The Doom of Kings_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [21]
The window was well above the nearest level surface. She had to twist around and lower herself down, then drop the last couple of feet. She tried to do it as silently as possible, but she still landed with a soft thump. She froze in a crouch, not even breathing, and listened again. Everything was quiet. Too quiet. Ashi scowled. Her drop had alerted the thief. He was listening now, too. She waited.
Her patience was rewarded. Somewhere in the memorial, not too close, leather creaked as thief moved again. Ashi let out her breath. She hadn’t been discovered. She rose from her crouch, remembering everything she could of the memorial layout from her previous visit.
The interior of the memorial was open, with two galleries rising above the ground floor. She stood on the second gallery. A shrine dedicated to Dol Arrah and Dol Dorn, the martial gods of honor and strength, stood in the very center of the ground floor, the focal point of the memorial. Spread out around the ground floor and lining the walls of both galleries, however, were the real reason the memorial’s few visitors might come: cabinet upon glass-fronted display cabinet of trophies taken during the campaign and of relics commemorating the fallen. Arching over the whole was a vaulted ceiling painted with an age-darkened image of what might have been the greatest battle of the campaign but to Ashi had looked like any other chaotic battlefield.
By night, however, the painted ceiling was completely lost in shadow, along with most of the cabinets. The only light in the memorial came from four candles lit with magical cold fire on the shrine far below, supplemented by dim shafts of silver moonlight penetrating the windows on two walls of the building. Ashi had hunted by night before, however. It was enough light for her. She scanned the gallery for any signs of movement, but there were none. The creak of leather had come from below. Ashi walked to the edge of the gallery and peered down.
CHAPTER
FOUR
Moonlight fell across the stairs leading from the lower gallery down to the main floor. As Ashi watched, a figure moved through the patch of brightness. The pale light drained color and detail, but she could make out that the thief was tall and lean, wearing dark leathers and with a hood pulled up over his head. Down the stairs and onto the ground floor, he skirted the shrine and vanished again into the shadows. Ashi stepped back and made her way to the stairs as well, moving slowly and carefully to avoid stumbling over anything in the darkness. On the lower gallery, she paused again, assessing her options. She could just make out the thief as an indistinct figure moving from cabinet to cabinet as if looking for something inside one of them.
The thief had no light—if he was examining the contents of the cabinets, he must have had some magic or natural ability allowing him to see in the dark. She would be at a disadvantage in the deeper shadows. She needed to get the thief into better light. Approaching across the ground floor would put her in danger of being spotted, either as she crept around the dim perimeter or as she crossed the open center through the candlelight of the shrine.
But there was another way. She left the stairs and crossed along the gallery in the direction of the thief, taking care to stay well back from the gallery’s edge. She was partway around the gallery, almost above the place where she had seen the thief, when she heard a soft murmur of satisfaction from below. The thief had found whatever he was looking for. Ashi paused and heard the scratching of metal on metal. He was trying to open the lock on a cabinet. She moved back to the rail of the gallery, then oriented herself on the thin sound. When she judged she was nearly