Warrior Priest of Dmon-Li: The Morcyth Saga Book Three (37 page)

“Can you open it?” he asks James, gesturing
to the wall.

“Open what?” Lord Pytherian asks.

“There’s a secret door here that we came
through,” he replies as he begins to examine the wall. When he
doesn’t find any sort of loose stone or anything, he says to Miko,
“See if you can move that torch sconce there.”

Miko moves to the torch sconce on the wall
across from the secret door and begins attempting to move it. He
wiggles it first one way then the other. Suddenly, the sconce
slides down and the wall begins to move to the side.

Once the opening is wide enough, they file
through. A minute later, the door begins sliding closed once again,
leaving the orb as the only source of light.

They descend the stairs to the next level
and then down one more to the bottom level. Going through the
doorway, they move down the passage until they come to an open
door. Moving into the room, the smell of the sewer becomes
strong.

Lord Pytherian sees the trapdoor there and
asks, “The sewers?”

“If you don’t mind milord,” James says.

Smiling, he replies, “Not in the least. I
prefer it over my last accommodations.”

Jiron moves past him and goes down the
ladder first, with James taking the rear. He closes the door to the
room before descending the rungs. Once he’s gone down far enough,
he closes the trapdoor as well then climbs down the rest of the
way.

At the bottom, the others are waiting for
him and once he’s down, Jiron sets off the way they’d come. It
doesn’t take too long before they’re once again at the thick iron
bars blocking the passage.

James come to the fore and Lord Pytherian
watches in amazement as the bars begin to move, making a hole large
enough for them to squeeze through.

When they’ve all passed through to the other
size, James again lets the magic flow as the bars move back to
their original position.

“Hopefully they’ll spend hours looking for
us in the Keep before realizing we are not there,” James says as he
turns back to the others.

“If they do, it will give us enough time to
get out of the city,” Jiron figures.

“I doubt if the city will be open,” Lord
Pytherian states. “As a matter of course, they’ve most likely
sealed the gates and put patrols on the streets, even if they
believe we’re still in the Keep.”

“Then we’ll need to be most careful,” James
says. “Let’s try to follow the sewer as close to the eastern gate
as we can.”

“Why the eastern gate?” Lord Pytherian
asks.

“There’s help there,” replies James. Then he
looks to Jiron and says, “If they haven’t gotten impatient and done
something stupid.”

“You never know,” adds Jiron.

As they move along the ledge next to the
flow of the sewer, Lord Pytherian asks, “Who’s waiting?’

“Someone by the name of Miller,” replies
James. “Do you know him?”

A smile comes to him as he nods and says,
“Yeah, I know him and this is just the brash thing he’d try.”

They follow the sewer tunnel for several
minutes before they come to where another large sewer tunnel joins
the one they’re in. “Which way?” asks Jiron.

James looks to Lord Pytherian who shrugs, “I
don’t know, I’m all turned around. Maybe we should move to the
surface so we can be sure of heading to the eastern gate.”

“Alright,” agrees James. “That might be a
good idea.”

They backtrack to where they passed the last
set of rungs going up. Jiron climbs them as the others wait below.
Several minutes pass before he climbs back down again. “We are
still within the inner wall,” he tells them. “We need to continue
further before we’ll be past.”

Lord Pytherian says, “Okay, then let’s
go.”

Jiron leads them further down the sewer
tunnel, and when they return to the branching tunnel, he passes it
as he continues down the one they’ve been following. He moves past
three sets of rungs before stopping before the fourth. “I think
this should do it,” he says. “Wait here a moment.”

They watch him as he climbs up into the
darkness above. A minute later they hear him call down, “Come on
up, we’re past the wall.”

Lord Pytherian goes first with James again
taking up the rear. As James climbs out of the sewer exit into the
room, he can tell they’re in a building’s basement. Jiron is over
at a doorway, fiddling with the lock.

As James gets closer to him, he returns his
knife to his belt and slowly pushes the door open. On the other
side, a short flight of stairs leads up to another door.

The others wait while Jiron moves up to the
door where he puts his ear against it and listens for a moment. He
waves the others to come on up as he slowly opens the door and
peers around to the other side.

Opening it up further, he passes through and
the others follow him, finding themselves in what looks to be a
chandler’s shop. Upon various tables are goods for sale, one having
cloaks and other travel gear.

They each take one of the cloaks and
canteens, as well as other equipment they might need. James removes
a gold piece from his pocket and places it on the counter. When he
catches Lord Pytherian looking at him, he whispers, “I don’t want
to be counted a thief.”

Nodding his approval, Lord Pytherian moves
to a window overlooking the street. He ducks to the side as a
patrol of ten soldiers pass by outside. Once they’re gone, he looks
out again and turns back to the others, “It looks like they have
put extra patrols on the streets.”

“That’ll make things interesting,” Jiron
says as he looks out of another window. Seeing the street clear for
the moment, he turns to the others and asks, “Ready?”

When he gets an affirmative from them, he
moves to the door and opens it as he passes out into the
street.

Once out on the street, they keep to the
shadows as they make their way to the eastern gate. Jiron remembers
which way they’d come from the southern gate in relation to where
the Keep stands and is able to maintain a general eastern
heading.

They duck down alleys to avoid the patrols
roaming the streets, none of which seem very concerned about
finding anyone. They seem more in the ‘patrol just to keep our
presence visible’ mode than actively searching for them. This just
leads them to believe that the powers that be believe them to still
be within the Keep.

As they move from street to alley and back
again, they notice that only the soldiers are on the street. James
figures there must be a curfew in effect while they’re on the
loose. So with the lackadaisical patrols the soldiers on the street
are doing, it’s fairly easy to make it all the way to the eastern
gate unnoticed.

Jiron brings them to a halt at the end of an
alley which looks out upon the gate area. Twenty soldiers stand
guard there in the courtyard before the gate with a dozen or more
crossbowmen lining the walls above.

James catches his breath when he sees a
brown robe there with them.
For a world that doesn’t have many
mages, the Empire sure seems to have more than their fair
share!

Jiron notices the brown robe and glances to
James who says, “I see him too.”

“What do you plan?” Lord Pytherian asks.

“Another distraction?” asks Jiron.

“Distraction?” says Lord Pytherian, glancing
at James.

“May not have much choice,” replies James.
Sighing at the inevitable, he turns to Lord Pytherian and says,
“You and Miko stay here while Jiron and I arrange for some of the
guards to be drawn away.”

“What are you going to do?” he asks.

James looks him in the eye and says, “You’ll
see.” Turning back to Jiron he asks, “Ready?”

Giving him a mischievous grin, he replies,
“You bet.”

To Lord Pytherian, he says, “We’ll be back
in a few minutes. No matter what you may see and hear, don’t move
from this spot. Understand?”

Lord Pytherian nods his head.

“Let’s go,” he says to Jiron as they head
out.

Lord Pytherian watches them go back down the
alley away from the gate. He asks Miko, “What are they going to
do?”

Shrugging, he replies, “I don’t really know.
When I first met James, he could hardly do anything without going
unconscious or having horrendous headaches. But the last few weeks
he’s been able to do the most amazing things.”

James follows Jiron through the back alleys
until they’ve put some distance between the east gate and
themselves. “You know,” he says to Jiron, “when this all begins to
let loose, they’ll know we’re not in the Keep.”

“True,” he replies, quickly making his way
along a dark alley. “But hopefully that information will come too
late to be of much use.”

James comes to a stop and says, “Let’s pause
here a moment.” A couple seconds later, five small bubbles appear
and begin to float away.

“Now let’s see if we can find a building
that’s not being used right now,” he says as he indicates for Jiron
to resume leading the way.

Nodding, Jiron sets out and a couple blocks
down they find a warehouse. Looking inside, they see it stocked
with bolts of fabric and other valuables, but otherwise
unoccupied.

“This’ll work,” announces James. He pauses
next to the side of the building and ever so briefly, a spot on the
wall lights up and then disappears. They go all the way around the
building, stopping at each side for a moment until the light
flashes just as it had on the first side before continuing on.

Once they have paused on each of the four
sides of the building, they then move back closer to the eastern
gate. One street runs almost directly from the eastern gate to the
warehouse they just visited. They make their way carefully down the
street until coming to within five hundred feet of the eastern
gate, far enough away so that the lights from the gate won’t reveal
them.

James pauses at one point on the north side
of the street for a moment then moves down fifty feet where he
again pauses for a second. Then he makes sure no one is looking
before darting across to the other side where he does the same
thing on the other side of the street, directly across from the two
places he’d stopped at on the north side.

Satisfied, he gives Jiron a nod and they
begin to move back to where the others are waiting. James grabs his
arm as he starts to cross the area between the points where he’d
just stopped those four times. When he looks at him, James
whispers, “Not a good idea.”

Nodding, he moves back and skirts that area.
Ducking down a side alley to avoid a patrol, they finally make it
back to where the others are waiting.

Lord Pytherian sees them coming and waves
them over. When James comes next to him, he says, “Nothing
happened.”

“Just wait,” James assures him.

Suddenly, they see a shimmering bubble
making its way slowly down the street toward the soldiers at the
gate. The translucent bubble is hard to see unless you know what
you’re looking for. As it gets closer, the mage there suddenly
turns his head toward the bubble, sensing its magic resonance.

The mage says something to a soldier next to
him who barks an order and everyone there comes immediately to
attention. The crossbowmen on the walls are staring intently into
the darkness of the street but fail to find anyone.

The bubble abruptly turns around and goes
back the other way. The mage, sensing the magic moving away from
him moves to follow when from across the town…

Crumph!

…the warehouse erupts in a tremendous
explosion throwing fire and stone into the air. The mage
immediately begins moving toward the explosion, half the soldiers
going with him.

James can detect several of the bubbles in
the area, throwing off the senses of the mage as he tries to hunt
down the source of the magic he’s sensing. He watches as the mage
begins walking determinedly down the street, directly toward the
place where he’d stopped those four times. When he reaches the
center of it, four lights flare into being. The mage cries out as
he falls to the ground and the soldiers with him try to run but are
stopped by an invisible barrier that has sprung up between those
four lights, boxing them in. Trapped, the soldiers begin crying out
as they strike the barrier with their swords and fists but to no
avail.

James takes some slugs out of the pouch at
his hip and begins launching them up to the crossbowmen on the
walls. One by one, they’re struck and begin falling off the walls,
some landing within the courtyard, others falling outside the
walls.

Pytherian glances to James with renewed
respect as he continues launching slugs until the walls are cleared
of crossbowmen.

With his knives drawn, Jiron says, “Milord,
it’s our turn.”

Nodding, he pulls the sword from its
scabbard as they move toward the soldiers guarding the gate.

As Miko turns to follow them, James grabs
his arm and says, “We need to open the gate.”

Snapping back to himself, Miko nods and
follows James to the gatehouse. On the way, James takes out two
more guards before Jiron and Lord Pytherian begin to engage
them.

Within the gatehouse are several levers and
James begins pulling them at random. Miko stands at the door to the
gatehouse, sword drawn and keeping a lookout. A loud clatter
suddenly can be heard coming from the gates and then they begin to
slowly swing open.

“Let’s go,” he says to Miko as they leave
the gatehouse. A horn sounds from the top of the wall as a soldier
there warns of the gate beginning to open. James looks to Jiron and
Lord Pytherian who have already disposed of half the remaining
guards and are standing back to back as they hold off the last
four.

Down the street, past where the soldiers are
trapped by the force fields, James can see a band of cavalry
coming.