But though this trip also had something dreamlike about it; everything seemed outlined in bright Fire like a conjure, with all the singing colors of her gifts making her lightheaded.
Ten measures from Feruche they stopped, just beyond the first sentries, to rest for a little while after the long day’s fast ride. After dismounting and securing the horses, they walked the last of the road as night gathered behind them. The castle came within sight above the rocky hills, bathed in winter sun, its towers crowned by a golden glow that seeped down the walls like honey. Sioned paused for a moment to contemplate the beauty of Feruche, recalling that Rohan had promised it would be hers one day. And so it would, she told herself. This day.
Sounds of revelry came from within the keep, drunken celebration of the princess’ safe delivery of her son. Sioned listened, a tiny smile touching her mouth from time to time. She was aware of Tobin and Ostvel standing behind her, waiting nervously. In her own mind she conjured up Maeta’s instructions of that spring, seeing her as surely as if the warrior was with her now.
“There’s not a castle in the Desert I don’t know inside and out—and more to the point, how to get inside from out. There are more secrets here at Stronghold than just this grotto passage, but we’ll talk about them another time. Let me tell you about Feruche.”
Sioned closed her eyes, visualizing the hidden entry, the corridors carved out of the rock, the twists and turns she had memorized but had not yet used. At their end was the upper hallway leading to Ianthe’s chamber. A shudder ran through her, but she was not afraid. She felt nothing.
“Sioned. . . .”
Tobin’s whisper turned her head, and she nodded slowly. “Yes. It’s time I finished my work here.”
She led them forward in the shadows below the sunlight, out of sight of the guardpost where she had been captured before. She had no worries about that this time; all of Feruche celebrated Ianthe’s fourth son, and the stones outside the castle were silent. She moved around the curtain wall to the place where castle and cliff joined. A chink in the stone. A thin knife blade inserted to work the invisible catch. A moment when Ostvel’s breath quickened with fear that the mechanism was too old and too long unused to function.
The slab of rough-hewn rock slid soundlessly aside. Sioned slipped through first, concentrated for an instant, and produced a finger of Fire to see by. As Tobin and Ostvel moved into the narrow passage beside her, she inspected the workings of the entry. They had not been touched in Goddess alone knew how long, but the builders’ skill had been such that the system of weights and catches still functioned perfectly.
The miniscule flame lit their way through the shoulder-wide passage, glanced off long-empty sconces rusting on the walls. The floor sloped up, turned sharply, then descended, and in places rotting planks had been set over water seeping in from the underground spring that allowed Feruche to live. But there were no rats, no webs, not the slightest sign or whisper of life here.
At last there was another weighted stone door, and they emerged cautiously into a place Sioned recognized only too well. She had been held in a cell here, away from the light. A quiver chased down her backbone as the nightmare of colorlessness flickered through her memory, and she coaxed the fingerflame a little higher, a little brighter.
“Who’s there?”
Tobin caught back a gasp and exchanged a wild glance with Ostvel, who drew his sword with a sharp hiss of steel. Sioned seemed not to notice. She walked forward as the guard appeared from around a corner.
He choked and blanched in the glow of Sunrunner’s Fire. “You!”
“Yes,” she murmured. “I remember you, too.” She pointed one long, ringless finger at him, and a new Fire sprouted a handspan from his chest. He flattened himself against the wall, eyes huge and staring, mouth open in a soundless scream.
“Sioned—” Ostvel put a hand on her arm. She shrugged him off, smiling; there was that in her eyes that made him swallow hard. But he stepped forward and sunk his blade into the man’s throat. The guard slid down the wall, still staring, dead.
Sioned whirled on Ostvel, fury in her face. He wiped his blade and met her gaze without flinching. “No one can know we’ve been here—not if this is