The Staff of the Winds (The Wizard of South Corner Book 1) (23 page)

Out of site of the castle, a guard on Sarah’s left called to the weasel-faced soldier who held the end of their leash: “Hey Stangar, what say we take a little break before we get to the bridge? It’s not often that men such as us finds themselves in the company of two such pretty and willing young girls as these.”

Sarah could see Emily duck her head deeper into her shoulders and hear her sobs increase at this suggestion. Angrily, she tried to think of what she could do in her own defense if the filthy beast’s suggestion was followed. She didn’t think that these rough characters would be as easily dissuaded as Darrel Hansen had been when he had tried to take liberties with her, but she wasn’t about to just let them have their way without putting up a fight. Maybe she could induce them to untie her hands and take the rope off of her neck. Then if she could get one of the ugly brutes off in the bushes by himself, a quick grab for one of those knives that they all were carrying at their belts and at least she would have some kind of chance; pretty thin she knew, but a chance.

“Yeah,” said a soldier on the other side of her, “I’ll bet they’re both just panting to have a little fun with us. I don’t see any reason to be in such a hurry. Let’s stop and give ‘em what they want.”

“Idiots!” snarled Stangar, glaring over his shoulder at the guards.  “I like a little fun more than most, but it’d be worth my life to be deliverin’ damaged goods to that pig Kadeen.  And you think al Bardon wouldn’t learn of it?  He’d have you four roastin’ on a spit over a slow fire before you knew what happened.  Think of the smell of crispin’ bacon; then imagine it’s your own skin before you suggest anymore stupid ideas like that one.”

Other than some grumbling and cursing under their breaths, the soldiers made no more comments and the day passed monotonously as they continued their long march, winding through the patchy woods.

Passing through a last large stand of tall grey fir trees, the vista suddenly opened up as they reached the rocky shore of the Wizard’s Moat. Sarah gasped at the beauty of the vast expanse of still water leading to the base of sheer cliffs that rose high up, tier after tier, to form the snow capped peaks of the West Wall. Only a strong, musty, dead smell emanating from the dark, unnaturally still lake marred the beauty of the scene. Sarah’s mouth dropped open and she almost stumbled when she saw off in the distance to her right the coal black stone bridge that arched high into the pale blue sky over the calm black water to reach the other side. It was huge, but looked almost delicate in its form.

‘How could anything this grand be built?’
she wondered.  Reaching from shore to shore across the wide placid waters, it had no supports that she could see.  She knew that when a stonemason wanted to build an arch, he must use a mound of earth or a timber scaffold to support the blocks until the keystone was securely placed; but here, over the deep black water, no such support could have been constructed.  ‘
It looks to be all of one piece,’
she thought in amazement.  Sarah had never witnessed magic before, but surely only great and powerful magic could produce a structure on this scale.

“That’s the path to your new home, girlies,” Stangar taunted over his shoulder.  “The sun is getting’ too close to those mountains for us to try the bridge tonight, so we’ll camp on that little rise up ahead, but come first light we’ll be on our way over the bridge.  Don’t want to keep your new master waitin’ any longer than we must.”

“Yeah,” volunteered the guard to Sarah’s left.  “You’re gonna just love the Lord Sorcerer Kadeen.  Or, at least he’s gonna just love
you
.” Several of the soldiers laughed loudly as though they thought that comment was especially witty.

Yeva crept quietly and skillfully down the passage toward the postern gate.  Since her recent, unsettling experiences in the Realm of Infinite Possibilities, she had taken to regularly exploring the halls leading to the several entrances that she knew of to the Grand Palace of the Baraduhne.  To avoid raising suspicions, she moved so as to minimize the chances of being seen by either the guards, the Watchers or other members of the Guild of Assassins.  In the trade, what she was doing was known as “opening the avenues.”

In the Realm of Infinite Possibilities, an observer could only witness future or current events in spaces and times for which they themselves may possibly be. If a future sequence of events is destined to travel down a particular “avenue” of space and time, and there is virtually no chance of a particular observer being in that place at that time in the real world, then that observer will be unable to see those events unfold while casting the future in the Realm. The more likely a person is to be present at a future event, the more easily and clearly it is seen in the Realm.

During recent meditations, Yeva had seen possible future events involving strangers not from the palace, and by their looks, not from elsewhere in Baraduhne, the holdfast of Cathardoom, or even from Maragong to the north. In the Realm, these events had the weight and feel of pivotally important happenings. By scouting the palace, and especially the ways in and out of the palace, in a fairly random fashion, and with the strong intent to maintain her careful wanderings at every opportunity into the future, she hoped to set up the conditions under which she would be able to witness in the Realm the arrival of these mysterious strangers. If she could do that, it would be much more likely and therefore easier for her to track the events surrounding these key players in the big game of the future as they took the actions that would inevitably lead to the major disruptions in her life that her meditations in the Realm augured.

They say that life is risk, but what Yeva was doing was risky indeed. If it were noticed by the wrong people, things could become very difficult. If the Watchers noticed that she was spending so much time in these halls she would almost certainly find herself the subject of an inquiry by the Guardians of the Way.

The Guardians were an elite and feared sect of the Watchers, charged with ensuring that the Watchers were diligent in their duties. Subordinate only to the High Lord Sorcerer of Baraduhne himself, the Guardians watched the Watchers. As far as the rest of Baraduhne was concerned, however, this was the least of their tasks; for the Guardians were also charged with the questioning of anyone in the kingdom suspected of “sedition.”

A charge of sedition could be brought by any citizen, and could consist of as small an act as speaking openly in critical terms about any lord of higher standing than the speaker.  Sedition could also be charged by a Watcher who thought that a citizen’s behavior was in any way inappropriate or suspicious.  Once in the hands of the Guardians, skilled application of a vice, pincers, hot needles and other instruments of persuasion would invariably reveal the truth.  It was rare indeed that the Guardians failed to discover some hidden sin against the kingdom, and most criminals in their custody freely and eagerly confessed to any crime that would help speed their inevitable path to the gibbet. Execution was liberating, and to most minds, far preferable to the long, slow, agonizing process of establishing guilt.

As skilled as she was, Yeva was confident that she could avoid the attention of the Watchers, but avoiding other members of the Guild of Assassins was a much more difficult challenge. Several other Guild members in the palace were nearly as adept as she in the Realm of Infinite Possibilities, and by opening the avenues, she was involving herself in more and more lines of time and space that they might cross during their meditations. Every major faction in the palace was protected by Guild members, and because of the Lord Sorcerer Kadeen’s position, many of those assassins would likely take more than a passing interest in her actions. They would just naturally assume that she was working on some plot for him. No one else had mentioned the turmoil in the Realm that she had been witnessing, though in truth neither had she, and she had sensed no unusual activity among any of the other members of the Guild. That lack worried her some. It was true that the things she had witnessed were in states difficult to achieve, and surrounded by roiling uncertainty, but still their very impact should have caught the attention of some of the other members, unless they were to be on the periphery of the coming events. With events this large, Yeva could not imagine how that could be.

Yeva slowed her progress as she neared the last turn in the dark corridor before the guard post at the postern gate.  In the Grand Palace, no entry point was left unguarded, not even one as unlikely to be used as this one. She could hear the murmur of voices around the corner, although she could not make out what was being said. Approaching slowly, she suddenly heard footsteps coming toward her from the guard post.

Quickly and silently Yeva moved back down the corridor.  There was a narrow alcove about eight paces back, just deep enough for one archer to stand to establish a point of defense to slow an intrusion from the gate.  Pressing her back into the corner of the alcove, Yeva used her hands and feet, pushing against the sides of the corner, to lever herself up near the ceiling into the darkest shadows.  She held her position there for mere moments before, in the dim light of the corridor, she recognized Guild member Salanda striding by.

This was the very kind of entanglement that Yeva had been working so hard to avoid. Salanda checked the alcove in passing, of course, but he had not looked up and back over his shoulder as would have been required to spot Yeva in her hiding place.  ‘
What were the chances that he might have done so?
’ Yeva wondered.  ‘
What were Salanda’s normal scanning practices, and how standard were his patterns?’
  Guild members tried not to lapse into predictable patterns, just to keep, in a small way, the avenues open; but it took constant effort to avoid simple habits over time.  ‘
How diligent was Salanda in maintaining his skills?’
  These were the questions that related directly to whether Salanda had spotted Yeva during his meditations in the Realm the previous evening.  He had given no indication that he knew of Yeva’s presence, but then he likely would not have done so, especially if he had known.

Yeva waited for the sound of Salanda’s steps to fade in the distance, then counted to one hundred, slowly, before she silently eased back down to the floor. There she paused again, allowing her body to recover from the strain of holding her position up on the wall and extending her perceptions to detect any further presence in the passage. Satisfied that she was once again alone, Yeva carefully moved back up the corridor in Salanda’s wake.

Salanda could be a problem.  He was very skilled and ranked nearly as high in the Guild as Yeva, but his allegiances were not clear.  It was rumored that Salanda had ties to the High Lord Sorcerer himself, but Yeva had not been able to confirm them, and as far as she knew neither had anyone else.  Salanda never spoke of his work, and allowed no one close enough to find out.  The rumor might even be a plant by Salanda himself to garner some safety from other Guild members based on the hinted ties to power, but if so, and if it was not really true, Salanda was courting considerable risk from the Guardians. Yeva dismissed the speculation for now; until some evidence could be gathered, there was no way to resolve the questions.

There were not many freelance Guild members. Without the official backing of one lord or another, it was difficult to stay alive as an independent operator. Only a very few, like the mythic Trancer, dead now nearly two hundred years, were able to do it successfully for any length of time, and an assassin with the skills of Trancer had not been seen since his passing.  It was Trancer who had first discovered and perfected the method of drifting freely on the tides of probability in the Realm of Infinite Possibilities.  It was said that Trancer could peer as much as two weeks into the future, keeping all of the myriad paths of possibility straight in the process.  If true, his mastery far surpassed any Guild member before or since his time.  It was this mastery, along with an unerring cunning, that kept him alive and successful for nearly 40 years as a freelance operator, turning all plots and most actions against him to his own advantage.

“Trancer protect me from misstep,” Yeva prayed quietly, and moved on. In addition to opening the avenues by frequenting the publicly known entrances to the palace, she was also searching to discover one or more of the private and hidden exits that she reasoned must exist. Men like Kadeen, al Bardon, and his predecessors back through time would have made sure that they had a path of escape that was unknown to anyone else in case of extreme emergency. Even the High Lord Sorcerer himself would not feel totally secure if he knew he could be trapped in his own palace.

Over the centuries since the Palace was first constructed, several such secret exits must have been created, and in the dim passage of the years it was reasonable to suspect that more than one of those had been lost and forgotten as the men who knew of them took the secret to their graves. Rediscovery of those dark tunnels out of the palace could prove exceedingly valuable, should events take an evil twist, and Yeva had a strong premonition that she was going to need that extra margin of safety.