Realms of Shadow - Lizz Baldwin [121]
He crept on to the top of the steps, peered through the wall, and surveyed Old Town. If any beauty remained to its burnt and battered houses, he couldn't see it under these conditions, nor did he care. He reckoned he'd come as far as required to give Ajandor a nice anxiety-ridden chase, and now he needed a place to wait for him-somewhere indoors, where no passing shadow would spot him. At the far end of a little plaza stood a cottage, its eaves encrusted with carved roses and its door standing ajar. He scurried to it, ducked inside, found a stool, and sat down behind a window that looked out at the head of the Cormyr Stairs.
Soon, he assured himself, Ajandor would come bustling to the top. The knight would probably be furious when he realized Kevin had tricked him, but it wouldn't matter. The shock of his fosterling's disappearance would still restore him to himself.
Suddenly, a wail of anguish broke into Kevin's imaginings. Unlike all the others he'd heard, this one sounded close by.
Looking in all directions, the squire peered out the window. After a few moments, the source of the noise stumbled into view.
Roped together to form a coffle, a matron with gray curls, two men, and a little girl trudged across the plaza, passing only a few feet from Kevin's vantage point. Slinking around them, shoving and prodding them on, were several of the man-shaped shadows he and Ajandor had fought before. The youth couldn't tell precisely how many. In the darkness, he was lucky to glimpse the shadows at all.
He wondered if the prisoners had still been living somewhere inside the city, or if the shadows had captured them out in the countryside. Not that it mattered. The only thing that did was helping them. But how?
Charge out and attack? Ajandor might have managed it, but he'd been honing a genius for swordplay for forty years. Kevin had been training a modest talent for five.
He doubted he could handle so many of the shadows all at once.
What he could do was follow the shadows and hope that an opportunity to free their captives would present itself. Not that he wanted to. Not only would it be risky, it would mean he likely wouldn't be in position to greet Ajandor if-no, when, curse it-the latter climbed the Cormyr Stairs, but Kevin couldn't see any alternative.
As he waited for the shadows to lengthen their lead, he prayed to Helm for aid and wished he'd given the god the sole silver piece in his purse instead of a measly copper.
It was time to go. He crept out onto the porch, and a plank groaned beneath his foot. He cringed, but the shadows didn't seem to hear, so he slunk on.
The stalking proved to be a nerve-racking business. Kevin was no woodsman or housebreaker, schooled in the art of sneaking soundlessly, and no matter how he tried, he couldn't avoid making little noises, each of which threatened to reveal his presence. Nor could he shake the nagging fear that as he concentrated his attention on the shadows ahead, some other phantom would spot him and take him unawares.
But none did, and eventually the shadows and their coffle led him to a drum-shaped keep notorious throughout Cormyr. When Kevin perceived that it was indeed their destination, he nearly laughed in dismay, because it figured, didn't it?
The ruin-now no more ruinous than the rest of Old Town-had once been the residence of the enchantress Tilvara. According to rumor, it was now home to strange beasts and the restless dead, and hellishly dangerous. Few would-be explorers ever even got past the "Medusa's Garden," the field of statuary in front of the entrance. The figures animated and attacked them.
Though many of the statues lay shattered on the ground, a goodly number remained intact. Still, the shadows and their prisoners passed them unmolested. Maybe they knew the trick of it, or perhaps the tides of battle magic washing through the city had somehow rendered the effigies inert.
The procession vanished through an arched door, and Kevin wondered whether or not to keep