A/N: I haven't been receiving review alerts or PMs, so if you've reviewed or messaged me and I haven't replied, that's why.
To atomic noodle: Thanks for the review! As for Prince Dan being nice to Alocas, well… we'll see, won't we? And the Clayr are coming up later. They will be featured in chapter 32 if all goes according to plan, so that's a little something to look forward to!
I'll take this opportunity to issue a swear word warning for this chapter – but it's one that Garth Nix used in "Lirael", so you should be fine. This chapter takes place during the last bit of the previous chapter. If you recall, Cassiel Abhorsen left the throne room to go down to the reservoir…
Under Palace Hill
Cassiel strolled through the hallway, whistling softly between his teeth. He glanced out of a window and saw the sun just starting to rise. The Freemen had struck during the night, and it was hard to believe that it was daylight already.
Around him guards were rushing about, tending to the wounded and leading their captives through the halls. The young Lord stood to the side as no less than five Charter Mages escorted a sorcerer down to the dungeons. He too was looking for a staircase, but he had a different destination in mind.
The doorway to the reservoir was locked, of course. Luckily Cassiel had been down there once. His father had taken him to see the Great Stones, and he knew what to look for. Lord Abhorsen ran his white hands over the arched wooden door, which was inlaid with little towers of gold. Cassiel felt a tiny throb of power zip through his fingertips, and grinned at having successfully located the key. Raising a hand to push aside his black hair, Cassiel touched his forehead to one of the golden towers. The Charter mark on his brow flashed momentarily, and the door creaked open.
Cassiel found himself faced with a massive staircase that could hold eight men abreast. He called out a Charter mark for light, which hovered just above his head and cast a weak yellowish glow. The steps sank before him into the gloom.
"This is the way to the reservoir?"
The young man glanced down at Mogget, who was peering around his legs suspiciously. "Yes indeed. Kind of gloomy for a part of the palace, isn't it?"
The dwarf wrinkled his nose in disgust. "It's damp."
Cassiel rolled his eyes and set off down the steps, Charter light floating above him. As he walked he listened to Mogget muttering under his breath. Mogget seemed to be doing that a lot lately, ever since his father had died. He hoped the strange creature wasn't planning a mutiny.
About fifty steps down, a hand closed around Cassiel's ankle and he nearly jumped out of his skin. His Charter light flared into life, illuminating the battered face of a woman. Her teeth were broken, and her hair was covered by a green hood stained with blood. She sneered up at him.
"You serve the Charter," she said, face twisting into a grimace.
"I do," Cassiel answered, trying to remain calm. Slowly, he inched his hand towards his sword, endeavouring not to draw her attention to the fact. True, she did not look very dangerous, but it never hurt to be on your guard.
The woman coughed, and blood trickled from her mouth onto the steps. She was dying. "I scorn you," she wheezed, fingers tightening on his leg. "Your status may be high among these people, but I serve a greater power than you. I am more than you can ever hope to be."
"Oh really?" asked the young man. He gripped the handle of his sword tighter, hiding the action under his cloak. "And who are you, exactly?"
The woman rolled her head to glare at him with one bright eye. "My name is Veloria," she snarled. "And I am a follower of the Ancient Ways." She moved fast, pulling his foot towards her with one hand and bringing up her knife with the other. But Cassiel was faster. He drew his sword, and soon the woman was screaming as she stared at her gushing stump of an arm. Another slash silenced her forever.
Mogget took a careful step forward and turned up his nose at the body. "One of the necromancer's henchmen," he sniffed. "No great loss there, master."
Cassiel was too tired to even glare at the dwarf, and they continued down the steps as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. In fact, in this day and age, being attacked by a half-dead henchman wasn't such a rare occurrence.
After a couple of minutes they could see a yellow glow ahead, and soon Cassiel did not need his Charter light anymore. In the gloom, he could make out pillars edging a vast chamber, and people were moving about in the water. The young man nearly stumbled over another body on the steps, and bent to examine it. A lift of the shirt confirmed that it too was a Freeman, and quite dead.
"Who goes there?"
Someone had been crouching on the steps, and now stood with raised hands ready to cast a spell. Cassiel spread his arms, showing his blue and silver surcoat. "I am Lord Cassiel Abhorsen," he said. The figure gave a short bow and muttered an apology, and Cassiel edged by. He could see in the torchlight the bodies of guards and Freemen sprawled over the steps. The surviving guards were tending the wounded, and nodded as he passed by.
"So many injured and killed," the young man whispered.
Beside him, Mogget snorted. "If you had loosed my belt, my Lord, I would have had the power to stand up to all of the Freemen."
"If I had loosed your belt, Mogget, you would have tried to kill me without a thought."
The dwarf neither confirmed nor denied his words, and they carried on in silence until Cassiel came to the final step. He edged into the water, which lapped at his waist. It was cold, and the young man sucked in a breath at the shock before taking a determined step forward. He jumped as something warm and furry landed on his shoulder, and glanced over to see a white cat with a red collar. "What are you doing, Mogget?" asked Cassiel suspiciously. He was aware of his servant's shape-shifting abilities, but Mogget hardly ever changed form.
The cat graced him with a particularly patronizing look. "I do not want to get my feet wet." Green eyes darted from side to side. "Besides, this water is so deep that I would have been completely submerged. And I did not feel like swimming."
Cassiel set off towards the Great Stones in the distance, careful not to splash. He passed guards and Charter Mages, and paused to have his mark checked. Finally he came to the circle of stones.
On a barge within the protection of the circle were the three Royal children. Six very powerful Charter Mages had been stationed to protectively surround the stones. Now that the battle was over, four of them had gathered around something that was glowing, and the other two were talking to a blonde woman wearing a moonstone circlet.
The Clayr, Princess Penemue, looked up and smiled when she spotted him. The two Mages she had been talking to turned around, and Cassiel recognized the Wallmakers Felio and Nehima. Penemue hurried forward, water sloshing around her waist. "What happened?" she asked breathlessly before she had reached him. "Is everyone safe?"
"Yes, everyone – Dantalion included – is safe." Cassiel winked at her. "The Freemen did break into the throne room, but we managed to apprehend them."
"And nobody important got hurt," Mogget added from his perch on Cassiel's shoulder. He sounded almost disappointed.
"We have some good news for you too," said Felio, wading up to them with Nehima at his side. "We captured Gamori."
Cassiel did a mental double-take. "You – what?"
"That's right," nodded the dark-haired Wallmaker. "She's right over there."
The younger man turned and stared at the other four Charter Mages gathered around a glowing figure. It was a person, wreathed in golden light and suspended horizontally between the Mages. Some of the marks binding the necromancer seemed familiar, and Cassiel recognized them as ones he had seen on Mogget's collar. It appeared that the Wallmakers were to thank for this.
"How did you capture her?" Cassiel demanded, staring as the Mages carried Gamori towards the staircase. "Who did it?"
"It was Nehima," said Felio with great pride. "While Gamori's witches and sorcerers kept the rest of us busy, Nehima managed to wound the necromancer and knock her unconscious. Once that was done, it was pretty easy to bind her. Being near the stones helped our Charter Magic."
"Really?" demanded Mogget. He had been examining Gamori with sharp eyes. "You expect me to believe that some immature Wallmaker defeated Gamori the necromancer single-handedly?"
"That's right," Nehima confirmed merrily. "Besides, it takes a bitch to catch one."
Cassiel had to fight down a laugh, and near his ear he heard Mogget mumble, "In that case, we should have called Kibeth."
The small group waded over to the Great Stones, and Cassiel started at the sudden rush of energy he got from passing into the circle. Penemue took her youngest child, Sitri, into her arms. Felio allowed Prince Andromis to clamber onto his back. And as the tallest one present, it fell to Cassiel to scoop gangly Princess Farelle into his arms. She held tightly to the front of his surcoat, shivering with more than just cold. He could tell that she was frightened, but her face was expressionless. Quite a brave girl.
They headed back towards the steps, inching carefully around the floating bodies of slain Freemen. As Cassiel carefully set the Princess on her feet, she finally spoke. "I like your cat."
Mogget jumped delicately from Cassiel's shoulders onto the steps and promptly changed back into an albino dwarf. "That is a terrible shame," he said to the flabbergasted Princess, "because I much prefer a shape that allows me to see more than eight inches off the ground, thank you very much."
"Mogget, why don't you go hang yourself or do something equally useful?"
"Is that an order, my Lord?" hissed the albino. "Because if it is, it won't do any good. A mere hanging would not come close to killing me."
Cassiel crossed his arms. "Pity. In that case, would you mind leading the way back up to the palace? Oh, and count the steps while you're at it – that should help you pass the time."
The Dwarf stomped off grumbling about having to carry out foolish trivialities for a child with a sword. Cassiel turned to the Princess and gave her an encouraging smile. "Sorry about him," he said, nodding back at Mogget. "He's a servant of the family. A bit testy sometimes, though. Shall we?" He held out his arm, and the young Princess took it after only slight hesitation. "Last time I met you," said the young man, "you were nine, and I was eighteen. I only saw you for a minute though. I hardly recognized you just now."
They climbed up the steps, and Cassiel tried to keep up his inane chatter to distract the girl, both from the oppressive darkness, and from the dead and wounded guards they passed. From the expression on her face as she gazed around her, he wasn't succeeding very well. "How are your studies coming along?" he asked, then immediately wanted to smack himself for asking something so stupid. Farelle merely looked at him and raised her eyebrow in a manner eerily similar to Tirelle, and Cassiel knew that she thought him pretty daft for asking, as well.
"Were you with my father during the attack?" she asked after a short silence.
Cassiel bit his lip and shook his head. "No. I was outside, by the gates. Your father was with the King."
"Why were you outside? It was dangerous. I would not have made you stay out there."
The young man reached up with his free hand to brush his bandolier. "I am Lord Abhorsen," he grinned. "And call me crazy, but it was my choice to stay outside. Part of my job is to be wherever any dead things pop up to terrorize innocent people."
The Princess cracked a small smile. "Very dramatic, Lord Abhorsen."
"Dramatic but entirely true," he answered with an exaggerated courtly bow.
Farelle actually giggled at that. She glanced up as her face was touched by the glow from the open doorway ahead. "How many steps did we just climb up?"
"One hundred and fifty-six," answered a pert voice from the area around Cassiel's waist.
He looked down into a pair of glaring green eyes. "Thank you, Mogget," said the young man through clenched teeth.
They stepped out into the palace hall, blinking in the bright light cast by torches and Charter Marks. An elderly woman in palace livery stood nearby, ready to escort the children to their rooms. Farelle relinquished Cassiel's hand with reluctance, and gave him a shy smile over her shoulder as she left.
"I think she's taken with you." Cassiel turned to see Penemue smiling at him. "Thirteen years old, and she chooses you as her next crush, of all people."
"Well, she is obviously a young woman of good taste." Mogget gave him an incredulous stare.
Felio and Nehima strolled up to them, Nehima still wringing water out of her long braid. Puddles were gathering around their feet as they stood. "Shall we go on to the dungeons?" asked Felio. "We can see Gamori, and I've received word that the Prince will meet us down there."
As the four humans and one dwarf walked through the palace, Cassiel chatted with Penemue. "This was obviously carefully-planned," he was saying. "They coordinated all of their movements, and the agents revealed themselves only at critical times. That was how they were able to get past me and through the gate in the first place."
The Princess nodded thoughtfully. "It does make sense," she sighed. "It just saddens me that so many people we trusted and thought we knew turned out to be traitors. You say that Lieutenant Antares turned on you. From anyone else I would call it falsehood."
"They had many contacts within the palace. And once they were inside the gates, they knew exactly where to go. I suppose the witch Carabia went looking for the throne room, and Gamori headed a second force into the reservoir."
Penemue involuntarily shuddered. "They got so close," she whispered. "I was with my children, and there was a moment when she looked right at me."
The young man placed a hand on her shoulder. "Yes, but they didn't succeed, did they? She was taken, by Nehima of all people! You know that none of us would ever let anything happen to your children."
They had reached the stairway to the dungeons, and the sounds coming up to them were terrible. People were screaming in pain, cursing, and pleading for their lives. Penemue and Cassiel shared a glance, and went down together.
The dusty prison was full, with three and sometimes four people sharing a single cramped cell. Freemen agents and spies were strung up by their wrists and ankles, and shackled all along the walls. At the far end of the room was a door leading to Charter-spelled cells of bronze designed to hold witches and sorcerers.
Nehima was speaking with a Mage, and Felio hurriedly explained to them, "They put Gamori in a separate room. Nehima and I want to check the binding spells." Penemue waved her hand in permission, and the two Wallmakers disappeared through a heavy wooden door.
They were unable to go near the walls, so Cassiel and Penemue stood in the middle of the dungeon as they waited for Dantalion. The Clayr was hugging her arms to her chest, and Cassiel looked at her in concern. She caught his glance and smiled apologetically. "It's just – I've never been down here before," she explained.
"I've never been down here before, either," admitted Cassiel.
They heard footsteps, and turned to see Alocas stumble into the dungeons surrounded by guards. Despite what Dantalion kept insisting, it seemed that Alocas truly had been loyal to them. This allegiance to the Kingdom had resulted in the capture of his former friends and allies. Alocas seemed to be in a state of shock, and Cassiel almost pitied him – almost. He knew the life of a spy to be a dangerous one, a life that almost never ended happily.
Another person was descending the steps, and Cassiel caught Penemue's eye. Dantalion was here, which meant that it was time to interrogate Gamori. He was not at all looking forward to facing the necromancer, helpless as she was. And by the look in her eyes, the Clayr was frightened too.
A/N: There you go, ValorieJueles! Celebrate your guest appearance as Short-Lived Henchman #1. I couldn't do the green hair, so will you be satisfied with the green hood?
By the way, I think Nehima had a snappy line: "It takes a bitch to catch one." Although I rather liked Mogget's comeback, too. Next chapter: Gamori tells all. But until then, reviews please?