Chapter Twenty-Three

The rush light shook in Catha’s hand, sending shadows leaping along the corridor. Those moving just ahead of Tansy did not seem too frightening, but when she peered back over her shoulder, she kept thinking one of the guards had followed them, and her heart pounded in her ears deafeningly.

There had been many guards. So far, she and Catha had evaded them all as they descended into the bowels of the keep, going ever deeper.

“How do you know what direction to take?” Tansy whispered at one point.

“I ha’ been raised in just such a place and ken how the passageways lie. Hush and follow me.”

Past the kitchens they went, past rooms piled with weaponry and old furniture, and the air grew steadily colder. Tansy wrapped her arms around herself and tried not to shiver. At last, from down a well-worn flight of steps, they heard voices, echoing up to them, and paused as one.

“What—” Tansy began.

“Hush,” Catha breathed again. “Sound does carry.”

She edged down the steps, her back brushing the stone wall, and Tansy followed reluctantly. The light here filtered up just like the voices and, when they crept near enough, showed them a scene.

Two men sat at a rough table, playing with a dirk, flipping it into the air and tossing it over and over again into the scarred wood planking, playing at some contest. Both wore the garb of Latham’s guards. Beyond them stretched a narrower passage, very dim. One that led to cells?

Suddenly, with all her being, Tansy wanted to flee. The feeling came from deep within, as primal as the magic she sometimes employed. She feared imprisonment in one of those cells, could taste the terror of the chilly dark.

She did not want to end up there. Nay, anything but that.

Catha placed her lips against Tansy’s ear and violated her own ban against speaking. “Can you gi’ them a push?”

“Eh?” Tansy gasped.

Catha’s intense blue stare scorched her. “As you did Latham.”

Could she? Tansy eyed the guards, very much awake and engaged with each other, talking and laughing. Two of them. She’d never attempted such a feat.

And her terror seemed to have a stranglehold on her power. With Latham, anger and hate had fueled it. Not now.

She shook her head.

Catha seized both her arms. “Please.”

The movement must have caught the attention of the guard who sat half facing them. He looked up and whistled through his teeth. “Wha—”

Panic punched Tansy in the gut. If apprehended, would she and Catha be forced into one of the cells that doubtless lay beyond? Her power burgeoned in response, arising the way a war horse might to the scent of battle. She hit the man in the forehead with a bolt of will that knocked him back in his chair and made his eyes roll up in his head.

Sleep, she ordered desperately. Sleep.

“Eh?” His companion leaped up and turned in a baffled circle, scanning the area. Tansy and Catha, each holding her breath, pressed into the dank wall, and his gaze passed over them. He leaned down and touched the sleeping man’s chest as if expecting to find a weapon embedded there. Then he looked at the dirk in his hand.

Tansy took the opportunity to push him also, far more gently than the first man. He collapsed onto the table and commenced snoring.

Catha seized her fingers and squeezed so hard it hurt. “Ah! A blessedly useful skill. Come on.”

“There may be others.”

“I do no’ think so. How long will they sleep?”

“I do no’ ken.”

“Then hurry.”

Tansy eyed both men as she and Catha edged past. Neither stirred, but her heart thumped wildly in her chest. Should she stay here and watch to make sure they did not awaken? Would it be safe for Catha to go on alone?

Ah, but now she could see Catha need not go far. There, in the shadows beyond, she saw three cell doors, lying just past an open grate set into the stone floor.

Catha dropped first to her knees above this, striving to peer into the cell below by the fitful light.

“Mercien? Mercien!”

Not a sound came in response. Only an evil smell issued up from the dank place below, as indescribable as it was stomach-turning. Tansy again had an image of herself confined to such a place. It stole her breath.

“I do no’ think he’s there,” she groaned.

“Or he canna’ answer.” Catha stumbled to her feet and hurried to the first of the cell doors. She thrust her face to the grate. Tansy resisted the urge to pull her back.

“I can see naught. ’Tis too dark. Mercien!”

“There.” Tansy’s overwrought ears caught a thread of sound. “The last door.”

Catha rushed to the portal on the right. “Mercien?”

The response came in a groan. “Catha? For the love o’ God—”

“Sweet Jesu! Mercien! Come to the door.”

“I canna’. I canna.” The faint voice sounded weak and distant to Tansy’s ears, as it must have to Catha’s. She seized the bars of the grate and pressed close. “Are you hurt?” She wept. “Can you no’ rise? Och, but I want to touch you.”

“Chained. By God, what are ye doing here?”

Catha replied, heartbreakingly, “I am here because you are.”

“Go. Save yoursel’. He has broken me, Catha. Broken me.”

“Nay, I will no’ leave while yet you remain. Mercien, I love you. Do you hear?”

Had ever there been a braver declaration? Tansy squeezed her eyes shut against the pain and beauty of it. And the hopelessness.

Broken. She, who had seen Malcolm’s wounds, need not wonder what that meant. And for all her sympathy, she could not begin to guess how they would free Mercien from that cell. Giving two guards a push was one thing, a whole keep full of them went beyond consideration.

“Help me get him out of here,” Catha said over her shoulder. “There maun be a key.”

“Where?” Tansy scanned the area. No keys hanging handily on the wall. None in sight on the table.

“Search the guards.”

“Catha, I canna’. I do no’ ken if they will wake.” Terror swamped Tansy and the vision returned: hard hands on her, and being thrust helpless into the malodorous darkness. If she fell into the underground cell, would she break a limb? Lie there agonized in the stinking gloom?

“There must be a key.”

“Latham carries it.” Suddenly Tansy knew that for truth as if someone had spoken the words. “He keeps it on his person.”

Catha stared at her. “How do you know this?”

Tansy shrugged.

Catha seized her shoulders. “Then you will have to get it from him. While he sleeps.” Her blue eyes gleamed like those of a madwoman. “I canna’ leave him there. Would you leave Malcolm?”

“Malcolm.” The word echoed from the cell like an utterance from another world. “Say he is safe.”

Catha swung back to the door. “He is. For now.”

“Keep him so. Keep yoursel’ so, Catha. Let me die.”

Let me die.

The words smacked of defeat and struck Tansy to the heart. Where had fled the sunny, cheerful soul everyone described? Gone, gone…

She turned to the grate in the door and called, “Master Mercien, please keep strong. We will return for you. You need only hold on till then.”

Mercien made no reply. Tansy seized hold of Catha, who wept copiously.

“We maun go if we’re to have a hope of rescuing him later. Come.”

“Mercien! Mercien, my love stays with you.”

Forget, Tansy whispered to the guards as she passed them, all too aware that nothing followed them from Mercien’s cell, nothing save silence.