A million questions sprang to Merrin's lips, but remembering Feldwar's actions she decided that at this point movement was likely more productive. A glance around them showed nothing of interest - or more specifically so, that they were not noticed by anyone who might prohibit their sudden departure. "How soon is now?" she demanded under her breath, moving toward the doors through standing nobles with him in tow as though they were merely a couple departing early. "My clothes - my sword - still up in our rooms."

What had they found out since she'd left? - perhaps Garthag had imparted some valuable knowledge. Merrin's mind raced...she couldn't think what would have spurred on this sudden alarm...and a regretful thought of that bedchamber joined the myriad others. She had to grin at herself, but it only lasted for the space of a moment. There were guards in the chamber beyond, the candlelit entrance hall...

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Kendath simultaneously nodded and shook his head. His hand still on her shoulder, he steered her into the antechamber, pausing to nod curtly at the stationed guards. On the carpeted stairs he spared breath for one word: "Shadowers."

The laundry maids were quick, he gave them that. A return to his chambers upstairs revealed a markedly cleaner state of his armor, all hidden daggers accounted for, laid out on the bed. He suspected magical means. No serving wench, no matter how skilled, could air leather in four hours. He swiftly threw the maroon vestments on the rug in exchange for his usual attire. Leaving his ceremonial cape on, he grabbed his knapsack and stuffed his black cloak inside. By casual glance he'd still appear the nobleman he wasn't.

On his way out, the dancing unicorn in the music box also found missing its ruby diadem. On his rethinking his options and retracing his steps, the music box found itself out of the room entirely.

Torchlight from the brass sconces illuminated the tapestried corridor, empty both ways. Most of the guards were taking a holiday downstairs. By daybreak, unfortunate Feldwar would have a hundred hungover soldiers on his hands. Kendath stepped lightly anyway and met Merrin, Garthag, and Evlyn on the corner.

"I've set up the east courtyard," he breathed, taking the lead. Merrin still looked bewildered, but that couldn't be helped. He'd have to explain once they were out.

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Merrin slung her own pack over her shoulders, feeling the unfamiliar lump of her cloak inside it. Even her silver-grey garb showed too well in the darkness, and the slight shimmer of her cloak would have not helped their cause. She was almost surprised at herself that she'd thought to take it off, not being one who generally remembered such details in a situation such as this.

East courtyard. Merrin cast a glance up at Kendath, wondering just what he'd done to set it up. For that matter, she still didn't know why they were leaving with such alacrity. But the unnatural quiet - not to mention Kendath's set expression - indicated that discussion was best left till they were safely away.

Such was the quiet that Merrin jumped a foot in the air when thunder cracked outside, seemingly above their heads. Walking past a row of arched windows she could see brief flashes on the horizon now, and sucked in an unsteady breath to convince herself she hadn't been that startled.

Rain was gathering in puddles in the east courtyard when they arrived, coming down with increasing intensity. Merrin paused at the doorway, shooting Kendath an anxious look. How on earth would they not be discovered?

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Thunder pealed overhead, accompanied by a flash of lightning that illuminated the slick flagstones and sculpted benches. On a sunnier day the carefully gardens themselves might have rendered any peachy noble awestruck. But it wasn't as though Kendath had an aesthetic sense as he took wary steps into the courtyard, keeping to the shadow of the stone wall behind him. Beckoning towards the others, he blinked rainwater from his eyes and squinted at the crenellated walls enclosing them. Sentries - veiled in rain, silhouetted by the brief flashes of lightning - patrolled the battlements.

That same lightning blinded Kendath time and time again as his vision tried to inure to the darkness. His gaze alighted - finally - on a tendril of something hanging from the far wall. Still pressing against the stone behind him, he drew his hood over his head and inched around the courtyard's perimeter.

Copses of flowering trees placed in strategic convenience provided concealment as they darted from one copse to the next. The icy, driving rain instantly soaked through his cape's thin fabric. He would have shivered, but his every muscle was taut with heightened awareness. The sentries had but to look twice at the four figures flitting about the courtyard below. One cry was all it took, though in this tempest they might need two cries. The storm, stymieing vision and hearing, was proving to be a valuable asset.

At last they reached the far wall. Kendath grasped the thing he'd spotted earlier, which revealed itself to be a thick rope punctuated with knots. He gave it an experimental tug. The grappling hook held. He squinted at the battlements above. A single sentry lounged against the nearest guard tower. Upon closer observation, one could note that this sentinel didn't move at all - not even to breathe.

He held up a hand to the others and, grasping the first knot, began shinning up the rope. He almost fell twice that thirty feet, for the water had rendered the hemp slippery. His palms were raw and bleeding by the time he vaulted over the crenellations to land on the top of the wall.

No live sentries approaching. Yet.

Evlyn came next, making it relatively unscathed. Kendath peered over the edge for the next in line, Merrin. He stood braced there, ready to lend her hand once she neared the top.

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Merrin was shivering violently by the time they made it to the foot of the rope, and it was only her clenched jaw that kept her teeth from chattering as well. Squinting up through the rain, she could just barely see twin figures at the top of the wall, dark against a marginally darker sky.

Her first fistful of wet rope slipped. Merrin wound her fingers tighter, wondering in some trepidation if she'd have much skin left on them at the top.

Her teeth didn't chatter on the way up, either, though that was likely because every time her grip faltered the set of her jaw seemed to increase. Merrin felt tense all over by the time she made it, and her grip on Kendath's hand was much harder than it generally would have been. The battlements were no less slippery, especially considering the gusts of wind that seemed to have neither rhyme nor reason.

Merrin had just begun to make herself relax - though with this came a certain amount of halfway suppressed teeth-chattering - when she came unpleasantly upon the ominously still guard with a hastily muffled squeak and shot Kendath a reproachful look that he likely didn't notice.

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With a deep sighed Garthag arrived to the edge of the battlements afte having darted around the courtyard, he did not come to rely on the rope that Merrin and Kendath had exploited, but levitated up like a feather in the wind. It was one of the few things he was thankful that he could still perform with relative ease, but then again he cursed at the memory of his old capabilities. Every time he looked back it felt as, if he had been amputated, but none of his limbs were missing, only his magic.

A sharp snap of his fingers and he was no longer there, gone with the wind and melded into the shadows. From this particular point on eliminating the guards around the battlements would prove child`s play, Garthag`s drew his dagger that would have glimmered in the rain had it been seen by anyone. A short stab and the deed was done, the guard fell forwards, blood flowing from his throat after the dagger blade had pierced his neck. There was no room in the guard`s lungs to shout an alarm, only desperate gasping for air as his own blood filled them. Garthag`s spun the dagger between his fingers with a grim smile upon his face before wiping the blade against the guards clothes.

Garthag took a peak down from the battlements and then gazed back towards his always fledgling companions. Kendath was going to require more rope, but Garthag at least knew he didn`t it.

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Evlyn had fallan back into silance since Garthag had been so cutting. How was she to know they already knew everything. She watched unmoveingly as Garthag killed the remaining gaurds.

He returned; "You didn't have to kill them you know, you could have just knocked them out." she looked startaled by what she had said. That wasn't like her, it sounded like something Merrin might say or...or her farther, her farther.

Images of Lord Corbie flashed into her mind, of his teaching her to fight; but with the cuation to only kill when needed. 'Needless killing diminishes your houner Evlyn, rember that.' But she hadn't; she'd abandoned everything he'd taught her when she joined the Meiltha.

She froze, the look of surpise growing even more pronounced upon her face. She'd been an Inderpendant, then she was a Meiltha, now she was an Inderpendant again. That ment that instead of takeing her title as Lady Corbie flipently, it was who she really was by right. She was an equal to Garthag, and above both Merrin and Kendath; unless Merrin really was the Chosen One. In fact, she thought with a small smile, she was of equal status or above Lord Feldwar.

And she'd tricked Kendath into makeing her his serf.

(btw, i'm thinking of haveing her become Corbie heir when she gets back to Vyngard (sp))

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Made by Lembas

Merrin glanced at Evlyn briefly, startled. Was this even the same Evlyn she'd first met? This one was almost...civil, most of the time.

Upon Garthag's ascension they hauled up the rope and Merrin scrubbed her raw palms on her cloak in preparation to climb down the other side, peering into the dimness that was the ground below. A flash of lightning illuminated it for an instant, not long enough to catch much more than a cursory glimpse.

Thunder rolled to follow the lightning, and Merrin didn't hear any sound out of the ordinary over the din - but she saw torchlight from the tower to their east and caught at Kendath in alarm. "Hurry, go! They're coming!"

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Kendath blinked through the haze, just faintly distinguishing the sentries' outlines running down the adjacent wall. One - two - three of them. Perhaps not so lax after all, but easily overpowered. They were waving swords and shouting something, but the tempest drowned their tinny voices out -

A clarion horn blared, echoing off the stone walls with a resonance to make any sentry within a mile snap to vigilance.

He swore under bated breath and began reeling the rope in. He was just gathering it to throw over the wall's other side, when the first three sentries rounded the foremost guard tower. An auxiliary of soldiers came hot on their heels. Their halberds, stabbing above their heads, glistened in the rain. He could make out four... five... eight... countless... An entire platoon? Impossible! Three men could walk abreast on these battlements, but no more. And how by the thrice-cursed gods had they mustered so quickly?

The confounded hesitation lost him precious seconds. By the time he dropped the rope's end over the wall, the first of the soldiers were upon them. "Go, Merrin!" he shouted, bringing up a dagger just in time to parry. A powerful flamberge jolted the small blade from his hand. It clattered to the stone just as Kendath whipped out his falchion. A glimpse of steel to his left, and he pivoted to parry again -

The enemy was gone. The rest of them were still here, shouting for blood, but the steel he'd spun around to parry had dissipated as soon as his falchion -

A lightning bolt sizzled past his ear and sliced the rope cleanly in half, sealing off their escape. And providing him with all the answer he needed. Storms don't spontaneously decide to slice off ropes. Mage.

Kendath was just beginning to think - belatedly - that his Escape Plan B might not be such a lovely idea after all.

[btw I intend for them not to make it]

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Lightning crackled down around Merrin as if attracted magnetically and her own white fire flashed blindingly for a moment. Fumbling her saber out of the sheath with wet fingers she whirled to stand back-to-back with Kendath. Her stomach dropped in horror upon beholding the torches that bobbed around the guard tower opposite the first.

Trapped - rope gone - Merrin dashed rain out of her eyes. Thrusting her free hand out in front of her she steeled herself. Just another moment...a moment...as the guards skittered past the tower, rushing full-pelt along the battlements, Merrin screamed something inarticulate and a column of white fire burst from her outstretched hand, wide enough to wipe the battlements clean of soldiers. Sheets of water began to pelt from the lightning-strewn skies and Merrin saw nothing but a blurred explosion of white.

When she could next see, there was no indication that her effort had ever existed. Frantic, Merrin tried again, and the white column bounced harmlessly off the foremost soldiers, dissipating into ineffectual fragments.

She started to screech for Garthag - if he could levitate himself, could he do it for them? - but found her voice lost in the shouts and clatter of armor on stone. The first of the guards' weapons met her saber and Merrin had no more breath left to shout.

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"Illusions!" Kendath shouted over the din. "You can't - " His falchion slashed slashed straight across a sentry's chest, but said enemy dissipated unsurprisingly on impact. He glimpsed another flash of steel above his head and reflexively ducked low, lunging under his enemy's sword arm -

- straight into the unrelenting edge of a very real and very solid blade. Stinging pain erupted in his sword arm, throwing his falchion slash wide to harmlessly nick the sentry's cuirass. His emboldened adversary twisted his backsword, driving it down and across to strike the opening. But Kendath was already behind him, thrusting a dagger into the nape of the man's neck. Warm blood spurted onto his dagger hand.

Not all illusions, then.

Parrying another genuine blade, he rapidly backpedaled towards Merrin. The new adversary was a behemoth of a man wielding an equally formidable flamberge. The long blade cut wide swaths, dissipating some illusions but leaving enough standing to put the current criminals at edge. The large blade of Kendath's falchion was defying the flamberge with just enough tenacity to keep its wielder alive, and the assassin was just settling in a pattern of defense and scanning around for an opening...

The behemoth choked up on the flamberge's ricasso, twisting the sword around and somehow arcing it behind Kendath's sword arm. He couldn't stop its momentum, and a dodge would mitigate its fatality but still keep him in danger's path. Outnumbered! Hopeless! He flowed to the side anyway, falchion desperately reversing its former stroke.

Out of the blue - more accurately, out of the driving rain - a sabre came cutting between the greaves, into the foe's left knee. The man buckled with a cry of pain. His flamberge fell short, just tearing through Kendath's leather. "Thanks," he muttered at Merrin, twisting around to deflect another halberd coming for his midsection.

The halberd disappeared. Another illusion.

"Someone gut me!" he burst out, a phrase he often employed in frustration but probably not a good idea at the moment. The reason being that quite suddenly he found three more enemies circling him. All three looked more than happy to comply.

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"Welcome," gasped Merrin, the single word an effort to utter. She twisted up and around, for a split second in dire danger of locking hilts with her larger opponent and being disarmed. The saber's slender blade was edged, something she was unused to from three years of using a rapier where only thrusts were dangerous to an opponent, but it proved fortunate when she slashed sharply across and down and the burly man fell, gurgling. Vaguely - through a haze of rain and blood and lightning mixed with deafening rolls of thunder - she wondered at the blade's capability to effortlessly slice through armor. But there wasn't time to think, only act on breathless instinct.

"Someone gut me!" she heard from behind her.

"Not a good idea!" Somehow she found breath for words. Merrin stepped backwards, nearly slipping on the slick stone, and parried a slash that turned out to be nothing the moment it met her blade. She whirled - but not quite fast enough. A flash of silver in her peripheral vision opened a gash across her cheekbone, frighteningly close to her eyes, and Merrin cried out more out of fright than anything. That blade was real.

A moment later she was blinking blood and rain out of her eyes. A soldier came barreling towards her and Merrin had barely room to lock blades with him and engage in a moment of frantic grappling. She stepped back fractionally and the armored figure skidded, landing hard on the battlements. Merrin hesitated for the barest second, unwilling to employ an unfair advantage, until his blade flashed out and cut through her boot. Teeth clenched, she stabbed the fallen figure and turned away, stomach roiling. Gods, she hated this - and gods, her ankle hurt -

Dimly Merrin turned to once more slash upwards and this time she was the one who fell, hitting the battlements with a bone-jarring thud. Her saber skittered out of her hand and such pain lanced up her leg that Merrin almost felt her vision going black. She groped blindly for her weapon and froze, feeling steel at her throat.

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Merrin wasn't the only one in dire straits. Kendath drove back one and a half solid blades with his falchion, that half being the flank Merrin had covered. Then Merrin went down, and he caught a brief glimpse of some hulkish opponent looming over her before his peripheral vision was obscured by the blinding light of another lightning bolt. This one sizzled his shoulder, melting the leather on the spot and rendering his sword arm momentarily paralyzed.

He lashed out with a dagger anyway, felling one enemy from sheer desperation. He arced his small blade wildly, dissipating two more illusions before being forced back around for a launch into the nearest foe's throat. Pressed for space, he backpedaled again and felt his back contact the guard tower behind him. Broadsword coming in with three seconds to spare. He tried moving his falchion again, but...

What was his arm doing? The lightning bolt had sent a stinging tingle through his very bone. He couldn't move it, couldn't so much as twitch.

Weapon still hanging uselessly by his side, he sidestepped the broadsword's first wide-swinging stroke. The second stroke pressed in harder, missing again, but his adversary reversed the movement at the last instant. The sword's hilt came down like a blunt cudgel right as Kendath ducked. He glimpsed the jeweled pommel coming, could only jerk his head to the side and hope for a glancing blow -

His vision blacked out first. Then he began seeing interesting things, namely stars and shiny comets. He was a mere dodge away from tasting steel in his gut - and blissfully ignorant of the fact - when... for the second time... out of the blue...

No sabre. The flash of bluish light did make for a pretty display of pyrotechnics, though. He felt a curious jolting sensation, as from a terribly orchestrated takeoff, but there was no flight saddle under him. Nonetheless he was jerked upwards, plucked by some eldritch hand right out of the battle heat.

That same hand dropped him unceremoniously -sent him sprawling, actually - onto a cold stone floor. No masonry. No crenellations. A dim glow pulsated from somewhere ahead, but aside from that the darkness was perpetual. Kendath groaned and began pushing himself up. His stinging shoulder instantaneously refused to support him. He plopped back painfully on his spine, narrowly avoiding a clash between the back of his skull and the rather hard floor.

"Anyone alive?" he muttered, still blinking to clear his hazy vision. His voice wasn't loud, but it bounced around the cavern anyway.

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Merrin couldn't seem to breathe steadily. She felt dazed and soaked to the bone, and wasn't even sure how conscious she was. Surely that strange haze in which she'd felt herself being half-dragged, half carried through something that looked dimly like stone hallways but could have been anything wasn't consciousness. Every time she tried to stop the gulping, frantic gasps for air her vision cleared a little - and so did the flaming needles of pain in her ankle and, she'd recently discovered, a shallow cut that ran nearly the length of her left arm. Inevitably one of the gasps turned to a moan that wouldn't be stifled, even if she'd had the energy to try.

"Alive," she managed to say in response. Abruptly Merrin realized she was biting her lip so hard it was beginning to bleed, and stopped. Somehow, amidst trying to calm her stomach - which was making vague threats to expel its contents - and clinging by her fingertips to consciousness, she managed a gasping, "You all right?"

Maybe if she didn't try so hard to retain a sitting position. Merrin let herself go limp against the stone wall behind her, somehow sweating even in the damp cold. Her thoughts were a repeated mantra of Gods, help me...help me...help me... with interspersed bursts of gut-wrenching fear about the situation in general. Her breathing began to stead itself, though it still rasped painfully and Merrin wondere if she'd been shouting for her throat to be so raw.

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Kendath heard Merrin's voice manage a response. He worked his mouth, swallowed twice, then worked it again. This time his own voice obeyed him. "Alive, eh? Always good to hear." He tentatively poked his right arm. The tingling feeling hinted that it'd fallen asleep, though never before had an appendage falling asleep stung so painfully.

At last he worked some sensation into his nerves. Apprehensively he drew back his sleeve. If eyes could spontaneously pop out of their sockets, his would have at that moment. His entire arm had a charred appearance, as though he'd stuck it in a fire for a day. Both the blackened, blistering appendage and his spinning head sent a vertiginous wave of nausea into the pit of his stomach.

"Excuse me a moment." That said, he crawled to a corner of the cavern and proceeded to puke his guts out.

He was feeling considerably better afterwards. His head wasn't reeling so much anymore. Upon more careful inspection he found a dozen more gashes all over him, but superficial wounds compared to Merrin's sanguinary ankle. He helped her pull off her boot to inspect it. "Nasty," he commented, a blantant understatement. Her ankle was twisted at an alarming angle, revealing the white of bone protruding outwards. He was at utter loss for what to do - he could aid her in patching the injury a bit, but he was no healer.

Then again, perhaps he didn't need to be. He was beginning to recognize the nuances of this cavern - the glyphs lining the walls, the rank odor. Thus it struck him as no surprise when a familiar voice echoed down the ramifying tunnel: "Come, come, my visitors. I won't bite, you know."

"Here, lean on me," Kendath whispered, bracing his arm against her back and under her other shoulder. He slowly rose to his feet, staggering a bit but managing it nonetheless. He clenched his jaw, eyed the tunnel ahead with steely resolve, and hoped to the gods he'd cursed so fervently twenty minutes ago that the Seeress hadn't a long memory.

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Merrin did more than lean - she practically clung to him, trying all at once to stay conscious, not empty the contents of her stomach, and retain some vestige of dignity by not sobbing at the pain of standing upright. This last she did not quite succeed at. "Hurts," she rasped into his side, not even sure whether her voice even sounded, wishing with all her heart to succumb to the waves of unconsciousness that seemed so welcoming. "Where...where are we..."

She couldn't tell whether the corridor was actually as dark as it seemed to be or if it was just her wavering state between consciousness and the other. A wave of dizziness ensued upon her tentatively attempting to walk with her uninjured leg, and Merrin dimly felt Kendath stiffen when she clutched at him. Can't. Stop doing that. Her thoughts were monosyllables but the general idea came through nonetheless. A moment later during their painful progress toward wherever that voice was coming from, she discovered she was muttering a series of fervent prayers made up generally by attempts to breath and talk simultaneously, and not audible except for the frequent, "Gods..."

The light was getting brighter, she was sure. Merrin had one very urgent thought that was refusing to dissipate like so many others. "If - if's dangerous - " she began, every word a battle, "leave me there and go."

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