The Spine of the World - By R. A. Salvatore Page 0,125
went to the trap door and gently pulled it open. Slipping down to the dirty tunnels, she walked barefoot in the slop, hiking her dressing gown up so that it would carry no revealing stains.
Wulfgar awoke to sounds of a key in the lock of his cell door, and a thin, flickering light outside in the corridor. Having lost all track of time in the dark, he thought the morning of his torture had arrived. How surprised he was to find Lady Meralda staring in at him though the bars of his locked cell.
"Can you forgive me?" she whispered, glancing over her shoulder nervously.
Wulfgar just gaped at her.
"I didn't know he'd come after you," the woman explained. "I thought he'd let it go, and I'd be-"
"Safe," he finished for her. "You thought that your child would be safe." Now it was Meralda's turn for an incredulous stare. "Why have you come?" Wulfgar asked.
"You could've killed us," she replied. "Me and Liam on the road, I mean. Or done as they said you done."
"As you said I did," Wulfgar reminded.
"You could've let your friend have his way on the road, could've let Liam die," Meralda went on. "I'm owing you this much at least." To Wulfgar's astonishment she turned the key in the lock. "Up the ladder and to the left, then through the larder," she explained. "The way's clear." She lit another candle and left it for him, then turned and ran off.
Wulfgar gave her a lead, not wanting to catch up to her, for he didn't want her implicated if he were caught. Outside his cell, he pulled a metal sconce from the wall and used it to batter the lock as quietly as he could to make it look as though he had broken out of his own accord. Then he moved down the corridors to the ladder and up into the kitchen.
He, too, heard the guards arguing and rolling bones in a nearby room, so he couldn't similarly destroy the locks and bars up here. He re-locked and barred the trap door. Let them think he'd found some magical assistance. Going straight through the larder, as Meralda had bade him, Wulfgar squeezed through the small door, a tight fit indeed, and found a precarious perch on wet rocks outside at the base of the castle. The stones were worn and smooth. Wulfgar couldn't hope to scale it, nor was there any apparent way around the corner, for the tide was crashing in.
Wulfgar leaped into the cold water.
*****
Hiding in the kitchen, Meralda nodded as Wulfgar heightened her ruse by securing the trap door. She similarly locked the larder, washed all signs of her subterranean adventure from her feet, and padded quietly back to return the keys to Steward Temigast's room without further incident.
Meralda was back in her bed soon after, the terrible demons of guilt-some of them, at least-banished at last.
*****
The breeze off the water was chill, but Morik was still sweating under the heavy folds of his latest disguise as an old washerwoman. He stood behind a stone wall near the entrance to the short bridge leading to Castle Auck.
"Why did they put the thing on an island?" the rogue muttered disgustedly, but of course, his own current troubles answered the question. A lone guard leaned on the wall above the huge castle gate. The man was very likely half asleep, but Morik could see no way to get near to him. The bridge was well lit, torches burning all the night long from what he had heard, and it offered no cover whatsoever. He would have to swim to the castle.
Morik looked at the dark waters doubtfully. He wouldn't have much of a disguise left after crossing through that, if he even made it. Morik wasn't a strong swimmer and didn't know the sea or what monsters might lurk beneath the dark waves.
Morik realized then and there that his time with Wulfgar was at its end. He would go to the place of torture in the morning, he decided, but probably only to say farewell, for it was unlikely he could rescue the man there without jeopardizing himself.
No, he decided, he wouldn't even attend. "What good might it bring?" he muttered. It could even bring disaster for Morik if the wizard who had caught Wulfgar was there and recognized him. "Better that I remember Wulfgar from our times of freedom.
"Farewell, my big friend," Morik said aloud sadly. "I go now back to Luskan-"