The Forlorn(74)

Keilin's mind could not leave Shael's need in other's hands. He turned to the captain. "Can I have a guard please? To show me the way down to the chambers underneath. I must go there." She needed him now.

The captain looked at him strangely. "Things happen down there, boy, that I don't know about. Lots of screaming. That's one reason I'm neck deep in this mess. Now you want me to send you down there?"

Keilin nodded. "My friends are down there." The fear demon was gone now. All he knew was the need for haste.

Cap's eyes narrowed again. "Would our gear be accessible?" he asked the guards.

One of the remaining men nodded. "They'll be in the red vestibule off the great hall."

Cap smiled, all teeth. "Captain, I must insist that the boy is right. Send these two with us to collect our gear. Then we'll give you a good deal of commotion. Just leave down below to us. Do you want your Patrician alive or dead?"

The captain looked startled. "Uh, what?!"

"Two escorts," Cap said impatiently.

With a blinding suddenness Keilin realized that all Cap really wanted was to recover the core sections.

They were marched as if they were still prisoners across to the entrance hall and into a vestibule hung with red drapes. It was all Keilin could do not to run.

Keilin reached for his assegai, S'kith and Beywulf for their swords. Cap burrowed through the pile of belongings until he found a black leather pouch. Only then did he take his sword. Stashing knives hastily, Keilin grabbed his small pack . . . and Shael's. "Bey, better bring Leyla's gear. Likely they'll need clothes."

Now Keilin didn't even wait for his escort. He was off and running for the archway down which the girls had been taken. He heard Bey thundering along behind him, and an abruptly cutoff word of challenge. He ran on heedlessly around the corner.

The two guards on the door were chosen for size. But they weren't really expecting anyone. One even had his helmet off and was picking nits out of his long hair when Keilin arrived at a full sprint.

The helmet went flying. But Keilin's second stroke missed. He wrenched at the door-embedded assegai desperately.

And then S'kith and Beywulf barrelled up, closely followed by Cap.

"Bugger me, youth. Don't run so damn fast next time," panted Bey, kicking the door in, as he wrenched his sword out of the dead guard's chest.

It didn't stop Keilin again totally outpacing them down the stairs.

It was a huge room. The walls were hung with grisly mementos . . . and implements of torture. And a terrible thin screaming came from the far side of it.

Commander Kemp knocked Keilin butt-over-tea-kettle as he ran for the door. The Guard Commander didn't stop, but he did yell "Need a doctor!" in his sprint for the stairs. And he did evade the rest of the party, and gain his freedom via the stairs.

Keilin staggered to his feet and continued to run toward the screams.

Both of the women were stark naked. Leyla had been strapped to a vast bed. In the candlelight he could see both the old and the new blood stains. Shael was spreadeagled on a hanging steel pentacle, steel manacles about her ankles and wrists. On either side of her head jutted vicious spikes so that she had to look at the bed. Around the victims stood racks of cruel, sharp-edged things. A small brazier burned, despite the heat . . . and the air was tainted with the smell of burnt flesh, as well as the reek of blood and fear. Shael's back was scored with five fine lines, with trickles of blood running down onto her buttocks. Keilin ran forward. The screaming did not come from her.

On the floor writhed a naked Patrician Vedas. He was plainly in terrible pain, his face blueish and contorted, his muscles jerking in uncontrollable spasms. Blood trickled from his nose, and from deep scratches on his shoulder.

Keilin moved forward to spear him.

"Leave him." The words came from Leyla. "Just get us loose, and out of here." Keilin's assegai blade made short work of her straps, and by the time S'kith came up, he'd found a key and was struggling to unlock Shael's manacles. S'kith too was about to make an end of the man on the floor, but Leyla told him to leave the vermin.

Bey arrived, his face white. "Hell's teeth." He kicked the writhing man. "We lost the other one, I'm afraid. Cap's gone to secure the stair. Come away. You can put clothes on there. Keil said you'd need your packs, so we brought them."

Half carrying the girls, they ran back. Shael still hadn't said a word. Keilin noticed she had her arm tight around him, but she was keeping her fingers very carefully straight. When they arrived at the staircase, she said in a small voice. "Cay . . . please take my dress out of my pack, and . . . and help me put it on. I'm scared to scratch anything. I've got tetrodotoxin on my fingernails."