework ceiling of interwoven roots as thick as Madd’s arms. Yet more and thicker roots braced the sides of a room—nay, a cavern—high and broad and filled with sweet, magic-laden air. Roots even served as a floor, a tangle of serpentine shapes polished down and worn smooth beneath homey witchkin rugs. The place boasted simple but sturdy furnishings: a bed, a table, and two chairs. Cabinet fronts graced the mossy walls, and there was even a small iron stove with a chimney that vanished up through the roots. Every part of the place looked well-kept and disturbingly ready for guests.