Into the Labyrinth by Tracy Hickman;Margaret Weis

Author:Tracy Hickman;Margaret Weis
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781417661084
Publisher: Topeka Bindery
Published: 1993-01-01T10:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 27

LOST

MARIT SAT WITH HER BACK AGAINST A CHILL STONE WALL, watching the human assassin keep watch over her. He was leaning back against the wall opposite, a pipe in his mouth and a most foul-smelling smoke issuing from it. His eyelids were closed, but she knew that if she so much as brushed a strand of hair out of her face, she'd see the black glitter of his deep-sunken eyes.

Lying on a pallet on the floor between the two, Haplo slept fitfully, uneasily, not the healing sleep of her kind. Beside him another set of eyes kept careful watch, dividing their attention between her and the master. Hugh the Hand sometimes slept. The dog never did.

Growing irritated at the unrelenting scrutiny, Marit turned her back on both the watchers and, hunkering down, began to hone her dagger. It didn't need honing, nor did it need the sigla redrawn. But fussing with the dagger gave her something to do besides pacing the chill floor—around and around, around and around until her legs ached. Perhaps, though she didn't really expect it, if she quit watching them, the watchers might relax and grow careless.

She could have told them they were worrying over nothing. She wasn't going to harm him. Not now. Her orders had been changed. Haplo was to live.

Knife sharpened, Marit thrust it into a minute crack between two of the large blocks of white polished stone that formed the floors, walls, and domed ceiling of the strange room in which they'd been imprisoned. She slid the dagger along the crack, probing, testing for a weakness she knew wouldn't be there. Sartan runes were engraved on each block. Sartan runes surrounded her, were on the floor, everywhere she looked. The runes didn't harm her, but she avoided touching them. They made her nervous, uncomfortable, just as this room made her nervous and uncomfortable.

And it was impossible to leave.

She knew. She'd tried.

The room was large, well lit, with a diffused white light that shone from everywhere at once and nowhere in particular. A maddening sort of light—it was beginning to annoy her. There was a door, but it was covered with Sartan sigla. And though again the runes didn't react when Marit came near, she was loath to touch the door they guarded.

She couldn't read the Sartan writing; she'd never learned. Haplo could, though. She'd wait until he woke up to tell her what it said. Since he was to live.

Haplo was to live. Marit made a vicious stab into the crack, levered the dagger against the block in a completely futile attempt to wiggle the stone loose. It didn't budge. She was likely to break her dagger first. Angry, frustrated, and—though she refused to admit it—frightened, she snatched the dagger from the crack and hurled it away. The blade skidded across the polished floor, caromed off the wall, and slid back to the center of the room.

The assassin's eyes opened, two glittering slits. The dog lifted its head, regarded her warily. Marit ignored them both, turned her back on them.

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