The Sleeping God (The Disinherited Prince Series Book 4) Page 9

  He stopped and used his location sense to look into the park. There were dots slowly moving throughout area. Pol decided to climb a tree and follow a few. From their movements, he detected sharp turns that indicated avoidance of certain areas. Pol memorized their actions and saw the patterns of pathways that the patrols duplicated. He was high above the ground when a two-man patrol walked underneath him.

  Pol dropped to the ground and began to follow them. Each had a magician’s light. Pol used his power to amplify his vision and watched each step as they traveled. They walked over obstacles and around others. At one point they bent down and shuffled under another.

  What were they avoiding? Pol thought. He stopped where they had bent down and detected a faint ward glowing to his magical senses on a branch. He looked harder to find it wasn’t an ordinary branch but an artificial thing.

  He continued on, and now that he knew what to look for, he found the pathway of the patrol littered with wards and carefully followed them, since there might be physical traps that they avoided.

  Pol worried about the time, but he finally came to a wide, torch-lit area around the Hole. The guards continued on towards a large guardhouse. It looked big enough to house at least one hundred men. Pol stood in the shadows of the torchlight and observed a guard change at the hole.

  Guards wheeled out an apparatus. It looked like more like the device used to raise and lower a bucket into a well, but much larger. A wooden cage hung from the thick rope that wound around a pulley with handles on both sides. A guard entered the cage. Pol didn’t see any weapons.

  Two guards climbed up onto platforms on each side and used the cranks to lower the guard down into the hole. A few minutes later, they raised the platform with a different man carrying another sack, and then they wheeled the apparatus to the guardhouse.

  Pol had to shake his head at the elaborate security measures. Surely the Pontifer didn’t need such a thing, but that just showed the ruler’s twisted mind. How many others had tried to save other young women? He had no respect for Botarra’s ruler after seeing the Hole, built solely to break the wills of the Pontifer’s victims.

  He didn’t notice any traps around the Hole itself, but there were two guards looking out the guardhouse window at the Hole, and there were constant patrols through the park. Pol had no idea what security measures were in place on and around the road the led to the outside.

  Trying to take the Hole by force would take a lot of men. He tweaked invisibility and carefully walked across the field, following the patrol’s footsteps. Once he reached the guardhouse, he used the same pathway to the Hole itself. Pol would take no chances of traps built beneath the dead grass or on the paving stones that the guards hadn’t walked on.

  He leaned over the edge and looked into the Hole. It didn’t look like a prison below. Pol knew he shouldn’t spend any time at the entrance and tweaked a cushion of air above the Hole and stepped on it. He slowly decreased the thickness of the cushion and descended to a small reception area.

  No guard greeted him. Ceria said that the place had been remodeled, and she never did have a good idea of where she was in the first place. He looked up. The surface was a bit higher than ten feet above him. Getting out would be a spur of the moment thing. If he had to, he could tweak the rock and break out through the stone in a cell, although he had no idea how much that would drain his magical reserves.

  There were two corridors leading away from the reception area. He went to the one on his left and began to look for Shira. None of the doors were locked, and he opened them on empty rooms. Examination couches were in the center of a few rooms with stains on the leather covers.

  He clung to the side of the wall as three armed guards and two civilian men entered the corridor. The two men carried satchels. It all seemed so surreal. Pol knew that bad things happened down here, but his imagination didn’t provide him with any idea of how those bad things were carried out.

  He peeked in the room the men left. Bunks for eight lined the walls. Another door led to a latrine. One side of the room seemed to be dedicated to food preparation. Crocks of ale stood upright with wooden spigots. The consumable items were all made out of pottery or wood. Pol looked at a wooden box filled with garbage, but one of the ale crocks had broken. Pol picked up five of the smaller shards. They would do more internal damage than the wooden dowels that he carried.

  So at most eight guards, Pol thought. If there were no other rooms, he didn’t face too many men. His heart began to pound. Pol didn’t feel like he was over his head, but suddenly the risk of his actions seemed greater than it had when he left the inn hours ago.

  He exited the room and found nothing else of note. The cells for the women must have been along the other corridor. He was glad he found the guard room first, if for nothing else than the shards that he carried.

  He heard voices in the reception area and observed that is was now manned by a guard sitting at a small desk. Pol guessed that with the changing of the guard, the men might have shared a meal. He wondered how often the guards changed. The longer the better, as far as he was concerned.

  Pol put the guard to sleep and made his way into the other corridor. These doors had locks. Pol undid one and cracked open the door. A woman in a ragged shift slept on straw strewn on the stone floor in the dark. She faced away from Pol, but she definitely wasn’t Shira.

  He heard voices in another room. The door wasn’t fully closed. Pol heard men laughing and a woman crying. One of the civilian men told the woman how insignificant her life was. As he continued to berate her, the woman’s crying turned into sobs.

  The two civilians and two of the guards were on the floor. As far as Pol knew, they might be the only others left. Pol didn’t recognize the woman’s face. He quickly opened the rest of the doors along the corridor and found a bedroom with two beds, probably for the civilian men.

  The last door revealed a large ornate room with a huge bed. Perhaps when the women were fully broken, the Pontifer used this room to welcome the victim into his harem.

  Pol began to lock up the doors again. Shira wasn’t here. He bit his lip in frustration. Could it be possible that she had been broken on her trip from Demina? His legs weakened with emotion, and he sat down on his haunches with his back against the wall and looked up at the stone ceiling.

  Getting into the Hole had been too easy for him, and now he paid for his success with failure. He shook his head and wiped damp eyes. He had to leave before the men awoke.

  Looking up at the hole in the ceiling, Pol tweaked an air cushion and instead of letting out air, he tweaked air into it. He rose up from the floor until he stood at ground level. He jumped off the cushion, past the stone apron. The bag of air kept floating into the sky. Creating the air bag weakened Pol, but he had to maintain his invisibility.

  Being as careful as he could, he staggered to the edge of the trees of the park and stared at the Hole. He would have to go to Tunna and find a way to get Shira out of the Pontifer’s castle. Pol didn’t know how they could have traveled any faster without killing their horses. Perhaps the Pontifer had teams ready to ride all day and all night to beat them here.

  Pol didn’t know how long he sat against a tree and gazed dejectedly at the Hole. He blinked his eyes open from dozing when he heard horses approach. The brief respite had given him a chance to recuperate. A supply wagon entered into the open area that surrounded the Hole, followed by a single carriage. Pol watched the guards help unload the wagon. Once unloaded, it drove off. The carriage driver waited patiently and drove up to the guardhouse.

  The driver dismounted and opened the door to the carriage. A woman disembarked, and then turned towards the door to help a dark-haired girl dressed in a single shift down from the carriage. Pol hadn’t been late; he’d been early!

  Shira stumbled down from the single step and fell to her knees. Her head waved back and forth, obviously disoriented. The woman helped her to the opening while guards wheeled the apparatus towards the Hole.
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  Pol checked his invisibility and hurried across the dead grass to Shira’s side and held onto her from the opposite side of the woman. He took a deep breath and tweaked a blast of air, pushing the woman towards the Hole. She must have had something metallic on her and Pol saw a stone move followed by the swish of a blade that impaled the woman midway through the opening.

  Guards shouted, and Pol expanded his invisibility to cover Shira while attention was on the Hole. Everyone looked over the edge.

  Pol said, “Both women fell,” in Botarran as he took Shira into the woods.

  She couldn’t stand on her own, so Pol had to help her through the forest, looking for traps and wards. He tweaked tiny eddies of wind to cover Shira’s tracks. Constantly afraid of missing a trap, Pol finally reached the end of the park.

  He looked around and couldn’t identify where Fadden might be.

  “Shira, I’ve got you,” he said.

  She mumbled Shinkyan words and didn’t recognize him. Pol began to walk around the park until he finally spotted the hill where Fadden hid. His strength was about gone when he finally reached the ex-Seeker.

  “How broken is she?”

  Pol shook his head. “We weren’t late; we were early. She arrived after I went down into the Hole. It’s a hornets’ nest right now.”

  Fadden looked at Shira’s half-closed eyes. “She’s in no condition to ride.”

  “No, but that’s what Shira is going to do,” Pol said as he stripped off his pack. “Let’s get these dark clothes on her. We’ll have to bind her to the saddle.”

  As he put the clothes on her, Pol found that she wore nothing beneath the shift. Anger boiled within him, directed at Pontifer Terria, but Pol knew he was powerless against the monarch.

  Fadden helped Pol secure her to the horse, and they escaped to the north.

  ~~~

  Chapter Eleven

  ~

  Dawn began to lighten the horizon when they reached the others. Pol and Fadden stopped with Shira. Paki and Kell helped exchange horses.

  “She was mistreated,” Ceria said.

  “Drugged. I got to her before she went down into the Hole.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be able to find her there.”

  “I found two other women,” Pol said

  “You went in and came out?”

  Pol nodded to Ceria. “The woods are filled with traps and magical wards. It took a long time to get through them. I just followed two patrolling guards in. Shira arrived after I did.”

  “You must leave, now,” Fadden said to the innkeeper.

  Ceria gave them all a curt nod, and she left with four other men on the horses that Pol and his group had ridden in Botarra.

  “Shira is in no condition to cover tracks,” Pol said as he began to tweak the surface of the ground. He had to be careful to leave the tracks of their former horses.

  They mounted and headed west, back towards where they had come. Fadden kept them away from Ceria’s village. Pol followed behind, blurring the tracks to make them look older. Finally they found a well-traveled road heading south. Farmers and merchants were already up, traveling to their destinations, and their tracks would hide their escape.

  They stopped at a turnoff to a farm.

  “I know these people,” Fadden said. “She needs rest, and you do, too,” he said to Pol.

  Pol had to agree, but he carefully hid the hoof prints of their horses as they headed towards a farmhouse in the distance. The sun was well up from the horizon when Fadden knocked on the door.

  “Silvio!” Fadden called.

  An old man opened the door. “Fadden!” He continued in Botarran spoken so fast and in a dialect so thick that Pol had no idea what he said.

  “Bring her in,” Fadden said.

  Paki and Kell carried Shira to a chair. She was awake enough to look at her surroundings. The man’s wife offered Shira some tea, but had to help her drink it. She drank it all, and then fell asleep as soon as she finished.

  “You need some sleep and some food,” Fadden said to Pol. He turned to the old woman and spoke in the same dialect. Pol could catch a few words of Fadden’s slower speech pattern.

  Soon, with his stomach filled with a sweet porridge, Pol stretched out on the floor.

  ~

  “Pol,” Fadden said, gently shaking his shoulder. “We must be off. Shira is awake.”

  Pol sat up. “Shira? How is she?”

  “You can ask her over here,” Shira said. She wore the riding clothes she had brought with her from Boxall.

  She looked at him through angry eyes. “I don’t want to talk about anything, but we need to ride.”

  “Do you feel okay?”

  “Do I look okay?” she said. Pol noticed dark circles underneath her eyes, and they still drooped a bit.

  “Can you do any magic?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll not try until I feel better. My head is pounding, and my body feels like it has been run over.”

  Pol nodded. She was reacting to the cessation of the drug they used, he thought. Searl had felt the same way, only a lot, lot worse.

  “I feel better, anyway,” Pol said.

  That would have earned a poke or a pinch normally, but this time Shira only sighed.

  They mounted their horses, and each had a sack of food and full water skins when they took off. They now also had a packhorse loaded with sleeping blankets and whatever else Fadden had managed to scrounge from his friend.

  “One more thing,” Pol said. He stepped over to Shira and lightened her hair to a brown color and applied the same color to his own hair.

  Paki looked at them. “You could nearly pass for brother and sister,” he said, “if it wasn’t for that sharp nose of yours.”

  Pol growled. “I’ll flatten yours if you don’t keep your mouth shut.” But then he grinned at Paki, who playfully shoved Pol towards his horse.

  “Can you ride, sister?” Pol said.

  Shira nodded wearily. “I don’t have a choice, do I? The Pontifer will have the roads covered with soldiers before long.”

  “I doubt it,” Fadden said. “We took measures to draw them away from our escape. We’re headed south.”

  “But we’re going to Fassin,” Shira said, looking a bit confused.

  “We’ll be taking a longer, but safer way,” Fadden said.

  ~

  Fadden returned from the docks of the small town of Briazza. Pol paced the length of the common room. Shira, still not over the effects of days being drugged, rested upstairs in her room.

  “I’ve got us booked on a small Fistyran merchantman headed for Bastiz. The shipping lanes are a little empty this time of year, but we got lucky. It has a cargo of hides. Briazza even has a leather named after the craftsmen in this town.”

  “No word on pursuit?”

  The ex-Seeker shook his head. “None at all, and my contacts are still active in Botarra.”

  “Then we endure a few weeks at sea—”

  “Twenty-five days, if the weather is average,” Fadden said. “There are two Botarran ports of call and another in Fistyra, so there will be a respite along the way.”

  “Twenty-five days!” Kell said.

  Paki didn’t look much more excited. “I hadn’t planned on floating to Fassin, Pol.”

  “I didn’t either, but I’d rather fight seasickness than the Pontifer’s Hounds,” Pol said.

  “I agree,” Fadden said. “The boat leaves at midday tomorrow. Eat fresh food while you can.”

  “In the meantime, I can get a little digesting in before I feed the fishies,” Paki said.

  They ate a large lunch and dinner, but in the morning, Pol followed Fadden’s advice and drank plenty of water, but had a light breakfast. Shira had been picking at her food all the way from Tunna, and he didn’t blame her. She walked slowly, listlessly, he thought. The circles under her eyes hadn’t lightened very much, but she seemed to be a bit more talkative on the way to the ship that would take them out of Botarr
a.

  “This country is definitely not on my list to return,” she said.

  “You have countries that you’d see again?”

  She gave Pol a weak smile. “I’d like to visit Queen Isa. So South Salvan is on my list. So far, I have no desire to return to Volia.”

  “Maybe we can add a country before we leave.”

  She shook her head. “I doubt it.”

  Shira didn’t say another word before they were underway. Pol stood next to her as she watched Briazza dwindle in the distance. The ship plunged into a cold fog bank, and the Volian continent disappeared.

  “I wish I were on my way back to Shinkya,” she said.

  Pol looked at her tired eyes. “I wish we were, too. Perhaps Fadden should have sought a ship heading to Port Molla, where we first landed.”

  “I asked him before he went searching. The tides aren’t right this time of year. It’s a long, hard passage, and there won’t be a ship going west for over a month.”

  Pol shook his head, feeling plenty of guilt. “I’m sorry about that. I’d take you to Shinkya, if that’s what you need.”

  She looked deeply into his eyes. “Would you? It’s getting to Fassin that drives you, isn’t it?”

  “That is my goal, but goals can change,” Pol said. He wondered if he really would abandon his quest to find his ancestors. He didn’t know.

  “It would be the death of our relationship,” Shira said. “You’d never forgive me.”

  “Can we survive the trip to Fassin?”

  Shira turned away. “I don’t know. That is our path now, like it or not.”

  Pol wished she would open up about her experience on the road from Demina to Tunna, but he wondered how much she would really remember. He decided to say nothing more. She hurt, and Pol didn’t want to make matters worse. He didn’t even know if standing by her helped.

  “I’m going to my cabin,” Shira said.

  That answered Pol’s question. She needed more time. He wished they could recover some of the fun they had together. He found that he missed the bruises.

  ~

  The fog dogged their progress until just after dawn on the third day when they broke out into a bright sunny morning. Pol didn’t mind the chill wind if he could point his face towards the sun and feel its heat. Shira hadn’t spent much time on deck, but Pol had helped the sailors work and sparred with Fadden, who claimed he was rusty with a sword. He didn’t seem too rusty to Pol. Kell joined in from time to time, but Paki had the most delicate of stomachs, and when he joined them on deck, he hugged the rail.