“It’s the knight!” Corgar cried. “The gate guarder!” He lunged but lacked control over his own feet. Without a thought for their warlord, the goblins flung themselves after the brilliant figure, who darted from the room with the speed of fleeting summer. The goblins loped from the great hall like hounds after a stag.
“Catch him! Catch . . . him . . .” Corgar snarled, each word more muddled than the last. With a growling gurgle, he collapsed across the table, his arms outspread and his jaw slack. His eyes remained open, two luminous orbs of white in the darkness.
The moment Corgar fell, the Chronicler was on his feet, following the chain, hand over hand, until he reached Corgar’s belt. But the lock there would not give.
“Hallo?” A timid voice whispered across the hall. “Chronicler?”
It was Alistair.
“Can’t see a thing in this murk. Watch your step, Mouse! You all right? The room is empty, I believe.”
Of all people, this was possibly the last the Chronicler would have expected. He remembered dimly that Alistair had been absent from Earl Ferox’s funeral. Somehow he must have escaped the turmoil of the day. And now . . . what? It was too absurd! The whole affair was turning into some nightmarish hallucination!
But Corgar was asleep, and the goblins, for the moment, were led away. This might be his only chance.
“I’m here!” His voice, so little used for the last several hours, cracked. “I’m here, m’lord, by the earl’s seat!”
“Chronicler?” Alistair, setting aside his goblin’s spear and shedding the heavy breastplate, waded into the dark of the room, his hands out, leaving Mouse behind by the door. “No one else is here, I trust? It looks empty enough, but I can’t see much.”
“Their leader is here!” the Chronicler said.
“What?” Alistair froze midstep. “In this room?”
“He’s unconscious.” The Chronicler looked again at Corgar’s slack face. Though the muscles were motionless, there was fierceness behind his eyes. “At least, he can’t move. He seems to be under some sort of spell.”
“Ah! The cat-man must have got him. Mouse, where are you?”
Mouse recognized her name and picked her way across the room, following the vague shadow Alistair cast by the dim torchlight. He reached out for her hand, but she ignored him and hastened past to the long table, freezing when she saw Corgar. But she had not endured the last weeks and the last dreadful day for nothing! Calling on reserves of courage she had never known she possessed, she hastened around to the other side of the table where the Chronicler stood, his head barely higher than the board.
“Who are you?” he demanded. Mouse spoke in her strange, fast language, her voice furtive. The Chronicler shook his head, at a loss.
Alistair joined them and said, “We’re here to rescue you. Any ideas how?”
The Chronicler showed his manacled hands. “There must be a key,” he said.
Mouse leapt to Corgar’s side. Though her fingers flinched and her skin crawled at the prospect of touching the goblin—who seemed to be watching her from those luminous eyes—she plunged her hand into the narrow space between his breastplate and his dreadful rock hide. Sure enough, there was a key ring hidden there.
She tossed the key to Alistair, who could scarcely fit it into the lock, his big hands were shaking so hard. But then the manacles fell away, and the Chronicler nearly fell over in his eagerness to be liberated of them. His wrists were raw and bloodied from his efforts to escape, but he did not care. He was free!
The first words out of his mouth were: “We’ve got to find Lady Leta.”
“Leta?” Alistair snorted, not unkindly. “Look, Chronicler, we’ve come to rescue you and propel you into some nonsensical prophecy fulfillment. We have no time to be heroes. We have to save the world!”
“We can’t leave her to these monsters.”
“We haven’t a choice.”
Mouse, her eyes straining in the dark, turned from one young man to the next as they exchanged hushed words. They were arguing. They were standing in the middle of a goblin-infested castle in front of a possibly conscious slavering monster arguing. This was why men were never permitted to speak in the Citadel of the Living Fire! She thought she would scream.
Then Corgar moved, and she did.
14
IMMORTALS NEITHER COUNT THEIR LIVES IN YEARS nor feel the passage of time. Yet somehow I felt the passing of days, and they were slow. I ruled my city with a firm hand. In the place where the Mound had clutched the ground, we built beautiful tombs and in them laid the remains of my father, mother, and brother. Etalpalli grew and prospered, and I made alliances with Faerie lords and ladies of other realms and sat in councils of both war and peace.
I waited for Etanun’s return.
At last he came. Though I spent every day with the beat of his promise in my heart, I was surprised when I saw him climbing the long steps of Omeztli to my throne. I smiled to see him, rose, and offered him my hands.