Hand of Fire - Ed Greenwood [47]
After another silence, he added, in a voice so low she had to almost rest her chin on the back of his neck to hear him, "Will you – take me with you, Lady? I'll do anything…"
"I don't doubt that," she whispered back. "Think on this before you ask again, Besmer: We're almost certainly being listened to, right now – and where I'm going, death will be well-nigh inevitable. In truth, it might be safer for you to throw yourself onto Bradraskor's mercies."
There was another silence before he whispered,
"Lady, what are you?"
As if his words had been a cue, the sentinel with the sword stepped back into the passage, said curtly,
"Come,".and whirled back into his side-passage again.
"Lead on, guide," the soft voice said gently in Besmer's ear, and the trembling thief reluctantly stepped into the side-passage.
They'd gone barely six paces before a sword thrust through Sharantyr again. She regarded the sentinel with a raised eyebrow, and he put out his other hand to snatch the cords of her stonemaiden and snapped,
"From here on, you go to see the Master alone.
Leave me your sword – and your dagger, and every other weapon you have."
Sharantyr's strength held the cords immobile despite his strong tug, keeping the suddenly gargling Besmer alive. She looked straight into the sentinel's stony face and said in exact mimicry of his flat tones, "Let go of my cords – or die."
For a long moment they stared at each other, strength straining against strength and the thief staggering and clawing for air, trying desperately to turn around. Sharantyr raised one eyebrow, and the sentinel let go of the stone-maiden, stepped back a pace, and growled, "Surrender your weapons now!"
"I hired this man as a guide," Sharantyr told him calmly, taking her cord from around Besmer's neck and dropping a handful of coins into his hand. Out of habit the thief looked down at them, and she said to him, "I hope those few coins will suffice. If I need a guide again in Scornubel, I know what alley to expect you in."
Besmer stared at her, clenched his hand around the small mound of gold coins that filled his palm – then turned and ran, rubbing at his throat.
The sentinel repeated his demand, and Sharantyr turned back to him, lifted her eyebrow again, and said, "You seem slow to grasp the fact that I take no orders from you or from the Master. To borrow again the phrasing you seem to love so much, stand aside – or die."
The man's face tightened, and he lunged like a trained sword-master, thrusting his blade – through her harmlessly, as before.
Almost lazily Sharantyr swung the stonemaiden. The sentinel's hand darted up to prevent the cords from being looped around his neck, and both stones struck his head from behind, one on either side.
Limply he sagged to the floor of the passage.
Sharantyr sprang over him and walked on.
The passage took a sharp bend, where rusty blades thrust out of the wall to transfix her. She walked through them unscathed, shaking her head, and found herself locking gazes with another man, this one a grim, armored giant. He was more than a head taller than she was, though she overtopped many a man, and almost filled the small, square room the passage emptied into. The passage almost filled one wall of the giant's room, and the other three walls were similarly dominated by doors – all of rusting scraps of salvaged armor, nailed to wood beneath.
The two to either side were closed, but the one straight ahead, beyond the giant, stood invitingly open, onto a passage that turned right to lamplight in the distance.
This hulking guard wore an open-faced helm. What Sharantyr could see of his face was a grotesque, fleshy mask of crisscrossing scars.
She smiled at him and said grandly, "You may introduce me: the Lady Tessaril Winter, here to see the Master of the Shadows."
The response was a slow, sneering introduction of a steel war-axe from behind the giant's back. Sharantyr eyed its wooden haft as he hefted it to the accompaniment of a deep, sinister chuckle, decided she didn't want to have bones broken at every blow, and strode nonchalantly