Forest Mage
“Who is running the estate?” I wondered aloud.
“Yaril, by the sound of her letter. She mentions that a Sergeant Duril, her new foreman, was very proud to hear you’d become a soldier. He asked her to send his best wishes along with hers, and to remind you that you’d promised you would write to him.”
And that was when I broke. I lowered my face into my hands and dissolved into tears. Spink was silent, doubtless embarrassed to witness this. I managed to calm myself enough to say, “Spink. You have to find a plausible lie for me. If it’s the last favor you can do for me, please do it. Don’t let any of them know how I died. Not Yaril, not Caulder or my father, not Sergeant Duril. Please. Please.”
“I’ll do what I can,” he replied hoarsely.
I lifted my face in surprise. Tears ran unchecked down his face. He was not a tall man. He stood on tiptoes and thrust his arm into my cell window as far as the bars would allow. “I’d like to shake your hand a final time,” he said.
“I don’t think I can stand up, Spink. I’m hamstrung. Those leg irons cut into my ankle tendons badly.”
He pulled his hand back and peered down at my feet. He narrowed his eyes in sympathy. “Those bastards,” he said with quiet feeling.
“Lieutenant Spinrek! Sir?”
“What is it?” Spink scrubbed angrily at his eyes as he shouted back at the guard. “My time isn’t up yet.”
“No, sir, it isn’t. But you’re wanted right away. All the officers are being called to report. There’s been a disturbance out at the road’s end, some sort of sabotage. And—”
Before the guard could complete his sentence, a muffled explosion shook my cell. The guard gave a yelp of terror. Dust sifted down from the ceiling. A sudden crack ran across the back wall of my cell.
Epiny! I mouthed silently at Spink in horror.
“It couldn’t be,” he said aloud, but I heard the terrified doubt in his mind.
There was a second, smaller explosion. Dust hung in the air now, and I coughed. Spink looked in at me and our eyes met for a last time. “She sent you this,” he said hastily, and vanished for an instant from my sight. Something wrapped in a napkin was thrust through the food slot in the bottom of my door. Then Spink bobbed into sight again. “Farewell, my friend,” he said through the bars, and then he was gone. I listened to the clatter of his boots as he hurried down the hall.
I noticed that he had not said, “Good-bye.” I hoped that he would be in time to whisk Epiny away from the scene of her mischief and get her safely home before anyone knew she was involved. And I wondered, with a sudden hope too sharp to bear, what else had she set in motion?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
SURRENDER
I waited until I heard the door slam behind both Spink and the guard. I could not tear my eyes from the napkin that rested on the floor of my cell. My nose picked up a tantalizing scent emanating from it. I grunted as I leaned forward over my belly and tried to massage my injured legs. It only awoke fresh agony in them. I gave up the thought of standing up and dragged myself over to the door to see what Spink had left. My hands trembled as I carefully unfolded the napkin to reveal a small pastry. I looked at the browned crust sprinkled with sparkling sugar as if I were beholding a treasure chest of jewels. My nose told me that it was stuffed with the forest berries from Epiny’s kerchief. In a transport of joy, I devoured it. There were scarcely three mouthfuls to it, but when I had consumed it, a sense of well-being flushed through me. It muted the pain in my legs. I was tugging at the cuffs of my trousers, trying to see if the magic was healing my injuries, when I heard a peculiar sound.
I looked around, trying to discover its source. The crack in the wall was running. I watched it wander a crazy path across the face of the plaster. Bits of whitewashed plaster popped off and fell to the floor in a dusty shower, revealing the heavy bricks and thick mortar behind it. The engineer in me concluded that the building was resettling after the concussion of the nearby explosion. I decided that either the crack would soon stop, or the whole thing would suddenly give way and fall on me. It was difficult to care about either outcome.
More plaster flaked away. A chunk of mortar fell to the floor and shattered. I sat up and stared at the wall. Near the bottom, a brick shifted out of place as if pushed from behind.
I tried to stand and found that still sent agony shooting up my legs. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I rolled over onto my knees. I crawled to the back wall of my cell and put my ear against it. I heard small sounds, as if hungry mice were at work in the wall. Mice in a wall of mortar and brick, set below ground level? Tiny grindings and popping sounds came from the besieged wall. Plaster popped off the wall near the ceiling, and the crack ran along the top of the wall. At the same time, a dusty stream of mortar drizzled from between two lower rows of bricks. It cascaded down the wall, forming gritty little piles at the bottom of it. Then, as I watched in awe, one brick midway up the wall very slowly began to seesaw its way out of the wall. In fits and starts, it ground its way out from its fellows. When it protruded enough from the wall that I could get a grip on it, I seized it in both my hands and tried to pull it from its niche. It didn’t budge. I let go and moved back to watch. The wall continued to shed crumbs of mortar and bits of plaster in a nearly continuous sprinkling. A second brick wriggled slightly beside the first one. Little grinding noises, pops, and cracks sounded.