Crystal Rose (43 page)

“Ah, yes. On the back of a raven, I believe,” Ruadh said
cryptically and fell into a thoughtful silence.

Saefren could think of nothing more to say to him, and
wished he had Aine-mac-Lorimer’s aidan so he could divine the other man’s
thoughts.

Once on the second floor, they traversed the Royal wing. The
widely-spaced doors hinted at the size of the apartments behind the tapestried
and paneled walls. At the end of the broad main corridor Ruadh stopped and
nodded toward a heavily ornamented door.

“That’s it. He’s not here. He usually posts guards when he’s
 . . . consorting with one of his Wicke.”

“Can you open it?”

“No key. Cousin wears it. Like a jewel. Around his neck.”

Saefren stepped forward and tried the door. Indeed, it was
locked.

“Iseabal?” he called softly. “Iseabal-a-Nairnecirke, are you
there? Are you all right? It’s Saefren Claeg.”

There was no answer and Saefren felt a chill of dread
trickle like ice down his back. He put his ear to the door, ignoring Ruadh
Feich’s opaque stare.

“Daimhin isn’t a very gentle man,” Ruadh commented almost
absently. “Never has been. Oh, he starts out that way—soft-spoken, caressing.
But somewhere between wanting and having . . . it’s as if a demon takes him.
Demon-Daimhin. I’ve heard women call him that. Those were the willing ones.”

Saefren rattled the door with no result. “Damn. Look, Ruadh,
I need to talk to the Regent. Have you no idea where he is?”

“Behind you?”

Saefren turned. Daimhin Feich was indeed standing behind
him, flanked by two armed men in Feich colors. He shook his head, made a
clucking noise with his tongue.

“I come to visit my lovely guest and what do I find—she’s
attracted other admirers.”

“Saefren was merely concerned about the good health of your
lovely guest,” said Ruadh dryly. “He seems to feel some personal responsibility
for it.”

“Uncle was concerned that the girl not come to any harm,”
Saefren offered.

Daimhin Feich smiled. “Charming. Concerned about the health
of a virtual stranger—a Wicke, at that. Imagine how concerned he’ll be about
you.”

Before Saefren could react to that obvious threat and draw
his sword, Feich’s men were all over him, forcing him against the wall and
relieving him of his weapon.

Ruadh stumbled out of the way, a stunned expression on his
face. “Cousin, what in the name of—!”

“Good work, Ruadh. You’ve helped me capture a traitor.”
Feich peered into Saefren’s face. “All Claeg are traitors. All Jura, all
Graegam, and all Gilleas. You, sir, are also insurance. If your uncle or any of
his cronies put themselves in my way, I will have you dismantled, piece by
piece, and the bits sent to your family.” He glanced at the guards. “Take him
to the first level dungeon. There’s a tiny cell there with his name on it.”

oOo

Frozen in a moment of sheer terror, Aine watched Feich’s
men drag Saefren Claeg away down the corridor. It took all her will not to cry
out, not to drop her Cloak, not to give in to desperation and division, but
there was Saefren being taken away into the unknown, and there was Iseabal
ebbing into aislinn silence just on the other side of that ornately carved
door.

She reached for Isha, frantic, wanting to shake her to
awareness, but no awareness answered her.

In the instant she hesitated, Saefren was gone from sight
and Aine could only stand and quake, desperately clutching her Cloakweave.
Tears started from her eyes before she could stop them. She wanted nothing more
than to lie down on the dusty floor and weep.

Aine
 . . .

She dropped the Cloak.
Isha
?

Aine, you shouldn’t be
here.

Aine crossed the hall in two strides to press herself against
the door of Iseabal’s room.
I came to see
if you were all right. Oh, but Isha, you’re not all right. I’ve got to get you
out of here.

The flash of relief from beyond the door was swiftly
smothered in concern.
Saefren Claeg was
with you? I felt . . . You’re afraid for him. Where is he?

Aine visualized Feich, Ruadh and the two guards who had
taken Saefren away. Her knees began to tremble.

Aine, you must get him
out of here. Feich will murder him! What he has done to Abbod Ladhar, to me, to
others . . .

You first, Isha. Let
me just unlock this door. Let me—

“No!” Aine heard that cry with her ears as well as her aidan
senses.
Aine, no! You must get Saefren
away from Feich. Now! Leave me. I can’t come with you.

Leave you! No! Why?

The answer was a flood of stinging physical and mental
anguish that strangled the breath in Aine’s throat.

I’ll carry you out.
Papa always said I was built like a horse. I’ll carry you and cloak both of us.

Aine, leave me.
Saefren can’t be left here. He’s innocent of anything but trying to help us,
foolish as he thought it was. Leave me! As long as Feich believes I’m of some
use to him, I’ll be safe. He’ll waste his time trying to drain something from
me that he can never use.

Aine cowered against the door, tears burning her eyes, heart
twisting in her breast.
Oh, Isha, I
can’t!

Don’t ever say you
can’t.

Taminy’s words. She had said them so long ago, it seemed, at
Hrofceaster. Now they came, hauntingly, from Iseabal.

I can’t find Saefren.
I don’t know where they’ve taken him.

You can sense him.

He has no aidan.

Aine, please!
The
anguish rolled over Aine again, battering her.
Taminy is watching over me. The Meri will care for me. She’s put you
here to care for Saefren.

He didn’t want me to
come with him. He doesn’t know I’m here.

Then he’ll be that
much happier to see you. Now, go. Please go! And God guard you.

Oh, Isha, don’t—!
she
began to plead, but felt the connection between them sever.

In the silence of the broad corridor, Aine crouched against
Iseabal’s door, quivering with fear and loss and doubt. She was not good at
praying; she tended to demand things of God rather than beg them humbly. But
now, here in this alien place, in this nest of enemies, she pleaded without
pride for Iseabal’s protection, for her own courage, for some sense of where
Saefren Claeg was. Then she willed her self to inner silence and got to her
feet.

She followed the way the guards had taken and found herself
at the top of a staircase. Simple enough; she descended and found herself on
the landing of a crossing corridor. She paused in the darkness and made her
mind and heart be still.

Saefren
. She’d
divined his thoughts before, knew their texture and tenor. Knowing the dungeons
must be somewhere beneath her feet, she turned her thoughts downward, seeing in
her mind’s eye an aislinn mist, drifting, settling, seeking.

It was Daimhin Feich she chanced on first—a hot, bright
furnace of exultation. Shuddering away from his heat, she blocked Feich from
her touch.

Fear—she felt that next and reached for it, thinking it must
be Saefren, but it was Ruadh Feich she found at the end of that thread. No time
to ponder that.

Aine searched further and dipped into a cold void.

Thoughts were fevered here, flinging about like snow in a
blizzard. He pondered neither life nor death, but the tiny closet of a cell his
captors forced him into.

Aine moved then, ever downward, clasping the strand that now
bound her to Saefren Claeg. It led her to a thick door three times the width of
a man, half again as tall. It was ajar and voices came to her from beyond and
below.

She closed her eyes.

Gray the veil, white
the shroud, black the cloud that hides me.

The flush of aidan that swelled beneath the duan told her no
eyes could see her. She waited in the hall as the door swung open and Daimhin
Feich exited with his cousin and two other kinsmen.

“ . . . found ourselves a perfect hostage,” Feich was saying.
“Iobert Claeg may be a heretic, but he’s still a Claeg. He’ll do nothing that
will spill one drop of his nephew’s precious blood.” He laughed—an action shared
by all but Ruadh Feich, who glanced uneasily at his cousin before following him
away to the upper reaches of Mertuile.

When they were gone, Aine swung the great door open and
slipped through onto a landing atop a short flight of steps. At the bottom of
the steps, she stood in a nearly square anteroom, its torchlit walls broken by
a series of doorways. Voices came to her from a doorway to her right—from that
place, too, a path of firelight flickered across the rough stone floor. To the
left, an arched portal gaped like a black, toothless mouth.

Saefren was there.

She moved into the inky corridor, pausing only long enough
to allow her eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom. She felt her way along the
silken, aidan fiber until . . .

She turned and knelt at a narrow, barred doorway. So black
was it within she couldn’t make out Saefren’s form, but she could hear his
breathing—heavy and rasping. She could feel his fear now, sharp and chill—fear
of this dark, stifling place, fear of strangling.

A chill shook Aine from head to toe. Glancing to make sure
she could not be seen from the anteroom, she let go the Cloakweave and wove
instead a tiny ball of light that sent soft illumination into the cell. What
she saw made her gasp. In a deep niche no wider than a doorway, Saefren was
forced to stand, caught about the neck by a thick iron collar. Joined to the
frigid stone by only a few links of heavy chain, the collar kept him pinned,
motionless, head up, neck at an unnatural angle.

“Aine!” he gasped. “What—?”

“Hush! Save your breath. I’ll work on the lock.”

He obeyed, a thing that Aine might have found smugly
pleasing under other circumstances. She focused her attention on the heavily
barred door with its mechanical lock. She’d never tried to manipulate a lock
before. In theory, it should be like manipulating any physical object. The only
problem was, she had no idea what the inner mechanism of the lock looked like.
She could not visualize the metal gears, or tumblers or whatever lay within.
So, she prodded and poked with aislinn fingers, her tongue caught between her
teeth, listening to Saefren’s labored breathing in the darkness.

The lock defied her every attempt to open it. Finally, with
her head pounding and sweat chilling her body, she gave up in complete
frustration.

“I can’t do this,” she admitted. “The mechanism is too
complicated.”

There was a moment of silence from within the cell, then
Saefren’s strangled voice said, “Then you’ll . . . have to . . . leave me here.”

Aine laid her forehead against the bars and fought a moment
of impotent rage. First Iseabal, now Saefren. “Never say you can’t,” she
murmured and got to her feet. “If I can’t open the door, then we need to get
the gaoler to open it. And the collar as well.”

“How?”

“Cry out. Pretend you’re choking.”

“I am choking,” he returned wryly.

“Feich doesn’t want you dead. If the gaoler thinks you’re
choking . . .”

“Then . . . what?”

Aine grinned fiercely in the dark. “You’ll see . . . I hope.
Just start yelling.”

He did as told, giving a convincing portrayal of a man on
the verge of suffocating. So convincing was he that the cloaked Aine cringed
and covered her ears.

In short order, torch light spilled onto the corridor floor
and two men appeared, keys and torch in hand. Aine all but held her breath as
they took quick stock of the prisoner’s red face and heaving chest.

He’s choking to death,
Aine suggested, hoping it might help.

The chief gaoler, a Malcuim regular, slipped the key into
the lock and opened the cell door. Inside, he moved to check the collar.

“Bring the torch in, Olery,” he demanded when his shadow
fell across the clasp.

His partner did as commanded, squeezing into the narrow
space behind him and flattening himself against the wall to his mate’s right,
arm raised to throw torchlight onto the collar. Smoke from the fiery wand
curled along the ceiling making both men wheeze.

The gaoler took up another key and fitted it to the collar’s
lock.

“You Claeg are a whiney lot,” he observed, giving the
panting Saefren a cruel shake. “I’d let you choke, if it was me calling the plan.
You’ve caused the Malcuim House a damn lot of grief over time, but you’re worth
something to Regent Feich, so I suppose I’ve got to let you out of this collar,
eh?”

“Oh, just do it!” muttered the other guard—a Dearg. “My
arm’s set to fall off.”

The key turned, the iron band sprang open, Saefren sagged
dramatically to his knees and the torch went out. In the chaos after, Aine
draped her Cloakweave over Saefren and silently begged him to recall which way
the door was. There was a mad scramble, thuds, a yelp of pain and the sound of
a body falling heavily to the straw-covered stone.

A moment later, Aine felt someone brush by her on hands and
knees, saw the faint shimmer of aislinn energy, and reached out a hand to grasp
Saefren’s shoulder as he scurried by. With the other hand, she pulled the cell
door to and was gratified to hear the lock spring shut. Wordlessly, she dragged
Saefren to his feet and hurried him out of the corridor.

He stopped her as they were crossing the anteroom. “What
about the others?” he whispered, just making himself heard over the shouts of
the captive gaolers. “There are other Taminists here in the next corridor.”

“No time. When they find their keys—” The sharp clink of
metal was followed by the feel of a ring and rods being pressed into her hand.

“I’m not entirely useless,” Saefren told her.

“If we free them, they may be killed trying to escape. I
can’t cloak them all.”