Divided Allegiance by Elizabeth Moon

Author:Elizabeth Moon [Moon, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780671697860
Amazon: 0671697862
Publisher: Baen
Published: 1988-10-02T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Suli grabbed the web strands that bound Paks, then yanked her hand back as welts rose on her palm. Arvid ran past Paks to look at Ambros and the priest.

"He's dead," he said shortly.

"Both?" asked Mal.

"Yes. Both." Arvid sighed, then turned back to help Paks and Suli hack the web apart. "Lady, that's a dire trap you're caught in."

"I know." Paks could hardly speak for mingled anger and shame—Ambros was dead, and she had not been able to fight. She kept cutting grimly, until finally she could step out of the web. Her clothes were charred to rags, and Arvid looked at her mail with respect.

"That's . . . very good mail you're wearing."

"Yes—" Paks touched one of the burns on her face gingerly, and went to look at Ambros's body. The priest's gray lash had laced blistered welts across his face. Together, she and Mal straightened his body, wrapping his cloak around it. Arvid and the other yeoman stood watch at the door, but no sound came from the corridor. Paks suspected that with their master dead, and his control broken, the men they'd fought had fled, either to the surface, or to deeper hiding places. Suli roamed the room idly, staring at the tapestries, then stooped over the dead priest's body.

"Look at this," she said, lifting a silver chain around the dead priest's neck. "It's got—"

"Drop that!" Paks remembered the Achryan's medallion in Rotengre. "It's magic."

Suli looked startled, and dropped it less quickly than Paks intended. But nothing happened.

Paks could not define what she felt. She had not wanted to go back underground; she had not wanted to meet another evil mage. But she liked Ambros, had gotten used to his cheerful face. When he told her his dream, she felt his trust in her—and as always, gave trust for trust in return. In a vague way she had hoped—and made herself believe—that what they might face under the keep was not nearly so bad as the possessed elf-lord had been. She had thought Ambros's dream was the dream of an untried soldier, a recruit thinking too much of the coming battle.

Now he was dead. She had failed him. She, the seasoned soldier, had not been able to fight. The untried recruit, the boy (as she thought of him), had fought on, alone, and died without her aid. He was as dead as Macenion, as Saben, two others she had not saved. As she took the precautions she knew to take—setting a watch, planning their return to the surface—her mind roiled.

Only after they had started back did she begin to realize what her position might be. What Sir Felis would think. What the Marshal would think. What everyone would think, when their yeoman-marshal lay dead and the experienced fighter let herself be trapped in a net. She did not know how grim her expression was until Arvid spoke.

"Lady? Do you foresee some trouble I do not? Your sorrow for the yeoman-marshal, yes, but—what else?"

Paks shook her head. "I did it all wrong.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.