“‘Patronizing past,’” he muttered as he read to himself. “‘Patronizing past carries forward the same disfavor twisted to new use, for a new master.…’ Dear Creator, I don’t know what it means. Please, let the vision come.”
Clarissa peered out into the darkness as the coach rocked to a stop. Dust hung in the air, their ghostlike escort. A stone fortress rose up just outside the coach’s window. It was dark, and she couldn’t see the whole thing, but what she could see made her heart pound out of control.
She waited, twisting her fingers together, until the soldier opened the door.
“Clarissa,” he whispered. “This is the place.”
Clarissa took his hand as she stepped out into the inky night. “Thank you, Walsh.”
The other one of Nathan’s soldier friends, a man named Bollesdun waited up in the driver’s seat, keeping tight the reins.
“Hurry, now,” Walsh told her. “Nathan said he doesn’t want you in there for more than a few minutes. If anything happens, the two of us aren’t going to be able to fight much of a battle to get you out.”
She knew the truth of that. They had ridden past so many tents that it left her stunned by their numbers. The hoard who had overrun Renwold had been nothing compared to the numbers of men here.
Clarissa pulled up the hood on her cloak. “Don’t you worry, I know better than to dally. Nathan told me what to do.”
She clutched her cloak together in her fist. She had promised Nathan. He had done so much for her. He had saved her life. She would do this for him. She would do this so others wouldn’t die.
As terrified as she was, she would do anything for Nathan. There was no better man in the whole world. No kinder man, no more compassionate, no braver.
Walsh walked beside her as they passed under an iron portcullis, and then into an entryway under a barreled roof. Two brutish guards, wearing hide mantles and hung with grisly-looking weapons, stood beside a hissing torch.
Clarissa kept her cloak tightly drawn and her hood pulled forward. She hung her head so that the guards couldn’t see her face in the shadow. She let Walsh do the talking, as she had been instructed.
Walsh flicked his hand toward her. “The representative of His Excellency’s plenipotentiary, Lord Rahl,” he said in a gruff voice, as if unhappy that this assignment had fallen to him.
The bearded guard grunted. “So I’ve been told.” He lifted a thumb toward the door. “Go on in. Someone is supposed to be waiting for you.”
Walsh adjusted his weapons belt. “Good. I have to drive this one back tonight. Can you believe it? Won’t even let us wait until morning. That Lord Rahl is as demanding as they come.”
The guard grunted, as if he well understood the annoyance of night duty.
“Oh,” Walsh added, as if in afterthought, “Lord Rahl also wanted to know if his representative could pay the Lord Rahl’s respects to His Excellency.”
The guard shrugged. “Sorry. Jagang took out of here this morning. He took most everyone with him. Just left a few behind to mind things.”
Clarissa’s heart sank with disappointment. Nathan had been hoping that Jagang would be here, but he had said that even though he hoped it, Jagang would likely be smarter than that. Jagang wasn’t one to trust his life to the unknown abilities of a wizard as powerful as Nathan.
Walsh took Clarissa’s arm and pushed her on ahead as he gave the guard a good-natured slap on the shoulder. “Thanks.”
“Yea, just go on in down the hall. There’s one of the women waiting there for you. Last I saw her, she was pacing by the second set of torches.”
Walsh and Bollesdun were Imperial Order soldiers, and they had had no trouble with any of the other soldiers, either. Clarissa dreaded to think what would have happened to her without those two the times their coach had been stopped by troops to query its mission. Walsh and Bollesdun also had little trouble ushering her through checkpoints.
Clarissa remembered all too well what happened to the women in Renwold. She still had nightmares about what she had seen happening to Manda Perlin when the Order’s troops captured Renwold. And right there, on the floor beside her murdered husband, Rupert.
Their footsteps echoed as they hurried down the stone corridor. It was a dark, dank, and depressing place. It looked to Clarissa to have no comforts other than a few wooden benches. This was a place for soldiers, not a place for families to live.
As the guard had said, the woman was waiting near the second set of torches.
“Yes,” the woman asked, “what is it?”
As Clarissa came to a stop before the woman, she could see in the torchlight that her face was badly battered. She had horrid-looking cuts and bruises. One side of her lower lip was swollen to twice normal size. Even Walsh moved back a little when he got a good look at her.
“I am to meet Sister Amelia. His Excellency’s plenipotentiary sent me.”
The woman slumped with relief. “Good. I am Sister Amelia. I have the book. I hope never to see it again.”
“His Excellency’s plenipotentiary also told me that I am to pay his respects to an acquaintance of his, Sister Verna. Is she here?”
“Well, I don’t know if I should—”
“If I’m not allowed to see her, His Excellency will be most unhappy when his plenipotentiary reports how his request was so rudely treated by a slave. As a slave myself, serving His Excellency, I can tell you that I will not be the one to take the blame.”
Clarissa felt foolish saying such words, but as Nathan had told her, they seemed to work magic.
Sister Amelia’s eyes fixed on the gold ring through Clarissa’s lip. Her hesitation vanished. “Of course. Please follow me. That is where the book is kept, anyway.”
With Walsh close at her side, and his hand near the hilt of his short sword, Clarissa followed Sister Amelia deeper into the gloomy fortress. They went down a long hall, and then took a turn. Clarissa was paying careful attention as they went, so that if they had to get out fast, she wouldn’t take a wrong route and be caught in here.
Sister Amelia stopped before a door, glancing to Clarissa for just an instant before she lifted the lever and led them in. A woman and a man were in the room, he sitting at a simple plank table, reading a book laid open on the table, and she looking over his shoulder.
The woman glanced up. She was a little older than Clarissa, and attractive, with curly brown hair. She looked to Clarissa to be a woman of authority crushed by humiliation. She looked in agony. Whether it was physical, or emotional, Clarissa didn’t know.
Sister Amelia held out a hand. “This is Verna.”
Verna s
traightened. She had a gold ring in her lip, the same as Sister Amelia, the same as Clarissa. The man, his curly blond hair in disarray, didn’t look up. He seemed frantically absorbed in his book.
“Pleased to meet you,” Clarissa said.
Verna turned back to the man and the book he was studying.
Clarissa pushed back her hood as she turned to Sister Amelia. “The book?”
Sister Amelia bowed. “Of course. It’s right here.”
She scurried to a shelf. The room wasn’t large. One of the stone block walls had a crudely built shelf holding books. There were perhaps no more than a hundred. Nathan had been hoping there would be a great many more. As Nathan had expected, though, Jagang wouldn’t keep many of his prizes together in one place.
Sister Amelia pulled a volume from a shelf and placed it on the table. She looked to be uncomfortable even touching it.
“This is it.”
The cover was as Nathan had described it to her, a strange black that seemed to absorb the light from the room. Clarissa flipped open the cover.
“What are you doing?” Sister Amelia cried out as she stepped closer.
Clarissa looked up. “I was instructed how to make sure it is the right book. Please leave it to me?”
Sister Amelia stepped back, wringing her hands together. “Of course. But I can tell you only too well that it’s the right book. It’s the one His Excellency agreed to.”
Clarissa carefully turned over the first page as Sister Amelia nervously licked her lips. Verna watched from the corner of her eye.
Clarissa reached inside her cloak and pulled out the little leather pouch of powder Nathan had given her. She sprinkled it over the open page. Words began to appear.
Assigned to the Winds by Wizard Ricker.
It was the book she had come for. Nathan hadn’t known the name of the wizard, but he had told her it would say “Assigned to the Winds” and then a name. She flipped the cover closed.
“Sister Amelia, would you leave us for a moment, please?”
The woman bowed and quickly scurried out of the room.