large pillar, Hazel stepped out and blew a handful of dust into Isabel’s face, catching her by surprise. Isabel stumbled and went to her knees, struggling against the effects of the powder. Alexander appeared next to her and Hector drew his swords, anger flashing in his eyes.
“I’ll have my vengeance, Witch.”
“Not today,” Hazel said. The air blurred and five exact duplicates appeared around her. Then all six Hazels ran off in different directions.
Hector started to give chase.
“Stop,” Alexander said. “She wants you to go after her. She’s counting on it. She can’t face all of you at once, but she can pick you off one at a time.”
“Horace deserves to be avenged!”
“Yes, but not right now. Stay with Isabel. Protect her.”
Hector looked at Alexander, then off into the darkness, then back at Isabel who lay unconscious with Ayela kneeling next to her. His inner turmoil was palpable but he reined it in, releasing the surge of anger that was demanding action.
“By your command, Lord Reishi.”
“She’s not going to get away, Hector,” Alexander said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “The way you came in is blocked by a cave-in. When she reaches that point, she’ll have to turn back. Then we’ll have her.”
Hector clenched his jaw and nodded, accepting Alexander’s plan.
Isabel was out for almost an hour. Ayela rested Isabel’s head on her lap and tried to wake her periodically while Hector paced.
Chapter 39
Alexander vanished from sight and found Hazel. As predicted, she was trying to flee the keep rather than face Isabel and Hector again. When she reached the cave-in and started cursing, Alexander projected just his voice, just his laughter into the room, moving it past her as if he were walking behind her.
She spun, looking around frantically. “Show yourself!”
“There’s no way out,” he whispered tauntingly, almost imperceptibly.
She turned toward the voice and found nothing. Clearly agitated, she hastily returned to the staircase and started down, moving cautiously as if she expected the walls themselves to reach out and grab her.
Satisfied with the fear in her colors, Alexander returned to Isabel, reappearing when she woke. She was groggy at first, taking a few minutes to fully recover from the sleeping powder.
“Hazel’s coming back down the spiral staircase.”
“We should set a trap in the black-and-white room,” Isabel said.
“I can distract her when she enters, so you and Hector can subdue her,” Alexander said, “but you don’t have much time to get into position.”
They moved quickly, carefully taking positions on either side of the door to the staircase in the black-and-white room. Isabel prepared a pinch of sleeping powder and they waited … and waited.
“It’s been too long,” Isabel said.
Alexander appeared, nodding. “I’ll go find her,” he said, vanishing again.
Several moments later, he returned. “She went into the level above. Maybe she knows another way out.”
“All right, let’s go find her,” Isabel said, heading up the staircase.
She stopped at the threshold. They had bypassed this level on their way down into the heart of Siavrax Karth’s laboratory, but now there was a single set of footprints moving off into the dark hallway. Isabel motioned for Hector to take the lead. Alexander provided light, revealing a long straight passage almost twenty feet wide with ten foot ceilings. Thirty feet into the hallway, they came to two doorways, one on each side, both open with the remains of their doors long since rotted away.
Isabel motioned to the one on the right and they slipped inside, Hector in the lead.
“Looks like living quarters,” he said.
“Alexander, can you tell us where Hazel went?”
The ball of light bobbled and vanished, returning several moments later.
“The corridor leads to a big room that was probably a dining hall,” Alexander’s disembodied voice said. “Past that is another corridor just like this one. She’s about halfway down that hall, heading for the stairs on the other end.”
They raced toward the dining hall, stopping briefly at the entrance to let Ayela catch up. When they reached the far side of the large room, Isabel heard voices coming from the hallway ahead. She motioned for silence and Alexander vanished, plunging them into darkness.
Each peering around a side of the doorframe, Isabel and Hector saw Hazel stopped near the end of the hallway, frozen in place, the sound of footsteps coming down the staircase on the far end. She acted just a moment too late, running for one of the rooms lining the hall but not before one of Trajan’s men reached the landing and saw her.