masterghandalf

Chapter 16: Changeling

At the direction of Irinali, the skeleton warrior took Thyra by the wrist and led her to a small guest room on the main floor of the manor house that was largely bare save for a bed and a basin of water in one corner. The skeleton gestured at the basin and Thyra, hoping she was doing what was expected and not something that would cause the undead creature to rip her limb from limb, quickly splashed water on her face and hair, washing away some of the grime and sweat that had accumulated during her trip through the countryside and brief stay in the dungeons. No sooner had she completed the task than a servant girl entered with a bundle of clothes in her arms; it appeared to be a Karrn military uniform of some sort and a hooded red cloak. Thyra dressed quickly, doing her best to ignore the empty gaze of the skeleton warrior as she did so, and when she was ready, the creature led her out into the courtyard.

Ir’Sarrin was there already, mounted on his horse, with Irinali on a somewhat smaller one and a number of other mounts around them. Several of those horses bore riders, and other soldiers milled about them; they were dressed in Sarrin House uniforms, but Thyra had a feeling more than a few of them were Emerald Claw troopers. One soldier brushed past her as he headed towards one of the horses, and Thyra shivered when she saw the medallion he wore, which bore the imaged of a fanged maw open to strike. A priest of the Blood of Vol.

“Don’t be squeamish, girl,” Irinali said, regarding her disdainfully. “You’ll see worse than a priest you don’t agree with before we’re done in the Mournland. Count yourself lucky we’re not going far in; the stories I’ve heard from the inner regions would give a necromancer nightmares.” Her lips twitched in a mirthless smile. “I know that from personal experience.”

“Be still, Irinali; unless it should become obvious she is lying to us, this woman is our guest,” ir’Sarrin said. He gestured to a comparatively placid looking brown horse that a groom was holding beside his own. “I trust you can ride? It would make things somewhat more difficult otherwise, but not insurmountably so. Still, I’d rather not have to carry you slung over my saddle as if I was villain from a two-crown melodrama abducting the fair maiden.”

“I am quite capable of riding a horse,” Thyra snapped, not sure if ir’Sarrin was making a joke or not but refusing to rise to his bait. She placed her foot in the stirrup and swung up onto the horse’s back, the skeleton warrior taking up its place by the animal’s side; the horse must be very well trained, Thyra thought, to tolerate its presence so easily. “So,” she said, seating herself and turning to ir’Sarrin, “is there any particular reason you wanted me to dress like one of your lackeys?”

“Your sister may still be watching our road,” ir’Sarrin said. “Put your hood up before we depart, and you reduce her chances of recognizing you. I’d rather she didn’t decide to follow us, and based on some of the things she said, I don’t think you want her to either.”

“That we can agree on,” Thyra said quietly, and quickly pulled the hood up and cast her face in shadow. Turning to look back at the main building, she saw several more skeleton warriors approaching, led by the young man from earlier – Dal, she thought his name was. The skeletons fell in beside the Emerald Claw troops, and Dal himself mounted a horse beside Irinali’s. He must be her apprentice, Thyra thought with a slight shiver – a student of necromancy. Irinali, Dal, and the priest – those were the three who would be most dangerous to her if this went wrong.

Thyra pulled her gaze away from them and leaned in beside ir’Sarrin. “I promise you that I’m telling the truth,” she said. “I can’t tell you what’s in that vault because I don’t know, but if anything can open it, it’s the blood in my veins. Everything I told you about that was true. All I want in return is that when it’s done, you’ll let me and my friends go free.”

Ir’Sarrin nodded once. “You have my word as a Karrn, a disciple of Vol, and a man of honor that if you do this for me, you will all go free.” His voice lowered dangerously. “And if you are lying to me, then what you already experienced in my dungeon will be only the slightest taste of what lies in store for you.”

He pulled to the front of the group and gestured imperiously with one hand. The gates opened slowly, and then the warlord and his company road through, Thyra by their side.

///

Len hung in the chains in ir’Sarrin’s prison cell, apparently deep in thought; the other members of her team were silent around her. The warlord had wanted to leave within the hour, he said, and Len felt that trying anything before then would fail miserably. But when he was gone, his most powerful servants with him – well, even with the Emerald Claw troops, there was a limit to the number of armed men and women he could keep barracked in this place. And Len had no intention of simply waiting passively for ir’Sarrin to return and pronounce her fate.

That was why, though she appeared to be half-asleep, the captain was in fact counting her breaths, and had been since shortly after ir’Sarrin and his lackey had left with Thyra. It wasn’t a precise measure of time, but it would do well enough – and, if she was right, the warlord ought to have just left with his party. It was time. Len raised her head and glanced over at Rinnean, nodding once.

The elf returned the nod and twitched his bound hands. Something slid into his fingers from the cuff on his sleeve, a slender piece of metal, and he worked it into the lock on the shackles and began picking. He worked on it for what felt like several minutes and Len watched with baited breath as the scowl on Rinnean’s face grew. “What’s the matter?” Harsk finally asked. “Finally meet a lock better than you are?”

“If you must know, this is a very poor angle, and the only pick ir’Sarrin’s men missed isn’t one of my better ones,” Rinnean snapped back. “I can get it, just give me time!”

“Time we may not have,” Len hissed. “There’s still guards outside – keep your voices down or none of us will get out of here!” Harsk looked guilty and even Rinnean seemed slightly abashed; Havaktri, meanwhile, had tilted her head back and closed her eyes. Len scowled at all three of them – the men for being loud, and Havaktri for picking a Khyber of a time to meditate.

“If you’ll just be patient,” Rinnean said, more softly this time, “I can get it. Ir’Sarrin’s locksmith is good, but I’m better, and…”

“Got it!” Havaktri suddenly called. No sooner had she finished speaking than a ring of keys shot between the bars of the cell door and landed directly in the startled Rinnean’s hands.

“How-?” The elf managed to ask; Havaktri looked superior.

“A wizard’s spells are based on learning, a sorcerer’s on blood, and a priest’s on faith, but if they can’t pray or speak or move their hands, they can’t do anything.” The kalashtar smiled, and for the first time Len thought she could see the impression of an ancient dream spirit on that almost-human face. “But a psion needs only her mind. Clearly, ir’Sarrin didn’t know that. Now, hurry! The guards can’t have missed that!”

Sure enough, a pair of figures now stood outside the cell door, bickering with one another in low voices – trying to figure out what to do now that Havaktri had stolen their keys, Len presumed. Finally the bolder of the two gave the door a resounding kick and it burst inward; the guards rushed inside, weapons drawn.

Rinnean had been working frantically trying to find which key unlocked the manacles; just as the door burst open he freed his hands, and then his feet. The elf tossed the keys to Len and then dove towards the guards, swinging his legs underneath the man and knocking him to the floor. The other guard raised his sword, but Havaktri’s eyes suddenly flared with a brilliant blue light; the guard was slammed against the wall by an unseen force and lay still.

Len managed to free herself just as a third guard stepped in; this one was a woman and, judging by the gold clasp on her cloak and the stripes on her uniform’s sleeves, was probably an officer. She regarded her two prone guards and Rinnean for a moment, and then her eyes widened. Yelling a battle cry, she slammed into the elf, knocking him back to the floor, and then raised her sword. “My Lord wants you alive,” she said, “but I don’t think he’d mind if I took one of your hands for a lesson.”

“I mind,” Len said, slamming into the guard officer with her shoulder and kocking her back. The woman stumbled and raised her sword; Len ducked beneath her swings and then raised a hand. Calling magical energy into her fingers, she darted forward and seized the guard’s face, releasing the power as a surge of electricity. The guard screamed as the power coursed through her then stumbled back as Len released her grip before falling to the ground, unconscious.

“That was for trying to hurt my team,” Len said, giving the officer’s body a kick for good measure. Quickly she turned freed the rest of the mercenaries; when Yhani was free, Len wrapped her arms around her in a tight hug. The priestess stiffened for a moment at this entirely improper display of emotion, but then she gave in and hugged Len back, if anything even tighter.

Len pulled back and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. “Let’s not do all this again, shall we?”

“Of course not; I am not over fond of prisons,” Yhani said, looking around. “the question remains – what do we do now?”

“Well, I think that’s obvious,” Ghazaan said. “We find Thyra and get the kid back from that Karrn bastard.”

Havaktri nodded vigorously. “I agree,” she said. “Ir’Sarrin claims he will spare her if she helps him, but I don’t trust him. His mind is desperate, and a desperate man may not act with logic or consistency. And if she can’t do what she’s promised, he’ll kill her anyway. And I liked her.”

Rinnean shrugged. “I, for one, say we should put this whole mess behind us,” he said. “The girl is obviously where she wants to be, doing what she wants to do. I say we let her. I’m not interested in pursuing a Karrn fanatic into the Mournland for any money.”

“Oh, so you’d abandon her with the job half done?” Ghazaan demanded. “My old granny always said elves were sneaky and didn’t have honor; guess she was right.”

“Honor isn’t worth dying over, my tall, orange friend,” Rinnean snapped back. Ghazaan snarled, but before he could speak again Yhani interposed herself between them.

“Enough, both of you!” she said. “We need to leave before the guard shift changes; we have little time. Len,” she glanced over her shoulder at her lover, “I think this is your decision.”

“Captain’s in charge,” Harsk agreed. “I’ll follow her lead.”

Len paused for a long moment, staring down at her long-fingered grey hands. She remembered Thyra’s lies and hidden agendas, but there was the matter of the money she’d promised them – and, rising in the background of her thoughts, the memory of a young woman with a look of terror on her face, fleeing what she was, hiding her heritage, desperate for a chance to start over again. Not so different from another girl who had done much the same, years ago…

“We follow Thyra,” Len finally said. “Job’s not done, and Havaktri’s right; ir’Sarrin could very well kill her before things are through and she’ll need our help. Now, we’ve got to get out of here.”

“Oh, really?” Rinnean asked. “And how to we propose to do that? I can sneak, but some of us are rather conspicuous.”

Len smiled coolly. “Watch me.” She knelt beside the unconscious guard captain, regarding the woman’s feature’s carefully, and then she closed her eyes and fixed the image in her mind. She felt the familiar sensation of her flesh rippling and then she stood, now the spitting image of the officer on the floor.

“Rinnean, Harsk, grab their uniforms and put them on,” she said in another woman’s voice, gesturing to the two male guards. “We’re marching straight out the front door.”

///

Still wearing the guard’s face, Len lead her team up into Sarrin’s main level. Rinnean and Harsk followed immediately behind her in stolen uniforms, their helmets pulled down low to hide their faces; Yhani, Havaktri, and Ghazaan marched between them, their hands bound by cuffs that were not actually locked. So far they had encountered no one but a few servants who quickly got out of their way; it seemed like ir’Sarrin really had taken most of his remaining guards with him when he’d left. Len said a quiet prayer to the Traveler for that oversight, thanking the god for enemies who were in a rush.

Finally, as she crossed the main hall and headed towards the front doors, one of the guards who stood there stepped forward, gaze suspicious. “Captain Verin,” he said, meeting her gaze, “I have to ask you to go no farther unless you can explain where you are taking these prisoners.”

Len swaggered forward, wishing she’d had more time to study the captain to better imitate her mannerisms; still, assuming ir’Sarrin used the same rank insignias as the Karrnathi army this guard was only a sergeant, and that gave her certain advantages. “Our Lord requested these prisoners,” she snapped imperiously. “Apparently he thinks the girl will be more cooperative if she can see her friends with swords at their throats. We’re taking them to him now. You will let us pass.”

“Nobody rode back after the Lord left…” the guard said, but Len cut him off impatiently.

“He didn’t want to risk the delay; he had Mistress Irinali cast a sending. Now, are you going to stand aside and let me pass, and send a runner to have the front gates open, or are you going to disobey a superior officer and, by extension, Lord ir’Sarrin himself?” Len leaned in close. “Doesn’t seem like much of a decision from where I’m standing.”

The sergeant gulped. “Of-of course not,” he finally said, and gestured for one of his men. “You, run to the gates and have the open for Captain Verin. Quickly!” The other guard saluted, opened the doors, and dashed out across the courtyard.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Len said brightly; sometimes, your enemy’s respect for order and hierarchy could be made to work against them. She gestured for her team to follow and crossed the courtyard without incident; the guards at the front gate saluted, and then they were out of the fortress and into the open area before the trees. Len breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

It was too soon. They hadn’t made it halfway across the clearing when bells suddenly began to ring within Sarrin; Len cursed and began to run towards the trees, gesturing for the others to follow. Someone must have found the real Captain Verin and her men stripped to their smallclothes and tossed into their own prison cell. They made it to the first line of trees and turned to see about ten guards – probably the bulk of those who remained behind – come running out of Sarrin’s gates, heading straight for them.

“Damn,” Len swore under her breath, and drew her sword.

“I knew something would go wrong,” Rinnean said.

///

And so the final stage of the fic begins! Thyra and ir’Sarrin are on their way to the Mournland, and Len and company have broken out of their cell. Len was right that ir’Sarrin’s sudden departure left the fortress in a rather disorganized state, and the word that one of the prisoners was a changeling hadn’t gotten disseminated properly yet (the officer Len impersonates was named for a character of rather slippery allegiance in the Wheel of Time series, by the way). Of course, the ruse couldn’t – and didn’t – hold for long. The mercenaries are free, but they’re about to have a fight on their hands. Otherwise, I think this chapter was pretty straightforward, but things are moving towards a climax.

-MasterGhandalf