Chapter 13.4.1

#

I came back to the world, and found myself moving. Someone was dragging me from the torture chamber, scraping my heels over the rough stone floor.

I raised my hands to the arms circling my aching chest, and felt the rough cloth of a monk’s robe. My rescuer – if he was indeed rescuing me – paused, then helped me to my feet. Then he pulled me against his taller frame and half-carried me beyond the door.

There he paused to pick up a lantern, and the light flickered up under the cowl, highlighting familiar features. Had my lord come back to save me? No, this man was too tall for my lord. This was Peter, determined to get me to lauds.

As long as it got me away from the torturers, I was grateful.

We went down a long hallway, then stopped before a wooden door. Peter pulled a key from his robe and opened it, then helped me through. He paused to relock the door.

It was the dusty storeroom. The secret passage, and freedom, was not far.

This time, when he moved the screen that revealed the passage, he came with me. He put the screen back in place, but there was no one to move the chest. I lifted swollen fingers and said, "They will know the screen was moved."

"The dust will tell them we came this way," Peter’s hands replied. He took a deep breath. "We will rest for a moment, no more."

"Can we hide in the cavern?"

"We have no food, nor fuel, and when the soldiers do not find us in the castle, they will scour all the land around. We must starve or go out to be caught. Our only hope is to leave quickly, before sunrise, and hide in the forest. Later we will make our way through it to the monastery."

"The Eastern Green Forest?" I signed. "Before dawn?"

"Lord Guerney’s soldiers are superstitious heathens – they would never follow us into that place, fearing as they do the simple shadows of the night."

There is nothing simple about those shadows, I thought back.

"By my faith in Christ, I know I have nothing to fear from it. I have seen a road that cuts through it – how could it exist, if people did not travel on it?"

The people who travel on it are doomed, I replied to myself. But I faced a forked path: did I tell the monk what I knew to be true, and unmask myself as a heathen unworthy of his sacrifice? Or did I stay quietly in character and face destruction of both body and heart? Perhaps his faith was strong enough to protect us both. Or perhaps I could change his mind before we stepped foot into that evil place.

For now, however, I struggled to my feet and accepted his help.