The Golden Key (Book 3) (7 page)

8

Sweat flowed easily down his cheek as Angus finished the
last knot of the Flying spell. It had taken much longer than normal to tie those
knots, and he knew they were shakily done. But the magic hadn’t escaped from
him, nor had it done something noticeably unpredictable. It was an encouraging
sign, but not a definitive one. He had to try to fly before he would know if it
had worked. He looked down at the snow a half dozen feet below him and decided
to climb down closer to it. If he leapt from the mountainside and couldn’t fly,
at least he wouldn’t fall far and the snow might soften his landing a little
bit. When he reached the edge of the snow, he knelt down on it. He didn’t have
to fly
high
above the glacier, did he? He lunged forward, tweaking the
magic in his left hand so that he would fly horizontally—but he didn’t fly. He
dropped.

He grimaced in anticipation of the pain of landing on his right
arm, but there was no pain. Instead, he passed through the snow and, when he
hit the ice, he sunk into it and shot forward at a rapid rate. His eyes
widened, and he quickly tweaked the spell to bring himself to a hasty stop. He
rolled over and sat up, his torso rising above the snow.
Where’s my trail?
he wondered as looked behind him. He bent his right knee and stared in
amazement as his foot went deeper the ice as if it wasn’t even there. He gulped
and tweaked the spell, intending to fly to the left at a slow pace, and sidled
along the ice for several feet before he remembered to stop.

Another mistake
, he thought fiercely.
I used the
wrong magic again. Instead of flying, I’m swimming through the ice as I would
glide through the air.
He might have sat there embedded in the ice for some
time as he analyzed the mistake and studied the way the spell had been
modified, but a sense of urgency tugged at him.
I need to get across the
glacier while I can
, he thought, remembering how tenuous his control over
the magic had been. He repositioned himself until he was just below the surface
of the ice with his head tilted slightly upward so he could see what was in
front of him. Then he tweaked the strand to go lower, finding to his
astonishment that he could breathe without any difficulty as the ice swallowed
him up. But he didn’t go very deep beneath the surface, submersing only far enough
to take full advantage of the spell’s effects.

Angus began by testing the gestures that normally redirected
his movements while he was flying through air and found that they still worked
for flying through ice. But his maneuverability was severely hampered by his
inability to use his right hand, and the ice made it impossible to see more
than a few yards in front of him—and even that was cloudy and distorted. He
hovered near the edge where the glacier met the mountain, turning left and
right, moving forward and back, skimming along the surface and going deeper into
the ice to see what he could do.

He was still testing his limitations near the surface of the
ice when a shadow darkened the ice above him.

9

Hobart squinted at the valley far below them and saw a
flicker of a dim blue light on the ice. It was at the base of the mountain to
the south, and it was only noticeable because the moon had been obscured by a
passing cloud. “Ortis,” he said, his voice low and steady as he fought against
the sudden burst of excitement the light had brought.

Ortis sat up abruptly, his bow in hand. “What is it?”

“Isn’t that like Angus’s Lamplight spell?” Hobart asked.

Ortis took a long look and shook his head. “Wrong color,” he
said at once. “His spell was yellowish-orange. That one’s blue.”

Hobart nodded, “It was bright yellow when he melted the ice
on the winch at that well,” he said. “Why can’t he make it blue? We really
don’t know what magic he has, do we?” The blue light suddenly darted away from
the mountain for several feet, and then stopped. After a brief pause, it
squirting away from them and stopped again.

Ortis frowned. “It’s possible, I suppose,” he said. “But
what if that isn’t him?”

“What if it is?” Hobart demanded, clenching his jaws and
rising to his feet.
What if it is Angus
, he repeated to himself. “He
would need our help, wouldn’t he?” The light suddenly shot across the valley in
a straight line. “It’s moving like he did when we first saw him fly.”

“He had a lot of practice over the winter,” Ortis countered.
“He wasn’t at all erratic when he went after those fletching eggs. It was
almost like he had become part bird.”

Hobart studied the light for a few more seconds before the
moon crept out from behind the cloud. The moonlight glistened on the ice and
hid the little blue glow from view, and he stepped forward, sliding a bit on
the loose rock. “It was heading for that mountain. Whatever it is, it will
probably make its way up to the road we took to Giorge’s tomb.” He began
walk-sliding in that direction. “We may as well check it out. We’re heading
back anyway,” he added.

Ortis shrugged as if he were humoring a fool and fell in
behind him.

But Hobart was no fool; he knew it wasn’t likely to be
Angus, but they were out of options.
It has to be him
, he thought
fiercely, taking long, quick strides down the easy slope of the mountain. If
they hurried, and if it was coming toward them, they might meet up with it by
midday. If it wasn’t Angus…

He shrugged. It
had to be
Angus.

10

As soon as the door opened far enough for him to reach
through, Typhus lunged forward with the fishhook, wrapped it around Thaddius’s thick
neck and jerked it forward. The barb caught on the flesh, ripped through it,
and left behind a ragged, gaping wound that sprayed blood out in rhythmic
spurts. Then Typhus used the blunt, curved loop of the hook to push against
Thaddius’s chest. He staggered backward and reached for his throat, bumping
into a man Typhus didn’t recognize. He tried to speak through the hole in his
throat, but only frothy, gurgling blood gurgled out.

Typhus twisted sideways to squeeze through the opening in
the door and lunged toward the man he didn’t know. That man had lifted his
hands and his eyes had dilated, but it was too late; a short, quick thrust with
the little knife punctured his robes as the blade buried itself in his chest,
just below the ribcage. A quick flick of the wrist severed the blood vessels feeding
his heart, and Typhus dismissed him from his mind as he sidestepped around him.

A quick glance to the left confirmed his suspicion that
Iscara was there, but for some reason, she had lingered in the corridor well away
from the door—too far away for him to make a quick kill. She was already
turning to run, so he turned to the right to see who was at the door mechanism.
It was Gregor. He frowned. He actually liked Gregor, at least as much as he liked
anyone, and he felt a pang of regret as he circled in behind him. He dropped
the fishhook and reached for Gregor’s sword before the poor man had a chance to
use it. A single thrust upward from the side, just above the waistline and at a
sharp upward angle, and it was over. “Easy, Gregor,” he said, gently lowering
him to the ground. “Leave the blade in and don’t move around. A healer can save
you if one gets here in time. I missed all the important bits.” As Typhus
turned away from him to run after Iscara, he wondered why he hadn’t killed him
outright. He would die anyway; Argyle was far from lenient with incompetents
and Iscara was his healer. And she—

Iscara was near the end of the corridor, some twenty feet
away, but she made the mistake of slowing down as she went around it. He
didn’t. He ran at full speed and used the wall as a springboard to redirect his
momentum without significantly slowing him down. It was a difficult maneuver,
one that he had practiced frequently while preparing for his escapes, and it
gave him the advantage he needed to catch her before she reached the end of the
short corridor that led to Argyle’s meeting chamber. It also made a lot of
noise as his bare feet slapped against the smooth stone wall.

She screamed. It was a strange sound coming from her, a bizarre
contrast to the squeals of delight she made when the blood began to spill. But
somehow it was eerily similar to those squeals: a high pitched trill that
grated on the nerves. A second later and he was upon her, wrapping his arms
around her waist and thrusting her harshly against the corridor wall. He
pressed his body close against her back, pinning her to the wall, and set the
flat of the little knife’s bloody blade against her cheek. “Hush, Iscara,” he
whispered into her ear as she struggled against him. When she didn’t calm down,
he turned the blade and let it bite into her cheek. “Be still,” he hissed, his
eyes darting to Argyle’s meeting chamber to see if anyone was coming. There was
no sign—yet. No one seemed to have heard her scream, so he turned most of his
attention back to Iscara.

She was trembling, her lower lip going in and out of her
mouth as she tried not to make any sound while she sobbed. He smiled; it was so
like her to be weak. Put her in a room with a man in chains, and she was as
vicious and terrifying as they came, but up against a man on equal terms, and
she quivered like a trapped rabbit. Or was it an act? An attempt to put him off
guard? It didn’t matter; he had plans for her.

“I need your help,” he said, his voice soft as he eased up
on the amount of pressure he was using to keep her pinned to the wall. “Give
it, and you will live.”

She was sweating, now, but the worst of the trembling seemed
to have passed as he turned her around to face him. “Typhus?” she asked, her
voice soft, lilting. Her eyes stared blankly at his left shoulder,
through
his left shoulder.

He smiled and held up his right hand in front of her eyes.
“See this?” he asked.

She gulped and shook her head. “How?” she began. “When?”
Then she blurted out, sharply and shrilly, “You don’t have magic!”

Typhus smiled and lowered his right hand, letting it fall
upon her familiar, ample breast for a long moment before continuing to her
hand. His fingertips raged at the contact, but he ignored them as he gripped
her hand firmly and turned to Argyle’s meeting room. “Not here,” he said.
“Argyle will catch us.” He tugged on her hand, but she didn’t move.

“No,” she said. “I won’t go.”

He turned back to her and made a quick slash with the knife,
cutting a long gash across the top of her breast. She gasped and lurched
backward, but he clung to her hand and prevented her escape. He pulled her
closer to him and said, his voice cold and unfeeling, “Make no mistake, Iscara.
Our past will not stay my hand.”

She shuddered and gulped. Then, quite suddenly, she
straightened and said, “I can’t help you escape. Argyle will kill me.”

Typhus shrugged, then realized that she couldn’t see him
shrugging and asked, “Would you prefer I kill you now?” He paused and added,
“It is the only alternative. I can’t leave you here to tell Argyle what you
have seen and—” he paused for a moment and then pointedly added “—
what you
haven’t
.”

Her eyes widened as she shook her head. “But—”

“I need you to do two things,” Typhus interrupted. “After
you’ve done them, I will let you go.”

She
almost
shook her head again, but then took a
deep, ragged breath and asked, “What things?”

Typhus smiled. He had seen it so many times before that it
didn’t surprise him any longer. People often put up a strong, defiant stance in
the face of the overwhelming threat of death, but it wasn’t what they really
wanted. Give them an alternative, offer to let them live if they do what you
wanted of them, and they almost always buckled to the hope that life would
reassert itself. Few clung to that desperate, defiant stance in the light of
that alternative—no matter what they had to do to win their life back. It
didn’t even matter if it was a
real
hope.

“First, you will help me leave here,” he said. “No one can
see me, but they can see you. If I go alone, the doors will seem to be opening
on their own, and that will draw the guards’ suspicion. I would have to kill
them all, and that is something I would rather not do. I have already killed
enough of Argyle’s men, and I have grown weary of it. You will leave as you
usually do, act as you usually do, and I will accompany you. No one will see
me, no one will know I am there, and we will walk out together without anyone
the wiser.”

“But—”

“Compose yourself, Iscara,” Typhus said. “You’ll need to
clean and heal that wound before we go; it will look suspicious if you don’t,
even to the most dimwitted of guards.”

Iscara’s breathing was becoming regular, and her eyes
dilated as she looked down at the long, straight cut drenching her breast in
blood. She grimaced and lifted her hands to it. Beginning near her cleavage,
she squeezed the edges of the wound together with her left hand and worked her
way to the other side. Her right hand followed, hovering just above the skin,
and as it passed, the wound sealed itself and left behind a bulging little
scar. When she finished, she said, her voice even, “This will do for now. I’ll
tend to the scar later. Couldn’t you have cut my arm, instead?”

Typhus smiled. So vain, so mercurial—
nothing
was ever
simple with Iscara. “Tell the guards it’s my blood if they ask about it.
They’ll believe that.”

“All right,” she said. “We should leave through the Grain
Street entrance. There will be fewer guards, and it is not as well lighted as
the other passages. It’s also the closest one to my shop.”

Typhus nodded and was about to lead her into Argyle’s
meeting chamber when she asked, a slight tremor in her voice, “The second
task?”

Typhus paused only long enough to say, “Minor healing.
Burns. They can wait until we are out of here.” Then, as an afterthought, he
added, “And I will need some clothes.”

“I would think it would be easy for you to acquire clothes,”
she scoffed, her normally snide attitude reasserting itself. “You are a capable
thief, aren’t you? And moving unseen—”

“Hush,” Typhus said, his voice unbearably soft, almost kind.
“We need to leave now. It won’t take long for Argyle to find out what
happened.” He took her hand and ushered her through Argyle’s meeting room. It
was a huge room with a gigantic throne in the middle, several corridors leading
from it, and a variety of furniture and weapons that he sometimes used during his
meetings. Typhus ignored most of it and ushered them to a short table—a human-sized
table—that had a basin, ewer, and cloth rags on it. He poured water into the
basin and reached for one of the towels. He couldn’t see the blood on his chest
or thigh, but he could feel it, and after washing it off, he turned to Iscara
and dabbed at the blood on her breast and cheek. Remarkably, the blood hadn’t
splattered onto her healer’s gown.

“You know,” Iscara said, glaring at a spot a foot to the
left of Typhus’s head. “I’ll be a lot more helpful if you tell me what Argyle
wants to know.”

“What does he want—” Typhus began as he took hold of her
elbow and led her toward the exit that would lead to the Grain Street entrance.
But he didn’t finish the question; he already knew what the answer was.

“A key,” Iscara said. “I was told to ask you about a gold
key. He wants to know where you’ve hidden it.”

As they approached the exit, Typhus began to laugh. It was a
soft, intense laugh, one that only lasted a few seconds. Then he turned to her
and said, “All right, tell him this.
Exactly
this. I no longer have the
key. It is in Angus’s backpack, where Sardach dropped him. If he wants it, he
will have to send someone to get it.”

Iscara frowned for a long moment, and then said, “I suppose,
since there is no Truthseer present, I will have to take your word for it.”

Typhus laughed, a short, simple laugh, and asked, “Have I
ever lied to you, Iscara?”

She scowled in his direction and demanded, “How would I
know?”

He laughed again, and she turned abruptly down the corridor.
“You no longer have the key,” she said. “It is in Angle’s back—”

“
Angus’s
backpack.”

“—pack, where Sardach dropped him. If he wants it, he will
have to send someone to get it.” She paused, and then said with some amusement,
“Argyle will probably send Sardach. He already knows where he dropped Angros.”

“
Angus
,” Typhus corrected her again, wondering not
for the first time why she had such a horrid time remembering people’s names—
other
people’s names; somehow she had no trouble remembering his. No matter; if she
remembered the rest of it, Sardach would know enough to fill in the details.
Hopefully it would be enough for him to avoid a resurgence of Argyle’s wrath,
and perhaps it would even offset the loss of Thaddius and the new Truthseer.
And Gregor, if he didn’t get help soon enough.