Masques (Sianim #1)(4)

Aralorn stared at herself in the mirror, the ae'Magi having dispelled his illusion of the bird. The flickering light from the torches gave a dancing appearance to the fine, blonde hair. The fragile face that stared expressionlessly back at her was extraordinarily beautiful. A thin sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead; the misty, sea-green eyes looked dazed and vulnerable.

Abruptly irritated with that vulnerability, Aralorn stuck her tongue out at her reflection. It didn't make her feel any better. She wrapped both arms tightly around her legs. Head bowed on her knees, she listened to the sounds the servants made as they banked the fireplaces and snuffed the torches, trying to think over the uncontrollable panic that the thought of his intimate touch brought on.

"Logic, Aralorn, logic," she warned herself soundlessly. "If you leave now - granting that you can leave - he is going to doubt what you told him about Myr, which may not matter in the long run anyway."

She tilted her head back and whispered with bleak humor, "But if I don't get out of here I'm going to break and tell him everything from the fact that Audreas the Vain is bald to the name of my first pony." Decision made, she waited while the sounds of the castle diminished and the moon hung high in the sky, revealed by the clear panels in the ceiling.

When she was more or less satisfied that the people who were going to sleep that night were asleep, she knelt in front of the cage door. Grasping each edge she began to mutter quietly, sometimes breaking briefly into song or chant, grateful that the cage was not made out of iron, which her magic couldn't manipulate. The phrases she uttered were almost intelligible, as if a person were just not listening quite closely enough.

First her fingers, then her hands began to glow a phosphorescent green. Gradually the light spread to the metal between her hands. When all the metal of the gate held that soft flickering glow, she stepped through, leaving the spells on the locks intact. When she stopped singing the light faded abruptly - leaving the great hail even darker than before. She stood absolutely still to let her eyes get used to the darkness.

The only light in the room came from the moon through the skylights high above, which made it difficult to find the doorway. She exited the first one that she could find, hoping that it was one of the two which traversed the outer wall of the castle.

Before she entered the hallway she dropped to her hands and knees. Guards generally look at eye level, so that from her lower vantage point she should be able to see them before they saw her - an edge that could turn shaky odds to her favor. Her position also had the secondary benefit of making her a smaller target if she were seen.

The corridor was lighter, although not much. The stone of the floor was dry and cool to the touch as, still crouching, she ran a hand lightly over the walls. It took her longer than expected to find the small opening she was searching for. Panic clawed at her, and the temptation to run blindly down the hallway fought for control of her body. This, she thought with wry self-humor, must be how a pheasant feels just before it jumps out of hiding and into the path of the arrow.

She had almost decided to look for another way to leave when she found what she was looking for. Just above the bottom row of blocks, one end of a hollow copper pipe was cut flush with the wall. Silently, Aralorn blessed her hobby of collecting folk tales and the old man at a shadowy bar near Sianim who had told her the story.

A long time ago an apprentice to one of the ae'Magi discovered a rain spell in a book he was reading while the master was away. Three weeks later when the Magician came back the castle was flooded and the apprentice was camped outside. The Magician drained the castle by the simple technique of placing a drain pipe every sixteen stones in the outer corridors.

One such drainage pipe was under her fingers. It was bigger than she'd hoped for, being about four fingers in diameter. It cut directly through the thick stone wall of the castle to the outside. The air coming through it smelled like a moat.

"Ah, the sweet perfume of freedom," murmured Aralorn with a strained smile.

She took a deep breath and concentrated - The familiar tingle spread through her body until it was all the sensation she could absorb, leaving no room for any of her other senses. Unable to see or feel, Aralorn focused on one part of the mouse at a time; nose first, then whiskers. It took her only the time it takes to breathe deeply three times before a very small mouse crouched where she had been.

She shrank against the wall underneath the pipe for a minute and waited for the Magician to investigate the magic that she'd used - but he didn't come. Human magicians weren't usually sensitive enough to detect that someone else was using magic, but the ae'Magi was a law unto himself. He'd said he was tired, so maybe (she hoped) he was asleep. The mouse shook herself briskly, twitched her whiskers, and scratched an itchy spot where the tingle hadn't quite worn off yet; then she climbed up into the dark tunnel of pipe.

Centuries of sludge had built up in the opening, and if several other bold rodents hadn't foraged through (perhaps to escape a castle feline) she wouldn't have made it - as it was, Aralorn was submerged in slimy stuff of unknown origin up to her belly.

It was dark which didn't bother her much, and smelly which did. As she was busy not thinking about the composition of the muck under her feet she almost fell out of the pipe and into the moat some distance below, only saving herself by some ungraceful but highly athletic scrambling.

She caught her breath and thought, "Okay, now what? I need to be something that can swim" - a whiff of the moat's unsubtle aroma cut through the stench of the pipe - "or better yet, fly. Hmm ..."