Depths of Madness - Erik Scott De Bie [3]
Twilight ran down the hall, her eyes darting back and forth for signs of an ambush. She felt unusually light on her feet and faster for it.
Good. Unarmed, she could not fight an attacker. Evasion, subtlety, and attention-her own, and not that of her enemies- were her three best allies for now. The shadows further comforted her, like the mother's caress she had long forsaken, or the arms of a loving god-if such a thing existed. Outside the confines of the mage cell, a brief shadowdance just might be possible.
The corridor, perhaps a spearcast in length, curved and snaked off to other cells. Some contained enough space for a dozen prisoners, some only enough for one or two.
For political prisoners, she guessed, or mages. She remembered the anti-magic field in her own cell. She hadn't been able to feel it, but that confirmed its presence.
Twilight had known many disciplinary facilities-what some called dungeons-in her day, but none shaped like this, with its twisting and curling corridors. What maniac had imagined such atrocious architecture? Most elves would have blamed a dwarf, but Twilight was not most elves. Who had built this place?
These questions made it easier-easier not to think about being alone, weaponless, and nearly naked in a dark prison, and when-that troll caught her…
Twilight saw no other guards. Four small cells were shut, all of them dark-she guessed they held prisoners. Twilight passed them by. She had her priorities.
At the end of the corridor, she came to a chamber whose smell told her, beyond a doubt, that she had discovered the fiendish troll's lair. It had once been a torture room, she decided upon seeing the rusty knives, moldy rack, and pitted cauldron meant for boiling oil. The withered devices seemed relics of an ancient age.
"Years pass," she murmured, "methods of conversation remain the same."
She noticed a creature of darkness and dived behind the cauldron. She listened, tense, but the only sounds she heard were of a furious troll bashing on cell bars.
After a heartbeat, Twilight sniffed. An onyx griffin crouched in the center of the room. Its features appeared mad, making it all the more frightening, but it was only stone.
"Interesting taste," Twilight said.
A stout chest lay nestled under the onyx griffin's claws- locked, of course. Casting about for tools, Twilight wrenched a rusty blade from an unpleasant looking harness. Crude, but she had worked with worse. And if her guess about the chest's contents was correct, this was the only lock she would be picking with an iron shard.
Though really, she thought, what are the chances?
It didn't matter. She had to have the Shroud.
Twilight bent to work on the chest and her delicate ears picked up the jangling of keys-telltale sound of a troll getting smart. If she lingered a heartbeat longer, she would be caught, and it would almost be worth it. But she wasn't certain about the chest, so she made the logical decision.
It was not easy, though-she wasn't sure she didn't prefer death.
With a wince and an oath, Twilight left the chest and dived into the shadows. She concealed the rusty spike along her forearm-it might prove useful.
As soon as she reentered the curving corridor, Twilight grimaced. She saw the troll fumbling with a thick key ring to get the padlock open. She couldn't dance back into a room that forbade magic, and she would never slip past a cautious troll.
Not without her other powers-powers he had taught her.
Though it twisted in her gut like a serrate blade, Twilight knew it was necessary. A creature of pragmatism, she could not let personal anger interfere with survival, no matter how much it vexed her.
But without the Shroud, it made her nervous.
"Chameleon watch my comings and my goings," she murmured. "Take my hand and guide me through the darkness."
With the words came a feeling the Fox-at-Twilight knew only too well. A cool mantle of power-like the shadows, but teasing her every nerve-settled over her. It would vanish in the anti-magic field, but