Arutha pointed.
Captain Subai motioned and the man behind him signaled. Another man pointed and nodded. He then started searching in the indicated area. The progress over the mountains had been slow, as the men on foot could cover only between ten and fifteen miles a day. But they were now in sight of the base of the mountain atop which perched the former Abbey of Sarth.
Three scouts were moving along the difficult trail, moving up tiny gullies worn by rainwater, small game tracks, anything that might lead to the entrance. They were looking for a large extrusion of rock that overlapped the face of the mountain, yet behind which was a long narrow passage, leading to the entrance to the tunnel under the abbey. Arutha remembered his father telling him that unless you were looking right at the entrance, end-on to the extrusion, you would only see what looked like mountainside.
They had been searching for days and had twice almost come into contact with Nordan’s patrols. Only the fact that Arutha and Dominic were accompanied by the best woodsmen and trail scouts in the Kingdom kept them undetected. There were only six of them in this party. The one hundred and twenty Pathfinders and Crimson Eagles who were given the responsibility for taking the abbey waited miles away, in a tiny valley, just beyond the range of invader patrols.
Arutha took a drink of water from the skin he carried. The summer heat was oppressive, yet they could not tarry. His father had mentioned several other landmarks, but nothing in the area remotely looked like those features. The large oak may have burned in a fire, or been harvested for lumber. The three rocks piled one atop the other may have fallen, due to rain or an earthquake. After all, it had been over fifty years ago. Then a whistle alerted Arutha that someone had found something. He hurried to where Subai stood and saw a man below the Captain. He had jumped down into a depression where all but his head was hidden by brush; he would be invisible from the trail. Arutha glanced around and his eyes caught sight of a large oak tree, masked by other, younger trees, but directly opposite his position. He turned and saw a large boulder, the size of a wagon, and at the base were two others—instantly he knew. “We’ve found it!” he said quietly to Subai.
Arutha motioned to where Dominic stood and jumped down to stand behind the soldier. “There’s something on the other side of this brush, Your Grace,” said the soldier.
Without saying anything, Arutha took out his sword and started hacking away the brush. The soldier hesitated a moment, then pulled out his own. By the time Dominic arrived, they had cleared away a significant portion of the undergrowth. Behind the cleared brush was a passage. Arutha knew it was the place his father had described, because from end-on, it did indeed look like a hallway, between the face of the cliff and a wall of rock. To Captain Subai, he said, “Wait here until Dominic and I find the entrance.”
The cleric and the Duke entered the narrow passage, which ran a full hundred yards along the face of the mountain. At the end, to their left, a cave large enough for one man to enter could be seen. Arutha said, “If this was discovered, it is as easy to defend as the access above.”
Dominic looked into the darkness. “It is natural, but it has been ‘improved’ by the Brothers of Ishap. Notice, it’s wide enough that a monk carrying books or pulling a hand-cart can negotiate the turn, but there’s not enough room to turn a ram to break down the door.”
“What door?”
Dominic closed his eyes, chanted almost silently, then held up his hand. A nimbus of pale yellow light grew from his hand, casting enough illumination that Arutha could see a large oak door ten feet inside the entrance of the cave. It was without latch or lock. Across it three large iron bands showed it was heavily reinforced. Arutha said, “You’re right. You’d need a heavy ram to knock that down, and there’s no room here to swing it.”
Dominic said, “The latch—”
Arutha said, “Indulge me a moment.”
He inspected the area, running his hand above a ledge, and then below another, and over the surface of the door. Finally he said, “My father told me stories of his days as a thief. Often I imagined myself in his shoes, doing just this sort of thing, attempting to enter somewhere I was not welcome. I wondered if I would be equal to the task.” He knelt and inspected the ground before the door. Off to one side, a small rock lay nestled against the overhanging stone wall. Arutha reached for the rock.
“I wouldn’t do that,” said Dominic.