Death Sworn(6)

The stairs were also, she noted, defensible. In case of attack, the interior of the caves could be defended by a few men against an army. The famed impregnability of these caves was no myth.

At the bottom of the third staircase, they stepped into a large cavern. This one had three passages branching off from it, and only the middle was lit.

“The left-hand passage leads to the main training area,” Sorin said.

Ileni squinted. She didn’t see any stones set in the walls. “It’s dark.”

“So it is.”

She was not going to give him an excuse to be amused at her expense. “You first, then.”

Sorin held up one palm, which began to glow with a yellow light. He walked into the passageway, holding his hand out to light the way.

Ileni followed cautiously. The passageway grew narrower as they walked, until there wasn’t enough room for two people to walk side by side. “A regular magelight would be a lot simpler.”

“Sometimes, I’m not simple.”

She blinked. He glanced swiftly over his shoulder at her, not a hint of levity in his expression, then looked straight ahead.

Ileni watched his back, since that was all she had to look at. His gray tunic pulled tightly against his shoulders as he moved, and one unruly tuft of golden hair stuck out near the top of his head. “Which of my predecessors taught you that trick?”

“Absalm,” Sorin said. “Cadrel was not here long enough to teach me anything.”

Absalm had been the assassins’ tutor for ten years before his death, so no one had been suspicious when he died earlier that year and the summons came for his replacement. The Elders had sent Cadrel, a mid-level sorcerer with a friendly smile and a talent for cooking. That had been soon after the Elders decided that Ileni’s fading powers should be put to another Test, so she hadn’t been paying much attention.

By the time a messenger came two months later to report that Cadrel, too, was dead, the Test had confirmed her worst fears. Even the rumors about how Cadrel had died hadn’t pierced her fog. Not until the Elders summoned her had she started to take some interest. By then, of course, it was too late.

But she wouldn’t have avoided the summons, even if she could have. Ever since the Elders had told her that her entry into the sorcerers’ compound was a mistake, that her powers were going to fade away just as they did for the hordes of Renegai commonfolk, she had survived by focusing only on whatever step was immediately in front of her. The Elders had helped by giving her a new and almost impossible task: find out what had happened to the two tutors who had come to these caves before her.

Perhaps their deaths were accidents, the Elders had said, but without sounding like they believed it in the slightest. Truly, Ileni didn’t want their deaths to have been accidents. All that would mean was that she had no purpose at all, that she had been sent here to bide her time until her own death. That she was truly disposable. Untangling an assassin plot seemed highly preferable.

If she could do it.

She might as well get started. “Cadrel lived here for nearly two months, didn’t he? Surely that was sufficient time to teach you something.”

“Not much,” Sorin said. “I was on a mission for most of the time he was here.”

On a mission. She knew what that meant. “Do you know how he died?”

Sorin stopped walking and turned to face her. The yellow glow illuminating his face . . . or maybe the knowledge that he had murdered someone a few weeks ago . . . made him look hard and dangerous. “He fell down the last of those staircases and hit his head. These caverns can be dangerous to those who aren’t used to them.”

“I’ll be careful, then,” Ileni said. She flicked her wrist, and all at once the passageway was filled with a bright white light emanating from nowhere in particular. It wasn’t much harder than calling up a magelight, but she felt her power flutter weakly, deep in her stomach. “That should make it easier to see my footing.”

The yellow glow around Sorin’s hand was nearly invisible in the sudden brightness. “I’m sure Cadrel made it just as light.”

“He wasn’t as powerful as I am,” Ileni said flatly. It was true, in a way. “I’ve heard that Absalm was more so. Did he die in a fall?”

“No.” Sorin closed his hand, and the yellow light vanished. “Absalm drowned.”

Ileni glanced around at the dark walls of dry rock surrounding them. “Drowned where?”