III
Jame was still silently cursing herself as they left the square. It seemed that the bond between lord and Kendar was so cruelly tight here that those poor people, reduced to near stupor by Caldane's excesses, were unconsciously mirroring his actions and mumbling his thoughts. If so, under all his bully bluster Caldane was scared sick about something. And he was taking it out on that poor bastard whose cry she had so distinctly heard, if no one else had. It was Graykin whom Caldane was abusing, she was almost certain . . . because he couldn't get his hands on the Southron's new mistress? Could all this somehow be the result of that little trick which she had played on Caldane in his tent at the Cataracts?
They were drawing near the two arms of the river that surrounded the castle mound like a moat. More Kendar drifted past them, but no one tried again to raise the alarm. Two randon sprawled at the gate-posts of the moat bridge. One watched them approach but didn't speak, perhaps because she no longer could. The other was dead. Brier saluted both.
"This way," she said, and led her small command over the bridge and around to a lesser door which opened directly into the mound.
Inside, they descended a ramp of weeping stone, lined with doors. The dank, mildewed air made Jame's nose twitch and Jorin sneeze. At its foot the decline sank into black water, lapping against weed crusted lintels.
"Here," said the Kendar, and put her shoulder to the last unsubmerged door.
The shriek of its rusted hinges made Jame flinch, but no guard appeared. Beyond, a corridor lined with more stout doors stretched out ahead of them, its far end curving out of sight. The Kendar looked at Jame expectantly. All she remembered from her dream about Graykin's prison, though, was this stink of decay and Caldane's voice echoing off stone walls.
There was no sound of M'lord now, as surely there would be if he were still kicking Graykin around a cell. Had she been wrong, or were they both somewhere else?
"We'll have to search," she said. "How big is this place?"
"On this level, perhaps two hundred cells, opening off a series of concentric corridors like this one. You pass from one hall to the next through short passageways which double as guardrooms. There are at least a dozen levels above this, extending up into the mound. Below, who knows."
Oh, lord. "We'll have to separate, then."
"Lady, are you sure?"
Jame sighed. "Hardly ever, about anything."
But she didn't call off the hunt, to the cadets' delight and their commander's disgust. The latter sent the former off in pairs, herself going with Rue. That left the two Highborn. Kindrie hadn't spoken since his encounter with the bogles. Jame wondered if he was having second thoughts—much good they would do anyone now.
Jorin was snuffing around the corridor. Unfortunately, he had never met Graykin nor did Jame still have any of the spy's clothes. But she remembered their slightly sour smell. The ounce sneezed twice, then trotted off down the hall. She followed, Kindrie trailing after her.
They went down one curving hall after another, cutting between them by way of the numbered doors, moving toward the core. The whole dungeon seemed to be empty. Caldane must have cleaned it out the previous winter and not yet gotten around to restocking it with prisoners or guards. Cadets began to call back and forth to each other, as if this were all a game. Brier Iron-thorn must be having a fit. But they were out of Jame's way for the moment, which was what she had intended in splitting them up. The fewer to witness her first meeting with Graykin, the better.
However, the cell to which Jorin led them was empty.
Damnation, Jame thought, standing in the middle of it. Now what?
Of course, there was that thread of contact which had first warned her, back in Gothregor, that her servant was in trouble. She hadn't touched it since. After all, sharing awareness with Jorin was one thing, but with this scruffy little half-breed whom she barely knew? Ugh.
Don't be so damn squeamish, she told herself sharply. Why did you come, if not to rescue him? The image of Graykin's thin face rose in her mind's eye. Where are you? she silently asked it. What do you see? What do you feel?
Pain. Intense, obscene, wrenching at shoulders as though to tear the flesh off of them, dragging the skin up around the throat . . . . Hard . . . to breathe. Underfoot, nothing, down and down and down . . . . But to the side, two faces staring, a young Kendar in the background, sick-eyed, eclipsed by Caineron's full moon gloat:
". . . told you I would think of something special. Now dance, puppet, dance . . . ."
Oh god, his fat hands on the wires, jerking them . . . .
Far below, down in the dungeons among the rats, someone screamed.
Jame woke to the echo, cracking off the stone walls around her. She was curled up in a ball on the floor. Her throat hurt.
Kindrie and Jorin had backed away from her into the far corner.
"Backlash," said the healer hoarsely. "Whoever this man is, he's bound to you, isn't he? Isn't he?"
Before she could answer, Brier Iron-thorn came swiftly into the cell, very large and controlled, prepared to be very dangerous. The sheer force of her presence brought Jame lurching to her feet.
"S-scream?" she stammered, in response to the Kendar's sharp question. "What scream? Oh"—remembering the echoes—"that scream."
Now she's going to think I'm a fool, as well as mad. But Graykin . . . .
"He's not here anymore," she said, not very coherently. "Caldane has him up in the tower."
A buzz of excitement rose from the hall, where more cadets had arrived in time to overhear her.
"I can't take you up there," said Jame desperately. "Any of you. This isn't hide-and-seek in the dark anymore. This is Highborn against Kendar . . . and if these innocents don't know what that means, Brier Iron-thorn, I'll bet my boots you do. Think! Torisen doesn't know where we are. If Caldane gets his hands on any of us, he can do anything he wants, and get away with it!"
"Are you going on, lady?"
"I have to."
"Then so do we."
Jame ran a distraught hand through her hair, forgetting that it was under a cap. "My brother is going to skin us all. You know that, don't you? Oh, hell. Caldane will probably beat him to it, anyway."