Fire by James Erich

Author:James Erich [Erich, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press LLC

Chapter 7

GETTING into Harleh alongside the vek’s party had been easy enough. Donegh merely hid his cloak in the bushes and then slipped into the procession, which included several servants on foot. No doubt they’d been forced to walk alongside the carriages for a couple of hours. Some of the vek’s servants had given Donegh an odd look—they knew he didn’t belong with them—but no doubt they assumed he was a local peasant who wasn’t bright enough to get out of their way. At the same time, the Harleh guards assumed he was with the vek.

Once inside the walls of Harleh, there were few guards. Donegh merely tagged along behind the procession along with nearly all the curious citizens in the city. When they reached the keep itself, it was easy enough to mix in with the stable hands. If anybody wondered who he was, they were too busy to give it much thought. Donegh eventually found a spot up in the hayloft where he could bury himself and hide until nightfall.

Since entering the forest yesterday and discovering he was cut off from the ömem, Donegh had been going over the layout of the keep as he’d memorized it. Normally there would have been no need for him to memorize it, or not much. The ömem would have provided him with eyes to see most of its courtyards and corridors, and even glimpses into the outer rooms. That would have been enough to keep out of the way of the guards. Many samöt depended upon this and grew lazy as a result. But those often ran into trouble when sudden storms moved in and blotted out the Eyes that the ömem depended upon for their Sight, or they found themselves in inner rooms without windows. It was always wise to memorize the layout of the target destination.

In Donegh’s case, he’d been contracted for this job after the ömem had lost contact with the valley, so he’d never had the opportunity to explore it in his inner vision. Instead he’d been given a blueprint to memorize, and he’d gone over that until he knew every corridor, room, and linen closet in the place. The last samöt to infiltrate the keep—Larekh, who’d successfully assassinated the previous dekan, but paid for it with his life—had scaled the outer wall with hooks and surprised the dekan on his balcony.

Donegh thought a more direct approach might be better—slipping right under everyone’s nose, so to speak. The front door of the keep was guarded, but since the courtyard was guarded as well and had an iron portcullis, the guards here were mostly for show. Other doors, such as the door to the kitchen and the door to the servants’ quarters, were guarded in principle, but generally had no more than a single watchman stationed nearby. If Donegh put a little thought into it, he could probably fool one of these men.

He waited until after the church bells tolled Nemom, when it was dark enough to provide

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