Fire Weaver (Fall of the Fey #1)

Chapter 34

Mel could just make out the outline of the castle when Lucius called halt on their travels. He slid off the camel with the grace of a person who's done it a million times and, although they had stopped many times since they started walking through the Red Desert, Mel still had trouble getting off and on the great beast.

'I don't know why anyone would build a castle in the middle of a desert.' Mel complained, not for the first time. 'Sand gets everywhere.'

Lucius ignored her as he started drawing an image in the sand. She fell into silence while she watched the outline of the castle come to life. It looked so small on the horizon but the layout Lucius was drawing was huge.

'The thing about being in a desert is.' Lucius started speaking as he stepped away from the finished picture. 'You can almost always see an enemy coming and an enemy that is stupid enough to brave the desert will be fatigued by the time they get there because there are no landmarks to show the way directly.'

'But you knew what way to go.' She reminded him.

'Because I've been here many times before.' He responded. 'I think we should go under cover of darkness. The king only really seems only to have the minotaurs in his retinue so there wont be many with superior night vision.'

With those words they began to form a plan and when they were done they waited restlessly for night to come. When the sky started to turn into pink and orange fire, Mel spoke for the first time in hours.

'We could die tonight.' She told him.

He looked at her with his lips pulled into a thin line and eyebrows slightly pulled together; it was a face that he had made often during the trip. Mel hoped she would never forget him if he were to die. If she was going to die she hoped he would remember her as well. She didn't want to consider what would happen if neither of them survived.

'We could die any night.' He reminded her. 'Tonight is just another night. A night that may be filled with blood but Death will be ridding his white horse with us tonight.'

She wondered if those were the same words he had spoken to his men when he fought wars three hundred years ago. Lucius had spoken the words without thinking with a gravity that made it seem like something he'd said it before.

They waited for full dark before they rode toward the castle. The beats of the camels steps soft thumps in the night. Like wraiths they traveled the last feet of the night bleached sand and no one saw them coming.

They did not try to enter through the front gate. Instead Lucius knew of a secret entrance along the eastern wall that he said was never guarded. When they were standing in front of where he said it was Mel looked at the wall. She saw nothing but sandstone.

She was about to question Lucius when she noticed him kicking the sand at his feet. Mel helped him and spotted a trap door.

'This should lead to the first basement level.' He reminded her in a whisper. He pulled the trap door open but hesitated before he jumped through. Lucius looked at Mel's face with an intensity that had her blushing before he said, as if to calm himself: 'Death rides with us.'

He jumped into the basement and Mel followed, closing the hatch door behind her. To her surprise there was no one in the hall they landed in but it was lit with torches at regular intervals. Lucius looked at her before searching the room for any type of threat.

'The prisoners would be on the second and third basement levels.' He told her. Lucius unsheathed his dejmon blade and walked to one of the doors. He opened it a crack and peeked into the dim hallway beyond. He gestured for her to follow as he stepped into the quiet hallway.