The Ritual (24 page)

“And then some. He’s good at it though, always knows what to do. He’s never let me down, not once.”

“Twins,” I said, nodding my understanding. “So, how long before the elf in charge arrived?”

He snorted again. “Half a day. Brought an entire delegation with him; not just his sorcerer but his cup-bearer, his parasol-carrier… Probably his arse-wiper as well, for all I knew. And do you know what I resented most about him?” I shook my head and he sighed and looked away. “When he explained why he had come, I was glad,” he said, almost too softly for me to hear. “All this time I’d sat through the elocution classes and the etiquette lessons. All this time they’d tried to tell us that elves were superior and that we had to learn to be good little slaves, not to displease them and to be obedient at all times. All this time I’d grown up learning to hate elves, and then
he
came and made me glad that he was there, that he had brought his sorcerer to show me what to do.”

He sounded so forlorn that I reached out without thinking and placed my hand on his knee. “But you got out, Mior, that’s all that counts. They’re all a bunch of manipulative bastards, but we beat them. We got out.”

“Yeah, we got out,” he agreed, though he still sounded wistful. Then he turned his head back to me and smiled. “It’s been amazing to meet you two, you know. We’ve met plenty of other half-elves, of course, but never anyone so similar. Your sister…” He sighed happily. “She understands me like no one else ever has.” He hesitated for a moment before adding, “Not even Zash.”

It was as close to a declaration of love as I was likely to hear, and it made my heart ache. I thought of Shani, as deeply in love with Mior as I was with Zash, and I wished that there could be no secrets between us, that we could try to understand what was going on and resolve it together. I contemplated confiding in Mior, but discarded that plan almost immediately. For all that he was different from his brother, more outgoing and cheerful, he would never go against Zash’s wishes, and I knew better than to think that Zash hadn’t given specific instructions on what to reveal and what to hide.

“Shani is amazing,” I agreed instead. “Everything that life’s chucked at us she’s simply shrugged off. Rarely complains, always happy. I keep going simply because of her.”

“Hey, you’re not so bad yourself,” Mior said, patting my foot. “You’re doing Zash a world of good anyway.”

“I am?” I asked, unable to stop the little waver in my voice.

“Yeah. I’ve never seen him this… I don’t know, carefree. He never opens up to anyone, never lets his feelings show, but you seem to have got through to him somehow.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. It was music to my ears that I did affect him, that he was different with me than he had been with anyone else, but there was nothing I could say at that moment that wouldn’t give all my feelings for him away. Thankfully Mior didn’t seem to expect a response, and for a while we sat in companionable silence.

“I think I could sleep now,” he murmured after a while.

“I’m with you,” I agreed, and with that we settled down in the grass.

*   *   *   *   *

After two days of solid surveillance we had a good idea of the comings and goings at the monastery, and had been lucky enough to observe two hooded visitors enter the place. The bridge swayed ominously under their steps, but it didn’t have any bells or such attached to it to warn the inhabitants of travellers – probably because they would have sounded continuously in the persistent wind that funnelled through the canyon. The door opened and swallowed them up, and although one of them had since left again, we had not yet seen the other one emerge.

The roof and walls held
six guards at all times; four of them patrolled the walls and two travelled a fixed track across the roof. Their beat was regular as clockwork, and Zash estimated that we had a tenth-measure interval in which to make our way across the bridge to the door. Tight but doable, in his view.

At night the interior of t
he monastery was well-lit, with light spilling from almost every window. The windows themselves were spaced along the walls at regular intervals, but although they had no shutters and appeared to contain no glass panels, Zash ruled them out as access points, mainly because neither Shani nor Mior had our skill at climbing walls. We did incorporate them in our back-up plan, in case we could not open the door from the outside. If this was the case, Zash would climb through one of the windows and attempt to let us in. I hoped this would not be necessary though – the walls were not just sheer, they also looked smooth, and a quick peek down the ravine at dusk showed it to be deep enough to give me vertigo.

Our trip to the ravine had also shown us that the next pillar over, to the south, held a colony of tuft-tailed vultures. It puzzled us all to see them there – they were large scavengers and we hadn’t seen anything bigger than a fox in over a week, yet they did not appear to be starving. It added to the mystery of the place, and to the ever-present nagging feeling of unrest in my stomach, but I knew that Zash would just laugh at such insubstantial worries, so I held my tongue.

Zash had set that night as the night we would attempt the break-in, and the time at one measure after midnight, when the monastery appeared to be at its quietest. We all attempted to rest beforehand, though for my part I was too nervous and apprehensive to sleep, and had to force my muscles to relax as I lay in the grass.

We had discovered an easier path down to the bridge from our hiding spot, and to Zash’s satisfaction it was rocky all the way and would not leave a trace of our passage unless we were followed by hounds. His intention – should we be discovered – was for us to melt away into the canyon and let any pursuit pass us by, and that part of the plan at least I agreed with. Our camp was impossible to see unless you knew it was there, and I judged it safe enough.

Night came and we got ready, dressing in our customary black. It would prevail us little if the monastery was fully lit, but light still meant shadows, and in any case we were expecting to have to deal with people – this was half the reason for Shani and Mior coming along. Shani wrapped her thick braid securely around her head and tied it there with a scarf, both of us still wary of the time my own braid had got me caught.

“All ready?” Zash asked, his voice pitched low.

“Yes. Lead on, Black Eyes,” I replied, taking a deep breath to steady myself. He gave me a quick smile and an encouraging nod, then set off. I followed after him, with Shani behind me and Mior closing the ranks.

We reached the bridge without incident and melted into the shadows, waiting for the right moment in the guards’ beat to cross. When it came, Zash darted ahead and I followed without giving myself time to think about it. The bridge swayed enough to make me nauseous, but we all reached the door without an outcry from above – so far so good.

‘Ears out,’ Zash signalled to me in thieves’ cant, indicating for me to listen out for the guards or anything unusual, then crouched by the door handle. For a while he just studied it, then he carefully started testing it, generating small scraping noises as he moved the handle. At that point I heard the footsteps of the guard approach, and I touched his shoulder.

‘Stop, guard,’ I signalled, and he froze until the steps faded away again.

A few more careful tests later Zash stood up from his crouch. “Barred,” he said quietly. “Mior, you’re on.”

Mior nodded and pressed himself bodily against the door, hands splayed on the wood and eyes closed in concentration as he muttered to himself in syllables unintelligible to me. I heard a faint scraping noise, and as sweat started to bead on his forehead it stopped abruptly, to be followed by a soft thud on the other side of the door.

Zash slowly pushed it open and Shani peered through, her hands poised for a sleep spell while Mior caught his breath. He looked as if he’d run a mile, and I gained a quick insight into just how taxing levitation had to be.

The open door showed a tiny corridor – more like a short, square hallway – which led onto the main corridor that ran perpendicular to it. Zash sauntered ahead and peered around both corners, then beckoned for us to follow.

‘Close door,’ he gestured to me, and I gingerly pushed it shut again. I noticed the bar, neatly leaning against the wall, but decided against putting it back, just in case we were in need of a quick exit later.

Zash led us into the left hand corridor, the source of all the light we had seen through the windows. The walls were stone, but they were covered in colourful tapestries, and the carpet underfoot was thick and muffled our footsteps. It seemed very luxurious for an order of ascetic monks, but the décor was hardly important at this moment in time, so I studied the more relevant things instead.

It appeared that – on this side at least – the outer wall shielded nothing more than this corridor which stretched to either side. There were doors opposite the windows, spaced at equally regular intervals, but they were all closed. Not a person was visible, not a voice could be heard, and I breathed a little more easily.

When it became clear that the corridor went around the entire outside of the monastery, Zash started looking for a door that would lead to the interior. We backtracked a few windows until I caught his attention and pointed at the floor.

‘Carpets,’ I signalled. ‘Footstep pattern indicates path.’ I followed it with the gesture for uncertainty, indicating that I was by no means sure of my conclusion, but Zash nodded and smiled at me.

‘Think you’re right,’ he signalled back. ‘Door also more expensive.’ He pointed at the door that the scuffed path led to, slightly taller than most of the other ones and with ornamental carvings, then beckoned to Mior.

“Check for wards,” he whispered, and Mior closed his eyes again, his hands curved into cups as he ran them past the door. Halfway down he froze, then dropped one hand and drew a pattern in the air as he muttered a few words. There was a brief puff of air and a momentary sparkle around the door, then Mior dropped his arms and nodded at Zash, who tested the handle and drew out his lockpicks when it did not yield. He had it open in a few heartbeats, then carefully pushed the door ajar.

“You check the next one,” I heard Mior whisper to Shani, and I gestured for them to precede me, walking backwards after them to keep an eye out behind us.

We continued our slow progress for half a measure, with one heartstopping moment of terror when we saw someone round a corner at a crossing of corridors ahead of us. To my relief he turned away from us, and Shani dropped him like a stone with a sleep spell. She had gone for overkill, like we had agreed, meaning that no one who was caught in one of her or Mior’s spells would wake up until well into the morning. We dragged the man away and stuffed him into a hidden corner, and continued our laborious path inwards.

To Zash’s great chagrin the carpet became too worn to be of use after the third corridor, so from there we had to rely on guesswork. Whether the monks had not yet got round to replacing these carpets or whether they had found something different to spend their money on I did not know,
but at points the woven hemp backing peeked through, and whatever pattern it had was no longer visible. It was a stark contrast with the luxury of the outer corridor, and added to my confused impression of this place.

We opened many rooms. Some were storage areas, full of crates, bags and boxes, some smelling musty, others spicy or fragrant with herbs, and once we entered a grand hall with long tables for communal dining and a lingering scent of food. At each door we listened before entering, and thus managed to avoid the two or three dormitories we passed – the snoring was clear enough to give them away. Other than on those few occasions the monastery was eerily quiet, and every noise we made sounded amplified to my own ears.

Most doors were locked or warded, though rarely both, and so far only two of them had been trapped, with simple poison arrow systems. Zash pointed out the small holes in the walls on either side, then quickly managed to locate and disengage the trigger.

‘Only on at
night,’ he explained to me, ‘must have easy switch.’ I nodded my understanding and we continued past more doors, the four of us alternating in opening them. None were particularly difficult, but my sense of unease grew ever stronger, for we had now spent close to two measures inside and seemed to be no closer to locating the spring, never mind getting back out again. The deathly quiet inside also unsettled me, even though it was the middle of the night and therefore people were expected to be asleep. I simply could not fathom a place this big not having more nocturnal people wandering the corridors.

‘This door,’ Zash motioned to me, indicating a door to our right. Shani had just checked it for wards and it was my turn to pick the lock, so I crouched down and started working on it. It clicked open without problems, but when I pushed the door ajar I was met with the most unsettling sight I had seen so far that night.

The room was dimly lit by one candle on a small sideboard off to the left. Its light cast shifting shadows as it flickered in the draft, but I stood frozen with my eyes riveted to the woman shackled to the wall.

She was stark naked and either unconscious or magically asleep – no one could hang by the arms like that and
fall asleep of their own accord – and I knew she wasn’t dead, because I could see her chest move with her breathing. Her wrists and ankles were shackled with heavy leather manacles, and although her feet were resting on the floor, her legs were spread wide. Her head hung forward, her limp black hair covering her face and trailing down to just below her breasts, and by the tips of her ears peeking through the tangles I deduced she was a half-elf. There was a sour, metallic tang to the air, a mixture of sweat, semen and blood, though the scent of blood overpowered everything else. There was a sickening amount of it covering the insides of her legs, and what I could see of the skin of her breasts was covered in cuts, bruises and teeth marks. It was easy enough to figure out what she had been used for, and appallingly clear that whoever had used her, he hadn’t been gentle.