Fistandantilus Reborn - Douglas Niles [93]
They kept to the rocky ridges above the roadway instead of taking the smooth but easily observed track. Twice they camped on windswept slopes, not daring to build a fire that would have left them vulnerable to discovery.
At the first of these camps, Emilo shared the rest of Mirabeth’s story-at least, as much of it as she had told the kender and that he could remember.
She had been the daughter of the bold Knight of Solamnia, Sir Harold the White. This was a man who had made peace in this portion of Kharolis his personal business. Eventually he had become too great a thorn in the side of Kelryn Darewind, and the bandit lord had exacted revenge in a brutal and murderous attack against the knight’s house.
“I should have guessed it!” Danyal said. “Kelryn Darewind’s men were coming back from those murders when we first ran into them!”
After slaughtering her family, Kelryn had made it clear that he was determined to find and kill the lone surviving daughter of the family. She had been found, by Emilo, as she had said: miserable and alone in the wilderness. Knowing the bandits were about, they had seized on the idea of the disguise, and together they had made the wax ear tips. Emilo had helped her to fashion her long hair into the topknots favored by kender, and Mirabeth herself had known enough about makeup to trace the thin age lines around her eyes and mouth.
The knowledge that her life was forfeit if Kelryn should discover the girl’s identity was further incentive to their rescue attempt. This awareness caused Danyal to toss and turn miserably through each interminable night, terrified that Mirabeth’s disguise would be penetrated by the shrewd villain. He could only hope that she had been able to use her hair or some other means to disguise the real shape of her ear.
On the second night of their pursuit, Emilo suffered from another attack, a seizure like the one that had claimed him on the night of their rescue on the road. Dan and Foryth tried to keep the kender comfortable as he thrashed on the ground and finally went rigid. Again he had awakened with little memory of their surroundings, though during the course of this last day, Emilo’s awareness had slowly returned.
Finally their cautious approach brought them into sight of their goal.
The manor house rose like a small peak from the crest of what was, in fact, a full-sized mountain. A single tower of stone thrust high above the walls, and several peaked roofs were visible over the ramparts. Still, most of the structure was lost behind the steep barriers that enclosed the major portion of the mountaintop, giving the place the look of a small but formidable castle.
Danyal and his two companions looked up at the place from a neighboring ridge, and they immediately started to look for the best way to approach the place.
Only as they were discarding options and proposing others did the lad realize that a week earlier he would have been filled with despair at the prospect of approaching-not to mention entering!-such a fortress. Yet now the challenge simply reinforced his sense of grim determination, fanning the embers of hate that now burned steadily just below the surface of his awareness.
“That bridge looks like the only way to get up to the place,” Danyal said, pointing to an arched span that crossed a steep-sided gully separating Loreloch’s summit from a neighboring elevation.
The manor itself was a surrounded by smooth walls, though many small, rude cottages were clustered on the outside of the compound. Some of these were perched at the very edge of the precipitous slope, while others lined the narrow lane that led from the bridge to the front gates, currently shut, of the imposing edifice.
“Once we’re across, we’ll have to find some way other than the front gate to get inside there,” Emilo noted.
“Maybe they left the scullery door open,” Foryth suggested. When Danyal looked skeptical, he added an explanation. “It