Vladzan had apparently tired of his experiments, and Penrys heard the creak of the chair when he sat down. His breathing was regular, but without the deep rhythms of sleep.
Too much to hope for, that he’d just drop off. At least he can’t see my toes inside my shoes.
For the last little while, she’d been trying to wiggle her toes, and she welcomed her feeble success. It’s wearing off, finally.
If her body could move again, eventually her power would return, assuming there was no permanent damage. Vladzan would be shielded, surely, but with her full power that would mean nothing to her.
How long would she have to wait? If she alerted him before she was strong enough, she’d never get another chance, but the others might return before she could be sure.
Pump the heart. Breathe. It’s working.
The damage to her body was probably healing, but she didn’t dare open her eyes to look.
Vladzan pushed the chair back and she heard the clink of bits of metal. Chains? If he binds me so he can nap in peace, I’m doomed.
Now or never.
She pulled up as much of her shield as she could manage, then she broke through his and grabbed at his core power, as if he were a power-stone. She set herself, and drained it all away, into her chain, leaving him nothing, not the barest remnant. With bits of the power that she siphoned off, she reached out and stopped his heart, and held it still as it stuttered, twice, three times, until all the movement ceased. While she worked, she wrapped her own shield around him, to smother any final mind-cry. Without a working heart, he had no time for an audible scream. The only sound was his body hitting the floor with a dull thud.
She listened to his mental confusion and panic, and made no attempt to hide herself while she watched with him as darkness descended and his mind died.
It meant nothing to her, nothing at all.
The next task was to get away, and for that, she would have to move. She opened her eyes. and tried to sit up. The theft of Vladzan’s power had no effect on the residue of the drugs, and her body was slow to respond.
She clenched her fists, over and over, and waggled her feet—anything to increase the blood flow. She managed to jerk her body up onto one elbow and held it there while she looked around the room.
There were no windows and just the one door. It was some sort of storeroom, she saw, with sacks of supplies piled up along one wall. Probably no locks on the inside. Good. If I can walk, I can get out of here.
She strengthened her shield as best she could, concentrating on being invisible. If one of the others probed the room, it wouldn’t matter that they couldn’t find her—they wouldn’t find Vladzan, either, and that would be enough to raise the alarm.
She swung her legs over the side of the wide bench and winced as her feet hit the floor clumsily.
Pump the heart. Breathe. Keep moving.
It took four attempts before she could stand up, and then all she could do was sway back and forth.
Concentrate. Flex the hands, bend the knees.
Leaning forward, she forced her body to stagger into a step, and then another one. Sensations against her skin distracted her, and she looked down. Her clothes were in rags, cut by Vladzan’s busy knives. The pain was distant, and healing, but the sticky blood was a distraction, impeding her motion where it bound the clothing to her.
She did a quick calculation, warmth versus movement, and without hesitation tore some of the rags away where they interfered. Then she returned her focus to the door and let her body take care of itself.
She watched her hand lift the latch while she listened through her shield for anyone else nearby. She still couldn’t hear mind-glows at any distance, so she opened the door softly and listened carefully. When she pulled it open all the way, onto an empty corridor, she saw bare and dusty stone stairs ascending into darkness, with recent traces of footsteps disturbing the surface.
The first step up onto a riser almost stopped her. She tilted her body to the left to let her right foot reach the step without bending the knee much. That worked, but making that leg take all the weight again when she tilted back failed for several minutes.
She stood unbalanced there and worked the muscles of her arms and hands, trying to flush more of the drug away. Eventually, the leg bore her weight, and she repeated the process for the next step, and the next, a little more smoothly each time.
The door at the top was invisible in the black, but her groping hand found a latch, and it opened into the cool night air, somewhere in the inner courtyard, lit by starlight.
She swayed on the threshold for a moment, and tried to find mind-glows again, and failed.
Have to get away, not just hide. Can I fly?
She invoked her wings, and nothing happened. Ruthlessly, she suppressed the panic that said “they’re gone.” Must need a full recovery to be used, that’s all.
Hide, then. I’ll have to hide until everything wears off.
Penrys turned her head at a rustle and the dim shape of a man. They’ve found me. She reached out, and seized his mind, prepared to rip away his puny shield, but it wasn’t one of the mage council, and she hesitated.
Dzantig stepped all the way out into the starlight a few feet away, his face distorted and his hands held up in supplication.
“Please, brudigna,” he whispered. “Please, don’t. Don’t kill me. I’ve been waiting for you.”
She tilted her head to look at him, and tasted his mind. Fear, but no malice.
Her voice choked her, dry and rusty. “Where’s Zandaril?”
“I don’t know.”
That seemed to be the truth. She released him, and he took a step closer and cautiously reached for her arm.
“You’ve got to hide. They’ll be back.”
Yes, hide. Hide first, then talk.
He pulled at her tentatively, and she lurched after him. He guided her about fifty steps to the back of a disused garden fountain and lifted an iron trapdoor there. “Can you, um, climb down?”
She peered down at the iron ladder bolted to the side of the shaft that vanished into darkness, and shivered at the reminder of her fall into the abyss.
“Look, I’ll go first,” he said. “But you have to close the door behind you. Can you do that?”
She thought about it, and nodded.
When he was a body length down, he reached up to pat her foot, and she backed in carefully, one foot at a time. When her head passed below the surface of the ground, he tapped her leg from below. “The door. Lower the trapdoor. Quietly.”
She took one last breath of the autumn garden, sleeping in starlight, and lowered the trapdoor.
They climbed down for several body lengths, until she heard Dzantig step off the ladder onto a stone surface, and she followed. She could hear water dripping into pools in the distance. He pulled a small lantern out of his pocket and tried to power the stone in it, but Penrys could feel him trembling. She reached out casually and powered it, and the darkness was beaten back.
They were standing in a junction of four arched tunnels with the vertical shaft. In all directions the tunnels receded into the black. The air was humid, and little moist noises reverberated in the distance.
Dzantig backed away from her unblinking stare. “It’s the water tunnels, and the sewers. Students know about them, a way out of the compound undetected.”
He laughed briefly. “The previous students left notes about them. I don’t think the mage council knows.”
She reminded herself. This Rasesni is Dzantig. Zandaril’s friend, his drinking partner. Not an enemy?
“Where’s Zandaril?” It came out more clearly this time.
“He asked me about Vejug, but I hadn’t seen him. He asked me to wait for him in the square. He was going to meet me for… well, it doesn’t matter. He didn’t come.”
She nodded at him to continue. She could see his mind-glow, a little, and it didn’t waver.
“I saw this cart come out,” he said. “Like they use for vegetables. There was a man driving, and another one riding alongside. A guard for a food cart? At night? It didn’t make any sense.”
He cleared his throat. “I tried to find a way to look inside but I couldn’t see much. I thought I saw a bundle of clothing. It turned north, away from the bridge.”
With a catch in his breath, he continued. “And the later Zandaril was, the more I wondered about that guarded cart, and the fabric, thinking about his robe.”
She shut her eyes, and heard him gasp as he took another step back.
When she glanced down, she found her fists clenched. When she looked at him again, he said, hastily, “I came to look for you. I went by way of the courtyard, to see if there was anyone to ask about the cart, but it was dark, and no one was there. And then I saw them, carrying you, and they vanished into the stable.”
She tasted him again. Truth, still truth.
“All of them, all the mage council, even Vejug. Who could I tell?”
He looked into her face as if hoping for agreement. “So I waited and watched, for hours. They all left, not long ago, except for you and Vladzan.”
His eyes roamed over her rags in muted curiosity, and she slashed her hand through the air. “Sennevi. Vladzan is done.” The end of that story.
It was hard to tell in the lantern light, but she thought he blanched. Certainly his mind was scared.
An important question caught her attention. “Why? Why are you helping me?”
He straightened up, in the underground tunnel, and made her a bow. “Dzangab, my god, enjoins me to help the god-touched.”
Penrys mused out loud. “But I don’t believe in gods.”
Dzantig smiled at her, raggedly. “I don’t think that matters.”
“It’s because of Zandaril,” he said. “And you. And because we must defeat Surdo. And because this is wrong, Dzangab would have me defend the righteous. And I am not a traitor—this is how we Rasesni will survive Surdo, if we do.”
His voice picked up confidence. “I’m not strong enough to change what the mage council wants, but I’m strong enough to conceal you and get you to help, and this I will do. I fear what has befallen Zandaril who came to us as an honorable guest. As you did. If I can’t help him, maybe you can.”
He spat on the tunnel floor. “And besides, I have always despised Vejug and his greedy god.”
