The Mists of Sorrow: The Morcyth Saga Book Seven (58 page)

She looks around the corner and sees the man
standing there, bent over the map on the table. Taking a calming,
centering breath, she steps away from the wall and draws back the
bow at the same time. Just before she releases, the man looks up
and they lock eyes. Then the arrow is launched. In a blur, the man
dodges out of the way, and his hand comes up to snatch the arrow
out of the air.

Once she releases the arrow, Jiron pulls his
knives and moves to rush into the room just in case the arrow
didn’t complete the job. When he sees the man standing there with
the arrow in hand, he moves forward to finish it.

“Korgan was right,” the man says as he draws
his sword. “The fire in the city was just a ruse so a rescue
attempt could be made. I didn’t believe someone would willingly
burn down a whole city just to save a few lives.” He then braces
for Jiron’s attack. “I’ll have to apologize to him after I’ve
killed you.”

Before Jiron can close with him, a noxious
looking black cloud forms between them. From the hallway he hears
Brother Willim gasp, “Magic!” Jiron comes to a quick stop and
backpedals quickly to avoid coming into contact with the black
cloud. He doesn’t take two steps before it begins moving quickly
his way.

“Down Jiron!” Brother Willim cries out as he
enters the room, aglow with power.

Trusting in the priest, Jiron jumps to the
side and hits the floor. He no sooner lands on the floor than
something strikes the center of the black cloud. One of Brother
Willim’s many seeds he carries begins to grow, and as it grows, it
absorbs the black cloud. Blossoming into a black orchid, the seed
draws all the cloud into it until finally dropping to the
floor.

Miko appears with sword in hand and closes
with the soldier. Metal clashes as the two blades meet. Both men
move with incredible speed, yet Miko is the faster of the two. The
time he had the Fire in his possession having given him great skill
and speed.

Then Brother Willim is there beside him, his
staff smashing into the soldier’s armor. “Help the others Jiron,”
the priest yells. “We’ll deal with this.”

Jiron gets up off the ground and motions for
Aleya to follow him as they leave the combatants behind. Passing
through the door Korgan had used, they enter a smaller corridor.
Moving down it quickly, Jiron begins to smell the mustiness of an
enclosed area. “We’re close,” he tells her. The clash of swords
from the battle they just left follows them as they hurry down the
corridor.

Another dozen yards brings them to the top
of a narrow spiral stairway descending into darkness. The odor of
mustiness is strongest from that direction. “This way,” he says.
“Stay close to me.” He sees Aleya nod then begins taking the stairs
down.

Whack!

Brother Willim’s staff takes the soldier
again in the side of the head. Twice the soldier tried to send the
noxious black cloud toward them, and twice Brother Willim countered
it with magic of his own. Now, three orchids lie on the floor, all
but crushed by the combatants’ feet.

The soldier has been on the defensive since
shortly after Miko and Brother Willim engaged him. His armor shows
tears and dents from where sword and staff have left their
mark.

Miko’s sword is moving almost faster than
the eye can see. For every two of his blows that the soldier
manages to block, one makes it through his defenses.

Whack!

The soldier’s sword hand is dealt a heavy
blow by Brother Willim’s staff which causes him to lose his grip.
As his sword flies out of his hand, Miko comes in with a thrust and
sinks his sword to the hilt in the man’s breastbone. With a cry,
the soldier staggers back and crashes into one of the tables.
Smashing though its top, he dies before his body even reaches the
floor.

Just then, the door opens up and the two
civilians enter the room. They come to an abrupt halt when they see
Miko and Brother Willim standing there over the dead body of the
soldier. They immediately do an about face and race from the room
hollering for help.

“That tears it,” Miko says. He puts his foot
on the soldier’s chest as he grips his sword and pulls it from the
man’s body. He’s had this sword a very long time. In fact, it’s the
one James had improved with magic just before his fateful fight
with the warrior priest at the foot of the Dragon’s Pass. And it
has served him well since. Using a strip of cloth torn from the
dead man’s clothes, he cleans off the blood.

“Let’s go,” he says and takes the lead as
they head for the door through which Jiron and Aleya had gone.
Before they make it that far, the sound of feet running toward the
room comes to them. Glancing back at the door the two civilians ran
through, Miko sees the door burst open and guards begin pouring
into the room.

“Go tell the others!” he hollers as he
pushes Brother Willim through the doorway.

“What about you?” Brother Willim asks.

“I’ll hold them off,” he asserts. Drawing
his sword again, he says, “Go!” Turning back, he sets himself to
meet the assault.

“Good luck,” Brother Willim says then runs
through the door.

The stairs spiral around three times before
ending at the mouth of a corridor. It extends away from stairs and
in the distance they can see where it opens up onto a dimly lit
room.

“Hope that’s where we’ll find them,” Jiron
says to Aleya as he enters the corridor.

“Should be,” she replies.

Moving forward at a run, they soon are
approaching the room with the light. Movement is seen on the other
side. From the amount of light coming through the partially opened
door, there can’t be more than a single candle burning on the other
side.

Jiron glances back to Aleya and finds her
with arrow set to bow, ready. Reaching for the door, he pulls it
back and races into the room. A single guard is sitting at the
table, and before Jiron can cross over to him, an arrow flies past
his ear and takes the man through the neck.

“No!” cries out Jiron as the guard falls to
the ground dead.

“What?” asks Aleya.

“He could have told us where they were being
held,” he tells her.

“Sorry,” she said.

He sighs. “Don’t be,” he says. “You did the
right thing considering the circumstances. Just hold off a second
next time.” Looking around the room, they find three doors which
lead deeper into the dungeon, all of which are closed.

“Which one?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he replies.

Moving past him into the room, Aleya begins
examining the floor before each of the doors.

“Now what are you doing?” he asks.

“Seeing if the floor may tell us which way
to go,” she says. Then she kneels down before the door on the right
and says, “This way.”

“How can you tell?” he asks coming to kneel
beside her.

She points to a scuff mark on the floor.
“This is more recent than anything else before the other two.”

Nodding, he gives her a quick hug and kiss.
“I knew I brought you along for some reason,” he says with a
grin.

She returns his grin and reaches for the
door handle. Opening it up, they find a corridor lined with doors
on both sides. Each of the doors is very stout, with a small window
about two thirds of the way up, and a sturdy deadbolt lock.

The corridor grows dark at about the fifth
set of doors and then remains so until coming to another light far
in the distance. Jiron takes the lead and is about to enter when
Aleya stops him. “How are Miko and Brother Willim to know which way
we went?” she asks.

“It’s the only door that’s open,” he tells
her with the expression that she should have known that.

Giving him a weird look, she takes the dead
guard and drags him by the hand until he’s halfway in the doorway.
Removing her arrow from the guard’s body she says, “Now there won’t
be any confusion.”

Jiron rolls his eyes as she cleans her arrow
on the dead man’s shirt. Muttering to himself, he sets off at a
quick run toward the light at the other end of the corridor with
Aleya right behind. As they pass through the dark area, a voice
calls to them from behind a door on their right.

Jiron pauses and turns his attention toward
the voice. A hand reaches out toward him as the voice again calls
to him pleadingly in the Empire’s tongue. “Sorry,” Jiron says to
whomever the hand belonged to then resumes his run toward the light
at the end of the corridor.

“Shouldn’t we have done something for that
man?” Aleya asks in a hushed tone.

“Don’t have time for everyone,” he tells
her. “Got to save the ones we came for.”

She remains quiet as they reach the area of
the corridor where the light from the end begins to illuminate.

Jiron slows down and starts walking on the
balls of his feet in order to reduce the chance of his boots making
a scraping noise. If there is anyone ahead, he doesn’t want to
alert them that they are there. Moving closer to what is beginning
to look like a room that the corridor opens out onto, they strain
to hear if someone is there. Silence is all that comes from the
room ahead of them.

When Jiron is no more than five feet from
the end of the corridor, he motions for Aleya to wait while he
moves forward to check it out. Leaving her behind, he keeps close
along the corridor’s right side as he edges forward. The room is an
interrogation room, or at least he thinks so. Within are several
torture devices used in extracting information. One, a cage not
tall enough for a man to stand erect has a decomposing corpse
within it. Four torches held in wall sconces are the source of the
light.

Jiron waves Aleya forward and she enters the
room. Two other corridors extend from the room, one straight across
from the one they just left, and another to their right. He moves
to check the one across the room and gestures to Aleya that she
should check the other.

The one down which Jiron checks is dark and
quiet. Aleya moves to the entrance of the one to the right.
Stepping a few feet into the corridor, she hears voices coming from
further down. Returning to the room, she says, “There’s someone
down this way. I can hear voices.”

Jiron crosses over to the entrance to the
corridor just as someone bursts into the room from the direction
they came. Startled, he pulls his knives as Brother Willim comes to
a stop before him. “Miko needs help!” he exclaims.

“What?” he asks as he puts his knives back
into their sheathes.

“Guards showed up,” he explains. “Lots of
them. He’s holding them off.”

“Damn!” he says. Making his mind up quickly,
he says, “He’ll have to hold out a few minutes longer. Follow me.”
With there being no longer any time for skulking about, he sprints
down the corridor toward the voices. Even before he reaches the end
of the corridor he recognizes Korgan’s voice.

“…been too long,” Korgan says.

Whack!

“Tell me what I want to know and I’ll be
merciful,” he says.

“You’ll get nothing from me,” Perrilin’s
voice replies.

Perrilin?
He would have thought for
sure that Korgan would have been interrogating James first. No time
to figure it out, he doubles his speed when he hears the sound of
someone being struck again. As he draws close, he sees a guard
standing with his back to the mouth of the corridor. Jiron pulls
his knives, and when he emerges from the corridor, sinks one of
them into the guard’s back. He strikes the man with such force his
knife sinks to the hilt and wedges in between two vertebrae. As the
man lurches forward from the blow, his knife is pulled from his
hand.

“Jiron!” he hears Stig shout happily.

In a flash he scans the room. Sees Korgan
standing startled before Perrilin who’s tied to a chair, three
other guards in the room beside the one he just killed, and his
friends shackled to the wall.

Reaching down, he pulls the dead guard’s
sword from its sheath and turns to face Korgan. One of the guards
pulls his sword and rushes Jiron, but is thrown backward onto a
table by the force of Aleya’s arrow striking him in the chest.

“Stay where you are!” cries Korgan. Moving
closer to Perrilin, he lays the edge of a knife menacingly
alongside the bard’s throat.

Jiron stands there and contemplates his next
course of action.

Thwock!

Another arrow flies from the corridor and
takes Korgan in the shoulder above the arm that’s holding the
knife. Perrilin cries out as the knife rakes across his throat when
his captor is struck.

“Kill them all!” Korgan cries as he staggers
back from the blow.

At his command, the two remaining guards
rush Jiron.

“See to Perrilin!” Jiron hollers as Brother
Willim enters the room. As his knife blocks the blow from one
guard, he yells to Aleya, “Find the keys!” Bringing the sword in
from the side, he causes the second guard to dart backward.

Brother Willim rushes past where Jiron is
battling with the two guards and comes to Perrilin. Blood gushes
from the severed jugular and he knows the bard has little time
left.

“No you don’t!” cries Korgan. Right hand
hanging limp at his side, blood flowing from where the arrow is
sticking out of his shoulder, he brings up his sword in his left
hand. Moving forward, he attacks Brother Willim to keep him from
saving Perrilin’s life.

“Don’t kill him!” James cries out to Brother
Willim.

Aleya searches the body of the first man
Jiron killed upon entering the room for the keys. Not finding them,
she moves to the guard she killed with the arrow. There on his belt
is a ring of keys. Taking them, she moves to where James and the
others are chained to the wall and begins releasing them.

Brother Willim takes his staff in hand and
is suddenly surrounded by a green glow. With speed augmented by the
power of his god, he strikes out with his staff. One blow to knock
aside the sword coming toward him. A second blow to the hand
holding the sword, a crack can be heard as bones break. As Korgan’s
sword falls to the floor, a third blow takes him alongside the
head.