Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [226]
He’d slowed to a fast walk and was growing fearful that he’d missed the passage to the water-filled chamber when a hand closed over his right sleeve. Cauvin struck fast with the Ilbarsi knife.
“Easy! I’m on your side.”
Cauvin recognized Soldt’s voice, but his panic was such that moments passed before he could stop struggling and even then, he couldn’t speak.
“This way.”
Soldt tugged, and Cauvin’s left hand lost contact with the stone around them.
“Left hand,” Cauvin protested, barely coherent. “Left-hand passage.”
“Takes too long. Come on.”
Cauvin resisted. “Bec? Did you see Bec? Did he come this way?”
“Don’t worry about Bec. Vex is with him. The dog won’t let him get lost … or hurt. Now, come!”
Soldt’s temple passage was narrower and steeper and, though every bit as dark, it was somehow easier to follow. When the duelist warned, “Careful here, there are pits in the floor. Keep to the right until you’re past the first, then move quickly to the left—” Cauvin remembered his own explorations and knew they had made it back to the Temple of Ils.
Once topside, Soldt attacked the rope ladder with a boot knife, but Cauvin had a better idea. He rammed his shoulder against the undermined marble column.
“Help me. We can bring it down and seal them in.”
“They’ve got other ways,” Soldt insisted, but he attacked the column from a different angle.
Bits of stone and dirt rained into the pit. Cauvin felt the column begin to shift.
“Once more, Soldt. Once more and run for the Promise. The whole outside wall could follow.”
It didn’t, but several blocks of marble tumbled from the roof piers and followed the column into the pit. Rats and mice could still use the passages to the Hand’s bolt-hole, but larger creatures were sealed out.
Safe on the Promise of Heaven, Cauvin was ready to congratulate himself when Soldt said—
“Your arm’s bleeding.”
Cauvin had forgotten Leorin’s parting gift. His sleeve was slashed and blood-soaked. He’d ruined another shirt. But the gash itself wasn’t serious—just a flesh wound.
“Hang on,” Soldt advised, “I’ll clean it out.” He extracted a leather bottle from a scrip beneath his cloak. “You’d better sit down for this.”
“Not now. I’ve got to get back to the stoneyard. I’ve got to know that Bec’s safe—”
Soldt rapped Cauvin on the breastbone. He staggered, tripped, and wound up where Soldt wanted him: sitting on the weedy steps of the Temple of Ils.
“First things first, lad. Lord Torchholder charged me with keeping you alive, and I’m not about to fail him. The only thing the Hand loves more than blood is poison. It’s second nature to them, like breathing—”
“Leorin didn’t have time to load her knife,” Cauvin protested and started to rise.
Soldt rapped him again. “It wasn’t her knife, she pulled it off the corpse. Sit still. You’re fortunate that I know as much about poisons as the Hand.”
“You saw?”
“I put that arrow through his skull.” Soldt opened his cloak, letting Cauvin see the odd-looking bow slung below his shoulder.
“And the fire arrows?”
Soldt shook his head. “Not mine. Not arrows, either.” He unstoppered the leather bottle with his teeth. “We had help back there.”
“Friends of the Torch?”
“Not hardly,” Soldt snorted. “That fire stank of magic, and I can’t say that Lord Torchholder’s got any friends among the wizards and hazards, but the Hand hunts magi with a special vengeance, and they return the favor. I didn’t think there were any master magi holed up in Sanctuary, then again, I didn’t think there was a nest of Dyareelans under the Temple of Ils, either. Brace yourself, lad—this will sting a bit.”
Frog all, the thick, green ooze Soldt squeezed on Cauvin’s wound did a lot worse than sting. It blackened his flesh and filled his nose with acid